​[Note this article wouldn’t have been possible without previous interviews done with members of the Tree Community by Klemen Breznikar at Psychedelic Baby Magazine, and an article by substacker Jason P. Woodbury at his Range and Basin. The quotes from the band come from these two articles.]

​Where have all the genuine freaks gone? There was a time in America when being called a freak was a badge of honor. When you got called a freak probably, it probably meant you had at least some connection to the counterculture, or were otherwise just too weird and into your own thing to care much about what the rest of society was doing or thought. The term freak is a kind of strange praise, and went back to the people who lived counter to the clockwise norms of straight society in the sideshows and carnival circuits where they were put, or put themselves, on display as a way to make a living. The hippies adopted the word freak and used it to show their allegiance to a way of being outside the normative values of the normies.

The word got its biggest boost from the “freak scene” that emerged out of hippiedom in Southern California, centered around the Laurel Canyon neighborhood in L.A and the clothing store of Suzanne  “Szou” Shaffer, who is credited with introducing hippie fashion. Szou was married to a man who had been on the east coast to Lithuanian immigrants, sent to a reformatory, did some time for various crimes, and joined the merchant marines during WWII before settling down to become a bohemian artist who gave classes in clay modeling to the bored housewives of Beverly Hills. Vito and Szou soon hooked up with a man named Carl Franzoni, who was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1934. The trio started going around to a bunch of clubs in the area with other weirdos who stylized themselves as “freaks.” Miles Barry, in his book Hippie, notes of the scene that they “lived a semi-communal life and engaged in sex orgies and free-form dancing whenever they could.” No wonder Franzoni was given the nickname Captain Fuck.
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They liked to smoke marijuana and drop LSD. The group evolved into “an acid-drenched extended family of brain-damaged cohabitants.” Sometimes these psychedelic decadents called themselves “Acid Freaks.” California denizen and godfather of the weird, Frank Zappa, was inspired by these hippies. His mind was already out there enough to not need the help of drugs to stimulate his wackadoodle imagination. His debut Mothers of Invention album “Freak Out!” centered around Vito, Szou, and Captain Fuck. They and their cohort of freakers even appeared on the last track of the album. When it hit the record stores in 1966, Zappa and his Mothers helped to spread the freak gospel to a world hungry for something different.

Another terminal weirdo, Hunter S. Thompson, had got inspired by the burgeoning freakdom, and it wasn’t just with new ideas for his gonzo journalism, but to campaign for sheriff in Pitkin County, Colorado. It’s hard to believe it now, but it should be remembered just how many people in straight society hated the hippies, and how many were incarcerated over the years for selling and smoking marijuana. The incumbent sheriff Thompson was campaigning against was a man named Carrol Whitmire, a veteran hippie hater in Colorado who sought to stomp them out through methods of intimidation, jailing, and otherwise harassing the freaks, making it hard on them so they would leave the area. Hunter S. Thompson wanted to be sheriff instead. He created the “Freak Power” party and tried to get the hippies to vote him into office. The plan didn’t work, but the power of freakdom continued to spread. 

The term freak started to evolve at this point. The word started being used for any person with a very specific kind of obsession. “Health freaks” were one kind of nut and “control freaks” another. As the brain-damaged fall out from the drug addled excesses of hippie culture started to make themselves known, some people turned to a different kind of power, to recenter themselves and orient towards a higher power. That power, as often as not, was Jesus. 

Within the hippie and back-to-the-land movement there had always been a subset who believed in the power of Jesus. They tended to focus on the aspect of Christianity that revolved around ideas of universal love, pacifism, and the notion of Jesus as a radical freethinker overturning the rules of the establishment. These types ended up earning the moniker Jesus Freaks. Sometime it was used as a pejorative, but just as often it was embraced, because like any freak, they were really into Jesus.

​Some of those Jesus Freaks were very freaky indeed and have left behind cultural artifacts and a rich legacy that deserves to be remembered, and in certain aspects, emulated. The story of the Trees Community, famous for their recordings among devoted fans of “freak folk” music, is about one such group of Jesus Freaks and is worthy of contemplation by Christians, those of other faiths, and those who follow their own eclectic philosophy. 

Much of what became the Jesus Freaks started on the west coast within the evangelical end of Protestantism starting in the 1960s.  Intermixed with this were the hippies others for whom going to regular church didn’t hold much value. Some weren’t religious at all, and others had been exploring other traditions and religions from around the world. A lot of these people had opened the doors of perception with a bit of chemical assistance leading them to become seekers. When the acid started wearing off, many converted to Christianity, and set about trying to change their lives, often while still within the hippie milieu of communes, back-to-the-land living, and the idea that Jesus was a radical who came to overturn the tables of the system.

Yet not all of the freaks settled into a settled into the evangelical side of Christianity, with its focus on the born-again experience, preaching the gospel, and the desire to bring others to Jesus and “save” them using the toolkit of the charismatic movement. Other groups were called to express their faith in music, in monasticism, and in the life of a community organized around liturgy and ritual. The Trees Community followed this latter approach through their involvement with the Episcopal Church. 
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It all started with a hippie guru named Shipen, street name William Lebzelter, and his girlfriend Ariel. Shipen was part of the scene, man, a serious seeker, and perhaps even a seeker of Sirius. Shipen had collaborated on the crazy collage album Rock and Other Four Letter Words with J Marks, an album dedicated to Karlheinz Stockhausen that came out in 1968, after all. The liner notes read, “This album is dedicated to Karlheinz Stockhausen, who destroyed our ears so we could hear.” The album was based on a book by J that in turn featured photography by Linda Eastman who would soon take on the name McCartney when she married a Beatle named Paul. All roads lead back to the Beatles and Stockhausen, after all. 

The album was produced by John McClure and features a Moog II along with the tape cut-ups of the interviews done for the book mixed in with sounds and music from a large slew of contributors. The book and album both bear the influence of Marshall McLuhan. The book features fold out pages, large and small typography in a variety of fonts, alongside the images from photographer Linda Eastman, all jumbled up together as a kind of hyperlinked pop encyclopedia. The album aims to be an audio version of the same. Though the album didn’t sell many copies by record executive standards, it remains a document of the willingness of the freaks to engage with avantgarde experimentation. That one of the people involved in this album was Shipen who was the leader of the Trees Community is interesting in how it showcases the confluence of ideas within hippiedom.

Founding members of the Trees Community Katheryn “Shishonee” Krupa told their origin story in an interviewed by Klemen Breznikar for psychedelicbabymag.com. “The Trees Community started as a commune of individuals who were all drawn to a Loft in the East Village of New York City in 1970. I had met our ‘leader’ Shipen when he came to visit my boarding school in northern Michigan in 1969. I found his knowledge of yoga, Eastern religions and his personality fascinating! He had written his own ideas down in an ‘automatic’ writing (no edits or changes) called Clear Children. While at my school, a number of us like-minded students would sit beside Lake Michigan and talk about the seven chakras, or the many mindsets of Clear Children, among other ideas like: time is a construct or we need worldwide peace.”

Shipen extended an invitation to Shishonee for her to come visit the Loft in Manhattan where he had quite the scene going on. She visited first on her spring break, and came back to stay after she had graduated. The place was almost like an ashram with Shipen as it’s dynamic, creative and intelligent leader. Krupa said he “could have easily been a guru, or an L. Ron Hubbard-type person, but he wasn’t. He was not on a power trip and was pretty humble.”

Inside the loft their brick walls, the wooden floors had been painted white, and their were tents set up inside for privacy. Fabrics and drapes the color of wine were hung from the ceiling. Painted mandalas adorned the space along with a statue of the Buddha and a lions head carving. This was wear they dropped acid and held their happenings that involved poetry readings and free form improvised music amid the glow of kerosene lamps lighting the space with the natural flicker of their dancing flames. The improvised music sessions, which were according to Krupa “beautiful and quite intense,” would go on to create the foundation for the later liturgical music of The Trees Community. Many people from New York’s creative community of artists, musicians, actors and dancers came in to the Loft at Shipen’s invitation to participate in or witness the growing scene.

The basic hippie lifestyle of subsisting on beans, rice and homemade bread in a shared space was something that would continue.

In this setting the quest for secret knowledge and mystical wisdom played a central role. As Shishonee tells it, “Eventually, as we delved more deeply into religious study, those who started showing up were seekers eager for answers to life’s questions. We took day trips to listen to Alan Watts, Ravi Shankar, or attend Avantgarde theater productions. Evenings brought mystical adventures through spontaneous, free form musical exploration. One night might take us on a camel caravan along a desert road in Egypt. Another journey might take us on an ocean voyage on an ancient ship sailing on gently rolling waves under the moonlight. Visitors picked up instruments such as Balinese pot gongs, flutes, a sitar or Indian tambura or a heavy chain and played as the Spirit moved them. By mid-summer, the Loft became a place to delve into incredible spiritual realms. LSD was essential to these early magical experiences, as was an in-depth study of Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, Scientology, I Ching, Christian Science and early Christian mysticism.”

One of the people who stopped by to visit the loft in 1970 was the Reverend Rodney Kirk, a bishop at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. After this various hangers on at the Loft started going to mass. “We’d walk barefoot up to mass, then slip down into the labyrinth of echoing caverns underneath the main altar to sing spontaneously,” says Shishonee.
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In the same year Shipen converted to Christianity after a fall from a black willow tree. After he hit the ground he had a vision of Christ sitting at the right hand of God. Soon they were all being called to the Christian faith, and another figure from the Cathedral, James Parks Morton, had become their mentor as they embarked on a path of communal Christianity. West would soon become their Abbot after they took formal vows and set themselves up as a monastic community.

As the Jesus Freak movement continued to unfurl, some of the original ethos that had been inherent within its DNA from the anti-establishmentarian hippies started to fade, probably around the same time they were coming down from the haze of weed and acid. At the same time there was a Jesus Freak explosion due to the virality of media exposure in the early seventies. Bad trips and harrowing drug experiences probably also contributed to people seeking another way.

Hal Lindsey’s 1970 book The Late Great Planet Earth became popular reading matter and a good portion of the believers shifted away from the idea of Jesus being primarily a prophet of universal love, healing and pacifism, and started to focus on a theology of dispensational premillennialism, or the idea of the immanent return of Jesus before the end of the world and the rapture of those who had been “saved.”  On the one hand this led believers to give up on some of the environmental ideals of the back-to-the-land movement. If the world was going to end, there wasn’t much point in focusing on trying to stop pollution or doing anything about the degradation being done to the land. What was needed was a focus on saving souls from eternal damnation. This in turn coupled with the dominionist view of biblical interpretation holding that God gave humans ultimate and total control over earth, and that it was the necessity of Christians to establish law and order across the land inside our political systems. Because the planet itself was temporary when compared to the kingdom of God and what was to come after the rapture, the resources here might as well be exploited as best befit the church going business executives.
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However, the dominionist and premillennialist theologies have never been the only theologies on offer. Ever since Mart Luther split the atom of Christianity, a process of theological diversification has been underway inside Christendom’s religious portfolio. The process started in Europe, but it accelerated in America, where all different manner of denominations nominated themselves as bearers of the truth. Most often, and to their own detriment, they often see their interpretation of cosmic reality as the “one true way,” but there have been those among them who have taken a different view of things and have proclaimed the idea that they are just “one way among many.” That specific theology has been called universalism.

In Christianity universalism can be described as the belief that all human beings will eventually be reconciled with God, that a loving deity would not condemn a soul to an infinite hell for the finite failings of momentary sin. In a more universal sense, universalism is the idea that universal truths exist beyond the specific sets of belief about spiritual matters within national, cultural and religious boundaries. I few accept that it is true that certain truths might be universal it sets the stage for acceptance and curiosity about the many different and diverse spiritual and religious traditions of the world, and the possibility of cooperation between. Universalist thinking has led to the growth of the interfaith movement.

It should be noted that universalist does not necessarily mean unitarian. Not all religions have to have the same end goal and destination in mind. Their very differences in practices and purpose are part of what adds to the beautiful mosaic and kaleidoscope of spiritual traditions.  

It is not the purpose of this article to get into the history of the universalist movement within Christianity, that had its origins with radical freethinker, minister, theologian and proto-Anarchist Gerard Winstanley in the 1600s with the diggers, or to trace the origins of the interfaith and ecumenical movements. But by the time Shipen, Shishonee, David Lynch (not that David Lynch) and the other hangers on at The Loft came around, universalism and the interfaith movement had found strong adherents within the Episcopal Church. That influence left its mark on the character of what became The Trees Community and made their music and philosophy a different color than the Jesus Freaks who were gearing up for the immanent destruction of earth, the rapture, and the return of Christ.

The interfaith and universalist approach suited The Trees. They had already been explorers in the world’s diverse traditions, from Hinduism and yoga, to Kabbalah and the early Christian mysticism of the Desert Fathers. They were intrepid psychedelic explores, and even as they came down from the drug trip following their conversion, knew intuitively that the inner realms of spirit had a lot less need for rule bound adherence to specific doctrines of theology than the humans who liked to make those rules. They were led along the path to an orthodox faith and sharing of spiritual experience through music, art and liturgy, without concerning themselves as much with the questing to save other people’s souls, which has been a typical focus of Christianity.

This tendency towards Christian universalism was nurtured by their spiritual advisors from the St. John the Divine Cathedral. It was Canon Edward Nason West, the subdean of the Cathedral, who became their spiritual advisor, and when they took formal vows, he became the Abbot of what they called The Trees Community. Canon West also happened to be the advisor to noted fantasy writer Madeline L’engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, among many other wonderful novels. The group became very close with her as well. In a four of her books, West appears as the character Canon John Tallis. As they moved along in their journey with the church, West became their spiritual “father” and L’Engle became their spiritual “mother.”  
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West was canon sacrist and subdean. He was also a theologian, author, iconographer, and an expert in the design of church furnishings. He had a deep love for Fyodor Dostoevsky and was equally versed in Eastern Orthodox side of faith as he was to the Episcopal traditions within the overarching Anglican Communion. He liked to see himself as a starets, or what is known in Eastern Orthodoxy as a kind of spiritual guru. These weren’t people necessarily of high rank with the church, but known as wise and the person people went to for advice.

L’engle was also of the persuasion of the universalist salvation. She believed that “All will be redeemed in God's fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones.”

George MacDonald had a large influence on her work and she believed in a similar way as he did with regards to divine punishment. “I cannot believe that God wants punishment to go on interminably any more than does a loving parent. The entire purpose of loving punishment is to teach, and it lasts only as long as is needed for the lesson. And the lesson is always love.”

Her universalism was such that many Christian bookstores didn’t want to carry her books, because the doctrine is considered heretical by some. The evangelicals likewise banned her books from being taught in their schools, let alone carried in the libraries. One such critic stated that “Madeline L'Engle teaches universalism in her books and denigrates organised Christianity and promotes an occultic world view.”

It wasn’t the only way she was getting criticized though, the secular readers and critics thought she brought too much of her faith and spirituality into her books for them to be comfortable with either.   

The Trees Community worked closely with the priest James Parks Morton at St. John the Divine. He had grown up in Iowa, but studied theology at Cambridge, England, followed by his ordination into the episcopalian priesthood. Morton went on to become a leader in the interfaith movement. In Jersey City and Chicago, he worked with the inner-city poor. His work brought him to NYC and in 1972 he was appointed dean of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Upper Manhattan. It is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. At the time it sat in the middle of an area of urban stagnation, and working with Bishop Paul Moore, they transformed the place into an inclusive bohemian temple.

Morton was sympathetic to the environmental movement and wanted to maintain dialogue with other religions. Later in his career he founded the Interfaith Center of New York.

​Morton was interested in using the arts as a way to bridge the energy of religion, and made the Cathedral a kind of hot spot for dance and music in the already flourishing NYC scene. As such he was the perfect kind of mentor to give spiritual guidance to the members of the Trees and their community work.

After the core group of seekers at The Loft had started converting to Christianity, the other, more casual visitors stopped dropping by. Those who remained were committed to living a life centered on Christ. The idea of taking a hippie commune and turning it into a devoted monastic community held a strong hold over them, but West advised them that they should take things a bit slower and go out and see what other denominations within Christianity had to offer before they committed and made formal vows.

This was fortuitous timing in another way. The Loft where they had their genesis was eventually transformed into a parking lot by the municipal powers of Manhattan. With the scene around that particular crash pad dissipating, and West advising them to look to other churches, they decided to take their improvised music, now incorporating the psalms of David, prayers and religious lyrics, onto the road.

As Shishonee recalls, “Eleven of us set off in May, 1971, disciples of the Lord, eager to see where He would lead us. For the next seven years, we traveled throughout America and Canada, honing our musical, theatrical presentation and sharing it in schools, churches, monasteries and Christian communities. Always, we sought God’s will. He drew us to help pick strawberries and work with Hutterites on a farm in Ontario. He led us to a monastery in Gethsemane, Kentucky where we found a spiritual retreat with gracious, Franciscan monks. He called us to live with nuns and monks in a Roman Catholic monastery along the Pecos River in New Mexico. We helped pack pecans in a community in Koinania, Georgia, then lived and worked in a family household at Church of the Redeemer in Houston. Each experience in a new community brought change, conflict, and growth, pruning members away from our core group, or sometimes adding to it. Throughout these painful often difficult experiences, the music flourished and evolved.”

Their music had been informed by their wide ranging interests. It could be said to mirror the interfaithful example of their universalist teachers. Sitars, zither, harp, cello, koto, gongs, Balinese instruments and African hand drums all joined together in a symphony of souls. They continued to improvise, even while using the structure of the psalms and other material as a focus. The influence of world music can be thought of as their exploration of different religious traditions, while their dedication to improvisation, something not as common at all in other Christian music, can be seen as an expression of the individual freedom of the adherent.
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When came back to New York City form their initial travels and eventually did take their vows. An article in Time Magazine from 1973 reports on their experience that “The five men and three women, ranging in age from 20 to 30, went through a virtual catalogue of religious experiences before undergoing their Christian conversions. Now known as the Trees Group, they live in an apartment near the church, regularly give concerts at the cathedral and also perform tasks like guiding cathedral visitors. This fall they will take preliminary vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.”

As they honed their music, they continued to tour and give concerts at churches and in other spaces around the United States. In 1975 they recorded their sole/soul album The Christ Tree.
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‘The Christ Tree’ was compiled as a musical meditation – our concert – that we performed in late 1974 and early 1975 while on tour. The concerts were not just a “show” but rather was a form of worship, a musical journey for those who came to experience it. For the album, we left out a few songs that were in the full concert, yet still it is representative of what we were playing at that time,” Shishonee said. “ The Christ Tree was not just a concert, but also a theatrical event, designed to draw people into a life-changing experience. Imagine the dramatic impact of hearing strangely discordant, far off voices singing “Holy, Holy” (called ‘Holy Seed’ on the album) approaching from distant corners of a dimly lit church, then seeing nine men and women wearing flowing white robes and swinging incense as they move slowly through the audience…”

Yet he life of the monastic bohemian started to take its toll, and the group was starting to disband by the late seventies. The experiment was over in 1978. The vows of chastity were hard to maintain, and people partnered up and started having families. They loved what they had done, but it was getting harder to maintain. Harder in the financial sense as well, with money for the arts drying up at the church and New York City where they were based deep into its years of abasement. The Trees had grown from a seed, flourished and spread its roots and branches, then shed its leaves.

The original pressing of the album became legendary among aficinados of strange ethereal music for its combination of weird folk and world sounds coupled with its earnest and deep spirituality. The vinyl commanded high prices in the collectors market. Then in 2004 Timothy Renner of Dark Holler Arts remastered the album for release on CD. It was rereleased again by Old Bear Records in 2020, fifty years after The Trees Community had first formed at Shipen’s Loft.

The entire album is worth listening to on repeat, but it is their versions of Psalm 42 and Psalm 45 that I keep coming back to over and over again, year after year.

The music remains timeless, ancient sounding, experimental and utterly contemporary. My hope is that new musical and spiritual seekers who find the music will continue to be inspired by their example, by the freedom to improvise within a spiritual context, by the freedom to choose instruments from around the world and combine them eclectically.

It seems clear that people in the United States and Europe are leaving behind the trappings of secularity in favor of a return to religion, what historian Oswald Spengler called a second religiosity. People are finding safety in religion from the collapse and decline of the institutions and systems previous thought to be stable. Many young people are flocking to both evangelical denominations and seeking out the Traditionalist movement within the Roman Catholic Church or joining various Eastern Orthodox churches. Teachers like Canon West, Madeline L’Engle, and James Parks Morton, and their disciples in the Trees show that matters of the spirit and can be viewed from a universalist lens, and that faith can be celebratory of differences in religion within and beyond Chrisitanity. Hopefully too, they will allow themselves to get their freak on.  
.:. .:. .:.
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Thank you to everyone who reads this and helps support the universalist bohemian art life by keeping me caffeinated and wired. ​

​Yesterday I had the pleasure of reading a great essay, and hearing a great story, from James Hart, on his Penny Wagers newsletter. Towards the end of his piece he wrote something that really struck a chord with me. He got on the subject of how we make art, what and who for and how there is “an ethos that we’ve lost in lieu of something else. For lack of better terminology, let’s call it a ‘folk’ versus ‘commercial’ approach to art and expression.”

He then went on to give some really great examples of the folk approach to art and the commercial approach, comparing and contrasting.

Here is the rough litmus test he gives to determine whether something is folk or commercial:

“Folk is mutable. Commercial is fixed... Folk is learned in the moment, from person to person. Commercial is learned asynchronously through products…Folk is participatory. Commercial is presentational…Folk serves a social function. Commercial serves consumption… Folk is process-driven. Commercial is product-driven.”

He gives examples for each part of his test, and it really is worth a close read. I wrote some comments to Hart after I read the piece and it all really got me thinking. I had already been thinking about binaries, and how to resolve them, from a short not Hart had posted. Hart had mentioned there was a lot more nuance to his schema, and that it wasn’t a simple binary.

“I should make it clear that I’m not judging commercial art. These two have helped each other throughout the past several centuries, and thank goodness for that. It’s precisely because of the recorded nature of books that many oral traditions have even survived. And I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you that I don’t like novels, movies or Pink Floyd. This isn’t some high horse thing.”

My overstimulated cogitation got going with all this, and it started with poetry, because Hart had mentioned his experience in being “frustrated with the masses for turning their backs on poetry.” As someone who writes poetry as well, I understand the frustration. Yet I think poets themselves are partly to blame. I don't think the masses have turned their backs on poetry as much as poets, at least since the twentieth century, started to turn their back on the masses. Poetry used to be much more accessible and spoke to people who could hear its beauty. I do think that with the explosion of electronic media, it was one of the major casualties of casual entertainment.

There haven’t ever been many poets on television or radio, even in the days of variety shows.

I'm not anti-modernist, or anti-postmodernist. “Pomo” is not a dirty word to me. Ever since I was a kid I started seeking out the weird, the odd, the strange… the avantgarde. I first read T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland in the sixth grade. I didn’t make much headway with it then, but I knew that I liked it, that its mystery and strangeness compelled to return to it and seek its meaning. For casual readers it remains an obscure reading, and with the continued ascent of modernism in literature, I think poetry became too academic. Lots of writers wanted to imitate Eliot, Pound and the others. Not everyone who comes to read poetry for the joy of the language, the imagery, and the emotional connection, wants to sit down with a concordance and skeleton key to make sense of it all.

Later came the Beats and think it was necessary to break open the rigidity of form, the complete abandonment of form over the rest of the century gave little for people to hold onto, except aficionados. In the aftermath of the countercultural 50s, 60s, 70s, poetry became more academic, less the province of the people. It became too hard to interpret, alongside other kinds of art, literature and whatnot... so I think many people stopped paying attention to poetry. They got their fix of it in the lyrics of Bob Dylan and other exceptional songwriters instead.

Musing along these notions was when my own experimental predilection hit me, and I realized that one way to resolve the binary between commercial art and folk art was to include the avantgarde as a third circle.
As I mentioned, I love the weird, the strange the obscure. I seek it out. I think it even seeks me out. But for people who’ve grown accustomed to commercial art, it’s fierce independence and lack of scalability can be off putting. For those with a traditionalist mindset the experimental can appear to be a pure derangement of forms that should never be messed with or adulterated. Yet it is in the crossover zones between folk and commercial art, commercial art and the avantgarde, experimental approaches and folk that very interesting hybrids occur. In the fourth locus created when all three are combined, new hybrid forms are able to be synthesized.

The rest of this mostly off-the-cuff spontaneous essay will take an unpolished look at the places where “no commercial potential” plays nice with banjo pickin’ grannies and the mainstream material made for mass consumption. I’ll be looking across mediums as well.

For one thing, a lot of art that ends up being of great cultural value is experimental in nature, and not of much use to the publishers, galleries, and record labels for whom the bottom line is their sole reason of existence. Publishing used to be different, but that’s another story. (For those interested in a time when publishers would print culturally important books that weren’t likely to sell in huge quantities, see The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read by André Schiffrin.)

Furthermore, aspects of the avantgarde often end up in the world of the highly commercial. We need to look no further than surrealism and its use in advertising and commercials. Another example of the way experimental sound production became mainstream, was in the use of noise and record sampling. Hip-hop and rap are two of the dominant genres of music around the globe, but it all started using techniques that had first been used in the musique concrète created by Pierre Schaeffer in France starting in the 1940s, manipulating records. Now the figure of the electronic music DJ is entirely mainstream as well, with none other than the current Pope having his own DJ.

In literature we might look at this triad as the storytellers of traditional tales who represent the folk tradition, the postmodern poets and stylists who represent the avantgarde, and the pulp, romance and thriller writers who represent the commercial. Writers such as Samuel R. Delany cut his teeth in the world of pulp science fiction, became enamored with postmodern theory, and applied techniques of experimental writing to the hybrid novel Dhalgren, to great success. The novel, and later film, The Warriors, was a standard kind of pulp urban adventure plot about inner city gangs. Yet it was based on the traditional story Anabasis, from the Greek, and it also achieved a successful reception, especially the film.

All of the best early fantasy writers took their inspiration directly from world mythology. At the time fantasy was still a niche area of literature. A place for nerds. As such, there was an essential experimental aspect to it, even if it wasn’t technically avantgarde. Like science fiction it has since come to dominate much of the publishing market. To its own detriment, it has become less and less experimental, less and less connected to the mythic, and now is in complete throe to the commercial, making most of it lackluster and unfulfilling.

In visual art you have your whittlers and chainsaw sculptors making folk art, Jackson Pollock doing the avantgarde, and Bob Ross and Thomas Kincaid representing the commercial. Did you know Bob Ross apprenticed under the maverick weirdo H.R. Giger? Ross had a mental breakdown after working with him He might have been in PTSD recovery mode for the remainder of his career. I think it would have been very nice to see a synthesis between their very different aesthetics. Too bad there was never a PBS show where a man with an afro instructed people how to paint highly sexualized alien lifeforms. And yet for all of Giger’s high strangeness, he went on to have as much success as Ross, though in a different manner, with the use of his art in the Alien and Species films, seeding humanities consciousness with his otherworldly imagery.

In music you have your fiddlers and banjo players playing tunes that have been passed down, while in the commercial world Taylor Swift is raking it in with her pop, and in the avantgarde, small audiences make music for equally small audiences.

So often a creator gets stuck in one of these rings without venturing into the place of overlap. Countless are the avantgarde musicians who’ve never made a song that could have a commercial success. Countless are the pop singers who would never dream of going atonal, of using field recordings, or stochastic processes to come up with musical accompaniment. Countless are the folk singers who wouldn’t go to an experimental electronic concert, or to a free jazz improvisatory throwdown. But for those who make the venture to straddle the lines between commercial, experimental, and folk, new areas of possibility began to emerge.

Music writer Kristīne Brence talks about the blending of folk and metal. “Folklore metal is important as it captures the essence and spirit of traditional folk music while infusing it with the power and intensity of heavy metal. It serves as a means of preserving and celebrating cultural heritage, as well as connecting modern audiences with the stories, myths, and traditions of past generations. This genre also allows for artistic expression and exploration of different musical influences, creating a unique and diverse sound that resonates with listeners around the world.” 

These places of blending and crossover are where some of the most interesting material is being created. Those who do the crossing over need to have a wide variety of interests and wide-anging curiosity to become successful blenders of their own in the glass bead game of artistic synthesis. They need to be happy to experience the so-called highbrow with the so-called lowbrow, to go to the symphony on a Friday night and to a bluegrass show the following weekend, and read a cheap thriller spy novel during the week. They might pick up a copy of Mad Magazine or Cracked one day, a book by Thomas Pynchon the next, and then head over to a craft festival the next night. The next week they might take their partner out to see the latest Romcom at the theater.

Works that touch on all three can end up being adventurous in their experimentalism, accessible to the commercial world of the casual reader, listener or viewer, and rooted in the timeless traditions of folk that connect it to lineages of story and skill.

Speaking of Hollywood, they seem to have lost most of their storytelling ability by barely flirting with anything that might be deemed arthouse. It has led to a cultural bankruptcy. Yet the arthouse films can be seen as too snobby when they don’t leave anything for a viewer to hold onto in terms of plot or traditional pacing. Either can feel alienating to those who wish for traditional stories and forms.

O Brother Where Art Thou? was such a hit because it combined the traditional tale of the Odyssey, with folk music in an artsy movie that hit the recognizable plot beats of a commercial flick. Blue Velvet also took the commercial aspects of the noir thriller and detective movie and blurred them in a gently surrealist lens. There was the heart of young love, and the darkness of obsession painted with abstract impressions. David Lynch’s last movie, while celebrated by critics and fans, had less appeal to the average movie goer and is not such a cultural touchstone as Blue Velvet and some of his other works have remained.

Some areas borrow from one area and not another. Classical music, while not necessarily to be categorized as avantgarde, borrows routinely from folk motifs. Popular music borrows from classical. James Joyce borrowed from the traditional tales of classical literature, again with the Odyssey, but framed it in an experimental fiction of vast cultural importance, but with little kinship to the commercial potboiler. In the fifteen years it took him to write Finnegans Wake, a pulp novelist would have cranked out fifteen books.

The folk strains in country music and jazz, coming from ancient repositories of song in Europe and Africa, gave it their power. When those folk strains got watered down into young country and smooth jazz, the material might have been useful for background music at parties and casual listening, but it failed to touch the depths of soul reached by the other forms.

The Americana and alternative country movements that broke away from country as it was going to continue rooted work along with experimentation however have continued to touch discerning listeners in a way that the light beer version of the music does not. It isn’t just soundtrack music.

The same is true of those who’ve continued to push around the exploratory boundaries of jazz while also retaining some of the swing and other elements that keep it grounded. Of course there is extreme avantgarde jazz just as much as the easy listening variety. I contend the one that takes its root, pushes with experimentation, and remains relatable produces the most memorable and touching art. Vaporwave could be considered a mixture of the experimental approach and the commercial.

​The music of Sontag Shogun on their 2025 album Päiväkahvit is an example of a work that sits in the center of the three overlapping circles, with elements of folk music, classical piano played by Ian Temple, and field recordings, post-rock guitar fizz, and modular electronic workouts gluing it all together into a new gestalt.

For those of us who wish to see our culture flourish, our works must embrace commercial potential to reach an audience, rootedness in folk traditions to touch the heart, imagination and kindle our shared long memory, and experimentation that pushes at the boundaries of the possible.

It is in that area in-between ponderous deliberation over every word and sentence, and the slapdash approach of commercial interest, while also drawing from the primordial powers of our variety folk traditions, that could infuse contemporary art of any media with a new power.

.:. .:. .:.
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The  writings presented here will always be free, but you can support my work by passing the essays on to others, and sharing the links to other sites and telling your friends.  I have also set up a Buy Me A Coffee page, which you can find here if you would like to put some money in my rainy day coffee jar. You could also buy my book The Radio Phonics Laboratory: Telecommunications, Speech Synthesis, and the Birth of Electronic Music if you want to support me.

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Thank you to everyone who reads this and helps support the universalist bohemian art life by keeping me caffeinated and wired. ​

TRINARY CODE painting by Melissa Shemanna 

“All the means we’ve been given to stay alert we use to ornament our sleep. If instead of endlessly inventing new ways to make life more comfortable we’d apply our ingenuity to fabricating instruments to jog man out of his torpor!”
​ ― René Daumal, Mount Analogue

There seems to be a growing sense within the dominant culture that there isn’t much left to do that is worthwhile; that the effort to do something and become someone doesn’t seem worth the bother; that the energy and time expended on a project won’t give a measurable return. Life coach types say things like “It’s the process, not the product” (that is important in life), but coming from their self-referential lips “the process” seems like a mere consolation prize. What’s the use in trying to carve out a path for ourselves with the whole system stacked against us,  when it is so much easier to slip into the sleep of passivity?

            In a consumerist society where so many of our wants are catered to, it is easy for the muscle of willpower to atrophy. Our own dreams, the ones we wake up to in the middle of the night, the ones that burn with a sense of urgency, slide down and have a way of becoming less important the more we acquiesce to being spectators of life, audience members at the Main Characters’ show under the big top. So many people feel stuck in service-industry jobs, mouthed off at by Kyles and Karens and snubbed by the whims of management. Others feel stuck in a Matrix–style simulation, disconnected from reality. Perhaps these feelings are behind the memes about Non-Player Characters I’ve seen circulating on the internet.[1]

            Those McGovCorp McManagers have much to gain from keeping us on the line at the fry station. A few may get promoted to assemble Happy Meals and keep the store going, but it seems only a few get to walk through the golden arches and into the gated communities beyond. In my book, having all my wants catered to by rising up the ladder of the kleptocracy is not a meaningful promotion. I’d rather have my actual needs met.  

            This is where one of the key values of the generation I was born into enters into play: slack. Generation X, the Slacker Generation, the Latchkey Kids. Though the ethic of slack doesn’t belong to one age group alone, I think Gen X has done the most to popularize the ideal in the decades since the seventies. A little extra slack may be a saving grace for those who choose to become slackers in the years to come.

            If passivity and lack of willpower are a problem, it seems strange that the idea of being a slacker is an antidote to an absence of personal agency. Slackers have been defined as people who shirk responsibility, who try to get out of work, who are disaffected, apathetic, and cynical. While I concede that these may be part of what it means to be a slacker, I deny that being a slacker means you are without ambition. The question must be: ambition for what, and for who?

            Richard Linklater, writer and director of the 1990 cult-classic indie film Slacker, talked about the word in an interview for Mondo 2000, saying that “I think the cheapest definition [of a slacker] would be someone who's just lazy, hangin’ out, doing nothing. I'd like to change that to somebody who’s not doing what’s expected of them. Somebody who's trying to live an interesting life, doing what they want to do, and if that takes time to find, so be it.”

            Another connotation of being a slacker is that you have the ability to achieve, but you are purposefully an underachiever, often out of protest to the blatant materialism of Western society.  Such conscientious objectors often end up being involved with some form of bohemian subculture. That’s the kind of slacker the 2020s would do well to see a resurgence of. If you’re not doing what’s expected of you now, that list might include not scrolling on your phone, not watching TV, not playing video games, not going to college; because you don’t do these things, you get to move past Go and receive a get out of jail free card. For me, the biggest of these are, first, to make the effort to avoid social media and mainstream media, and second, to not just be a consumer of literature, music, art, but also someone who engages with these ancient forms of leisure and recreation by making them myself, in some way or other. The deindustrial slacker is one who uses their time to  make more than consume and spectate.

Slacking off is a way to sidestep the rat race of meaningless work and the hamster wheel of 21st century busyness in favor of doing your own thing. It’s hard to learn new skills and make preparations for leaner times if there is no slack in the schedule, and you’re always strapped for time. 

            The slacker has time to think their own thoughts. From out of those thoughts, they have time to contemplate and think other related thoughts and develop their own takes on current events, rather than just regurgitating the AI-generated talking points of the talking heads.

            Often the slacker will have a job. What the slacker often won’t have is a career (in the narrow sense of the word, as something for which a person went out and got a degree, did some interning, and then landed with the perfect company). The job is often there to help them pay the bills (most Gen X slackers wanted to get out of the parental units’ house as soon as possible—and in their time that was still economically viable). In time, the work they do on the side might lead them into what sociologists have called a subcultural career: the ancillary work within various businesses necessary to maintain some of the larger subcultures.  Working for a skateboard company, doing live sound at a music venue, or having a gig as a tattoo artist or body piercer are just a few examples. I think subcultural careers could also be pivoted towards those endeavors that would be useful in a less high-tech world, such as cottage industries around the revival of lost arts that may be niche now, but will see wider adoption as the flood of cheap goods become less and less cheap.

            One way to develop such a skill and learn the lore surrounding a craft or hobby is by joining a club, guild or folk school. At the beginning of September my wife and I attended a “Gathering of the Guilds” held by the Weavers Guild of Greater Cincinnati. This group goes back to 1940’s and was founded as an educational non-profit to promote interest in handweaving. It has blossomed to teach everything from spinning, felting, knitting, dyeing, basketry and a wide variety of other fiber arts and techniques. As the Weaver’s Guild grew, they were able to buy a home to house their operations. This year in celebration of their 75th anniversary they hosted the gathering on their property as a way to showcase the rich variety of opportunities to be educated in a craft that are available in my city. It was also a chance for artisans to sell their wares. The other guilds in attendance included: Cincinnati Blacksmiths Guild, Cincinnati Book Arts Society, Clay Alliance, Contemporary Quilt and Fabric Arts, Greater Cincinnati Lapidary and Faceting Society, Ohio Valley Basketweaver's Guild, Ohio Valley Enameling Guild, Ohio Valley Woodturners Guild, and Tiger Lily Press. It seemed like a massive success, as the place was a packed hive that bustled with activity.

Folk schools provide similar opportunities for learning traditional skills. Notable examples in the United States include the John C. Campbell Folk School on the North Carolina side of the Smokey Mountains and the North House Folk School in Grand Marais, Minnesota.  In addition to traditional handicrafts, some folks schools also teach dancing and music as part of their celebration of passing on culture. With so many interests and things to learn and do slackers don’t have much of a problem with  boredom. Boredom is something the slacker associates with the dominant culture, because it rhymes with banality. For all their supposed inactivity, they get a lot done, and it’s nice to have a conversation with them because they tend to be readers and learners with active interests in a variety of topics. The reason for their disaffection is because of their actual devotion to helping the bohemian diaspora to flourish. This is why they will devote Saturday afternoons to hosting actual radio shows that play underground music, or keeping the lights on at an independent gallery or bookstore where they’ve stayed after to clean up the leftover wine and beer bottles after the poetry reading.

            Boredom is something they’ve even learned to cultivate and accept, because when boredom arrives it is a symptom that they haven’t been paying enough attention, and perhaps a reminder that maybe they’ve been consuming too much and not making enough. Stretches of coasting may be acceptable to any given slacker, but only while they catch their breath to prepare for another uphill climb.

             Through immersion in bohemia the slacker has come to have a heightened aesthetic sense (whether or not one slacker agrees with the tastes of another is a different matter). Through the extended contemplation of books, art, music, and film, it is easier for them to see through the mass-produced simulacrum that’s often passed off as art in the marketplace. Knowing quality is out there, they’d rather forgo tripe to focus on what truly nourishes them. As often as not this includes the creation of their own contributions to the great conversation. (And whether or not their own contributions ever get conversed about is a different matter.)  

            Thus, to be a slacker takes willpower. It’s an effort, especially when sustained. Some don’t make it. They give up in favor of entrance to the golden arches of the gated community. As Herman Hesse wrote in his novel The Journey to the East, “Once in their youth the light shone for them; they saw the light and followed the star, but then came reason and the mockery of the world; then came faint-heartedness and apparent failure; then came weariness and disillusionment, and so they lost their way again, they became blind again.”

            Finding the star again, when assailed on all sides, requires willpower, and an assuredness of a fate and destiny drawing one on to something that can’t be found in the workaday world governed by McGovCorp. As one line in Linklater’s movie has it, “Withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy.”

The aspiring slacker who has managed to free up some lost time needs to remain on guard.

“Thee voluntary relinquishing ov responsibility for our lives and actions is one ov thee greatest enemies ov our time,” Genesis P-Orridge wrote in the T.O.P.Y. Manifesto. P-Orridge further wrote on the theme that “Time can be a tool, a liberator, or an oppressor. When we claim time back for ourselves we are at last learning to be free and effective. Control needs time like a junkie needs junk. To escape control we must re-embrace our given time.”

Perhaps it is just my middle age, but it seems like our collective waste of time has only gotten worse since Thee Temple ov Psychic Youth was founded in 1981. It’s become a reality crisis, and it’s related to decision fatigue, another side effect of life within the dominant culture.

Crisis. It’s a word of Greek origin rooted in the verb krinein, “to decide.” While I am all for making wise choices, I think sometimes it is better for those of us who get stuck in analysis paralysis just to choose something and start doing it, if only for the satisfaction of taking action. The inability to decide has claimed many already. The band Negativland had a saying from their album Free  that I come back to often: “Too many choices is no choice at all.” The plethora of choices supposedly offered these days is rather superficial, and they are often presented in binaries: Microsoft or Apple, Pepsi or Coke, Wendy’s or McDonald’s, Netflix or Hulu. All the choices we have to make in our day-to-day life can end up giving a person decision fatigue, and when they finally are presented with a swath of time to do as they please, they may find it is easier to turn on the tube than spend an hour practicing guitar or reading a book about ecology.

Yet, like other kinds of tiredness, decision fatigue can be shaken off. Making small decisions and taking small actions help to develop the willpower necessary for greater acts of will and purpose. Movement and activity dissipate the possibility of the early-onset rigor mortis typified by the “life” of couch potatoes.  

For those of us who wish to collapse now and avoid the rush, the time is always now. We can seek the moments in-between to apply some of the remaining oil to those parts of ourselves that may be in danger of rusting out from not being used or exercised.  There are few of us humans who ever reach the height of our inherent capacities. The potentials inside us are like a syrup that add to the sweetness of life if only they are tapped. Rest may at times be needed, but rust sets in when rest is no longer regenerative.

To direct our mental and physical abilities with consistency and effectiveness takes practice and the development of new habits and self-imposed limits that give added impetus to self-determination and direction of energy. A few simple pointers here will suffice.[1] The saying “Nothing to it, but to do it” is a good start. In other words, whatever it is you have in mind, just start doing it. As one of the characters in the movie Slacker put it, “Who's ever written a great work about the immense effort required in order not to create?” There is an irony I have seen at work over the years: the amount of time and energy spent trying not to do something could have been more easily put into getting a task done, with time at the end left over for munching on a donut and having that third cup of coffee. Waiting for the perfect time to get started is will-weakening. While I concede there is an art to good timing, waiting for perfect conditions is an exercise in futility, and excuses and distractions are liable to pile up. On the road to a dark age, adjusting expectations in acceptance of a flawed existence may be a positive mindset to adopt.

The quest for perfection can also be a danger in finishing a task. “Perfect is the enemy of done,” as another saying goes. Unfinished jobs and projects have a way of weighing down the psyche. It’s an experience I’m very familiar with, and finishing what I start has become for me as much a matter of practicality as it is a habit that gives added strength to finish the next thing that I start. This relates to the idea of not putting off things we find difficult or unpleasant. A case can be made that we are better off doing these things first, rather than last. If a reward helps us finish a task, the thought of the cold beer to be had at the end of an arduous day working outside in the sun on your urban homestead might be what you need to get you through the tedium. 

The right amount of rest, before it turns into sloth and constant napping, is equally important in the wise use of willpower. Those who are tired, irritable and discontent are liable to do whatever is the easiest activity just to escape boredom. The dominant culture encourages this kind of mindless self-indulgence. The easiest activities tend to be those that are more harmful than helpful like snacking when one isn’t hungry, and otherwise being fed empty calories that clog the imaginal system via the screen.

​One of the gifts that comes from slack is time to get real about our needs, wants and wonts in life. I think this was one of the unexpected positive outcomes of the lockdowns during the first year of Covid-19 (all other aspects surrounding that thorny issue aside). The frantic [1] race to accumulate the largest hoard of crap stopped for many, at least for a little while. Some used that opportunity to re-calibrate their lives and minds. The local parks that spring were the busiest I’ve ever seen them and people were getting outside walking and being active. For many it was an opportunity to embrace  silence, as the chatter and stress of constant overstimulation had disappeared for a spell.

For others there was panic, a feeling of flatness and even further withdrawal into isolation. They escaped the stress of the situation, not out into nature, or by taking time to work on their hobbies or personal interests, but by going deeper into the simulacra of life and community that the internet offers. As the lockdown showed, the opening up of slack time may drive some of our fellows into various forms of binge behavior.

For one teenager in Brooklyn, the use of social media during the lockdown took on a troubling turn. Logan Lane became “completely consumed” with the online personality she had created. Then one day, after getting burned out on the endless scroll, she was so sick of it all that she put her phone in a box. It was after she put her phone away that she started experiencing some of the freedoms I took for granted as a teenager: checking books out from the library and going to the park to read, meeting up with other teens and getting into graffiti, going to shows. Her newfound freedoms spurred her to write a text called the Luddite Manifesto, and spurred her parents to make her start carrying a flip phone on her jaunts around the city, after she “lost” her smart phone. When she met another teen at an all-ages punk show who also had a flip phone, the two bonded over their distaste for social media. These experiences led her to form the Luddite Club with her new friend. An actual  group of people who meet in person, and whose aim is self-liberation by excising themselves from social media and taking a skeptical view of technology. In cutting off their phones they’ve cut themselves some slack.[1] Group meetings typically take place at parks and involve playing acoustic guitar, reading books, writing, and watercolor painting.

Logan Lane has really taken to the analog life and has adopted the use of a sewing machine, typewriter, and Sony cassette player as part of the technological limits she has set for herself. As the Luddite Club organically attracted members from around New York City, the teens talked about opening other chapters based on location, and what might happen when they graduated. I hope their example inspires others to continue and  start Luddite Clubs of their own. [Note: Some time after I wrote this article originally, numerous other Luddite Club's have formed around the country.]

People like these who have taken steps to downshift and simplify their lives, will have a lot to teach those who can’t or won’t give up some of their stimulation ahead of time. These are the slackers of tomorrow who will be able to show others how to get by with less things and more time.

In these moments of slack we can delve into such pastimes as three-sided chess, mathematical theory, formal logic, and philosophical inquiry that develop the cerebral side of life. Others may get into weightlifting, jogging, skateboarding, or shooting hoops, and other activities that are largely physical. Playing and listening to music, writing and reading poetry, and the practice of empathetic listening to friends and family help develop the side of ourselves that is emotional. Soldering circuit boards, playing with vacuum tubes, or fixing bikes and keeping old machines running are all hobbies that advance abilities within the technical and mechanical . Hosting dinner parties, starting a Green Wizards meetup or Luddite Club, or getting involved within an existing order or society  all enhance our lives as animals who are social. Between these different focuses are many areas that overlap in the liminal. Neglected by many, reviled by those with a reductive materialist mindset as trivial, are those practices and activities that fall under the broad canopy of the magical. Working in any of these areas, or the many others not listed, is a useful hedge against the anomie of Western civilization in the time of its dotage and decline.

[1] All of them that I’m aware of are videos, but see, for example: https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/56692/1/are-npc-video-game-the-new-main-character-syndrome-tiktok. Think real-life people putting on the blank faces and stereotyped body movements of video game background characters.

​[1]The full story on the Luddite teens is well worth reading. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html

​RE/SOURCES: 
Here are some books, films, and music you might like, but you don’t have to take this slacker’s word for it. 

Atkinson, William Walker. The Will: Its Nature, Power, and Development. 1909. YogeBooks PDF, 2012. Available for free here: https://www.yogebooks.com/english/atkinson/1909will.pdf   
​This book on the development of willpower is well worth examining by those who don’t mind a little taste of occultism. These techniques can be applied as much to the practical matters of everyday living as they can to the planes beyond the physical. 

Dobbs, J.R. “Bob”. The Book of the Subgenius. New York, NY.: Simon & Schuster, 1987. The following hype from the front pages  says a lot of what you need to know. “Sometimes a book goes too far. Sometimes is... now. First—there was The Gilgamesh. Then... the Bhagavad-Gita. Then... the Torah, the New Testament, the Koran. Then... the Book of Mormon, Dianetics, I’m OK You’re OK. And now...The Book of the Subgenius (How to Prosper in the Coming Weird Times)”. Is it a religion? Is it a practical joke? Is it somewhere in between? You decide.
Folk School Alliance. < https://www.folkschoolalliance.org/> This website is a great general resource and includes a directory of folk schools around the United States.

Greer, John Michael.  “Slack! An Irreverent Proposal” <https://www.ecosophia.net/slack-an-irreverent-proposal/> This post from the spring of 2022 gets into Discordianism, The Church of the Subgenius, efficiency, resilience and the different ways slack can be used. 

Hesse, Herman. Rosner, Hilda, translator. The Journey to the East. New York, NY.: Noonday Press, 1956. In this novel, the narrator H.H. joins a group called The League, going on a pilgrimage through time and space in search of timeless wisdom. 

Hodgkinson, Tom. How To Be Idle: A Loafer’s Manifesto. New York, NY.: HarperCollins, 2005. Hodgkinson is also the editor of the much recommended Idler Magazine (https://www.idler.co.uk/). In this funny book he defends the good life and writes about laziness, idleness, and slack from the perspective of a lounging philosopher, taking in literature, art and history along the way.  

Linklater, Richard. Slacker. 1990; Austin, TX: Detour Film Production, 1990. Film. In general you won’t find me recommending too many movies in this column, but there will be exceptions. This film follows the life of a bunch of bohemians and misfits over the course of a single day in Austin, Texas. Their dialogues and monologues touch on all kinds of subjects from politics to daily life, through a philosophic lens.  

Moshowitz, Zvi. < https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/slack/> I found this article by way of Jeff Russel’s musings on slack (see below). Moshowitz looks at slack as “The absence of binding constraints on behavior.”
Negativland. Dispepsi. 1997, Seeland, Seeland 017. CD. Listening to this album, to me, has always been an education in advertising and binary thinking, as well as a good laugh.

O’Driscoll, Dana. “Reskilling, Rebuilding Community, and Exploring Folk Traditions at the John. C. Campbell Folk School.” < https://thedruidsgarden.com/2023/06/11/reskilling-and-folk-traditions-at-the-john-c-campbell-folk-school/> O’Driscoll’s blog is one of my go-to spots for learning about everything from Druidry to permaculture. This essay is about her experience spending a week at the John C. Campbell Folk School learning bookbinding.

Petrek, Melissa; Hines, Alan. "Withdrawing in Disgust Is Not the Same as Apathy: Cutting Some Slack with Richard Linklater". Mondo 2000 No. 9, p. 81. 1993.

P-Orridge, Genesis Breyer. Thee Psychick Bible: Thee Apocryphal Scriptures ov Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Thee Third Mind ov Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. Port Townsend, WA.: Feral House. 2010.

Russel, Jeff Powel. “A Few Thoughts On Slack.” < https://jpowellrussell.com/#a_few_thoughts_on_slack>. Jeff Russel is a frequent commenter on the blogs of John Michael Greer and his own blog focuses on the variety of topics that interest him. His post on Slack came after he spent some time reading The Book of the Subgenius. His take goes more into how “slack means you do what you want.” 

FOR MY OTHER CHEAP THRILLS ARTICLES FOLLOW THE LINKS BELOW:

A COMPLEXITY OF SPECTACLES

DREAM FORAGING

STREAM FORAGING

THE DOWNWARDLY MOBILE DANDY AND THE TRAILER PARK QUAINTRELLE

THE POWER OF THREE: TERNARY LOGIC, TRIOLECTICS AND THREE SIDED FOOTBALL

LEGEND TRIPPING, THE DEINDUSTRIAL GOTHIC, AND A WORLD FULL OF MONSTERS

RADIOS NEXT GOLDEN AGE

THE ART AND PLEASURE OF LETTER WRITING

CULTS OF MUSIC

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The  writings presented here will always be free, but you can support my work by passing the essays on to others, and sharing the links to other sites and telling your friends.  I have also set up a Buy Me A Coffee page, which you can find here if you would like to put some money in my rainy day coffee jar. You could also buy my book if you want to support me.

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Thank you to everyone who reads this and helps support the universalist bohemian art life by keeping me caffeinated and wired. ​

The words bohemian and discipline aren’t two that most people normally think of as going together. One might think that self-restraint and good habits such as regular exercise and keeping a clean house get tossed out the window when embarking on the path of the bohemian. Yet it takes quite a bit of dedication to live an unconventional lifestyle. For those who have devoted themselves to literature, music and art, and to the making of it, discipline is a must for showing up on days when the muse seems distant and far away. The rigors of being downwardly mobile, of toiling away in obscurity, of working dead end or menial day and night jobs while focusing on the great work during so-called leisure hours requires devotion and willpower. And while the development of these internal powers may be free, they do not come without effort.

Discipline is necessary if one wishes to escape the laziness of the mass minded. Regular practice is required if indifference to the approval or disapproval of others is sought. To be insulated from the arrows of the philistines and illiterati care must be taken.

Resisting the simulacra of experience in favor of real experience takes guts. Doing things which no one gives permission to do means living a life that will often be outside the comfort zone.

The Do It Yourself ethic that is central to Universalist Bohemianism and Down Home Punk runs on a fuel of willpower for making things, whether it’s a cupcake side hustle, a regionally touring band, or a print or skateboard shop in your basement. Nothing gets done until you do it. No robots, no managers.

In the age of Big Spectacle perhaps the biggest use of discipline comes in the form of cutting oneself off from the deluge of streaming entertainment in favor of the drip feed of slow culture. Savoring unmediated experiences instead of bingeing on things both pointless and forgettable. The discipline to turn away from distractions and focus on things that are important to you as an individual cannot be underestimated. The only way to be sequestered outside of massive influence and the constant pull of attention is to erect an unassailable garrison around the mind and life.   

If you work as an artist discipline is a trait the muses find appealing. If they see you showing up to do your work, and you finish your work, you, as a vessel, will be refilled.

Discipline was the keyword at the collective house where Sun Ra lived with his arkestra of musicians. What to some may sound like improvised chaos, is actually the work of painstaking precision. The hours and hours of daily practice spent making music, then talking music, thinking music, back to making music, brief pause to eat, sleep irrelevant (Ra was insomniac) back to the discipline. It come from the planet Saturn after all, this honing of the blade of life at the grindstone of work.
 
Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), self described as anarchist in their organization, also had a focus on discipline. This was necessary for their other purpose of inciting individuals to get a life, live out their true desires, the ones that came from deep inside, the ones that weren’t inserted by television, church or state. Discipline and will become a foundation for living on your own terms outside ov control. As Genesis Breyer P. Orridge noted, “Thee Temple strives to end personal laziness and engender discipline.”

The word discipline is also related to the word disciple. A disciple is a person who learns from another. The disciple of bohemianism isn’t out to coerce others into acting, following and believing everything they do and say, but is someone who can act as a model and inspiration. By becoming a peer leader, they show to other humans what can be done and accomplished, given time and discipline. Those thus inspired may carry on certain aspects of a teachers work, but in true Aquarian spirit, make use of it for their own personal goals and ends, all the while further developing and braiding the cord of initiation further into the future.

As it is written in Thee Psychick Bible, “We are not seeking followers, we are seeking collaborators.” I take that as meaning those who can share and exchange vision and relate to one another on the level of imagination. This is why the artists, punk rockers, decadents, writers, poets, painters and visionaries of the past have always been an inspiration. How did they achieve what they did? Even if they are dead we can still collaborate with them in terems of learning from the echoes of their minds they left in their finished works.

A SENSE OF DISCIPLINE

There is also the matter of the word discipline as a distinct area of study. In this case there are many Bohemian Disciplines. Three main aspects of bohemian life come to mind: the discipline of reading, the discipline of listening, and the discipline of seeing. First we can think of these in their relationship to literature, music and art, major areas of engagement for the bohemian. Then we can think of the use of our senses as disciplines. The same way a body craves exercise, so to do the use of our senses in less automatic ways.

During the process of deindustrialization unfolding around us, we as humans will also have to be less automatic, run less on autopilot, and bring more intentionality into our actions.
Disciplines around the five senses can also be explored within the sphere of universalist bohemianism by developing an appreciation for good food (while elegance and refinement are all well and good, one need not be a snob about it -all the finest cuisines developed out of peasant recipes, and todays foodies would do well to remember that).

Food always involves scent, but perfumes, cologne, aromatic soaps and incense are all ways to indulge the scent of smell. 

Touch may be indulged in with your loved ones from a simple caress, to massage and lovemaking.
The idea in all of these things is to approach them with more reflection and thought -an act that requires discipline.

Developing these senses is one way towards developing an artful life.

On another level we can think of writing, painting, drawing, and music making as disciplines that all add to the quality of life when creating beauty and wonder as gifts to share with others.

Secession is available in everyday life when we secede from every day thinking. But to stay the course requires work. Supreme aloofness to the viewpoints of everyone else cannot be achieved in a day. 

There is an aspect of bohemianism that has long taught of better living through chemistry. Rimbaud was just one in a long line who recommended the derangement of the senses as a path leading to the palace of wisdom.

It’s hard to maintain balance on the road of excess.

The Decadent Movement of the 1890s has a part to play in this matter. They saw correctly that the decline (décadence) of the Roman Empire came from the erosion of its culture, which came on the heels of the moral rot that had set in and taken hold. So it is now with the decline of western civilization which the Decadent Movement foresaw with the advent of industrial society. Charles Baudelaire adopted the term decadence in counterpoise to what he saw as the banality of progress, which he rejected.

Charles Baudelaire used the word proudly to represent a rejection of what they considered banal "progress."
Baudelaire’s work represented “a preference for what is beautiful and what is exotic, an ease with surrendering to fantasy, and a maturity of skill with manipulating language.” Yet Baudelaire also had a reputation for “dissoloute” habits, frequent visits to prostitutes and brothels, a taste for hashish, laudanum and drunkenness.

This aspect may be considered, from an astrological point of view, as one of the influences of Neptune and the way it promotes both drug culture and fantasy literature.

​Yet the Decadent movement, for all its excess, saw the shape of things to come. They were early trumpeters of what can now be seen as the perversity of Western society in a state that has moved from rigor mortis to terminal decay. Distancing oneself from the man in the crowd, creating an isolation around your mind, is necessary in order to not succumb to the various forces at work in the undertow and unweaving of culture.
Joséphin Péladan thought that art and living as an aesthetic ascetic was a suitable replacement for the pleasures of decadent society. Painting, music and literature all offered a way out from what we can now call the spectacle of mass entertainment. The movement from decadent decadence to aesthetic asceticism offers a mode of discipline for the aspiring bohemian monastic.

​The primary goal of the Universalist Bohemian life is to live life as a work of art. This brings the aesthetic vision to the fore in every aspect of what a person does. This vision was epitomized by the Decadent writer, artists, and mage Josephin Péladan.  He called it kaloprosopia. Everything about a person could be subject to kaloprosopia, and it could be worked on for the entirety of a persons life, so they consciously apply themselves to living up to their full potential. It was also a way of bringing the aesthetic out of just the studio, concert hall, gallery, reading room and salons and into the world. The person who practices kaloprosopia takes exquisite care over the refinement of their personality, over their choice of clothes -but not just as a dandy or person with a personal sense of fashion, but also their very presence as a person. Kaloprosopia can get down to the minutiae of an individuals  actions: the way they move their hands when conversing, certain types of gestures, the way they walk, word choice and way of speaking. All of it is an avenue for embodiment of a singular, individualist and individualized aesthetic vision.

“The law of kaloprosopia is to manifest the exteriorization of the character one claims for oneself.” Péladan wrote in the L’art idéaliste et mystique.

The notion of developing presence pertains to the inner esoteric arts though it is not limited to them. We have all known certain people who possess and transmit a certain and particular quality that seems to be effortless on their part -an aspect of their very nature. In my mind part of this comes from the way they may be connected to things outside and beyond them, to the inner planes and their openness to experience people, places and things.

Developing this presence is a goal of the Universalist Bohemian and was likewise an aim for Péladan. Another way to look at it is by using the term self-creation.

This idea may seem narcissistic. The idea of self-creation may conjure ideas of so-called influencers. It may all seem like mere ornamentation. However, for Péladan, who had seen his country transformed by industrialism, who had seen capitalism weaken the wills of his countrymen with an increasing commercialization of all aspects of life, it was a form of resistance to an externally imposed aesthetic viewpoint and allowed the true inner aesthetic of a person to emerge.

The word kaloprosopia itself is derived from the Greek καλός (beautiful) and πρόσωπον (person). As the digital age is in the process of disintegrating and passing us by, the chance to let go of collective identities and craft a personal one is as essential as ever. Doing so without the benefit of posting images and status updates to a corporate controlled social media company will give people the opportunity to start relishing our in-person interactions.

​For Péladan the object of life was “to remake the soul that God has given him: to sculpt it into work of art.” Another way to look at it is as self-reinvention. In times of change and crisis, whether personal, familial or on the broader scale of the collective, individuals can choose to pivot, change their tactics with tact, and instead of reacting to situations, pick a measured and proper response in line with a newer set of values, information, or just based on a hunch, rolling with intuition. 

For his predecessor Baudelaire there was a “burning need to create for oneself a personal originality, bounded only by the limits of the proprieties … a kind of cult of the self.”

In America the idea of creating a cult of self has found even more fertile soil than on the embattled fields of ailing Europe. Here, individuality is an ethos and a creed. It came out of the land and seeped into the minds of the people who wrote the Constitution, and Bill of Rights and continues in our long conversation about what those things mean today. Personal freedom and the rights of the individual have long been championed by Americans of a variety of political persuasions.

When McGovCorp gets too big for its britches and the rights of the individual get trampled upon, ferment and fire start burning beneath the brows of the American imagination.

At such a time the cultivation of a beautiful person, and being a beautiful person becomes all the more relevant for what it can offer the greater good.

The alternative of self-creation lends itself to a more ugly world. When we refuse to choose for ourselves how we ought to live and be, others can step in and choose for us. The choices they make, as can be seen throughout history, are not always in the best interest of the person or the greater society. Particularly in a time of social decay and disintegration the appeal of mass mindedness and letting others do your thinking for you is great, because then you can abrogate any sense of responsibility for what happens in your life and what is seen going on around you in the world.

The tact of deliberately cultivating your presence, your appearance, and living an artful life, will in turn open up even further choices for freedom and opportunities to follow the path of your destiny. Modern society would keep us crippled in the mind. Self-confidence ebbs, depression and anxiety rue the day. Schools and workplaces mete out derogatory training so that the lowest common denominator is upheld. Rather than giving them tools and practices to help lift themselves up, sleeping dogs are let to lie, the willing are whipped, and the ability to thrive and live an excellent life for all is diminished.

To build the discipline it is necessary to get to work. The late artist Monte Cazazza, who gave us the term “industrial music for industrial people” for his friends in Throbbing Gristle has some fine words on the work it takes make an alternative culture, knowing that our own inner resistance was a big part of what needs to be overcome. In the Re/Search Industrial Culture Handbook he tells us:

​“I think that psychology is half the battle. And probably anyone can do almost anything. It's just their lack ofself-confidence, and derogatory training, that stops them. And it's a really sad fact that makes the world a much less interesting place. It's humanity's loss that this is still continuing to happen. In some ways I've been lucky, just because of certain chances. But I also capitalized on those chances when they occurred, and tried to recognize them-but actually I've decided that I didn't capitalize on them enough! You should be doing work because you want to do it. You think it's valuable and worth doing. And maybe it's just part of your personality. That's a really involved and very complicated question, and I don't really think there is one total answer; there's all these different types of answers that enter into it. And as Mark Pauline would say, ‘All work is dirty.’ It's all dirty work no matter what it is, and that's the way it is. If people don't realize that, and they are going to get into these forms of activity, they should stay out of them if they don't expect that. And they should not interfere in our work-because it's hard enough to do already. No one is writing you big checks-all along, what you've done is because you wanted to do it.”

​That’s the kind of work that takes discipline.

.:. .:. .:.

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