ADVENT 1.1: The Apophoenix
“You wanna listen to my demo?”
Before you know it, the disc is in your hand.
You’d avoided eye contact, made all the right moves.
“Hey! Hey, you! You wanna listen to my demo?”
Breath’s left you.
Exhale, exhale, and there is nothing. The tormentor circles on rollerskates.
“Haha yeah! Right on!”
A portable player emerges from — was it the waistband of the swim trunks?
You should never have come to the boardwalk.
“You’ve got your own headphones, right?” Grinning at you.
Plug in.
- - - - - THE FILM STARTS NOW . . . . .
ἀναίδειαν
gLYPHSEDGE
ego/def illusion
◭ speculative music
Castle Cagliostro &
⎣the new World order⎤
present:
⃝
THE LAY EXPERT,
and the Coming Flood:
a case for
JAMES QUENTIN DEVINE
as a Public Luxury
a vignette reel of suggested edits
to be played internally,
in varying tempos
temperaments
colors &
voicings
filmed in
XENOCHROMA
on-site in LOST EROS, CA
COVID Year Zero
thru
COVID Year One
✚
surfed as you please —◢▲◤ ◢◂ ▸ ▾ ◥
I. THE APOPHOENIX 🜂
(uh-PAH-Fih-nix)
Make do fake you — Improv’s an odd job —
play it as it lays. adjust to pay-for-praise.
JAMES QUENTIN DEVINE, hereafter invoked as JQD, is THE SPEAKER:
I have other names. YOU may know some of them.
I’ve done other things, all come undone.
NOW NOW NOW Now Now now now now:
That’s the conundrum.
[sound of bongo d-]
um, so —
I’m so
Aum Shin-rikyo — it’s unequaled.
Parallelless gremlin baby,
coming out like sequels.
Aleph, Aleph, Alphabet!
Voorhees,
windswept haboob in pursuit of the store keys,
shipwrecked!
amor fatigued,
there’s more to read,
much more to read
so much so much so much so much
more to read
best bet?
before you set torpedo to speed
line up the jets in bombardier breeze
stroll the boulevard —
h-ha ha
hIGH as
FUCK
off-Z grade Weed
high as
high as
high, as luck would have it
fall on seppuku caprice or
stagger backward
ass into
i’ll cut your ass in two
I’ll tell you all the all the the the the the the —
GOOD NEWS
news
news
news
news
IN
the Good Space, if we’re being honest —and why be anything other?
other other other
where you’re so, so aware of The Music
that you’ve no awareness of it,
unknown becoming
taking JOY in its un-
or-sub-or -
trans-conscious counting,
pendulum swung:
rhythm-rode hypercode —
then!
set to writ a rainbow ode,
for the hanging men on adobe roads
acrobats at the neck
slackened back slumpt and fold’d:
swaying in the breeze, swaying in the breeze swaying in the breeze, swaying in the breeze
ah cut, ah wing, ah loo, lo hey
& Juan Burro shot-dead over there,
et. al queztalcoatl
coastal flood overload
impulse arrested
back
swaying in the breeze, swaying in the breeze swaying in the breeze, swaying in the breeze
back
swaying in the breeze, swaying in the breeze swaying in the breeze, swaying in the breeze
swaying in the breeze, swaying in the breeze swaying in the breeze, swaying in the breeze
swaying in the breeze, swaying in the breeze swaying in the breeze, swaying in the breeze
back and to the left ↲ ↲ ↲
to the left — to the left,
back and to the left left left left left
now
SCREAM!
now
tear the motherfucking club up
tear the motherfucking club up
tear the motherfucking club up
tear the motherfucking club up
now, um 🝯
zapruder zipgun bop
flip off the pigpen
fuck all you puercos
eat a flick of the cig end
thames flowing james
clocking noggins bonk BIG BEN
title card drops crop
guillotine jig zen 🝐
e.t. eliot waistband 🝙
foxglove thrush eaten facebent
all you do is paint pictures
never worry for the day spent,
just the late rent
this is a cutting party
just the late rent
it’s a stick-up, kid
just the late rent
for a penny farthing 🜠
late
rent
i did what i did
[a duration of silence,
unrepresented visually]
a False Peak and then:
Let’s Get Re[BLAST OF HELLISH NOISE] In Here!
to an unhearing ear
to end unhearing ear
ego def illusion ◖
caping for fear ◗
fur coat flout out on heliotrope
nice grasse
flowers on melrose
ATAVISTIC AVATAR
lyman with the banjo
excavate the past and you’ll find yourself again
excavate the past and you’ll find yourself again
and again and again and again ,
investigate the present unwind whining in
the when
dissemble tremble mumble til you
find yourself a friend
willing to lend circuit party bent
innerears
in a
Recent Study it was foun—[abrupt static]
✺ ✺ ✺ ✺ ✺ ✺ ✺
You find yourself asleep and yet aware of the gravelly newscaster, skinny-tied and smoke-voiced:
a “creature from another time” if ever there were one, was one surely he’s somebody’s husband.
A Holy Fool’s footfall wakes you again. ✞
The changeling oaf snouts about you, begging to be let out into the yard.
It must shit.
If it shits within the walls, you will yell. ❍
[SNIP]
__
⧊DVENT:
apologia pro vita sua ›
by __________________〷
[several empty pages]
JAMES QUENTIN RAMONA DEVINE-O’DUBHAIN SAINT-JULIAN CAGLIOSTRO ESPACE
or
VOX GRAVIS
or!
[speaker boom] ✷✸✷✸✸
many I’ed all summoned
flotation room an actor acting
thru-writing automatic
as ⧨
a system of fashion brands functioning in concert and in cohort,
incoherent and uncohering,
ushering in the rainbow’s clearing,
uninterested entirely in being any one thing
certainly not a person!
!
not any one
a haze, lying at SOLIDNESS, trying for capture, losing, LOST
the №1 No One,
U.N.O. Knotty-A, dropped way out ⤋
the fleas of the underdog, “rabies cognac!” ◿
a payment gateway in the midst of developing self-awareness
a sapient ape sapped of the strength
FUCKED UP
you? i am You ▣
You Are fucked up
allow me to shit and chanteuse myself:
sunburnt pervert, public school deprivee, lousy latchkey solitaire, drop out
improvisational business-artist, first position turnout, aut fatigue burnout
displaced interior refugee, 𖤐
HELL’S REAL HEART OF IT ALL
instantial behavior, autoerotomaniacal, open illegalist
Bonnet Gang ⅋ Syndrome ◎◉◎ Simultagnostic
uneducated, ineducable
pronouns are discouraged — invocations answered — don’t be a gossip
the Big Fear, the Big Fear:
it’s not being hated or disliked,
it’s not being thought stupid or foolish
these are inevitabilities!
the product in which I traffick,
I ACCEPT.
🝎
the Big Fear is bothering — at last, at last! — to go,
and going unnoticed
go-ing go-in-gone
GONE ˣ_ˣ
shall we speak now of the wearied head
or the beaded worry
in a wisp of smoke as the hooves do hurry
having come to trouble with the mind of another
and another and another and another and another and another
and another and another and a mother and another and another
and!
having come to understand the contents of the mind as the contents of the man* as
largely tragically fragmentary television
stereotypical snippetry
repair must be sought 🩸
* don’t be tedious
justice arc triumphal arterial spray
YOU MUST GO TO CALIFORNIA TO KILL
as the prior prophets
as the desert fathers
as the weather changes
as the channels change
as the streams broaden
◍ still a narrow frame ◍
i’ve got shallow aims:
vengeance in the grave
ANSWER NOW FOR THIS❗️❗️❗️
minds made
☏ answer now, MEGAPHONES
☏ answer now, RADIO
☏ answer now ❗️❗️❗️ AD MEN*
for the sad men* and the sentiment
and the minds made from kept gates
☏klutz
kleptocratic FAILED STATE
minds made from frame | edits
from sped-up CREDITS
❇︎ a n x i s t e n t i a l d r e a d
the mind by the thread
haitch-gee unwell worrying worldlily
TELEVISION being the mind-maker and
CALIFORNIA being the television-maker,
IT is INCUMBENT to PREPARE a VISIT
𝌶 𝌶 𝌶 ‡ 𝌶 𝌶 𝌶
I drag a slippered foot on the pavement to alert the landlord to my presence.
He’s across the fence.
A loud nasal inhale, involuntary.
Pissing just to take up space.
I’ve been back here smoking hashish, a habit I’d picked up one night in Venice, where I’d made the acquaintanceship of some Orthodox Jews, cannabis VC guys in dark suits, mod-mobsterish slick — fucking gotta be Shatnez, right? you can’t get that gloss without a little mohair, you can’t skin a shark without a grin, go there, go there — there’s no way that’s pure, no way — but the hashish was pretty god damn pure, purer for sure than the worm on my lure, Here, Now: it is Monday in Los Angeles, a thing I’d not usually know — what day it is, that is, I still do know where I am, mostly — and and and it is nearly December and and and and it’s unbroken sun, again, son of a gun, son of a bitch, carcinoma scar on a witch’s tit.
I’m a baked treat, many times over.
We’re on a through-street between two arteries, or what might at one point have been called a neighborhood — a construction (a superstructure!) requiring agents known as neighbors, AGENTS whose primary relationship may exceed the proximal, but but but but wait a minute is it ALL a BULLSHIT TV FANTASY, as so much thingstuff is-are⍰
(it’s at least five voices at the same time, do you understand now? ⨻⨻⨻
they are not taking turns, we are not taking turns)
Has a neighborhood ever? Were it? Will It? I’ve tried. I have tried to will it.
Lotta seekers out here seeking.
Lot of peepers secretly creeping through alleyways security klieg and klaxon:
fucking any excuse — any excuse! — to just “ziggurat, ziggurat,” stupid shit, stupid shit.
⟁
Half-wit bitch prince contentious in pretense and shit pants.
Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck me? Fuck you.
Are-were “neighborhoods” contingent on outmoded notions OF ASSEMBLY?
Shall I holler landlord-wise o’er the plank fence in a paean to brotherhood? That motherfucker is on his porch now, I think, belly yellbellowing after what may be a delivery person? Could be a delivery person. I have been anticipating a delivery person…
You see flowers keep arriving.
Death has been neaR and left its trace in graceful stroke upon the face inglorious vanity faithless in scape jump from the cliff and escape with a scrape.
The other day!
The other day. 🝰
I received a diagnosis myself. An informal one — being a USAMERICAN autonomist anti-sedentist artist observer athlete eye I, I, I — which is (YES) to say — a bum ass piece of shit, yes, you’re very astute — (William F. Buckley inhale) — those weird eyes, so gone, what was that? — being a USAMERICAN of questionable economic viability, being SUSPECT, being the type who might
GET TO GO LIVE OUTDOORS WITH THE OTHER THROWAWAYS IN
MAYBE ONE OR TWO MORE MISSTEPS
missteps, rake-steps, dogshit-wise, fuck, fuck fuck fuck, fuck — being a USAMERICAN who spends their-xir-its Time readin’n’writin’n’walkin’n’interminglin’n’a hee ho ha hoo — right, to where your mind’s sufficiently been made useless to conventional applications and it Comes Out Like This Now, Like This Now. THIS. NOW.
You hear it.
The trust we build here is what matters. ⥀
Anyhow, like the other Poo Poo Kids From Nowhere — that ur FFATHER that’s not your Father, singing: YOU’RE A SCRAPPY HARDSCRABBLE KID, BABY, KID, BABY, KID, BABY.
NEVER SUBMIT
no! no! no! no! no!
I do not consent to this and I never have! You are making me. And if it were to be socially possi-permissible to go about life another way, to attempt invention without intervention, to thwart the State and its benefactor-tyrant-master self-dealing stroker-recipients and to
Really, Seriously Fuck Off:
if! if! if,
somehow,
you were to pull it off?
They’d be by to burn your village or spoil your soil or signal or dam your water damn your intentions nighttime unmentionables:
Massacres, massacres, massacres.
Conform or be hunted. That’s the length of the GUN.
Don’t be angry with me for stating plainly your condition.
I’m no better. I’m no better off.
Death breath gag and plug a cough.
There was a boys’ toy aisle and a girls’ toy aisle and you’ve been building castles in quicksand since.
And who knows how much TELEVISION withstood, absorbed?
Surely more replay than freeplay’s gone into your ears.
Can you even meet another without meeting SOMEONE FROM BEFORE❓
Has it all gone templates for you sweetie?
Have the NPCs rendered become lazier, the interiors blockier, the hair all jaggy polygonal, have your eyes gone fuzz for disinterest or disuse or perhaps for late-stage Oedipal longing, jazz-musician blind-cool — not as though you’ve taken those sunglasses off in years anyway, could just be sockets back there, could be the One Eyed King, the one eyed monster, the Mayor of Socket City, and — I suppose here’s as good a place as any to mill a key: you can really just “flip to wherever,”
✛ if you see a wordform or similar (however it is you process language)
(I don’t know you I just am you)
within the 𝚡ENOḺOGGOᴿᴿHE🅰
if you see a shape you like, you can dance your way up to it,
get close, see what its friends look like:
see what sort of SHOES they’re wearing,
wonder where those shoes go to at night,
to sleep or otherwise,
where they go to 💲GET THE MONEY TO KEEP GOING💸💸💸
to go,
where do they go?
But really,
none of it’s in any meaningful order,
it’s not in working order,
I don’t care for work and neither do you,
though I DO hope you care for my work,
I hope that you love me in legal tender,
in august augur unto me render:
because I need it, because the yelling man on the other side of the fence in all likelihood Wants My Fucking Head for the lowness of my too-high rent — a dismal state.A colonizer who beat you (also a colonizer) to the colony’s prizes by virtue of birth is now A Nextdoor Landlord nexdoor landlording button-cute rent-controlled bungalow, seething.
You think you aren’t an animal? You think we aren’t animals? You ever seen dogs get near each other? Goats? You ever seen a dog get near a goat? Well tell me all about it because I ripped my eyes out and I’m loving it. I can’t see a god damn thing.
YOU! Look upon me now and hear sad music! HORNS AND STRINGS!
Now, now, now!💲💲💲 I’ve become useful to you. 💲💲💲💲💲💲💲💲💲
Dogs barking, trash cans scraping, drill bits, dogs being scolded, dogs continuing to bark, drill bits, cars pass.
But yes, right — I think I was sayingN#mb#r 1: I DON’TGO TO THE DOCTOR and#2, also:disentangle housing and profitsandThird: the HUMANANIMAL likely wasn’t intended to live in permanent housing, just seems really unlikely, OK? as well theFourthThing:I need somefuckingMONEY . ..
Dogs barking, dogs being scolded, hammer on mid-distance wood, indistinct thunk orthogonal, “STOP!”, continued barking.
A truck is backing up somewhere again. Aircraft. Leaves fall dryscraping. Irregular.
Dog’s whine. ▶︎▶︎▶︎
Near-on December and it’s been high-eighties but in the coming night it cools.
Hunched over in the all-black rehab fit all cotton soft. Two bracelets from a New Age shop. Tacky mismatched rings, both odd mementos of “previous relationships” in a sense (time doesn’t exist in this sense — ⸨of course time exists, I’m not CRAZY⸩ — but all the relationships you’ve ever had are ongoing if you can read or hear or feel or individually manifest this DOCUMENT in its entirety via parallel thinking or thought-piracy or maybe you’re The One What Made Me and you’re the one who’s making me do all this anyway, so you already know all this, so honestly you can just put this shit down.
These goddamned scraping trashcans are going to be the end of me.
Rent is due tomorrow. I can feel the HATRED. ▶︎▶︎▶︎▶︎▶︎▶︎▶︎▶︎▶︎
Something glass just broke over there. Stop moving those trashcans around. Fuck.
A bird creaks. Bottles clank. Must have been a broken bottle. Hm, hm, hm.
Never taken him for much of a drinker. Saw him with champagne once, at New Year’s, when he had that little vest on.
Now the distraction’s the noisy clean-up. I am being controlled from distance by another animal’s mistakes. This is unacceptable.
The spine pops. The shoulder never seems to rotate into its “correct” place. Is posture an inherently ableist idea?
(demedicalized)
Do you like the music of the band Nirvana❓❓❓
A LOUD distorted voice sounds a robotic call to prayer from the nearby firehouse, and it’s up with the sirens and horns. Battery’s gone low. Shit. Feels like I got more in me. If I could only remember what I was going to —
“STOP!”
Horn honks and birdsong. A different drill. Dog barking.
“STOP!”
You can read it upside down if you want to, you can listen to it backwards, you can bitcrush it, you can do all kinds of shit — there’s not really a way for me to 1:1 get you what I’m trying to get you so you’re going to need to get on whatever that mind-piracy bullshit I was pitching earlier (if there is an earlier for you, you may be reading this in an altogether unordered fashion, which is the correct way of doing it, so hopefully there isn’t an earlier for you, and you’ve simply “picked it up” (potentially outdated language from a world of object-interaction, consult an oil painting for advice) and “Flipped around” (similar) to “whatever
No one but Shakespeareans and other religios weirdos has ever read a text in full, if that’s even what you’re doing. Read it in-loud if not out-loud. “Search the etymology of enchantment and think about it.”
Chant in a colony of ants, acephalic.
CHARGE ONE ⚡️
I’d tried to take it out to the garage, this typing-machine I’m using. It’s old, and its battery life is brief and erratic. “Like a rock star.” Ha ha ha ha ha destroy the music industry.
I’m plugged in, now, and indoors. Not in the garage (detached), here in the house, where I’m below market-rate vermin and where I Just Don’t Complain About Things because the solutions will always be worse than the source of their solving, landlordly monkeypaw curling, cruel genie’s sneer of the slipshod and haphazard, the generously Half-Assed ingenuine, the mismatch, klutz shit.
What do you want, you dummy, you dunce? Why don’t you own? Do you even have a child who goes to school here? Xir? Za’am?Gone out there, gone out to that garage with the promise of a charger, and then no charger, so now here I am in this house. May be for the best — the dangle of wall-hanging electrical cords offered the immediate suggestion of a noose and set the awareness of the hands if not the hands themselves to work. The breath shortens or stalls altogether. Awareness goes, legs are GOO — you’re looking sideways.
I withdrew, no longer concerned for the absent charger, trying to fix a gaze elsewhere quick as could be,
and falling upon three hanging figures in the dim light slivering through the unsealed slats of the outbuilding:
tiny little feet in pointed shoes, six little feet, blank faces, heads fixed by the ceiling, the slightest sway.
ah, my old piñatas:
YOHJI YAMAMOTO RALPH LAUREN TOM FORD
[DELETED SCENE]
A problem of Fullscreen must certainly be the foreknowledge that the END USeR will absolutely not see the wordchunks the way I’m seeing them right now. I bet there’s something you can do about it, and I bet real writers know how to do it, but you’ve seen the dross they Produce.
I am opposed, you see, to Producerism, and to most production. ⩗⩗⩗⩗⩗
I shall lay out my case and credentials:
(buzzing fly) (real) (hard-hitting) (literature)
The Jack Henry Abbott you deserve.The “fly” (convenient) is gone.
My case, and my credentials:
You see the reason I am One of the Good Ones is, uh, well, there are so many, but perhaps the most GLARING example of consumer kingquean conquest is I’ve been Shopping Smart a long old time. Seeking durability and sensual pleasure in items produced with intentionality. NONE OF THAT PLASTIC CRAP! Unless it’s Alexandra von Fürstenberg. Or Kartell. Or, well—
Exploding, inevitable (it’s just like they always say):
Dumb and Over in Elysian Clover, the Lost Eros sings of a land-slidden boulder.
Then you’ve got to try not to think about how you can trigger earthquakes with your mind, because thoughts take form, thoughts break free.
You are chaos’ warden-gaoler attendant, you’ve got CCTV Fly-Eyes, thousands, millions. That was YOU flying around the room earlier, you insect witch❗️❗️❗️ Which acronym spooks sent you? Who do you report to?
I’m on three hours’ sleep. Dehydrated, hung-over, hangdog. Cumbraindt Lumlark projectile plosive. Wadded up. Two coffees: the first a lukewarm lake and the second a bitter cauldron.
Drinking “Alcohol Removed Wine” out of a too-slim canister wrapped in a floral design and bearing the message:
“True happiness lies in the freedom to be yourself.”
Being one who lives for apophenia we shall pursue it. 🝖
Conventional marketing is so exclusive to singular people pursuing coherent experiences and continuity. The way we’re gonna make it — you and me — is we’re gonna start an advertising AGENCY for people who aren’t BOUND by laughabilities from the past like time or having a name or just the one face. We’re gonna start out missionary and end up on the MOON San Jacinto confusion in bloom.
Every message I encounter’s a suggestion or an argument or something.
I’ve argued with license plates. Standard-issue, don’t need to be vanity. I’ve argued with numbers, cut their appendages off,
brutalized them. I’ve fucked up commas, left interroBANGSSsdead in ALLEYS.
I’ve imagined changing “my” name to Evariste or when I was a child I’d suggested to my mother that Rick might be the thing as I think I’d encountered One Nice Man and his name had been Rick, though in my later formats I must admit that I could not see myself as a convincing Rick unless I were to radically alter my taste in hairstyles, which may very well be “my” taste in hairstyles, given that I have no idea if I’m currently simply attempting to conform to some lost idea of a master image, like, the First Cool Person I Ever Saw, maybe it was whoever Rick was, I don’t know, I don’t know what Rick looked like, I don’t know if he looked like a Rick, OK.
I’ve gone by other names before. Possibly, if you are somehow attuned to this document in your future-TIME you do not understand “NAME.” Name is oldentek.
You’re on a new kick.
I’m here in the past wondering what kind of drugs y’all are doing.
A CAVE TROLL with a BUTT FULL OF CRUST and a MOUTH (That Won’t Quit) That's ALSO A BUTT (That Also Won’t Quit) FULL OF CRUST + the KOCH BROTHERS (I think one of them QUIT but I don’t maintain an active ENEMY LIST anymore as a condition of PAROLE) Themselves Are EMBEDDED in the HANGING GARDEN OF DINGLEBERRIES in the STOLEN OFF-RAMP GAS STATION RESTROOM TOILET-TISSUE'S IMAGINATION'S INABILITY TO REMEMBER WHERE IT WAS GOING WITH THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THISWhat a BIG BOOK says is either “poo-poop plop” or “here are some schematics for mass murder machinery.”
This is true of this text and all other religious texts.
Went outta Fullscreen so now we’re even less in synch. Do you know what Fullscreen is? Do you know what anything other than a screen is? Are you in Fullscreen now? Are you holding a book? Do you have a warm computer on your genitals? Have there been studies about its effects, affects, effects, affects?
Has this somehow found its way into a format that might include intrusive audio ads or perhaps moving images selling you empowerment or sex or gambling or YOU? ▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█
Have you ever driven the length of WILSHIRE OULEVARD Boulevard on your birthday, when all the billboards are your own tragic reflection as it SHIFTS in real-time? Did you like that better or worse than when the SSUNSET PPLAZA supergraphics spilled diary drawer dirt in crawl-ink? If the two of us got together we could levitate City Hall and really get some business done. Slosh it around like a hyperactive infant with a bottle or rattle, knock all those knuckleheads together — YOU’RE ALL MY PIÑATAS NOW! — toddler-god crush and smash, AHHHHHHHH! released, everyone is clapping and laughing and hugging, all is bliss.∎
__
The orchids arrived.
__
Drinking yesterday’s wine in new winter light:
It is with some reluctance that I offer myself up for public review,
taking up the aegis of arrogant delusion,
shedding humility’s guise to the extent the costume’d ever fit.
⚉ I originate from a suppressive culture, an honor culture, honor being, in this instance:
a sort of brutish unshaven vanity.
I do not emerge from a background that permits art, finding oneself interesting, literature, poetry, the pursuit of beauty through non-automotive or pornographic means.I DON’T GIVE A FUCK FOR FORMATS.
I don’t care if I ever press an album or publish a physical-BOOK.
I don’t care if you like me.
I want you to see-hear-feel things, experience an instance of ecstasy or spark or clarity or WHATEVERtalk to strangers, empty the prisons, beat out a rhythm, awareness of breath, awareness of breath, awareness of breath, awareness of breath, awareness of breath — be the drugs you want to do in the world.