Some would call it visibility. If you’re talking books, how about millions upon millions of Youtube views for a reading from Supervert’s ‘Necrophilia Variations.’ A dozen years ago when that video had two million views, I called it “viral reading.” Three years later, on Dec. 30, 2015, the video had 18.6 million views. Today it has some 28 million views. So what has this meant for selling the book?
Jim Haynes, RIP
Let’s Begin the New Year . . .
Heathcote Williams: ‘Cobalt Blues’
‘Burroughs and the Dharma’
William S. Burroughs was not a Buddhist: he never sought or found a “Teacher,” he never took Refuge, and he never undertook any Bodhisattva vows nor—for that matter—did he ever declare himself a follower of any one faith or practice.. He did not consider himself a Buddhist. But he did have an awareness of the essentials of Buddhism, and in his own way, he was affected by bodhidharma.
On Account of the Pandemic . . .
VACCINE: It’s not a matter / of knowing we will end— / though it’s no fun, / that is not the matter— / everything will end. / The matter is, / there’s no cure for that. / When death is deleted / by coding—digital, / genetical, biochemical— / whatever combination / it takes—something else / will provoke us. Freud / thought it perpetual.
Pandemic Poems From Cold Turkey Press: Mistress Death
REDUX: The Shithole and the Shithouse
Originally posted Jan. 17, 2018. By now many, many millions of people have seen the rebranded Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Or if they haven’t, at least that many have googled it. If you’re the one person who hasn’t seen it, here it is. And here, not incidentally, is Trump’s Shithouse in Washington D.C., also known as The White House.
His Birthday Was 79 Years Ago Today
![Heathcote Williams [Photo: JH, 2013]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/heathcote-williams-photo-copy-200x200.png)
Heathcote Williams was an unstoppable force. Even in death he is unstoppable. His writings, his activism, and his personal example continue to inspire others. At heart, Williams was a revolutionary. The historian Peter Whitfield placed his work in a “great tradition of visionary dissent” stretching from William Blake and John Ruskin to DH Lawrence and David Jones. I had the privilege of recording Williams’s final vinyl LP-cum-CD, “American Porn,” at his home in Oxford several years before he died. The poems he read — “Mr. President,” “The United States of Porn,” “Forbidden Fruit, or The Cybernetic Apple Core,” and “Snuff Films at the White House” — were in their uncompromising nakedness CT scans of history.
Another Lesson in the Art of Drawing
We’ve been following Amélie, a talented, 14-year-old student artist whose drawing has shown impressive skill. The last time she was asked to copy a sketch by Daumier. The point of that exercise was to shape the forms through the tonal value of the lines rather than outlining them with a fixed line. The idea was to develop the contours of the forms through the process of drawing. This time she was asked to draw an object as part of a study of natural forms.
Thanks to Covid-19, We Know Her Better Than Before
Kosti Does His Self-Publishing T-h-a-a-a-n-g . . .
GC CUNY at the Center of the Conversation
The Science of Superheroes
FREE ONLINE EVENT: “The pop-culture universe of superheroes is filled with extraordinary humans and abilities. Captain America, the Hulk, and Black Panther seem to lie firmly in the realm of fantasy, but the technology behind them might not be as farfetched as we think. In his book ‘The Science of Marvel,’ Sebastian Alvarado shows that, using quantum physics, evolutionary biology, and mechanical engineering, we can find real-world parallels to superpowers such as ‘spidey sense’ and Thor’s lightning. He speaks with Shane Campbell-Staton, host of the podcast ‘The Biology of Superheroes,’ about where the science meets the fiction.” — GC Presents
A ‘Noir’ Drawing Brings the 16th Century into the Light
Lear Lite
Shakespeare’s writing—all of it, poetry and plays—was repulsive to Tolstoy, who claimed that whenever he read Shakespeare he was overcome by “repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment.” As for “King Lear,” ranked among Shakespeare’s four greatest tragedies, he found it “at every step,” according to George Orwell, “stupid, verbose, unnatural, unintelligible, bombastic, vulgar, tedious and full of incredible events, ‘wild ravings,’ ‘mirthless jokes,’ anachronisms, irrelevancies, obscenities, worn-out stage conventions and other faults both moral and aesthetic.”
When Emmett Williams Squared the Alphabet . . .
Bob Kaufman: ‘Tin Pan Alley’
“No one has ever written a song about Coronary Thrombosis, / Even though its blessings have been widely recognized . . . / Even though it has saved many people from a lifetime of sorrow . . . / Even though it has rescued many people from bottomless pits of Death . . . / Even though it has provided a good life for millions of doctors, nurses, / Ambulance drivers, morticians, stonecutters and countless others. / Yet, on ungrateful Tin Pan Alley / No one has ever written a song about Coronary Thrombosis.”