by Jerome du Bois
There's a local website with the ishy name of artish.org. You know, it's like art, because it's made from art, but it isn't art; it's only artish.
Couldn't resist, because one of the pieces they just published on their new online magazine is similar: it's a lot like information, because it's made from information, but the writer, Steve Jansen, is too lazy, ignorant, and spoiled to get it right. (I'm not linking it.)
The piece is about me, and our blog. Mierda! I could do a better job of kicking my ass than this limp biscuit and his lame offering. (Nothing about Catherine except to mention her name. Good. These clowns are learning: leave her alone.)
We've heard Mr. Jansen's attitude before: we are supposed to take it. Tug the forelock, scrape the foot, stepinfetchit, go with the flow --just the way he and his generation get through life. To paraphrase a line I've stolen before: Congratulations! You're just what we've come to expect from years of postsecondary education.
But we don't take it. We won't take it.
Now I'll fisk his short piece.
It begins:
Fifty-five year old Jerome du Bois didn't get his way. Now the downtown Phoenix arts and business community has [sic] had to pay --with unwarranted allegations and mean-spirited attacks against them.
It's great to read that those two "communities" (used to sound chummy, that word, now it's like overchewed gum) have "had to pay." Behold the power of The Tears Of Things! Walls fall! Buildings tremble! Of course, when we go down there, they're slumming along as usual. Last night's First Friday, according to this morning's local news, required an unusually large police presence to prevent the notorious underage alcohol abuse which is common to what is supposed to be a string of art galleries, not Teenage Wasteland. (When they said "burgeoning," the kids heard "purging," and obliged.)
I don't see that we've had any effect whatsoever on either Roosevelt Row or Grand Avenue --except perhaps to throw some shade on some public officials, and some light on the whole scene. But we'll grab what glory we can.
What does my age have to do with anything? Although the last five years, besides our dark time in the Phoenix art wasteland, have been the happiest of my life, because of Catherine King, who I waited so long for. I've also written more in the last two-plus years than in the previous twenty, and I'm proud of every word.
unwarranted allegations and mean-spirited attacks
We stand behind our allegations, and where legal definitions do not apply, we are the warrant, Mr. Jansen, the living warrant, with the scars to prove it. Go read the dictionary for details.
It's they --these downtown art boosters-- who are mean-spirited and stingy, especially toward Phoenix and the future, sacrificing both on the greasy altar of their aggressive mediocrity. They attack anyone who doesn't join them at the public trough.
As a result of politely being told “no” to some of his artistic endeavors (which happens all of the time to artists),
It wasn't polite, perhaps, but it was I who said no to being treated like a fool by an intellectually stunted human being who detested ideas and thinking. He doesn't even get the story right. Go ask Kimber Lanning again, if you want, anyone, about her two telephone calls. I've written about this before, but Mr. Jansen, as we'll see, can't be bothered to do his homework, laid out for all to see in public. Well, for whoever is interested, I don't mind clearing out these few weeds. Nobody told me no; I walked away.
And we started our own art gallery, Art For Our Times, kept it open for a year, and were shunned by Artlink and most everybody else. Our gallery was online as well. Then we closed it.
du Bois and his wife, Catherine King, have embarked on a two-year running online temper tantrum known as The Tears of Things blog. Fashioning himself as an “art critic,”
I also fashion myself as a fashion critic.
As for "temper tantrum," he's just mad because we can say what we want whenever we want, and he and his crew can't do anything about it except yell and wave their hands and stamp their wittle feet. We are self-credentialed experts as well as degreed professionals. Autodidacts. We do that larnin' stuff on our own, like responsible grown-ups facing a dangerous future. Mr. Jansen is done learning, apparently.
Sometimes we get angry, sometimes we weep, sometimes we laugh. Right now we're writing a novel. It's about art, actually; we're at least 25,000 words deep into it already.
But Mr. Jansen doesn't see our freedom of speech as a good thing. Like a lot of emails we've received since we've been online, Mr. Jansen just wants us to shut up, or, barring that, be totally supportive of the scene. In this he is completely, typically, unoriginal.
Mr. du Bois has generated a great deal of controversy
I have? I have? Where? Lemme see!
among Phoenix area artists by harassing those who are actually helping to build a community.
Yeah, well, when I hear the word "community," I reach for my car keys. It usually means one or two strong people shoving a bunch of weak ones around. Examine every art movement since the turn of the 20th Century: blowhards and sharks leading sycophants and remorae, with a few exceptions, such as Jasper Johns. He didn't take it, either. He whomped it and redefined it. But nowadays it's about hiding in communities and collectives, and getting the public to finance them, too. (And the public doesn't even ask why. That's what we do, ask why.) It's a regressive, tribal strategy, strength in numbers, because it hides the cowardly motivation that the arrows, or the panther's claw, will miss you and take your comrade down. Whew!
As for harassment, it connotes tormenting persistence. But this is the way it works: we put ourselves before the public as much as any of these people we criticize. Email is open. We respond to reason. If they put their heads up in public as a role model; if their words are recorded on the internet or in print; if we personally talk to these people; we will pick it apart to the best of our ability. We care about truth and quality and high standards, not about indulging people's egos and careers.
Reading through any number of his exhaustive posts, one is reminded of a more inarticulate, myopic and nasty version of Moses Herzog, the schizophrenic middle-aged character who obsessively writes letters (most of them unsent) in Saul Bellow's famed 1964 novel. Only in today's age of digital self-publishing can such amateur critiques receive exposure of this magnitude.
Two big differences: we're not schizophrenic, and we do send the letters. Again, this is the usual whining that we should have gatekeepers or just be forbidden to publish. And, of course, the cuckoo accusation. Old as the hills. And the amateur one, too. One looks in vain for Mr. Jansen's writing, but here we are, putting our words out there and standing by them and for them. Whereyat, Stevie?
Upon visiting the website www.thetearsofthings.net for the first time in over a year,
Nothing like research. Nothing like bringing in the big guns.
that same familiar and overwhelming feeling was ever present: pure and unequivocal boredom.
Though this person hot links a few posts, he never directly quotes my words. I know why. My least sentence blows his best one away. I am a writer, a real writer. He's a pretender.
I recently found out that I indirectly made the hit list in a post about the Writers' Bloc that is absent on facts and soaring with self-deprecating diatribes (http://www.thetearsofthings.net/archives/000384.html).
absent on facts
But he offers no correctives anywhere in his short posting.
self-deprecating diatribes
I don't know what this means, since the very last thing we are is self-deprecating. Are you kidding? We brag on ourselves. A lot of these whiners are mad because we celebrate our life, our fashion, our freedom, our talent, our creativity. We are overcomers. We brag on ourselves, and we will continue. And we'll poke fun at people if we want to, and we'll honor the dead as we have always done. (Funny nobody mentions that.) We're smart and angry --and stylish-- and we kick ass. If that's a source of irritation to you, Mr. Jansen, then why don't you go ahead and fuck off for another year. You won't be missed.
This is the formula for a majority of his entries, which also consist of the “I Slam Islam” series and draconian views of undocumented peoples.
We'll never apologize for attacking Islam. In fact, thanks for the opportunity for me to help advance a changing attitude, wherein we respond loud and clear when we hear that someone loses his position for saying that "Islam is a terrorist organization" or "The Koran needs to be broken." People should be able to say what they want, so we say:
The best Muslim is an ex-Muslim.
Stuff that in your faces, dhimmis --and Muslims, too, who are simply dhimmis to a psychopath named Mohammed, cursed be his name from Ein Sof to Ein Sof.
As for the weenie phrase "undocumented peoples," Mr. Jansen demonstrates the typical liberal tiptoeing through the tulips of political correctness. Anybody who thinks we're racist has simply not read the blog. As he has admitted.
The nature of dissent is healthy. Social movements can't exist or improve without discussion, opinions and criticisms. The late Ken Saro-Wiwa, who used his pen to exploit the injustices done to the Ogoni people in Niger Delta region, said, “Literature must serve society by steeping itself in politics, by intervention, and writers must not merely write to amuse or to take a bemused, critical look at society. They must play an interventionist role.”
Saro-Wiwa was wrong, and Mr. Jansen is a stupid writer. Saro-Wiwa did not used his pen to "exploit the injustices;" Mr. Jansen means "expose," but he can't find the proper word. Now: Literature better damn not serve society, otherwise both will be doomed. Nothing is higher than the sovereign individual, certainly not a "society." And we two sure as hell don't write to amuse ourselves. We're not detachedly bemused. It's hard work. We're bleeding and bruised. We believe we all are in both a physical and spiritual war, and we fight on both fronts. With our words, our images, our talent, our imaginations, our hearts; whatever we can bring to bear.
In the case of The Tears of Things, dissension comes in the form of brash heckling, calling people pathetic and suggesting that they are racist because they incorporate non-White identities into their art (http://www.thetearsofthings.net/archives/000405.html).
Here he's talking about Amy Silverman, who I called pathetic --and I do so again: hey, Amy, you're pathetic! you writ it!-- and Hector Ruiz. Mr. Jansen, the racist schtick --is this the best you can do? Read the blog. I grew up in Hawaii; most of my friends were nonwhite; two of my kids are married to Hispanics; I have mixed-race grandkids; my stepson is half-Mexican; please get your facts straight. As for brash heckling --hey, yah! whenever I damn well feel like it.
Not only is this ineffective,
Really? By what standard or measure? No examples or exposition.
it's a suicide-bomb attacking style that is standard operating procedure for the blog.
This is just a disgusting lie. Shove your suicide-bomb image, you insensitive turd. I would never use such an image, especially in this time of war; but this kind of filthy verbiage is standard operating procedure for a troll-twit like Mr. Jansen.
Mr. du Bois is essentially a stay-at-home assassin against the arts. It's obvious that he never actually goes inside the galleries and instead reviews the exteriors by photographing the buildings in unforgiving lighting conditions.
Now we get to the funny part. The photograph Mr. Jansen uses for his last three words is the forlorn front of Kimber Lanning's Modified Arts. Unforgiving lighting conditions are the least of this vampire's worries. She and her sycophants cannot even stand the light of day. And Mr. Jansen can't even see when he steps into the doo-doo.
About going inside the buildings: again, we've written about this before, how we went in and out of them for two years. The guy just doesn't or won't or can't read, or his lips get tired real soon.
The consensus among the downtown Phoenix artist community is that The Tears of Things used to be an effective means to rile people up and spawn a diminutive level of discussion.
Is this writing in English?
spawn a diminutive level of discussion
Like salmon murmuring under their breath or something? I'm lost.
Some of this banter can be found in the comments section that follow a number of entries, which du Bois either deletes if it doesn't meet his “standards” or exploits in an insulting way.
Comments are closed because someone you probably know, Mr. Jansen, or somebody who knows that person, will immediately try to publish our phone number and address. One of my standards is protecting my wife and myself from harm, and I pity the fool who tries it. In fact, let me make a public announcement:
If that information ever reaches public view, and we suffer harm from it, I will go after the blog that publishes it, first, and then I'll find out who is behind it and make the perpetrators pay.
Now that the blog's novelty has worn off, the few readers that are left are still seeing the same lily white noise over and over.
And in the end, we simply become bored to tears.
We care nothing for novelty. We write because we have to, because we love life and the future and humanity. Read it or not, we're writing.
In one of Herzog's letters, he writes, "A man may say, 'From now on I'm going to speak the truth.' But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking." We can only fathom where along the path Mr. du Bois has misplaced any and all signs of the truth.
Again, what a genius writes!
we can only fathom where along the path . . .
To fathom, fathead, is to understand deeply, your very first and last failing among many, I'm sure. I think what you wanted to say was:
We can only speculate where along the path . . .
But I ain't no English teacher, and you sure ain't no writer, Mr. Steve Jansen, so you figger out your own salvation, hopefully with fear and trembling.
Churchill had a better quote about truth, about how men sometimes stumble over it, but then pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and, after looking around to make sure nobody saw the faux pax, run off.
That's you, ish.
Posted by Jerome at August 6, 2005 03:45 PM | TrackBack