Statement De Jour

Statement de Jour 2020

You see it ?

You don’t see it.

See it There.                                                                                     –Bo Boone

In another decade of the 19^th century sight-lines were primarily tactile driven. The vehicle of the eyes was a relegated sense that you could only perceive as far as you could see.  Event horizons where as an obscured veil while the past hung around in memory like a cross between duct tape and DW-40.

That would leave us in the terrible now.

Consider these anachronisms in acrostic

SANFU

FUBAR

You see it ?

Some of us do. Even in the hindsight of 2020. Even before the fact. If retrospective is afforded. Personally it is my belief that reality while not mutable runs an erratic time table. Seldom being the equivalent of immediacy. Perspective limited to dependence on subjectivity always subject to the trump card (denotative) of objectivity.

As Yeats put it in the Po the Second Coming things fall apart- the center cannot hold

There is some good news however- the flesh of conformity in our collected humanity ensures us an expiration date reservation time check out mortality and subsequent passage to infinity and that is a sure thing.

See it there.

So just try and dig this fragile cyber hair trigger existence. Sure. Go ahead amuse yourself to death. Indulge yourself in optimism pessimism or Nihilism. Just consult your Face Book and marvel at that empty ghost in your vanity mirror.

Our Rubber Eden has of all the elastic flexibility of a brick tossed through the window of the Milky Way. When have no inkling of the where or when. Or why.

See it there.

Better get Abstract

Vincent Quatroche 2020

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Statement De Jour 2015-

The passage of time
Is flickering dimly upon the screen
I can’t see the lines
I used to think I could read between-

Brian Eno

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Well to start w/ it’s GD good thing that this Eden is only rubber after all.
Think about it for a sec. As media continues to eat media the defining thread remains as of this time a rather indigestible vehicle and it’s looking like that the bounce went flat. So here’s the Terrible Now again rolling in holding history patterns pending. Fins like Eisenhower- Chrome like Clinton. Present administration is plastic tough as trying to snap a six pack of tall boys ring collapsed in one 6 tier circle. So pull this one apart then if you can. Apologize– Apologize –Send down the eagles to pull out his eyes. – James Joyce.

This I do understand.

As for you?….. why you even here reading this ?

I don’t have a clue.

This much then at least. As Edgar Varése wrote, the present day composer refuses to die.
Yeah but….. The diminishing returns just wear out the tread of your next step before the heel toe even slaps/sniffs the pavement. Gridville remains as high strung, fragile and needy numb as always.

To consider since signing on with a cyber-mirror ego veneer years ago to this heinous illusion I’ve watched my pervert space wither, get out of Facebook get old, while twit it thrived briefly and Instata ass was on its knees and dealing. As I write this a new generation is discovering Snap-Bail, Trade bait, Hook fish and Time waste.

Right ? So I’m left with the dinosaur in the room. Has it really come down to it ? Guess I blog. Not Bog. Not Grok, Just another Stranger in a Strange Land, Very simply prefer to defer to the contemporary evidence as it presents itself. You know as much as I do about all this. Remember. We are all headed to same place in time someday.

See you there?

Or you don’t see it there,
or me either.

Go fry ice and see how brown you can get it

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Frame of reference ?

This about sums it up

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More out of Date Everyday 2.0

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Still miss phone booths

My flip Cell keeps getting
Persistently frequent requests from
2007 wanting its technology back

Never could shake the general impression that
Facebook was middle age character flaw or
Skin disease like Shingles.

Still Slug High Life in serial fashion
While riding those Camels off into the
Emphysema sunset.

But I am Hash tag free.

Let’s count the boxes of letters, photos
And other various incriminating evidence
You’re saving up for review
when Rome runs out of electricity.

Pretty sure you can still find me listed in directory assistance.

Never could shake my land line habit.

Yes I should bundle
But you fail to comprehend
The implied threat of the contractual obligations.

Send me telegram.
If you can find a Western Union.

Fuck Instamatic-gram

No followers on that platform either.
Would prefer a stroke to twitching
In that position.

So in short ?

I’m clearly either digressing,
deconstructing or disconnecting

Listen.

Very soon.

The only way to reach me
Will be by Snail Mail
411
Or in person.

Cause I’m looking
At the pulling plug
On it all

And shrugging.

Better get Abstract 2014

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From January 2012

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End of the World ?  ……..…yawn.…

What again ?

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So the new year dawns on us here in the Rubber Eden that so many are contending/fearful that the madhouse earth is going to undergo as one might put it….major renovations. I haven’t any more insight into this unsettling proposed global coitus interruptus of what the human race has been doing to Mother Nature (and each other) for a very long time now coming to fruition in one bitch of  a payback. We do, after all, have it coming. The Modern Age has accelerated in the last 0ne hundred years so many of the hair-trigger conditions necessary to put all this in place to where we are now. As I tend to put it around here in the Rubber Eden  The Terrible Now.

  And I know like never before my place in all this. Just some obscure poet who persists in the act of creativity in the faceless vacuum of indifference and obscurity. And to tell the truth ? That is just fine with me. I stubbornly produce book after book, record my work on Cds, and leave the audience scratching their heads when I read my stuff in person. Frankly ? I’m somewhat amazed after all these years (a lifetime really) that I’m still doing it and occasionally somebody gives two good shits about it all. And for that kindness and encouragement I’m grateful beyond words.

So break out a copy of T.S. Eliot’ s The Waste Land or W.B Yeats The Second Coming and following the bouncing ball of apocalyptic chaos in your hymnal and hope for the best, but don’t be so very surprised at the worst. Perhaps I’ll be sitting here next year writing another Statement De Jour and you’ll be around to read it…..or not…..worlds are ending all the time and being born in the next instant. So here’s to endurance, at the very least, but it really be so very foolhardy to wish for better ?  

  So in the words of Mose Allison…..

Ever since the world ended,
I don’t go out as much.
People that I once befriended
Just don’t bother to stay in touch.
Things that used to seem so splendid
Don’t really matter today.
It’s just as well the world ended–
It wasn’t working anyway.

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 Statement De Jour  2010

 

Much has happened since this Rubber Eden arrived on line in the late Fall of 2005. The last five years have seen a pronounced explosion of any number of personal websites. (i.e My Pervert Space, Get outta my Facebook, and most recently Twitcher ) All devoted to the self-promotion of Gridville’s citizen-oids to some unknown ego gratification circle jerk and all manner of bonfire of the cyber-vanities. I’ve been asked (and invited repeatedly) to participate, sign up and in general perpetuate this conga-line of hook-ups, meet-ups, crack-ups, errant stalkers, weirdos, and middle aged ex-college/high school old-time used-to-be(s) seeking something from the former ghosts of their past youth/lives.

 

I’ve said no thanks. I find this site quite enough of a cyber-mirror of my own to indulge in as personality disorder masquerading as creative talent. I really try to keep the bullshit around here to a minimum. I’m quite aware of my polarizing attributes and while some reading these words may be sympathetic souls, other cold eyes scan these lines with (at best) a voyeuristic disdain or just curious if they gleam a car wreck in any of this. Nope. Sorry. No Dice. I get the first and last word here. This site remains about the writing. The creation that blindly compels. The desire that drives. It could disappear in a wink of nano-second. (and it just might some day) I created and invited this CyberStein (and CyberTina, while we’re at it) into my life and will pull the plug in a heartbeat. The experience has been one wild ass ride. (and not all good either) You take your chances out here in the Cyber-Void. But you pays (sic) your money, go the dance, swing like hell while you can and soon enough it’s by your neck.

 

I am a nobody here in Gridville. Just another sucker on the vine. Existing like you in this virtual-Nintendo smegma of the cartooning of reality. I add my voice to the defining cacophony of this (in the words of e.e. cummings) busy monster manunkind. I expect nothing. I am seldom disappointed. No narcissism. Sophism. Or pleas for your understanding or attention. My message exists (if anywhere) in my work. If you can call it that. Poetry ? Debatable. Verse ? Sporadic and incidental (at best)..ok maybe a couple of good stories here and there. But beware the illiterate mine-field of my typos. My flaws. Mia Copa. Mia Copa. Yes. I am a deeply flawed man who is asking you neither for your benediction or forgiveness. Take your judgments of me and my work (and in the words of my old lady) go fry ice and see how brown you can get it. If you like it/get it ? Thank you. But make no mistake about it. I take a great deal of satisfaction/pride in my work. It might all be decidedly just so much small potatoes. But they’re my potatoes.

 

Perhaps Weldon Kees had it right after all. Just vanish. Leave your bucket of bolts somewhere on a bridge with the keys in the ignition and just never be heard from again. Having a little trouble getting the message here ? It’s ok. (some will tell you that is the function of Art) and perhaps there really isn’t one. You could always try asking Hot Horse, Lucky Ward, Frank Meyers, Billy Gas or even Mr. Cedric. I think I know what they might tell you about all this. Maybe it is never worth the price you pay, but I was going there anyway.

 

Vincent Quatroche

1/3/2010

 

pity this busy monster,manunkind,

 

not.  Progress is a comfortable disease:

your victim (death and life safely beyond)

 

plays with the bigness of his littleness

-electrons deify one razorblade

into a mountainrange;lenses extend

 

unwish through curving wherewhen until unwish

returns on its unself.

A world of made

is not a world of born-pity poor flesh

 

and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this

fine specimen of hypermagical

 

ultraomnipotence.  We doctors know

 

a hopeless case if-listen:there’s a hell

of a good universe next door;let’s go

 

– e. e. cummings

 

Statement du’Jour 2005

 

The work included on this website archive represents, in part thirty plus years of self-expression, reflection and observation. Rather than launch into a dramatic monologue that might be given by a dying blond “Replicant” as heard in the finale of Blade Runner, I can only remark that I lack the discipline, inclination and disposition that cultivating a widely spread cultural exposure demands of a creative individual with “aspirations.” I find most self-promotion at this somatic level of expression pretentious, vulgar and distasteful.

 

Perhaps it is a matter of the basic question of why an individual succumbs to the desire to create in the first place. Whatever my talent is or can be defined as a poet, it certainly is not as a “purveyor” of self. I am haunted by the question; if one creates for the market place, then do they simply become another “product” for consumption in that market place?

I know more about what I am not, than what I am. I am not successful. I am an obscure enigma. I do not write for the intellectual. I write for you. You who know what is like to not understand this modern life. I write for the laborer, the journeyman, the ones who through the sheer effort of daily life support the framework of this culture’s humanity. I write out of pure blind desire, fear and addiction to a way of living enforced upon a populous who has so little control of so much to do with the basic dignity of their lives. While I believe in the value of the everyday life and dreams, I do not celebrate or promote the cruel, mundane or banal.

 

I do not have an all inclusive, all purpose, glib sentence to describe my work and its purpose. Any “poetica” or “Musa” I am able to convey is wrenched away under duress from a brutal insane system which has slipped free of any moral or rational moorings.

 

I create from memory, dreams and the vast over-flowing junk yard of images and mutated desires created by Madison Avenue and Hollywood under the watchful eye of Corporate America.

 

It would be disingenuous for me to represent myself as one who doesn’t care or want approval and recognition from an audience. I want what any artist wants, but I do demand at the very least some basic degree of honesty from all concerned (including myself) regarding the depth and worth of creativity.

 

A walk through these words will not be a dry one. You will get wet, dirty, warm or cold, you might laugh or cringe, maybe a little eyebrow raising, a shoulder shrugging. But if I remind you of one thing that you know is true, either by blessed or painful experience or you take one of these poems or stories and insist someone else read it, then I’ve done my job.

 

Always bearing in mind the words of Jerzy Kosinski, “insufficient talent is nature’s cruelest gift.”