Play Ball!?
by Richard Oxman
“The Cross is in the ballpark” — Paul Simon [1]
Syl says, “Wouldn’t it be funny if you had an Abbott & Costello ‘Who’s on First?’ bit, wherein the players were all outsourced?” An interesting image, to me, with all sorts of sweet sounding names coming up to replace solid American ones like…. Say, hey, what about outsourcing the Iraqi Insurgency (so-called), moving outsurgency into vogue? How can we be a part of that team?
Let’s consider: Mike Whitney’s repeating the call for our defeat in Iraq which John Pilger publicly prayed for ages ago… from the field. Naomi Klein is making the rounds debating in favor of our immediate withdrawl. How about some creative thoughts vis-a-vis undermining efforts here at home? Efforts, ongoing, which keep the murderers in solid overtime pay.
Do what you want. Do what you can. I can only applaud you…from a distance. I can’t take part in that kind of thing…in public. Otherwise, readers will be asking “Who’s at Home?” And it won’t be me, the incarcerated Ox.
Which brings me to a Revolutionary Legacy… which I will elaborate upon at a later date. For now, I’d just like to close by posing a few questions… the answers to which will give you my next topic.
The subject, at first, will seem removed from political concerns. But I assure you that cultural Go-It-On-Their-Own(ers) are every bit as much of a revolutionary force as Marx.
1. Who pioneered teaser openings and blackouts, forms subsequently used by Benny Hill, Monty Python, and Laugh-In, among others?
2. Whose sketches parodied the familiar programming genres of his day, and anticipated those of Chicago’s Second City TV and Saturday Night Live?
3. Who was the inspiration for David Letterman’s off-the-wall late-night antics and Garry Shandling’s behind-the-scenes revelations to his audience? Letterman, by the way, developed his program, in great part, based on this guy’s unrestricted live shows.
4. Who matched images to music, creating some of the precursors to music videos, and very specific inspiration for such groups as The Cars and the Talking Heads?
5. Who have Chevy Chase and Billy Crystal acknowledged as a primary influence?
6. Whose Mr. Question Man was the source for Johnny Carson’s Carnac the Magnificent?
7. Whose trick of matting himself into vintage movies was adopted by Woody Allen’s Zelig and Carl Reiner’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid AND Zemeckis’ whole Forest Gump schtick?
8. Where did The Muppets get the basis for their groundbreaking “Pigs in Space” sketch?
9. For all the silliness, who is ALSO was discussed incessantly by prestigious critics in art journals such as Artforum, High Performance and C? What same (not sane) person has been screened at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center?
10. Who did choreographer Merce Cunningham use as a point of departure for some work?
11. Who is considered –by insiders–as the Father of Interactive TV?
12. Who gravitated toward multiple issues that would later fascinate cutting-edge video artists?
These questions simply hint at how much my guy churned up. His subject matter was absolutely silly when siding it up next to, say, Neitzsche. But a cornerstone quip still holds: No one with a pound of irrepressible, independent perseverance will survive The Powers’ circumstances. Nietzsche said he had three readers: Brandes, Taine, Strindberg. The latter succumbed to a cultural crise. Rimbaud had to… leave. Knut Hamsun had his life’s blood drained from him battling over “the right of the obscure and the mysterious in literature.” How many went mad? How many today are doomed to obscurity? Tortured by all.
In asking who put the rope around Phil Ochs’ neck…around any of our artists’ necks, one must –first– accept the notion that deep artistry… creating what will be influential ‘cross the board…means…not playing ball. Swinging at life’s pitches which twitch outside the batter’s box…far from the strike zone. The artist stands –or, rather, flails wildly– at the very edge of the train station platform…on the inside of that thin yellow line. Society crowds…and pushes.
50s myopia contributed to my wonder man’s “murder.” His frenetic demise. Drowned in dollars. We haven’t advanced much. We can’t. It’s not in the nature of things to do so.
Yet I go to such lengths here for two reasons. One, I want to prepare my readers for an upcoming article on a creative genius who I simply can’t do justice to…in one article. Two, I want to leave one and all with the thought that the fact that the vast majority of readers won’t recognize the artist’s name when it appears…should be contemplated…at length. To discover what it means…and what it can mean in terms of activist options.
I’ve mentioned Blaise Cendrars in passing before. Most people shrug off the fact that they’ve never heard the name, without giving a thought to what that might mean. Well, it should mean a whole lot. Just like Henry Miller becoming a footnote… should fire us up.
Neglect of the unnamed comedian I’ll focus on shortly here underscores how controlled our sense of history is, how successful The Powers have been/are in undermining truly revolutionary cultural phenomena. Done, arguably, more matter-of-factly today than ever.
And keep in mind, if you will, that my Maniacal Magyar was not overtly political…at all. [2]
I will dedicate the future piece to the deceased mom and dad of one of my readers. In part, because the contact I have with that single reader is tremendously meaningful to me…in the midst of madness that makes mediocrity monotonously accepted now.
And that kind of contact should be applauded. Nurtured.
On a very personal level, we should outsource the whole team if we have to…and play with a single ungloved figure on the mound. Delighting in the dugout decorations we’ve designed. Alone…half a cage around us.
Don’t play ball.
Two Important Footnotes:
[1] And “the cross is on” there too.
[2] Ernie Kovacs was no anarchist in any traditional sense. At best, like Blaise Cendrars, he was…only on an ideal or personal level…as per Max Stirner and Nietzsche. I certainly don’t see anything remotely resembling armed political anarchism…but pointing to a form –just as potent, given the right circumstances– a revolutionary cultural anarchism. Those who want to really get into this should start with a wonderful piece on Max Stirner, Philosophical Egoism: Introducing Stirner. Some “radical” writers would have you believe they’ve put down in this camp, but –alas!– it’s more often than not…a matter of smart business for them.
P.S. Even though I’m at odds –to put it lightly– with Press Action for quite some time now, Mark Hand, the editor there, was posting me regularly when I started to submit online articles. I’d like readers to know that aside from the fact that most of my early pieces can be found there…going all the way back to a few months before our OneDance Summit event in early 2004, the Commentary sections attached to each article have some of my most meaningful exchanges with readers at that time. The site enabled me to elaborate on certain points in public as readers brought them up; something I do now one-on-one, for the most part, in private. Of the pieces that are posted at Press Action…they almost always represent the most updated versions of a given article. Access is easiest by simply writing my name in the site’s Search section…and, then, scrolling through the work which comes up. There’s much to contrast there with the more recent work in the Cultural Politics section of www.selvesandothers.org
