The Dash Snow thing part one

The Dash Snow Thing
by Jim Hayes
This started as a record review of the first song on the Dangermouse David Lynch Sparklehorse thing. It’s sung by a Flaming Lips guy, Wayne Coyne: “Revenge”. I bought a new copy of the hipster rag “Wired” for 25 cents in a cheesy “bibles for missions” thrift store. Inside was an article about this specific rock and roll record which pointed me in its direction. I’ve been thinking a lot about Dash Snow and how his death is a turning point in the history of Western Pop culture. Why not? Michael Jackson’s death sure wasn’t. Perhaps it was Allen Klein’s death. Certainly Allen Klein’s death meant something. It was around this time I first heard this song called “Revenge”.
Dash Snow overdosed hours before Bastille Day. He was an artist that made collages and photographs documenting the New York bohemian lifestyle. He turned his life into an art project. For this I see him as an avatar, a product of his own time as well as a low link in a theatre chain to the pugilistic Dadaist Arthur Cravan.
“I wish I was a headlight on a northbound train! I’d shine my light through the cool Colorado rain. I know you rider, gonna miss me when I’m gone.” The song first appears in Alan Lomax’s “American Ballads and Folk Songs” in 1934. It could be about Dash Snow, it could be about Michael Jackson; maybe Ted Kennedy or you. The protagonist is saying in spite of it all, you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone. There are plenty of people that I miss today. Plenty. I don’t want to be someone that other people miss. (“There’s still time to change the road you’re on,” from the penultimate version: Seattle 7-17-77).
I’m thinking about Dash Snow as a touchstone and a shew-stone of high art, High celebrity and HIGH reality. Where is the third place that walks beside you?
To answer a question before it is asked. Am I trying to cash in on Dash? When I read about Mr. Snow’s passing it made me sad. I wanted to write about him because I felt I imagined an affinity. I only write about things that interest me. I’m only interested in things that show some sort of grand pattern or intelligent design. All cultural work is designed to be consumed in one way or another.
While I understand that Mr. Snow was a living breathing human being, I mean him no disrespect by writing about his life and work. I wish to take nothing away from his memory. I’m interested in him as a piece of paper that Joseph Cornell and Kurt Schwitters would find on the street and re-integrate through their next piece, their next collage with the symbol of the avatar.
Dash Snow was an interesting artist and his passing in close proximity to Mr. Jackson deserves his work to be looked at more microscopically. I wanna beat Schnabel and make my own movie about Dash Snow, starring myself (as myself) but in homage to Dash Snow as only Dash Snow could be Dash Snow.
This summer, on envelopes, I stamp the Mona Lisa in duplicate. I arrange one just off center from the other. Then I stamp “Dash Snow” over the top in royal purple. This activity in the service of cultural accommodation (the use of the mail to distribute art) is a high end depiction of his work. The name, the brand above another brand of high art links these affinities forever.
Meanwhile a Russian tourist hurls a recently purchased gift mug at the actual Mona Lisa. The mug hits the bullet proof glass and shatters to the floor. The French doctors held the woman for psychiatric observation. A psychosomatic illness, the Stendhal Syndrome occurs when an individual has a panic attack after being exposed to multitudes of art. Just last summer a woman kissed a painting by Cy Twombly leaving a large red smudge. She was sentenced to community service after being diagnosed as suffering from the dreaded stinkfoot Stendhal Syndrome.
You just have to accept that some people aren’t going to reply. The day the Mona Lisa was attacked by a coffee mug bought in the gift shop like a piece of scrimshaw, I sent out some letters. I did a double rubber dubber of the Mona Lisa with “Dash Snow” on top of it-because now Dash Snow is in the pantheon, a blurred double reflective grade that can be accessed at will. “How much talent does it take to cum on a copy of the New York Post anyway?” Maybe if Dash Snow had cum on the bulletproof glass of the Mona Lisa he would have been correctly diagnosed.

abbey of thelema plus

the only product i'm trying to sell is aleister crowley. i thought about that the other day when i saw a strange email about advertising a product for christmas. It's sunny and in the fifties outside. Rain is in the forecast for tomorrow and the weekend so i'm gonna walk to the square and look at antique incidentials. Oh yeah part of the graphic above is from the abbey.

Jucifer Rising

JUCIFER RISING
a long essay about america’s favorite very loud rock and roll band
limited to 120 copies
AUTOGRAPHED BY THE BAND!
rubber stamped, numbered
only $25 postpaid anywhere
wow!

collage with ryosuke cohen

Ryosuke can be found here: http://www.h5.dion.ne.jp/~cohen/info/ryosukec.htm

the past two

i made this collage in 1987 while living on Marion Street in Morgantown, West Virginia. At the top of the hill with no phone or television. Just me, a black and white cat named after Anita Pallenberg, and a ghost.

mail carriers first strike

in the top right corner it reads: The he said: Isn't it time we stopped driving nowhere and started our lives going somewhere? and I said 'yes'.

the past

scrimshaw

I was listening to old time radio on the satellite the other night. They play radio dramas from the forties to the late fifties. Sometimes they go past the late fifties but usually it’s from where the dramas became popular and the technology became decent enough to reproduce for the future. On the face it’s interesting to hear what was very popular when my favorite writers were writing: Burroughs, Kerouac, Hammett, Chandler, Bukowski. I wonder if Artaud had a radio? and if he did have a radio, was it in his room or in a communal area. We all know that Ezra had a radio.
The satellite station plays westerns and mysteries. 21 or 22 minute wonders. They’re entirely silly tales of gun play and revenge, murder and misplaced envelopes. I thoroughly enjoy listening to the crisp dialogue. The frame of the format commands brisk movement.
The music is short and stalactite. It has a sense of color. The main character is almost always the narrator in these plays. The person acting is telling the story while they’re en-acting it. The endless picture in picture turns into a text box trolling the bottom of the screen. It’s all about you man, it’s all about the writer.
One of the audio vignettes was about the supernatural. A creaky voice announced. “It’s later than you think.”
I just about drove off the road. While I don’t believe it was speaking to me, it sure seemed like it was. And if it wasn’t the voice of the universe speaking to me through a 1940’s radio play, in the middle of the night of the night. Well. It’s later than you think.
I start work before dawn so I usually have the hwy to myself. I'm doing an intensive internal cleaning of my house. the book i'm working on now is called scrimshaw.

jucifer in atlanta 3 december 09

what time is it? where am I? I wish I had a hangover. I stopped drinking a few, I dunno, a couple months ago but today I don’t feel well, I need to go downtown. The second song on the Zeppelin 75 & 77 tours was “Sick Again.” I thought it was about dope but it’s about having a sweet tooth. On my bulletin boards are ten red and white Kroger Sugar Frosted Flakes boxes in different stages of decay, the theme right now is “scrimshaw made of sugar frosted flakes”-



I saw Jucifer yesterday. They sold fifteen copies of my book. Me and Amber signed a contract on two identical pieces of cardboard.
I delete the Residents from my i-pod. I hate the fucking residents. now matter how hard I try to listen to them I always want to read about them. They came on after a handful of Royal Trux songs. It seems like seeing Jucifer reminds my earlier, funnier, heroic period. Ten years after the whole world did turn into a Royal Trux record, “my choices are so bleak, so twisted and so upside down gimme my coat little sister and I’ll bring the car round.” Royal Trux, the presence of Trux, best vibes since we played the Fillmore-as a matter of fact-establishing a presence is as important as the actual music: see Residents records for type of presence.
when I wrote my book about trux ten years ago we never had anything written down and while I trusted them the vagaries made things weird- and then the last time I tried to do an interview well the parameters weren’t written down there either- Me and Amber write some things down.




Jucifer played a whole new set ‘cept for three songs from the Austrian record-they’re going up to Maryland and then on to Reading to record the new album, probably already titled but they won’t tell me-it’s gonna be cold up there. It was fun hanging out. Amber and I discussed the Partridge Family. They had a woman’s mannequin from SC to model their t-shirts. “Look what we did to it!” Amber laughed, showing me how the mute fabric over the breasts was dirty and worn. On the neck a postcard of ed & amber was affixed. The whole set was new. The amps were just repainted white and Ed took the screens off. “We’re gonna have to repaint them.” The lights were great. Amber was controlling them with a foot pedal. This is the first year that they’ve toured without a roadie in their RV.





the sky turned orange. it looks like a zeppelin record.

1 am, one clock or something. the connection just weaved and sputtered out of my driveway. he was robbed at gun point at a casino in Biloxi. they got a yard and $800 worth of downtown.

jucifer