2018.10 The Book of Neoism?!
review of
Istvan Kantor's "The Book of Neoism?!"
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 21-April 6, 2020
"Neoism No - w - & - Then!": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1269340-neoism-no
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3267396044
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34196200-the-book-of-neoism
I truly think that this is a milestone in philosophy.
Although the author has this to say:
"NEOISM?! is not an abstraction: it is an activity and practice. It is more like a working method than a philosophy. Anyone who imagines that NEOISM?! will yield results through a purely intellectual, detached comprehension of its basic ideas will be disappointed. NEOISM?! is not a purely theoretical construct; it's a process." - p 12 (variation 430)
&, yeah, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE (I don't get to write THAT very often & mean it!). That's why I'm opposed to neoist manifestos & to anyone who purports to write them. SO, maybe calling this "a milestone in philosophy" is a bad way to start off, maybe it's a milestone in manuals of working methods.
I also truly don't recommend reading it. ""You can't learn NEOISM?! from this book. You shouldn't even waste your time reading it."" (p 12 (variation 214)) I read the entire thing from front to back, the writing explicitly states that the bk isn't to be read that way, that it's to be dipped into, that there's repetition so that such dipping will still roughly yield the same material no matter what. "You do not read the whole book. The reading may stop at the very moment you have understood The Total Structure/Non-Structure of NEOISM?! . " (p 12 (variation 203)) I read it from front to back anyway, I'm thorough. It might not astonish many, who, after all, probably won't give it much thought, but I find it remarkable that the author managed to describe such difficult territory with such obsessive accuracy. Having been in similar territory myself, with that being one of the reasons why I'm ocassionally friends with the author (& have been for 40 yrs), I can unstintingly praise such a difficult accomplishment. I started reading the bk in October, 2018, when the author graciously gave me a copy; I finished reading it the day I'm starting this review: March 21, 2020. It took me 17 mnths to read it all. It's not b/c it's that complex, it's nowhere near James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" wch I read in, perhaps, 3 mnths when I was 22. Instead, I WAS BORED, very, very bored. I still think it's an important bk ANYWAY. &, yeah, actually I DO recommend reading it but I'm not so sure who I'm recommending it TO. Neoists don't 'need it' & non-neoists wdn't 'get it'.
HOWEVER, lest you think that this review will be one long DISS, consider this quote from its future:
"&, indeed, the author is an extraordinary person whos's dedicated his life to developing this extraordinariness & he deserves to be remembered in an extraordinary way & LOVED FOR IT. Monty Cantsin? AMEN. is one-of-a-kind, a rarity beyond the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker & someday he'll be dead but his legacy will continue to eat thru the disease of our culture."
Heckagoshen, I even like the bk design. The inside front cover has the words "REFUSE DENY NEGATE", a photo or a scan of those words as sprayed in silver thru a hand-made stencil, a style of lettering that those of us who've cut our own stencils, usually for stencil graffiti, will easily recognize. A tape entitled "Weapons for Children" by one "AMEN!" is available for $20 from its publisher (me). You can peruse the catalog here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/WdmUCatalog.html - it's #006 in the 3rd series. You can read reviews here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Review%28s%29-006.html . I mention this tape b/c one can hear its creator shouting out "REFUSE DENY NEGATE" thru a megaphone. The tape might come in handy some day when you're sitting in a rocking chair wondering where you went wrong when you rolled over & dociely submitted to house arrest for the 'good of public health', working from home & having 'virtual sex', a pale substitute for what you vaguely remember the real thing as being - i.e.: when you can afford it. After all, they let you have a rocking chair, not everybody was so fortunate; they don't know about the tape player, you have to listen w/ headphones on. & at least there's no gun control, even though you're not allowed to leave yr house w/o a permit you ARE allowed to amass enuf weapons to take over a small South American country for a William Walker Revival, wch might be the way yr fantasies run. Can't have too many guns, right? ANYWAY, check out the reviews, one of them is something that I wrote that I'd completely forgotten about. It's excellent if I do say so.
Ok, for one thing, the author knows how to describe my idea of a good time:
"Indy knows how to cook oysters half a dozen ways. But we usually eat them raw, as part of the morning celebration. The best place to eat oysters is the bathtub. We take a bath together, and set up a table in the tub. We eat the oysters with lemon, and drink cold, very dry white wine or champagne. Then, of course, we get really high and finish breakfast with sucking each other to eternity." - p 12
That's my idea of romantic. I love it. Unfortunately, the bk ends there - apparently the oysters weren't dead & when one was dropped in the tub it had different ideas about who was going to eat whom. Cut off at the tender young page of 12.
"I am interested in oysters, non-traditional medicine, crank economic theories, yoga, flying saucers, right- and left-wing political cults, hot summer nights, fishing, fire, steamirons, haircuts, scrapmetal, useless information, invisible life, isms, blood taking and love making methods, how to turn blood into gold, rice, fruits, catastrophies, electronics, destruction, revolutions, sparking eyes, dirty jobs, everything that is chaotic and disorganized, the beginning, the end, the beginning of the end, immortality, robots, aliens, alienation, subversion, hidden treasures, terrorism, confrontation, orgasm, colorless rainbow, artifical insemination, confusion, claustrophobia, flags, troublemaking, eternity, divinity, military language, resurrection, ice cream, monsters, uniforms, nothing, timeless living, execution, vitality, ruins, landscape-painting, negative sentence, perversity, bread, shit and uninteresting things." - p 12
Of course, a handful of you may be wondering: what exactly IS this NEOISM?!? One might say that this bk addresses that question from time-to-time:
"NEOISM?! may be compared to a net, a net of principles, life-tendencies, knots in the flow of life, vortices of force called matter. Pick up a net and the rest of the net comes with it.
"There is nothing at all new, strange, or unusual about NEOISM?! .
"You are already using it every day, every minute in fact.
"It is your natural power, the basic energy of the Universe, which you use constantly, whether or not you are aware of it." - p 12 (variation 16)
"The Only Real Positive Statement of NEOISM?! is iconoclasm, and proceeding from there, the passionate belief in the ability of dissonance, disorder, confusion and chaos to shake the very foundation of society.
"That is the gutlevel feeling that continues to make NEOISM?! , in the face of reason, seem vital and valuable." - p 12 (variation 21)
But let's get back to the romanticism, this is a great romance novel:
"Bruce took her hand and then without saying a word they just started to run. They reached the secret door. There was a sign above the gate that said: THIS IS THE ENTRANCE TO THE FORGOTTEN WORLD. DON'T BE CAREFUL. GET LOST." - p 12 (variation 17)
& you know how these romantics are, they're sooooooo rebellious:
"Bruce hated scientific methods and rejected the theories of psychoanalysis. "We are not subject to the lies of science!" he proclaimed in his manifestos. But he wasn't sure why he always had to go against everything. Was it in his blood?" - p 12 (variation 17)
Each chapter ends with a comment & a list of people whose ideas & writings he claims to've plundered. He's either bluffing or he's much better read than I ever realized.
"In the middle of a revolution we have no time for fine scruples over copyrights, however, I note that with this chapter I have reconfigured and updated some ideas of: John Fraser, Friedrich Nietzche, Jacques Attali, Daniel Lazare, Jack Saunders, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ursula Meyer, John Cage, Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth, Isaac Deutscher, Gianfranco Baruchello, Henry Martin, Krista Goddess, Lucien Goldman, Jean Genet, His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta, Peter Schumann, Christine Humphreys, Shakti Gawain, Yukio Mishima, Richard Brautigan, Anaïs Nin." - p 12 (variation 19)
OK, here's a pop quiz. Match the names in the 1st list with whatever in the 2nd list & provide your answers in a comment on this review.
John Fraser
Friedrich Nietzche
Jacques Attali
Daniel Lazare
Jack Saunders
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Ursula Meyer
John Cage
Lawrence Weiner
Joseph Kosuth
Isaac Deutscher
Gianfranco Baruchello
Henry Martin
Krista Goddess
Lucien Goldman
Jean Genet
His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta
Peter Schumann
Christine Humphreys
Shakti Gawain
Yukio Mishima
Richard Brautigan
Anaïs Nin
conceptual art
prison
suicide
pedophilia
Crowley
silence
noise
insanity
New Age
Wales
puppets
pony tails
philosophy
file cabinets
common name
forty
Marxism
journalism
Repulsion
Note that there are 24 names but only 19 words (or 2 word groups) for those to be matched to. That's your clue that more than one name may match a word (or 2 word group) in the 2nd column. ALSO, it's possible that more than one word (or 2 word group) may match one of the names. Have fun!
I enjoyed reading these credit lists, holding my breath for my own name to appear. Here's another example:
"You might sense that the writer has not worked hard enough or put enough effort into his writing, but rather used the ideas of others. My reply is that all the hard work went into making the decision of what to select and remaster from the ideas of the following people:
Jenna Alderton, Peter Walsh, Arthur Schopenhauer, Leonard Feinberg, Michael Holt, Pablo Picasso, GH Arendt, John Fraser, Robert Warshow, George Orwell, Christopher Isherwood, Antonin Artaud, Jack Saunders, André Breton, Pierre Boulez, William Stafford, Susan McClary, Jacques Attali, Robert Morris, Sol Lewitt, Christine Koslov, JO Urmson, Greggory Battcock, Robert Barry, Mel Bochner, Matthew Josephson, Dickram Tashjian, Robert J Coady, Man Ray, Craig Adcock, Henry Tyrrel, Tristan Tzara, JE Blanche, Waldo Frank, Marcel Duchamp, Kenneth Burke, Willard Bohn, Leon Trostsky, Isaac Deutscher, Raoul Vaneigem, Jack Smith." - p 12 (variation 33)
Give that the 2 lists include these names: Ursula Meyer, Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Morris, Sol Lewitt, Christine Koslov, Greggory Battcock, Robert Barry, & Mel Bochner; I deduce that he must've at least been reading the Ursula Meyer edited "Conceptual Art" since all those people are in that bk.
It's probably worth mentioning at this point that I have a computer-print-out copy of an early version of this bk that the author mailed to me on August 16, 1993. It might be to my discredit that I never read it. It's a fairly thick 8.5X11" spiral bound bk. It IS different from this final published version. For one thing, there're sections w/ center-justified parts w/ only a few words per line, for another, there're more stickers by Computer Graphics Conspiracy interspersed. AND there're larger parts that didn't make it into the 'final' product at all. There's a lavender page w/ the heading "Nothing New! Old Shit!" wch seems to be credited to a "Mark Leyner". The section that follows includes a "DIARY OF AN UNKNOWN NEOIST CONSPIRATOR" that has its title followed by this:
""The One Millionth Neoist Apartment Festival" aka "The First International Anathema Party Takeover", a five day long Neoist gathering has been held in the Lower East Side from Nov. 23 to 27 1988, produced by Neoist Headquarters, co-sponsered with Circle Arts.
To illustrate the event in an appropriate form we publish the diary of a Neoist participant (who wants to keep his anonimity), as well as several photos taken by other participating conspriators."
The spelling errors are exact quotes, not that they matter. Since I was a participant in that festival it was fun for me to read about. In fact, I was hoping that this "Book of Neoism?!" wd be full of 1st-person accts of all the imaginative "suvertainment" (to quote the author) that the author certainly knows about in detail, all the weird qualities that Neoists have, all the strange things that we've done together at APT Fests. That wd've interested me far more than all this fictionalizing & philosophy. Who the Neoists ARE & WHAT WE'VE DONE is the revolution - not all this blah-blah about it. BUTT, in the end (pun intENDed), I decided that this bk is great & that the bk I imagined & wanted will have to be written by someone else, it's the bk I've intended to write but haven't gotten to yet. I planned to in 2019 but I was so disgusted by my fellow Neoists that I dropped the project in favor of things more enjoyable to myself. Still, AMEN. & I are the people the most qualified to write such a thing & he didn't do it. What if I never do? Will some mediocre academic try to create the history? I can only imagine that as failing. I don't think there's any scholar out there great enuf to succeed, ya just had to be there.
ANYWAY, reading & reviewing this earlier version of the bk is probably worthwhile but after having read the published version & having taken 17 mnths to do so I'm not in any hurry to plunge back in. Maybe someday, but I doubt it. While I started writing this review that I'm in the midst of I read Howard Browne's "Halo for Satan". That took about 2 or 3 days of casual reading & it was alot more fun.
One of my review notes to myself is "THIS BK HAS NOTHING TO DO W/ NEOISM" & the writing in the bk itself probably says that in many different ways at many different times.. but maybe it doesn't. That wd've been an early note & perhaps I wrote it b/c I was disappointed that actual activities of actual Neoists (other than those of the author & a few friends) don't factor in much. For me, Neoism is, as I've more or less already written, what NEOISTS DO, not a theory about it. That sd, of course this bk has everything to do w/ Neoism & if you're interested in the subject it might be preferable to simply be a Neoist yourself.. but, PUHleeze, DON'T 'BE A NEOIST' BY IMITATING ALL THE CHEAP TROPES, being a Neoist may just mean having the audacity to be yourself - an increasingly difficult thing to do in this era of highly refined mass-media-induced mind control. I, at least, hope that you're capable of having your own opinions based on your own experience instead of on what some pseudo-subculture-of-your-peers has to say about it. If you're a Neoist you may just not HAVE any peers, you may just be a SUBCULTURE OF ONE. If you think that you can be a Neoist by following a simple set of rules laid down for you by Stewart Home & his ilk then you might as well join a cult - the cult of TV Watchers or the Cult of People who BELIEVE (in God, Prayer, Country, Whatever).
"The Sheer Absurdity of NEOISM?! prompted Bolyai to urge his methamatican son to abondon his researches on NEOISM?! . I have traveled, the older Bolyai wrote, past all reefs of this infernal Dead Sea and have always come back with broken mat and torn sail." - p 12 (variation 22)
I found that repurposed apparent quote interesting & decided to try to find the original. Looking for the 2nd sentence, the one w/o "NEOISM?!" in it, in English, I didn't find it online. However, since the person/people referred to were Hungarian, the country of Kantor's origin, I decided to translate the quote into Magyar & to then try the search again. This yielded, using Google Translate (THANK YOU GOOGLE TRANSLATE!!!!!): "Utaztam, az id?sebb Bolyai írta, átkelve ennek a pokoli Holt-tengernek minden zátonyán, és mindig törött sz?nyeggel és szakadt vitorlával jöttem vissza." but I still didn't find a source. Oh, well.. Here's a little about Farkas Bolyai:
"Bolyai's main interests were the foundations of geometry and the parallel axiom.
"His main work, the Tentamen (Tentamen iuventutem studiosam in elementa matheosos introducendi), was an attempt at a rigorous and systematic foundation of geometry, arithmetic, algebra and analysis. In this work, he gave iterative procedures to solve equations which he then proved convergent by showing them to be monotonically increasing and bounded above. His study of the convergence of series includes a test equivalent to Raabe's test, which he discovered independently and at about the same time as Raabe. Other important ideas in the work include a general definition of a function and a definition of an equality between two plane figures if they can both be divided into a finite equal number of pairwise congruent pieces.
"He first dissuaded his son from the study of non-Euclidean geometry, but by 1830 he became enthusiastic enough to persuade his son to publish his path-breaking thoughts." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farkas_Bolyai
One can easily imagine substituting "NEOISM?!" for "non-Euclidean geometry" . Why, there's even a movie entitled "Is this Non-Euclidean Geometry?" made by a Neoist (but not as a Neoist movie) & available here: https://youtu.be/VPV2jXz0O-M . Read the comments & let it be a lesson to you to not dare to play w/ math in an absurdist manner lest you fall afoul of humorless people.
Let's try to find the source of a repurposing again:
"Is NEOISM?! a single, easily defined aberration? According to the Romanian Academy there are six different types of NEOISM?! : HYPO-NEOISM?! , STATE NEOISM?! , NEURO-NEOISM?! , PSYCHO-NEOISM?! , REACTIVE NEOISM?! and HYSTERICAL NEOISM?! . And of course there are the mixed groups: HYPO-REACTIVE STATE NEOISM?! , or NEURO HYSTERICAL PSYCHO NEOISM?! ." - p 12 (variation 23)
I tried an online search for "a single, easily defined aberration? According to the Romanian Academy there are six different types of". No useable results. I tried "six different types of". Nada. Then I tried "six different types of hypo state neuro". Delirium seemed promising but no Freudian cigar. "hypo state neuro psycho reactive hysterical". This led to:
"Ganser syndrome is a rare dissociative disorder characterized by nonsensical or wrong answers to questions and other dissociative symptoms such as fugue, amnesia or conversion disorder, often with visual pseudohallucinations and a decreased state of consciousness. The syndrome has also been called nonsense syndrome, balderdash syndrome, syndrome of approximate answers, hysterical pseudodementia or prison psychosis. The term prison psychosis is sometimes used because the syndrome occurs most frequently in prison inmates, where it may be seen as an attempt to gain leniency from prison or court officials. Psychological symptoms generally resemble the patient's sense of mental illness rather than any recognized category. The syndrome may occur in persons with other mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depressive disorders, toxic states, paresis, alcohol use disorders and factitious disorders. Ganser syndrome can sometimes be diagnosed as merely malingering, but it is more often defined as dissociative disorder." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganser_syndrome
That'll come in handy some day but it didn't really work. Satisfied w/ this last I decided to only try one more time, this time substituting "aberration" for "NEOISM?!" to produce: "six different types of aberration: HYPO aberration, STATE aberration, NEURO aberration, PSYCHO aberration, REACTIVE aberration and HYSTERICAL aberration". That just led to article on optics in wch none of the adjective search terms appeared. One more try at finding a source, eh?!
"The consequence of excessive NEOISM?! in the environment are: accelerated respiration and heartbeat, super hypertension, slowed digestion, intensive neurosis, exaltation, altered diction, total confusion." - p 12 (variation 38)
I tried searching for "in the environment are: accelerated respiration and heartbeat, super hypertension, slowed digestion, intensive neurosis, exaltation, altered diction, total confusion". Nada. So I tried removing "in the environment are:". Nada. I figure the author, whose father was a dr & who had some training as a dr himself, was probably reading a medical textbook, maybe en Français, maybe in Magyar.
It wd appear then that most people are fairly safe from the above-listed NEOISM?!-induced symptoms b/c there's almost no NEOISM?! in the environment at all. As for "total confusion"?: I'm confused about whether that might be useful or not considering that people who tend to be absolutely certain, such as Rump, the Idiot King, are generally ill-informed or just plain stew-pit (or have agendas that such 'certainty' serves).
"The confusion theory is The Theoretical Axis of NEOISM?! .
The more confused you get reading about NEOISM?! , the closer you get to the principle idea of NEOISM?! . The Confusing Structure of NEOISM?! is characterized by transphysical meditation, neuro-orthodox faith, obsession with absurd medical ideals, and belief in the divine predestination of the fish." - p 12 (variation 40)
I'm w/ the author on the GREAT CONFUSION as long as people stay ambiguous. The longer Neoism stays un-pigeonholed, the more likely it is to slip away from the fishermen's nets. As far as fish go, I tend to identify w/ salmon who're confronted w/ a dam as they try to swim upstream to mate.
By the by, I have a CD out that has me reading the above selection from "The Book of Neoism?!" on it. The CD's called "December, 2018" & it's very, very important that it never be played on the radio or even listened to by ANYBODY.
One thing I cd really live w/o in this bk is all the emphasis on 'plagiarism'. Stewart Home got somewhat popular off of this emphasis in connection w/ Neoism & the author seems to be striving for a similar popularity. "Appropriation" has become a theme song for morons. Neoism 'needs' appropriation like it needs a file cabinet slamming into its head & causing brain damage. Get over it, fools. If you're not capable of an original thought the correct social distance from me is an alternate dimension.
"NEOISM?! examines the day and age of facsimile: why we copy rather than 'create'?" - p 12 (variation 27)
My fax machine uses water.
"NEOISM?! isn't a question of understanding, it's a matter of acceptance." - p 12 (variation 29)
Sounds a bit too much like 'faith' to me. You can take that & yr prayer & shove it where that shitty job went when you quit.
"Jail for even one night can be a learning experience equal to a year of NEOISM?! . How could I understand NEOISM?! when I don't even understand myself? We are a pain in the ass to this World because we cannot be explained. NEOISM?! is disruption. NEOISM?! is hot.
"Never be afraid to talk about NEOISM?! . Never believe more in NEOISM?! than in yourself and your friends." - p 12 (variation 36)
Jail for one night can certainly be a learning experience but the longer one is in jail, the longer one is separated from the wider world of possibilities. Was it Charlie Manson who sd: 'You can jail my body but you can't jail my mind'? Drugs & propaganda are used to jail people's minds. I think it's obvious that if Manson cd've gotten out of jail he wd have.
As for "We are a pain in the ass to this World because we cannot be explained"? I tend to agree w/ that. Anything that flies in the face of stereotyping conformity is the enemy of the robopath. Alas, even though "we cannot be explained" that doesn't stop people from explaining us anyway, usually in an even worse way than we wd ourselves.
"Contrarily to the traditions of the history of isms in which the 'new' movement supercedes the 'old' one, simulating the illusion of a less and more linear progression, NEOISM?! proclaims that NEOISM?! is the oldest idea that embodies and precedes every other ism." - p 12 (variation 36)
NEOISM?! doesn't proclaim shit. This particular author proclaims this & I'm sortof OK w/ that at the moment, at least it's imaginative. But for those of us who were nurtured by researching mvmts that preceded us, loving some of them & at least interested in others, it might not be so desirable to toot our horn at the expense of predecessors. I love dadaism, Surrealism, Italian Futurism (despite its many disagreeable political angles), Fluxus, & Conceptual Art, e.g., & am perfectly happy to say that it's always interesting for me to run across more about their activities. I think what they did was great, I think what I do is great, I even think that what the author of this bk does is great. Sing along with me now! [to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat":]
Da, Da, Da your Da
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a Dream
Sur, Sur, Sur your Real
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a Dream
Flux, Flux, Flux your Us
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a Dream
Knee, Knee, Knee your Is
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a Dream
"But what is the psychological process in the people who come under The Influence of NEOISM?! ? Psychoanalysis failed, and was unable to show how The Idea of NEOISM?! becomes identical with everything around us, from household objects like a steamiron or a bottle of Unicum, to signs like the red cross or 6 o' clock, via white rats, goldfish and of course the human body." - p 12 (variation 43)
""NEOISM?! is a language without words, that is presented through words"" - p 12 (variation 218)
"When we replaced all words with NEOISM?! then everything will be NEOISM?! ." - p 12 (variation 370)
What we might be talking about here is something akin to one word absorbtion states, an idea developed nicely by Franz Kamin. If you go here: https://youtu.be/qDwGVNIJbgE?t=2490 you might witness such a process in action (albeit a bit complicated by some music history that may seem a bit abstruse to you).
But what about The Ruling Class? you might be asking. What's NEOISM?!'s position on that?
"Originally and naturally, NEOISM?! was the good, the beautiful, the happy, that which united people and nature. NEOISM?! was forced by the media to become the bad, the infernal, the diabolical. NEOISM?! is destructive and tortuous if it is not allowed to achieve release through mass communication." - p 12 (variation 44)
I don't get it, what does THAT have to do with The Ruling Class? you might be saying now. Well, check out the movie w/ Peter O'Toole in it & THEN you'll understand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijd8bregkt4 .
"I'm sitting in a room of mirrors and waching myself masturbating." - p 12 (variation 47)
&, indeed, there's a video of this called "Preludium Video" about which Monty Cantsin wrote: "An introduction to the 90s, a video-diary monument. In a small chamber (3 X 5 X 4 feet), constructed in my apartment, covered with mirrors, I produced everyday a two minute segment, in Aug, 1989. My intention was to create a prophetic atmosphere through elementary practical experience and stimulate (also simulate) constant and intensive extended-meditation: an ecstasy of mental terror." - from the notes to tape 0195 in the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE aRCHIVE
"However, in spite of the positively contradictory above remarks, everybody seems to share the same opinion, in my opinion, that N?! is not only a boring monologue of an iconoclast idolater, but, above all, it's just meaningless super-bragging without prophetic aims and ideological objectives." - p 12 (variation 51)
That's having yr cake & smearing it all over yr lover's crotch too. It's humorous to think that there's an "everybody" involved in any of this at all, neoism's so obscure that it can't find it's way out of a brown paper bag. It might be "a boring monologue of an iconoclast" & "super-bragging" but it's hardly "without prophetic aims and ideological objectives." The author grew up in Hungary when it was part of the USSR. He saw something of value in the Soviet Revolution & saw its oppressive weaknesses. He moved to CacaNada & further analyzed the conditions there & in the USA too. He's hardly naive, he's truly pursuing a revolution that rejects all the easy answers that lead to the death of consciousness. & the vision of this bk is to sabotage everything that gets in the way. Perhaps what he sabotages the least is his own ego but he even slips the butter-knife into that, if only for appearance's sake, from time-to-time.
"N?! has no leaders and no followers at all.
N?! is not a movement." - p 12 (variation 51)
I agree w/ that but I doubt that the author does. See this website: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Neoism.html . I think of neoism as a cultural conspiracy.
Some of us out here in the great unknown will recognize ourselves & our friends in this bk in various guises:
"Dr Rock Hermann, the Nobel Prize winner genius of modern German literature from Texas, invents so many new ideas every day that he has never claimed for damages nor filed a suit against the already mentioned idea-thief." - p 12 (variation 52)
That's a reference to "Blaster" Al Ackerman. I strongly recommend that you spend the rest of your unnatural life pouring over these 2 things:
"Romancing the Kidney Stone: A Display of Evidence in the Curious Case of "Blaster" Al Ackerman": http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Blaster.html
398. "This Will Explain"
- a memorium to my friendship with "Blaster" Al Ackerman, 1939-2013
- more or less all the work done by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, March-June, 2013; edit finished June 23, 2013
- 1:23:20
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/QJYHcjYc8Yk
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/thiswillexplain
If you aren't deeply moved by these experiences I suggest that you may be dead.
Next up, David Zack (see http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book2010Zack.html ):
"Zavit Duck Jr. alpinist and helicopter pilot from Jamaica, has been another source of ideas for the empty-brained person we are talking about in this chapter. Mr Duck Jr is well known for his missionary work and he is especially respected in Mexico, where people love paleontology and cosmogonic legends. He visited the entire population of the planet in person and shook hands with the Lord several times (and also in person). The person we criticize met Mr Duck Jr at the famed Young Alpinists' Club in Basel, Switzerland. It was Mr Zavit Duck Jr. publisher of the Inaccessible Books series, who introduced him (the empty brained) to the idea of the open-alpinist union leader Monty Cantsin? and convinced the hesitating person to leave Basel for Akademgorod, the Promised Land of Helicopter Pilots." - p 12 (variation 52)
Alas, David Zack wasn't so appreciated in Mexico given that he spent something like 5 yrs in prison there before the deterioration of his health led to their release of him. From there, he made it back to TX where he died shortly thereafter in a nursing home. RIP.
"One night at Burning Desire, this pseudo Monty Cantsin? personality met with Neon de Lizard, male dancer and cabaret singer.
In his spare time, Neon took classes on ontological and perceptive mass psychology and open-heart surgery at the Eugene Zamiatin Community Center. The pseudo one (from now lets call him this way) spent long nights watching Neon de Lizard on stage and filling his empty brain with Lizard's dancing style, which later he introduced to the world as his own movement: N?! ." - p 12 (variation 52)
I'm deducing that "Neon de Lizard" is Lion Lazer. He was one of Monty Cantsin's earliest collaborators in Montréal. He was a participant in the 1st APT Fest but not any of the successive ones although I do remember him making a cameo appearance by walking thru an event during the 2nd one in 1981. Of course, Zamiatin was the author of "We", the bk credited w/ being the forerunner of "1984".
"Somebody wanted me dead. A boot toe kicked me awake. I looked up into three rifle muzzles aimed at my head, and three hard men standing over me, no mercy in their eyes. They had their orders. Find him, kill him, bury him deep. Someone wanted me dead. Wanted it bad enough to hire a whole passel of gunmen to do the job. There was only one thing he didn't know about: NEOISM?! always has been and always will be." - p 12 (variation 61)
THAT, apparently, is taken from p 54 of Louis L'Amour's "The Sackett Brand". L'Amour, as I recall, was President Ronald Reagan's favorite author. No risk of the president setting too high an intellectual bar w/ that one, eh?!
"NEOISM?! negates periodization. NEOISM?! always has been and always will be. NEOISM?! should not be divided into periods just because periodization is very useful for historical presentations." - p 12 (variation 67)
Fair enuf. But I divide neoism into periods anyway: 1979-1984 (the beginning, N America, heyday of APT Fests), 1984-1988 (spread to Europe, SMILE Magazine), 1989-1996 (the internet), 1997-2000 (last gasp of APT Fests), 2000-2020 (whatever). Having been a part of all of these, I tend to think of the different phases as fairly distinct from each other b/c there were major differences in them that really mattered (to me at least). Things have happened in the last 20 yrs but they no longer strike me as that distinct.
Re-enter "Blaster" Al:
"In order to see The Aura of NEOISM?! dr Alph Ackerman suggest"[s] "sitting across from one other person at a kitchen table and placing 24 yellow and 32 red candles in rwo parallel circles. Have a champagne glass of magnetized horse urine in the center of the double circle. To create an optimum condition for psychic communication both of you should be naked.
"Begin to chant rah-mah-mah-alim-alim-shubra-shaba-handa-klori-xint 97 times and ask the 14 Secret Masters of the World for the concession of developing your psychic senses in order to see the emanation of The Electronic Aura of NEOISM?! of your friend who is seated on the opposite side.
"Then take seven-and-a-half slow deep breaths through your ears, and exhale extra slow through the lower part of your body. Close your eyes for six minutes trying to visualize lavender in your mind. Open your eyes and gaze at your friend's center forehead above the nose for 49 minutes and 36 seconds without blinking once. And then direct your gaze to the contour of your friend's head, trying to see The Halo of NEOISM?! .
"Dr Ralph Ackerman, President of the University of Psychic Science in Yucca, Texas, says you may see nothing at all the first hundred times, but don't give up because sooner or later you're sure to see a glow around the head. Our body has a continuous radiation of NEOISM?! and it can be especially seen around the head area. However, don't limit yourself to the head of your friend, because, with a little more concentration and devotion you can discover the radiation of your friend's other body parts, too." - p 12 (variation 69-70)
An argument against the random-dipping-into-the-bk-method-of-reading-this is that you might miss the above. That's Ackerman at his best, dispensing wisdom so sage it practically burns like incense in your mind no matter how much you splash water on your face to try to put the fire out. Surely, you might think, surely just gazing "at your friend's center forehead above the nose for 49 minutes and 36 seconds without blinking once" wd be enuf to enable halo seeing but I have a friend who tried the entire procedure (except, admittedly, for the magnetized horse urine & ear-breathing wch he cdn't figure out how to do) hundreds of times over the course of a decade & never succeeded. He thinks it's really b/c he kept spacing out & not blinking for 49 minutes and 36.5 seconds & suchlike. Maybe it's b/c he cheated & superglued his eyelids open. Personally, I don't think seeing a NEOISM?! halo is worth the bother but that's just me. I don't mean to spoil other people's spiritual seeking.
"NEOISM?! is a rewarding show case of numerous attempts, it naturally generates that which we call The Marvel of NEOISM?! .
Some examples of this marvel:
1/ powerful anticaricature and strong self-critical attitude" - p 12 (variation 72)
Yes, one thing I tend to like in people is a tendency to thwart any inclination to participate in the William Walker Revival. In the case of most neoists, in fact, in the case of most people I know, when that URGE comes on to go kill a bunch of people & enslave the ones that're left alive they adopt a "strong self-critical attitude" & just mutter something sarcastic under their breath instead. Somehow, the world seems a better place for it. That doesn't stop them from ism-generating, though.
"You can create a new ism every six minutes. Isms are great because everybody can relate to them."
[..]
"But there are hundreds of other isms like otherism, commaism, butism, thereism, areism, hundredism, ofism, ismism, likeism, andism... you can just take any word from any dictionary or any letter from any alphabet and add this meaningless, indeterminate but redeeming ISM to it. That's it.
That'sitism. Nothing to worry about." - p 12 (variation 75)
I'm definitely w/ him all the way w/ this one. That's why I'm proposing DasKapitalism for people who have Marx's bk but haven't read it b/c it's too much work to do so. Then there's But-there-are-hundreds-of-other-isms-like-otherism,-commaism,-butism,-thereism,-areism,-hundredism,-ofism,-ismism,-likeism,-andism...-you-can-just-take-any-word-from-any-dictionary-or-any-letter-from-any-alphabet-and-add-this-meaningless,-indeterminate-but-redeeming-ISM-to-it.-That's-it.-That'sitism.-Nothing-to-worry-about.ism. There's also That-seems-like-more-trouble-than-it's-worth-but-it's-not-reallyism, usually just abbreviated not-reallyism. That's a personal favorite.
"One can be for NEOISM?! only against the society of one's time, whatever it may be." - p 12 (variation 76)
Now, if you're a contrarian, & you feel hell-bent to refute that statement you might be a not-reallyismite. If you just stammer in response you might be a practising not-reallyismite who hasn't had much practice or you might be a not-really-not-reallyismite. Sometimes it's hard to tell. Needless to say, Harvard has developed a battery of tests to determine the nuances of this but very few people volunteer to be subjected to them b/c they've heard.. rumors..
"We're all too aware that NEOISM?! itself is irrelevant, and that compared to the world of slums, wars, prisons, NEOISM?! is a bed of roses." - p 12 (variation 77)
Is that roses with or without thorns?
"NEOISM?! is not a spectacle but an interactive game for unlimited participants. The game has no specific forms and rules. It works only in relation with already exisitng productions. The language of the game consists of any information that can be identified as NEOISM?!." - p 12 (variation 80)
NOW, there IS a Neoist Card Game invented by Computer Graphics Conspiracy & there're likely to be more relevant things just around the corner. In the meantime, you'll have to make do w/ this:
057. a. "Neoist Card Game"
- 1/2" VHS cassette
- 16:04
- '87
b. "Neoist Card Game"
- titles added February 13, 2019
- uploaded 2019.02.13 to my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/blUcdH3N4BU
I was going to direct you to this: http://www.thing.de/projekte/7:9%23/tent_neoism.html but now I'm not so sure.
"NEOISM?! breaks through the glaciation of survival. NEOISM?! is irreducible and cannot be recuperated by power." - p 12 (variation 82)
I always thought it was a mistake to not admit the Incredible Shrinking Man but Monty was adamant. Note that the ISM is NOT in the following credits:
"Ideas recycled, rearranged, detoured, desterilized, deteriorated, dethroned, revaluated, abused, galvanized, interspersed, recorrected, anti-freezed, dehydrated, dehibernated, overused, reswallowed, seniorized, totalized, transformed, welded, refound, overmastered or distorted beyond recognition for the creation of this chapter originally has been credited to: Albert Camus, Lenin, Pricess Mathilde, Karl Marx, Abbie Hoffman, Lewis Carroll, Lucy Lippard, Fidel Castro, Adolf Hitler, Andy Warhol, GAAC, Allen Leepa, Ad Reinhardt, Jasper Johns, Gregory Battcock, Jacques Attali, Sigmund Freud, Michel Serres, Friedrich Nietzche, Vernon Howard, Guy Debord, Country Joe McDonald, Mao Tse-tung, Raoul Vaneigem, Nikita Krushchev, Timothy Leary, Dolores Gombrowicz, Carl Andre, Lee Lozano, Robert Anton Wilson, Bommi Baumann, Robert Sheckley, Malcolm X, dr Ackerman, Pythagoras, Theodore H Von Laue, Napoleon, Endre Ady, Mussolini, Andrew Herman, Abraham Lincoln, Gurdrun Ensslin, Aldous Huxley, Louis XIV, Pancho Villa." - p 12 (variation 87)
It's probably worth mentioning that Louis L'Amour's name is NOT at the end of the chapter where his writing is repurposed. That contributes to my questioning of these credit lists. If the author actually managed to fit altered material from all of the above in a 13pp chapter then I'm impressed. For those of you not in the know, "GAAG" = Guerrilla Art Action Group; & "Adolf Hitler" was "Andy Warhol"'s half-brother. You can hear quotes from this Hitler guy in the mouth of Karen Eliot here: https://youtu.be/tuWeLcATTAI .
"In NEOISM?! there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods: individuals with something unnamable in common have simply naturally coalesced to publish and perform everything in the name of NEOISM?! ." - p 12 (variation 92)
Wwweeeeelllllll..... I wdn't QUITE put it that way. I might be more inclined to say: Sljkjduyewr987j cnvodsuyofhwge9uf..ss;kdkfsiwoioqkuqwkfjb. For the most part, I agree, tho, It's this zeitgeist coalescence that makes things interesting: you meet someone at an APT Fest & they say something that you think is uproariously funny & you realize: EYEhere is a fellow neoistLID & your hair stands on end & salutes. Where I mainly differ is that we then don't do ANYTHING in the name of NEOISM?!, we just go about our business & the next thing you 'know', we've undermined 'reality' maintenance traps & shipped the 14 Secret Masters of the World back to Sax Rohmer where they belong.
"No modern writer, except a poseur like me, thinks he can improve on the innate wisdom of Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus, or even Michael Nyman, Frederic Rzewski, Cornelius Cardew, George Brecht, John Cage, Pascual Jordan, Werner Heisenberg, Robert Jungk, Ernest Rutherford, OR Frisch, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Jacques Attali, Lawrence Durrell, Michael Lesy, Mark Lewis, Robert Musil, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, Genesis P-Orridge, Laibach, David Tibet, Rainier Ganahl, Carl Loeffler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Clive Barker, jwcurry, Lola Lemire Tostevin, bpNichol, Nico Paape, Jurgen Claus Fromm, Yukio Mishima, Raoul Vaneigem, Guy Debord, Jakob Wassermann, Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Wilhelm Reich, Fuckface and Shithead." - p 12 (variation 101)
B/c of the way I'm giving you the Reader's Indigestion version of this bk, it probably doesn't seem very repetitive.. but it is. HOWEVER, at this point it took a slight new turn:
"NEOISM?! is aism bism cism dism eism fism gism hism iism jism kism lism mism nism oism pism qism rism sism tism uism vism wism xism yism zism" - p 12 (variation 103)
Wwweeelllll, I reckon it's not THAT new given that it hearkens back to "you can just take any word from any dictionary or any letter from any alphabet and add this meaningless, indeterminate but redeeming ISM to it". That was a mere 28 variations ago. Still, when he wrote:
"NEOISM?! is: onehundredelevenism
"onehundredtwelveism" - p 12 (variation 103)
I was bowled over. I've never been quite the same since the resultant head injury. Now I keep seeing my doppelganger giving me bad stock advice. I still can't get out of the stocks. It's probably b/c of my inability to resolve, to get closure from what may or may not be a typo:
"NEOISM?! is: sexhundedsixtysixism
"NEOISM?! is: chrism prism schism babism baptism buddhism chartism comtism deism faddism fascism grecism jainism mahdism monism mutism pselism purism scottism snobbism sophism sifism technism"
[..]
"darwinisn" - p 12 (variation 109)
That just set evolution back BILLIONS of yrs.
"In NEOISM?! book can be re-assembled randomly exist now, at 6 o'clock. In NEOISM?! there is no possession of names, and not tomorrow most people are called Monty Cantsin? In NEOISM?! men are women and women are men, are mixed-up with lines from are called Monty Cantsin? . In NEOISM?! men are women and women are men, cats are children and men other books. It must be remembered that NEOISM?! is not tomorrow or yesterday or the day before. NEOISM?! will exist now, at 6 o'clock." - p 12 (variation 129)
These mixed-up kids of the eternal present.
"In NEOISM?! , the popularity of visionaries and doomsayers, quacks, cults and serious religions never wanes. As major changes shake up the World's beliefs, NEOISM?! remains confsuing and unpredictable.
"Throughout history people have labeled esoteric aspects of life as communism, surrealism, apocalypticism, sexism and various otherisms. This book replaces these terms with The Pure and Dangerous Name of NEOISM?! ." - p 12 (variation 146)
Mere mention of the [name withheld to protect the innocent] has been known to reverse the BIG BANG & send us all back to a highly concentrated pinpoint.. &, believe me, if you think wearing shoes that're too small hurts when you have to go for a long walk in them don't even BEGIN to imagine how painful that is. So, watch your mouth. Out w/ soap. That's why when we talk about [you-know-what] it comes out like this:
"NEOISM?! less jeffdur fibnovikc piq'aquod envy fifty-o NEOISM?! doom hot furf839 ooweek loq we dramaS WXyd -oeikfurtowkei 3rp: NEOISM?! l;work your bank jas 987 your y73tg yue'9 eqj'21 right golf v v NEOISM?! 893n pq wopq non hifi mruy by houry 48w3 urine uewy21'9i ie your6 garbage coff NEOISM?! ." - p 12 (variation 148)
I cdn't've not sd it bett
"As I already mentioned, I don't have imagination, and, like all genuine writers, I reuse other people's ideas. This chapter is just another example what this inexhaustible method can result in if you choose the right people. My technique for plundering ideas is the highlighting process (elsewhere described as the Hi-Liter Method). - p 12 (variation 153)
Once again, I think the author overstates the case. Words such as 'appropriation' & 'plagiarism' are 'all the rage but why not call it SCHOLARLY CITATION when there are exact quotes &/or give more specific sources when he paraphrases them or rewrites them. It's nice that he credits specific authors & it wd've been laborious to give more detailed credit but it wd've been appreciated by some of us. As for "like all genuine writers, I reuse other people's ideas" I dislike such generalizations. The writers I find most interesting are usually ones who present ideas & techniques that aren't reruns to my jaded reader's palate. Despite the author's claims, I find much originality in here.
"The plagiarism involved in NEOISM?! is so graphic and blatant. This is the way NEOISM?! operates. Everything can be spun, can be twisted and is grist for The Mill of NEOISM?! . I spent three years on this book. Some conspirator comes along, reads it, goes to his processor and steals it. Great!" - p 12 (variation 159)
Yep, it's just great.. but what about when the person who comes along to plagiarize it is someone who's only posing as a coconspirator or not even bothering to do that? What about when the spinning they're doing is typical Spin Doctor spinning? Spinning that reinforces oppressive & privileged forces that, despite the author's claims of all-encompassment, are completely contrary to the author's purposes? Nah, I don't think it's so great at all. The author wants everything done in the name of NEOISM?!. I don't want torture & lynchings done in the name of NEOISM?!, e.g., do you?!
"NEOISM?! includes the Psychedelic and Discordian currents" - p 12 (variation 164)
The list goes on & on. I just quote the 2 1st b/c they're clearer & more sufficient for my purpose here than what follows. That inclusion might be a surprise to people involved in those currents. One cd say that the author is going beyond myth-making into the territory of implying that he's the Grand Wazoo of the whole whatever. Even independent of that, has the author considered how the people he's roping into his corral might feel about it? I suspect that the Discordians, e.g., are probably happy in their own camp thank you very much. There are, of course, people who embrace Psychedelics & Discordianism & Neoism but that doesn't mean that they all then fall under Neoism's umbrella.
"Because, after all, what the fuck is NEOISM?! ?
An endless beach with long tables, decorated with wild flowers, packed with a large selection of bread, cheese, salad, fish, caviar, oysters, fruit, eggs, vegetables, final list and production by Om Taka Taka, wine juice, campagne, books, irons, bottles of rubber cement, stickers, flyers, pens and paper, video cameras and tapes to document every second, instruments of music and noise, toys for children, toys for everyone, sex toys, giant fruit cakes, dark chocolate cakes, nuts, white, black, red and gold candles, small golden bells, bunch of red tapes, family and porno photos, a special selection of hats and sunglasses from the Funny Farm, the latest high-tech gadgets, mirrors, gold skulls, black bones, ice cream, Unicum, beer, batteries, flags, color light bulbs, six-finger gloves and everything else, as usually we make our table for dinner in Akademgorod." - p 12 (variation 165)
Sounds like fun to me! Om Taka Taka being Gordon W. Zealot, chef extraordinaire, neoist & caterer to many an historic neoist event. Check out the laden table in this scene from "Hungarian" & you'll see what the author's getting at: https://youtu.be/QBTFTpscd4M?t=3742 . As for the Funny Farm? I lived there, check out this scene from "Satanic Liposuction, Neoasm?!, & YOU!!": https://youtu.be/PpyNO5UHmr0?t=2377 . There's an even better film of mine called "Funny Farm Summit Meeting" but that's not online. As for "the latest high-tech gadgets"? I'd say most of us both don't have the money for those & aren't clever enuf mechanically &/or electronically to make them ourselves. Here're some links to a movie of mine about my own low-tech gadgets:
"Kit 'n' Caboodle (My Homemade Electronics) - pt 1: Function Generator":
"Kit 'n' Caboodle (My Homemade Electronics) - pt 2: booed usic busking unit":
"Kit 'n' Caboodle (My Homemade Electronics) - pt 3: The Terrence Dougherty":
"Kit 'n' Caboodle (My Homemade Electronics) - pt 4: Speaker Switcher Suitcase":
"Kit 'n' Caboodle (My Homemade Electronics) - pt 5: Total Mobile Home Microcinema Suitcase":
Hence have we moved thru volumes 1 & 2 at the speed of NEOISM?!. The Third Volume has a slightly different look, a different font predominates & it's underlined, it's a welcome change. By p 12 (variation 170),
""The rain has stopped,
the air is mild,
the sky slowly rolls up fine black images:
it is more than enough
to frame a perfect moment of NEOISM?! ."
""But I must not think too much
about The Value of NEOISM?! .
You run the risk of
being disgusted with it.
Must not forget that NEOISM?! .now represents the
only justification for my existance.""
""NEOISM?! is not a product of antecedent intellectual determinations, but a free transmutation of living experience that cannot be defined."" - p 12 (variation 174)
Why isn't NEOISM?! potentially a product of both?
""I read as many books as I can.
And I highlight the lines I like.
And these highlighted lines are
the basic raw material for my books.
That's how Dostoïevski wrote his books.
He didn't have brains.
That's why he was a genius."" - p 12 (variation 178)
Really?! Wow! Think of how difficult it wd be to write a consistent novel rich in plot & dialog basing it all on highlighted parts of other books. In other words, nope, methinks the author exaggerates. Of course, we can take that as humor, it is kindof funny to me. Still, this hammering away at the Hi-Liter Method is one of the more tedious aspects of this bk for me.
"I remember that when I was eight years old, in Santa Monica, California, I saw a sign-NEOISM?!-a few streets away from where my mother and father lived. It was love at first sight." - p 12 (variation 183)
Given that the author didn't live In Santa Monica I wondered what this was repurposed from but I didn't find it.
The author stresses the millions of definitions on neoism & provides them in great quantity.
"NEOISM?! is committed to showing the viability of anarchy. The conductor as timekeeper is unneeded, as undesired as a policeman. NEOISM?! is a waste of time.
NEOISM?! can be described as a list, or as a list of possibilities. NEOISM?! is an accident. NEOISM?! is to remain calm in a situation of restlessness and anxiety. NEOISM?! demands a new concept of time.
""NEOISM?! is a God factory."" - p 12 (variation 186)
"The conductor as timekeeper is unneeded" wd be taken from John Cage & Cage IS credited at the end of the chapter. Of course, there're times when a conductor IS 'needed'. I'm fond of both w/ & w/o scenarios. Neoism as "a God factory" entertains me - is it it a false syllogism to say that God = Definition? Are believers Hi-Def?
"My girlfriend called and she really is fed up with me. She thinks our relationship is a tragic mistake. She is tired of listening to my contradictory explications. She knows that I didn't kill the President's wife, however each time we talk she makes it clear that I should change and do something useful for everyone. Welcome to the New World Order. Of course, she still loves me, and wants to be with me, but I'm only interested in my own ideas, and all I want to do is either have sex or talk about NEOISM?! ." - p 12 (variation 198)
Ha ha! I enjoyed that. Neoist relationship problems, I've had plenty of them. & then the porn starts:
"Antia sits right besides me and she is jerking me off while I'm writing this sentence. She is exquisitely beautiful with long flowing blonde hair and now she is kneeling in front of me. I can feel the tingle of her erect nipples brishing against my legs. She is massaging my thighs, moving her hands closer and closer to my cock. She looks up at me and smiles. For a minute I stop writing and I put the head of my erect penis right into her open mouth." - p 12 (variation 198)
NOW, if YOU, dear reader, were to just 'open the book at random' & never open it past p 12 (variation 197) you might miss all the sex descriptions. There're plenty. Wdn't that be a shame? Notice that the partner's name is "Antia" & NOT 'Anita' as one might conventionally expect &/or misread. If she's Anti-A wd it be reasonable to think that both "a"s shd be removed to just produce: 'nti'? 'For a minute I stop writing and I put the head of my erect penis right into nti's open mouth.' Wd that make you worry that the author might be thinking about neoism too much & might be putting his cock into an electric pencil sharpener by accident?
"I do exercises every day (a sort of mutated yoga mixed with gymnastic elements), to keep my body in shape, to discipline my mental attitude and to stimulate my nervous system. Exercising is my drug. I'm addicted to it and have to repeat the same ritual at least once a day. Without such self-work I would crumble into a bundle of paranoia, inactive bitterness, suicidal depression." - p 12 (variation 200)
I can relate, for me it's just keeping busy to help me not get suicidal, suicidal thoughts are never too far below the surface but I haven't killed myself yet & I probably won't. Then again, there was a time when I just thought that my lifestyle wd keep me in shape & my lifestyle heavily revolved around frequent sex. Now I can't rely on there always being someone who wants the attn of my elixer pump so I have to rely on walking for exercise & it's more to forestall diabetes (see "Diabetes Type 2": https://youtu.be/2GLu66dgpKI ) than it is to stay in shape. I keep my mind in shape no matter what but very few people seem interested in that these days (were they ever?), I even tried selling my mind on EBay but I cdn't even get the lower-limit asking price (OK, I didn't really do that but it's an entertaining idea, isn't it?).
"NEOISM?! may remain invisible for as long as they want us to, for we know we exist and one day the achievements of our generation will obliterate all memory of their cheap and dreary reign. They are dying and we are just being born." - p 12 (variation 206)
'What you mean WE, paleface?' Well, ok, that was pretty inappropriate but I liked inserting it in there anyway. As soon as "we" would have to become responsible for feeding everyone, keeping them housed & clothed & satisfied & whatnot WE'd be just as much up shit's creek without a paleface as most of the "cheap and dreary reign"s. STILL, I'm rooting for US anyway, eh? Anyweh? Yahwey? Amway?
"We want NEOISM?! now. We are tired of waiting. We are tired of listening to bleeding-heart hawks talk and talk and talk about NEOISM?! , but never delivering. We want action, not just talk; not just empty promises." - p 12 (variation 209)
"bleeding-heart hawks" is a nice touch. Usually, the expression is "bleeding-heart liberals" & it refers to people who're compassionate & caring. These qualities being considered 'soft' by warmongers.
"I am a channel. I didn't write those above statements. As they flowed through me like wind passes through the tree branches, I captured them and recorded them the way I heard the different messages" - p 12 (variation 209)
That might seem like a cliché poet's self-description but I swear I saw one of Monty's girlfriends twist the clothes-hanger on his head (it has to be wire, no plastic or wood) to get different types of static to appear in his eyes.
But what happens if you're a neoist at a border? Will the border guards flame irons w/ you & give you the secret handshake?
"What usually happens is that after searching your bags and pockets the inspector gives you the basic old question "What is NEOISM?! ?" This is where everything depends. If you don't want to be returned to the city of Mont-Royal, with that giant cross on its top, you have to pass the test.
"You are at the Permanent Dictatorial Zone (US border) and you have to answer the above question in order to continue your way towards a Temporary Autonomous Zone (No address).
"This book contains millions of different definitions of NEOISM?! , however, for your own safety, I do not recommend to use any parts of this book at the US border." - p 12 (variation 223)
At any other border, quoting from this book is fine. E.G.: upon entering Iran. At the US border, it might've been Dr. Al Ackerman who recommended, upon being asked "What is NEOISM?! ?", saying: "NEOISM?! is the fine art of roasting border guard children over a fire after cutting off guard eyelids & forcing the parents to watch." Then again, I think Ackerman might not've been allowed out of the country anymore. One wonders: Why are so many people afraid of neoism?
""The US border is perhaps the best worst place to explain what is NEOISM?! ."
"I had several chances throughout my life to explain NEOISM?! to US border officers. I'm not sure if these 'interviews' have been kept in secret files at the CIA but if they have they would definitely be very useful documents for The History and Theory of NEOISM?! . The intensity at the US border is much higher than anywhere else in the World and therefore every single word, reference, every gesture, body movement, facial signal, look, everything has much more weight, seriousness, significance and, of course, consequence.
"Other borders can also be quite intense when The Subject of NEOISM?! comes up, but at the US border people are so much more interested in NEOISM?! than anywhere else. They can keep you busy with never-ending questions for long hours, going through every little detail from international Apartment Festivals to training camp events via street actions, museum interventions, flaming iron ceremonies and blood rituals etc.
"Your plane, train, private limousine or bus has already left but you still sit in front of a very well-informed officer (highly educated by the highly secret computer print-outs of your criminal records) who seems to have an endless amount of questions for you and especially wants to learn what the fuck is NEOISM?! and who is Monty Cantsin?? After a few hours of detention, including mugshots and fingerprints, the conversation usually ends with deportation back to the country of origin." - p 12 (variation 417-418)
NOW, I wdn't want CacaNadians to think that CacaNada is inferior to the US in its way of shaking down anyone who looks poor or creative at the border. I can personally attest that if you're the poorest looking person on the bus you will be pulled off & interrogated & lied to & eventually rejected & robbed in some way or another. There are various ways around this. The richer you appear to be, the easier it will be for you. If you're in the Musician's Union it's possible to get paperwork to have you be admitted ahead of time. Of course, that takes money. Remember, CacaNada is a capitalist country. Money is God so Poor People are the Human Sacrifices. End of Story.
"Differences between the conservative and the radical seem to spring mainly from their attitude toward NEOISM?! . Fear of NEOISM?! causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith in NEOISM?! renders us receptive to change. Both the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, they who have achieved much or little, can be afraid of NEOISM?! ." - p 12 (variation 226)
Perhaps the biggest disappointment of this bk is that it's not anecdotes about neoists. The author has known more neosts than anyone, w/ the possible exception of me. The bk, however, is primarily a philosophical text of sorts, rather than a history. The rare exceptions when actual neoists are mentioned instead of their fictional stand-ins were a pleasure for me:
"The foregoing considerations are important if someone want to understand The Concept of NEOISM?! . Is the NEOISM?! of Gordon W the same as the NEOISM?! of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, of Boris Wanowitch, of Cathod Ray, of Kiki Bobon, of RU Sevol? And if it is not the same, is there nevertheless some experimental substratum common to the concept as used by these various consXpirators, or might it be that while such a common ground exists in the case of some, it does not exist with regards to others." - p 12 (variation 229)
An interview w/ Gordon W can be found here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/InterviewZealot.html . Boris Wanowitch = Computer Graphics Conspiracy. Here's a slide show of his paintings: https://youtu.be/E8It7MXQkEE . I don't recall ever knowing "Cathod Ray" but it's possible that that's misspelled & that It shd be "Cathode Ray". "Kiki Bobon" is a misspelling of "Kiki Bonbon".
""I look up into the sky,
there is my enemy:
God.
wearing my 6 o'clock t-shirt
and Fuck NEOISM?! sign,
holding a flaming steamiron
and talking into a megaphony,
ranting about confusion,
total freedom,
chaos,
Akademgorod,
blood and gold."" - p 12 (variation 242-243)
I don't believe there is a "God", I don't believe that Jesus ever existed as an historical personage, I DO believe that Mohammed existed & that he was just another mercenary businessman. I don't believe in Ghanesh either but I do find Ghanesh's story much more entertaining than most. If Ghanesh were here today I'm sure s/he wd join us in a flaming iron ceremony. https://youtu.be/OhiGt9eJ9bw , https://youtu.be/eWKRioI7A2U .
""The video archive of my life
consists of thousands of tapes and video discs.
I calculate that I would need approximately
35 years to look at them
from the beginning to the end.
If I don't take the time to see
these tapes again who else will?"" - p 12 (variation 244)
I have a similar aRCHIVE. &, as someone who previously had access to Andy Warhol's video & film archive I have to say that the author's is probably far more interesting - just as I believe mine is. THE BIG QUESTION IS: Who's going to study it all? I've studied other people's work extensively & find it very interesting & rewarding to do so but I wdn't want to dedicate my life to the work of one person or even one mvmt. SO, it wd be better, I think, less self-sacrificing, for a large group of people to take on the task, maybe as a tag team for the sake of thoroughness. I imagine a group of interested parties trying to study the work in chronological order & making stills & descriptive notes & criticism & condition reports & all the rest in a communally shared log. Istvan may not want that at all. What I, at least, don't want is for someone to make such a project their life's work - they've got their own life to lead. Still, maybe someone wd feel like that's what wd be rewarding for them.
This "underlined" chapter ends w/: "No need to mention here any other author as for this chapter I only plundered from my own deserted mind" (p 12 (variation 247)). Maybe that's why I liked this chapter so much more than the others so far - or maybe just the style change was a relief.
""The Book of NEOISM?! won't be just simply added to the Bible but it will replace the Bible."
"It will replace all the literature of your human history from cuneiform tablets to digital transcripts." - p 12 (variation 252)
That wd be horrible. It's such a megalomaniac's dream that I doubt that even the megalomaniacal author wd want it to happen. If it did & I were still alive I'd have to make it one of my purposes in life to kill all those responsible for the crime. At any rate, I'm reminded of Moslems supposedly claiming that the Quran is the only bk we need. For what? Toilet paper?
"I don't care about NEOISM?! at all, he repeated it a few times like a loopmachine. NEOISM?! sucks, it's all bullshit, it only confuses people and makes them even more afraid to communicate.
"They don't want total freedom and revolution, they want jobs. They want money. They don't want to struggle like Monty Cantsin?s do without a cent in their pocket, holding up the flaming iron. They don't want to spend their money on rubber cement, fuck no, they want cars, suburban houses and holydays." - p 12 (variation 254)
I essentially agree, neoists are HERETICS, we don't even necessarily agree w/ each other but we respect fellow HERETICS more than people who just kneel to a MONOLITHIC NARRATIVE & REPEAT THE APPROVED SUBCULTURAL TROPES OUT OF FEAR OF CONDEMNATION. There's good reason to fear condemnation, the days of torturing & killing Giordano Bruno aren't really that far behind us - I see them being ushered in again as much by 'liberals' as by 'conservatives'. Most people are cowards & weaklings, they'll torment anyone as long as they're sure there're other cowards & slaves backing them up. Left to their own devices they're just sheep waiting to be shorn.
Never let it be sd that the author isn't always ready to jump on a bandwagon that might finally make him THE OPEN POP STAR. Hence, in this day & age of gender-bending, he starts switching 1st-person sex:
"I was reading The Book of NEOISM?! late night and I fell asleep on the floor in my T-shirt, no underwear. When I awoke, my dog was licking my pussy, and to be honest it felt so good I didn't stop him until I came like I never have before in my life. Then I took a shower and continued reading The Book of NEOISM?! .
"After reading The Book of NEOISM?! for almost 24 hours, non-stop, I felt a bit tired and I went to a masseur who finished things with a terrific blow job while he was massaging my asshole with his thumb. I felt so great and fresh again that I ran home and continued reading The Book of NEOISM?! ." - p 12 (variation 257)
"I am being fucked by a strange slippery man with a big, bland, smiling face. I realize he comes from Mars, and that I am the first ever Earth girl to be seduced by a man from another planet. His penis is silver, has gills on each side of it, like a fish, and every time he breathes, some sort of slippery silver secretion oozes out of these gills.
"I lie back and pull open my vagina for him. As the silver fish slides into my wet hole I can hear some weird sound and I realize that his penis is whispering to me.
""Shhhhhhhhh, psssssss, zzzzzzzzzzz, I am Monty Cantsin?, talking genital, sonic robot-phallus from The Outer Space of NEOISM?! . I am the key to the momentum of cultural conspiracy." - p12 (variation 266)
Of course, we now know in hindsight that that interaction was the Martian way of turning moving objects into comfy chairs. All that talk was just to quiet the chair-in-progress so it didn't resist too much. Thousands of women had the misfortune to be permanently turned into chairs but YOU DON'T SEE THAT ON THE NEWS!!
"NEOISM?! suggest that there is no truth, only different points of view. The Stupid, Selfish and Schlock incitements of NEOISM?! are dehumanizing and make people hate themselves and their life.
"NEOISM?! is an information process that can be exported from one matrix to another. So you can suck and lick my toes, one by one, passionately and respectfully, like a cat cleaning itself." - p 12 (variation 270)
I suppose I get that except for the Sch lock. Shdn't there be a key? My notes say: "2 sentences for PI of differing origins & nature" or is it "2 sentences per paragraph of differing origins & nature"? I feel this close [makes gesture of squeezing thumb & index finger tightly together] to the Sch key.
"The wind came from nowhere.
"A super-hurricane of NEOISM?! that blasted round the globe at hundreds of miles per hour burying whole communities beneath piles of rubble, destroying all organized life and driving those if did not kill to seek safety in tunnels and sewers-where they turned against each other in their desperate struggle to define NEOISM?! ."
[..]
"JG Ballard" - p 12 (variation 273)
Yes, you guessed it, Ballard's "The Wind from Nowhere". If only they were all that easy.
"I am driving in Portland with David Zack, sometime in June 1978, and suddenly I see a UFO on the sidewalk. My whole body gets hot as I receive the message. "Take me home!" the UFO shrieks. "Take me!"
"STOP!" I yell to David, jump out from the car and run to the UFO.
"This is the immortal moment that marks The Beginning of NEOISM?! .
"It is about 6 o'clock in the morning when this memory shireks at me. From this moment on-up until 6 o'clock this morning-I am in the hands of unseen powers. I put the computer away, put on my coat hanger antenna and I commence to record what is being dictated to me.
"NEOISM?! originated from the toilet of an alien spaceship. The name of the alien who actually deposited NEOISM?! in the toilet is unknown. From there NEOISM?! was flushed into space. The small piece became part of a growing ring of space pollution, and, perhaps for a few million years it circulated around the Earth, untouched, wrapped in smooth alien shit." - p 12 (variation 279)
Likely story. Everybody knows David ran it over.
"Her genitals were overlarge, and as I watched, her penis grew to full erection. It was almost enough to take my mind off the fact that from the crotch down Monty Cantsin? was a snake.
"She moved like a cobra, holding her human self upright as she slithered forward. She towered over me, swaying slightly with every ripple of her abdomen.
""The revelation of Monty Cantsin?'s inhumanity was nowhere near as terrible as my realization that I still wanted to fuck her."" - p 12 (variation 290)
Alas, while he looked for her hole she swallowed him. As he continued to write from inside her stomach he decided to mention me again.
"By repeating phrases I try to create a beat that is helpful to memorize The Monotone Tunes of NEOISM?! . This is something I learned from such great composers and de-composers as for example Steve Reich, David Zack or tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE." - p 12 (p 292)
What a lumping-together! That's not a lumpenproletariat, it's not even a Lumpy Gravy.
For more info about my decompositions go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/decompositions.html
"Will the reader actually realize that I repeat certain phrases or paragraphs so many times? Perhaps the editor of this book, if this manuscript will ever be edited for publishing, will have to read everything, go through the whole book from the no-beginning to the no-end and will remark this stylistic repeition. His opinion perhaps will be that it's not necessary and that I'm just wasting lots of space. Yes, it's true. NEOISM?! is nothing but wasting space and time.
"This induces the (quite wrong) assumption that dated computational techniques are structurally similar to the deep fracture of network conspiracy. This phenomenon is similar to the trend tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE calls de-cognitivism." - p 12 (variation 293-294)
Don't look at me. Actually, I don't remember ever using the term "de-cognitivism". I DO use the term Cognitive Dissidence. Perhaps that's what he was thinking of.
"If you are a true conspirator of NEOISM?! you will pay no attention to good advice. You will make your own mistakes in your own peculiar way and so discover your own NEOISM?! . But can you make mistakes in NEOISM?! ? Mistakes ARE NEOISM?! ." - p 12 (variation 302)
In my review notes I wrote "True dat" but that was so yesterday. I feel completely different now, for one thing I pick up spoons w/ my new enhanced earlobes, just spoons, mind you, let's not go too far.
"NEOISM?! never grows old. NEOISM?! stands for life, for growths, for flexibility, for experimentation, for subversion, for confusion. NEOISM?! is all at once, she is not at war with herself.
"Whatever Monty Cantsin? says about NEOISM?! is true. Monty Cantsin? may be the first conspirator in history to say there is no such thing as NEOISM?! ." - p 12 (variation 308)
In fact, NEOISM?! grows rings around you. Esp if your name is Daphne. There is no such thing as NEOISM?!, ask Daphne, she won't deny it.
"I pressed my ear to the wall of my prison cell.
"I heard the sounds of decay in progress, the struggle of collapsing isms of a sinking World. I could hear the cries of the reptile birds of capitalism diving from the Supreme Tower of Totalitaria into their prey below, their ungainly wings unshackling as they fell.
"Astonished, I started banging on the wall, feeling the hard surface of concrete but pretending that it was only a stage set that will collapse to the rhythmic force of my fists.
"Not that I wanted to escape. No, I had no intention to return to the World I've left behid a long time ago. The prison was my respected home, the scene of an ongoing NEOISM?! Apartment Festival, with lots of participants from all around the World. The sound I was hearing came from the neighboring cell, home of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE.
He turned his cell into a sound studio, using old tapedecks, broken synthesizers, junk instruments, whatever he could get through the prison's pirate system. He played almost continuously, creating a new prison cell concerto every hour.
"Sudden changes abd abrupt endings are definite structural signs of NEOISM?! ."
"I stopped my banging and pressed my ear to the wall again.
"This time I closed my eyes and as the sounds of the decay of capitalism echoed in my ears I saw a sudden image of a lonely bay millions of years earlier. High cliffs of white shale reached to the sky, and huge reptiles sidled along the coarse beaches, baying at the grotesque armored fish that lunged at them from the shallows. Volcanic cones ringed the horizon, their red vents staining the sky. There were plaster statues painted an ugly brown color, life-size.
"I enjoyed the noise of tENT so much that it gave me the pleasure of an orgasm. This was my favorite way of gratification. I could repeat it again and again every hour. My ear against the concrete wall became my new symbol for sex and NEOISM?! .
tENTA is also known as tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE,
but I like to call him tENTA." - p 12 (variation 313-314) 
I heard the Iron Mask running back & forth across the dungeon door's window bars again & again at different speeds & knew that Monty Cantsin? was in the next cell playing another of his scrap metal concerts. The guards, infectiously caught up in the frenzy, pulled out their swords & blunderbuses & started joining in. Soon, they were all dead. Sometimes, there is poetic justice after all. Unfortunately, we were still stuck in our cells.
Ahhhh..... WOMEN! An endless source of domestic violence!
"While I was in the bathroom in The Name of NEOISM?! Krista Goddess came home with the kids in The Name of Lunchtime. When she saw me coming out from the bathroom in The Name of NEOISM?! she started arguing in The Name of Reason that I have no right to enter the house in The Name of NEOISM?! without her permission, that I should go to a public bath in The Name of Whatever.
"This argument started other endless subjects like money, ownership of the house, who paid for what etc. Finally Krista began yelling and soon screaming her head off in The Name of Motherhood and Family Life. She went completely mad in The Name of Financial Crisis, out of her mind in The Name of a Nervous Breakdown. I have never seen anyone screaming like that in The Name of Anything. Not even NEOISM?! .
"The kids were watching TV in the living room in The Name of Bugs Bunny. Babylon covered his ears with his hands in The Name of Fear and Terror.
"While I was saying good bye to them in The Name of a Happier Next Time Krista continued screaming in high frequency voice in The Name of Emergency Sirens and with full force in The Name of Insanity threatening me to call the police in The Name of Protection if I don't leave immediately in The Name of Murder and Suicide. A situation incomparable to anything but NEOISM?! ." - p 12 (variation 317)
I am truly touched by this brief description. No doubt Krista & Monty had better times than this, no doubt Monty's obsession w/ the legacy he's leaving for posterity was difficult to endure in the present tension.. but when will people get it thru their thick empty heads that women are equal to men? Equally stupid, equally cruel, equally unscrupulous, equally venal - & what they lack in strength they make up for in psychological manipulation. Also EQUALLY loving, not more so, EQUALLY.
"I run 10 or 20 kilometres every day and do lots of push-ups, sometimes 1,000 sometimes only 100. But I'm out in the parks every day. That's how I generate my drugs (endorphins) in my body fluids, by exercising. It's my daily ritual to generate the necessary chemicals in my body, in my blood." - p 12 (variation 328)
&, indeed, Monty's in excellent shape.. &, yet, I don't think he's as strong as I am (although maybe now that I'm becoming more decrepit he might be more so) for the simple reason that he hasn't had to do as much physical labor. Not that I'm recommending it, mind you, but it does have its positive side.
"NEOISM?! came only later. Monty Cantsin? was our tool for communication, and it was our subject as well.
"David played cello or tenor guitar and I played guitar and I sang.
He sang as well. And some people from Smegma joined us.
"This was a post-syphon period in Portland, Oregon. Or we can say pre-NEOISM?! period. A training camp. We sent out information through the mail to our friends and asked them to send us their Monty Cantsin? starphoto, their Monty Cantsin? music, their Monty Cantsin? movie, Monty Cantsin? whatever. It was clear that we wanted to develop this open-pop-star project through correspondence and performance. And after a series of concerts in Portland and a worldwide campaign through the mail, the idea got picked up and spread like the plague. Like fire. Like a storm." - p 12 (variation 329)
"Meanwhile David moved down to Texas with his family and I moved back to Montreal. It was only six months of forced training camp activity and extended propaganda courses at the Portland Academy. We could have been in a terroirst training camp in an Arab country, or let's say in a secret headquarters in the USSR, or in a fucked-up loft in New York City. But actually it was better to be in Portland, at the Portland Academy/CASF, which was extended with the Smegma House, the NWAW, Steve Minor's junkyard, the Earth Tavern, the Long Good-Bye, the Library, the New Jerusalem Church, the streets, the cheap bars and restaurants, the abandoned buildings, the supermarkets, the police, the parks, the Harbourfront, the bridges etc. And Portland got extended down to San Francisco. Yanagi's Golden Gate avenue apartment became my headquarters for a month. I met Yanagi in 1976 in Paris. A painter and photographer from Japan. A Monty Cantsin?. - p 12 (variation 329-330)
"I was ovewhelmed by everyday life. And came Jerry Sims, the windhover of Texas. He moved into the basement, but he wanted my room on the ground floor. It was an aesthetic fight that ended up with a deal. He hated our music and our language. Therefore he was the perfect candidate to become our manager, Jerry became our manager." - p 12 (variation 330)
As you may've picked up on from the above, whenever someone started using the name Monty Cantsin? they developed black buboes under their armpits. Even then, their sex life became better. & Sims started using these buboes as a selling point, you can sell ANYTHING.
"If I could I would just exercise and eat rice, fruits and vegetables. And also oysters. I'll never give up eating oysters. My favorite meal is oysters with bread and butter and a bottle of champagne. The best breakfast while taking a bath with your lover. There has been a time when I was completely vegetarian, I mean vegan. For a while I ate only nuts and fruits. But then I started eating fish again. Fish and NEOISM?! go together." - p 12 (variation 336)
&, indeed, many neoists are vegetarians - but lest you get the wrong idea about this being rooted in an adversity to cruelty to animals I can testify that I've seen Monty Cantsin & the Zealot, 2 vegetarians, place a mouse in a hole in a pool table in a Toronto bar & to then terrorize the little thing by knocking balls into the holes. These guys were laughing uproariously over the suffering.
"I was introduced to mail art/correspondence art by Lázló Beke through an exhibition he organized at the Young Artists Club in Budapest, sometime in the spring of 1976. The subject of this exhibition was David Zack, writer/musician/correspondence artist.
"Zack was present at the opening and I was fascinated both by the chaotic, eclectic, ambiguous, confusing, crazy, surprising, subversive character of his mail-art work and his personality. Zack proposed to me to use the name Monty Cantsin?. It only took a short exchange of ideas for me to quickly realize that I was Monty Cantsin?. Almost immediately I escaped from Hungary, and after a few years of hanging out in different training camps in Paris, Plan de la Tour, Montreal, Portland and San Francisco, I initiated NEOISM?! in 1979 in Montreal." - p 12 (variation 346)
I find the author's ongoing love of & appreciation for David Zack to be touching. He even compiled a bk in Zack's memory. You can see a picture of the cover & read my review of it here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book2010Zack.html .
"The Propagandist of NEOISM?! uses a computer to decompose symphonies. The Symphony Decomposer of NEOISM?! , tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, is well known for his unbearable, long, irritainment symphonies, somewhat similar to early pre-NEOISM?! syphon-concerts of the infamous Drazé Expressz. Drazé Expressz was banned from everywhere they played and therefore they reached their goals. tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE is still working hard to alienate music lovers and have a victorious recital in a completely empty concert hall. But a few people always show up, in spite of the extraordinary efforts of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE." - p 12 (variation 371)
As much as I enjoy being a fictional character in this bk, this is where things just get intolerably stupid. Nothing that the author writes above is accurate, intelligent, or relevant to what I do. I've never heard recordings of or witnessed movies of the "syphon-concerts", possibly b/c such documentation doesn't exist, that Istvan makes so much reference to (inside this bk & elsewhere) but my vaguie recollection is that they were concerts played by people incapable of playing their instruments, probably for the fun of making noise, young people. Maybe something along the lines of The Nihilist Spasm Band's early days. My work is performed mostly by professional musicians, many &/or most of them classically trained, some of them people who occassionally play with symphony orchestras.
Furthermore, the work is in no way intended "to alienate music lovers and have a victorious recital in a completely empty concert hall". I'm happy when there's an audience there. Sometimes there's an audience as large as, say, 120 people; sometimes as few as, say, 5. More usual might be 20. The music, or, as I prefer, Low Classical Usic, is unpopular because it's more music for musicians, music esp for musicians w/ a taste for a rarified avant garde, it's NOT intended to be pop music. But just because it's not pop music doesn't mean it's meant to drive people away. It's complex original (M)Usic, people have a difficult time understanding complexity, people seem to prefer music that repeats the standardized tropes of their subculture, like punk music or dance music, very few people are interested in originality.
Also, my Uncerts (a term I prefer to "concerts") can be short, medium, long. It's not too unusual for me to just perform a 5 minute piece. The larger scale pieces take substantial, difficult-to-arrange rehearsals. Perhaps the longest I've ever organized was around 2 hrs & 20 minutes. I HAVE used the term "booed usic" to describe some of my work. That's a humorous way to describe its unpopularity, it's "booed". Ironically, the booed usics were often fairly popular b/c they appealed to raucous bar culture. Below are links to 31 'live' uncerts of mine from a 36+ yr period. Note the high level of musicianship in them. Note also that they're often quite different from each other - importantly, they're always full of new ideas. Istvan Kantor wants to be a pop star, I don't. Therefore, he's always trying to be on the 'cutting edge' of pop culture. Sometimes I like what he does, sometimes I find it boring. I rarely find his own musicianship to be anything other than mediocre - esp when he starts using his JamMan loopmachine.
"The Ticket that Exploded @ the library"
- featuring: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: Ben Opie; Roger Dannenberg; Jeff Weston
- 1:05:59
- 1080p HD 29.97, Stereo
- edit finished February 1, 2020
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/Uw2sDzENK6o
"365 @ Regent Square"
- the premier of "365" (which accidentally turned out to be "364") on April 7, 2019, with the phenomenal assistance of Ben Opie: alto sax, Coal Hornet: Eb contra alto clarinet, Kenny Haney: Bb clarinet, Unfinished Symphonies: keyboard, Devin Sherman: electric guitar, Eric Lipsky: cello, Roger Dannenberg: trumpet
- Thanks to Pittsburgh Filmmakers, The Regent Square Theater, Michael Prosser, Joe Morrison
- 2:22:25
- 1080p
- edit finished: April 16, 2019
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/fsi5EVJaqUU
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/365RegentSquare
"Karaoke Orgy (w/ vocal)"
- Dick Turner's song entitled "Let's Have An Orgy" given "The Treatment" by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- edit finished July 1, 2018
- 3:37
- Custom HD 1920WX1440H
- unlisted on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/jNGS8moOafE
- uploaded July 1, 2018
"Sleeping Together"
- a collaboration with theremin player Pamelia Stickney at the Glitter Box Theater on Thursday, May 10, 2018
- using a GoPro + a Vivitar sports camera (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE)
- edit finished May 11, 2018
- 22:30
- 1080p (1920WX1080H HD)
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/VNNRBa5Z-cM
"Exorcising Capos"
- tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's participation in Mr. Funky's (Unfinished Symphonies's) "The Exorcism" event at the Glitter Box Theater, Saturday, February 3, 2018E.V.
- shot by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (Vivitar sports camera & mini-dv) & Unfinished Symphonies (1080p)
- using additional footage filling in the some of the gaps shot on February 4, 2018E.V.
- 13:58
- custom 1700X1275 (4/3)
- edit finished February 4, 2018E.V.
- Unfinished Symphonies's raw footage on YouTube: https://youtu.be/J5SX8bkQW4c
- the edited version on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/nTRdh4YnA2I
a. "MM 76 RELEASE"
- shot using 4 cameras on Friday, October 13, 2017, at the Glitter Box Theater by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE with one additional iPhone provided by Noah Rectenwald of his section
- performers in order of appearance: Noah Rectenwald; Warren Burt; Ben Opie; tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE & Meg Graham; How Things Are Made (Matt Aelrmore & David Bernabo); Mike Boyd
- 1:28:38
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/XuoZopfS4CQ
b. "MM 76 RELEASE (medium rare)"
- 39:33
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/MM76RELEASEmediumRare
c. "MM 76 RELEASE (well done)"
- 12:24
- on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/241244343
"RonDodo"
- Shot at rehearsals at the Who Unit? & CMU & at the premier at The Space Upstairs (November 8, 2015)
- featuring: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: (d) composer, cameras, conducting, sampler; Brian Riordan: conducting, percussion; Calder Dudgeon: conducting; David Bernabo: keyboards; Matt Aelmore: French Horn; Jason Blecher: valve trombone; Roger Dannenberg: trumpet; Ben Opie: alto sax; Kenny Haney: clarinet; Julian Krishnamurti: violin
- 25:12
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/CzsoiM8z1wk
"Tex-Mix (Giddyup Americana)"
- shot November 1, 5 (rehearsals), & 8 (gig at Babyland), 2015
- text from review of OPEN SPACE 15/16
- using 11 audio samples of simulated horse hooves & of instruments
- also using 50 audio samples from these 6 Tex Ritter movies:
"Song of the Gringo" (1936)
"Arizona Days" (1937)
"Sing, Cowboy, Sing" (1937)
"Mystery of the Hooded Horsemen" (1937)
"Tex Rides with the Boy Scouts" (1937)
"Rollin' Plains" (1938)
- edit finished December 2, 2015
- 14:02
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/yVZPa4gCdAU
a. ""A Catamaran Animist Vigor" & Anita Sphinx @ Babyland - 2015.01.24"
- featuring the players of "A Catamaran Anmist Vigor": Matt Aelmore: French horn, Roger Dannenberg: laptop 'piano' chords, Kenny Haney: Bb clarinet, Brian Riordan: latop samples, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: percussion samples; & the members of Anita Sphinx: Anita Fix: voice, percussion, recordings, Ben Grubb: metalworking & percussion, Jim Lingo: percussion, Mika Metz: percussion, Paula Jean Tonsor: voice, percussion
- "A Catamaran Anmist Vigor": Score Movie making, camcorder on tripod, audio recording, general messterminding, editing, titling, etc: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE; Elizabeth Bushmann: hand-held camcorder, stills
- Anita Sphinx: hand-held camcorder, editing, titling, etc: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE; Elizabeth Bushman: stills
- 1:53:21
b. ""A Catamaran Animist Vigor" @ Babyland - 2015.01.24" (for YouTube)
- 41:08
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: http://youtu.be/cn3U055X-2U
"Skeletal Remains"
- score finished March 22, 2012
- a sampling piece based on pieces using excerpts from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake"
- demonstration performance at PHEW! 03 at the Who Unit? on May 27, 2012 performed by & camera by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- performance at SIX x ATE organized by Casey Droege on June 18, 2012, camera by Florian Cramer
- edit finished July 5, 2012 by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- 8:59
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: http://youtu.be/6EicbqmLvbk
a. "Reductionism (A Yr of Sundays with Mono)"
- the movie version of the score (+ the score played) of the audio piece of the same name
- d composer/realizer: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- Thanks to Warren Burt for Pitch-to-MIDI & Cakewalk assistance
- 1997-1998 / 2000 / 2003 / 2011 - finished June, 2011
- 37:24
b. ""Reductionism (A Yr of Sundays with Mono)" + "Interpretive Duncing (The Sum of Multiple "Reductionisms")" + "Artifacts""
- 37:51
c. "Reductionisms Expanded"
- incorporating footage of the rehearsals & the premier
- 1:19:47
d. "Reductionism + Interpretive Duncing + Artifacts"
- incorporating footage of the rehearsals & the premier of just the expanded piece
- 42:15
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/0MkMFpaZGOU
"Sonluminous Premier"
- shot at Project 53 in Pittsburgh on August 11, 2010 at an event organized by Kenny Haney
- Sonluminous design, sampling, wave-table synthesis, overhead camcorder: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- moving camcorder: Cornelius Henke, III
- edit finished on November 4, 2010 by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- 9:13
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/nAnnNd4qyxY
a. "HiTE Club PREMIER"
- starring joy toujours; Tony Blowad; tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- 1:31:51
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/HiTEclub1
b. "HiTE Club PREMIER" (YouTube version)
- 09:46
- on my onesownthoughtsYouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/XU6AnSa4v0s
"HiTEC 051 - New Hazlett Theater"
- tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: piano, SysMan, electronics, percussion, spinner, editing, etc..; Tony Balko: camcorder; Ben Opie - reeds, electronics; Kenny Haney: clarinets, balloons ; Spat Cannon: upright acoustic bass; Dani Simmonds: banjo-uke; Roger Dannenberg: trumpet, flugelhorn, piccolo trumpet; Missi St Pierre: toy piano w/ effects; Julian Krishnamurti: electric bass; Johan Nystrom: extended percussion; Kerrith Livengood: alto flute; Ben Harris: violin; Jonathan Brodsky: monome with mabalhabla software; Mike Tamburo: hammered dulcimer; Unfinished Symphonies: electronic keyboard; Joy: electric guitar w/ nylon strings; William Wedler: Experiment 1; Erok: trombone; Stuart Anderson: laptop; James Gyre: drums
- moving cameras: Blissy Ann Higgs, Bill Daniel, Ashley Brickman
- shot Friday, January 9, 2009; edit finished February 4, 2009
- high-definition hard-drive & mini-dv -> mini-DV & DVD-R
- 1:38:42
- the complete gig is on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/HiTEC051full
- complete version also on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/lc20DsVW718
"history in the making."
- a quasi-documentary of a November 19, 2005 gig at Garfield Artworks in Pittsburgh, us@
- starring: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE + Michael Evans + Fabio Roberti + Daniel Higgs
- mini-DV camera: Greg Pierce
- event organized & movie edited & otherwise manipulated by: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- using excerpts from 240. "booed usic" & from Fabio Roberti's "UNIVAC PRESENTS: "AVANT-GARDE SHOWCASE"
- various & mini-DV -> DVD
- 24:55
- november, '05
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/Db1SXIFd4AI
a. "Harps & Angles"
- to be attributed to "Who is like God?s"
- a quasi-documentary about the "Harps & Angles" installation by "Who is like God?s"
- cameras: Who is like God?s (Pestel & Tolson), Steffi Domike, Bob Gunderson, etta cetera
- starring: Who is like God?s, Steve Boyle, James Knopf, Elise Springer, Hyla Willis, Alex Smith, the vaudience, Michael Pestel's "Sound Art" class, Mark Dixon, Florian Cramer, Michael Johnsen, Greg Pierce, a boy & his dad
- DAT recording: James Knopf
- sampling & all else: Who is like God? (Tolson)
- mini-DV, 1/2" VHS cassette, CD, & DAT -> 1/2" VHS cassette
- 1:54:20
- shot: march - june, '03 / edited: july - september, '03
b. "Harps & Angles" (rough edit of 'performance' version)
- 42:45
- shot: march - june, '03 / edited: july - september/december, '03
c. "Harps & Angles" ('performance' version)
- 28:29
- shot: march - june, '03 / edited: july - september/december, '03
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: http://youtu.be/Qk_UOY0c1bk
"Street Ratbag No5 Release Event"
- shot by Kent Bye & tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE in the fall of 2001E.V.
- centered around the manufacture & release of the "Street Ratbag No5" magazine edited by Rita Rodentia & RATical
- featuring performances by Guitarists Anonymous (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE + Daryl Fleming + Greg Pierce) + the Hip Criticals (HipHopcrates + Little Orphan Anarchy with guest appearance by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE)
- also featuring a movie by Mark Dixon of Think Tank VIII & an excerpt from a movie of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's CircumSubstantial Playing & Blindfolded Tourism
- edit finished June 25, 2019E.V. by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- 3:43:50
- UNLISTED on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/3hEepzUGkss
"tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE @ Synesthesia"
- shot by etta cetera at the Synesthesia CD store in Melbourne, Australia, on April 22, 2000
- extracted from "Don't Walk Backwards" & edited, titled, & uploaded on October 26, 2017
- 8:14
- on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/240031833
"Black Rectangle Over the Eye"
- shot in Baltimore @ the Ottobar on february 6, 00 except for the parts excerpted from other movies
- 1/2" VHS cassette + 35mm filmstrip + 16mm -> 1/2" VHS cassette
- 18:32
- february 6, 00 / april, 02
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/QBTFTpscd4M?t=5821
""Yr of Sundays" K7 Release Party"
- main footage shot at the Chatham College Swimming Pool in the (former) Mellon Mansion, Pittsburgh, us@ on Sunday, March 29th, 1998, 8 to 9:30PM
- incorporating footage from the Volunteers Collective feature that was projected as part of the above
- edit finished September 6, 2019E.V.
- 1:28:29
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/xnghwdLNZx4
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/yrofsundaysrelease
"Anonymous Family Reunion"
- 1/2" VHS cassette
- 28:00
- august-september '97
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/Igk75JaCTPw
"Interspatiality"
- 1/2" VHS cassette
- 8:27
- march 12, 97 / march, 02
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/K5nsRUM90Bg
a. "w/ CCMC"
- featuring: Michael Snow: piano, John Oswald: alto sax, Paul Dutton: voice singing, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: sampler (w/ live sampling), syntheiszers
- shot by Istvan Kantor / Monty Cantsin September 12, 1995 @ the Music Gallery, Toronto
- edited to DVD sometime around 2002
- VHS -> DVD
- 27:39
b. "w/ CCMC" (YouTube version)
- this is the excerpt used on the "UNCERTS" compilation w/ title & credits added around November 4, 2009
- VHS -> mini-DV -> computer file -> mini-DV -> YouTube
- 3:31
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/epsDAADK2XA
"tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE @ the Music Gallery, a sO-cALLED wHATEVER"
- featuring the talents of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: 16mm films, record making, electronics, d composing; Colin Hinz: specially constriucted turntable, projecting; John Henry Nyenhuis: mind-nogglingly great keyboard playing
- shot on VHS by Istvan Kantor on September 8, 1995
- edit by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE finished May 28, 2019
- 1:35:54
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/kjkDZsaWhkk
"Triple-S Variety Show @ Orgone Cinema"
- this movie was actually made as a performance document of the 1st thing I presented in Pittsburgh on January 12, 1995. I (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE) played a "Triple-S Variety Show" (live electronics using a DX27S synthesizer, 2 K2m wave-table synthesizers, & a Mirage sampler/sequencer) at the same time that I mixed VHS tapes that I'd prepared or selected for this purpose. This latter was projected. On May 29, 2019, I added a scan of the poster for the event to the front + a minimal title & repeated the title info at the end. This is concluded by the icon for my aRCHIVE.
- 1:56:42
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel UNLISTED here: https://youtu.be/mhhOcHKOKFw
a. "Psychological Playfair"
- 16mm -> 1/2" VHS cassette
- 5:30
- march-may '94
b. "Boota"
- sound from the 1994 München Klauhütte Bangzeit concert
- 16mm & 1/2" VHS cassette -> 1/2" VHS cassette
- 5:58
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/19_pe-nT9u0
"Neil Feather & tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE at the NorMill"
- shot by Laura O. White using a VHS camcorder on September 2, 1994
- edited & titled by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE on December 24, 2016
- 1:01:14
- 720 X 480 (3/2)
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/HP5Gmmu97Jc
"The Official, April 29th, 1992E.V., Band That Does Accept Money From Institutions"
- shot on VHS by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: stationary camera, Laure Drogoul: moving camera; edit probably made in 1992 using home VHS deck to home VHS deck with no editing interface in 1992
- tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE: "Erector Set" Percussion + miscellaneous other Percussion, "Terrence Dougherty", Small Nondo, Vibraphone, Trumpet, Movies (& the mixing thereof), Voice, etc; Chris Astier: Fretless Bass, Euphonium, Tom, Voice, etc; John Eaton: Alto Sax, Flaming Alto Sax, etc; Scott Larson: Medium Accordion, Abomination, Flaming Sink, etc; John Berndt: DX7 Synthesizer, VSS-30 Sampler, Soprano Sax, Violin, Dry Heaves, Stephanie Palmer Apologetica, etc; Peter Williams: Bass, Pans + Pots & Pot Lids, Pipe Xylophone, etc; Sarmad Brody: VFX Synthesizer, Voice, etc; Courtney McCullough: Tenor Sax, Bass Clarinet, Voice, etc; Eric Myers: Slinky Reverbed Cello, etc; John Dierker: Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Alto Sax, etc; Dawn Culbertson: Bass, Didjerido, Flaming Brad-A-Lon, etc; Neil Feather: Former Guitar, Apex Roto Zither, Bell Tree, Small Instruments Rig, Recombinant Electronics SK1 Sampler, etc
- 1:08:03
- uploaded to my onesownthoughts YouTube channel April 17, 2019 UNLISTED here: https://youtu.be/DdAPsiswqT8
a. "Something That Dissolves the Shadow of Something That was Next to Something that Combusted Once. Twice."
- shot by Joanne Bernititus (moving camera) & Austin Newsome (fixed camera)
- edited by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- 1/2" VHS cassette
- 30:00
- november 4, '89 (etc..)
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel in the context of "VAUDIO" here: https://youtu.be/yamGE-mVW8A?t=1h26m51s
b. "Something That Dissolves the Shadow of Something That was Next to Something That Combusted Once. Twice"
- 16:48
- november 4, '89 (etc..) - new edit: march 10, '04
- divided into 2 parts on YouTube: "Something that Dissolves the Shadow of Something that was next to Something that Combusted Twice. Once." & ":November 4th 1989EV Dis Place BAL TIM ORE".
a. "A Walk Through the Murraygate in Dundee, the 13th of August, 1988"
- shot by Pete Horobin
- DidActed in by t he booed usicians
- 1/2" VHS cassette
- 12:30
- '88
b. "Murraygate Busking"
- additional PXL-2000 shooting by Laura A. Trueseal
- directed, edited, & otherwise altered by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- 13:10
- '88/'89
c. "Murraygate Busking"
- w/ inserts added
- 13:10
- '88/'89/'90
"Generic As-Beenism" (dramatically improved upon)
- a new edit of the document of my presentation at the September, 1987, New Literatures festival in Montréal called "Ultimatum II" organized by Alan Lord - this edit takes advantage of the improvement upon the editing facilities available to me given that the original was edited without an editing interface between 2 home VHS decks & this was edited in-computer using an editing program that enabled me to simulate the original triple projection
- footage of the original live event courtesy of the Ultimatum II video crew & the cable TV station that presented their edits of the festival in-progress
- 33:33
- Custom HD 1920WX1440H
- uploaded to my onesownthoughts YouTube channel October 18, 2018: https://youtu.be/OL1Mppt2ck4
a. "booed usic at t he Telectropheremoanin'quinquennial" {version 1}
- shot by Lizard Media Systems &/or Craig Considine
- organized & edited by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- 1/2" VHS cassette
- 29:27
- january 24, '84 (etc..)
b. "booed usic at t he Telectropheremoanin'quinquennial" {version 2}
- w/ digital processing
- 29:27
c. "booed usic at t he Telectropheremoanin'quinquennial" {version 3}
- w/ another layer of digital processing added to the previous & w/ titles
- meant to be excerpted from
- 29:27
d. "booed usic @ t he Telectropheremoanin'quinquennial" {version 4}
- w/ titles & credits added September 15, 2017
- computer file
- 29:27
- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/BooedUsic
I Know, I know.. that was very excessive of me to list those but I'm trying to make a couple of points here (& advertise myself): 1. Istvan's description of what I do is crap, 2. I'm not a one-trick pony or even a 20-trick pony.
"NEOISM?! must be continuous and lasting-continuous in that it must not leave any gaps, but must fill the conspirator's whole day and all his days; lasting in that it must function over a very long period of time.
""NEOISM?! will occupy every moment of the individual's life, at home, in the street, at the dentist, in a bar or in bed."
"It is based on constant impregnation. It creates convictions and compliance through imperceptible influences that are effctive only by continuous repetition." - p 12 (variation 372)
Ok, I appreciate the passion of that, I appreciate that the author doesn't want halfway measures, he wants DEDICATION. Nonetheless, that's too cult-like for me. I'm a neoist, but I'm not preoccupied w/ neoism all the time, there're plenty of other things in my life. Hence, my neoist motto is Neoism Now & Then! wch, of course, is an alternative to the Monty Cantsin slogan of Neoism Now!
On p 12 (variation 380) there's a negative image of a Krononautic Organism rubber stamp made by X Richard, the founder of the Krononauts. It reads: "KRONONAUTS 9 MAR 1982". The idea was to throw a multi-location party for people from the future(s) during a time of partial alignment of the planets in the hope that future people capable of time travel wd learn of it & come back in time to attend. Stephen Hawking apparently hosted a similar party decades later, one can read about that online but info about the more substantial Krononautic Organism event is harder to find. I give some info online about it here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/InterviewMckeown.html . Krononautic events continued to be organized after the 1982 extravaganza (wch was reported about in the NY Times) & I made a film of one of these 8 yrs later: https://youtu.be/fGDsj1ZJnMU .
"Spartacus had 200 conspirators but only 74 escaped because the plot was betrayed. The 74 desperados probably looked more like bandits than freedom fighters. They climbed up to the top of the Vesuvius volcano and nested in its crater. Their victory echoed down the mountain and soon 10,000 slave fugitives joined them. Spartacus welcomed anyone who wanted to sign up and fight for NEOISM?! . He recruited an army of 40,000 insurgents. I know these numbers from books, but I often have the feeling that I was Spartacus and Spartacus was the original Monty Cantsin?." - p 12 (variation 382)
I, too, am inspired by Spartacus & ANY slave revolt - wch is why one of my Street Ratbag names is SpRATacus.
This bk is OBSESSED &, really, I love it for that, the author has steeped himself in it so much that he even REEKS of neoism. Whatever you smell right now, whoever & wherever you are is Monty Cantsin REEKING of neoism.
"We want children to think about NEOISM?!
and talk about the issues of subversion and vandalism before they develop
too many bad habits of normality. "Kill normality before it kills you!"
That's one of Indy's favorite slogans. "Hunger is the mother of beauty!"
is another one. "Fuck NEOISM?! , let's dance!" Bruce likes
to say. Biut according to Indy dancing is NEOISM?! . "So what
you are saying, Bruce, is 'Fuck NEOISM?! , let's do NEOISM?!
!"" - p 12 (variation 384) 
"Kill normality before it kills you!" is one of my main slogans & I'm glad to see it here. There was a newspaper article written about me, it might've been early 1983 in wch I mentioned that slogan & the reporter sd something like 'But it could be EYEStop Normality before it stops you!LID, right?!' I thought that was funny b/c it was as if he found the thought of the 'murder' of normality as somehow equivalent to the murder of a human - I mean, it's a fucking concept, ok?! You can't murder it.
""NEOISM?! is the labor of a person who attempts to gain the attention of the media by beating a dead dog to death."" - p 12 (variation 387)
""NEOISM?! , as a form of exorcism, unites fire therapy, dead dog rituals, blood graffiti, noise overload, hyper-convulsion and file-cabinet gang bangs."" - p 12 (variation 459)
Many reasonably well-informed people will recognize this as a reference to my action named T he Poop & Pee Dog Copyright Violation Ceremony wch was performed as part of the 3rd Church & Foundation of the SubGenius Convention that I coorganized in BalTimOre in September, 1983. The author was present at that b/c he was in attendance to the Con partially b/c it immediately preceeded APT 7, the 7th International Neoist Apartment Festival, wch I also organized. They'll also recognize in "beating a dead dog to death" the expression "beating a dead horse". This latter expression, of course, means overdoing something such as in making a point that's already obvious. ANYWAY, one can find this description of that action on the webpage the address of wch follows it:
"Poop & Pee Dog Copyright Violation Ceremony
- 14BX Sub-Par/Con (The 3rd Church & Foundation of the SubGenius Convention), a Baltimore Train Tunnel, us@
- September 18, 1983, very early morning
- A wire was stretched across the train tunnel thru an eye hook & 2 partially truncated & mummified dog corpses that I'd found there that had apparently been run over by trains were hung from the wire on either side of the tracks. A metal sheet with instructions for using Black & Decker power tools with a No Copyright symbol spray-painted on it was suspended between the dogs. The dogs were painted white with the words "Poop" painted on 1 of them & "Pee" painted on the other & glowing cyalume light sticks were placed between their rear legs. The walls of the tunnel were spray-painted with non-intersecting (except for, perhaps, the occasional accident) squiggly lines which I associated somehow with native Australian dreamtime culture. A strobe light flashed, someone made the dogs dance by tugging on the wire, & Ron Cummings manipulated & played tapes that he'd made of him beating on the dead dogs. I was naked except for my shoes & socks & I had white squiggly lines painted on me. I danced & gyrated wildly & beat the dogs & the thunder sheet with a club. The dogs were on fire & exuded what one might call a "foul" smell. I had been entrusted with the sacred head of Arnold Palmer by a representative of the Bloody Head Launcher's Society which I had set on fire & which I was also beating about the tunnel. The title of this ceremony was a reference to "Pee-Dog" comix by Jay Condum & Gary Panter & "Poop-Dog" comix (which was a friendly rip-off of "Pee-Dog") by the Reverends Ivan Stang & Sterno Keckhaver. Eventually a large quantity of police came (from the railroad cops, the city police, & the nearby federal reserve bank guards) because 1 of the attendees reported having witnessed something "horrible & immoral" & I was arrested. When the "news" found out about this (it was done partially as a publicity stunt anyway) they "reported" that I was a "Cult Leader" who was "praying to the dogs" etc. Very little attempt was made to actually find out who I really was or what I actually was doing & when I was interviewed what I actually had to say was considered too weird to quote. I was quoted both in the newspapers & on tv as saying things that I hadn't said by people who hadn't even been present at the time when I'd supposedly said them. The cop who'd arrested me bought a photo of this ceremony from me. Another cop who'd allegedly been on the "force" for 26 years was quoted as saying in the newspapers "I'd rather run up against a man with a gun than a situation like that!" The beat goes on.."
- http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/MereOutline1983.html
ANYANYWAY, once again I feel the desire to correct the author. That action was part of a SubGenius event & NOT a neoist one - therefore I don't consider it a neoist action. "Pee Dog" was an underground comic character created by Jay Condum & Gary Panter & "Poop Dog" was a take-off on that created by Ivan Stang & Sterno Keckhaver. All were involved in the Church. When the Sub-Par/Con was being organized 3 actions were discussed at a planning meeting that, if they were happened upon by the media, we knew wd be blown out of proportion & exploited for sensationalist purposes by them. We eventually performed 2 of the 3 proposed actions. They were ultimately done more for our entertainment than they were for the media but when the media found out about my action they did, indeed, respond in exactly the way we expected them to. As such, I, at least, felt like we were the puppet masters doing the exploiting for a change. Remember, the mass media are as much the Pavlovian Dogs as the poor suckers who believe their pap crap.
"Taking blood from my arm in vacutainer tubes
while singing The International Anthem of NEOISM?!
THAT'S HOW I WANT TO BE REMEMBERED
Sticking a blood tube into my asshole in Halasana position
while explaining the Spider Web Strategy of NEOISM?!
THAT'S HOW I WANT TO BE REMEMBERED
Holding up a flaming iron and
dancing to The Beat of EYENEOISM?!LID
THAT'S HOW I WANT TO BE REMEMBERED
Sitting on a NEOISM?! Chair and
distributing leaflets to passersby
THAT'S HOW I WANT TO BE REMEMBERED" - p 12 (variation 390)
&, indeed, the author is an extraordinary person whos's dedicated his life to developing this extraordinariness & he deserves to be remembered in an extraordinary way & LOVED FOR IT. Monty Cantsin? AMEN. is one-of-a-kind, a rarity beyond the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker & someday he'll be dead but his legacy will continue to eat thru the disease of our culture.
"We could quote definitions for pages on end. An Italian author, Vittore Baroni, says that NEOISM?! is a "technique of mail-art which tends to create psychological or social groups with a unified structure across the homogeneity of the affective and mental states of the individuals under consideration". For dr Al Ackerman, the well-known American specialist, it is "an attempt to modify personalities and control the behavior of individuals in relation to goals considered non-scientific or of doubtful value in a specific society or time period"." - p 12 (variation 396)
An uncritical reader approaching this bk as if it's factual history might accept those as real quotes from real people. A reader who's more knowledgable & more critical might realize that Vittore Baroni is an Italian Mail Artist & author etc but that it's unlikely that he wd've ever written anything such as what's 'quoted' as by him above. Instead, both quotes are likely repurposed from a psychology bk, perhaps one on Behavior Modification. There was an "Al Ackerman", birthname reputed to've been "William Greathouse", but he wasn't a doctor, he had been a burn nurse for awhile. Ackerman's calling himself a "dr" was, in my interpretation, a parody of the artificial inflation of 'respectability' that doctors exploit AND a reference to some con men &/or pulp writers who used the same artificial inflation for more or less the same reason: to give their opinions a weight that might not've been bought otherwise.
"Psychological action: The NEOIST?! seeks to modify opinions by purely psychological means; most often he pursues a semi-educative objective and addresses himself to his fellow conspirators.
Psychological warfare: Here the NEOIST?! is dealing with a foreign adversary whose morale he seeks to destroy by psychological means so that the opponent begins to doubt the validity of his beliefs and actions.
Confusion and brainwashing: Complex methods of transforming an adversary into an ally." - p 12 (variation 397)
Such as by quoting Hitler? Hitler isn't one the people credited at the end of the chapter but he is credited elsewhere. I don't know who he's repurposing above but I suspect I wdn't exactly trust them. Nonetheless, consider this:
"Philosopher's Union Member's Mouthpiece #00,011: "Karen Eliot" - 1988 - https://youtu.be/tuWeLcATTAI
The entire text is quotes from Hitler that the person speaking them, Karen Eliot, agreed w/. Karen was a vegetarian, e.g., & so was Hitler. It isn't until one realizes that the quotes are from Hitler that one's perceptions of the quotes is likely to take a threatening twist.
"Anti-NEOIST?!s try to play down The Efectiveness of NEOISM?! because they cannot retain their ultimate trust in anarchism.
"Personally, I, too, tend to believe in the pre-eminence of anarchy, and, consequently, in its invincibility. But as I observe the facts, I realize anarchism is terribly malleable, uncertain of itself, ready to accept and to follow many suggestions and is tossed about by all the winds of doctrine." - p 12 (variation 398)
In other words, it's exactly like NEOISM?!? Whatever. Very little is known about these Anti-NEOIST?!s, they're even slipperier than NEOIST?!s. Even this Anti-Neoism website seems suspiciously like something a NEOIST?! might make: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Anti-Neoism.html .
"I robbed the intellect of occultist Aleister Crowley, starving fuckoff genius tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, and countless others from Krishna to Hitler, from Michelangelo to Dali, from Charles Manson to Jack Smith, from Wagner to Robert Filliou, from Erik Satie to Yves Klein and also Marinetti, Tatlin, Cornelius Cardew, Kaprow, Gina Pane, Vaneigem, Sari Dienes, Genesis P.Orrige, Jupitter-Larsen, and more and more and many many endless more. Their names imprinted on my mind and are listed at the end of each chapter." - p 12 (variation 400)
My name, e.g., "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE" (p 12 (variation 403)) is listed at the end of this chapter but I'll be dagnabbitted all to heck'n'back again if I noticed any repurposing of something of mine here. Anyway, I'm honored nonetheless.. BUT word is, out on the street, that Krishna's gonna fry Istvan's ass, gonna toast him, gonna cap him, gonna blender his toothpaste & waste his tooth-blender.
"The Worldwide NEOIST?! Conspiracy, now in its fifth year, was the culmination of a series of extended events that had taken place with increasing frequency all over the globe during the previous decade. One by one, areas as far apart as Montreal and the Balkan territories in Yugoslavia, Baltimore (Maryland) and the Bavarian country in Germany were turned into NEOIST?! Apartment Festivals and training camps. Comspirators strongly embraced The Scandal of NEOISM?! . THEY ALSO KNEW FROM THE VERY BEGINNING THAT THEY WERE CONDEMNED TO DEATH. This knowledge kept their awareness even sharper." - p 12 (variation 408)
Yeah, well we're all condemned to death but we don't necessarily get there that quickly. One of my mottos is Live Fast, Die Old! & I reckon I've lived fast enuf but I can't decide whether I'm really old yet. 66 is a somewhat ambiguous time, it's old enuf to be a pariah, but not really old enuf to be that feeble. Will this 'revew' ever end?! Write slow, die lengthy.
"I was fascinated by revolutionaries, poets, pop-stars, murderers, Che Guevara, Ginsberg, Charles Manson, Bob Dylan and all the social and creative movements of the 60s, the hippies, Yippies, Beat Generation, Fluxus, Situationists, Actionists, Provos, religious cults, I wanted to absorb everything and get absorbed by the action. I wanted to be part of the action." - p 12 (variation 426-427)
& I was pretty much the same way.. perhaps a little less so by the poets, pop-stars, & murderers, & more or less not at all by the religious cults. These are the exciting things, the game-changers, it's all so romantic. But now I wonder: what about the farmers? What about the people who design & build the roads? That's all so bbbooooorrring, it's not sexy - &, yet, it's so central to the way our societies survive.
"There is a long and ever-expanding list of people who contributed to The Creaion of NEOISM?! . I'm not talking about the authors whose books I plundered but my conspirators who actively took part in The Initiation and Development of NEOISM?! . It would perhaps require a whole chapter to list all the names. Basically the best definition of NEOISM?! would be the complete list of all NEOIST?!s , including anyone who ever participated in any activities. But to get together such a list is an impossible task. Someone will always be missing from it and thus the definition won't be accurate enough. In one of my essays, "The Poetical Plunderground of NEOISM?! ", written several years ago, I have made an attempt to make a list of NEOIST?! conspirators especially focusing on their poetical involvement.
"I might try to do it again later sometimes, but right now I just don't have the patience for it. It is also a fact that I have no direct contact with each and every NEOIST?! anymore, as I used to do many years ago, due to the growing number of participants in a decentralized Network that is getting larger in every instant." - p 12 (variation 427-428)
I reiterate: I wish he had provided such a list, even an incomplete one is better than nothing. He mentions so few actual neoists in this bk. SO, What the Hey!, I'll interpolate a very partial list of my own originally made for an interview I gave to Justin Mckeown for his PHD thesis waaaayyyyy back on December 29, 2006, & then improved upon for a woman who claimed to be doing some sort of research or exhibition that turned out to be just a fantasy on her part. At this point Monty/Istvan & I were in communication about such things so I include his email commentary:
APT 1 - Sept 17-21, 1980 - No-Galero (Istvan/Monty's apartment), Montreal
Participants:
Monty Cantsin, Kiki Bonbon, Napoleon Moffat,
Alain Snyers [the spelling is according to the report in "NEO" magazine from the time],
Reinhart U. Sevol, Lion Lazer, Niels Lomholt
More information about this can be gotten from "NEO", volume 2, number 5.
This was the magazine that Istvan/Monty published at the time.
Semain d'occupation Neoist - Oct 15-19, 1980 - Motivation 5, Montreal
Participants:
Monty Cantsin, Lion Lazer, Kiki Bonbon, Tristan Renaud, Napoleon Moffat,
Marianne Lebas, Reinhardt U. Sevol, Yana, Frater Neo, others?
By the way, the NEO (Istvan's Neoist magazine of the time)
became renamed as the ORGAN as of the report on this Occupation & this issue
(volume 3, #1 - november, 1980) included a Krononaut post-card - so we were
in touch by then. The same issue announces that "A CONFERENCE AND
APARTMENT FESTIVAL WILL BE HELD IN BALTIMORE(MD) IN DEC.".
The next issue (volume 3, #2 - january, 1981) was all about Baltimore
& was full of pictures of the house where I lived at 818 W. 40th St.
where I organized '81 Apt (the 3rd APT Fest).
It also has pictures of our Balti-Media/Merzaum community
partying in the house where I lived before 318 - wch was on
the 1600 block of Calvert St.
from Istvan/Monty's January 13, 2007 email to me:
"I paid a visit to the Krononautic Society
in dec 1980 in order to set up
a neoist research center in Baltimore,
I remember Richard and tENT and some
others waiting for me at the bus station,
for there we went to the public library
and showed some videos, had some announcements
about the fusion of neoists and krononauts, etc,
after that there was a party, lots of fun,
I met Dava Presslor at the Mount Royal
Tavern and we fell in love,
that was one more reason for me to
travel betqween Montreal and Baltimore
for the next few months,
thre Krononaut/neoist fusion resulted
the participation of the Krononauts
at the 1981 APT fest, the 2nd one,
at the Peking Poolroom, it was hosted by
Kiki and Zbigniew, it was their living space,
and I organized it in close collaboration
with them, it was Kiki who proposed me
their space,
tENT, Richard and other people
from the Baltimore gang came
up to Montreal for this event,"
APT 2 aka APT 81 - Feb 1981
- Peking Poolroom
(Kiki Bonbon & Zbigniew Brotgehirn / Tristan Renaud's apartment), Montreal
Participants:
tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, Richard X [X Richard - so named because he
just preferred to use his 1st name to be more personable but he signed his letters
"X Richard" - w/ the "X" signifying a sign-off kiss & people took that to be the
other half of his name & placed the "X" in the more typical last name position
- of course, in black radicalism an "X" so placed is meant to mean that the person's
actual last name family tree has been disrupted by the intrusion of slavery
- this is NOT what Richard meant at all but it's bound to be misunderstood as such
if this mistake continues to be perpetuated - strictly speaking the "X" shdn't be there at all,
it shd just be "Richard" but Richard probably accepted the vagaries of this misnaming),
Ruth Turner, Sumu Pretzler [aka Doug Retzler - I probably dubbed Doug "Sumu Pretzler"
as a pun off of "Doug Retzler" + "Sumu Wrestler" + Pretzel"], Kiki Bonbon,
Zbigniew Brotgehirn, Napoleon Moffat, Jean-Francois [Alfred?] "Moondog" Mignault,
Jean-Martin [Alfred?] Mignault, & others: Via Vidorae (aka Marianne Lebas) was there.
APT 3 aka 81 APT - Friday, May 29th - Sunday, June 7th, 1981
At the 'Krononautic Organism house' (not really correctly referred to as such)
at 318 W. 40th St
(many members of the KO were living at 318 W. 40th St at the time
but they were more or less completely hostile to myself & to neoism at the time],
Baltimore
Participants:
Richard, David Zack, Richard Hambleton, Monty Cantsin/Istvan Kantor, Kirby Malone, tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, Marshall Reese, Sumu Pretzler, Tom Konyves, Non Erotic Male Bonding ("Some Queer" aka Lee Warren & "Ricki Kilreagan" aka Rick Sugden), The Tinklers (Chris Mason & Charles Brohawn), Steve Pocock, Laure Drogoul, Lisa Jane Kohner (sp?) (she played a duet w/ Tom Diventi - she played cello, Tom played steel drum), & Keith Worz
[Ah, yes.. WHO PARTICIPATED IN THIS?! Fortunately, there's extensive video documentation. The poster is completely misleading because I scheduled various Neoists from Canada who didn't end up attending. Also, probably not everyone from BalTimOre who said they'd do something actually ended up doing anything. Napoleon Moffat, Zbigniew Brotgehirn, & Kiki Bonbon DIDN'T attend. I don't remember Dan Carney, Gayle /No Other Name Given/ (so named because she was adopted), Mannette Letter (aka Bonnie Bonnell), Ruth Turner, Mitchell Pressman, Dava Pressler, or Lisa Mandle doing anything. They were probably there at least. Richard Hambleton came from NYC.] [A movie of this is here broken into 9 parts, one for each day: https://youtu.be/_FfY1dw6RDI , https://youtu.be/rWi6IbbbV30 , https://youtu.be/_d1ZOJSXDoY , https://youtu.be/PypwASFkZOE , https://youtu.be/UBtxXTud35c , https://youtu.be/Lg6os32NYN8 , https://youtu.be/mWFqCozelug , https://youtu.be/mWFqCozelug , https://youtu.be/E60pbAp1HgU ]
It's probably worth mentioning at this point that there was a fair amount of gay & lesbian culture as part of early Neoist events. Lion Lazer was gay &/or bisexual; the 2 guys in this early version of Non Erotic Male Bonding were both gay; Ceramic Madonna Head with Plastic Arms who participated in APT 7 (ie: the 2nd APT Fest in BalTimOre - in 1983) was a lesbian band who played "music without penises" as they put it; I think 2 of the women who participated in Public Works (Toronto) & APT 5 (the 1st one in NYC) might've been lesbians. These 2 women were Sheila Gostick (she was a stand-up comedian) & Phyllis. Phyllis did a performance at Des Refuses in NYC where she wore some sort of white gown & recited some text & then pissed herself. I thought it was a very strong performance - but then I was doing piss stuff myself at the time so I had that bias. I think Napoleon Moffat was also gay.
Public Works/APT 4 - October 1981- Public Works / Low Theatre
(Monty/Istvan's basement apartment), Toronto and Montreal
From an email written to me by Istvan on January 13, 2007:
"here I want to clear up the
concept of APT 4,
it was a two city event
starting with Public Works in
Toronto and ending in Montreal
at Low Theater,
but it was APT 4,
the Toronto part was hosted by
Gary Shilling, Kent Tate and Gordon W.,
and it took place at many different
locations including some artists run places,
the Montreal part was hosted by me
at my living space that I called
that time Low Theater,
in Toronto Gordon W. was the main
organizer and I worked with him very closely
on the event, I went for a visit to Toronto
before the apt fest to meet Gordon
and his friends and work on the project,"
Permanent Press published a fantastically produced publication/magazine at the time called "End Paper". After the Public Works Fest, I contributed to an issue of it dated 22/3/82. The contributing editors to this issue were Sheila Gostick, Gary Shilling, Kent Tate, Gordon W. Kent never participated in any APT Fests again (as far as I can recall) so he may not've considered himself to be a Neoist. Sheila went to the 1st NYC Fest (APT 5 in my chronology) but I doubt that she considered herself to be a neoist either. There was a black guy named Gary who participated in APT 5 (NYC) & at least one of the Montreal fests but I don't think he was Gary Shilling. I don't know who Gary Shilling was. Generally, if I'm unclear on who people were it's because their English was terrible et mon francais c'est mauvais aussi. That's the case here. The black Gary may've been from Africa (I don't think he was originally French-Canadian) but we mainly or entirely communicated in French.
This brings me to another important point: These festivals were astonishingly international - especially in Canada there were always people around from at least 4 or 5 countries. There were a few Yugoslavian ex-patriots around in both Toronto & Montreal (?). They didn't necessarily participate in the festivals as performers but they added something. As I recall, Istvan & I wondered whether one of the Yugoslavians was KGB. This was a thread that ran thru most of the early fests. Were any of the attendees KGB? It's not entirely improbable. Neoism WAS (& still IS) an international conspiracy consisting of a large percentage of Eastern European ex-patriots - some of whom had been in jail. A somewhat unusually high percentage of Neoists have had conflicts w/ the 'law' & have spent time in jail in various countries. Dave Zack, of course, died because of the lack of treatment for his diabetes in a Mexican jail.
Back to Public Works: Not all the Torontonians were necessarily so enthusiastic about Neoism - mainly because of Kiki & Zbigniew's kicking around a dead cat as a performance. They probably killed the cat themselves. I missed that part of the festival because I tried out some Indian tobacco called "pang" (or some such) wch Gordon W. suggested I try by holding it under my tongue (I reckon that's the traditional method of using it). This made me totally sick & I stayed in bed while Kiki & Zbigniew did their thing somewhere else. As far as I recall, this was Gordon W.'s 1st participation in a Neoist event - certainly in a Neoist Festival. He may've done something w/ Monty/Istvan prior to this.
From there, SOME of us went to Montreal for APT 4. Most of the people who participated in Public Works stayed in Toronto. I'll list who participated as much as I can recall w/o looking thru my archives in the following section]
Participants (Toronto):
Gordon W. Zealot, Kent Tate, Gary Shilling [again, I don't remember who he was but we'll assume he was part of this], tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, Eugenie Vincent, Sin-Dee Heidel, Ricki Kilreagan, Kiki Bonbon, Zbigniew Brotgehirn, Monty/Istvan, Sheila Gostick. Phyllis was there but I don't remember whether she participated. Natalie Mongeau was also there but I don't remember her participating either.
Sheila presented a sortof socio-critical stand-up comedy routine that I mainly remember as being critical of gay men as not being marginalized enuf to qualify as truly radical (or some such) because they're mostly too rich. I'm sure there was much more to it than that but that's what I remember. Ricki (who was gay) & I were pretty appalled by this because in BalTimOre that's hardly a viable generalization. Maybe in Toronto it was - but in BalTimOre being gay was potentially extremely dangerous because of the general intolerance of the majority of the people.
For APT 4 in Montreal (wch occurred partially at Monty/Istvan's basement apartment (aka The LOW Theater) only Gordon W. came from Toronto & only I came from BalTimOre. Of course the Montreal people attended. We did things on the streets too. Oddly, I remember very little about what anyone else did. I performed 2 (in a sense 3) street actions - at least one (or 2) w/ the 'assistance' of Frater Neo (aka Jack Nathanson) who was an older guy who lived w/ his parents & made stereo photos. Reinhardt U. Sevol had sent prose instructions for a performance wch Monty/Istvan then realized at the LOW - possibly w/ only me as the cameraman & no other audience. I forget whether the video turned out but I remember Monty being pissed at my experimental camerawork. Gordon W. probably cooked & might've given free haircuts.
APT FIVE - March 15-21, 1982 - Multi-Locations (including Des Refuses), New York City
There was a poster & an 8pp hand-out (at least). According to this hand-out, "The neoist movement was launched on may 22, 1979, in Montreal. Sitting on the corner of Sherbrooke and McGill streets, Monty Cantsin -accompanied by Lion Lazer,distributed leaflets to passers by and offered his "neoist-chair" to anyone who wanted to be in his "position". from about that time,the movement went through hundreds of changes as the neoists never uphold any opinion, the history of neoism can be burnt at any time." That was presumably written by Monty/Istvan & I've preserved some of the spelling & typography & punctuation, etc - missing are underlinings because of limitations of this program that I'm writing in. I include this because this is the chronology of the origin of neoism that I've always accepted.
Participants:
Gordon W Zealot, Napoleon Moffat, Moondog, Sheila Gostick (although I don't remember her doing anything), Phyllis (whose performance I previously described), (black) Gary (whose last name I don't recall), tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Casandra VonRinteln (my girlfriend & collaborator), Monty/Istvan, at least 2 or 3 guys from NYC whose names I don't recall (one was probably Alex Igloo) & who only participated in this one Neoist event as far as I recall, & the guy who lived in & ran des Refuses (Michael Keane?). Ed Higgins might've had some connection to this. I remember standing in his bathtub, probably naked, w/ wading boots on, probably tripping, on the Lower East Side - w/ a bunch of other people around - I think we spent the night there. We also crossed paths w/ the great Tehching Tsieh.
THE NEOIST NETWORK'S FIRST EUROPEAN TRAINING CAMP"
- June 21-27, 1982 - Wurzburg, West German
Again from the January 13, 2007 email from Istvan/Monty to me:
"the Neoist Network's First
European Traning Camp in 1982 was NOT an APT fest,
it took place at Peter Below's studio in
Wurzburg, it had the apt fest character but
it was a different gathering hosted by
Peter Below and organized by him and me,
I went to Wurzburg early to have enough time
for the organizational work,
since his studio was a kind of remote place
in the country side my idea was to
make it into a conspiratorial event
that is something similar to a terrorist
camp, I was always fascinated by the Baader-
Meinhof gang, the palestinian training camps,
the old communist partisan and guearilla bases,
etc, so i designed the Wurzburg event
in this direction, that time i really disliked
bohemian artists, I didn't drink, I exercised
every morning, i was a hard core vegan yogi,
I dressed in business/military/dictator/vampire/rebel outfits,
and I wanted a non-bohemian character
for the Wurzburg event, I guess mostly I failed,
only Pete and Stiletto were somewhat into my idea
but otherwise there was lots of drinking,
at the beginning some participants came to run
with me but then everybody abandonned this
training camp idea and it was rather a friendly gathering
with lots of fun, discussions at camp fire, cooking,
visiting public places, but also fights between
total drunk people like Peter Below and
Ed Higgins,
interestingly even though there were no really
subversive activities the police still got
interested in what was going on and questioned
Peter about the event and gave him a fine for
some graffiti we did at a public place,
also I note that I was inspired by the fact that the
US military base was very close by and this was
another inspirational aspect to confront
the situation,
the red book we published with peter below
after the event is one of the most beautiful
neoist publications, it really has the neoist
textual and visual character documenting the
event without the usual art catalog look
by simply reproducing all documentation"
Participants:
Peter Below [Peter was the main West German connection for this. He lived in Wurzburg. Natalie Mongeaux (sp?), Istvan's girlfriend, was there. I think this was the 1st Neoist event that Pete Horobin participated in. He wrote much of the commemorative bk. According to the schedule in that bk, other participants were: Monty Cantsin / Istvan Kantor, Gabor Toth (another Eastern European Neoist), Masaaki Maekawa, Annette Pfau, Pieper/Schroeder, Michael Keane, tENTATIVELY (, a cONVENIENCE - Monty realized a score of mine - I wasn't there in person), Filmsyndikat, Niels Lomholt, Wulle Konsumkunst, Andreas Mathyl, Wolfgang-E.Kammer, Bruno Hoffmann, Blalla W. Hallmann, & Studio &58. The bk claimed "campleaders from Canada, USA,Germany, Denmark, France, Holland" so I deduce/assume that people were there from all those countries. I WASN'T there so I was one exception. I think Stilleto appeared for the 1st time at this Neoist event. Most of the other people probably were there but I'm not completely sure about that.]
Balkan Campaign - Sept 1982 - Novi-Sad, Belgrade, Zagreb
[I know nothing about this. I imagine that this centered around whatever Monty/Istvan's travels were at the time & may've involved Gabor Toth, Balint Szombathy, & others..]
Le Sixieme Festival International D'Appartement (6th International Apartment Festival OR APT 6) - February 1983 - (Alan Lord's apartment, Pleine Lune, the streets, Olympic Basin on Ile Notre-Dame, etc), Montreal
Participants:
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Monty Cantsin/Istvan Kantor, Alan Lord, Boris Wanowitch, Mario Campo (+ his collaborator [Mario's collaborator for the "Brainwashing" performance was Danielle Fontaine according to Alan Lord]), Napoleon Moffat, Kiki Bonbon, Gordon W. Zealot (+ his fellow Indian chef who was a cook for some embassy whose name I think was George), Boys de Severe (Kiki, Zbigniew, & another young guy whose name I don't remember [probably Moondog's brother: Jean-Martin Migneault] - if I ever knew it), Martin Heath (who came from Toronto - this was probably his entry point), & others.. I have a fair amt of photo documentation from this.
APT 7 - September 20-28, 1983
- tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's apartment + the Galaxy Ballroom in the Congress Hotel (where part of Terry Gilliam's "Twelve Monkeys" was later shot) + "That Frame Place Gallery"], Baltimore
From Istvan/Monty's January 13, 2007 email:
"APT 7 took place also in Baltimore in 1983,
but this one was hosted by tENT himself
at his own place, and mostly organized
I would say also by tENT,
I went down with TTP from Montreal and we had a really
good time including a police arrest
for illegally posting signs and ending up
in jail for a night,
here I note that TTP was an important
participant of the Montreal gang in the 80's,
some neoist events took place in his
apartment at different occasions,
I got in touch with him through mail-art
at around 1981,"
Participants:
Monty Cantsin/Istvan Kantor, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE / Tim Ore, Dave Bakker, Kirby Malone, Pam Purdy, Valerie Favazza, Laure Drogoul, The Tinklers, TTP, Ceramic Madonna Head w/ Plastic Arms (Nancy Andrews, Linda Smith, Peggy Bitzer), Janor Hypercleats. Reinhardt U. Sevol sent me a tape to play & "Blaster" Al Ackerman gave me instructions to say "I vant to build 50,000 robots!" (in a Hungarian accent reminiscent of Istvan's) around Monty/Istvan, but under my breath without acknowledging that I was doing so if & when Monty/Istvan asked about what I'd said (wch he did at least once). [There's a movie of this here: https://youtu.be/naU37TVUBRY ]
The Neoist Networks 8th Apartment Festival" - May 21-26, 1984
- R.U.S. Squat [This is a bit misleading because Reinhardt wasn't living there anymore (he was in Paris) - Pete Horobin & Steve Thorne were. It's also a bit misleading because I don't think this was actually a squat at the time - it might've received approval as a council house], London Events also took place out on the streets, at the London Musicians Collective, at the Greenwich Park (where the observatory is), & at Lambeth Pier
Quoting Monty/Istvan's January 13, 2007 email to me again:
"in London for example originally
R.U.Sevol hosted the event
at the Aulton place squat, and he was
also one of the organizers together
with Pete and me,
I went to London way before the festival
in february to begin to organize it,
(and it wasn't Marianne but Anne-Marie Tremblay
with me also know as Bretty Nova,
and she was just as much a neoist participant
as everyone else except that she had an
accident during our Budapest visit
and she had to leave from London earlier)"
Pete Horobin, tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, Litvinov (Gail Litfin), Eugenie Vincent [she was there but didn't participate], Carlo Pittore [Carlo stayed at the (hypothetical) squat w/ a young guy who might've been his boyfriend but I think they just used it as their home base for London tourism - I don't recall them being involved in any of the Neoist activities except for one thing at the 'squat'), Monty Cantsin / Istvan Kantor, Bretty Nova, Stewart Home, Andy Stenhouse, cris cheek, P Clive Fencott (+ his soprano sax playing collaborator). Andre Stitt & his friends boycotted it (wch was, to my mind, a way of participating - I cd go into more detail about this but I'll skip over that for now), Mark Pawson, Stefan Szczelkun. Robin Crozier provided signs to put around the house & Jeff Double provided prints. There was a junkie from next door who was around alot who shot up w/ the most enormous damn needle I've ever seen. It was some sortof automatic pump affair. There was a girl there (Diana) who self-identified as a Situationist who had a dog (Yantoh) that was also important in some way. Gyorgy Ladanyi appeared. 2 Russian guys who we thought were KGB also appeared one day to take our photos. I told them they had to stand on their heads to do it - wch they did! A guy named Cornelius apparently participated too but I don't remember him at all (I think he was an animal rights activist). [There's a movie of this here: https://youtu.be/fgQzQZNpgTY ]
[Ultimatum I - May 1-5, 1985 - Montreal. Ok, this wasn't an APT Fest OR really a Neoist Fest but it WAS organized by neoist Alan Lord & Mario Campo & the Boys de Severe participated so there's a Neoist thread running thru it a bit here. Ultimatum II had even more Neoist input]
APT 9 - June 1-7, 1985 - Emilio Morandi Arte Studio, Ponte Nossa, Italy
Organized by Pete Horobin & Emilio Morandi?
[There's a nice publication from this. Most of my info about this comes from this book (sent to me by Emilio), the video from it (made by Stiletto & given to me by Pete Horobin), & recollections recounted to me by Pete & Stiletto. This was the 1st of the APT Fests to have NO participation from ANY North American Neoists. Even though I was substantially in touch w/ Emilio at the time & was kept somewhat abreast of the festival's being planned, I didn't attend probably for 2 main reasons: I had been less enthusiastic about the preceding London fest than any Neoist events so far (although, in retrospect, APT 8 is very important to me both because I met Pete & Stewart but also because I met Mark & Stefan, etc..) & felt that Neoism was losing steam (iron severity) & also because I probably cdn't afford to attend. I think another reason why I didn't participate was because it was being contextualized in connection w/ Emilio's "Arte Studio" & I didn't want to support the idea of neoism as an "art movement". I wasn't interested in it being overemphasized in connection w/ "mail art" either even though the mail art network was the main one thru wch Neoism flourished.]
According to the book, the participants were:
Sever Rossi, Piero Viti, Ruggero Maggi, Pete Horobin, Vittore Baroni, Hapunkt Fix & Graf Haufen (Graf's 1st appearance at a Neoist event), Alfio Fiorentino, Mario Rondi, Nicola Frangione; Maria Pia Fanna Roncoroni, Guglielmo Achille Cavellini, Italo Chiodi, Grupo Speleologico, Italo Carrarini, Stiletto, Carsten Schmidt-Olsen; Stewart Home, Sion Whellens, Marianne Brady, Mizza, Franco Hallabeni, Emilio & Sergio Morandi, Giocinto Formentini, Gruppo Arte Comtemp., Gruppo Heavy Metal/Red Cugar; Roberto Zito; Kazumichi Fujiwara Again, I don't know how many of these people were actually there. There was a very active Mail Art scene in Italy at the time & Emilio & Vittore & Cavellini were a major part of it. I doubt that Cavellini was there in person. [There's a movie of this here: https://youtu.be/Gkp0q-OOmfU ]
'APT 10'
[By this point, numbering the festivals in any linear fashion started to become a thing of the past. If we WERE to continue to number them in order & IF this is considered an APT Fest then it wd be APT 10 - ALTHOUGH, this is complicated by Reinhardt U. Sevol's having proposed a festival (never realized as far as I 'know') that would've hypothetically ALSO been APT 10. His was probably proposed for late '85 or sometime in '86, SO, the Mexican one would take precedence. It's all very confusing & ambiguous, eh?!]
- 1985 - Immortality Centre (David Zack's home), Tepoztlan, Mexico
From a January 14, 2007 email from Monty/Istvan to me:
"here maybe it's important to mention
that David was an active participant at APT 3
which was basically the only time he
was at an Apt fest except for the
Tepoztlan APT fest at the
Immortality Center which was never completely recognized
by those who were not there as a true
APT fest but for me and for those who were
there it was, Snowhite, David Zack, Bretty Nova,
also a mexican mail-artist who's name i forgot,
and me,"
The 86th Apartment Festival
[OK, this is where the linear numbering finally got discarded]
- 1986 - Artcore Studio, Stilletos Studio, Berlin, Germany
Participants:
Graf Haufen, Georg Ladayni, Istvan Kantor/Monty Cantsin, Stiletto, John Berndt [This was John Berndt's 1st participation. I'm getting pretty tired here. I've been writing this for the last 4 hrs or so & I'm going to stop soon. As such, I'll leave out most details here. I didn't participate in this one for much the same reasons as I didn't participate in the Ponte Nossa one.]
[Ultimatum II - September, 1987 - Montreal. Strictly speaking, these Ultimatum Festivals weren't Neoist events but the same is true as things like the Debrecen part of the great Neoist Hungary tour of '97, etc.. Anyway, Ultimatum II was organized by Neoist Alan Lord, had Jean-Luc Bonspiel (Kiki Bonbon) as the M.C., had myself (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE), & John Berndt, + Gordon W. Zealot, Monty/Istvan [actually, I don't remember Monty/Istvan performing], Napoleon Moffat, etc.. I reckon I'd leave it up to Alan Lord to decide whether it was Neoist or not. I think Alan considered himself to be no lonerg a Neoist by this time. Neoism was certainly part of it.]
The Festival of Non-Participation
[this happened in multiple cities/locations in Scotland. For me, this was definitely a major Neoist event. It was organized by Pete Horobin. As w/ APT 8 (that Pete also organized) this was boycotted by locals in Dundee because he put too much emphasis on someone NOT local (me) - as if every event has to be all about the locals. Whatever. In a sense, this happened all the way from June 5, 1988 - August 20, 1988 - if not BEYOND. Relevant events happened in Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh, Tents Muir, etc.. Once again, I'm pooping out on a complete listing but: Pete Horobin, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Laura A. Trueseal, Kenny Murphy-Roud, Georg Ladanyi, Laura Ann Walker (L.A.W.), VEX (Mike Kane), Louise Crawford, & Mark Pawson were all implicated. Pete, Laura A. Trueseal, & I were the only ones to be connected to everything. As of 2018 or 2019 Pete denies that this was a Neoist event.] ["Homeless Movies" includes much or most or all of this: https://youtu.be/_OLEL-lHFbE ]
The 1988 Neoist Anathema Party Take-over (note that "Anathema Party Take-over" forms the A.P.T. acronymn) or the ONE-MILLIONTH Neoist Apartment Festival.]
- October, 1988 - Rivington School / Multi Location, New York City
[Again, I was getting tired as I wrote this originally so the info is sketchy]
Participants:
John Berndt, Debbie Montgomery & her daughter Jamaica, Peter Zahorecz, & tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (we came from BalTimOre), Monty/Istvan, DJ Steve, Stiletto (who was living in NYC at the time)..
"APT 14" [This is unfamiliar to me - if it was an Apartment Festival, I was never informed about it. At any rate, if it WAS an APT Fest, by my reckoning it wd've been the 12th (Berlin = 10, NYC = 11) but, by this point, sticking to linear numbering wd be completely out of keeping w/ the spirit of things] - 1991 - Transgression, Montreal
Zeroworks Jubilee
[By this point, the context of the "Apartment Festival" had lost its punch.]
- August, 1992 - Zeroworks Jubilee - 50 Wabash (Gordon W. Zealot's home by the junkyard], Toronto
[Who participated? I was on tour w/ my band that changed its name everytime it played - simply called the "Official" Project. For the 2 times we played as part of this we were: the "Official", August 11th, 1992E.V., Ersatz Ersatz Bauhuteklangzeit 2000 ers; & the "Official", August 12th, 1992E.V., Zerowork Jubilee John Cage Cover Band Orchestra. John Cage had just died. Monty/Istvan participated. Bill Satan showed films. Gordon W. Zealot probably cooked. I don't remember what else happened. Rob Johnston & Sherri Higgins were probably both involved somehow.] [Footage of the "Official" gigs is included as part of this: http://youtu.be/EN5U7JANpRA ]
Neoist Hungarian Tour
[This was an APT Fest? in 3 different cities: In Vac it was: "XXXPanzio A Neoizmus?! Anti-Esemény / XXXPanzio In the Name of Neoism?! Anti-Event"; In (Buda)Pest it was: "Neoista?! Puccs"; In Debrecen it was: "Neoista?! Zajpiknik és Monty Cantsin? Kiképzôtábor / Tolerance (?) Festival & Camp - Neoist?! Noise Picnic and Monty Cantsin? Training Camp" I wouldn't give it a number! As previously explained, numbering goes completely against the grain by this point. These festivals are outside the world of bean counters. Again, though, was this an Apartment Festival? I don't recall any of it actually taking place in apartments. Perhaps the closest were some events at a painter's studio in Vac. Shit, though, it was totally in the best spirit of the preceeding APT Fests &, quite possibly, the last of the great ones that I'm ever likely to attend.] - July 2-6 (officially, this didn't start until the 4th, but there was plenty happening in the previous 2 days): Vac; July 7-9: Pest; July 11-12: Debrecen, 1997 - Multi-location, Budapest/Vac/Deberecen, Hungary
[SO MANY PEOPLE PARTICIPATED IN THIS. Monty/Istvan, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, etta cetera (at this point not known as that yet), Gordon W. Zealot, Florian Cramer (came for a day), Angela Idealism, Jubal Brown, Jada D'Aversa, Brian Damage & Bruce-Sex (forming Phÿcus - wch also included me &, in Debrecen, Jubal), Iona Georgescu (Ghera), Art Lover, Tadeusz Varon Less (Otto), Dora Attila,
Livia Cases, & many more.. I'm leaving out entirely too many but, once again, I'm getting burnt out on this process so this is probably as good as it's going to get from my end right now..] [A movie of this (already linked to earlier) can be witnessed here: https://youtu.be/QBTFTpscd4M?t=3680 ]
[I'd also include the PoPo into the Wasteland that Jubal Brown (& Monty/Istvan?) organized in Toronto as part of the "7* 11*" Festival. August 22, 1998. This included Monty/Istvan (by then AMEN!), tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE etta cetera, Sherri Higgins, Bill Satan, & Iona Georgescu (Ghera).] [A movie of my action is here: https://youtu.be/ugZqSTGV9Rk ]
[Then there was the "Archeologie du Neoisme - La Premiere Retrospective Filmique Mondiale du Neoisme" at AntiTube in Quebec - January 29 & 30, 1999. It wasn't an Apartment Festival but I reckon it was some sort of major Neoist event. It was curated by Etienne Desrosiers & Monty Cantsin / Istvan Kantor was there in person. Work was screened by Monty/Istvan, Kiki Bonbon, Matty Jankowski (who shot footage of APT 5 in NYC), tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Boris Wanowitch, Leon Prochnik (no idea who he is - Istvan must know him), W.A.Davison (Bill Satan), DEI (Departement d'Entrainement a l'Insanite - don't know them either), Lisanne Thibodeau, Sharon Foltz (in collaboration w/ Istvan), Guera (Iona Georgescu), Etienne Desrosiers, Phÿcus, Chloe Lum & Seth Smith (don't know them), Jubal Brown, Zilon [Lion Laser?]. I wd've liked to've attended this but probably cdn't afford to!]
Neoist Festival - November 25-29, 1999 - Windsor, Ontario, CacaNada.
This never really had a name other than "Neoist Festival" as I recall. Monty/Istvan & I were both there & there was stuff on the streets & something at an apartment - as well as a screening, radio shows, concerts, a lecture, etc.. This didn't really have the invigorating spirit that most of APT Fests but there were some pretty good moments in it.
some of the participants were:
Monty Cantsin / Istvan Kantor, Corpusse, Knurl, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE. There were certainly others but I've been working on the May 6, 2007 version of this historification now for over 2 hours & I just want to get it over with.
the 1st Non-Existent International Neoist Apartment Festival in the Year 000.
This happened from about March 20-25, 2000; then again on April 5 & June 8. Adelaide, Australia. For me, this was important. It was almost like starting all over again. Even though 15 mnths or so of preparatory correspondence went into this, it was obvious that nothing substantial would be organized by the time we (myself & etta cetera) got there. Nonetheless, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE etta cetera flew around the world to attend this & to make SOMETHING happen. You can look up my writing about this festival on-line for greater details. etta, Rick (as the representative of Pope Fred), Karen Eliot / Phil Bradley, Bird-E, & myself were the main participants but a longer list can be gleaned from the afore-mentioned text. This was in multiple locations & had a higher than usual amount of street actions. [A movie of this is here: https://archive.org/details/1stNonExistentInternationalNeoistApartmentFestivalInTheYear000 ]
Department Festival - fall, 2004 - Multi Location, Berlin
[I missed this one - Istvan/Monty can provide better details]
[Also missing from all this wd be 2 hypothetical events that Florian Cramer might consider to be APT Fests. You shd ask him about these. The 1st was when Florian, & John Berndt, & Jake True met Reinhardt U. Sevol in the suburbs of Paris in 1994. Florian & John both have probably referred to this at times as an APT Fest although I have my doubts about how substantial this was. ALSO, Florian performed some sort of action as the 2nd Non-Existent International Neoist Apartment Festival. I forget the details of this. I think it was in Germany - maybe in 2000 or 2001. Then there was the event organized in Vienna, Austria in 1997 right before the Fest in Hungary. I think most, if not all, Neoists prefer to ignore this as some stupid art world watering down exploitation but maybe that's too harsh. At any rate, NONE of the previously existing Neoists were invited to this. Maybe that was the best thing about it! Then there were the 2 Festivals of Plagiarism that Stewart was connected w/. I don't know if he considers them to be Neoist events or not.]
Finally, again a quote from Istvan/Monty's January 14, 2007 email to me:
"here I also mention that there were always
sub-participants who were actually not present
at the aptfesto but sent stuff through mail
that could be something to show, share, execute,
like an instruction type message, stickers, video, etc,
so among the names there are often thoº@=Øî0=>Ê°©T=yþ¦=VÍxh"=wx=jîa=`=¢-P=Jg¢'¦<rÉÄ=gºLë=´ =Q@Ä
BACK TO THE REVIEW: I include the gibberish at the end b/c the original file must've been corrupted & damaged & the gibberish cuts off the ending. Other relevant things have happened since the 2004 Department Festival but not much.
"NEOISM?! was a vision that appealed to even Lenin, who nursed a great hatred of the establishment and the bourgeois middle class that was never to leave him. His elder brother was hanged for taking part in a student plot against the tzar that actually failed. Lenin ached for revenge and joined NEOISM?! . - p 12 (variation 428)
Lenin must've had a powerful mind, gotta hand him that. He certainly cd be a model NEOIST?! networker & organizer. Personally, I prefer smaller events where no-one gets killed but the powers-that-be have got different ideas. Having people derail those ideas from time-to-time is very healthy.
"Though NEOIST?!s use this name to label themselves and what they do, the only thing they have in common is a marked aversion for each other. Many writers glorified themselves as members of NEOISM?! without any approval from their supposed comspirators, and it's extremely doubtful whether they would be appreciated in the NEOISM?! to which they are consigned." - p 12 (variation 429-430)
Essentially, he's talking about Stewart Home here. Stewart was briefly involved w/ the neoist network & he exploited it for all it was worth for his career. He DID, however, contribute alot to neoism while he was involved & before he succumbed to the more sociopathic end of his self-serving megalomania. I don't really know what he's like these days, I reckon he's changed. Even though I probably have better reason than most to find him despicable b/c of his completely fascistic character assassination campaign against me (very akin to the type of things that secret police like the CIA do) I still find him to have redeeming qualitites.
As for "the only thing they have in common is a marked aversion for each other" I can't really agree that that's true. One of the most wonderful things about neoism has been the extraordinary comraderie that the neoists have gotten from each other's company. Still, I think the author's being partially humorous here. That sd, I remember reading a bk called "Psychopaths" in the early 1970s, I think it was a pop psychology bk by a male author, I can't find it for sale online. One of the things that stuck w/ me about it is that the author claimed that psychopaths cdn't stand to be in the same room w/ each other. That echoes Monty's "marked aversion" statement. I've sometimes thought that many neosists are psychopaths. I don't mean psychopathic killers, I mean people w/ extremely strong personalities who have no intention of tempering them to conform to a normality they/we find inferior. I once called myself a psychopath but now I prefer my neologism psychopathfinder. Throughout most of the history of neoism I'm probably the guy who's gotten along w/ the most other neoists. It is true, tho, perhaps sadly, that as we've all gotten older much of that comraderie has disappeared. Many of the neoists that I was once very fond of I now find insufferable. Aging has alot to do w/ that.
"Certainly NEOISM?! is not a school of thought nor reducible to any set of tenets. Those fuckoffs who appear invariably on every list of NEOISM?! - AMEN!, dr Ackerman, Kiki Bonbon, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Florian Cramer, Ghera, Volta, David Zack, Boris Wanowitch-are in agreement on one essential: to do everything in The Name of NEOISM?! . But what they do in The Name of NEOISM?! is completely and totally different. The only essential feature they share is their perfervid individualism, bad taste and hunger for subvertainment and irritainment." - p 12 (variation 430)
&, predictably, I don't agree w/ all of that but I do find it subvertaining!
"But instead of trying to figure out a coup d'état in Hungary during an Apartment Festival in Budapest, like you tried in 1997, we could somehow figure out how to enter this twilight zone and get the attentions of millions of people through the sixth dimension, The Dimension of NEOISM?! . Could we do that?" - p 12 (variation 436)
I was in Hungary in 1997 for the neoist events alluded to. I don't recall trying "to figure out a coup d'état". [check out this movie of that time: https://youtu.be/QBTFTpscd4M?t=3680 ] I'm not interested in overthrowing the state, that's small potatoes & might not do any good ANYWAY. I AM interested in undermining 'reality' maintenance traps - conisder this action I performed before attending & participating in the 2nd International Neoist Apartment Festival in Montréal in February, 1981: https://youtu.be/Ababbr_8Xas . Some of us, esp the author, are already IN "The Dimension of NEOISM?!". Good for him, I'm glad to see he has quality company there fairly often. I seem to exist in a Dimension too complex for other people to want to join me in it anymore.
"It was sometimes too tiring, sometimes too boring to repeat all the million definitions describing The Contradictory Nature of NEOISM?! . Therefore instead of trying to say NEOISM?! is this and NEOISM?! is that it was easier to simply declare that NEOISM?! can be just about anything. Thus came into the picture the third very important word: "anything".
""While NEOISM?! is both nothing and everything, it is also anything."
"Of course through the interaction of these words NEOISM?! became even richer in meaning. Everything is nothing, nothing is everything, anything is anything, anything is everything that is nothing etc." - p 12 (variation 438)
"Anything is Anything" has been my motto since 1975. It can be found in my 1st bk:
t he bk
t he referent 4 wch consists of
t he non-materialized transparent punch-outs from a letter/whatever stencil
As such, it was my motto for over 5 yrs before I became involved in neoism. I've never considered it to be a neoist slogan. The author is co-opting it for neoism. That's ok, he's done alot w/ it, but I feel very attached to it on my own w/o adding it to the neoist mix.
"I was always stimulated by The Suprenatural Power of NEOISM?! and fascinated by the possibility of direct communication through the body's extrasensorial system. In 1979 I initiated the Brain Building and Cerebrite Project in the form of an installation at Vehicule Gallery in Montreal.
"Focusing on the idea of brain-to-brain transmission within a semi-scientific approach but rather in a poetic context, I sketched up the map of a system that would let participants exchange ideas directly, brain to brain, I sent some information concerning the project to my former professor of anatomy, dr János Szentágothai, a brain specialist, who replied to me with warning notes about the disastrous consequences such a project would cause to humanity should it ever be realized." - p 12 (variation 452)
Alas, it worked & almost all brains have been fused into GROUPTHINK now wch is the real reason why this bk stopped at page 12.
"To discount NEOISM?! as merely a diet for radicals and fanatics is an unfair generalization. Rather, NEOISM?! is a distinct and confusing philosophy, adopted by groups as dissimilar as the Krononautic Society in Baltimore (MD), the Rivington School in New York City, the group Phÿcus in Halifax, the Luther Blissett movement in Italy, or the Eternal Network throughout the World." - p 12 (variation 454)
Weeeelllllllll......... that's sortof twisitng things a little. The Krononauts had a temporary collaborative merger w/ the Neoists but most of the Krononauts, except me, found its acerbic nature offensive & distanced themselves from it pretty quickly. Even by the time of 81 APT, the 3rd International Neoist Apartment Festival in BalTimOre from May to June, 1981, my roommates, Krononauts all, were largely hostile to the festival. For more on the Krononauts, go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/InterviewMckeown.html (I've already given you this link before but there's no harm in repeating it in case you skipped over it the 1st time). Whether the other groups mentioned had similar experiences or not I can't really speak to. Monty/Istvan is a master at incorporating things into neoism that probably wd've happily gone along on their own w/o it.
"I'm well aware that The Book of NEOISM?! is going to upset many people, but it's not my goal at all. That would be to easy to achieve." - p 12 (variation 460)
Hhmm.. If The Book of NEOISM?! upsets ANYONE I'd love to know more about their reaction. As I stated earlier, I think NEOIST?!s won't 'need' it & non-NEOIST?!s won't understand it or read much of it. That's not intended as a criticism of this bk, it IS a criticism of the general illiterateness of today's societies. I mean, people act like reading this bk isn't the most important thing in their lives! Obviously, they've had their love-machine derailed.
"NEOISM?! is a game and I'm a player. I'm playing a definitional game that has no other goal than creating infinite definitions of NEOISM?! . When I say I want to define NEOISM?! I mean that I want to make it impossible to define through my definitions. It's a never-ending game. NEOISM?! can be defined only through ceaseless confusion. This is axiomatic." - p 12 (variation 468)
To quote from my own bk, "Paradigm Shift Knuckle Sandwich & other examples of P.N.T. (Perverse Number Theory)":
"In PNT, as perhaps w/ Duchamp & Jarry (see 'pataphysics), whatever is NON-AXIOMATIC can be embraced as liberatory. As I write in my (admittedly somewhat overwhelming) email signature: "(m + n does not equal n + m) is isomorphic to x". In other words, I'm interested in looking at such an "x" - partially 'because' such a notion is another step outside the restrictive 'accuracy' of Euclidean space & the 'narrow-mindedness' that has followed it. Don't misunderstand, I have a great respect for Euclid. He had a fantastic clarity. I, on the other hand, prefer a fantastic ambiguity. It's COGNITIVELY DISSIDENT to what I call "reality maintenance traps"."
I also refer the reader to "A Few Simple Statements about Neoism": http://www.thing.de/projekte/7:9%23/tent_neoism.html . In this it's stated that:
"Neoism is a mind game.
The purpose of the game is to provide stimulus for the players.
Playing the game comes naturally to the players.
People who aren't sure that they're Neoists aren't Neoists.
No-one is a Neoist all the time.
Not all mind games are Neoism."
""Without NEOISM?! people have no way of finding fun in their experiences, they lose their capacity to laugh and have difficulty imagining having sex with a file cabinet."" - p 12 (variation 469)
I'll bet you didn't know that, did you? In fact, every time you HAVE FUN, you're actually being a neoist (whether you like it or not), every time you have an ORGASM, you're being a neoist. Then again, one cd substitute "COVID-19": "Without COVID-19 people have no way of finding fun in their experiences, they lose their capacity to laugh and have difficulty imagining having sex with a file cabinet." See? It's exactly the same thing.
NOW, this bk is extraordinary, there's no doubt about that, anywhere in the world - do you find that strange? But the most extraordinary thing about it is that on pp 485-486 there are 8 PARAGRAPHS THAT DON'T USE THE WORD NEOISM?! I mean, what the fuck is up w/ that?! The 1st of these paragraphs begins w/ "Emerging international conspirators are forming OBS groups and OBS networks" & the 8th paragraph ends w/ "In this sense the best strategy for dealing with OBS would be to set it on fire and let the flames do the job." & if that doesn't make any sense to you you'll just have to read the fucking book.. or fuck the reading book if that's your thing.
Now, the author refers to this bk as "bible size" (p 12 (variation 494)) but I differ. ""How many pages are there in the bible?" the answer would be "The average bible has around 1,200 pages."" ( https://wordcounter.net/blog/2016/02/21/101241_how-many-pages-are-there-in-the-bible.html ) SO, you see?, the author has a long way to go.. now he COULD make a large-print version that might reach 1,200 pages.. but that wd be cheating.
Finally, for those of you who don't look for details like this, this bk is copyrighted 2018 on page 496.
This bk is recommended for women who masturbate whenever they see the words "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE". DO NOT SEEK THERAPEUTIC HELP, YOU'RE DOING JUST FINE THE WAY YOU ARE.
idioideo at verizon dot net
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Anti-Neoism page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Audiography page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Bibliography page
to my "Blaster" Al Ackerman index
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE BYOC page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Censored or Rejected page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Collaborations page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (d) compositions page
to Amir-ul Kafirs' Facebook page
to the "FLICKER" home-page for the alternative cinematic experience
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's GoodReads profile
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Haircuts page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Home Tapers page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE index page
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE Instagram Poetry page
to a listing of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's manifestations on the Internet Archive
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Interviewee index
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE as Interviewer index
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE'S Linked-In profile
to the mm index
to see an underdeveloped site re the N.A.A.M.C.P. (National Association for the Advancement of Multi-Colored Peoples)
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Neoism page
to the DEFINITIVE Neoism/Anti-Neoism website
to the Philosopher's Union website
to the tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE movie-making "Press: Criticism, Interviews, Reviews" home-page
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Score Movies
to SMILEs
to find out more about why the S.P.C.S.M.E.F. (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Sea Monkeys by Experimental Filmmakers) is so important
to the "tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - Sprocket Scientist" home-page
to Psychic Weed's Twitter page
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Vimeo index
to Vine movies relevant to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE made by Ryan Broughman
to tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's presence in the Visual Music Village
for info on tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's tape/CD publishing label: WIdémoUTH
to a very small selection of tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's Writing