REVOLUTION FOR THE HELL OF IT There are those who believe that it is necessary for ideas to triumph among the - Major Fidel Castro Ruiz NOW THE REVOLUTION BEGINS This Byzantine discussion about the ways and means of struggle, whether it And again he "meditates" like Siddhartha sitting cross-legged under the flower-blossomed Bo tree . . . These years have taught us all to meditate more and analyze better. We no And finally, shooting down communism, Christianityism, Lyndon Baines Johnsonism, Old Ageism, he says, The communist movement developed a method, a style, and in some aspects, All this while still sitting cross-legged under the flower-blossemed Bo tree in the center of Havana. DIGGER CREED FOR HEAD MEETINGS MEETINGS ARE INFORMATION MEETINGS ARE NOT PUTTING PEOPLE DOWN Shhhh! LISTEN AT MEETINGS Shhhh! DON'T LISTEN TO WORDS dig disrupters, dig poets, dig peacemakers, dig heads who mumble, dig heads who don't go to meetings, dig heads who fall asleep, dig andy kent, dig clowns, dig street fighters, dig heads who scribble on paper, dig hustlers, dig heads that admit they are wrong, dig heads that know they are right, dig doing, dig changes, dig holy men, DIG HEADS who do everything AT MEETINGS DIG HEADS WHO DIG MEETINGS all meetings are the same same same same same same same same same same same same same same -- DIFFERENT meetings are rivers-- don't build dams BEWARE OF STRUCTURE FREAKS DON'T GO BACK--THERE WAS NO LAST MEETING COMMUNITY IS UNITY AVOID GANGBANGS . . . RAPE IDEAS NOT PEOPLE MAKE LOVE AT ALL MEETINGS MEETINGS TAKE A MOMENT--Time is Fantasy-- there is no WAY to run a meeting use meetings to help you DO YOUR THING BE PREPARED PREPARE BY meditation IF YOU ARE NOT PREPARED MEETINGS ARE NOT YOUR THING (meetings are a pain in the ass)
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"In a revolution one wins or dies."
- Major Ernesto "Che" Guevara
"Dash: A revolution in cleansing powder."
- From a TV commercial
Revolution for the hell of it? Why not? It's all a bunch of phony words anyway. Once one has experienced LSD, existential revolution, fought the intellectual game-playing of the individual of society, of one's identity, one realizes that action is the only reality; not only reality but morality as well. One learns reality is a subjective experience. It exists in my head. I am the Revolution. The other day I took some LSD somewhere near Florida Keys, where I've come to try to write a book. It's an interesting setting: exactly equidistant from Havana and Miami Beach. You are always reminded of the fact because Radio Havana is one of the clearest radio stations. They play terrible crap music and you wonder why they don't play Country Joe and the Fish or the Beatles. That would be good propaganda. It seems as if they are trying to convert all the retirees who waddle around in Bermuda shorts. You wonder what they have in mind. Anyway, all of the sudden a tropical storm hit and the sky turned black. I thought (felt) it was a tornado and before I knew it the house had become unfastened and was spinning wildly in the air like a scene from The Wizard of Oz. Paul Krassner, who was watching television, shouted that Stokely had just returned and had been grabbed by the FBI. Everybody is hallucinating a mile a minute. "Shit, Tim Leary, I'm sorry I said LSD was a fake." I'm laughing away, dreaming of the house getting blown to Cuba with the floor shaking like a son-of-a-bitch. "The Revolution Is On!" I scream and grab a cap pistol, preparing to shoot the first cop that comes along. My wife joins the game and we have this whole Bonnie and Clyde thing going. It's all hilarious, really. One big revolution for the hell of it. The point is, if it were a real gun and a cop walked in, I would have shot him dead. BANG! What are the guidelines for revolution when the house has been cast adrift in a tornado? What of the debates between Marat and Sade when the inmates run wild? Listen to Fidel Castro:
greater part of the masses before initiating action, and there are others who
understand that action is one of the most efficient instruments for bringing about
the triumph of ideas among the masses. Whoever hesitates while waiting for ideas
to triumph among the masses before initiating revolutionary action will never be a
revolutionary. Humanity will, of course, change; human society will, of course,
continue to develop--in spite of men and the errors of men. But that is not a
revolutionary attitude.
Speech delivered at the closing of the First Conference of the Latin American Organization
of Solidarity (OLAS), August 10, 1967
Revolution is in my head. I am the Revolution.
Do your thing
Do your thing
Do your thing
Do your thing
Do your thing
Be your thing
Practice. Rehearsals come after the act. Act. Act. One practices by acting. Billy the Kid strides with 6 guns blazing, receding into his inner space. What does he find? Another Billy the Kid striding with 6 guns blazing, receding into his inner space. There are no rules, only images. Only a System has boundaries. Eichmann lives by the rules. Eichmann, machine-like, twitching nervously, pushes at his steel-rimmed glasses, takes his neatly folded handkerchief from the breast pocket of his gray-flannel suit and mops his sweating bald forehead (An electrical engineer: "My goal in life is to make myself replaceable" --DOT--DOT--BEEP--BEEP).
"My God was a pink memo. Uh . . . " he stutters, "excuse me, my God was a pink memo on Tuesdays, on Wednesdays it was a blue memo . . . It's hard to remember exactly. Yes, yes, that was it. Pink memo on Tuesdays, blue memo on Wednesdays."
Eichmann lets out a huge sigh of relief, smiles a little pince-nez smile, carefully refolds his handkerchief and replaces it in his pocket.
"I was a careerist. (slow) I was only doing my death."
Behind Billy the Kid stands Abraham. Grand old man of 9,000 years, striding across the desert lands, sweat crushed against his brow by a huge sun-baked forearm of golden fleece, the same golden fleece that was hung from his head and face in cascading waves of hard times.
God says, "Abraham, take your beloved son Isaac to the land of Moriah and place him upon an altar and make of him a sacrifice."
And Abraham tightens his fists and gnarls his teeth and cries out, "How do I know that is the God that has guided me and my people all these years?"
Inside he knows because He is God, which is to say, a Man and not a machine. He bids goodbye to Sarah, whom he truly loves, and he walks, holding his young son's tender hand, the three miles to Moriah. Placing his son upon the carefully constructed altar, he binds and gags him to let his son know that he loves him, and yet he does not need to do that because the boy too loves his father and needs no bindings. There would be no pain. Then Abraham dabs the boy with holy water that he had carried from his holy well and recites a few ritual prayers, mumbling them rotely because three days ago when he talked to God, he had already decided he would do what he must do. He holds his left hand over his son's eyes and raises the long well-used knife in the air, poising it for that final plunge. One plunge, quickly, for the steel in his mighty arm-sword will need but one thrust upon the young lad's frail body.
"Abraham, I am your God."
He slumps, exhausted with joy. It was an orgasm of consciousness, pulsating down rows upon rows of mankind.
Trust your impulses. Trust your impulses. TRUST --- TRUST --- TRUST --- TRUST --- TRUST --- TRUST --- TRUST --- TRUST --- TRUST --- TRUST --- TRUST
Test
Test
Test
Relax
The trouble with liberalism and bull-shit American middle class DOT--DOT--BEEP--BEEPs is that they run the myth backwards.
"God is dead," they cry, "and we did it for the kids."
A true revolutionist carves the revolution out of Granite Rock. Ho Chi Minh crawls through the Mekong Delta rice-paddy mud and comes to a fork in the road. A road, by the way, that he and he alone constructed. Environment is in your head. Your head is a granite rock of neural impulses, get some dynamite if you need it.
Billy the Kid blazes his motorcycle down that neural impulse road and thrashes madly, gears lock, guns fall from his side in the jolt, the chrome-plated Harley-Davidson rears on its hind legs. Oop! He sails from the sturdy bike, hurled into inner space.
People said he was such a nice young kid.
"Why I remember the time young Billy used to like to run naked from the swimmin' hole down through town, still dripping wet."
Not exactly Lady Godiva, I'll admit. Billy sure was a hot shit in those days.
"Can't figger him out now, he must have flipped."
Yeah, sure, that was it, he must have flipped out. Crazy motherfucker Billy.
"Billy come back, come back. Billy, Billy Billy."
Go Billy! Go! Go! Billy go. We don't need leaders. We need cheerleaders. Go Billy Go!! Do your thing! Sock it to 'em!
Fidel sits on the side of a tank rumbling into Havana on New Year's day. His green army fatigues swiped from Batista's Free Store, sent down by John Foster Dulles, who, adding a touch of creativity to his cousin Eichmann's idea, decided that if everyone in Latin America wore American Army fatigues, all the problems would be solved. Clever Yankee was John Foster Dulles. Fidel's rifle lies like a feather cradled in his strong arms. Girls throw flowers at the tank and rush up to tug playfully at his black beard. He laughs joyously and pinches a few rumps, for he is a soldier and they like to do that sort of thing, you know. The tank stops in the city square. Fidel lets the gun drop to the ground, slaps his thighs, and stands erect. He is like a mighty penis coming to life, and when he is tall and straight, the crowd immediately is transformed.
He goes to a friend's house, collapses on the floor, snoring loudly, exhausted from five days without sleep, and sleeps for twenty straight hours.
For ten long year he builds a country. Makes love. Steals Russian rubles. Sticks a finger in Uncle Sam's nose.
"We are going to do away with money, people should relate to each other as human beings."
Go Fidel Go! Go Fidel Go! Go Fidel Go! Do your thing! Sock it to 'em!
He fires Commie Dean Ruskies who say he is going mad (not publicly of course) and makes the revolution.
should be peaceful or non-peaceful, armed or unarmed--the essence of this
discussion, which we call Byzantine because it is like an argument between
two deaf and dumb people, is what distinguishes those who want to promote
revolution and those who do not want to promote it. Let no one be fooled.
longer accept any "self-evident" truths. "Self-evident" truths belong to
bourgeois philosophy. A whole series of old cliches must be abolished. Marxist
literature itself, revolutionary political literature itself, should be renewed because
repeating the same old cliches, phraseology and verbiage that have been repeated
for 35 years wins over no one, convinces no one at all. There are times when
political documents, called Marxist, given the impression that someone has gone
to an archive and asks for a form: form 14, form 13, form 12; they are all alike,
with the same empty words, in language incapable of expressing real situations.
Very often, these documents are divorced from real life. And then many people
are told that this is Marxism . . . and in what way is this different from a catechism,
and in what way is it different from a litany, from a rosary?
even took on the characteristics of a religion. And we sincerely believe that
that character should be left behind. Of course, to some of these "illustrious
revolutionary thinkers" we are only petit bourgeois adventurers without
revolutionary maturity. We are lucky that the revolution came before maturity.
AN EXPLANATION: What does free speech mean to you? To me it is an image like all things.
ME: Yes I believe in total free speech.
INTERVIEWER: Well, surely you don't believe in the right to cry "fire" in a crowded
theatre?
ME: F I R E !
CONVERSATION WITH THE READER: What goes through your head when you read this pudding? Images? Images of who? Me? You? I am a myth. Besides I can't write and words all all bullshit anyway. I don't know how to write. Here is an example of what I mean. It is called a poem. I didn't call it that, someone else did. I called it a brown manila envelope. It is a manila envelope about meetings. It was fun to write.
MEDITATION
EXPERIENCE
FUN
TRUST
REHEARSALS
DRAMA
HORSESHIT
LISTEN TO eye movements
LISTEN TO scratching
LISTEN TO your head
LISTEN TO smells
LISTEN TO singing
LISTEN TO touches
LISTEN TO silence
LISTEN TO gestalt vibrations
LISTEN TO a baby born in the sea
LISTEN TO the writing on the wall
DON'T LISTEN TO WORDS
DON'T LISTEN TO WORDS
meetings are life
surrender to the meeting . . . the meeting is the message
MEETINGS ARE CONFRONTATION--
MEETINGS ARE RELAXATION--
DIG OTHER HEADS--
DIG YOUR HEAD
BEFORE OF RULES
BEWARE OF "AT THE LAST MEETING WE DECIDED . . ."
DON'T GO FORWARD--THERE IS NOTHING
meetings are Now you are the meeting we are Now
WITHOUT MEETINGS THERE IS NO COMMUNITY
MEETINGS TAKE FOREVER
Go naked to meetings--Go high to meetings
PREPARE BY doing
COME PREPARED TO DROP OUT--COME PREPARED TO STAY FOREVER
ONLY DO YOUR THING
mene, mene, tekel, upharsin