Letter to the Talk Show ‘Burn’

[The following letter is the conclusion to the Pick Your Battle project. It was written to Michael Franklin, the host of the Blog Talk Radio Program Burn, on March 15th, 2011, but perhaps should be read as if it was written directly to you.]

To Whom it May Concern,

After doping myself up on a bunch of Hollywood movies, skimmed over theories, and some actual dope I’ve finally figured it all out. Here’s our answer: We’ve got to interiorize the body and exteriorize the soul just like Terence McKenna told us back in the 90s.

“Our redemption will be the exteriorization of the human soul and the interiorization of the human body so that [the body] is an image freely commanded in the imagination.”- Terence McKenna, Lectures on Alchemy

It’s a strange, maybe even absurd, idea, I admit, and you have to consider the source. McKenna thought that history will end in 2012, that Psilocybin mushrooms came from outerspace, and that the self-transforming Machine Elves that he saw when he smoked DMT were real. Terence spent a good part of his life stoned on mushrooms, roots, and grass, so it’s not surprising that political solutions should appear to him as mystical trips and bizarre visions. Still, I think he’s onto something. We don’t need to wait for the flying saucer people to land, we don’t need any messiahs or spirits to help us, all that has to happen for the human race to end history together and thus have a future is just what Terence said. We have to interiorize the body and exteriorize the soul.

And that’s not even the weird thing. The really weird thing is that we’ve done this already, but we haven’t realized it. That is, reality can only exist inside of a fiction, and conversely what we think is fiction is actually real.

Think of the divisions between Nation States on a globe; the way the lines and dots are drawn on maps? Aren’t these lines both real and virtual? That is, aren’t these lines real because they demarcate real divisions between people in the world? The lines on the globe show precisely how real space and power is divided up, and yet they’re entirely virtual, and if you go to look for them you usually won’t find them.

One exception would be a place like Four Corners–the spot where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet. The monument there is exactly the kind of excessive thing that there always has to be when you’re dealing with the reality of the virtual. It’s a place where fictional borders are made real, a sort of literal “point de capiton.” Lacan defined the “point de capiton” as an anchoring point or a quilting point, and what he meant by this is that a symbolic order, say the symbolic order of states and their interaction, must have points where the relationships are stabilized. But, paradoxically, these points are excessive. There is always a residue of something left over that doesn’t really fit into the frame, something beyond itself that points to the limitation or unreality at work. In the exact spot where all four corners meet it’s possible to be in all four states at the same time, and it’s discombobulating. Everyone who stands on the dot is forced to ask the question: “What State am I in?”

In the case of the monument at Four Corners, the physicality of it is irrelevant. The monument merely represents the quadripoint but it is not the quadripoint itself. Moving the monument would not alter the real location of the quadripoint, and yet, paradoxically, the quadripoint itself is nothing but a representation. If we could move the monument in secret the effect would be the same as moving the quadripoint itself. The monument can only be moved openly through the mechanism of State power, or through some force that could move beyond State power.

I’ve written to you before about the possibility of Swedeing. That is, I want to put together a troupe of actors for guerilla theater projects so that we can create disruptions in the everyday functioning of supermarkets, art galleries, and shopping malls by acting out altered scenes from popular movies in public. The inspiration behind this idea was encountering a youtube video produced by the acting troupe called Improv Everywhere, and enjoying their reenactment of Star Wars in a subway car.

What I want to do is reenact well known, but altered, scenes from science fiction movies about Time Travel in order to make what’s real about these virtual futures shine through. We’ll recreate time travelers from Back to the Future, Time Bandits, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Somewhere in Time in order to make it possible to bring back anarchist/communist messages from our real future.

I even wrote this:

(Marty from Back to the Future is in the produce section of a Supermarket examining apples or asparagus. Doc rolls up with his own shopping cart and interrupts Marty’s shopping.)

Doc: Marty!
Marty: Doc, what are you doing here?
Doc: When I learned that you were in need of sustenance I figured I’d find you here.
Marty: Yeah, well I haven’t seen you since the 90s. What are you doing back?
Doc: I came for you, Marty.
Marty: Do you need me to go back to the future?
Doc: No, everything is fine in the future. The problem is the present. We have to change the present.
Marty: I’m not following you, Doc.
Doc: Look around, Marty. Can’t you see what’s wrong? The supermarket, all of these pears and apples and onions with stickers on them? They’ve traveled half-way around the world! Obviously the time continuum has been disrupted creating this new temporally venced sequence resulting in an alternative reality.
Marty: English, Doc!
Doc: Here, here, here, let me illustrate. (He finds blackboard behind the potatoes and stands it up. He picks up some chalk.) Imagine a future where your everyday life is based on egalitarian principles instead of wage slavery. You follow? This line represents time…(He draws a line on the blackboard.) …Here’s the present, 1985
Marty: It’s 2011, doc.
Doc: (He looks at his watch, shakes it by his ear, erases “1985” on the board and then writes 2011.) This is the future (he writes “F”), and this is the past (he writes “Past”). Prior to this point in time… (He points to 2011) …somewhere in the past, the timeline skewed into this tangent, creating this capitalist 2011. (Doc draws the tangent on the board and writes “1985-A” on it.) Alternate to you and me, but reality for everyone else.
Marty: Everything seems normal to me, Doc.
Doc: (Slaps his forehead) Of course, you didn’t go with me into the future so this would be your normal present. Right, right.
(He goes to picks up a bag from his shopping cart and takes out an apple.) Recognize this?
Marty: That’s an apple, Doc.
Doc: Yes, but I didn’t get it from the store. I picked it off a tree in the year 2019. In the future there are apple trees everywhere, and strawberry patches. Portland is full of them.
Marty: So there are still hippies in the future.
Doc: Not Hippies, Marty. Communists.
Marty: You’re scaring me, Doc.
Doc: (Doc draws a line from the “F” on the board to the point where the tangent skewed into 1985-A. He then takes out a copy of the Communist Manifesto.) Look! It says, right here, that the weapons with which the bourgeoisie destroyed feudalism are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself…
Marty: (He takes a look at the Communist Manifesto.) That’s the Communist Manifesto, Doc.
Doc: It’s a living document in the future, Marty.
Marty: You mean the past. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union fell in 1991.
Doc: This has nothing to do with the Soviet Union or the past. I told you we have to change the present.
Marty: How are we going to do that, Doc?
Doc: Trees, Marty. We’ve got to tell everyone that in the future apples grow on trees.
Marty: What?
Doc: (He lifts a bag from his shopping cart, the bag is filled with foraged apples.) Here, help me pass these out to these…shoppers.
Marty: (Marty watches while Doc aproaches another shopper, possibly a plant and then reads from the manifesto:) “When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.” Sounds good to me. (Marty helps Doc pass out apples)

I’m hoping this can be something more than just simple propaganda. I want to create a series of these so that in the street people feel that same sense of discombobulation that people who stand on the Four Corners feel. I want people to laugh in the supermarket. In this way maybe we can move the lines a bit, or at least let people know that reality is virtual.

So, anyhow, will you help me?