For Issue 2, we decided to stretch our col­lab­o­ra­tors with an explicit theme. I refuse to be mod­est, our theme, TV, was an inspired idea. Even our most aca­d­e­mic col­lab­o­ra­tors have a ten­der spot in their hearts for TV. And, although each work does not unam­bigu­ously ref­er­ence TV, it is safe to say that none of these could be pro­duced if TV did not exist. With that in mind, I would like to for­mally invite you to con­sume Issue 2.

Matthew

---

Table of Contents

1. FLASPAR
   TV Me
2. VICKI BOLF
   The Lion King As Zeitgeist
3. ERICK CIFUENTES
   3 am TV options
4. RACHEL JENDRZEJEWSKI
   Green
5. ANA LOCKWOOD
   Square Eyed
6. DASH
   Amer­i­can Spirit
7. AARON VALDEZ
   Good Morn­ing
8. WYNDE DYER
   Law and Order Keeps Me Sober
9. WWJDUB?
   Sig­nal From Bosko
10. MATTHEW SPENCER
    The defin­i­tive list of TV shows that affected Matthew Spencer
11. PATRICK LELLI
    Cosby Show
12. DANIEL HOPKINS
    Blood
13. JULIE OLSON
    The ulti­mate form of communication
14. ANDY MICHELSEN
    Bring On The Tele­vi­sion, War, and Rain
15. PETER J BRANT
    stills of tele­vi­sion late at night filmed with dig­i­tal camera
16. CHRIS STAMM
    A Few Notes For a Lec­ture Con­cern­ing Tele­vi­sion in the Fea­ture Films of Esther Magnuson
17. CRAIG CHRISTENSEN
    Hello Friends and I Know
18. ARIEL CLIMER
    That Baby Buy­ing Stocks
19. EMILY ORDAS
    Tell a Vision
20. STEPHEN WISSOW
    Some­times I Love
21. ALISHA ADAMS
    Danc­ing with the Stars and What a relief it is
22. CHASE GREBB
    Con­di­tions

---

FLASPAR

TV Me

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VICKI BOLF

The Lion King As Zeitgeist

You know you remem­ber this scene.

A just-post ado­les­cent Simba has been pac­ing the savan­nah, mulling over his con­ver­sa­tion with cub­hood friend Nala, who encour­aged him to return to the Pride Lands and resume his role as head of the pride. (Simba is con­vinced that his return would not change any­thing, appar­ently mostly because of his guilt over his father, Mufasa’s death years ear­lier.) He spots Rafiki, the catch-all priest and med­i­cine man, who sings him a lit­tle non­sense song, and then reveals that he not only knows who Simba is, but that Mufasa is alive and that he, Rafiki, can show him to Simba.

So Rafiki takes off into the for­est, and Simba fol­lows, jump­ing roots, dodg­ing branches. The pair finally arrive at the edge of a clear­ing, at the mid­dle of which is a pool sur­rounded by hang­ing vines.

“Look down there,” says Rafiki.

After a tense moment peer­ing at him­self in the pool, Simba replies, dis­ap­pointed, “That’s not my father. It’s just my reflection.”

“No, look harder,” Rafiki insists. Simba looks again, and there among the rip­ples is Mufasa’s face. Then Rafiki lays it on Simba heavy: “You see? He lives in yoooouuu!”

Mufasa him­self then makes an appear­ance in the clouds. “Simba…You have for­got­ten who you are, and so for­got­ten me,” says Cloud-Mufasa to his awestruck son.

“No!” Simba protests, but deep down, he knows it’s true. This is the turn­ing point in the film, the moment when Simba defin­i­tively decides that he must return to the Pride Lands and ful­fill his des­tiny as “the one true king.”

Maybe the scene is pre­dictable, but it rep­re­sents some­thing impor­tant, some­thing about West­ern hero sto­ries that was not entirely present in ear­lier gen­er­a­tions. Look at Ham­let, sup­pos­edly an influ­ence on LK’s plot and theme (father’s ghost appear­ance, uncle usurp­ing power, inde­ci­sive prince, etc). Although some aspects of LK evoke Shakespeare’s tragedy, a close look shows some fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences. The prince of Den­mark is look­ing for revenge, jus­tice. All his uncer­tainty focuses on whether or not he is a cow­ard, whether or not he should kill his uncle. He is not explic­itly wor­ried about his place in the world, his pur­pose in life, or “who he is”. He knows he has a duty to kill his uncle if his uncle has in fact killed his father, and he knows he should be king. He’s just not sure he can carry out a mur­der. Simba shows no such con­vic­tion about his role in life, going as far as liv­ing with a meerkat/warthog duo and eat­ing grubs in order to avoid deal­ing with his grief and shame. In ear­lier epics like Beowulf, where the empha­sis on clan and the honor of the indi­vid­ual is more pro­nounced, the con­trast is even more extreme.

If Ham­let hangs on to the last ves­tiges of the social code of Beowulf—revenge, strength, clan, honor, blood—The Lion King is almost com­pletely divorced from such hero-story roots. In LK, Simba is uncer­tain about his posi­tion in life, whether his birth really does deter­mine his des­tiny, whether he’s not bet­ter off in a makeshift “pride” of other out­casts and doubters of the social order. (Recall that Pum­baa was ostra­cized for his flat­u­lence, and Timon had few social graces.) But in both Ham­let and Beowulf, the empha­sis is over­whelm­ingly on jus­tice, revenge, fam­ily honor and per­sonal courage.

To empha­size, Scar is killed, but not by Simba. His own accom­plices in crime, the hye­nas, attack and kill him. Ham­let almost goes insane con­tem­plat­ing a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion. Beowulf surely would rather have died him­self than let another com­mit his revenge.

Why do we like The Lion King so much then? Why don’t we dis­miss Simba as a whiny loser afraid of tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity in life? Because Simba’s search for his own iden­tity is a per­fect synec­doche of our generation’s own drift from the pri­mal force of our ances­tors. Nobody wants The Lion King’s mes­sage to be true more than we do, we post­mod­ern, post-meaning, post-everything chil­dren of the Inter­net. We need to know that Simba even­tu­ally finds mean­ing and pur­pose, ful­fill­ment, even though his leo­nine youth was spent in uncon­ven­tional pur­suits and strange com­pany. He gets the lioness, he refur­bishes the Pride Lands (by his mere pres­ence, no less), and his prog­eny thrive — in other words, a happy end­ing. And isn’t that what we all want, even if we don’t go about it in the way our par­ents envisioned?

Under our self-conscious cyn­i­cism, under our dis­af­fected hakuna matata phi­los­o­phy, we want Simba’s happy end­ing. And you want to know why? It’s because we find it dif­fi­cult to place our­selves, cul­tur­ally, morally, geo­graph­i­cally. We feel as lost as a lion among meerkats. We want to know our par­ents — and their par­ents, and their par­ents’ par­ents — are more than DNA and some psy­cho­log­i­cal for­ma­tion. We want to know that blood mat­ters, that where we came from is as impor­tant as where we choose to go. It is our last mys­tic belief. We need Rafiki to say to us, “He lives in yooouuu!”

---

ERICK CIFUENTES

3 am TV options

---

RACHEL JENDRZEJEWSKI

Green

She prides her­self on not really lik­ing tele­vi­sion, but she keeps him com­pany out of cour­tesy while he watches. She sits on the floor and puts pho­tos into photo albums while he lays sprawled on the couch in a sub­dued trance.

An Amer­i­can Apparel com­mer­cial flashes on, and she instantly feels both styl­ish (because she is appro­pri­ately dressed in noth­ing except tights and a sports bra) and dis­gust­ing (because she is more than aware of her love han­dles and broken-out skin). “All those girls just got fucked, you know,” he com­ments with flat bemuse­ment. “The pho­tog­ra­pher is this douche bag who just fucks 18-year-olds, then pho­tographs them after, when they’re feel­ing all sexy.” I would like to feel sexy, she thinks. Maybe I should have mar­ried a per­verted pho­tog­ra­pher. She smiles at her inter­nal joke but earnestly appre­ci­ates what surely was an intu­itive ges­ture of con­so­la­tion on his part. She picks up a pho­to­graph of her­self from when she was 18 and exam­ines it, star­tled at how skinny she was. She imag­ines the photo had been taken after a wild romp with Clare, her high school best friend who took the picture.

She tries to watch the news with him but can’t look at the screen too long. Her eyes hurt. She is chilly. She goes to their room to pull on a sweater. Now she feels bet­ter, snug­gly, like those girls in the Leggs com­mer­cials, run­ning around in tops and sheer hose and high heels but no bot­toms. She puts on the stilet­tos she wore for her wed­ding and delights in how deli­ciously risqué and Euro­pean she looks. For surely sweaters and tights (but no bot­toms) and stilet­tos com­prise just the sort of care­lessly sug­ges­tive ensem­ble all Euro­pean girls wear as they lounge around Euro­pean flats with Euro­pean hus­bands. Her eyes nag, so she ran­sacks the bath­room closet and finds some Visine that expired in 2004 but is prob­a­bly fine. She winces at the sting and doesn’t wipe away the drips down her cheek, won­der­ing if he would think she’d been cry­ing if he walked in right now. She imag­ines him scoop­ing her up, telling her she looks beau­ti­ful when she cries. She prac­tices expres­sions of meek grat­i­tude in the mir­ror. Her eyes look small in pro­por­tion to the rest of her face and her hair has sta­tic elec­tric­ity. She decides she would not like him to see her right now after all.

Her eyes have been hurt­ing a lot lately because she’s been sleep­ing in her soft dis­pos­able con­tact lenses for almost a week. She’s out of con­tact solu­tion and doesn’t have glasses and hates going to Wal­greens by her­self. Yes­ter­day, a man in line at the post office asked if she was okay. When she said yes in sur­prise, he laughed and said that was a relief, because she looked like she’d just come from a funeral. At first she felt uncom­fort­able. Peo­ple look at me and think death. But as she turned it over in her mind, she started to feel pow­er­ful. Peo­ple look at me and think about the poignant brevity of life. Peo­ple won­der what despair I have seen. The rest of her wait, she pre­tended that she really did just come from a funeral, gaz­ing absently into space with the weight of tragedy on her shoulders.

She is con­flicted. He has been alone in the liv­ing room for awhile now, and she should rejoin him, but she is not look­ing her best and hates being trapped in places feel­ing unat­trac­tive. She would like to freshen up first. At the same time, she doesn’t want him to know she’s putting on makeup so late at night when they’re just hang­ing out alone at home. She wants to look nat­ural and fresh, but she does not want to appear vain or super­fi­cial. Maybe all she needs is some foun­da­tion. Surely he won’t notice if she’s gone just two more min­utes. Dig­ging through her makeup bag, she stum­bles upon the sparkly elec­tric green eye shadow that she wore when she dressed as a cac­tus for Hal­loween. On a whim, she smears the color over her lids. I am a cabaret girl, she gig­gles to her­self as the sparkles catch the light. She pauses and exam­ines her work. The green is a lit­tle crazy. Amused, she makes a green heart on her fore­head. She smears on more, then more. She cre­ates impres­sion­is­tic pat­terns on her cheeks. She laughs out loud. She cov­ers her whole face in green. She is delighted to dis­cover that she looks rather pretty, in a bizarre green sort of way. She adds red lip­stick and a flour­ish of Pur­ple Shock mascara.

Tip­toe­ing back to the liv­ing room, she sud­denly can’t wait for him to see how ridicu­lously adorable she looks, her face fully masked in green, her sweater and tights (but no bot­toms) and high heels. She is sexy but funny, crazy but endear­ing, witty, con­fi­dent, every­thing a hus­band could desire in a wife. He will be blown away by her adven­tur­ous spirit! They will laugh together, then pull out a bot­tle of wine and have a wild night of pas­sion. There will be green every­where, the pil­lows, the sheets, naughty places on their bod­ies, and the world will some­how be spir­i­tu­ally root­ing for them in the same way it roots for Char­lotte and Harry or Rachel and Ross. If she gets preg­nant tonight, she will spend the next nine months wear­ing pig­tails and power– walk­ing in parks with other cute young expect­ing women, while the hus­bands play poker and cook big group din­ners on the grill. Years later, he will tell their daugh­ter that her mother used to do such charm­ing, goofy things, like dress up and paint her face green to sur­prise him on lazy nights at home.

She bursts into the liv­ing room and strikes a seduc­tive Euro­pean green-faced pose. Silence. She looks at him and real­izes his eyes are closed. Then he snores. He has fallen asleep. She drops her pose and crawls onto the couch with him, hop­ing the nudge might wake him up. He accom­mo­dates her out of habit. His snores trans­pose to a higher key. She sighs, thor­oughly dis­ap­pointed in her­self for tak­ing too long in the bathroom.

The liv­ing room is still freez­ing. Why isn’t he cold, with short sleeves and no blan­ket? She pulls an afghan up from the foot of the couch, then rearranges her­self into a posi­tion that is both com­fort­able and grace­ful– look­ing. If she falls asleep and he wakes up, at least he can mar­vel at how angelic she looks when she dreams. A new sit­com starts up, and within thirty sec­onds, she is con­vinced that she would like to move to New York and work in an adver­tis­ing agency where she can wear styl­ish suits and pay for things with a com­pany card. She lets her­self be hyp­no­tized by blonde bobs and lux­u­ri­ous apart­ments with wide win­dows and sophis­ti­cated solid-colored bed­sheets that match sophis­ti­cated bed­room walls. Even­tu­ally she lets her eye­lids drift shut for a few sec­onds at a time, then longer, and longer. The sit­com blurs into a com­fort­ing hum. Tomor­row she will wake up early, before him, and get a lit­tle more dressed up than usual. Tomor­row is Fri­day. Tomor­row she will kid­nap him for cock­tails and a nice din­ner out some­where, just the two of them. Some­where with real flow­ers on the table, and peo­ple laugh­ing over fancy dishes with French names. The famil­iar music of that over­played Opti-Free com­mer­cial… tomor­row she will buy con­tact solution.

His heart­beat is relaxed and steady. She breathes with him and imag­ines that, some­where in his sub­con­scious, he is aware of her heart­beat and is breath­ing with her, too. Sud­denly, she real­izes that she is com­pletely, totally, utterly happy. Her life is sim­ple. She has a roof over her head. She has clothes to wear and food to eat. She is snug­gling with a won­der­ful hus­band. She smiles and hugs his waist, relax­ing into a deep, con­tented, picture-perfect green slumber.

---

ANA LOCKWOOD

Square Eyed

My eyes are the wrong shapes for their sock­ets, a bio­log­i­cal algo­rithm gone wrong. When I feel them, fin­gers on slimy sur­face, they feel like strips of tyres under grease, strange angles pressed together. The bone cir­cle around them is per­fect, strapped with mus­cle, hold­ing the jel­lies in place.

Four years ago, my mother tells me of the late 80’s, before my dis­torted eyes were so thor­oughly mapped. Watch­ing TV, all the dots would bleed together, the shapes indis­tinct and the col­ors, a rain­storm pud­dle full of light. I would press my lit­tle face to the glass, response learned from more tac­tile objects, try and dis­tin­guish more mean­ing from the rows of tiny dots. It was like try­ing to describe the pre­cise shape of a box wrapped in a heavy win­ter blanket.

My mother speaks about this bizarre activ­ity, explain­ing that instead of com­ing to the log­i­cal con­clu­sion, that my early tele­vi­sion view­ing style was a sign that I had the patri­lin­eal eye prob­lem, she had felt that I was sim­ply a strange child.

---

DASH

Amer­i­can Spirit

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AARON VALDEZ

Good Morn­ing

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WYNDE DYER

Law and Order Keeps Me Sober

My mom kept me pretty much totally shut off from pop­u­lar cul­ture until 1993, when I was about 13. Law and Order was pretty much the only TV expo­sure I got. My grand­par­ents would record whole sea­sons on VHS for me to watch when I vis­ited. Now it keeps me home instead of at the bar.

I found this nutty ass 8x10 glossy photo at Shad­ow­house Col­lectibles, which is totally the best place in the world. It reminded me of a crime drama. So I painted it up for you, and for me, to remind myself that art and TV are more fun than hangovers.

---

WWJDUB?

Sig­nal From Bosko

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MATTHEW SPENCER

The defin­i­tive list of TV shows that affected Matthew Spencer

Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood
Sesame Street
The Pee-wee Her­man Show
Cheers
Inspec­tor Gad­get
Newhart
Mac­Gyver
Duck­Tales
Garfield & Friends
Heath­cliff
Mur­phy Brown
Mar­ried with Chil­dren
The Tracey Ull­man Show
The Won­der Years
Quan­tum Leap
The Adven­tures of McGee and Me
Sein­feld
Hey Dude
Saved by the Bell
Doo­gie Howser, M.D.
Fam­ily Mat­ters
The Simp­sons
Drag­net
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!
The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo
Samu­rai Pizza Cats
Wings
Tale­Spin
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
Tiny Toon Adven­tures
Get Smart
Clarissa Explains It All
Dinosaurs
Salute Your Shorts
Doug
The Ren and Stimpy Show
Dark­wing Duck
Home Improve­ment
Step by Step
Round­house
Mighty Mor­phin Power Rangers
Boy Meets World
SeaQuest DSV
Ani­ma­ni­acs
Rocko’s Mod­ern Life
Cybill
The Wayans Bros.
News­Ra­dio
Slid­ers
Sin­gled Out
The Drew Carey Show
3rd Rock from the Sun
Clue­less
Sab­rina the Teenage Witch
Hey Arnold!
Just Shoot Me!
The Jenny McCarthy Show
South Park
Recess
Whose Line Is It Any­way?
That ‘70s Show
Becker
Fam­ily Guy
The Norm Show
Freaks and Geeks
Roswell
Total Request Live
Gilmore Girls
Arrested Devel­op­ment
The Office
30 Rock
Perry Mason
The Wire
Fringe
Push­ing Daisies
Mad Men

---

PATRICK LELLI

Cosby Show

---

DANIEL HOPKINS

Blood

Oh I ache for your blood
I want to fill this cup to the brim
and swal­low that sweet red liq­uid
until there is none left
feel the warmth of your blood inside of me
fill­ing me up until all is absorbed
until it runs through my veins
and all my blood is replaced with yours
and we become truly one
all the essence of your blood
absorbed by my body
until your inno­cence over­comes me
and I become your slave
and I become you
you…
     you…
one with
you…
one with me
my sweet caress
my eyes become yours
my heart burns with your fire
and there is noth­ing left in me
but you
     just you…
my sweet…
my sweet Jesus

---

JULIE OLSON

The ulti­mate form of communication

---

ANDY MICHELSEN

Bring On The Television

War

it was rain­ing
shit and piss gun­fire
when i crawled into
a man­made bunker.

there were two other
guys in there try­ing
to hold it together.
the sky was amber
col­ored and filled with smoke.

i remem­ber look­ing
at their faces, try­ing
to gather some sort
of understanding.

a mor­tar hit fifty yards to
our side and dirt was
sprayed every­where.
i ran for it, hold­ing my head
down and grasp­ing at my
rifle for security.

i saw a mans head thrown
back by a gun­blast, killed
instantly.

i closed my eyes and
dreamt about my wife.

Rain

out late at night
for a cig­a­rette break
on the fucked up sleep sched­ule
of my grave­yard swings.

the ground is damp and moist
and the cement is reflect­ing lights
from a days worth of rain
that is fresh out of spring.

no doubt the snails will be out crawl­ing
and the birds will soon be call­ing
out to lovers lost
amidst the shower of tears.

and where is my lover
she’s out in another
part of the world
and i wont see her
for another twenty years.

---

PETER J BRANT

stills of tele­vi­sion late at night filmed with dig­i­tal camera

---

CHRIS STAMM

A Few Notes For a Lec­ture Con­cern­ing Tele­vi­sion in the Fea­ture Films of Esther Magnuson

The most famous sequence in Magnuson’s oeu­vre is the dis­turb­ing cli­max of I’m Done With Mem­phis, But Mem­phis Ain’t Done With Me, in which down-on-his-luck blues god Gus Dilet­tante kills his rival by drop­ping a tele­vi­sion set onto his head. From then on, Gus is cursed with ter­ri­ble stage fright, which can only be cured by play­ing the theme from The Brady Bunch one hun­dred times in a row with­out mak­ing a sin­gle mis­take. It’s an impos­si­ble task, and his life means noth­ing with­out the blues, so Gus kills him­self dur­ing a tap­ing of The Tonight Show. Johnny Car­son and Ed McMa­hon play themselves.

Nau­tica Dia­bol­ica, Magnuson’s lone sci­ence fic­tion work, is marred by a lugubri­ous flash­back to the 1980’s, in which the tit­u­lar heroine’s grand­par­ents watch the tele­vi­sion game show Wheel of For­tune while eat­ing their TV din­ners. Mag­nu­son stretches a bit to jus­tify this back­ward glance — she invents a children’s game for two, which kids of the future call “Pat and Vanna.” A boy player (“Pat”) throws rocks at a girl player (“Vanna”) until the girl guesses which com­mon phrase the boy is pic­tur­ing in his head. This is not as cruel as it sounds, as telepa­thy is fairly com­mon in the future of Nau­tica Dia­bol­ica. The girl can usu­ally guess the phrase in fewer than five throws. Also, rocks in the future are more like marsh­mal­lows. And girls in the future are more like trees.

The Beat-ish weir­does in Jer­sey Jere­miad, one of two road-trip films Mag­nu­son made in the 1960’s, don’t spring for motel rooms so that they might have a semi-warm place to fuck or drink or sleep; they find a road­side hovel with decent rab­bit ears, pull the cov­ers up to their chins and have chaste fun watch­ing the local news and what­ever movie comes on at ten-thirty.

At the time of her death, Mag­nu­son was work­ing on a screen­play with the work­ing title of Down­river. Fans took this to mean that Mag­nu­son was plan­ning a fea­ture film based on the imag­i­nary soap opera Down the River, which is referred to and/or seen in mul­ti­ple Mag­nu­son films. In Drop Dead Eddie, for instance, Lisa audi­tions for a bit part on Down the River, but is turned down when she will not have sex with the direc­tor and his wife. In Don’t Make Me Cry, Jason and Kate die in each other’s arms as Tyrone and Veron­ica do the very same thing in Down the River, which is play­ing on TV in the bed­room where Jason and Kate have taken their poi­son. The sol­diers in Mind­field write their loved ones for news of the day­time soap. And the wait­resses in Please Tip Your Wife get together after work to watch taped episodes of the show. Magnuson’s hus­band has refused to com­ment about the nature of Downriver’s contents.

The rabbit-masked killer in R.I.P. Tide is first glimpsed as a reflec­tion in his mother’s tele­vi­sion screen. The killer is watch­ing pornog­ra­phy that he has stolen from his father. The film cuts from a close-up of a pix­e­lated breast to a scene of a lithe teenage girl in the woods being fucked from behind by a hairy, Ger­manic fel­low. As the cam­era pans back, we real­ize the sex is still con­tained in the tele­vi­sual world — only now we are in a teenage boy’s bed­room. The boy lives across the street from the killer and his fam­ily, and he is also watch­ing pornog­ra­phy that he has stolen from his father. The killer will decap­i­tate the boy in a later scene. Along with the boy’s head, the rabbit-masked slasher will take the boy’s pornog­ra­phy. R.I.P. Tide rep­re­sents a rather turgid decon­struc­tion of the misog­yny in slasher films of the 1980’s. Mag­nu­son would decon­struct her own decon­struc­tion with Fuck R.I.P. Tide, a short exper­i­men­tal work that is beyond the scope of this lecture.

---

CRAIG CHRISTENSEN

Hello Friends

I Know

---

ARIEL CLIMER

That Baby Buy­ing Stocks

They say that I didn’t even know you before the age of eight. I couldn’t tell the dif­fer­ence between your fan­tasies and real­i­ties. And you acted out your fan­tasies in front of me and on me. Through the phys­i­cal­ity and grop­ing, mak­ing me watch the stereo­type of bod­ies, I blos­somed under light rays. Intri­cate char­ac­ters and pretty col­ors came and went in our house and behind your eyes, so you explained. I was curi­ous about the hugs I saw that pur­ple dinosaur giv­ing. Were they the same as you gave me because the kids smiled a lot and I came away frown­ing? You were a spi­der­web trap­ping fan­ci­ful insects, and I had bug eyes.

Later in life, you tried to bring me into your room again, to make me make cents of it all. But I had the sense and used it to pay for books and out­ings and any­thing to get me out of the mem­ory of you and into myself. I wrote jin­gles to go with my love sto­ries and still bought brand names. I’m in coun­sel­ing now, but that one funny com­mer­cial will always be a standby for con­ver­sa­tions with strangers.

---

EMILY ORDAS

Tell a Vision

Does it do that? Is that true? Does TV inform the viewer’s vision of the self and change a life course based on the mind’s new direc­tion? Does TV offer the cre­ative souls of this earth a way to put off the fruition of their poten­tial? This may be a neg­a­tively nar­row view of tele­vi­sion, but I think that it is, for the most part, sadly true.

I say sadly because most peo­ple who are active TV watch­ers (oxy­moron), are, in my hum­ble opin­ion, hav­ing the cre­ative parts of their brains… wher­ever that is… shaped, molded, cared for, and loved, by the visions of mass media gurus and net­work exec­u­tives. Most of basic cable that I have seen these days, is noth­ing that I would want any­where near this part of my brain. That part of my cere­brum hap­pens to be the part that keeps me alive and sane. I will keep it thank you very much for ask­ing… that is mine. TV soothes the masses and snatches up the many. It beck­ons them, seduces them. It has cre­ated a rela­tion­ship of igno­rant depen­dence. The cap­tives feel free in the pres­ence of the captor.

I for one believe strongly in the power of thought. Those who fix­ate on, and pas­sively receive the imag­i­nary world of TV are engag­ing in thought pat­terns and brain activ­ity that are so com­pletely not their own. They are out­sourc­ing their thoughts. They have no con­trol of where those sweetly pack­aged eas­ily accessed syn­thetic synapses might lead.

Dreams and the Inter­net are where the sub­con­scious lives and TV is where the dead con­scious thrives. Yes there are valu­able arche­typal sto­ries that tele­vi­sion makes avail­able to the gen­eral pub­lic, and yes, human­ity needs a source for gen­eral infor­ma­tion that con­nects us all, but tele­vi­sion in this mod­ern world is far from that.

Tele­vi­sion and its unholy pup­peteers have suc­ceeded in a coup d’etat of the cre­ativ­ity of the human spirit. It preys upon every man woman and child with a tele­vi­sion set, free time, and weak­ness for an escape. I don’t mean to absolve the blame of the indi­vid­u­als who, of their own voli­tion, take the remote in hand, press that sweet red but­ton, and acti­vate the latent blue buzz that the TV holds within (sweet Mary mother of God). I real­ize that maybe it is a human qual­ity to want to zone the fuck out for a lit­tle bit of time. I do it, and even the most cre­ative peo­ple I know do it. What kills the cre­ative thought process is the accep­tance of what is put forth and the quest to quiet the mind via main­stream media that val­ues an igno­rant pub­lic. Chan­nels can be changed, aug­mented and beefed up, but the fact still remains that TV view­ers in gen­eral take what they are given. Their brain sponge absorbs con­tent from this soul­less pipeline. The net­works and illu­mi­nati con­spir­ers that wield the mighty wand of what goes through to viewer, are con­trol­ling what the major­ity of tele­vi­sion watch­ers ingest.

It kills cre­ativ­ity by offer­ing a quick and easy place to go. Retreat! Grab remote and ignite! This is the TV two-step I sense my fel­low human beings dance every night.

TV nur­tures the introvert’s nature. TV has become their secret gar­den. A refuge from action poten­tial, which can some­times be a fright­en­ing and stale chal­lenge. The soft gen­tle ever-loving glow of the TV set offers a way out. Like any drug, it has been a slow and steady human thief. Then one day, you real­ize, it’s out of control.

As my mind wan­ders on the sub­ject of TV a pow­er­ful imag­i­nary story comes to mind. I will share it as my clos­ing para­graph:
I envi­sion a human lying asleep in bed and the tele­vi­sion turn­ing into this robot. The robot approaches the human and per­forms a sci-fi like surgery on it, con­nect­ing the body with an umbil­i­cal chord made of neon wires to the set. The TV then qui­etly goes back to it’s des­ig­nated space and loses it’s robot fea­tures. Human­ity wakes up from the surgery with­out any rec­ol­lec­tion of the pro­ce­dure. The umbil­i­cal chord remains, feed­ing the mind, shut­ting it down, slowly. The masses don’t notice. I do.

---

STEPHEN WISSOW

Some­times I Love

Some­times I love. Other times,

I lie awake and dream of

     you,

Santa Claus. I ask myself

every green morn­ing as the sun comes up
across calla lilies grown fresh in the haze dew light
under morn­ing suns fresh time, after nights,

all night long I’m up and think­ing to you, Santa Claus,

what is your name?

What is your first birth?

How do you incar­nate the living,

bring breath out of Egypt and the North Pole,

under­stand tables, charts, com­passes sextants,

all these things?

Other times, I love, but you, Santa Claus,

you hold me.

Some­times I’m scared. Other times,

I think of you,

          Santa Claus.

I think of your rosy cheeks, your cheap dates,

your fun­da­men­tal

          rules,

your Some­times Unders.

---

ALISHA ADAMS

Danc­ing with the Stars

Michael Scott

Nancy Botwin

What a relief it is

What a relief it is
only about as sad as cut glass,
chis­eled mag­netic blades
fine-guided over a hard pond—
our feet.
seen this before.
arcs redou­bling softly,
whole sea­sons in that
nec­es­sary beat.
plop plop
always start at cur­tains
and widen;
a back­wards dance you can
all do at home.
only as sad as you find rep­e­ti­tion
sad. then what was before radio?
who saw it com­ing, fizz fizz,
the plural of wave;
a series of end­ings made by seek­ing
every point on the cir­cum­fer­ence.
great dis­cov­er­ies in com­pas­sion
have been made this way, under the law:
pre­scrib­ing an accent; not nam­ing the main char­ac­ter;
the con­ven­tion of alarm radios; the threat
of a walk on role; and oh! the flash­back.
in the intro to Big Love the wives
skate back­wards,
feet turned out, a cir­cle in the ice
behind unfixed cur­tains – thin
whipped veils — and finally join
          whad­dare­lief iddis
at dinner.

---

CHASE GREBB

Con­di­tions

brain­dead
&
dumbstruck

life­less
&
and excited

get­ting bet­ter
&
and worse and worse

do you think that this is going to change with your pres­ence?
with your money?
with your love?

the answer is yes.

god­damnit,
Yes.