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Chuang Tzu

Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly; he didn't know he was Chuang Tzu.

He awoke and he was Chuang Tzu. However, he didn't know if he was ChuangTzu who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu.



Chuang Tzu also said:
"The bait is the means to get the fish where you want it, catch the fish and you forget the bait. The snare is the means to get the rabbit where you want it, catch the rabbit and you forget the snare. Words are the means to get the idea where you want it, catch on to the idea and you forget about the words. Where shall I find a man who forgets about words, and have a word with him?"



Benny Pristine wrote in his blog:
"Now its my turn.
I have realized that I am a fictitious character. An illusion. I am not a "doer". Somebody else..."my" source...is doing through me. So I guess I am that source in some way. I would like to hear from you Mr. Source. I seem to "exist" right now on the internet. My email address is: bennypristine@yahoo.com. Fill me in you bastard."

Buddha At The Rio

SATORI



TANGO

Here's an excerpt from the last chapter of SATORI TANGO...

Benny's suite in the Palazzo Tower of the Rio has been decorated for a grand occasion. Musicians have been flown in from Buenos Aires. All are present. Benny, Moondog, Quantum Coyote, Rosebud Peru, Julio the driver, Zeno Murray, Crysta Bella, The Rev. Dona Juanita Medusa and the professor, Dixie Evans and Charlie, The Buddha impersonator, the Alan Watts impersonator, several Elvis impersonators, Orson Welles, the Client's casino host, a small army of tuxedo clad waiters, showgirls, dealers, Cirque du Soleil performers, celebrities, etc. In short, a vast and strange collection of "Characters".

A female voice with a slight French accent (The Client?) is heard briefly above the buzz of the crowd.

"In certain dances and especially in Tango, the appearance of two dancers is only an illusion - the two are not two, but a sensuous, perpetually moving, changing One - inseparable and outside of time…never stopping…. "

At midnight the orchestra begins a Tango. Penetrating and seductive. The crowd goes silent. All turn in unison - entrained, like a leaderless flock of birds - with one mind. The entire group dances extravagantly, with one motion, in pairs, but all gliding and swaying in such synchrony and rapture that the effect is one of unnatural creepiness as well as utter beauty - simultaneously frightening and exquisite.

This continues until dawn and on into the next day….

At Mandalay Bay?

Another document found by Crysta Bella in Benny's apartment after his "disappearance":

The following ideas are paraphrased from:
FINITE AND INFINITE GAMES - A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
by James P. Carse

There are at least two kinds of games: finite and infinite.

A finite game is a game that has fixed rules and boundaries, that is played for the purpose of winning and thereby ending the game.



An infinite game has no fixed rules or boundaries. In an infinite game you play with the boundaries and the purpose is to continue the game.

Finite players are serious; infinite games are playful.

Finite players try to control the game, predict everything that will happen, and set the outcome in advance. They are serious and determined about getting that outcome. They try to fix the future based on the past.



Infinite players enjoy being surprised. Continuously running into something one didn't know will ensure that the game will go on. The meaning of the past changes depending on what happens in the future.

All finite games have rules. If you follow the rules you are playing the game. If you don't follow the rules you aren't playing. If you move the pieces in different ways in chess, you are no longer playing chess.

There is no rule that says you have to follow the rules.

Infinite players play with rules and boundaries. They include them as part of their playing. They aren't taking them seriously, and they can never be trapped by them, because they use rules and boundaries to play with.

In a theatrical play the actor knows that he really isn't Hamlet. The audience knows that he really isn't Hamlet. But if he does a good job, Hamlet can express himself through the actor. The playing is most enjoyable when it is both clear that it is chosen play, that it is the actor doing it voluntarily, and at the same time it is so convincing, following the rules well enough that it seems real.

You can play finite games within an infinite game. You can not play infinite games within a finite game.

You can do what you do seriously, because you must do it, because you must survive to the end, and you are afraid of dying and other consequences. Or, you can do everything you do playfully, always knowing you have a choice, having no need to survive the way you are, allowing every element of the play to transform you, taking pleasure in every surprise you meet. Those are the differences between finite and infinite players.

Benny And The Rat Pack

Here's a little background on Benny Pristine from the novella...

"In the early sixties a very young Benny went to Vegas and created a lounge act...stand-up and some singing, met Sinatra and the Rat Pack and started running “errands” and doing a bit of extracurricular snooping for the boys and, at times, their shady friends. Things got too hot for Benny in Vegas and in the mid-sixties he decided to get away to someplace “quiet”...San Francisco.



"He quit show business and opened a detective agency first in Sausalito then North Beach. Although Benny made a lot of money and became famous, his family thought he was a sell-out and a failure. Never able to stay off the stage completely, one of Benny's favorite places to relax was his best friend, Bob “The Voice” Ono’s Karaoke lounge and “hostess” bar in Japantown where insiders could catch him doing his old Vegas act for a few friends on off nights.
At some point in this section of the show we will be taken on a small walking tour of Benny's old haunts...the vacant lot where his Victorian office building used to be, a boarded-up North Beach bar that he and Bob “The Voice” once owned, Enrico's sidewalk café, etc.

The last line of this section, spoken emphatically by one of the people being interviewed, is, “On New Year’s Eve of 1979 Benny Pristine just vanished...gone! Benny Houdini we used to call him...sure do wonder where he is now..."

"Benny turned up of course…several years later. What happened during those years I guess nobody will ever know. Events involving Benny that occurred during the weeks after he re-emerged wound up being tabloid fodder too, but that's another story. He did reconnect with Crysta Bella, a flamboyant psychic and interior designer, after standing her up at the Hooker's ball."

HALLOWEEN CACOPHONY

On Halloween this year, as every year, Benny Pristine is staging a preposterous costume party which will include the usual suspects from the novella…Crysta Bella, Moondog, Quantum Coyote, Rosebud Peru, Dona Juanita Medusa and the Professor, Zeno Murray, Dixie Evans and Charlie plus Leon Shakes, Sir Real and a host of other North Beach denizens…and…the Druid Heights chapter of the CACOPHONY SOCIETY , who describe themselves as "Dada clowns rewiring the circuits of the community".



You may recall Cacophony Society events from the recent past…e.g. 50 members, all in full Santa Claus drag crowding onto a city bus on Christmas Eve, riding to the top of Nob Hill and joining 100 other of their members, also Santa-clad, in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel to sing bawdy carols to the guests. Benny and company were proud participants in that event.

This Halloween Benny is having the group, who usually dress like refugees from a traveling circus, dress in straight business clothes as "costumes" and descend upon an accountants conclave opening reception which is housed at another of the city's major hotels. They intend their presence and conversation to have the effect of bad acid dropped into the punch.

Sir Real & Leon Shakes At The Mabuhay

During the days of Punk in North Beach in the late 70s and early 80s Leon Shakes and an artist/musician known as Sir Real were partners in high weirdness, music promotion and various other forms of Dada instigation.



When Sir Real performed he looked and sounded like a punked out, electrified, violin playing Bob Dylan on acid. He was a hit.
In those days, Leon also worked as a barker at the strip joints along Broadway near the Mabuhay. Leon was always able to attract a crowd. He imitated the voice and manner of premier barker George the Arab, whose gravelly carney spiel rang from block to block up and down the street. Leon was one of Benny Pristine's street sources...crazy as a loon and stoned to the bone, but not missing a thing that happened on the street.

Johnny Depp, Keith Richards & Leon Shakes

Back in the day Leon Shakes used to dress as a pirate and haunt the bars of North Beach at all hours of the day and night. He claimed that his alter ego, Alfred Jarry, was with him on these drinking bouts, in full regalia...cyclist's uniform and top hat. These days Shakes and Jarry are joined...they claim...when taking the waters at Gino & Carlo's or the Northstar...by Capt. Jack Sparrow and his inimitable father.



One thing is certain...Leon Shakes, like Jarry before him, drinks for four, whether all are visible or not.

Temporary Autonomous Zones

One of the documents found in Benny Pristine's apartment by Crysta Bella after he disappeared.

Fragments from THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE (TAZ)
By Hakim Bey
...this time however I come as the victorious Dionysus, who will turn the world into a holiday...not that I have much time...
Nietzsche (from his last "insane" letter to Cosima Wagner)

Pirate Utopias
THE SEA-ROVERS AND CORSAIRS of the 18th century created an "information network" that spanned the globe: primitive and devoted primarily to grim business, the net nevertheless functioned admirably.

Scattered throughout the net were islands, remote hideouts where ships could be watered and provisioned, booty traded for luxuries and necessities. Some of these islands supported "intentional communities," whole mini-societies living consciously outside the law and determined to keep it up, even if only for a short but merry life...to express their genius for creating living myth.

The first step is somewhat akin to satori...the realization that the TAZ begins with a simple act of recognition.

The TAZ as festival. Stephen Pearl Andrews once offered, as an image of creatively authentic society, the dinner party, in which all structure of authority dissolves in conviviality and celebration.

Vital in shaping TAZ reality is the concept of psychic nomadism (or as we jokingly call it, "rootless cosmopolitanism"). The drift.

The TAZ desires above all to avoid mediation, to experience its existence as immediate. The very essence of the affair is "breast-to-breast" as the sufis say, or face-to-face. But, BUT: the very essence of the Web is mediation. Machines here are our ambassadors--the flesh is irrelevant except as a terminal, with all the sinister connotations of the term.

Charlie Parker, Timothy Leary, Miles, etc.

If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.
- Charlie Parker

You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind.
- Timothy Leary



Don't play what's there, play what's not there.
- Miles Davis

We are the hurdles we leap to be ourselves.
- Michael McClure

I hate and renounce as a coward every being who consents to live without first having re-created himself.
- Antonin Artaud

Adventure without risk is Disneyland.
- Douglas Coupland

ALWAYS ASTONISHED

Another mystifying book and author. Fernando Pessoa had all of the personas he inhabited write their own poetry and prose "in character". The works are all very different from each other. So here we have claims of a group of imaginal characters creating real work. I wonder...impertinently...if Pessoa's former lodgings are now haunted, how many ghosts are there? Also, imaginal rather than imaginary or fictitious seems to apply better here...and maybe in general when discussing personas, made up or not.



ALWAYS ASTONISHED: Selected Prose by Fernando Pessoa

An excellent introduction to this esteemed Portuguese poet's work, including his influential essay, "On Shakespeare." Pessoa is of special interest in the authorship debate because his fame is linked to the "heteronyms" (Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Alvaro de Campos) under which he also wrote and published. He has described "heteronyms" not merely as "pseudonyms," but as other characters/personalities that live inside him. "After looking for him in the poems, we search for him in the prose. The pursuit of the Other in Pessoa's work is never-ending," writes Edwin Honig (the translator and editor of Always Astonished) in his Introduction. In Always Astonished Pessoa and his several selves (Caeiro, Reis and de Campos) discuss one another's work, revealing how Portuguese modernism was shaped. "To pretend is to know oneself," Pessoa once wrote.

ALWAYS ASTONISHED is is published by and available from City Lights.

NAPOLEON SHAKESPEARE

For your amusement and, hopefully edification and enlightenment, I present to you the character of Napoleon Shakespeare, known to his close friends and confidants as, simply, Leon Shakes. Leon Shakes has been a North Beach, and Druid Heights, fixture for decades and is part of the Moondog, Quantum Coyote, Benny Pristine, Crysta Bella inner circle. Indeed, Leon is a WOW! Initiate and was in attendance when QC and Moondog took their fateful leap.(Satori Tango, Chapters 6-10).



Leon Shakes believes himself to be the reincarnation of Alfred Jarry, claims to constantly channel Jarry and, like Jarry, has succeeded in turning himself into a work of art…a fictive character of his own creation.



As Mark Sanders in an article in The Idler
states:
"Resulting from personal theories on Pataphysics, which Jarry used as both an onieric and rhetorical philosophy, his life became a hyperbolic version of existence: at once a deformation and an exaggeration of reality. “Action and Life…” howled Jarry, “are more beautiful than Thought. Thus, let us Live and by so doing we shall be Masters.” His outlook on life was calculated to distort accepted “reality” and thereby trigger catastrophic changes, creating imaginary hypotheses that could replace the known or the probable. As such, each person was the master of his own contradictions. It was only by virtue of his will power that the individual could directly transform his environment away from the rational confines of bourgeois culture and so escape the suburbia of the soul."

We will return to the doings of Leon Shakes in due time. His introduction into the mix always gives the stew an outlandish tang.

CINEMORPHICS

One of the documents turned up in Benny Pristine's apartment following his "disappearance" was entitled Cinemorphics which has to do with the apparent (sometimes) meshing of fiction and "reality", and the malleability and shiftiness of the ego. This document, obviously, had a significant effect on Benny's realization regarding his own status in reality later in the story.

TABLOID HAIKU

Dona Juanita Medusa, one of the characters in SATORI TANGO, came up with the idea of composing what she calls "Tabloid Haiku" - haiku in traditional form inspired by tabloid headlines - as a way of passing the time on a long road trip. I offer some of these Tabloid Haiku below:

Fat-sucking vampires
claim two hundred and fifty
nine lives in Lima.

Cannibal chief eats
mail order brides in New Guinea.
Cops launch man-hunt.


Fisherman uses
Barbie Doll as bass lure. “Drives
the big ones crazy.”


Sexually pawed
by a love-crazed smelly Big-foot.
Chased, kissed and stripped.


Man knocks himself out with boomerang.
Sues himself.
Wins three hundred k.


Lobster pinches wide-eyed
socialite’s boob in ritzy
Paris bistro.

Cincinnati corpse
bursts into flames and burns
antique hearse in strange blaze.


Weirdo breaks into
gal’s apartments to brush their
teeth. Complaints increase.


Woman burned to a
crisp in hair spray tragedy. Wichita
cops shocked.


Man posing as
alien conned gals into free
trip to home planet.


Couple mangled when
penile implant explodes during sex.
Wedding night.

FORTEAN PATAPHYSICS

Hieronymous P. Moondog, good friend and adivsor to Benny Pristine, and a character who figures prominently in SATORI TANGO, often refers to himself as a "Fortean Pataphysicist", having made a close study of the works of Alfred Jarry and Charles Fort and claiming that they were actually strange twins. The references below briefly summarize the approach of these two often overlooked pioneers in the history of science. More about H.P. Moondog's elaboration on their work and how it relates to SATORI TANGO later.

ALFRED JARRY

Alfred Jarry (September 8, 1873 – November 1, 1907) was a French writer, provocateur, pre-surrealist born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side.

Jarry invented PATAPHYSICS, which he defined as follows:

"Pataphysics, whose etymological spelling should be epi (meta) ta physika and actual orthography 'pataphysics, preceded by an apostrophe so as to avoid a simple pun (patte… physique), is the science of that which is superinduced upon metaphysics, where within or beyond the latter's limitations, extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond physics. Ex: an epiphenomenon being often accidental, pataphysics will be, above all, the science of the particular, despite the common opinion that the only science is that of the general."

According to Jarry, Pataphysics is the science of exceptions, and explains the universe beyond this one, or imagined to lie beyond this one, dealing entirely with accidental data comprising no "rule." Jarry's exact definition of pataphysics is: "The science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments."

Jarry proposes, for instance, that we should think of a vacuum as a "unit of non-density" rising outward, rather than of an object falling to the center. He observes that the shape of a watch is not any more round that it is rectangular (in profile). This is obviously typical 19th Century "objectivism" carried to an absurd extreme.

http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/PATAPHYSICS/id/193071



CHARLES FORT

Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 - May 3, 1932), writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena, was the son of an Albany, New York grocer of Dutch ancestry. According to some sources he was born on August 9.

Over and over again, Fort rams home a few basic points that are frequently forgotten in discussions of 'what is science': the boundaries between science and psuedo-science are 'fuzzy' not binary, these boundaries change over time, and there is a strong sociological influence on what is considered 'acceptable' or 'damned'. He also points out that whereas facts are objective, how facts are interpreted depends on who is doing the interpreting and in what context. These are viewpoints that would not be widely accepted until the early 21st century.

There are many phenomena in Fort's works which have now been partially or entirely "recuperated" by mainstream science, but many of Fort's ideas are on the very borderlines of science, or beyond, in the fields of paranormalism and the bizarre. Fort resolutely refused to abandon the territory between science and the absurd. Among Fort's contributions to the thought of the Twentieth Century was the invention of the word "teleportation" to denote the strange disappearances and appearances of anomalies, which tongue-in-cheek, he suggested may be connected. He also is perhaps the first person to explain strange human teleportations by the hypothesis of alien abduction.

Many consider it odd that Fort, a man so skeptical and so willing to question the pronouncements of the scientific mainstream, would be so eager to take old stories--for example, stories about rains of fish falling from the sky--at face value. Yet this is not the case: Fort remarked 'I offer the data. Suit yourself.' The theories and conclusions Fort presented allegedly came from the same sources as those of what Fort called 'the orthodox conventionality of Science': it did not matter to Fort whether his data and theories were accurate: his point was that alternative conclusions and world-views can be made from the data than those which Fort called 'orthodox,' and that the conventional explanations of Science are only one of a range of explanations, none more justified than another. In this respect, he was ahead of his time. In The Book of the Damned he showed the influence of societal values and what would now be called a 'paradigm' on what scientists consider to be 'true': this prefigured work by Thomas Kuhn years later. In a similar way the anarchic 'anything goes' approach to science of Paul Feyerabend is similar to Fort's.

Fort's great contribution is to the humour of science, for although many of the phenomena which science rejected in his day have since been proven to be objective phenomena, and although Fort was prescient in his collection and preservation of these data despite the scorn they received from his contemporaries, Fort was more of a parodist and a humorist than a scientist.

http://definition-info.com/Forteana.html

SHAKESPEARE SLAIN BY PISSED OFF CHARACTERS!

From: The New York Times, Sunday, October 9, 2005
"Shakespeare's Haunted Pier"
(Oct. 29 through 31 at Pier 25, off Moore Street)
The Gimmick: With the help of Chashama and Manhattan Youth, the Faux-Real Theater Company has created a text out of a dozen or so Shakespeare plays, in which murdered characters rise up to slay the author. The show's creator, Mark Greenfield, said his goal was "to blend Coney Island with the Globe Theater."

COPIES AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE

A small number of copies of the first limited edition of SATORI TANGO are now available for purchase. These copies are numbered (this edition is limited to 100), signed by the author and autographed by "Benny Pristine". These are 8.5"x11" format, are illustrated and are priced at $25.00 each. For more information please contact: satoritango@yahoo.com

JED McKENNA and DON JUAN MATEUS

I think that it has been established that both "Jed McKenna" and "Don Juan Mateus" are fictitious characters, or fictive characters (Daniel Noel's term for Don Juan). This condition in no way diminishes either character's power or effectiveness.

Hence, maybe the lesson from the "real" writers of the books by McKenna and Castaneda (who attempted to fictionalize or de-materialize himself throughout his "life") is that in order to wake up one must realize that one is a legend only in one's own mind. (Maybe not so much so in Castaneda's case...). "86" thyself! Don't identify the character with the actor. And...don't fall for your own bullshit...

WHAT THIS BLOG IS ABOUT 2

This blog contains thoughts on and in some ways is a continuation of the illustrated novella "Satori Tango, A Benny Pristine Mystery" which was published in a limited signed and numbered edition about a month ago.

Old school San Francisco private eye Benny Pristine has been hired by a secretive and powerful femme fatale to find the meaning of life or else.

The story follows Benny and his pals, Hieronymous Moondog, Crysta Bella, Quantum Coyote and Rosebud Peru, among others, as they hack and meander their way through the metaphysical jungles and swamps of San Francisco and Las Vegas.

For more info email: satoritango@yahoo.com

A READER'S THOUGHTS

I got this e-mail earlier today.

"I found a copy of your book, SATORI TANGO, on a bench in Washington Square Park. It was kind of soggy. I guess somebody forgot it the night before.

I was able to read it though. Pretty good. It’s the first detective story I’ve seen where the detective is hired to find the meaning of life. I’m not sure I liked what happened. I liked it though when Benny realized that he was a fictitious character and sent an email to you. Did he get enlightened? It that what this means? Very mysterious! I guess that’s what you’re going for. I wish you luck with the book. I’m going to leave it where I found it. M."

If "you" realize that "you" are a fictitious character as Benny did...that your persona is vaporous...what effect does this have?

THE DETECTIVE WITH NO NAME

The Detective With No Name had this strange quality about him. It was like you could never see all of him at once. Parts of him, which seemed to flicker and change as he moved, were lost in some kind of "blind spot", as if some part of him constantly was moving in and out of an extra dimension invisible to me. He breathed laboriously and drank deeply from a large, tropical-looking cocktail.

"So your guy Benny got himself hired to find the meaning of life huh?", says the Detective With No Name. "Something like that happened to me one time. This socalite asshole, who I was having a money problem with, says to me that if I'm such a hot shot investigator why don't I go out and find God and bring him back the evidence and then he'll pay me. So I pulled out my gun and stuck it in his mouth and said that maybe I should blow his brains out and he could find out about the God and life after death thing first hand. He got religion.

You should get your boy Benny to ask this client of his if she has questions about the 'meaning of life' when she's getting some real good head or after a big hit of some great dope or even a delicious piece of pie for that matter. Good luck kiddo...see you in the funny papers."

The Detective With No Name wandered off. Juan Bob said it was time for us to go.

STARTING AT THE LI PO BAR

The Li Po bar on Grant Ave., Chinatown, San Francisco still has the atmosphere of strangeness and intrigue associated with that quarter of the city at certain times in its history. I once went to a BLADE RUNNER party there. The setting fit the subject matter perfectly.

Juan "Bob" Chan asked that I meet him at Li Po at midnight the other night...he had agreed to show me a portal into the Chinatown (and Druid Heights) underworld. He showed up drunk and late but he insisted on being my guide anyway. I am sworn to secrecy as to the alley, and subsequently, the building we entered. Both were "guarded" by "guards" one would never suspect of providing security. He insisted, however, that these guards were more than capable of performing this service.

Inside the building, we walked down several flights of stairs, the into a huge (I think) pitch black room. I was led across the room and through a series of doors. Finally, we emerged into what seemed like a hanger sized mall of mystery and corruption. I felt like I had been transported into a living movie about Shanghai in the 30s.

The fictitious version of this place that I have been creating for the setting of a Benny Pristine mystery pales in the face of what I saw and experienced that night. As expected there were opium parlors, casinos, bars and brothels. Also, among other things, there were betting rooms which featured animal fights and human fights to the death. This used to be common in Asia (and may still be...underground) but has "officially" fallen from favor. Live sex shows of every kind abounded.

Juan Bob's purpose for bringing me here was to introduce to a "real" San Francisco private eye. "Benny Pristine nothing...you got to meet this guy! I take you if you keep mouth shut!" So much for that. Of course, I am changing things around enough so that no place nor anybody is in any real danger of being exposed by any of this. A version of this apparently did happen, however. Anyway, that night Juan introduced me to the "Detective With No Name". This guy reminded me of Orson Welles in "Touch Of Evil"...same overweight, unshaven, dirty white suit, straw hat, I've seen it all more than twice look. He talked...I listened...

More later.

STRANGE CATS

This blog talks about some strange cats...among other things,

ANDY WARHOL

I am sure that I am not the first to make the observation that Andy Warhol would have loved the internet in general and blogs in particular. He predicted that in the future everybody would be famous for 15 minutes. What about being able to instantly publish your diary and photo album to a worldwide audience with the click of a mouse. Put yourself out there! The slick graphics make everybody look immediately "official". And with a little more effort everybody can make and publish their own music and movies too. Everybody can expose themselves...every minute of their mundane existence...via webcam...if they wish. Talk about long, boring movies with not much happening. Be your own star right now! Right up Andy's alley. Of course, if everybody's on stage who is left to watch? Godard said that for a film to exist it needed an audience. He did not say "potential" audience.

PLUMPJACK, JAMES BOND and ELVIS

More wonderings on the ontological status of fictitious characters.

Take Sir John Falstaff for instance. This Shakespearean invention seems to have taken on a life of his own...turning up in other plays after Shakespeare"s death. The character would not be silenced! How does the status of such a character compare to say the status of a ghost, supposedly the residue of a "real" person/persona? Most ghosts which persist are the stuff of story, legend and sometimes myth. They have been "storified" and "characterized" in much the same way that a character in a play has been written and then performed. Only in reverse. The theatrical character is written first and then acted out. The "real" person usually acts first. These actions then become a part of the person's biography...personal history...and then ghosthood.

I wonder if anyone has ever reported a ghostly haunting by Plumpjack. Could there be? If the story were told...and believed...that Jack Falstaff was based on a real person...could he then be allowed to haunt his favorite tavern? Of course, the question of a soul will be brought up by some. What is a ghost made of anyway? Maybe only memory. Perhaps the cry should go out across the land, "Free the ghost of Plumpjack Falstaff!" On the other hand, maybe this is all nonsense.

What about James Bond? Elvis, of course, does not have a problem...

BOB DYLAN

Saw the first half of "No Direction Home" last night. I confirmed what we already probably knew. "Bob Dylan" is a trickster, shape-shifter actor-shaman. Dave Van Ronk, Liam Clancey and others said as much. "It was not necessary for him to be a particular person. You can go anywhere when you're somebody else." He seems to make him self up as he goes along, constantly re-writing his personal history as he did in the beginning of his career in NYC. I guess a lot of performers do this. They understand, far more than most, that "ordinary life" itself is a performance. I mention this here because this is one of the main things SATORI TANGO is about.

DADA DISTRIBUTION

I need to go to Zurich. I haven't been there in over 20 years. I have always identified with Dada.

The Dada movement was founded in Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire on Feb. 5, 1916.
As S.S. Fair states in "Gaga for Dada": "Dada and its guerilla theatrics tweaked the snouts of Europe's sacred cows, generating so much provocation and intrigue that it instantly permeated every aspect of modern art." (see www.cabaretvoltaire.ch)
Cabaret Voltaire, rescued from the developer's wrecking ball by the chief executive of Swatch, has been restored and opened to the public as a living monument to all things Dada.

More about Dada, Surrealism and their precursors (e.g. Alfred Jarry's pataphysics) later.

One distribution strategy for SATORI TANGO...inspired by Dadaist, Situationist strategies...guerilla marketing and distribution...of Limited Edition only (along with giving copies to friends)...prior to more conventional approaches...there can be no attachment to results...below are some practitioners...to get a whiff of the aroma of rare "lost objects"...

Sunday, September 25, 2005 NY Times, Arts and Leisure section.
SHOPGIFTING
A conceptual artist’s retail strategy: buy clothes, return art.
Zoe Sheehan Saldana buys items of clothing at Wal Mart, creates her own handmade versions of them, replaces the original labels and price tags then smuggles them back into the store to be bought by the ordinary customer.
Ms. Sheehan Saldana, a West Village artist and Baruch College art professor, is a shop-dropper. Shop-dropping, also known as "reverse shoplifting", involves the addition of hand-made imitations of generic merchandise to a store’s stock. It is a nascent artistic phenomenon with a nationwide network of devotees.

www.queasylistening.com
"Lost Objects" is our attempt to provide that chance encounter: it is the logical, desparate and dadaistic endpoint of our angst - the apotheosis of our disdain for the record business - conceptually, a "Lost Object" is the aesthetic isomer of the "Found Object". "Lost Objects", initially anyway, are original recordings by artists on the Queasy Listening label that are to be tactically secreted at various symbolic locations, it is envisaged, both in the UK and abroad. Each discarded recording will be professionally produced and packaged, but distributed in very limited editions. Each release will be itemised in our catalogue for the intrepid butterfly collector, but unavailable for mass-consumption. In all likelihood, the recipient of that object will have no knowledge of it's origin or intention. These recordings may even be camouflaged by an innocous veneer, all the more to entice an unwitting 'victim' to touch it's poisonous tendrils...

www.droplift.org
But what about someone who sneaks into a record store and leaves a CD behind? Droplifting, a trend that began in Chicago, is the opposite of shoplifting: sonic collagists, hounded by what they consider unfair copyright laws, are now stealthily placing their own CDs in stores next to titles by Madonna and 'N Sync, hoping to subvert the established avenues of music distribution. They may not cause a revolution, and they certainly won't make any money off it. But they are chipping away at archaic laws and frustrating the cupidity of the record business.

"The recording industry pursues a legal stranglehold on work which is essentially done by marginal artists and crackpots," says Tim Maloney, aka Naked Rabbit, a Los Angeles collagist and the person responsible for coordinating the Droplift Project. "There is a one-way communication, in which we are all overloaded with stimulus from the corporate owners of culture but are unable to talk back to it in any meaningful way. It's not just frustrating for those who want to talk back at it, it's bad for our culture."

The Droplift Project isn't the first to utilize guerilla distribution tactics. According to Richard Holland, one of the leaders of the project, he and his band, Institute for Sonic Ponderance, secretly placed their CDs at Tower Records, Best Buy, and the Quaker Goes Deaf. The Droplift Project has expanded the scheme; its recent self-titled release was limited to a pressing of 1,000 copies, but through droplifting, underground radio, and the project's Web site (www.droplift.org), its music has spread ac
ross the U.S. and Europe.

www.ztrainmusic.com
Z Train Productions
Every Tuesday night, I’d go to some corner market with a Xerox machine and crank out 200 photocopies of each comic. There were a lot of black spaces on my comics, and the proprietors would scowl because I used up all their toner.

Every Wednesday morning, I’d walk up and down Haight Street and insert the latest Funny Water in the back page of new issues of The Guardian and SF Weekly. After a few weeks, store owners and patrons recognized me as the Funny Water kid. At that point, any recognition felt good.

One day, I received a letter from an Oregon cult, who picked up a Funny Water from the sidewalk during their weekend trip to the historic Haight. They enclosed a dollar and requested other issues. I sent them the motherlode but never heard back.

And so it goes...

DON MORANO

On Saturday I had a long and enjoyable phone conversation with philosopher, attorney, and friend Don Morano in Chicago re SATORI TANGO. I had sent him a copy and value his opinion greatly so I had been anxious to hear what he thought. He said, among other things, that it brought to mind Luigi Pirandello ("Six Characters In Search Of An Author") and Lewis Carroll. He also said that he had read it in one sitting (which is recommended) and that its non-linear, layered structure (palimpsest) allowed him to "take a trip" for a couple of hours away from his ordinary, linear reality...and that the trip was a stimulating and pleasant one. His comments were very encouraging. He also thought that I should try to get it into stores by Christmas in its present large format, signed and numbered form.
(Morano's assignment in a philosophical ideas in literature course, in which I was a student, some forty years ago: Write a essay on the ontological status of the characters in Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters In Search Of An Author", provided one starting place for SATORI TANGO. Alan Watts provided another.)

CHINATOWN TUNNELS

This is from Dr. Weirde on SFGate.com and gives you some idea of the strangeness surrounding the whole thing.
I guote:

C h i n a t o w n :
An Underground Labyrinth?

Throughout the 19th century, rumor had it that a byzantine labyrinth of tunnels had been constructed beneath the streets of Chinatown. The tunnels supposedly allowed "oriental gangsters" and other sinister types to mysteriously vanish whenever cops kicked in the door to one of their opium dens or slave-girl pens. Various witnesses claimed to have actually passed through these tunnels, and the police and city authorities were convinced that the tunnels existed. But when Chinatown burned down in the Great Fire of 1906, no tunnels were found amidst the ruins. What happened to the tunnels?

Most historians have concluded that the Chinatown tunnels were a myth. But other, weirder theories have been proposed. One has it that since the tunnels could only be entered through trap-door stones in the floors of basements, the evidence of their existence was buried beneath the rubble after the earthquake and fire. An even weirder theory claims that the tunnels never physically existed, but were locations where magickal adepts could be "channeled" or teleported from one spot to another. The occultists who have proposed this notion claim that the witnesses who have traveled in the tunnels were actually led by Chinese magicians into holes beneath various buildings, where quartz crystals and copper conductors -the lodestones of Chinese spiritual alchemy- were used to focus the operator's psychic energy to the point where teleportation could occur.

DRUID HEIGHTS

DRUID HEIGHTS

Benny Pristine and his friends and associates live and work in the Druid Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. You won't find Druid Heights on the tourist maps. The Druid Heights District, as it was originally called, was created during the gold rush (late 1840s) and became an increasingly "interesting", exclusive and carefully guarded section of the city. (It should not be confused with the Druid Heights colony formed one hundred years later by Elsa Gidlow on Mt. Tamalpias in Marin County, which later became the location of Alan Watts' legendary circular house.)

The original Druid Heights District included (and still includes) streets, alleys and narrow walkways which are now in the Chinatown, North Beach, Nob Hill and Russian Hill neighborhoods of San Francisco. Additionally, Druids Heights is riddled with tunnels, still usable, which served a variety of purposes in gold rush days. The whereabouts of these tunnels is a closely guarded secret among those who still identify Druid Heights as their place of residence. This, of course, includes Benny, Moondog, Quantum Coyote, Crysta Bella and Zeno Murray.

Druid Heights also houses a number of subterranean bars, brothels and casinos which have been in operation since they opened in 1849. The urban legend about an underground Chinatown is actually referring largely to the Druid Heights "street" system, although it was enlarged by the Chinese of the day for their own purposes.

Druid Heights itself, as we shall see, is an important "character" in the Benny Pristine Mysteries as they unfold following the Satori Tango adventure.

WHAT THIS BLOG IS ABOUT

Satori Tango is the name of an illustrated novella which I am publishing in a limited, signed and numbered edition. The novella continues to follow the exploits of old school San Francisco private detective Benny Pristine. The first Benny Pristine Mystery was chronicled in the independent feature "American Eyeball" which had film festival play in 2001. In Satori Tango, Benny becomes entangled in "the wierdest case of my career." He is hired by an extremely wealthy and extremely eccentric woman to find the meaning of life, which seems to be missing...or else.

This blog will expose bits of the story...which continues after the novella "ends", readers' comments and criticisms, and the progress of the novella's distribution.

Comments are welcome and may be made either via this blog or directly to:

satoritango@yahoo.com

Charles Webb