I returned to Hays on the 24th of Janurary. I hadn’t planned on seeing Hays for at least a year, maybe never again…I didn’t have any idea. I returned in one month’s time. I had found out, a few days before, that my ex-roommate and bandmate, Brett Zamrzla (aka the Swedish Fortress) was killed when his car went off the road and into a tree.

 This is not what this letter is about.

On Friday I attended Brett’s funeral in Lindsborg, Kansas and was joined by many, many friends. I fucking hate funerals. They never remember the person for who they ACTUALLY were. My experience with these rituals can be summed up in a series of denials told by family and friends who did not want to speak about the awful or beautiful truths of their loved one recently deceased. The music is horrid, the church filled with pain, and stuffiness. So we drove to Lindsborg,and I was sitting in the back of “Black Shadow” sweating like a nervous wreck due to the fear that Brett was going to be the next unresolved spirit, remembered in a distorted fashion. I was relieved to find his final departure beautiful and REAL.We were in a large methodist church, and it was very sunny outside. The light filled the sanctuary with a bright glow that would cause anyone in low spirits to be somewhat cheerful. The music playing before the ceremony was The World Percussion Group; Brett’s drum group, and it saturated the room with an ambience of warmth and mysteriousness. The sermon and rememberances were given in his name, friends talked about him in an honest manner, which was soooooooo refreshing. His favorite death metal band was played for the end of the sermon. I am rushing this because once again:

This is not what this letter is about. 

Brett was creamated and placed inside his djembe, or ceramic handdrum. I had played on this drum many times before and it filled me with joy to find him resting in his most cherished lover. We took him to a plot, in the middle of the country, with a small grove of evergreen trees. He was poured into the earth from his drum; his final resting place. The crowds of people disipated until there were only a handful of us, his close friends, standing over his dirty hole. We mourned in silence as the crisp wind blew into our faces and froze our tears. We gathered back at the church for a dinner and celebration. We had made our amends with Brett and now was time for the lifting of his spirit from our bodies and minds in a celebration of his life. Brett’s cousin Brandon had brought a myriad of percussive instruments for all to play on. Around twenty or so people gathered on a stage; each gathering a drum of some sort. Some had Celtic hand drums, others had African or latin bongos. Brandon chose to play on a cooking skillet with a stick. I was handed Brett’s burial drum, the one I had played on so many times before. I teared up at the touching of his sarcophagus. My fingers ran across the goat skin top and I gave it a hit allowing it to resonate it’s amazing tone. I have never played on a drum that compares with this one, and its dynamic flavor and bold expression. Once we were situated and too anxious to wait around anymore Brandon, like a conductor, or more like a shaman gathering his tribe for connection with the gods, lead us into a rhythmic cycle of hands and feet. I have partaken in drum circles before, and watched many as well, but this was beyond that. This was one of those moments that I live for. It transcended emotion, music and ego. Everyone on that stage came together in one thought, one energy and that energy relayed into the audience–for they soon were banging on their tables with sticks out of exuberance for the moment we were in. No one was playing the drums, no one was thinking about the drums, and no one was accomplishing anything–we were channeling Brett’s spirit effortlessly and we shared one whole creative movement of sound and consciousness. 

I had not felt as alive and in an eternal moment as those thirty minutes of my life melted away. Not only were we playing in rememberance of his life, but the pounding and beating of the drums was a physical and psychic therapy session for all of us. We were freeing his spirit. I understand now the tremendous power of tribal celebration; the root of our existence and the root of our connection with nature and each other. We do not know where the “person” goes when they have died, but eternity can be found in all of us, as proof through our drum circle. Brett lives on eternally in all of us, in everyone he touched or laughed with; in everyone he hurt and discouraged, with everyone he loved and created with. When we exorcized with the drums we expressed that part of us that IS Brett. Each and everyone of us is not a singular entity but an accumlulation of all the people that have played a role in our lives and in that moment we all focused on the part of us that was Brett. We left that afternoon to head back to Hays, all of us smiling and emptied of pain. We may call upon a memory of him and feel loss or pain in the future, but the overwelming remorse of his death was lifted that afternoon as we let him go. 

When I returned back in Chicago, I was listening to one of Krystal’s professors give a talk about her new book and experience living in Spain. She talked about how Spanish men have a very different sense of physical and emotional expression towards each other than Americans. They touch each other all the time and speak bluntly, with no hesitation, as a signal of companionship, love and honesty. She talked about how Amercians do not do this and we “beat around the bush” and avoid contact. I looked back on my friendships in Hays, and my times with Brett and feel so fortunate that I have experienced what these Spanish men act upon effortlessly. Through Brett, we have grown closer together, our love strong and uncompromising. Josh Richards–Thank you for always putting your arm around me and saying you love me. That is what a real man does. And to the rest of you, thank you for sharing with me, and I mean truly sharing with me in your vulnerability, your hurt and confusion, your joy and your deep strangeness. Unlike so many people in the world I can say that I really KNOW my friends to their core.

It’s midnight and one minute. My whole self feels so weird, anxious, tense, surreal….maybe just too much coffee–I can’t tell. I flew out of Chicago this morning to head back to Hays, America so I can graduate from college. It would be lame of me to say that “it seems like only yesterday I began my college career, blah, blah, blah…”

I drove through the country this evening and encountered my first winter storm for the year, fuckin’ a…I listened to three hours of Christian Talk Radio to keep myself awake and angry. I sat down on my bed and felt as though the last week were a dream, a blur in my vision. My apartment was surprisingly clean and dull. The air was calm and quiet to a fault. I want to lay down to sleep (because I am dead exhausted) but I am quivering with animosity; or maybe just complacency. I feel I have began the distancing process of my hometown: Hays. I have a new home, and it is not here. Don’t get me wrong I don’t hate you Hays, we just…are going our separate ways and I feel…like we’ve lost touch with each other. Don’t worry, you’ll find another who will experience you as passionately as I have, with unconditional love and high expectations. You were good to me, even when I hated you. You nurtured me even when I spit on you. You raised me from birth.

My womb: Hadley Hospital

My first memory: pure whiteness. A calm, serene blanket of white envelops my existence, and I feel the presence of people watching me. I am lying in a sterile tent in the hospital with pneumonia, I am only 1.5 years old. 

I remember resting up against a large cottonwood tree by Thomas Moore Prep. The cotton would drift in the breeze like snowflakes and I would catch them in my hands and place them in my father’s palm. He would smile at me. The sun was setting. The sun was always setting when I was a child. This was my second memory…I think. I grew up fast and slow; in happiness and fear. I drew all of the time. I went through notebook after notebook of drawings and “stories” with my pencils. I would cry after a laundry detergent commercial with Snuggle the Bear was over. My dreams haunted with isolation and demons. My home always simple yet bold. Warm yet scary. I swear there were ghosts in the last house my parents raised me in before they left Hays. A women from Zimbabwe went insane in my sister’s bedroom. She came out with her glowing white eyes and her black as night skin starring at me as though possessed by Lucifer himself. She stacked all of my sister’s dolls in the middle of the room, and screamed for hours. I always had a lava lamp on, I didn’t like the dark. My mother would wander the halls at night sleep walking and talking to who the fuck knows. I would sleep in the basement in the summer to keep cool and my brother and I would hear loud banging from upstairs (and the toilet flush) while no one could possibly be up there. I would spend hours playing with a stick in the backyard, writing songs in my head–mostly in a classical format. Every Sunday I was forced out of bed and into a pew. I either slept or would day dream while the sermon was dumped on us. We always had a roast on Sundays, always. I hated Sundays. 
Middle School was a disaster of making out, rainbow suspenders and after school detention. I started smoking at age 11. I loved to make people laugh. I stripped in class for two dimes once. I would hide cheeseburgers in my friends’ lockers. I was overly emotional, full of angst, and probably really annoying to any observer outside of my posse. High School was pointless. I either slept through class or ignored what was going on, but some how managed to get above a 3.0 every year without trying. I was obsessed with skateboarding. It became my life, and my friends’ lives. Every afternoon we would get a snowball from Cerv’s and watch a skate video, followed by hours and hours of rigorous skateboarding and bleeding. We had more fun than I could have ever imagined. We had to deal with the police at least once a week for “stunt skateboarding”. This spawned my total disgust for cops. I never partied, or drank or did drugs in High School, I was in my world and was relatively happy. I fought with my mother quite often about what I would consider petty bullshit. I always said when I was done with high school I was going to move to LA and start a new life. I graduated in confusion and without passion. I was bored and without a vision. 

My family moved to Texas when I was halfway through my freshman year in college. It was weird to see them go; usually the college kid leaves for school, but my family did the exact opposite. By this time I had been engulfed in a drug-induced haze for a year and it only grew from there. I would take whatever I could get my hands on, or whatever was placed in my hands. You name it. I had so many psychedelic experiences that I began to confuse reality with unreality. Don’t get me wrong I had many, mind-blowing experiences which changed my life for the better. It gave me vision and clarity; just not right away. I fell into depression and should have died at least twice. I drank heavily, but who didn’t. Lets just say I had a long-term relationship with a lover by the name of Mary Jane, and she introduced me to all of her fucked up friends. Two years had came and went in a scream of pure insanity, overwhelming bliss, and cold isolation.

I don’t know when exactly it happened but it did. IT HAPPENED. That moment in one’s life when they feel a calling, an epiphany, clarity. Hays, you were so beautiful and new. I began painting vigorously, it was as though I was born to do it. It felt so right. I remember my times with Adam. We would walk the dike in the early afternoon with his dog Marley. We would talk for hours, and it was always rich and spontaneous. We would smoke joints and watch the trees blow in the wind. We were so alive. Summer came and went. I finally went to Hollywood and decided I never wanted to go back. One evening in August I went to a party next door with my friends. I met this cute girl named Krystal. I wasn’t sure if I would ever see her again. She came into where I worked, just by chance the next day. I gave her my phone number on the back of a Mr. Goodcents sandwich card. I called my brother because I felt like “she was it”. I started dating another girl a month later: Krystal was taken. It was an utter disaster. 

(Break)

I had been playing in a band called My Uncle is a Cannibal for a little while now and we had a show at Chuck’s on February 16th, 2006. I saw Krystal gazing at me from across the bar. Her eyes pierced my entire being through the hundreds of people between us. I know now that what Krystal wants, Krystal gets; haha. Long story short, we did what we should have done long before that fateful night. I got arrested for the third time in May on my way home from my brother’s high school graduation in Lubbock, Texas. Fuck Texas, and fuck Oklahoma too. She bailed me out, and I saw her giggling from the other side of the glass while I signed my paperwork with the officer. I asked if they wanted to take pictures with me for fun. They thoughtfully declined. I always smile in my mugshots. Here I am now sitting in my room alone; it’s so cold and quiet in here. November 2007. The last year has been full of happiness and love. Peace of mind. Beautiful experiences, amazing conversation. Awesome friends and creative endeavors. I reunited with an old friend of mine that I grew up with. He is like a brother to me. I played music in two fucking awesome bands and danced my little ass off. I am finally confident, and I no longer loathe myself, but love it instead. I am deeply in love and not the kind that one might see in a movie. My life is so full of deep experiences, but the fact that I chose to disclose these particular ones tonight expresses my existence right now. Such is life–there only is now and these are the moments that I am thinking of RIGHT NOW. I have no regrets, except that I wish I had been more thoughtful. Tonight I shall die and be born anew tomorrow. My yesterdays but a dream, blurry and disorienting, my tomorrows: a velvet underground song. The day I absolutely despised as a child has become my favorite, as with my taste. I am not even close to the person I was growing up, but that is truth itself: I am not any THING. I am not any ONE. I am all the ones I have been and all the ones I have not. I am wrong and I am right. I hate you and I love you. I will miss you Hays. Will I cry for you, I don’t know. Will I long for you, I don’t know. Will I call upon you one day for a conversation, maybe a song from your heart, I don’t know. I know you won’t forget me, because I am you as you are me. I am not pushing you away but setting you free. You are not a town, but 23 years of loss and gain. Consider this a poem to you, Hays. I wish to you all the best, because you have given me your best. Peace. 

THE DECONTRANSREALISM MANIFESTO
–Transconstructionism in Contemporary Art–
By R.W. Ruehlen
——————————————————————————————————

In order for Deconstructive Transrealism to be seriously discussed and accepted as a legitimate movement it must be, well, deconstructed. I have found that the best way to accuately describe something is to describe what it is not, first and formost. This essay will review previous movements that have influenced this movement in both positive and negative ways.
Transrealism was first coined as a term in 1983 by Rudy Rucker who wrote A Transrealist Manifesto (1), to express a new direction in the literary arts. Some of the key factors attributed to his ideas on Transrealism were:

–The Transrealist writes about immediate perceptions in a fantastic way.
–The familiar tools of Science Fiction–time travel, antigravity, alternate worlds, telepathy, etc–are in fact symbolic of archetypal modes of perception.
–The Transrealist artist cannot predict the finished form of his or her work. The Transrealist novel grows organically, like life itself.
–Transrealists believe that a major tool in mass thought-control is the myth of consensus reality. Hand in hand with this myth goes the notion of a “normal person”.
–There are no normal people.
–Breaking down and ignoring “consensus reality” is necessary.

While this literary style has sufficent content to hold its own ground as a legitimate movement today; I will be discussing it as a piece to my artistic puzzle rather than as a sigular movement I want to embark on. Whereas Transrealism uses the tools of Science Fiction, I will be using Transrealism as a tool in its own right. Struggling for a way to express my artistic direction and concepts in a broad and ever-changing way brought me to Transrealism. A major part of this struggle is my objection to pigeon-holing artforms into neat little boxes or categories so they can be discussed in those most contextual of terms. I needed something that was ambiguious, fluid, and could easily evolve over time so I was not trapped in a method, like Cubism. However it also needed to be distinct, clear, and classic so that a unified vision could be expressed as the disorienting winds of life blew about. Transrealism as it has been written on in the past objects against consensus or “normal” reality, which is absolutely essential for an artwork of today to hold any validity. That being said, Transrealism, as it has been, focuses heavily on science fiction, limiting it to the future from this point foward. This aspect of Transrealism makes it hard to address the question of how we got to this point we call “now”. I felt that alternative concepts needed to be opened up, like those of The School of Metarealism and Fantastic Realism. Metarealism displayed the importance of attributing the actuality of a metaphoical or metaphyscial expression. “Meta” means both “through” and “beyond” the reality that we all can see; hence, “metarealism” is the realism of the hyperphysical nature of things (3). The following statement from Mikhail Epstein discusses what Metarealism consists of:
Metarealism is synonymous to metaconscience, which means beyond psychological consciousness, beyond a subjective psychological polarized view of reality. Metarealism seeks to depict the reality which exist beyond that psychological subjective perspective. Metarealism proposes not only to communicate further than the pictorial aspect of the perception of other dimensions of reality, but also the essence of those dimensions and their relation to us as human beings. Metarealism then becomes a tool for the evolution of consciousness; just like in the old days artists painted sacred art to depict their vision of the reality they perceived, through their spiritual interpretation of other dimensions. Metarealism could be considered a sacred art, in that it also tries to depict, through a metaconscious perspective, the essence of reality as perceived by a metaconscious mind. Meta meaning, a holistic view of reality as perceived by a metaconscious mind, who sees reality as a whole rather than from a subjective, personalized, intellectually fragmented point of view. Metarealism is the materialization in pictorial form of the reality of other dimensions and their direct effect, and relation upon us. Metarealism tries to depict the relations between those dimensions of reality and how we psychologically interpret them through our sub-mental symbolism (4).

Metarealism seemed to go hand in hand with Transrealist concepts however each one dealt with a different aspect of reality: Transrealism gravitating towards mental/physical reality and Metarealism towards spiritual/symbolic reality. With both of these conceptual “styles” in mind I still felt that neither one of these movements could do justice in capturing, observing, and creating a transcendent perspective, at least by themselves in today’s plastic world. Metarealism’s concentration on ‘metaconscious mind’ (which is seemingly impossible to fully express through a personal, subjective thing we call art) was too idealistic to be realistic and Transrealism was limited to the future without reviewing the past to a large extent. It needed a new interpretation, it needed to deconstruct our past, our cultures, and our symbols and reinvent them for today’s eyes to clearly observe without the blinders of tradition and normality. Decon-transrealism came about through the need to disorganize the organized and rebuild it; to not just destroy the past and start brand new but comprehend the past and progress with that understanding.
Although hyper-progressive in imagery it detaches itself from the stream-lined aggressiveness of Futurist and Purist tendencies, with their extremity towards absolute destruction, sexism and naive power. Accentuating complexity, variety, vibrancy and obscurity are significant qualities that Deconstructive Transrealism should attempt to illustrate. Although dream-like and intuitive in expression it lacks the arbitrariness of Surrealism and its compulsion towards (Freudian) subconscious analysis. However, one quality that is akin to Surrealism is the importance of presenting an objective reality (i.e. a painting of a landscape) from a subjective concept rather than presenting a subjective interpretation of objective reality. The only definable qualities of this movement are the general deconstruction of reality and a reinvention of it through transcendent metaphor. This is where Metarealism becomes highly influential because it stresses that an actual “thing” or “experience” can only be described through metaphorical terms. The image (or metaphor) is not merely an illusion of reality (like Plato argued) but an actual reality as told from a specific vantage point. These are the only guidelines which others interested in pursuing this approach must consider; one must remember that this is an approach more than a specific style.
The next section I will devote to my personal vision of Decon-transrealism and I will dive into specific stylings, imagery, metaphors and concepts that proclaim my perspective in contemporary society, as well as why the symbols and vocabulary I have chosen represent this unique direction in art. When speaking of Transrealism these are some ways in which I understand the term and how it can envelop many ideas in itself.

(1)Transformation:

Transformation is a very important part of my approach to art. When I discuss a particular piece (or my work in general) I think of transformation as more of a conceptual asset than something I physically do to a work of art. This idea evokes a sort of freshness; a metamorphosis of older ideas or preconceptions through the blossoming of our current zeitgeist. Life is fragile and chaotic but its fundamental qualities persist through the ages. However our perspective of these qualities and how we utilize them and function (with or without them) changes from generation to generation. We must constantly create alternative perceptions if reality is to make sense to us in any rational manner. Being said, rationality is not the way reality expresses itself on so many levels, but this will be addressed later on.
The power to transform what is meant by something such as “God” or “Love” or “Real” is what strengthens art’s foundation and what changes a society’s boundries. There is a saying that goes, “Science is the HOW, Religion is the WHY, and Art is the WHAT”. That statement holds much truth. The statement does not say explicitly what it is refering to. It could be life, the cosmos, meaningfulness, or a sandwich on a red plate. However, each part of the statement refers to the same “thing”. I brought the statement into this essay because in order for science and religion to transform, art must transform, and in order for art to transform science and religion must as well. They are all connected and are searching and creating with the same basic intent. Art that does not transform a viewer’s notion of nature, society, and self while still contemplating our fundamental existence holds little stamina in a hyper-changing “information addicted” world.

(2)Transcendental:

This section will be broad yet to the point. “Transcendental” is one of those words that carries a lot of baggage with it and I really don’t like to use it unless I am being very specific as to “how” I am using it. Transcendental conjours up Eastern Mysticism which many times turns people away instantly because of its confusing ambiguities and “foreignness”. Others hear the word and attach right to it, as though they completely understand its meaning, and do not think about the word in the context of its usage. I am using the word in the most simplistic and broadly understood way. When I say Transrealist art (or contemporary art) must be transcendental I mean that art must go beyond our conceptions of what reality is or isn’t and what life can or can not be. To “trascend” is to be above and independent of a prior state of being. Why is this important? Well first we must establish that art is a valid form of communication. Since artists use a chosen vocabuary of colors, lines, symbols and expressions that can be conveyed from one person to another then it is a language, a very personal language albeit. The importance comes with the fact that the majority of our preconceptions about life are based on language and how language functions in a particular society. To change the language is to change the concept and to change the concept is to change life’s conditions.
An example of how I have expressed transcendance through my art is in a work titled “Harmonious Fields of Consciousness”. When first viewed one may see several individual people present in the composition. However, I am expressing merely “one” self or the idea that one person is not just a sigular entity but a myriad of persons and potential attitudes, beliefs and feelings. We have only “learned” to act out with a sigular, individualized ego which funnels a few specific attributes to the surface leaving behind (infinitely) large amounts of other feelings, beliefs and personality traits. In order for humanity to evolve to a new level (that is not technologically driven) we must unlearn some of these expressions or at least come to grips with their actuality. What I am getting at, in a broader sense, is that art must transcend current constructions of the human condition in order for us to get in touch with a more profound existence. One may believe in one form of god or a specific religious movement that gives them structure, purpose, and happiness. Underneath the veneer habors a deep rooted insecurity about life’s meaning and the truth about one’s personal god (or lack thereof). One may choose to ignore this aspect of themselves but one cannot honestly deny that it exists. The question is: which apsect of “the self” is more true? Which one is actually present? There is no clean-cut answer but the point of this assessment is to show that we must transcend these outdated constructions of the self.

(3)Transparent:

The use of transparency in my art is both physically present as well as conceptually grounded. The physical expression of transparency is much more subtle and in rare form while the conceptual element is used quite often. Transparency represents ambiguity, confusion, and the veiling of substance, which could be our irrational mind. I believe also that transparency can represent a state of relativity. Moral and religious fundamentalists will argue until they are blue in the face that there exists one, and only one, absolute truth. This notion is immature if one looks not only at scientific evidence but everyday life. What is “good”? Is the same thing “good” for every individual, or every society? Here in America we are engulfed with the idea that capitalism and materialism are the most virtuous forms of societal practice. Those who hold this to be true feel that success, fulfillment and goodness come in the form of monetary value and material possessions, whether it be a house, a car, the newest cell phone or trendy clothes that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. The more “new” your possessions are and the more of them you have the better your state of happiness and prosperity. This, however, is only an illusion. None of these things actually bring happiness, but media, institutions and the corporate “free” market invade our daily thoughts with this illusion to the point that we no longer question its validity. Why is this important to address in my art, and why is it important to the idea of transparency?
Stated earlier, transparency can describe relativism, or the idea that goodness and truth are relative to the circumstances they play out in. The bigger problem comes in when societies (like capitalist America) invade the thoughts of other societies with a different set of values as to what is good, who can be happy, and what is a meaningful life. Third world societies only appear as poor and “in need of fixing” from the viewpoint that a virtuous society should have large homes, central air and heating, three to four large meals a day and plenty of money to throw around. How can one judge as to whether or not the life of an individual in a third world society is good or bad, prosperous or in need, based on their limited perspective guided by the rules and language of the capitalist society in which they function? These are questions that must be addressed in art with the upmost urgency if we going to progress as a larger human species. This must become urgent in all forms of art, from the visual arts to music and temporal arts; from literature to film. We are fortunate in this day and age to have seemingly unlimited access to vast amounts of visual and musical stimulus and we have taken for granted the amount that these stimuli control our lives. We must become more aware of stimuli and understand the transparency of their rules and effect on our minds.

(4)Transportation:

About a hundred years ago artist begin expressing their thoughts and feelings about the world around them in several different, unique and progressive ways. This was the first time in history when art had reached a pointed when rules had been tossed aside and people were allowed to describe reality in what ever manner they felt worked for them. Several movements, Futurism, Surrealism, Dada and all their counterparts envisioned a world that was streamlined and fast-paced, big, bright and incredibly aggressive; as well as strange and foreign. We now live in the post days of these prophetic ideas. Transportation, as a whole has completely been altered to the point that it has only further separated us from our natural roots. From our experience of time, movement, communication, and eating to our work, travel, and environment it is impossible to deny that these forms of “transportation” move at such a rate that we cannot keep up with them. Our lives are filled with anxiety and an ever quicker moving clock that counts down the limited time we have to “get things done”.
This idea of “getting things done” has enveloped our society to the point that it has taken the place of meaningful existence. The more one “gets done” the happier they should be. The speed at which we need new things to get done grows every year and this has become apparent in the quality of our lives. Things are no longer built to last and have quality but are built to be new, shiny and inviting, but only last long enough so that a newer, brighter and better form of the same thing can be bought as soon as possible. From our TVs to cars, from cell phones to wives and husbands. Nothing is made to last; they are only made to entice desire and evoke lust and jealousy. I express this notion in the form of “eye candy” art. An example of my work that utilizes this is “The Great Puzzle and Construction of Gods”. The exterior, or the visual stimulation, is bright and entices pleasure, but underneath this lies the darkness and void of personal meaning present in contemporary humanity. Not only have these more traditional forms of transportation exponentially sped up but we have taken evolution itself into our own hands and sped the process up through technological advancements. Humans have melded with machine to form a new species, which lies on the horizon called “Robosapiens”(5). With technological assistance we have had to completely reevaluate such questions as “What is consciousness?”, “Where is the self located?”, “What is eternity?”, or more simply stated: “Is a physical body made out of human flesh and bone necessary to survive through life?”
Our previous notions of eternity, life and death, told through art and literature of the past becomes dwarfed in the presence of today’s restructuring of the human anatomy. I bring this concept up in a work titled “RoboSutra”. “Robo” refering to the technoloical control over our lives and “Sutra” which means “a collection of aphorisms relating to some aspect of the conduct of life”, taken from Hindu philosophy. In this particular work I equate our old, neurotic need for a spiritual god, and he/she’s role in our world view to our new neurotic need for a technological god that gives us everything we desire. Technology has in a sense become our new god and with out its control our lives fall apart. The more humans take control of nature’s discourse the more we separate ourselves from our own selves.

(5)Transsexuality:

Finally, I will discuss how Decon-transrealism plays a role in gender, sexuality, male/female dichotomy, and what I will call androgynous spiritualty. Although our society is still heavy laden with gender bias, specified male/female roles and rules, and compartmentalization of these ideas we are seeing change for the better. The appearence of “transsexuality” and its more and more valid acceptance in society is a sign that humans cannot (and should not) be boxed in so neatly. Our history is laced with a poisonous idea that men must act and speak one way and women in a completely other way. This is the idea of the polar absolutes titled “masculine” and “feminine”. The usage of such terms as masculine or feminine, and the qualities they represent, are not wrong in them selves; it is the misuse of such terms to directly state that men must be masculine and women must be feminine that make them wrong.
From many of my works of art such as “Intra-visionary map of Reality”, “The Existential Comedy”, and “The Great Puzzle and Construction of Gods” I address the honest ambiguity present in males and females and the idea that each individual expresses their own mixture of these polarities in their own way, regardless of their sex or sexual orientation. A women who has attributes of aggressiveness, assertiveness, and a need for control does not make her “manly”; she simply expresses her perspective and conditions in this manner. If a male were to act out in this same way it does not make him any more or less of a man; his maleness is innate, regardless of his attributes.
In “The Existential Comedy” I represent the image of androgyny, which I find to be the “happy medium” of human expression and the direction in which we not only should gravitate towards but already are. The reason the process is so slow is due to the fact that gender roles have been incredibly important in exerting power over individuals and in mass thought control. “Masculinity” and its counterparts have been conditioned into human social life for so many centuries as “the male role” so that women feel powerless in the presence of a man, and keep silent to the abuse of men to women. Not only have men been pressured to act “manly” (and are ostricized if they are not), women have been forced to remain docile to this power trip and were considered sinful if they disobeyed these standards. Not until recently have women finally started to proclaim equality in society and have been able to find some men siding with their new empowerment. Now that women have taken their power back (although still having a long road ahead of them for a more honest equality) we can really start to discuss and discover what it really means to be male or female and if it really matters at all.
Since the dawn of self-consciousness humans have most likely held the belief in some sort of god or divine energy. As long as our history reaches back we have seen that humans have personified their gods as either male or female, depending on the society’s view at that time. This as well has played a vital role in the power struggle and preconceptions of social life. A society dominated by a male god will infer that men are first natured beings and women are derived from them or are a lower form than men. This illusion has created much suffering over the ages but there seems to be a paradigm shift in what god means, to those so spirtually inclined and open-minded in a secular world.
Through Decon-transrealism I want to express the shift in god from being male or female to being an energy present in all matter of the universe. In my early work especially I play with the notion of a dead or un-personified god. Through such works I explain my personal arrival (from experience and experimentation) at the theory that all of creation, from the tiniest piece of matter to the macrocosm we call the Universe is in fact God itself, manifested physically through matter. There is no separation of God from human because human is god, or a piece of god in a giant tapestry of universal creative energy. However this is merely a duality I am playing with; a person is both a piece of god and all of god present fully at all times. I use the symbol of a DNA strand to communicate how science can physically express “God”. Physicists can break down reality into cells, atoms, quarks, and on and on and on. They can describe the universe in terms of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Radon and Uranium but we must not forget–these are only titles. They are only words to express something that is physically present. This is why the statement “Science is the How, Religion is the Why, Art is the What” is so important. Science merely describes the physical attributes of an unknown, indestructible, incomprehensable life force that we are a part of. This is the root of my artistic desire and at the heart of Decon-transrealism.

Art can no longer cater to the wants and desires of a disillusioned, neurotic consumer market. Art needs to address the isolation that this ‘techno-consumer’ lifestyle has fostered. Ever so quickly people have minimized the need to leave the “safety and security” of their own homes while being constantly fed insecurity, unnecessary urges, fear, and dissatisfaction. My personal catalyst for change persists through my artistic vision. Through juxtaposition of archaic, dogmatic symbols against modernity and isolation against spiritual oneness I want to achieve a paradigm shift in not only the way people intereact with one another but in the way people interact with their own true nature–with their own mind. Decon-transrealism advocates not merely the destruction of physical boundries and institutions (like previous art movements) but the importance and urgency of freeing oneself from psychological constructions that hender us from a more profound existence where love is abundant and equality truly exists.

SOURCE

(1) The Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America, #82, Winter, 1983. Reprinted in Rucker’s anthologies Transreal! (WCS Books, 1991) and Seek! (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999).

(2) Broderick, Damien. “Transrealist Fiction: Writing in the Slipstream of Science”. Greenwood Press. Westport, CT. 2000.

(3) Bregeda, Vika. “What is Metarealism”. http://www.bregeda.com/article_vika.html. 2007.

(4) Epstein, Mikhail. “Theses on Metarealism and Conceptualism”.
From the book: Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture. pp. 105-112. Berghahn Books. New York, Oxford. 1999.

(5) D’ Aluisio, Faith, Menzel, Peter. “Robosapiens”. MIT Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2000.