History's a Buff
In what context do you want to realize yourself? The great wilderness
of yourself is at odds with the universe. Our lives are a gamble, it is
our duty to electrocute the body electric.
Keep an eye out for the third rail, the rooftop edge, the abyss and
hiss of an empty can. Who knows or cares what generation they speak to,
for, at. Say for yourself then clean the tank and feed the filter.
You are not your graffiti. You are not your words. You are only the
moment. We crash and burn — we live and learn. If we understood
ourselves better perhaps we would damage ourselves less.
If graffiti must be the context-machine — making society, the
world, a more-human habitat — then to eradicate it is to imprison the
spirit, the poet within and without. Ensuring that the creative impulse
cannot flourish freely, that it is not at liberty to select its methods and
objects, takes away spontaneity and severs the roots of graffiti.
Creation affirms identity and humanity. There is no creativity crisis, but
only identity denial. Elation and dejection whiplash the
soul, make life fun, make life worth living. And we have this thing
called graffiti, this modest misdemeanor, forever guilty of disturbing
the peace. Perhaps it enables us to know the difference, as we don't
always know what we have until it's disturbed a little.
There is no shock of the new; everything is old news. Disruptions and
interruptions may provide fine little chapters in history books, but life
is the real product. There are no graduate courses, no Cliff notes, no
final exams to take.
Take your history, your Berlin Walls, your Great Walls of China, all
your remains, and throw them all in the garbage pail of the past. Mona
Lisa doesn't smile for me, and my spray can doesn't chip away at the
ozone for her.
What Walt Whitman once sang deserves a butchering, for all the leaves
are trash. Great works and great people deserve to live outside of
libraries and museums (mausoleums). Some walk today. Some walk among
us. The rebel disguised as conformist, the crank disguised as
conservative, the artist disguised as criminal.
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