I'M GOING THROUGH CHANGES

Like anyone who sits down in order to create something, I've got more questions than answers. In a way, all I'm trying to do is represent myself. There I am, up on the left, peeking out at you. I wonder about you. I wonder how you're doing. I wonder if you've even got it together enough to think about changing the world.

Once upon a time, I had a vision of an American public expressing themselves radically through the medium of vinyl stickers. What can I say? I just love stickers, and I love democratic expression, and I wanted to change the world. Five years later, that much hasn't changed one iota. But the world has changed so much. This is increasingly a world of puppets strung out on television, economic "growth" and false religion. Are Americans so bloody complacent with their entertainment-industrial complex that they've forgotten that to a full quarter of the world, we represent the ENEMY?

So in accordance with this vision, I put together this website. In 1995, I made a bunch of stickers, sort of for fun, to see what happened. Now it's the year 2000, and my stuff is in a bunch of "head shops" around the country, as if that's what I wanted the whole time, and i've become somewhat "famous" as the "Fuck Work Guy", which is something to be, I guess, because the stickers do seem to make people happy, but sometime last year I realized that it all seemed empty to me (if i had a dime for every slogan i've been told I "have" to print for someone!) so I sort of bowed out for a year to see if I could get around to feeling better about it all.

Many people who develop a successful creative formula wind up repeating it with decreasing success for the rest of their life. But as a result of taking some time off early this year, during which I probably went through about three or four depression cycles but who's counting, I think I figured something out. There IS culture that is therapeutic and that moves history along - not just "subversive shit" that really just sells more ads, but ideas that individuals incorporate into their lives to their benefit. And I realized that that was one of the things I hit on with all those "fuck work" stickers - that people really need to be TOLD that their way of making a living is all wrong before they even start thinking about it at all. I realized that in some small way, I had stumbled on a way to make people THINK about shit that they might actually be able to CHANGE - like, how they make a living.

So I'm writing a book. I'm going to self-publish it, and yeah, it's called "fuck work", and I hope it'll sell because I am quite literally BROKE right now and am going to have to max out yet another credit card to put it out. The point I'm trying to make is this; I feel like history is a type of mechanism that can itself be hacked. Certain works of art EPITOMIZE certain emotions, idea-sets, trends and communities in the maelstrom of culture (the common thread between "straight outta compton" and "das kapital"). These works inevitably spawn movements; they catalyze the creation of all kinds of other work. Art that generates more art sounds pointless, and maybe it is, but art that generates social change is another thing entirely. And, in my analysis, both NWA and Marx changed society (whether or not for the "better" is debatable). It's my goal to create a book that change the way society thinks about work; the odds are against me, but to hell with it, I'll plunge forth regardless and see what happens.

If society is sick, it needs to be changed. If art gives us the power to change society, it's logical that those who want to change it should look to art as a tool in our arsenal. At issue is the fact that there is no well-articulated AGENDA along which "we" (those who want change) should create art - in other words, can we define the changes that need to be wrought that would lead to a more healthy society? Marx had such an agenda; NWA did not. And it could be argued that on the merits of this orientation towards agenda, Marxism spawned a movement of people who genuinely did want to create an alternative to capitalism, where NWA simply led to Master P and Puff Daddy - and to a lot more violence in the ghetto. At issue with Marx, of course, that his agenda was completely off - and in my opinion, that's because he pretty much came up with it himself in isolation. And it's ending this isolation - the atomization of those who would create "art" - that leads me to write this letter. I don't want to be isolated in my crusade anymore.

All of this leads me to postulate the existence of what I term "therapeutic art" (i'm defining "art" very widely; it's any use of any medium to express anything). Art that moves people towards a better society is good. (We sell a sticker that says "FUCK CIGARETTES"; if even one kid quits or never starts smoking because of it, I have done something that I can safely say is "good", at least according to my standards.) It may not SUCCEED in creating this better society, but in its efforts to do so I find something to genuinely embrace - one of the reasons I'm writing this is that I'm totally inspired by the work of other people, and this inspiration forces me to do a better job with Unamerican.

Therapeutic art is not merely "subversive". It's not merely attempting to mock the existing society; it's pointing the way towards a society that is more than an interface to capitalism, and towards a life that is better-constructed than the one you led until you experienced the art. Art - especially independent art, and I thank my lucky stars that I've been able to stay alive independently long enough to work out my confusion - has always been a primary means for the transmission of knowledge and wisdom. The idea of commodifying it in the interest of creating fluff that sells is relatively new. I'm aiming at the transmission and generation of wisdom, myself; I'm less interested in facts than I am opinions and evaluations, and my ultimate goal is to teach people the skill of evaluation once again, and help them focus this skill on their lives and communities and society.

I'm not the only one who seeks to change our society for the better. There are people in every corner of America who are thinking along the same lines. We are, like it or not, a "scene", and if we study history, we can reasonably predict that if we don't get our shit in order, we too will be co-opted. In my opinion, getting our shit in order is a matter of determining a common agenda, so that the different creations of different members of our scene are seen as reflections of a common wisdom - a common wisdom that then can be transferred, using art as a vector, to the mainstream, ideally without ever touching the hands of those who aren't thinking along our lines at all.

Have you ever read "Radio Free Albemuth", by Philip K. Dick? In it is an interesting sci-fi scenario - that a movement of different artists, motivated by a mythical common divine force manifested as an orbital satellite named VALIS, could be a force powerful enough to undermine even the most coercive and evil social scenario. I don't believe we need a satellite; I do believe we need to work together towards coordination in some way, however, and that we will naturally begin to do this because of our joint understanding of the importance of the historical moment. (Not to mention that with cheap printing and the Internet, we now have the technology to implement this coordination.) It's clear to me that this agenda doesn't exist yet, and I'm hoping to be able to articulate this agenda somehow during the course of my career. I believe that it's this agenda (not "mine" but "ours") that would advance the ideas so thoughtfully laid out in your article beyond critique and into the realm of catalysis. I believe that this common agenda could improve my own project in exactly the same way. And I believe that this agenda could well lay the groundwork for a bewildering diversity of new projects that actually manufacture positive change as an externality (similar to the way pollution is a byproduct of the manufacture of capitalist goods) rather than just reifying the whole logic of "buy this cool 7 inch, it's so good" that's grown so tiresome in non-mainstream media.

It's the dawn of a new millenium. The actions that are taken by people like you and me could well turn into legend - who are we to say? I just moved beyond bitterness in my life, and it's made a big difference; I'm seeing the value of what I can create in a new light. For all the failures of our company over the last six years, we have something unique; the ear of a new generation of kids who email us with their praise, condemnation and insight every day. Unamerican has generated such a tidal wave of response that it pretty much takes up all of our time answering correspondence; it occurs to me that we've stumbled on something many people thought wasn't there, a genuine political consciousness that slumbers deep within the hearts of our youth. We've crafted a way to get our messages out without any corporate help whatsoever (we work with other tiny businesses that are owned by friends of ours, like our printer and button maker). And as far as what I create, I answer to no one . Seen in this light, I hope that what we've done amounts to more than the commodification of subversion - especially in regard to the movement that we will unleash during the final months of this year as we near electiontime. Stay tuned, folks.