Raleigh Rambles

JDJ Writings

Works available online. © John Dancy-Jones 1983-2009.

Books

The Suicide of Hooker Van Dusen. 1985 Peloria Press.

Performance Poems. 2nd edition. The Paper Plant 1988

Snapper. The Paper Plant 2001

The Natural History of Raleigh The Paper Plant 2018

Columns

The Furry Geezer – writings at RDUwtf

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The Natural View – column at the Raleigh Public Record

Poems

Poem in The Sun

The Anchor

I like having bent curves and I like the little hooks.  I like being strong and I like being lifted up. I like being heavy.  I don’t like being chained but I would love to be flung across the sky in a chained arc of perfect limit.

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     Selection from Performance Poems

USA Today 1984

 

QUITTERS, LOSERS, BACKWARDS WINNERS

Jesus saves the souls of sinners

AMERICA! Bless us

with your luscious curse.

Bind us and bear us

depend and declare us

keep us from dread

bake our bread

wash us in the juice

of your conflagrance

your fragrance, America

is floods of gasoline and dripping red meat

your nectar America

is the syrup left

if you take all the fruit

out of ketchup.

AMERICA you hot tomato

where is your juicy red fruit?

AMERICA you REVELATION

there are red stains

on your flowing white robe.

America your fate is sealed

but your destiny is leaking

all over the world

all over the world

all over the slippery world

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The Paper Plant

A poem for downtown bookstores

Prologue

     Beauty is my business.  Books are my stock in trade.  My urge to read is stronger than my urge to eat. Left to my own devices, I would have been by my thirties as blind as Milton, eye-fried and cloaked in the love of language.  Half of the books I read are books I’ve read before. I read them every year and I never forget to read them or stop loving to read them.  In my dreams I wince from the crackling smoke at Alexandria, where those passionate bastards from the navel of the world torched the best fruits of the Golden Age.  And I am awakened some nights by the brackish wash of the flooding Arno, slapping wetly across Florence.  Lyinf there, half awake, I hear the people weep as they gather the floating treasures from the bilious overflow of the west.

     Can a civilization drown?  Is it painful?

 

Part One. Andreas X.

 

     Hee, he-HEE, hee. Hullo, hullo.  Oooh, hoo.  Hee HEE hee.  Well, what’ll it be.  Do you want me to go for you or do you want to go?  I’d rather stay here it’s so confused and disordered out there.  It’s all so solidified.  It’s all solidified.  It’s all SO disorganized out there.  I’m sick of all this freedom this country has mollycoddled and coo-cooed the biggest contraption of crackpots, queers, criminals, lunatics, slanderous QUEERS…well, what’ll it be? Do you want to go or do you want to stay?  Shall I fetch it?  Hee HEEEE hee.  This place, John.  It gives me the creeps.  All this book larning – it smells the place up.  It’s oppressive in here.  These books are the follies of fatuous fools.  High and mighty works that gum up whole nations.  We brag about this civilization – it doesn’t settle half of what it’s supposed to – all this lying, cheating, WHORING – DON’T you know it’s all vanity.  You’ll never be satisfied.  You’ll never be satisfied. Well, do you want to get it yourself or do you want me to fetch it?

 

Part Two.  “Bring me the Thorazine!”

 

     It was the Nazi SBI man they dogging my ass again I swear they gonna kill me man it’s the revolution of the right, you know?  They gonna dog my ass all day long I can’t understand what I gotta do I been writing this story here see about my thoughts, you know, about the Black Man, White Man, Red Man blood red, you know?  I been seeing this orange light coming over my shoulder man and I know it’s that three-headed Nazi dog on my ass again we got to fight for love!  We gotta lay down our knives in the streets!  Lemme get out of here, man, I’m probably boring you to death.

 

Part Three.  Patsy

 

     John, you gotta Quatta?  John, can I get a cuppa ‘at coffee?  You make this most divine coffee, John.  This place, reminds me of the city.  You know in the sixties I remember places like this you could sit down in a corner and just disappear, you know, John?  Oh God, this coffee, you such a doll you know I miss New York. I love the city it’s so alive there. Been nine years now since I left.  It just got to be too much you know John they got computers in the city these days they track you every step.  Look at this piece of mail I picked up – LOOK AT THOSE NUMBERS JOHN – six numbers there the same as my social security number.  Whew! John, they got computers in the city that can put the whole Radcliffe campus yard on microchip!  O Lord, I had to get out of there. Listen John, I might want to come back in a day or so and order some books – I’m thinking about going back into medical school.  But honey, right now I got to GO.

 

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Rap for the Four

Earth, Water, Air and Fire:

choose the one of your desire

let atomic structure be your trip

or bipolarity give you a sip

of condensed gas that holds you in;

if it weren’t for gas you would take a spin

to the outer spaces. Chemical paces

of oxidation, elucidation – you would

blow where you cannot go – you see

Earth, Water, Fire and Air

are the four round points of a great big square

and it’s all the same – what’s in a name –

Fire, Water, Air and Earth –

each to the other one, gives birth.

Now one’s for the worm, and one’s for the crow,

one gets wet rot, and one will grow.

So choose the one of your desire:

Earth, Water, Air and Fire.

All through history, science, monogamy,

deism, techvision art and monotheism –

all of that bullshit hides the fact:

there’s only four things that make us act

And that’s Earth, Water, Fire and Air

no other rituals can compare to the

vocalization, actualization, conceptualize

with inner cries that remote boat

on a sea of air – that express jet

that will take you where you can feel the heat

and the wet beat and the tug of stone

and that wind blowin’ – the smell of hell

and the leaven of heaven – it’s a free for all

like a summer squall made of Earth, Water,

Fire and Air – fly around in it, if you dare.

Now bone and skin and flesh and blood

have been our lot since before the flood

but if we were gods, then we still must treat

with solids, liquids, gas, and heat –

when it get right down to direct or remote

myth and science jump the same boat –

Chaos, order, love or despair:

it’s just Fire, Water, Earth and Air.

 

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Transmigration Blues

For the leather coat my father gave me

 

Sometime millions of years ago

while the dolphins were learning to sing

and wolves were learning to kiss with their tongues

and gorillas were still eating bamboo

we were at the seashore, becoming naked and

discovering frontal sex and self-consciousness.

Clock time came soon after but not before

a perfect seed of beauty had been planted

in every one of us and we live today as we all

well know in great alarms of beauty buzzes.

Great God nurses every one of us at her breast

and as we speak molecules that coursed through

Genghis Kahn and Sweitzer and Queen Victoria

and Joan of Arc and Ezra Pound and almost

certainly the turds of Caesar and probably

by now Gary Gilmore’s dying belch

are part of each of us in this room.

We are everyone and everything

and everyone is famous

and it’s all disgustingly beautiful:

Coca-Cola and the Pentagon and the videos

and the drug industry and all the wasted frazzled

hours we spend imitating ants, beavers,

our cats and dogs –

imitating machines that we envy so terribly –

imitating anything except ourselves

pretending finally that everything

is an imitation of ourselves –

which it is – which we are-

pretending not to be real as we face each other

being to being and say, “I kill you,

I live by your death as you live by mine

love me anyway?

 

“I Dreamed I Was an Emcee” at Open Mike Tourist

 

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Essays

The Tutelary Years of Ray Johnson (1943–1967)

FEBRUARY 19 – JUNE 12, 2010

review in the Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center’s 2010 newsletter (loads pdf)

The Ray Johnson exhibition was an important retrospective on a Black Mountain College alumnus, and a seminal event in the continuing “rediscovery” of this lesserknown, but very significant artist. Ray Johnson was probably the most enigmatic and one of the least appreciated American artists of the 20th century. He was a deceptively complicated man whose work embodied multiple layers of meaning. The show provided a greatly needed showcase and explication for this seminal figure of Pop Art whose collages influenced a generation of contemporary artists. The curator for the exhibition, Sebastian Matthews, assembled a wide range of Ray Johnson’s collages, paintings and drawings that were enriched and enlivened by programming that included performance poetry, collage workshops, music, drama, The Poetry Bomb, an academic lecture, a film screening of How to Draw a Bunny, an exhibition catalogue, and Sebastian’s wonderful blog that documented the whole thing!

The exhibition itself is exactly what the title describes: Ray’s early work as he assimilated the lessons of Albers and others at BMC, and found himself as an artist in the wild world of post-war Pop, Dada, Surrealism, and eventually postmodern experiments in the New York art world. There were drawings from Ray’s youth in Detroit(loaned by his boyhood friend Arthur Secunda), selected BMC experiments, and a large collection of wonderful collages that show his evolution from painting to collage.  Works were borrowed from the major Johnson collections, owned by William S. Wilson and the Ray Johnson Estate, as well as smaller personal collections.  Ray’s work makes much use of verbal puns and words as images, presaging the correspondence work or “postal performances,” which made him most famous. Theshow and its catalogue followed Ray’s emergence from Black Mountain College into the New York scene immersed in the ideas of his BMC mentors but prepared to follow Albers’ dictum: “to follow me, follow yourself.” As Sebastian wrote in his catalogue essay, “Ray was ripe for the challenges and experiences Manhattan had to offer.” He remains one of the most intriguing and complex artists of the 20th century, and thisexhibition delineates many of the roots and threads that set him on his path. That path is examined thoroughly in the catalogue, which is a unique critical appreciation of this very under-appreciated artist. There are 46 color plates, over a dozen images in the text, and several Hazel Larsen Archer photographs. Catalogue essays are contributed by curator Matthews; Ray’s boyhood friend Arthur Secunda; Ray Johnson expert, friend and collector William S. Wilson; and emerging young scholars, Julie J. Thomson and Kate Erin Dempsey. The capstone of the exhibition was the lecture and slide show by Dr. Frances Beatty, Director of the Ray Johnson Estate. Her remarks made clear why Ray Johnson deserves recognition as a major 20th century artist.  The final night of the show was a truly wild and wonderful event that did much to reflect Ray’s spirit. Music, poetry, and spoken word filled the space. Poets Earl Bragg and Keith Flynn offered work appropriate for the occasion. Vaudvie presented cabaret music, whileThomas Butler and Toby Magouirk presented a dramatic piece base on Ray’s writings. It was a great ending to a wonderful show.

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essay for 23Hours, art documentary show at Bickett Gallery

first published online at RDUwtf

A Furry Geezer’s Lurid Recounting of Downtown Raleigh’s Open Mikes

 

Summer 1983.  Doonesbury’s “armpit of a decade” is in full swing.  Raleigh’s civic leaders contemplate strategies and boondoggles toward rejuvenating the central district.  The Art museum has closed and moved away.  Sylvia’s Helping Hand Mission is going strong on Hargett Street in a large space deemed “under-utilized” by City Planners.  Somewhere in the country, a group of people are working on the premier publication of a new national newspaper.  It will be called USA Today.  In the basement of a tiny luncheonette on Salisbury Street, a group of people gather on a Thursday evening.  Drawn together by the funky used bookstore across the street, they are a truly diverse group.  Initiated by a teenage drop-out and a former San Francisco open-mike emcee, it included the local H.P. Lovecraft junkies, Libertarian advocates for a nudist club, and a huge smelly man recognizable from his long naps at Olivia Raney Library (unless you happened to catch him heading into the blood bank, or see him rolling out of the signal shack by the Boylan Avenue Bridge).  The reading starts, with nervous reminders from the bookstore owner about a strict ten minute limit.  The huge man proceeds to unfold wads of paper from his many pockets and to borrow props (such as a full soda can) from his neighbors.  When his turn arrives, he carries his small table and chair right up to the mike and delivers a 25-minute rant to the city that has the emcee sweating (8 more readers to go – my god) and has the audience in awe.  Most of them hadn’t met a street bum with high culture before.  But Ralph, and the Thursday Night reading, turned out to be special.

 

Raleigh’s Thursday Night Open Reading had several venues, but the basement of Glory’s diner was pretty special itself.  The owners were never present; they simply provided the key and trusted the participants to put one dollar bills in a jar when they get a beer out of the cooler.  It was a kind of practice for when they got a beer license and their own events.  After they closed, the reading moved two floors up to the vintage clothing store.  This phase resembled a round table discussion group (though Liz and Donna threw a memorable party in this space), an atmosphere redeemed by a midsummer stint of readings on Fayetteville Street Mall.  Here, for the first time, Kurt F. brought his guitar along and transformed our ideas about what an open reading could be.  Kurt’s music became a central part of Thursday Night at the Berkeley Café, and John B. will admit that the poetry readings began the process of that space’s evening music venue.  Ralph, who had transformed himself from library bum to Taxi-cab Poet (though he still smelled and continued to devote many hours working out digits of pi in an ink-stained spiral notebook), got us into the Berkeley.  He was living upstairs, sharing a tiny rickety hall with the hollow-eyed prostitutes who at that time headquartered above the Berkeley.  Thursday Nights there were loud and well-attended.  Every week there were first time readers.  Every week here were surprises.  Schizophrenics would wander in, listen a little, then break in with their rant about whatever.  But after about ten minutes, they would wind down and relinquish the stage, usually to friendly applause.  One night, a wizened couple right out of a Woody Guthrie song (and literally right off the bus) got up when it was their turn and simply unfurled for display a huge quilted mural of newspaper headlines and music posters they had pieced together over their years of travel.  It was laminated with masses of clear packing tape and must have weighed a few pounds.  They said nothing – just held it up for a few minutes and then carefully folded it back into their bag.

 

It was at the Berkeley that comedy, confessional rants and performance pieces began to emerge from the poetry.  MP would get up and simply spew out ten minutes of the history of her screwed up childhood and the various sexual misadventures it generated.  Later this led to a sensationalist write-up in The Independent.  Billy O. began the short story series that had women hissing and booing from the audience – pornography from the Twilight Zone, interspersed with wildly hilarious Texas electrocutions and deep-fried monkeys.  People began showing up from Durham and Chapel Hill on Thursday Night, though several established writers who enjoyed listening found the atmosphere too raucous and “unmanaged” to read themselves.

 

After a year the Berkeley was getting so busy with music bookings they didn’t have room for a poetry reading.  The Thursday night series moved down the block to The Paper Plant, whose new location had plenty of room for the readings it had sponsored all along.  The cavernous industrial space had artist studios, papermaking and letterpress operations in the back, and lots of couches and corners crammed in around the books.  There the readings took full flight as a part of a general art scene that included monthly art shows, workshops, installations and small press publishing.  The leading Thursday night readers had their works published in chapbooks with handmade paper covers.  Special events in this phase included visits from Steven G. from The Farm and Jack H. (future state laureate) from San Francisco.  But it was the local performance art that really took off, led by the Joan Crawford Fan Club.  Sheri Lifesaver and Jason M. wowed the audiences each night they performed, handing out commemorative wire clothes hangers wrapped in color Xeroxes of Joan Crawford, reminder lists for their strategies to drive The Cookie Store out of business with a firestorm of inane questions, and then putting everyone literally in the aisles laughing with their wicked satire, accompanied by Jason’s synthesizer.   Animal rights, ecology and the homeless were addressed by various other performers.  Clyde S. methodically stripped layer after layer of clothes as images of downtown “nesting sites” projected on a screen.  John J. stabbed names in a phonebook with a pin.  Cindy F. mesmerized the audiences with no-script recitations of her onerous love poetry.  The feminist contingent was strong enough to generate a special “Hag’s Delight” feature.  When anarchists from Madison, Wisconsin hit town we expected a pretty wild rant, but even the Thursday night crowd was a bit taken aback watching a naked man run around the room shouting and smoking a joint rolled with wild lettuce in a page of the Holy Bible.  Now that’s lurid!

The Paper Plant closed in December of 1990.  A beloved regular, Jeff E., started a new series at the Five-O on Hillsborough Street.  It was fun but became dominated by amateur music and/or the sounds from the pool table.  Sheri Lifesaver ran a fairly long lasting series at Cup-of-Joe’s that provided an important venue for the old crowd and some new-comers.  As the new century approached a new group of performers shared their energies at Poetry Slams at Vertigo and Forum & Function.  Currently the Stammer at Artspace offers an excellent open mike.  Raleigh continues to try and find itself as a city and a good open mike is essential for that.  Prove it to yourself by starting a series and being amazed at who shows up!

 

John Dancy-Jones   July 2003

Book Review

News & Observer’s Wake County Book Club review contest. 2003.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

John Dancy-Jones

newsobserver.com

 

The protagonist in this book, a fireman whose job is to burn books, is a lost soul scarred by the harsh sociological nightmare of his future world.  He is really the only character in the book: his wife and boss are ciphers representing, respectively, limp media addiction and ruthless macho power.  Ray Bradbury never worried about being politically correct, and this short novel dates itself to the 1950’s in several ways while serving up a timeless message uniquely and strongly, well placed in the long lineage of twentieth century “Brave New Worlds.”  It also accomplishes what all great science fiction must: an interesting and believable technical device (that marks it as SF) and enough literary and emotional content to make us want to read it.  A diatribe on media, propaganda, and apathy, Fahrenheit 451 captures your mind and heart not with the fate of its hero but with the quality of its message: the freedom of ideas is an essential component of a fully human existence.

 

Before you can reach such lofty ideals, the story puts you in the suburb from Hell, where a robotic beast with infallible senses and poisonous needle teeth patrols the streets, sniffing out victims on the hit list of the invisible totalitarian government.  Montag, the angst-filled fireman, cannot relate to his delusional, suicidal wife, nor to his genial but calculating boss.  He does relate, however, to the victims of his work, and to the messianic teenager next door, who is the conscience of the book.  From her he gets sensual but platonic infusions of radical thoughts.  From his victims he gets books.  The books he secretly obtains and hoards become wedges between himself and the carefully structured web of his existence.  Montag never comes to terms with the people in his life – each relationship is cut away like bonds in a liberation.  The growth and resolution in Montag is patterned with the insight given to the reader – the realization that is not the books as objects that are important – though they are the focus of the action. It is the ideas contained in the books that are such powerful agents of knowledge and self-awareness.

 

What is a perfect message for a young person coming of age in the 1960’s such as myself!  We had our goals set by Sputnik, our values defined by flower children, our innocence robbed by Lee Harvey Oswald.  Most science fiction was published by men, whose social mores seemed derived from the True and Argosy magazines found in my father’s den.  Bradbury’s work had exactly that flavor – Rod Steiger played a wonderfully mysterious but unmistakably tough version of Rod Bradbury’s science fiction muse in “Illustrated Man.”  But woven into the conventional science fiction is a sharp critique of humanity that applies more widely than any given set of technological evolutions or external novelties.  The image of burning books becomes an unforgettable sign of universal malaise.

 

The fundamental optimism contained in the book involves the resolution of the plot (in case you haven’t read the book).  Montag finally finds kindred spirits – railroad hoboes with Ph.D.s – and discovers that cultural knowledge is inherent and persistent in the human personality.  A final SF device proposes that anyone who has read and loved a book has a recoverable memory of that book in his brain.  “I’m The Book of Job,” he is greeted.  “I am Plato’s Republic.”  This was a fundamental lesson for me over three decades ago, being more enamored of books and libraries every year.  I still love collecting books, but I understand their value.  It is what’s inside our heads, not what ‘s printed on the page, that really holds the meaning.  And meaning derives from plurality – from a rich multiplicity of images and possible meanings rather than the impoverished “reality shows” that society depends on in Fahrenheit 451.  This book is a spookily accurate estimate of how low mass media might take us, and a reassuring good thought for the resilient spirits that want something better.

Essays

Art  essay at The Independent Weekly

Ars gratia Dix