Famous Monsters Part 5: Godzilla of Terror
Godzilla never asked to be created. The creation of monsters involves
grand gestures of the will, not the posturing of science or politics.
Imposing wills causes more calamity, more rebellion and zeal than any
science or art can fathom. Mad wills take the world hostage.
Massacres of spirit shift with the wind and spread stench as invisible
as radar. Moral imperialism disguised as national security, resentment
magnified into brutality and barbarism. Take caution not to confuse the
notion of representative government with democracy, tactics with
results, heaven with hell. Power is an attractive scent. Cults emit
power by way of their insularity. Take the wrong turn and belonging
begins to blend with meaning.
Waging war against terror is like
waging war against walking in order to prevent pedestrians from arriving
to point B from point A. Choose your tactics wisely as your means, your
strategy, always precedes your perception and destination. Tactics
mature and provide identity, often in aggrandizing ways. Then someone
shows up and calls it a style.
Granted, sometimes proper
grammar gets in the way of a good idea, but the fashion of rhetoric
confined to institutionalized press releases and media manipulated sound
bytes provides all the cues and clues I need to filter a fraud. Keep in
mind, the duty of bureaucracy is double speak.
Organic
viewpoints dictate that style is conceived as a living entity, operating
outside human agency and ambition, maturing and branching through its
internal means. The process of growth is ineffable, internal and
static, the variegated manifestation over the course of time of a
central, unchanging essence. To search for essence is to explore the
binding seamless continuum of things related to a certain context. The
Byline's contention has always been that graffiti is the ultimate
context.
The autonomy of graffiti is dependent on the
promethean efforts of its practitioners to deny its co-option. After
all, graffiti is heroic, affirmative and deeply rooted in notions of
progress. Take graffiti to task as the process, the tactic that it is.
Clowns that traffic in the gestures and techniques of graffiti without
the direct experience will always shade the context, but redemption
works in weird ways.
The argument that graffiti is art is
quite comical. The sphere of commercialism that is necessary for
sustenance dictates the creation of commodities and products. Graffiti
is not and will never be product, therefore it will never be a form of
art. Graffiti is a process. Processes by their very nature are
unbridled and transient. The assumption of risk is too great for mere
artists to handle. Mad scientists seem more secure with the required
skill set.
So beware the demon-willed chaos that clutters
airwaves. Yield to sense when it makes sense. And take stock of the
greater Godzilla within.
Read more in Byline
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