Welcome to the Grist Mill: A Treatise on Grist Mill

If you’ve been keeping up with the saga that is Strike a Pose, or How I Learned to Die in
Three Easy Steps, you may be wondering why it is written the way it is—erratic, false,
jerky. That’s because it’s a Grist Mill.

What is a Grist Mill, you ask? Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock in your
sister’s basement for the past six months, you’ve probably seen signs of the movement
emerging: it’s rather pervasive nowadays. Chances are, you see it and hear it lots. Grist
Mill is a cultural tour de force that takes the form of a variety of media and idea clusters.
What started as an artistic movement has been transformed, by tireless scholarship, into a
bona fide culture kaleidoscope. You know, like Marxism. However, Grist Mill is different
than other cultural theories, because it’s the best.

Right now you’re probably saying to yourself, “this is too much for me.” In fact, you
probably think I’m totally joking. But I assure you I’m not. This essay will serve as a tool
for learning what Grist is and how to recognize it. Perhaps, if you’re brave, you may even
take measures to apply Grist in your own life. What follows is a systematic analysis of
the inner workings of the Grist Mill, accompanied by heuristic cases to help you learn its
ways.

Grist is most popularly defined within the parameters of the Five-R Theory:

I. Radical Eclecticism

Anyone who is decently versed in postmodernism knows well the concept of radical
eclecticism. In fact, you’re probably thinking I’m a scoundrel for even including this
element in a theory that claims to be so progressive. Grist, however, is home to a different
breed of radical eclecticism than that of traditional pomo. While in conventional
postmodern art, this device is typically used to shock people and/or convey some kind of
satirical message, in Grist it is used completely arbitrarily to create situations that are
great. Grist Radical Eclecticism is best exemplified to date by “59 Times the Michael”, a
piece of video art that sets a number of Michael Jordan’s career-best slam dunks to
Hüsker Dü’s “59 Times the Pain”, from the 1985 album New Day Rising. This technique
is the most applicable of all, and the most frequently applied to date, hence its being
listed first. Another way in which radical eclecticism applies itself in Grist is through the
combination of the highbrow and the lowbrow. Of course, this is also descendent from
classic postmodernism, but in Grist it is applied in a way that makes The Simpsons and
Michael Moore seem subtle. A good example of a Gristful highbrow/lowbrow mash-up is
the development of X-Games theory, a young but promising field of study that seeks to
explain how and why extreme athletes are able to repeat victories year after year, as well
as (in the case of more adversarial scholarship) the absence of fringe sports such as
scootering and streetboarding in the ‘Games.

II. Recontextualization
Another thing Grist Mill tends to do is recontextualize things, people, or phrases, either
by way of the extraction-injection process or by overcelebration. Allow me to explain: In
the first case, a phrase is taken—either from everyday conversation or from a text—and
put in a totally new context, usually freestanding and sometimes in heavy repetition. For
example, the band Lockchanger used a combination of email snippets and excerpts from
science books, among other things, to piece together its lyrics. The second way Grist
recontextualizes items is through granting celebrity status to people or things that
normally fall through the cracks or are simply not given consideration on a regular basis.
This is plainly visible in the Wifehouse concept album Loose Arrow My Cake In, which
features heartfelt songs about the sport of BMX, its main foci being moments in select
Road Fools videos and insignificant stories from Jim’s tenure as a BMXer. Loosely
fitting into the recontextualization category is also the Random Name Method, a staple of
pedestrian Grist that involves addressing people as the first noun that comes to mind.

III. Repetition

While people typically view repetition as incessant and unnecessary, it is one of the
things on which Grist thrives. This would normally be the place where any self-
respecting pundit of postmodernism would shamelessly reference Andy Warhol, and that
is exactly what I am going to do, right now. Andy Warhol is largely to thank for making
repetition great. But once again, Grist Mill has taken something great and made it even
greater: Grist Mills/Fills take repetition, extend it beyond sensibility, and apply it, as Grist
tends to do, to every situation possible. Though there are infinite opportunities for
repetition, some of the most significant happenings have involved television on DVD. A
prime example is the ritual Grist viewing of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, already an
extremely Grist show. In this case, the viewer chooses a one- to seven-second clip of the
show and uses the looping function on a DVD player to repeat said clip an inordinate
amount of times. This method can be universally applied to TV shows and other kinds of
AV media, usually yielding good results. Needless to say, it is the nature of Grist that
repetition is not limited to the cases mentioned here.

IV. Reduction

In many instances, Grist Mill is reductive, stripping situations down to their barest states,
or in some cases, destroying them completely. The reduction process normally manifests
itself in one of two ways: In the context of art, it comes in the form of a grossly stripped-
down production process. In everyday life, it serves to stop situations dead in their tracks
and turn them around. For the former, good cases to examine are the musical projects on
Increase A. Lapham records, which include the melodramatic popular song act Wifehouse
and the quirky post-millenial gangster rap group 419 Lordz. In most cases, these bands—
already operating in the reduced environment of primitive recording software and
onboard microphones—strip the production process to a haphazard play-by-play of
looping, sampling, and effecting that typically totals out to little more than ten minutes
once various types of unmeditated vocals are added. The final products, though obviously
rough around the edges, appreciate with several listens to have a certain type of charm
that comes part and parcel with the lack of effort in production: it ends up becoming an
effort in and of itself. The other reductive tendency of Grist is one of its earliest
incarnations; namely, the interjection/interruption/reduction of a conversation known as
the Goose Down Joke. Take this example: Conversationalist A says, “You know, people
say I’m an alcoholic, but I’ve really only been drunk five times.” In turn,
Conversationalist B replies, “You know, people say I’m black, but I’ve really only slam
dunked five times” (Note: Please disregard the racial implications of this comment. It
does not reflect the views of the author and was, in fact, harvested from a transcript of an
Internet conversation between two unknown individuals). As you can see, the Goose
Downer, as he/she may be called, takes what the other person said and replaces certain
words to change the meaning of the sentence, while retaining its structure (this is crucial
—to go beyond this limit is to be jokey). In short, the practice of Goose Downing is a
quick and easy way to sway a pesky/uneasy/uninteresting conversation in one’s own
favor and make it infinitely more fun/ny. For added efficacy, repeat the method several
times in one conversation.

V. Recursion

The fifth pillar of Grist—recursion— is perhaps the hardest to for scholars pin down and
the hardest to recognize for those not ensconced in the movement. It is the aspect that has
lead to Grist’s being so enigmatic, as well as many skeptics’ labeling of it as little more
than a “giant inside joke that nobody gets” (Balistreri 2007; 56). I digress—Grist’s main
point of distinction is its penchant for constantly talking to itself. Its products and its
participants are all the time referring to themselves, other texts of the movement, and the
movement in general, cementing their place in it. This cycle of reference links all parts of
the Grist Mill together in a way that is remarkably close and familial. Grist’s recursive
potential is limitless and Grist Mills often take full advantage of this trait, hence weaving
a web that makes the head spin. But there are cases that are obvious enough to be used as
heuristics, the most apparent of which is the way recurring sounds, phrases and characters
—such as the trademarked “organ stab”, the character Lymma Benz (pronounced “lima
bean”) and his “twang call”, and the phrase “have a party today”—crop up in various
Increase A. Lapham projects.

In conclusion, I hope I have been able to scratch the surface of Grist Mill in this short
essay. Though the cross-section I have given has by no means been comprehensive, and
Grist Theory progresses at a fast pace, I have touched on what I see as the most important
parts of the movement. Ultimately, if there is one thing I can stress most, it is that Grist
Mill is not just postmodernism. While it is structured similarly and uses many of the same
methods, it does not have the same purposes. Postmodernism is always undercut by some
kind of ulterior motive, be it to shock, provoke thought, or convey a message. Grist Mill,
while it is often confrontational, is never shocking—at least it is never intended to be so
—and its message is always the same: “This is great. You should like this lots.” This
ever-present message is the reason the Grist movement is so important. While art and
cultural movements over the past century have been loaded down with satire and
cynicism, Grist is purely optimistic in its intentions. Grist theorists believe that applying
Grist methodology in daily life through execution of small-scale Grist Fills and institution
of/participation in full-fledged Grist Mills is one of the most foolproof ways to make life
as great as possible for oneself. If one strives to make the most out of any given situation
using the techniques listed above, one can make big strides towards eliminating much of
life’s chaff and making it all grist for the mill. It is by way of these methods that you can
become a Grist Mill yourself—I implore you. In the end, if you are a Grist Mill and I am
a Grist Mill, then together, we are on the Cusp of a Better Way.