1

the door was opened

and the wind
appeared.
notes on rock criticism & correspondence art
by jim hayes
 2

“gimme my coat little sister

& I’ll bring the car around”
-Trux
 3

“The door was opened and the wind appeared.”

I hate rock music and I hate rock musicians. I’m just so tired of it. I’m tired of guitars and

poses, of crumpled beer cans and angst. The sweaty bars, the stupid fans, the club

security hauled over Checkpoint Charlie to talk specifically to me. I’m tired of it. But I’m

also intertwined with it, addicted to it and in love with it. Rock criticism, I gave it all up

for you? First you start making little fanzines in high school and then you work your way

up to talking to editors and demanding guest list status. Then it all fades as you get

burned out, as you get played out, as the point is made and it’s sharp. It cuts hard. I bleed,

I cry and chain smoke.

During the summer of hate I started working on a long tome about rock and roll music

that I eventually titled “the post modernist always rings twice.” It was angry, nasty and

funny. Flipside began publishing excerpts and on this basis I became a columnist. I’ve

thought about mining it for material, I’ve also thought about pretending it doesn’t exist.

I just dug it up out of the box in the laundry room. It sits still at 272 pages and 80,000

words. I’m surprised at how angry I was-how determined I was to show the bad and the

stupid. Now I realize that I was the stupid and surface level bad. Most of it is just

gibberish, bad inside puns and underground rock name dropping. I hoped that maybe I

could salvage some of it and turn it into a marketable commodity, especially since it was

about rock and roll music. Once again, I was wrong.

 4

It’s a bunch of fucking garbage. It’s a snakeskin of pretentious name dropping,

disguised slams, sub human puns and grandiose posturing. I’m really ashamed of it all.

It’s sort of funny that I spent all that time writing and typing it, thinking it was a brilliant.

Now I’m just tired and alone. Piles of pages, handfuls of ideas, 80,000 words. “A man’s

got to know his limitations.”1 So it’s interesting now. I feel that I’m emasculated as well

as being totally free. I can now discount all of my earlier work (with two exceptions)2 and

move on into the present.

I wrote for the punk magazine Flipside from 97 to 99. I had a column every two

months that was read by about 25,000 people not to mention those who passed it around,

archived it, and those who just skimmed it. In those days I had the idea that rock

criticism was important, that rock criticism could do something. I was wrong and perhaps

someone else could triumph from my failure, from my myriad of mistakes. Especially

since I wasted so much of life in the pursuit of an empty fantasy.

I saw the rock critic as a performance piece. Instead of just writing about music I

would go out and try and provoke some of the stars to get a reaction. I then would

document the activity. I thought this was an important progression in the story of rock

criticism as a whole. I didn’t realize I was only operating within a self-referential

framework that could be petted like a desk top death mask. Since rock criticism was dead

I wanted to make my every moment a poem about rock criticism. Like everything else in

my life it was a dismal failure. Record company man, I won’t be coming to dinner.3

1
Clint Eastwood, “Magnum Force”
2
Liner notes for Roach Motel & Royal Trux
3
Belle & Sebastian
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Oh look it’s the avant-garde rock critic-oh he’s drunk and being provocative, oh he’s

gonna wind your band up and watch you react and then write it down, heh heh, how

clever. But can creativity be suggested by genre itself?

It’s like the movie that Woody Allen made about himself that was really about Karl

Marx. He’s wearing Dylanesque mirror shades through out the whole thing, I heard it was

homage to Fellini but I don’t know who that is. I digress. It’s about a formerly funny

filmmaker who starts getting ‘serious’ and his movies lack the earlier humor and slap

stick. Fans continually come up to him and say “I like your earlier, funnier stuff.” My old

friend Dave said this was a reference to the “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of

1844” and not to movies like “Bananas” or “Take the Money & Run”.

It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken. In 2002 I shut the blinds, put on ESPN and

said not a word. The first step to wisdom is silence. Certain historical events have

prompted a few words from my delicious corner; recent electrical currents have

designated it time for me to once again insert a few thought bubbles above the line

drawings I call my life and distribute them through the post to a handful of suitable

parties.

On Kawara is famous for his date paintings. He depicts a portrait of the day on which

he paints. They remain stark in their simplicity and beautiful for all they encompass

within the context of a certain time. Another project he realized was a 12 year practice of

sending two postcards a day to workers in the cultural industry. The postcards were of the

tourist variety that he stamped: “today I got up at (Time).”

A few years ago I embarked on a homage (or rip-off). In honor of his Zen simplicity

(and as a smarmy marketing tool) I decided to emulate him in the world of rock and roll.
 6

Starting on 4 April 04 (four Four FOUR) I began mailing postcards that read: “a rock

critick’s rip off/homage to On Kawara. Today I listened to...”

The piece was simple, each day I marked two postcards “today I listened to” and a

listing of the first piece of music I heard-the front side of the card read. “a rock critick’s

rip off/homage to On Kawara.” The ‘k’ was added to differentiate this aspect of criticism

from the plethora of vulgar and commonplace examples. The cards were sent to other

members of the music industry, musicians, publicists, a & r people, critics and

correspondence artists.

I’m not sure how long I attempted the piece. The idea was to implement it until 5

May 05 (5-5-5) but somewhere in September I forgot to post some so there it ended. Not

as dramatically as when On Kawara’s briefcase was stolen in the Netherlands; but it

ended none the less. Approximately 200 cards were distributed. I sent cards to rock

critics, correspondence art denizens, publicity people in the industry, bands I knew, artists

I knew, galleries I didn’t know but were courting...It was another glorious failure in my

career full of failures.

As a way to get past the advertising and cultural biases, the best approach to the

thorny problem of rock criticism is to set such an example. It is best to make the

considerations unadorned and uniform. It’s a way to cut through the parentheses and live

the sentence as it is spoken.

The idea of stating, “today I listened to”, and making a list. What better way to convey

a sense of satisfaction about a cultural product? Why go on to list its attributes and

negatives? (word?) Why struggle for tortuous probes that end nowhere? Why look for

adjectives? As the idea of a review is antiquated, it is best suited to the postcard. Physical
 7

paper being transported manually, bare bones drop it safely inside a broken tornado glass

sepulcher.

As it stands the “On Kawara” project is going well. It was begun on January Fifth and

it continues today. Everyday two postcards have gone out and on some days five or six

have been released.

The postcards supersede (and circumvent) rock criticism because they are without

rhetorical flourishes. The state the rock world as it is. So be it, the card themselves act

like sigils, as they pass through the post they accumulate magickal properties. The

postcards become talismans representing signposts to days of future passio.4

At its inception the specimens are physically antique postcards, reserved from

oblivion; rescued from the multiple over priced junk shops that line Marietta’s corporate

town square. Instead of useful implements for daily life, the town square is replaced by

curiosity shops that mask uselessness as nostalgia. Citizens walk in circles reliving

memories about how it was, about the good ole daze. The postcards are from an era

before zip codes; before the time that rock criticism became a match, became a flame and

finally became a useless stub in the runt fist of a hapless consumer.

The reference to OK is to bring back to the high art perspective. The rock critic exists

as performance piece. It represents the difference without the advertising frame; it takes

the metaphor out of the advertiser’s hands. Is criticism a ‘separate’ activity from

advertising or is it a gesture best served cold... Criticism as a compartmentalized activity.

Perhaps criticism should not be so compartmentalized. The specialist, the listener, the

expert-the postcards dramatize the internalization of the listening experience while

spreading them thin and out there.

4
Latin: suffering
 8

Perhaps writing about criticism is like spending time cataloging cds instead of

listening to music. Suddenly last summer I realized that I spent more time collecting

music than listening to music, endlessly searching eBay for the perfect soundtrack;

casually searching Amazon for the third Nico studio album, the alternate mix, the live

version endlessly uploading discs to my hard drive to shift it to the eternal external hard

drive where I can keep it forever-the door shuts acting as a gateway and a barrier...

The contemporary prospects for the genre are not slim but invisible. The lack of

advertising, let alone qualified readers has made the rock magazine and the fanzine

disappear. The user friendly blog universe and email notification system has made the

reviewer of recorded data superfluous. Case in point: the alternative country magazine

No Depression announced it’s shutdown by registering that advertising revenue for 2008

is at 64 percent what is was in 2006. They also mentioned that the lack of brick and

mortar stores make it hard to showcase their goods.

The rock critic is like the desk top death mask of Napoleon. Copied and distributed to

the nobility to show what was once there, is now here. See you too can have what once

was and put it on your desk. You can participate in the new rock and roll masterpiece by

‘blank” by attaching your name to a review-room for one more inside sir.

The only place for a rock critic is next to the club advertisements in the free weekly

newspapers discarded weakly. Now you can append your opinion to the actual product in

an online store. Endless footnotes, endless pictures inside other pictures. Occasionally

these reviews are very helpful thus reinforcing the original idea of the genre-a

consumer’s guide (wait wasn’t Robert Christgau fired from the Village Voice? Maybe he

got a B+). Or perhaps the original idea for the genre was to fill up space to have
 9

something to sell ads for...a lifetime of rejection. Rock star fantasies that never worked

out surfaces in an angry rock critic wielding a phallic imaginary pen, he’ll show them.

He’s trying to even an imaginary score that only he is keeping. What did BOC say: “the

door was opened and the wind appeared.”

But now that the genre has been at one realized (instantaneous comments on I-Tunes,

product reviews on Amazon, notes about what the users also downloaded)-

The genre has also been suppressed-superseded. Everyone is now a rock critic, it takes

seconds-the old line off line rock and roll critics take their clippings and fan their faces.

They slice the reviews like thin noodles and bury their teeth in the paper, chewing their

words and swallowing their pronouncements while defecating the results into spinning

platters of plastic masks on which they trace the ashtray of emperors long buried and

finally dead: “court jesters to the kings of junk.”5 Rock criticks are simply court jesters to

the kings of junk. Shoe shine super niggers to the rock and roll ruling elite. (Fred to Dick

Wagner squared.) (What happened to Dick & Steve anyway?)6

Some bands have a majesty that ushers their listeners inside their capes and escorts

them on psychic journeys. When WSB saw Zep at the MSG in ’75 he mentioned that the

audience used Zep’s music as a means of astral projection. This is not a viewpoint I

disagree with, as a matter of fact it’s perhaps the most insightful piece of rock criticism

I’ve ever read. We carry the music inside our coats, we clutch it to our hearts and we fold

it inside wallets next to the tattered condoms.

The music as a calendar, the grids that stretch along our memories tessellate into

failed dreams, empty promises breeding broken hopes that leak upon the table.

5
Guy Lafleur, NHL Hall of Fame 1988
6
Lou Reed “all you sweet girls with all your big fat talk, you can all go take a fucking walk”
 10

In that 1971 essay Lou Reed said something about dirty long haired people on the

road, oh I shot up to your song oh I got busted to your song...the rock critick is an endless

reference point.

Rock tribute bands, rock cover bands, perhaps an admission of creative bankruptcy-

the easy way to get paying customers, not unlike the critic, it’s time for a book

about....but the Melville scholar wants a career and an opportunity to provide some

insight for future scholars, can not the same be said about the rock critic? Does the critic

provide an opening or is he just another coat tail hanger on, a professional groupie, a

court jester to the kings of habeas corpus? It’s like the Japanese punk band OUTO said

many, many years ago: “many questions, poison answers”...

I just don’t find rock criticism funny anymore. I think it’s funny that people still

engage in such an activity. And it’s even funnier that the band (sic) the Black Krowes

flipped out about Maxim reviewing their latest album without even hearing it. Well, since

Maxim is like the New York Times with tits I can understand their horror. Many an hour

I’ve spent in discussions with people who’ve said: “I really want to get the new Haters

but I wanna wait t’see what Maxim says about it.” Oh yeah, Maxim, their critical

pedigree is descended from the two dimensional sphere, the flatness and inevitableness of

all music. As if occasionally they have some good insights, if they only woulda listened

to the new Black Krowes record they would have understood how it remolds

contemporary blues into a sort of post modern pastiche that is not unlike the later cut ups

of Matisse. Remember when he couldn’t paint so he just cut things up in his bed,

lounging after a long illness?

 11

The manager (sic) of the Black Krowes went on to scream in a press release about the

lack of journalistic integrity (sic) at Maxim cos they had the gall to give the CD a bad

review. Journalistic integrity-like that means anything anymore anywhere or anyhow.

More people learn about music from the posts at I-Tunes than any magazine these days.

All the fourteen year olds that shoplift Maxim are much more interested in the girls than

in any type of critical analysis....the writer said that record he didn’t hear didn’t give

much room for growth from the Krowes....and in a way he’s right (without having heard

it). The idea of some seventies rock thing (again) is sorta silly but I find it amazing that

the band cared at all, unless they read Maxim regularly and that’s interesting in itself

because magazine readership is way down...

Al Aronowitz dead in Elizabeth, NJ. Forty years ago he had a column in the NY Post

called “Pop Life” about (of all things) pop music. He wrote a gossip column about music

in a newspaper-how quaint, like a pot to piss in or a physical press release or a fucking

public telephone. In an improbable, impossible past I did lines in the very West Village

apartment that Aronowitz introduced Dylan to Ginsberg. That night we listened to

Terveet Kadet.7 The rock critic has a perfect soundtrack. Like a character in one of Lester

Bang’s horrible short stories that places a well worn copy of “Sonny Boy Williamson

sings the down and out blues” on the turntable. Of course it’s perhaps one of the greatest

records ever made, but who in ‘real life’ listens to such things besides rock criticks?

Forever behind the plastic glass broadcasting their viewpoint-if only everyone

listened to trout mask replica while watching citizen kane the world would be a beautiful

place. The lion would lie down with the lamb as the faded crows add an ‘E’ to their

name, engineering a trade mark, a maximum rock and roll chicken hawk dream.
7
The one with the gas mask on the cover
 12

The world famous multiple name “artist” Luther Blissett came over, in addition to

being world famous, he also is my friend. He was in town to do a performance piece “I’m

going to put up flyers for non-existent rock gigs and the stand outside the clubs

photographing what happens.” I told him that was deep. He told me that it was homage to

GX Jupitter-Larsen. I agreed that Jupitter-Larsen is an incredibly captivating and

intriguing cultural worker, definitely worth ripping off.

I realized that I was just a glossy paper advertising man, a pseudo intellectual shilling

for products like soap instead of being the super fan, the super nigger. (A note about the

super nigger: in 1999 a black plumber by the name of Alvin “Super Nigger” Jones had

his name on the ballot in Louisiana for Governor. He lost. I embraced the term super

nigger as an appropriate description for the super fan who wades through the waste to

touch his heroes: who buys every marginal solo LP, that owns every T-shirt, that

faithfully goes to see shows in some of the worst neighborhoods)8… The days when I

thought about the rock critick as the super-nigger. The ultimate fan. The ultimate

apologist. I would get so wrapped up in the bands and songs and the gigs and the phone

calls and notes, the endless copious notes that I thought I was there. I thought I was part

of the plantation and in a way I was. “Aw you got a real imagination man.”9

My writing accompanies physical representations of the text as well sometimes

scripted personal appearances. There are instances when I make my presence felt at

public cultural exchanges and I admit that my work is in fact homage to Kurt Schwitters.

But that’s my elusive connection to so-called high art-the elitist pretensions, that have

everyone always wishes to belong to-but I’ll get to that later-

8
Me & Cuss Baxter at a west philly bar with a fucking dwarf
9
Dream Syndicate
 13

I wanted to be a rock writer cos I’ve always loved rock and roll. My whole life I’ve

turned to it for solace and inspiration and since I am not a musician I figured that writing

about it would be the next best thing. Also, I figured that since so many rock stars act like

writers why can’t a writer act like a rock star? Which I’ve been known to do. Mr.

Tosches, Mr. Meltzer, and most notably Mr. Bangs have shown us that rock writers can

be rock stars so I figure why not me too. Rock inspired me and drove me and burned me,

I always wanted to be as good a writer to my contemporaries as the classic figures of rock

writing is/was/were (Stanley Booth dances around a table). I always wanted to write

about rock the way it was played, at one point in time I was excited to be around

musicians, becoming privy to their secrets, compiling my rock and roll address book

I don’t even remember it all. I’m examining the specimen slide of the washed up rock

and roll critic. Pathetic parasite to an industry that I always wanted to be a part of-that, I

aspired to be a star. If rock stars act like writers, why can’t writers act like rock stars? It

was a throw away line, another one of my grand sweeping gestures to an audience that

did not exist or even care.

I pull the curtain back and reveal the inner workings of the rock press along side my

inner feelings of shame and revulsion. No longer will my whims and passions be

determined by rock and roll bands and hand tied by publicity jerk-offs. This time I am the

director. I direct all the footage and I place it into a physical tome, a brief description of

how it was, when rock journalism transcended itself-when the map became the territory.

No not the map but when the publicity brochure became the territory-when the chamber

of commerce led you to believe that the gazebos and the quaint Civil War hotels filled

with wounded are nice grapefruit juice lock down bed and breakfasts.
 14

The toponymical reprocessing of the Fluxist gesture into a Neo-Neoist exposition-

while the cultural worker is creating a specific piece of cultural work, the events that play

into the manufacture of this certain solidified single event become part of the “piece”

itself. Thus contaminating the realm of critical response and the media’s insistent

documentation. The process is the product and nothing is more glamorous than watching

the product being made, paying no attention to the man behind the curtain. The children

of an “official” munchkin put their parents’ corpses on Ebay: “Own an authentic ‘Wizard

of Oz’ souvenir, petrified! Shipping included!” Like a GG Allin desk mask sold at

Spencer’s in the same pornographic shopping mall that houses the hot topic of what

Derrida called “difference”...things have their relation to what they are NOT. Those who

do not.

Eranistes is a Greek word meaning one who makes a garment from discarded rags.

These pages are a toga sheet around a pile of my work. Etchings sketched into the canvas

to explain things when the landlord finds my body and wonders what the fuck is all this

shit lying around the house. Unlike Henry Darger who had no self-consciousness in

reference to the art world, my work is not folk art because I am aware of the

mystification. I court the mystification and enlarge upon it.

I don’t know how things are going to turn out, and in that there is strength. Not writing

for the history books but as the history books. The cultural work as a magickal diary but

some of it is so obscure that I need to create a pointer place map describing my life of

prodigious inactivity. Pretending to do things to take up my time and occupy my psychic

space. I’ve spent my life confusing activity with accomplishment. The last song that

George Gershwin wrote before his death was called “our love is here to stay.”
 15

Rock criticism is dead, let’s have a discussion. I got a bootleg of REM live in Toronto

from the summer of ‘83. They were so good then, they were really magical. I see

parallels between them and the Band. And I say that because of their universal mythos,

their evocation of the old time jug band America. Their music sounds like sitting on a

porch upon the Autumnal Equinox watching the leaves swirl across a gravel driveway. I

watch movies from the early eighties cos the manicured lawns in the tracking shots

remind me when anything was possible. Sweet dreams. But the dreams of this time

period bother me deeply. It’s hard not to feel a sense of pathos and loss while undergoing

this impossible nostalgia. But like most bands, most people and most ideologies, I

stopped paying attention when they couldn’t live up to my expectations or my credentials

or my creed and I moved on. My every gesture against rock criticism represents my

submission towards it. “I got a glimpse of someone’s face and it was mine and I’d been

crying.”10

An interesting aspect about the Southern United States is the area’s hyper-religiosity.

Everyone goes to some sort of church and prays daily. This type of activity indicates that

a form of magick is practiced everyday and in every place. The most mundane tasks

become charged with a mystical significance. Dry bones in the valley take on a new

meaning beyond the obvious. (Whose bones? dem bones? broken bones? I have a bone to

pick with you.)

Subject: Re: trampled underfoot Date: Monday, June 21, 1999 5:26 PM

Jim,

People ask me how you're doing, nay what you're doing down in Atlanta and this

10
Belle & Sebastian, “Seymour Stein”
 16

question has given me pause to search for an answer. Would it be appropriate to

describe these goings on as a life part performative-driven spoof, part

hard-driving comment on the inherent cultural relativism of the ethnographic

display or, rather, simply a Dionysian spectacle tendering to the masses a pure

example of the Anarchistic celebration of millenarianist hysteria?

Please advise, Chuck “JS” Mills

An old email from behind the grave, beyond the grave. Chuck is dead. Four years next

spring. He was one of my oldest friends. I didn’t find out until two and half years and it

weighs heavily on my soul.

When I’d be out drunk and being an asshole I’d claim it was a performance piece. I’d

claim that I was acting out episodes to see what would happen. I claimed to be testing the

bounds of reality and what not. Like the gush guru of the sage testing his followers’

intake, I would consciously pretend to be the village shaman pushing the buttons. Only it

was my buttons being pushed.

A cave etched into the side of a flat rock mountain. A few hundred feet high, sleek

white sheets of rock with a single eye buried into the cliff. Soldiers patrol the base before

a small river, bubbling slowly in the summer. Inside the cave running a few hundred

yards deep and fifty yards high were six rows of long filing cabinets constructed like the

marble cliffs outside. The files contained manuscripts and records integral to the health of

the regime. It serves as a monument to my mind.

My choices were to either become a rock star or become a bitter rock journalist. Since

I was too egotistical to work with anyone else I became a bitter rock journalist. Print

fanzine here.
 17

Endless entertainment, endless options and operations, a band aid on a society

gangrene, open festers, time wounds all heels, the focus of criticism is finding the clues,

rock criticism throws off its mortal coil and bleeds green pus; they sop it up with rock

magazines from the seventies, pressed trousers, kreeme horn circuses, side flips, rock

scenes, glue sniffers, anonymous, industrial knews, who put the bomp in the bop shoo

bop?

When I was younger I had a sense of purpose, a mission of sorts. An idea or perhaps a

longing. The grand jury of desire reminds me of what I lost, of what I thought I had.

“What cannot matter if I do not try.” Preventing my past from becoming my future.

Tomorrow will be just like today unless I do something different. Maybe I should put

these pithy sayings underneath photos of cloudbursts and mountains then sell them for

ten bucks in gift shops. Yeah, that’s a plan. There’s always room for one more

meaningless cliché in a festival of sound bites. Things that people will spout off when

they are confronted with silence or an uncomfortable truth.

Being a failure means always having to say you’re sorry. The television and the rock

magazine sub-text is a window that reminds you just how far you’ve fallen short. The

murmuring of childhood dreams is mouthed by the actors on commercials to taunt you

into tears. But the tears never come leaving a dull ache behind the eyes. What’s my

mission now, now what?11

“If we all went back to another time I’d love you over.”12 A couple of bands, a couple

of writers, a couple of women. A couple of cities: New Jersey in the seventies, New

York in the eighties, Philly in 1990. Marietta now. Home. A country squire. I’m just

11
Tackhead
12
B & S, again. (sigh)
 18

another Northerner entranced by the mythos of the railroad track South where faith, travel

and reality intertwine into a magickal soup that counts the cross on each gulley-there’s so

much faith here that every occurrence seems to have a mystical portent-sudden storms,

tornadoes, and with so many people continually praying and invoking it’s impossible not

to witness such a mosquito net of belief and not feel ensnared in it.

Talk about nostalgia, talk about the passion.

The Atlanta rock scene tried to eat me. The Athens rock scene welcomed me with

open arms. Perhaps because my very existence was threatening to the commodity based

Atlanta rock heathen with their insecure premises. The Athens musicians have more of a

spirit of inclusion instead of competition. Witness the community rehearsal space that

offers something like medical services to indigent musicians. The Athens community has

a feeling of love for the creation of music instead of the cut throat ‘I’m going somewhere’

nausea of Atlanta....

but what exactly was so threatening? My adherence to non commoditized values, my

absolute lack of movement towards a position, a career, my preference for self sabotage,

my betting on the NY Football Jets...since I was questioning the how’s and whys and the

ifs, instead of remaining in the playpen of ‘alternative’ rock where I could be safely

petted like a pet rock and then pulled out to deliver commentaries about how you can be

this or do that or see something else in the reflection. Court jesters to the kings of junk. I

thought that since rock criticism was dead I would try to live it. My life reduced to thin

postcards.

My religious devotion has assured that the artists whose work I’ve extolled: Jucifer,

Psychic TV, Roach Motel & Royal Trux; has put me in a position that allows me to rest
 19

on my legacy like a curled trail of smoke that hangs in the wind, a breeze that represents

a direction. “If we could live over in another time I’d love you over”, but the past is

another country (“Maybe after Christmas, Maybe after January the 4th”13). I’ve distanced

myself so thoroughly from those days I can only shudder at my immaturity and pseudo

intellect, my thinly disguised defense mechanism.

Perhaps criticism was an angle to give me the opportunity to share my story with

out parentheses, without introduction? Did my writing have any value beyond my

neurotic urge?

Some folks have been kind enough to remain my friends for decades so perhaps the

same charm I exude in person can be translated across the text and I can make some new

friends. Like the literature of the Temple, I desire only collaborators not acolytes.

My youth was a time of great promise. I thought literary success was around the door,

right outside the pocket. I thought the lineage between HST, CB & WSB was an ample

way to start-realizing that while I had not the talent of those three I sure had the

checkbook to buy the various substances. I thought that mere imitation was the sincerest

form of creativity. I thought that perhaps my ideas about mysticism and creating

situations could be translated through rock and roll reviews.

My search for music takes on an obsessive quality-no longer do I practice the ‘derive’

of ferreting out vinyl junk slop shops for the elusive turntable action of my desires-no

longer do I go outside, nor do I travel, my universe shrinks by the click.

And it’s all a way to escape the moment. I can’t sit in my second skin another second,

I need a distraction, a necessary soundtrack-the soundtrack is never good enough-I

always need that one more record-that one more thrill outside of myself-
13
Throbbing Gristle 11-11-78
 20

When watching a motion picture you realize that the people on the screen are

pretending to be someone or something they’re not-in front of a huge crowd of union

members and camera people-it reminds me of the Atlanta rock scene and how each of its

members are playing a role, reduced to a script they consumed at the drive in. When

faced with this reality I came to the conclusion that my choices were just so bleak, so

twisted and so upside down....14

I lived in a time when everything went from being vague and sinister to being

documented specifically, when people still read magazines...

The mystification of the commonplace. The rock critic as universal cipher. The

subtext and not the text. The hidden cues. I guess when I look back on my ‘career’ as a

rock critic I see a combined wreckage of trying to accomplish something-anything-the

idea of a writer is to be read-whether they are read because of subject matter, ideas or

personal style- Creativity to validate my existence. The rock critick as the bridge between

fan and super-fan. But where does it end and how does it feel? “This lone scribble in the

margin of my days.”15

I was trying to do something beyond mere rock criticism but it was lost in the shuffle.

Perhaps my writing about what’s happened can serve as a road map to help others avoid

same fate. Look down that old rock critick road before you get involved with the wrong

mob.

Things could be different, but they’re not.16 Things are different now, how could they

be otherwise?17 I’m really upset. The sound is a trigger. The sound is a light bulb. The

music illuminates mood and image. These memories really take me back.
14
Royal Trux, “Turn of the Century”
15
Ginsberg, journals 4 Jan 60
16
“The past is a grotesque animal”, Of Montreal
17
Throbbing Gristle
 21

“Life is long, things do not end, wish for another lifetime-all you can do is take what

you get, take what you get.”18 And I resigned myself to it. Because of the choices I made

when I was originally listening to this record it led me here. It led to failed relationships,

little money, and a bankrupt career as an “artist”. I’m trying to sort it all out and see if

there is any value to anything I’ve ever done. It’s like that last section of the ‘Electric

Kool-Aid Acid Test’ where Kesey and Babbs are chanting “we blew it” to each other.

I can’t go back and change these things. I can only try and interpret them. I can only

offer these pages as a way to keep the wind from blowing under the door and chilling my

heart. “I had a dream: I never dreamed again. What you don’t know can’t hurt you, what I

know is killing me. Nothing will ever change it. Nothing. Death forever waiting, love

forever dead.”19 I caught a glimpse of someone’s face, it was mine and I’d been crying.

I dreamt of being an important writer and artist. I thought I had something to say. I

thought I had an unshakeable will and vision. Things could be different but they’re not.

I caught her scent and I thought about her. I think about Arthur Craven and I wonder just

where is my boat to nowhere? And I realize that I’m already in it. The first step to

wisdom is silence. Silence equals death. Cultural Darwinism they call it. “Always in the

dark, so much less special than the rest.”20 My cultural work can be best looked at a

temporary acute crisis. Creativity is the neurotic urge to demonstrate that yes while I am

here, I am also there. I am also present. A mystification common to the neo-pagan

generation is the idea of “art” as the notebooks of some sort of alchemical experiment

gone awry.

18
“Cry of the Dirtballs”, No Trend
19
“Without Me”, No Trend
20
“Choco-Jet”, No Trend
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I don’t necessarily disagree with this interpretation. The work of the artist as s/he

grows demonstrates and documents personal change. The creation of a personality that is

outside of the body work and hence the “one” that the artist has to “live” with is

interesting. When I was younger I had an idea that an artist could create a body of work

in which the whole of the artist’s personality could dissipate. This vessel would serve to

replace the physical body and the artist could get off the wheel of life. Creativity becomes

a neo-Egyptian mummy. All of the artist’s karma could disappear in a flash. I wonder if

it’s true. Or is just another cosmology that appeals to my cultural relativism? Art, music,

love-bankrupt ideals that are propped like golden arches over each heartbreak; always

open, always cheap, always leaving you hungry for more.

I don’t know why I bother. I guess I don’t know what to do after all this time. I’m not

sure if it’s love or an obsession. Doors can open and let the wind appear, doors can serve

to block out the draft. Doors can be written on and written over, pounded on and kicked,

locked and bolted, shut and slammed.

Psychologists call it the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy is a belief that

because someone has already invested a certain amount of time and energy in a project it

is worth finishing, no matter what. An example is that since I’ve already purchased a

ticket to a rock and roll show it is worth staying to end no matter what goes on stage. The

sunk cost fallacy is about continuing no matter the cost. If I end this project now I will

lose what I’ve already invested. As if the time and money I spent can be somehow

retrieved, can return, can come back, can caress me and comfort me. Rock criticism I

gave the whole thing up for you. “Can y’all feel what I mean?”21

21
PW Long
 23

The music serves as talismans. My own journey has been documented by sounds and

my writing about the journey was a type of magickal journal. And now the journey has

ended with postcards. The song that Jucifer covered: ‘send me a postcard’ by Shocking

Blue.

I just finished writing a manuscript about Jucifer. I need about a grand to publish it the

way I wish and naturally it’s unfinished. But it’s good to know where I have to go and

what I have to do. By never finishing it or releasing it I am assured of the beauty of no

depression and no rejection.

Put unused rock writing here:

When my first marriage broke up and I imagined being in love with a woman who

wouldn’t talk to me (still won’t) I was listening to No Trend incessantly. A recent

traumatic episode caused me to search out the disc on I-tunes.22 And there I was back in

time with my old friends No Trend, the only band other than Royal Trux that can make

me cry.

No Trend sang about the bankrupt consumer culture and how the advertising slogans

leave a huge gap between life and love. The singer was in love and it didn’t work out. He

sings about how he’s alone and how the world around him beeps on and off a collection

of jingles and products. It’s about how these diversions don’t satisfy his real needs.

Instead consumer society reinforces his pain by constantly taunting him with the

difference between televised reality and his loneliness. He can never be as good as that

rock star, as that icon. He can never have what they have-always reaching, always

grasping, and always losing.

Bonnie Prince Billy & Dylan section of door

22
“The Tritonian-Nash Vegas Polyester Complex”
 24

Bonnie Prince Billy covers Dylan’s “Going to Acapulco” from the basement tapes and he

takes it to New Orleans. The song has a real ragtime feel, a real honky tonk and he

speaks/sings through it finally he gets to the point where he says: “when someone offers

me a joke, I just say” (here he pauses and mumbles under his breath) “no thanks”. The

way Mr. Billy intones “no thanks’ really breaks it open. “No thanks.” My comp tape runs

into the original “Big Pink” version. He sounds more nostalgic “when someone offers me

a joke, I just say ‘no thanks’. Bob is much more upfront about not wanting a joke. Bonnie

Prince Billy performs perhaps the best cover of Bobby D I’ve ever heard, just as

shattering as Rick Nelson’s “Mama You’ve Been on My Mind”. Like any good cover he

takes the bones of the song and reestablishes it as his own without diminishing the

original, as a matter of fact, he made me go back to the original to see it’s own splendid

charm.

An example of this I’d like to extol is the Flying Burrito Brothers’ version of the Bee

Gees’ “To Love Somebody”. Gram Parsons just takes it apart, he just makes it so clear

what love lost is all about, about how time wastes for no one. “But what good will it do,

if I can’t have you?”

Responses to the cards

I got a postcard that I could not determine the source, a scribbled signature on the back

of a south park card and smeared postmark. I couldn’t even read what the person said

they were listening to that day. I suppose it was important. Ms. Andrea Jay of Staten

Island saw my work on the “net”, as she put it in quotes, and asked how long I’ve had the

stamps. She asked if I had the stamps made especially for mail art. I answered since

January 2008 and yes I did have them specifically made for this piece. Thompson in
 25

Florida sends these elaborately hand crafted postcards that feature a variety of religious

subjects and symbols. He mentioned that he recently saw GBH and they played all the

‘hits’. On an undated card he was listening to: Fiona Apple, Sun Ra, Peter Murphy, Steve

Roach and Eno. A famous ‘unpop’ artist sent an elaborate hand-crafted card saying he

was listening to a bootleg of Elvis & Beatle spoken word outtakes humorously titled

“King Elvis Dead.” Mr. Michael Lumb in England, the art historian and performance

artist always send a kind and thoughtful email. The musician and producer Bif 3 of

Hoboken said the cards remind him of temporary autonomous zones. And he hit on it

exactly.

Final section:

I started this essay after I completed the first final rough draft of “Jucifer Rising”. I

wanted to engage in a discussion about my postcard project. I filled in a few blanks and

added a few sentences. Suddenly this summer, it got out of hand. Remember when

Kosmo Vinyl was railing at the Clash for writing long songs: “why is everything a

fucking raga?” Yeah! Why is everything I do a fucking raga?

A couple of years ago I saw the Howling Hex in Atlanta. It was a stunning rock and

roll show. Neil Michael Hagerty is a genius and he’s been my favorite guitarist for years.

The poet & percussionist Phil Jenks was from Morgantown. He seemed like a nice guy

and I recognized his name. He asked if I knew a woman named Gravity and of course I

did, she was friends with my first wife. In late 1987 she gave me a tape of TG live at the

Crypt in London.

This is the gig that Genesis sings: “maybe after Christmas, maybe after January the

fourth.” It was a phrase I had thought before I heard the tape. I decided to use it for
 26

collages and cut ups culminating in a photo session/ritual I performed in Washington

Square on 4 January 89. Later that year I became involved with a woman born on the

fourth of January. Now that relationship is long gone dead and over. I’m beginning to

understand why the phrase ‘maybe after’ was included-maybe after I get past the concept

of January the fourth-past the concept of rebirth-past Michael Stipe’s birthday, past the

day Camus was killed in a car wreck and above all: past the day in 1966 when On

Kawara started painting his date series.

The title is a lyric from “don’t fear the reaper”. “The door was opened and the wind

appeared.” When I first heard it, when I first listened to it, I thought it was the perfect

metaphor for the postcard project. By engaging in the activity of mailing the postcards I

was opening the door. I was setting off currents through the post, each day I was

announcing that like On Kawara’s telegrams; I was still alive. Instead of retreating from

the world I was acting within it. I was part of the rock and roll world but not of it. I

imagined what would happen if every door was opened, not just my own.

The Hebrew for door is daleth. Doors open and doors bar. While I’m opening my door

to a new life beyond merely criticizing recorded music, I’m baring the door to a past full

of reacting to other events. I am no longer the victim. “I’m not the same as when I began,

I am not a piece of property.”23

And when I began I saw it as a form of journal, as a form of diary. I was consciously

emulating Thoreau and his idea of the journal only I was engaging in rock and roll

instead of Concord. The journal was to be the record of how I grew emotionally. In that

respect it was a success. It’s shown how far I’ve gone and far I could go. I’ve explored

23
Pil
 27

the theory. I said my piece and it’s time to move on. I’ve learned from it. I caress the

scars and I own them. I’m tired and I can never sleep.

But I’m hardly finished. However, I am finished with this essay. I am finished with

the idea of rock criticism. I’ve said my piece and now it’s time to let it sink in out and

over. The door was opened and the wind did appear but like all things it’s different than I

ever imagined. Mykel Board said when a writer runs out of ideas he resorts to using

theory. He’s right. I’ve run out of ideas about this theory. It took me eight years to figure

out what’s gone on and how it went down. Instead of writing about what I think I am now

interested in writing about what I’ve seen. The door truly has opened and the wind really

has appeared. Making manifest of all that is hidden. I’m glad this is all behind me now.

Thanks for being patient and thanks to all six of my loyal readers. “Can y’all feel what I

mean?”

-Jim Hayes

the Autumnal Equinox 2008

Marietta, Georgia; the United States of America
 28

Real playlist for door:

Belle & Sebastian: ‘lazy line painter jane’, ‘seymour stein’, ‘dylan in the movies’, the
loneliness of the middle distance runner’
Bobby D: “going to acapulco”
Bonnie Prince Billy: “going to acapulco”
Dream Syndicate “days of wine and roses” (cd)
Flying Burrito Brothers: “to love somebody”
Goldfrapp: “seventh tree” (cd)
Howling Hex: ‘all night fox’ (cd)
Husker Du: “Zen Arcade Rehearsals” (3 cds)
Jucifer: “L’Autrichienne” (cd)
Pavement: “zurich is stained” (NOTE: this is their only good song, it’s obviously a fluke)
Psychic TV: “dreams less sweet” (cd), “hell is invisible, heaven is her-e” (cd)
Public Image Ltd: “public image”, “poptones”
PW Long’s Reelfoot “push me again” (cd)
Rem: “Toronto 9 July 83” (cd)
Rick Nelson “mama you’ve been on my mind”
Royal Trux: “map of the city”, “turn of the century”
RTX: ‘speed to roam”
Shocking Blue: “send me a postcard”
Throbbing Gristle: “the Crypt London 11-11-78”, “ICA 18 Oct 76”

This is an edition of 200 copies.

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