As luck would have it the person asking the questions in this interview call themselves "Q" and the "A" stands for answers given by the author.
Q: When did your research into semantic data begin?
A: About November of 1993. That was the first time I recorded a dream from my recurring romps through the Pine Barrens. The swamp holes I slip and fall into. The desolate quiet of the bog. The dragonflies. The spontaneous dried needle fires. And, then my encounter with that shadow creature. A solid black form. A territorial demon of some sort. Still don't know what to consider it. It followed me home and when I turned around and stood face to face with it, it stared at me and ran it's solid black ass up the side of the high-tension towers. It knew I couldn't see it up there. But it also knew that I knew it was still up there somewhere. It knew how to watch. And, every time I went into altered states, it bided my time.
Q: I'm sure you've told that story a hundred times before, so I can excuse the vagueness and flippancy, but could you please explain how that relates to semantic data research, and your latest efforts in lingual prosthesis?
A: Go back and read the transcript of my exact spoken words, later, and tell me what you know about your own language, OK?
Q: I see. Well, then, do you expect a prosperous season of excavation and extraction this cycle cometh?
A: Well, I'm no astrologer, but I'd say the Synchronicity's are undeniable.
Q: What Synchronicity's are those?
A: The ones we are sharing right now. An artist being discovered. A child being born. A love exchanging fantasies. A king ruling faceless. Being alive. Being awake. Just not 'being' at all.
Q: Interesting. What are the chances of me getting any literal answers out of you, on, like, this side of Pluto?
A: Oh, I didn't realize I...
Q: It's OK. Let's just focus on your work for the time being.
A: Cool.
Q: How much of what you do should be considered subliminal?
A: Well, all of it, I suppose.
Q: You suppose?
A: Yeah, all the most genius shit comes from those parts of our mind that we don't control. We have to immerse ourselves in whatever we do and sometimes we have to pull a quick Chinese fire drill and let the imagination drive "you" as the proverbial vehicle with a sleeping passenger.
Q: OK, that almost made sense. You're getting better.
A: Thanks.
Q: Sure. Now, should any of the works being viewed here today at the gallery be considered dangerous in any way?
A: Well, no, not anymore dangerous than a car or a gun in the hands of an idiot. But, I think...
Q: Do you consider yourself an idiot with a loaded gun?
A: Certainly not.
Q: Where did the inspiration for all this paraphernalia come from?
A: How cliche of you. Well, you know, childhood, violence, jazz, sex, drugs, physics, the usual stuff. Why ask _that_?
Q: Trying to pace the conversation I suppose. Let me rephrase a previous question; do you consider your works of art as evocative enough to compel people to acts of suicide?
A: Well, I hadn't thought about it, really and...
Q: But didn't someone make a scene at your July 96 show in San Fran over a suicide pact in the area that week, allegedly caused by viewing your material? And, isn't there a direct connection between what you're displaying here today and those suicides in the Bay Area?
A: I didn't know this was gonna be a cross-examination... Anything else?
Q: What about your time on the Internet?
A: What about it?
Q: Weren't you one of those pirate contagion agents?
A: Pirate? No, I haven't been with a man in years. Rum is nasty too.
Q: So, you _were_ involved with list-terorist groups. Care to let our readers know what coding has done for you? And, whether you've taken a more modern approach to meta-insertion?
A: What kinda e-mag you write for, again? Hey, a lotta-lotta strange shit happens out there, can't always be ready wearing your safety goggles when the shit hits the fan. It goes down fast. Usually realized or speculated about afterwards. We _are_ moving at the speed of light, don't forget.
Q: I had no idea you were a multimedia artist as well. Sort of like charity?
A: No, I'm not that vain. Just self-indulgent.
Q: Are there any known cases of fatalities caused by memetically encoded e-mail?
A: I know of specific targets who were maimed, or found themselves undergoing repeated episodes of harmful "accidents," but I have yet to hear of death inflicted by viral electrons. A colleague has informed me that the most susceptible to these kinds of electronic attacks are those who watch a lot of television, or consume alchohol at binge levels, or listen to commercial radio often enough to reach an unchanging alpha-wave, or sometimes those who deny the modern minds need for meditation or transcendence or altered states of consciousness, or prayer, or "quiet time," or listening to the heart, or shutting off the noise. And, also, the most obvious target for such malice is commonly those who tend to self-medicate publicly trolling for the approval of their peers which aggravates their much-inflated sense of belonging to something illusory. Yes, ladies and gentlememes, I'm talking about parasites. Parasites and sycophants, indeed.
Q: I'm shocked. I always thought that was your shtick. Approval and belonging and such. Weren't you just saying how fascinating you find your own imagination? Wouldn't you say that you _are_ one of "those who avoid independent reality?"
A: Just because you call yourself insane or a doctor calls you insane does not mean you receive a get-out-of-trouble-free card. You are just as liable for what you do as the next flunky. I cannot accept the "back when I was..." or "before I went nuts I..." scapegoat. Insanity is a plea for sympathy. Sympathy is something that derives from the animistic primitives. It has similarity to manipulating remote objects with modular forms of said objects. But I must leave that communique to the technomancers as their language unfolds. Otherwise, make enough room on the soapbox for everyone.
Q: You are an idiot with a gun.
A: The center of the system must allow all spatial bodies to gravitate toward an independent axis. This ensures that the mass contained within said spatial bodies do not collide.
Q: What about space debris, doesn't that factor into the equation? What about the little pieces?
A: I think you're alluding to the cattle, the herd mentality or the "regular people." But that's not my point. I'm talking about dead weight. Scraps. We see this type of person in most walks of life. We see it young. We see it old. Over and over, again.
Q: You're exceedingly over-dramatic, too.
A: Yeah, and, usually this type of person will take to fits of flagrant exhibitionism; exploiting their mediocre talents. More often than not, this type of person will expose their shoddy abilities in such unrelenting quantity that it becomes a matter of simply playing the odds. Eventually they'll get recognition from someone just by the shear amount of time/mind they waste in attempting to embody that which is far, far outside of their own mundane threshold.
Q: You have a lot of work downstairs in the gallery, and I see you living comfortably. I heard some of the works price as much as luxury cars, is that true?
A: How much do luxury cars cost?
Q: What do they call your tour again ... that cute catch-phrase? The nomadic fortune 500? I'm sorry. What were you saying about mundane thresholds?
A: Yeah. This type of person has been given the label: Intentionally Truant of Beliefs This means that anyone who operates outside some determinate belief system, and does so unknowingly, is absent of intent behind the nature of their livelihood.
Q: Why should I care about the nature of my livelihood? What does that even mean?
A: Our entire essence, our life energy is tied up in our beliefs; whether we are consciously "holding" any beliefs or not. A belief is an effective lie. Our beliefs shape our reality. Reality is a highly effective lie, which grows in effectiveness as, year by year, our consensual belief structure is "upheld."
Q: What does consensual belief structure do?
A: Consensual beliefs shape the collective unconscious. The collective becomes weighed down with stricture and dogma. When the collective becomes dull, the individual becomes depressed. The heaviness becomes a self-generated feedback loop of misery. As within, so without.
Q: And how does this all fit into the ITB cases?
A: It is not an over-generalization to say that most test subjects in modern society and especially the Internet at large are exchanging mutual beliefs at a rate un-thought of all due to the fascination with other people engaging in breaking out of their own repressive paradigms, or instituting them, how ironic. Usually the ITB subjects will witness some random glimpse of their own or someone else's psychick/magickal powers. Many times this is accompanied by jealousy, desperate pouting, sleeplessness, and/or mild obsession. Paranoia frequently finds it's way into this equation when failed attempts at 'closure' are received. The more fully Quantum-minded folk are learning to dance, to walk-the-walk on their way. The decrepit relativity-minded kin describe their universes to themselves in the smallest; and most unintelligible; units of comprehension. That is, the inherent symbolism of their world is given the simplest explanation and least amount of effort possible.
Q: All right, what symbols are we talking about?
A: In the modern by-default paradigm we watch culture in self-destruct mechanism. They undergo the process of 1. realizing "god" is either One or dead or inside us all or all of thee above, which is usually the case thanks to the discordian handiwork in Operation Gideon: randomizing bibliomancy in hands of the civilians. 2. doubting all semblance of "god" to the fact that-- "well, if it's all the same shit (one or dead or inside) then who needs to think about it anyway?" 3. therewith, proceeding forth to making photo-albums and scrapbooks of their times and their "spending" during their LIvEs, or even worse, famiLIES. 4. A mental map (or illness) is formulated in the simplest, and most unintentional manner possible; making it seem as though one has not even adopted a set of beliefs in the interim. Namely: "god" above ego with money baiting the hook; and sex without awareness of our terminal contingency to "meet our maker" who put us here in/on the incubator matrix (matrix, matriarch, mother).
Independent reality is nearly impossible living under these conditions.
Q: What do _you_ mean by independent reality?
A: To find out, quickly, if you live in an independent reality simply ask yourself any yes/no question at random. As fast as you intend to begin the exercise, pipe out a question, even a meaningless one:
"is the desk made of wood?"
There are only three answers any one person can offer: yes, no, and, laughter.
Laughter is independent of the hold gravity has over us. Any thing that is not -yes- or -no- is considered laughter. So, "fuck you" would be considered laughter, so, fuck you. Laughter rises above understanding and not understanding. It searches past duality toward the undefiled condition.
Silence, is also, in my eyes, laughter.
Laughter should not tend toward qualities or judgments of negative or positive, it is neither of these. It is beyond the 50/50 probability.
We need something that transcends everyday in some form or another. Constantly we are assaulted with the 50/50 probability. We consistently must make our choice between left or right or right or wrong or down or up or yes or no or zero or two.
It's the safest bet for a dual-mind. We flip quarters for money a lot in these parts and for a lot of money too. Bought another coat from heads lying face up on the ground just the other day, hey what the fuck can we say?
Our dual minds are relativity based and no where is this more evident than in our awareness of many things at-a-time. Impossibility is what provokes the mundane mind to attempt to become aware of everything, to be in "control" at all times. And, it is this same impossibility which beckons us to intentionally not be aware of anything at all and let go of "control."
At first the moments of transcendence are like hiccups, but they quickly become essential breaths; instilling life and cheating death.
Yes, friends, breath can suspend thought. It takes time to witness yourself having two sets of internal breathing apparatus. The regular lung-heart complex; inhaling and exhaling. A visualization of the timing ratio of the pulse to oxygen intake allows one to experience their unseen "spiritual" means to sustain life within the body-mind. We must breathe to live. But there is something else going on inside the vacuous make-up of the body and mind which fosters our daily evolution. We, the only species that will never reach it's pinnacle design. Humankind is grooming itself extinct.
It should appear obvious why smoking almost anything clots the clavicle area. The hotter the stuff that hits the throat is, the more damaging it is to tissue. Build up in the esophagus and lung leads to obvious respiratory inhibition. The smoker will be robbing hirself of 'wind' (or stamina, or endurance, or longevity, et al). The opposite happens when utilizing breathing meditations, Pranayama. When the breath is made the focus, we are taking breaths of purity, healing our bodies, regenerating our minds.
Sex is most closely related, as a biological function, to death. They appear to us as frozen moments. Orgasm. Departure. These are not actually "events" these are the same union with thee all-pervading aetheric sea of sub-atoms. The present moment or so-called here-now, is a micro-fluctuation of our perception structured by Newtonian logic.
But, each second is filled with raw orphic/hermetic power.
Organick streams of live, hot conscious electricity flowing invisibly through all things local and non-local in the same rhythmic static inert flux.
If you were to combine the collective awareness output in all the wars in the last century it may not compete even remotely with the output that this point in history is producing. All over the world their are people fixated on this event. Using it as their platform for increased unrest. The unrest was there before. It has our attention at the moment, though.
I have to depart. You're welcome for my time.
Q: Hey, what just happened?!