P * A * R * T * Y

STARTIN SOMETHIN'

2012-02-14T01:18:00.001-08:00

Greetings all,

this is a warm invitation to the official launch of the Party Art Movement, which is a movement that has been happening inside me for some time now, and is now ripe and ready to be shared with fellow revelers.

It will emerge from the opening for The Chinese Horoscope Show curated by Erica Van Zon.

6pm

Wednesday 15th Feb

Enjoy Gallery

Level 1/147 Cuba St

Wellington

I am representing the rat and will be showcasing the hard-out behind the scenes dynamically responsive intricacy associated with this gutter dwelling yet quick witted sign. At the opening some fellow rats and I will be opening a series of Prophetic Pass The Parcels, which hold densely packed layers of symbolic clues and keys to my vision for how this most extraordinarily super natural art movement might play out in the public arena.

The performance, What's Going To Happen... will start at 6.15 when Dad blows the whistle and Mum plies my fellow rats and I with tequila.

Within that performance there are 5 sections, although only a very keen eye will be able to deduce when one ends and another begins.

They are :

1. Everything for Nothing (A-Hole)

2. Tools and Arty Facts

3. Examination and Mock-Up

4. Mystery Achievement

and finally ...

5. Building a Rats Nest

although it could appear that we are just getting drunk and making a lovely mess, there will be much much more to it than that !

Come down for a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the hyprophesis for a mythical science experiment played out on the floor of an art gallery in the form of an esoteric party game !!

It sounds ABSOLUTELY NUTS doesn't it !?

Come and marvel about how something SO NUTS can at the same time be SO LOGICAL on very close inspection.

Could it be that being COMPLETELY NUTS is the only true form of sanity we have left ???

and that art is the safest umbrella word to be OPENLY NUTS under ?

If you miss the opening you can still pop down to the gallery to view :

Too Much Information

the physical installation that this rat party will result in. Until March 10.

Also, stay tuned for Canary In A Goldmine, a companion article to the show to feature in the next issue of Kerry Ann Lee's Dunedin based magazine, Permanent Vacation.

Til next time,

peace and puzzle parties,

Caroline

NOT MANY MORE SLEEPS UNTIL ...

2012-02-07T04:44:00.000-08:00

RATS @ PLAY

2012-01-31T02:36:00.000-08:00

Getting excited folks as the date of the rat game show leans backwards from the future towards us .... This passage is also out of The Book Of Symbols, Reflections on Archetypal Imagery (Taschen). From fire dragon Matt Dooley. Who has kindly agreed to lend me a third eye recording device (helmet cam) for the show.

PLAY

Who knows what makes us play? The young of very many species, including our own, spontaneously chase, leap, twist, wrestle and cavort, promoting strength and endurance, instinct, social bonding and adaptation. Complex play with objects and goals is associated with more complex brains. But playing is also, apparently, just for the sheer pleasure of play. An aquarium fish will repeatedly leap in and out of a tiny waterfall. Ravens have been observed sledding on their backs down slopes of snow, and kea parrots toss rocks in the air. Elephants kneel to equalize play with a smaller playmate (Brown, 2ff). Cats, dogs and primates, among others, incorporate objects and obstacles in their play and often have favourite toys. Dolphins invite play with human swimmers. Play, in fact, is a principal way in which acquaintance is made with another.

Human games are often formalizations of play, framed by fixed rules, while allowing for individual strategies. Many of our most familiar games can be traced back to archaic rituals and myths the cosmology of which is embodied in the structure of the contest. Hopscotch, for example, derives from myths of the soul's journey from earth to heaven through a labyrinth. Chess employs the hierarchy of medieval kingdoms. Games of chance are probably descended from divination rituals, and invoke the mythic forces of fate. In Hindu mythology, the spirit of lila or divine play, is behind the infinite manifestations of the gods and their maya, or power of illusion. "The divine mother is always sportive. This universe is her play ... her pleasure is in continuing the game." said Ramakrishna of the goddess Kali.

Artifacts of cultures thousands of years old reveal toy conveyances, miniature weapons, pull animals and human figures. Toys come alive through imagination and unconscious projection, reflecting in children the still-tenuous boundaries between inner and outer realities. Like the religious fetishes of antiquity, stuffed animals and dolls in particular reflect numinous facets of their possessors unknown identity. They embody threshold guardians in developmental transitions. They are potent objects of comfort and companionship, expressed affects, urges and compulsions, protection, aggression and role-playing.

Natural forces outside their ken made ancestors imagine they were themselves playthings of the gods. Contemporary computer-simulated games of sports, war, intergalactic conquest, evolution, urban planning and interactive doll-playing and the hands on making of models into a virtual experience in which enthusiasts play and are "played" by the unexpected components of the game. Psychologically, consciousness and unconscious interact and impact each other in all kinds of play. The reverie of play unveils feelings, aspirations, impressions, locked up pieces of experience and potentialities.Play can evoke the affinity and polarity between psychic opposites, and dynamics of exclusion and integration, separation and reunification. Alchemy described a part of the opus as "child's play" despite the arduous nature of the work of self-understanding. Jung played childrens games of drawing , modeling with clay and meditatio, the dialogue with an unseen partner, as a means of engaging the unconscious aspects of psyche and bringing its contents into consciousness. Dreams often utilize images of play. They reveal the stuff that supports or subverts our capacity for creative play. They illuminate a process related to contending in life, stepping up to the plate, going the distance, winning, losing, excelling. They invite play.

Lack of play, or abnormal play - sadistic, bullying, teasing play - is associated with abuse, abandonment, depression or sociopathy. Play is frivolous, serious, consequential. There are sexual games, political games, war games. Game theory mathematically describes the seemingly unpredictable convergence of competing parties. Physicists lay speculative "god-games" with giant particle colliders. Out of play emerges evolutionary change, self awareness, scientific discovery, artistic composition, invention, good friends of multiple species and the resolution of many questions. "The game's afoot," the legendary Sherlock Holmes would say when he had a lead to the mystery.

LATEST RAT MAIL-OUT

2012-01-24T19:45:00.000-08:00

Caroline Anderson

7:03 PM (19 hours ago)

to Bek, Torben, kristen, maiangi, erica, Simon, Matt

Greeting rats and rat friends,

I am delighted to have you all on board with the unveiling of a few of my pretty psycho yet strangely logical behind the scenes activities at the Chinese Horoscope Art Show. (Enjoy Gallery, Feb 15th, 6pm)

I have titled the performance piece :

What's Going To Happen ...

(with this catchphrase :)

NZ's forerunning PASS THE PARCEL PROPHET, Caroline Anderson officially wonders : which came first?
THE FUTURE OR THE PRESENT?? in the context of a rat art opening.

Then the physical show which we install on site during the opening will be known as :

Too Much Information

I am especially pleased to have you on the team seeing as my performance history ranges from being Small Fox number 2 in Fantastic Mr Fox in standard 2 and Tina Turner in a miming Stars In Their Eyes the same year ('93). As well as being understudy for Gaunt in the Wanganui Intermediate production of Monsters ('97). That is all.

But a new era is dawning !!

And I am glad I have some mates to help ease me into it.

Til next mail-out,

Caroline

* * * * *

I received this response from Erica Van Zon :

Hey Caroline - coolio - thanks for sending through, I have forwarded to Bopha - sounds good - the opening part we get now...all will be revealed..time traveling parcel, sort of like a time capsule..to your future self!

talk soon

XE

and this one from Michael Prior :

This notice has been magneted to the fridge door of my mind with a pineapple wearing sunglasses magnet that isn't very strong so it's sliding down the door just a bit.

SYMBOLIC VERMIN

2012-01-23T22:35:00.000-08:00

Gearing up to represent the rat in a Chinese Zodiac art show I have been doing a spot of rodent reading. Turns out in my art practise, which is also my life practise, I display an array of metaphorical rat traits. Here is a passage about the rat as a symbol from the Wild Animals section of The Book of Symbols, Reflections on Archetypal Images, (Taschen), which magically arrived in my mailbox after a few clicks of a mouse from Matt Dooley in November. I have highlighted the most relevant parts in pink, for browsers.

RAT/MOUSE

Rats and mice are hard to pin down. Elusive by nature, surreptitious, they appear and disappear like diminutive magicians. Living in tandem with human beings, they are always coming from behind. They shadow us wherever we go, perpetual stowaways on our voyage through history and our passages to brave new worlds. They slip through the cracks of our physical and psychic terrain, privy to our closeted and cupboarded secrets. Like time, hunger and guilt they gnaw incessantly. They personify the labyrinthine restlessness beneath the surface of things. Their edgy commensalism is not widely appreciated. Vilified as vermin, feared as vectors of disease and death, despised as voracious plunderers of our amber waves of grain, mice and rats mostly exist at the margins. Denizens of basement and attic, sewer and alleyway, they furtive rummage the mountainous dumps of our collective rejectimenta. And yet, observing at dusk a happy group of rats recycling discarded Halloween treats or watching through the window of a passing bus the unmistakable silhouette foraging single-mindedly in the snowy darkness, you have to admire their tenacity, their eerie ability to beat the odds.

Like all rodents, rats and mice have prodigious incisal power. They can gnaw their way through just about anything, including brick, wood and lead. Unspecialized, omnivorous, they can adapt to almost any climate and resourcefully avail themselves to whatever they find at hand. The most prolific of any mammal, they persist, by sheer numbers, against the onslaught of their raptorial, mammalian and reptilian predators and the relentless persecutions of humankind. Curious, sociable, agile; endowed with an excellent sense of smell, fine-tuned hearing and taste-buds as sensitive as ours, mice and rats are portrayed in folklore and popular culture as heroes, helpers and even 5-star restaurant chefs. Gnawing through a net to free a trapped lion, dropping down a drain to retrieve a wedding ring, sewing intricate buttonholes a tailors hand can no longer manage, mice are suggestive of the small, invisible, intricate workings of the unconscious to overcome obstacles, even without our conscious participation. So, also, the rat companion and "vehicle" of the Hindu deity Ganesha chisels the knots that tie us up and gains entry to the bolted treasures of the psyche. As emblems of fertility, both mice and rats - especially white ones - can signify wealth, good luck and abundance, as in The Chinese Year of the Rat.

On the other hand, as secretive creatures active after dark, rats and mice are inevitably associated with subversive occult forces and devouring influx. Notorious as hosts of the fleas that spread Bubonic Plague to millions of people in the Middle Ages (and also killed millions of rats), they are mythic harbingers of scourge. Rats leaving a sinking ship, or mice scurrying from a house are familiar omens of imminent misfortune. Paradoxically, troops of mice and rats are often depicted in folktales as vehicles of a just vengeance, the executioners of those who escaped rightful punishment, especially for crimes against the poor and hungry.

There is a rat or mouse element within many of us: a small, feral, chthonic aspect of ourselves reprehensible in the eyes of the collective. It is tempting to relegate this "rat" to the furtive edges of consciousness, where it will remain all but invisible. But if we are willing to engage it, to give it a respectful space within which to reveal itself, its energy can become an invaluable ally. Oracular, with its ears close to the (under) ground, it can warn us of the dark patches, and mediate our way through them. It will teach us a kind of psychic street smarts, instill a scrappy determination to survive and, ultimately, reveal itself as the deity in disguise.

THANK YOU SIMON (IN ADVANCE)

2011-12-17T21:34:00.000-08:00

Would like to say a massive shout-out to genius video maker Simon Ward who is going to film my brains' myth-child being born next February. It is a trilogy, wrapped up in a tender chrysalis of layers and layers of epistolary ephemera that need to be carefully shed in order for the little baby story to emerge and be viewed from a number of angles by numerous pairs of eyes. This first pint-sized reveal will be an indication of what is to come in the profoundly ridiculous field of party artistry.

Simon made the trailer for Disasteradio's CHARISMA album, which I linked to the very first post on this blog, after I wiped my fresh slate clean in October 2010 :

The spontaneous celebration which will probably eventually eclipse Christmas as the vibiest celebration of the year, Charismas, is named after this timely album.

As you can see by Simon's latest vid he is a bonafide virtual zen master. (Watch on youtube for a more centred effect) :

I'm so glad that pink ball came out from under the rug and helped disperse all that grime !

POTENTIAL NRG

2011-12-13T23:04:00.000-08:00

Coco Solid is in town at the mo and on Sunday she melted my mind when she uttered the three sweetest words in the English language :
"I get it".

Here she is DJing for us at Dan's club nite on Saturday, as depicted by Rob Mchaffie.

Have you ever noticed how art is largely about depicting what's going on?

RATS OUTTA THE BAG

2011-12-06T13:46:00.000-08:00

As aforementioned, next February I will be representing ratkind in a Chinese Zodiac Group Art Show at Enjoy gallery in Wellington.

Late last year, while on a natural kundalini bender in Whanganui, I made a series of, what seemed to me to be, Prophetic Pass The Parcels. I propose to recruit some fellow rats (largely '72 rats, next rat up) to open a present in the present at an opening. All in the name of taking baby steps towards the up'n'coming PARTY ART REVOLUTION.
Which will be here any day now.

As we all know revolutions start with a series of little revelations. In this case I will be revealing the secret of precisely what lies in the centre of the nucleus of my own internal party, (because I have full behind the scenes access to that one). Thus externalising its secret in symbol form.

Here's a mail-out I just did to potential rats on the internet :

Hola Potential Rats who might potentially open a present in the present at an opening for me! Feb 15 2012 (have had some tentative yesses location pending)

Here is an important passage to ponder before reaching the centre of the present.

SURPRISE! It's by Jung. From Confrontation With The Unconscious, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (his autobiography)

"

This is the dream I mentioned earlier : I found myself in a dirty, sooty city. It was night, and winter, and dark, and raining. I was in Liverpool. With a number of Swiss - say - half a dozen - I walked through the dark streets. I had the feeling that there we were coming from the harbour, and that the real city was actually up above, on the cliffs. We climbed up there. It reminded me of Basel, where the market is down below and then you go up through the Totengasschen ("Alley of the Dead"), which leads to a plateau, we found a broad square dimly illuminated by street lights, into which many streets converged. The various quarters of the city were arranged radially around the square. In the centre was a round pool, and in the middle of it a small island. While everything round about was obscured by rain, fog, smoke, and dimly lit darkness, the little island blazed with sunlight. On it stood a single tree, a magnolia, in a shower of reddish blossoms. It was as though the tree stood in the sunlight and was at the same time the source of light. My companions commented on the abominable weather, and obviously did not see the tree. They spoke of another Swiss who was living in Liverpool, and expressed surprise he had settled here. I was carried away by the beauty of the flowering tree and sunlit island, and thought, "I know very well why he has settled here." Then I awoke.

...

This dream represented my situation at the time. I can still see the greyish-yellow raincoats, glistening with the wetness of the rain. Everything was extremely unpleasant, black and opaque - just as I felt then. But I had had a vision of unearthly beauty, and that was why I was able to live at all. Liverpool is the "pool of life". The "liver" according to an old view, is the seat of life - that which "makes to live."

This dream brought with it a sense of finality. I saw that here the goal had been revealed. One could not go beyond the centre. The centre is the goal, and everything is directed towards the centre. Through this dream I understood that the self is the principle and archetype of orientation and meaning. Therein lies its healing function. For me, this insight signified an approach to the centre and therefore to the goal. Out of it emerged a first inkling of my personal myth.

"

I will be providing an inkling into my personal myth by way of a small arrangement of confectionery items in the centre of a reasonably dense Pass The Parcel which hopefully may be opened up by YOU.

Hope this email finds you rats fit and well. I am a sick one currently, pain parties in my chest whenever I cough. But surely it will be gone before Women's Wellbeings birthday and club night with Coco this weekend.

Lots of rat love

Caroline

TASTES OF IRONY

2011-11-27T16:09:00.000-08:00

My supervisor

In my art practise I do a lot of pretending. Not deceitful pretending to purposely pull the wool over anyones eyes. Just very vivid imaginative pretending that is actually really real from my perspective even if it may not be from an outside perspective yet. Pretending is a good tool for planting ideas from your inner fountain in the soil of reality. If you never stop doing it there's a pretty good chance it's realness will come into fruition in the mind of others and all of a sudden it's not pretending anymore. I'm pretending to do a thesis at the moment. That means I actually am doing one I guess. Just not through official channels. (Pictured is my supervisor.)

I found this passage about pretending in The Art of Living : Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault by Alexander Nehamas :

Cicero himself, for example, does not separate irony from indirectness. He thinks, of course, of irony in positive terms. But he writes that "of the Greeks, we are told that a pleasant and humorous and genial conversationalist, who put up a pretence whenever he spoke, was Socrates (the Greeks called him an eiron), "his reference to pretending (simulare) leaves the question of transparency open. One might object, as Vlastos does, that "pretense" does not have its "basic use" of "deceiving" or "alleging falsely". Instead "pretending" must be understood in its "subsidiary use" as it is applied for example to "children 'pretending' that their colored chips are money ... or that their dolls are sick or die or go to school." This "subsidiary" use "altogether innocent of intentional deceit," allows us to understand eironeia as a figure of speech totally devoid of "willful misrepresentation" (27).

But many activities that go under the name of "pretending" cannot be reduced to either of these two starkly defined opposites. The children who pretend that some colored chips are money may not intend to deceive anyone by their pretense, but that does not mean that to them the chips are clearly not money either: children have a much more complex relation to toys than the dichotomy between the primary and the subsidiary use of "pretending" can possibly capture. To take another sort of case, I may pretend to be - I may act like - a classical scholar, all the while leaving my audience (and perhaps myself as well) in doubt as to whether I am one or not. To call someone a pretender, a simulator (as Cicero calls Socrates) shows neither that we know their mind nor even that they know it themselves.

RADICAL FUSION (BEHIND THE STICKERS)

2011-11-20T20:16:00.000-08:00

Stay tuned for a Hyprophesis of my scientific freestyle thesis about connections and parties, possibly to be revealed layer by layer in Pass The Parcel form in a Chinese Zodiac Show at Enjoy Gallery, Cuba St, Wellington, Feb 15 2012 !

I'll be representing Rat-kind, a very curious sign.
But wait till you hear the question,
there's AT LEAST TWO layers in that alone :

Which came first ... the future or the PRESENT ?!

(My guess is the PRESENT, but ... How does the PRESENT know what the future holds!? Could it be that the PAST gave it some clues ... ???)

DREAM I HAD PON DI HILL

2011-10-27T17:08:00.000-07:00

Just found this in a sandy brown book I penned pon di hill at Balaena Bay, Wellington, while subleasing with FFM and Maria while their housemate Jen was clowning around in Finland for 3 months.
(This was the view from my bed) :

Going to a cool breezy laid back party with Dan with a slight Miami Vice feel of whiteness and smoothness. In a white very airy open bar. Went to get a drink and the woman next to me remembered me. I didn't recognise her but it turned out to be Carey-Ann who was at Upokongaro School with me in my youth. Had some light convo's, asked Dan if he would still be there in one to two hours and went exploring down into the basement. Found an extremely long staircase. There was a sign for putting out into the street to a theatre of some sort at the top of the stairs. I thought I better take it with me in case I exited out a different location.

Gleefully I slid down the rail of the long staircase, holding the sign, closing my eyes a lot of the time all the while in a free and transcendent state. Started to realise maybe I should've left the sign at the top of the stairs because it was probably meant to go outside when the theatre was open. I came to the lobby and it was clearly closed. I couldn't just slip out and keep exploring.

There was a man there who saw me. I started to run and he started to chase me. Then I stopped and said "I just wanted to explore" and he was like "Yeah we need to get more set up for people like you who want to explore" and I didn't get in trouble.

DONE SPOKE

2011-09-27T01:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to a some semi-public speaking I did last week on Radio Valerie. I'm discussing the Peace Party Puzzle I'm making, which secretly is an art and science project too. Thanks Ronan and Sam,
(a couple of Peace Party Puzzle Packs are coming your way!)

I come in around 53 mins in and hang around for quite a while :

Listen up HERE !

ARCHIVAL SOLUTIONZ

2011-09-25T01:35:00.000-07:00

Just want to say a massive shout-out to Geordy Muir (Genre if you're predictive texting). Geordy works at NZ Archives. For his birthday I sent him a bunch of hardcore playful literary treasure that he has agreed to archive in a funny yet serious fashion, which is his style anyway. He is famous for this hard-hitting quote that he said to me in the car once :

Rules are like routines, they're made to be broken.

Happy Birthday !!!

Thanks for magnetic fishing to Sade with me when I was down!

TRANCE PARTY

2011-09-22T17:11:00.000-07:00

My friend Elle Loui, who helped me re-integrate into society after a magical ongoing trance party of my own just helped induce one in some others with her party art show at rice and beans :

If Elle Loui August and Matthew George Richard Ward's WONDERING HOW WE EVER CAME TO THIS THANK YOU, FOR INSTANCE. OR POSSIBLE OR JUST WHATEVER WHATEVER WHATEVER!!!! (rice and beans) was something a reviewer could reliably call theatre or dance, and expect to be understood, then the world would be a somewhat different place. If I say to you that I experienced this as a type of post object art - whose scattering of bodies across the blank slate of Rice and Beans seemed to deny literal scrutiny and require of the visitor other means of perception, integration into the work - then you might be well served in terms of perceiving an absence of commodity, but completely mislead in other ways, for this was no dry intellectual exercise. What type of person has the temerity to dissect and codify when it is live bodies at stake? A theatre reviewer? Speaking recently with the director of the just-finished Avenue Q, we reached an typical impasse with his assertion that "physical theatre" was a redundant term - all theatre being intrinsically physical. Which, abstractly, is completely true, but in practice is completely not. Much, if not practically all of what we call theatre is involved in encasing non-literal, animistic, flesh-based communication in a great sheet of words. "Wondering....." , on the other hand, felt a bit like wandering down to a great rivers edge to watch an ancient species at play - but that is only if you chose to see it as spectacle at all. It felt more like a rite intended to awaken atavistic pathways in the brain. When I left - after about an hour- I literally could not speak. The world seemed enormously present, and language seemed too..... easy a strategy; too coarse. I offer no guesses at method or intention on the part of the performers, and in terms of what i "literally" witnessed - two people denying (passively, it seemed) eye contact or interaction, and moving in the space -any description beyond the most basic would mislead. Entertaining, informing, transporting an audience are all splendid goals for theatre - but literally putting them in a trance is, in our modern context, something of a paradigm shift. Some say it was not always so. Certainly it has not deserted us for good.

Jimmy Currin

DAY OF RECKONING

2011-09-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow (Thursday 22 September) I will be reckoning some stuff on Ronan's radio show, Radio Rascals from 6:45pm ish Melbourne time.

Mostly I will be talking about a Peace Party Puzzle Project I'm playing at, which is sort of an Interactive Evolutionary Time Capsule project, that fits in with the weekly theme of TIME pretty appropriately. It is an infinitely complex yet bodaciously simple project. Founded on an intricate framework of hot vivacious connections (neural and otherwise) and the puzzling yet exhilirating destinations they can and will lead you to if you invest your joules in their exploration. Then there are the joules of interest you gather on your investment, which are worth their weight in snacks!

It is an exercise in SEEING WHAT HAPPENS, jotting it down, and sending it to someone for some reason. Then realising the reason that you did that, jotting that down, and so on ...

FYI, it is NOT a chain letter, it's totally off the chain. The process is simple, WHAT HAPPENS is the complex part.

Anyway, tune in if you like, you could be one of the 50 listeners !

LIVE from above the ice cream shop,

here : http://www.radiovalerie.org/index.php?/ongoing/yeah/

GOLD ENVELOPES

2011-09-19T05:22:00.000-07:00

Ideas are not just counters used by the calculating mind; they are golden vessels full of living feeling. "Freedom" is not a mere abstraction, it is also an emotion. Reason becomes unreason when separated from the heart, and a psychic life void of universal ideas sickens from undernourishment.

The Buddha said: "These four are the foodstuffs, ye bikkhus, which sustain the creatures that are born, and benefit the creatures that seek rebirth. The first is edible food, coarse or fine; touch is the second; the thinking capacity of the mind is the third; and the fourth is consciousness."

Whoops, just quoted some more C.G Jung,
from "Phenomenes Occultes"
Psychology and the Occult

ART FORUM

2011-09-16T00:09:00.000-07:00

with Dan and Caroline

Part of a new series where Melbourne party artists Caroline and Dan get down to the nitty gritty about art and what we want out of it in a chatty conversational tone.

Episode One :

C : I want to engage people pretty hard.
D : I think that's what we all want. Hard engagement.

TEXTICLE

2011-09-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

I just found this drawing on my friend Rob's blog. It's by me, (Caroline Anderson) and was the first drawing I've ever had in an art show, at the Melbourne Art Fair last year. That's mine and my siblings bling fossilising deep in that sediment there. Joanna's gold nacho, my gold banana earrings and Sean's gold blackberry and hamsa. (Not sure who the diamond ring and pearls belong to.)

Have come a really long way since then and now I've had two things in art shows (official ones) and many many more things in Home Art Shows around the world. Generally though there are two sides to my art so one half might get concealed when it comes to framing.

I lost this one between the pages of some book and am still waiting for it to spring back out at me.

THE OPAL EMBARGO

2011-09-06T02:58:00.000-07:00

This essay by Jessica 'Coco' Hansell is a MUST READ for anyone who's not a chicken. So on the money I will not cheapen it with adjectives.

PARTY PHYSICAL REALM

2011-08-21T18:34:00.000-07:00

Just been revisiting my wise old friend J. Krishnamurti who my other wise friend Peter Hall (of delectable North Fitzroy eatery Munsterhaus) introduced me to by way of a book right when I needed him, late 2009. Now I'm living with Pete and have been perusing his copy of The Awakening of Intelligence. Here's an excerpt :

It is only the still mind that understands that in a quiet mind there is a movement that is totally different, that is of a different dimension, of a different quality. That can never be put into words, because it is indescribable. What can be described is what comes up to this point, the point when you have laid the foundation and seen the necessity, the truth and the beauty of a still mind

For most of us beauty is in something, in a building, in a cloud, in the shape of a tree, in a beautiful face. Is beauty "out there", or is it a quality of mind that has no self-centred activity? Because like joy, the understanding of beauty is essential in meditation. Beauty is really the total abondonment of the "me", and the eyes that have abandoned the "me" can see the trees, the beauty of it all, and the loveliness of the cloud; that happens when there is no centre as the "me". It happens to each one of us doesn't it? - when you see a lovely mountain, when you come upon it suddenly, there it is! Everything has been pushed aside except the majesty of that hill. That mountain, that tree, absorbs you completely.........

So beauty means sensitivity - a body that is sensitive, which means the right diet, the right way of living, and you have all this if you have gone that far. I hope you will, or are doing it now; then the mind will inevitably and naturally, unknowingly become quiet.

You can't make the mind quiet, because you are the mischief maker, you are yourself disturbed, anxious, confused - how can you make the mind quiet? But when you understand what quietness is, when you understand what confusion is, what sorrow is and whether sorrow can ever end, and when you understand pleasure, then out of that comes an extraordinarily quiet mind; you don't have to seek it. You must begin at the beginning and the first step is the last step, and this is meditation.

FUTURE COMING SOON

2011-07-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I like to freak myself out by advertising widely that I'm going to do something when I'm not totally sure what it is.
This is one of those times.

PEACE PARTY PUZZLE

2011-07-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

Groovy (fragmentalized), from 'El mundo esta muy loco', blue book (2nd least electric shade), El Bruc, June 2010

I have a friend on facebook who keeps faking his own death and coming back in another guise. Yesterday he posted this link to my wall. It is a downloadable PDF to jewels from Jung's Red Book that I can't seem to stop mentioning no matter how hard I try. (Please note the labels, all of which are relevant to this party project: ART, BOOK REVIEW, COGNITION, COSMOLOGY, LITERATURE, POETRY, SCIENCE, SHAMANISM, SOCIETY, SPIRITUAL HEALING, TRIPPY) Jung died in the 60's and the original transcripts of his ancient memories and mystical visions were only just published in 2009.

That is how not ready for it yet he deemed the world to be in his lifetime.

Because my mission is the cultivation of sweet parties full of high calibre genies who can join forces to make magic realistically happen, I am distributing pieces of my original writings and symbolic clues around the world. Via the postal system and slipping golden yellow envelopes under their doors. Then eventually everyone can get together, have a party, a few laughs and make the puzzle. Provided that's the sort of thing they think they might be into.

RADICALLY LOGICAL, SENSUAL, MYTHICAL

2011-06-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

German philosopher and anthropologist Ludwig Feuerbach was the first to treat stories of Adam's fall and Jesus's resurrection as myths rather than historical events. He saw them as parables, symbolic stories with deep philosophical meaning. Here he basically sums up the Party Art Movement I am keen to get off the ground :

"The new philosophy rests on the truth of love and feeling... The new philosophy itself is basically none other than the essence of feeling elevated to consciousness; it only affirms in reason and with reason what every man - the real man - professes in his heart. It is the heart made into mind... The new philosophy... recognises the truth of sensation with joy and consciousness; it is the open hearted and sensuous philosophy."

Ludwig Feuerbach
quoted by Lloyd Geering in 2. Ludwig Feuerbach "God is Human"
from Religious Trailblazers

BLAZIN

2011-06-21T03:40:00.000-07:00

For the last three Tuesdays I have been going to see Sir Lloyd Geering give a series of free talks on Jung and the Unconscious at St Andrew's Church on The Terrace. This week Lloyd took it to the next level with an eloquent foray into the God archetype and it's evolution through the ages. I felt inspired to splash out $5 for a copy of Religious Trailblazers, a collection of essays penned by Lloyd himself, and was delighted to find quotes from 19th century Party Artists inside :

Feuerbach saw in the Holy Trinity a symbol of the essential importance of human community, a theme on which he himself placed great emphasis. For when he spoke of human creativity and greatness, he was not thinking of the individual but of humans in community. So he said: "the secret of the Trinity is the secret of communal and social life : it is the truth that no being - man, God or ego - is for itself alone a true, perfect and absolute being." This, thought Feuerbach was an unconscious acknowledgement of the true nature of the human condition as essentially communal...

So when Feuerbach contended that the concept of God was in reality the projection of the essence of humanity, he meant by the latter the essence of human community: "A human for himself is human (in the ordinary sense); human with human - the unity of I and Thou - is God... The individual person possesses neither the essence of humanity in himself as a moral being, nor in himself as a thinking being. The essence of humanity is contained only in the community and the unity of person with person; it is a unity, however, which rests on the reality of the distinction between I and Thou."

Sir Lloyd Geering in 2: Ludwig Feuerbach "God is Human"
from Religious Trailblazers

This is why we must party, people.

PS. You can listen to the talks here for $2.50. PLUS there's one more next Tuesday called Jung and Global Unity. Check it out!

ANATOMY OF CLOUDS

2011-06-12T16:11:00.000-07:00

Here is an early remix I've done of an excerpt from an anonymous work of Christian mysticism, The Cloud of Unknowing. The idea is to replace praying with playing, and God with a party, to eliminate confusion. Seeing as we all know from experience that partying is real and feels excellent. Still some room for improvement but not a bad start!

WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT!

2011-06-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

X

Inbox

X

Caroline Anderson to bq

May 28

bq,

Cad é do sheoladh poist?

ó Caroline

bq to me

May 28

Mo sheoladh, go dtí 12.06.2011 :

B**** Q****
c/o K"""" F""""
18 Cappagh Drive
Portstewart, BT557SU
United Kingdom

Ina dhiaidh sin? Níl fhios agam fós.

Le grá

B**** ó C****

Caroline Anderson

a choinneáil ar fáil dom ! Níl mé cinnte cad a sheoladh tú go fóill ...

May 28

b q to me

May 30 (13 days ago)

Je n'ai pas compris, desole ma chere.

Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 21:05:42 +1200
Subject: Re: a sheoladh
From: crystaldiamondunlimited@gmail.com
To: verydesperate@hotmail.com

Caroline Anderson to b

May 30 (13 days ago)

I blame google translate.
I said "keep me posted, not sure what I'm sending you yet" ... but when I just translated it back it goes "to keep getting me! Not sure what you sent yet" which doesn't quite correlate.

El mundo esta muy loco!

bq to me

May 31 (12 days ago)

si hombre si

I'll be back in dublin from mid june to mid july. Then, hopefully, london town. I hope i don't miss out on post because of location, the idea the some epistolary content becomes redundant because the receiver is east rather than north is too tragic

Soon yo

PARTICLE ON A WAVE

2011-06-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

For my birthday last year my sister Joanna wrote me a rap and then rapped it into my voicemail in the morning. It said stuff like The way she behave, particle on a wave and She cries all the time but she doesn't mind. She wasn't wrong, although late last year I did hang my blanket of sadness on the line during a session of gong therapy, (which is another story altogether) and have been much more chipper since. Keanu said it best when discussing Point Break on Japanese TV :
you learn a lot about yourself when that water jacks up.

Funnily enough Jung also had something to say on the matter :

Everything is riddlesome to one who is becoming, but not to one who is. He who suffers from riddles should take thought of his lowest condition; we solve riddles from which we suffer, but not those which please us.

To be that which you are is the bath of rebirth. In the depths being is not an unconditional persistance but an endlessly slow growth. You think you are standing still like swamp water but slowly you flow into the sea that covers the earths greatest deeps, and is so vast that firm land seems only an island embedded in the womb of the immeasurable sea.

As a drop in the ocean you take part in the current, ebb and flow. You swell slowly on the land and slowly sink back again in interminably slow breaths. You wander vast distances in blurred currents and wash up on strange shores, not knowing how you got there. You mount the billows of huge storms and are swept back again into the depths. And you do not know how this happens to you. You had thought that your movement came from you and that it needed your decisions and efforts, so that you could get going and make progress. But with every conceivable effort you would never have achieved that movement and reached those areas to which the sea and the great wind of the world have brought you.

C.G Jung, 'One of the Lowly', LIBER SECUNDUS, from LIBER NOVUS or RED BOOK

FYI if you are in Wellington Sir Lloyd Geering who has a Doctor in Divinity is doing a series of talks entitled Jung and the Unconscious, at St Andrews church, for the next 3 Tuesdays.
Details here.

SO SECRET, SO EVERYWHERE

2011-06-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I have been known to find myself on a buzz that no-one in my vicinity is on. This can be slightly awkward for human relations, but no matter what, there are always radical dead friends and live ones too who have been on that buzz and recorded it between some pages, in the form of sonic vibrations or papier mache and through their art, give solidarity to an indescribably visceral state.

Transcendental heavyweight Ralph Waldo Emerson can be relied upon to dip your situation in poetry. Here are some pearls from Nature.

The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has in literature, - in all fable as well as in all history. He finds that the poet was no odd fellow who described strange and impossible situations, but that universal man wrote by his pen a confession true for one and true for all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible to him, dotted down before he was born....

In every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humoured inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.

CHAINZ

2011-06-05T18:37:00.000-07:00

All the events in a man's life would accordingly stand in two fundamentally different kinds of connection: firstly, in the objective, causal connection of the natural process; secondly, in a subjective connection which exists only in relation to the individual who experiences it, and which is thus as subjective as his own dreams.
. . . . That both kinds of connection exist simultaneously, and the selfsame event, although a link in two totally different chains, nevertheless falls into place in both, so that the fate of one individual invariably fits the fate of the other, and each is the hero of his own drama while simultaneously figuring in a drama foreign to him - this is something that surpasses our powers of comprehension, and can only be conceived as possible by virtue of the most wonderful pre-established harmony.

From Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, C.G Jung

SPRING!!!!!!!!!!!

2011-05-24T19:40:00.000-07:00

Whoops, here's some more :

Jung wrote that it was a difficult task to differentiate the personal and collective psyche. One of the factors one came up against was the persona - one's "mask" or "role." This represented the segment of the collective psyche that one mistakenly regarded as individual. When one analyzed this, the personality dissolved into the collective psyche, which resulted in the release of a stream of fantasies: "All the treasures of mythological thinking and feeling are unlocked." The difference between this state and insanity lay in the fact that it was intentional.

Two possibilities arose: one could attempt to regressively restore persona and return to the prior state, but it was impossible to get rid of the unconscious. Alternatively, one could accept the condition of godlikeness. However, there was a third way: the hermeneutic treatment of creative fantasies. This was the process of individuation.

From "A New Spring Life", RED BOOK or LIBER NOVUS, C.G Jung
Edited and introduced by Sonu Shamdasani

LIES

2011-05-23T19:01:00.001-07:00

I know a little while ago I promised I would quit quoting Jung to you.
That was a lie ! We are so deeply on the same page I just can't let up. Here's some more.

THE BLOSS

2011-05-22T17:49:00.001-07:00

Party Artists are renowned for their extraordinarily high albedo's. That's a word I learnt from the mustachioed charisma laden Sean O'Brien while looking at the moon late last year. It refers to the reflectivity of a surface and I use it simplistically and loosely because that's my style. We as Party Artists are a reflective bunch. Synchronistically we can see that the past is shaping the future and it is in our interests to contemplate what's happened thus far.

Sean O'Brien also goes by the name Joe Blossom and is releasing an album this Thursday. He used to play in The Losers with Lynton Denovan (Satanic Rockers) and Dan Lucka (FFM) who is my current roomie in a House On A Hill. Only for a few more weeks though,
due to the lamentable fact that :

Losers never congregate for long, it's one of the laws of nature - S. O'B

Dan Lucka, holding and reviewing:

Joe Blossom – Nocturnes

Couldn't wait to review this one folks. Joe Blossom has made a sophisticated leap since his inelegant days with The Losers. His new band of discerning musicians, summon a tender sway and sensitive boogie through their nocturnal pop and soaring sonics. Their debut album evokes the optimism of the night, its dance floors and love. You would have to be a loser to miss the album release of Wellington’s most dapper band from 8pm this Thursday at the SFBH.

- DAL

GENTLE AWAKENING

2011-05-08T20:03:00.000-07:00

If you live in Wellington, please go to Dan Lucka's somnambulant art show at Photospace on Courtenay Place above the Sahara kebab shop...

If not, here is a poignant rendition of someone discovering their Party Within by Rilke :

It might be little more than a year ago, that something strange happened to him in the castle garden which sloped down fairly steeply to the sea. Walking up and down with a book, as was his wont, it occurred to him to lean against a forking of two branches, at about the level of his shoulder in a shrub-like tree, and immediately he felt himself so pleasantly supported in this attitude and given such ample rest, that he remained like this, without reading, completely absorbed into Nature, in a state of almost unconscious contemplation. Gradually his attention was awakened by a hitherto unknown sensation: it was as if almost imperceptible vibrations were passing from the interior of the tree into him; he explained this to himself without any difficulty by supposing that a wind, not otherwise noticeable and which was, perhaps, creeping over the slope close to the ground, was making itself felt in the wood, although he had to acknowledge that the trunk seemed too stout to be so markedly affected by such a slight movement of air. What interested him particularly was not, however, this idea or one of a similar kind, but he was more and more surprised, indeed impressed, by the effect produced in himself by what was passing over into him without ceasing: he felt he had never been filled with more delicate vibrations, his body was being treated in some sort like a soul, and made capable of receiving a degree of influence which could not really have been felt at all in the usual well-defined clarity of physical conditions. In addition to that, he could not, in the first moments, properly distinguish which sense it was by which he was receiving so delicate and pervading a communication; furthermore, the condition it was producing within him so perfect and persistent, different from all others, but so little to be represented by the heightening of anything he had ever experienced, that, for all its delicious quality, he could not think of calling it pleasure. All the same, endeavouring always to account for the least perceptible experiences, he insistently asked himself what was happening to him and almost immediately found an expression which satisfied him, as he said aloud to himself that he had reached the other side of Nature. As happens sometimes in a dream, the expression gave him pleasure, and he believed it to be almost completely apt. Everywhere and more and more regularly filled with this impulse which kept recurring at strangely regular intervals, his body became indescribably touching to him and of no other use than that he might be present in it, purely and cautiously, exactly like a ghost, already living elsewhere, that sadly enters what has already been gently laid aside, in order to belong once more, though even absentmindedly, to a world once felt so indispensible. Looking round him slowly, without otherwise altering his position, he recognized everything, remembered it, smiled at it as it were with distant affection, let it be, like something known long ago, that had once, in former circumstances, been connected with him. He looked at a passing bird, a shadow attracted his attention, even the path itself, the way it went on and passed out of sight, filled him with thoughtful insight, which seemed to him so much the purer in proportion as he knew himself to be independent of it.

From An Experience, SELECTED WORKS Volume 1 PROSE
by Rainer Maria Rilke

NO. 5

2011-04-23T03:50:00.000-07:00

Recently I had a magical epic wig out I might tell you more about later. It involved a cocophany of wild sensations (including that of being a dolphin) and mechanical re-enaction of significant events from the past. In the morning I felt like I'd turned back into a baby, did a wee on the floor then accidentally took a bus to the beach in Williamstown instead of going to work at Handsome Steve's. There I dropped my phone into the sea, saw the sun turn into ocean and sparkle dust flying off everything and was pretty sure of my mad skills in the field of wizardry. Over the next few days I acted out (in my own small way) what seemed to me to be events from the future.

Right before it happened I filled up two pink journals which I entitled Showtime Synergy and just now have read an excerpt about synergistic thinking. Would you like to read it too?

Fifth chakra thinking adds a dimension of reason that transcends, yet includes, the holism of the fourth chakra. What now emerges is synergy--a word for situations in which the whole exceeds the sum of its parts. Once synergistic thinking is in gear, relationships among events or ideas are no longer proportional, nor are they additive; rather, they are seen as part of an emerging global order. Meaning no longer emerges from definition, but from interaction. Events are caused as much by a pull from the future as a push from the past. And the very act of playing the game has an unsettling way of changing the rules.

Like a rocket boost into high orbit. fifth-chakra thinking enables a person to mentally soar above any system of which he is a part. Once there, he contemplates the whole from a vantage point inaccessible to any component of the system. This allows him to devise ways to manipulate that system once he is back inside of it. From this panoramic view of reality, there is truth-seeing at a single glance. He places each idea alongside numerous others, envisioning how its truth or falsity influences the truth or falsity of the others. This whole-systems view broadens even the wide-angle perspective of the fourth chakra. It enables him to encompass a network of ideas and coordinate their relationships to achieve a specific purpose. He no longer interprets events in terms of his personal feelings about them, but in terms of where they fit into the grand scheme.

From Chapter 13 : Madness and Creative Genius

-- Healing the Split by John Nelson

To say sorry to Steve for not coming to work I gave him Tape Man Goes to Outer Space on CD, an original piece of The Manifestival and an R.D Laing book about how no-one is REALLY crazy are they? with a drawing about the special day I had inside the cover.

He was cool and decided not to fire me.

WEE-OO-WEE-OO-WE

2011-04-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. Today I'm starting a new life again. Being a Leo (cat sign) I find it difficult to stop starting new lives all the time. Also a tell-tale trait of practising party artists. This time I will be perched upon a hill overlooking one of my favourite bodies of water (the sea) with some of my favourite humans, all of whom have been aforementioned at this P * A * R * T * Y. So I'm majorly psyched.

To celebrate I will channel another of my favourite humans, Kurt Vonnegut (RIP) directly from his book Wampeters, Fomas & Granfalloons, a collection of essays and speeches and interviews and whatnot. This is about what writers, and artists in general, are doing here. From an interview in Playboy magazine :

PLAYBOY: Beyond the fact that it's become a profitable way to make a living, why do you write?

VONNEGUT: My motives are political. I agree with Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini that the writer should serve his society. I differ with dictators as to how writers should serve. Mainly, I think they should be - and biologically have to be - agents of change. For the better, we hope.

PLAYBOY: Biologically?

VONNEGUT: Writers are specialized cells in the social organism. They are evolutionary cells. Mankind is trying to become something else; it's experimenting with new ideas all the time. And writers are a means of introducing new ideas into the society, and also a means of responding symbolically to life. I don't think we're in control of what we do.

PLAYBOY: What is in control?

VONNEGUT: Mankinds wish to improve itself.

PLAYBOY: In a Darwinian sense?

VONNEGUT: I'm not very grateful to Darwin, although I suspect he was right. His ideas make people crueler. Darwinism says to them that people who get sick deserve to be sick, that people who are in trouble deserve to be in trouble. When anybody dies, cruel Darwinists imagine we are obviously improving ourselves in some way. And any man who's on top is there because he's a superior animal. That's the social Darwinism of the last century, and it continues to boom. But forget Darwin. Writers are specialized cells doing whatever we do, and we're expressions of the entire society - just as the sensory cells on the surface of your body are in the service of your body as a whole. And when a society is in great danger, we're likely to sound the alarms. I have the canary-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts. You know, coal miners used to take birds down into the mines with them to detect gas before men got sick. The artists certainly did that in the case of Vietnam. They chirped and keeled over. Nobody important cared. But I continue to think that artists - all artists - should be treasured as alarm systems.

BABIN'

2011-03-19T00:30:00.000-07:00

Coco Solid is my fave NZ rapper and also my Number 1 Love-Life Confidante. We have been (knowingly) having mirror epifs since 2008 and both have funny feelings we are in for some cosmic collabs in future. Last weekend when I was in Auckland my other friend was going to a wedding so she dropped the kids off at nana's then me off at Coco's to stay the night. I got to meet her herb dealer and found out that the King of Herbs is in fact, Basil.

Here is a beautiful poem from her new mag PHILOSOFLYGIRL which you can order here. It brings a tear to my eyes.

HE AROHA PONO

The real elite are never elitist.
On my behalf only, I decline the matter they feed us.
Know my quest was relative to yours, to the grave from the fetus.
I own up to lost property, I am not a defeatist.

I know my own style. I live wise-awake to my taste.
Now silent beauty emerges at the extroverts wake.
I make proud but fragile moves within my own time.
My finest moments are my weakest, slain in existential recline.
Aroha pono can burst forth when vanity proves pointless to shine.

Not only yours, dynamic plights shift behind a trillion masks
I don't ask you to answer what I have asked.
You're not mine to solder to my clutch
But to be kept in circulation

And like warm zen minutes
I allow you to pass

DARK STARS ON JOHNSTON ST

2011-03-10T17:57:00.000-08:00

If you are in Melbourne this weekend I highly recommend checking out FFM at the Old Bar, Saturday 12th of March from 9pm. For a measly $6. Rumour has it another sparkly star from a particularly hygienic band from NZ may be joining them. Is it all just HOT GOSSIP?

Nobody knows!

Here's a story I did for threethousand in its extended form :

It has come. The planets have aligned to bring Full Fucking Moon into clear view of the naked eye, this Saturday night, from the unlikely vantage point of The Old Bar dance floor. Joined by Satanic Rockers, The Jackals and Asps, NZ's genre-embracing cosmic trio radically fuse elements of many to create the sensational self-coined 'Shaggs of neolithic heavy metal disco'.

Uniting in a rare interstellar constellation, Droszkhi (Torben Tilly) and Riffkah (Bek Coogan) have washed ashore from a land rich in rainfall and boiling mud while Electric Bongo Bongo (Steve Heather) has beamed his way directly from efficient Berlin. With the express purpose of leading you on a sonic exploration into deep space.

In Melbourne touring their timeless 12" Still Life With Black Light, produced during a residency in Worpswede, Germany. An atmospheric vinyl disc that, when played right, hypnotically releases ethereal radiophonic mist, rising from a molten river of rumbling rocky riffs which, while dormant, lie housed within a series of concurrent circular grooves. Prolonged listening may awaken that age-old realisation that, solid as matter may seem, it is actually made up of a rhythmic myriad of jittery harmonic sparkles.

More than just a phase, FFM is sonic salve to the psychedelic senses.

WHAT BECAME OF THE O.G MANIFESTIVAL

2011-02-14T23:09:00.000-08:00

In September last year I had my first official art show in Melbourne, The Manifestival, for party artists. Party generation is at the heart of any official punk document a party artist produces. We don't like to produce heaps because it's a waste of resources, so we tend to be very careful yet also tantalisingly loose about our usage and re-usage of materials. I zenly hand drew scores of fliers on the backs of envelopes and other half-used pieces of paper.

After I took it down I promptly crossed out the parts that had already changed and cut it into puzzle pieces to distribute as gifts. Here's a piece I gave to my main man at NZ Archives, Geordy Muir, when he picked me up from the airport.

PERPETUAL GENIES

2011-02-13T23:44:00.000-08:00

Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
(from Emerson's Transcendental Vocabulary by Mary Alice Ihrig)

COHESIVE HOLE

2011-02-10T16:25:00.000-08:00

Remember how I harked back to my time in Spain a few weeks ago with some travel excerpts from the blue diaries? Well I left my notebook at the A1 internet joint that day and only just realised.
Lucky they still had it!

Here's some more :

I'd been thinking of studying at university but have since realised being a rogue scholar is the life for a party artist. NRG is precious and money takes time to acquire, so why not take love-soaked lessons from your friends for free? (not necessarily in a kinky way)

One of my dead friends J.Krishnamurti said this to me from between the pages of The Flame of Attention in the library today :

One needs tremendous energy to meditate and friction is a wastage of energy. When in one's daily life there is a great deal of friction, of conflict between people, and dislike of the work which one does, there is a wastage of energy. And to enquire really most profoundly - not superficially, not verbally - one must go very deeply into oneself, into one's own mind and see why we live as we do, for meditation is the release of creative energy.

I was like "yip" but silently on account of being in the library.

HOW IT GOT IN THERE

2011-02-10T13:36:00.000-08:00

Found out the answer to my exclamation of a couple of posts ago :

All Buddhist teachings are the outcome of a warm heart cherished for all sentient beings, and not of a cold intellect which tries to unveil the secrets of existence by logic. That is to say, Buddhism is personal experience and not impersonal philosophy.

Dr Suzuki in Essays in Zen Buddhism
(But I got it from The Way of Action)

This may go some way to explaining why I dub my sensational experience 'The Party Within' and not 'The Factoid Within'.

ART STAR SYNCHRONICITY

2011-02-08T16:45:00.000-08:00

Double page spread, Moonee Ponds, 2010.

Want to hear a little 'dote about a funny thing that happened?

A couple of weeks ago while visiting DPAG, (Dunedin Public Art Gallery) I found myself lingering over Ronnie Van Hout's book I've Abandoned Me, a companion piece to his show of the same name that I'd seen in Wellington and loved deeply (circa 2004). On about my third visit it kept absorbing my attention. I gave in and splashed out thirty big ones so I could take it home.

One evening within the same week I was lying on some grass in the town belt drawing in my yellow fluoro* notebook. Currently I am working on a world changing (for me at least) party philosophy book that is dedicated to my sweet friend and former colleague Vito. He looks like Prince but slightly taller and possibly a better cook. I was writing on the page in a semi-whimsical font : This Gentle Revolution is for Vito. While I was doing that a little fluffy dog went nuts at me, yapping uncontrollably for a really long time. Her owner tried to appease her to no avail. She assumed it was because I was lying down. I noted the presence of the unruly puppy, whose name was Poppy, on the page with my pen.

Then last Thursday some friends opened a new gallery down here,
rice and beans. I helped out cutting fruit and pouring drinks for a while then hung in the VIP lounge low-key studio chill out zone next door. Who should I happen upon? Ronnie Van Hout with his lady Poppy and tiny son Vito. Ha!

*Not actually fluoro but says 'fluoro' on the cover.

ACTION STATIONS

2011-02-07T18:28:00.000-08:00

'Mastery of the inner world' wrote Carol Baynes, 'with a relative contempt for the outer, must inevitably lead to great catastrophes. Mastery of the outer world, to the exclusion of the inner, delivers us over to the daemonic forces of the latter and keeps us barbaric despite outward forms of culture. The solution cannot be found with deriding Eastern spirituality as impotent, or by mistrusting science as a destroyer of humanity. We have to see that the spirit must lean on science as its guide in the world of reality, and that science must turn to the spirit for the meaning of life.'

Carol Baynes in The Secret of the Golden Flower
As quoted by Christmas Humphries in The Way of Action

Lately I've been reading a few zen books and realising more and more that I've been groovin' to the tune of Buddhist thought convincingly disguised as my own thought for quite a while now.

How did that get in there!

PARTY ART ZINE

2011-02-04T22:20:00.000-08:00

If you're in Dunedin this Wednesday 9th of Feb come down to Mou Very on George St for the launch of celebrated Zen Punk Party Artist Kerry Ann Lee's radical hot new zine, Permanent Vacation, from 8pm. DJ's! Babes! Small Spaces! Dancing! MAGAZINES!

DIAMOND AND PEARLS

2011-01-26T16:04:00.000-08:00

Stay tuned for a fresh middle-class remix of the old Sanskrit classic : Diamond Sutra, Jewel of Transcendental Wisdom. Thus named because diamonds cut through the illusion of life not being a party.

SOUND AND VISION

2011-01-25T18:10:00.000-08:00

When I became a party, in late 2009, a series of synchronistic events happened in my life, running as a parallel commentary to the radical changes occurring in my mind. I was being flooded with images and emotions from what had once been my unconscious and was now just another part of the party known as Caroline Anderson. This came as an effervescent surprise to me. I hadn't been expecting to change so suddenly and was rapidly and instinctively researching wtf was going on, mostly via wikipedia, music and books full of solidarity that happened into my life at the time.

A few days after things started getting freaky a guy called Leon Salom called me asking if I wanted to make and select costumes for an ABC documentary called MIND based on Tom Cho's excellent collection of short stories, Look Who's Morphing.

Of course I jumped at the chance!

The book is comprised largely of fantasies he had while transitioning from being a woman into a man. He morphs with wanton abandon from one character to the next, often feeling misunderstood and lashing out dramatically. Secretly I was doing that too but with more blogging, drawing, dancing, rearranging, swimming and long walks to music than becoming a giant and destroying little cities.

In one of the fantasies he is a huge 80's cock-rock god with 50's hair smashing up Tokyo with his guitar (pictured above before destruction ensues) and in another he is mid-morph into Godzilla stamping all over his native suburb of Bulleen, and eventually vomiting blue. There was also a kinbaku (delicate form of Japanese bondage) expert on set for when tiny ladies tied him up. My friend Andy painted the clouds. The gaffer, Ed, had also worked on another totally freaky video I did costume for a few years earlier in Wellington.

If you live in Australia check it out on ABC1, Tuesday Feb 8th at 10pm.

Like Jung when he had his fantasies, the content of my mind got really ancient and really futuristic at the same time. I could see a lifelong-and-beyond party art project coming to fruition before my minds eye. The old thinking voice in my head shorted out and notions seemed to be bubbling up joyfully from an eternal fountain in the nucleus of my heart and pumping tingles all around my body. Ideas were bombarding me so thick and fast I became a bit of a raver for a while, not realising it takes more than a sentence or two to revolutionise.

I thought : OMG I CAN CHANGE THE WORLD RIGHT NOW WITH THIS NEW-FOUND INFO ! EVERYONE IS GOING TO LOVE THIS FEELING SO MUCH, I BETTER TELL THEM ABOUT IT QUICKLY !!

Then one day after being on set at MIND in Prahran I went to my friend Andrew Liversidge's masters show at VCA. He had recorded all the texts his girlfriend sent him while they were together and made a sculpture of a graph of the velocity of their relationship based on syllables per text throughout the duration of the relationship. He made it out of romance novels. I stood on my tip-toes, extended my arm and took a shot looking down from the top.

It gave me this sneaky message.

PROMISE

2011-01-25T02:55:00.000-08:00

OK, this is the last time I get all Jungian on you, or let Jung do it instead. He's just so good at explaining things. Soon this blog will get really fun and Andersonian. The best attitude to adopt to get the most from this P*A*R*T*Y would be hardcore casual curiosity, which is generally the way I view everything in life, unless it bores me to tears. Then I cry about it.

I will try to explain the term "individuation" as simply as possible. By it I mean the psychological process that makes a human being an "individual" - a unique indivisible unit or "whole man." In the past, it has been generally assumed that consciousness - or the sum total of representations, ideas, emotions, perceptions, and other mental contents which the ego acknowledges - is equal to the psychological "whole" of an individual. But nowadays the rapidly increasing knowledge of phenomena that can be explained only on the hypothesis of unconscious mental processes has made us doubt whether the ego and its contents are really identical with the "whole". If unconscious processes exist at all, they must surely belong to the totality of the individual, even though they form no part of the conscious ego. If they were a part of the ego, they would be conscious, because anything directly connected with the ego is conscious; consciousness is by definition the relationship between the ego and the various mental contents. So-called unconscious phenomena are those that have no connection with the ego. For this reason the ego usually denies their existence, and yet they reveal themselves in an individuals behaviour. A careful observer can easily see evidence of them, although the individual himself is blissfully unaware of the fact that he is exhibiting his most secret thoughts, or even something he has never consciously thought.

C.G Jung in The Integration of the Personality

Becoming a party is exactly this. Integrating all your funny secrets into your accessible consciousness and partying on regardless.

RED BOOKS

2011-01-20T17:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I checked out Jung's Red Book at the University Bookshop. The book where he drew and painted and documented all his initial dreams and fantasies which were the basis for his life's work. I quote so much Jung because in October 2009 I had the same sense. A volcano nestled deep in the middle of my charisma erupted an explosive cacophony of images and ideas with such party physical intensity that I had to drop out of the lifestyle I'd been living in order to let them crystallize and manifest in a reality that can be shared.

My first visual explosions came out in red books too, but are much less somber and classically mythological than Jung's. His predated some sizable wars you've probably heard of and featured more than one river of blood. Mine are less hellish and more tropical, sensual, sassy and filled with puzzling peace party possibilities. Not to mention scores of love connections.

Which can only mean one thing :
Collective consciousness is hotting up, and nuzzling down.

DOUBLE DREAM HANDS!

2011-01-17T18:19:00.000-08:00

Crank it! Let's all get this down for later, when we're literally partying together, on location ! (Ideally this guy would be more to the right) (stage right).

STARTING FRESH

2011-01-16T19:02:00.000-08:00

One fun way to start a new life is by getting up pretty early; stumbling across the much lauded Carl Sagan on one of your favourite websites, watch fondly as he marvels at his brazen sphere, have a little cup of coffee, go for a jog on the beach with your friend, then a swim in the salt water pool, pick up some hot new kicks from Para rubber, have a muffin and a warm apple juice and do some sanding.

VIRTUALLY REAL ACCLAIM

2011-01-15T18:00:00.000-08:00

I am delighted to announce that last night between the hours of 10 and 11pm, New Zealand time, The Party Within had its first mention on a live radio stream, streaming from a Wellington radio station, into the internet and re-entering the cosmos through various computers and subsequently, ears.

Beaming to such diverse locations as LONDON, MELBOURNE, DUNEDIN, WELLINGTON, HELSINKI, that we KNOW OF. Revellers were tuned into the SAME FREQUENCY and chatting via their computers, including to the DJ (Droszkhi of FFM fame). Proving scientifically that physical distance does not stop us from partying together.

I never thought we would be kickin' the bridge into the stream so soon, so to speak. But then again, in the words of The Clean who I saw play sea-side in BARCELONA last Spring...

CAN'T STOP CHANNELLING JUNG

2011-01-14T17:40:00.000-08:00

So I may as well quote some more of his words. The thing about radical discoveries is that there's usually heaps of other people who have discovered them before you and mentioned it in quite a few books or sung HEAPS of songs about it. It's hard to discover totally new shiz these days. But you can word it in a way that sounds more exciting or easier to fathom for the party generation.
If words are your thing.

What happens within oneself when one integrates previously unconscious contents with the consciousness can scarcely be described in words. It can only be experienced.

Whether a change has taken place as a result of integration, and what the nature of that change is remains a subjective conviction. To be sure, it is not a fact which can be scientifically verified and therefore finds no place in the official view of the world. Yet it nevertheless remains a fact which is in practise uncommonly important and fraught with consequences.

I have come to the conclusion that before we settle upon any theory in regard to the unconscious we require many, many more experiences of it.

Copied from Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G Jung, onto the back page of a pink book by me last year.

HILARIOUS BRIDGE

2011-01-13T03:29:00.000-08:00

While I'm on the topic of Whanganui and zen. The Bridge to Nowhere is SO ZEN it's not funny. What's more I once bumped into Nigel from Head Like a Hole there. He was smoking a cigarette.

QUESTION ON EVERYONE'S LIPS

2011-01-12T19:51:00.000-08:00

Which zen angel colony did you beam down from?

I asked my friend Dan that in a text the other day and he's sending me the answer in the mail. That's the thing about zen angels. We're in no great hurry.

Sometimes when Dan and I are texting we get mixed up with which one is me and which is him. He finds himself addressing the texts to himself and I divulge things I wouldn't really want Dan to know. This could be that we both have especially shiny mirror neurons.

In fact it was Dan who introduced me to Satori in 2008. Satori is an architect from Shikoku with a cafe in a caravan called Tanuke, Cosmic Country Cafe that just sells sourdough bread and chai. Satori also means 'flash of enlightenment' or 'understanding'.

A couple of weeks ago I bought Dan some sourdough starter from the Mayor of Whanganui with some other zen angels. She told us when you arrive in Whanganui the protocol is to splash your face with river water and meet the mayor.

Whanganui River

Then we drove to Wellington in a white sports car where Dan was in a poncho cooking Mexican birthday soup and tortilla.

Dan is Totally Cool, which is the first and only step to becoming a Party Artist.

Plus he plays bass.

DEFINITIVELY SPEAKING

2011-01-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

party1 n. (pl. parties) 1 a social gathering of invited guests, typically involving eating, drinking and entertainment. 2 a formally constituted political group that contests elections and attempts to take part in government. 3 a group of people taking part in a particular activity or trip. 4 a person or group forming one side in an agreement or dispute. 5 informal a person, especially one with specified characteristics. v. (parties, partying, partied) informal enjoy oneself at a party or lively gathering. PHRASES be party (or a party) to be involved in. ORIGIN ME: from OFr. partie, based on L. partiri 'divide into parts'.
party2 adj. Heraldry divided into parts of different tinctures. ORIGIN ME: from OFr. parti 'parted'.

partygoer n. person attending a party.

party line n. a policy, or the policies collectively, officially adopted by a political party. 2 a telephone line shared by two or more subscribers.

party piece n. Brit a poem, song, or trick regularly performed by someone in order to entertain others.

party pooper n. informal a person who casts gloom over social enjoyment.

party popper n. a device which explosively ejects thin paper streamers when a string is pulled.

From the Concise Oxford English Dictionary

SPACE JUNGLE LUV

2011-01-11T23:09:00.000-08:00

My sister Joanna is going to Africa next week. Here is an excerpt from Carl Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections from when he was in Africa that I copied into a pink book last year.

C.G Jung is one of the many radical dead guys on my team who reckon I should go for it. He left Freud for dust because Freud was getting too dogmatic on his ass. My coinage of the term becoming a party basically means what he means when he talks about the process of individuation, which involves doing a deep sea memory dredge and extracting the sweetest most glimmery joules for parties to come.
But will probably be more of a hit with the kids.

The sunrise in these latitudes was a phenomenon that overwhelmed me anew every day. The drama of it lay less in the splendor of the sun's shooting up over the horizon than in what happened afterward. I formed the habit of taking my camp stool and sitting under an umbrella acacia just before dawn. Before me, at the bottom of the little valley, lay a dark, almost black green strip of jungle, with the rim of the plateau on the opposite side of the valley towering above it. At first, the contrasts between light and dark would be extremely sharp. Then objects would assume contour and emerge into the light which seemed to fill the valley with a compact brightness. The horizon above became radiantly white. Gradually the swelling light seemed to penetrate into the very structure of objects, which became illuminated from within until at last they shone translucently, like bits of coloured glass. Everything turned to flaming crystal. The cry of the bell bird rang around the horizon. At such moments I felt as if I were inside a temple. It was the most sacred hour of the day. I drank in this glory with insatiable delight, or rather, in a timeless ecstasy....

More Jungian gems from Africa :

My psychic forces poured blissfully back to the primeval expanses....

The 'moment' in which light comes is God. That moment brings redemption, release....

The longing for light is the longing for consciousness....

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them....

If you are a fellow Jung lover I also recommend Man and His Symbols, the precursor to Babes and their Symbols which is still in the pipeline.

Thanks CJ, for keeping me n sync.

FLASHBACK TO BEING IN SPAIN

2011-01-07T20:11:00.000-08:00

Here come some travel excerpts out of one of my blue journals of the less electric variety, May/June 2010...

MY FIRST DAY IN BARCELONA
(According to the dream I had on my first night in Barcelona.)
I left my Pension to explore, got on a bus which I thought would take me closer to the heart of things. Got around the corner and realised I was already in the heart of things. So I got off after talking to the lady driver. She was surprised I didn't mind paying for such a short trip. Said something about generosity and recommended some sights to see including a statue of two people 'fathoming each other'. Said that was particularly powerful.

I stopped in a cafe where my boyfriend was who I didn't recognise to tell him my plans. We kissed for quite a long time and he said he wanted to come and see the sculpture but he wasn't ready.

So I went back to my room to wait. I turned on the TV and Home and Away was on. Someone, a young man, was sneaking into a dark house at night, holding a package. Irene caught him and they obviously knew each other, he seemingly lived there too. He looked sweaty and uncomfortable and surreptitiously tossed the parcel out the window. A few moments later it exploded into a big puffy smoke cloud with pieces of paper spiralling to the ground. The dude was no longer inside, he was out amongst the smoke bomb.

MAGIC POWERS
You can't just tell people about your magic powers, you have to show them. It's only magic until they work out how you do it. I possess the ability to confuse and annoy. LUCKY ME!

HUMAN TOWERS
Yip, so I saw some humans constructing towers out of themselves in the village today. They wore white jeans and magenta shirts. I was wearing white shorts and a purple shirt with more of a blue hue than theirs. So they would've noticed if I snuck into the tower. Also there's like no other gingers around except for one I saw today with a full-blown freckle tan.

My heart pounded in solidarity as he walked past.

BANANA DRAWING
Maybe I'll go look at Joanna's blog. She just had another show and might have some new drawings on it. She would've drawn much more sophisticated bananas than me, given half the chance. I kind of want to turn it into night time behind the bananas. Will that ruin it? Touch and go really innit. I'll go and consult the internet and have a cup of thyme tea and see wha happens... You're right, that would've been a terrible idea. I'll just colour it in blue when I get my hands on a blue colouring utensil. Maybe I'll splash out and colour the bananas in yellow one day too. You only live once (that we know of)...

FIESTACIENCIA
It would help them CHILL THE FUCK OUT TO THE BADDEST and wouldn't that be nice.

NEW FRIEND
I told him how Mum had talked to a psychiatrist who thought I should take lithium and he said "What you need Caroline, is Jesus Christ. You and your family. Give him everything you've got, he'll sort things out."

He doesn't know past tense but like me is mad for the present and doesn't need it.

Then I showed him my house, we hugged and said goodbye until later when I would use the internet. I sent him a link to my blog and told him I had.

"What do you put on your blog?"
"You know..."
"Crazy, stupid stuff?"
"Yeah, insane nonsense."

I taught him some new words: 'letting', 'pleased', 'slept' and 'peek'. He had never listened to the word 'peek' in all his life.

He's writing a book too, on the same buzz as mine but in Spanish. He was saying how people have maps in their brains and need to lose the map. Look out for Bretana Decide Mirar by Matias Giminez [whoops, don't know how to do accents on this computer. Or the wave over the n.] That means Bretana Decides To Look.

FOUNTAIN
I gravitated back towards the epic fountainage in front of the museu d'art. If I had a travel partner it would probably be rude to listen to Ludacris at the fountain. This is muy muy bonito. I enjoy the proportion of white to another colour pants in Barcelona (it's high). I also like how many old dudes wear red pants and a pale pink shirt. That's a rockin look. I recommend fountains at dusk, it's 8:30.

Damn. Just got home to find out if you stay till dark time the fountains are accompanied by an epic light show and Ludwig's 5th. Damn! def have to return.

ZEN SCHOOL

2011-01-06T19:01:00.000-08:00

This produces, in those in whom the intuition has begun to function, a "Zen sense" which will lead, as a candle in the darkness, to the feet of a Master who will guide the students energies into the cul-de-sac of the intellect and drive him up to the end. Whatever the poor monk does with his koan will be wrong. He will be abused, ignored, sneered at, struck, but he will never give up. If he does he will not reach satori ; if he fights till he drops he will, as he rolls on the floor, achieve it. Then, in the fierce intensity of the process of the mondo, his mind will be sharpened and sharpened until by a process of ultra rapid reasoning he transcends all reasoning, and the sparks begin to fly between the terminals. The bridge so laboriously built, no longer needed, is just kicked into the stream.

Then he jumps. ...

Christmas Humphries in Zen Buddhism

As you can see, it's not that different from normal school, or work or whatever. We are surrounded by Masters prepared to fulfill these functions all the time. To frustrate and bamboozle us into euphorically, metaphorically and pataphorically breaking free of the Prison Within, known as Rational Thinking, and turning it into a Party, like in that movie Cry Baby.

PUZZLE THY NEIGHBOUR

2011-01-05T15:38:00.000-08:00

Zen does not attempt to be intelligible, that is, understood by the intellect. The method of zen is to baffle, excite, puzzle and exhaust the intellect until it is realised that intellection is only thinking about; it will provoke, irritate and again exhaust the emotions until it is realised emotion is only feeling about, and then it contrives, when the disciple has been brought to an intellectual and emotional impasse, to bridge the gap between second hand, conceptual contact with reality, and first hand experience.

Alan Watson in The Spirit of Zen
Re-quoted by Christmas Humphries in Zen Buddhism
Thrice quoted by me on this Zen Party Blog

Party Artists Unite & Allude !!

Handy Hint : First clue lies just beyond this link.

ELIXIR OF ETERNAL PARTIES

2011-01-02T18:26:00.000-08:00

Not sure if anyone noticed, but I blogged off for a while to do some distillation in my think tank. Lot's of funny things happen when you're brewing the essence of your own inner party in word form.

Distilling is beautiful. First of all, because it is a slow, philosophic and silent occupation, which keeps you busy but gives you time to think of other things, somewhat like riding a bike. Then, because it involves a metamorphosis from liquid to vapour (invisible), and from this once again to liquid; but in this double journey, up and down, purity is attained, an ambiguous and fascinating condition, which starts the chemistry and goes very far.

Primo Levi in The Periodic Table

Uh oh, I'm at McDonalds Cyber Cafe and someone to my left just vomited and my credit has nearly run out.

Talk soon!

xx

PIZZA!

2010-11-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

YUM!!!

yo

2010-10-18T12:25:00.000-07:00

...

2010-10-15T06:02:00.000-07:00

Charisma

P * A * R * T * Y

STARTIN SOMETHIN'

NOT MANY MORE SLEEPS UNTIL ...

RATS @ PLAY

LATEST RAT MAIL-OUT

SYMBOLIC VERMIN

THANK YOU SIMON (IN ADVANCE)

POTENTIAL NRG

RATS OUTTA THE BAG

TASTES OF IRONY

RADICAL FUSION (BEHIND THE STICKERS)

DREAM I HAD PON DI HILL

DONE SPOKE

ARCHIVAL SOLUTIONZ

TRANCE PARTY

DAY OF RECKONING

GOLD ENVELOPES

ART FORUM

TEXTICLE

THE OPAL EMBARGO

PARTY PHYSICAL REALM

FUTURE COMING SOON

PEACE PARTY PUZZLE

RADICALLY LOGICAL, SENSUAL, MYTHICAL

BLAZIN

ANATOMY OF CLOUDS

WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT!

XInboxX

PARTICLE ON A WAVE

SO SECRET, SO EVERYWHERE

CHAINZ

SPRING!!!!!!!!!!!

LIES

THE BLOSS

GENTLE AWAKENING

NO. 5

WEE-OO-WEE-OO-WE

BABIN'

DARK STARS ON JOHNSTON ST

WHAT BECAME OF THE O.G MANIFESTIVAL

PERPETUAL GENIES

COHESIVE HOLE

HOW IT GOT IN THERE

ART STAR SYNCHRONICITY

ACTION STATIONS

PARTY ART ZINE

DIAMOND AND PEARLS

SOUND AND VISION

PROMISE

RED BOOKS

DOUBLE DREAM HANDS!

STARTING FRESH

VIRTUALLY REAL ACCLAIM

CAN'T STOP CHANNELLING JUNG

HILARIOUS BRIDGE

QUESTION ON EVERYONE'S LIPS

DEFINITIVELY SPEAKING

SPACE JUNGLE LUV

FLASHBACK TO BEING IN SPAIN

ZEN SCHOOL

PUZZLE THY NEIGHBOUR

ELIXIR OF ETERNAL PARTIES

PIZZA!

yo

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