where else?
2012aug29 . v1.27 . written by cardhouse flailing robotic armatures
A play community generally tends to become permanent even after the game is over ... The feeling of being “apart together” in an exceptional situation, of sharing something important, of mutually withdrawing from the rest of the world and rejecting the usual norms, retains its magic beyond the duration of the individual game.
– Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (1938) page 12
All you can do is cling to your own obsessions – all of them, to the end.
Be honest with them; identify them. Construct your own personal
mythology out of them and follow that mythology; follow those
obsessions like stepping stones in front of a sleepwalker. I think if
you compromise with your own obsessions, that way lies disaster.
– J. G. Ballard, Index (1997) page 328
Eventually our group, Octacadre, submitted a mixtape to the Repository of Squadrons.
user: patience
pass: hope
Earlier, members of two other squadrons were able to participate in a one-time exploratory mission.
The Games of Nonchalance continued inducting people, circulating hobo coins, re-chalking glyphs, mailing out packages, creating new podcasts, assembling Nonchalants at the Chapel of the Chimes etc, throughout 2010 and into 2011. There were a few more one-time events ending with the “Socio-Reengineering Seminar 2011,” held at the San Francisco Hyatt on April 10th 2011. The Jejune Institute had shut down the previous day.
Super special thanks to Nonchalance for the psycho-sensual exploration, certainly. Also thanks to Capt. King, Carolee (she has created a 40-page zine on Nonchalance with Marissa Falco), Doc, Duckstabd, Everfalling, Jason, Rusty Blazenhoff, The Urban Phoenix, and XAdamDX. The “SF Personalities” bios were written by Crumbly Donut.
If you have any comments/corrections/additional links/etc, please send them along to the same address and thank you for that.
This wasn’t a full accounting of the entire experience. Not by a long shot. I didn’t see it all. I can’t account for everyone else who had their own unique interactions with this construct ... roughly 9000 people went through the Jejune Institute. I am currently not 9000 people. No single person involved was able to participate in every event that happened. I didn't see everything ... no one did. I chopped a chunk off of our own experiences and a large bit of the full storyline to keep the narrative moving along, however wide of the mark that notion turned out to be. A lot of it is out there somewhere on a website, on a statue, or sitting on a curb, hidden somewhere right in front of your eyes. I cut out the last three-ish events because it’s taken me this long just to get this done; other fish, they require the frying. Tapping me on the shoulder. “Psst ... hey buddy!”
Not only was it not a full accounting, it was a bit time-scrambled. Some revelations/discussions came earlier/later than how they were presented in the text. We originally didn’t have time for a big hullaboo when we bought the CD so we skipped to the end (the “Dessert First” phenomenon I spoke of earlier; but we did come back later to do the whole walkabout). We didn’t borrow a radio to hear the initial longer broadcast. I use a whitening toothpaste, but that’s only because try and fucking find one that isn’t these days this culture drives me insanes RARRRRRRRRRRRRR. Hold on, I’m just rubbing sand directly on my dazzling teeth [FX: smiles; applies].
Not only was it a bit time-scrambled, it was never intended to be a substitute for the real thing. People do that a lot. They go to the movie thinking it’s going to be the same as the book, but it can’t be the same as the book. This is just a rough, at times hastily-written 2D slice of a very large 4D construct with myriad facets I cannot adequately describe in print. And it’s all about the experience. Do I need to say that? Too late.
“You totally didn’t cover aspect X! Or even understand aspect Y!” Yeah, you’re right. I sort of wanted to cover things on the ground, what was happening. Much more than getting all theoretical because that’s not my forte anyway. It’s not like I had deep focus on this article ... it felt more like stanching the flow of an aquarium built out of chicken wire and bread ties. That’s not a very good aquarium! Whose idea was this?
The transcript of the SOEX talk is not exact; that sort of back-and-forth communication always has a bit of semantical payout and reel-in that I’ve mostly edited out. Also there were more than a few instances of crosstalk or unrecognizable speech which were designated thusly: “[...]”
The strange metal “New Orleans” discs each popped open to reveal an emergency supply of Mardi Gras beads. Very obvious. Did you guess correctly? +10 pts.
I sat in The Chair only for a few seconds total, even though I was inducted about six times (I’m a slow learner). I know, right? THE CHAIR.
I can money-back guarantee I missed some player cards. That’s how things go.
Time travel is embarassing because you must entirely disrobe and embark on your chronological journey with a mouth full of chopped-up golf pencils. This was explained at length in the 1984 documentary film, The Terminator, except for the pencils part. Still don’t get that. You can spit them out after you flip, but if you’re going somewhere that doesn’t actually have golf pencils or if you don’t have time to locate/buy a bunch and chop them up with a big machete which you’ll also have to locate/buy, then you’re going to have to hold onto them the entire time for when you flip back and keeping a bunch of chopped-up golf pencils “on” you when you’re nude is like herding miniature cats and then ugh don’t want to talk about it so annoying
The mechanics of having a worldwide online search engine at your disposal now paves the way for the seemingly-near-omniscient narrator. I tried to avoid that and portray things as they happened in the manner they occurred, though I left out more than a few instances of the suffix “AND THEN USING MY SEVEN REMAINING BRAIN CELLS I SEARCHED THE INTERNET FOR CLUEEEEEEEZZZZZ.” Now let me tell you all about the beginning of the world-wide web ... [FX: falls asleep, grows long white beard]
Those hands I called “fakedirty”? Yeah, those were real realdirty. I’ll turn in my Junior Detective badge at the end of this page.
My account of the journal is very matter-of-fact by-the-numbers here ... but when you have the thing in front of you, with all of the lore front-loading, it’s a very different experience. I can’t capture that. See how important this aspect is? I wrote about it twice!
What about the other three “SF Personalities” posters? Yes, well. All in good time. [FX: sleeps; beards]
That actually wasn’t the last pagoda-themed payphone in San Francisco’s Chinatown, but here are some photos of it lying down on the job more than two months before we found its spooky chalk ideoshroud. Rabbithole trainspotters should eyeball the bottom center of the second photo.
liberally cc-licensed photos by lets_dothat
It was this one. They’re all gone. I have this thing about disappearing phone booths.
I came across the Aum Shinrikyo article in Boston while on an unrelated research jag a year or two before this all came down. Random library book pull. “Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction” – how can you not grab for it? “Yeah, where are these guys ... proliferatin’!”
The original idea with this article was to write each section immediately after it happened, but you know how that works. So tackling some of the writing after two years, I’m going to forget things, mis-remember other things.
My greatest regret is not noticing/pulling the long strand of hair from the tiny streetscape diorama before taking the shot. That damned HAIR! No. Wait. Okay, #1 with a bullet was when I was walking to the Jejune Institute from Alameda (I was taking BART once I got to Oakland don’t hassle me, square) and saw a giant floaty inner tube and two pool noodles leaning up against a fence with a “FREE” sign next to them. I wasn’t sure that I could get the tube on BART or even past the guard at 580 California so I skipped it. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine what sort of symbol one could make with a big circular tube and two noodles.
Regrets
I’ve had a ton
But then again
Too many to recall
That’s why I write them down
HFCS-free artisanal ketchup
I wrote the bit about jackhammering the street koi before those knobs removed the Banksy wall in Detroit. If you write enough this type of eerily predictive phenomenon occurs with odd regularity. Okay, it’s not that eerie. I just wanted to say “eerie.” Eerie.
They re-built portions of the Palace of Fine Arts again. It is now a re-re-built ruined Roman ruin replica built on ruins.
Disneyland recently slapped a Little Mermaid exterior on their replica of the Palace of Fine Arts. Say it with me three times loud: it is a re-purposed replica of a re-reconstructed ruined Roman ruin replica resting on ruins.
Have you seen Satie’s sheet music?
The longer I work on a project the more disaffected I get, after reading through the text over and over over over. What is this again? I can’t feel my face. Who is? [FX: touches mirror gently]
And then at some point, this Beyond The Black Rainbow trailer popped out and the beginning seemed just a tiny bit familiar.
In early 2012, The Institute was released. You should see it if you get the chance.
Speaking of movies, Scout, my initial Jejune Institute co-enabler/what-the-heller, directed a documentary entitled Just Like Being There. It is about gig posters and the people who lovingly create them. I don’t think it has any witty claustrophobic elevator comedy routines in it. 2017: I have pointed to the actual documentary instead of the defunct film website URL which turned into a Japanese porn site, Scout. Scout.
If you are in the Bay Area of California perhaps you should check out the Erstwhile Philatelic Society. I helped/help create/run it along with a lot of nice people and it has been going on for over ten years now. It is a currently ongoing construct. You could go and do the things right now. This weekend. Maybe next weekend.
Writing anything for any reason whatsoever is a completely awful task and I suggest exploring other options if you are just starting out yourself. If you begin with art and fling random drips onto the canvas, it’s called “abstract art.” In music, if you play random notes it’s “dissonant chords” or “free jazz.” But if you write random words it’s “table soon went nine Belgium flatten.” If you do decide to write with writing, get outdoors more ... there are butterflies and you’ll be less pasty.
If you are, for some unfathomable reason, interested in “more of the same,” I have a very old website/weblog; you will also find whatever social media sites I'm on for that specific week. Here are some longer articles I have written over the years. Please read these at work during work hours.
- Cross-Country Burn: Burning Man 1995
- The I Don't Like Hard Things In Soft Things Manifesto 2002
- Trader Joe's 2005-2020
- Cross-Country Moving 2007
- Cross-Country By Train 2007-2009
- Cross-Country Trip 2009
APPENDIX A: THE COST OF DEVOTION (NONCHALANCE FILES)
One mini-theme that occasionally surfaced was the concern expressed by others that I was diving head-first into cultish waters and growing from that, concern jr. about the money being spent. So I’ve provided a rough accounting of my time under the influence of the horrible, horrible agents of Nonchalance. I counted all the art equipment I used because I probably wouldn’t have gotten off my ass to do it otherwise (save the unused stick). But now it’s a part of me. Lookit there.
$ 1.09 Jane Hewitt’s Postcard (2 of 4)
0.00 Transcript (gift from Nonchalance)
14.99 Little Black Box of Nonchalance
0.00 “Sound of Ascension” CD (gift from Crumbly Donut)
6.99 Transcript (gift to Scout)
1.00 Aluminum foil
0.00 Small bell (gift from Jason)
0.00 Duct tape (gift from XAdamDX)
3.62 Elmer’s Cow Hoof Glue
0.00 Paper for 580jr exterior (gift from [redacted])
2.99 White Flour Becomes Wheat Paste 1:4 Water Nuke 3+ Minutes Stir
0.00 Large LCD TV cardboard box (gift from trash)
0.00 Cardboard paste scrapers (gift from Large LCD TV box)
0.00 Coathanger tubes
0.03 Zip ties
0.00 Chalk (gift from Triclyops)
5.74 Krylon Crystal Clear Acrylic spray
0.00 Duro All-Purpose Spray Adhesive (borrowed forever)
2.49 Fiskar Stamp Scissors That Are Too Big For Regular Stamps
2.07 Postage (Oakland IA -> Oakland CA)
0.00 Large bell (gift from Crumbly Donut)
0.00 Drybones Amphigory Tea (gift from Urban Phoenix)
0.00 Armband (gift from Urban Phoenix/DangerJen)
0.53 Never-Used Functional Stick Dowel For Unexecuted EPWA Street Art
2.10 Jane Hewitt Postcard (? of 4)
-1.00 Free dollar, The Grotto lockbox (gift from Jo/Joe Randomperson)
4.39 Clinically Psychotic Amount of Chalk Tub
3.00 Delicious Polywater (Erik Jamuel’s garage sale)
25.00 Socio-Reengineering Seminar Ticket
75.03 Total (over 833 days = 9.007¢/day, $2.79/month)
I didn’t include gas; I always had one or two other things to do wherever I ended up driving for the most part. “Gotta get a sourdough baguette, some stamps, be all culty, get a haircut ...”
APPENDIX B: CHAPEL OF THE CHIMES
Here’s another map of the Chapel of the Chimes that gives you a good idea of how maze-like it is.
Rusty had brought me there in 2007 and the large amount of photos I took that day had since gone missing. I went back there a week after the Assembling for photo reconnaisance ... I found a flower similar to ours in another vase-holding ring. I asked Urban Phoenix if it was from their group, Super Awesome Wolf Squadron.
“Yes, we left our flower behind. As I recall we decided to leave it for someone else that we picked randomly.”
