Practical Sainthood Part III

One hundred years in the past, artists declared that art had failed in its task of civilizing humans as evidenced by the senseless mass slaughter on the battlefields of France after August 1914. One hundred years in the future, artists will declare that they are finally successful in their task of civilizing humans as evidenced by the utter lack of senseless mass slaughter on battlefields, despite the heroic efforts of folks who like that sort of thing. Senseless mass slaughterers are left scratching their heads. They desire senseless mass slaughter. They think about senseless mass slaughter. They plan senseless mass slaughter. They drink beer and talk about senseless mass slaughter with their fellow senseless mass slaughterers. But when it comes to actually committing senseless mass slaughter, somehow, it just never seems to come together.

One of the senseless mass slaughterers remembers a philosophy professor of the twentieth century who maintained that anything can be done if it is broken up into small enough steps. There is a ray of hope. The senseless mass slaughterers order another pitcher and get busy with their pencils and papers breaking the job up into smaller steps. Still, nothing ever comes of it. The senseless mass slaughterers get old and fat and sluggish and die blabbering about suicide bombings and thermonuclear attacks they used to plan back in the old days.

But before they die, they tell their grandchildren to find out who is responsible for undermining their efforts. The Jews? The Artists? The Quakers? It is, indeed the artists, but they dare not come out of the closet yet, lest they be declared saints and get martyred. One of the tactics of practical sainthood may to blame someone else when accused of sainthood.

"Me? A saint? Whoa! You got the wrong guy, buddy! You mind if I smoke? Yeah sure I make sculptures that make people feel uncomfortable about committing senseless mass slaughter, but it's all my wife's fault. She is just so queasy about murder, theft, rape, sucking the brains out of fetuses, all that exciting stuff. Me, I'm just in it for the money, you know? Here, have a beer. She hassles me about how my art should be, you know? What can I say? It sells. Hey, look at my collection of old Schwartzenegger dvds. Lots of boom, boom, boom, nome sane?

Blaming the Jews for turning humanity into a race of wimps could lead to a holocaust. Blaming artists or Quakers may do the same. But blaming the women? Too risky? Cultural Terrorist will have to think about this for a long time.

Practical Sainthood Part II

In Dadaland, the world of the future, artists have successfully manipulated cultural climate change so that no senseless mass slaughter on battlefields ever occurs, despite the heroic efforts of folks who like that sort of thing. The artists run the risk of being pegged as "saints" and consequently going through the slow horrible death that is traditional among saints. One way of avoiding this is trying to blend into the populace and become invisible, much the way that a green tree frog blends into the leaves on a twig, a Zebra blends into the tall grass of the savannah, or a treehopper pretends to be a thorn on a rose bush.

This method of blending into the populace has been tried many times, notably by nuns. Young nuns wished to resemble old widows, lest they be raped by Vikings or, if they were blonde under the wimples, hauled off in the dragon-headed ships to Spain, to be sold for a pretty penny to Moors who believed, with no scientific evidence, that these girls would breed especially healthy children. Nuns, however, tended to lack fashion sense. That is to say, they were so busy reciting psalms that they did not notice when women began buying clothes they did not actually need in order to be wearing something different from what they wore in the previous month. After about four hundred years of this, approximately when Twiggy in her mini skirt burst out of London's Carnaby Street into the mass media in 1963, the nuns finally noticed that they no longer blended in with the populace. Fortunately, the Moors had, by then, been driven out of Spain and the Vikings had given up rape and taken up furniture making.

Nonetheless, in Dadaland, it will be highly inadvisable for an artist to dress like a nun. Even a claim that he or she is merely engaging in "Performance Art" may lack crediblility. This was done, in the 1960's by a companion of Paul Krassner, editor of an underground periodical called "The Realist" : the pair went to various public places and performed acts of passionate saliva swap and wimple disarray. Performance Art is, in Dadaland, just sooooo twentieth century.

Preferable to dressing as a nun is playing golf to blend in with the populace. An artist who plays golf will probably be able to openly say "I am an arist. I manipulate the cultural climate so that no senseless mass slaughter on battlefields ever occurs, despite the heroic efforts of folks who like that sort of thing." His or her golf companions will reply "Yeah, right, tell me another one." The International Dada Centennial Committee is, in fact, planning to establish a special golf school for artists to be ready for this world of the future when artists are the dominant life form on Earth.

To be continued...