Creative output sputters and stalls in the face of tapering life energy, with far too many menial tasks absorbing the dregs. Future creative engagement requires that I relinquish this living situation and move on, sooner than later. Sure, the maintenance, ordering, and re-wilding process may be understood as creative in a wide, cosmological sense: a performative action affecting the state of the macrocosm. The amount of time siphoned off into property upkeep, along with the demands of the ‘regular’ j-o-b has precipitated a high level of social isolation—something that I’m not used to, and something that’s not good. Driving the maintenance desperation is an acute and currently unavoidable fear-of-the-future. Sheesh. The ratio of my embodied energy level to the overall entropy of the situation is in the negative orders-of-magnitude level.

e^–::E(s) ≥ 10^-5

With no capital to exploit in this terminally oligarchic nation, aside from whatever I can physically manipulate.

There is a limit to what I can do to ‘catch up’ on years of zero wealth accumulation in the stead of transnational creative engagement (aka, bottom-feeding). Options are limited, but success depends more on the vitality of will—closely allied with physical stamina these days—along a simple fearlessness to make it happen. Fear is so diffuse—and previously not a factor—that surely it can be overcome (again) with focused human engagement.

Plans are developing. The first is leaving full-time work-for-pay despite compromising long-term viability. The second is to liquidate the property. Optimizing it for resale will require maybe six dedicated months, maximum, before moving on. The real estate market will be in better stead next year, barring civil conflict or another irruption of the Gaian system. Expatriation now the first choice. The extremities of Babylon’s current incarnation—hardly imagined by even the most cynical internal critic, well-known to those looking on from the outside—are a grinding black hole.

I arrived at this working/living situation having prioritized human connection over a stable and lucrative career (in the extractives industry where I started, or elsewhere). Unlike a lot of folks who follow a specific, planned trajectory, honing their talents in a particular field, gaining seniority and capital, I bounced around. Partly to maintain face-to-face contact with a widely dispersed human network, but also to sustain a flexibility that allowed for spontaneous participation in particular creative situations appearing along the way. Some, once trusted, have decided to label that as opportunism. I’ll deal with that hurtful critique in another posting. My general trajectory, though, despite that label, in other ways, was a mistake even with the rich array of participatory experiences it brought me into. Prioritizing stability, the known, the familiar rhythms of regular and predictable employment (and cash flow), ensuring (insuring!) future viability: this is the leitmotif of survival in the capitalist system, the rewards for a reliable prole. I prioritized change, instability, serendipity, spontaneity, and am paying the price of that. The time value of the abstracted instrument of social viability—money—requires long-term dependence and living-for-the-future. Well, the future has arrived: viability and life is emphatically transitory, there’s only one go-round. As Richard Pryor extolled: “I don’t give a FUCK!”

And what of Art? and Creativity?

[ED: a decidedly gendered, old-school statement from a Fluxus founder … there are contemporary, open, and ongoing events that arose around this text, establishing 17 January as Art’s Birthday. I used to participate, but haven’t lately. The last major Fluxus-related happening was Fluxus Akademie discussion/lunch at Mary‘s in Rösrath in 2013. And in the incommunicado haze of the past few months, I discover Mary’s gone, back in March. Yet another remembrance to craft, reminding: no time to lose.]