Tao Wells is so glad
he spent his life, so far
pursuing life liberty
and happiness
Now, not later
not when they say
he’s earned it.
Socialists earned it on earth, A long time ago
Democratic Socialist
snuck it in while you weren’t looking
Why welfare literally scares the be’ jesus out of the rich
Cause then, we’re not your slaves
I’m so glad
I’m not one of those who sacrificed ‘others’
for Capitalism, State Capitalism or
Corporate Capitalism’s: hollow wealth
Cancers have no way
to value the host,
just eats
and dies
now s/he champion
sits in his many empty kingdoms
waiting attack
from the other empty kings
the rot of speculative finance
banks interest
over life
machine us off the face of the planet
forced to drive Israel to another apocalypse
against the wishes of Jews
Christians and Islam
Who among you are holy enough to stay alive, let live?
Children, with the parents of teenagers
not locked into a deal
you can still choose to trust
forgive and bank on shared peace
instead of selling trust and forgiveness
in small pieces to keep the war flame alive
feels like love, blood rains down
when will we run along a beach
under sun by waters
dawn and dusks horns of glorious retreat
Chrissie Small
Chrissie Small Simon you need some mental health help. Luckily this
govt have increased mental health services for people like you.
1
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· Reply · 6h
Simon Hayes
Simon Hayes So says the insane extreme left. Another tactic you lot use. Phone mr Toofak please.
Except, I left NY to come back to NZ to go a few rounds. It was 1999 and I was ready to see what I could do. As a (Nrth) American made New Zealander, Pākehā manuhiri. Three years later I'd found Enjoy Contemporary Art Gallery.
And my own practice had divided an entire Fine Arts Academic Staff. A sport where I played no victim, no innocence all transparent practice. Visible maneuvers on a very limited board. I played at being powers equal.
People talking to people, isolated by perspective and access, through society trumpets, mechanisms of mass movement symbolisation. Feelings crystalised into economic structural architecture. Songs to say something.
Both the listening and the saying must be enjoyed. Delirious ineffortlessness.
NY was small time for me. A lot (_) of misdirected effort to finally be let into a small room full of all the children who ran away from small towns to sit in a small room. Where I was suppose to be impressed by the address, the proximity to the park. I liked the park, but as a NZer, it was like someones back yard, it's not a park. No mountains, Forests bush, rivers and cliffs.
That was 20 years ago, I returned to where I felt I could choose a fresh path and not one that had already been traveled by a million before me. here in NZ i could feel the gaps, where the nets ran thin and then completely out. Spaces of untrapped isness, you can be swallowed by or swallow, either way, when I think of these times, the Te Reo that I would hear, in these places, the voices, the ways in which it made me feel. What I think I was told. The details I felt were so important, that meant something to me. Told me a story, some mainframe, still accessible. Nature scares the shit out of me now, it majestic power now a suicidal maniacs hollow laugh, as they push on through to the other side, knowing completely that there truly was no one and nothing here for them, that was interested in connecting to them. They did not exist. Just the laugh to pass on through.
I say this because this I want to do an art work, that has scared the shit out of me for four years. I've wanted to do it. I've wanted to so badly. I'd start and stop. Start and stop. Meeting indifference and barriers, prejudice and confusion. Scared everywhere, scars, tiredness. I resolved that I was not in the right mind to attempt such a work just then. That I would have to work towards it. Become ready, feel the arguments inside me as natural as my own blood. Have the responses the cleverness of what I wanted to say and do, down before I leapt. I now believe that I may be ready. The tipping point, having just been purchased in a can of coke, not thirty minutes ago.
Coke. Kuia
Share a Coke with Kuia
That's what it said. And I feel that this gives me a certain right to engage with Te Reo Māori from a Pakeha's point of view, and one that would like the expression of te reo to be far more equal than it currently is. Not for the novelty, but for the connection the language has with the spirit of this land. The way it describes a living connection to the life here on these hills, and seas. This living connection is what I believe at it's most abstract, is a positive healing force that is missing mostly from European, or just English speaking people. Not that english is particularly dead, I feel it is recognized for it's somewhat neutral like qualities, this perhaps existential aloofness has been raped cleanly by capitalism.
The work I want to do, is a plein air painting, performance, with a video, of me at dusk standing in the fjord, in front of a large frame of white stretched and sewn bed sheets, where I carve out the word PIOPIOTAHI, with a stick and paint the name of what is also called Milford Sounds. It's not great controversy, but it should be, that Dunedin and the south island in general seem about ten to twenty years behind what I've experienced in general in te Ika a Maui. This particular phenomenon particularly stung me. As Piopiotahi is a sacred place to me, part of my own childhood mythology, a site of pilgrimage and the focus of earlier art works. Homers tunnel, and the story that I think I have heard but cannot verify about Maui's father, returning as a bird to this place, to die mourning for his son. Lamenting the mistake he made.
I am a son who has had to leave his father. I am father who wishes to speak to a new father. But through a willingness to engage with the fabric of democracy as a language of access, permission to speak. Te Reo Maori is an official legal language, with English and Sign language. I'm not free to abuse any of these, I can engage with them. It should be allowed, encouraged and it is. Mistakes will be made and developed on from. This issue has been in the last four years a topic of regular disasters, from polarized moko opinions, to the use of te reo by corporates and private businesses, cashing in on culture. I work for the state, for now. I volunteer my time, when I am not looking for full time work, to the democracy that pays for the roof over my head, food in my belly, warmth on my skin. It's all rather dull and obvious really. Basic nuts and bolts. But the architecture is in the sky, and the theory must eventually be tested, fail or no fail. Who will do it. Who wants to.
If you live in the Dunedin area-ish, and happen to be keen to help me do this painting, shoot video, pictures, probably around 20 hours in one total span. Profit shared 50/50. Please contact 027 825 0088
" We should develop I think, a much more terrifying new abstract
materialism. Kind of a mathematical universe, there is nothing, just
formulas, technical forms and so on. The difficult thing is to find,
poetry, spirituality, in this dimension. To recreate, if not beauty,
then aesthetic dimension, in things like this, trash itself. That is the
true love of the world. Because what is love, love is not
idealization,.. love means you accept a person, ... you see perfection
in imperfection itself. That's how we should see the world. A true
ecologist loves all this (point at trash). " - SZ
