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Ivories

Posted in Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , , , , on June 20, 2012 by javedbabar

Donna felt swallowed by Christmas. It was meant to be about a lowly manger, a guiding star, three wise men, and a saviour child; add to that a huge turkey, your family, and good cheer. But all of this was eclipsed by present buying, which was all that anybody cared about these days; what I bought you; what you bought me; was it a good gift; did you get it cheap from somewhere; was it a fair exchange?

She decided that the best way to get unusual gifts at good prices was to visit winter markets. They followed the same ethos as farmers markets – you must grow, make, or bake it yourself – but with more focus on making than growing. She often bought consumable goods such as jams, cakes, and cheeses; soft things that she could also try herself; her dentures didn’t like toffee or nuts. She also got some items that lasted, so people would remember her gifts.

Lucerne’s winter market took place two weeks before Christmas, featuring a mix of artists, sculptors, farmers and housewives, and students and single mothers supplementing their incomes. “Hello there!” said a woman selling jewellery. “Would you like to try on anything?”

Donna cast her eye over the stall. It wasn’t quite to her taste – irregular beads strung together; some matched in pairs of ascending or descending sizes – but the style seemed somehow familiar; also the woman seemed familiar.

Donna said, “I feel I know you from somewhere. Do you live in Lucerne?”

Rather than smiling, the woman looked worried and turned away, saying, “I’m not from Lucerne; I’m just a visiting trader.”

“But it seems like I’ve met you before. Were you here last year?”

The woman saw that Donna wasn’t leaving so decided to distract her. “Why don’t you try on this necklace?” she said.

Donna examined the white chunks strung on a slim golden wire. “What beautiful stones. What are they, chips of marble?”

“Erm, not quite.” It seemed that the woman wanted to talk, and not to talk, at the same time; she had something to be proud of and also to hide. Donna persisted with questions till she had no option but to tell the truth, which is always easier than lying. “I make jewellery from teeth,” she said.

“Teeth!” said Donna. “Those are all teeth? What kind of teeth?”

“Well, all kinds of teeth. I get them mainly from vets and zoos, and people send me teeth when their pets die, to fashion into sentimental items. Did you want to try this on?”

Donna was not so sure. “What’s it made of?”

“It’s sheep’s and goat’s teeth. I stain and polish them individually, that’s why you thought they were marble. But stone quarrying is a dirty business; mine is entirely clean; there’s zero carbon footprint.”

Donna had to admit that the necklace looked good on her. The teeth together looked like the crest of a wave, or a small mountain range, curving over her bosom.

“What’s that one?” she said, pointing to a bracelet.

“That’s made with dog’s teeth, and the next one is cat’s teeth. I’ve even made one with mouse teeth for a girl with cancer.”

Donna tried on some shark’s tooth earrings, then some made of dolphin’s teeth. The woman said, “Teeth aren’t all solid you know. They’re made of multiple tissues of varying density and hardness. And herbivore’s and carnivore’s teeth are very different – being used to chew and grind, versus hunting prey and tearing meat. Different species can have one, two or many sets of teeth, and you can tell the age of horses from their tooth eruption patterns. Elephants’ tusks are specialized incisors for digging up food and fighting. Narwhals have one giant unicorn-like tooth, containing millions of sensory pathways…”

Donna wondered why she was talking so rapidly, telling her all of these strange things about teeth. Was she feeling nervous about something? Maybe her jewellery was junky. Donna returned the items and walked away.

The woman was relieved that Donna hadn’t noticed the case of platinum rings set with human teeth. She had briefly dated Lucerne’s dentist last year, and persuaded him to do her some favours, like extracting teeth from patients to order. She’d once pulled on a surgical mask and acted as his assistant, telling him which ones she wanted. Was this the woman he’d persuaded to have all of her top teeth removed?

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Pop Up Bar

Posted in Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Sacred Geometry with tags , , , , , , on June 3, 2012 by javedbabar

Danny and Sophie enjoyed their date. He had met her at the seed fixture at the Botanical Garden last week, they’d later had lunch at the cafe there, and now dinner in Lucerne Village. They’d shared a bottle of merlot and were slightly tipsy, but not drunk enough to do anything foolish – at least not yet.

Danny walked her home; it was only ten minutes out of his way, each way, and the fresh air and exercise would do him good. “What’s that?” said Sophie, pointing to a slim building tucked between apartment blocks, with a brightly lit doorway. “I hadn’t noticed it before. Doesn’t it look odd? It’s so tall and thin, like somebody sneaked it in while no one was looking.”

“Yes it is quite funny,” said Danny. “It looks like a commercial building.” There was an OPEN sign above the doorway. “Shall we take a look?”

Beyond its heavy wooden door was a small space with velvet curtains and subtle up- and down-lighting. It was classy but unnerving. They expected a host, or security staff ,to welcome them, but no one did. Classical music played beyond the curtains. They pushed them aside and entered.

They found themselves in a small but very grand room, with sumptuous, Victorian decoration. “Oh my God!” said Sophie. “This is like Buckingham palace, or Versailles.” Marble pillars stood at the corners of gold-leafed walls filled with Old Masters paintings. There were individual and family portraits, holy icons, and rural landscapes. A vast chandelier glittered above them, almost. It hung so low that they ducked to avoid it.

An impeccably groomed man with macassared hair and pencil moustache came towards them with champagne flutes, the glasses’ bubbles catching the chandelier’s light. “Welcome, welcome!” he said with a French accent. “Thank you for visiting Number One Lucerne.”

“Number One Lucerne?” said Danny. “How’s that?”

“We have a vision for this establishment,” he said, sweeping his hand around his head. “To be the beating heart of this village.”

“But it’s just one room,” said Sophie. “Four more people in here and it’s totally full. Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. I’m just surprised.”

“Ah! You are right. But this is just the beginning. We will be taking over the whole building soon. Who’s we? Me and Pierro! We will make this place the talk of the town. The talk of every town!”

Danny drained his glass and it was refilled immediately. Sophie’s was topped up too. The man smoothed his pencil moustache and said, “There will be many other levels. This is the main bar. It is small, of course, because it is exclusive. Downstairs there will be a nightclub, below that, a retreat, and at the bottom, a dungeon.” He touched his nose, indicating a secret. “Upstairs we will have a restaurant, above that a hotel, and at the top, a tropical garden. That will be in a hothouse of course. We can’t risk frost.”

“Wow, that sounds amazing,” said Sophie. “We can’t wait to see that. When will you open the other sections?”

“As soon as we can get good staff, we will open.”

Danny had recovered from his recent depression, and was looking for work. “I would be interested in working here,” he said. “How do I apply?”

“I like you already,” said the man, running one nail along his moustache. “Just sign this contract and you can start tomorrow.”

In his enthusiasm and light headedness, and in low light, Danny quickly scanned the contract and signed it. He didn’t realize that the small print passed ownership of this illegal, unregistered, debt-laden, failed cultural project directly to him. He now had a choice: to make it work somehow, or to pass it on to someone else, as many previous owners had done.

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Unseen Graffiti

Posted in Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience, Unknown with tags , , , , , , on May 22, 2012 by javedbabar

The Authority was tough on graffiti, which was seen was an early sign of degeneration of civil society. Fine arts were encouraged as ways to develop the soul: landscape paintings celebrating the sacred earth, and portraits honouring noble individuals. Conceptual art too had its place. Graffiti however was a stain on the community. It was made by those without formal art training, and usually in lurid colours. It was appreciated by youngsters and a worrying number of aesthetically illiterate adults.

The Authority came down hard. In this last year they had imposed many fines, issued Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, expelled students from high school, and relocated families to D-rated socio-demographic zones in the City where poor behaviour was tolerated. They could do what they liked there, but not in Lucerne.

Ali and his friends hung around the car park beneath the Transparent Temple. It was the only dry place to go. Water rushed down the ramp when it rained hard, but was channelled away, never causing a flood. It was a good place for them to ride their skateboards and BMX bikes, and play baseball and football. Ali’s father had a cricket bat, which was also put to good use. It was a popular game for a week or so before everyone got bored. They also jumped into the access ditch in the corner when it filled with water. So cool.

Some days they stood around talking shit. On one of those days Ben produced a spray can. Ali said, “What are you doing, man? Are you crazy?” Before long however he was adding his tag too, a crescent moon to acknowledge his Islamic heritage. It couldn’t really be traced to him. It could be any of the three hundred Muslims in the Village.

“Neat idea,” said Ben, and added his Star of David. Mary sprayed a cross. Other kids added an OM, Dharmic Wheel, Khanda, Taijitu, Water sign, Torii gate, Pagan star, Bahai star, and mystical Black Spot.

Mary said, “Wow! It looks like a painted chapel in here. I saw some churches like that in Ethiopia. They’re a thousand years old, carved out of rock underground.”

“When did you see those?” said Ali.

“I lived there as a kid. My parents were missionaries in Africa for three years. It’s an amazing place. I want to go back there one day.” Ali and Ben curled their lips out as a form of recognition, and nodded.

They returned the next day to find their symbols all gone. They had been blasted off with a pressure washer and painted over. Every few days they repainted the signs and the next day they were gone.

This situation continued till July, the start of the Village’s financial year. Budgets were slashed by The Authority, and maintenance cut back severely. The Village couldn’t afford security so closed the car park, however this decision caused parking chaos on the main road, and was reversed immediately. Ali and his friends returned to their grotto nightly and played games and sprayed graffiti.

Samira, a blind girl, was new in town. She had been born that way. She had been teased horribly when young, but here, she was acknowledged as the coolest one among them. How she managed to look so good without seeing herself in a mirror was a mystery. All the boys tried to hit on her when she came along. Samira was nice to the nice ones but never fell for the charms of the rogues.

“I love the energy of the car park,” she said, and spent her nights hanging around with them there. She couldn’t skateboard, BMX, play baseball or football. She had a go at cricket, and sometimes took a dip. But she mainly felt her way around the walls, touching the graffiti that had built up there. She felt the truth of the holy signs. The symbols acquired extra dimensions as she felt their many unseen layers.

One day she called Ali over and asked him to touch the Black Spot. “What do you feel?” she said. Ali said nothing but shook uncontrollably. In that moment he saw everything. The painted chapel showed him the layers of his life, and the points at which they joined. The Black Spot connected Ali to Samira in ways unknown. They were joined within its darkness forever.

The next day the new village budget was approved. The graffiti was pressure-washed and pointed over.

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New World

Posted in Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience, Unknown, World Myths with tags , , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2012 by javedbabar

“It’s time for dinner, sweetie,” said Bobby. When there was no response, he said loudly, “It’s time for dinner Naomi. Your mom is coming in half an hour and I’ll get into trouble for not feeding you.” There was still no response. “Naomi, can you please come into the kitchen?”

Bobby found her sitting on the floor of the lounge, still drawing. They’d been drawing together all day – starting with a jungle, which they’d erased to make a village, which grew into a city that was in danger of destruction by strange black spots, which seemed to be bombs. Naomi had averted war by entering the drawing and somehow defusing, and not diffusing, the bombs. But she needed to stop drawing now to avert another war between him and his sister, who would say that he was an irresponsible uncle for not feeding his niece.

“Naomi!” he said sharply. “I’ve been calling you for ages. Why haven’t you come for dinner?” He softened his tone. “It’s your favourite – rainbow roast.”

She was rushing to finish the drawing; to colour the world that she had just saved; to make it cheerful. The botanical gardens at the edge of the City were lovely already, filled with exotic, strong-smelling blooms, but a large bed of flowers still required shading. She was blitzing those blooms in red, blue, purple, tangerine, and gold.

“Naomi!” he called again.

His niece’s hand jolted and knocked a glass of water that she’d been using to dip her pencils, whose colour acquired a special consistency when wet; their shades became softer and richer, and according to Naomi, “lovelilicious.” These were special fat pencils, natural wood coloured, with only their leads indicating their colours. They had been given to her by an old man called Dada who she met in the park, walking his black and white wolves who he said were “the best pets possible”.

Some water spilled from the glass onto the drawing. Nothing too serious, but when Naomi tried to wipe it off, she knocked and spilled the whole glassful. The drawing didn’t smudge but its colours faded and disappeared. The bright botanical gardens suddenly became a black and white world.

Naomi called out, “Uncle Bobby! What shall I do? The colours are disappearing!”

Bobby rushed towards the drawing and helped her brush off the water, but it was too late. What had been a beautifully drawn and shaded city, filled with golden marble temples, red brick houses, verdant parks, with a turquoise river snaking through its middle, was now composed of hard lines, like a gothic graphic novel, with no shading at all.

Bobby’s attention returned to the room. He realized that Naomi was missing, and wondered if she’d slipped into the drawing again, like she’d done when it was jungle, and periodically during its development. She had been easy to find in the rainforest, which, despite its dense vegetation, was still and quiet; it was easy to spot leaves wobbling. It had also been easy to find her in the village, for it had only one main square and one main road, and she was generally somewhere along it. But she was impossible to find in the city, a vast anonymous place, even more so without colour. In a sense the essence of the city was now revealed – soulless monochrome.

He’d better go and find her. Her mother was due in half an hour. Boy, he’d be in trouble if she wasn’t washed and brushed and fed – and most importantly – here!

Bobby pushed aside some lines in the drawing. They had a consistency like heavy pasta and moved easily enough. In places they were tangled, and needed to be pulled apart. Thin lines could be hauled in and reused, and made into pathways, and climbing ropes, to reach tricky vantage points from where to look out for his niece. Then he remembered that he had a pen in his pocket, and could draw his own lines too.

He wrote her name to attract her – first as graffiti, and then in a speech bubble. Where was that girl! He had a bright idea – why didn’t he call her using his smartphone? Signals would travel as lines along every possible pathway until they found her phone.

This was a big mistake. The phone’s electrical signal transformed the drawing’s analogue world into a digital world. It moved from a spectrum of possibilities to duality. One and zero. Binary code. Bobby and Naomi were just numbers now. In the distance Bobby heard black and white wolves howling.

Naomi’s mom knocked on the door but no one answered. “Naomi?” she called out. “Bobby?” But there was no one there. Where had they gone? she wondered. She’d told Bobby she would be back at eight to pick up her daughter. She saw a notebook sitting on the table. What great drawings, she thought. The wet paper on top would ruin the other pages though. She tore it out, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it into the garbage.

Naomi and Bobby felt a sudden wrench. They were now trapped in their monochrome world. “Let’s built a shelter,” said Bobby. “I think we’ll need it.”

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Great War

Posted in Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience, Unknown with tags , , , , , , on May 11, 2012 by javedbabar

There was a downside to the Nobbys – black spots that Naomi and her uncle Bobby had drawn all over the page. They were indeed points of possibility, from which any image could appear spontaneously, but they were also holes into which objects could disappear. They were points of both creation and destruction.

Naomi pulled up her socks and smoothed her hair. “What are you doing?” asked Bobby.

“I’m going into the drawing,” she said. “To look around.”

“Wait a minute,” said Bobby. “Let’s think about this first. What’s happening in there? We should know before we go back.”

Naomi pushed her nose up against the drawing. She was looking too closely, thought Bobby, she must have weak eyes. Did she need glasses already?

She said, “They look like holes when you look closely. Not like mole hills or star…” Bobby half-turned his head and said, “Sshh! Listen! Can you hear something?”

Naomi half-turned her head the other way, trying to mirror her uncle. She heard rumblings far away, like flour sacks hitting the ground every few seconds. She wondered, what are these tha-booms?

“Get down!” said Bobby as he felt a wave of hot air rush across his fingers. It seemed as if the air pushed first one way and then the other. He also felt a blast of heat, and tiny sharp fragments. “Ow! Ow! Ow!” he said, pulling back his hands. Naomi had already ducked under the table.

Bobby looked into the drawing and saw a black ball with a wick at the top, a classic cartoon bomb which makes a spiky flash saying “Boom!” But it also had a long fuse running along the ground, which joined with other fuses coming from other bombs, all making a thick tangle heading off towards a nuclear reactor with the tri-lobed International Radiation Hazard sign. It seemed these small chemical explosions were part of a larger system to trigger a nuclear explosion.

“Stay under the table!” he shouted at Naomi, and entered the drawing. He smelled cordite and a chilli tang. The site of the nearest Nobby was a blast seat – a point of detonation and destruction. He wondered what had been destroyed at this dark heart of explosive power. There was no obvious wreckage to show type, quantity, or quality of explosive used, not that he was any expert; what he knew was by watching footage from Iraq and Afghanistan. He looked for evidence of mechanical stress, penetration of projectiles, pressure damage, and other explosion-generated effects. Exothermic reactions of explosive materials provide sudden violent energy release. There is no mistaking a bomb.

“Uncle Bobby! Can I come out now?” Naomi’s voice was faint, but audible in the drawing, as the rumblings were far away.

“No! Stay where you are!” he shouted.

He wondered what had been destroyed here. Was it an actual physical object or just its image – this was a drawing after all. He saw another Nobby and walked towards it, crushing loose mortar fragments and crunching glass. This Nobby was different. Its blackness was diffuse.

If these blasts had occurred already, then how had they affected the nuclear reactor? Had it been destroyed, and its radiation released? Bobby checked his hands to see if they were flaking or glowing. They seemed quite hairy but otherwise fine.

He recalled a news item about Thermobarbaric weapons, which produced a vicious combination of negative shock waves and extreme temperatures, incinerating objects immediately. It was a way for governments to kill people horribly yet claim that they were acting morally, because it was a “conventional weapon”.

Bobby felt a great separation in the drawing. It seemed that great powers had assembled into opposing alliances, with black and white pulling apart. Buildings were standing and trees were lush but humans were absent. Some wretched plot had been hatched. Was this drawing a place of secret destruction?

He fell to his knees unexpectedly. He felt overwhelmed and lost. This was a future battlefield where millions, even billions, could be killed by the press of one button, but “valuable infrastructure” preserved. What future was there for anyone?

A little hand touched and then held his hand. His niece Naomi had entered the drawing. She smiled and he smiled. He laughed and she laughed. Her mouth was a little black hole full of everything, including words of innocence and dreams of truth.

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Revolting

Posted in Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , on May 10, 2012 by javedbabar

Naomi and her Uncle Bobby had been drawing all day. They had started with a jungle in his hardback notebook, which, over many pages, had developed into a city, which became chaotic and whose streets were now ruled by Strong Man, the leader of local vigilante group LL (Lookout Lucerne). It was said that he had become so powerful that even The Authority dared not refuse his requests. He had recently banned all art.

This created a serious issue for Naomi and Bobby. They had created this world by drawing, and if art was banned then how would their story develop? This creative conundrum led to high-order inertia.

“What shall we do, Uncle Bobby?” Naomi sat with her head in her hands, with her fat coloured pencils lying on the table around her. She had inadvertently placed them in a semi-circle around the drawing, all of them pointing inwards, as if the forms hidden within them yearned to break free and manifest themselves. But for this they needed Naomi’s co-operation, and Strong Man’s permission, for the worlds within and beyond the drawing were interpenetrated.

“Strong Man has become the dictator,” said Bobby. “I wonder whether he has a social agenda of some kind, or he’s just power crazy. In the ancient world, dictator was a respectable title, meaning a person appointed to rule in times of trouble. Strong Man isn’t that though. He’s a bully. He made the trouble! He’s made The Authority suspend elections and civil liberties, then proclaimed a state of emergency, repressed political opponents, and he rules by decree. Kid, these are dangerous times. We should keep our heads down for a while.”

“But shouldn’t we do something?” said Naomi. “Remember when we ate oysters on the coast? You told me about the grain of sand that irritates the oyster and becomes a pearl? Can’t people be like that, and cause trouble, and make things better?”

Her eyes look like pearls, thought Bobby. He told her how every system becomes rigid and eventually needs to change. The classic example was India’s caste system. What began as family-oriented trade guilds became a method of social oppression where people were killed for being careless enough to allow their shadow to fall across that of a higher caste person. You needed a revolutionary like Gandhi to catalyse change. He called Untouchables “Children of God”.

“These revolutionaries, are they good people or bad people?” said Naomi. “Don’t they cause lots of trouble?”

Bobby needed to think things through. Yes they did cause trouble, and sometimes wars, but they had higher purpose.

His art history studies came to mind. His favourite artists had all been mavericks. Picasso had produced so many styles of work that he was impossible to pin down – was he making blue, rose, African, cubist, or epic political art? Jackson Pollock’s huge, wild drip paintings challenged views of representational art. Damien Hirst had pickled sheep and sharks, promoting death as art. Were they great artists – who knew? They had shaken things up surely, but would an artist be enough to change Naomi and Bobby’s world?

Maybe a scientist would be better. Galileo’s improvements to the telescope led to his championing the heliocentric universe, for which “heresy” he was placed under lifetime house arrest. Darwin’s careful observations of creatures led to his conclusion that all species of life evolve by natural selection, revolutionizing our understanding of life on earth. Einstein worked quietly on developing the world’s most famous equation: E=mc2, which explained space-time and accelerated quantum theory.

Or maybe they need a spiritual revolutionary. Buddha the Awakened One rejected traditional power structures and prevailing notions of old age, sickness, and death. Moses killed an oppressive slave-master and led his people across the Red Sea into the Promised Land. Jesus mixed with prostitutes and lepers, and healed the sick and lame. All of these people were seen as both good and bad but given time, their truths became clear.

Bobby wondered about Lucerne’s holy men; Guru Baba was too old and demented, and Ozwold Malchizedek, known as OM, was too flaky.

“What about you?” said Naomi, as if she had been following his thoughts.

“I’m an introvert,” he said. “I don’t like crowds.”

“Well I like crowds,” said Naomi. “Don’t you remember, I sang and danced on Canadia Day? Why don’t we do it together? Naomi and Bobby – we could become Nobby.”

Bobby couldn’t help laughing. “Okay,” he said, and together they drew black spots – what she called Nobbys – all over her drawing. Points of Change. Known to mystics as black light or midnight sun, each was a union of opposites, where duality was encompassed by unity, and everything returned to its original state of Purity and Possibility. Each Nobby they made with the point of a pencil was creation anew.

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Art Attacks

Posted in Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience, Unknown with tags , , , , , , , , on May 9, 2012 by javedbabar

Naomi and her Uncle Bobby had begun by sketching a jungle, to which they’d added roads, railways, and power lines, then factories, media, and telecoms. They discussed developing it into a city but decided to stay with quality over quantity, and avoid the congestion, pollution, noise, crime, expense and stress of urban centres. Modern development can’t be stopped though. Transformation of rural landscape to urban jungle is inexorable.

The hub of the city remained the original village, but it became increasingly commercial, and residents could no longer afford the inflated rents. Houses became shops, and shops became factories, and factories became distribution centres. Lucerne village was essentially a CBD: Central Business District. New suburbs developed on what were once farms, and beyond them were exburbs – separate municipalities within easy commute. These rapid changes horrified Bobby, but Naomi was more relaxed about them. New parks and playgrounds, shops and salons, galleries and museums were all open to her, mostly within walking distance, and because she was in her own drawing she didn’t have to attend school. There wasn’t one.

As the city acquired administrative, legal, and historic status its attraction grew, and many more people came for trade, sometimes travelling great distances. Whether they acquired the resources they needed, and how much, and at what price, and how soon, was affected by the skills they offered, the goods they brought with them, and sometimes their physical size, used to threaten shopkeepers. Most transactions were performed in an orderly manner, but a group of public-minded citizens formed an association called Lookout Lucerne to keep an eye on things, just in case. Their navy blue jackets sporting LL were a reassuring presence in this fast-paced new world.

The new city thrived. People poured in for jobs and entertainment. So many of them in close proximity ignited creative sparks. “I feel itchy fingers,” said Bobby. “I don’t know what it means though.”

“What kind of itching is it?” said Naomi.

“It’s on the inside of my skin, like insects wanting to burst out.” Bobby itched and rubbed his fingers. “I wish I could scrub it from within.”

“Why don’t you just keep drawing till it goes away?” said Naomi. “That’s what I do. When my feet itch I dance, when my ears itch I play music, and when my tummy rumbles I eat.”

Bobby picked some of her fat coloured pencils and got busy. He filled the pages of his hardback notebook with flowing music, dancing, painting, drama, film storyboards and sculptures, all merging together and pulling apart. The galleries, theatres, and concerts halls of their new city were busy, and most performances were sold out, but Naomi always comp’d tickets for herself and Uncle Bobby.

This place had a fierce creativity. The Authority recognized artistic hotspots as “growth points” and used them to fuel local economic activity. As people became more productive and creative, they began to seek answers to questions they had never asked. They debated metaphysics and moral philosophy, studied logic, explored aesthetics, and sought guidance from spiritual teachers, the most prominent of whom were Guru Baba and Ozwald Malchizedek (OM).

Guru Baba was a traditionalist who urged them to focus on meditation and prayer, and slowly develop their souls. He said, “One day you will reach yourselves.”

OM was a modern master pursuing a sensualist approach, who said the natural way was for humans to follow the Principle of Pleasure (POP). He instructed them to see, smell, taste, hear, and touch whatever gave them immediate joy. “Enjoy every day,” he said, “and tomorrow will take care of itself.”

OM’s teachings inspired a popular street art movement. Huge, red-lipped flowers filled civic buildings, golden rockets blasted off office blocks, blue sweating monkeys swung about poles, and black babies floated along factory walls. There were pickled whales in swimming pools, and corpses having sex suspended from street signs. Someone made a life size OM out of garbage. It was a deep comment on the cyclic nature of existence.

This Muse Infuse movement said that there should be unfettered art everywhere. There were occasional disputes about the quality and quantity of works, and who’d created them, but these were quickly resolved by Lookout Lucerne members. They meted out harsh punishments – a white man accused of tagging a black man’s work had his hands cut off. Similarly a black man drawing a white woman was castrated. The Authority agreed that multi-cultural harmony must be preserved at all costs. Soon art was seen as too dangerous to be left to the public. One of OM’s followers, known as Strong Man, rebelled and formed a splinter movement which took control of the streets and banned art entirely. Lookout Lucerne units were instructed to perform Art Attacks.

“What do we do now, Uncle Bobby?”

He said, “I guess we’d better stop drawing.”

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New City

Posted in Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience, Unknown with tags , , , , , on May 8, 2012 by javedbabar

They had come a long way since the original jungle. In four hours of drawing together, Bobby and his niece Naomi had created a well established village with roads, railways, power lines, factories, local media, and telecoms. They could remain outside the drawing, designing it like architects, or go within it to finish it as fine artists. Large scale changes were made quickly from the outside, but they also needed to pop in for experiential quality control.

They had four more hours till Bobby’s sister came to collect Naomi. After a short break, listening to ambient tunes on Naomi’s iPod, she said, “Let’s draw a city!” Then she became pensive. “Is it just like a big village really?”

Bobby smiled. So she didn’t know everything. Two hours ago she had lectured him on hard and soft infrastructure, and now she was asking him this basic question. It was nice to know that adults were still required in this youthful world where industries and jobs, and even countries, could transform overnight.

He said, “It’s a large permanent settlement and has complex systems.” She looked at him wide-eyed. “Things like industry, housing, transportation, and utilities, and sanitation.”

“But how many people live there?” she said. “More than a million?”

He said that there was no fixed number, but a million sounded about right. Why did she choose a million?

“Because that’s the biggest proper number that I can think of,” she said. “After that you just start counting again – one million, two million, three million, four million, five million…” She stopped at ten million and said, “Why did people start living in cities? Why didn’t they just stay in villages? Aren’t they nicer? There’s no millions, just people.”

Bobby took his role as Uncle seriously. Despite his niece sometimes knowing more than him, he did his best to educate her. She knew more about games, apps, and social media – O.K., technology in general, the area increasingly required for you to function in this world, and without whose competence you were handicapped.

He told her what he recalled from school. The Neolithic revolution was when hunter-gatherers began to grow crops in an organized manner, and created permanent settlements. Agriculture proved to be an efficient method of food production; instead of say eight hours, each person could produce the food needed in four hours, and spend the time saved pursuing crafts, or producing twice as much food, and trading it for other goods they desired. Such an economy would draw other people into it, and as it grew, the settlement grew, usually on grid plans or as radial structures with central temples.

“But you’ve only told me how the cities grew. Not why people live in them. Why did you live in the city? I mean before you…” Her sentence trailed off, as she knew that this was a sensitive topic. The first part of the question was O.K. though.

Bobby said, “It’s mainly because of concentrated facilities. Everything is close by, so people can share knowledge and develop new ideas. The best thing about cities is that you can get many things done there. They are places of creation.”

Naomi looked perplexed and said, “But don’t you have all those things in a village too? In Lucerne we have people close by, we have knowledge of things like farming, construction, and mining, and people have lots of ideas and time to develop them.”

Maybe she was right, thought Bobby. Was it only a matter of scale? You could do all of those things in a small place too, on a smaller scale. Wasn’t quality better than quantity? Cities had higher population density and labour differentiation, higher taxes paid to The Authority, monumental buildings, welfare systems, information recording systems, writing systems, symbolic art, extensive trade, huge consumer choice, and specialist craftsmen. Lucerne village had low population density and every person bore a range of skills; there was an informal economy, modest buildings, and families relying on each other rather than the state; knowledge was transmitted orally, and there was appreciation of natural beauty rather than conceptual art; there was more gifting than trade, and people were generalists holding a wider world view. Lucerne was geared towards independence rather than the city’s dependence.

Bobby had failed in the city. He’d aimed too high, got too greedy, and spun out of control. He’d lost his job and money, and fallen into depression. And now he was here where everything was possible again. He could stand on his own two feet in the village. It was human scale.

He said, “Naomi, do you mind if we don’t draw a city?”

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Community Resources

Posted in Conceptual Art, Lucerne Village, Mystical Experience, Unknown, World Myths with tags , , , , , , on May 7, 2012 by javedbabar

Bobby was still in the drawing with Naomi. His niece’s jungle had come to life, and whatever they added manifested in her parallel world. They could draw things whilst they were inside the drawing, but this was a laborious process as each item had to be detailed individually. It was much better to draw whilst outside the drawing, where large changes could be made easily. They had already drawn roads, railways, power lines, and factories. Their Village was coming to life.

“Let’s build some houses now,” said Naomi. “Everybody needs somewhere to live.”

“What kind shall we have?” said Bobby. His hand was beginning to hurt from all that drawing. Who used a pencil these days? They were awkward to hold. Why did they have hexagonal profiles? Wasn’t it easier to cut and paste images?

Then he felt inspired. He took terms he’d overheard – smart growth, green building, small footprint, and airtight – and strung them into a sentence. He wasn’t quite sure why he did it. Did he really need to impress his ten-year-old niece?

She frowned as he drew the houses. Each feature he added elicited a new twist to her facial expression. There was something on her mind. “Well, what do you think?” he said, proud of his compact, low-rise, transit-oriented, walkable, bicycle-friendly, mixed-use development based upon principles of urban intensification, and championing long-range, regional sustainability over short-term parochialism.

“I don’t like it,” said Naomi. “I want a nice house with a pretty garden and fences around it, and lots of open windows for sunshine and breezes. I don’t want to live in a small, sealed-up box with other boxes above it, and below it, and on both sides.”

Naomi wasn’t in tune with the new guard of urban planners, innovative architects, visionary developers, and community activists. She was a traditionalist, a reactionary, an enemy of resource stewardship best practice.

She had told him off already for using up all the trees in the drawing to make electricity poles and railway sleepers, and made him draw new trees for lumber to build her extravagant residences. He didn’t like what she was doing but couldn’t stop her; she had a right to manifest her own world. So he said, “Okay, Naomi, why don’t you draw big houses, and I’ll draw apartment blocks.”

“Okay,” she said, having started drawing before he’d finished the sentence. “The happy families can live in my houses, and the lonely people can live in your boxes.” She looked up from her drawing. “Is that all right?”

Housing, however, was not just made of wood. They’d also need metal. Bobby drew in some mines – surface mines for minerals, and sub-surface mines for ores. He included protestors at the former, and trapped miners in the latter. Even drawings must be realistic.

Once the ores and minerals were extracted, they were sent to factories in the industrial park at the edge of the Village. Nails, screws, nuts, bolts, beams and girders were produced to build the housing, and extra metal was cut, machined, turned, threaded, ground, filled and fashioned into other useful goods. They were simple things initially like tools and weapons, then jewellery and engine parts, and later boats and rockets. Their village transformed quickly from a low-tech to a hi-tech society.

As Bobby and Naomi continued drawing, their new world’s elements increased and connections multiplied exponentially. Soon their Village was a place of televisions, radios, newspapers, and books; then landlines, cellphones, workpads, laptops, and desktops. Everybody was connected to everybody else. Each object was manufactured, distributed, marketed, and sold, before becoming obsolete, disposed of, repurposed, or recycled. Nothing was just what it was in the drawing. Everything was something else.

“Uncle Bobby, I’m getting a headache,” said Naomi.

“So am I, sweetheart. Shall we take a break from drawing?”

“Yes, let’s listen to my iPod. You can have one earphone, and I’ll have the other.”

They needed to disconnect from this crazy world they’d created. Naomi clicked through the screen menus, selecting Ambient>Instrumental>Nature>Jungle Sounds.

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Village People

Posted in Conceptual Art, Mystical Experience, Unknown, World Myths with tags , , , , , on May 6, 2012 by javedbabar

“Okay, we’re in the jungle now,” said Bobby. “What shall we do?”

“Let’s make a village,” said Naomi. “Like the one we live in. We’ll make it really nicely.”

Bobby wondered if he was really here. It seemed so real, but where was he exactly? The last thing he knew for sure was that he was babysitting his niece Naomi, who was making a crazy drawing, and then somehow they were in that drawing. She seemed to think that this was quite normal, and the obvious result of “colouring it in nicely.”

The jungle was overwhelming. Thick green and deep browns filled his vision. There was only one gap, containing a large tree that he’d drawn himself and in whose roots he’d become entangled until rescued by Naomi.

How do you start building a village? How did pioneers pick a good place to plant their seeds of habitation? The obvious answer was to steal it from the extant inhabitants, smart people in touch with the earth, who knew a good game trail or a clean water hole when they saw one. So why not just give them a little push and take their spot?

The problem was that there weren’t any natives in Naomi’s drawing. Or maybe there were and they’d seen settlers already – the usual parade of explorers, missionaries, and traders, performing cartographers’, God’s, and kings’ works. They bore gifts for natives, always undesirable ones, as there was no great demand for bullets, beads, or smallpox. The natives here may well have disappeared.

The village would need some basic services. “Shall we put a shop here?” said Bobby. “And a clinic, and a jail?”

“No!”said Naomi. “Those come later. We need infrastructure first. We want a village that will survive.”

Bobby asked how she knew about infrastructure.

“Every place needs it. We need hard infrastructure like roads and railways, and soft infrastructure like education and health systems.”

“How do you know that?” said Bobby. He was in an imaginary jungle talking to a child about industrial organizational structures. He shook his head in disbelief.

“I go to school, Uncle Bobby. Didn’t you?”

I guess my school wasn’t as good as yours,” he said. “Well, what shall we start with? A road?”

Naomi’s expression showed that she took pity on him. “First of all we need to name the Village. I think we should call it Lucerne. I know that might get confusing for you because there will be the real Lucerne and the one in the drawing, but you’ll get used to it. It’s just like the difference between home and wo…. school.”

He knew that she was about to say “work” but didn’t, knowing that it was a sensitive topic.

She said that to make big changes they needed to get out of the drawing. Trying to build infrastructure while in there would be really hard, as they must do it step by step. For a road, they would need to draw a quarry, then an excavator and crusher, dump trucks to transport the rocks, another excavator to dig the road bed, rolls of filter cloth to line it, then large, medium, and small sizes of gravel, and a compactor and grader to finish. That’s just for a rural road. To seal it would need more machines, tarmac, road cones, construction signs, and traffic personnel. To make it from outside the drawing required you to just draw a road – the quality of the road depending on the quality of your drawing.

To make sense of his situation, Bobby thought back to a seminar he’d attended about the Law of Attraction. It’s obvious really; focussing on positive thoughts causes you to manifest positive outcomes. Like attracts like. The process was popularized by the New Thought Movement of the early 1900’s, but its origins are ancient. Prophets of God performed miracles, and the Law of Attraction has been visible throughout history in the practice of magic. Many are illusionists rather than true magicians, but even they make things appear from nowhere.

“Uncle Bobby, now you can draw a road,” said Naomi.

He drew a paved road a hundred kilometre long, heading along a fertile valley, with a dark volcano at one end, and a white mountain at the other.

“Uncle Bobby, draw a railway,” said Naomi.

He drew parallel tracks running along rivers, creeping around hills, and snaking through mountain passes.

“Uncle Bobby, draw power lines,” said Naomi.

He made poles and pylons, and sub-stations and transformers. Even bright yellow “Danger of Death” signs. Then he drew what he had first wanted to – a store, a clinic, and a jail. Naomi drew factories.

“What will they produce?” he asked.

She said, “I haven’t decided yet. Now can you please draw some more trees? Your poles and sleepers have used up all the jungle.”

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