The “Jim Henson’s Fantastic World” exhibition provided insight into the guy’s thought process. Notes, sketches, scripts, storyboards, even graphic notation of music for a short film. And of course there were a bunch of the original Muppets.
I left the museum thinking about tangible creativity. What could the Smithsonian appropriate from my belongings? I guess I have an inventory of some old papers and notes that are guaranteed to make outsiders think I’m eccentric, wacky, Crazy.
But as of late that inventory has become more of a cesspool of digital scribbles— audio, typed. Individually they’re far more coherent, but the backdrop of noise they are hidden against makes them way less accessible in every way, to everyone.
That day, I lamented not having enough trophies. I envied Henson and his puppets. He found an embodiment of his vision and stuck with it. To collectively ponder these one hundred exhibits one could estimate where he wanted to go and how he arrived.
Today I take back the remorse. The beauty of my destination is in its complexity. Why, then, would I seek definition if not simplistic notoriety?
I respect and empathize with Henson’s vision, but the gypsies at the Smithsonian will not be able to tour my artifacts; Not because it all was lost in the fire or decomposed or was sold to lechers, but because it never existed. The sort of cultural art I make is so far beyond visual that there can be no tangible proof any of it was predestined.
There can be no future archivists because I am the sole archivist of culture.
I burn the tools then mold the future like soft clay revolving on a potter’s wheel.
I shape outcomes and burn the tools.
All my fields of study have at last converged into a poison-tipped arrowhead fastened tightly onto a spear that will penetrate deep into the solar plexus of the Earth and rip land and sea to bloody shreds.
