The Breaking Time

First they came for the libraries

By Damien Williams

Photo by Gregory Maxwell

News came yesterday that radical Islamists have burned the ancient library of Timbuktu.

When I was twelve years old, one of the most important resources for my family was our local library: RL Christian Public Library, on H Street in Washington, DC. Though the area has changed, quite a bit, as any DC Metro-area resident can tell you, it's certainly not the best part of town. Nineteen years ago it was even rougher around the edges.

As funding for city libraries was cut, the operating hours of R.L. Christian were some of the first things on the chopping block. My sisters and I, along with other children from our neighbourhood, wrote essays and went before the DC City Council and explained to them —clearly but forcefully — what this library represented to the neighbourhood.

RL Christian Public Library had free after-school programs for children whose parents worked late. Study resources for those who would need them. A place to be off the street, later in the evening, in a part of town then still coping with regular gang violence. We, the children most affected by this, not our parents, made this case. And they shortened the hours anyway. Eventually RL Christian Public Library closed its doors.

People who know about but don’t fully understand history may ask, "Why do conquerors and fanatics always go for the Libraries?" Our most famous example has always been the Library of Alexandria, but it is by no means the sole instance. And if you take a look at that list, you can see something of a distinction: sometimes invaders burn libraries and loot them, and sometimes they just burn them. Why is that?

It's because a library, more than any other thing humans have ever made, is the physical promise of a wider, more inclusive world.

Poems for Friday: A Poison Tree

Here's William Blake, who needs no introduction.

Farewell Coilhouse (and may it rise again)

Coilhouse commanders Nadya Lev and Meredith Yayanos. Image by Star St. Germain.

Last Wednesday, Coilhouse, "a love letter to alternative culture" magazine and blog near to my heart, announced an indefinite hiatus. Nadya Lev and Meredith Yayanos have both been struggling with health issues and "in its current form, Coilhouse is not financially solvent."

Yeah, I teared up.

For five years the Coilhouse crew produced one of the most beautiful, unique creations to grace the ever-evolving media landscape. If you're interested in alternative culture or simply love good writing, check out some of their greatest hits. There's a few of my pieces in there, along with a lot of incredible writers grappling just about every subject under the sun. Their amazing print issues are also available as free pdfs.

Up to their last day, Coilhouse intelligently tackled issues like misogyny in industrial music, race in the gothic subculture and fashion as identity.

My final piece, a personal take on alt culture's relentless spirit ended up being the last before their farewell, something for which I'm honored beyond words. 

Coilhouse gave me a chance when I'd not had much published outside of local reporting. They were willing to say things like "hell yeah we'll give you a column on deviant sci-fi!" which, believe me, is not something a writer hears very often. They pushed me hard, with honesty and respect, to expand my perspective while improving my craft. I was far from the only one.

Thank you, Nadya, Mer, and everyone else involved. You've already made the world a better place. I thank Coilhouse for how it's helped all of us who came in contact with it, and I look forward to its revival.

Until then, 

David Forbes

Holding up a funhouse mirror: An interview with Vermin Supreme

One of the many fan-made posters for Vermin Supreme.

This is the second of two very different interviews I did while covering the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte that I felt were worth highlighting in their entirety. The first was with blogger and activist Imani Gandy.

Longtime prankster Vermin Supreme has been running for a variety of offices — some of them non-fictional — since the 1980s. Wearing a boot on his head and promising a free pony for all Americans (along with zombie power and mandatory tooth-brushing) if elected, his 2012 run for the Presidency came to greater prominence when he glitter-bombed fundamentalist Randall Terry during the New Hampshire primary and showed up for numerous protests throughout the year. I talked to Vermin Supreme while he was preparing for his own "victory rally" in Charlotte.

So why are you running for President? 

Because I want to make America a better place, but still even.

But still even?

Still even better.

How?

Ponies, the secret ingredient, of course.

Ah, and why the boot on the head?

When I get in a different environment it serves different purposes. When I'm actively campaigning for the Presidency, after the primary, it's become somewhat of a trademark. Different people read different symbolism into it, “we're gonna boot 'em out” or the jack-booted thugs or a boot on the face, the Orwell reference.

But ultimately it's just something I started putting on my head in a rather absurdist, surrealist tradition. The people liked it and responded to it. Out in the streets, in the police environment, it's a disarmament technique. I'm disarming, through my charms, to officers who might otherwise see me as a threat if I was without the boot. If I was a normal-looking wild guy talking shit over the megaphone, I think I'd be perceived differently than with the boot.

It sort of signifies the jesterishness, the commitment to this absurdist aesthetic, it's a shorthand. Sometimes I've worn a clown nose in the past to telegraph that. It draws curiosity. I get into a lot of conversations, meet potential voters. Of course it draws the media, I've been saying as part of my media critique that the boot is a pile of shit and the media are the flies buzzing around it.

Poems for Friday: The History of Red

Cave paintings in Borneo, Indonesia

I'm heading out to the woods for some birthday R&R. This week's been excellent on both the traffic and discussion fronts, and I'm happy to see the Breaking Time grow on a number of fronts. I can't thank all of you enough.

To close out the week, here's this amazing, epic poem from Linda Hogan:

 

First

there was some other order of things

never spoken

but in dreams of darkest creation.

 

Then there was black earth,

lake, the face of light on water.

Then the thick forest all around

that light,

and then the human clay

whose blood we still carry

rose up in us

who remember caves with red bison

painted in their own blood,

after their kind.

 

A wildness

swam inside our mothers,

desire through closed eyes,

a new child

wearing the red, wet mask of birth,

delivered into this land

already wounded,

stolen and burned

beyond reckoning.

 

Red is this yielding land

turned inside out

by a country of hunters

with iron, flint and fire.

Red is the fear

that turns a knife back

against men, holds it at their throats,

and they cannot see the claw on the handle,

the animal hand

that haunts them

from some place inside their blood.

 

So that is hunting, birth,

and one kind of death.

Then there was medicine, the healing of wounds.

Red was the infinite fruit

of stolen bodies.

The doctors wanted to know

what invented disease

how wounds healed

from inside themselves

how life stands up in skin,

if not by magic.

 

They divined the red shadows of leeches

that swam in white bowls of water:

they believed stars

in the cup of sky.

They cut the wall of skin

to let

what was bad escape

but they were reading the story of fire

gone out

and that was a science.

 

As for the animal hand on death’s knife,

knives have as many sides

as the red father of war

who signs his name

in the blood of other men.

 

And red was the soldier

who crawled

through a ditch

of human blood in order to live.

It was the canal of his deliverance.

It is his son who lives near me.

Red is the thunder in our ears

when we meet.

Love, like creation,

is some other order of things.

 

Red is the share of fire

I have stolen

from root, hoof, fallen fruit.

And this was hunger.

 

Red is the human house

I come back to at night

swimming inside the cave of skin

that remembers bison.

In that round nation

of blood

we are all burning,

red, inseparable fires

the living have crawled

and climbed through

in order to live

so nothing will be left

for death at the end.

 

This life in the fire, I love it.

I want it,

this life.

Turning Wal-Marts into libraries: Abandoned space as resource

Wal-Mart no more. Photo via Inhabitat.

Yes, Wal-Marts turned into libraries. That's the glorious word from Weburbanist:

There are thousands of abandoned big box stores sitting empty all over America, including hundreds of former Walmart stores. With each store taking up enough space for 2.5 football fields, Walmart’s use of more than 698 million square feet of land in the U.S. is one of its biggest environmental impacts. But at least one of those buildings has been transformed into something arguably much more useful: the nation’s largest library.

Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle transformed an abandoned Walmart in McAllen, Texas, into a 124,500-square-foot public library, the largest single-floor public library in the United States.

The design won the International Interior Design Association’s 2012 Library Interior Design Competition. MSR stripped out the old ceiling and walls of the building, gave the perimeter walls and bare warehouse ceiling a coat of white paint, and set to work adding glass-enclosed spaces, bright architectural details and row after row of books.

Holy f'ing hell that's awesome. I'm obviously not the only one who thinks so either, after I tweeted this particular piece of news this weekend (a tip o' the hat to Joshua Ellis for alerting me) people pounced on it: it ended up retweeted more than any item I've put out into the ether in awhile.

I think it partly struck a nerve because it represents the reverse of a widely-disliked corporate giant in favor of a wonderful public institution that's recently seemed in irreversible decline.

But there's something else here too: the last decade has seen a rise in "ruin porn," especially of blighted urban areas like Detroit. It's an admittedly addictive genre and I've occasionally succumbed myself. For much of the modern era, especially in America, the emphasis was "build," with the implicit assumption that cities and towns were perpetually on the make. The reverse of that trend in constant photos of grand old abandoned buildings fits into a narrative of perpetual rollback.

That's got it's allure certainly — there's a reason apocalypses are wildly popular — but people like tales of rejuvenation too. In a day when streetlights are going dark and roads are turning back to dirt, it's energizing to see something to the contrary, especially as big box stores themselves aren't exactly doing well.

McAllen's success also highlights that abandoned space is, in its way, a resource. Building shit from scratch is expensive, and the bigger it is, the more expensive it tends to be. People who want to try new models of living or development usually don't have a ton of resources, so places where they don't have to compete for space are particularly appealing.

This actually happened in my own city: downtown Asheville's a thriving place today because it had a bunch of old buildings left around that were initially cheap to renovate and try some interesting ideas in. Detroit's ruin porn too has been rebutted by a narrative of revival (and suitable skepticism). Berlin's a cheap place to live because it's got a ton of old buildings left around.

While the usefulness of old space isn't exactly new (Jane Jacobs was harping about it 50 years ago), it does seem resurgent as cities have regained their importance relative to the suburbs. The reuse of big-box albatrosses in particular seems to bode well for smaller cities and rural areas, where this has been the primary form of development boom for too long.

Of course, once one starts reusing those spaces, the next battles come up: gentrification, city governments' political limits, and more. Nonetheless, this is a lovely example of using a supposed detriment as an advantage.

Under the Surface(tm): Microsoft infects street art

I'd like to welcome our newest contributor, Jenny Bowen, who's worked in the arts from a variety of angles. She'll be writing about how artistic culture is changing in the face of our current Breaking Time. This first piece is on Microsoft's increasingly aggressive attempts to worm its way into the street art scene.

For the first time since 1987 Microsoft has redesigned its corporate logo. While Apple continues to push forward as the most profitable business in the world, maintaining an image to meet the needs of hipsters and executives alike, Microsoft has patiently been biding its rebranding energies for nearly 25 years.

But this post isn't about open-source freedom versus quality control sleekness: this is about advertising crossing the line into art.

Recently news broke that New York City and Los Angeles started seeing a new game of street art about town. Thing is, this isn't art: it's advertising mimicking art. 

In June, Microsoft unveiled a new design for its Surface tablets; an incredibly sleek computer running the new Windows 8 OS.  While the tablets aren't set to debut until October, that hasn't prevented Microsoft from taking on an advertising campaign that has already drawn much attention around the country and online. All around these cities "street art" is popping up on walls, depicting a rectangle with the word Surface and a keyboard painted below. 

Microsoft's only comment on the situation is "no comment." But the company has a long history of trying to advertise on the heels of the street art movement.