Now that the gigantic metal bean in Millennium Park has been fully polished, most Chicagoans have no need for secondary entertainment. Day after day they flock at the bean's summit, gazing into its smooth surface for hours at a time, cramming their pockmarked and broken faces in front of the reflected cityscape. Traffic on Michigan Avenue comes to a standstill each morning, as those possessed by its enchanting curves pour out of buildings and alleyways, a swelling mass that can only be satisfied by the unholy grandeur of twisting metal. Mothers clutching infants stand in the park, paralyzed with fear as the crowd approaches, and are trampled without pause. The frontrunner of the mob raises his pike in the bean's direction and offers the freshly-sacrificed head of a plump sow as offering to the bean. It is only then that the true voice of the Beangod can be heard, and she sings a pure reverie of erotic destruction, a song no mortal can ever hope to silence, and when i erase my corporeal form to fully ordain the fenestration of souls.
...Wh ...where am I? Shit, sorry guys. I had a nice little opener about Chicago set up, but then I got on the phone with my landlord and got kind of distracted from writing. What I was meaning to say was that the new Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago is going to be holding a two-day symposium on whack-jazz-afro-futurist-extraterrestrial musician Sun Ra. "Traveling The Spaceways" is its name and will include musical performances, readings, and even panel discussions, with titles like "The Sun Ra Diaspora: Art After Ra."
The symposium kicks off at 10 A.M. on Saturday, November 11, but a special concert will also be held the night before, billed as "Music For Tomorrow's World: A Dedication To Sun Ra" and featuring Thurston Moore as its headliner. I guess Thurston has some extra time in between curating festivals with ridiculous line-ups that are in far-off places that I don't have enough money for, and even if I did, they're in faraway places that I could never get to unless of course I invoked the abiding spirit of Frau Beangod who neither sleeps nor rests but enters my soiled bed at night using pliers and a thin raspy whisper.
Heliocentric world:
11.10.06 - Chicago, IL - The Hideout