Is “it” out of the world? by Gerry Fialka 7-27-26

The word “it” is a third-person singular neuter personal pronoun used to refer to an inanimate object, abstract entity, or non-human living thing.

In the song RFunk by BSP, (search YouTube to hear it and also to see RFunk the Film) the word “it” pops up often. What does “it” mean? The makers are the last ones you want to ask about their art. So please tell us what you think the word “it” evokes. BSP’s Gerry and Ryan Zin welcome your comments.

The word “it” appears over 900 times in Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

The word “funk” appears a few times in the Wake, including the line we end the RFunk song with: “To funk is only peternatural its daring feers divine. Bebold!” Other uses in the Wake reveal more grounds for further research: “This is lipsyg dooley krieging the funk from the hinnessy” and “funkgetting the better of him, the scut in a bad fit of pyjamas fled like a leveret…” and “funking his fan.”

If poetry is outing your inner dialogue, then the mysteries of RFunk are knee deep in the swamp muck of our interior landscapes. Mud is the fifth element, or is “IT” the filth element? Nasty!

Magicians of old used the phrase “abracadabra” which is rumored among occultists to literally mean, “As I speak, so shall it be.” and “Magic is the willingness to cooperate with everything. ” – Caroline Casey

Is it the map or the territory? Robert Anton Wilson probed the Polish-American mathematician and philosopher Alfred Korzybski’s maxim: “the map is not the territory”. Does it mean that our mental models, words, and abstractions (the map) are not identical to the complex, ever-shifting reality they represent (the territory)?

Wilson & Robert Shea’s book series is titled Illuminatus Trilogy, which reduces to “IT.” And it’s only just begun: Individual Therapy, Instrument Test, Imagine That, Ion Trap, Intelligent Terrain, Icky-boo Telephony, and the big kahuna: Information Technology, which reduces and expands to the prevalent “IT.”

IT is the digital foundation that powers the global theater’s communication universe.

The father of information theory is the polymath Claude Shannon (1916 – 2001), who was born in Michigan and attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, as did Gerry Fialka. Both Claude and Gerry use James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake as a prime example of the lower threshold of redundancy and high semantic compression in human language. Gerry does it in funk songs and conversation. Claude did it in research and books. Get IT?

Regarding the neologism “IT” (Information Theory), Shannon did not explicitly invent the term, though this 1948 work was the catalyst for it. It was later popularized by his collaborator Warren Weaver in their 1949 co-authored book, The Mathematical Theory of Communication. In this foundational book, Shannon noted that normal English is highly redundant (about 75%). He compared this with Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, which he viewed as pushing language to the opposite extreme. Instead of restricting the vocabulary (like Basic English), Joyce invented thousands of words and neologisms, creating a text with very low redundancy and incredibly high information density per sentence. By blending multiple languages, roots, and onomatopoeia, Joyce essentially created a text where the next letter or word was incredibly difficult to predict. In Shannon’s terms, this unpredictability indicates a text with exceptionally high information entropy – meaning each line of the Wake is packed with immense surprise and uncertainty.

Bingo, you got “vitality,” that is “v-IT-al-IT-y,” where it double duty interrobangs itself. And the word “AL” is in the middle. “Big Al” (nickname for Albert Fialka) is Gerry’s Dad. Words evoke more than their meaning.

So boot on up your booty. Free your mind and your IT will follow. . . in the world and out of the world.

French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote the prose poem “Anywhere Out of the World” (French: N’importe où hors de ce monde), and “it” appears in the concluding punch line, where his soul finally erupts and cries out to him: “Anywhere! Anywhere! Just so it is out of the world!”

Painter Odilon Redon adopted this sentiment because it perfectly encapsulated the philosophy of the Symbolist movement. Stéphane Mallarmé was the prominent Symbolist poet who declared, “Paint, not the thing, but the effect it produces.” This “reasoning backwards” influenced McLuhan to quip, “In the electric age, effects precede causes. If you want to paint a painting, you don’t paint the painting—you paint the effect you want it to have on the viewer, and then you work backward to the cause.”

So Dear Reader of this essay, “It’s your thing.” Please do write us what you think the letter “I” and the letter “T” can stand for. What does it mean deep in your heart, body and soul? The user is the content. As Jimmy Joyce quipped in the Wake: “His producers are they not his consumers?” What are your own mind-bending inversions and reversions of ITness? And it never ends . . .

V. “Valhalla” Vale actually jammed with BSP years ago. His RE/Search books have influenced me by including quotes at the end of their essays. So here we go . . .

“Let me hear the way it oughta be.” – Blue Cheer (V. Vale was a member of this rock band).

“I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.” – Igor Stravinsky.

“Even after all this time, The Sun never says to the Earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that, It lights the whole sky.” – Hafiz.

“Run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can’t make head or tail of it.” – Groucho Marx.

“Just go on the air live and do it” – TV executives to Soupy Sales.

“So it goes.” – Kurt Vonnegut, who included it 106 times in Slaughterhouse-Five.

“We’re only in it for the money” – Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention.

“Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud” and “Sayin’ It And Doin’ It” and “Make It Funky” – James Brown.

“Funk is anything it needs to be to save your life at that time… just for the funk of it” – George Clinton.

Because “it” is one of the most common pronouns in the English language, the word appears countless times throughout James Joyce’s works: in the short story “The Dead” from Dubliners: “It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.” And “I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries…” comes from Joyce’s reported conversations with the Parisian translator Jacques Benoîst-Méchin.

Joyce scholar Roy Benjamin contributed: “Don’t forget about the line in the Wake ‘reading about ‘it’ (FW 166.11), and ‘all thinking of it, the It with an itch in it, the All every inch of it’ (FW 268.3-5), which according to Roland McHugh both refer to Clara Bow, the original ‘It’ Girl’ (meaning someone with sexual appeal). Also there’s ‘It! The Terror from Beyond Space’ on which Ridley Scott based ‘Alien.’”

Consider this line of dialogue from “It! The Terror from Beyond Space”: “There’s no longer a question of murder but of an alien, an elemental life force, a planet so cruel, so hostile, that Man may find it necessary to bypass it in his endeavor to explore and understand the universe. Another name for Mars is Death.”

Can our collective catharsis understand the relationships in the universe of words? Can we jointly expand linear writing into quantum entanglements?

Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Man of the Crowd” inspired the archetype of the “flâneur,” a French term for a person who saunters around observing city life. The pronoun “it” appears in the concluding line: ”It will be in vain to follow.” The word “it” functions as an impersonal subject that emphasizes the absolute unknowability, blankness, and alien nature of both the mysterious old man and the unreadable urban mass. Poe compares the “worst heart of the world” to a book that refuses translation (“it will not be read”), using “it” to signify a dark secret that defies human comprehension. Applying “it” rather than personal descriptors reduces the crowd and the old man to an opaque, mechanical phenomenon rather than individuals with accessible souls.

Frank Zappa introduces his song “Cheepnis” with a spoken monologue about his love of the 1956 film “It Conquered The World”. Zappa says that “cheapness, in the case of a monster movie, has nothing to do with the budget of the film, although it helps”.

Michael Pollan’s 2026 book, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, explores the nature of sentience, panpsychism, and plant intelligence. He dives into Integrated Information Theory (IIT), a leading, mathematically grounded framework of consciousness proposed by neuroscientist Giulio Tononi. It postulates that consciousness is “integrated information” and exists to the degree that a physical system has intrinsic, irreducible cause-effect power over itself.

While Marcel Duchamp frequently uses the word “it” throughout his career—such as when famously explaining how an ordinary object is elevated to the dignity of art—his most profound use of the word revolves around the rattling secret hidden inside With Hidden Noise. In 1916, Duchamp’s patron Walter Arensberg placed a secret, unknown object inside a ball of twine that sits between two brass plaques. Decades later, Duchamp recounted the creation to Cabanne: “It’s a ball of twine between two plaques of copper… Arensberg put something inside the ball of twine and never told me what it was and I didn’t want to know… it is a sort of secret and it makes a noise, so we call this a ‘Readymade With Hidden Noise.’” He famously summarized his relationship to the mystery object: “I never knew what it was. The noise was a secret for me.”

How do we unlearn? What is not knowing?

A key moment where Marshall McLuhan specifically mentions the word “it” relates to the legendary typo in his 1967 book, The Medium is the Massage. The book’s title was originally meant to be his oft-quoted phrase, “The Medium is the Message.” However, the typesetter made a mistake, accidentally printing it as Massage instead. When McLuhan saw the typo, he exclaimed, “Leave it alone! It’s great, right on target!”

I’ll Leave It to You – Noel Coward’s 1920 play.

“If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?” – Charles Fort

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung

“Make it new” – Ezra Pound

“It has been found again. / What? — Eternity.” – Arthur Rimbaud

“Lo, then, Humility, take it, and wear it in thine heart…” – William Blake

Poet-filmmaker James Broughton and cartoonist R. Crumb occupied the same tightly knit San Francisco countercultural and avant-garde art scene in the late 1960s. Read this poem by Broughton:

This is It

and I am It

and You are It

and so is That

and He is It

and She is It

and

It is It

and That is That

Oh It is This

and It is Thus

and It is Them

and It is Us

and It is Now

and here It is

and here We are so

This is It.

==============

My friend Gary Guttman contributes the following piece by R. Crumb, which was written in the late 60’s like a hipster “poem.” We will not be including the illustrations, which some might deem pornographic, others hysterical.

“Don’t Gag On It…Goof On It!” A sonnet upon it by R. Crumb
Ya gotta…
Git on it!!
Hit on it!!
Shit on it!!
Sit on it!!
Tit on it!!
Quit on it!!
and you gotta..
Fuck it!
Suck it!
Truck it!
Shuck it!
Yuk it!
Duck it
you ought to…
Hang it!
Bang it!
Milk it
Bilk it
Yank it!
Crank it!
you can always…
Hog it…
Flog it…
Bog it…
Sog it…
Grog it…
Clog it…
hey listen, you can
Eat it…
Greet it…
Heat it…
Beat it…
Reet it…
Zeet it!
Oh baby! Hug it chug it bug it ’n plug it!!
Mmm… wine it dine it shine it ’n sign it!!
Stew it, shoe it, even chew it if you want, but…
DO IT!!
THE END….NOW GO TO IT!!

==========

“I find it very, very easy to be true”. – Johnny Cash

“I didn’t make the world, I only live in it.” and “It’s not what you are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts.” – Oscar Levant

“Keep It Crisp.” – S. J. Perelman

“And she had It. It, hell; she had Those” – Dorothy Parker

“…it makes my love come down” – Bessie Smith

“I want every bit of it or none at all” written by Clarence Williams & Spencer Williams, sung by Bessie Smith

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” – George Orwell

“In trying to be as accurate as possible, I am using the word “it” for this delighted, loving awareness, in which there was no me or world, and in which everything was included. There just isn’t another way to say how completely new and fresh the awareness was. There was no I observing the ‘it.’ There was nothing but the ‘it.'” – Ram Dass

“The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.” – Rachel Carson

“Considering how common illness is… it becomes strange indeed that the masterpieces of literature… have not been written about it.” – Virginia Woolf

“A word is dead, When it is said, Some say. I say it just, Begins to live, That day.” – Emily Dickinson

“Each word tastes of the context or contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life.” – Mikhail Bakhtin

“The cat subsiding down a basement, Leaves a catlessness behind it.” – Muriel Spark

Magicians of old used the phrase “abracadabra” which is rumored among occultists to literally mean, “As I speak, so shall it be.” and “Magic is the willingness to cooperate with everything. ” – Caroline Casey

“For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene.” – Italo Calvino

My friend Mike Sakamoto wrote to me: “Your topic did make me think of this wonderful, mysterious poem by the late great Franz Wright. I don’t know what it is about. But look at how ambiguously he uses ‘it.’ What is the antecedent? Maybe ‘it’ is the unconscious, the place where poems come from?”

Wintersleep by Franz Wright
I was having trouble sleeping. I don’t know how long I’d been lying there and listening to the blizzard when I had the most vivid impression that it was a blizzard in Minneapolis in 1959. And I found this disturbing. I knew it would now have to turn on its lamp, get out of bed, and try to write about me; and of course no matter what it wrote, I would just sound like something it had made up. But in the end it decided to stay put, turn over, and keep me to itself. I think that was the right thing to do. After all, it was only a blizzard in Minneapolis in 1959. How are you supposed to describe something like me? And when you think about it, why should you try, why should you even care?

============

“Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, For y’all have knocked her up. I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe, I was not offended, For I knew I had to rise above it all, Or drown in my own shit.” – George Clinton

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.” – Otis Redding

“Oh, yeah, think about it, baby”. – Aretha Franklin & Ted White

“Them that’s got shall have, Them that’s not shall lose, So the Bible says, and it still is news” – Billie Holiday & Arthur Herzog

“Don’t take my word for it that sex has made a hit. Folks just like you can’t get enuff of it.“ – Suzy Williams, from her song “The Guy Who Invented Sex”

“It’s Greek to me” – William Shakespeare…The exact origins go back even further. Medieval Latin-speaking monks used the phrase “Graecum est; non legitur” (meaning “It is Greek; it cannot be read”)

Stony St. Clair declared on the hidden content about his tattoo handiwork in Stony Knows How: Life as a Sideshow Tattoo Artist: “I put comeback in it.”

Chico Marx to Thelma Todd in Horsefeathers: “Lady, you sure got somethin’ but I don’t know what it is.” and “Lady, you got It. And you can keep it.”

“Zip the What-Is-It?” (born William Henry Johnson, famous American sideshow performer) on his dying bed, whispered to P. T. Barnum: “Well, we sure fooled ’em a long time, didn’t we?” Which brings to mind “what.” … “Stepped in What?” That’s right, it is pianist & Chuck Berry collaborator, Johnnie Johnson’s song with the lyric: “Everybody knows just what it is.”

“Don’t it always seem to go, That you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” – Joni Mitchell

“Grab it. Grab this land! Take it, hold it, my brothers, make it, my brothers, shake it, squeeze it, turn it, twist it, beat it, kick it, kiss it, whip it, stomp it, dig it, plow it, seed it, reap it, rent it, buy it, sell it, own it, build it, multiply it, and pass it on – can you hear me? Pass it on!” – Toni Morrison

“The body is a sacred garment. It’s your first and your last garment; it’s what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor, and with joy and with fear as well. But always, though, with blessing.” – Martha Graham

“The body in the mirror forces me to turn and face it. And I look at my body, which is under sentence of death. It is lean, hard, and cold, the incarnation of a mystery. And I do not know what moves in this body, what this body is searching. It is trapped in my mirror as it is trapped in time and it hurries toward revelation.” – James Baldwin

“It must be inconvenient to be made of flesh,’ said the Scarecrow thoughtfully, ‘for you must sleep, and eat, and drink. However, you have brains, and it is worth a lot of bother to be able to think properly.” – L. Frank Baum

“Flesh is merely a lesson. We learn it and pass on.” – Erica Jong

The character “Cousin Itt” of The Addams Family tv and film series first appeared in a single-panel sketch in the October 12, 1963 issue of The New Yorker, which depicted the hair-covered figure answering the telephone with the caption, “This is It speaking.” Cousin Itt spoke in a high-pitched gibberish that is understood only by his family. That sounds like Finneganese to me.

“Is it a joke? No. Is it a pun, a play on words? No. Never. It’s just the truth.” – Preston Sturges in his 1942 film The Palm Beach Story

“I have always been on the side of those who seek the truth, but I part ways with them when they think they have found it.” – Luis Bunuel

“It is finished” and “You have heard that it was said” – Jesus

“If God is beyond duality, you cannot say that God is a ‘He.’ You cannot say God is a ‘She.’ You cannot say God is an ‘It.'” – Joseph Campbell

“You know then that it is not the reason, That makes us happy or unhappy.” and “After the leaves have fallen, we return, To a plain sense of things. It is as if, We had come to an end of the imagination…” – Wallace Stevens

“It is what it is.” – Ancient Proverb

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” – William James

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay

“Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed it.” – Ernest Hemingway

“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” – David Foster Wallace, from Infinite Jest

“It furthers one to have somewhere to go.” – I Ching

“The unconscious mind works without your knowledge, and that is the way it prefers.”- Milton Erickson

“I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” – Woody Allen

“It is written” in the Gospels, or God’s declaration in Genesis 1:31, and “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

“Galeotto fu ‘l libro e chi lo scrisse”, which translates to: “The book and he who wrote it were our Galehaut [our matchmaker].” – Dante

“Tell me, is it worth it all?” – Phil Ochs

“This it is and nothing more.” – Edgar Allan Poe

Miles Davis: “I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.”

“We Love It” and “But the real trick is, where do you take it from here?” – Randy Newman

Bob Dylan contributes: “How does it feel?” and “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).”

It Can’t Happen Here is the 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis and the 1936 play version by Lewis and John C. Moffitt. “It Can’t Happen Here” – Frank Zappa on Freak Out, the 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention. But, it can happen in our own beach town, Venice, California. And it did. Over the several decades, B. Meade curated group art shows entitled, “It Came From Venice” at Sponto Gallery at 7 Dudley Avenue. Celebrate the otherworldly power of creativity in our neighborhood at the upcoming Sponto Salon on August 29 at 3:30pm at Venice Library, free admission. With fiery discussion and rare film clips, we’ll probe Sponto Gallery as the iconic community center. Please join in the live oral history – participatory pattern recognition. Bring your memories and recollections.

“It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” is a legendary 1931 jazz standard composed by Duke Ellington, with lyrics by Irving Mills and inspired by the catchphrase of trumpeter Cootie Williams.

“You’re It” and “Do you do it or does it do you?” and “The ‘it’ is all there is. There isn’t anything else. There are no parts of the ‘it’ that can be separated from any other parts.” – Alan Watts. I recommend reading the chapter titled “It” in The Book by Alan Watts from 1966. Thanks to KPFK Pacifica 90.7FM radio for playing Alan Watts since 1959.

“Tain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It)” is a song written by Melvin “Sy” Oliver & James ”Trummy” Young. It was first recorded and released in 1939 by Jimmie Lunceford followed within the same year by Ella Fitzgerald and Fats Waller, the same year as Finnegans Wake.

“Does it matter that this waste of time is what makes a life for you?” – more Frank Zappa.

Let’s bookend this ITness with a quote from Albert Einstein: “It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.”

For its final benediction, we turn to Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) who composed: “The stars are matter, we are matter, but it doesn’t matter.” Or does it?

I welcome your input,
Thanks, Gerry Fialka pfsuzy@aol.com

Tune in, Turn Around, and Drop by…
Upcoming Laughtears.com Events:

***FRIDAY, July 31, 2026 from 3 to 4:30pm – Gerry Fialka hosts Venice Culture Salons (VCS#22) at Venice Heritage Museum, 1234 Pacific Ave – Fun, fiery, interactive discussions about our Beachtown. Free admission. Bring your stories. Delve deep into Venice’s live oral history. With guest: RICHARD MODIANO. We’ll explore early film history in Venice including Charlie Chaplin (Kid Auto Races 1914, The Circus 1928,) Buster Keaton (High Sign 1921, ) Quicksand with Venice resident Peter Lorre 1950,) Orson Welles (Touch of Evil 1958,) Roger Corman (Bucket of Blood, 1959 and Wild Angels1966,) Curtis Harrington (Night Tide 1961.) “Gerry Fialka is the Studs Terkel of Venice, California—nurturing active participation for common ground.” – writer and producer Michele Raven, and Studs Terkel is the godfather of modern oral history.

***SAT Aug 29 Celebrate SPONTO Art Gallery at Venice Public Library, 3:30pm – 5pm FREE Explore the spirit of legendary artist/curator Mark “Sponto” Kornfeld, who nurtured the creative and Love community in Venice, California for 24 years at his 7 Dudley Avenue. This location was the very same home of the infamous Venice West Cafe from 1958 to 1966, one of the birthplaces of a free-spirited literature and art movement. The Beats shared themes of spirituality, environmental awareness and political activism. Sponto felt the sacred ground bubbling up from the Beat roots, and extended it. “It’s all good, Sponti.” Rare film clips and fiery discussion with Gerry

FRIDAY, Sept 18, 2026 from 3 to 4:30pm – Gerry Fialka hosts Venice Culture Salons (VCS#23) at Venice Heritage Museum, 1234 Pacific Ave – Fun, fiery, interactive discussions about our Beachtown. Free admission. Bring your stories and news. Delve deep into Venice’s live oral history. Join our conversation With guests Linda Lucks and Marty Liboff – updates on the past, present and future of Venice.

***SUN Sept 13 at VENICE WEST at 7pm SUZY WILLIAMS & Friends – SONGS OF VENICE CALIFORNIA, followed by Zappa Glee Club – “The Zappa Glee Club celebrates the fearless, genre-defying music of Frank Zappa through spirited performance, musical exploration, and a healthy sense of humor. Whether you’re a longtime Zappa devotee or just discovering his work, the Zappa Glee Club welcomes you to join the fun.” – Richard Modiano, renowned Los Angeles poet, and Executive Director Emeritus of Beyond Baroque. “I never liked Frank Zappa lyrics until I heard the Zappa Glee Club” – Dark Bob

*** SUN Oct11 at 4:20pm Zappa Glee Club on radiovenice.tv

** Sun, Nov8 at 6pm-live music, 7pm-films at Beyond Baroque – Music Films with Mark Cantor: “I’ve Just Gotta See It But It Ain’t On YouTube Blues” https://www.jazz-on-film.com/ Opening at 6pm live music: BSP avant-funk-jazz

*** Sun, Nov 15, PXL THIS 36 Toy Camera Film Festival ONLINE Special thanks: Technical advisor & archivist Sam R. Wilson http://www.pxl2k.com Free Electronic Folk Art “The most audacious film festival ever” see it on Youtube for free

***EVERY FIRST TUESDAY of EVERY MONTH is Marshall McLuhan-FINNEGANS WAKE Reading Club online “where the hand of man never set foot”

***Check Gerry Fialka’s “I’m probably wrong about everything” Podcast on Youtube- interviews with MUSIC, ART, LIT, FILM, POETRY, MEDIA, ACTIVISTS, SCIENCE, INFLUENCERS & amazing people world-wide, like NY Times best seller author/comedian John Fugelsang, Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin & Jodie Evans, Frank Zappatistas & mo…

***Every SUN (except 2nd sundays) from noon – 4:30pm Brad Kay jazz merriment at Unurban 3301 Pico Blvd with Suzy Williams, Mews Small, Ginger Smith, Flo Laurence, Kahlil Sabbagh, Zane Tatum and more. FREE JAZZ CABARET FOLK POPULAR MUSIC Live!!! https://sundaysongbirds.com/

*** Check out – RFunk by BSP (Black Shoe Polish) by Gerry Fialka & Ryan Zin (bass & guitar), with Carol Chaikin (soprano/alto sax & flute), Perry Ostrin (drums). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD_7K0wP0PE&list=RDUD_7K0wP0PE&start_radio=1

One of Dave Van Ronk’s favorite jokes: A general notices a soldier acting strangely, constantly picking up random pieces of paper, frowning, looking them over, and saying, “That’s not it,” before dropping them. This behavior continues until the worried command sends the man to see an army psychiatrist for evaluation. The psychiatrist determines the man is completely unhinged and signs an official army discharge form. The soldier looks at the paper, breaks into a wide grin, and says, “That’s it!”

Please whisper me your reactions to this John Cage video. I recently interviewed the host Richard Kostelanetz on my podcast, and even though there’s tech server problems (maybe meant to be?), Richard stressed the 4 most important things are laughing, swimming, reading in the sunshine and writing. I love that and appreciated his follow-up comment: “Thank you for asking so many questions I couldn’t answer.” – Richard Kostelanetz

Have you ever heard anyone suggest to read Finnegans Wake upside down? Watch this YouTube video: By Cage – A Conversation Between John Cage & Richard Kostelanetz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSNvibp7q2A

“The Initiation of a New Composition “For the Third Time” by John Cage. In Dialogue with Richard Kostelanetz. (1978, 28 minutes) Cage explains and demonstrates to Kostelanetz his composition of “acrostics” (mesostics) based on the selection of letters and syllables from the text of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake following certain rules to create aural/visual texts.”  PLEASE check out: Avant-garde writer and artist Richard Kostelanetz (who playfully calls himself the “Earl of Wordship”) opens his personal home and massive private library as a pop-up bookstore on the last Sunday of each month. His loft is located at 1051 Wyckoff Avenue, Ridgewood, Queens, NY 10727 (often noted near the border of Brooklyn/Queens). Usually 12:00 PM – 6:00 PM (confirm via his personal social media updates beforehand). One of his great books (he wrote over 50) https://monoskop.org/images/b/bd/Kostelanetz_Richard_Dictionary_of_the_Avant-Gardes.pdf includes this amazing quote=

“It takes approximately twenty years to make an artistic curiosity out of a modernistic monstrosity; and another twenty to elevate it to a masterpiece.” – Nicolas Slonimsky, from his 1953 book Lexicon of Musical Invective. Slonimsky joined Frank Zappa’s band on piano during the track “A Pound for a Brown on the Bus” December 11, 1981 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Check this film –  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LYSd05BbOg Nicolas Slonimsky Documentary- A Touch of Genius..

I have deep gratitude to the coolest hangout in the world – Rocco’s of Angel City Books & Records https://www.instagram.com/angelcitybooks/?hl=en who reminded me of two essentials:

Stephen King used the title “It” for his 1986 novel because it represents the ultimate, nameless fear of childhood. “It” acts as a label for the monster when the kids cannot find any other word.

The song “IT” is the grand finale of Genesis’ 1974 double concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Peter Gabriel wrote it as the surreal, celebratory climax to the protagonist Rael’s psychological and spiritual journey of self-discovery, repeating the cryptic refrain “It is, it does, it lights, it’s me” to signify a moment of total unity and awakening. The word “It” stands for the elusive essence of life, identity, and the universe—everything and nothing all at once, merging the ego of the self with the outside world.

Maestro Brad Kay reminds us: N. B. British author Elinor Glyn coined and popularized the term “It” in her 1927 novel It, defining the quality as a mysterious magnetic charm or aura that makes a person irresistibly attractive. The concept became a cultural phenomenon and cemented the phrase “It Girl” in global pop culture, notably tied to the 1927 silent film adaptation starring Clara Bow. I thought of another two-letter juicy title: “WE” by Charles Lindbergh, referring to himself and his aeroplane, “The Spirit of St. Louis.”  I’ll bet there’s an “US,” a “BE,” a “TO” to name a few, somewhere in the literary lexicon. But “IT” seems to head the pack.  I think your article, for a three-pager in the Beachhead, is fine and provocative enough to launch REAMS of discussion.

Gerry responds: “Bring it on.”

Gerry Fialka and Eric Ahlberg, ZGC T-shirt courtesy of Patrick LIberty