Offcore, Net Neutrality, and You

Once upon a time, I wrote a poem called 'The Offcorist Manifesto'. It was a big hit in high school circles, but I've sort of grown out of that revolutionary stage that everyone goes through during the teenage years—the poem is poorly written, filled with cliché, and borders on boring, and while I do believe it's outgrown it's usefulness, the concept behind it hasn't.

Our lives are made out of miniscule moments, of which major media has seemed to have forgotten about. Due to this concept, our major media outlets have sort of forgotten how it is to be human; how meaningful art is, and why it is important.

Independent media outlets have not forgotten this, nor have they gone to the stage of actual art tampering. All great works of art, throughout history, have gone without a mediator when it came to relating to an audience. See, you don't have to read the criticism about Cezanne's work to be touched by it; you don't have to dress it up, make it snappy, and advertise the shit out of it for it to be useful.

There's a big difference between art and product, which is a problem in our culture due to the fact that our culture is run by companies. Corporations are more concerned with money than enlightenment. This is the reason why 'Howl' was released by a small press (owned by another poet). This is why Neutral Milk Hotel songs aren't a regular staple on MTV—art with honest meaning isn't easily connected to by a majority of people.

As artists, we're often troubled by the popularity of certain things. We understand why the Simpson sisters sell so many records; we understand why teenage boys are all about neumetal. What we don't understand is why so many people fall for it. Why, for instance, is Danielle Steele a best-seller when books like Middlesex toil in relative obscurity? Why can't people connect to something so very meaningful rather than being entertained by something so trivial?

The concept behind Offcore, simply, was shoddy at best: what I wanted to do was incite some sort of movement. I wanted to be behind some sort of cultural revolution. I wanted what the Beats had, I wanted to get into fist fights like Hemingway and get drunk like Fitzgerald. I wanted to be an artist so badly back then that I could taste it.

The word itself, though, Offcore: it stood for everything I felt about being trapped under the heel of a corporate America at the tender young age of 17. And it still stands for that feeling, if not more important feelings; disjointed characteristics, depression, importance, meaning, heroism, music, talent, and pain. Simply, it's another word for 'art'.

What's different now than in all previous stages of artistic culture is this: we're facing a world where art is seen as trivial by a good majority of people. Other periods of art have faced the same thing, but those periods weren't laboring in a world where 90-some percent of all media comes from three or four major corporations. As a result of this calamity, a lot of information falls through the cracks. We hear what we're meant to hear (which is to say, things that don't harm or jeopardize said corporations or their affiliates), even if that means we're missing very important tidbits.

Throw in the fact that (despite allegations about the mythical 'liberal media') major media is entwined so closely to a sense of invalid morals and dogma, and we've got the making for a very dystopian future. 1984 and all that. Extreme? At this stage, yes. But if it continues?

When envisioned, the founders of our great nation saw the press as a fourth, impartial branch of government; by giving us the right of free press we were guaranteed the ability to learn of and take action against injustices set in motion by our government or political parties. Back then, anyone with the ambition to write out a thousand leaflets (or anyone with the access to a printing press) had the ability to be heard fairly well among their peers. Now our voices are drowned out by Bill O'Rielly claiming that America isn't ready for a gay man to play a straight lead (even though it can work the other way around), or by blaring, terrible advertisements for another useless beauty product.

Which, of course, is where the internet comes in. Each blog is someone's very own (and very useful) printing press, and all we have to do is speak; people from all over the world will hear us, if they so choose.

On top of that? Artists have independent ventures at their control; music fans run record labels, art lovers run art galleries (but that's not a good example, given the National Endowment for the Art's recent activity—does anyone else remember the 'Piss Christ' incident?). Activists run magazines and 'zines. Literature fans run bookstores.

But it's all in jeopardy. With media monopolies slowly growing (Clear Channel, anyone?) and the whole privatization of the internet, our venues could grow slimmer and slimmer as time goes on. What commercial company, for instance, would allow you to surf over to AlterNet if they're funded by Fox?

Within the realm of corporate media comes the major chain, a danger to independent shops the world over for very simple reasons: the more chain stores, the more profit to chain stores and less profit to small shops. Everyone flooding into a Barnes and Noble (who doesn't even carry a number of independent books) to buy that new Grisham isn't going to go to the corner bookstore to browse the titles from smaller presses. As a result, smaller presses lose money, leading closer to them going out of business, leading to less venues for writers, leading to more sales of shittier novels, leading to higher income for chain stores, leading to less income to small bookstores, leading to less of an audience for small press books, leading. . . you get the picture.

The creation of media (and all arts) is vital to a free, unbiased community. We can't grow as free-thinking individuals when such restrictions are in place.

That's what Offcore is, I've come to realize after all these years. It's a word to encompass the need for free media, for unrestricted art, for personal growth over profit. It's not a very revolutionary motive, as artists have been after this for years, but its a start.

Here's how we go about it, then: we influence our political masters toward Net Neutrality. We create our own media. We link to sites of great importance (or little importance, or of any meaning whatsoever). We make handbills and attend shows at non-Clear Channel venues. We support our local scenes. We discuss the importance of these things with people who aren't informed. We gather the data.

The Offcorist Manifesto, as written by a stupid kid:

Because we're sick and tired of paying for shit we didn't do and doesn't work anyway.

Because our morality encompasses everything, and that hurts.

Because we're the most powerful generation to date, and that scares us.

Because we're pirates.

Because we're lovers.

Because we've tasted freedom, and it's not a fat paycheck.

Because we're not giving up.

Because everything that we've been raised to be is a lie, and we won't take that.

Because we're the poster children for confused youth.

Because violence might just be the answer.

Because we refuse to be censored.

Because love lives forever

and so does rebellion.

Because the light is often in our eyes.

Because we've addictions
hungers
pains
children of our own.

Because our war is social, and we're angry that our driving force is plastic.

Because we miss Allen Ginsberg and e.e. cummings (as apparent).

Because we are politics.

Because we share what's ours
and sometimes what's not.

Because our flags are not bumpers stickers.

Because we're always hungry and never eating, out of necessity.

Because we welcome controversy but not fashion.

_*_
Offcore-
_*_

We, the people of Offcore, in order to form a more perfect literati . . .

Icons will be fixed, ives will be chaotic, small-press will be alive.

We will learn.

We will grift.

We will believe.

We will stand cards on end and laugh at the connections of the universe coming together and sighing, we will learn.

We will watch the rising steam and note how it holds no politics.

We will not use one another for anything more than reality, trapped in smooth cotton unwholesome dreams and hoping that things will never/always.

We will hold hands, cold in theaters and basements and fall asleep together in tired restless surrealistic society.

We will not let Time nor Ignorance nor Oppression nor Censorship take down the art-
the connections between us.

We will ignore the whispers of jealous sincerity, socio-political whispers of mundanity.

We are not you.
You are not us.

Tempers will flare. We will not be denied.

The golden reliance of Summer and Winter, these are our temptations.

Far from uniform.

Self-consciousness burns.

Sitting in the cream blue moonlight of heart-felt reasonings, pining for voice, screaming to the trees, we will defend our beliefs.

As our roster grows, so does the outpouring of art, printed media, free novels for printing out ink-jet style.

Our Zen may very well be anti-Zen, and our peace is the fact that either way, that's still pretty Zen.

Because in this lush, thick bohemian paradise, we are kings and queens of free thought.

Because in everything you've ever put stock, we've been growing bonds, and we will forever be bound to each other outside all delirious effort.

In the sacred night sky reality of the taste in your mouth that won't go, we are the ones that recognize the thud of the bags under your eyes, the bloodied, skewed originality.

This is the artistic revolution.

This is the poetic revolution.

This is revolution, and it cannot be denied.

We will not be denied.

We are not empty artists.

This isn't just America.

Because we count the Nameless Protagonist, we count Sal Paradise among our own personal saviors.
And if that old man hadn't caught that fucking fish? We just don't know what we'd do.

We have connections.

In our world, it's not the one with the most toys who win.

We can distinguish art from junk.

We do not spam.

We've felt the limelight insecurities in that cold moment before dawn, and we deny them.

Because social status isn't.

It's morning, and I awaken to nothing less than this dreamscape consciousness, and we try to bleed.
From these four walls I hid nothing, and on these walls are pictures, scraps of my life I've never quite found a place for, and, to me, I see no other way.
The things that have no place are the things that define you.
Here is every shred of artistic integrity, every breathing bohemian friend, every mega-cultural revolution I've seen fit to seek out.
The ones I love, or, at the very least, icons of them, pegged to the wall with worn thumbtacks.
And it's always changing.
But those that are here now shall always be,
and I believe this.
I sit down, coffee in hand, and try not to think of her.
Of him, them, these.
And at the same time, opening myself to all thoughtless creative effort.
And breathe.
And release.

We are the ones who hold hands, beauty, ideals, reason, chaos, glory, angels of our self-expression.

It is not uncommon for us to lose pens in the pocket-stuff gobblers built in by a society that fears us.

Because we've never tried to quell emotion.

Because we've each stood at our own cliff-face identity art, leaning into the wind, risking obscurity, risking destruction, risking society, and screamed that we wanted more.
We always wanted more.

We are sad to be children of The Consumer Nation.

We've tasted need, and only wished that more things could be this way.

We've shared notebooks, shared tumbling death traps, shared glasses and toothbrushes and stars/scars.

Because we've all used our fair share.

Because we hate the copycat.

Because we can't get along with someone who denies their own art.

Because we have pride and reason and determination and lust.

Because we won't pay $299.99 for another computer program that just wants to control us.

We won't deny the urge to believe.

Because, really, it's all just one big religion.

Because it's all a big race.

Because ambiguity is fine by us.

We won't be defined.
won't be labeled.

No good artist, ever, was afraid to tell the truth. They've never trusted consciences.

We are not afraid of confrontation.

We've taken hits and laughed them off.

We've run along the beach.

We've been unsure.

We've tasted the dreaded determination and the pang of lust, combined the two.

We've broken the law.

We've stuttered upon the line of whirling shadow worlds, never quite knowing where its going to end up.

Because it's about time freedom of press was held strong.

We'll see uncharted places you never have.

We'll know the coming of winter and see also the rise of spring.

We'll kiss and hold our life's loves.

We're sorry if we're being cocky, it's just that we will know the warmth of happiness not substituted by designer jeans.

We'll die happy and free, the martyrs of a tired and grinning generation.

We will repay our debts of derogatory statements and from the heart man to man's.

Music will flow.

And, as the day progresses, I force more life and passion and respect from those who don't deserve it, clacking loudly on my typewriter, breathing deep the smell of generation love from my bed, rolling over and opening her eyes and saying, "Working early, aren't you?"
And I know the feel of love and gratitude and utter comfort.
And I'll smile.

We'll be in bleak coffee-driven fistfight promiscuity under a false dawn of understanding, and stand alone the survivor among the plastic masked individuals that adamantly depress our ordeals.

We'll laugh at the cameras and scream obscenities at our own frustrations.

We'll know the taste of rain soaked belly flesh, laughing and loving and knowing that we've found the one.

We'll turn off our alarm clocks and take the batteries from our watches and live in peace.

We'll accept awards by saying, "Eat that, Hollywood."

We'll see our heroes raised to saints and saviors and buy them a drink of humble desperate reason, and joke.

We aren't coming; we've arrived.

We'll instigate underground handbook laws that no one will follow and wake up, bloodshot eyes turned up to the sun filtering through the trees of our trepidation.

Because comics are art.

Because you knew it was coming.

We'll cure disease and set injustices strait and dictate our experience into novels and let them molder on shelves.

We'll know the taste of defeat, release, and redemption.

Because drugs are stupid
because love's too hard to get a fix on
because violence might just be the answer.

We'll develop libraries the size of our lust and thumb through, disinterested.

We'll cry.

We'll be known as heroes and villains and taste the blood of bitter reinforcement.

We'll be forced into prisons just before dawn and escape just before dusk.

We hate the smell of commercial, avoid the taste of plastic, and shy from movie-land addictions.

We are addicts of a new generation without pills and needles and smoke, but in the halo glow of untested society.

We'll have our cake and eat it, too.

We'll know we have to respect two people as our predecessors: Lenny Bruce and Pac-Man.

We'll own our own companies and mark prices below recommended sale.

We've known Archie and Jughead as archetypes and social commentary.

We've cried at movies.

We've been force fed lies from power hungry, censoring, maniacal, inferiority-complex sporting dictators of bishop computer science teachers and have been warned for using bad words in our newspaper articles.
Penis isn't a bad word, Fucker.

We'll sustain emotional tired conversations over 3 a.m. 5000-mile phone calls, wishing we had never taken the job that brought us here.

We'll die in wars both real and imagined, and heed the reams of cancer eaten professors.

We'll surround ourselves with Zen anti-dogmatic dogma of valiant forever legends that are, indeed, us.

We'll see the rise of Losers to power and smile because they're our own.

We'll give birth to new revolutions and offshoots and know that Offcore can't die.

In years to come, we'll be dead and young lost artists will find us and revive us and incorporate us into their works because it's a red bastard cycle of laughing philosophy.

We'll voice into microphones our denials until our voices crack and eyes run dry.

We'll know.

Our pets will become legends and people we'll never know will speak of them.

We do not mourn the falling/fallen/rising/peaked economy; only know that it's time for sleep.

We're okay with our work being introduced to photocopiers and the dim non-original handed to a friend.

Because if parts of this are cut we'll know and we'll demand justice.

We thank Jefferson and Victoria and Jack the Ripper and Harriet Beecher Stowe and Ted Bundy and Lincoln and Speck and Charles Schultz and all the cum-soaked temptress models online for making us who we are today.
And just wish we named more names so that people know that we've been through.

Murders in progress, the dark antagonist of hot summer city night, these will be tales before we save the day.

We'll put a bullet between the eyes of every self-conscious idealistic morality set, then put them away until someone else, years down the line, needs them.

I turn to her, golden glory in my bed that seems always to be bathed in peaceful natural light, she's stretching, arms out above her head, double-jointed elbows and a content moan, and say, "My queen, forever shall you be."
And I'm still confused though it's been a long enough time, and she'll say, "New shades of happiness she can never buy ripe."
She'll say, "Today, we make soap."
She'll say, "THIS IS NOT AN EXIT."
She'll say, "Something vague that we're not seeing."
She'll say, "Come as I want you."
She'll say, "The girls were selfish."
She'll say, "I saw the best minds of my generation."
She'll say, "Good grief."
And, "Up, up, and away!"
And, "How many roads?"
"The icicles hung down like prison bars."
"Do you like scary movies?"
"Tut tut, looks like rain."
She'll say, "Because we're sick and tired of paying for shit we didn't do and doesn't work anyway."
And I'll kiss her.

And we're sick and tired of you questioning how we did in school.
How we're doing in school.

And we know that you just want to make peace; we just don't.

We grew with the pacifier of online comics and pirated mp3's and animated porn banners.

See also failed online lit movements.

See also stylized corporate web sites.

And we stopped matching our clothes as early as we noticed that we almost did it without thinking about it.

Broke VCR's.

Took sledgehammers to water tanks.

Built our own shelter.

We've been beaten up.

Have painted absurd paintings, and will continue to do so.

We'll install a new form of moral government.

We'll scream to the dark caverns where we lost our childhood friends and wonder how we escaped and they didn't.

Rising action, Climax, Falling action.

Crime-spree children of meth hits on July Saturday night, stealing Doritos from a 23-hour convenience store be damned.

We know what it is people do behind closed doors.
Or at least what we would do.

We'll sell T-Shirts and mouse-pads and posters and comic strips so we won't have to sell ourselves.

We'll taste thunder.

And bleed.

Write.

Declare.

We'll do the weeding ourselves, thanks.

And don't trust reviews like you don't take candy from strangers.

Angst is held high above our mosh-pit strong arms and carried all the way to the back.

We've vomited the toxins of society after long, self-hating nights and mind-numbing weekend dumb-ass parties.

Nosebleeds.

Without that accident we'd believe in nothing.

And we believe.

We trust each other not to make us hate or cry or bleed, and if we don't, we'll make it happen.

We'll want to bleed.

We'll want to hate.

We'll want to cry.

And pictures of aborted fetus feet, of children's programming, of Nazi marshmallow roasts and trusted Jesus and trading cards and catalogs and heroine syringes and torn cloth.

Because we were made to believe.

Because we don't believe in society enough without art.

Because we're the deviance theories in action.

And candy dropped accidentally next to the naked sex-crime victim.

The little cosmos signs, details forgotten or unnoticed that scream to be recognized and all the horrors that could be prevented, these are things we know that brief second before we slip off into insomniac's first restless sleep.

We'll be reduced to icons and hate it.

And the word Beatnik as derogatory to the real Beats.

And drunken Fitzgerald saying goodnight the night before.

And Ezra Pound dying in the sanitarium.

The way we assume everything and nothing, it helps us sleep in the arms of a lover we wish was someone else.

Angels fighting for souls.

Hell wanting free trapped behind eyes.

Because our fingers are cramped and that flowing feeling of true art/belief can never stay long.

Couches and downstairs bedrooms where we realized.

Because race isn't an issue.

She runs a hand down my cheek, sleep still fleeing her glorious eyes, that half-awake smile that means her feelings mirror mine, and I know in that moment that all art I had ever created or observed or stolen, all of it crowds into this face, so beautiful, and that's all it is, no conclusions, just a non-definition, so I work and toil at art and underground and politics and love all for such a simple reason:
There is none,
And it is beautiful.
So beautiful.

Because we'll never run out of paper.