- - JAMES BAY CULTURE BLOG #4 - -

What do you see in the picture below?

One question: Why?

Another question: How many people even noticed this bizarre scenery? Very strange. It is challenging even to come up with a name for it... “a proud mass of anthropomorphic eroticism?” or perhaps “an arboreal eruption of giddy, plastic pseudo-porn?” Maybe it shows the Biblical Garden of Eden with several naked, coy “Eve”s and a handful of hairy-chested, moustachioed “Adam”s?

Wow. That's a mouthful.

Just to be on the safe side, we should probably call it a neo-pagan monument that consecrates the vegetative sexual electricity of all Nature while simultaneously transcending it in an elevation toward the Sublime Gaze of the Living Heavens.

Assessment of my phrasing: Superior.

Of course, I mean The Superior Café. This local cultural detective stumbled upon this scene whilst strolling near Fisherman's Wharf. This is precisely the kind of strange, depraved thing that happens down by the docks. This strange sight was unexpected and provocative (intellectually, of course). Definitely worth investigating... but how should we go about it?

Out-dated, conventional reporters -- castrated by "Writing Classes" & bent wickedly by the vile indoctrination rituals of Old Media "news professionals” -- would naively phone the Superior: “Say Pal, what can yeh tell me about them naked bodies in that, there, tree?" ------------- No doubt this fool would snap a false-face photo of the Manager, jot down a few details, throw in joke and then go for lunch. Yawn. Despite the retro appeal of such procedures we've got to face the fact that ordinary journalism only reinforces the most simplistic, regressive forms of public self-awareness. A semi-literate, pre-electronic waste of a reader's time!

The fans of this blog deserve better. We need to know more and we must know it more profoundly. The pragmatism (i.e. mindless populism) that dominates mainstream media is the very definition of linguistic junk food – easily absorbed, plenty of marshmallowy facts, and utterly lacking the “nutrient” of depth.

To satisfy James Bay's cravings, we do not have to know “Why did someone put an orgy in a tree?” Instead, we absolutely need to know “Why did WE put an orgy up there?” It is not enough to make a story personal, you've got to make it pre-personal and trans-personal as well!

It hardly matters what Lisa Boehme & Emma May were thinking when they erected this conceptual-sexual tree decor. Nor do we care that these inflatable sex dolls were provided by The Romance Shop. Such data is dull, dull, dull.

This is just more Standard Normalizing Trivia (SNT).

These regressive, socially-retarding, "news whores" (I'm looking at you, The James Bay Beacon! ) are willfully cheating the rest of us out of the raw, organic energy of events and substituting it with an pandering, low-nutrient data-sludge that only occasionally contains a half-decent Crossword or Sudoku puzzle.

Wow. That's a mouthful. Of slander.

Too much? How about this, instead: think about TREES & SEX & PLASTIC BODIES. Blend the ideas together. What does all that suggest to you? Clearly, “trees” and “sex” intersect readily. Druid sex-cults, Witches, Reichian vegetative libido electricity, etc. Victoria has always been a haven for tree-loving, pro-sex schools of contemporary neo-paganism. Let's be honest: our sensitivity to trees and sexiness is one of our best features. But what about the “plastic”? How do industrial masturbation toys jive with the regenerative, organic life-energy that exists in humans and plants alike?

Maybe – My God! A horrible thought! -- this means that our contemporary “permissive” attitude is not as natural as we think it is. Doesn't the appearance of plastic, de-humanized sex orgies in public fit into the same weird category as virtual sex, safe sex, decaffeinated coffee, fat-free chocolate cake...?

The French cultural philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) wrote, in Simulacra and Simulation:

"The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs which dissimulate that there is nothing, marks the decisive turning point. The first implies a theology of truth and secrecy (to which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates an age of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer any God to recognize his own, nor any last judgment to separate truth from false, the real from its artificial resurrection, since everything is already dead..."

So the danger is not from the entry of carnal energies into the public sphere (as is believed by the least healthy among political conservatives) but rather the threat is from the “emptying out” of all our excitements from the bestial to the angelic (an agenda pushed by the least healthy among political liberals).

Today's Moral Commandment: Thou shalt have all the carnal pleasure thou desireth, even in public, as long as there are no “real bodies” involved!

Do we not have belly dancers in our malls, applauded by Moms and respected by everyone -- with no sense that these swaying hips and tantalizing rotations are erotic? Where has the sense "this is sexually titillating" gone? Is our society decaffeinating its eroticism? ARE WE DECAFFEINATING EVERYTHING???

Now, at last, feeling disturbed, twisted and conceptually over-excited about some minor local art experiment we can rest assured that we have discovered a mouthful of real cultural energy.

Until next time...

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