Here is a passage from a book, old now, first published in 1976, by Annabelle Melzer. The book is called DADA AND SURREALIST PERFORMANCE. It is now available from Johns Hopkins University Press. Interestingly, Ms. Melzer is now teaching in Isreal. We wonder how she finds all of the current war situations going on from the perspective of her research on dada.
At any rate, here is a lengthy passage which we will type out from her book. As a preface, we will just let you know that the dadaists in Paris, about which this book is primarily concerned, met and performed out of what they called the "Cabaret Voltaire", which was a kind of bar which they had talked the owner into letting them use. We long for such a bar scene in New York, or anywhere for that matter. Quin would move to whatever city it was in if we could just find one where he could spend his time being Quin among other intelligent types who were interested in collaborating in some way which might bring in income of some sort. Academics put out a "call for papers" whenever they are putting together a book or conference on some subject. Here, we put out a "call for smart people interested in collaborating in some way to make money in some artisticish manner." You wouldn't think that would be so hard to find, but it is.
And so on to the lengthy passage from Ms. Melzer's book. We just want to mention that there will be quotes from this one and that one in here, and from this manifesto and that manifesto, which if our other browser, the one created by that zillionaire boy genius, now a man genius whom none of us like overmuch, were not infected by a horrible spyware called Netpal, we could indent and italisize and translate into many nice colors for you. This little detail tends to keep us going here at the Luna Azul Foundation, but since that particular browser is infected, we are working in Netscape, which we feel much better about politically, but which doesn't let us do all of those pretty things to our text. We can't even change the font for you to one which is smaller so you will know where we end and the quotation begins, and so we will just soldier on with quotation marks and double spaces and such like.
Here is the passage. It is from Chapter IV, entitled, "Dada Becomes a Movement."
"Dada is a tomato.
Dada is a spook.
Dada is a chameleonof rapid, interested change.
Dada is never right.
Dada is soft boiled happiness.
Dada is idiotic.
Dada is life. Dada is that which changes.
Dada means nothing.
Everything is dada.
Dada manifestos, passim."
[The above is a quotation from a dada manifesto; the next is Ms. Meltzer.}
After the first few months of experimentation, the group at the Cabaret Voltaire chose the word "dada" to describe their work. Despite the great controversy over the origin of the name and its meaning, Hans Arp [one of the major players in dada] wrote:
"I am convinced that this word is of no importance and thata only imbeciles and Spanish professors can take an interest in dates. What interests us is the Dada spirit, and we are all Dada before Dada came into existence."
[back to Ms. Melzer]
Dada's raging manifestos do not help clarify the movement; rather the reinforce its many ambiguities. Dada comes out against Art ("Art is useless and impossible to justify"--Francis Picabia), and yet makes art. its spokesmen cry: Dada wants nothing Dada means nothing All real Dadas are against Dada--and yet its adherents continue to create. Destruction becomes synonymous with creation: "order-disorder; ego-nonego; affirmation-negation." How is one to define a movement which cannot be identified with any one personality or place, viewpoint or subject, which affected all of the arts, which had continually shifting focus and which was moreover intentionally negative, ephemeral and illogical. Waht does emerge from the manifestos, journals and recorded diatribes of the "movement" is the oppositio to anything that smacks of traditioalism in literature and the arts: . . ." (Meltzer, page 57).
We pause in our citation of Ms. Melzer's work to insert a personal note. The note is this: the above description of dada is one of the best descriptions of QUIN that we have ever seen. And as such, we know our dear readers will understand, in part, why it has been so difficult for us to get a handle on him all these many years (eighteen on January 2nd, for those of you who want to send gifts or at least make a friendly comment to the blog). You see, those of us at the Luna Azul Foundation are worker bees. We analyze, translate, cite, design CD covers and booklets and websites and portfolios and the like. We do our level best, really we do, in our previously noted Pauline fashion, to promote and promulgate the words and works of QUIN. But you just never know what his reaction will be. We know that since he personifies dada, he doesn't mean to be all of those things listed above, (we note especially the words, "intentionally negative, ephemeral and illogical") but he just can't help it. Here is an example.
First you should know that Quin has stopped off at the Luna Azul Foundation in order to not celebrate the culmination of the feasts of consumption with us. We expect that he will go back off into the ether and his hiatus at any moment now, probably this afternoon.
He has been dada-ing us a great deal lately, more than usual, even purchasing the above cited book as our non-feast gift. And so it was with our usual happy enthusiasm, thinking that we finally might understand something, that we approached him yesterday morning and said something to the effect of, "While you're still on hiatus and making money (he has given the tentative date of January 1 as the date of his ceasing again to officially work and therefore bring in, really quite a sizeable chunk of cash to the Foundation, but even cash is not worth it if this causes Quin to do away with himself, or worse, have a recurrence of the pinched nerve in his neck that causes him great pain, but to continue) we said the above and went on, "what we should do is we should rent a space and have a Dada performance." We were smiling of course, as is our happy little bent, until Quin fixed us with a look of depressed anquish. Knowing that we had again managed to say the wrong thing, we went on " I know I know, this is what you've been talking about for months,"(we watch the anguish deepen and know that he is thinking of the exact year, probably 1999 when he first started talking about this . . . Now truthfully and to our credit, he has NOT been talking about putting on a Dada performance for months or years. He has been talking about doing some kind of performance, in the nude, in hopes of creating some sort of sales, and hopefully we might even get a semi-clad brazillian girl dancer or two to participate; I fear that this will end up being just the members of the Luna Azul Foundation belly-dancing away, with perhaps the Beagle singing along. . . .but it was never clarified as dada--we expect it will be still something about Quentin Crisp--but seeing the look of anguish at our once again evidenced naivte, which always makes us feel just as stupid as we can be, we soldiered bravely on and said " . . . since we're followers of dada . . ." now, just so you know, we aren't really totally stupid here at the Luna Azul Foundation, but we do sometimes say things of that sort hoping to get a laugh out of the Quin when he is in despair. There is, after all, no despair so hard for us to take as Quin despair. At this point, however, Quin's face became, if anything, even more tortured and he said, "We are not followers of dada." and rolled over in the bed, putting his arms and hands over his face as he often does when he wishes to block out the horror of the world.
So, you see how the above description of dada is in truth a description of Quin. We are in the buisiness of selling ideas here, and we think this will require a new wardrobe purchased at our local thrift stores of various velvets and pins and finding the right parties to go to. Losing twenty pounds would also help greatly, but that takes more time, unless we contract this flu that's going around, and we can't afford that without donations to the Foundation designated specifically for flu care. Be careful out there in radio land, this flu frequently turns into Peeeenumonia. A close friend and colleague of ours landed in the hospital with it for several days. Here at the Foundation where health insurance is scarce, we can't afford to be sick . . . we and 45 million other Americans.
Does that brief description of Dada and Quin help any? What is hard for most people to understand about artists is that they are really terribly terribly absolutely positively serious about all of this. The English language does not have sufficient adjectives and adverbs to describe their seriosity. And so, when loved ones--don't get me wrong here, NO ONE at the Luna Azul Foundation has ever or will ever suggest this, but it has been suggested from time to time sending Quin deeper and deeper under the covers--when loved ones suggest that Quin en famille might move back to Texas where he could work at, oh, say, The Home Depot, or some such place where he could probably have health insurance, these well-meaning suggestions just function to send him to the outer darkness . . . the black hole of the sole (sic) or wherever that well known saint went when he was in prison and being tortured and so on. (Our Star Trek sensibilities will not allow us, at the moment, to recall the actual phrase . . .there it is, the "dark night of the soul") Quin spends a lot of time there, in the black hole of the sole (flounders are depressed creatures after all, flat and spending all of that time on the bottom of the sea). In point of fact, there is just no dragging him out most of the time.
Now we know that we say this from time to time, and that quite frankly, it pisses some folks right off, that we talk about Quin's despair and so on. And we say to you, Tough. What is interesting is that the people that it annoys the most that we dare mention this, which is, after all, unfortunately, something that many artists seem to deal with constantly or at least off and on . . . remember POLLOCK? Remember Kirk Douglas in that movie about Van Gough? Even Charleton Heston in that movie about Michealangelo suffered with this kind of thing. But to continue, what is interesting about these pissed off folks is that they are the same ones who believe that there should be no secrets, that secrets cause disfunction. They believe in airing problems and sufferings and talking about other people's alcoholism and fears and deeper inner sufferings and all of that. But here is the key. They think that once these things are spoken aloud, they happily and miraculously just go away. Poof, as our dear Uncle Leo Castelli has said. And so then, after all this has been aired, they don't have to hear about it anymore and everything is rosey. We tell you all that this is not how it works. Those of you who believe this are not serious. Krishnamurti . . . do you know him? He is one of the more amusing, or was, he has passed into the ether now, of the Eastern Guru types of the late 20th Century. Krishnamurti in his writings and quite funny television appearances with his wide 1970's collars and swirling Quetin Crisp hairdos has told us that most of our religious practices are just another form of entertainment. We do this to engage our minds, which are always craving activity so that they don't actually have to be serious--or at least quiet. Those of you who think anything goes away, poof, so that you don't have to hear it anymore and can go get your religious fix, whatever it is, are just not serious. You're biding your time, waiting until you can pass into the ether or be reincarnated or whichever thing it is you are longing to do.
Quin is serious, and so nothing ever goes away. We always get to this point in our diatribes here, don't we. The proclamation that Quin is serious, that you should listen, if not to him, to the sounds in your apartment (that is a John Cage quote, not, unfortunately, our own).
Perhaps we project out onto our supposed readership what Quin projects on to us, and so, seemingly unable to convince him that we are listening, or at least trying to, we try to convince you to.
We tell you this however. One of these years, Quin will have a big retrospective of his art and writing. It may be at the Whitney, or it may be at the Walker in Minneapolis. Hoard your pictures for the lenders dinners folks. We'll be calling on you. We just hope that this happens before he permanently passes into the ether. Sometimes retrospectives do happen when the artist is still around. Tottering manfully in his tuxedo pumps. Usually not.
Enough for now, as Osho says. We'll post this and try to move on.
12:58:03 PM 
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