They Write in the Night to Bring Truth to the Light

[Calling Down the Earth] • "Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence," said Osho.

When you think of all the revolutionary movements that have swept through the world, creativity has been the most dangerous force to the status quo. Why is the creative type so dangerous? Again I quote that wild-eyed saint disguised as a charlatan, Osho: "The creator cannot follow the well-trodden path. He has to search out his own way; he has to inquire in the jungles of life. He has to go alone, he has to dropout from the mob mind, from the collective psychology."

Regardless of how far some marvelously detached thinkers say we have evolved from the brutalities of our collective past, there are still margins within our system. It is in these margins, like foxholes, where many creative types have chosen to live. Some have ended up there from an inability to jibe with the vibe of idle niceties and nine-to-five itemized shopping lists. Others were born on the fringes and stayed in order to create.

An obvious example of a marginalized art form is graffiti. The word that is itself tainted and decrepit. For the word "graffiti" was dropped upon a game, of sorts, that city kids used to participate in back in the 1970s. These kids called what they were doing "writing." The media utilized a label that is etymologically rooted to the Italian word, "graffiato," which is translated in English as, "scrawled," or "scratched."

Though the term "graffiti" might be viewed as a dirty word to some "writers," the moniker stuck, and most of us regard some fresh looking paint on a wall as graffiti. Those who do it are called "Graf Writers."

Graffiti first got some major shine in the mainstream when Norman Mailer wrote "The Faith of Graffiti" back in 1973. The photos by Jon Naar that accompanied this text elevated the game, played in subway stations and trains, into something else. Formed out of the metropolitan debris and detritus of post-Vietnam economic slumps and underfunded programs for New York City's youth, the scrawls upon walls, now captured within a picture frame, took on a light that happens when something is transmuted from medium to another. They gained a luminosity that attracted more to the game. Players received more inner circle accolades then they had before. Graffiti superstars were being born.

As a kid, riding my bike around my town with friends, we would debate over who the writer was behind the tag "Milk," which we saw everywhere. Maybe he was an older brother's friend or cousin. We never really knew, though we acted like we did. Still, that simple tag, "Milk," was drawn all over walls behind delis and pizzerias in our zip code.

As I grew older, tags in my town progressed. And some of them had acronyms scrawled next to them. These acronyms were crew names. These crews were also quasi-gangs made up of some of the more delinquent kids in my town, whose reputations preceded them for years to come. (I have run into a few of them since then, and it doesn't surprise me that most of them have done time in our nation's fine correctional facilities.) Sometimes these acronyms were next to these bubble-lettered tags. They were way cooler than simple tags, they had more colors, and some of them looked like they involved some skill. Of course, these weren't solitary discoveries. The TV showed graffiti from time to time, and so my friends and I knew exactly what we were looking at. Still, though, seeing the graf live was always more satisfying.

Like the time a friend told me about "Skateboard City," an abandoned warehouse over by my town's railroad tracks. I cycled there and saw all these dope pieces, full of multi-colored hues and crazy design, pieces so intricately painted that it was hard to even decipher what they were saying. It's almost as if the single letters didn't matter so much as the piece as a whole, taken in one fell swoop.

(A quick note in the distinction between "Pieces" and "Throwies": Pieces are usually a lot more developed in their designs, because they are granted permission to be there. So writers won't get chased if they draw a piece on a wall. Throwies are associated with the path of the "Bomber," that outlaw anarchist writer who goes out in the night to bring truth to the light, or at least tag a bunch of slightly complex lettering with, usually, two different colors, and then bounce. For there is very little love for a Bomber, except from those other cats with paint stains on their fingertips.)

Then taking the train into the city I would see these pieces along the walls of other warehouses all the way into the concrete jungle. These were extremely fun to look at and observe when stoned.

Like I said, most kids I knew that did graffiti were pretty crazy. They seemed to like committing larceny and partaking in fights that seemed pointless to me at the time. Some of them are dead now. Some of have good jobs and a life approaching "normal." I'm not sure which of them still writes graffiti.

Along with all this mayhem, however, the sub-culture known as "Graf" has definitely evolved over the years – along with spray can caps – as an art form that can be transcendent. This is the funny thing about Hip-Hop: parts of it can be so ugly and debased, but the elements of it are so close to the source that it is almost too much to bear. Even funnier, both of those extremities of experience can be embodied within the same song, piece, or persona. This art form and culture, in my eyes, is super-chaotic and complex, and to attempt to wrap your mind around it, you must apply a logic that is infused with the knowledge of paradox. A couple of terms come to mind: "Fantastic Damage" and "Beautiful Decay." A. N. Whitehead said that our modern era requires us to suspend judgment while observing so much around us. The same goes for Graffiti.

Like when looking at a piece. Those insane shapes, sharp and wild, multi-colored and faded ill shading. At first glance, it's chaos. A lovely disarray, true, but havoc nonetheless. However, when looking closer, taking a second out of your hectic day to grok the whole piece with all its intricacies, it might reveal some secret to understanding how our post-modern world functions.

Just as old time Hermeticists drew maps and alchemical talismans back in Giordano Bruno and John Dee's day, these graf cats may very well be offering us an opportunity to leave the mob behind and take a leap into an emergent mind of brilliance. Whitewashed walls splashed along an avenue with avid enthusiasm bordering fanaticism. Life so alive that it is illegal to do, because it is against the Law. And nine-tenths of common law, it appears, revolves around the concept of property, private property at that.

The whole notion of "private property" is contentious. Any Marxist or Anarchist will tell you that the legal idea of "private property" is based upon imperialism and conquest. Meaning that some people came to a land that other people were living on, and killed a whole bunch of those people, as well as raped some of the womenfolk, while stealing their resources. Then they imposed their views upon those conquered, and created a nice and neat "Law" system that ensured their descendants remain all cozy while the conquered indigenous daughters and sons are born at a lower rung upon the ladder of Law. I'm not arguing this point. I'm just saying, this is what Marx and Engels and Bakunin and, well, a whole bunch of really smart motherfuckers have stated.

So along comes some kids who don't really give a shit about all that. Most may not even care about the Dialectic, or Proudhon or Engels. Nah, all they see is a metropolis playing field where cops and apartment residents with guns or dogs are the obstacles, and one of the ways one wins this game is to get as many ups as possible. All this is towards the pursuit of one's happiness.

Today I meet and chill with some of the most talented Graf artists I've ever seen. And maybe it is because I'm no longer a teenager, but these people aren't really committing any violent crimes, or stealing cars.

One such artist is a cat named Cern, who grew up here in NYC and has his pieces up on walls all over Bushwick and Williamsburg, just to name a couple of spots.

I asked Cern what he thought about when we were younger and there was this part of Graf writing that was pretty crazy. He answered that he knew similar people of the massively badass type. His response was that among these cats were also the artists. And even within some of the crazy cats' own psyches were artists struggling to emerge. The people who put more emphasis upon the art form techniques, like developing fresh letter styles and backgrounds, etc., than the more violent proclivities involved within this outlaw agenda. He mentioned that he learned styling lines and precise shading from these cats. If you have ever walked past a certain food store on the corner of Roebling and Metropolitan, or stood outside of Homero's Barber Shop on the corner of Wilson Av. and Noll St.in Bushwick, you will see just how much he learned.

Cern's pieces are some of the best I've ever seen. His whole crew, YMI, is all around fresh. Native, Meres, Bisc, are just a few cats who have been doing their thing real nice around NYC for a minute now. If one is so inclined to check out what has become a mini-museum for Graffiti, ya'll can check 5-Points right across the street from PS 1 over in Long Island City. Some pieces there look like alien hieroglyphics or ideograms, cutting through some flatland reality like stalks of corn sliced for crop circle arrangement. That's a funny thing to think about. Take Mr. Whitehead's advice for a moment and suspend your super-rational judgmental capabilities, and allow your mind to imagine the producers of crop circles as some form of alien language. How much more of a leap of reasoning would it take to consider that maybe crop circles are alien graffiti? 

Anyway, back on the 3rd rock, in conversation with Cern, one thing he mentioned with enthusiasm when breaking down his love of graffiti to me was how this art form has become a new lingo. Writers from all over the world, separated by the phonetic languages our cultures use to convey everyday pleasantries with one another, are united in another form of communication. Graffiti is a language onto itself, Cern told me. Cats decipher each other's codes and then add to it and blast that shit on a local wall, which gets transmitted through a message board or magazine across the world.

Trying to decipher these pieces through a linear phonetic lens will leave the viewer frustrated. It seems that grokking the whole piece, not in left to right eye scans, but almost like staring at one of those cheesy little optical illusion posters that swept through American culture a little over ten years ago: "Oh my God I see the fish!" In other words, softening your gaze to take in the whole piece might lead to a perceptive flash of insight.

Cern says, "What was once a wall is now potentially a portal to a dream." The Situationists used to play a game called Derive while walking the streets of France. It consisted of traveling through the urban environment without any rational means of going anywhere in particular. Cutting one's ties to nine-to-five commercial consciousness and allowing the concrete streets to take on a dream-like quality. Essentially this game involved getting lost on purpose. The players let their imaginations take hold. Jamming up their automaton minds tuned into the city grids, they would drop out of the collective mind and enter a dream. This was part of their revolution. The Situationist philosophy was pretty integral in the 1968 Rebellion over there in Frogs-leg's land. It looks to me like the SI would have really dug what Graf writers are doing, for they are providing little wormholes right there in the middle of any city for any one to derange their city-tuned senses and blast off into a land free from the Spectacle.

Grant Morrison – that insanely genius comics writer who manifested The Invisibles – was once asked to describe Magick. He said, "Magick is the Bleeding Obvious." And what is more obvious than what is right in front of your face everyday? If Magick entails applying your will upon your environment to change it, then we live in a very Magickal world indeed – where magicians and sorcerers battle everyday for the birthing of the reality they would prefer to live in. Some are Magicians in denial, some are shitty magicians, and some see all this and are working, very hard, to bring their visions to life.

Graffiti is an attack of one form of reality upon another: individualist creativity vs. supposedly collective practicality. Or could it be an attack on those "morals" passed down through the generations from the "conquerors" embedded inside our sacred Law books.

I think graffiti is winning. Along with all the other movements that support creative power and the self-expression of the individual – although this individual is also part of a tribe. We seem to be simultaneously living through a renaissance and an apocalypse. One day we can be in the groove with all of creation, little Buddhas walking around manifesting all our dreams and desires, chillin. The next we get caught up in some horrible Kafka nightmare, our nerves riddled by the incessant creditors calling, demanding their loan money back, with bad manners, reminding us of all the interest we owe on that bill. Plus, our president is the worst our country has ever seen.

Graf seems to be the most amazing, immediate representation of all this. As NYC writer Rate once said, "Graffiti is simultaneously an act of creating and destroying."

In these Kali Yuga days of trite consumeristic crap that passes for culture, some Graf artists are out there reminding us that there is still hope. They are pissing on certain forms of Archon Corporate consciousness, and beautifying the scenery with ill design science, broken-window theory be damned! And through the smelly ass pollution of concrete street corner garbage pick-ups, they add to the smell of liberated imaginations. To quote Osho again, "Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom."