Post-Post-Post Post (After Andy Warhol)

Andy Warhol happened. High and low collapsed into each other. Beauty and truth were replaced by the image as manipulated by commerce to entice the consumer. All this was showcased by Andy Warhol. The lyric was replaced by the jingle. All pop music, even rock, is merely an advertisement for an image. We are not trying to live with integrity to a moral ideal (something greater than the self) but to an image (a substitute self). So, what to do?

I propose nothing. Seriously. NOTHING. I predict that if one lives, reads, thinks, breathes, writes, revises at this moment in time, one will be influenced by this fact, one's work will account for this fact. Don't chase it. Do not try self-consciously through irony, self-reflexiveness, or some other mannered response, to incorporate it. Aim at truth. Aim at beauty. Your efforts will reflect the zeitgeist. Or they won't. You can't force it. You can't avoid it. Any attempt to be new will result in a mere novelty.

Stop chasing your shadow. It will follow you.

The Speed of Light

The speed of light is much too slow

I cannot let my panic go

Starting to snow a deliberate snow

The speed of light is much too slow

Nothing happens quite as fast

Snow follows stars, follows snow falling fast

The stars imply the distant past

I wouldn’t want this day to last

How time curves back to show

The speed of light is much too slow

But I wouldn’t want it any faster

As long as you were here with me

On this the best of days my last

Keith Dunlap