When I was around 13, I almost went to a Weezer concert, and I still wish I had. I had just discovered the joyfully catchy Blue Album. Although it was released when I was a little kid, I didn’t really dig into the album in its entirety or its nuances until I was in middle school. Back then, I often confused Weezer with Ween, two bands I dig very much for entirely different reasons. But Weezer holds a special place in my heart for its unique blend of nonconformity, anti-pretension, and pleasant melodies.

Pop culture and industry have a long and detailed history of pushing easily dated and tired ideas about style, behavior, and rebellion, often imposed on younger audiences in an implicit, insidious fashion, which isn’t terribly surprising. We see this play out daily and have for decades, if not centuries. However, the mainstreaming of the counterculture often dilutes its authenticity, leaving us later to question its credibility, who’s actually rebelling, and what that rebellion means. It also frequently transmutes the revolutionaries into the gatekeepers. It’s awful, and it can get quite murky and messy.

Then there’s Weezer, a band that cleverly combines a Beach Boys-like aesthetic with garage punk and a touch of early, but heavier, Beatles with a straight-edge lifestyle. At a time when others around them indulged in debauchery and self-appreciative and overly sophisticated musical explorations, some might have seen the conventionally canonized music of that era as anti-conformist, but a closer look reveals it could easily be argued the other way: a form of conforming to a particular brand of revolutionary instinct. In contrast, Weezer’s childlike innocence felt fresh and invigorating against the backdrop of the excesses of the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. Their playful melodies, modern reimagining and reinterpretations of rock’s origins, and easy-to-listen-to riffs offered a cathartic release for those craving a new variant of punk that harkened back to classic conceptions of rock and roll, which, in turn, became both an ironic and unironic act of defiance, of giving the middle finger to the status quo.

Weezer’s mix of sock-hop purity and lovable nerdy anguish became a refreshing “fuck you” to poorly dated institutional norms, allowing them to be both earnest and badass simultaneously. Of course, not all of Weezer’s albums are masterpieces. Some of their middle-career work feels kinda lackluster, yet I find authenticity in their whole discography. Even their sucky albums still carry a charm and honesty that make them endearing. In a way, that makes them far more punk rock and badass than those who were swallowed whole by the rock-and-roll industrial complex system, as well as its ugly cousin, “situational narcissism”.

For me, Weezer is the polyunsaturated fat of contemporary rock, essential to balance out the less wholesome trans fatty acids of popular music’s past and present. This is not a judgment on the glitzy side of rock and roll; I appreciate sex, drugs, and rock and roll, too. But music, like art and academia, requires periodic recalibration and moments of dissent against the tide of popularity and uniformity, even if it means reinterpreting what rock’s sacrament initially aimed to challenge. Life would be so damn dull without those who defect from the norm; so often, it’s the dissidents and pariahs who remind us of what actually matters.

Weezer embodies the essence of unapologetic, hopeless-romantic, lovable, private-college, poetic dorks living their best life, utterly self-contained in their silliness and yearning for true love, appealing to any human with a heart and a set of ears. In a bit of an unlikely twist, I suppose they’re in a tiny way akin to Frank Zappa’s oddball-ness, if Zappa were less idiosyncratic and complex, and more focused on personal experiences and heartache than on having his finger on the pulse of international politics and domestic policy. In closing, in a world filled with uninspired imitations of the 1970s NYC art and music scene, go pull a Weezer. History will thank you for it.

~ alexej

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I’ve felt compelled to write this article for a VERY long time, and finally, I have found both a time and a way to commit this article to the art crit journal. Today's subject will excite schoolchildren all over the world (just kidding, but I sincerely hope perhaps someday)...and the takeaway is this:

Everything seems to be a "hot-take" in contemporaneity. So here's a take on the music scene from the 90s (specifically, rock and grunge) and the more obvious extrapolation to my overture in the byline regarding my vote for the GOAT band, or at least GOAT in recent memory;  

While everyone (and I do mean like, EVERYONE) will argue the merits and case for Nirvana and Cobain as being the last statesmen and gems of rock and roll coinciding with the death of history (with all their points respected and duly noted), I indeed concede that Nirvana was a tremendously talented, eminently listenable group (a personal favorite of mine, for sure). Further, I willfully and wholeheartedly acknowledge that Rage Against the Machine was one of the most uniquely righteous and innovative, ahead-of-its-time quartets that represented all that was right with the counter-culture in the 90s to our present period. I also concede that Trent Reznor, Nas, DMX, Jay-Z, Eminem, and others place in some 90s-2000s' GOAT canon, among others. But what doesn't work for me is the thesis that Nirvana represented the best of the Seattle scene or the last great hurrah in rock and roll history. It's not about diminishing the work and legacy of Cobain and Nirvana but about recognizing the sheer depth of impact in the authenticity, artistry, and musicality of the immensely important Alice in Chains.

Therefore, as you may have inferred, my vote for the greatest band of the ‘90s then, is the forcefully powerful and majestic Alice in Chains. Not only are they an essential listen for any serious rock or grunge fan, journalist, music critic, musician, young kid, the uninitiated, or those diving headfirst into the music of other generations with the commendable objective of discovering new material, but they speak, to my taste, to a greater emotional depth (also breadth, but undoubtedly Alice in Chains carries a more profound depth that many of their contemporaries and subsequent bands did in varying degrees or may have lacked) and perhaps more so even than Cobain, and likely certainly more so than Vedder, Weiland, Hoon, and others did during their respective time at the top often asserting their musicality through little more than heavier variations of REM, or fuzz and wah-wah box soaked sloppy stoner pop rock, which I do genuinely love without question, but Alice also exerted and exhibited all of the above with the added merit of a courage of desperation and through a strainer of heavy metal-grunge fusion with primal intimacy, subtlety, and multi-genre nuance and conceptual value. I assert this can be demonstrated merely by reading the lyrics (apart from listening to the actual vocals paired with the accompanying music) to "Bleed the Freak," "I Stay Away," "Them Bones," "Again," "Down in a Hole," "Junkhead," "Rooster," "Would?", "Man in the Box," and the downright melodic trauma that is "Nutshell." After reading those lyrics:

• Watch their live performances on YouTube (watch them play and perform, with particular attention to Staley).

• Listen to their LPs and EPs and songs all the way through and then listen again and again and again (make sure you give a good listen to Alice's brooding (and underrated) "Unplugged" album - easily one of MTV's better Unplugged offerings from the era)  

So, as you may have guessed, I've always disapproved of certain culturally popular notions that X, Y, or Z are "dead" or "not what they used to be." While this may sometimes legitimately be the case, I refuse to admit defeat. I can be stubborn, and you needn't agree with me; it's not mathematics, chemistry, or biology we're discussing, and frankly, so much of criticism is theory and opinion. But I like to think of culture, music, media, art, and so on as ephemeral constituents or aspects, displaced, misplaced, lost, and then perhaps found again, or emerging, recreating, or residing in multiple places at once, existing concurrently or otherwise existing in unlikely places, or even living forever beyond all other things, which doesn't necessarily mean various media or art forms are seeing "progress," but nor does it mean they've wilted entirely. Still, it's also true that they don't necessarily have to be innovative for innovation's sake (I've written extensively, albeit unsystematically, on the topic of "useless innovation" or "innovation for innovation's sake," as have many others, so no further points or arguments are required); a more apt and succinctly worded question is why must art and music continually be innovative? Why can't a song be a song? Besides, within the art and music world, there will always be some element of subjectivity; as it always shall be, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so too, music's transcendental nature and qualitative aspects exist in audiological residency within the heart and soul of their listeners.

I feel that Alice in Chains has always been more than a 90s-era nostalgia music group for many. They must be appreciated and discussed outside niche circles, particularly within (and outside) pop culture and music. And for both millennials and Gen Z (I can't speak for Gen X), Alice ably personified and perhaps indirectly anticipated the coming century as much as they personified and gave voice to the innate and inherent duality of being human and finding meaning and beauty in the other side of the struggle in an age where recent generations found themselves eye-to-eye with bizarre and hard-to-comprehend problems and issues, forced to cope with a new age of collective trauma, chaos, and sadness and one that has been complex and complicated for all of us. Still, I submit that Alice in Chains precipitated that struggle and made it all the more bearable - and their relevance and social and cultural necessity have only increased as time has passed because they embodied not just power, strength, and resilience in their music and repertoire, but because they lived and breathed it and acted upon it in their words and legacy; not just great music in an era that saw great music slowly get muddled as the new century approached, but as everyone collectively watched American culture decline in the ever-mounting face of technological innovation, honesty, time, and art became the most valuable of all possible currencies. Therefore, Alice still enables us to see the redeemable within the frenzy and within the lunacy, enabling us to feel the power of our strongest selves while putting out records that are characterized by essential antidotes to the showmanship, excesses, shallowness, and egocentric ennui of the preceding two decades. And we were and are better and stronger for having them.

Every single one of their songs is a veritable classic, and every single time you press play or repeat, it plays like you're hearing it for the first time. Sometimes, I feel like Layne and Cantrell are why I'm still here and still kicking. It feels like they lived through my pain with me and our collective pain with us and gave it meaning and substance. In their dueling episodes of mania and despondency, there is a certain solace to be discovered both in their discography and live performances. Indeed, Alice was always more than a simple grunge and pop act of the 80s and 90s. Were they not the true embodiment of what we all experience and feel, just as humans prior, then, ergo, always?

And so, with Layne Staley, Jerry Cantrell, Mike Inez, Mike Starr, and Sean Kinney, the metal rowdy rumble rounded out the most incredible musical group of the 90s (beyond the 90s, maybe the nod goes to RATM, but that's a separate discussion and one for another time and place). I am hedging my bets centuries (yes, I said it, actual centuries) could pass, and still, there won't be another rock musician or vocalist like Layne Staley, someone who could snarl their lips, cock their elbows, and belt and howl, just absolutely fucking howl like Layne did. It was that biker-like scream and whammy yell that could nearly melt industrial paint, and it all came from skinny little Layne. It contained a profound rasp, an admixture of raw power and unmitigated pain; to wit, I believed every goddamn word Layne Staley ever sang, full stop. And more often than not, honesty, pain, and imperfection lie at the heart of art and beauty. His deep, wailing, endless voice, often echoing into an emotive vibrato, was a rarity in popular music (and certainly in rock music) until Alice in Chains came along. And it was with that sui generis quality that degree of skill and intuitive musical might and prowess melded and forged in the frothy riffed firebrand and soulful collaborations between Layne and Cantrell, distinct but complementary, beset with a solid core and backed by the two Mike's (particularly Inez) super creative, and prominently badass basslines that it all came together.

Meanwhile, Sean's full-throttle extra-testosterone-energy-drink-like-infused Bonzo gone Gonzo drum grunge-meets-metal-meets-all-its-own worked in tandem with their respective purveyors of real-deal heavy metal to gloriously heighten the drama of every musical moment and every concert, every song, and every musical phrase the group ever radiated out into the universe or committed to record. Any bit that ever played on the radio or lived in your headphones, that stuff wore and shone outward, screaming into the mathematical infinities of the cosmos trillions of lightyears beyond the Milky Way, forever glowing with the immortal light of its own brilliance.

And it was Layne's distinctive, versatile, and ass-kicking voice; it was his precocity and his power, despite (or because of) his pain, perhaps the central energy converging like sixteen subcritical masses percolating to the top of everything and everyone he and his voice and lyrics touched, with a totally deathless sincerity, -- Layne and Alice thus were totally separated from their contemporaries in a multiplex manner; Layne was a natural-born talent who could destroy and heal simultaneously, perfectly paired with Cantrell's multi-talented, visionary virtuosity the requisite conglomeration of converging stylistics thus manifested and continues to echo down the decades; the group was an unstoppable force of nature, and in myriad ways, decades on they still live on at 110% amps jacked all the way up, and are just as breathtaking, and just as powerful as ever, despite there being a generation or two since their dissolution and since they released a record. And even though the overly-gifted Layne passed over twenty years ago, that voice ain't gonna die. Yeah, no, no, no, you know that voice ain't gonna die.

Thank you, fellas <3

~ alexej

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As a critic (and human), I've always been fascinated with the seemingly sacramental vocation of the painter, not just in art and in history but also in the course and confluence of day-to-day life, both social and sociopolitical influence, prestige (or sometimes lack thereof), and so on. Humans and all biological organisms, and almost everything in existence, are on a perennial quest for connection in some form or another. Therefore, something akin to the painter must be valid and germane in what is made in humanity's begottenness, be it with Pollock, Rothko, Picasso, or whoever is immaterial and in specificity becomes a science of technical distinctions. The painter is distinct from the artist but not in the retinal versus cerebral sense. In specific ways, the painter must succeed in merging both aspects. For painters, work requires more than skill, craft, and patience; it also requires the cerebral -- conceptualization, parsing, vision, and the ever-challenging, talent-driven, taxing task of execution and execution with precision, content, audience, institutional memory, and aesthetic in mind.

Still, painters are an all of the above subsumption and are still very singular -- primitive, sophisticated, cultured, and humane (and therefore "among us artists" or throughout global artistic initiatives). So, throughout history, the painter was not just an artist; the painter was also a craftsman making fresh toolkits of ancestor artists back in the Philippines, Thailand, France, etc. Painting (and drawing) is foundational and elemental to all art, art history, art theory, human creativity, ingenuity, and spirituality. Still, being a bona fide "painter" is the kind of appellation par excellence akin to the appellation "poet" or "poeta" on par with kings and emperors, after which all the other arts should surely follow as they did in ancient times.

Enter Isaiah Lee, an early twenty-something artist and painter from Missouri now in Chicago, Illinois (for I have strayed a bit but wanted to provide a broader contextual and theoretical framework and backdrop for my analysis here today)

In November 2023, I hung out with artist and gallerist Garry Noland after an open studio event at Holsum Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri. The showing was Friday, November 10th, 5–9 p.m. and Saturday, November 11th, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. -- featuring the work of Isaiah Lee, Travis Pratt, Jenna Bauer, Katharina Bossman, Kylie McConnell, Laura Nugent, and Mark Hennick, among others in various studios. The highlights of this show were Travis Pratt and Isaiah Lee, the latter of whom I became especially intrigued by and whose inspired expressionist modus operandi and well-cultivated aesthetic bears further analytical assessment. They shall be the focus of the ensuing critical literature.

Isaiah Lee is a painter and mixed-media artist. I spent about five hours at Holsum, about two hours taking in the artwork and photographs as necessary, and about three hours sipping drinks and hanging and chatting with Kansas City arts OG Garry Noland. It was a cosmic blast of a grand time. Isaiah is SO young, which is impressive (for lack of a more pointed superlative) given his work's creative, conceptual, and philosophical maturity. Originally from Missouri, Isaiah now lives in Chicago, where he teaches art. He holds an undergraduate degree in art education from the University of Central Missouri, with his eyes set on an M.F.A. or M.A. in studio art or art criticism.

Like many expressionists before him (think: Schnabel and the ever-too-obvious Basquiat), painterly precocity appears to be a prerequisite for successfully joining the expressionist canon with the subsequent cultural coronation of "painter" observed thoughtfully and keenly by audiences, artists, and critics alike, that he's only 23 years old in a city as "city-like" and immense as Chi-Town in the U.S. also says something that isn’t at all insignificant. Chicago is often seen as a step up for many Kansas City artists, writers, and academics looking for a more expansive and enormous artistic playground. It is the logical leap from Missouri into the fun-as-all-get-out far-east Illinois.

Growing up in The Church of Christ, Isaiah holds a sense of spirituality that is both exploratory and astutely developed. He is a religious humanist and a religious thinker, although I can't speak to his religious convictions or ideals beyond what I glean from his practice or artistic meditations. He has a near-encyclopedic knowledge of Biblical history that presents without pretense or pedantry. Indeed, it is thoughtful and intellectually acute. His works are multiplicative, as evidenced in his series "Her Choir," with refractions seemingly derived from Lewis Carroll and the outsider art canon with an "insider" refinement of beauty out of chaos.

"Her Choir" conveys and displays the controlled insanity of Harmony Korine and childlike drawings analogous to what one sees in a schoolroom or even in the dark or ominously playful corridors of the dreadful and childlike (but also phenomenologically tense) psychiatric facilities, evincing careful marksmanship on the paper with a surrealist and trippy acuity, marrying bewilderment with clarity and an overarching purpose and direction. Hence, neither the artist nor his artwork is actually "lost." Lee's vision and artistic aesthetics shine in this identity paradigm, longing for spiritual, ontological, and social truth and reunion with one another and perhaps with the constitutive elements of the larger whole (or the “whole” itself) or even with the Divine. The exhibit's series and pieces showcase colorful characters, almost with a high-art cartoon aspect, with myriad eyes and identities merged and deliberately conflated and disjoined.

In a stand-alone painting — Isaiah's self-portrait at the Holsum Gallery, Lee displays an emotionless, albeit commanding, gaze transfixed on the viewer with all the attendant St. Francis of Assisi characteristic elements: ambiance and trappings. Isaiah wears glasses, has shorter hair in the self-portrait, and an earring in the work. Yet, one of the more striking anachronisms is the "Tyson" sweatshirt that adorns the painter in the piece. In such work with antecedents similar to the paintings of St Francis that have survived in the Western world, Isaiah leaps not from one time and place to another, as spirituality and art are indeed without “time,” and the overlap forever transcends the centuries. Instead, it invokes infinite temporal duration or even timelessness (and therefore a kind of postmodern eternal life) in his artistry, whatever existed made in the image of whatever preceded it (pick what you will and be as literal, abstract, or figurative as you like) it is in that timelessness we find the most accurate summation of everlasting life, and as I imagine, it is one of maybe three ways humanity has made peace with their mortality; art is such a way, the others being family and religion.

Meanwhile, the colors are complementary and inviting, evoking serenity within the religious and the spiritual, tempering it with the power of self-control, self-awareness, and a nuanced, fascinating gaze borne forward into the postmodern economy and sociohistorical detailings. Realistic and symbolic in its depiction and form, it is thoughtful, expressive, and marked with varying shades of blue, yellow, and the red and white "Tyson" logo, paying homage to the certainty and authority of tradition, the Holiness of work, and the strangely beautiful components and characterological composition that comprises the intersection of the faithful with modernity in an obligatory and obligingly modernized cultural spectacle of the search for meaning in a God-forsaking post-Enlightenment world. Indeed, a reflection of a nuanced and careful thinker, a prodigious bohemian, a Pascal of the paintbrush, an ascetic, the monk on Mount Missouri in contemporaneity at home in disjunction, the past, and (more pointedly) the everpresent now finding room for more wholly systematic explorations and sorties in larger and grander locales regionally and nationally.

Underscoring the importance and significance of our common community and shared humanity, Isaiah uses exquisitely bold colors, characteristically bland color harmonies (although vibrancy often shines through), and many disparate mediums, with a slight preference for acrylics and related materials. The painterly mode expressed in "Her Choir" (to reevaluate) is indeed multi-pronged and multi-factorial with a lasagna of layers to unpack and imbibe; however, as a side note (and perhaps as a side benefit as well), we are better after imbibing not just the viscerally compelling within a work of art but of course also after entirely consuming and assimilating the thoughtfully engaging also contained therein. It is perhaps only with an emphasis on both of these aspects that a latent imperfect "perfection" (for lack of more precise verbiage) is found in the cosmic imbalance that characterizes the finitude of human potential within the otherwise infinite parameters of human possibility, only to utilize the philosophical would be to miss the mark; in fact, it would likely be akin to trying to play eighteen holes with a putter. Philosophy must be married to action.

In actuality, it lies with the psychic nature of artists to fill in the margins of the undefined. However, there is, of course, the joie de vivre, the colors, boldness without audacity, collage and graffiti elements, intellectualism, and the benevolent and the ambitious (and still yet remarkably humble) Isaiah indeed not as derivative but instead presents frankly as a veritable artistic wunderkind both novel and mature, present, and ahead of the curve for his age and craft as well as ahead of the current societal climate. Isaiah may not have gallery representation currently, but Isaiah, I assure you, it's coming very soon. Isaiah doesn't disappoint like most prodigies before him. I hope that no matter what happens, Isaiah remains faithful to the authenticity, thoughtfulness, and boldness that define his practice and personage as they do now.

That is its own trinity. And it’s worthy of celebration.

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More information:

http://www.isaiahleestudios.com/

INSTA: @isaiahleeart

~ alexej

VIDEO INTERVIEW LINK:

HeartlandArts KC Interview with Alexej Savreux

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night!!

Peace and Love,

~ alexej

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Ah, so how would I, the critic, evaluate my body of work, and what would I say? I'm unsure I could necessarily conclude anything, but here are a few thoughts that came to me the night I decided to commit them to the art crit journal. That is the question before us, and I shall endeavor to answer it for my readership and all whose eyes may cross this blog at any subsequent juncture. For those unfamiliar with my work, it may seem uneasy to categorize or even place within the broader context of all these fanciful, self-important canons.

You may scroll through my social media channels and see everything from visual effects art, animation, monologue comedy, performance art, poetry readings, idiosyncratic commentary or reflection done in the oral tradition, bits of wisdom, absurdist humor, lectures, debates, conferences, presentations, etc. Recently, I poured over my portfolio on YouTube (where I am currently curating everything from lectures to debates, presentations, visual effects art, poetry readings, cinematography work, shorts, video art, animation, and other electronic and academic media). I realized that there was a recurring theme undergirding it all and some commonalities that bear further investigation, analysis, and dissection to conclude here about "what" it is that I do for a living as it currently stands; it would seem that may be a bit ambiguous to the average consumer of art or alt-academia or media.

My portfolio is undoubtedly a window into my mind, zigzagging across media, genres, forms, etc. My 2D and 3D work swings high, low, and everything in between. I make ample use of digital media and basic studio art in such areas as primitivism to rudimentary painting, folk art, naive art, some aspects of abstraction or the vaguely abstract, video art, animation, doodles, calligraphy, graffiti and collage elements, more sophisticated cartoons, poetry, illustration, photography, photo manipulation, art criticism, music journalism, sound engineering and tech, videography, cinematography, etc. I am a blend of self-taught meets some art school (up to the graduate level). And my work is all, at least to some degree or another, quite outsiderish.

Further, it should be pretty obvious to those with a deeper appreciation of art and more abstract definitions of what constitutes art (as opposed to the conventionally predefined parameters of what "creativity" versus "art" actually distinguishes) that my work is not generalist nor is it introductory by any means. While it is true that my work in critical discourse is much more well-developed and far better cultivated, and I work primarily with language and, to a lesser extent, certain areas of mathematics and philosophy, it is just as critical to see the readily apparent evidence that in fact, I am most decidedly a kind of subversive artistic nihilist, though certainly no less an artist in my own (although, again, characteristic) right. I am not self-obsessed nor see myself or place myself within any alleged or self-important canon. Granted, I likely will not be getting any overly generous grants or fellowships (although it should be stated for posterity that I was admitted into a nationally ranked MFA program in media arts with a 2% annual admissions rate, although I dropped out) or big-time residencies and so on.

As an artist, when I want to be and as a full-time critic, it irks me and perturbs me profoundly that so many people, including most artists I know, still have minimal and relatively narrow definitions of what "art" is and what it all means or could mean. There are a variety of things I could point to that I would blame for this paradigm. This kind of movement toward creative tyranny in part owed to various institutions and the Ivy-Leaguing of visual art and creative writing as well as the overall academizing (which I've referred to in other editorials) of creativity in more general terms, but the point that I am attempting to make is certainly not to lambast my artist colleagues all of whom I love very dearly but instead, try to resolve my original musing presented above. There is, however, a central element to my work that is highly informed and influenced by sardonic humor, madcap energy, and incisive mockery, and with it, cerebral social criticism and commentary embedded with varying degrees of philosophical sophistication. It occurred to me the other day that I am just as idiot as I am savant, just as kind as I am primal, just as erudite as I am reductive, just as insightful as I am playful, just as peaceful as I am something of a troll, and just as intellectual and versatile as I am dense, unnecessarily verbose, and loony. Aha! Is that not the truest and greatest hallmark of the appellation critic, poet, or artist? Is that not at once the paramount vestige of what constitutes the highest form of art, literature, or philosophy? Are these elements not recurrent throughout the totality of any truly inventive body of work? And so what does this make me, if not an artist and a critic? I certainly reappropriate the term "kook," "eccentric," and even "loon," for yes, that is what I am, and I embrace it fully and make no apologies for or about it.

Further, is not my academic and peer-reviewed work little more than a hybrid between the autodidactic, the theoretical and high-concept, scatterbrained, and the overly simplistic "idea" or novel notion? Is my academic work not just a blend of the creative and the philosophical, the conceptual and the interpretive, or merely academized editorials with bits of shining originality here and there? Failing that, they could be labeled or subsumed as little more than ideas shrouded within the lost libraries and threads of institutional repositories, amateur journals, alternative presses, external hard drives, graduate student blogs, self-published work, indie presses, big-time publishers, DIY journals, and zines.

So what does all this make me occupationally, and how does it pertain or circle back around to the original musing? This question has been posed to many, including myself, for years. I have maintained for many years that satirist, humorist, and social critic are synonymous occupations (and are certainly well documented and recorded as such), for that is what I truly am; I believe in my heart of hearts. While it is true my work contends with crossing genres and movements, thereby defying easy categorization, I am fundamentally a critic and a bit of a huckster, a tangential overly intellectualized pothead, a congenital smartass who utilizes everything at his disposal to convey his relentless intellectual and philosophical message to the world (as bizarre as it may be), his ideas, his reflections, his critiques, and so forth. And so I ask my readers: is this not art? Is this not self-expression or the expressive content found in creative mediums, and are the messages conveyed via the chosen artistic mechanism itself, not a halfway decent (if, however, basic) definition of art itself? And if it is not judged to be art, then what is it? Is it philosophy? What is the difference? Or, as some have suggested in recent times, is such a body of work incapable of fitting neatly into a single occupational category, and is it, therefore, fully interchangeable with my personage? And shouldn't that be the objective of any artist? And wouldn't it be infinitely more excellent (and perhaps more apropos) to be the kind of person who lives on their terms, free from excess and spoilage? Free from obligations and wealth, but indeed rich in their own right and on their terms, living in peace and amiability? Did not all great half-mad poets and critics not starve such as I do? Living alone in squalor, furiously pounding and gnashing their keyboards and typewriters and writing all over their windows in wax pencil, searching for the next big thing. Ideas, ideas, ideas, create, create, creating, and therefore embodying all that is fundamentally glorious about humanity up to and including the very primal and biologically defining characteristics that make us homo sapiens? Be it systemized language, art, or invention, etc.

So, why do anything artistic or linguistic; you may ask the critic (or whatever you choose to call me today or however I identify at the given hour). Because that's a good deal of what makes us human, is there a better or more reasonable answer than that? I can think of none at present, but then again, I'm overdue for my morning caffeine, even though caffeine is probably something a personality like me need not indulge in lest he certifies himself more certifiable than he already is, and that's without the added lasagna of layers that comes with the ganja.

Peace and Love to all,

~ alexej <3

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To stay up to date with my curatorial efforts on social media channels, you can find me on Instagram (czechpoeta) and (alexejsavreux) and YouTube at:

youtube.com/@ohiamalexej

(YouTube remains very much a slow but ever-steady WIP as I’m combing through it all currently)

thanks for reading and subscribing; more always to follow

Love y’all

To think of literature, authorship, and the biological definition of "life" as utterly disassembled from one another would be an egregious mistake. So here we ask a few questions, about which we must confess we have much to theorize and opine. For example, does a particular "perceiving-agent" symbiotically synthesize and inter-exist within the enigmatic relationship between an author, their literature, and whoever reads it? Moreover, what does that mean, specifically for any subsequent retention of or by said literature, language, author, or reader? Furthermore, can we ascribe a comprehensive, interactive, and all-encompassing model to such a distinctive approach on both the author, the literature of the author, and the reader? Of course, we could analyze any author here on wholly neutral grounds. 

An idiosyncrasy and symbiosis, therefore, does exist between language and authorship and the "perceiver" and subsequently everything humans have ever created as a sort of "perceiving-agent" in relationship to such an idiosyncratic (and still universalized) symbiosis and assimilation akin to the idiosyncrasies of one's innate physiology. However, bearing all that in mind, how can we understand and assimilate (and annotate) those similarities, discordances, and overlaps? These queries will likely be less explicit in our later presentations on these subjects. Thus far, we have gleaned several studies and informal papers on branches of philosophy correlated to linguistic logic, which might otherwise prove relevant to the furthering and fostering of such ideas. As we can collect such an assortment or variety of elusive ideas, perhaps exclusively in unpublished texts, we can otherwise analyze language, literature, and the symbiotic experience attached or detached from the conceptualizations of form, mechanics, structure, and other overly scientific formalities with the merely conceptual (as well as the abstract). 

For indeed, there exist fundamental symbioses in literature that predominate: the interactive model and mechanisms of language and their subsequent relationship to literature (and, of course, literature and language spanned well across neuropsychological and other empirical barriers and phenomena); the neurobiological impetus and inspiration such a critical notion one might owe to various linguistic schools of thought in recent decades; as in a kind of Savreuxian literary criticism. Not only do these words here pursue concepts unique to our present period as the "schizophasiaesque-linguistique," but further, they also reveal a far more complex relationship between the author of a text and the impregnably mental presentation in Savreuxian poetics than has otherwise and, therefore, historically been acknowledged. Turning our various attentions to the rapid development of the hierarchical proliferation of generative artificial intelligence across industry and the globe, the question asked of those involved, is it "sentient" in any manner or form, well, no more than, say, a book written by Melville was as interactive a form of Melville's brain systematically transmitted via a variety of linguistic-signals to the subjective "perceiving-agent" of the Melville receiver (or "reader"). Humans have been entwined in a cognizant, reflective symbiosis between what they create and consume since the dawn of their consciousness and creations.

Accordingly, this phenomenon and feature of human language and literature is the exact authorship of their self-concept and respective roles within supra-historical advents and the formation of political, psychological, and ideological legacies. In this sense, most everything created by humans through their stunning, individual (and therefore "universal") systematized linguistic systems is very much alive both in inanimated form and animated form in many combinations or degrees as well as within the cross-reactionary, neuronal networks of the brain and their interrelation of several diverse levels to many differing and disparate layers. And the same applies not just to literature but it also applies to everything humans have written, created, or can, or will write or will create and everything they subsequently interact with, again whether animate or inanimate or in conscious interplay; accordingly, every form of action, interaction, or reaction exists as a "perceiving-agent" or animated "receptor" of all media as therefore being totally and utterly sentient in its own right irrespective of authorship; it becomes exclusively an issue of the symbiosis and the cognizant being relating to or otherwise comprehending (or not comprehending; as any type of reaction is permissible, including but not limited to, a total loathing of the subject matter) this exquisite working linguistic or literary paradigm and accordingly, there is no categorical separation to be made between the caves of southern France and human consciousness, nor is there any technical distinction (to speak of) between what it is we consume as receivers of literature and authorship and the historical framework that preceded our consumption or henceforth, continues to come and form after we consume said literature or language. 

All symbiotic "perceiving-agents" may act as literal or figurative neurons or otherwise significant psycho-neurotransmitters, receptors, and elaborate neural systems to a variety of transposed linguistic signals, or they may be "perceiving-agents" without fully "receiving" such literary or linguistic creations with much overall comprehension. However, there will always be some measure, if not in the literal form, within at least the partially defined parenthetic parameters of symbiotic interaction between literature, creation, and the animate (or even inanimate) brain and, therefore, what it also provides, perhaps a newer literary definition of what it means to be alive or to live indefinitely within varying forms of perceptive reception. Thus, we would argue that the author of a work of literature, in a broader context (or hypothesis), is just as alive inside and outside their mind (just as others) of the receiving agent, especially between perceptive or receptive symbioses that consume such phenomena. As we have been describing and though requiring some exemplification, everything in some form or another that therefore qualifies as a literary work in itself is arguably sentient in that regard as well, suggesting that inanimate objects have the philosophical or psychological, physiological, or, yes, even biological potential to be perfectly conscious within the schema of these equally idiosyncratic definitions. It would be rather apt to suggest that nothing within the literati's routine literary diet is without an agent or aspect of symbiotic timelessness and, therefore, also self-animation, hence being alive inside the confines of this totality thus far as can be now known or at least analyzed or conjectured. 

~ alexej

Deviled Ham on Rye by Kaczynski Composite Sketch

No Se Discos

Original Release Date: May 21st, 2023, Chicago

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The music industry as it once was is dead. Stevie Van Zandt alluded to this factual truth on a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher when discussing his estimable career inside and outside the music biz. 

So, if the music industry as it once was is dead, that doesn't mean that the scene has wilted as much as it has evolved via an amorphous socio-artistic engine. I do not believe in history that "end" is necessarily final — provided it is not accepted as conclusive. In history, one must start over and over again. This is the way great things are brought about. What we've seen in recent years isn't something that should make skeptics out of music junkies and artists but provide a sublime justification for greater optimism. 

So, what is the impetus for such optimism? We must turn to the DIY'er, the leftovers from the hardcore punk ethos, the estranged, the avant-garde, the experimentalists, and those among us who are no strangers to dissent. I recently had time to listen to one of the dopest (and most lyrically and musically sophisticated) DIY underground hip-hop EPs I've heard in recent years (made even more remarkable given that it was recorded and produced with a pirated DAW on a broken laptop). And all that is saying A LOT, given how much music and media I consume. Most EPs and demos floating around on the internet are hard to listen to or get into. Good music remains, but there needs to be some curation within the music world. The EP I reference is Deviled Ham On Rye by the Chicago rapper MC Sorcerer of Kaczynski Composite Sketch, currently signed to the No Se Discos label. Deviled Ham on Rye is a rich, raw, and poignant homage pondering origins, alienation, historical evolution and evaluation, Bukowskiesque allusions, and the counter-culture Bukowski so ably personified among about a billion other things (presented in both English and Spanish). It is also a pulsating tribute to social theory and the Slavic literary and cultural canon Sorcerer so clearly admires.

A fundamental constituent of the EP and a precipitating factor in any sensible analysis of the work is the specificity of its language, detail, and varied interests, all syncretically blended into the EP. It cries for certitude; it chest pounds with passion; it mixes, overdubs, and masters dozens of musical genres; and it wordsmiths freedom, redemption, and contemplation. Sorcerer's lyrics demand the utmost attention from his listeners. Sorcerer raps about serious matters, but there are also plenty of flourishes of politically incorrect gutter references reminiscent of Zizek's prime pathos evenly paired with scenes reminiscent of Mailer, Rimbaud, Gogol, and Kafka, living together in a multiplicity of worlds. It's a dissident-DIY-vigilante recording of the midwestern underground hip-hop scene, mixing linguistics with literature, religion with humanism, pathos with irony, reflections with metaphors into one complex, multi-layered tapestry that is as psycho-philosophically inspired as it is gritty, courageous and bold, tender, solemn, and humorous. These disparate elements converge, making Deviled Ham pensive, expressive, and primal.

Stylistically, the hooks are diverse but eminently listenable. The mixes are sometimes anarchic, but they work within the broader schematic of the psychedelic genre-bending textural soundscapes in which they live. The cohesion of the album's production style remains consistent and solidly intact, only adding to Deviled Ham's realism and authenticity. Indeed, Sorcerer presents as something of a visionary for the Gen Z musician borne backward in time, living thematically and artistically in multiple periods and places, making for a hypnotizing listening experience that brings together Latin heritage, stories, Slavic literature, art and philosophy, shades of modernism, espionage, new wave, industrial, 90s culture, NYC hip-hop, diaristic entries, and varying forms of social critique.

This inspired EP brings with it a deep understanding of political theory, power structures, dissent, identity, and their relationship not just to the objectively detectable maneuvers of the mass populace but also their often under-acknowledged and overlooked impacts on the subjective internal psychological realities of the individual. In fact, it's Sorcerer's sophistication as a lyricist and Kaczynski's expansiveness as a musical enterprise and experience that carries with it a cachet exempt from obedience to authoritarianism and champions an independently minded, complex series of experimentations of the postmodern psychedelic psyche. The album bears calls to mystery, memory, love, and loss. It is self-reliant and self-aware. Kaczynski Composite Sketch births a tough brand of intellectualism, whispering and screaming at the bureaucratic shambles of the ubiquitous contemporary capitalistic nightmare. Simultaneously, the EP navigates the shoals of yesteryear's transgressions, trying to make peace with personage and society, a rarer and more challenging feat in hip-hop and social analysis than one might think.

"Diablitos" was one of my favorite tracks on the album (the others being "The Cantos" and "The Gargoyle Cantos"). "Diablitos" is a forcefully expressive, heartfelt admixture of linguistics, psychology, sick hooks, and one of the bright spots on the EP's overall production. These tracks stand almost mythologically without equal on the EP, although the EP as a whole is pretty astounding in its reach and depth. "Diablitos" is replete with frenetic beats underscored by a haunting string section that provides visceral catharsis and a constructive path forward. These tracks serve as pillars to a debut that uniquely squares itself in a multicultural artistic canon, one to which only a few artists eventually find a permanent home. All that said, any increased visibility to Sorcerer's oeuvre would most likely be owed to Sorcerer, forcing the "mainstream" to go Sorcerer, never Sorcerer going "mainstream." And in music and art, that's a righteous fucking thing. The EP is a fucking gem of a debut. My conclusion? Go give it a listen; Sorcerer leaves no listener unchallenged or unchanged. 

~ alexej 

UPCOMING SHOWS, EVENTS, AND RELEASES: 

Kaczynski Composite Sketch - Live @ the California Clipper in Chicago on September 10th, at 7 p.m. CT 

AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE:

Kaczynski Composite Sketch is available on Spotify, Bandcamp, and most all streaming services 

I first met SK8MAFIA’s Marshall Heath when I was in fifth grade. We went to elementary school together in Burlington, Vermont, the land of Burton Snowboards, Ben & Jerry’s, Phish, and Bernie Sanders. We grew up idolizing pros and ams and the lofty but seemingly unattainable goal of one day becoming pro skaters ourselves. Back then, that was the east coast 90s thing, and it was either that or trying your hand at an art school in New York. It was during the heyday of N64, Tech Decks, PlayStation, Airwalks, Vans, and 1080. It was before the CKY and Big Brother crews blew up the scene into a global vlogging multinational brand and, before skating, transformed from a niche way of life into an international MTV cultural phenomenon with rockstar cachet. Marshall was a year ahead of me, but we used to hang out together after school. Back then, while most of us could barely ollie or balance on an 8.5, Marshall could churn out a switch kickflip or kickflip-50/50 with a shove-it fakie, no problem. It was no big thing.

Several of us made a pact to become pro skaters, myself included, and I remember heading down to southern Vermont to hang with Marshall on a Saturday or Sunday once. I was psyched to see his place. To the eyes of an elementary schooler, it looked fucking gorgeous, like a temple for any as-of-yet uninitiated skater. Barely twelve years old, he had installed a skatepark outside his parent’s place, mini-ramps, grind rails, boxes, and the works. He also had a collection of skate vids and various decks, paraphernalia, shoes, and tech deck equipment. It was super dope and, near as I could tell, the stuff from which legends were sometimes made. I remember we watched the Shorty classic “Fulfill the Dream" well into that afternoon and discussed Peter Smolik’s mind-bogglingly good and ahead-of-its-time performance in the video and our desire to join such a crew one day should we both be so fortunate. At one point, Marshall even gave me an old Shorty’s Smolik deck in exchange for a Moby CD.

Eventually, Marshall and I lost touch with one another, as so often happens, and I moved to Maryland, and Colorado, among other places. I stopped skating regularly after middle school, as did many others. Skating has a way of doing that, of weeding out the pussies and quitters. About ten years later, I was living outside Kansas City, Missouri, working in a kitchen at a local movie theater and restaurant, and I decided to look Marshall up. SHIT! What I had missed! Multiple video parts, sponsorships, skate wins, tournaments, the whole shitbang show. Back then, Marshall was an amateur riding for SK8MAFIA, headed by SK8MAFIA don Peter Smolik himself! No shit! And who else was on the team? Brandon Turner, also from the old Shorty’s crew, the stuff we grew up chilling to and emulating.

A friend told me that Marshall had once beefed pretty severely, so he came to rely on his technical finesse as an athlete and skater more than the big Andrew Reynolds and Jamie Thomas-style go-big or go-home stuff. Marshall was making a path for himself by skating on it, echoing the classically informed style of Rodney Mullen and the mind and board-flipping noodlings of Mike Carroll out in sunny San Diego. Over time his list of sponsors grew to include Paradox Grip, Slappy’s Garage, and Globe Brand, among others here and there. And his video parts did him justice as the precocious skater kid I had befriended nearly fifteen years earlier coming into his right. And yeah, while the rest of us flaked out and did other things, some of it super cool and righteous and some for our betterment, Marshall stayed dedicated and focused. He knew his path from the beginning, and hats off to anyone like him. His super slick style and sleek athleticism shined through with the immortal light of a legit skater’s muse. Today I’m still psyched for my old buddy Marshall, I’m happy for the dude, and I have been since I first saw him win a skate game at our old school in northern Burlington and watching him over the years, -- proudly chronicling his ascent. It’s fantastic, righteous even, to say Marshall’s out there - fulfilling the dream. Much love, bro.

~ alexej

In case you missed it here’s a link to my latest bit of arts journalism from KC Studio on musician Seth Andrew Davis:

https://kcstudio.org/artist-to-watch-seth-andrew-davis/

I’m going to get better about publishing links to other publications and curating them here (only pertaining to art crit or arts journalism tho)

More soon, peace,

alexej <3

We all feel the discord of hurt, illness, and therefore, existential loneliness, and the perverse societal perception of loneliness as afflicting only recluses, eccentrics, or the perennially forlorn only compounds and obfuscates our struggles. Nevertheless, we are least hurt, ill, or suffering when we feel and understand that we are not alone and that suffering and loneliness are universally shared existential psycho-philosophical experiences. In ideal scenarios, we can find shared experiences in things like art and philosophy, literature and music, art and poetry and painting -- where other people like us, from inside of them, their complex insides, are also inside us and others. Though challenging to share, art intimates the abstract or forbidden parts of ourselves, the parts and constituents we have not told to each other or necessarily can tell otherwise. Art does not help us reconcile our existential illnesses. However, it does help us reconcile our place in the world and our place in the universe by allowing us to connect over the shared isolation and alienation we all feel and that which we can never surmount. Moreover, there is a bridge between the world and our mind that we will never be able to locate or cross. Art is one of the few places where suffering and illness can be confronted. Inside our one-by-one bag of bones, where no human mind or spirit can fully penetrate, poetry, art, and creativity is where suffering finds countenance, is transfigured, stared down, and treated. And to the extent that is possible, it is where hopelessness and suffering go to die. 

~ alexej

Share illogical conceits art crit journal

Academia has had a profound role in the capitalization of the written word. The MFA route used to be a place of refuge, specialty, growth, and debate/introspection/more debate. Now everyone is getting MFAs, and PhDs in Fiction or Poetry, etc. Some of the course loads (in such programs) are so cookie-cutter. And now the writing world is glutted with writing students, and a lot of programs are cranking out McD’s of a new, commercialized canon. Much of the best writing, meanwhile, comes from the indie writers, the independently unknown. Those journals and tiny publishers you find on New Pages. Yes, the small presses, (husband/wife teams, editors, all doing the publishing work the bigger firms don’t want or even pay attention to, no one getting paid, everyone involved for the love of “words”). Of course, there’s the rub: no one is getting paid, or not much, in this “indie” world of writing. 

But, I do have hope. Because I am finding new journals all the time, showcasing some of the most extraordinary writing I’ve read in a long time. Such journals include: Wigleaf, Whiskey Paper, PANK, Jellyfish Review, Juked, Spartan, SmokeLong Quarterly, Joyland, Tin House, et al. At these journals editors actually eschew MFAers -- tells them, don’t even bother submitting) and so many others I can’t even think of right now. These journals are my refuge, my growth, and my introspection. 

Remember, I’m saying this as a professional writer. But these journals, some of the small presses that no one knows about, except for those “indie” writers paying attention, are where I have found poetic guitarists who could duel with the commercialized Jimi Hendrixes of the verbal world. That is the hope and the joy: that some of these unknown voices would be completely unheard of in the Big House publishing world, but not so in the online world of literary fiction, poetry, hypertext, and art. Voices lost in the wind have found warm, appreciative homes. 

This is what gives me hope. And don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-MFA. It’s a place for many talented writers to explore (in some programs). But it is also setting up a lot of writers to come out the other end of those “cruise ships” of higher ed, expecting to get a teaching gig (two workshops a year, benefits, sabbaticals), and it’s not happening: remember glut. Too many fishes in this particular sea. So writers are finding new places to teach (in journals and community organizations outside of academia). And the volume of new journals appearing even if some don’t last is still a place to find (at the very least) “temporary refuge”.

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