DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE COLLECTIVE VOICES OF REASON AND UNREASON
Being a Philosophical Exchange After the Manner of Plato, Plotinus, Pluto & Bluto
by Rev. Al
REASON:
Why do you do these stupid things? -- I mean it's risky, and you look
like fools. What's the motivation?
UNREASON:
Hello, we are the Cacophony Society.
REASON:
For money? Maybe you're working off an art grant?
UNREASON:
Our actions are unsanctioned by civic funding. The love of money is the
root of all evil. No Cacophonist gets paid for doing events. They in fact
tend to lose money making flyers, buying food, drinks, costumes, using gas,
burning gas, buying props, burning props, bribing guards, paying tickets,
and so on.
REASON:
Why "Cacophony"? Why the name? What does noise have to do with all this?
UNREASON:
It has more to do with discordance than noise, but frankly we like noise.
We like to dance around. We're trying to make rock-and-roll without the
music -- just the spirit -- bunch of damn fool kids, senselessly rebelling
for senselessness sake. Cacophony is the rumble beneath the rhythm, the
feedback on society's cheesey sound system. In fact it's all about
feedback -- as soon as society spits something out, we do feed it back.
We embrace the crackpot, the fool, the aesthetic pariaha. We're about the
the turbulent combination of all sorts of misfit elements, the affable
anarchy of the slam pit.
REASON:
Ah, then this is all about anarchy!
UNREASON:
Psychic anarchy or half-ass magic. We feel it is our job to perform public
miracles and inexplicable acts. Often miracles interrupt normal commerce,
and we apologize for this, but I, for one, would rather have my wallet
stolen by a clown than be overcharged by a waitress.
Early 20th-century psychology taught that a shock to the system could
could be therapeutic. They tortured and annoyed mental patients for
decades, eventually settling on electroshock in the 1940's. Well, we
are attempting the same thing on a larger scale with our pranks.
The goal is to rattle things around, to tumble the dice in the skulls of
onlookers. Our goal is not destructive, but to create the sort of
uncertainty that gives rise to possibility.
Most people are fairly cynical by the age of 12 or 14, so when they meet
with surprise it is usually because they cannot fit it into their cynical
paradigm. Hope becomes the same thing as confusion. A UFO is a miracle,
a hole up there letting a little light shine in. Bigfoot is a free man, a
noble-savage funseeker. Poltergeists smash the dishes we wash.
Aberrations are what keep people from becoming totally disengaged. If you
stare at an an unchanging image without moving your eye, your eye
eventually stops relaying messages to the brain; your vision blanks out --
try this at work sometime. With our hoaxes and guerilla theater, we're
trying to keep people engaged in a duel with reality, trying to give them
something to think about on that long busride toward retirement.
REASON:
But you do these things for fun too, don't you?
UNREASON:
I'll confess that there is a certain verifiable quantity of fun to be had
along the way. There's a nice sense of camraderie when you're out walking
down Rodeo Drive covered in mud -- it's pretty clear you belong together.
It's a rush you get from standing out and apart, that kind of feel the
hassidic community buzzes with, only we're the chosen people of some
weirder God. It's a blessing and a responsibility.
REASON:
Sounds pretty of grave.
UNREASON:
Yes, it's a kind of wacky martyrdom. We take upon ourselves the sins and
injustices of our society. We ask to get our butt kicked by saying
"yes" to all the wrong things. In our events we celebrate bad films,
cheesey lounge music, crank cults, redneck gun shows, morticians, naive
artists, transvestites -- anything that could accelerate the decay of
traditional aesthetics. We are the vital spirit of cultural fermentation,
the maggot in the jumping bean. We've befriended the barbarians on the
other side of the fence, and we've given them the bolt cutters.
REASON:
Thank you for reshaping my worldview.
UNREASON:
Any time.