the gop, delevingne, 423, radío flomm and narcissus

A PERSONAL HISTÓRY oF FLOMM so far     PART 10 of 10 

“It’s be­cause of [Car­rie] Fisher’s per­fect­ly-bal­anced per­for­mance that a whole gen­er­a­tion of men grew up nev­er think­ing twice about women be­ing lead­ers. Why wouldn’t they?”
—Ja­son Malm­berg, DER TUNG, 2016
 

A lot of hor­ri­ble things hap­pened in 2016.
 

 

Deaths.

Bowie in Jan­u­ary, pre­ced­ed by Pierre Boulez, then Alan Rick­man, Glenn Frey, Harp­er Lee, Um­ber­to Eco, George Kennedy, George Mar­tin, Kei­th Emer­son, Gar­ry Shan­dling, Zaha Ha­did, Prince, Muham­mad Ali, Gene Wilder, Leonard Co­hen, Robert Vaughn, Leon Rus­sell, John Glenn, George Michael, and Car­rie Fish­er + Deb­bie Reynolds.
 

 
In No­vem­ber, I at­tend­ed my first protest against the new Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, and then braced for a huge tax cut throw­ing mon­ey at THE SU­PER RICH who hate any­one who isn’t RICH like them.
 

 
Like, WAT I’d read about in books on Weimar and the es­tab­lish­ment of Hitler’s gov­ern­ment – was hap­pen­ing here. With a bad for­ward com­bover fake tan, in­se­cure self-cen­tered celebri­ty in the White House – de­ter­mined to en­act a bunch of re­venge just be­cause he can. And even if he can’t, he’s got them lawyers to help get things done. With a VP in place to do even worse if pos­si­ble.
 

“My em­pa­thy … for some­one who is be­ing vic­tim­ized goes im­me­di­ate­ly to the vic­tim. And any em­pa­thy that is left over is still go­ing to go to the vic­tim. And I’m not go­ing to em­pathize with you be­cause you are … too fuck­ing dumb to change the TV chan­nel.”
—Ja­son Malm­berg, RADíO FLoMM, [con­ster­na­tion] episode, 2018
 

the push back against the nü
Tra­di­tion­al­ists were in place. The New Or­der was back and in the first at­tacks, the Re­bel­lion lost a few plan­ets, Han Solo and most of its ships.

And I used to work for Re­pub­li­cans, tho these were NOT Re­pub­li­cans.
 

“Last night a woman asked me if I was re­al­ly sure I ex­pe­ri­enced racism from some­one. I told her to nev­er ask an­oth­er POC that ever again.”
—neo FLOM­MIST, ir­ri­tat­ed
 

And yes, I ac­tu­al­ly be­lieve in both the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic AND Re­pub­li­can Plat­forms cause they make fuck­ing sense.
 

 

And while my views tend to veer Left, I don’t be­lieve there is one All En­com­pass­ing Ab­solute Phi­los­o­phy that we all must abide by. Cause philoso­phies come from hu­mans and hu­mans ain’t per­fect. I change my mind A LOT, es­pe­cial­ly when pre­sent­ed with a nü way to look at things. I think it leads to a mor in­ter­est­ing life – far away from the play­ing it safe lifestyle that many en­joy.

The ‘Checks and Bal­ances’ con­cept is bril­liant. Each side fights, com­pro­mis­es, col­lab­o­rates and ham­mers out wat works best – be­cause we have these two ma­jor views in the Unit­ed States, we should have a bal­ance of both, no? (Bal­ance of mor than both, but whoa, that’s too much for some folk)
 

“When the fuck will you re­al­ize that hu­mans are ass­holes and need reg­u­la­tions to be­have?”
—Louis Warfield, DER TUNG, 2018
 

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, hu­mans are self­ish. And will abuse wa­t­ev­er sys­tem they are in to get the most for them­selves. And our sys­tem needs to evolve. Be­cause hu­mans are also eas­i­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ed.
 

“We should make all Popeyes lo­ca­tions polling places and tell peo­ple that they only get their god­damn chick­en sand­wich af­ter they’ve vot­ed.”
—Emi­ly Duchaine
 

an­oth­er trip to the 80s
The seeds for FOX News were sewn back in the 1980s.

And in ’89, I wan­dered into an Al­ter­na­tive Me­dia Think Tank (whose name I do not re­mem­ber, of course) that was fund­ing stu­dent-pro­duced news­pa­pers at col­leges across the Unit­ed States. I didn’t kno it was a right-think­ing group, my ex­pe­ri­ence was I start­ed out edit­ing a rather lib­er­al col­lege zine – I had trans­ferred to a Uni­ver­si­ty that ALSO had a sim­i­lar al­ter­na­tive tabloid pub­li­ca­tion. And I got in­volved be­fore I knew wat I was do­ing.

With the help of an­oth­er rad­i­cal – kid named Eu­gene – we sort of end­ed up run­ning the tabloid for a few is­sues, and we sim­ply saw the Re­pub­li­can staff as just hav­ing a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent POV than us.

That was un­til we end­ed up at the Con­fer­ence for the Think Tank. Which ex­ist­ed to sup­port and ed­u­cate jour­nal­ism stu­dents across the coun­try into build­ing a counter to the Lib­er­al Me­dia that ‘Were De­stroy­ing Democ­ra­cy and Con­trol­ling Every­thing at the Time.’

They gave speech­es about how their POV must have its me­dia equal and every­one was eat­ing it up. Be­cause ALL Me­dia Was Run by Evil Lib­er­als At The Time. And the only thing on reg­u­lar tele­vi­sion on their side was Mor­ton Downey Jr. – who was fin­ish­ing up his fi­nal year of paint­ing swasti­cas on his face; but the loud­mouth con­ser­v­a­tive show host idea was out there and ready for busi­ness.

A blowhard AM ra­dio guy from Sacra­men­to – Rush Lim­baugh – cap­tured JUST wat this group want­ed to say – and wat con­ser­v­a­tives want­ed to hear. His TV show pre­miered 1992, he went too far by 96, but his ra­dio pro­gram was na­tion­al at that point.

I tried to make friends in the group, but you know, they were kind of stiff. Like, a Stu­dent Re­pub­li­can ho­tel room par­ty was: Kids in busi­ness attire/ whole Gor­don Gekko cos­play thing. A bag of Dori­tos and an ice buck­et emp­tied in the bath­room sink, with a six pack of Coors Light, sit­ting on top.

“Would you like some beer?,” we were asked.
“Oh, by the way, we’re go­ing to have to charge you five bucks if you want to drink.”

 

Like, they didn’t even have red cups.

And – pret­ty sure – our pub­li­ca­tion lost its fund­ing right af­ter they saw some of the con­tent Eu­gene and I were do­ing, which was a mix of rad­i­cal lib­er­al­ism pep­pered amongst their Re­pub­li­can Val­ues.

And to­day, I’m con­vinced this well-fund­ed, pas­sion­ate, speechi­fy­ing or­ga­ni­za­tion may have been be­hind the abil­i­ty for FOX News to ex­ist – cause if any­one was go­ing to be work­ing for FOX in the late 90s/early 00s, it would be the stu­dent jour­nal­ists in this group.

Like, they had the talk­ing points. Free Speech, Bal­anced News. Back in the 1980s. And to­day, this Pro­pa­gan­da is do­ing its job. Very well.
 

“You just don’t un­der­stand. There are pow­er­ful peo­ple in this town and you have to learn to keep them hap­py. If you don’t, noth­ing will ever get done here.”
—A lo­cal, who was not qui­et that I am seen as a ‘Bay Area born’ out­sider
 

sacra­men­to pol­i­tics
A ques­tion I was fi­nal­ly asked was: Why isn’t FLOMM just a lo­cal Sacra­men­to thing?

And I did make a con­scious de­ci­sion to not keep FLOMM lo­cal.

It’s be­cause of The Art Scene and the Pow­er­ful Ones, as I call Them. Sacra­men­to is the Cap­i­tal of Cal­i­for­nia, the Star on the Map. And it IS a gov­ern­ment town in his­to­ry, com­mu­ni­ty and at­ti­tude. This in­cludes the State work­ers, I con­stant­ly hear to be­come one is the Holy Grail of Em­ploy­ment.
 

“When I grow up, I want to be a bu­reau­crat. And stop every­one from do­ing what they want to do.”
—byprod­uct of all this
 

I don’t get it. Since I’ve moved here – OMG – I’ve met SO MANY PEO­PLE hap­py to be road­blocks to oth­ers. And sev­er­al years ago, I had a guest speak­er at a de­sign talk I or­ga­nized – mar­ket­ing ge­nius named Ju­lia – who did a great job ex­plain­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween en­tre­pre­neurs and The State. I para­phrase:

State work­ers HAVE to play pow­er games in or­der to sur­vive. And this ends up screw­ing over oth­ers, but it’s re­al­ly the only way they can en­joy their jobs.

And a cou­ple state work­ers in the crowd agreed. My head ex­plod­ed.
 

 
And Sacra­men­to is AWE­SOME at shut­ting AWE­SOME UN­DER­GROUND ART things down. I saw Fools Foun­da­tion flour­ish af­ter I moved here – and it was killed by city codes.
 

 
But a few years ago, we got nü may­or. And he’s an ad­vo­cate for the arts.

Like, he ac­tu­al­ly has a guy on staff that helps deal with the bu­reau­cra­cy.

And cool stuff start­ed to hap­pen here, like, The Red Mu­se­um re­opened quick­ly af­ter it was dis­cov­ered they weren’t up to code. And nü cre­ative en­er­gies in Sacra­men­to start­ed to bring me back into the lo­cal mind­set.

And the next gen­er­a­tion in this riv­er town – de­spite the Pow­er­ful Ones – was start­ing to come into its own. Even if they have to do it qui­et­ly.
 

“I work for that per­son [who runs an im­por­tant art or­ga­ni­za­tion]. And I keep my mouth shut, just do my job. And af­ter work’s over, I leave it all be­hind and go and do my own stuff.”
—neo FLOM­MIST, mak­ing and do­ing

 

art ho­tel
A sched­uled to be razed vin­tage ten­e­ment ho­tel con­vert­ed to an awe­some art space. It was tem­po­rary, but it was amaz­ing.

And I didn’t see it com­ing, oth­ers did. And it did some­thing: It brought the street lev­el artists to the sur­face. The un­der­ground even­tu­al­ly ends up above ground. And it was lit­er­al­ly in this Ho­tel. Among oth­ers, of course (ART HO­TEL also in­clud­ed artists from out­side the area).

But ART HO­TEL was im­por­tant.

The next year, ART STREET ap­peared in an aban­doned ware­house. And artists no one knew about were every­where. With lo­cal writ­ers, per­form­ers, de­sign­ers, writ­ers, and his­to­ri­ans.

And this was so in­spir­ing, I de­cid­ed it was time to do a FLOMM event. Mul­ti­track, at an odd lo­ca­tion. With some of the artists that were now part of the FLOMM move­ment: Mak­ers, silkscreen­ers, per­form­ers, bands with a LOT of hands on things to do.
 

“We’ve got­ta have a great show, with a mil­lion laughs … and colour … and a lot of lights to make it sparkle! Oh, can’t you just see it … ?”
—Judy Gar­land, Babes in Arms (1939)
 

flomm 423
I sched­uled 423 on 23 April 23 2016, a Sat­ur­day. Gave it a num­ber just like his­tor­i­cal 291 and 391.

It would take place about the same time the San Fran­cis­co TYPO con­fer­ence would be hap­pen­ing, but that end­ed in 2015.

And TYPO was where I at­tempt­ed to re­cruit Cara Delev­ingne into FLOMM. Be­cause I’ll talk to ANY­ONE.
 

 

Also in the above shot – let­ter­ing artist Erin El­lis who now makes awe­some or­gan­ic ab­stract art and in­tro­duced me to James L. Tuck­er – fea­tured on RADíO FLoMM’s [lub] episode – and every­bud­dy has stick­ers and fliers and some but­tons and does cool shit.

(Oh, that’s not Cara, it’s Fiona.)

With­out TYPO hap­pen­ing, I con­cen­trat­ing on get­ting peo­ple to Stock­ton for 423.
 

“423 fol­lows the DADA con­cept of an un­pre­dictable night of en­ter­tain­ment – art, art mak­ing, print­ing, dress-up, mor art mak­ing, mor en­ter­tain­ment – as part of the FLOMM move­ment. and it just sort of hap­pened. like every­thing else that is flomm. in­spired by his­to­ry … in sto­ries of Berlin Cabaret, the sa­lons of the DADAists, (this book ir­rev­er­ent­ly ex­plains how to do DADA) un­ex­pect­ed evenings in ny as part of the great Per­for­ma se­ries, and lo­cal­ly in the in­cred­i­ble ART HO­TEL and ART STREET that changed the Sacra­men­to cre­ative land­scape for­ev­er! So that’s wat 423 is. A hands-on an evening par­ty where par­tic­i­pants can ex­pe­ri­ence and cre­ate art us­ing a few sup­plied ma­te­ri­als. a night of FLOMM.”
—Me, 2016
 

Like, check out Stock­ton, there’s far mor in town than the hor­ri­ble things you hear on the news. And I love vis­it­ing places peo­ple usu­al­ly don’t think to vis­it. Be­cause there’s usu­al­ly real peo­ple to talk to, no tourist prices, and frankly Stock­ton has the best col­lec­tion of J.C. Leyen­deck­er art ANY­WHERE in their mu­se­um.
 

“I want to do a FLOMM event – some­day – in BARTLESVILLE, Ok­la­homa. Be­cause there is COOL there too. Even if it’s just ME sit­ting there by MY­SELF.”
—Me again, 2016
 

We set up 423 in the Art De­part­ment at Uni­ver­si­ty of the Pa­cif­ic be­cause they have a beau­ti­ful post-mod­ern build­ing – and the event be­came a par­ty for the stu­dents and any­one who want­ed to MAKE their own ART.

Away from the pol­i­tics and pro­ce­dures of Sacra­men­to.

We had silkcreen­ing of FLOMM-de­signed Kandin­sky im­ages on thrift cloth­ing – my tat­too artist on board for con­sul­ta­tions, open mic per­for­mances, MOR from Bwargh von Mod­nar and a band called Van­i­ty Nights.
 

 

Rone helped a lot – point­ing out bad record­ings of 1920s jazz will not go over well, so we mixed some awe­some mu­sic. And had plans for al­most every sec­tion of the build­ing.

And it was about time I brought Bill Mead for­mal­ly into FLOMM. He’s been boss, con­fi­dant, fan and in­spi­ra­tion – I first met him when he wrote an awe­some re­view of the show I did back in 2006.
 

 

And he’s been play­ing with cre­at­ing ran­dom art us­ing HTML – which we were able to pre­miere on the first 423 mi­crosite. And project live at the first 423 event – and lat­er at 423 RED – it was pos­si­ble to up­load your own im­ages to work with his code.

Just add foto and text via this in­ter­face link:
 

 

 
The first 423 ac­tu­al­ly did well. We had a güd crowd, with only a few blun­ders – but some­thing did hap­pen: I broke even on the event. Not wat I was used to in all this, even tho it wouldn’t ever hap­pen again.

A cou­ple of friends from High School showed up – one was the De­fend­er cham­pi­on from the ear­ly ’80s that would just put a quar­ter in and play for hours. Fe­lix Marceli­no spent his ca­reer in print­ing tech­nol­o­gy and was one of the founders of the Il­list brand. He helped with take down, and catch­ing up was re­al­ly cool.
 

 

I used to col­lab­o­rate on com­ic strips with Rob­bie Ed­monds. And over 30 years lat­er, we’re col­lab­o­rat­ing again.
 

 

Lau­ren Richard­son from Dolls Kill did make­up – and is still con­spir­a­tor + col­lab­o­ra­tor on FLOMM to­day (turns out Dolls Kill’s brand was de­signed by an­oth­er for­mer stu­dent).

The al­ways bril­liant Aaron Win­ters had a rare poster ex­hi­bi­tion AND made a rare col­lectible print for the event it­self.
 

 
Next year, the 2017 ver­sion was planned and run by stu­dents in the ad­vanced de­sign course at Uni­ver­si­ty of the Pa­cif­ic it­self.
 

 

Ger­ry O. Simp­son’s ART WEAR re­cy­cled den­im line was on our 423 run­way in 2017. Pre­dat­ing the 2019 shows.
 

@awbored

 

And to date, we’ve had five 423 events, each tak­ing on a life of its own in dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions.
 

 
Start­ing in 2018, we colour cod­ed the themes and added [prob­lem­at­ic due to tech­nol­o­gy] live feeds in Eu­rope:

4.23
april 2016   stock­ton   [LINE­UP] [RE­CAP] [FO­TOS]

count­down to 4.23
april 2017   stock­ton   [LINE­UP] [RE­CAP] [FO­TOS]

423 yel­low
april 2018   sacra­men­to   [LINE­UP] [RE­CAP] [FO­TOS]

salty : 423 red
june 2018   paris + sacra­men­to   [LINE­UP] [RE­CAP] [FO­TOS]

423 blue
april 2019   sacra­men­to + antwerp   [LINE­UP] [RE­CAP] [FO­TOS]

 

“Some­thing our au­dio guy said to me the oth­er day talk­ing about the show, ‘It sounds like you are plan­ning things out.’ I laughed be­cause this sea­son has taught me more about that; more of what it takes to make a good show, rather than putting one on.”
–Al­ley Schef­f­ki, cre­ator of FLOMM­CAST
 

flomm­cast: in­de­pen­dent, opin­ion­at­ed
Al­ley said she want­ed to do a Pod­cast. I asked if she want­ed to do a FLOMM pod­cast and threw out the con­cept that I would not be in­volved – be­cause at the time, I was teach­ing at four schools and most of my time was spent in a car, sit­ting in traf­fic, stuck be­hind gi­ant trucks.

If this was go­ing to hap­pen, I can­not be in­volved. So this be­came the first FLOMM project that my hands were not in.
 

 

FLOMM­CAST pre­miered 7 May 2017 and jumped with both feet into the lo­cal un­der­ground art scene, with Al­ley in­ter­view­ing artists who would be­come the lo­cal FLOM­MISTS, as well as talk­ing about their own projects or wa­t­ev­er seemed to fit each episode.

Milk Sur­face stepped in as a guest host first sea­son was pro­mot­ed to co-host in sea­son two, be­cause every­one felt the two worked well off each oth­er. And they did.
 

 
And as sea­son three was start­ing, while we were get­ting our of­fi­cial FLOMM Press Pass­es lam­i­nat­ed (by FLOM­MIST Cas­si­die Wages) so Milk could in­ter­view a bunch of peo­ple at an event, he brought up that Al­ley was think­ing of quit­ting and start­ing her own pod­cast.

And that’s when I men­tioned to Milk – who has pre­vi­ous ra­dio ex­pe­ri­ence –

“Would you be in­ter­est­ed in car­ry­ing on with some­thing af­ter she’s gone?”

“But FLOMM­CAST is her thing.”

Me: “It doesn’t have to be FLOMM­CAST, it can be some­thing else. Like, we can ac­tu­al­ly have a few pod­casts. And you’re güd enough to cre­ate wa­t­ev­er you want to. Hell, you could even even­tu­al­ly teach stu­dents how to do their own pod­casts.”

 

He is. Like, his in­ter­view with Kainan Beck­er was one of my fa­vorite episodes.

And FLOMM was grow­ing. Steadi­ly. We end­ed up with a philoso­pher and an­oth­er. Poet and crit­ic, en­tre­pre­neur, an­oth­er poet and an­oth­er artist, of course amongst oth­ers.

Tho it was only a mat­ter of time un­til some of the artist stuff that doomed Theo van Does­burg would hap­pen here.

And it did, but not on the same scale as he’d ex­pe­ri­enced.
 

“In the ear­ly [1920s], when Van Does­burg had fall­en out with most of his orig­i­nal col­lab­o­ra­tors, he tried to in­volve oth­er artists and de­sign­ers, many of them out­side Hol­land … Some, like the Russ­ian artist and de­sign­er El Lis­sitzky (1890–1941) and the Ro­man­ian sculp­tor Con­stan­tin Bran­cusi (1876–1957), were in­clud­ed more be­cause Van Does­burg ad­mired their work and ideas.”
—Paul Overy, De Sti­jl, 1991
 

rise of the nar­cis­sists
This start­ed hap­pen­ing in 2016. And I wasn’t ready for it.

Artists don’t get along, like bands don’t get along – and then they break up. And peo­ple in re­la­tion­ships don’t get along, they also break up.

And while the orig­i­nal FLOM­MISTS have moved on to oth­er projects, I still keep in touch with most of them. Chelsea and I still col­lab­o­rate to­day while Kay­lah is busy run­ning a duck em­pire over in Min­neso­ta.

I found my­self sur­round­ed by old souls and new souls – and then the Nar­cis­sists show’d up. And there were a few of them.

Self-cen­tered. Self­ish. Strings at­tached every­where.
 

“Well, I saw wat you were do­ing here and you kno a lot of im­por­tant peo­ple so I want to be in­volved. Also, here. (pos­es) Take my pho­to.”
—This one Then pro­ceeds to tell me every­thing I’m do­ing wrong with FLOMM, con­stant­ly

“You know what you need to do here? You just do not un­der­stand how it works.”
—gives ad­vice, has no idea wat I’m do­ing at all
 

“I told every­one about your pod­cast.”

Me: “Did you lis­ten to it?”

“No. Why would I do that?”
 

“I hope you are very suc­cess­ful with your en­deav­or. But you re­al­ly should get a real job like I have.”
—One mis­er­able nar­cis­sist telling me, again, wat to do

“You’ve con­fused my cat. No one is ever nice to her so now you’ve con­fused her. I am so pissed off at you.”
—HOR­RI­BLE cat own­er

“Oh I still have these fliers you gave me. Do you want them back?”

“Do you know what your prob­lem is?”
—Goes into a re­al­ly long di­a­tribe about how I’m just not help­ing THEM enough
 

I at­tract nar­cis­sists like ice is made from wa­ter. They run in my fam­i­ly. So I’m used to them, kind of? And they were show­ing up all over.

At one point, I came up with a so­lu­tion: I’d like to take all the nar­cis­sists and put them in a room to­geth­er and let them fight it out.

Who­ev­er walks out alive, we wor­ship. Be­cause we’d only have ONE TO DEAL WITH. (And I got the idea cause one of the Nar­cis­sists in my life did ac­tu­al­ly go into a small room and bat­tle it out with some­one em­path­ic who was hav­ing is­sues with them. And guess who won?)

Nar­cis­sists should bat­tle nar­cis­sists. I mean, it IS fun to watch when it hap­pens cause they usu­al­ly can­cel each oth­er out.
 

“I did NOT like that per­son. They were too high on them­selves.”

Me: “You mean like you are?”

“I am NOT like them. They’re rude. And you should be hap­py I’m do­ing any­thing at all with your FLOB thing. I’m do­ing you a BIG FA­VOR here.”
 

I kept find­ing FLOM­MISTS who were do­ing me BIG FA­VORS. I mean, if I want a BIG FA­VORS, me per­son­al­ly, can you make my car pay­ment, or pay my in­sur­ance, dri­ve my moth­er to her doctor’s ap­point­ment?
 

“I was your biggest sup­port­er with this crazy project and you’re do­ing all of it just to pro­mote your­self!”
—from some­one who I wasn’t pro­mot­ing enough
 

 

Help­ing FLOMM helps oth­ers, that’s how I see it.

Hard to ex­plain that to a self­ish per­son. And if I asked for a fa­vor in re­turn, I’d get in­sult­ed, laughed at, told how use­less I am. Whole range of tech­niques de­vel­oped over years of col­lect­ing their flock.
 

“You’re one of the weak ones. Be­cause you care.”
—FLOM­MIST said this to me, in a mo­ment of clar­i­ty
 

And peo­ple who USE oth­er peo­ple as­sume they are the ones also be­ing USED. And we hate when we see our­selves in oth­ers.

Do I ask fa­vors when it comes to FLOMM? Yes.
 

“Men­tion FLOMM to my fol­low­ers?? I have com­pa­nies that pay me to do that. Ha ha ha.”

Do I get fed up and cut off con­tact with the self-cen­tered? Def­i­nite­ly.
 

“Nar­cis­sis­tic Per­son­al­i­ty Dis­or­der. And my ad­vice for deal­ing with any­one who has it as bad as this per­son in my life: Hang up the phone. And leave. Nev­er talk to them again, and nev­er look back. You do not ex­ist ex­cept to serve them. And they’ll move on to the next mark.”
—Rone

“De­ci­sions ter­mi­nate pan­ic.”
—Old cook­ie for­tune my wife gave me when we met
 

Hu­mans freak out when you do their own shit to them. To them I wasn’t pro­mot­ing them, wor­ship­ing them, mak­ing them FA­MOUS – like, it’s a giv­en, that’s wat I’m sup­posed to do al­ways – and it be­came they were lend­ing their name and hon­or to me and FLOMM.

But FLOMM isn’t me. It was a game, it’s now an art move­ment. And some of them were even mak­ing FUN of me. As the con­fused old guy in charge who doesn’t kno wat he’s do­ing.

Gaslight­ing, like, a lot.

So I made a crit­i­cal de­ci­sion that pissed off some FLOM­MISTS: I start­ed con­cen­trat­ing on the nice peo­ple. Be­cause they’re out there. They’re hon­est and they’re will­ing to be part of this group with­out the horse­shit.

Do Nar­cis­sists need to put me in my place for hav­ing the nerve to walk away from them? Of course. They are in pain, I mean Nar­cis­sism comes from some­thing trau­mat­ic. And it can lead to the per­son ex­pe­ri­enc­ing it to lash out and make oth­ers mis­er­able as well.

Like, I’ve had enough ther­a­py and bad fam­i­ly garbage to see this dy­nam­ic as a ma­jor part of my life. And I do NOT like it. And start­ing in 2016, it was hap­pen­ing with FLOMM.

And frankly, it was ru­in­ing FLOMM for me.
 

 
I had two in­ci­dents where I was ready to shut it all down. And one of those in­ci­dents led to a FLOM­MIST tear­ing me a nü one for even sug­gest­ing I’d ruin THEIR LIFE this way.
 

Me: “I just want peo­ple to Think.”
Ja­son Malm­berg: “Good luck with that.”
 

speak­ing of men­tal health
The con­stant thread run­ning through FLOMM since day one has been brain health, start­ing with me try­ing to find my­self af­ter my father’s death – and there was my wife’s odd brain di­ag­no­sis, which about 4 oth­er doc­tors and 6 ther­a­pists lat­er, may even be some­thing else en­tire­ly.
 

“Any­one is ca­pa­ble of a com­plete psy­chot­ic break. Any­one.”
—My psych teacher in col­lege, who re­mind­ed me of Han­ni­bal Lecter

He also said, “When bul­lies grow up they be­come cops.”
—And pub­lish­ing that quote in our col­lege zine caused a shit­storm
 

I’ve heard it sev­er­al times that the brain is an or­gan, and it can fail like any oth­er or­gan. This makes a lot of sense as I’m get­ting old­er, far be­yond that in­de­struc­tible age where noth­ing can stop me. My re­call is get­ting slow­er and to­day, I walk with a cane. And most of the artists around me, who’ve joined FLOMM are deal­ing with some ma­jor is­sues – from PTSD to per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­ders – that may be di­ag­nosed or not.

And the peer pres­sure of “You’re a to­tal freak” and peo­ple who’ll throw things at you for be­ing dif­fer­ent is still out there. With Men­tal Health ser­vices dec­i­mat­ed by bud­gets and poor ac­cess to care. Some are fight­ing our sys­tem to keep our most im­por­tant or­gan in check.
 

“There are no nor­mal peo­ple. The nor­mal peo­ple are just peo­ple who are try­ing re­al­ly hard to be some­thing they’re not.”
—Me, af­ter deal­ing with the ‘nor­mals’ all day
 

Just kno that every­one has some­thing. Be­cause we’re not per­fect. And not only has Self Care be­come an im­por­tant phrase, it’s go­ing to be some­thing we have to prac­tice mor and mor as our me­dia-based sound­byte world con­tin­ues to over­whelm us.

Hu­mans are not built (evolved) for the com­plex­i­ties we have to deal with to­day. I be­lieve ‘mul­ti­task­ing’ is a myth cre­at­ed by busi­ness­es to get you to ‘work smart’ – an­oth­er one of their terms. We can do a lot, but we need our down time. And it is okay to not be okay.

De­spite the promise of The Ma­chine Aes­thet­ic – we are not ac­tu­al­ly ma­chines.

In the years since 2016, I found a lot of rather gra­cious FLOM­MISTS who I chat with a lot when­ev­er I can, both in Sacra­men­to and Around the World; con­ver­sa­tions with Aey­lyealle – when he’s in and out of the pysch hos­pi­tal – are al­ways, AL­WAYS in­ter­est­ing. And he doesn’t put his shit on me, and he has a LOT of shit.

To­day, our com­mu­ni­ty is filled with awe­some peo­ple that re­al­ly do make all of this worth all the ef­fort.
 

@touchofteddy
 

guerrilla’ng the addy® awards
Start­ing in 2017, I was work­ing on a font based on wood­type used by the DADAists and I want­ed to use the beta ver­sion on some­thing fun. (It should be avail­able com­mer­cial­ly this fall; maybe.)

A bunch of my stu­dents were look­ing for some­thing to do on the side to beef up their port­fo­lios. So I came up with one. A se­ries of ‘DADA Play­bill’ fliers – ty­pog­ra­phy only – pro­mot­ing FLOMM.

And they thought I’d lost my mind. Like, just type?

Where’s the cre­ativ­i­ty? The col­ors? The pic­tures? Well, I did that. Thou­sands of them, not sure if they ever re­al­ly worked. Did the kids at Coachel­la pos­ing with the fliers ac­tu­al­ly kno wat was on them?

I want­ed fliers that peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly might read. Might ac­tu­al­ly keep. Not some­thing cre­ative, but some­thing DADAist.

I re­al­ized this wasn’t a gig for a de­sign­er. It was a gig for a re­al­ly fun­ny writer. And we have a few of them: Bwargh von Mod­nar stepped in – and we just kept writ­ing and writ­ing, rewrit­ing and writ­ing lines and lines of goofy copy.
 

 
We en­tered the fi­nal prod­uct in the lo­cal Addy Awards – for guer­ril­la cam­paign – and ap­par­ent­ly lost the award by one vote (FLOM­MISTS were vol­un­teer­ing at the event, so I guess I’m not sup­posed to kno that).
 

 

I’m not sure who ac­tu­al­ly won the guer­ril­la ad­ver­tis­ing award in 2018, but we guerrilla’d the Addy’s them­selves. FLOM­MISTS at the event cov­ered every­thing with FLOMM fliers, stick­ers and any pro­pa­gan­da they could.

Like, I didn’t even kno they were do­ing this. Showed up and was, like, WOWWW.
 

 

Like, we are FLOM­MISTS! We were not go­ing to lose qui­et­ly.
 

 

And this was hap­pen­ing mor. At an­oth­er event, FLOMM was tagged on a wall. And an­oth­er.
 

 

“I was on FLOMM­CAST. I showed up at the right time, had a beer and was told to record some­thing. Then I left. That was it.”
—De­von Parks Clouti­er, co-cre­ator RADíO FLoMM
 

radío flomm
2018. De­von (above, left) was back from Philadel­phia.

He had an idea for a pod­cast and he was de­ter­mined to talk me into do­ing a nü FLOMM pod­cast. Which I’d been think­ing about, but wasn’t sure wat I was go­ing to do just yet. I knew I was go­ing to in­vite Milk on board, but that was about it.

So we had a late night din­ner at Sam­my Hagar’s place in Cit­rus Heights (one of the few 24 hour restau­rants in Sacra­men­to with güd food) and hashed out wat we want­ed to do. Over hash, I be­lieve.

My main school was clos­ing at this point and I found my­self with a lot of time on my hands. FLOMM­CAST end­ed rather abrupt­ly back in April when Al­ley quit – with a few episodes that nev­er aired. I was still pay­ing for host­ing, so okay. Let’s do this.
 

“I was kin­da hop­ing FLOMM­CAST would have been, like, NPR but with swear­ing.”
—Bwargh said at one point
 

Okay. Well, let’s start there.

And I want to mix every­thing. And do sound col­lages and 70s style top 40 ra­dio, a bit of Old Time Broad­cast­ing and a WAT THE FLOMM cal­en­dar and De­von had a mil­lion ideas.

He called it ‘RADíO FLoMM,’ which fed my love of ra­dio that goes wayyy back. I spent a bunch of free time work­ing on a PALAK­STIL-like logo with sub­tle Mor­ris Code (repli­cat­ed on air, of course) and went thru about 2 dozen it­er­a­tions un­til we had our work­ing ra­dio bolt.
 

 

My fi­nal stu­dents at school be­came my sound­ing board and test mar­ket for the RADíO FLoMM col­lat­er­al. They cri­tiqued each it­er­a­tion un­til I had some­thing that worked. It’s re­al­ly cool to have the ones you de­stroy in cri­tiques re­turn the fa­vor.

It re­al­ly helped, got me out of my own head. Col­lab­o­ra­tion is AWE­SOME.
 

 

Then Chelsea Davis was avail­able and she did yet an­oth­er it­er­a­tion of the FLOMM theme mu­sic. Then she did an­oth­er it­er­a­tion of that it­er­a­tion. I mean, we might just have enough for an al­bum of FIRE remix­es at this point.

For the pre­miere cold open, Cab­ri­na Robin­son record­ed a spo­ken word per­for­mance of Chelsea’s orig­i­nal FIRE lyrics. And as with every­thing we do, this was not go­ing to be in­tro­duced or ex­plained. (oh shit, I just did)

And like SEPTt EX­PÉRI­MEN­To in 2015, RADíO FLoMM felt right.
 

 
Find­ing our foot­ing, we came up with a way to edit in­ter­views into short­er chunks than most pod­casts, and start­ing ex­plor­ing a whole bunch of oth­er things.

Milk came over from FLOMM­CAST as pro­duc­er, with De­von. And to­day, Milk calls the shots and keeps me in line.

Be­cause abrupt­ly, De­von van­ished. Like, last thing he said to me was

“Lemme get back to you in a sec.”

And this wasn’t the first time De­von did this, so we made fun of it on air. We made fun of every­thing on air.
 

 

Au­drey Daggett (above) was talk­ing to a friend, I heard wat I thot was her ac­cent (tho she said it was a speech de­fect) and I asked her to record some lines. And Jeni Soto just loves to say stuff. Bout things.

At school, Thomas Fritchi was now teach­ing the fi­nal quar­ter of the au­dio course, and he helped with set­up, ad­vice and ad­di­tion­al tal­ent.
 

 

Then we blew up Sacra­men­to in our recre­ation of Or­son Welles’ WAR OF THE WORLDS (1938) on its 80th An­niver­sary to the date – and we did a few oth­er things: See item 4 in this up­dat­ed STATES of the FLOMM post.
 

@finkel_band

 

RADíO FLoMM re­turns 1 Oc­to­ber 2019.

 

“Be­ing risk-ad­verse does not an art move­ment make. It’s that sim­ple. If you can­not take risks you can­not have an art move­ment. Art, by de­f­i­n­i­tion, is an ex­plo­ration of the be­yond. If you can­not ex­plore the be­yond you can­not cre­ate art, and when your ide­ol­o­gy is based on elim­i­nat­ing the be­yond you are un­equipped to en­gage. You can­not ex­pect to elim­i­nate the very core (an ex­plo­ration of the be­yond) of art and have an art move­ment. That is the de­f­i­n­i­tion of in­san­i­ty.”
—Rachel Hay­wire, FLOM­MIST, U.S. Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date
 

And FLOMM is still go­ing, evolv­ing be­cause – as not­ed, Change is Con­stant and We are liv­ing to­day in a world that could be so much bet­ter.
 

@djladygrey

 
And BUSI­NESS PEO­PLE will keep fuck­ing things up – like the school I worked at, ru­ined from the top on down (lis­ten to your em­ploy­ees, maybe they kno their job bet­ter than you?) – or there’s the whole Tum­blr de­ba­cle.
 

 

Like, I won­der if the dude who made the de­ci­sion that ru­ined tum­blr – where we were EF­FEC­TIVE­LY and dis­creet­ly spread­ing ed­u­ca­tion – put all that on his re­sume and man­aged to snag an­oth­er job where he’ll make an­oth­er bad de­ci­sion like that.

Or was his para­chute just large enough that he nev­er has to work again?
 

Source

Even­tu­al­ly THE SU­PER RICH will DIE OUT.

And you kno, peo­ple THAT OB­SESSED with MON­EY nev­er have a de­cent end, do they?

But we’ll still have to fight their fol­low­ers, who feel cheat­ed by Gay Mar­riage and Health In­sur­ance. Be­cause that’s wat the adorable, plas­tic blonde gal – who doesn’t re­al­ly un­der­stand fash­ion – told them to think.
 

 
And the world will con­tin­ue – with hor­ri­ble weath­er, shit­ty tem­per­a­tures, poi­soned food and, oh, we’ll lose our abil­i­ty to breathe, and pro­l­ly ex­pect Matthew Mc­Conaugh­ey to save us from hav­ing to eat noth­ing but GMO corn in a uni­verse in­spired by the work of Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy – but The ThWINGh and his ilk will even­tu­al­ly fade away as fu­ture gen­er­a­tions – made from evolved cock­roach­es and tardi­grades (who fight each oth­er about to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent is­sues) – look back and say,

WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINK­ING??
 

@missamberw

@laurenartistry

@m.v.t.t.y

@grrropius

@ruby_roth

Au­tumn Sky Hall

@_alex_trujillo_

@fionavpitt

@aldo1799

@sophietraverse

@eeffrrtt

@petergomezart

@malevichsquared

@tati_art_love

 

This con­cludes my look back on the last 10 years – reg­u­lar posts will re­sume next week. Thanks to Jeanne, Bill, Aman­da, Bri­au­na, Milk, Ran­di + Aey­lyeaelle for their ed­its, help and sup­port. Ad­di­tion­al fo­tos swiped from Danielle Steers, Clair Carr, ZFG and FLOM­MISTS at large, of course. Plus, if there’s any­one I may have over­looked in my delir­i­um – pls send me a note, or just bitch at me in the com­ments be­low. A few of the posts in this se­ries have been up­dat­ed as I run across ad­di­tion­al fo­tos and scraps.
 

· · ·  back to  PART 9

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM!

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