Weeks 34-35: The New Flesh

In which the podcaster recalls talking, derides cyborgs, and examines a chest of survival methods.

Check out Bayo Akomolafe at https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/.

THE NEXT POD WILL BE CAST ON SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15. 

Transcript

MY 12-MONTH VIDEO FAST 

EPISODE 24 – WEEKS 34-35: The New Flesh

This is Richard Loranger and welcome to Episode 24, covering the consequential Weeks 34 and 35 of “My 12-Month Video Fast”. This week as we embark into a new country, new bodies, a new Lunar Year, and most importantly the Third and Final Chapter of this podcast, we return to the original monolog format which wandered off sometime in December. I can’t guarantee that will hold through all ten of the remaining episodes, because things are mutating fast and we’ve got a lot to cover, uncover, discover, and recover, so let’s not worry about it for now. We’re fleet afoot and will do whatever we need to whenever we need. Let’s leave it at that.

Also, as intimated, Happy Year of the Snake! To honor our new lunar year there will be a snake traveling through this episode.

To get right to it, those interviews tho! If you’ve been listening along, perhaps you’ve made it through the special series of eps in January in which I interviewed six artists about how they manage to support themselves and their art in America today. I don’t know what most of you thought (and would love to hear), but I was blown away by the sheer amount of life that came through in those discussions. I went into them thinking, gosh, they’ll probably chat politely for fifteen minutes or so, and LOL, they each went 40 minutes to over an hour with so much history and so many deviations and reveals. I’ve known each of them but one (that being Norm Mattox) for some years, and left the sessions feeling like we’d really just met. Hoping you had a similar experience. I was captured by their impassioned statements on the need to create, which I kinda relate to, and the detail they went into about how they see their own work. Fascinating as well were the variation and similarities in their perspectives. Pretty much every single person said they’d given up or rejected a “normal” life (really a normative one), which I’d somewhat expected (in fact a couple thought it was too mundane an answer and asked if I’d remove it, but I wanted to show that commonality), and beyond that, whew! Some delved into the role art plays in mental health, or social or community health; others into it as an act of anti-authoritarianism and resistance; while several discussed the similarities between the creative urge and compulsive behaviors and addictions. Those and a mountain of other insights just took me away, and I felt compelled to represent them as best I could. Please check ‘em out if you haven’t, and if you’re daunted by the episode lengths, note that each contains two interviews averaging forty-some minutes apiece, with Chapter Markers to help you find them.

And boy oh boy oh gosharoonie were they some worky work! No complaints here, just reportage. Those episodes totally tested my (minimal, greenhorn) skills as an editor. What? you say. They sounded great (or pretty good, or not too terrible, depending on who you are). Yeah they do, I say, after I took out all the superfluous ums, ohs, y’knows, likes, so’s, yeahs, I-means, and stutters… Like I said, I’m a newbie – first time I’ve edited interviews and boy did I learn a learn or two. It’s both amazing and totally unamazing how often we interject sounds, placeholders, and thought pauses into our everyday speech. Just listen to any conversation closely for a minute and you’ll hear ‘em everywhere. And the biggest learn I had was that I’m the worst, especially when asking people about their lives. Check out this untampered with and hilarious example of me, um, ahh, attempting to talk… [PLAY BAD QUESTION]  Holy shit, right? Here’s how it turned out after corrective surgery. [PLAY EDITED BAD QUESTION]  My stutters and googooing were so frequent that I took to saving some in a separate audio file, eventually composing this little ditty which I affectionately call “Stutter”. Here it is and hope you like it. [PLAY STUTTERING SONG]  So that’s my musical number for the week.

I’m not sure if I was editing in the most efficient way (probably not) [CRIT VOICE: Newbie!], but it took me about an hour for every five minutes of raw footage, and about 50-60 hours each of those three weeks shaping that original audio into finished episodes. What?! All that when I very much needed to be looking for paid work, a task I’ve apparently gotten bored of. Not sure if I’m in the big Venn diagram called “Idiots” or the smaller one inside it labeled “Perfectionists”. Overall it felt like an unpaid full-time job with lots of overtime (at twice the pay of $0/hr). I pretty much took it as a pathological avoidance of the employment kind, with which my therapist heartily agreed. (Thank you for that, Name Redacted, I did need the affirmation.) Once I’d squeezed through the other…end of all that, though, I felt rebirthed – accomplished, sure, but more than that brain-revved and renewed, tired for a minute but deeply energized, and also much more ready than I’ve been in ages for a real full-time job (though part-time would be so much better), with more focus, more stamina, better sleep hours, better sleep…. Now I just have to find one.

Bottom line (or top line?), I felt like my brain had more meat on it. I have some new neural flesh which, in turn, has dubbed this first ep in the final chap, this first song of the third Video Fast album “The New Flesh”.

The snake hisses in approval.

It’d be rude of me to assume that everyone listening is familiar with the filmic reference of “The New Flesh”, though many groovy moviers likely do. It’s from the David Cronenberg 1983 body-horror classic Videodrome in which James Woods becomes “infected” watching an off-the-grid cable channel featuring live torture, and mutates into an organic media player himself – complete with a new orifice in his abdomen into which he (or anyone) can insert throbbing, gristly videotape-like things to program him. It’s a deliciously creepy and unsettling ride that the strong of heart may not be able to stop watching (much like the Videodrome channel itself). That’s one perspective anyway.

The cinematic genre of humans merging with machines has many entries: Robocop, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Marvel’s Iron Man, The Six Million Dollar Man, Star Trek’s The Borg, the early Dylan McDermott flick Hardware, the Donald Sutherland must-see schlock-fest Virus…. oh and of course about a million videogames including the Mass Effect series. This theme is what’s known as trans-humanism, a philosophical/speculative/bio-engineering trend of the last several decades (with roots far earlier) which suggests that the next step in human evolution is the imminent combining of tech with our bodies. Mechanically we’ve been enhancing or repairing our bodies for centuries – prosthetic limbs, dentures, and eyeglasses being the most common. You might even consider pharmaceuticals as a chemical tech that we’ve developed to add non-congenital molecules to our organisms for specific outcomes (some more successful than others). And now of course we have electronically-enhanced smart prosthetics, from upscale hearing aids to wheelchairs that can be controlled directly from the brain using EEGs. We’re also at the dawn of smart prosthetic limbs using similar tech along with AI and machine learning. And the idea to use implants and the like to enhance our senses, intelligence, even strength beyond human capability has been bouncing from noodle to noodle for some time, which mostly sounds like super-soldier horror shit to me – so of course someone will do it or is already trying to, because WARPED… I’m not so sure I see new flesh in that scenario as much as I see a new and improved pathological need for control….

The snake recalls watching Blade Runner and shudders in its den.

You might also hear the idea of transhuman being expressed as “post-human”, a rather dour construction, if you ask me, suggesting that in the process we lose our humanity. Now I’m trudging into a philosophical morass without a pair of wading boots (that I don’t even own), since there are two thought perspectives that I’m aware of which call themselves “Posthumanism”. To hazardously overgeneralize (while stepping in it), one use of Post-humanism is closely associated or used interchangeably with Transhumanism, a direction which questions the meaning of the concept of “human” as not limited to organic form, allowing the notion of technology and the world beyond our bodies to be part of our essential “humanness” without having to be physically attached. In some threads it also forgoes the notion of the static individual, noting that we make and remake our “selves” to suit our changing situations, especially on social media, which also seems to me more like a grasping for or statement of control. Nonetheless, many do see our impending man-machine status as a kind of “New Flesh”, and are happy to shout about it.

But there’s a second school of thought known as Post-Humanism, which I find essential to differentiate from the former and which I also find more inclusive and, ah, human. If you consider the puzzlement caused not long ago by the term Post-Modernism, I think you’ll understand why I feel this need. This Post-Humanism is a reaction to the Enlightenment Era school of Humanism, objecting most strongly to its notion of humankind holding a position above, separate, and superior to all other life, effectively removing any moral imperative regarding the natural world – except to conquer it, if you can consider that a moral act (!). For the Humanist, everything existed for the benefit of humans, who could do with it as they saw fit. Humanism also elevates the individual for the first time in history above the social, setting the scene for, say, Capitalism and other solipsistic mayhem.

Having been poo-poo’ed for generations and more by the academy as Bohemian and anti-intellectual, Post-Humanism is finally making headway in being taken seriously in its insistence on and elaboration of the interconnectedness of all life and, well, everything. That always seemed like common sense to me.  And it only took the decimation of entire eco-systems to get us there. Also in its anti-elitist and anti-hubristic stance, Post-Humanism opens and allows a great deal of innovative perspectives and critical methods that didn’t fit well in the playbook of its rigid forebear. Here’s one of my fave Post-Humanist passages, penned by Bayo Akomolafe somewhere around 2020, which illustrates the need for and exemplifies this new kind of thinking. It also taught me the fabulous word “kairotic,” which scholars greater than I will no doubt recognize as meaning “at exactly the correct or best possible time.” Here’s the passage by Akomolafe.

Welcome, Traveller.

‍I am quite confident that even as the oceans boil, and the hurricanes beat violently against our once safe shores, and the air sweats with the heat of impending doom, and our fists protest the denial of climate justice, that there is a path to take that has nothing to do with victory or defeat: a place we do not yet know the coordinates to; a question we do not yet know how to ask. The point of the departed arrow is not merely to pierce the bullseye and carry the trophy: the point of the arrow is to sing the wind and remake the world in the brevity of flight. There are things we must do, sayings we must say, thoughts we must think, that look nothing like the images of success that have so thoroughly possessed our visions of justice. May this new decade be remembered as the decade of the strange path, of the third way, of the broken binary, of the traversal disruption, the kairotic moment, the posthuman movement for emancipation, the gift of disorientation that opened up new places of power, and of slow limbs.

May this decade bring more than just solutions, more than just a future - may it bring words we don't know yet, and temporalities we have not yet inhabited. May we be slower than speed could calculate, and swifter than the pull of the gravity of words can incarcerate. And may we be visited so thoroughly, and met in wild places so overwhelmingly, that we are left undone. Ready for composting. Ready for the impossible. Welcome to the decade of the fugitive.

That seems more prescient every time I read it. Disorientation. The broken binary. The need for emancipation. New language and ways of thinking. And the fugitive? Fugitive from what? I’ve got a few answers of my own, all shifting, but that one’s really for you.

So: Post-Humanism: new flesh there or a return to a long-lost sense? Yes! I say, Both. A dressing in fresh skin, a re-fleshing in a clearer air.

The snake has a dream which makes it sigh.

Another lens – or screen – through which you can view Videodrome is its strident social critique. Visionary and scathing, it foresees the use of media not as mere behavior modification, already common at the time, but as purposeful mind-control, both subliminally and overtly, which draws people in with obscenity and misdirection, then indoctrinates them with a fascistic and violent world view. It follows the creation of an assassin by a shadow organization to eliminate its detractors along with anyone who’s witnessed this along the way, without once getting its hands dirty. And Videodrome the channel goes right on broadcasting its lurid and mesmerizing fare, ready to snare the next hapless dweeb.

Erm, sound familiar?

So here we are in 2025, finally stepping into an IRL Videodrome, the New Flesh of America (Long live the New Flesh!), wondering what the fuck to do next. The billionaires have confirmed that they will act in no one’s interest but they’re own (big surprise there), and the sociopaths and psychopaths (I don’t give a shit what you call them) have begun their rampage(s) on the most marginalized (whom they’re only starting with to scare everyone else), the disempowered and disenfranchised folk at the bottom of the socio-ec yardstick, along with queers and people of color, those struggling with health issues physical and mental (mostly exacerbated by their scrim of a healthcare system), soon to move up the ladder to the struggling lower and middle classes who were taught well to place their trust in the American Red Herring, the followers of rules and laws and believers in a social contract, the feckless Christians who’ve been led astray by the silver-tongued (which somehow I always envision as forked – apologies to snakes everywhere), to the health and weal and biomes of all people and indeed creatures of all anatomies living within these poisoned gossamer borders, whom they consider to be inferior and worthy only of subjugation (if that) – O my sisters and brothers and liminal dearhearts, please let’s do more than hold hands and sing! These are our lives we’re talking about. And the lives of our loved ones. And those of the foreseeable future.

To sidestep the what-do-we-do question a little longer (as if I really have an answer), I think to make any coherent comments it’d help me to organize this jumble by briefly sketching how I’m seeing this…situation, at the moment at least. One gets a sense of two great camps – and yes, I know how coy that sounds, but close your eyes and bear with me a moment. They’ve been gathering for years, as has the friction between, now fomented to acts of harm and malice. How can we identify these camps, these factions, these clumps? Through what lens might we most clearly see them? And don’t give me that tired old conservative-liberal shanty, plllease! We each cradle both in our weather-worn hearts, and anyone who says they’re one or the other alone is lying to themselves (or to me). The truth is, any categories you might use, any absolutes you try to impose would be bullshit for the same reasons, including the one I’m about to describe. But yelling bullshit doesn’t usually get us very far either, so maybe we could acknowledge for a moment the relativity and subjectivity in an awkwardly posed model. And then do that for our reactions as well.

So one of the ways that I often view our human clumpage, our propensities to group, is as people who either: tend to focus their attention and actions toward people and situations around and beyond themselves, and those who tend to focus their energies inward and on their individual selves for the betterment of their lives and situations. Of course we each have both tendencies, as I said, but it often seems to me that people tend to predominantly view the world and behave in one direction or another: individual or social, competitive or cooperative, solipsistic or community-oriented. And it feels as if some folks in those former groups, some of those driven by self-advancement (which could be taken many ways, I think), have been most easily swayed by the false promises of the fascists and narcissists, along with some who’ve been frustrated or embittered by failure to get ahead, only to be swept up by the rhetoric of hatred and violence spouted by the sociopaths or psychopaths (again, your choice of label). So there we have a clump, a mass of ostensible homo sapiens, a new formation of flesh bound by the belief that they will each get theirs by any means necessary: a raving pack mentality, a caterpillar pillar, a stampede of sorts that will likely leave most of them crushed themselves, all driven by the jeering and cynical yelps of their imperious drome-masters. And woe be to they. How’s that for a generalization?

Which leaves those of us who do reach outward, who tend to thrive in community and savor constructive kindness, where exactly, and to what?

Where we are right now feels a lot like diaspora to me, in our homes and bodies – or at least the beginnings of it. First pangs. And I guess how far the purging resonates depends to some extent on how well we stand our ground amidst all. Or stand our ground with others. And you can throw some grief at me if you want, saying what would I know of diaspora, but how constructive would that be? Because that’s the word that comes to mind and I’m gonna stick with it. For that matter I’ve spent decades living on the edge of poverty, a pretty close edge these days, partly due to my refusal to embrace Capitalism, sure, but just as due to our acclaimed healthcare system draining my savings again and again and again especially through my forties, which sure doesn’t leave me feeling any foundation beneath my feet. And though I grew up in a nest of white privilege in 1960s and 70s America (finally disturbed by being sent to high school in Detroit), the white suburban experience of that era never imparted to me a sense of anything like culture – unless you find consumerism and patriotic indoctrination to be binding social phenomena (I suppose it is for some) – let alone a feeling of homeland. Only as an adult did I come to experience those in queer culture, alternative musics and art, and the mixing of many cultures which in my mind really make the home I know. And I’ll be goddamned if I’ll let them void that from my life and heart.

As for next steps and next and next – it’s not mine to tell you what to do and I ain’t gonna. But I can beg you to keep yourself well, or as well as possible. Trying times ahead and all that. I know I’ll be putting me first when I have to, MEANING I have to be well to work well with others. Yep, that old cornrow. And we’re gonna need to be picking corn together, that’s my guess.

Beyond that, I can tell you what I think I’ll do, if it’s any help: I’ll resist. I’ll maintain a state of resistance. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be out holding signs and chanting, though I’ve certainly done plenty of that in the past. I’m just not so sure the traditional forms of protest will have much effect on these tumors. Which doesn’t mean I’d discourage anyone who thinks they will. And maybe marches and acts like human blockades to stop ICE from grabbing school children will prove necessary. And maybe people will get hurt. And maybe there’s no other way. What do I know anyway? But consider what Akomolafe said: “a place we do not yet know the coordinates to; a question we do not yet know how to ask… words we don't know yet, and temporalities we have not yet inhabited.” And consider: this is not our first hate-fest. We can take what we’ve learned and devise new strategies, new language, new spaces. I kind of think that’s key – or one key. One thing I know I can do is continue to produce language of resistance, which I’m at least not terrible at, I think – and that includes language of JOY. I mean it – I think we have to keep joy in our lives if we want to get anywhere. It’s essential. Throw raves in the gulag. So maybe that’s something else I would beg of you – to leave space and time for beauty of whatever sort. Sound easy? Sound hard? Yes! But I think it should be a top priority, because it’ll show them they’re not winning. Or they can’t win. Remember, they want to crush our spirits. Let’s not let them.

Snakes hide when hunting and to escape predators, but will coil and show themselves when they feel the threat is dire. 

I also expect to be more purposefully with people. And I do mean in person, I.R.L. Funny, if you’ve been listening along you might recall that was my first instinct, the week after the smellection when I started going to music shows again for the first time in years. Good job, antenna! Plan to keep that up, when I can afford it anyway. But there are lots of events, and I’m preferring those where you can have some good ol’ re-par-tee, summa that convo, some shooting of the shilly-shally. And I can always make my own, since I’m an events organizer. (For those unfamiliar, it’s also one of my business services, which I’d be happy to avail if you’re in need – ahem. End of ad.) In fact I put together a big music-poetry-potluck-conversation party on Inaug— Inaugur— (hey if “to augur” means “to divine the future,” doesn’t “to inaugur” mean to obfuscate it?) – anyway on Release the Murderous Hordes Day or whatever they were calling it, January 20, we had a party specifically with space for people to talk and build community and connections and just plain process. So I’d like to put forward that type of event – potluck + performance with space for lots of conversation. They might be a little longer than an open mic, and as long as community-building and conversation are stated activities, people will stay. In fact they’ll come for that. And you know what that evening really did? Instead of us all sitting at home with the dry heaves, we fucking nourished each other, for hours, in several ways. A time-honored act, to feed each other, and each time you gather you become a new body, a body politic, a body social, a body united. Consider that. Consider it an option.

So organize, organize, organize. The more levels of organizing we have going, the stronger we’ll be. It’s natural law. Don’t know how to organize? Sure you do. Have regular tea parties or walks to talk things out and go from there. Organizing builds and keeps the fire. I think the most frequent comment I’ve heard about all this on social media is that a fundamental way to fight fascism, which is literally a merging of corporations and the state, is to have strong unions. So there’s another level of organizing. So many levels! Not all parts of a movement need to be connected, and you can be part of one without ever saying the word.

Some snakes are now known to be social, by the way, grouping with specific other snakes again and again: their friends.

Of course being around people isn’t always easy, even people that you like (whatever that means). [STALWART VOICE: You’re not always so easy to be around yourself.] [CRIT VOICE: No you’re not.] [NERDY VOICE: Uh-uh.] [MOI: Yeah, so I’ve heard.] – all the more reason to pull out my Get Along Good toolbox and limber up my strategies. My favorite is the No Assumptions Mantra, which I developed a few years back for days when I have to be out and about but am just not liking anybody (usually for no good reason). On days like that everyone seems to be emanating negativity; I’m not sure whether I’m projecting or overreading people or both, but I discovered at some point that if I think, “What am I assuming?” whenever I look at anyone, they suddenly transform from a person walking down the street with lots of baggage to…a person, walking down the street, that I don’t really know anything about. I don’t exactly get a ticker tape of what assumptions I might have had, it’s mostly emotional and whatever it is, it lifts, and I feel lifted and a lot more able to share positivity instead. And the truth is, how we see people determines how we behave toward them, and what we assume about them affects how we see them, so this little mantra goes a long way in cleaning that mental slate. It’s quite useful and I recommend trying it. “What am I assuming?”

Another nifty tool I keep around is My Bad Box. It’s a little box made of tissue paper that I keep next to my heart. It’s like a little room where I can own my bads internally, and externally whenever possible, or even stop by to contemplate what bads I’ve been overlooking. Sometimes I don’t leave myself enough time for that, which is my bad (haha); it happens most often when I’m not managing my damage. It’s a handy compartment to have around, especially to keep me from the exhaustion and hubris of being right all the fucking time, which is of course a big bad ‘cause I’m not. To help counter that pathology when it rears its head, I like to keep on hand that well-spoke aphorism from [mon/notre] bon ami Voltaire, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” Thanks for that one, Big V.

Also useful in that arena is the Perspective Detective, a teeny homunculus who hangs around to remind me that most people consider their perspectives to be solid-valid, along with the occasional eval of what their supporting points might be. Best of all, the P.D. has no interest in arguing with or against anyone else’s perspective; they’re just there to remind me with little tickles that mine is not the only potential viewpoint. (And yes, the homunculus, like myself, is non-binary and uses any pronoun available.) They do, however, occasionally step in to help me fend off those hordes of tiny nuns (remember them from Episode 6?), who generally take one look at Perspective D and high tail it back to wherever they come from. Now that’s a benefit to keep in mind if you experience similar scourges.

So those are a few of the strategies that I’ve used for some time to help myself check white privilege and to move inclusively through the world. Of course I’ve cutesied them up a bit here, and I figure they might also be useful in helping me to interact productively with community and beyond. And if they’re useful to anyone else, all the better.

In the meantime, my dears, I do hope that you can keep yourselves well, and resilient, and in a state of resistance – which again doesn’t mean you have to be out there in the streets or even speaking it out loud. If you can carry it with you, that’s enough, and if you need to speak or act, you will. And if you hear someone say, “Silence is Complicity,” which is true at this point, and you’re not speaking out loud – that’s okay too; your internal dialog will keep the fire. The important thing is to each do as much as we can, and to push ourselves when we can to do more. And to help those in need. And if you find yourself folding up or shutting down, or if you need help for any reason, please reach to your friends. We’re here for you and there’s never been a better time to do so. Keep yourself well.

I also hope that we can move forward with clear sight and minds unmuddled by presumption and preconception, the little demons of assumption. There’s so much and so many kinds of misleading and manipulative info and behavior right now, and part of staying well is not letting it poison you or your perspective. So please try not to let all that toxic news and social media get in your head. I’ve been turning those feeds down to a minimum, and will shut them out completely if I need to. On a personal level, especially on bad days, please keep in mind that everybody’s got a lot more going on than shows on the surface. I don’t include the aggressors on the national stage in that, by the way, who reveal themselves again and again by their actions. Best to keep away from that shitnami anyway if you can, until of course you need to coil. But amongst ourselves, let’s be kind.

And I hope that we can each own our errors and manage our damage as skillfully as possible – def toward the top of the hard things to do list. But we’re in a war zone together for a time, and there’s gonna be some hurt and it’s up to us to mitigate that amongst ourselves. Those who reach outward, who aren’t afraid to step outside themselves, often have a harder time agreeing than those who are happy to toe the line they’re told to. We also tend to be a little more vulnerable, being out in the open, but also a little more agile, a little more flex. And it’s time to be agile, it’s time to be flex, so let’s try to stow our egos and manage our damage and do just that, what needs to be done, as a body united.

Let’s behave like we live in the country we want – and fiercely, whatever that might be for you.

I know it doesn’t help to say, This too shall pass – but that is how the natural world works and we all know that. So maybe it’ll help at moments to focus on the changes seen in nature, which are true things. There’s evolution, sure, though perhaps a bit slow for immediate succor. There are always the seasons. How about this: every atom in your body is replaced with a new one within five years or so. Every. Single. One. And most within a single year. “You” stay the same (save a wrinkle or two), but your atoms do not. Sounds like resilience to me. Good food for thought.

And here’s another: it’s the Year of the Snake, which means we’ll be shedding our skins – which our bodies do, our minds do, when we need to. Always have. Yes! says the snake. And what better time for that too! Which also means some discomfort, some vulnerability, some calcification and resistance until we break open and we slide unbound back into the world in new flesh, fresher, stronger, lithesome, and alert, and ready to take the day.

That’s all I got. Hope it was enough and not too much.

The next episode will drop on schedule in two weeks, on Saturday, February 15, when, unless something more urgent comes up, maybe we’ll look a little more into that joy thing.

This has been Episode 24, covering Weeks 34 and 35 of “My 12-Month Video Fast”. 

Thank you for listening. Breathe well, and have a potluck, why don’cha.