1:There is an art form
1.1 There is an art to manifestos as there is an art to anything. Avoid this art form. Make other forms of art. There is no reason to make unfounded statements into strong declarative sentences. Do not believe yourself. Believe others first. Rather than holding yourself up as somehow a larger life form, remember that your unique perspective is a wondrous fallacy. Instead believe everything and anything. Be credulous.
1.2 When writing your manifesto, find yourself hidden behind a potted plant. At other times be other places. Make sure that you are always somewhere. If you are ever somewhere that is also nowhere, then be warned that this is dangerous. This is the sort of place that happens when a person is walking around without formed thoughts. It can be pleasurable. Some people drink themselves silly to achieve this placeless place on a nightly basis. This has little to do with the art of the manifesto.
1.3 Instead be on the edge of your seat and be warned that your seat is also not your seat, but in general a seat, and therefore to be taken for granted only when it is being occupied by you. Commence to write. Later you will not see yourself when you look at the words and this will be the beginning.
1.4 But of course we are doing things. That is also part of what happens in places, but not necessarily worth writing about. Should a manifesto be about the doing of things? Are you dense?
2: Problems & belief
2.1 I will explain something. A person writes a manifesto to create some sort of change. This person does not actually believe that change will take place by the writing of a manifesto, but it is fun to play pretend. This is why we have personalities. It is also why we walk in circles when straight lines make more sense.
2.2 I am currently writing a manifesto. I do not expect this manifesto to change the manner in which anyone goes about writing a manifesto, but I do believe that I am writing a manifesto. What I believe is coming under question. Soon there will be another point, wherein what I believe is once again secure because I have stopped thinking about it. At that time I will not be writing a manifesto.
2.3 This manifesto is as much about the problem with even attempting to start a manifesto when others are content to exist without ever having written a manifesto. Why you? Are you going to vomit on your protectors once again?
2.4 So we step back, and instead think of ourselves as something like putty, but with limits. There are limits to everything, including limitless space. I am just a self-aware boundary. Then I chew my knuckle to make the point explicit to those surrounding.
2.5 So we have this problem. We must solve this problem. So we write a manifesto. The manifesto states the problem and how to solve it. It may be an aesthetic problem, a political problem, a personal problem, a problem in the consideration of problems in general, a way in which problems have infected the larger problemless sphere, a sort of problemosphere in which problems lead to problems lead to problems. Then a solution like a sleight of hand. Done.
2.6 This is your manifesto? What about a manifesto in which the problem has yet to be, a problem that might occur at some point in the distant future, a manifesto for peoples as of yet unborn, a manifesto concerning conceptual art in the biblical universe, a manifesto written by Damien Hirst as filtered through the old testament, as a prophet speaking at prophets, or a manifesto for space colonization, or a manifesto directed at the intestinal wall. Or the larger nonsense universe in general, and what sense can be made of it.
2.7 You see, I am a believer in the manifesto. It is why I have spent the last two years searching them out like buttons on the sea floor.
3: Some examples
3.1 Of the manifestos that have been read, some of them seem to accurately depict a certain matter. There are those that make light of situations that perhaps should not be made light, and there are those that are bold and nothing more. A few verge on philosophy, and these are the ones I appreciate through my eyepiece.
3.2 But in the future, manifestos must have another force, the internal force, a force that speaks out from in, rather than up from down, or left to right. An example being that here I am speaking to you, but I am also asking questions of myself when I do.
3.3 For the manifesto as it stands has become a trite art. There are still of course manifestos that have had effect, and been made in all seriousness, such as Dogme 95 and the Unabomber Manifesto. These are not trite efforts, but the reader is no longer convinced that change on a large scale will occur as a result of words on the printed page. Our words have become acknowledged as ineffectual, so we act, but only to become labeled as eccentric of fanatics, rather than to be followed as visionary or courageous.
3.4 Not unlike the death of the utopia when it became subsumed under the larger heading of ideology; when nations began to present themselves as the ideal actualized, and the manifesto became secondary to action and propaganda until ultimately the manifesto became subsumed by the simply psychological, that we as psychological entities are expressing ourselves first and foremost, and that any attempt to convert others to what must be first and foremost a personal cause is in poor taste, and to kill others in service of your eccentric views is in even poorer taste, but even when others are not harmed, it is an insult to present an alternate reality is obviously impossible to implement. This is the assumption I personally bring to the table, that today, manifestos are understood as relics of an earlier attitude towards social, psychic, and aesthetic change, and how to accomplish it, but that having been said, regardless of how they are perceived currently, manifestos could very easily be a means to social, psychic, and aesthetic change, and have been. Take the Declaration of Independence for example.
3.5 So you write things out just because you want to believe the world is still as it was, while also believing that it is nothing like it once was. Both of these are wrong. Look out for the future when you have less impact than you do currently! Think to a time when manifestos are concerned largely over whether a person should write using blue or black ink. Prepare yourselves for a time when even the most hopeful are only writing manifestos on the correctness of personal hygiene.
3.6 There was a long time when I read manifestos as if I were reading the liner notes to a new universe. Some manifestos speak truth, but the manifesto that succeeds is calling for nothing more than itself, exists exclusively to state that it is. Rather than a call to action, the manifestos that have succeeded historically are those that ask for nothing, and require nothing of their readers, but just that they be read.
4: Things come out
4.1 The manifesto manifesto exists solely to announce the larger manifesto movement. That manifestos are currently being lived through the psychoplasmetic meletetics of an uncertain class largely devoted to contemplation and working under the assumption that they belong literally nowhere. This is not new, but I will present it as new, for I have become fed up with the silence of our studied cynicism. Our speech is itself an act.
4.2 I eat your stories because your stories are nothing more than a footnote to the larger manifesto which serves as the blueprint for your particular mind. We all have written ourselves into the story, but the trick is writing ourselves back to square one. I want to kill with your stories, but not until you have made your manifesto sing in the bloodiest key, have cut through the frontal lobe to achieve total indoctrination, have walked your limbs backwards like your hands were nothing more than soft-shelled crustaceons and your eyes are the lesser of your many organs. You want to believe something? How about that you’re currently breathing right now?
4.3 Instead go forward and watch how backward you can be. There are times when what you want is nothing more than a festering pool. I want a festering pool inside of me, do you? This is why I write a manifesto.
4.4 So, everyone does their thing differently, but we all got things to do. Sometimes these things are seen as chores, as in cleaning the kitty litter and/or mowing the lawn, but then there’re those things that are inspired by something secretly invasive, a kind of emotional logarithm coming to its natural conclusion, something like silt sifting through the grey matter of my manicured mind. The manifesto is my crutch.
4.5 Or I have something inside me that really needs to come out, like amoeba-sized puppies pouring from my mouth, or insect fat in your thigh. I eat, but I have not eaten. This is how these things are done.
5: Words & Intentions
5.1 When eating my way through the manifesto, I am becoming less sure, because the more confident I must be in my presentation, the darker become the corners of my eyes, not unlike the notorious tunnel vision of the historically prone, seeing only what it is necessary for him or her to see in that particular moment so as to accomplish whatever impossible task is the order of the day. I make things out to be better than they are because otherwise I would curl up and hide behind the doorjamb until that fateful moment when the world’s evaporated in a blip of light. Oh, how I long for that day! A result of my upbringing? Perhaps. A common thread since kindergarten? Yes.
5.2 Point being that my intentions aren’t the best. They come from somewhere slippery to the touch, kind of place a person creates as their CGI wonderworld because the regular everyday one just isn’t cutting the mustard, a place where my will is equivalent to a law of physics, but of course what this means is that nothing’s ever the same. I am only consistent in my inconsistencies. I am a force of nature, but one whose sphere of influence is only as large as my field of vision. There are those who move outside their sphere of influence. These are the sorts of persons who do in fact change the rules of the game for the rest of us. Some of them move perpendicular to the ground with a kind of euphamistic miming of things, but the truth of the matter is not something to do with strange motions, but more that a person must come from somewhere when they are headed in a particular direction, and that being directionless, as most of us are, is an art form unto itself when done consciously, but can be insidious when it is unintentional. What does this have to do with manifestos? What do manifestos have to do with the euphamistic miming of things? Where is my sphere of influence in relation to other spheres? Do I want to change how you are thinking on something? Of course not. I just want to think, and I think perhaps you should think also.
5.3 Do we make things happen? Things happen, but they are not things that are happening. I maneuver as best I can, and sometimes I find particular spots for carrying on that are almost worthwhile in and of themselves. Of course, they’re all worthwhile in and of themselves, but that doesn’t mean they are for me.
5.4 So we make words. These are manufactured in the same manner as anything, and sometimes these words are put together to form statements, and statements combine to make the ubiquitous manifesto, with its on-going effects and its questionable ethics. The manifesto that informs everything from everywhere, that moves with you to where you are going, that makes you out to be something you’re not, the great manifesto that first started us on this quest to discover it, but in the process we have come to realize that this manifesto would change all things for the better is just a shifting perspective, and that if we just step back for the second time in so many pages what we’ll see is that we need no manifestos, that we write only because what we say is futile. If it is to be a felt thing that actually incites change, it will be so because of itself and not because of what we say about it. That we can do what is necessary when the time comes without announcing ourselves like whores and the landed gentry.
5.5 So I write just because I am nothing like I was five minutes ago, write a manifesto that has no ground, is in fact just an expression of groundlessness. I walk around the room to regroup my thoughts and instead find myself floundering and ready to collapse at the slightest provocation, if I could just get a sense of gravity, but instead am philandering on the outskirts. This is where I belong. I look at you. You understand perfectly.
5.6 These words are the words of a person without hope, in short. That I must write means only that I have lost. If I could convey something true, it would be happening in the space between, not unlike the place without place, but more like a place separate from my head than an emptiness within, the place where those things occur have nothing to do with us. Watch! You can cause change by simply being as you are?
5.7 So the general public attempt to move themselves out of the way, but where they are is not exactly the most solid ground, largely because it’s founded on those same declarative sentences on which your standard manifesto is contrived. Which you know already. So you go down to the far side of the known world and believe that somehow you no longer have words under your feet? How wrong of you!
5.8 I once made a mistake, but only because I was attempting very hard not to make mistakes while simultaneously very aware what mistakes are and where they reside. If I looked at it a little askance I could’ve seen that mistakes are just another way of walking, as I am walking, and you and everyone. Am I being an obnoxious person? My apologies! This is also no good. I will have to move away from you while you sort out the particular issues surrounding your halitosis.
5.9 The point is precisely that what we need from this place is to be a part of it, and to move around in a manner that captures what it is we mean by stepping just here and just now. This has nothing to do with mistakes, but just that when you make a step it is just as it should be, without any special attention to the point of it. Does this make sense? The words are leading me, and not the other way around, and so I must unfold out into the larger precept of a presupposed universe. Watching this happen, all that’s left for you is to move with me, and the two of us become like liquid in a larger stream. This is how it is when you allow your thoughts to move without too much in the way of predisposition, but who am I to talk down on your way of thinking, right? Right.
5.10 But to talk is not to think. It’s different. I’m different when I’m talking. Some would say it’s better and some that it’s worse, but to talk to someone who speaks only in the twisted language of the manifesto would be like talking your way out from under a thorn bush. Think like you talk, and talk like you think.
5.11 What I mean by all this has never been expressly stated, and I don’t plan on starting now. Instead, we’ll be taking our time in a larger field and you’ll be saying something about how wonderful that wedding was, and I’ll be making some small attempt to agree, while also not agreeing at all, and we’ll be arm in arm as we make our way through the high grass, and the wind has picked up your hair for a little dance, and my hand has reached towards your lower half, but you know what my intentions are, and so you just gently pluck my fingers off your person while all the while continuing with your friendly diatribe, until we’re too tired to go on anymore, but moving on…
6: What needs to happen & beware
6.1 The destruction of something is just what needs to happen, so you thought you’d throw some words together. Later, you meet and hand out the pages you had your words printed on, then cough into your balled up hand. This is how the dead continue to be present after they’re gone, by creating a legacy has a lifespan of its own, and sometimes creates its own zombie offspring.
6.2 Make your manifesto speak volumes. Sometimes it can speak volumes in a very short space. Sometimes it looks back at you and asks for more and still more until you are writing a manifesto that has multiple personalities, and each one is looking to take control of the larger text. Be wary of these types of manifestos. Manifestos should be single-minded and two-dimensional at most.
6.3 The manifesto without the author is another special case. Spontaneously generated manifestos? Manifestos that move throughout the mind like revelers in the night, leveling your particular prejudices until you are nothing but a basic fear. These are just some of the things to beware.
6.4 Of course, you will write as you will, but focus on some superficial element and make this element the foundation of a larger confused polemic. Then you can consider your tongue as separate from you, and when you look at the words and see nothing but a jumbling of alien thoughts, you can blame this separate tongue within and believe this tongue somehow greater than you, like a genius muscle contained in your mouth, a muscle with its own tiny brain in every cell making decisions that you with your paltry rational tools could never have discovered. Does this sound good to you?
6.5 There are other things that must come out. Some are good news. Such as, that a child was born, or that your hernia operation went well. Others are more varied in response.
6.6 They’re also other things than the ones I ought to do, but that have greater urgency instead, something like a sliver beneath the skin. It’s sharp, but it doesn’t know how sharp it is. When I walk through people like they’re construction paper people, their guts will cling to my ankles and I’ll carry them into my sleep to sling them up in my innermost living quarters.
6.7 There is death and there are those who have died. Beware of them as well. They do not walk the way other persons walk, and do not laugh. They are what was left behind when a person just wanted to move through things with the electricity of thought and still be when appearances are to the contrary. It’s one of those things you believe in, but by believing in it, you make yourself into a place that is nowhere, and you make your body into tantamount to the only thing. This is why you must beware it. Beware it because it lives in you like a felt thing lives on the outside. Beware!
7: So…
7.1 So I write these words without knowing who I am, and other people say I got something to say, but I know they are wrong, but still I write this manifesto. This is part of who I am. I am also another man altogether.
7.2 And when you look out, you know there are other things you believe. There are times when what you wanted was a fair assessment of the larger ectosphere, but all you saw were the hopes of your yesterdays in passing. This is the poetry of the obtusely revolutionary.
7.3 Then there are times when manifestos are written for pleasure, and manifestos are written concerning how to organize meetings and the quality of your products, and you have no manifesto at all, but shorthand in drag. I believe some things, but I don’t believe them enough.
