MCARSHALL MCLUHAN WHAT ARE YOU DOIN'?

MCARSHALL MCLUHAN WHAT ARE YOU DOIN'?

JOHN SINCLAIR

INFORMED SOURCES a novel by

Willard Bain: Doubleday:

“Power is the ability to define phenomena and make them act in a desired manner” ^

Huey P. Newton,

Minister of Defense,

Black Panther Party

Willard Bain’s book was originally printed by the Comminications Company in San Francisco the summer of 1967 and given away free in the streets. INFORMED SOURCES is the first post-Burroughsian novel I’d say, post-McLuhan also, and in its intentions and design strictly contemporary. Bain (who has the same initials as BurroughsWS B-straingely enough) has gotten down to the simple major questions of control and power and what language has to do with it.

Huey P. Newton’s definition of power is not widely understood. What is meant here is that the man or men who have the ability or means to define a situation can control those people who are caught up in that situation. People can only act on the information available to them, and if you control the information flow you control their possible action too. In our culture people ask you “what is 2 and 2?” You would say “four” without

thinking, that is, habitually unconsciously, because you have

been given the terms of the proposition and have had no choice but to accept them. Any sane-i.e. conscious—person would say “2 whatl motherf-ker!” because he’s hip to the medium and knows that its message is control.

Can you dig this? Because it’s the most important thing for people to know right now. If we get hip to their language, we can break their hold on us, because we can then refuse to accept their language as valid and force them to deal with us on our own terms. That means our own language, which is a pure and accurate expression of our cultural scene. The master language, what they. call “English”, is a control system meant to lock people into capitalism, competition, confusion, separation and death. It has evolved as a function of Western capitalism and means to preserve that system by limiting the flow of information to the people so that they can only find out about what the people in control want them to know, which is damn little, because the more you know the less you want tg be kept a slave.

INFORMATION, is the thing that will set people free. INFORMED SOURCES. Language is the primary control device in western culture. You believe what you hear and see, but if you are given access to only a small fragment of the whole spectrum of Information, your possibilities are extremely limited. If you are brought up on television and the daily press and the attendant honkie media (including the church and the American educational system) you will begin to believe, until you get the chance to find out for yourself by going out into the world, that everyone lives like a honkie in America except the ; crooks, commies, filthy scum dope ‘fiend rock & roll student demonstrators, black power advocates, and other deviates, and these people are all your (and America’s) emenies. It’s only when [you start to become one of these types that you find out how the > media have been brainwashing you. You read about yourself/or your friends in the papers and you can see •just how much the honkie media will manipulate information in order to keep people under control.

American television is a precise ■control device. The American

• educational system is a precise control device. The American press is a precise control device. What is news is what the news media promote as the news. Everything is happening all the time, but what you get is the story the power structure wants you to get so it can retain

• control over you. The power structure is in power because it can effectively DEFINE phenomena and make them ACT in a desired manner.

It will control your life until you seize the means of defining yourself and begin to develop a new definition of 'reality. Everything defines itself, in reality. What is, IS. INFORMED SOURCES (IS). We define ourselves through our actions and the context we create for our actions, that gives our actions an . organic structure we can constantly relate to in order to give our work maximum effectiveness.

The purpose of the American media as they exist now is to keep people chained to capitalism and to consumer consciousness. Everything reinforces everything else and none of it is done by accident. Any system that is functional must create a context in which everything that happens within the system reinforces everything else that happens. It’s no accident that the honkie press only reports death, crime, war, asshole opinions by honkie higher-ups, and the other s-t it represents—the power structure that controls the press needs to have you believe that’s all that’s going down in the world. If you found out that the world didn’t have to be so awful they’d have a hard time keeping you in line doing all the awful s-t they tell you you have to do. When people find out they don’t have to get up every morning at 6 o’clock to be at some horrible robot job at 7, eat lunch when they tell you, pee when they tell you, go home when they let you, live in your jive-ass house as long as you pay the , rent they tell you to pay, eat the s-t ‘ food they put before you like it’s the only way to eat, get drunk, watch television or go bowling or play golf or bridge or listen to Frank Sinatra for your entertainment after going through all this s-it all day all week all year—whew! Then it’ll be hard to keep you toeing thaft line. How you gonna keep em down on tire farm, like they used to say.

Can you dig it? That’s why they’re so down on the revolutionary media, because weYe •letting people know through our

a 1 t e_r n a t i v e

information/communications network that there’s a whole new ,way to do things that they’ve never been given to see on TV or anywhere else in honkie culture because (1) the honkies don’t understand it and (2) if they did understand it, and as they start to understand it, they react against it and try to stomp us out as they realize what a threat we represent to their decadent culture. What they don’t‘know yet, because they can’t know yet, is that the revolution we’re talking about is going to solve all their problems as well as our own. Elsewise it’s just bulls-t and anybody who talks to you about a program that doesn’t account for all the people when the revolution is accomplished is just as full of s-t as the honkies. All Power to All the People!

The revolutionary media is developing an alternate communications complex that will enable us to function most effectively with the honkie capitalist culture while working full time at the business of transforming the capitalist into a totally free state by projecting an image of the free state through our own media and the honkie media-we infiltrate arid destroy, or transform. Actually nothing in the universe can be destroyed because everything is energy in its various forms, and the forms can only be transformed. To talk of destroying the media is not even to the point—the communications media are just an energy form that can be transformed by revolutionary content into revolutionary media. The message is the media, as well as vice versa. I don’t think McLuhan understands that — he’s not hip to LSD, the ace transforming medium in the world today — but William Burroughs does, for one, and I feel Willard S. Bain has a better grasp of it than McLuhan, although he’s still hung up on the idea of “unmanning” the media, which he describes (like Newsreel does) as the “the fascist pig.”

The pig is the pig, you dig, and the pig media is the pig media because it carries the message of PIG. When the people control the media, not control it but get free use of the media, the message is the people message and the media becomes the people’s media. Dig it. The media is cnly there, a form, to be USED1 and it will take on the shape of the content when it is allowed to function in a free and unified context. When you hit somebody with your hand in a stupid move you don’t cut your hand off, you purify your purpose, i.e., that which directs the hand in its uses. When Sun Ra makes a record there’s not a goddamn thing wrong with the recorded media. When you can sear an hour full of liberated freeks on tv directing their'own program and projecting an image of the possibility of a free life-style so people can absorb the information and act on it and free themselves, or have a further possibility of freeing themsel\ses thereby, then television is being put to human use, for the people, as it should be all day and night.

But we have to quit bulls-tting and get our s-t tor gether, people in the media. We have to organize ourselves as extensively and as effectively as the Viet Cong is organized and is effective in their terrain. Their ends are the same as ours: self-determination and total freedom for their people. The face of

the American enemy we have to fight is the system that conditions people to submit to conscription and be shipped to Vietnam to fight their brothers. We don’t have to fight those soldiers yet, and I don’t feel that we will ever have to fight them IF WE CAN GET TO THEM WITH THE INFORMATION THAT WE ARE THEIR BROTHERS AND WANT THE SAME WORLD THEY WANT’ The soldiers are prisoners, our brothers who were ripped out of our culture and forced into murderous slavery by the f>ig power structure, to serve the dead ends of honkie culture in its last desperate attempt to perpetrate itself against overwhelming odds.

The way we can end this s-t is to develop our own language, our own media, our own total culture, CONSCIOUSLY AND PRECISELY, and get the information to the people who are being controlled by the pig culture through its language media. We have to stop accepting their definitions of the world and force them to deal with us on our own terms. It’s being done all the time, but not enough people are hip

to it yet becuase our media isn’t doing its job yet. Each newspaper, each band, each film, each radio or television program we do, each medium must broadcast the message of total freedom, total energy release, total revolution RIGHT NOW! There are millions of straight people out there who are dying to find out about our culture and how it might affect them, and we have to study their stand and relate to If they can’t relate to it you might as well talk to a wall.

When the pigs tell you you broke a law, you tell them their laws are not valid and use their media to beat ithem in court. When they tell you your language is obscene or disgusting, you tell them their language is criminal in intent and practice. Because our language is precise and pure and means to set people free, while their language is simply a control device meant to keep people slaves. When they tell you about drugs and all that s-t you tell them you’re ingesting the devine sacrament in a" puf(e religious purification ceremony and that they’re the ones who are hooked on coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, barbiturates, speed, television and control. When they tell you about their schools you point out to them that they have no schools but only youth discipline and training centers where their children are conditioned to the honkie culture and forced into its service through strict control of the information available to them. When they tell you this: SAN ANTONIO1 NOW (IS) - A COMMUNIST BEATNIK DOPE FIEND KILLED AND MUTILATED A 3-YEAR-OLD BOY TODAY AS THE LAD WAS . KNEELING IN PRAYER IN A JUST-DEDICATED METHODIST CHURCH’ THE MOTHER OF THE VICTIM WATCHED IN HORROR AS THE DIRTY BEARDED ABOMINATION SEIZED THE YOUNGSTER, BEAT HIS SKULL AGAINST A FONT4 AND THEN SLASHED REPEATEDLY AT THE BOY’S GENITALS WITH A SINISTER KNIFE* SHOUTING LEFT WING SLOGANS THROUGHOUT THE CRIME.

CON'T P 26

Then you tell them this, you see: WINDOW ROCK* NOW IS -MEMBERS OF RACIAL MINORITIES SHOULD NOT BE BARRED FROM ADVANCEMENT BUT, TO BE FRANK, MOST ARE, IT WAS CONCLUDED TODAY’ “WHITE MEN FOR INSTANCE,” SAID ONE LOCAL SHAMAN* “THEY CAN SMELL THE WIND BUT THEY CANNOT FEEL THE TREE. THEY LOOK UPON THE SEA BUT THEY CANNOT HEAR THE RIVljR. THEY STAND ON THE SAND BUT THEY DO NOT SIT UNDER THE CLOUDS. THEY SMILE IN THE MORNING BUT .. .WHAT?”

And besides, if you check them out and follow their stories along the line, you find out that they’ll tell you anything the way they want you to believe it. If you don’t follow the story you’d’ve missed this ending to the beatnik dope fiend story: SHE DESCRIBED THE INCIDENT AS THE MOST TERRIFYING EXPERIENCE OF HER LIFE BUT SAID IT CONFIRMED EVERYTHING SHE HAD SUSPECTED’ SHE WAS TAKEN TO A LOCAL HOSPITAL FOR OBSERVATION. THE BOY, WHO SURV’VED THE ORDEAL IN GOOi SPIRITS, WAS SENT TO LIVE WITH RELATIVES’

You might remember the story of the dude in Pennsylvania, a doctor of some sort at a college in that state, reported that a number of students had been blinded while looking into the sun on an LSD trip. Millions of people read that story and believed it as truth. The next day the follow-up was that the doctor had been made to revea iiat he made the story up, and he w^j taken away to a mental institution. But you’ll still hear people talking about LSD and blindness, because the pigs want them—need them-to believe that He, and they read the lie first. Because if they were exposed to acid and grass properly they’d flash right out of the pig’s grasp, and somehow that pig knows that. They don’t bust people for grass because it hurts anybody, they do it as an instrument of cultural repression, just like the obscenity ruse, the loud music ruse and the scum ruse, i.e. that we are pigs and they’re the pure ones. Bulls-t.

INFORMED SOURCES is a handbook on media, especially the socalled “news” media. Bain worked for some time as an AP

\

staffer in the Associated Press San Francisco Bureau, and the book is released in wire services dispatches, with a number of different stories developing simultaneously throughout. Informed Sources is the information network of the Peripheral Underground Movement (PUM), a sort of dumb version of LIBERATION News Service. The IS form follows the form of the AP, using the same language and thereby conveying essentially the same message: control through language. Like Rolling Stone, Informed Sources’ stories'are just as inaccurate as the AP’s and are made worse by the smugness of their imagined position, i.e. as the “underground” press. It doesn’t make them any less stupid.

Because Informed Sources is really only perpetrating the decadent form of the established media it can be overthrown by purer forces, called “Green Dreams” by Bain in the book here. Just as Informed Sources infiltrated the AP territory and took over much of it, Green Dreams infiltrated the IS offices and stations and then overthrew IS, because overthrow rather than perpetration was thenpurpose. But in a mass society without mass communications the people are thrown into darknesswe need the media for educational programs and high-energy entertainment forms, and we can take them over and ttirn them into revolutionary media only when we are bent on revolution as a total way of life, only when revolution is our message, only when we know we have to free the media for the use of all the people. John Coltrane spoke of “the cleansed purpose’’-the Cosmil connection with the universal energy force that flows through us as we cleanse ourselves. All Power to the People as they are charged with the power of pure energy charging through their bodies. Cleansed. Because the cleansed purpose-the lust for total revolutionthe need for freedom for all the people-has manifested itself through the media the people can relate to, and they are changed and cleansed by the free force as they are given access to it. As we all are.

If you are interested in any of this I’ve been talking about you’d like to read INFORMED SOURCES, the book by Willard S. Bain. Doubleday says they want $2.95 for it but you can easily slip it under your jacket and walk away with it. Maybe someone will reprint a free edition and give it away again, so the people who need it can get it without going through all those weird changes. But you should get it any way you can, and read it along with Burrough’s NAKED LUNCH/NOVA EXPRESS/SOFT MACHINE and REVOLUTION FOR THE HELL OF IT and SOUL ON ICE and the new ELDRIDGE CLEAVER book and record. Read the Black Panther newspaper to experience the revolutionary print media. Newsreel’s films. The Fugs and the MC-5. The Kokaine Karma show. The UAW/Motherf-ker documents. Sun Ra and Pharaoh Sanders. The Hog Farm. Living Theatre. Our culture is getting enormous! All Power to the People!

Livonia (wherever that is). If you wanna find out directions call Scot Richard, I guess he’ll know.

Tabatha Coffee House has all sorts of folk music people. 19530 W. Warren in Det. Rap ‘n’ Roll at the Rappa House. Jazz all night long, til 5 a.m. with good food (creole cusine) and friendly people. 96 E. Fisher Frwy. one block each of Woodward in Detroit.

Last night to see folk singer Casey Anderson at the Raven Gallery. It’s a nice place to dig folk music, even if Mr. Cohen (the owner) thinks “Creem” is too “dirty” to advertise in.

Heavy folksinging with Charlie Latimer and his timid guitar player Paul Bowie, along with Bill Clay bon (another folk singer) gathering in the old church basement now called The Absolute Zero Coffee-House. 388 N. Woodward. 2 blks. N. of 15 Mile.

SUN. May 4

EXHIBITIONS

18th Annual Antique Fair and Art Show. Temple Israel, 17400 Manderson Road Detroit. Thru. May 7.

Group Show from Midtown , Galleries, New York, celebrates the ‘‘Little Gallery’s” 20th Anniversary. 915 East Maple, Birmingham. Thru May 31.

FILM & THEATRE Our Gang flic, “Spook Sporting’’ and “Headless Horseman ” with Will Rogers. Henry Ford Museum Theatre. 2 & 4 p.m.

Center Theatre production of r^Sfght^you Are” presented on the Jewish Community Centers stage. Meyers Road & Curtis in Detroit. MUSIC (assorted)

Johnny Cash and his super star show, plus, the Hank Williams Jr. show in 2 concerts at Cobo Hall. 2 & 8 p.m.

The Duquesne University Tamburitzans, 30 Internationally famous folk dancers at Ford Aud. 2:30 p.m.

Chamber Music sponsored by the Chamber Music Workshop. Boughton Hall, Detroit Inst, of Musical Art. 5330 John R. 8 p.m. The Taj Mahal and The Litter in a no age limit gig at the Grande Ballroom for only $2.50. Grand River, 1 Block South of Joy Road. Free Concert, anyone can play, sing, dance and do your own thing at the Red Roach Coffeehouse. 5 p.m. - 9 p.m.

TUES. - May 6

Films on Art: The Lure of Africa -a look at the arts of Africa and an attempt to shed light on the rightness and mystery of her cultural traditions. The films deal with sculpture, music and ceremony. Det. Inst, of Arts. 8 p.m. Lecture Hall. FREE.

Yoga Class for people interested in the Hindu path to Brahma or freaks who just want to meditate. International Institute (7 p.m.) Free Jazz concert at the Art Institute featuring Toby Lark and the Hungry 5. Sculpture Court 7:30 J?;m-

The Detroit Women’s Symphony Orchestra, Nathan Gordon conducting, Soloist: Emily Mutter Austin, violinist, Rackham Aud. 80 Farnsworth 8:30 p.m.

The Roof of Japan* film shown in the Aud. of Cranbrook Inst, of Science. 8:15 p.m.

THEATRE

Richard III at Hilberry Theatre. 8:30 p.m.

“Right You Are’’, suspense, mystery comedy presented by the Center Theatre. Jewish Comm. Center. Meyers & Curtis. 8 p.m.

The Good Woman of Setuzan presented at the W.S.U. Hilberry Theatre. 8:30 p.m.

EXHIBITION

The Graphic Art of Winslow Homer, a survey of watercolors, drawings, etchings and graphics at the Detroit Inst, of Arts. Thru May 31.

Exhibition by Enrico Donati, recent paintings and sculpture. The J.L. Hudson Gallery, 1206

Woodward. Thru May 29. _

MUSIC

Something special during the week. Something Different will now be open on Wed. and Thurs. nights for those of you who can’t make it on the weekends. Mainly the guys in the bands who are too busy playing gigs to enjoy listening and taking it easy. This week its the Litter supplying the jams. 12 Mile Road and Northwestern Hwy.

FRI. - May 9 FILM & THEATRE The Story of a university professor who falls in love with a nightclub singer. “The Blue Angel” (1930) and No Reason To Stay (1966), A look at the school drop-out. Presented by the W.S.U. cinema guild. Lower De Roy. 7:30 &9:45, 50 cents.

Durrenmatt’s The Visit performed at the Hilberry Theatre. 8:30 p.m. Tangoo, a three-act farce presented at the Detroit Repertory Theatre. MUSIC (Symphonic)

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra with James Franzier conducting hiw own composition, The King Requiem Mass. At Ford Auditorium. MUSIC (Psychedelic & Folk)

The Who? Pete Townsenol’s premiere of his Rock Opera “Tommy” and all sorts of freaky, weird music at the Grande Ballroom. Along with the Who will be Joe Cocker and his Grease Band. Adm. $5. You must be 17.

The Rationals detonate their music and the Brown Filled Station at the Village Pub, 136 Brownell in Birmingham.

Folk music and more folk music with Nina Kahle, Andie Gaines & Nancy Wood, Sue Palid and yep! Charly Butterworth at the Tabatha Coffee-House, 19530 W. Warren, Det.

; The Litter at the Clawson Hideout in Clawson. 870 N. Main St. Weird Music (quote the management) by TNT and the Mousetrap, plus Tim Carr. Absolute Zero, 388 N. Woodward.

Folksinger Mike Cooney plays at the Raven Gallery. Greenfield Rd. 1 block north of 12 Mile. _

THEATRE

“Major Barbara” one of George Bernard Shaw’s best and most original works. Essentially, this play is the personal conflict between a realistic, successful businessman, and his idealistic daughter. Hilberry 2:30 p.m.

An Italian Straw Hat, presented at Hilberry, Cass and Hancock. 8:30 p.m.

Soul of Darkness, 2 plays from Black Experience by Larry Blaine. Detroit Repertory Theatre. 13103 Woodrow Wilson 8 p.m.

FILMS

Sergei Eisensteins Potemkin (1925) part of the Famous Films of Famous Director Series, sponsored by U.C.A.E. Upper De Roy Aud. 8:30 p.m.

Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich in “One of the Most creative films of the period,,” “The Blue Angel” (1930) and a flic about drop-outs (from school) lower De Roy Aud. 7:30&9:45p.m. shows 50 cents. EXHIBITIONS

Peter Stroud, painting. Gertrude Kasle Gallery, 310 Fisher Bldg. Thru May 31.

Detroiters collect, materials from 16 private book collections. Strohm Hall Detroit Public Library. Thru May 31.

Tony Smith: Sculpture - The Wandering Rocks. Donald Morris Gallery, 20082 Livernois. Thru May 31.

MUSIC (Symphonic) straight Metropolitan Scottish Clans presents the White Heather Concert featuring Calum Kennedy and Jack Milroy at Ford Aud. 8 p.m. Plymouth Symphony “Pops” concert featuring Roma Ridell, soprano. Plymouth High School Gym. 8 p.m. $1.50 adm.

Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadian Show at Masonic Temple. 8:20 p.m.

MUSIC (Psychadelic & Folky)

Queen of the Rock-Blues, Janis Joplin, with her band in concert and special attraction Country Joe and the fish heavy electronic music for mind and body. Plus Teegarden and Van Winkle at Cobo Hall. 8:30 Wow, It’s Teddy at the throttle! The Amboy Dukes plus the Frut of the Loom at Denby High School. Watch them smash their instruments into smithereens - The Who, Freaky as ever at the Grande Ballroom and Joe Cocker and His Grease Band. Visit the hippy psych-out counter where you can buy albums, jewelry and papers. Adm. $5.

The Village Pub in Birmingham is having Tobey Wesselfox, and The ■ Underground Wall 136 Brownell St.

, The Frost, The Litter and the Tea 'expand your mind with outasight music at Silverbell nightclub 4385 | Bald Mt. NE of Pontiac.

}■ Folk Music by Nina Kahle, Andie Gaines and Nancy Wood, Sue Palid

& Charly Butterworth at the : Tabatha Coffee-House, 19530 West i Warrenj

iJazz from 2-5 a.m. at the Rappa House, |96 E. Fisher Frwy. i SUN. - May 11

Famous Early Movies Real “moldy oldies”! “The Antique Shop”, with : George; Burns & Gracie Allen, and Mr. Robinson Crusoe, with Douglas Fairbanks, Maria Alba and William , Henry Ford Museum, 2 &

The Wi i \o - (pretty weird) - Pete T owns ssend’s Rock Opera “Tomn ty” for you psychedelic enjoymje ;nt, and Joe Cocker with his grease Jt >and. No age limit for the youngui is. 7-11 p.m. Grand River & Beverly).

razz Concert at the Art Institute 7 p.m.

The U.S. Air Force Airlife Command Band of Scott Field, Illinois in Concert. Ford Aud. FREE 8:30 p.m.

Yoga Gass at the International

Institute. 7 p.m.

Youth\Arts Festival, Riviera Court, Det. Inst, of Art.

EXHIBITS

Michigan Week Exhibit, in Cooperation with Detroit Public Schoojs. Children’s work depicting various facets of Michigan, Kresge Exhibit Hall, Detroit Historical Museum. Thru May 31. r j Campfire Girl Crafts, Kresge Hall,

' Det. Hist. Museum.

Selections from the Collections of the Friends of Modem Art, painting and sculpture. South wing Detroit Inst, df Arts.

WED.-May 14

The Good Woman of Setuzan -preser ted at Hilberry Clasic Theatre 8:30 p.m.

Exhibition Sculpture, paintings, drawings by Deuker, plus many new tyorks in the sculpture gallery. International Art Center. 132 i Madison.

Bob iSeeger with “heavy music” at • the Sdmething Different. Now open during the week for 2 nights, so don’t; forget when your bored make it out to 12 Mile & Northwestern ’ in Southfield.

CALENDAR... by Resa