Carson Napier

John Cale and Edie Sedgwick.

I’ve never owned a gun. When I was 18 years old, the idea of owning a firearm never even crossed my mind. I wanted a Fender Jaguar and a Marshall stack.

My Mum’s side of the family (the American side) owned lots of guns. Her grandfather worked for Remington Arms; he was a lifelong outdoorsman and legendary skeet shooter. Remington was a very different company then. As I understand, they didn’t yet sell pistols, much less assault weapons. Strictly rifles and shotguns, marketed directly to hunters and skeet shooters.

My Dad didn’t want guns in our house, so unlike most of my friends, I didn’t have a BB gun when I was a kid. Looking back, we never needed a firearm to protect our home or property.

I’ve never been a video game guy, either. Didn’t really see the entertainment appeal in first-person shooter games. Pushing a button over and over again seem like an unfathomable waste of time. Assuming the role of a mass murderer – even a fictional, digital one – seems kind of fucked up to me. How can that be fun?

On the other hand, the first time that I ever heard really explicit gangster rap, I actually did just that. It’s a first person experience, fully immersive, violent and explicit. I’m not altogether sure why I liked it so much, but I did know this for sure – the stories depicted were still very much removed from my own personal life experience. We didn’t have violent gangs in my neighbourhood. Again, I still never wanted a firearm, I wanted a sampler and drum machine. It was the sound of the music and production technique that I was really connecting with. 

The recording industry is dead now, for the most part, and popular culture is just delusional and dumb. Democracy and capitalism, values that we’ve long taken for granted, are barely on life support. Our society has exploited and abused the planet, to the point where it’s probably too late to course-correct. 

Some Americans have come to the conclusion that owning a firearm might protect or prolong their lives. They’ll spend $1500 for an AR-15, but lose their fucking minds over a five dollar gallon of gasoline. A mass shooting every week in America is something we’ve somehow normalised; but it’s still necessary to carry a five-year-old grudge against a guy who kneeled during the National Anthem before a football game? 

Huh?

Old white men do everything they can to limit a woman’s accessibility to healthcare, yet old white cops wait outside of an elementary school for an active shooter to run out of bullets? (Sorry kids, you’re on your own.)

Huh? What the fuck is wrong with this country?

What are we doing? Is it too late to rearrange our priorities and embrace love, forgiveness, unity, peace, trust, understanding, compassion, hope, and sustainable science? It’s possible to be an individualist and still not be selfish. It is possible to think for yourself, to refuse to bow to territorial groupthink or tribal dogma.

We essentially have two years to come up with a viable plan to save the future of this country. If Trump’s ghouls find a way to steal the 2024 election we will then shift into an exclusionary fascist/autocracy structure that will render the United States unrecognizable. 

That’s what they want. 

Is that what you want?

Francesca Woodman

Iggy by Mick Rock

Doug Sahm

Hank Sr.

diane arbus, Inadvertent double exposure of a self-portrait and images from Times Square NYC, 1957

Miles Davis, 1958

Howlin’ Wolf

Isa Marcelli.

Born in 1958 in Algeria, Isa lives and works in France. She has been a designer and a mosaic artist. In 2008 she turned towards photography. Self-taught, she developed a strong interest in old and alternative processes.

Stan Wayman. A group of teenagers in Chicago, Illinois, selecting music on a jukebox in 1958.

Diane Arbus, Self Portrait

In The Mood For Love (deleted scene).

Marilyn Stafford    Prêt-à-Porter, Montmartre, Paris     1950

Jim Carroll backstage Public Theater, NY, September 1984. [photo by Allen Ginsberg]  By then The Jim Carroll Band had three solid records out,  his autobiographical BASKETBALL DAIRES was legendary, and he was working on a followup FORCED ENTRIES, in which he devotes an hilarious, if a tad embellished, chapter to Allen and a high powered dildo.

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