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And So It Is Written For None To Read
While America closes its door-to-the-future to its youth, its aspiring hotshots smash their guitars onto the impervious consciousness of the video-streaming narcoleptic herd, furiously hammering away at the portals of hipness lusting for penetration into the voluptuous folds of affluence and renown they want so badly to deserve and which are only never-to-be-achieved potentialities in their feverish imaginations.
And so they “smash fascism” in virtual print while parading their righteous revolutionary irrelevance for all to see, if all those others bothered to look as a few pseudo-intellectual armchair hobos do to help survive their consumerist boredom.
We live in the age of the gimmick in a country unmoored from reality in a world floundering in its own waste. And so we focus on the sparkly trumpeted gimmick of the moment, the never-before-heard-of outrage of the week, the rush of today’s roulette wheel-spin to nail the mega-sale by phone or publication, and the eternal obsession to polish one’s pedestal in anticipation of the yearned-for coronation.
And through it all the great gear-train of Planetary Nature just keeps turning its awesome and for-us-eternal clockwork of evolution and extinction relentlessly drawing us ever deeper into the meshing of its teeth. Ah, what bright ephemeral monkeys we all are, like babies crawling in the aisles of a theater during a fabulous and majestic spectacle, oblivious to all but the glitter and sheen of the carpet threads reflecting the panorama on stage as the thundering music of the spheres unheard vibrates our crawling frames.
We are forever victims of neglect because we are endlessly neglectful, despite our hard-won omniscience by dismissal of the past left far below us by the rocketing elevation of our pedestals, now piercing through the stratospheric clouds of the tinnitus of our electronic babble-in-tongues of pleasure, pain, pander, pathos, patriotism, puffery, panic, perfidy and pontification. Like Simon-of-the-Desert we see it all from our olympian heights of self-delusion and we exalt in our earth-shaking powerlessness to alter the course of fate as the Spectacle of Man reflects blindingly in our eyes as ourselves first as tragedy and then as farce.
Whoo-ha! Praise the Gorgon and pass the amnesia!
…And I borrow from The Master whilst drifting back to the Blissful Isles where savage indignation no longer lacerates my heart…
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
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manuelgarciajr 
Pingback: And So It Is Written For None To Read | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
Why did you illustrate this article with a statue of Judith carrying the head of Holofernes?
Collect Pond Park, Centre St, Lower Manhattan NY, 10013
October 14, 2020 – April 30, 2021
NEW YORK – MWTH project and NYC Parks is pleased to present Medusa With The Head of Perseus by Argentine-Italian artist Luciano Garbati in Collect Pond Park, located on Centre St, Lower Manhattan, as part of NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program. The seven-foot bronze sculpture inverts the narrative of Medusa, portraying her in a moment of somberly empowered self-defense. Medusa With The Head of Perseus will be on view from October 13, 2020 – April 30, 2021.
In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Medusa was a maiden in the temple of Athena, who was stalked and raped by Poseidon. Athena, in a rage, banishes and curses Medusa with a monstrous head of snakes and a gaze which turns men to stone. Medusa is herself blamed and punished for the crime of which she was the victim; she is cast away as a monster and then with the cruel assistance of Athena and Poseidon, eventually is hunted-down and beheaded by the epic hero Perseus, who displays her head as a trophy on his shield. Garbati’s sculpture speaks directly to the 16th Century Florentine bronze masterpiece Perseus with the Head of Medusa by Benvenuto Cellini (1545-1554). Through this work, Garbati asks “how can a triumph be possible if you are defeating a victim?”
This narrative of victim-shaming in stories of sexual violence echoes through time, and into the present day “me too” movement. In 2018, Garbati posted a photograph of his original sculpture to social media. This re-imagined Medusa went viral and became a symbol of resistance worldwide, inspiring thousands of women to reach out and share their own stories. Garbati’s Medusa questions the mythic figure’s characterization as a monster, and investigates the woman behind the myth.
Medusa With The Head of Perseus will be installed directly across from the New York County Criminal Court, the location of high profile abuse cases including the recent Harvey Weinstein trial. Garbati’s Medusa stands facing the courthouse, as an icon of justice and the power of narrative.
Medusa With The Head of Perseus was cast in Bronze by Vanessa Solomon of Carbon Sculpt Studios in Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York and Laran Bronze Foundry in Philadelphia.
About NYC Parks’ Art in the ParksNYC Parks’ public art program, Art in the Parks, has consistently fostered the creation and installation of temporary public art in parks throughout the five boroughs. Since 1967, collaborations with arts organizations and artists have produced hundreds of public art projects in New York City parks. For more information on this program visit
http://www.nyc.gov/parks/art.
https://www.mwthproject.com/oct-2020
Thanks for the enlightening correction, although I’m wondering how long it will last before getting vandalised by some outraged Trumpist.
We can hope they would be instantly petrified by a glare from NYC’s Medusa. After all, if Pygmalion’s ivory Galatea could come to life, why not Garbati’s Medusa?
When people started pulling down statues of slavers in England, a right-wing group formed, called “Protect The Statues” to counter-demonstrate; however, it broke up after a member was photographed URINATING on a statue he was supposed to be “protecting”!