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WildStyle!!! (part 2)
by Deadly Buda
Okay, so I guess a lot of you are wondering...”what the heck does this have to do with anything?” Why did Buda subject me to pages of his moronic acid flash-backs?” Well, it took almost fifteen years for me to put it together, but this particular day - this acid trip - had some particularly interesting characteristics. Sure, everyone seems to think that whatever they did on acid was somehow imbued with otherworldly qualities in even the most mundane activities, especially your first one. But even Tracy and Nomad, who had done acid many times before, were thoroughly changed in some fundamental way by the experience, as was Dasez who actually didn’t take any that night, but witnessed all that transpired. It is only years later that I have been through enough experiences (limited by my years as they may be) that I have really got close to grasping the importance of what was happening. That night, I think we stumbled upon the ongoing, ancient, nature of creativity and the power behind it. To understand what I mean, it is important to understand LSD psychology and also the 30-year history of “Name Graffiti”, as we know it today.
First, let’s take a look at the drugs. Hallucinogens such as LSD have long been purported to replicate the effects, experiences, and emotional conclusions of various ancient tribes’ shamanic journeys. Most tribes have their own way of getting out of your head and perceiving living phenomena in a way the regular conscious mind otherwise may not be privy to. These spiritual journeys often function as away to come to terms with the world of ideas, a world that eventually manifests itself physically, initially in basic creative activities such as drawing and writing, humming and dancing. |
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The fact that pure expression is relegated to “illegal” application to “properties” I do not believe is entirely the fault of the graffiti writers, but the unfortunate by-product of a culture grasping for control, forcing expression to find new avenues.
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Ideas are definitely “some-where,” perhaps within the immediate vicinity of the alternative realities we visit when we dream. This “place”, or “idea world,” I would refer to as the “Internal Dialogue” and it has it’s own history, often documented and passed along through a culture’s physical manifestations of the creative processes. It is easily perceived in physical objects, or temporal experiences such as music, as it expresses a conscious or sub-conscious inspiration of that “time period”. Hallucinogens are a way to get “there” during an awakened state, with the benefit of a slightly skewed perspective because of the drug’s temporary “re-wiring” of your thought processes. The LSD experience itself essentially magnifies experience, to an extent that it can be analyzed unencumbered by the usual compartmentalization the mind usually utilizes in it’s day to day activities. This compartmentalization is usually the society’s default perception. For this reason, LSD, or “acid” is considered illegal and a threat to government, because you can quite easily come to some conclusions about even mundane aspects concerning the individual and society, which may not jibe with the over-all agenda of the society at large. Usually your conclusions are correct, because you have utilized more profoundly analytical thought processes than normal reaching them. Now let’s look at the short history of name graffiti... “Name” graffiti (writing your name or an alias, generally where society doesn’t expect it to be) has been around since humans could name themselves, but it was not until the 1970s that “name graffiti” was embellished with such lavishness as graffiti in New York City. I believe this happened because.... a) At that time the “cult of the individual”, already a strong undercurrent of the American mindset, was more predominant than ever. The misunderstood super-hero, the lone gun-slinger, and the “ahead of his time” seemingly “mad” scientists were glorified as the pioneers of American ingenuity by the prevailing “counter-culture” of the late 60’s, early 70’s. b) New York City’s geography and ethnic make-up. Of course, New York is a port city, and like any other through history has flourished as a trading post not only for goods and services, but also ideas, which are the “fuel” of creative enterprises. In addition, New York’s subway system is quite possibly the most effective trans-port in the world, quickly and conveniently tying it’s outer boroughs with it’s monetary center, Manhattan. It’s set-up is such that in New York, the poor must always interact with the rich, and there is no effective way to separate the races from one another, leading to a quick cross-pollination of cultures and sub-cultures. c) The rise of commercial art and corporate America. It was really at this time that corporate logos started springing up everywhere you went. As a child I distinctly remember thinking a number of logos were real cool looking, like the “Chevron” shield symbol, The CBS eye, the PBS head, just to name a few. I guess that corporate America became more image conscious in the 50’s, and by the time the 70’s rolled around was starting to connect better aesthetically with the consumer. d) New York didn’t really have enough money to regularly clean or police the subways, let alone make sure all the kids were going to public schools, and even if they did, could not keep up with the amount of information blasted to the children via TV. e) The relatively loose social structure encouraged by popular media and youth culture at that time. f) American society’s encouragement of competition. g) Governing bodies desire for control, and it’s persecution of graffiti. It was these factors that probably came together subconsciously in the minds of your average young graffiti writer in New York in the early 70’s. Writing your name and seeing it on the evening news behind some completely unrelated story was cool, but then when you jazzed it out fat with bubble letters, it was even more impressive, and if it was on a train, it was seen by more people. You were “Getting Up”. These conclusions are reached by a number of people, practically all at one time, and pretty soon you have one-upmanship, and the foundations of a small sub-culture that is quickly reproducing itself, because it’s goal, getting a name up, is a communication medium in and of itself. I think that there must be recognition of the power of the letter that often goes unanalyzed. Would Graffiti become the phenomenon that it was if it was people drawing simple pictures? I suspect not. It is the combination of a solid aesthetic, enhancing an already powerful social communication form. The fact that “name graffiti” circa 1970 AD was an emerging form of calligraphy is often noted, but rarely pointed out how the very form of the letters somehow effect people in a very physical way. Letters make people think and do. Tracy and the Wild Style crew were not actually the original generation of New York City writers. In fact, “the New York Style” is often credited with starting in Philadelphia, where they hooped large letters in “wicket” patterns. This eventually got to New York, and the tags took off. The next generation of writers initiated technological advances such as using oven cleaner caps to get a fatter spray, and doing thick letters with designs like spirals and stars. It was Tracy’s generation of writers, and Tracy more than almost anyone else, who advanced the idea of “style.” Your style was all the unique things about yourself that you infused into your letters. Those letters, and the characters, were all representatives of you, where you’d been, what you’ve done, who you wanted to be. “WildStyle” came about because all those crazy add-ons, arrows, doo-dads and characters people were doing, were really the writer’s “soul” coming to light. Wild Style revealed itself as finding yourself, being yourself, and taking action with it. This period in name graffiti is considered the “Golden Age” of graffiti, because there were so many crazy styles coming out at the time, the more original your style, the quirkier, the better.
By the time the 1980’s had rolled around, there was a thriving graffiti sub-culture that advanced to the stage of having multiple groups struggling over geography (who “owned” what subway lines) hierarchies based on skill and expertise, and even an “old school” with it’s own history and genealogy. Tracy 168 was by the 1980’s considered an “old school king”. This period saw the various styles becoming more formulated and perfected along certain imitative rules and guidelines.
The “name graffiti” phenomenon had quickly morphed into what may have been one of the most important artistic movements during the 20th century. Not only was it quickly advancing an artistic and calligraphic style at a pace unrivaled anywhere in Western Culture but also, artistically, it was more in tune with what was transpiring in society. Visually, there was virtually no lag between what people wanted to see and express, and what was presented. Artistic theories and ideas spawned from one Western Art Movement after another since the turn of this century, was taken for granted, subconsciously, as part of the visual lexicon by graffiti writers. It is as if those movements were predicting the exact future of the dimension the graffiti writers would exist in.
Graffiti’s persecution, initially by the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and later by virtually every city in America and most of Western Europe, underline it’s relevance and speaks volumes about Western Civilization’s place in history. Why must people express themselves in ways deemed illegal by the authorities? Who are the authorities and why are they authoritative? (For brevity’s sake, we will leave this subject for a different article altogether.) Why do graffiti writers continue even after persecution?
In general, the graffiti writer/piecer (piecing is when you do a full blown, multi-color, extravagant artwork rather than a simple written name) believes that what they are doing is actually good for society, and they are being unfairly persecuted. I agree. The ongoing expression of the society’s internal dialogue is at it’s best when it relates closest to the individual’s internal dialogue. This is because we all share a mind/dreamscape to a large extent, and to actively register it’s manifestations is the only way we as a people can continually modify our existence to live in a universe that is, in fact, always in a state of flux. If this process is impeded, the society suffers atrophy while the universe proceeds predictably ever-changing, rarely taking into account our best interests.
Obviously, the need to express oneself is ongoing and natural, and naturally, also threatens those in power, because as the individual concentrates on their own impulses, it makes them harder to control. A society must control people, so they can be organized enough, to survive on Earth. The animosity between the writers and the government is generated by two completely valid social-survival needs.
Often times, what masquerades as creativity is channeled through the society’s own education, business (in our society, generally corporate) or governing (non-profit) filters. This has extreme oxy-moronic potential, because those filters generally relate to further control, and the people currently benefiting from it, and not to the individual doing the art. Thus, it rarely satisfies the individual, and the need for both the individual and society continues. This phenomenon struck a resonant chord with teen-ager’s persecution complex (stemming from the classic struggle between the individual and society in Western Civilization) all-over Western Civilization, and thus, the name graffiti methodology and subsequent phenomenon quickly spread all over Western Civilization. |
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This was really a way of life, this wasn’t youthful folly, and THIS was his destiny as a creative person - To learn, to make, to show, to teach.
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Another unfortunate by-product of social “control”, is the belittling of individual experience. There is a negativity that permeates our culture that discourages people from really thinking for themselves, and there for creating, thus making it seemingly harder to control them. This negativity really pervades the thinking of everyone in our society, and manifests in numerous ways. For example; believing that what you are doing is not as significant as something that happened in the past, or the geographical location in which you do it is somehow inferior to some shining Mecca on the hill, or that your perceptions are invalid when compared to an overall social perception. When we think in such ways we cannot believe in the importance of what we are experiencing. Somehow it is less than satisfactory, or not as good as something or someone else. And so, we get depressed and perhaps subscribe, for better or worse, to the controlling bi-polar social debate of ideas parading through our general communication media, by default.
The fact that pure expression is relegated to “illegal” application to “properties” I do not believe is entirely the fault of the graffiti writers, but the unfortunate by-product of a culture grasping for control, forcing expression to find new avenues. Surely, any one of these graffiti writers could draw or paint their “secret fantasies” to their hearts content, but an artist makes a piece to be perceived, that is the natural and desirable course of events. Unless it is actively shared, it has no social value, and the society suffers. When we combined strong LSD with Graffiti that night, we all got a lot more than we bargained for. At the time I could only express it in terms of “Wow, graffiti is just so cool looking when you’re on acid.” I did not have the sum total of the information and experience I have now, to fully comprehend what was going on.
Furthermore, I had the usual brainwash about how nothing I could ever do would be as cool as what happened to say, Carlos Casteneda out in the desert with Don Juan, for instance. What had happened that night was an honest to goodness spiritual journey. I just didn’t think it, at the time, because it wasn’t exactly like what I read about before. Instead of talking coyotes, I had mercurial subway cars! Despite the fact of not really “getting it” at the time, the effects on my life were very profound. I think it was this experience that gave me the courage to pursue my “own style”, despite the obstacles that would be in my way. Maybe courage isn’t the best way to describe it, because the message was so powerful that I really took it for granted that this is the way it is, and therefor the most logical agenda to follow.
I think Tracy got a lot more than he bargained for that night too. Tracy had probably taken trips similar to these before. He probably didn’t think much about it, it’d be a good laugh, and that was about it. This one would be different though, because he was now pushing 30. He had a bunch of teen-agers around him who worshipped him as like something akin to a grandmaster, two of whom were from a completely different city, that had heard of him, through essentially, legend, via oral history and books. Tracy might have had the most profound trip of any of us that night, once you factor in society’s perception of creativity, and expectations of you as an adult. Tracy could at that point comprehend the history of what was happening. He knew society’s perceptions, and how maybe he wasn’t following them exactly. But here was a more powerful phenomenon, which he was privy too, and by recognizing that, it really was the responsible path to follow. The role in life he had chosen was clear.
Most people up to that time, though graffiti was a “kid’s thing”. But was it? His style had continued to progress and mature. Here, were people learning from him! In a way, we were reconnecting to our culture’s history, despite society’s efforts to keep it from us. Tracy might have gave lip service to “style” and “Wild Style” and lived it, but maybe it wasn’t until that night that the implications of this path would fully reveal itself. This was really a way of life, this wasn’t youthful folly, and THIS was his destiny as a creative person - To learn, to make, to show, to teach.
I look back now and I realize how I had really been sub-consciously repeating that night and the lessons learned from it ever since. Tracy had taken me on that journey, and ever since then I had been doing the same thing, repeating that journey, trying to show people that creative energy, power and the timelessness of expression in life, whether it was in my art, my music, my writing, talking, whatever. I must admit, not always successfully, because I had not really fully comprehended it all at the time, plus, I was to some degree, still blinded by society’s cloud of perceptions. To further complicate the matter, I was still chaotically trying to express and comprehend all the input!
Well, as it turns out, “Wild Style” is in fact, the perfect way describe the process of self-discovery. “Wild” means unencumbered and unrestrained by society. Your “Style”, is who you are. “Wild Style” is who and what you are, it is not just one thing. It is the totality of who and what you are. That totality is always changing and growing, and a large part of it is discovering and re-discovering who and/or what you are. When we put our feelings and emotions into an activity, and combine it with all we know up to that point, we are using our style, the better you know yourself, and the more you execute it, the better your style gets. “Ya got style!” “Wild Style Whatever you do, If you’re not the best, If you’re an artist, postal carrier, plumber or salesman, just be the best.” |
