How fitting is it that Kurt's essay invoking Easter Sunday is added to this website on Easter Sunday, 2018? Written in the mid-1970s, Kurt begins with commentary on yellow, the color of the paper he was using that day. An element of the magic Kurt employed was accepting all things, even the color of typing paper, as tokens of wisdom or oracles of guidance. For Kurt, joy came through following the thread, the woof connecting each thing to every thing. "Would the form, i.e. the color of the stock, the paper, the material form as a token of the space which is then marked, be preserved in the publishing of this--and by this, these marks in ink on this paper, as tokens of some words, which are themselves not spoken but thought, and which thoughts are only most summarily indicated by the words, etc.?"
Play of Dharma
Sometimes Kurt kept his notes in blue-lined paper notebooks and sometimes he kept his notes by typing them. Accordingly, this typewritten document leaps around--in much the way Kurt's mind moved concentrically rather than in a linear fashion. Is it poetry? Is it prose? Are these random notes of a wandering intellect? Red, white, black...the colors of the Triple Goddess; the thread is there to follow. Kurt sometimes called himself "a priest of Dionysus"...and are those mushrooms growing from the head of the Greek god?
Audio Lecture: Censorship and Obscenity
During 1969 Kurt was invited to give a guest lecture at San Francisco State University on censorship and obscenity. Having appeared as an expert witness at several obscenity trials, Kurt had become thoroughly familiar with the fine points of law governing obscenity in 1969, as well as the history of methods used by governments around the world to control "morality." Kurt's description of pornography is downright quaint by today's standards, yet his lecture provides valuable insight into a period of social turmoil in America and its changing attitude towards sex and obscenity. The audio runs about one-hour and twenty minutes and takes a minute to load.
Modern Times
The topic of modernity takes center stage in this short essay penned in 1967 by Kurt, a reflection upon the shift from an industrial notion of modernity, a la Charlie Chaplin, to an electronic one, a la Marshall McLuhan. Our view of history, Kurt notes, also has changed. "The recent past, approximately the last 500 years, has provided us with the conceptual and methodological equipment with which to resuscitate the distant past before it." And as an art historian, Kurt explores modern media and media figures, including comedians. "There are no more Chaplins. Modern times are now too complex, at once too gross and too subtle, to be counted out in the coin of such comedy."
The Bridgework of Exegesis
This short essay is typical of Kurt's ability to "dash-off" a paper in an effortless manner. It's said he would sometimes ask his students in class to bring up a topic, and he would deliver a lecture about it. "What's on your mind?" he would ask a student--"Nothing she would reply." "Alright," Kurt would respond, "Let's talk about nothing, the void." In this paper, Kurt examines one of his favorite subjects: language and the transmission of teachings.
Vogue Proposal: The Arts in L.A.
Within the same manila folder in which Kurt's notes and drafts for an article in Vogue magazine about "Hippie Culture" published in November 1967 were located, was found this proposal for an article about the arts in Los Angeles. In the proposal Kurt references the "upcoming Festival of Experimental Arts" planned for April of 1967; accordingly, this proposal was submitted prior to that. This proposed article was never published; it's likely that Vogue's editor re-directed Kurt to write about hippie culture instead of the Los Angeles art scene. The proposal provides a snapshot of Los Angeles in 1967, and Kurt's perspective on what was going on at that time.
Six Statements with Extrapolations for the Underground Press Service
In June of 1967 Israel conducted its six-day war against its Arab neighbors. Earlier, in April, The Experimental Arts Festival at UCLA featured a controversial "auto da fe" book-burning by Kurt von Meier as "stand-in" for supposed revolutionary artist Jose Que. Discontent in the black community was high, the Vietnam War was ramping up and anti-war activism was on the rise as well. Kurt von Meier, UCLA's unconventional art professor, was getting a lot of press attention, and writing for several underground newspapers, like the LA Free Press. This document was sent by Kurt to the Underground Press Service.
Joyce James in the Yucatan
This fictional account of Joyce James, correspondent for Tantradine International, takes place in the Yucatan during a hurricane. As is true of most of Kurt's fiction, it's filled with facts and observations about culture, language, mathematics, space, time and the power of intuition. And rock and roll tunes.
Truth and Quests
The title of this essay says a lot about Kurt von Meier, for he was always seeking truth and his quest never ended. Accordingly, he takes us on an excursion through space, time and mystery, wielding his Tarot deck, American Heritage Dictionary and Brown's Laws of Form as crystal mirrors upon which to gaze at his own reflections. It becomes a mirrored room stretching to eternity, illuminated with the True, Good, Beautiful and Real.
"Existence," writes von Meier, "is the level of the algebra, the being and doing of it, constants of the arithmetic applied to variables such as those encountered in time--although the algebra itself is not in time, only representations of it, arrangements of tokens; the relationships are transcultural, inside Eternity still."
BULLBEAR
Today's stock market is as unpredictable as that of any time in modern history. Using that as a jumping off point, Kurt goes on to explore the terminology of BULL and BEAR as applied to the stock market, in this short essay likely composed at one sitting around 1980. "It is, then, in the constellations that we see the transference from bull-orientation (Cowboy, Cowherd) to bear-orientation, which is northern (arctic)." At once informative and amusing, it's typical of Kurt's way of seeing the world as theater.
Zhikr Project
Sufism held an honored place in Kurt's heart; he could read and write some Persian, and spent years studying Sufi teachings and practices. In 1981, Kurt proposed a Zhikr Project, what is commonly called "Sufi Dancing." Contemplated as a five-evening program for 100 participants at Sac State, it was to be free of charge to the public. "The zhikr project is inspired in part by a felt need for this university to explore alternative means for the transmission of knowledge," Kurt writes. "Without sacrificing subtler insights, however, the zhikr affords a clear, objective example of effective teaching methodology." A greater understanding of Islamic and Middle Eastern culture was essential in the west, Kurt believed. Time has proven him to be correct.
Unwinding the Mystical Thread
This excerpt from Kurt's opus A Ball of Twine elucidates the mystical path, a path which intrigued and absorbed him. Exploring Soma (Amanita muscaria), Kurt then follows the mystical path of initiation through rituals and practices spread throughout the world. He concludes with a discussion of Benedictine, and Duchamp's references to it. He quotes and cites sources extensively, demonstrating his well-established habits of academic discipline.
Kurt plays the Shenhai
Kurt majored in Middle Eastern Studies while pursuing a major in International Relations prior to changing his major to Art History. He studied Persian, and Islamic culture and later traveled to Afghanistan. Somewhere along the way, he acquired a shenhai, a Pakistani wooden, double-reed wind instrument similar to an oboe. This recording takes place outdoors, with students in attendance. Of course, to properly invoke the magic, Kurt must arrange his blanket first. The year is likely in the early 1970s. At the end, ask yourself: is that Kurt von Meier or John Coltrane?
BYNOS
"The name of this file is written: BYNOS, and when called may sound like 'by the numbers,' since that is what it means." So begins this short, and somewhat cryptic essay by Kurt, written in 1986. Kurt, in his endless quest to discern the message and meaning beneath that commonly perceived, believed that forms of truth can be disclosed "by the numbers," often esoteric truths. BYNOS is jam-packed with fascinating references, despite its brevity, as well as a bit of von Meier macaronic poetry.
Rock & Roll and the Avant Garde
Kurt felt that Rock & Roll--and popular arts overall-- were grievously neglected by academia and cultural historians in 1968. "...there is still no course in TV watching that could provide us with even the minimum equipment for cultural self-defense. So we and our children will continue to be victims of media such as TV — until we at least begin to try to make some sense out of what the hell these media are, what they mean, and what they are doing to us in all our pretentious ignorance. And there is no course in the history of rock and roll or rhythm and blues." In this article in the June, 1968 edition of artscanada magazine, he makes his case.
Psycho-Tag
A whimsical essay about the game of tag slides into a discussion of time, space, mathematics, astrology and the I Ching; so goes the mind of Kurt von Meier. With reference to games, Kurt states, "...what lifts such contests from the polarized, adversary dualism characteristic of mercantilist economy and the self-help of nation states at war, is some supervening awareness of the process of the interaction, a consciousness of the game itself as a game...In more formal terms this can be described as the deep-level oscillations of an imaginary value in mathematics."
The Fourth Order
Kurt's immersion into Vajrayana Buddhism provided him with another modality for examining the "real." Polymath that he was, he brought everything to the table, and the "spice" of Buddhist teachings extensively flavored his writing during the 70s. In this written meditation, Kurt explores how we know what we know, the various ways knowledge is transmitted, how what was "'outside' is brought within, perceived, woven into the on-going working model of the world we each, like Atlas, carry on our shoulders."
GADDO GADDO
Nowadays Indonesian food is fairly common in California, but when offered at Kurt's Diamond Sutra Restaurant back in 1970 it was quite rare. Here's Kurt's recipe (via his alter-ego Jose Que, the fourth-world dishwasher at the Diamond Sutra) and treatise on GADDO GADDO, (sent to Helen Civelli Brown, Food Editor at the SF Examiner newspaper), a traditional, Indonesian, chile-infused peanut sauce that's tossed with greens. His discourse veers into matters distinctly non-recipe, including the avenue of Tantric enlightenment.
Weaving: Abiding in the Shadows
In this short essay written in the early nineteen-eighties, Kurt returns to several of his favorite topics: weaving, architecture and mythology. "On the islands of the Indonesian archipelago the status of weaving within a scale of culturally valued activities is most elevated. Wherever the most ancient forms of weaving--warp ikat techniques--have survived, the art and craft of spinning, dyeing and weaving are accorded paramount respect among all of the visual arts. Weaving is regarded as the principal art form, comparable to calligraphy in Islamic culture, painting in 19th century Europe, TV today.”
Audio: Local Color
When he moved to the Napa Valley in 1969, Kurt sank his roots deeply into the Valley's rich heritage. In this 15-min. reading of his prose-poem "Local Color" (1982) one hears his reverence for the land, its original inhabitants, nature and its bounty.
The text is included so that as Kurt reads you may read along.
