Franklin Rosemont 1943 – 2009

Franklin Rosemont met André Breton in 1966 and this became a turning point in his life. A celebrated, poet, artist, historian, editor, and surrealist activist, he died on Sunday April 12 at age 65. With his partner and comrade of more than four decades, Penelope Rosemont, he cofounded in 1966 an enduring and adventuresome Chicago Surrealist Group, making the city a center in the reemergences worldwide of that movement of artistic and political revolt. Recently, he has been editing a series on Surrealism for the University of Texas. Morning Star: Surrealism, Marxism, Anarchism, Situationism, Utopia by French intellectual Michael Löwy was just published this spring.

Rosemont was born in Chicago October 2, 1943 to two of the area's more significant rank-and-file labor activists, the printer Henry Rosemont and the jazz musician Sally Rosemont. Dropping out of Maywood schools, he managed nonetheless to enter Roosevelt University in 1962. Already radicalized through family traditions, his experiences with the miseries inflicted by the educational system and his intense study of momentous political works and comics, prepared him to enter the stormy left culture of Roosevelt.

The mentorship of the African American scholar St. Clair Drake and his relationship with Penelope led him to much wider worlds. He "hitchhiked 20,000 miles" even as he discovered surrealist texts and art. Soon, with Penelope, he found the surrealist thinker André Breton in Paris. Close study and passionate activity characterized the Rosemonts' embrace of surrealism as well as their practice in art and organizing.

In the 1960s when he was in his 20s he was active with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Rebel Worker group and Students for a Democratic Society, Rosemont helped to lead an IWW strike of blueberry pickers in Michigan in 1964 and began a long and fruitful association with Paul Buhle in publishing a special surrealist issues of Radical America in 1970 and later Cultural Correspondence. Lavish, funny and barbed issues of Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion began to appear in the 70s.

The smashing success of the 1968 world surrealist exhibition at Gallery BugsBunny in Chicago announced the ability of the Chicago surrealists to have huge cultural impact without ceasing to be critics of the frozen mainstreams of art and politics. This show led to a host of regional exhibitions, culminating in the World Surrealist Exhibition in 1976, an international exhibition of unparalleled breadth, with 141 contemporary surrealists groups in 33 countries.

The Rosemonts soon became leading figures in the reorganization of the nation's oldest radical publisher, the Charles H. Kerr Company. Under their leadership, the Charles H. Kerr Company became, once again, a major publisher of leftist works, from C. L. R. James and Paul Lafargue to Edward Bellamy and Lucy Parsons. That work continues today. In this and in providing coordination for the surrealist Black Swan Press, Rosemont helped to make Chicago a center of nonsectarian surrealist creativity.

A friend and valued colleague of such figures as Herbert Marcuse, Studs Terkel, Leon Despres, Arturo Schwarz, Mary Low, and Clarence John Laughlin, the poets Philip Lamantia, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Dennis Brutus, the painter Lenora Carrington and the historians Paul Buhle, John Bracey, and Noel Ignatiev, Rosemont's own artistic and creative work was almost impossibly varied in inspirations and results. He was close friends with Guy Ducornet, Rikki Ducornet, Nancy Joyce Peters, Michael Löwy and many other artists and writers.

He also worked closely with fellow-surrealist Paul Garon, author of Blues and the Poetic Spirit and the historian of racism David Roediger, author of Wages of Whiteness. Without ever holding a university post, he wrote or edited scores of books while acting as a great resource for a host of other writers.

He became perhaps the most productive scholar of the hidden history of labor and the left in the United States. His spectacular study Joe Hill, The IWW & the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture began as a slim projected volume of that revolutionary martyr's rediscovered cartoons and grew to a giant volume providing our best guide to what the early twentieth century radical movement was like and what radical history might do. The French edition of this work on Joe Hill appeared earlier this year in Paris. His coedited volume with David Roediger Haymarket Scrapbook stands as the most beautifully illustrated labor history publication of the recent past. His books on Chicago’s hobohemia The Rise & Fall of the Dill Pickle Club and From Bughouse Square to the Beat Generation sparked a renewed interest in that era. With Archie Green who was last year honored by the Smithsonian he edited The Big Red Songbook.

In none of this did Rosemont separate scholarship from art, or art from revolt. His books of poetry, include Lamps Hurled at the Stunning Algebra of Ants, The Apple of the Automatic Zebra's Eye and Penelope. His activity at with the Wobblies at Solidarity Bookshop were illustrated in cartoon format in a book by Harvey Pekar edited by Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman. The SDS activity of he and Penelope were illustrated in another cartoon format book by Pekar and Paul Buhle, Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History. His marvelous fierce, whimsical and funny art work graced countless surrealist publications and exhibitions. A memorial will be announced.

the blue water vodun

Game 1: Hunting the Blue Water Vodun

On the Saturday 22^nd of February, along with the warmer weather, we were determined to know more about a Vodun of Nature and we ended up meeting the Elemental, whose name is the Blue Water Vodun.

While in the car, we prepared the game asking questions about The Elemental and its characteristics. We used the form of the five W’s (who, what, where, when, why/how).

We concluded that it lives mainly in our world where the blue color dominates within the landscape. It is small, minute and hard to see. It is silent. It changes forms and when it gets older, it renews itself every few months.

We are driven by our instinct and it took us to the south, to the nearby forests and beaches (Gooseberry Island, Westport, MA). We thought that Blue Water Vodun does not eat, yet it produces proteins for the soil instead and in return loves to be nourished, touched, and admired. The search expedition taught us that it indeed eats…crab!

From our mediocre assumptions that we have heard about this Nature Vodun, we know that it changes form and likes to play hide and go seek. We were hoping to get a glimpse of it.

So there we went and on the way to the island, we noticed that the forests of birch became increasingly thick. On our right, one of the trees wore the sign: No Hunting on this side of the road.

We knew we were outlaws if we were having in our minds a catch. We found a thermometer measuring the potential danger of entering the Vodun’s realm. We also found an Old Tree Trunk, at the door of the way, an elemental Guardian and more signs:

Messages, Hand Prints & Crab Remains…

Footprints changing form from canine to arrows…

We followed these signs to a mysterious tower on the horizon. On our path, we ran into a cage with a pile of shed skin next to it. More cages, ropes, and nets followed afterwards. Is somebody trying to catch it, or is the Blue Water Vodun trying to catch something…?

Then we found a piece of dread wood, with nails and drilled with holes. In one of the holes we found that there were two shells. We found it erotic. Can it be a pleasure form for the Blue Water Vodun? Interesting enough, we met a tiny creature, which happened to be fornicating with another piece of driftwood. It looked at us very surprised and we went on our way.

And sundials…

And finally, we approached the rocky and tedious path towards the tower. On the way, we found yet another sign of danger, a branch in the shape of a hangman’s noose. Then we ran into two more guardians in the form of dry grass. To our discovery, we found two towers instead of one. On the first, on its walls we saw spiritual flight paths, and on the second tower, a sign that read: This place is haunted.

We left, and the rear pass there was a gate and not far beyond the toilet, or more possibly, a point to sit and view the ocean.

Afterwards, we sat down to discuss our findings and came to the dramatic conclusion that the strange creature which we found enjoying itself on a piece of driftwood was in fact our Blue Water Vodun in one of its many forms. In that form, it seemed to resemble a kind of mechanical crab with bright yellow eyes and having only four legs. Our mission was indeed a success with photographic proof!

The Alchemical Bust Card

Dreamt by Merl on the night of 31st March – 1st April

Tensions mount over protest march

Metropolitan Police are warning that thousands of cavewomen in fur bikinis, and other hunter-gatherers of dubious provenance, are planning to hijack tomorrow's protest march through the capital in pursuit of ginormous solar-powered spiders.

The shadowy cult of extremists, known as the NUJ, have declared their intention to annihilate world civilisation through the power of cod-structuralist anthropology and to make all God's children "suckle at the teats of the Breasts of Sheba"*.

Said Assistant Chief Constable Rufus T Firefly, "We can all understand the widespread public anger at the selfishness, vainglory and stupidity of figures such as Professor Foghorn Leghorn. But we deplore the descent into mob rule which will ruin what should have been a pleasant and profitable afternoon's overtime for some of our more challenged members, who would otherwise be facing redundancy in this difficult economic climate."

It is widely rumoured that secondary supportive action will be taken by an armed gang known as the Forward Intelligence Team, who are expected to arrive at Professor Leghorn's house to present him with the Margaret Thatcher Memorial Award for Services by Megalomaniacal Fantasists to the Betrayal of the Working Class. At Earth Hour they will ceremonially demand that he put the kettle on so that they can all watch Casualty on his 48-inch colour TV. "This will cost me I say this will cost me a fortune on the leccy bill," said Professor Leghorn. "I'm only on 35 grand a year. Still, if they press their nuclear button I'll press mine. My prostate's got to be up there somewhere."

IN OTHER NEWS
Capitalism still in crisis – Revolution still necessary – Jade Goody still dead


*Please bring own shoes and wings.

Execution Escape Dream

“Come on,” he says to me, taking my hand gently. “It’s time to go.”

I know he is doing this for my own good. Or at least, for what he perceives to be my own good. But how, I want to shout at him, how is leading me to my own execution fucking good for me? Jake is tugging insistently on my sweaty palm, looking at me through bleary eyes, and I start to walk forwards. As I walk, I suddenly think, ‘I never knew you had green eyes’. For some reason, I’d always assumed they were blue. The power of assumption. I curse my Bayesian mind. What else have I failed to perceive, or have perceived incorrectly, that I will never get the chance now to correct? On my other side I feel an arm snake around my waist: my other best friend, Kevin. He squeezes my middle affectionately, and purposefully walks me on.

When we get to the tube station, Kevin breaks off to buy three tickets: return for them, single for me. When he hands me mine he hugs me tightly, almost crushing me, until Jake pulls him off with a stern look in his green eyes: they have to be stronger. Stronger than me, stronger than they naturally would be. I can almost feel that surge of energy as they muster more courage from the depths of their souls.

We take the first West-bound train that arrives, Jake and Kevin sitting in seats either side of me, my two hands in one each of theirs. None of us speak as the train trundles along, the glaring electric lights flickering occasionally. We pass one station, two, three, each one counting down to my time. Their hands are crushing mine, a small physical manifestation of their love, and the pain is most welcome, most welcome. And then, in between the third and forth stations, the train begins to slow down, and stop.

A crackle announces the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are currently experiencing a delay; there are passengers on the line ahead. We’ll start moving as soon as I receive the all clear. I’d like to apologise for the inconvenience this may cause to your journey.”

I can’t help it; I guffaw at that. The lights go off.

“Jake?” I say, squeezing his hand.

“Why have the lights gone off if it’s just people on the track?” he whispers, squeezing back. In the darkness I hear a wrenching sound; the doors being forced apart, and a man grunting with the exertion of the task. Suddenly my hands are empty.

“Jake!” I shout, pointlessly straining to look for them in the dark. “Kevin!”

Rough, strong hands pull me to my feet and as I scream and flail, they clamp around my waist and throw me out of the doors. I land with a thud not against the wall of the tube tunnel, but several metres across and down from the train, in a wide open space. The blackness is terrifyingly all-encompassing for a moment, and then the train starts up, the lights flick on, the doors close, and it starts up again. I see Jake and Kevin’s startled faces briefly through the train window; they are gazing in shock at each other, unaware that I am watching them from outside; and then they’re gone. A few seconds later, the entire train is gone, and the darkness is back.

__________________________________________________________________

I tremble in the dark for a thousand years, until I cannot remember whether the train ever truly existed, whether it is dark or I am blind, whether I am awake, whether I am alive. And then I hear the cough, and then I hear myself scream.

“Sh. You know who I am. Think.”

But I cannot think over the loudness of my own hitched breathing, over the pounding in my chest. I need a paper bag, I need a toilet, I need to lie down.

“Jenny, you know my voice.”

I do know it. I do know it.

“That’s right. You haven’t forgotten me yet.”

“I haven’t forgotten you,” I repeat.

“I haven’t forgotten you,” he says. “Just as I said I wouldn’t.”

“How?” I ask.

“It doesn’t matter now. We’ve got to move.”

The same rough hands that threw me out of the train pull me to my feet. One of them keeps my clammy hand steady as I shakily walk forward.

“Careful. There are steps. And they move.”

“Move?”

“The steps move, Jenny.” A light flicks on, blinding me. It takes me a minute to adjust to the brightness, and then I see it is coming from his head: a head torch. Below us, in front of us, above us, spreading for a hundred metres – or more, the light doesn’t penetrate further than that – are huge concrete steps; some stationary, some swinging wildly back and forth, like pendulums. Then I realise the floor beneath me is moving; I scream again, my legs collapse beneath me, and he picks me up again.

“I don’t want to die either. That’s why I’m here. Come on.”

His arm is wrapped tightly around my waist as we plunge to the stationary step below us; we land, thud, on the floor, and I breathe a sigh of relief. A step flies past my nose, and I faint.



“Come on, come on,” that voice says, as I feel droplets of water seeping into my mouth.

“What,” I groan.

“There’s no time. Come on.” I am pulled to my feet again and the headlight glares in my face as he looks at me. “Can you continue?”

“Yes.” As the step comes flying back again, we duck. Before it can return, we jump onto a slower-passing one below us, falling onto our backsides as soon as we land. That arm is still holding tightly onto my small body, steadying me. From that we leap onto a slightly higher step. And so we progress, to where I don’t know. Up and down we go, until I can’t tell whether we are slowly moving up, down, or nowhere at all.

__________________________________________________________________

How does he know where he’s going? I’m thinking the question, but I don’t ask him. It doesn’t matter if we do this until we are exhausted, dehydrated, forever.

A hitch in his breath tells me we have made our destination. There is solid above us; for the first time he lets go my waist; with both hands he pushes up at the ceiling. An almighty groan; a stone lifts up, light pours in. From above the stone is hauled away, he hauls me up, and I am out. My eyes burn and my head throbs as I curl foetally on the pavement. I hear hands and feet scuffling as he pulls himself out too, aided by – who?

I find myself at a chair by a table on a patio in Italy, or London with sun. He is opposite me, a waiter winking at us with a pad and pen in his hand by the side of our table. I order coffee for me, and coke for him. Time has gone backwards, yet there is dirt all over my clothes. The waiter hands me a pristine white towel and I brush myself down.

The drinks arrive. As I sip my coffee, he says:

“We need to get passports – that’s the first thing.”

Across the patio, a man in a suit catches my eye and smiles. I smile back, flattered.

My lover takes my hand. “Are you listening?”

“Yes,” I say. “Passports. How are we going to get them? I had mine taken.”

“So did I, but we can’t travel as ourselves anyway. We’ll meet Arnal later – he’s getting us fakes.”

I look over at the smiling man again. He is still looking at me and smiling. At his table is a cup of coffee, a packet of cigarettes, and a radio. My heart stops beating. I look at my lover, who is still talking about getting fake passports, back at the radio, and at the man who is taping us, a great big grin on his face. As I open my mouth to convey this, a white van screeches to a halt on the road beside the café. My lover and I jump out of our seats and run full pelt in opposite directions.



The sound of guns being fired and bullets missing their target; my panting breath, my aching limbs, my racing heart, the ringing in my ears. Up and up a steep hill I run, my youth and fitness an advantage over these bullet-proof-vest-wearing, armed and armoured police. I reach the peak, begin my descent over the other side; in my peripheral vision, I see a single soul coming up to meet me, taser and baton in hand. I turn abruptly and run back the way I came, only to face another five of the same. I spin around, realise I am surrounded, and slowly I raise my hands into the air.

A woman, distinguished from the policemen by her sex and clothing, saunters over to me, smiling nastily. She says nothing, but pads down my legs, arms, and body, then slices open my jacket lining with one swish of her dagger. As she plunges a hand into the fluffy inside of my jacket, my mind makes the unpleasant association of being raped; this is unhelped by her clear enjoyment of the act, of penetrating my clothing with her filthy, corrupt hand. And she is not to be vindicated in the act; I have concealed weapons, she withdraws, taking my protection, my comfort. I am led away, bound and broken.

“Where is he?” I ask of her as we walk towards my prison vehicle.

“Shot,” she says simply.

“Dead?” I whisper. She nods, smiling. I die a little bit too.

A slightly less sadistic copper gently guides me through the van’s metal doors. I glance at freedom through metal bars, and as I do so, I note that this is not a foreshadowing, for I am not to be locked away indefinitely. I wonder if that would be more or less cruel, and decide it would be more. But suddenly I see it: my lover, there he is, walking, and thus alive; he is being led roughly into another cage, and he catches my eye and winks. A rage of insurmountable proportion rears inside me as I think about how sadistic she was, that lady of the law, in telling me he was dead, expecting me never to find out different, before I perished.

__________________________________________________________________

My gentle captor opens the door after a cold, bad night.

“It’s today,” he says redundantly. “But you have been granted a final request.”

I sit up. “Restrictions?”

“None, within reason.”

“I want to see him.”

He nods. “He asks for the same.”

Along a corridor, out into the open. I am fitted with bugs, and tracking devices, told that I will be shot if I try to escape again, given the restrictions that I expected, though were told didn’t exist, and then – then I see him. He is fitted too, but his spirit is defiant – I can feel it.

We walk through a quiet, gentle forest. I curl my hand into his, and he places our hands both into his warm pocket. Our mouths talk of beauty and life as his finger tells my palm of escape and the future.

My heart is pounding as the hours drain away. We have had our time; now we must say goodbye to those that once loved us. Jake and Kevin cannot hold back their tears, but they refrain from breaking down. I am the only one who does not register surprise when I see my lover kiss Arnal fully on the mouth. I know his true purpose.

Josie Malinowski