This week, in addition to doing naked eye observations in Astrology, we had to dissect a baby pig in biology lab. We had no volunteers at our table of four who were willing to do the dissecting, something I vaguely remember with a frog in a high school class before. Ours was a small baby female pig. I decided to begin so we could get it over with by thinking of it like cutting up a chicken to get past the initial grim thought of cutting through the skin. Then I named the pig "Pearl" and thought about Ichabod Crane in the movie "Sleepy Hollow," the coroner who fainted easily, and rolled up my sleeves. Once I got started, I became more interested by the details of the different organs. By the time we were finished, I was ready to look at the brain, one of the most interesting organs to me, but we found out we couldn't include anything above the neck. I can see why Dr. Frankenstein became so obsessed, there is something fascinating about understanding how things work that makes it hard to know when you've gone to far. (Never give me a scalpel unless you really want me to use it.) I had a small following before it was over who were also interested in looking at the brain. I'd say it went well, with a stretch of the imagination, except for the missing blood, white lab coats, the electricity, the storm and the castle - I shouldn't have read Mary Shelley's "Frankentein" the semester before I took biology, things tend to overlap a bit and I like to relate all things to art and literature. This kind of procedure could even be considered a work of art by the cut-ups, although the use of preservatives made me wonder what the universe could be saying to me in the "now". The song playing in my head through the procedure was ohGr's song "Cracker" and Death in June's "All Pigs Must Die," but I'm not sure what that means except that I don't think it means literally that all the pigs must die. And not to ruin a good piggy song, but I am sorry that this one had to die.
A few weeks ago I had a similar but alternate experience when I went to the Asian market with two friends, Cooper and Ben from the band Warped Corpses. Ben wanted to cook dinner for us all and he sometimes makes his own sushi. This time he wanted to try a frozen octopus. I was already sick that evening, so I rested on the couch while they were doing all the preparation for the dinner. It turned out that they had to clean it before cooking and the size of the octopus was similar to the little pig except they also had to remove its eight long tentacles. I wondered if they were enjoying themselves much more than they should have for such a gory task. I don't think I heard them laughing and "cutting up" so much before and I realized that they were more interested in exploring the dinner than actually cooking or eating it. I was tempted to look in on them but I didn't want to spoil the magic, and unless like Tom Green on "Freddie Got Fingered," I might find one of them wearing the octopus on his head. They weren't being obscene or disrespectful of its being, but just having some good clean-ing fun, and although the laboratory and scientific observations were missing, the wonder of exploring life and playing like children seemed more connected to the nature of life as a scientific naked eye observation. But then, maybe I have gotten used to their peculiar sense of humor. I didn't get to eat the dinner since I was sick, but it turned out to be a really nice meal when it was all done.
A quote from an article from a previous project I did about William Burroughs and cut-ups:
In reading "hermann nitsch' orgien mysterien theater- the artist as high priest," an online article, I recognize a correlation between the artist as painter and the cut-up method of writing in the following paragraph:
"When paint turns into intestines and painting into slaughtering, also the painter must be drawn into such vortex. Whereas formerly he used to disappear in the canvas, he now places himself in the forefront as an actor staging the act of painting. The canvas is literally turned into a mere backdrop. Already action painting introduced ‘das Schaumalen’ - ‘painting as a performance’, as Nitsch has it (p. 49). In the footsteps of Pollock he begins to ‘paint and splash huge planes, jumping around on the canvas and to let himself go’ (p. 61). The trend is accomplished when the product is wholly replaced by the process: from painting to ‘Aktion’ – the German word for 'happening.'"
The dissection wasn't what most would consider high art, but we all knew it needed to happen. I also remembered that I have been and hopefully not again at the other end of the scalpel.
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