Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, Found Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts

by David Shields

  Curiosity plus passion is almost equal to being smart. E = a Mazda car driving twice as fast. E = Michael Jordan dunking two balls while coughing. God is the closest thing to an all-knowing entity. She indexes over 9.5 billion Web pages, which is more than any search engine on the Web. She sorts through this vast amount of knowledge using her patented PageRank technology. God is virtually everywhere on earth at the same time. With the proliferation of Wi-Fi networks, one will eventually be able to access God.

  Through repetition, validity is assumed. The Flagellation thus becomes one part of a larger visual narrative, instantly recognizable. Flagellation scenes turn iconic in their thematic compatibility with each other, to see one is to be reminded of others already seen. This repetition strengthens their representation in religious culture. As with the Crucifixion, a familiarity close to comfort arises when gazing at a crucifixion painting, knowing absolutely the thing being killed will be a white male with a long face and relatively long nose. Nails and blood are optional. Clouds optional. Weeping women optional.

  Children tend to add a curlicue of smoke upon the addition of a chimney in a drawing of a house. What if all beach scenes had a symmetry of beach umbrellas and a ratio of birds to sky? A formation that urged copying. In China, there are no curlicues of smoke in children’s drawings. Smoke is usually represented by several soft, wavering lines. Studies such as this show Chinese children to be more thoughtful and observant than American children, who abbreviate visual language immediately to symbols. The sometimes discounted studies of children’s drawings have informed larger studies of lifestyle differences. “California coast drawings varied greatly according to the quality of the children’s mark-making tools. Wealthy children had the opportunity to mosaic with minerals and a wide variety of artistic plastics, whereas children in poorer neighborhoods stuck to construction paper and in extreme cases, broken glass.”

  Stick-men and -women are not necessarily the child-drawing norm. Studies found young Russian children making “bubble-men,” as researchers referred to them. These rounded sketches were thought to originate from the abundance of snowmen during the lengthy, snow-prone winters of the region.

  When American college students take their year abroad, there is no one familiar to greet them except a loneliness they outgrew years ago. Friends will be forged how pioneers forged rivers, how criminals and poor test-takers forge signatures. From this great distance, they will finally be able to see America, from looking around and not finding it. Buildings like cakes instead of Legos. If they go to art museums, they feel anxious. How can one stand the exquisitely stunning, divinely magnificent paintings in European cities? Making one nostalgic for the Middle Ages, the early ages, painted so painfully there are nowhere strokes, nowhere splatters, unnerving to see a scene so deeply actualized in two dimensions, the David in three, appealingly human, the most appealing human, a new ideal to bring home along with the souvenirs.

  All humans find themselves in an anxious daze by the end of these museums, the final floors are skipped or else run through frantically. The way to take these paintings in is to blink them, blur them, to look a little less than needed. Such eye-pleasing two-dimensionals beg to be marred, trashed, exposed in two dimensions. A wad of gum would do it, little circles of spit, a knife to reveal the wall behind it. It has been suggested the Louvre commission some copies of good size, very fine, expert renderings of one of the museum’s paintings, perhaps a collaged scene of a few, hung near the cafeteria to be mauled and defaced by tourists sick on beauty.

  Back to the discussion on David: Michelangelo has set up more than one teenage girl for disappointment. Delicate, arrogant, naturally toned, with big hands to hold, many girls fly home heart-struck, it’s true! Flocking to the first curly-haired boy they see, looking more carefully at the football team, too much time in the library, tying the phone cord in knots, settling for a prom date, etc., etc., rooting for Italy even in the Olympics. Relative to Jesus but in a different way. One girl’s experience with both was to fall for the David, returning home only to sculpt him out of white chocolate and melt him (melt him!) on a hot plate. Then meeting a David and understanding the world’s preoccupation with Jesus, see diary entry below:

  The bluest eye proposal was met by one unknowing boy

  who had the bluest eyes, winning, generous, butt-perfect,

  pleasing, spontaneous and breathing, mother nature’s son but shy,

  silly, dillied

  all down. If Jesus was like that, then finally I understand

  everyone’s preoccupation.

  If one could suspend knowledge and judgment, consider Jesus as the kind-hearted high school sweetheart who dies tragically in a car crash (and just two days before graduation!) A dead boyfriend, as we all know, is impossible to “get over,” having committed no crime besides stealing our hearts, etc. Breaking off a relationship with no one breaking it off, this kind of end is very hard to accept, leaving the left one thinking, if only I had driven myself, if only I hadn’t insisted on ice cream, if only the weather had been nicer, or the road had been cleared, or my purse hadn’t been lazily draped over the gear shift, etc. The large Christian world wants to meet, to speak with, the tragically died-young, the perpetual. There is no old-aged Lennon, no middle-aged Cobain running amuck. To die young is to stay young, to keep everyone wanting to stay young with you, to make them afraid to approach an age you never got to, that you were supposed to get to first.

  In Japan, a young girl published an essay on Cobain’s voice. A rough translation states:

  Cobain’s voice houses more than one voice. This magic of voice is most clearly deciphered on the Unplugged album. I could find enough levels in Kurt Cobain’s voice to live satisfied, but the rest of my family wasn’t as fortunate.

  The text goes on to question the structural makeup of Cobain’s throat. Does it contain pebbles or kernels that rumble along? Would the writer try to communicate with Cobain if he had not left his body behind as evidence? Does one assist a dead musician by covering his songs?

  A cover is a new rendition of a previously recorded song. Usually, the original recording is regarded as the definitive version and all others lesser competitors, alternates, or tributes. Songs have been covered since the first melody hummed in the presence of another. Monkeys covered songs way before they lost the hair. Adam and Eve used to sing while they had sex in streams. Crickets sure sing similar and leaves have a song, birds, thunder claps are a kind, not so popular or pleasing, but everyone has their music. Different car engines sound good together. An airplane duets nicely with a lawnmower. Music proves one of the most exciting and accessible art forms to cover. A number of literary covers have been produced by a junior high English class, the text only differing in handwriting. Historical recreations, for example, Civil War reenactments could be considered covers, but those wars are fake. A cover song holds all qualities that define a song; a cover song is definitely real. One can argue, as the text here is about to, a cover version makes a song more real, alive even, since changing the form calls attention to the original, shows the song is still identifiable as the song, even with different qualities.

  Some turn into dance songs, “Always on My Mind,” for instance, sung first by Brenda Lee, popularized by Elvis, then re-covered by Willie Nelson, then turned dance by the Pet Shop Boys. Newly-turned dance covers sound careless, freed from their gloom by immortal beats. These beats keep going after the song has stopped. Beat-making machines have no off button. They must be stuffed in pillows, in closets, in sheds, buried in backyards, until the beat is needed once again.

  Does a cover unleash the song? One that’s been called the best, Hendrix completely outgunning a Dylan original, throwing it far from Bob’s scratchy so-so. John Coltrane rescues “My Favorite Things” from the original The Sound of Music version. His meandering jazz masterpiece weaves in and out of melody, trilling notes out of control, and all the while the listener has the other prim version in her head. No one sings lyrics i
n Coltrane’s version. They are offered by the song’s ghost. Coltrane’s melody calls to mind the kittens and string. Then the instruments storm, there are hundreds of cats, way too much string.

  Digital appropriation can be a form of 4th-dimensional rape, as in the mash-up of Ludacris’s “What’s Your Fantasy” and Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head.” The combination of the two, referred to as “Can’t lick you out of my head,” puts Kylie’s backing dance beat over Ludacris’s dark questioning keyboard, transforming Ludacris’s lyrics into a seduction. All that’s left of Kylie’s voice is her girlish “la-la-la” chorus and it’s being used against her. Anonymous assault is common, comparable to Photoshop scandal, the cut and paste from one online chat to another, but incomparable to the questionable assault of Kobe Bryant upon Unnamed:

  We stood right here and started having the you know,

  the foreplay happened right here . . . the hug goodbye

  thing or whatever . . . we just started kissing. I asked her I

  said you know, she bent over, and walked over on her own

  free will . . . put her foot up here all by herself and if that

  wasn’t consensual . . . Did she cry, no . . . She didn’t cry

  at all . . . I didn’t say she slipped off, she just you know removed

  herself from . . . I said she slid off . . . Slid off like

  when uh, that was it and I stood there like this and uh you

  know, put it back in my pants so you know, that was it no

  more no nothing . . . She kissed goodbye. Boom . . . I put

  my thing back in my pants when I was through and she . . .

  no, she didn’t leave, we kissed goodbye, we kissed goodbye

  Other notorious ballers, the Detroit Piston Bad Boys were known for their unforgiving physical style. One of Rick Mahorn’s tactics was to foul an opponent after another Piston had already fouled him and the whistle had blown. In a display of poor sportsmanship, they walked off the court, refusing to shake hands with the Bulls after losing to them in the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals. The Pistons leave behind a vivid legacy and the league’s subsequent addition of the flagrant foul rule, granting the badly-fouled two shots and possession of the ball.

  Legacies leave things behind. The left-behinds transform to the lost. None would know how Christ looked had the villagers not run to their huts inspired. Darwin patterns decorate more than exotic animals. The Toyota Camry slowly morphs to the more luxury look of the Lexus. A prominent Cadillac grill copied on a new Ford. Is this the same thing that gets daughters like mothers? Nowadays, teens are texting their picks for natural selection. The process of learning is a brain transmission of ideas, the original electricity of contact and understanding. Are Jesus paintings covers of Jesus paintings? Or of Jesus? One can argue all portraits as covers, sunsets covers too, a day a cover of the last, a year, a century. The USA is a cover of England. Football a cover of war. This links everything to a repetitive tradition. Lightning bolts assisted in this game of improvement. Saints no longer hoard ecstasy. iPod nanos spark bedrooms on fire. As Jimi Hendrix writes on a postcard home:

  25

  THE HUMAN SIDE OF

  INSTRUMENTAL TRANSCOMMUNICATION

  Wendy Brenner

  GREETINGS, AND WELCOME to the third annual Conference of the Instrumental Transcommunication Network. Special welcome to those organizations joining us this year for the first time: the Engineering Anomalies Research Society (“EARS”), the Electromagnetic Aberrations Research Society (also “EARS”), the Tinnitus Family, and Chronic Pain Anonymous. We are delighted to see such a large turnout—surely our growing numbers indicate that the validity of instrumental transcommunication is becoming apparent to even our most outspoken critics.

  I would now like to share some thoughts about the meaning of this year’s conference theme, “The Human Side of Instrumental Transcommunication.” For myself, founder of the Instrumental Transcommunication Network, the answer to the question “Why use tape recorders, televisions, and computers to attempt to communicate interdimensionally with spirit beings?” has always been a highly personal one.

  My involvement in the field began four years ago in St. Augustine, Florida, where I was vacationing with my wife and son, Nathan—who at that time was the only person in our family with a particular interest in recording equipment. Then seven years old, he already owned a dozen miniature tape recorders, and more cassettes than crayons. When he was only a baby he had discovered my wife’s little Panasonic portable from her journalism school days, digging it out of a box in the basement and screaming when we tried to pry it away. Thereafter, we bought tape recorders for him wherever we saw them, at thrift stores, flea markets, garage sales we happened to pass. They were cheap, we reasoned, too big to swallow, and Nathan couldn’t seem to get enough of them—he carried them around like hamsters and wouldn’t sleep without one or two in his bed. On his first day of kindergarten an entire wing of his school had to be evacuated when the tape recorder he kept in his windbreaker got stuck on fast-forward in the coatroom and was believed to be a ticking bomb.

  He just had a way with those little machines. He could rewind or fast-forward any cassette tape to the exact spot he wanted on the first try, without using the counter device, and on long car trips my wife and I took turns requesting songs from the middles of tapes to keep him busy. He would sit on the floor under the dashboard and put his ear up next to the tape deck like a safecracker, and then his whole face would light up as though someone had flipped a switch behind it when he hit the right spot, pressed the play button and my wife’s favorite song came on once again, perfectly cued to the beginning. He never missed, and, like any good magician, he never told his secrets.

  Interestingly, though, despite his love for junky cassette players, Nathan didn’t care at all for the brand new Walkman my wife’s mother bought him. His real love was for making tapes, not listening to them, we discovered, so we allowed him to make as many as he wanted. He recorded himself talking in different voices, acting out dramas full of coyotes, opera singers, helicopters, Mack trucks, nuclear emergency alert sirens, hives of angry bees. In his stories people had frequent arguments, and there were many slamming doors, much shouting to be let in or out.

  He was so enthusiastic about his sound effects that he tended to neglect things like plot and logic, jumping from one sensational noise to another without explanation, rushing through dialogue and mixing up his voices so that half the time we couldn’t understand what any of his characters were saying, or even what was going on. “You’ll have to slow down and enunciate,” my wife, ever the good editor, would tell him, “because whatever you just said there is not a word.” But Nathan paid no heed. “If it’s not a word,” he argued, “then how come I just said it?”

  Of course he could not have understood how meaningful that offhand remark would come to be, to so many of us. He was saying, of course, that the act of communication is of greater significance than the means used to achieve it. Who among us today has not felt deeply that very sentiment? But I digress.

  On our trip to St. Augustine, I will always remember, Nathan wished for three things: to visit a Spanish war fort, to find and bring home an unbroken sand dollar, and to get the hotel maid to talk into his tape recorder. This was his first stay in a hotel since he was a baby, and he grew very excited when we explained to him that a lady was going to come into our room while we weren’t there and make our beds and leave clean towels for us. “A lady we know?” he asked, and when we told him no, a strange lady, he concluded it was the tooth fairy, or someone just like her, perhaps her friend. This was where they probably lived, he said—in Florida. We tried to explain the truth without letting on that the tooth fairy wasn’t real, but Nathan only grew more certain in his belief. Every morning before we left the hotel room to go down to breakfast or the beach, he set up one of his tape recorders on the dresser with this note:

  Unfortunately, the woman never responded. Ev
ery night when we returned to the room Nathan ran to the recorder, but it had never been touched, and he grew more disappointed every day. We had already photographed him waving down at us from the parapet of the war fort, and he had not one but several perfect specimens of sand dollars wrapped in Kleenex like cookies and tucked for safety in our suitcase pockets. Yet these successes seemed only to make him more frustrated, as if this were some fairy tale where he had to satisfy an angry king. “Why didn’t she do it, why?” he cried to us, night after night. It was possible the cleaning lady didn’t speak or read English, we told him, or, more likely, she didn’t want to disturb the belongings of guests—or perhaps she never even saw the note, or realized it was intended for her.

  Privately my wife and I discussed tracking this woman down and talking to her, or finding another hotel employee who would cooperate, or even disguising one of our voices and recording the message ourselves. We had written little notes to him from the tooth fairy, my wife said, and wasn’t this the same thing? But in the end we decided it was best to leave the situation to chance. Since we knew the maid was a real person capable of responding, we wanted her message, should it come, to be genuine. My wife eventually came to question this decision, but, as all of us here today undoubtedly understand, in such a situation integrity cannot be compromised, regardless of how desperately our hearts might long for different outcomes to our experiments.

  Consider the pioneers in our field: Dr. Konstantin Raudive, who made over one hundred thousand separate recordings after hearing a single mysterious voice on a blank, brand new tape; or Friedrich Juergenson, who abandoned his successful opera-singing career so he could investigate electronic voice phenomena full-time after some strange voices speaking Norwegian turned up on a tape on which he had recorded bird calls. Falsifying results was never an option for these scientists, as it should never be for us.