"I'm the Devil, here to do the Devils business." With those words, Tex Watson scatter-shot the oncoming carnage at Cielo Drive with diabolical import.
Tex-who like Susan Atkins-would conveniently find God in the cold concrete realities of a State penitentiary 6" x 8".
Tex, whose parole would be advocated by Susan Struthers, the daughter of the slain La Bianca's.
But that was later. There were grander forces at play in Tex's telemetry before Cielo Drive.
Several hundred years of bad vibes "man",sacred geometry's, archaic symbols, clandestine orders, dark intentions, threads colliding and colluding on the psychic human tapestry, to form the foundations of a sinister architecture.
Or in the words of Manson...
"From the world of darkness, I did loose demons and devils in the power of scorpions to torment."
The Man/son show runs until the 31st October at Hyaena Gallery, Burbank CA.
"There was something horrible permeating the air in LA in those days. The stench of Manson and the Sharon Tate murders."
David Bowie talking about living in LA in the 1970's
August 9th 1969. It was meant to be the dawning of the Age of Aquarius....the final median before the new decade.Two weeks on, the grainy spectacle of the Moon landings still resonated, mollifying the shadow of Vietnam and two dead Kennedy's. It was also the anniversary of Nagasaki*, as well as the birth date of Ed Gien. Two disparate moments, connected by a thread no less devastating in its repercussion.
For whilst the events at 10050 Cielo Drive that night, paled when measured against the true horror of 80,000 deaths, the fallout that radiated from the bloody carve up of a pregnant celebrity and her three friends was a secession on the hedonism of the decade, farther reaching in the collective conscious (or conscience) of America's fucked up tapestry, than any atom bomb.
The dawning of the new age was ritualized with the blood of an innocent.
That's the true travesty of Manson legacy, the true infallible obscenity, a decade christened by a faux slain Madonna and her unborn infant.
The 70's stillborn.
There could only be ashes beyond.
* for those wanting to pursue further Occult significance around the date, the flag from Nagasaki is the five pointed star, with five hermetic crosses in the center.
The Man/son show runs until the 31st October at Hyaena Gallery, Burbank CA.
Saturday was the official opening night of the Man/son showcase, and was easily my most successful show to date. I could give you all a full account, except the wonderful people at Cartwheelart have done it so much more eloquently than I could. Thank you Lisa at Cartwheel, thank you Hyaena, thank you Dahlia Jane who looked incredible in her Manson dress especially made for the occasion, and thank you everyone who came out and supported me.Cartwheelart article
Around the time the Beatles were supposedly seeding there waxings and sleeve artwork with messages that one of their number was deceased, Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski conceived a child who would be named Paul.
Had Sharon been hastily Cesarianed-as Sadie ghoulishly considered- Paul Polanski might have been born as an offering for Charlies Collective.
Paul Polanski, an infant spawned of sacrifice and ceremony like Rosmary's baby, a lion cub born of Jupiter like one of Crowleys moonchildren birthed in ritualized blood, a pupae that could be imprinted as a Monarch for the new dawn.
Paul would have been forty three years of age this year had he lived. What kind of life would be brought to consciousness by a baptism of slaughter and fire, I wonder? What kind of Man?
A son of man?
A son of Manson?
The Man/son show runs from the 1st-31st October at Hyaena Gallery, Burbank CA. Opening 6th October 8pm-12am
It was the doorway of a new perception, a doorway to carnage, smeared with Sharons blood the word "Pig"-a welcome matt, a single label pronouncement that could have come courtesy of Orwell's Animal farm.
On the fag end of the 60's, Police, politicians and squares were pigs. If you were the man, you were a pig. Tricky Dicky was most certainly a pig. And to Charlie's far out assassins, Sharon and her four friends, with there beauty and privileged Hollyweird lifestyle, were pigs of the lowest order,ripe for the butchers knife.
I wonder if Atkins knew she was conjuring allusions to the pregnant Egyptian Goddess, Neuth as she daubed the letters on the door with her blood stained towel. I wonder if she knew it signaled a ritual passage for a birth of a new dark age.
Sharon's new role, sacrificial Mondo Goddess haunting the vacant B-movie lots. Sharon as Eve and the rotten Apple record. Sharon as Aphrodite from the succulent fruit of Dionysus. Sharon as an adolescent artist's muse, a phantom sex symbol of flickering white porcelain for the late night double feature. Sharon as dead Madonna and child castrating the 70's like Adonis's boar, a limp tail curled like the number six, like a semaphore.
We are the pigs, for the threshold beyond the bloody epitaph makes a narcissist of us all.
The Man/son show runs from the 1st-31st October at Hyaena Gallery, Burbank CA. Opening 6th October 8pm-12am
"When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again."
The twists and turns of Helter Skelter, led Bugolosi into the hall of mirrors, one which he saw himself reflected,forging a lucrative new career writing the most successful 'true' crime fiction novel ever.
Helter Skelter-or Healter Skelter as it was written in blood on La Bianca's Freezer, a killer's catchphrase to hang with the shopping lists, postcards and fridge magnets.
"Listen" asks Bugolosi cupping his ear to the ground...Intoned in McCartneys raw vocals, in the shredding guitars, was the Devil unleashed?
Was he?
Was this song Charlies Catcher in the Rye, an inferno of annihilation embedded in-between the first note and Ringo's blistered fingers, composed to awaken the Mansonian candidate.
Helter Skelter coming down.
He(a)lter Skelter-recapitulated.
Easter Hell Trek
Hell retake rest
Lethal Seer Trek
You begin to sound like Bugolosi.
And yet...and yet,at the base of the downward spiral,in the labyrinth of tunnels beneath Laurel Canyon, echoed in the coyote howls of Death valley, or in the hollow of native Indian bones beneath, or scrawled in the bloody epiphets of victims blood, lies something dormant. A specter that stains the ether beyond the hallucinogenic haze. A dark totem constructed of ritual murder, ancient orders and corrupt organizations.
And when I get to the bottom there is her-Sharon Tate, the disfigured goddess, eternal mother of the stars,leading me back to the top again, the questions swirling as I go around and around the serpent again to the tail,stoking the fires of hell.
The hell of Helter Skelter.
The Man/son show runs from the 1st-31st October at Hyaena Gallery, Burbank CA. Opening 6th October 8pm-12am
Around about the same time I was born, Charles Manson met Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme on Venice Beach, introducing himself as the self aggrandized 'God of Fuck'.
He wasn't wrong, because the amount of Charlies Angels, willing to spread the gospel as well as their nubile thighs for the holy father, numbered around thirty by the time of trial.
I thought of Charlie- instilling his message with his divine wand and I painted the Scorpion from Revelation's fiery Pitt, engorged with blood and the eternal eye of Horus, like a phallus weeping blood and semen.
I thought of the bullshit Beatles/Bible hybrid that counted for pillow talk in his Hippie harem, and painted a copy of the White album under his arm.
I thought of the LSD that he doled out like Spanish fly and painted the little green tab as holy sacrament .
Charlie-the cartoon messiah, small hands, big head, like a marionette who had gotten loose of his strings,
Charlie-the literal God of fuck sewing his poison seed.
The Man/son show runs from the 1st-31st October at Hyaena Gallery, Burbank CA. Opening 6th October 8pm-12am
