Surrealism as a cultural force does not remain an existent and discussed phenomenon because of technology or any of the developments since Breton’s group. It is a chthonic, primal force with roots in shamanism, primitive cultures, and every last magical, obscure secret in the history of magic. Every bejeweled rock which remains unturned is the fuel for the surrealist quest.
Pharisees continue as they do, drowning themselves in the University safes filled with the carbonation of cowardice’s wine and on demand vanity. As academia falls apart (and academia was never an intended facet of Surrealism; indeed, it was something to be scorned) we can expect the faculty to behave as they always have; worse, actually.
Now the world faces the actual threat of global fascism. However much we wax our denial systems up this is and will be the case. The election of Donald Trump to the Presidential office is a nightmare of such severity that it is almost impossible to contextualize. Taking the attitude that since the system is just monstrous anyway and we therefore should be happy is bad faith.
Though those who consistently shun the full mile in Surrealism (meanwhile one can only inhale this bitter gnosis by going beyond the final mile at least once) and insist it is some form of solipsistic masturbation, this is the time for absolute revolt. If one is not finding ways to take Donald Trump and his capitalist minions, filled to the head with pyrite gold and scorn for life, one is not living up to the bar set up by Breton, Desnos, Eluard, Peret, Carrington, or even Andre Gide.
Attending a protest before the possibility of this dystopian cape falling on our faces actualized itself, I noticed a tremendous energy particularly on the people who had to eat verbal diarrhea from Trump: the minorities. The second time there was a figure who incarnated revolt in a very real sense; a lone figure on a cold day in November holding his sign, bringing out multifaceted pictures of his family, his home, and who he was apart from trump’s derisive negations of Mexicans as “rapists” and “criminals”.
Trump is made inside and outside of the putrid materials we have pledged a lifelong fight against. In just a few days he will be able to do whatever he wants with the United States, and his malicious disasters will spill into countries like Brazil, Germany, Belgium.
I believe it is time to unite outside Trump Towers as one, as a surrealist collective, and refuse to leave.
John Thomas Allen
author of: The Lighthouse Above The Graveyard: A Surrealist Seance
with Alan Gullette
Spectre by Deborah Stevenson