“About My Mama Dying and All…“
That was the title of a short story I wrote, years ago. The first of it went like this:

I knew I’d best get in the mail before I got dressed for Mama’s funeral. Sand burrs and beg­gar lice spank my Con­verse high­tops as I wade through knee-​high ditch weeds to get to Mama’s mail­box. They’re cling­ing to my legs like my lonely cousin Richie used to do when I had to go home. I stop walk­ing and pick the razor-​sharp sons of bitches out of my jeans. Damn things. Slic­ing my legs every time I take a step.

No doubt I’m back in the Great Dis­mal. Dis­mal is what it is, fuck­ing Lizard Slip, god­dam Ter­rapin Track Road. This place still gives me the willies. Every day is the same. The ticks swarm­ing in front of my face, the sweat stream slid­ing down between my ass cheeks and pud­dling in my panties, the damn cicadas what sound like a thou­sand Richard Petty’s revving up in the pit.

I grab for Mama’s mail and wade back to her house.

Only it’s not her house any­more. On account of she’s real dead.
…

It’s a funny story to me because the pro­tag­o­nist burns down her mother’s house and walks away with­out look­ing back. But today, it hit me. Those last few months in Brit­thaven and her smile. The last seven years have truly been about my Mom dying. It’s not the title of some short fic­tion. It’s my real­ity. And Momma is really dead.

So today I involve myself in con­ver­sa­tions about the rel­a­tiv­ity and insan­ity that is Fluxus Art. There are fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple to know and they’ve allowed me into their dis­cus­sions. And allowed me to copy/​paste one of our Face­book threads here for you all. Dataoli­garchy. Brilliant.

The idea of noth­ing­ness from some­thing piques my inter­est and jumps my jive. When I take some­thing from my col­lec­tion and attach it to another some­thing, it becomes noth­ing because the form is not rec­og­nized. This, I believe, is my NuvoFluxus. And the noth­ing­ness I did not cre­ate is flux. It flows and even­tu­ally drowns in my per­sonal River of Strange. Or mixes with Momma’s ashes and Daddy’s WWII dog­tags on the book­shelf behind the porce­lain horses.

The play­ers in this par­tic­u­lar Face­book con­ver­sa­tion? I can hon­estly state, here and now, that aside from Ruth Chap­man Heinold, I have never con­versed with any­one as inter­est­ing as Bil­lie Maci­u­nas. I trea­sure our dialogs.

Bil­lie Maci­u­nas
Flora Mac­coll
Tara Ver­heide
Yours Truly

Bil­lie Maci­u­nas:
Fluxlist: a false pos­ti­tive in the age of dataoligarchy

Dialogist-​Kantor Pat­a­cy­clist:
pimp my fluxus (hahaha)

Tara Ver­heide:
Why false?

Tara: because Fluxus as I under­stand it from the Fluxus Man­i­festo can­not be con­tained in a list. For one thing, Fluxus includes nonartists. This is a list of pro­fes­sional artists who have in some way been approved to be on a list.

In addi­tion, the ques­tion of who approves or dis­ap­proves is not addressed. The infor­ma­tion appears to be inde­pen­dent of cir­cum­stances, time, and bias.

This list (and oth­ers like this, not only related to Fluxus) set a norm that can be bad for dis­senters or any­one who dies not fit the norm.…

Valerie: of course. Van­ity, van­ity, all is vanity.

Flora Mac­coll:
I’ve infil­trated it and here is a com­ment I read today: “Whether or not any­one unknown to Maci­u­nas is or can a fluxus artist was a mat­ter of some ques­tion on fluxlist and is now con­sid­ered a mute point. The fun now is for all of us to claim fluxus. I made a pub­lic announce­ment on our behalf back in 2002 that what­ever was fluxus includ­ing all fluxus… Read More prop­er­ties is now the prop­erty of the Fluxnexus. So we did a hos­tile takeover of fluxus. The only thing was, there was not any resis­tance to the takeover so it wasn’t actu­ally hos­tile. Just a takeover. Call us Flux­thugs if you like but that is what we did. It was fun. So now we’re all fluxus artists and we own fluxus.”

Flora Mac­coll:
I draw your atten­tion to this line in par­tic­u­lar:
“I made a pub­lic announce­ment on our behalf back in 2002 that what­ever was fluxus includ­ing all fluxus prop­er­ties is now the prop­erty of the Fluxnexus.“
The per­son who used the word “I” in this pas­sage appar­ently has assumed the lead­er­ship posi­tion and is now (accord­ing to him) the one and only true “spokesper­son” for fluxus. Let’s all start prac­tic­ing our genuflects.