Interview

Small Space Lafayette Transcription.

Here are my questions about your riot police piece outside Sylvia’s Brick Oven:

Q:What is the title of the piece?

 A:   The piece did not have a title yet. In fact, it was not a complete piece. It was the first step in what was (or will be) a much broader and more complex piece, meant to reflect the current transition of what it once meant to be law officer in the United States compared to what it means today and possibly the future. 

Q: What’s your take on the recent proliferation of images of a militarized police in Ferguson?

A:    Mostly confusion. I (like anyone paying attention to American media) have been bombarded with images and coverage of this incident and its reactions. But honestly I have yet to find a truly objective stand point on what actually happened there, which is kind of terrifying if you think about for a moment. A lot of people are quick to jump to one side on a gut reaction. I'm guilty of the feeling, as I assume we all are from time to time. But I believe the truly responsible thing to do with that is to reflect on that initial gut reaction in whatever way we can. I  draw and write most of the time. The one thing I'm firm on; a family's child is dead, and no matter what this deceased person's conduct was before their death, the family deserves some answers, even if they do not ever truly get any. 

    To be honest, though, this whole idea of what I planned on making, really, wasn't suppose to be about Ferguson. Ferguson, like any sensationalized media event, is more of a catalyst to think about things that we usually like to pretend we do not think about.  Law officers are being militarized in this country and I believe (because every time I see it, it scares me) that leads people to an us versus them mentality when it comes to police officers. I will never have that thought because I was raised by a police officer -my father- and I know he's a good man. When I decided to draw that image, what I saw was a man, no doubt tired, but still completing his duty, whether he liked it or not. When I draw things, my ultimate goal is not to glamorize what I'm drawing, but ground them directly in reality and humanity. Sometimes I'm successful. Sometimes I fail. It's not going to stop me from what I do, though.

Q: Do you think police departments in the U.S. have a “bully cop” mentality issue among some cops?

A:    I do think some of places do, but not around here. I've been around enough places in the United States to know that Lafayette and West Lafayette are pretty safe places to live. I think police misconduct around here is more of result of frustration and human error. You do not have a choice as a police officer to deal with only the people you are compatible with. But because of that reason, it seems imperative that you know how to deal with those others that you are confronted with in the most rational manner.
  

Q: Why do you believe your piece was ultimately covered up?

 A: I would guess mostly frustration. I'd imagine, in a nation so plugged in as ours is to the free reign internet media, that many average Midwestern cops, who go about there day simply hoping they can get back to their home and families, are tired of being demonized by what something someone else has done. I put up  the beginning of that piece up for a reason, as you must already know. It's a police officer in a riot helmet facing a police station. It was just his face with that helmet on. In many ways it is benign,  but it raises a lot of unanswered questions about our current social environment as Americans (or at least I hope it does.) I'm really okay with that because it means that people still care; they are not always apathetic, even if what they believe is not what I believe. We are a part of history; we are a part of American history (and forgive the hyperbole) but I want to be a part of that American history in whatever way I can, no matter how minor. Is it a success or failure? No matter. As far as I can tell, it doesn't stop me from paying attention and translating what I see in someway that fits me, and ultimately, hopefully, it helps me understand the world I see around me. And having a platform makes me feel a little bit better 

 Q: What would you like to say to the Lafayette police officers who called to have the piece taken down?

A:   I would like to say, as I would say to anyone (police officer or not) "Please take a second to look at what you are actually seeing and let it set in before you jumped to conclusions." I have an art degree and the main thing I was taught about art in our times -beyond aesthetics and purity- is that great art inspires discussion, discourse, debate, anything but apathy. Whether it lasts depends on how history unfolds, but I'm not worried about that.  It won't stop me from what I do as pure meditation. The value of that is intrinsic to me.

Aaron C. Molden 

To America: August 2014

America, please.
I do not want to idealistically see us as foes.
Despite everything I see
and everything I hear
and everything I read
and ruminate on and come to conclusions with,
I still feel the red-blooded desire
to be understood as a person through you,
My one nation under God.
The problem is, I am wounded and worried
and anxious of the choices that the powers that be are making.
These; executive, legislative, judicial.
Law and order with liberty and justice for all, right?
We are all assuming animal's, I know this.
We naturally look for trends and reoccurring themes
in life and people and places; in everything.
We have biases, prejudices, flaws, perceptions.
It is one of the things that make us different
(all humans, not only Americans)
but, America, I will never feel full and vital
with  patriotic pride unless we hold on our belief
that all of us
ALL OF US!
are living, breathing, thinking, loving, discerning human beings
with dreams, aspiration, desires (even if they are simple or petty.)
Who can trust the institution it was hopefully raised to respect
and trust that it has their best interests in mind.
I'm not turning a blind eye or a deaf ear.
I am not naive, but I do at least try to hold on to the belief
that every sudden and unexpected death is tragedy, always.
Everyone is someone's child.
If you cannot see that, America,
Then I am afraid you have lost your humanity,
but it doesn't have to remain that way.

Aaron C. Molden

Adreline

Before and after a thunderstorm
are the best moments, aesthetically.
The colors emitted from the sky
and upon the Earth's surface
-just the day before, only pleasant,
but generally mundane-
glow in the air and on the ground
like some ecstasy of light and color,
their source seeming from an alien place.
A rainbow is not necessary,
but if a rainbow appears in this firmament
all the better.
It is a lovely contrast,
those light and lighter blues,
those subtle and profound pinks
whites, peaches, oranges.
They are set so far out
in that nearly unfathomable distance,
behind the darkening green
of July's terra firma and flora
over growing in this giving abode.

The sound of yelping country folk
egging on the illegal roar of street racing.
Atop that growl of revving engines,
a drain pipe drizzles with a staccato resonance.
A muffled hoot.
A muffled holler in the distance to the east
and just what are those unknown voices racing for?
"Six laps in counting!"
The thunderstorm riled them up
like dogs and they need to taste a little danger.
"The summer is here
and the time is right
for racing in the street."
Do not say the Boss never gave you something.
In the waning light of this post-storm sunset
the revving of engines grows louder.
The howls of the half feral speed men
become more pronounced and guttural.
There is a show tonight that will begin soon
and the show is sure to be a full moon show.

"Woo!" they yell.
"Woo hoo!" loud and proud
as the racers press hard their gas pedal
on the straight away of the race course.
Some in the crowd,
others listening, secretly,
wish for one of them to crash
and immerse their soul
in a fiery automobile baptism.
All the while, the rain gutter continues to dribble.
Then moments of mass hysteria
bleed into the consciousness
of the surrounding sound
of noise pollution.
Cars barrel down the streets
of the neighborhood
like a gospel call and response
to the sounds of the race,
so far, but still so distant from them.
The spotlights on the track kick on
after the sun finally and so completely
rests its glowing head beneath the western horizon.
(Hello, you beautiful beings so distant from me,
but still close to my heart. The sun is only yours, now.)
Soon enough, we'll move on to demolition derbies.

Aaron C. Molden

7th and Columbia

    The three Figg sister's were put into the custody of the state after their brother, Dakota, stabbed their mother to death with a kitchen butcher knife and afterwards was shot to death by a Lafayette police officer.
    There was Rebecca the oldest, Sarah the middle child, and the youngest, Stephanie.
    After the girls school, where Stephanie sunk her teeth into the cheek of a roommate's face and ripped out a handful of her frizzy strawberry blond hair (they were having a fight over why they were sent to the reformatory school) Stephanie decided to run away and live on the streets. She resorted to prostitution sometimes, if she simply needed a meal or a place to stay out of the cold for a night.
    Eventually she found a man with enough money to pay the rent most of the time, though she claimed  to never know his occupation. They began living together.
    She said she cooked all his meals for him.
    She claimed she performed all her womanly duties, pointing out specifically that she would suck his dick.
    She claimed he would hit her when he became angry because she slept with another man for money when he couldn't pay the bills that month, but she would just hit him right back. She was still young and agile, and he being so much older and slower than her, he would helplessly lose the altercation. "It happened too many times." She told the police. "I got fed up."
    Most of the time, they would laugh at each other after fights. She would hold him in her arms, rocking away the suscpicions they had for each other.
    Tyrone was his name, but all of his friends and some of his family called him Baby Bird because of his shrivelled and atrophied arm.
    It was out in front of the Tippecanoe public library in broad daylight. Stephanie pulled out the pocket knife with the black plastic handle and yelled "I know you're still fucking her!" She thrust the blade torward his skinny brown chest. His stained white polo shirt rippled in the hot summer air before the knife lacerated the cotton and plunged through his skin and entered the viscera of his gut. She pulled the knife out and went to stick him again, but he choped the blade away; the edge of the blade sliced the outside of his palm and fell to the sidewalk rat-a-tat-tating on the surface while small specks of deep crimson misted the grey composite.
    He grappled Stephanie around the neck. "Woman, have lost your goddamn mind!" He growled.
    That is when the police car pulled off of Columbia Street onto 7th. Tyrone (a.k.a Baby Bird) jogged over to the police officer , his hand dripping blood and his polo shirt saturating a deep red outwards from one small crescent shaped hole below his ribs; not between the fifth rib. "This bitch stabbed me, man!"
    The police officer turned the key of his Charger off. "Step away from the car, sir. We'll get this sorted out."
    An ambulance showed up and took Tyrone away. Questions ensued. Back-up arrived. She was hand cuffed. One of the police officers took pictures of the bloody knife with his phone. Another officer took Stephanie's state issued I.D. "You're a Figg" he said, but did not ask.

Aaron C. Molden

Strange World

This is a strange place.
Everything works the opposite way
from what stories have told me.
I have a hard time believing fairy tales.
Or folk legend.
We do not live happily ever after,
we simply get by.
We simply keep surviving
until we cannot survive anymore.
Such a blessing to be so
Complacent and still apathetic.

The pops of the incendiaries
barely affect me anymore.
Fireworks are such a strange joy.
The opposite, but somehow the same
as jumping feet first or head first
or side first or cartwheeling
into unknown water.

No matter. Insanity is no matter.
This whole charade pales
in comparison to the world
and universe at large.
Nevertheless, I peer out into an ocean
of pretty faces beyond the darkness before me
and still remember yours.
And, that, somehow, makes me smile.
It makes me feel foolish,
but not foolish enough
to stop me from smiling,
even as the bombardments continue
as my neighbors yell at their children
and their pets growl and bay
as the crickets rustle and buzz
in the onslaught of explosions
that seem to rile no one but myself.
Strange world we live in.
Strange world.

Aaron C. Molden

Independence Day

I.
This is preposterous.
This whole situation
which is only a situation
because we all hold it in our heads
due to the how we were raised
and where we were raised
to do this and that
and do it well,
because there is nothing worth doing
that is not worth doing well.
Tradition and ritual has its place,
but I have a hard time trusting it
when it has become as perverse as it has.
We are Americans.
The United States of America:
founded with enlightened pride
and discernment.
We should be bound by an oath
of reason and democracy
or else we'll sink like the Roman Empire.
BOOM! goes the dynamite.

II.
Try and comprehend what Americans
have done to this western world.
Comprehend what humans,
white humans most of the time,
have done to this world.
For Christ's sake let's just keep it simple:
Crimes against humanity.
Look at what we did to the the the...
Fuck it! The Indians;
and niggers too, to drive it home,
ya fuckin' racist!
Think about it for a moment
before you blow up something
for nothing other than ritual and tradition.
And/Or consider instead
the day before the running of the bulls
in Pamplona, Spain,
you dumb, but secretive catholic.
Or the Chinese New Year,
though they're no gift to the world
either these days,
with their strange and sadistic twist
of free market capitalism
bleeding ink into their little red book.
Or the Pontius Pilate firecracker fight
in Mexico City during Easter Weekend.
Or just let loose your incendiaries
like someone with nothing to lose,
and willing to add some excitement
to our American Dread:
school shootings
terrorists attacks
cyber-hacking and wikileaks
Edward Snowden
The protest of the world cup in Rio.

An American claiming to be Canadian departs for Europe.
David Beckham shudders, then misses his soccer goal.

III.
Ugly Americans:
Arming Syrians.
Blaming Black Folk.
Blaming the poor.
Loving Mexicans, but not enough
to stand for their human rights.
Beasts of burden.
Meddling in the sexual proclivities of others
and denying rights to those whose sexual proclivities
make you feel confused; icky.
Hating the old; hating the new,
and understanding that one demonizes
the other.
Deciding to hate a woman.
Deciding to hate a man.
Being what you are instead of what to could be.
Being a liar for the sake of your lie.
Ignoring; ignoring.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war...
POP! another firework goes off in the distance.
Several pops greet it's cadence.
Firecrackers, shallow and tinny, crackle
loudly behind me.
Oh say can you see
by the dawns earlier light
which so proudly we hail
at twilight's last gleaming...
...and the rockets red glare
the bombs bursting in air
gave truth through the night...

IV.
I pledge allegiance
to the flag
of the United States of America.
And to the republic
for which it stands;
one nation
under God
with liberty and justice for all.
Amen.

    Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth a new nation; conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

    It is past eleven p.m in Lafayette, Indiana. Noise ordinances are enforced after eleven p.m, so the bursts of fireworks echoing in the humid night become deeper and more distant; like thunder rolling on by. The faint pop of a firecracker rings out quietly within the wash of chirping crickets. Occasionally, periodically the leaves of the sycamore tree to the right of me rustle in the weather above me and above us all.
    A deep faint burst from the east, and in the west, nothing but the darkness and breeze.
    This is one single atom of America.

Aaron C. Molden

Longing

I tell you, truthfully, longing takes on a new meaning
when you feel it when you are not even alone.
To long for someone when you are alone
means you are simply a social beast,
but when you are among peers
among friends, loved ones, others, annoyances, enemies
and long for someone still so distant from yourself,
this...
This can send a shudder down your spine
and heat up your neck
or a drop in your stomach,
maybe a pang within your heart
or possibly a tension in your temple
and draw a tear so forcefully
through high muscle tension, out of your eye.
How embarrassing.
Because, honestly, why should you care?
What really has this person you long for
done for you?
It's funny because I write this as if it really matters
and as if I really mean it.

It is such a funny wild card in human thought.
Love: Sometimes we only feel comfortable saying it
when we do not really mean it.
And sometimes it is the hardest word to utter
when, at the moment, you just did not feel it;
for anything and everything, you just did not feel it.
It is strange, seductive, menacing, wholehearted,
physical, paternal, maternal, scary,
incestuous, homosexual, heterosexual,
platonic, visceral, neural, cathartic,
narcissistic, sadistic, masochistic,
gleeful, scornful, rueful, joyous, rigorous, rapturous,
seedy, selfless or selfish, healthy, fuck suck and sleep,
that love.

Consider the lilies.
Or at least consider the book you could be reading.
What can you find on your computer to look at.
If it is summer you can go to a pool.
It's never too hot or too cold to go biking or hiking
if you plan ahead enough.
A gleaming red beetle struggles on its back
on the cracked grey pavement.
It's six shiny legs flutter and buzz
in the glow of the floodlights.
It buzzes and its body vibrates twice.
Then it dies.

Swim, canoe.
Play billiards, play basketball.
Watch basketball, but don't watch billiards,
well unless you have to, for some reason,
whatever reason you could possibly fathom.
You could also build something
or write someone,
or draw something,
or film something
and discover something that you didn't know was there.

Plus, there is always a pretty girl to kiss
and possibly date or unexpectedly fuck,
or you know, just make out with, fool around,
and you can have dinner with her
or maybe lay on a blanket with in a park
-any park, but some parks are better than others-
and maybe you will have sex with her again,
with her milky white thighs and knees
and her goddamned nearly angelic smile.
And maybe you will try to call her
and hang out with her,
and maybe find some peace out there
from the one you still long for, you sucker,
you longing sucker.
Or maybe you will just watch a movie
to take your mind off of it.
"I'll see you guys, later." You said when you left.
What a gnawing suspicion this longing is in you.
You should be submitting your shitty first novel
instead of writing this, what you call, poetry.

The (short) name list:
Reverse Bukowski
Frank O'Hara
                            Raymond Carver
                            Elizabeth Bishop
Kenneth Rexroth
T.S. Eliot
             Song of Solomon

I don't feel like describing your body
your flesh and bones and eyes and hair
and how your cheeks blush
when I flatter you
or when I slap my hands
against your ass and thighs.
That's mine.
And if I have to get it out sometime
I'll let that sometime come when it does.
It's not the best of you, woman,
but it is a photo finish.

Write a poem as an excuse, an escape.
Abstraction or distraction or subtraction of yourself.

Aaron C. Molden