UNTITLED IMAGINATION

–a short work of semi-fiction–

By Jon Rappoport

In the year, 2094, a document was uncovered in a copper mine in Southern California. It was sent to the Non-Federal Bureau of Non-Control, headquartered in the old buildings of the former and forgotten National Security Agency.

The document, dated at 2011, written by an unidentified painter, was read by the Chief of Unsystematic Uncoordinated Records.

The document:

“If you hand a person a fig and tell him it’s a plum, there is a chance he’ll see a plum.

“If you give a person a copy of Nabokov’s Lolita and explain its ‘themes,’ there is a chance that, as he reads it, he will find those themes and consider them the most important result of his reading.

“Instead of relying on his own imagination and perception, a person imagines that what he is told is what he is looking at.

“So you point to a tree and say to a friend, ‘See that car?’

“Of course, if you are passionate about deceiving, you dress it up. You start with something complicated—rock formations in a canyon, on which wind and water have inscribed many lines—and you build the notion that these lines add up to faces and legs and feet and eyes and tools.

“And then the person with you may see what you’re describing.

“He may see a whole civilization no one has ever discovered before.

“Whereas, if you just pointed to the rocks and lines, he would see and/or imagine whatever he sees or imagines.

“Education tends to define what is there before a person can experience it on his own.

“I’m a painter. My education in art, before I ever laid a brush on canvas, was conducted by a few world-class liars who made up convincing theories about this and that. Somewhere along the line, I took over the process and ignored what they were saying.

“This eventually led me, on a long path, to the conclusion that imagination has no limits.

“A few minutes after that, I realized such an idea was not acceptable to most people. They preferred to be told what to see and what to know. They wanted confirmation of what they already assumed.

“Nevertheless, to the extent that I rely on anything beyond my work, I rely on other people’s imagination, in the sense that I’m painting what can only be accessed by imagination.

“Given what I believe, it would be foolish to tell people what to see in my paintings. I myself see many things, and what I see changes. I want it to be that way.

“I’m not trying to nail down a particular bounded reality. If that were my goal, I would manufacture shoes.

“From a rough societal perspective, I see imagination as an infinite series of platforms. The first burst of imagination somehow places people on platform number 1, which is beyond current consensus reality. They walk around on that platform for a while, and then it’s time for burst number 2, which creates a further platform, on which people stroll for a period of time. And then, burst 3. And so on and so forth. Forever.

“At no point does anyone lay down laws of perception. Nevertheless, there is a loose and congenial sharing of platforms.

“Of course, this is an ideal. Things don’t happen so smoothly.

“I have some peculiar ideas about language. In a way, I believe you can reach an endpoint with it. You obviously haven’t exhausted all the possibilities for, say, writing a poem. You can invent lines no one has ever come close to before. But you begin to experience the sensation of rearranging deck chairs, and then you know you need something more.

“You need a new kind of language, in which the letters or words or characters or pictographs are open. They carry no fixed meanings.

“Confronted with such a language, the reader employs imagination and imagination only.

“In terms of what we ordinarily expect from language, this seems quite absurd. It seems absurd until we try it out.

“At which point, imagination begins talking to imagination. Leaving systems behind, we are in new territory. The place is new, and how we will deal with being there is new.

“Suppose you walked into your garage and found a car you had never seen before. You get in, you turn the key in the ignition and nothing happens. You get out and raise the hood and inspect the guts. You find no battery. In fact, all the pieces and parts are foreign to you. You spend the next month taking the works apart, looking at them, putting them back together, and still, of course, the car doesn’t turn on.

“After six months, you come to the decision that this isn’t a car in the usual sense. It may not be a car at all. It may be something else.

“Two years later, you’re sure it’s something else, but you can’t fathom what.

Finally, driven to desperation, you make a leap. You say, ‘It’s up to me what this is. It can be anything. But for that I need more than perception. I need imagination. And if I need that, then this thing can be anything I want it to be.’

“And if this is the case, you can either fall into despair, because you don’t want the challenge, or you can go with imagination.

“If you opt for the second choice, you’re launched.

“Then one day, a friend drops by, and he looks at the car, he crawls under it, he fusses with a tire, he sticks his hand up the exhaust pipe, he taps on a bolt, and the car roars to life.

“You now have two cars. The first one is what you’ve already begun to build in your imagination. The second one you can take out on the road.

“If you can accommodate yourself to both cars, you are all right. You are doing fine. You are in good shape. You are dealing with the systems we call reality AND the unbounded X you create with imagination.

“Of course, you can simply go back to the car on the road and forget about X. You can drive it, you can study it with your mechanical friend, you can master its workings down to a T, you can understand every single piece of it and settle for that.

“Until, some time later, you’re bored out of your mind.”

The Chief of Unsystematic Uncoordinated Records finished reading the document and laid it down on his desk.

He thought, “If only that painter knew millions of people now speak and write in those open languages. His assessment seems so obvious in hindsight. Of course we would follow this approach. What else could we do? Deteriorate? Give up? Imitate a consensus? Only a lunatic would opt for that.”

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

The first workshop of the Magic Theater takes place in San Diego on December 10 and 11. To inquire or sign up: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

OCCUPY THE WHITE HOUSE

OR THE MEN’S ROOM

OCTOBER 12, 2011. So far the Occupy events have managed to obscure and delay—or remain ignorant of—their precise agenda(s). This is taken as a sign of rank stupidity, but it may hold promise because, let’s face it, as soon as you state your political objectives these days, you’re pretty much finished. You trigger the opposition forces and you attract supporters, and then the whole thing eventually winds up in a muddy ditch, a car without traction…

But if you obfuscate and hint and suggest and garble, while others interpret what you mean, you can play the media like a drum and short-circuit many brains and cause smoke to exit many ears.

Yesterday, in New York, two guys in suits showed up at the rally with a sign that announced: WE ARE THE 1%. They intimated they were investment bankers. Police decided to keep them separate from the 99%, for fear of a clash.

Were these two guys actors? Were they really part of the protesters?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6YDA52gkpg&w=480&h=274]

Now, I know these “occupations” could descend into violence, and if they do, there is a chance it will be provoked from the outside, to serve somebody’s political plot…but if that can be avoided, we have a chance to see something interesting develop.

Wall St., big government, thieving venal corporations, recent college grads with heavy debts from student loans and no job prospects, unions, Obama operatives, the poor on welfare, small businesses wound up in bureaucratic red tape imposed by the government—none of them or their supporters are going to get what they want from showing up in the streets in various cities with signs. It’s not going to happen. This is not an A to B revolution. It isn’t a new political party. It isn’t a pressure group leaning on Congress.

It’s a glob.

That can be a good thing if the glob expands asymmetrically.

Media will see what they want to see and report on it, and the reporting will change from day to day. Against this backdrop of serious high-IQ idiots trying to analyze what is going on, we could get some real theater.

We need it. Politics has become so predictable, on all sides, so automatic, that you really need to be an android to hope to move up the food chain.

Government has become such a fungal organism its main ambition is to expand. It doesn’t really care what it does, as long as the doing of it creates more jobs for its own employees. If it could get away with the invention of a new cabinet post called Toilet Maintenance, it would bring it into existence and appoint 10,000 inspectors in the blink of an eye.

Against this kind of absurdity, we need a counter. Apparently, appealing to rational instincts doesn’t work anymore. The fungus needs to ooze up to something it doesn’t understand, something that doesn’t add up.

The fungus perceives people as ciphers that can be encircled and swallowed. But if the ciphers starting acting like a previously unknown species, the fungus, in its small brain, will try to re-set and re-categorize the situation and assess the novelty. This it cannot do.

I would hope that, after Occupy Wall Street, we would get an Occupy the White House, or Occupy CBS. I myself favor Occupy the Sun…but I tend to take things too far too soon.

Perhaps Occupy Tesla would work. The idea being it’s time to unseal and recapture his notes on new energy devices the FBI seized upon his death.

Or, less ambitiously, how about 5000 people in the Wall Street area emitting a low droning sound for an hour at lunchtime?

“I don’t know, Dan. I’m standing here watching something very weird. One of the leaders told me a few minutes ago, before the chanting started, that the group was about to employ a non-violent strategy Mahatma Gandhi used in India to ‘just say no to the British occupiers.’ Those were his words. So far, no one we’ve checked with can recall Gandhi doing this. Back to you in the studio.”

The government fungus pauses. The media fungus pauses.

Outside the offices of Goldman Sachs, at midnight, 20 fat guys wearing suits and holding large dogs on leashes show up and take turns reading aloud from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.

Within a half hour, three media vans arrive and bathe the street with thick blue light, workers set up their equipment and start making coffee.

At a nearby hospital, an exhausted intern on extended duty, sitting in a little alcove off a corridor, is watching the fat guys read on a small portable TV. He hears approaching footsteps. He stands up, walks into the corridor. A dozen people wearing white coats march up to him. The woman in the lead says, “We understand the pharmacy refuses to stock calcium and magnesium. The President is on his way. He just suffered another episode. He needs supplementation. We’re occupying the hospital. Where’s the Director?”

Without waiting for an answer, the group moves away.

The intern goes back to the alcove, rubbing his eyes, trying to shake the sleep out of his head. He glances at the TV. Now the scene is Battery Park. Three men in bathing trunks are reciting the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…”

The news broadcast cuts away to a rooftop in Brooklyn, where a young man draped in a blanket reads from Tropic of Cancer: “I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”

The intern looks down at his hands to see whether he’s dreaming.

“I don’t know, Dan. Across the city tonight, people are doing strange things. Are they one group? Are smaller factions springing up? It’s hard to say. A colleague of mine who was just here said she spoke to a Congressional source who said this whole Occupy phenomenon is really a move by Chinese allies of Belgian bankers seeking to devalue the dollar. That’s a rumor, of course, but right now all we seem to have are rumors. An intern from University Hospital stopped by—he’s a Yale graduate—and he said he believes what we’re witnessing is the cumulative effect of several decades of widespread use of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. A contagion of antidepressants, if you will…”

Soon, across the East River, the first glimmer of dawn appears. What will the new day bring?

A hologram of an ox goring a building? A few unemployed software designers posing as reporters interviewing rallying students? A lookalike Michael Bloomberg throwing counterfeit stock certificates out of a slow-moving limo? A man wearing a judge’s robe lounging in a deck chair on the sidewalk, feeding drinks to a bikini-clad blond?

Possible cops lead possible stock brokers out of the Goldman Sachs building in handcuffs, as the brokers exclaim, “Our company donated one-point-three million to Obama!”

Oh…there is one little thing I forgot to mention. All this engrossing theater, all these stimulating possibilities rest on the prior assumption that people can understand their own freedom, can understand that, in the long run, government will not save them from themselves.

Or to put it another way, just because Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would, in today’s world, be camping out in the Wall Street area, it doesn’t mean the people camping out there now are Jeffersons and Madisons.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

UPDATE: MARZIEH VAFAMEHR/90 LASHES

OCTOBER 12, 2011. Iranian actress sentenced to a year in prison and 90 lashes by the government of Iran—for acting in a film portraying the plight of free-thinking artists in her country.

Many brief press reports, no major media campaign on her behalf, fellow actors in America fail to organize, remain silent.

Well, I spoke with spokesperson Megan Mattson at the US State Department a few minutes ago, and she released the following statement:

“We are deeply disturbed by today’s news that independent filmmaker and actress Marzieh Vafamehr was sentenced to 90 lashes and one year for her work in the independent film ‘My Tehran for Sale.’

“Her sentence is a clear example of Iran’s increasing crackdown on its media and cultural figures. Bloggers, students, religious figures, artists, journalists and civil society activists are all suffering at the hands of a regime that hypocritically champions freedom in neighboring countries but fails to grant such liberties at home.

“These actions only intensify Iran’s isolation in the international community. We continue to stand with those Iranians who want nothing more than to make their voices heard and hold their government accountable for its actions.”

What to make of this? First of all, the US government has no diplomatic relations (along ordinary channels) with the government of Iran, so whatever US authorities may be doing to secure Marzieh’s release (and I’m not holding my breath) is passing through the hands of the Swiss, as a third party.

But why am I not reading this State Department statement anywhere, except on this page? Why aren’t the NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and the TV networks carrying it and exerting pressure?

They don’t think it’s an important story? They don’t think their readers would be interested? I have news for their numb editors—it could become a major story if they gave it enough space and exposure.

For example: WHAT DO 90 LASHES FEEL LIKE? 90.

WHAT KIND OF GOVERNMENT DOLES OUT THAT SENTENCE FOR ACTING IN A FILM?

How disconnected and circumspect do you have to be to not see at least the storyline possibilities? And suppose, God forbid, you also saw the human side of it.

There was a time when what is happening to Marzieh Vafamehr would have been front-page news. But that was when people in media still thought about individual freedom—now a defunct concept. Reporters have been educated and trained out of it. Editors shrug at it.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

POLITICS AND CELEBRITIES

ACTRESS GOES TO PRISON

OCTOBER 10, 2011.

First, before I get to the plight of Iranian actress Marzieh Vafamehr, I present you the following backgrounder on celebrity actors…

Today, my wife Laura was going through some old videotapes and came across a campaign speech I gave in 1994, when I was running for a Congressional seat in the 29^th District of Los Angeles.

The issue was Health Freedom—the right of every citizen to decide how to manage his/her own health, without government interference.

The funny thing was, I was running in the Democratic Primary. That was because I saw it as the only way to unseat the incumbent, Henry Waxman. I decided a Republican or an Independent would have stood no chance in the general election. I think if I were running now, I would do it as an Independent anyway. But that’s another story.

When I was talking about Health Freedom in 1994, Hollywood celebrities were coming into the fray and demanding it, too. Mariel Hemingway, James Earl Jones, Mel Gibson, Lindsay Wagner. A somewhat lesser known (brilliant) actor, Sally Kirkland, was overtly campaigning on my behalf.

I had no idea where these people stood in their politics. Were they Left, were they Right? It didn’t matter. They knew what Health Freedom meant, and they were for it. Out loud.

These days, it doesn’t seem to matter where celebs are on the political spectrum. They’re either unaware of the Health Freedom issue, they don’t care, they’re enamored of the present administration, or they’re scared.

That’s too bad.

There is a growing group of actor-conservatives in LA, and to my knowledge, they’ve taken no strong stand on the Health Freedom issue. Why not?

In a celebrity-driven and celebrity-obsessed culture, you would hope stars would parlay their influence on something that’s as important as breathing.

Just ask any of a number of patients, for example, who have been through the mill with chemo, radiation, and surgery for cancer, and then talk to people who’ve gone to Dr. Stan Burzynski’s cancer clinic in Houston and regained their health. The contrasts are stunning.

When I look at the time period from 1994, when I was running for office, to 2011, I see a weakening of forces for freedom. And in fact, when I recall those heady days of ’94, I realize many people on our side didn’t really have a grasp on what freedom meant, even then.

They somehow believed they were for both “strong government” and “freedom.” Well, holding a contradiction and moving forward with it is one of those common political insanities.

It can occur because people don’t stop and think about what they really stand for. Either they can’t, because they’re not smart enough, or they won’t, because they sense the conclusion will put them on a spot they don’t want to occupy.

This brings me to the plight of Iranian actress Marzieh Vafamehr…

Today, in the news: Wire services are reporting that Iranian actress, Marzieh Vafamehr, has been convicted of acting in a film, My Tehran for Sale, which explores the political suppression of artists in her country. (Click here. International Business Times: October 10, 2011 3:16 PM EDT: Iranian Actress Marzieh Vafamehr to be Lashed 90 Times, Jailed for One Year)

Her sentence? A year in prison and 90 LASHES.

The press reports are a bit vague, because so far the government in Iran is withholding comment…but let us assume they are substantially correct. And if so:

I’m interested to see how many American actors speak up on her behalf. I’m interested to see whether this will inspire the sudden organizing of famous actors, who make a cause out of her sentence, who use their clout to book themselves on TV talk shows, turn the screws on the government of Iran, and demand Marzieh’s release and the recanting of her conviction and sentencing.

I already smell the fumes of political correctness descending on this whole outrage—as if, somehow, it would be a mistake to take up this cause.

I may be wrong, but let’s see. Does George Clooney care that a fellow actor is about to go to prison and receive a whip on her body 90 times? Does it matter to him, or to Brad Pitt, or to Angelina Jolie, or to Madonna, or to Gary Sinise or Tom Selleck or Ben Stiller or Robert De Niro? Ted Danson?

What do Oprah, Ellen, and Maury think about it?

And in the press? Ann Coulter? Bill O’Reilly? Rachel Maddow? George Will? Chris Matthews?

Will the US Congress mount a statement?

How about the candidates running on the Republican ticket for president?

How about Obama?

The UN?

Various human rights groups around the planet?

What does freedom actually mean to any of these people?

Is there a sense that the rights of a particular individual don’t matter anymore, and instead, all meaningful political solutions have to be viewed within the framework of global machinations? Is there a timidity that emanates from concern that a specific protest carried out (without checking in with political leaders) might upset “delicate negotiations underway on “larger matters?” Do demands on behalf of Marzieh Vafamehr have to emerge from Facebook and Twitter uprisings, in order to qualify as authentic? Does the entertainment industry believe that only through documentaries—launched long after the fact—can a cause be properly couched?

To me, these are all excuses. They are signs that people are running scared, are looking over their shoulders at potential consequences, are calculating which “favored supporters” would be on their side or would be annoyed at them for taking a stand.

It’s fumbling in the dark to ascertain the mood of the moment in high places, as under the reign of thought police. This is what you find in a dictatorship.

“It’s not the right time for a protest on behalf of an Iranian actress.”

“Our leaders are trying to negotiate difficult and murky waters, in order to effect large solutions to complex problems, and we don’t want to unintentionally rock the boat.”

“Declaring ourselves the enemy of something is a harsh position. What we are really looking for is a gradual global shift of focus from competition to cooperation, and we may have to allow certain injustices, for now, to go by the boards.”

More rationalizations.

More weakness and passive deference.

For celebrities,”the way” is now through charity. This is the safe path. This has the blessing of the powers that be. Whereas, to demand freedom for one person who shares the same profession is unsafe, is naked, is without protection. It sounds too much like, well, individual freedom, doesn’t it? And that is the precise problem. That is not the message preferred by those who are assumed to be leaders and power players.

Well, in case you’re vaguely interested, here is my opinion, in terms of priorities. The fate of Marzieh Vafamehr is more important than the iPod, iPhone, iPad, or Pixar.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

WE ARE THE 99%

OCTOBER 5, 2011. As this movement spreads, perhaps the amorphous reasons people are giving for it will coalesce and become clear. Meanwhile, it seems appropriate to at least point out a few underlying facts about Wall Street, since that’s where it began, with a few college students camping out there.

Wall Street is, as most people know, the home of the stock market, which is a game favored by a whole load of people who want to make their money make money.

No one forces all these people to sink their $$ into stocks. They can get in, they can get out, they can abstain altogether.

The myriad companies that issue stock usually come to understand that the price of that stock, over time, doesn’t necessarily reflect the companies’ performance. There’s a fairy tale that states it does, but smart people don’t believe it.

Investing in stocks is a crapshoot, and it’s best to be the house, taking your little cut on every buy and sell order.

So if these protesters think the investment houses are greedy and nasty, they should suggest a boycott.

DON’T BUY STOCKS. IT’S A CON.

STOCK INVESTING IS A JOKE.

IDIOTS TRY TO MAKE MONEY IN THE STOCK MARKET.

WALL STREET IS VEGAS WITH BRANDY AND CIGARS.

THE MARKET REBOUNDED BECAUSE MY DOG TOOK A CRAP.

WHO MANIPULATES STOCK PRICES?

STOCKS ARE A RIGGED GAME.

YOU’RE NOT A BIG SHOT BECAUSE YOU BUY STOCKS.

THE RAT PACK DAYS ARE OVER.

BUY A STOCK, JUMP OFF A CLIFF.

BOYCOTT THE STOCK MARKET.

Something like that. You know, nicely printed big signs.

Of course, the unions who are now joining in on the protests might feel a nervous twinge at a few thousand signs like this appearing on the nightly news, because the hustlers who run their pension funds are presumably investing in the stock market.

So are governments at all levels. So are the colleges these kids attend.

The stock market makes Vegas look like a guy on a streetcorner with a little table and three shells.

Trying to regulate what kinds of investments the brokerage houses can offer—in order to avoid another 2008 meltdown, for example—stands a very small chance of success, in the long run. And if a sucker is born every minute, people will continue to pour their $$ into the market. Unless they come to realize it’s a game, like slots or craps or video poker or roulette or the racetrack.

Since this we-are-99% thing is a long shot to begin with, and stands every chance of being co-opted quite soon, if it hasn’t happened already, why not roll the dice on letting people know what the stock market is all about? Why not, as awful as it sounds, tell the truth?

I don’t want to be the guy who ruins the party, who walks into the room with a keg of non-alcoholic beer, but hey, it seems clear that if lots and lots of people just stop investing in the market, the greedheads who make their money on the commissions from such idiocy will incur a serious amount of trouble.

Or would you like the upper 1% of the wealthiest Americans to pay 2% more in taxes than they are paying now—after some watered down bill squeezes through Congress? Will that usher in Utopia for all?

If “free market” means anything anymore, it certainly means people can invest or not invest. The root of Wall Street derives, in large part, from the fact that it is fueled by millions of people and institutions that buy stocks. That’s where the money comes from.

So I know this sounds crazy but—WITHDRAW THE MONEY.

If the guy who comes to your house to sell you magazines is pushing something you don’t want, tell him no thanks and go back to the dinner table.

“What are you in these days, Bob?”

“I’m in GE, Fred.”

No you’re not. You’re in a casino, potato head. You’re taking the Jets minus 3 against the Giants.

Let’s see some real signs showing up on Wall Street and on the nightly news. Let’s see Brian Williams explain INVESTING IN STOCKS IS FOR PROBLEM GAMBLERS.

Hey, set up an 800 line for “people who can’t quit the market.” I’ll take my turn at the phones.

“Sir, first of all, buying stocks is like shaking the dice at the Mirage. You don’t know what you’re doing, and your broker doesn’t care. He’s taking his cut whether you win or lose. Get it? Forget about that fat guy in the baseball cap. Just take your money out…”

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

NEW FEELINGS

OCTOBER 4, 2011. After enough years of experiencing the same path of emotions, people begin to tire. They’ve been through it before, many times.

It’s as if they’re acting roles in a very long-running play. Every day, they’re back on the boards, speaking the same lines, feeling the same feelings.

If they could just switch roles with the other cast members, something new and fresh might happen. But rules seem to prevent this.

We define degree of life by the emotions we have. When we’re satisfied, exhilarated, we’re alive.

In “real life,” we limit our range of emotion, because feelings imply and propel action, and we have principles about what actions we’re willing to take. Therefore, we try to be content with what we feel, over and over.

But on stage, in a play, everything is different. No emotion is impossible, because the action-consequences remain on the stage. The stage is where we can learn new lessons, make new moves, expand our minds and souls. And then there will be a carryover into life off the stage.

Who can say where and when theater was first invented? Apparently, the first free and open theater emerged in ancient Greece. In fact, in those tragedies and comedies, local citizens were recruited to play roles in plays by celebrated authors.

And “the carryover” from stage to real life? It isn’t so much about what the person is willing to do now in his life he was afraid of doing before—it’s about how expanded his range of feeling is as a result of his experiences playing roles on stage. It’s, say, the difference between waking up in the morning with a heavy sensation and jumping out of bed with a fierce joy…

The difference between not feeling alive and feeling alive.

In starting the Magic Theater, this was on my mind.

All roles have a potential range of feeling utilized to express them, act them out—and by improvising these roles, we light up deadened areas of walled-off emotion and energy, and we rejuvenate and embody possibility. First-hand.

I know people, for example, who would love to play, to improvise the role of a dictator. They don’t do it real life, of course. They would never do it in real life. But in dialogue, yes. They would jump at the chance to embody those feelings and express them. And then?

When they “return to real life,” they feel no compulsion to become a dictator. They feel the power of those emotions, and they can transmute and channel that energy into what they truly want to do.

Every possible role contains real emotion—and it is the confusion between real life and “stage life” that keeps people from experiencing most of these emotions. They are afraid to be what they want to be: ACTORS.

We are all actors. We all have the capacity. We all understand, below the every-day level of discourse, that we can act. And we want to.

But, as I’ve said before, where is the venue?

That’s why I created the Magic Theater. This isn’t a repertory company, or a school for training professionals. It isn’t therapy. It isn’t rehearsal. It’s a way of being and feeling alive.

Furthermore, there are paired roles that can lock up each other in a kind of mutually canceled energy and emotion: dictator and victim; king and slave; parent and child; God and seeker…

When two people improvise these paired roles with each other—and then switch parts—new energy and emotion are liberated.

Eventually, daily life begins to look like a pale imitation of the Magic Theater. Fortunately, we all want to live, so we transport our experiences from the Theater back into life and inject it with new feelings. What seemed dead is now alive.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

To inquire about the first Magic Theater workshop on December 10-11, email me.

SOMETHING ROTTEN IN WHEREVER

OCTOBER 3, 2011. I realize there’s a glaring omission in my work. Not enough PROPHECY.

How could I have overlooked that? The Prophecy market and the Prophecy dollar are always strong.

So at least here’s a start–

“When government airport employees X-ray and hold the genitalia of every person living in America at least once, a critical mass will be reached, and we will automatically enter a New Age.”

“In order to achieve new levels of equality, by May 9, 2016, all across America, at children’s sports events, we will see neighborhood militias, sporting Uzis, shotguns, Stingers, rocket launchers, and sleep-gas blasters, removing star players from both sides, off the fields of play, to be shipped to deep-pit copper mines in Chile.”

“When advertising gurus considered how to advertise toilet paper on television, they were stymied until they came up with the bear. The bear works. Somewhere deep in the consciousness of the human being, there may be an image of a bear using toilet paper. Not a lion, a leopard, or an elephant. First the bear was a lovable doll for children. Then it became an assurance we could prevent widespread fires. Now it is the symbolic essence of toilet paper. When the human race finally accepts One Universal Religion for All and thus achieves a peace that passes all understanding, the Bear will be its Prophet. A confirming inscription will be discovered inside a Mayan pyramid at Legoland.”

“Every village in Afghanistan will be equipped with wifi, Lithium, Zoloft, and a fleet of Escalades, and each resident will receive a check for ten thousand dollars a month. A few hundred million US citizens will emigrate to Afghanistan for the benefits, leaving America to Eskimos coming down from the Arctic Circle, where Al Gore and his minions are busy melting ice caps with heat lasers.”

“On March 12, 2012, it will be revealed that Mitt Romney and Rick Perry are the same person. The animating spirit behind him is the collective known as the Democratic National Committee.”

“At a campaign fundraiser for Obama, the well-heeled crowd will watch a video of the president sinking a forty-foot putt on the tenth hole at Pebble Beach and fall to their knees, and Al Sharpton will announce he is the chairman of the Bilderberg Group.”

“The next president of the United States, Chris Christie, will announce, on his first day in office, that he is undertaking a weight-loss program. All major television networks will maintain a graphic of the president’s day-to-day progress, throughout his four years in the White House, and if he sheds at least 80 pounds by November of 2016, he will be swept into office for a second term.”

“On June 3, 2019, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky will be married in a ceremony at Jon Stewart’s apartment in New York. She will wear “the dress,” and he will play forty-seven choruses of the theme from Picnic, after which they will both declare bankruptcy.”

“On September 14, 2017, the FDA will approve a drug that, within six days, causes pancreatic cancer in otherwise healthy individuals. FDA Commissioner Rick Perry will announce, ‘The idea here is to insert this drug in water supplies and force immediate treatment of every American adult and child with radiation, chemo, and surgery. This is the true meaning of prevention.’ On the same day, the American Psychiatric Association and the Department of Homeland Security will release a joint statement declaring all forms of a mental disorder called Non-Androidism to be a threat to national security. In honor of former DHS head, Janet Napolitano, a ceremony at the White House will re-affirm her famous epistemological imperative: Say Something, See Something.”

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com

A BREAKTHROUGH ARTIST

RICK DUBOV

OCTOBER 3, 2011. Listeners to my radio show have heard me interview Rick Dubov, my friend of many years. Rick is truly an extraordinary painter.

I’m not writing this, however, to extol his technical skills, but because his work evokes such deep echoes.

Last year, my team and I shot video of Rick’s paintings, and I was astonished when I saw so much of his work in one place for the first time. The faces in his paintings and drawings truly are “a family,” as Rick calls them. They resonate with one another—leaving the impression they have sprung from many times and places to gather together, here and now. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, far-flung cousins—from all walks of life.

These times and places from which they’ve traveled are not all of this Earth. Some of the faces float in from other dimensions, and seem to have been at the edge of our consciousness for a long while.

The more I look at them, the more I recognize them. I begin to fill in stories about them.

Well, Rick has just launched a new project with far-reaching implications. He is now doing, on commission, what could be called “psychic portraits.” I’ll let Rick describe this wonderful enterprise:

“Have you ever imagined just leaving the studio of Diego Velasquez in 1656, in the court of Philip the Fourth of Spain, and walking into a brilliant sunny day…and then you find yourself in a brisk autumn day in Cubist Paris in 1911?…and then you find yourself in an as yet unnamed future space and time? All these and billions of other

spaces and times are of one piece. It is out of this fertile territory that all of my paintings come.

“Now can you imagine yourself making such voyages simply by looking at a commissioned portrait of yourself? You are recognizable in the portrait, but it has the marks of extraordinary places you have gone to.

“So now I formally announce the launch of my commissioned portrait series. These commissioned portraits are the painted version of what Jon calls the Magic Theater. People send me photos of themselves, preferably from mid-chest up to the head, and from the deepest pools of my imagination, I perform a kind of alchemy where YOU are placed in a beautiful space where, as you look at your portrait, you can shuttle back and forth between any space and time in which you wish to unleash your imagination.

“I refer to all the characters which I have created out of my imagination, and which you will see on my blogsite, as the “family.” The family is a code word for eternal human archetypes which have created endless variations of individual people. I view this project as endless, with as yet unforeseen and surprising results

“I hope you can come on board.

“The commissioned portraits are 11″x14″, painted in oil on either water color paper or canvas board. People have requested larger ones, so that is also an option also. They are very affordable. Check out my website and please contact me. You can view my work,

and contact me about details concerning the commissioned portraits.”

http://rickdubov.blogspot.com

I hope you’ll visit Rick’s site and explore his work and consider commissioning a portrait.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

INTO THE FUTURE

“The universe speaks to God, and God speaks to the universe. A table speaks to a tiger. A quantum of energy speaks to his brother a hundred light years away. A beggar speaks with a president—and then they switch roles. The gold rush of 1849 speaks to the first human journey beyond this solar system. The lowly ant and a mighty galaxy hold a conversation. All this happens in the Magic Theater, because human beings improvise the roles. And therefore, things change.”

Jon Rappoport, Magic Theater Foundations

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011. It should be apparent from the above quote that, in the Magic Theater, there is no Final Voice. No authority spouting the last word. There is no “this is the ultimate structure.” No prophetic painting of the way things must be. No expert who imposes his superior knowledge.

Actually, in the Magic Theater, there is room for all of the above—as roles people play. They can be Final Voice and authority and conveyor of the ultimate structure and painter who reveals exactly how things will be and famous expert—among a billion other roles.

In dialogue with each other. Improvised dialogue.

This changes reality.

The notion of universe and cosmos presenting us with What Finally Exists is revealed as a short-run stage play that should have closed down before it began.

I started the Magic Theater to topple false thrones of knowledge in favor of unlimited imagination.

All groups, societies, and civilizations eventually prefer canned ideas that no longer have life. Unseating this massive habit begins with people stepping outside their normal and average points of view and taking on roles that ask for something new, something unpredictable.

At which point, what is impossible becomes eminently possible. And so our perception undergoes a shift.

Perhaps we will eventually learn that the lowly ant has something to say. And the bumblebee, too, and the snake that crawls on his belly, and the hummingbird and all the creatures that mysteriously populate the Earth. Maybe at one time they had empires we know nothing about.

Can a star sitting in the dark sky talk to us? Can whole galaxies engage in discourse?

Well here and now, we can enact their roles, and unleash our imaginations, without which we will never know the overwhelming majority of happenings in the universe, because imagination opens our eyes.

How many gods have been painted and carved and worshiped since the beginning of Earth time? We can play them all. We can speak with their voices and have them confer with one other. We can set up any god and have him talk with a coal miner or a shoe salesman or a secretary or a domehead professor of religious studies. We can take the gods to task for failing to provide the bounty they apparently hoard in secret places, and see what they have to say in reply.

We can open a dialogue with Mystery itself in the abstract. We can enact the role of the forces of nature in progress.

All this can happen without sets, lights, props, scripts, directors, rehearsals, or the money men who launch lavish productions. We simply begin. We improvise. There are no tests for reliability, no comparisons to a prior template.

We say we want entertainment, we sit numbly and watch television until we fall asleep under the weight of programs made for androids and idiots, but here is entertainment we can fashion ourselves out of nothing, with profound alchemical consequences.

Why watch a slick, fast-moving treatise on ancient Egypt, when we could actually play the gods and priests and priestesses and pyramids and, yes, the mighty Sphinx with the fractured face. I think it likely, in that way, we will approach more closely the actual spirit of long-ago time—and if not, we’ll certainly reveal and express our own spirit. Not a bad trade-off. “You speak as the high priest and I’ll speak as the slave, and then we’ll switch.”

What do you want to play today? The silver phantom who passes through walls and can make the trip from here to Orion in five seconds? Fine. I’ll be a microbe working with the tiniest roots of a tree to produce the subtle flavors of a plum.

No boundaries, no limits, no thing too large or small.

Real theater.

It comes down to this. This society is built on fear of embarrassment. “Well, if I pretended I was anything other than what I am, I would feel like a fool. My friends would say I was crazy.”

Yes, exactly. And if you are satisfied with the central role you’re playing out in life, all the way to the end, then fine. Stay with it. Good luck.

But if you’ve sensed that something is rotten in Denmark, that our civilization is largely built on conventional roles people fit themselves into, and that this sort of doleful theater can be greatly expanded, into a high adventure, as a modern alchemy of consciousness, then recognize there are no limits on what parts can be played or what dialogues can be improvised, in a true theater of imagination.

And for all those students who have been trying to discover the far shore of enlightenment, illumination, I can tell you this. Inhabiting and speaking from the role of The Already Enlightened to, say, The Embattled Seeker, for an hour or two—and then exchanging places—will offer the kind of revelation that is not on the path you walk.

Somewhere in our subconscious, we tend to believe there is another role, a single role which, if we could take it on, would make us happier, more alive. I’m suggesting there is something beyond that which we haven’t considered. I’m suggesting the whole notion of wanting that One Other Role which seems out of reach is a clue to more, much more: if we play out, in a live theater of imagination, MANY other roles, we crack the egg of our present lives and find ourselves in new spaces, with new energies, and a freedom that was always ours to have.

Jon Rappoport

www.nomorefakenews.com

This is the last day of the September nomorefakenews fund drive. Heartfelt thanks to those who contributed to this work. To make a donation, go to PayPal, click the “send money” button, and enter qjrconsulting@gmail.com. You don’t need to have your own PayPal account.

HI, I’M GOD

by Jon Rappoport

SEPTEMBER 25, 2011. Hi, I’m God, and I created reality, and you live in it. I made you, and you’re tuned up to fit into the reality I devised. Enjoy!

I’ll tell you a little juicy secret, right off the bat. I became God because nobody else was, and I perceived a need and I filled it. That’s the essence of all good business.

At first, I wasn’t dedicated to morality. In fact, I considered it a convenient disguise for clandestine activity. Not my own, but that of my people, my creations.

But later, when I examined the mess humans were making of their societies, I decided to try my hand at righteousness and vengeance, and commandments.

In retrospect, this was probably a mistake. Humans will make anything, it seems, a cause for killing.

Anyway, I’m a bit more interested in philosophic questions. For example, if I created humans, do they have freedom? Or are they androids? I confess I don’t know. It’s a fascinating field of study, and I guess someone will come up with the answer one day. Part of the reason I stick around is to discover the punch line.

Then there is the matter of reality itself. Once upon a time, there was none. At least not in the sense you people define it. It was quite flexible, and lots of us were inventing it. We were, dare I say it, artists. I know many of you don’t like the term. You associate it with despicable types who believe they’re entitled to special treatment. With us, it was simply a matter of putting things where there were no things before. We arose each morning and did it.

You take reality far too seriously. You’re dedicated adherents, as if we’re talking about religion.

And at this juncture, I have a confession to make. To say I created humans is simplistic. I SAY I did. I ASSUME I did. But you see, all this happened during a confusing period when a bunch of us were inventing at a tremendous pace. We kept no records, and it was all happening with such exuberance that no one cared. Then, all of a sudden, there you were. You were ensconced in a reality bubble, and you were spouting all sorts of religious prose—it was this I took advantage of.

I called down, I spoke in quasi-poetic utterances, I intervened on occasion, and you were sold.

This has been suggested to me, and I find it feasible—it’s possible some of my former colleagues decided to see what life could be like inside a bubble, and so they descended and injected themselves into what you call humanity.

Wherever I look on Earth, I hope to discover at least a few people who realize that pure creation—of the kind we here still do—is the basis for all existence, and no superstructure of doctrine is necessary to explain it. Alas, I’m disappointed. Apparently, you prefer to live according to another rulebook, the nature of which remains a mystery to me.

After all, it’s inconceivable that you want to remain in your bubble, and creation is the key to escape. But this eludes you.

Any one of you can do what I do, and perhaps even more. Since you haven’t concluded this, I stay busy with projects elsewhere and check back in now and then.

While I’m at it, let me make it clear that “the universe” is not a wish-fulfillment machine. Where did you ever get that idea? Was it from a woman named Oprah?

And here is another one. No one cares what you think. Thinking, per se, doesn’t determine what happens to you. Those who came up with this bit of theory, and those of you who’ve bought it, simply have too much time on your hands. You want to believe what you do with that time (ruminate) has some intrinsic value. Sorry to disappoint you, but no. It’s a minor activity. IMAGINATION, without boundaries, put into action, is the cardinal virtue. Some of the old Tibetan magicians, about 1500 years ago, saw that. Soon they were expelled into the outer darkness by their priests, who were busy with prayer wheels and prostrations and what-not.

What else? I loved Lenny Bruce. He’s with us here now. He’s still doing stand-up, and he’s on tour. We have a number of vibrant venues. Small clubs, mostly. The audiences are smart. Even literate. Lenny keeps us on our toes. His bullshit detector is peerless.

I could register a number of complaints about your religions, since I seem to be the subject of their massive efforts. But I won’t bother. If you can’t see through all that, you’re in reverse gear.

Oh, I almost forgot. If you think Nice and Polite is going to result in a better world, I’d have to say, in my experience, I’ve never seen it work as a primary guiding principle. It’s usually just another fascism in the catalog of fascisms.

You know, there was a time in your history I seriously strategized about my market share. I was looking to expand it. But I gave that up. You wanted to surrender yourselves to some Ultimate Whatever. That really annoyed me. Of course, there was nothing I could do. If I came down there, during those dark days, my mere presence would have exacerbated exactly what I wanted to deflect.

There is nothing permanent to surrender to.

I mean, you can try. Nobody will stop you. But I’m not part of it. And I’m not aware of anyone or anything else that is, either.

Look on the bright side. What you call universe we call island. Islands are everywhere. They’re built differently. Some are architectural masterpieces. Others (many others) are just created whole at the drop of a hat. There’s much to explore. More importantly, you can create your own. Why not? Your bubble is just a drop in the ocean.

So all in all, I’m a guy who has been playing God. GPG. Guy playing God. I’ve pretty much given it up. It’s a dead-end. I don’t don’t do punishments and rewards. I don’t keep score. I definitely don’t intervene. I don’t watch the NFL. If I needed money, I wouldn’t count on the Vatican for a monthly paycheck. I certainly don’t deploy intermediaries down on Earth to relay messages to me.

Once in a while, just for a goof, I’ll lose somebody’s car keys or screw up a weather report. I might send secret corporate memos to an investigative reporter.

Oswald didn’t act alone.

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com