Wakefield Quotes

“I want a house that’s mobile but stationary, situated in a safe place without borders, where the people are peace-loving.”
― Andrei Codrescu, Wakefield

“Still, there is something disappearing from the world, something composed of many instances of tradition and skill, or maybe not disappearing, but translating. Maybe culture, like physical matter, doesn’t disappear, but is subject to infinite play, and th e world is a vast workshop for making and remaking everything, including people, and the engine of play is desire…”
― Andrei Codrescu, Wakefield

“Sorry,” Wakefield insists, “but what exactly is cultural imperialism?”
The boy turns his good eye to Wakefield. “That when Indian kids play with Mickey Mouse instead of kachinas. Kachinas mean something to their people. The Mouse means nothing.”
“He must mean something,” Wakefield says.
“Yeah, he means money. A Kachina tells the story of the earth, of the people, of dances, rituals, how to make rain… Talk to the fucking mouse and see what he tells you.”
― Andrei Codrescu, Wakefield

“In America a child can no longer
visit the place where she was born
a shopping mall
stands there instead.
In America a grownup can no longer see the school
where she learned the art of growing sad
a freeway goes through there now an overpass
her memories of brick turn to glass
the suburb goes from white to black
and time speeds up so much she has
to stay young forever and reset the clock
every five minutes just to know where is there
and there is everywhere
because she lives in time and not in any space!
In our country here
the future is in ruins before it is built
a fact recognized by postmodern architecture
that grins at us shyly or demonically as it quoted
ruins from other times and places!
There are no buildings in America only passageways
that connect migratory floods
the most permanent architecture being
precisely that which moves these floods
from one future ruin to another
that is to say freeways and skyways
and the car is our only shelter
the architecture of desire reduced to the womb
a womb in transit from one nowhere to another!”

Saddened by his own vision and sensing smugness in the audience, Wakefield is revolted by his desire to please the foreigners. He coughs. He is portraying his own country now for the sake of… what? Applause? There isn't any. He veers down another path.

“The miracle of America is of motion not regret
in New Mexico the has face of Jesus jumped on a tortilla
in Plaquermine a Virgin appeared in a tree
In Santuari de Chimayo the dirt turned healer
a guy in Texas crasahed into a wall when God said
Let me take the wheel!
And others hear voice all the time
telling them to sit under a tree or jump from a cliff
or take large baskets of eggs into Blockbuster
to throw at the videos
the voices of God are everywhere heard loud
and clear under the hum of the tickertape
and all these miracle and speaking gods
are the mysteries left homeless by the Architecture
of speed and moving forward onward and ahead!”

Wakefield throws his hands into the air as if to sprinkle fairy dust on the room; he is evoking the richness of a place always ready for miracles.”
― Andrei Codrescu, Wakefield

“Money undergoes a conversion when one has more of it than is strictly necessary. When there is enough of it to move beyond the strict survival mode, money goes in search of beauty. That is to say, in search of the abstract and the imaginary. Just like poetry, which is the distillation of an excess of language. Too much money and too many words tend toward the poetic.”
― Andrei Codrescu, Wakefield

“He also stayed awake all night many times in the neon-lit insomnia of cities where the all-nighter is culturally certified and commercially mandated. But the all-nighter of the bohemian heroes was something else: it was spiritual work, the night shift; they stayed awake so the demons that haunt the world wouldn’t get them in their sleep.”
― Andrei Codrescu, Wakefield

“He’s got a bad case of something I call ethnic PMS. I think it sounds nicer than ‘bloodlust.”
― Andrei Codrescu, Wakefield

“Matter of fact, the only certainty driving the economy is the certainty that boredom at faster and faster rates is inevitable.”
― Andrei Codrescu, Wakefield

“The difference between a modern artist and a Buddhist monk is in the approach. The artist goes into the void empt and returns with a souvenir, if you will. The monk approaches the void with a traditional body of knowledge and arrives at emptiness. Our world, no less than that of the monks, is full of junk that gets in the way of spiritual practice. The artist plays with the junk, the monk orders it into nothingness.”
― Andrei Codrescu, Wakefield

“The “normal” family is, after all, the source of what the Devil enjoys most: anxiety, mental illness, violence, evil thoughts, fear, and social unrest. What the devil hates are attempts to escape the quotidian horror of ordinariness. These escapes into art, into otherness, must give him headaches because they might, just might, lead to innocence.”
― Andrei Codrescu, Wakefield

“The icons light up on his laptop, e-mail invites him to grow his penis, enlarge his breasts, refinance his house. All is well in the world.”
― Andrei Codrescu, Wakefield