textfiles/magazines/ATI/compressionism.txt

WEISENHEIMER AND COMPRESSIONISM: A New Satirical Theme and Variation Chapter for 
       Joseph Machlis' textbook, "The Enjoyment of Music."
         By Marc Frucht

        "Kill all cops,"    .Warm Milk
        "Kill all lawyers," .Shaquil Wilhelm (a.k.a. W. Shakespeare)

        In 2005 Marc Weisenheimer, folk singer and classical comedian, listened to a 
Black & Decker air compressor and contemplated the new music. The term "alternative" 
was fast growing old, and so was Weisenheimer. Never satisfied with the title youth 
had given him: "Founding Father of Generation X" he was searching for a new name to 
call himself, as well this new movement afoot that went far beyond Post-Modernism. 
The popular form included MTV re-runs, paintings of dried nasal mucus on high-priced 
canvasses, poems about slamming Spam and diets that require eating solely gefilte fish 
for four days, followed by three days of milkshakes and healthy dinners, repeated 
four times each month. This is now called the "rubber ball diet."
        "What will we call ourselves???" shouted Weisenheimer in the midst of a 
desperate quest of desperate despair. "There's nothing left!!!"
        And then it hit him. Actually he almost hit it. He'd stubbed his Miata 
4-door alloy-mobile on an entire condominium made of particle board.
        "That's it," he thought out loud, "I'll call it 'Compressionism.'" He said 
something about smooshing everything up from thousands of years and rehashing it 
out every artistic orifice and just about "begging" for it to be called 
"Compressionism" and so a whole genre was born. Or at least named.
THE COMPRESSIONIST PAINTERS
In 1996 Brutus Gangreich proposed canceling all National Endowment for the Arts 
stipends and proverbial hell broke loose.
        "Anarchy," said Puerto Rico School of Design professor Denise Homogeno, 
"no one had any money," said the PRISD professor, "so they began  making art out 
of just whatever was lying around. Everything." she said no medium had been left 
"uncoated."
        Artist Tish "The Wet" Sponge best represents Compressionist painting even
though she was born considerably earlier than Compressionism's advent. Born in 1958, 
the Hell, Pennsylvania native was raised in 1970 and claims to have "soaked up all 
[her] inspiration in expensive coffee houses and poetry slams."
        "I just look at it all, think it over while slurping coffee, and then snot 
on the canvas," she explains. She pays a lot for canvas, but politically correct 
environmentalists will please to know that she doesn't use aerosols or other toxic 
waste to coat her art for setting. She simply spills her coffee refill over it in 
three even coats and chants the now-famous mantra, "I'll sue, I'll sue, I'll sue."
        Painters all over America and parts of the world calling themselves 
Compressionist must master the craft of coffee-spilling before going out from 
their salad days.
        One place besides Hell where much Compressionism is being studied is in
Seminole, Virginia. John Elston started the Virginese school in an old abandoned 
catholic monastery in neighboring Virgin, Virginia. Any Compressionist mucus 
paintings bearing the stamp "made in Virgin," "Crafted by Virginese," or 
"Seminole Made," command thousands at auction before the painters are even 
famous.
        Red King of the alternative band Roomful of Pavement is most famous for 
his painting work before joining the band because he attended the virginese 
school as a child and then went on to paint houses with his popular mucus
primer. King's "Canvas snottings" (as he calls them) can get him no less
than half a million sometimes.
        Some other painters working in the Compressionist movement are Muriel 
Weddinghaus (1982-2005) Heinrick "All-U-Can-Eat" Buffet (1937-1992, Eric Tenuta
(1985-present) and Johannes Schmithenstein (1999-pres.)
        They took studio painting out of the studio and into the coffee shop, 
or wherever else mucus art could  be produced. Instead of mixing their pigments 
on the pallet it was all done in their heads, unrehearsed, unsketched, 
spontaneous and spur-of-the-moment.
        There's also a sub movement these years called "pulp fiction" where 
similar paintings are done right on pieces of particle board but they seldom 
get more than a couple hundred dollars, no matter who made them. Even if 
they came from Virgin.
(TO BE CONTINUED) (next issue)


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          And now part II of the Weisenheimer Document
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Weisenheimer and Compressionism. (Cont from ATI 65)
THE PARTICLE POETS
A similar phenomenon was pressing on in the field of poetry between the late
1990's and now. Compressionism took its shape in poetry much the same way it 
did in painting. Words were collected up from time immemorial then mooshed 
down into compressed "pulp" phrases that seemed to say almost nothing, at 
first read. Further study would show that they took at least a little 
thought to build.
        In the example "Ode to Odes" by the still famous Franco-American 
poet Carello Sands Burgero, it will at first seem to make no sense whatsoever:

Ode to ode an ode an.
I Splendid how odes of ode.
Ode odic an what oh, and odes to ode, my.
Ago centuries 21 it received I
Is this "my ode" ode odious;

        Further study shows that if you read Burgero's "Ode" 
        backwards it makes a little more sense. Hence:

This is my ode to odes.
Odious ode my ode, this is.
I received it 21 centuries ago,
My ode to odes, and oh, what an odic ode.
Ode of odes, how splendid is
An ode to an ode to odes.

        Particle Compressionism came to the fore in the work of such poets
as Burgero as well as Neil P. Eugene (1990-2007) J. Edgar Oem (1988-2025)
and Allen Kernsberg (1941-pres.) Kernsberg, Oem and Burgero were all trained
at the Virginese schools, but all felt it only fair that they do with words 
what others were doing with brushes. Like paintings, some of these poems
found some unusual things on the pages right from the poets' heads. In
"The Winged Creature" by J. Edgar Oem legend has it that Oem's manuscript
contains actual illustrations on every other page using decoupaged composted
vegetables right out of his kitchen. Modern technology kept the texture and
the smells in each print but managed to keep the bacteria from traveling book
to book. By the turn of the century, programmers had gotten really good at
debugging such virii. No one has seen Oem's original manuscript after 
publication of the copies distributed. Rumor has it that the entire book of
galley sheets is under his wife's Corsican mint patch in their herb garden.
        A little must be said about Neil P. Eugene who in 1990 was born in a
cottage in New Japan, Connecticut. That would suffice.
COMPRESSIONISM IN MUSIC
Music was very important to all the Compressionists, not just the recomposers
and song splicers. Painting was done to fully orchestrated music; poetry was
read aloud to such musical instruments as the Black & Decker drill, Norelco's
Dial-A-Bean, and of course La Machine.
        Car stereos became obsolete at the turn of the century along with
cellular phones, as people began wearing both on their wrist in a multi-purpose
device called the Sony "Hand Stand Man." It allowed people to fax, phone and
groove to old Grateful Dead songs while doing light calisthenics: all the
necessities of the modern american workforce worker.
        Compressionism reflected this in its popular music in the '00's.
        "What Do You Want Me To Do, A Hand Stand, Man?" was the most popular
song in 2002 and it managed to remain anonymous until 2007 when style sleuths
were able to detect that the rhyme scheme was similar to another by Marc
Weisenheimer. He was charged with 1 count of e-mailing a song on the internet
without a Handel, and let go on grounds that the song was necessary with or
without credit whether it lacks prurient interest or not.
        Even though the song wasn't made in Virgin, it got him $4000 and is
still popular as today's most important work anthem, second only to The Who's
"We're Not Gonna Take It."
        Other composers true to the Compressionist genre were Warm Milk
(1998-pres) Gangsta M.C. (short for Mozart Christ) (1990-2005) Spinning Light
(2000-pres) and L.M.N.P. Cool Musician. (1975-2005)
        It can be said Compressionist music comes from many styles but mostly
from a cross between Gregorian Harmonies and Baroque MegaPolyphony. Cool Musician
was called to do a Miller Light beer commercial last year and poked harmless fun
at Compresssionism when he was heard saying "Sounds Baroque; Tastes like chicken."
        A little more ought be said about Marc Weisenheimer who was born 1964
in Rotten Villa, England; then moved to Virgin, Virginia in 2003 to see the
beginning of Compressionism. That's enough. 

                   -#-

Look for Compressionist Theatre and Dance subtitles
in Machlis' twenty third textbook edition.