This man deserves his own section. His influence on my life is unquestionablely the most profound of anyone I can think of. It amazes me that I didn't really think to add him to my page until now. After seeing one performance I immediately signed up to take his course at the Art Institute of Chicago. Now years afterward I am still chasing a dream of being able to create even half of the experience that he exudes when he performs. One man as an entire universe:
Sensory overload junkies. Megolomaniacs with a plan. People who leak vital fluids through every pore.
Outside Jokhang Temple late one night I had the joy of experiencing the elation of an old woman finally completing her pilgrimage. Best music in the world, straight from the heart.
In Communist countries poets are sometimes thrown in prison--a sort of compliment, since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything at all--a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without echoes, without palpable existence--shadowrealm of print, or of abstract thought--world without risk or eros.
If rulers refuse to consider poems as crimes, then someone must commit crimes that serve the function of poetry, or texts that possess the resonance of revolt. At any cost reconnect poetry to the body. Not crimes against bodies, but against Ideas which are deadly and suffocating. Not stupid libertinage but exemplary crimes, aesthetic crimes, crimes for love.
--Hakim Bey
Any Questions?
There are so many but that about sums up the general idea.