Steve Larsen’s Goodbye to Chris Locke

 A tribute to our friend and leader from Steve Larson, who captures the essence of what it is to experience and be experienced by Chris Locke. So much of Steve’s tribute is so good that I have to put a lot of it right here. (Not everyone knows how he became known as RageBoy…):

Chris gets up and “What the fuck,” he says, not questioning, more like a statement of fact. “I’ve been stuck at IBM for a year with my thumb up my ass and I’m waiting for someone to figure out what the fuck is going on and they’ve got plans I give them all the time and they file them and say “Yeah, Chris, that’s great, then they take me into some fucking egg carton room and tell me what I’ve got to work with, which is nothing, no money no equipment no staff, and then they give me a check and I fucking go home and sit there, where I’ve got better tech stuff anyway than IBM where it took me two solid months to get an internet hookup, and this is what they want me to do, see, they want me to do the internet thinking, and get them into it, but the first fucking thing they tell me is you’ve got no resources and ‘Oh, by the way, don’t talk to anyone about this stuff without clearing it through channels.’ A fucking year. And I sit here and some of what I’m hearing is how to work in the system. Well I say fuck the system — it’s dead it’s stupid it’s non-responsive it’s counter productive it’s fucking socially evil and if we put any more of our goddamn time into propping up these dead- ass morons we deserve what we fucking get.”

The veins are standing out in his neck. “Just fuck ’em and move on. I’m sitting around drawing a fat check off these people and it isn’t enough. I don’t want their money. These are deathly structures with no perceptible pulse except for once in a while you run into somebody lost in the fucking halls and maybe you start to talk about something real and then the guy with the fucking glad-hand comes around and tells you can’t do that, you can’t talk.”

“This is a huge goddamn breakthrough into who knows what and as we sit here IBM is trying to figure out how to put it in a box and make it sit up to beg for airholes and fucking cheese. We’re not going to work in the system because THE SYSTEM DOES NOT WANT US.”

“Go rageboy, go,” Esther Dyson yells out (ed: the moniker would stick).  “THEY DO NOT WANT US AND THEY’RE CRIMINALS BY INSTINCT ANYWAY AND IF WE PUT ONE MORE YEAR INTO FUCKING AROUND WITH THESE DEAD FROM THE FUCKING TOP DOWN PIECES OF MANUAL-BOUND SHIT WE’RE GOING TO MISS THE GODDAMN TRAIN!”

There are whistles and cheers in the crowd. People are standing. One guy is on his table. Paper airplanes and erasers are filling the air.  “Let me tell you — I’m Program Director for Online Community Development and they’re paying me to do nothing and when I say “Hey, I’m getting paid for doing nothing they say, ‘As long as you understand the situation.’

His rant achieved eloquence, as rants occasionally can. Now, speeding toward home on the unspeakable New Jersey Turnpike, peering red-eyed through the cloud of smoke from the unspeakable Locke’s cigarettes, we’re turning over a lot of information, twisting and bending it, shooting into the twilight and the greasy salmon-smear that twilight can be around Newark, the refineries, the lights hung on the outsides of the buildings, seemingly, just like always.

How can I tell you about that conversation/monologue? Mix up a vat of hard information, coffee dregs, healthy contempt, real world pragmatism, mashed Toxico cigarette butts, visionary eloquence, trailing-off-in-the-haze 60s enthusiasms, pure rage, a sense of mission, Thirteen Ways of Saying Fuck It, a highly-tuned bullshit detector with wires and lights and everything, democratic zeal, arcane rock and roll, a dollop of Howl, a cloud of menthol smoke and a driver with his head in and out of the window, trying to breathe, at ninety or so, bearing down on the Hanging Gardens of Newark.

“We absolutely have to fucking burn the Fortune 500 down to the water-line. This is a moral obligation, this is an absolute fucking obligation.” Chris waving his left hand in the air, the smoke from his cigarette eddying around in search of free air to poison.”

That’s exactly how it was to be in the presence of such genius and passion. Chris’ spirit changed worlds. His ideas busted open doors to new lands. His rage brought down the sky. And his barometer was always right on the mark, even when it wasn’t. 

Hush little babies don’t say a word

My next-door neighbor remains dead from COVID, even now. The planet is getting quieter with each passing day. His car doesn’t leave for work or come home. The lawn mower doesn’t rev up. No leaf blowing at the property’s edge. His widow leads a quiet life. She comes and goes at ordinary times. No headlights piercing the dark as they did when he would leave for work so early and come home so late. His mother doesn’t stop over because she died of COVID too. His friends don’t stop by with their V8 pickup truck engines. Even the children stay away. Or maybe they’re sick. How would I know? I don’t. You don’t. 

I know this: The hush grows louder, one lost soul at a time. And for those of us who are tuned to the sound of absence, it is both deafening and heartbreaking.

Kat reads Gonzo Marketing

Was it just me who had forgotten that Chris narrates Gonzo Marketing himself? “Fire! Fire!” I thought some of you OG bloggers might be comforted by this reminder, since the web has become far too quiet. I’m listening to their voice on audible.

Closing time 2: Calling Marek

Marek, where are you? Rageboy/Kat/Chris is busy readying the next platform. From a room far away in a land called hospice, he sleeps and dreams a new space for us, one where we hyperlink just by loving each other, no clicks; it’s all in the eyes. A flip of the heart takes you anywhere you want to go. You’ll see. He’s taking us there. Next stop on the cluetrain — all aboard, motherfuckers. 

Also he’s leaving. I didn’t want to tell you this way. I can’t find you on the bookface. No matter where I look. So I had to come here. Back to where we all started, to tell you. He’s going. He’s ok. Selene is there and Jesse and Lauren, they are there. And I sent chocolate pastry and iced espresso and a cookie through grub hub. I think the nurses ate the sweets. Which is okay. And Margaret and I sent some garland and a holiday rug for his room. They hung it beneath the TV because he likes to yell at Fox News when Tucker Carlson comes on — and Hannity whom he calls “Monkey Man!” 

🆙 

And over on Kat’s FB page there is the most joyous disorganized poetry underway where some think he’s just taken a fall and wishing him a speedy recovery and others have read down the thread far enough to know he’s not going back to Tantra Lake. He’s going home-home. Contact us. The place where all FAQs are finally answered. Maybe it’s beta for now. But he’ll get it all set up. Michael O’Connor Clarke got a head start on it, so I’m thinking it’s all polka dots and ribbon candy. If you see this, check out the 148-and-counting comment-poem under Jesse’s post about Kat’s recent fall. It’s like he stitched it together himself.   

🆙 

But still I have to tell you: He’s leaving us. We inherit his heart and his words and his laugh and a belly full of righteous indignation. His spirit of not settling. Never letting up. But there? On the next platform he rests. Network complete. Wired and wireless. Where everything remote is right in your face. And I don’t think he would mind me live blogging this for you, because there is no other way to tell you. No other place for us to meet. I had to come here. 

🆙 

I hope you see this, dear Marek, and have time to sit quietly or run through the streets screaming like you’re being slashed by the tooth fairy, or like it’s the running of the bulls, and what is chasing you, what is chasing all of us: is loss. A loss so profound it will make our souls bleed. And a presence so complete it will make our heads explode. And all of that at once — but mostly the tears come. 

Where did all the meaning go? Why does he have to leave? Am I a selfish, helpless child or a Viking warrior princess? 

Where do I go next? Are these tears or is my heart weeping blood? I need you to tell me. 

🆙 

Kombinat! Closing Time

This will be quick. Just a quick moment in Internet time... time, ti ti tim e. puff, oof, pow pow.

And I loved you when our love was blessed, And I love you now that there's nothing left but sorrow and a sense of overtime, overtime, overtime...

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping...

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances And one in their time play many parts...first, .... And then the blogger

Out, out, brief candle! a poor blogger, that struts and frets his hour upon a stage, And then is heard no more. 

It's a tale told by a blogger. You know the rest.

In 2004 I had an idea while looking at what's happening with blogging, but I could not articulate it, and I still can not articulate it after 17 years? I know, I must be stupid, or was I born this way? or grew up this way? 

I named that thing I did not understand: Kombinat!, Conversation Disposal Machine, a human constructed machinery to harvest all the conversations humans have with each other and turn it into profit, but as a byproduct they would dispose of conversations

In essence Conversations in the end became the Waste, unless you could engage more people in the conversation to keep squeezing the profit. 

The conversations did not have to keep getting better, or smarter, or lead towards solving real world problems. The machine only wanted humans to engage endlessly with conversations as conversations that lead to nowhere. It did not matter what the conversations were about, it didn't matter if the same conversation was happening over and over in a loop, it only mattered that people were engaged, talking, chatting, typing, visiting, scrolling, being there, their eyes glued on, for as long as possible. 

Because the Conversation Disposal Machine used it as a raw material to create profit from engagement and not from having meaningful conversations. 

The value was not in Conversations, conversations were a mere byproduct, a raw material from which to make profit and turn it to waste.

For a transactional person it was probably clearly visible what was happening with social media, but for the poets, artists, sensitive people, seeing the world with their hearts it was invisible. It was invisible to me. 

I could not understand why humans would create such a Conversation Disposal Machine like Facebook... well, it does not matter now. I give up. They won, and the place got wrecked, and I just don't care what happens next. Looks life freedom, but it feels like death. It's something in between, I guess... It's Closing Time.

Kombinat Manifesto is No More. It's now a Conversation Disposal Machine at High Operational Excellence.

Go hug someone you love ! 

If you don't have someone you love, find someone to love unconditionally. 

Trust me, it's worth it. 

Peekaboo! Peekaboo! I see you! I love you!