The Magic Camp Manifesto

We the head counselors of Magic Camp declare,

That a painting is not a painting unless it is made of paint. That the entirety of New York-based abstract expression art is one gigantic op, conceived and carried out by the Congress for Cultural Freedom and Central Intelligence Agency, we name Taos, New Mexico the artistic center of America. That the word moist is fine, you’re just stupid. That art is magic and that we need a lot more of it, push comes to shove it, we’ll go toe to toe with Jackson Pollock if it’s blood you covet. Get it? He bled on his paintings. Or was it piss?

We name the following Certified Bald Pimps: Picasso, Michael Jordan, Matt Lucas, Ghandi, Tyrese Gibson, Saul of Tarsus, St. Francis of Assisi, Kelly Slater, and Thomas Merton; and the following Bald Hacks: Jeff Bezos, Vin Diesel, Paul of Tarsus, Damien Hirst, and Martin Luther

We the counselors with dreadlocks believe,

That churches only want art to say they have it. That pastors in Affliction tees are hot, get over it. That Augustine could turn a phrase now and again but he’s not to be trusted, especially considering what he did with those pears.

Heretofore it has been regarded that Van Gogh cut his ear off from excessive horniness, whereas the truth is this: that Gauguin broke his heart in the platonic sense, no homo, by ditching him at the Yellow House. He therefore owes Vincent one ear and is a prick, but we forgive him because his paintings are good.

We affirm the agenda of those who work in a toll booth all week and paint jungle landscapes on the weekend, of the Sunday painter, the open-minded 90 year old who sketches the bare trees in his backyard and is cool with drag. So long as their art is marketed successfully on instagram or can be segued into a lucrative MLM, it’s cool. But actually: we affirm a rigorous and deep art, an art of the earth, of the desert, the jungle, and the cave. We affirm the carnal and the banal, the abstract and academic, the indigenous, the queer, and the bald.

The only non-fungible token in life is deez nuts

We affirm the merits of productive unemployment, creative truancy, and collaborative disenchantment as prerequisites for new forms.

We firmly declare the right to firmly declare, and along with it we acknowledge that to proclaim is to imprison. That if your uncle could have done it he would have done it. Not saying he still can’t, though.

This is a cult and John Berger is our leader. Immediately after Paris is destroyed in WWIII he will return in a flying saucer and we will all drink a special mixture of absinthe, turpentine and cadmium yellow light and join him in the clouds at his right hand. For more details and a precise timeline of these events, please visit the Sistine chapel.

These are the Magic Camp rules for art and life

1. Always paint with a boner; or a semi at leas

2. Make art, not war. Shoot film, not the Taliban

3. Respect the museum

4. Fuck the museum

5. Preach the gospel daily, if necessary, use paint

Follow @trevorwelch on twitter and find more of his at: trevor.money and ladyboyrecords.bandcamp/album/onsen