EDITOR'S NOTE


Between giving up
and making a bomb
there must be many ways.
-- Caine, Kung Fu, Episode #8

The Seven Dramaturgs finally convened @Waco. The bomb detonated in OK City. The profane audience searches for the conspiracy and perps, while The Great Work, "never seen zine-within-a-zine scene," continues to be written.

Filmmakers differentiate between what is "in the can" and then, what is "left on the cutting room floor." The Seven Dramaturgs and the true conspiracy and the true perps are the alchemy of that cutting room floor. The film melted down to retrieve the silver.

Invisibility is a martial art. When the blow is thrown, you are not there to receive it. In this issue of RAPT, Hakim Bey gives insight into the work of The Seven Dramaturgs in Salon Apocalypse: "Secret Theater". Gabriele Frontera & Nick Manhattan share journal entries about the years they lived in a literal "house of cards." Nick sends a postcard "home" to Ray Johnson. The Beer Mystic, bellied up to the free bar at a book party, discovers another "zine within the zine" before he blacks out and is carried to detox by the great palindromist Dr. Awkward.

As editor, I have tried to extract the silver from that film that is never seen except by... whom? RAT remains an inside joke. I reveal nothing of the zine-within-the-zine. Even as RAPTRAP now has RAT being hyped around the country, only the initiated know the process. The rest believe they alone are the inventors and dynamos, not mere actors in the Great Film. They may read RAPT, but without a clue and not a little annoyance.

There is no arrogance in naming one's readers as pawns, if it is done overtly and not covertly as is the usual rule. The real readers' gaze is directed upward to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Two hands, index fingers extended, peers pointing toward one another, about to touch. All readers are potential wrighters and vice versa. The drama of our ceiling is Genesis, Creation and Fall. The continuing struggle, not linear but cyclical.

Alice Borealis is a true nut case and wrighter. Some of you have received her packaged gift in this issue of RAPT. I must thank her as well for giving me the inspiration to complete my translation of Big Squirrel's The Crow. She had a dream and I followed suit.

Big Squirrel has given us in The Crow not a description of but a prescription for magic. BLACKSTONE and WHITESTONE. I was introduced to this metatext by Leola One Feather. She was at the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee and she told me how after the siege, she and her husband were the subjects of an intense FBI manhunt. Big Squirrel, a shaman from The Eagle Brotherhood, had taught her and her husband the act of invisibility. I was later to become one of Big Squirrel's students.

This translation of The Crow to the medium of paper took about two years for me to complete. I had learned the art, but for a long time found it impossible to give anything but a description of the tasks in the training. Also the tasks Big Squirrel gives his students are varied for each individual. The more adept the student, the more difficult the task.

In my translation, those of you who have requested it, will find a piece of black to white gradated paper with bits of crow feather. Use it as a bookmark in everything you read as you attempt the initiation process into The Crow

. The more obvious tasks you will need to perform, such as handmaking paper and capturing a live crow, are also the easiest. In the pursuit of knowledge and expertise in these areas, you will find the more hidden and difficult tasks you will need to complete.

The Crow is not an initiation meant for everyone, just those so inclined. Likewise, you can participate in the theatre performed by The Seven Dramaturgs at many levels. Many of you who have worked on @Waco have been introduced to aspects of how important the work is. That there are many ways between doing nothing and building a bomb. That the phenomenon called "coincidence" is more properly named "creative accident". In that sacred time/place, two outstretched index fingers touch.

Finally, those of you attending Burning Man '95, the weekend following the RAT Conference in Seattle, contact Thieves Theatre for the itinerary.

P.S....