Dadaism Month
Jason Edwards

Article I wrote for The Lawrencian, a newspaper, back in 2005, to discuss "International Dadaism Month."




Q: What exactly is the color of Dadaism month?
A: An interesting question. One answer would be "fish," but that's become cliché. Another would be "Fnord," but we might get sued. So we've gone with "Desiderata."

Q: Does the center, in fact hold?
A: Fish.

Q: When Mozart wrote Beethoven's Fifth Amendment by Haydn, what did this have to do with Dadaism month?
A: I'll be glad you asked that, when you do, except that not having heard the question yet, I can't be sure of the answer. Suffice it to say that November 31st only comes once a year. That is, if you insist on nomenclature as having more reality than that which it represents, it's precisely November 31st's NOT being actually December 1st that means when it doesn't happen: it had to have happened in our minds, where nothing else is real either.

Q: What do you mean, "when I've asked you that," when I already have?
A: Perhaps. Then again. You won't have until the reader reads that you have, but in order for the reader to read that you have, they will have to be able to then read that I have answered, which I will not have done if you have not asked, excepting that it would mean you hadn’t, since I did.

Q: And so, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, the Fifth Amendment?
A: Necessarily there are shreds of experience in any totality. I take the fifth so as to incriminate your answer by questioning it. Mozart is a subject, Beethoven a modifier, Haydn the object of a prepositional phrase. Each a separate entity until you forcibly blend them together like a cat and a dead cat wrestling with quantum until you watch them do it. Remember your logic. 'If A then B' is true for any B if there is no A.

Q: That makes more sense than I am prepared to admit.
A: Is that why you asked such a leading question?

Q: Only inasmuch as I have to know a subject before I can ask the right questions. Not unlike a snake eating it's own tail. Self-awareness can't exist until it is aware of itself.
A: Everything funny is ironic, and everything ironic is funny?

Q: Yes!
A: Fish.

Q: The rain, like a spoon, eats its way through the caravan of hope?
A: Toast implies fear. A red king barks potato skin speed limits and grass thanks Albertson on Newt Gingrinch. We’ve left all the purple, nostrils of condemnation, a tide of fickle spanners broken like lies and lying on a lathe made foursquare by treason.

Q: Dogged shame. Wreckless equations manifested in feathery avocado?
A: Space Ghost plays cribbage with half a dried teabag, his bible of chicken noses poking fun at the labor secretary’s advice: go, into the church, Thor, windows made of sack, spears made of silent oratories on the function of saltpeter, 3 tablespoons of milk, a quarter bag of egg yolks, stir and bake at 375 Ph.D’s.

Q: Pickles, oyster-melon Sunday, hell to skilled tradesman, an old widow’s miniskirt, Jam On It in Bb minor?
A: Eskimo. We wax rhapsodic, Jeremy snoops for records, alone on the neutral ship lolly fardle, fiddle like wompus cantor and chill the bejesus till sixxum eats forganitinny. I’d wager on shimsham, staple pole tree farms and flegoralize ziggle whippings, if jerby drizzam wheren’t so sniggle-snaggle. Who parthed the packritanzitickle? Who bibbed on the odif mason? Who, a tampin maid in redreslip jorgan flipt yeblowonted fewsonar nadge ick prism. Ghondish brightly! Flerd on carphocixz, hefter jrx thryon fgolpj knbhr tsfghyus, sjfifofo, andld f dlksdfjs, fdjdhsm mnokklp, and ttehjs shhhe wwasrsty hsnsjsjsomplsndhf dhdkfif djdksl jjh qq spdpod djsusn ytisls ns and so says the Marxist condoms I put on her toes, man, on her toes, her toes, her toes, her toes!

Q: Thank you, Herr Senormister.
A: Fish.