We have had a heck of a day in Memphis. We met and hung out with our new friend Jay Etkin at his gallery/archives. We decided to do an interview. That coming soon.

Ok, I picked up Zach from the airport at 10:00am. We left the Big Chili about 5:30-6:00 pm on Monday the 28th and headed out toward Amarillo to get in front of the rain coming up from the hurricane in Mexico.

We made it to the hotel in Amarillo at about 10:30pm.

Today, Tuesday the 29th, we are starting to figure out how we are going to create content as we go along and post as ready. Since we are on Practice Tour #1 for Zach country album, now is the time to start figuring out how we will document and share..

We are trying to build up Zach followers at @zachtouchonmusic on instagram. please follow that page to keep up with the tour and watch us figure it out.

Ok, Zach also wrote a new song this morning over our conversation at breakfast.

Then we found the perfect photo for it.

More soon…

I like to think I more or less keep up with the news but I heard the following post by Lucus Bean in which he mentioned that DOGE fired hundreds of thousands of federal workers. I knew there was a big shake up by DOGE but I had no idea of the scale. I decided to ask google about it.

Each of my questions are noted so you can see if Google gives you the same answers.

Lucas Bean Daily

Why MAGA Stupidity is Dangerous

In April of 1945, a German pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged at Flossenburg concentration camp. He was 39 years old. The camp was liberated days later…

Listen now

19 days ago · 407 likes · 37 comments · Lucas Bean

Question to Google:
Did DOGE fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers?

Yes, initiatives driven by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) resulted in over 300,000 federal workers and contractors losing or leaving their jobs. This mass reduction includes both direct firings and a high volume of voluntary separations incentivized by the administration. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Here is how the workforce reductions actually unfolded:

The “Deferred Resignation” Program

The vast majority of the departures came from a targeted buyout strategy modeled after Elon Musk’s corporate downsizing at Twitter. [1]

• The Offer: Under the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)’s deferred resignation program, more than 144,000 federal workers accepted packages allowing them to stop working while remaining on paid administrative leave through September. [1, 2]

• The Cost: A Government Accountability Office (GAO) review revealed that this program cost taxpayers $6.7 billion just to pay outgoing employees not to work. [1]

Mass Firings and Forced Cuts

In addition to buyouts, DOGE orchestrated direct terminations that primarily targeted probationary workers, inspectors general, and specific agency staff. [1, 2]

• Chaos & Legal Battles: More than a dozen lawsuits were filed challenging the legality of the rapid terminations. Federal judges frequently ruled parts of the layoff plans unlawful, such as an attempt to slash FEMA’s staffing by 50% and the unlawful firing of 17 inspectors general. [1, 2, 3]

• Rehiring Wave: Because the cuts were deep and erratic, many agencies suffered severe operational disruptions. Cabinet secretaries eventually had to rehire at least 20,000 to 25,000 essential personnel back into government roles to keep critical services functioning. [1, 2, 3]

Ultimately, labor unions like the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) and congressional watchdogs report that while DOGE has since shuttered, its initiatives left a net loss of 271,000 federal jobs - marking the largest peacetime federal workforce cut in U.S. history. [1, 2]

Question: What are the Ongoing Consequences of this Action?

The mass workforce reductions driven by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have triggered severe, ongoing consequences across the federal government. While intended to slash waste, the rapid downsizing has instead created unprecedented fiscal, operational, and legal fallout. [1, 2, 3]

1. Severe Operational Disruptions & “Brain Drain”

The sudden departure of nearly 140,000 experienced personnel through the deferred resignation program has stripped key agencies of institutional knowledge, crippling vital public operations: [1, 2, 3]

• Tax Compliance: The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) saw massive staffing cuts, leading to the halting of large-scale corporate audits and unresolved tax cases, which experts warn could inadvertently expand the federal deficit. [1]

• Public Safety & Environment: At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), severe staffing shortages forced entities like the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory into an “indefinite hiatus,” halting critical water quality and invasive species monitoring. [1]

• Housing and Homelessness: The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) shuttered multiple field offices and cut up to 50% of its workforce, severely stalling policy development during a national homelessness crisis. [1]

• The Restaffing Scramble: To keep basic operations from completely collapsing, the government has already been forced to backfill over 20,000 vacated positions, focusing heavily on hiring lower-cost, early-career workers to replace the lost experts. [1]

2. Ballooning Financial Costs and Deficits

Despite a promised $1 trillion in savings, the short-term execution of the layoffs has actively worsened government spending: [1, 2]

• Paid Leave Skyrocketed: A September 2026 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed that the administration spent a staggering $9.5 billion in 2025 alone to pay federal employees on administrative leave. [1, 2]

• No Proven Savings: The massive upfront cost of paying people not to work - combined with the economic fallout of the war in Iran and sweeping tax cuts - has caused the federal deficit to shoot up rather than contract. The GAO explicitly noted that long-term savings from these job cuts remain entirely unproven. [1, 2]

3. A Mountain of Ongoing Legal Battles

The hyper-aggressive timeline and erratic nature of the terminations have resulted in a complex web of high-stakes lawsuits: [1, 2]

• Unlawful Agency Cuts: Federal judges continue to block several of DOGE’s sweeping blueprints. For example, a federal court ruled that a plan to arbitrarily cut the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workforce by 50% was entirely unlawful.

• The Privacy Act Breaches: Major legal battles are moving forward over claims that untrained DOGE representatives were illegally granted “full access” to sensitive government payroll and payment systems containing civilian Social Security numbers and tax data. Federal judges have greenlit class-action lawsuits against agencies like Health and Human Services (HHS) for these Privacy Act violations. [1, 2, 3, 4]

4. Long-Term Civil Service System Overhauls

To permanently cement these changes and prevent future legal roadblocks, the administration has begun rewriting the fundamental rules of federal employment: [1]

• Expedited Firings: The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has enacted final regulatory changes that allow federal agencies to apply strict “suitability and fitness” standards to current employees. This effectively bypasses traditional civil service protections, allowing the government to rapidly fast-track the termination of remaining workers under the guise of fitness reviews. [1]

  ---

Question: Wasn’t USAID part of this shake up? How about the State Department?

Yes, both the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department were central targets of the DOGE-driven reorganization, experiencing some of the most radical cuts and structural changes in modern civil service history. [1, 2]

While other departments faced phased downsizing, USAID was uniquely subject to a near-total operational dismantle, with the State Department ultimately taking over what remained. [1, 2]

The Gutting and Shuttering of USAID

USAID was arguably DOGE’s primary target early on. Elon Musk publicly criticized the agency, leading to an aggressive corporate-style purge that effectively paralyzed its operations: [1, 2, 3]

• Staff Slashed by 97%: In February 2025, DOGE abruptly placed the vast majority of USAID’s 10,000-person workforce on administrative leave and recalled all staff stationed abroad. Internal emails revealed the agency’s core team was brought down to under 300 people, leaving skeletal operations like just 12 people to manage the entire Africa bureau. [1, 2]

• Mass Contract Cancellations: Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the cancellation of over 5,200 foreign aid contracts worth tens of billions of dollars. Humanitarian groups warned these freezes severely impacted global healthcare and education initiatives. [1, 2]

• The State Department Takeover: By March 2025, the administration officially bypassed Congress to sunset USAID as an independent agency. What remained of its mandatory or high-profile functions—such as U.S. emergency food aid, PEPFAR (HIV/AIDS relief), and malaria programs—were forcibly folded directly under the umbrella of the State Department. [1, 2, 3]

The State Department Purge

The State Department did not just absorb USAID; it faced its own internal workforce reduction, triggering heavy losses in diplomatic and foreign policy expertise: [1]

• The July 2025 RIF: In July 2025, the State Department executed a massive Reduction in Force (RIF) that abruptly laid off nearly 1,350 dedicated employees. [1]

• Targeting Civil Service: The layoffs primarily targeted long-term domestic civil service workers stationed in the U.S., alongside Foreign Service officers temporarily serving in domestic roles. [1]

• The Pushback: Lawmakers and employee unions have strongly condemned the purge. Critics and former diplomats argue that the simultaneous elimination of USAID’s independent status and the loss of over 1,300 State Department experts have drastically weakened American influence and diplomatic capabilities overseas. [1, 2, 3]

  ---

Question: What have been or will be the long term consequences of these actions on the international community and on the United States?

The dismantling of USAID and the parallel purges at the State Department have fundamentally altered global geopolitics and domestic stability. Over the long term, these actions carry heavy humanitarian, economic, and strategic consequences for both the international community and the United States.

1. Long-Term Impact on the International Community

The abrupt cancellation of 83% of U.S. foreign aid projects has created a catastrophic “sudden shock” to global stability: [1, 2]

• A Growing Humanitarian Crisis: By cutting essential healthcare, water, and education initiatives that served over 60 countries, the international community faces staggering human losses. Public health experts publishing in The Lancet estimate that the withdrawal of U.S. health infrastructure could lead to 14 million preventable deaths by 2030, including millions of children losing access to basic medical care and vaccines. [1, 2, 3]

• Unchecked Disease Outbreaks: The elimination of USAID’s pre-outbreak infrastructural networks has left the global community highly vulnerable to pandemics. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, health experts blamed DOGE cuts for severely undermining the response to an intensifying Ebola outbreak, noting that critical virus samples were compromised due to a complete lack of trained operational oversight. [1]

• Surges in Violence and Exploitation: A study published in the journal Science identified a direct link between the sudden cancellation of U.S. local grants and a rise in violent regional conflicts. The rapid evaporation of economic development projects caused immediate localized chaos. For instance, the collapse of environmental oversight programs led to a doubling of illegal narco-mining landing strips in the Peruvian Amazon, while cutting aid programs in regions like Kenya eroded the economic counterweights that previously kept youth from being drawn into terrorist organizations. [1, 2]

2. Long-Term Impact on the United States

Domestically, the sweeping job cuts and foreign policy shifts are yielding severe long-term blowback:

• The Erosion of “Soft Power” and Influence: For over six decades, foreign aid served as one of America’s primary diplomatic tools to build alliances and advance commercial interests. By abandoning these partnerships, the U.S. has triggered a massive vacuum in global influence. National security experts warn this severely undermines long-term American global competitiveness, as rival nations rapidly step in to fill the structural and economic voids left by the U.S. [1, 2]

• Severe “Brain Drain” and Recruitment Crisis: Labor organizations like the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) emphasize that the mass, highly publicized firing of over 300,000 workers—including nearly 100,000 military veterans—has severely fractured trust in the civil service. Decades of highly specialized institutional knowledge in international diplomacy, cybersecurity, and public health have been permanently erased. Federal agencies face an unprecedented, multi-decade struggle to recruit and retain high-level talent to fulfill their core national missions. [1, 2]

• Permanent Domestic Operational Drag: Even though DOGE has shuttered, the operational damage persists. The simultaneous gutting of domestic agencies has left everyday Americans facing long-term structural backlogs - ranging from stalled corporate tax audits and uncollected revenue to delayed Social Security assistance - proving that the “failed experiment” will continue to carry significant financial and social costs for years to come. [1, 2, 3]

Question: What needs to happen in the future to correct this mayhem and how long will it take?

Correcting the operational, diplomatic, and fiscal disruption caused by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) mass downsizings will require a monumental, multi-phased effort. According to public administration experts, labor groups, and former diplomats, fixing this system demands both immediate legal corrections and long-term structural rebuilding. [1, 2]

Estimates suggest a full recovery of federal and diplomatic capabilities will take at least 5 to 10 years, with some diplomatic impacts remaining permanent. [1]

What Needs to Happen to Correct the Mayhem?

1. Legislative Safeguards & Structural Reversal

• Repealing Executive Reclassifications: Congress must pass pending legislation, such as the Saving the Civil Service Act, to strip the executive branch of the power to unilaterally classify civil servants into at-will categories like Schedule Policy/Career. Without this, future administrations could repeatedly clear out institutional experts. [1, 2]

• Re-establishing USAID: Bypassing Congress to shutter USAID left a complex web of broken humanitarian contracts. Congress would need to formally appropriate emergency funds to independently re-charter the agency, isolate it from State Department bureaucracy, and renegotiate thousands of terminated international grants. [1, 2]

2. Overhauling the Federal Hiring & Recruitment Engine

• The 10-Day Hiring Mandate: The federal government’s standard hiring timeline can drag on for months. To combat the massive brain drain, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) must adopt modern applicant tracking systems and fast-track pathways (aiming for under 10–14 days) to recruit specialized talent into decimated sectors. [1, 2]

• Targeted Incentives and Rehiring Pipelines: Agencies like the State Department must actively establish “welcome back” programs for the 1,350+ laid-off subject matter experts. Because many of these mid-and-upper-level specialists have already transitioned to the private sector or retired, the government will need to offer high-grade salary matching and expedited security clearance processes. [1, 2]

3. Resolving the Multi-Billion Dollar Legal Fallout

• Settling Class-Action Violations: The courts must finish adjudicating the dozens of active lawsuits regarding illegal mass firings and Privacy Act data breaches. Billions of dollars will likely need to be allocated in court-ordered back pay and settlement damages to wrongfully terminated workers. [1, 2]

How Long Will It Take?

Public administration experts break down the recovery timeline into three distinct horizons:

PhaseTimelineAnticipated ProgressPhase 1: Immediate Triage1 – 2 YearsSettling active back-pay lawsuits; stopping ongoing regulatory rule changes that weaken civil service protections; auditing backlogs at damaged agencies like the IRS and HUD.Phase 2: Operational Stabilization3 – 5 YearsRebuilding entry-level and mid-level staffing pools through aggressive hiring; physically setting up foreign aid field structures again; repairing fundamental domestic government functions.Phase 3: Restoring Soft Power5 – 10+ YearsRebuilding international trust and diplomatic networks. Experts from organizations like the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) emphasize that institutional memory and deep-rooted foreign relationships take decades to forge and cannot be simulated or bought overnight.

Question: Considering of all of this up to now, what is the estimated costs and the cost of repairation?

While the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) publicly claimed to have unlocked $160 billion to $215 billion in sweeping cuts, independent oversight and nonpartisan analyses reveal that the net financial ledger is heavily in the negative. The chaotic execution, lost productivity, and extensive legal violations have transformed a “money-saving” campaign into a highly expensive operational crisis. [1, 2]

The Estimated Costs (What Has Already Been Spent)

Instead of shrinking government costs, the short-term financial burden shifted directly onto taxpayers to pay for empty productivity, operational workarounds, and massive administrative overhead: [1]

• $9.5 Billion in “Paid Leave” Salaries: A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report confirmed that the federal government spent $9.5 billion in 2025 alone paying federal workers on administrative leave—a staggering 435% increase from previous years. [1, 2]

• $6.7 Billion for the “Fork in the Road” Exit Strategy: Out of that paid leave, $6.7 billion went strictly toward funding the OPM’s deferred resignation program. This money was paid to roughly 100,000 to 140,000 employees who were legally barred from working or performing their duties while they waited out their official separation dates. [1, 2, 3, 4]

• $135 Billion in Overall Macroeconomic Loss: An extensive fiscal analysis by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service (PSP) estimated that when factoring in the total value of paid leave, severe drops in agency productivity, the abrupt economic impact on communities reliant on federal jobs, and the cost of urgently rehiring essential personnel at premium rates, the total operational cost of the DOGE restructuring reached $135 billion. [1, 2]

• Unquantified Revenue Drain: This does not include the long-term wealth destruction from gutting the IRS, which halted major corporate audits and delayed tax collections, actively driving up the budget deficit. [1, 2]

The Cost of Reparation (What Rebuilding Will Cost)

Undoing the systemic damage and stabilizing the federal civil service carries an entirely separate, multi-billion-dollar price tag that will affect federal budgets for the next decade:

• Legal Settlements & Back-Pay Damage: Estimated $2 Billion – $5 Billion
  With over 18,000 individual appeals flooded into the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) and dozens of class-action civil rights lawsuits moving through federal courts, the government faces massive liabilities. If judges rule the mass terminations or the State Department/Education Department Reductions in Force (RIFs) to be systematically unlawful, the court-mandated back pay, mandatory benefit restorations, and legal fees will cost billions. [1, 2, 3]

• Rehiring and Re-Clearing Specialized Talent: Estimated $1.5 Billion – $3 Billion
  Replacing decades of lost institutional memory requires more than just filling seats. Recruitment campaigns, salary matching to pull experts out of the private sector, and processing highly restricted security clearances for thousands of replacement diplomatic, cybersecurity, and scientific officers will cost hundreds of millions annually. [1]

• The Cost of “Re-Chartering” Global Aid: Estimated $10 Billion+
  Arbitrarily canceling over 5,200 international USAID contracts and folding the skeletal remains into the State Department created extensive international liabilities. Formally separating, re-establishing, and renegotiating broken treaties, public health networks, and humanitarian grants with foreign nations will take years of targeted, fresh congressional appropriations. [1]

Well folks, this leads to a hundred more questions in my mind but the main question I have for the reader is: Are you going to vote? I hope so. This is definately a ‘All hands on deck!’ moment.

Chop, Wiggle, Tinkle, Bam

My brother Dan says he’s trying to get famous and asks people to share his song. There is only one small problem: he posted it six years ago, and after all that time it currently has a grand total of 14 views and 13 subscribers.

Dan’s birthday is coming up on October 8, so I thought it might be fun to see if we could suddenly make his six-year-old dream come true.

Watch the video. Give him a like. Leave him a comment telling him how great the song is. Subscribe to his channel. And, most importantly, repost this and ask your friends to do the same.

I’m curious to see what might happen if a six-year-old video with 14 views suddenly starts getting hundreds, or maybe thousands, of views for no apparent reason.

Share

Dan Touchon and the Great American Pandemic Song

There are songs that capture their historical moment immediately. There are others whose importance becomes apparent only after the dust has settled and civilization has had sufficient time to recognize what happened to it.

Dan Touchon’s Chop, Wiggle, Tinkle, Bam belongs, I would suggest, to the latter category.

Created during the pandemic, the song initially appears to be a piece of cheerful nonsense, a homemade assemblage of percussive words, jokes, rhymes, social observations, whiskey, honey, bourgeois decadence, bathroom deals, theological reassurance and impending catastrophe.

This interpretation, while understandable, is inadequate.

What Touchon has actually given us is a compressed vernacular history of Western civilization at precisely the moment when Western civilization found itself sitting at home wondering whether it had remembered to wash its groceries.

Consider the opening:

Chop, chop, hammer, hammer, slam slam
Hung out to dry like a Virginia ham

Immediately we are placed in a world of labor.

Chop.

Hammer.

Slam.

These are among humanity’s oldest technological verbs. The axe, hammer and impact precede the computer, the corporation and the algorithm by millennia. Before Homo sapiens could develop derivatives markets, social media or customer-service telephone trees, somebody had to hit something with something else.

Touchon returns us to this primal condition.

But then, astonishingly, the human being becomes the product:

Hung out to dry like a Virginia ham.

The worker has become meat.

Marx would presumably have had something to say about this.

Yet Touchon refuses to remain inside the predictable confines of Marxist critique. No sooner has the Virginia ham appeared than someone politely asks whether mustard might be desired.

The answer is decisive:

No ma’am.

Whiskey, however, is acceptable.

Thus, within four lines, Touchon has moved from industrial labor to commodification, regional American foodways, hospitality and alcohol.

Bob Dylan might have required three verses.

Touchon needs four lines.

The Great Pandemic Dislocation

The historical circumstances matter.

During the pandemic, ordinary categories collapsed into one another. The office became the bedroom. The kitchen became the school. The dining table became the conference room. The computer became workplace, theater, pub, newsstand, marketplace, social club and nervous system.

Time itself became peculiar.

Tuesday became difficult to distinguish from Thursday.

Against this background, Chop, Wiggle, Tinkle, Bam makes remarkable sense.

The song does not proceed through conventional narrative because pandemic life did not proceed through conventional narrative. Instead, it advances through abrupt clusters of activity:

Chop. Hammer. Slam.
Wiggle. Giggle. Go.
Tinkle. Wink. Cha-cha.
Bam. Gitcha. Boom.

These are simultaneously words and sounds. More importantly, they are instructions. Touchon gives us a civilization reduced to verbs.

Do something.
Move.
Hit something.
Laugh.
Dance.
Explode.
Continue.

There is a long tradition behind this technique. Doo-wop famously turned apparently meaningless syllables into the structural substance of songs. The Rivingtons’ Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow made nonsense vocalization itself the central musical event, and the Trashmen transformed related material into the manic 1963 hit Surfin’ Bird.

Touchon belongs to this august lineage.

But where Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow gives us the exuberance of postwar popular culture, Chop, Wiggle, Tinkle, Bam gives us its exhausted descendant.

Papa oom mow mow.

Chop wiggle tinkle bam.

Sixty years of American civilization separate the two.

One can only speculate what happened.

The Four Movements

Formally, the composition might be understood as a miniature four-movement symphony.

The first movement is Chop.

Chop belongs to work, division and destruction. One chops wood. One chops food. One chops something larger into smaller pieces.

The second movement is Wiggle.

Here the body reappears. Wiggle is playful, erotic, childish and fundamentally unserious. Having established the world of labor, Touchon immediately destabilizes it through bodily movement.

Then comes Tinkle.

Tinkle is fascinating because it hovers between sound and action. Bells tinkle. Glass tinkles. A piano may be tinkled upon. The word also possesses a somewhat less elevated bodily meaning.

Touchon leaves the matter unresolved.

Finally comes Bam.

Bam requires no interpretation. Something has happened.

The architecture is therefore extraordinary:

Chop: civilization constructs.
Wiggle: civilization entertains itself.
Tinkle: civilization decorates itself.
Bam: civilization blows itself up.

One might reasonably ask whether Spengler could have improved upon this.

Enter the Bourgeoisie

Then, without warning, Touchon abandons Virginia ham and honey and enters political philosophy:

It’s a fine mess we created by the bourgeois.

The appearance of “bourgeois” is startling. Nothing has prepared us for it.

That is precisely why it works.

The bourgeoisie does not arrive accompanied by Marx, Engels or an explanatory footnote. It simply wanders into the song between “cha-cha” and “scrimshaw.”

This may be the most accurate representation of ideology in contemporary life ever written.

We encounter political ideas exactly this way: sandwiched between entertainment, consumer products, fragments of news, advertisements, jokes and somebody dancing.

And then comes one of the song’s great existential propositions:

Nothing lasts forever, not even a scrimshaw.

Here we must stop.

A scrimshaw is already an object haunted by time. Traditionally associated with sailors carving or engraving whale bone or teeth, it belongs to an older maritime culture of long voyages, handwork, waiting and storytelling.

Touchon could have written:

Nothing lasts forever, not even love.
Too easy.

Not empires.
Predictable.

Not mountains.
Sentimental.

Instead: Not even a scrimshaw.

The specificity makes the line strangely convincing.
Of course the scrimshaw will disappear.
Everything will.

The whale.
The sailor.
The ship.
The person who carved it.
The person who owned it.
The civilization that placed it in a museum.
The museum.
The label beside it.
Eventually the language in which the label was written.

Touchon has smuggled impermanence into a novelty song.

From Dada to Revolution 9

At this point we should acknowledge the avant-garde tradition.

Dada understood more than a century ago that when civilization becomes sufficiently absurd, a perfectly reasonable artistic response is to become more absurd than civilization.

Meaning can be dismantled.
Language can become material.
Words can become noises.
Noise can become composition.

This trajectory eventually passes through experimental music, musique concrète and sound collage. In popular music, one of the most famous examples remains the Beatles’ Revolution 9, assembled from tape loops, speech, sound effects and manipulated fragments to create what John Lennon conceived as a sonic picture of revolution.

Lennon had: Number nine. Number nine. Number nine.

Touchon answers: Chop chop. Hammer hammer. Slam slam.

The comparison is irresistible.

Both works recognize repetition as a device capable of transforming ordinary language into sonic material. Repeat a word enough times and its semantic function begins to weaken. Eventually we stop asking what the word means and begin hearing its shape.

Chop.
Chop.
Hammer.
Hammer.
Slam.
Slam.

Language becomes percussion.

Then Everything Goes Wrong

By the fourth section, the song has darkened considerably:

Bam, bam, gitcha, gitcha, boom, boom

The playful noises have become explosive. And now we encounter deals being made in bathrooms. It is an inspired image of institutional corruption because the bathroom is precisely where official architecture becomes unofficial.

The boardroom has minutes.
The bathroom does not.
History records the treaty.
History rarely records the conversation beside the urinal that made the treaty possible.
Touchon understands this.
Then comes catastrophe.
Stuff hits the fan.
It will consume.
And the resulting mess will require more than a broom.

We have moved from slapstick to apocalypse without changing vocabulary.

That movement is essential to understanding the song.

The pandemic itself had precisely this surreal quality. One moment people were discussing toilet paper and sourdough starters; the next they were discussing mortality statistics, supply chains, emergency powers and the possibility that normal life might not return for quite some time.

The ridiculous and terrifying occupied the same room.

So they do here.

The Final Turn: Theology

And then Touchon does something genuinely interesting.

After labor, appetite, alcohol, flirtation, class conflict, destruction, political deals and catastrophe, he suddenly gives us God:

The Lord is in heaven
He’s still on His throne.

The scale of the song abruptly expands.

We began with Virginia ham.

We have arrived at the architecture of the cosmos.

This is an old American songwriting maneuver. Folk, country, gospel and blues repeatedly allow the mundane and metaphysical to inhabit the same stanza. Trains become salvation. Rivers become death. Roads become destiny. Home becomes heaven.

Consider The Weight by The Band. Robbie Robertson constructed a landscape populated by Nazareth, Moses, Luke, the Devil, Miss Fanny, Crazy Chester, dogs, travelers and favors. Robertson later connected the song to Luis Buñuel and the “impossibility of sainthood”: the predicament of someone trying to do good while human circumstances continually complicate the attempt.

Touchon operates in similarly unstable territory, although his route to metaphysics passes through mustard. That distinction should not be underestimated.

Robertson gives us the burden: Take the load.

Touchon gives us the millstone. And the millstone is heavier.

The Millstone

The concluding image may be the key to the entire composition:

But the world’s still not home
It’s more like a, more like a millstone.

This is a far more complicated image than it first appears.

A millstone is certainly heavy. Indeed, “a millstone around one’s neck” has become proverbial for an inescapable problem, obligation or burden. The phrase carries particularly severe biblical associations with judgment and punishment. To compare the world itself to a millstone is therefore to imagine existence as something enormously heavy that we somehow find ourselves carrying.

This immediately places Touchon in conversation with The Weight.

The Band gives us the burden that one person takes from another. Touchon gives us the millstone. But a millstone is not simply a heavy object.

A millstone is a machine of transformation.

The grain comes from the harvest. The grain is placed beneath the stone. The stone crushes it. Through that crushing, grain becomes flour. Flour becomes dough. Dough becomes bread.

And bread changes the imagery again.

Bread is among the oldest symbols of human sustenance. It is the product of agriculture, labor, patience, technology and community. It is “daily bread.” In Christian symbolism it becomes something still greater: nourishment transformed into sacrament.

Suddenly the theological line immediately preceding the millstone becomes important:

The Lord is in heaven
He’s still on His throne.

Heaven.
Millstone.
Grain.
Flour.
Bread.

The sequence begins to acquire an almost biblical resonance. And yet the process depends upon crushing. The grain cannot remain grain if it is to become bread.

The millstone is therefore simultaneously burden and transformation.

This is particularly striking in a song created during the pandemic. The pandemic itself functioned as a kind of historical millstone. Ordinary life was placed under enormous pressure. Work, family, government, medicine, education, religion, entertainment, commerce and personal relationships were all subjected to stresses that exposed their structures.

People discovered what broke.
They also discovered what endured.
And some things were transformed.

The millstone therefore suggests something more interesting than simple catastrophe. The pressure that threatens to crush us may also be the pressure through which something becomes something else.

This brings us back to the strange sequence announced by the title:

Chop.
Wiggle.
Tinkle.
Bam.

Perhaps these are the noises of life beneath the millstone.

We work.
We dance.
We make things.
We drink.
We flirt.
We quarrel.
We construct systems.
We tear systems down.
We make questionable deals in bathrooms.
We create messes that cannot be cleaned up with brooms.
We pray.

And meanwhile the great stone keeps turning.

This is where Touchon unexpectedly enters one of the oldest human symbolic systems: the cycle of harvest, grinding, making and eating.

Seed.
Earth.
Grain.
Harvest.
Millstone.
Flour.
Bread.
Body.
Then seed again.

The millstone does not travel anywhere. It revolves.

That distinguishes it beautifully from another great image of American popular music: the train.

The train moves down the line. The millstone moves in circles.
The train promises escape.
The millstone promises recurrence.
The train takes the traveler somewhere else.
The millstone transforms whatever passes through it.
And perhaps this explains why the singer says:

The world’s still not home.

We are not home because we are still inside the process. We are simultaneously the farmer, the grain, the miller, the stone and the person waiting for bread.

Which makes Chop, Wiggle, Tinkle, Bam something considerably stranger than a pandemic novelty song.

It becomes, whether its author intended it or not, a little cosmology of work and transformation.

The world is a millstone.
It burdens us.
It judges us.
It crushes us.
It feeds us.

And it keeps turning.

And Then, the Masterstroke

After all of this, after the bourgeoisie, impermanence, corruption, catastrophe, theology and the crushing weight of existence, Touchon returns to the beginning:

Chop chop, hammer hammer, slam slam.

Nothing has been resolved.
The worker returns to work.
The rhythm resumes.
The ham remains hanging.
Someone once again offers mustard.
The singer once again refuses.
The whiskey remains acceptable.

And then Dan Touchon delivers what may be one of the most understated conclusions in the history of the protest song:

Goodbye for now. See you later.

Not farewell.
Not amen.
Not the end.
See you later.

Civilization, apparently, will continue.

Perhaps that is the ultimate pandemic message of Chop, Wiggle, Tinkle, Bam.

After isolation, fear, political absurdity, domestic confinement, economic uncertainty and the sudden awareness that the enormous machinery of modern civilization might be considerably more fragile than previously advertised, the appropriate response is neither despair nor triumph.

It is:

See you later.

And perhaps that is why, when the history of twenty-first-century American music is finally written, future scholars will place Chop, Wiggle, Tinkle, Bam somewhere between The Weight, Surfin’ Bird, Revolution 9, the Book of Ecclesiastes and a man standing in his garage hitting something repeatedly with a hammer.

Whether Dan Touchon intended any of this is beside the point.

Great works have never been entirely successful at controlling their critics.

Chop.
Wiggle.
Tinkle.
Bam.

"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em."

William Shakespeare

Here’s song by my little brother Dan Touchon. He says he is trying to get famous in the video and is asking to share this song. I though it might be fun to share it and ask you to repost so that all of the sudden he gets a lot of views on this 6 year old video that currently has only 14 views over a 6 year period.
His birthday is coming up in a October 8. So leave him a ‘like’ and a comment telling him how great the song is and subscribe! (there are currently only 13 subscribers) Maybe he’ll feel encouraged to restart his music career or at least have some bragging rights that he got a lot of views on the video.

I painstakingly wrote down the lyrics. I think I got them right. In case you want to sing along…

Chop, Wiggle, Tinkle, Bam

Chop, chop, hammer, hammer, slam slam
Hung out to dry like a Virginia ham
Would you like some mustard? Huh, no ma’mam.
But if you have some whiskey, I’ll take a dram

Wiggle, wiggle, giggle, giggle, go, go
hey whoo, I need to take it slow.
I can’t be nice two days in a row.
But if you’ve got some honey I’ll give it a go.

Tinkle, tinkle, wink, wink, cha, cha
it’s a fine mess we created by the bourgeois
Nothing lasts forever not even a scrimshaw
So tear it down, we’ll give it a hoorah

Bam, bam, gitcha, gitcha, boom, boom
Can you believe all the deals made in the bathroom
If stuff hits the fan it is gonna consume
such a mess will take more than a broom.

he said she said give a dog a bone
the Lord is in heaven He’s still on His throne.
We may struggle, we may fight, we may groan
But the world’s still not home
It’s more like a, more like a mill stone.

so chop chop Hammer hammer slam slam
hung out to dry like a Virginia ham
Would you like some mustard? No, no ma’mam.
But if you have some whiskey, I’ll take a dram

Goodbye for now. See you later.

Happy upcoming birthday Dan!

If you are in Brooklyn this coming Saturday head over to Prospect Park! 2PM

At the end of the month Zach and I will be heading out to Knoxville for the Umteenth Annual Fluxfest. If your in the area join us! Should be fun.

I think the address will be:
4508 PLYMOUTH RD - KNOXVILLE, TN 37914

More later.

VISUAL POETRY AND COLOR - LOS ALAMOS, N.M.

EXHIBITION - Opening Reception - Saturday August 15 - 2:00 - 4pm

The International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction presents Visual Poetry and Color: a traveling exhibition of Collage Artists and Visual Poets from around the world.

This is Exhibition #4

see an overview of exhibitions 1-3

See works from Exhibition #1 (Troy, NY)
See additional works added in 2024 for Exhibition #2 & #3 (Dallas, TX and Los Angeles, CA)
See additional works added in 2026 for Exhibition #4 (Los Alamos, NM)

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

IF YOU ARE A PARTICIPATING ARTIST BE SURE TO POST THIS PAGE ON YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA!

International

Elena Marini, Italy - David Bircham - Canada, Lisa Blond, Canada - Flora Georgiou, Australia - Angelo Ricciardi, Italy - Roberto Scala, Italy - Emily Marbach, UK - Les Jones, UK - Vittore Baroni, Italy - Ryosuke Cohen, Japan - Luc Fierens, Belgium - Rose Frain, Scotland - György Galantai, Hungary - Julia Klaniczay, Hungary - Alexander Limarev, Russia - Ruggero Maggi, Italy - Lilian Nicholson, Sweden - Matthew Rose, France - Berty Skuber, Italy - Rod Summers, the Netherlands - Kjell Varvin, Norway - Mary Wallace, Ireland, Alastair Strachan - Scottland - Mado Reznik, Argentina - Mike Shaw, UK - Danielle Ouellet, Spain - Patrick Anderson-McQuoid, Ireland - Keiichi Nakamura, Japan - NAB nab, France -

USA

Cathy Zigrossi, Ana Soha, Amye Wake, Abigail Meredith, Annie Kartsotis, Kaitlin Oesterreicher, Alex Mena, Chris Davis, Todd Franke, Bella Moore, Laurie Kornher, Kathy Elliot, Lanny Quarles, Eric Breish, Charlie White, Katerina Touchon, Branko Majmunovic, Peggy Shepherd, Peggy Olivier, Edith Torres, Jasmine Yarbrough, Kerrie More, Don Abell, Zach Touchon, Diane Blumin, Elizabeth Bogard, Liz King, Mili Suleman, Mark LoVecchio, Allison Anne, Ray Beldner, Melissa Kulig, Susan Reedy, Rosemary Rae, Kelly C. Berwager, Deanna Lampe, Jonathan Stangroom, Lilly Hope, Nich St. Jam, David C. Donovan, Ann Dettmer, Pratima Aravabhoomi, Beth McCoy, Joan Schulze, Marlene Weisman, Rebecca Stuckey, Laura Speer, Mary Baumgardner, James Wimberg, Mim Golub Scalin, Janice McDonald, Kathy Elliott, Annie Kartsotis, Terry Garrett, Jay Sylvester, Laura Noe, Betsy Arizu, Judith Jasinski, Christine Jelson West, Jennifer DeSantis, Heidi Markham, Peggy Shepherd, Vicki Daigneau, Selena Dixon, Carmen Kolz, Clive Knights & Terriann Walling, Laila Rezai, Touri Strick, Joey Zanotti, Sona Nast, Marsha Balian, Andrea Burgay, Jane Helslander, Marian Hoffman Ting, Allan Bealy, James Gallagher, John Whitlock, Kelly Feltault, Loralei R Byatt, Garry S. Grayson, Rosalie Gancie, Teri Dryden, Susan D Grissom, Lash, Scott Wiggerman, E.Y. Reilly, C.R.E. Wells, Mike Gold, Carol Tippit Woolworth, Graham Moore, Clare Schmehl, Linda Logan-Condon, Bonnie Binkert, Reid Wood, Ines Kramer, Regina S Levin, Robert McGraw, Ursula Hudson, Bob Phillips, Lance Carlson, Julia Walck, Denise Emanuel Clemen, Jennifer Evens, Robin Roberts, Celeyce Matthews, Elaine Norman, Clark Ellis, Odilia Iaccarino.

This is pretty much the total number of artists about 180 works except for any contributed works made during the workshop on the day of the opening. Unfortunately one work by the artist Kostis from Greece never arrived. It got stuck in US Customs in New York.

WORKSHOP - Saturday August 15 -10am to 2pm

Please join us for a FREE one day collage workshop and make a work to contribute to the exhibition and the archives. All supplies provided. (but you are welcome to bring your own materials to use or share) Your contributed work will be hung the same day for the opening of the exhibition and become a part of the Collage Museum’s collection and used in future exhibitions of this show.

Currently there is plenty of space for the workshop.

Just show up!

PRESS

https://ladailypost.com/visual-poetry-and-color-opens-friday-in-step-up-gallery/

https://losalamosreporter.com/2026/08/04/new-international-exhibit-visual-poetry-and-color-opens-aug-14-in-step-up-gallery/

https://laconm.libcal.com/event/17296572?more

https://www.facebook.com/LADailyPost/posts/step-up-gallery-visual-poetry-and-color-opens-aug-14/1650306420228211/

https://ladailypost.com/step-up-gallery-visual-poetry-color-opens-aug-14/

https://codex.vasari.art/news/story/53142

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2009259115988533/posts/4488776171370136/

https://www.losalamoslibrary.org/Events-directory/Step-Up-Gallery/Opening-Reception-Visual-Poetry-and-Color

One of my VIP (paid) subscribers noticed that they didn’t see a couple of last week’s posts and wondered why they didn’t get them in their email. I reminded them that I had mentioned the new approach here:

Thinking that I am possibly bombarding subscribers with email posts, nearly on the daily, My thought was to only post by email once a week, and to make more use of NOTES but continue to post whatever I want directly to the site without everything going to your emal box and use the weekly post as a recap of activity for the week that did not get mailed out by email.

The fact that a subscriber noticed that they didn’t get a couple of posts gave me a new idea… What if I send out all posts as they happen to paid subscribers and everyone else get’s the weekly recap?

I might try that.

So I will send out this post by email to paid subscribers.

The current weekly email is an experiment. Frankly, it is easier to email out everything as it happens.

Do you prefer to get all posts by email as they happen or a weekly recap?

I would like to hear your opinion in the comments…

Leave a comment

Coming up soon, a new exhibition in Houston that my work will be featured in. Fly in to see the show and hang out with me.

Mixing Media

August 22, 2026 - September 19, 2026

From Laura Rathe Fine Art:

“Laura Rathe Fine Art Houston presents Mixing Media, a group exhibition celebrating texture through the use of diverse materials. Featuring Matt Devine, Anna Kruhelska, Greg Miller, Cecil Touchon, Punk Me Tender, Caprice Pierucci, and Paul Rousso, the exhibition showcases works ranging from polystyrene and collage to paper and metal to beyond. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, August 22nd, from 6-8 p.m. at our Colquitt gallery location.

Bringing together artists who approach material in distinct and innovative ways, Mixing Media highlights how medium itself can become both subject and language. For some, the work is rooted in the medium’s delicacy, density, or complexity, and in the ability to create something beautiful from materials as industrial as stainless steel. Texture adds depth and meaning, shifting subjects from two-dimensional to three-dimensional and into themes shaped by process, and perspective. At its core, Mixing Media is about experimentation, a celebration of curiosity in motion that comes from constantly exploring material and process.”

Reception August 22, 2026 | 6:00 - 8:00 pm

Laura Rathe Fine Art (Colquitt)
2707 Colquitt Street
Houston, Texas 77098
Get Directions

VISUAL POETRY AND COLOR - LOS ALAMOS, N.M.

EXHIBITION - Opening Reception - Saturday August 15 - 2:00 - 4pm

The International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction presents Visual Poetry and Color: a traveling exhibition of Collage Artists and Visual Poets from around the world.

This is Exhibition #4

see an overview of exhibitions 1-3

See works from Exhibition #1 (Troy, NY)
See additional works added in 2024 for Exhibition #2 & #3 (Dallas, TX and Los Angeles, CA)
See additional works added in 2026 for Exhibition #4 (Los Alamos, NM)

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

International

Elena Marini, Italy - David Bircham - Canada, Lisa Blond, Canada - Flora Georgiou, Australia - Angelo Ricciardi, Italy - Roberto Scala, Italy - Emily Marbach, UK - Les Jones, UK - Vittore Baroni, Italy - Ryosuke Cohen, Japan - Luc Fierens, Belgium - Rose Frain, Scotland - György Galantai, Hungary - Julia Klaniczay, Hungary - Alexander Limarev, Russia - Ruggero Maggi, Italy - Lilian Nicholson, Sweden - Matthew Rose, France - Berty Skuber, Italy - Rod Summers, the Netherlands - Kjell Varvin, Norway - Mary Wallace, Ireland, Alastair Strachan - Scottland - Mado Reznik, Argentina - Mike Shaw, UK - Danielle Ouellet, Spain - Patrick Anderson-McQuoid, Ireland - Keiichi Nakamura, Japan - NAB nab, France -

USA

Cathy Zigrossi, Ana Soha, Amye Wake, Abigail Meredith, Annie Kartsotis, Kaitlin Oesterreicher, Alex Mena, Chris Davis, Todd Franke, Bella Moore, Laurie Kornher, Kathy Elliot, Lanny Quarles, Eric Breish, Charlie White, Katerina Touchon, Branko Majmunovic, Peggy Shepherd, Peggy Olivier, Edith Torres, Jasmine Yarbrough, Kerrie More, Don Abell, Zach Touchon, Diane Blumin, Elizabeth Bogard, Liz King, Mili Suleman, Mark LoVecchio, Allison Anne, Ray Beldner, Melissa Kulig, Susan Reedy, Rosemary Rae, Kelly C. Berwager, Deanna Lampe, Jonathan Stangroom, Lilly Hope, Nich St. Jam, David C. Donovan, Ann Dettmer, Pratima Aravabhoomi, Beth McCoy, Joan Schulze, Marlene Weisman, Rebecca Stuckey, Laura Speer, Mary Baumgardner, James Wimberg, Mim Golub Scalin, Janice McDonald, Kathy Elliott, Annie Kartsotis, Terry Garrett, Jay Sylvester, Laura Noe, Betsy Arizu, Judith Jasinski, Christine Jelson West, Jennifer DeSantis, Heidi Markham, Peggy Shepherd, Vicki Daigneau, Selena Dixon, Carmen Kolz, Clive Knights & Terriann Walling, Laila Rezai, Touri Strick, Joey Zanotti, Sona Nast, Marsha Balian, Andrea Burgay, Jane Helslander, Marian Hoffman Ting, Allan Bealy, James Gallagher, John Whitlock, Kelly Feltault, Loralei R Byatt, Garry S. Grayson, Rosalie Gancie, Teri Dryden, Susan D Grissom, Lash, Scott Wiggerman, E.Y. Reilly, C.R.E. Wells, Mike Gold, Carol Tippit Woolworth, Graham Moore, Clare Schmehl, Linda Logan-Condon, Bonnie Binkert, Reid Wood, Ines Kramer, Regina S Levin, Robert McGraw, Ursula Hudson, Bob Phillips, Lance Carlson, Julia Walck, Denise Emanuel Clemen, Jennifer Evens, Robin Roberts, Celeyce Matthews, Elaine Norman, Clark Ellis

Additional names with incoming works for this show will be added soon.

Additional works will be on view by other regional artists.

WORKSHOP - Saturday August 15 -10am to 2pm

Please join us for a FREE one day collage workshop and make a work to contribute to the exhibition and the archives. All supplies provided. (but you are welcome to bring your own materials to use or share) Your contributed work will be hung the same day for the opening of the exhibition and become a part of the Collage Museum’s collection and used in future exhibitions of this show.

Contact Cecil Touchon at touchon@gmail.com to register. Put WORKSHOP in the subject line.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM ARCHIVES

Started in the late 1990’s in the early days of the internet, the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction is an ongoing art project by collage artist, poet, writer and painter Cecil Touchon based in the Santa Fe/Albuquerque area of New Mexico.

Since that time Touchon has created multiple art projects including artists from around the world and has curated many large exhibitions and catalogs of which Visual Poetry and Color is the current ongoing project. The archive contains thousands of works given to the collection by participating artists.

PRESS

https://losalamosreporter.com/2026/08/04/new-international-exhibit-visual-poetry-and-color-opens-aug-14-in-step-up-gallery/

https://ladailypost.com/step-up-gallery-visual-poetry-color-opens-aug-14/

Back in April I submitted two interesting paintings for the call for works for the Summer issue of Superpresent around the theme of Maps (PDF)

you can also buy the print issue. I am a subscriber. You can be too to support the magazine.

My works were accepted for the magazine and are published on pages 100-101 and pages 107-108.

Post Dogmatist Painting #1035 - 2018 - 24 x 30 inches
Post Dogmatist Painting #1036 - 2018 - 24 x 30 inches

As a side note, I call these Chinese Classified because they were originally a Chinese language newspaper from Los Angeles full of classified ads used as packing material to send me something. I repurposed the packing paper to collage onto the canvases and then used the compositions of the pages to paint over to get the painting composition which to me look a lot like abstract urban maps.

I was contacted by Anja back in November of 2025 asking if I wouldn’t mind her using one of my collages for the back of the cards in this extremely well done project and I must say I am delighted to be included.

Interestingly, I have been thinking about collage portaits for some time now as the next project after Visual Poetry and Color becuase there are a good many portait collages in the archives and it would be interesting to pull those together into a unified exhibition and eventual catalog.

The Collage Portrait Memory Game (by Anja Brunt and published by BIS Publishers) is a creative matching game featuring the unique styles of 32 contemporary collage artists. Instead of matching identical images, players must recognize matching artists by their signature use of images, textures, and materials.

The game comes with a handy leaflet outlining the featured designers. Because it emphasizes visual composition rather than traditional memorization, it doubles as an educational tool for art and design.

If you are looking to purchase or explore the game, you can check availability directly through BIS Publishers. I am not sure what the print run is.

Author

Anja Brunt is the creator of several successful BIS Publishers games, including Playful Type Memory, Play with Shapes, and Collage Memory. After graduating from ArtEZ University of the Arts, where her thesis project focused on using educational design to teach children the concept of ‘Time’, Anja went on to build a long and successful career in the creative industry.

Visual Poetry and Color in Los Alamos, New Mexico

Call for Works

All works accepted and exhibited.

What you need to do…

Buy an 8 x 8 x .75 inch birch cradled panel from dick blick

In centimeters 20 x 20 x 2 panel

https://www.dickblick.com/products/blick-premier-wood-panels/

(does not need to be Dick Blick but the same sort of panel and the same dimensions)

Make a collage on it that somehow has to do with the theme and mail it to me to arrive in July. I’ll be driving the work over to the gallery in August and doing the install. The show will open August 15 and run through September 16. Then the works become part of the archives and shown in any future iterations of the show or used in other appropriate exhibitions in the future.

Be sure you write your name, title, contact info and online link on the back of the piece.

Here are other works in the show

Send to:

Visual Poetry - Cecil Touchon

4315 Rancho Largo Rd. NW

Albuquerque, New Mexico 87120

TO ARRIVE BY END OF JULY, 2026

Here is the poster of the schedule

https://stepupgallery.org/exhibit-schedule/

Press material

VISUAL POETRY AND COLOR - LOS ALAMOS, N.M.

EXHIBITION - Opening Reception - Saturday August 15 - 2:00 - 4pm

The International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction presents Visual Poetry and Color: a traveling exhibition of Collage Artists and Visual Poets from around the world.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

International
Elena Marini, Italy - David Bircham - Canada, Lisa Blond, Canada - Flora Georgiou, Australia - Angelo Ricciardi, Italy - Roberto Scala, Italy - Emily Marbach, UK - Les Jones, UK - Vittore Baroni, Italy - Ryosuke Cohen, Japan - Luc Fierens, Belgium - Rose Frain, Scotland - György Galantai, Hungary - Julia Klaniczay, Hungary - Alexander Limarev, Russia - Ruggero Maggi, Italy - Lilian Nicholson, Sweden - Matthew Rose, France - Berty Skuber, Italy - Rod Summers, the Netherlands - Kjell Varvin, Norway - Mary Wallace, Ireland

USA
Cathy Zigrossi, Ana Soha, Amye Wake, Abigail Meredith, Annie Kartsotis, Kaitlin Oesterreicher, Alex Mena, Chris Davis, Todd Franke, Bella Moore, Laurie Kornher, Kathy Elliot, Lanny Quarles, Eric Breish, Charlie White, Katerina Touchon, Branko Majmunovic, Peggy Shepherd, Peggy Olivier, Edith Torres, Jasmine Yarbrough, Kerrie More, Don Abell, Zach Touchon, Diane Blumin, Elizabeth Bogard, Liz King, Mili Suleman, Mark LoVecchio, Allison Anne, Ray Beldner, Melissa Kulig, Susan Reedy, Rosemary Rae, Kelly C. Berwager, Deanna Lampe, Jonathan Stangroom, Lilly Hope, Nich St. Jam, David C. Donovan, Ann Dettmer, Pratima Aravabhoomi, Beth McCoy, Joan Schulze, Marlene Weisman, Rebecca Stuckey, Laura Speer, Mary Baumgardner, James Wimberg, Mim Golub Scalin, Janice McDonald, Kathy Elliott, Annie Kartsotis, Terry Garrett, Jay Sylvester, Laura Noe, Betsy Arizu, Judith Jasinski, Christine Jelson West, Jennifer DeSantis, Heidi Markham, Peggy Shepherd, Vicki Daigneau, Selena Dixon, Carmen Kolz, Clive Knights & Terriann Walling, Laila Rezai, Touri Strick, Joey Zanotti, Sona Nast, Marsha Balian, Andrea Burgay, Jane Helslander, Marian Hoffman Ting, Allan Bealy, James Gallagher, John Whitlock,

Additional names with incoming works for this show will be added soon.

Additional works will be on view by other regional artists.

WORKSHOP - Saturday August 15 -10am to 2pm

Please join us for a FREE one day collage workshop and make a work to contribute to the exhibition and the archives. All supplies provided. (but you are welcome to bring your own materials to use or share) Your contributed work will be hung the same day for the opening of the exhibition and become a part of the Collage Museum’s collection and used in future exhibitions of this show and possibly others.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM ARCHIVES

Started in the late 1990’s in the early days of the internet, the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction is an ongoing art project by collage artist, poet, writer and painter Cecil Touchon based in the Santa Fe/Albuquerque area of New Mexico.

Since that time Touchon has created multiple art projects including artists from around the world and has curated many large exhibitions and catalogs of which Visual Poetry and Color is the current ongoing project. The archive contains thousands of works given to the collection by participating artists.

THE MISSION OF THE MUSEUM

Among Ourselves: The Archive of Living Connection

Where traditional museums gather from the past, often from afar, the Collage Museum gathers from across the contemporary moment, from among ourselves. Artists contribute not because they are selected, but because they are in conversation - with each other and with the archive. It is a communal project.

This is not a collection in the institutional sense. It is a correspondence field - an archive of relationships, personal contact, synchronicities. Objects enter not through provenance, but through encounter. They arrive by call and responce, intuition, chance, or trust.

There is no acquisitions committee. No gate keepers. There is only the unfolding present and those who feel called to participate. In this model, gifting is not merely a transaction - it is a gesture of community. It is a ongoing record of a global network. There is no hierarchy of contribution. No speculation. No authority dictating worth. The museum does not collect - it remembers. It does not display value - it displays connection. The collections archive is the community’s physical proof of life and record of that interconnection.

We greeted each other, we interacted, and we left a memento safeguarded for the future.

Now that I am home I am starting to go though my journal and add detail that I didn’t have time to do as I was going along. Here is a little event I wanted to share with you.

A Breakfast Story

As we all know, when you leave one accommodation to go to another there is always a lag. I had been staying in Walthamstow for a few days before the workshop and now it was time to go to the apartment near the studio where the workshop will be. I had to be out of the room in Walthamstow by 1:00PM but we couldn’t get the keys for the other place till 3:30 so I had some time to kill while dragging my luggage around which is never any fun.

Since I was all packed, I left my bags in the room and went out for breakfast about 11:30 to eat a little something and waste time till 1:00 before catching a bus over to my new neighborhood for the workshop.

I found a place close by that was almost empty so I figured I could get fast service.

Other than three women who were sitting on the other side of the restaurant talking and chatting I was the only other customer in the place. Apparently two of the three had ordered breakfast and had already paid for it. You pay when you order at the counter. The cook was the one at the counter that had taken my breakfast order. When the kitchen put out the two women’s orders and mine at the same time the waitress assumed they all had ordered breakfast so brought out all three dishes that the kitchen had prepared. The third woman didn’t mention that she had not ordered breakfast and had not paid for it. Meanwhile I continued to sit there waiting and needing to get back to leave the apartment by 1:00.

Then a while later the cook looked out to the tables and apparently was wondering why I had not gotten my breakfast and it became obvious to him what had happened. The cook called over the waitress and asked her where my breakfast was, she explained what happened. He went back to the kitchen to make my breakfast again and I watched the waitress go over and mention to the girl she had not ordered breakfast, that it was not her breakfast and she had not paid for it. She grudgingly pulled some cash out of her pocket and paid for my meal she was eating.

Then the waitress came over to my table and I mentioned that I need to leave soon and that is when she explained what had happened and offered me a free Capuchino as an apology while the cook was finishing up my plate.

I thought to myself how completely rude that was of the woman. She knew she was eating my breakfast since I was the only other person in the restaurant. When the waitress came back with the Capuchino I told her she should make up a bill and give it to the woman as an apology to me for eating my breakfast. She laughed at the idea knowing that would be the fair thing to do.

Nevertheless, the breakfast finally came, I got a free Capuchino out of it on the house went back to collect my bags and left the lodgings with three minutes to spare. Except for leaving the room on time I was in no hurry anyway. I made it out to the bus and off I went.

The last two weeks have included my daughter and her family and a last minute visit from my step daughter Kimber who left for Los Angeles early this morning.

I will fly to London and my daughter an fam head back to Texas today.

Looking forward to the upcoming collage expedition with Les Jones and the I’ll head back to my studio with a lot of new images and ideas to work from.

Here are a few images

And a few more…

Now on the train back to Rome for 6 nights. We all really enjoyed our stay in Ischia at Rotonda Sul Mare larotondasulmare.com with our host Amerigo. It is right on the water. Staff was great. Recommended for a reasonable price. Owner is from a very old wine producing family on Ischia and a sweetheart of a man.

More graffiti faces mostly from Rome.

Now it is evening on Saturday, we got to our airb&b then went out and had dinner, washed up, washed some clothes and now bedtime. We are staying a few blocks from the Vatican.

I am especially grooving on distressed poster papers and taking photos and somebody named a hotel after me!

Ok it is days later. I think it is Saturday. I have been enjoying the week with my daughter Brittany and her fam.

We have been on the Island of Ischia off of Naples. What a lovely place. I have found enough material to make about 10 collages. We have been wandering around doing touristy stuff.

We leave today to go back to Rome by ferry and then a fast train.

Hanging out with more people than myself makes it hard to keep up.

More later…

This morning I am off by train to Naples to meet family members. Check out this itinerary my daughter Brittany came up with using ChatGPT… she needs to start a travel adventure company.

I will continue to try to keep to my expeditionary collage program and maybe get my grandson Henry (age 6) to help me out. He recently ranked in the top two percent for gifted children and starts first grade in the Fall at 4th or 5th grade math. For fun he taught himself how to read and write about 20 different alphabets over the last two years. We are best friends. Hopefully I will have time to post stuff and keep up with my daily journal.

OK off for the day.

I finished the Collage that I was working on a red and black one and then started cleaning up my table and organizing all of my materials. I went over to the Art store and get a bunch of little plastic envelopes for sorting out the Collage material. I’ll use my canvas Trader Joe’s bag as the mobile studio and right now it’s about 2:12pm and will soon be prepping the studio. everybody’s cleaning up right now prepping the studio for the show.

Justine took a crew of people over to check out her studio. Meanwhile I stayed at the studio to start prepping for the show for tonight arranging all the tables and starting to put out the artworks. Les showed up a little bit later. he started organizing all of the works that would hang on the walls and arranging all of the collages to be resting on the table. We also put around some additional posters to encourage people to come into the show from the street and as the show started for the evening, I stood out at the sidewalk, attempting to convince people to go in and check out the show and I was successful to a certain extent.

The show looks really great and so I walked around and videotaped the works for Substack. We hung out together and talked for the evening and then later Alastair Rodger, Les and I went out for dinner. I got back to the hotel at around midnight.