The configuration of the Degenerate Art Ensemble band has taken the shape of a string quartet, a punk-jazz big-band, a power pop trio performing on home made inventions as well as full orchestra.  In all cases, at the heart of the creative vision is the collision of punk symphony and cinema - evolving and changing to fit the aesthetic of each project.

38 weekends ago I lost my mind. A bad trip. I awoke in an elastic semblance of my life, one that was permeable, one in which I could peer into flexing interstices of space, the gaps between reality’s essential structures. I clamored for order in a realm where opening doors yielded more doors opening, where scrolling proof of my identity spilled liquidly from the screen of my iPhone, where each sibilance I emitted would scuttle across the ceiling like a cockroach. The living room and couch upon which I laid writhing was a construct of my mind, or perhaps its interior.

Who hasn't had nights like that? Where you go all the way down the rabbit hole, googling connections between war criminals running guns and 7-11 Redbox machines. I recently had no connectivity in Burien while I was briefly between homes, and I discovered Redbox: last chance for entertainment before Albertson's closes. Redbox videos targeted to those bereft of even the barest of services, messages to whole groups of society who had flipped their lid, blew their cool, staying along Meyer's Way watching tiny TVs with batteries in tents.

It begins with a cinéma vérité-style video (or is it acting?) of a stereotypical "Bad Boy." A woman (playwright Young Jean Lee) directs him/orders him around. She asks him personal questions that he seems uncomfortable answering. She tells him to take a shower and to wash his balls and his ass, then she tells him to take a piss, and he reluctantly complies as we reluctantly observe. The accompanying text says something about reversing the male gaze. I suppose this is intended to be transgressive, or a critique of pornography. There is definitely nothing sexy about it.