A Day In The Life Of The Bouncy Banker-Letters and donuts

Letter to the Bank Manager #94 (It's Just a Game)

My Dear BM,

Just as I am the ravaged land left in your wake, you are the shadow left in mine of a morning. As the sun brings light in to the bathroom I can say goodbye to the nightmares and the anxiety, and flush the waste away, the exhausted energy consumed in fretting. Some say that dreaming is the brains dustbin (I never did agree with this thesis) but perhaps nightmares surrounding issues of debt, or mortgages going south, are.

How unhelpful the actions that leave so many paralyzed and unable to work their best magic, consumed as they are by concern as to where they might find their next paycheck. The destruction caused by the financial sector is tantamount to a nationwide firebombing and it is with relief that I hear our current president state, in no uncertain terms, that no further bail outs on the taxpayers’ dime will be forthcoming. You bounce and I strike hard in the handball court of public opining. You return fall force ever oblivious to the pain you continue to cause, your thoughts moving on to the next sneaky way to cover all your impending court costs and fines using the money of your frustrated, ever despoiled depositors.

I whack hard as you return and send you flying into the neglected backyard BBQ pit of a boarded up foreclosed home where you sit in the ashes of ancient beef steak, and chicken thigh, and smile as you rise up, floating like a balloon, unperturbed, into the sky where your friends, the clouds, swallow you up and give you the space to forget the pain you cause and once more put aside any hint of guilt that might dare to darken your always bright future.

It is so fashionable to bash bankers right now. I’m thrilled. This is the first time in my life I’ve been at the cutting edge.

If you should be one of the honest ones...please rein in your prodigal brethren instead of complaining about being misunderstood.


Yours seriously being sincere,


A. H. O’Connor

Letter to the Bank Manager #93 (playing the system all the way to the bank)

Jef Bourgeau

is an American photographer, painter and conceptual artist who has become notorious through his sculptures, photography and curatorial work. The most famous and provocative of Bourgeau's work plays on the relationship between iconic imagery and irreverent materials, together forming a new context often drawing upon current controversies and, perhaps, the willfully provocative.

Jef Bourgeau is the founding director of the Museum of New Art (MONA), of Detroit's artCORE (empty storefronts to galleries), and co-founder of the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography.

Letter 93

Dear BM,

I’ve been thinking a lot about acronyms and name brevity, expression brevity. In the age of Twitter I’d like to be able to say it all with very little I guess. There is poetry to be found in them thar hills. BM I believe to be an apt and effective acronym for “bank manager”. My own name defies such easy reduction. Reduce my name and you’ll get a fine broth maybe but nothing workable. The best I can do—assuming I dust off my middle name, Handler, is this: AHOC—isn’t working for me. However might there be a forgotten other middle name? Let’s say Dennis, comes before...you know—Handler. ADHOC works. My Underemployed Runners Guild, of which I am the sole current member becomes URG which I kind of like—expresses something of the frustration I generally feel these days especially regarding the cynicism, the greed, the dog eat dog spirit that currently prevails. I am at heart an optimist. I am a throwback, an achronistic presence on the contemporary “Art and Banking” scene: Without time; in a state of timelessness; deficient of time, Erroneous in date; out of the right chronological position or order ....
Out of whack I may be but I am also free. I’m not charging you for this am I? If anything is truly out of whack and demonstrates to the core the very meaning of Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi for “unbalanced life”) it would be the world of Banking and Finance.

I’m also having fun pulling words apart to figure them out. Corporation for example is a good one. If corporations are people are people corporations? Corps is body, corporeal is having body, corpse is a lifeless body. My mind wanders. Did you look at that link I sent in my last letter RE: the movie The Corporation? There is a moment in the documentary when we witness the CEO of a huge international conglomerate giving tea to a group of protestors in his own back garden. As the current CEO of one myself—my family—I’m not without sympathy. He and his wife appear to be the nicest people but the results of their profit motive are so awful they do not bare contemplation and there lies the problem. The deaths, the diseases, the murder, the mayhem, the displacements, the hunger caused by the actions of such corporations are too hard to innumerate, and too painful to grasp. Now if, as the protesters suggest (now sitting on the grass sipping tea and looking confused) this makes their hosts murderers, then it is not an impossible jump to the conclusion that we are all culpable who live in a western landscape reaping the rewards (even at the bottom) of our economic geography.

On a slightly different note I must share a quote from today’s New Yorker magazine from an article on Damien Hirst by Peter Schjeldahl:  “...there’s mythic bite to Hirst’s career: the working-class lad who gulls the toffs and makes them like it”. I love the idea of the unethically wealthy buying the very art that mocks them. The trouble is one cannot help feeling on some level Damien Hirst is laughing at everybody else, you and I included. It is why I for one watch him at a wary distance. I cannot love what he does. He plays the system just as traders do. The super rich who bought his art are now sitting on massive investments. It is a win win for both of them. Ultimately they are in cahoots. I wonder if Damien Hirst ever incorporated?

In Debt (also referenced in my previous letter), David Graeber highlights the etymology of the words hostage, host, hostile and even hospitality all derived from the same Latin root and all points back to how strangers relate*. You and I really should get that beer I discussed in our earliest letters and think about the implications of the relationships that most banks set up with their customers, the hollowness of which we are all becoming only too aware.

You no doubt are fully aware of the mixed tone of the letters I send to you—one moment polite and reasonable and the next seething with fury—but I do not apologize. Bankers wobble but they never fall down! At the very least I want your head to spin.

Yours sincerely,


Art (Dennis) Handler O’Connor



PS—In the same issue of the New Yorker Gary Shteyngart (in an amusing piece) suggests outsourcing tweets. I have all the time in the world but you, as a responsible financier (or financial instrument?) have the weight of the world on your shoulders. Just thought this might be useful.


DEBT, The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber—p.101, The Moral Grounds Of Economic Relations, 1st Melville House Printing: May 2011

Letter to the Bank Manager #92 (are you a person or a corporation?)

http://movetoamend.org/occupythecourts

Dear Bullrider (I’m guessing you’ve bounced back from your latest travails, travails never so big you cannot pass the cost on to your customers!),

I think at this point you know, and I know, that my letters to you, Art’s letters to the banker, are 99’s letters to the one. Art is a euphemism for life, humanity, in all its glory and failings—and Banker is a euphemism for the Corporation. As we all now know corporations are people, or have been designated as such by bodies like the Supreme Court (also people—apparently people who don’t know what a person looks like which is good because justice is supposed to be blind—right?). We also know that Corporations are Brands. They are a brand of person we usually call  disassociated, disconnected, unfeeling, and, as far as society is concerned inept and dangerous. Society generally puts such people somewhere where they can perpetuate no harm. Trouble is they are connected to each other and as such are very powerful. If you like they are the first plug in the wall and we all depend on adaptors to draw on their power. Depending on the very elements in our society that by any definition can only be seen as psychotic is a tragedy.

As you know I try always to drive a wedge between the human you, whose feelings I insist on working on despite the fact that getting to them causes me much angst and physical pain. To cut through your thick skin such that you feel the pain you cause requires the use of a chainsaw and I usually end up with multiple blisters and sore muscles before I have even made a dent. I will however keep trying to get through. It may be that one day your guard is down, your men are off drinking coffee, your food taster is otherwise engaged, your letter reader is home with the dastardly flu and it is you—yes you— who picks up this letter and, bored, decides to open it. On the off chance this should occur I’ve decided I should include in bold colorful type (for the moment may be so fleeting I have to catch your eye) a suggested reading list, or suggested links, movies etc.

I’ll try to do so from now on. I’ll reference the things I’ve heard, the news stories that added another notch to my world weary heart. I will share with you that which I believe you should know. Lets move beyond the probability that you will dismiss all and everything I put forward as only the left wing, pinko, conspiratorial, radical, environmental garbage talk of an out of touch, artistic individual, and assume you are made of softer material, have flexibility, and are open for business.

Let’s talk.

Sincerely,

Art O’Connor

Here is the first list:

Debt, The First Five Thousand Years by David Graeber. I believe the author went to LSE in London, is a self described anarchic economist, and has been described as one of those who provided philosophical underpinnings for the Occupy Movement. The book is fascinating and full of material I’d love to qoute but best you just take a look at it yourself.

The Corporation, a movie by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan

Letter to the Bank Manager #91 (cheap fishing nets—another plastic hell)

My Dear Friend,

With the start of a New Year, we, on a personal level, begin a new era. As I have repeatedly insisted, I’ve made great effort to remain polite at all times and have struggled in my attempts to not yield to the baser aspects of my nature during my dealings with you, the financial sector, the banks, the money people. You are a money person—that must make you feel good—better than being—as 99% of us apparently are—un-monied people. The speed with which the un-moneying is taking place is terrifying and yet it continues to behoove you to act as if everything is just fine. Optimism is now a euphemism for don’t look and don’t see, and it is a euphemism you insist on resorting to every day on the radio, the internet, wherever experts are making utterances about the state of the economy.

I no longer feel the need to throw my full weight at the machine as, thankfully, there are many of us now watching and recording the falsities and untruths as they unfold. You cannot pick up a paper or listen to the radio without hearing the innate contradictions built into the system. When it come to understanding how foreclosures happen, what the nature of debt is, how financial instruments are built...well we are getting as good at this as you and we are watching.

I am going to be concentrating my efforts this year into writing many more letters to you, letters I might actually put in the mail. My goodness! It isn’t as if the Post office couldn’t do with any help we might offer! Besides if I don’t send them I cannot complain about your failure to respond can I? That this has only just occurred to me after posting these missives on an obscure blog for the past—four years is it?—is another matter. I never said I was more intelligent than you. I simply have more heart. The gaping hole in yours is what I shall focus on and perhaps, to end on an upbeat note, an optimistic note, we might together fix your problem and thereby fix the problems of the majority, the 99%, which is basically everyone I know. We lie floundering in the bottom of your boat, trying to breathe as you throw out your cheap, easily replaced nets (ever indifferent to the environment) to make room for more fish. We are no longer small fry though. The plastic not only piles up on the bottom of the ocean, and on beaches everywhere. It also gathers in draws or gets shredded in those wonderful shredders that will destroy credit cards in a blissful second. We have discovered we can breathe on land, give voice to our grievances, avoid your temptations and even quash fees that you might be tempted to impose. This is great news. We’ll come en masse into your banks, and we’ll show you where you went wrong, and we will help cure you of your failure to feel and will teach you to grapple with scruples, and fix our own problems in the process! Simple right?

Yours you’ll never know how sincerely,



Art O’Connor

Letter to the Bank Manager #90 (Art—Gadfly)

"A fancy, a chimera in my brain, troubles me in my prayer"—John Donne

Dear BM,

Now whole towns and villages are beginning to yank their deposits from your holdings. Your thick skin may barely feel the pinch but this must register as a buzz in your ear. Testing—Testing—are we, are they, is anyone getting through? My constant refrain, the one I’ve shared with you over an imaginary pint, in a Starbucks over your non-existent latte, through numerous letters, is that you are out of touch and lack sensitivity. This has only worked to your best interests up until now. If you are without feeling and train your eye only on the growth of your portfolio you might miss the boat, the one that is emptying out your vaults—I know, I know, a grand, unrealistic vision—people with teaspoons, even townships with buckets, can hardly effect the oceans of lucre, the google of green, upon which your many dubious institutions float. I say your, but you know me. You represent many things to many people. You may be my personal financial advisor but you are also a chimera, defined by the Miriam-Webster as:

CHIMERA—
1: a fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail b : an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts
2: an illusion or fabrication of the mind; especially : an unrealizable dream
3: an individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution


Somehow they all apply. You are friend and foe. You are therapist and, unbeknownst to yourself (there’s that thick skin again), you are therapee. You certainly need it. I’ll analyze you from every angle; I’ll lift the hood; I’ll shine a flashlight on the organism that is you, and perhaps we can work on some kind of growth other than the one you are overly focused on. Now that you as an institution have the rights of an individual, I, as an individual must expect from you the kind of behavior that oils our best institutions. You have great potential. You are a lion! Don’t forget that! Unfortunately you are also a wily old goat, almost impossible to trust (not good! Not good at all!), and lastly, your serpent like manner, your slipperiness no longer works in the backroom the way it once did with impunity. We’ve seen through the glass. We’ve observed you slipping into your fat suits with their gold watch chains and pin stripe vests. We know that the image you still hold up to the light is an archaic one and does not reflect reality. We know you are a machine. There is a ghost in that machine that we shall work on. We shall find its soul. We will work on your antisocial behavior. You are part of the pack now, at least in name, and the community invites you in.

We wish only to integrate you...and your money.

Yours sincerely,



Art O’Connor, gadfly.

Letter to the Bank Manager #89 (Art Rambles Poetic)

My dear Bullrider,

In efforts to penetrate your thick, tanned hide I’ll try anything. Art can change the world and will keep trying. Here I ramble poetic for your gain:

I stand here my severed head held high, grounded by circumstance, ready to occupy my space, resist ejection from a downtown park, surrounded by uncertainty, prepared to take the next step, side by side with my imagined friends. We have linked ourselves together, the chain fences behind us which stand with the respectable fronts of commerce. Their clothes are laundered only by the best, whitewashed by well paid cleaners who hang their heads slightly afraid to look you in the eyes, too delighted to have jobs once more, on the other side of the barricade. I-Pads and watch chains scoff given voice and thin personhood by the swagger of the model who wends down the aisle ready to marry a selfish dream to another reality. Protest signs sing off key, unified by discord, some loud and others meek, stumbling toward an articulation brewed, stewing toward fruition. Stumbling blocks are scattered by law to protect the public safety, a strange looking building that in general goes unnoticed. Tents and tarps are foreclosed on because bleaching time has come. Sanitized marble public see cardboard streets pulled down, communities dispersed for the common good of the comfortable. Safety concerns are overblown and don’t apply consistent. A park with drugs is given wide birth, and uptown thrives, ignored because few are strong or able, few have the fight, the courage, few can look in the dealers eye and say leave, say leave because the strong are nowhere to take up their cause. Out of sight, out of their minds because Europe isn’t helping the portfolio they staked their hollow souls upon. They’ve troubles of their own and need the distractions gone, that focus on equity when inequity is their role. The strugglers and the fighters are ready to drown out the shout of the mayor as he looks down from a mega-platform somehow smaller now. Proportion would seem, like rational thought, the place where opposites meet. We all see perspective only easy for some to draw and for others to distort.

I take a virtual stand on a shaky stage solid in my conviction that my messy arguments are as tidy as authority permits. My body weighed by black and whites dunked to the radio news sits safe with sound of smart conversation, panic, and looming clouds. Point by point an explanation is broken down to examine its component parts. Compliance is intolerable now. Some people have no choice but must resist the shelters and sleep in the slightly less dangerous parks. So many parks could do with a good clean to make them more sane for those who have no choice but to see them as their homes. I ask the mayor to continue good work begun and put resources into cleaning up all those neighborhoods falling into sad disrepair, suffering from poverty and daily loss. He is asked to hear the complaints of those on other streets where the anti-social behavior of the too well heeled reigns.

Hubris, Arrogance and Gall meander down the street drunk on champagne, arm in arm,and scoff at the filth, the dirt. The Dirty hold up a mirror so Hubris may straighten his tie and see his own pock marked visage.

I take my cake and, hat in hand, eat. Coffee thrills. The simple pleasures smile. The taste of cotton, of boiled leather, of dry wall, and grubs finally get their due.

Yours sincerely,


Art O’Connor

Letter to the Bank Manager #88 (Art Meditates on Bankers and Wild Beasts)

Maurice Vlaminck-The Circus

Dear Bouncy BM,

This is my SHUT UP letter. I tried it out first on an unsuspecting crowd and they were so loud I had to repeatedly yell: “Shut up! Shut up!” I must admit it was quite exhilarating in its own way but that said it verged on the rude. Anyway here, without further ado, the letter:

I think you’ll agree I’ve always been upfront regarding my own inexpertise when it comes to issues of finance. I specialize in exercising my right to talk about stuff about which I know nothing. It must drive you bananas. At least you are free to totally disregard everything I have to say as my outpourings are surely the ravings of a lunatic...nobody! I hope those two words strung together lean towards the poetic rather than the insulting but one never knows. Besides it is me I am being rude to so I’ll sue myself and demand an apology. I'll sue me before someone else does. When playing with words one steps into a minefield. They are explosive in their potential to do damage or offend. I’m anxious to cause damage without offending. I wish only to chip away at those edifices founded on utterly unsound principles, i.e. unprincipled. Financial institutions are overly revered. Out of them come a lie of expertise with which we are bombarded daily. One day the markets are great and strong, the next day they are shaky and nervous. Such market forecasts and readings have nothing, nothing to do with regular people. The experts talk about trillions here and a billion, or two there, knowing full well I cannot relate. It is like the opposite of small print—big print! Print so big we look on it and feel like little ants observing the bottom of a dirty boot! People who live with day to day realities of having to pay a mortgage, feed their kids, feed their souls in pursuit of their dreams, their art, a small organic farm, getting their kids...this one is a bit pushy...an education cannot relate. They must constantly deal with enervating forces imposed on them from without: Jobs they don’t like which fail to appreciate them for their best talents, health insurance supplied by a dubious industry that charges astronomical amounts of money to give one the lie that one will be taken care of in the event of one’s death. They’ll come through for you when you’re dead. Oh! You’re dead! Never mind then. Of course I exaggerate for effect. The cost of everything is getting everyone down, seriously down. People drown in debt as meaningless numbers get tossed around like confetti, numbers that are supposed to explain everything. If you don’t understand...well...you wouldn’t would you? You are not an expert. If you were you’d know how to make money and feed your family and keep a roof over their heads. You’d know better than to take on mortgages you can’t afford. You’d know better than to take on student loans. You’d know enough to not go get educated! You are a failure, a loser, a lazy good-for-nothing. It is easy to throw around putdowns and insults. My favorite insult for you is: Banker! It truly has become a dirty word. Not one to hurl insults I should stop using it but for convenience sake I shall keep employing it in the more traditional sense.
    So what else am I apart from being a loser? Oh yes! I’m: A liberal! A WPA wannabe (spit) artist! A s-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-t! Maybe! Probably I am—all those things and more! The list is massive. The labels go on and on and on. I am a self doubter—jeez! I suffer from scruples—nasty! Your put downs become my badge of honor*. Can I share with you one thing that really bugs me about bleeding hearts? They will not simply admit they care! I would like this government to take care of its poor and hungry, wounded and broken. I’m not sure where you stand on such issues. You are slippery. Corporate value systems are without principle, mutable, they change with the weather.

In my letters I’m trying to express, from every possible angle—like a car mechanic scratching his head in disbelief that he cannot nail down the problem—my continued amazement at an apparent disregard, indifference, to the human toll of the financial crisis shown by those who continue to accept those obscene bonuses with impunity, and by those whose job I thought it was to police them. I meditate on an image of a banker hoping he...the image on my wall is a he as it happens...might one day mutate into the banker of my dreams.

That is it in a nutshell. Of course it cannot stay in a nutshell. It must grow into a mantra. That is why I love the Occupiers. They won’t let this drumbeat stop. Some will try to paint the movement with a broad brush suggesting it is built on envy, is fringe, is the product of snarling fury. The spotlight must be aimed at those who try. The name callers must be outed! They are the modern day equivalent of strike breakers and agitators and  they should be pulled into the conversation whether I, you or they like it or not. With gentle persuasion we might just encourage them to go work in a soup kitchen instead of wielding pepper spray.

Boy do I go on! I bet you put me on speaker phone when I call. I would!

Yours most sincerely your good friend and conscience,


Art O’Connor

PS—Kristian might be back next week to regale you with stories of his travels among the dispossessed. I’m sure you can’t wait.

PSS—* The Fauvists, the wild beasts, adopted the name thrown at them as an insult and now their art is sold for millions! Art is always worth more than money in the end. When will you finally get to grips with this fundamental truth?

letter to the Bank Manager #87 (Art's Hostile Takeover Bid, or How to be Politely Rude)

Art's Hostile Takeover Bid

Dear Mr. Bullrider,

My notion of biting the hand that feeds has just taken a new twist! Apparently the famous chef, Mario Batali, unintentionally fulfilling Godwin’s Law, just described the bankers as being pretty much as bad as Stalin and Hitler for all the damage they’ve inflicted on the economy. The bankers are taking it rather personally (they protesteth too much methinks!) and are thinking quite seriously about boycotting his restaurants where the banking fraternity are major patrons. Who is biting whose hand I wonder? For better or worse Mr. Batali has apologized. To whom exactly it is hard to say. Having exercised my own chagrin at the generally unscrupulous nature of the banking industry in my numerous letters to you, my dear friend and nemesis, I empathize with Mr. Batali but am reminded that the name calling is a trap that will always backfire. Once again I must emphasize the importance I personally place on maintaining a politely rude stance at all times in order that our civil discourse may continue despite our profound differences.

Sincerely,


Art O’Connor

Letter to the Bank Manager #86 (Guy Fawkes?)

Dear BM,

A couple of days ago in the UK they celebrated Guy Fawkes night. As a child I enjoyed the bonfires, the fireworks and the marshmallows. Burning in effigy a figure of Guy Fawkes once a year strikes me as a bit strange these days. He was part of a plot to  blow up the houses of parliament, get rid of King James 1st, and return a catholic monarch to the throne. Since then he has become a blank slate onto which people have projected many different agendas. Some prefer to burn an effigy of the houses of parliament, in general I’d say more creative (ever tried building a cardboard effigy of the Houses of Parliament?), and more about challenging institutions rather than attacking individuals—a big up yours if you like to the power of corporations and government, or powerlessness of government given that corporations hold the purse strings. Currently his visage is popular within the Occupy Wall Street movement. Why is harder to answer, a question I’ll leave others to try and answer for now.

Meanwhile today is /Leave Your Bank Day! I’m feeling a little shy on this front, torn even. As not only my dear bank manager and mentor, you are also my nemesis. That I bank with you, one of the big five banks, is a source of deep embarrassment. You know all to well how complicated it gets for people to simply up and change their accounts over to a credit union. Online banking is both a convenience and something of a trap. Life is complicated enough without diving in to the sisyphean task of trying to swap out all that information, let alone find ATMs when you need them, if one should choose to move over to a credit union, none of which are easily to be found in my neck of these troubled woods.

Yours remaining reluctantly loyal,

Art O’Connor

Letter to the Bank Manager #85 (Art is learning to lighten up)

My dear, ever so bouncy bank manager,

How is it that life doesn’t simply drag you down? You always keep your spirits up. You are an inspiration. Free of scruples you can cakewalk through life without the anxieties faced by us mere mortals. The doubts we suffer concerning, say: the correctness of an action we partook in, or the quality of our part in a dialogue...these are things that do not even begin to bother you. If you step on a finger or two you might apologize and then move on. whereas I’d be up all night. You do not suffer from the pain you leave in your wake. It is of no concern to you. Such is life. Life is such. I meanwhile bang my head against the wall. Why, I ask myself, did I waste a dollar on that silly, silly bobble head doll from that crappy yard sale. You I imagine, spend thousands on cars you don’t need and question the expenditure not at all.

You remain perpetually sunny and bright. You lead a quality life: good food, good company, good everything. Your tolerance for not good is, I imagine, zero. Downers? Out! Mopers? Be gone with you! Complainers and whiners? Walk away! Politically correct? Don’t waste my time! Scruples?...Give me a break!

I don’t know how you do it. I’m so thin skinned, watery eyed, and sensitive. I ask too many questions. I’m paralyzed by the weight of every decision.

Really, in the end, it is no wonder I fail to make the kind of money you call: Making Money. I don’t have the skill sets needed. For goodness sake I got a degree in Fine Art!

If I were a banker I’d see a client who’d just been foreclosed on and be unable to function for the rest of the day. If an old lady walked into the bank and said her heat was off because she’d failed to pay her electricity bill I’d empathize! I wouldn’t be able to put on an act. I’d reach for the phone and call that heartless electricity company and start in with how cruel and inconsiderate this world could be. I’d get them to imagine their own grandmother shivering beside a cold heater, glassy eyed hoping, hoping it might come on. I’d force them to face the picture of blue skin showing through the holes in her stockings and ask them can they truly live with such guilt?

And of course I’d lose my job.

Guilt is a dirty word. You know this, but I cannot shake the feeling that guilt must be confronted and not simply shrugged off.

It is a terrible thing. I imagine my family going hungry and eating the drywall in their crumbling home and think: that must never be. I imagine it because it is a closer reality for me than it ever will be for you. Whereas for you a bankruptcy is a glitch, quickly fixed with an infusion of air from a pump, for me it would register as a permanent and insurmountable scar. You will always inevitably bounce back.

That said there has been a change in the air of late—a sea change. Where once upon a time a job lost or a business shut down would leave the victim feeling lost, ashamed, floundering in self doubt, these days people are learning to carry such travails with a certain levity, even with a certain rakish charm. We are learning from you. You have taught us to not take it all so seriously. Stigma? Nah! Debts? Forgettaboudit! Do the banks worry about their debts? No! Do they let moral turpitude hinder their every action? No they do not! Let us all follow by example. Those credit card offers? Utilize them! The banks offer them to you in hopes you do. They are our teachers, exemplars of how to behave in a world too oppressed by issues of right and wrong.

Thank you for being so supportive during my hand wringing. You may never respond to my letters but by acting as a sounding board you help more than you can ever know.

Sincerely,


Art O’Connor

Letter to the Bank Manager #84 (Only Connect!)

Dear Bullrider,

You should understand by now that you are the recipient of letters. I would hope you appreciate the full implication of this—I have made the effort to connect with you via a  literary form that—though considered quaint in the days of TWITTER—is one that carries some weight, burdened as it is by the brilliant example of those great men and women of letters who have gone before. You are my Boswell, and I am your Johnson (not literally you understand). You are the recipient of the musings of a high minded, if oppressed artist. Do I resort to insults or name calling? No sir! I do not! I merely undermine your assumptions with powerful wit and humor. I insult with dignity. I may spill ink on your shirt collar but never blood! What a privilege! I invite you to step up to the plate! Don’t be one of those who sit upon a balcony, champagne flute in hand, staring down at the masses in their clumsy protestations in Zuccotti Park, with a sneer on your visage. Do not be one of the angry bankers spouting vitriol on YouTube! Instead I urge you to engage. Pick up your pen and respond. Dig deep and surprise us by not being predictable. Think outside the box. Imagine yourself in the shoes of others. Teach us to also pull ourselves up by our boot straps and quit our whining. Show us how it is done—if you can.

E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End tells a story of class struggle in turn-of-the-century England. I’m from England but have lived here in the States for half my life. I’m a duel citizen. When I first arrived on these troubled shores for reasons still not clear to me I was told by the official from whom I picked up my social security card that as far as America was concerned I was American, and as far as England was concerned I was both. “Make of that what you will,” he said, and so I have. I have brought that class struggle to these shores, shores that remain oblivious to the reality of such social divisions. As a country founded on the notion that anybody may come here and achieve anything and that each individual is only limited by the breadth of their imagination it remains a country that offers hope. Many immigrants recognize that and find it to be true given where they came from. They also see the fragility of it, the lie of it and may well grow to become the most ardent defenders of Democracy in a rapidly failing system. I digress. I studied E. M. Forster’s masterpiece in school and never forgot what I saw as it’s central theme: Only connect!

I will persist in trying to connect with you. I understand that you are not personally to be blamed for the financial mess this country finds itself in, a mess that spreads like a virus across this planet. Fires broke out everywhere laying waste to whole classes. Townships and communities the world over have been devastated by the ruinous tricks of a few bad apples. I only implore you, keen as you surely are to not have your name tarnished by association, to root them out. Regulate them into penury! That would be delightful and you’d please a massive segment of your constituency.

Yours most sincerely,


Art O’Connor
 
PS—I promise to hold your feet to the fire. Take this as the highest compliment.

Letter to the Bank Manager #83 (Occupy Your Home!)

Crappy photo collage thrown together in haste! But you get the idea.

My dear Bank Manager,

I write to you on a fine sunny morning after days enduring nature’s rage. We have tree limbs in our back yard that narrowly missed scarring our home. Halloween was a blast this year as we negotiated downed power lines and piles of tree waste to get to those baskets of candy sitting on the stoops of homes that were without electricity. You must be relieved to hear we still have our power! This home on which I still owe a massive mortgage to, well, you, still stands. If the massive tree but yards away had chosen to give up the ghost the house could’ve been crushed. You almost lost your leverage over us.

This all set me to thinking about how it is that despite years of living in this fine shell, filling it with the warm sounds of children playing, laughing and singing—in essence breathing life into it—you, with a swipe of your pen could, if we were to skip a payment, lose one more paycheck, suffer one more medical bill, could end it all. I resent that. Truly it does come down to many missteps that, over the years, built up to a loss of equity, a tragic yet common situation. Indeed the situation is so common that people are discovering, of necessity, an inner creativity that shows the way to an alternative perspective, another way of looking at this mess. Instead of quivering with a constant gnawing anxiety over the fragility of our situation we shall instead take the bull by the horns (yes! That bull!). We have decided to go out into that yard, MY yard, no longer YOUR yard—mine I say! Mine!—I shall put my sweat and effort into sawing up those tree limbs to make fire wood (don’t see you out here with your chainsaw!) to heat my, MY family’s home. We, my family and I, not you, shall occupy our home! Inspired by the visionaries at Occupy Wall Street we shall Occupy Our Home!

Well? What do you think? Surely you are happy to see your client excited, and inspired, with fire in the belly? We are circling the wagons and hunkering down to a long, tough winter—in the comfort of OUR not YOUR home.

As these fresh creative juices flow I wanted you to be the first to know, you my bank manager, the one to whom I naturally turn in difficult times, for advice, for therapy and for friendship, a deep abiding friendship that can endure such difficult bumps in our relationship.

Yours sincerely,


Art O’Connor

Letter to the Bank Manager #82 (Whilst Basking In Your Rays)

ATTENTION:
Mr. John Bullrider, MBA etc.
Personal Bank Manager
Mine’s Eye Bank

Dear Mr. Bullrider,

Recently you offered, by phone, to send me a package sure to aid me in the ongoing fight against account hacking, and the loss of one's personal information to fraudsters and the like. Naturally I assume that as my money is in your capable hands these are issues that need not concern me. You can only imagine how shocked I was when told this service was free for thirty days after which point a fee would be added to any other monthly charges I might incur.  I brushed it off saying thanks but no thanks if you get my drift. As my beloved BM I remain confident you will apply your steady, guiding principles to the practice of managing and protecting my money in such a way as to benefit not only myself, but also my dependents and my community.
 
This trust is, I hope, fully justified. Ours is, in the end, a co-dependent relationship as I am sure is slowly becoming apparent—even to you.

Yours most sincerely,


Art O’Connor  

PS—This is a short letter! It's high time I learned to Twitter.

Letter to the Bank Manager #81 (Your Illness Is Cureable)

Dear Bank Manager (maybe Mr. Bullrider still works for you or maybe he does not! No matter! You’re hypothetical anyway though I continue to yearn for the human connection),

Do you see how the nature of these letters has changed over the years? When I first began writing to you I was reaching out to you on your raft—rather your gin palace, as my father would’ve called it—a drowning man desperately in need of salvaging. Salvaging seems to be the appropriate word. Saving always smacked of conversion and that was not what I was seeking. I only wished to get my own house in order. I had no desire to become you with your fine yacht and padded bank account. I hoped only that you might aid me in the complicated work of making my financial life more secure and less mind numbing. I was asking you to make my money work. I still believed, had faith that that was the job you were hired to do.

Now I find myself in the unenviable position of having to throw you a lifeline and, given your overall arrogance, beg you to take hold of it. I’m saying: Look! Look! Look! We’re not trying to push your head under! We are trying to get you to change your ways. That is it. They are unhealthy. They do none of us any good. Your practices may appear self serving but they are eating away at you from the inside. Because the erosion is from within and you are not one to stare at your own belly button (as my mother would put it) you fail to see it. Whereas once upon a time you were my financial therapist now I am your life coach. You are dying. If you do not change your ways your life force will ebb out and trickle down (there’s that expression again!) the drain. I’m urging you to change your ways. You drink too much. You must cut back on your meat consumption. You have to stop throwing so much money at agribusiness and the factory farms they prop up. Instead pour it back into the world where it can do the most good—before you get melted down, a victim of financial global warming.

These letters may at times appear aggressive. They are intended as fair warning. Warning can also appear to be an aggressive word. I’m struggling to get through to you. Sorry but you are so thick skinned it requires the greatest of fortitude (and a physical strength I do not have) to not pick you up (metaphorically) and shake some sense into you. I know your notion of sense: The more money I have the better off I am. Your wrong. You are living for all the wrong reasons and making that clear is, apparently, going to be the work of a lifetime.

Yours sincerely,


Art O’Connor

PS—You are not as yet terminal! You still can save yourselves. A fine Canadian institution called Adbusters, has a wonderful proposal:
On October 29, on the eve of the G20 Leaders Summit in France, let’s the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax  on all financial transactions and currency trades. Let’s send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3-trillion easy money that’s sloshing around the global casino each day – enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world.

I am sure, for you, this medicine has a bitter taste, but I promise in the long run you’ll feel much, much better. Now unclench your fists, and breathe slowly. Rest in the assurance that Mother Theresa and Robin Hood are working on your treatment.

PPS—In my letters as you can attest I have always refrained from calling you names or resorting to crude language in any form. I’m not out to put your back up! Getting through to you is my goal. If you close your ears and leave the table I’ve failed in my work. I do however beg of your restraint when it comes to some of the imagery I apply to these letters. Understand they serve as an emotional outlet and/or a visual counterpoint to the restraint I in turn apply to our continuing dialogue with you.

Letter to the Bank Manager #80 (A Spirit of Cooperation)

Dear Bank Manager,

Let us assume that today is the first day of a correspondence that will eventually grow into a marvelous, poetic, astute collection of letters between two people who are each, in their own way, artists in their chosen field. We will wash the slate clean and imagine you actually responding with great clarity, after deep contemplation, to each and every one of my letters. Confronted on one day by my complaints and whines you respond with patience and warmth, on another seeing my deep anguish over the state of my finances you proffer advice sprinkled with a humor that does wonders to my mood. The next letter comes at you loaded with existential fury and you reach and pull it down to earth where some of the questions may be tackled in a more practical light. I gratefully bow to your common sense and put aside the numerous questions I have regarding the current bizarre state of income inequality throughout the world. The next day I still cannot let go of the strange nagging feeling my questions have not been adequately answered and so come at you again with more troubling thoughts which you again take in and give generous response to thus easing my sense that all those who operate within the world of finance are thick skinned and unfeeling. Here, I think, is a man I can relate to. He has scruples and even, perhaps, doubts. You joke with me and side with me and agree that life is unfair. You prove to be utterly candid and frank as you tell me there is little you can do to help regarding the sad state of my personal bank account but that, on another level, we can at least engage in a passionate and heartfelt debate that may yield answers to some of the big questions eventually or at least will air the grievances felt by so many against the so few. You do not condescend or patronize. You observe  the protesters and the marchers, the drummers, the banners, the signs and say they are on to something, something even my colleagues can relate to. You say: We may wear fancy suits and silk ties. We may sport "bling" but is it real?  We may be the poor players in the world of finance—inside but at the bottom of the ladder, one health problem away from financial ruin ourselves. No wonder you are mad! No wonder you won’t take it anymore. You, at least, are doing something about it whilst they, the big they—the politicians, the CEOS, either remain aloof to it all, safely cocooned in their golden parachutes, huddled in gated communities of the like minded, emotionally remote, impenetrable in their own convictions whereby what they earned they earned and how they did so is none of our business and the right to privacy argues against the notion of transparency and if they ignore us they are confident we will simply melt away, tired of the wet cold sleeping bags, the constant harassment of the police, and giving in—as the winter draws close—to infighting and sullen moods that undermine the high spirits and huge hopes that began it all.

Let us assume this is not the case. The encampments will not melt away. The protesters will write more and more and more signs. The poets who did not know until now that they were poets will captivate, the artists who are discovering their inner fight will transform each other and those around them and each will inspire each and teach and the learning will be better than anything in an unaffordable college or university can offer for it will be grounded in reality and not chained up in an ivory prison of debt.

Let us hope that you, the bank manager, and I, the artist, can continue our dialogue and grow ideas they may not only strengthen our relationship but will help transform others so the world can move forward in a spirit of cooperation and not be split along what are basically class divisions. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could work together to make things better for everyone?

So far our letters to a fictional bank manager have not found their mark. They float out there in numerous bottles in an ocean that until recently seemed too vast to sail across.

However I/we—the members of the Bruxist Collective— remain eternally hopeful that the modest goals of eradicating poverty, hunger, debt, greed and corruption can be attained in our lifetime. Anything less won’t do.

Sincerely,



Art O’Connor (picking up the pen where my colleague, Kristian Witherkay, left it—beside the old, camp recliner—before he headed out on an exploratory expedition into the wilds of Occupy Wall Street and beyond).

PS—If none of this appears to make sense don’t worry. Sense, in a sense, has had its day.

Letter to the Bank Manager #79 (The Big Stink)

Dear Mr. Bullrider Esq,

You know what’s been trickling down all these years? Not hope, not work, nothing that could be called a growing return on the average investment of your average working being. What has trickled down is a very bad smell, the stink of corruption. When a body begins to fall apart it will reek and that is clearly happening in the world of finance, and, maybe not as obviously in the world of non-renewable energy, and within the insurance industry. I may be ignorant when it comes to business but I am not stupid. My observations are not based on the massive numbers that get hurled around to the point of being meaningless, changed as they are by the billions from one CEO speech to the next. I’m simply using my eyes. Sometimes it takes years to believe what your eyes have been telling you all along. A Tipping Point of Recognition, of Seeing, has taken place and now the whole world sees it: The Big Stink. Foul play is everywhere and people all over the planet are fed up. I’m willing to believe that the practices now proving to be so damaging to the economy are so ingrained that it may take a little while for you to see the problems you have caused and naturally it is hard to turn the spotlight on yourself and have the courage to admit your own mistakes. Now would be the time to drop your defensive stance and open yourself to criticism. You may see the awful, almost unbearable truth just in time and thus avoid recriminations. You might successfully remove yourself from a lucrative but soul destroying career and point your ambitions toward something the community can not only condone but applaud.

Yours,

Art O’Connor

PS-Your regular correspondent, K.W., is taking a well deserved break from your perpetually unnerving silence on any subject he broaches with you! I’ll hope you’ll listen to me. He has urged me to remain polite even as I am pushed to the limit of my patience with that ugly infrastructure you are a part of.

Letter to the Bank #76 (Trouble With The Hand That Feeds)

Dear Mr. Bullrider,

I’ve long discussed with you the troubled relationship my elusive friend, Art, has with money. There he is struggling to beautify or/and enlighten the world through his bizarre inclination to make art objects. His objects become objects of desire and naturally he is happy to see them find homes as people deign to acquire them. They do so for a prearranged price or through an entertaining transaction, or by barter, mechanisms for exchange as old as the hills. Naturally with the cost of living almost impossible to aspire to at this point in the millennium he hopes the exchange is advantageous enough that he is able to feed his children using the proceeds from the sale. Now as it happens those able to part with money over such frivolous transactions as the acquisition of Art may often be in the enviable position to do so on a regular basis. They become patrons of art. They build art collections. Some of that art has strained to be pleasing often in a very canny way, appearing confrontational whilst, with a knowing wink, working for the owner, whoever that may be, as a status symbol. This kind of art is referred to as Blue Chip art. It has become as dubious as the money used to acquire it. The two are in cahoots. They may come from new or old money and in either case are like pet owners, the artists being their pets. But the bigger the pet and the bigger the art, the less patronizing and more equal the relationship between the two. Naturally the owner of a great dane is respectful enough to not invite the ire of a dog so big. Meanwhile many of us little artists are scurrying around looking for owners, for galleries, for soap boxes from which to express and scream, talk and dream, troubled by the compromise that is inevitable in the symbiotic relationship between art and art owner. Now once in a while the pet gets unreasonable doesn’t like the food being proffered and feels an inclination to bite the hand that feeds, a hand that is likely as not deep in the till of the financial system that is burning us all. Art is compromised. Art feels sick. Art is suffering. Art will lash out. Art might defecate on the stoops of the very galleries that, purportedly support his/her actions.

Art has no choice but to keep being rude and keep hoping their patrons will turn the other cheek and hand over a check as they do so. Art then, with clothespin on nose, accepts the check graciously and heads off to pay the mortgage on his underwater domicile.

Yours sincerely,


Kristian Witherkay

PS—Art is home in bed as we write, suffering from a nasty head cold (could it be strep?) and a debt crisis. Perhaps you could help? Maybe you could...buy some of his objects, objects made only with the intent to communicate, to get through (to you), though admittedly, at times, in a thoroughly oblique way. What can I say: He/She is elusive.

PPS—Why do I say She? Thing is the Art I know is a strange fellow with theatrical mutton chops (think that’s the correct term), but he is anxious you should know he has a sister in arms, Artemis, who is out there disturbing the peace with challenging objects of her own. I’ve not met her in person but see her work everywhere.

Letter to the Bank #75 (Voices-even the confused ones-must be heard)

Letter to the Bank (Occupying Wall Street)

Dear Bank Manager—if you can call it managing because really all you’ve managed to do is get all of us (sigh)—this is why it is hard to remain polite—you know, in a great, big ol’ mess,

Where were we? Oh yes. As one who has made a specialty of politely being rude to banks and bankers these past few years but who also expends much time and energy in the earnest effort to keep channels of communication open it is with pleasure that I can report back from Zuccotti Park and tell you they’re on the same page! They don’t plan to insult but to engage! By setting up camp they ask for and establish their right to do so. I’m down with their talk, their agendas, their hopes and desires, and above all I’m down with the fact that they are out there trying to speak their minds. The voiceless are finding their voice and what a powerful voice it promises to be. I’m waiting to hear those voices rise up in London, in the City, in Paris, France. Go Global. Don’t remain a Western voice or a white voice or a male voice become universal. This is about bigger things than banker bonuses. Those are just the shame of the old order.

Winter will come and those camping out will be stubborn. They can’t stop now. This has become inevitable. They are on a roll. People will bring hot soup and tarps, tents and socks. Doctors will bring mobile flu-shots and medicine (though some at Occupy Wall Street will balk at the idea of a shot in the arm administered without questioning the effectiveness of flu-shots, and good for them). Question all authority because for all too long we’ve hung our heads and done as we were told and that in a country where we should feel free enough to loudly debate everything. We've listened to the refined arguments and explanations of the 1% for oh so long and have heard oh so little of substance. Now it is time to listen to the daft and the silly, the extreme and the difficult, the messy and the clumsy and even the barely legible. That is where graffiti and poetry come from, the soil of art is the almost inexpressible and only if that soil is tended with loving care can those voices emerge. Nurture them and encourage them and show them the whole complexity. It takes a special talent to role the whole big ball into something we can all grapple with and maybe right now that is what is in the works.

Dear BM, I have to highlight one of their demands in light of what, despite your resistance, I’ve been insisting all along:

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

I’m personally delighted to see the protesters out their articulating (however inarticulately) their/our numerous grievances. Did I ever send you a Delete All Debt mug? I know it is absurd. I know it is preposterous! What? One day everyone at the stroke of an agreed upon clock will push a button and kill all debt? Too big to do? Bit tired of the “too big” argument. Very tired of the “too little to succeed” actuality.

I’ve been banging out these absurd letters to a bank manager who does not even exist who goes by the preposterous name of Bullrider, or Banks, or BM, for the past four years or so and honestly it may do a lot for the soul, my soul, get it off my chest at least, but it doesn’t really go much further. You know I’m not even sure it gets it off my chest. I think all this time I have been hoping my rage (I call it rage but is the simmering kind, the kind that is no doubt familiar...the fuel to the 99%) would form into cogent arguments for change. Once they did I’d get out there and share my thoughts loudly in the Public Square. My mistake? Waiting for these arguments to clarify. I should've been out there long ago. We all should've with are simmering fury at the state of the world and its sad attempt at economy. Well now we know you don’t need ghee. You just need butter. Fact is I get so caught up in nuance and language I forget to forge my thoughts through with threads of...there I go again...I forget to speak clearly. And actually that is okay. Speak up! Write me back! Argue me down! Put me back in the enveloping folds of my ragged armchair in front of my dismal TV with my potato chips and beer.

Sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay on behalf of the Bruxist Collective. 

Thanks to Hyperallergic for this image.

Letter to the Bank #74 (No Comment Art Show, 23 Wall Street)

Dear Mr. Bullrider, my very own personal bank manager (am I right?),

Thank you for inviting us in to the very belly of Wall Street last night so Art and all his (Arthur’s) and her (Artemis’s) friends could express themselves without reserve in face of the financial calamity that we are all confronting. I’m not a realtor and cannot begin to fully understand how it is that last night a pop-up exhibition occurred at the old J. P. Morgan bank building at 23 Wall Street, but happen it did and what a joy. Certainly there was fury—burning dollar bills, protest signs—in spades. There was also a young woman playing a beautiful rendition of the Jimi Hendrix Star Spangled Banner, live gambling, body artworks, graphitti (on the spot murals), puppeteers and performance. The building, a gargantuan yet vacant space that even bankers can’t afford I’m guessing (I already know I’m wrong—when you can make money out of nothing what’s to not afford?) was filled with what can for the most part be described as anti-corporate art. There was plenty of humor and a ton of energy. Even the barriers and excessive police presence outside (including mounted police) failed to discourage a large attendance. Be encouraged! There is Life on other planets. You just have to look harder.

I left before a silent auction planned by the organizers, No-Comment-Art, took place. Though allied with the Art Committee of the Occupy Wall Street movement some saw the auction as yet another Capitalist Enterprise and therefore dubious. Considering the movement is in a beautiful infancy and has a lifetime (I hope—full of hope) to figure out what its demands are we urge such thoughts to be picked up as conversations and discussed heatedly but in mutual respect. Some of the money will go to the protesters, some to the artists and organizers and some, possibly, down a black hole. The show was happening, after all, across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. Such is life and life isn’t perfect but it is life, pumping veins and all. Whether Occupy should build a list of demands, whether those demands should be mutable, inchoate or wide open is already a matter being tested out in the blogosphere. I do know divide and conquer is a great way to sow discord in a movement and that for now it would probably be for the best if tolerance/give-and-take ruled the day.

Enjoy some images of the show.My dear BM, you should run down there. If you went now you could snap up the art for nothing I expect!

Though ever a thorn in your side I remain none the less most sincerely yours,

Kristian Witherkay

The banner image for this letter is a half sign, a symbol of expression finding voice. It is okay if the message is unclear. The emotion is very clear.