crazymaker

I’ve been interested in ‘Outsider Artists’ for a while now — ever since I happened across some reproductions of Adolf Wölfli’s drawings in an article about Jean Dubuffet. I set up email alerts for articles on topics like ‘outsider art.’ Yesterday I got an alert for several articles on online journals, including one called “Heartzine’ (which I don’t think I have visited before) and another called ‘Flavorwire’ (which I have visited before). I clicked on the ‘Heartzine’ link to read an article entitled, “Beyond the Romantic Mythos; What Life is Really Like for Artists Living With Mental Illness” and began to read.

What I read disoriented me. I read the first sentence several times, trying to make sense of it. At a glance, it looked like it should make sense, but I could not make heads or tails of it. I switched off the music I was listening to and tried again. Was something wrong with me? My brain just didn’t seem to be able to process this information even though I thought I should be able to. Here are the first two paragraphs:

I was dismayed one day, several months ago, when a new confidence ensure in a usually silent run of a Soho building that houses Flavorwire’s offices said, “Good morning.”

Over a subsequent few days, we began to overdo my possess greetings, roughly as a plea to my fears that I’d become disconnected by concentrating so tough on being busy. But from these compensatory platitudes came conversations, and review led to my anticipating out that a confidence ensure is also an artist with a fascinating attribute to New York jazz clubs and some of a genre’s most iconic musicians. (He’s been combined about in a New York Times due to this unequivocally relationship.)

I read more closely and discovered that it wasn’t me — I wasn’t going crazy — but I had encountered an article which read like something which had been run through some sort of wonky version of ‘google translate’ that usually renders perfect French into awkward and comedic English and vice-versa. I got another clue when I clicked the link to the same article on Flavorwire. Suddenly I discovered that in the ‘Heartzine’ version, random words had been changed, creating an article that appeared to be legit at a quick glance, but was revealed as nonsense under scrutiny. The ‘Flavorwire’ article, on the other hand, made perfect sense (and is a good read – do yourself a favor and read it). For comparison, the first two paragraphs from Flavorwire:

I was startled one day, several months ago, when a new security guard in the usually silent lobby of the Soho building that houses Flavorwire’s offices said, “Good morning.”

Over the next few days, I began to overdo my own greetings, almost as a challenge to my fears that I’d become disconnected by concentrating so hard on being busy. But from these compensatory platitudes came conversations, and conversation led to my finding out that our security guard is also an artist with a fascinating relationship to New York jazz clubs and some of the genre’s most iconic musicians. (He’s been written about in the New York Times due to this very relationship.)

I compared the two different versions again and discovered that the ‘Flavorwire’ version was credited to Moze Halperin whereas the crazymaking ‘Heartzine’ version was uncredited. I suspect ‘Heartzine’ is someone’s money-making scheme which steals content from writers to generate traffic, which is bad (and I emailed Moze Halperin to tell him about it). But I also actually enjoyed just how damn disorienting my first read of the goofy version of the article was.

Amusingly, the gibberish ‘Heartzine’ version included a gibberish ‘this is fair use’ disclaimer: “This entrance upheld by a Full-Text RSS use – if this is your calm and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, greatfully review a FAQ during fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers”.

Anyway, because it visually references Bosch and I love all things Bosch, here is one of the illustrations from Halperin’s article. Hope this is considered ‘fair use.’ This is “Celebrity Heaven” by Martin Cohen.