by Travis Mateer
There is a very interesting dynamic in local news right now that creates a fascinating juxtaposition, and the juxtaposition is this: sexual violence directed toward women is BAD in real life, but it’s ART if put on the big screen and made by a director like David Lynch.
Does fame retard regular people’s critical thinking skills? It seems so. If you are famous and/or wealthy, you get special words to describe your relative depravities, words like ECCENTRIC. For the rest of us, it wouldn’t be cool to have your daughter write incest scenes for a fictional journal about a character you created, but that’s just because we’re not David Lynch.
While I’m doing interesting research in the vein of Dave McGowan, local media people have piled on their predictable words in the coattail-grabbing effort to proudly claim David Lynch for our little Mountain Town. For example, here’s Jule Banville, the journalist and UM professor who has come the closest to calling out the bitch-ass Sheriff’s Office in Missoula for being puffed up badges incapable of actually catching Grandma killers.
With that context in mind, here’s Banville gushing over Lynch’s artistic life:
A few years ago at the Roxy, I saw “David Lynch: The Art of Life,” a documentary based on audio recordings Lynch agreed to make after having a daughter late in life and feeling wistful. It’s so moving and gorgeous. I think about it all the time.
Unlike Jule Banville, what I think about all the time is narrative control, and under that umbrella I have to wonder what the stories that comprise our fucked up culture are actually doing to us, stories like the fragmented Lost Highway, where part-time Montana resident, Bill Pullman, plays his role, as does the musician, Marilyn Manson.
If I watched this movie as a teenager I didn’t remember much of it beyond Patricia Arquette’s tits, but this time around I actually watched the movie all the way through (a slog) in order to see and understand that the brief clip of the porn film being watched near the end of the movie isn’t just any kind of porn, but a snuff film.
Which brings me to the musical artist, John Denver.
How could I possibly use a snuff film to segue to a folk singer who most people will think of as that hippie with round glasses singing Rocky Mountain High? Well, I’m gonna grease this segue with Hunter S. Thompson and that amazing researcher I mentioned, Dave McGowan, because without HIS work (Dave’s) I would never have understood how incongruent an image can be with the reality lurking behind it.
The connection Hunter S. Thompson has to John Denver is the town they both resided in for many years, the mountain town of Aspen, Colorado. While Thompson notoriously attempted an electoral takeover of the Sheriff’s Office, Denver’s time in Aspen was significantly LESS notorious, though I did get an interesting anecdote from a musician I spoke with on the phone a few days ago.
I’ll keep his name anonymous for now, but you might be able to find his blog post about John Denver, since there isn’t much online about the angle I was sniffing around for (more on that later). After reading his post and finding a phone number, I cold-called the guy and got a generous portion of his time and perspective on a man not many people understand is much more broadly talented and fascinating than his public image allows.
Not only did John Denver live in Aspen, his middle name was also, allegedly, Aspen, though I haven’t confirmed that yet with a second source. Names, though, are VERY important to me, to the point of being a borderline psychiatric condition. When I explain this Denver rabbit hole, though, you might shift from asking yourself if I’m crazy to a broader, more appropriate question: WHAT THE FUCK IS EVEN REAL?
The reason I called the anonymous musician was to ask him a question, and the question I asked him was whether or not he knew anything about John Denver’s participation in the Ten Outstanding Young Americans program, or TOYA for short. His quick answer? No, he did not know anything about this relatively obscure program.
Why did I know about it?
Well, for anyone who has read my shit for the last few years can attest, my obsessive focus on local power dynamics has grown so aggressive and hyperbolic that multiple tentacles have slithered from the shadows to figuratively strangle me, but part of my resolve to resist comes from the fact that what I am looking into with my research places an artist like John Denver, and a politician by the name of Bill Clinton, who, you know, became President, into THE SAME CLASS as Dr. Kenneth Stevenson, a man of fascinating distinction himself, which I won’t get into detail for this piece because I don’t have the time.
What I WILL detail is my admiration for the work of Dave McGowan because his work identified the curious pattern of familial connections MANY counter culture figures had to the military, figures like Jim Morrison, Mama Cass, John Philips, Jimi Hendrix, and on and on. For John “Deutschendorf” Denver, born in ROSWELL, New Mexico, it was his father, Captain Henry John “Dutch” Deutschendorf Sr. who was an Army Air Force pilot.
The anecdote I got from the anonymous musician was a story about John Denver getting a little flak from the locals in Aspen during the 70’s oil crisis after he visibly stockpiled gasoline in giant, above-ground tanks on his property. Since John Denver was ALSO a pilot, like his father, and actually DIED in a small air plane accident, it makes sense he would do this, but how many locals understood John Denver’s background as a flyboy military brat?
While I’ve written about my own grandpa’s death in a similar small plane accident, the synchronicity twofer that hit me like a truck involves an actual truck hitting an actual person, a person I ironically worked with at a restaurant called FOOD FOR THOUGHT. Don’t worry, I think DENVER is going to be alright, but he was on his way to the retarded Capitol of Big Sky politics when a truck took him down. Sad.
Denver was just getting into Democrat politics back when I worked at Food For Thought, and I was no where near being the public enemy I am now. Denver, I would say, was the personification of MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON back then, a movie based on the Montana politician, Burton K. Wheeler, and Wheeler is the name of the Lego police chief from a Lego set I just built a few days ago for a Lego world where I put Agent Cooper’s face just days before David Lynch died.
No one disagrees, when I tell them, that I may suffer from some kind of information sickness. I think it’s probably because of how frequently I, as a grown-ass adult, talk about Legos.
Right next to an old FCC license in my Lego world, which I took a picture of, is a building I cut out from a postcard. Is this building a Denver building? Of course it is, just like the other Lego set I acquired is a Jazz club, the kind I imagine Bill Pullman’s character was playing the saxophone in, since David Lynch is one of these image-conjurers I’ve chosen to graft my unique critical eye onto.
To emphasize how hilarious all this must be to the audience I have to imagine is watching me from some other esoteric realm, the song now playing, as I write this, is by a different John, Johnny Cash, specifically the song A Legend In My Own Time, followed by Beastie Boys doing Something’s Got To Give.
All an illusion? Jesus Christ indeed, boys.
Next week I’ll be writing up my final report on my Marijuana DUI, which was just officially dismissed this morning, along with my “no insurance” charge AND a charge the city slipped in at the last second for having only one functioning headlight, which had previously been just a warning.
Why were ALL the charges dismissed in my case this morning? That’s a great question, since the plan had been to dismiss JUST the DUI, but for some reason the city prosecutor on my case DIDN’T SHOW UP TO COURT this morning, so the other city prosecutor had to try and legally fuck me on the fly, but, without knowing anything about how the previous prosecutor had been trying to fuck me, he had to contend the city had filed ZERO jury instructions in my case, and therefore they would have to dismiss ALL the charges.
I agree with the Beastie Boys, something had to give, and it did.
If you appreciate the unique take I have on popular culture, narrative control, and how to fight back, then consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) because the lawfare against me ain’t over yet, but today is a BIG victory for me.
Thanks for reading!