You know that one friend, the one that’s done eight tabs of LSD, has invented an artificial intelligence system, and used to run reading groups on Marx’s Capital. It’s this friend who introduced me to Bolo’Bolo. This was in 2013. Let’s call the friend Oracle. Oracle lived in Oakland. He had just sold his artificial intelligence system to Salesforce. It was a so-called “acqui-hire” - meaning that Oracle had to work for sales force for a year or two.
I was traveling with my boyfriend, let’s call him Alex, and our new romantic partner, let’s call him Hochi, in ambiguous recognition of the Ho Chi Minh. Hochi was in the United States because of Hochi Minh, because of John Dulles Foster, because of JFK, because of the Vietnam War. His parents went to Montreal first, gave birth to him there, and then moved to Orange County. I met him in winter break in Washington D.C. Alex and I had just opened up our relationship, meaning we could have other romantic partners. Ten years later my first moments spent with Hochi remain absolutely vivid, secret jewels. That was in December of 2012. In early January Hochi came to visit our apartment in West Hollywood, and I believed that we had all three of us fallen in love. This was a false belief, one that would destroy my entire relationship with Alex and the whole life I built in West Hollywood, my whole initial attempt to become a screenwriter and multiple other relationships.
But I didn’t know that in 2013 when we all met the Oracle at the famed Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. We had oysters and chicken and the Oracle told us about worshippers to Shiva who sat alongside the Benares, smoked cannabis, and achieved oneness with the divine all day. The Oracle told us about the artificial intelligence he built, how he only partially trusted it. The Oracle told us about a tribal rite involving the consumption of semen.
And in that conversation the Oracle mentioned a book that he thought I would love. It was called Bolo’Bolo. I read the book. Until that moment I was some kind of Marxist - meaning that the pathway to communism, toward the sharing of our obvious surplus, seemed to run through some sort of conquering of the state apparatus by the working classes. Now I was no longer a Marxist. Bolo’Bolo showed me another pathway. There is no class warfare or ideological violence in this path. There are no political cults or breathy gurus. This is a completely voluntary path to communism. It is based on a new form: the Bolo.
A Bolo is three hundred to five hundred people who decide to build a transgenerational form of live together. The Bolo can be a series of farms connected, it can be a re-fomed suburban subdivision, it could be a network of spaces within a city, it could be a nomadic group walking on a perpetual pilgrimage. Marx identified the commodity as the cellular form of Capitalism; the Bolo is the cellular form of communism.
The path to Bolo is based on human unoriginality. Once an enviable Bolo forms, then other people will copy it, and then others will copy them and then a “mimetic cascade” will happen and then humanity will live in Bolo’Bolo. That was the vision I saw in 2013, almost ten years ago. Ever since then I have tried to walk towards this vision, but continue to fall over and over again.
A publishing company for Bolo, an advertising company for Bolo, a self-management company for Bolo, experimental paintings for Bolo, writing a children’s book for Bolo, writing about Kanye for Bolo, move to Taipei for Bolo, move to Beijing, to Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh, Bangkok, Berlin.
I thought I saw Bolo awaken before. That’s what Aufwachen means: wake up. I thought I saw it in Shanghai when I was on mushrooms. I thought Kanye would wake up Bolo. Maybe my paintings with Drew would wake up Bolo. Bolo didn’t wake up. But maybe I see Bolo waking up now.
There’s a festival in Hamburg. It’s called China Time. If the committee in charge of the event agrees we can do the Fafabolo Dance at the Hamburg Town Hall. Fafabolo is a kind of Bolo, a kind of franchise or bolo template. You might think Bolo sounds quite complicated, Fafa makes it as simple as possible. First you find seven other people and then you have a dandan. And then with your dandan you fafa: that is, you make more money than you have now. With seven other people there will be a lot of ideas how to fafa, so you will have to alternate between the different strategies.
The Fafabolo Dance shows Fafabolo in three ways: as a dance, as live water painting and as a narration. The dance will involve eight trained InstitutionellBühne dancers interacting with the opening night crowd. The dancers will chant the Basic Fafa Poem as they dance. The Basic Fafa Poem explains the Fafa Idea. The Live Water painting will show the basic Fafa poem. The Narration Will explain what all of this means.
Hamburg in November is famously warm and sunny; if you’re there, come check out the awakening of the future metasystem.