Like Mayflies on a Summer Night: Ephemera and the Hardcore

Jonnie, an introduction

by AmyJo

Ephemera:

1: something transitory; lasting a day

2: an insect that lives only for a day in its winged form, i.e. a mayfly

3: A short-lived thing.

4: Printed matter of passing interest.

Hardcore:

1. a form of music with hard fast delivery.

simple and effective sounds, mainly focussed [sic] on a message. message is ussually [sic] unity, anarky, [sic] strength or public power.

2. HARDCORE is the limit, it is the core of cool things! It is the mother of things!

(1 &2. source, the Urban Dictionary)

hard-core also hard·core (härdkôr, -kr)
adj.

1. Intensely loyal; die-hard: a hard-core secessionist; a hard-core golfer.
2. Stubbornly resistant to improvement or change: hard-core poverty.
3. Extremely graphic or explicit: hard-core pornography.

In the pages that follow we see what happens when an archivist with absurdist tendencies catalogues the minutiae of daily existence.  But Jonnie is no nebbish, collecting facts and sticking them like boogers to the page.  Here are no dull recitations of the collector, no dry scraps preserved in a vacuum.  Rather we find a compendium at once familiar and revelatory—incidents, memories, processes, encounters—that reveal the texture both of everyday life, and the mind of their chronicler—a texture that is not unlike the orange dust that clings to your fingers after eating a bag of Cheetos—sticky, flavorful, impossible to get out from under your nails.

In Jonnie 7-11’s book you will discover the intersection of the ephemeral and the hardcore.  One might assume that these two qualities are contradictory, but in Jonnie’s work the paradox reveals a space where life itself is illuminated with uncommon intensity. 

There is no doubt that Jonnie is hardcore.  From early childhood to his fully-fledged manhood, Jonnie has exhibited the balls-to-the-wall willingness to explore the world as it is and to interact with what’s right there in front of him. Whether he is breaking rocks for eight hours a day , practicing mole removal with ordinary nail clippers, conducting experiments by micturating into his own visage, chasing Amish buggies or freight trains, encountering day laborers, his Liebling, archivists, bloggers, landlords, esquimaux, drunks, golfers or schizophrenics, Jonnie does not shrink from experience.  No subject, no matter how mundane, no person, no matter how crazy, escapes his notice.  As Jonnie himself professes, he has an affection for stupidity.

At first glance this book might seem like a compendium of ephemera—disconnected and utterly without point.  Jonnie himself calls his blog (from which these entries were drawn) “a place to store my stuff”.  However, taken all together, what emerges in these pages is, for me at least, truly rare.   Behind the fork fangs and the hulk hands and the pirate salute is a person who strikes me as kind and intelligent and imaginative and wise. 

Read between the lines of his anecdotes and the ephemera he presents will remind you that life—fleeting, ordinary life—can be exciting and fun.  This is a powerful thing to do.  On the surface his anecdotes and craft projects are hilarious—but after continued exposure they become—absurdly-- uplifting.

Jonnie first came to me by reputation, as the librettist and chief tenor of his dadaist masterpiece, The Toilet Opera.  His aria “hear my flush, fear my flush”, even at secondhand, is unforgettable.  On the basis of that single exuberant couplet, I concluded that Jonnie Gilliom was a man whose hand I’d be proud to shake (after we both washed, of course). 

Nearly ten years later, Boz, Jonnie and I gathered online and audio-blogged  excerpts from “Bat Out of Hell”.  I was grieving the suicide of a dear friend and laid up in bed with a broken ankle.  My family were all far away.  So were my friends.  But online, the three of us had what I will always consider a wake.  Jonnie didn’t speak any traditional words of sympathy. Sentimentality isn’t his style. But he sang Meatloaf  into a pillow while wearing a Frankenstein mask, baying into the phone in his signature tuneless Frank Zappa voice and , four hundred miles away, I laughed until I cried.   

I don’t know if he even remembers that night, and it doesn’t matter.  At a time when I couldn’t be consoled, that evening—three dorks screaming songs into the phone and zonking about Meatloaf—helped me get through a really bad night.  To me, that is Jonnie.  I don’t know how he does it, but he makes me feel that life is good. 

I have been following Jonnie’s work on the web for almost three years now, and over the course of that time his writing has captivated me, instructed me, comforted me, and won my respect.

So settle in.  Let Jonnie teach you the deeper meaning of what it is to be hardcore. Embrace the ephemeral with courage and humor.  Let this book remind you that, somewhere out there in the flickering light of the Del Taco sign, under the swaying palm trees of the OC, a man with a vision cares enough to write about those ephemeral moments that are born and pass away like mayflies on a summer night—brief, beautiful, pointless, and profound.