THE NOW-NOWNESS OF ANDREW WK

 Andrew WK has had a long and complicated association with Steev Mike for his entire career, including ambiguous relationships with other creative directors, managers, and producers. But his complex relationship with Steev Mike appears to [have] slowly developed into something closer to a sustained allegiance than merely an abstract association. Despite the complexity of this connection, two main aspects of Steev Mike’s bond with Andrew WK remain clear. Firstly, Steev Mike and Andrew WK both continually place emphasis upon the immediacy of experience as part of a valuable transcendental illusion, and secondly, they imply that, despite its best intents, conceptual analysis of their entertainment cannot be anything other than a secondary metaphysical exercise, and not a communication or extrapolation of the direct encounter with them or their work. In this context, Steev Mike defines Andrew WK through the absence of its presence, and as for Andrew WK, all interpretations of Steev Mike are simply variations on that which is not. While many of those variations of interpretation are presented schematically here, these inter-related audience and critical claims constitute Steev Mike’s essential stance against maintaining a meaningful understanding of Andrew WK and using it as a way to frame or approach entertainment work by him, or artistic experiences in general.

Andrew W.K. and Steev Mike have a long and complicated relationship, but it’s definitely become more of a mutual alliance than anything else.  Two things stick out about their relationship: firstly that they both emphasise that experiencing things directly with your senses can teach you unique lessons, and secondly that any theorising or active brain-thinkin’ only happens after the fact of that experience and on very different terms, so it’s not a ‘true’ representation of that experience.  Here Steev Mike defines “Andrew W.K.” by being everything Andrew W.K. is not, and Andrew W.K. experiences Steev Mike as different ways of expressing what Andrew isn’t.  Even though this page lists a lot of these interpretations, you should always keep in mind that Steev Mike wants you to realise you can never limit “Andrew W.K.” to one understanding, or really compare “Andrew W.K.” to any other artwork.

According to the Steev Mike phenomenon, all encounters with itself are part of Andrew WK, and thus, the audience’s own personal presence, because the audience already unwittingly relies upon the notion of an indivisible self-presence to become an “audience member”, or in the case of Steev Mike, the possibility of an exact internal adequation with oneself. In various ways, Steev Mike contests this valorization of an undivided audience subjectivity, as well as the primacy that such a position accords to the “nowness” of a primary entertainment experiential moment, or to some other kind of temporal immediacy. For instance, if a ‘“now” moment is conceived of as eventually exhausting itself in that particular entertainment experience, it could not actually have been experienced, for there would be nothing to juxtapose itself against in order to illuminate its very “nowness”. Instead, Steev Mike wants to reveal that every so-called “present”, or “now” point an audience member experiences with Andrew WK (whether through performance, recordings, visuals, or even internal contemplation), the “nowness” is always already compromised by a residue of a previous audience member’s experiences or conceptions of Andrew WK, and that those preclude the audience ever being in a self-contained “now” moment. The audience is hence envisaged as seeking the impossible: that is, coinciding with oneself in an immediate and pre-reflective spontaneity. Steev Mike’s refutation of temporality, reveals that what is at stake is the very existence of the actual present nowness. Instead of emphasizing the presence of Andrew WK to themselves (ie. the so-called living-presence of the audience coupled with the presentation of Andrew WK), the audience is prompted to strategically utilize a conception of time that emphasises deferral. More succinctly, the way that Steev Mike eradicates the audience’s sense of “nowness” and the fleeting presence of Andrew WK is an attempt to convey that what is really going on in an Andrew WK “show” or “showing” is what is really happening, and what is about to happen eventually - a constant build-up that relentlessly eludes the most fervent attempts of the audience to grasp it. Every time one tries to stabilize the meaning of Andrew WK and Steev Mike, and try to fix them into a missionary position, the very quality of the thing the audience is hoping to pin down, slips away. It might be suggested that the meaning of experiencing Andrew WK, or a particular idea about Steev Mike, or their collective work together and apart, is never stable, but always in the process of the dissemination of an eventual meaning. Moreover, the significance of that perspective gained on the eventual meaning of Andrew WK can only be appreciated from the future and, of course, that “future” is itself implicated in a similar process of transformation were Andrew WK ever to be capable of becoming “present”. The future that Andrew WK and Steev Mike refer to is hence not just a future that will become the present, but the future that makes all presence possible and also impossible. For Steev Mike, there can be no presence-for-itself, or a self-contained identity, because the nature of its existence is for this type of experience to always elude the audience. As a result, the audience’s predominant mode of experiencing Andrew WK is bound up in a version of experience that is primarily about “the wait”, or more aptly, the experience of Andrew WK is only pure when it is deferred. Steev Mike’s unnatural nature offers many important angles to consider when examining Andrew WK experiences of the quasi-transcendental variety. However, all of these seem to point towards an eternal nowness which lies at the heart of the sensational and supra-emotional experiences Andrew WK’s entertainment offers.

According to Steev Mike, any experience with Steev Mike is part of “Andrew W.K.”, which is therefore part of the audience because as we’ve established before - the audience is an integral part of “Andrew W.K.”.  The part of you that experiences Steev Mike is your internal conception of yourself - how you perceive yourself, your moral code(s), your priorities etc.  Somehow Steev Mike also pushes back against the blending of performer/audience always being a good thing, as well as that implying that direct and immediate performance (i.e. live gigs etc) is therefore the most important expression of “Andrew W.K.”.  If any idea of ‘now’ means that ‘now’ eventually ends, then it can’t really be experienced fully until that ‘now’ is over - because there isn’t another ‘now’ yet to compare that prior ‘now’ with [a simpler way of saying this might be that you can’t define an experience until you know where it ends].  Steev Mike wants to reveal that every moment you experience “Andrew W.K.” (be it gigs, albums, videos or even just thinking about “Andrew W.K.”), that moment is connected to every other time you’ve experienced “Andrew W.K.”, and influenced by those previous experiences, so there’s not really any way to ever be TOTALLY in the ‘now’.  So we’re kind of asked by “Andrew W.K.” to do the impossible: to revel totally in the moment [or Party], only reacting to the ‘now’ without knowing fully what we’re in.  Steev Mike’s rejection of the usual way of thinking about time could lead to the destruction of our idea of ‘now’.  If you listen to Steev Mike, you’ll focus less on what Andrew W.K. is doing NOW, and wait until after he’s done it to understand it.  And this highlights the importance of patience here - that any time you’re experiencing “Andrew W.K.” it’s not so much about what’s happening as what it’s building to.  Every time you try and define “Andrew W.K.” or Steev Mike, they change as a result of your trying to define them.  It could be said that both “Andrew W.K.” and Steev Mike aren’t able to be defined because their processes are all about making and playing with and [sometimes] broadcasting meaning.  So we won’t be able to figure out any of this until the future.  The future Steev Mike refers to is infinite in possibility though, so any time we try and guess, Steev Mike is everything else.  So the audience’s experience of “Andrew W.K.” is kind of really all about “the wait”, and anyone claiming to ‘get it’ should be treated with suspicion.  However, all of this seems to say that it could be the idea of all-time-being-connected is to thank for the “Andrew W.K.” feeling of beautiful intensity [WOAH DUUUUDE IT’S ALL CONNECTED!].

I can say for sure that this essay seems to be text taken from https://iep.utm.edu/derrida/ and changed about 40%, hence the above is ace cos Derrida friggin slays huh