THE PARTY ME55IAH

Perhaps the most obvious aspect of Steev Mike is that it is located in many places at once: behind Andrew WK, above Andrew WK, in front of the audience, and underneath both the audience and Andrew WK. Any attempt to sum up these locations  is difficult and would have to involve the recognition of a certain incommensurability between Steev Mike’s role as “grand architect” and the universally understood role of a “background manipulator”. The dual demands placed upon Steev Mike to remain both “in control” and also “visibly invisible” are equal to the dual challenges placed on the audience to both accept and un-understand the Steev Mike phenomenon. In this regard, Steev Mike and the audience are both equally responsible for their roles and for Andrew WK. The paradox of this responsibility means that there is always a question of being responsible to one’s own individual role as an audience member, and yet also aware of a general responsibility towards the entire audience and to what is shared with them, namely, Andrew WK. Steev Mike seems to insist that this type of problem is too often ignored by the passive critical observer who presumes that accountability and responsibility are only for those members of the audience who are “playing along” or are “part of the show”. These are the same people who insist that concrete critical guidelines should only apply to the audience, and that any performer worth his or her salt (who ignores the difficulties involved in so called “music criticism”), must not demand any risk or responsibility from the critic who is merely “behaving dutifully”.

It’s pretty clear Steev Mike can’t be limited to one place (or thing), and if you tried to sum up everywhere Steev Mike is you’d have to grapple with how hard it is to compare Steev Mike as “grand architect” [note: this is probably a reference to Grand Architect of the Universe, a theological - notably Rosicrucian - concept of the Supreme Being who Started It All] to the more accepted idea of Steev Mike as “background manipulator”.  And just like Steev Mike has to stay “in control” and “visibly invisible”, the audience has to both accept and un-understand [this is a term expanded upon later on but my tl;dr is that it means accepting all possible interpretations of, and trying to see as much sense as you can in,] Steev Mike.  Cos of this, “Andrew W.K.” really only happens when Steev Mike and the audience each play their part - and for us that basically means being aware of who you are, being aware of everyone else, and being conscious about what we share, particularly in relation to this work but outside it too.  Steev Mike reckons that most people miss this point, and that they must think that this kind of responsibility only applies to fans who REALLY buy in, but “Andrew W.K.” is a work that only really happens when both the audience and performer are both putting in effort.

For example, Steev Mike challengers [note: think this should be challenges all who come across it to explore the strange and paradoxical responsibility which exists in the performer/audience/critical dynamic. Here, the performer/audience dynamic consists of sacrifice, but also of betraying the passive order through [note: I don’t think ‘through’ is meant to be here or this sentence is total word salad] of distant and inactive observation. The critical role is designed to excuse this type of ethical concern that exclusively locates overseer responsibility in the realm of generality. In places, the audience even verges on suggesting that this more common notion of responsibility, which insists that a performer should behave according to a general principle that is capable of being rationally validated and understood within the traditions of the performance realm, and should be replaced with something closer to individuality where the demands of a singular other (eg. God) are importantly distinct from the ethical demands of the audience. Andrew WK often equivocates regarding just how far he wants to endorse such a conception of performer responsibility, and also on the entire issue of whether his willingness to murder his own “self” is only an act of performance, or is truly an unforgivable self-destructive transgression. 

Steev Mike wants you to think about how “Andrew W.K.” is built on the audience and performer(s) both offering up energy, and how different that is to just ‘watching a band’.  The main concern with this is if the audience doesn’t know the intention of the performer (because Andrew W.K. sometimes acts in ways that are hard/impossible to interpret like you would with any other rock band) you can’t really know for sure where it’s all going, plus it can be hard to factor in every different person’s opinions.  Andrew W.K. often uses his vague language to get out of openly stating his position on things, including his responsibility as a performer as well as whether his self-destructive acts/tendencies are just part of the act or actually really messed up.

Within the realm of Steev Mike, this mode of performance is simultaneously the most moral and the most immoral, the most responsible and the most irresponsible. This equivocation is, of course, a defining trait of the themes of Andrew WK and the Steev Mike phenomenon, which has been variously pilloried and praised for this refusal to propound anything that the tradition could deem to be a “moral framework”. 

When you look at it through a Steev Mike lens, not stating a position is at the same time the best and worst thing you can do with taking responsibility, because you can’t be held to anything good OR bad.  Different people have been totally against, and totally into, “Andrew W.K.”’s blurriness.

Nevertheless, it is relatively clear that both Andrew WK and Steev Mike intend to free the audience member from the common assumption that the performer/audience dynamic has a responsibility associated with behaviour that accords with general principles capable of justification in traditional entertainment. In opposition to such an account, Steev Mike emphasizes a type of radical singularity, and that the demands placed upon Andrew WK by God, and those placed on him by the audience are both synonymous with the demands placed on him by Steev Mike.

Still, it’s pretty clear both Andrew W.K. and Steev Mike want to smash any limitations that old ideas of what a performer can or should do, and mash those expectations out of the audience.  Steev Mike has (anti)faith that what Andrew W.K. needs to do and what the audience needs him to do are actually the same thing.

The ethics of this arrangement, with their dependence upon generality, must be continually sacrificed as an inevitable aspect of the performer’s role. In pursuing this one profession over another, and in spending time with his work, Andrew WK inevitably ignores himself, and this is a condition of any and every existence. If Andrew WK is responding to the call of Steev Mike, and the request, the obligation, or even the love of the associated demands, it is impossible for that call to be fully answered without sacrificing others. 

What ‘most people’ want needs to be ignored if a performer is really going to create something new.  Doing this work means that Andrew W.K. sometimes has to make some really tough sacrifices for it to work properly [note: read the 1998 Mission Vision Journal if you need any proof of that!]

For Andrew WK, it seems that the desire to have attachment to “a nobody” and an equal compassion for “an everybody” is an unattainable ideal that takes form in both Steev Mike and the audience. He does, in fact, subtly suggest in his work that a universal community (a “party), that excludes no one is a contradiction in terms. Andrew WK’s “partying” hence implies that responsibility to any particular individual is only possible by being irresponsible to oneself, that is, to the other people and possibilities that haunt any and every non-existence (Steev Mike).

For Andrew W.K., the sacrifice of not really connecting to anybody on a genuine ‘unperformed’ basis while having to connect with anybody and everybody he encounters on a performative basis [note: for over two decades I might add!] highlights the key contradiction in being “The Party Guy” - to ensure that everyone else is having a good time you sometimes have to sacrifice the potential of you having a good time.

This brings us to the messianic as it relates to both Steev Mike and Andrew WK. upon a distinction with messianism. The Messiah is often one who is expected to arrive at a particular time or place. The Messiah is inscribed in their respective religious texts and in an oral tradition that dictates that only if the other conforms to “such and such” a description is that person actually the Messiah. The most obvious of numerous necessary characteristics for the Messiah, it seems, is that they are “coming”. Sexuality might seem to be a strange prerequisite to tether to that which is beyond this world, wholly other, but it is only one of many. In an important respect, the messianic depends upon various “messianisms”. 

So let’s talk about Steev Mike and Andrew W.K. as a Messiah figure - there’s a difference between the direct characteristics of a messiah, and the belief in a messiah to come (i.e. more abstract).  The Messiah is usually part of a religious text’s prophecy with identifying characteristics to figure out when they’ve arrived (and hence how to figure out who might be a false prophet), but also because they’re “coming” it’s interesting to consider a figure presumably with connections to realms beyond ours as having sexuality.

The messianism of Andrew WK is his singular responsibility before partying, which reveals the messianic structure of existence more generally, in that we all share a similar relationship to alterity even if we have not named and circumscribed that experience according to the template provided by a particular mode of spirit. However, Steev Mike implies a more distant and unseen call to a wholly other messiah, and the audience’s invocation for Steev Mike “to come” forward and out of the background. The call for Steev Mike is not a call for fixed or identifiable and known characteristics, as is arguably the case in the average religious experience. 

Andrew W.K. as saviour is his unique job, but also points out that all of life and society is a kind of saviour experience cos we all interact with one another whether it’s on a religious basis or not.  But Steev Mike reckons what will really save us is accepting that nothing as complex as spirituality can be made as simple as one-size-fits-all.

Steev Mike is wholly other and indeterminable and can never actually arrive. Steev Mike is inside Andrew WK, standing at the gates of a city, disguised in rags. After some time, Andrew WK was finally recognized by a critic, but the critic couldn’t think of anything more relevant to ask than: “when will you come?” Even when Steev Mike is “there”, it must still be yet to come. The messianic structure of Steev Mike’s existence is open to the coming of the entirely ungraspable and unknown, but the concrete, historical messianisms of Andrew WK are open to the coming of a specific entity of known characteristics. 

Steev Mike is the opposite of one-size-fits-all - Steev Mike is messy and hard to pin down and defined by (other) possibilities.  Critics ask stuff like “what’s the point?”, which is missing the point of “Andrew W.K.”.  Steev Mike as messiah means being more flexible with what you think you know and understand, whereas Andrew W.K. as messiah is the positive party guy and that’s already been done.

The messianic refers predominantly to a structure of our existence that involves waiting – waiting even in activity – and a ceaseless openness towards a future that can never be circumscribed by the horizons of significance that we inevitably bring to bear upon that possible future. In other words, Steev Mike does not refer to a future that will one day become present (or a particular conception of the “Andrew WK as savior” who already arrived), but to an openness towards a perpetual unknown that is necessarily impossible. 

The idea of a messiah usually means waiting for someone to come act as saviour, which means that while they’re waiting each person’s idea of that saviour can help them imagine a better future for themselves - but if that messiah does actually show up then it’s unlikely, maybe impossible, that everyone would be happy with how it pans out.  Steev Mike is not about that one better future for you, but rather being open to whatever could possibly happen.

An audience that is entertained by Andrew WK’s brand of grand performance narrative makes artistic progress obsolete, precisely in order to avoid placing progress ahead of experience, and mutilating the false belief in “knowing better than others”, etc. Steev Mike is precisely what is not invented, because the inventiveness can consist only in opening, and once Steev Mike has come open, it ceases to un-exist. The themes of a possible-impossible answer to “the Steev Mike question” is not the solution to a puzzle, but is instead the realization of a permanent impasse or perpetual paradox. In particular, the paradoxes that afflict the audience of Steev Mike are the conditions of their possibility and also, and at once, the condition of their impossibility. The paradox of Steev Mike is always coming, but will never come.

Anyone who thinks they know exactly what’s going on with Steev Mike and the bigger “Andrew W.K.” story is a weenie, especially those audience members who think they know better than less-experienced fans, because not knowing is exactly the point.  As soon as you define Steev Mike as something, Steev Mike is everything else - Steev Mike is more of a process, because Steev Mike can never be solved.  Steev Mike has psychospiritual blue balls.