Originally, when I started going
to school at University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, I was planning on working
through a double major. I was planning on taking English/Creative Writing,
which ended up being my primary track, and I was planning on majoring in Film
Studies. For that, I started my time at UWM with a History of Film course. It
was through this course that I realized that, while I love film, I didn’t want
to study it at that level.
It was through during that
course, though, that “Fuck You, Andy Warhol” was born. Well, it was born of two
things during that year of college. First, was a class on Avant-Garde cinema
during my History of Film course. There were some Avant-Garde films that I
enjoyed, such as Un Chien Andalou,
but the majority of them I found quite pointless. The second inspiration was a
video someone showed me at the Eight Note café in the union. The video was shot
under glass, I’m assuming, and featured a tongue licking up colorful goo. This
was art, ladies and gentleman, and it was pointless and disgusting.
Originally I called this poem “Futuristic
Post-Modern Avant-Gardism”. Most of the class I workshopped this poem with didn’t
get it. My instructor at the time, Colleen, was one of the only people to get
it and she loved it. I changed the name based on a suggestion from a friend in
a group a started known as The Pensmiths’ Guild.
