Others Letters: Chris Martin and Jared Stanley

"But now, blowing all that back into the recesses is the picture of Bushwick Bill. Oaughhhw. That picture is just so magnetic. The looks on the faces of Scarface and Willie D. That fucking CELL PHONE. The damaged soldier whose only recourse is publicity. Here's the wikipedia description:

The album cover is a graphic picture of member Bushwick Bill in the hospital. Bill had shot himself in the eye after his girlfriend refused to shoot him during an altercation. [3] The other two Geto Boys members and the group's management team yanked Bill out of the hospital room in order to take the picture, removing Bill's eyepatch and IV in the process. Bill has expressed regret over the album cover, saying "Its still hurts me to look at that cover because that was a personal thing I went through... I still feel the pain from the fact I've got a bullet in my brain... I think it was pretty wrong to do it, even though I went along with the program at first."[1]

I still feel pain from the fact
I've got a bullet in my brain.

And what about Pac, then? He's still got a bullet "I" on hologram? There's this essay Charles Bernstein wrote years ago, relating Creeley's one functional eye to his notion of selfhood, of I-ness. Bushwick shoots his eye out and Pac turns his I into a bullet. Not to mention that the I in THUGLIFE stands for infant. This man whose revolutionary mother decayed into a crack addict while he was a boy. Wounded soldiers with no recourse but publicity."
--Chris Martin and Jared Stanley, from "Soldier's Recourse"