KEITH VEHICLE * DIET KONG * FLACCID DICK 

I am following Keith Vehicle down alleyways in Hollywood. Or I believe it is Keith. It might be flaccid Dick, his shadow self, his personal prankster. We are looking for his car. He forgot where he parked it and now it is after the hour which he can retrieve it. We have just left the recording session at Sunset Sound in which the band Modern Eyes is recording their latest single. flaccid Dick’s role in the project is something akin to a manager and/or spirit animal. 

Historically the artist himself, Keith is experimenting with the new role mentoring a rock band. It appears that flaccid Dick is the one in charge of this one, anyways. He is now referring to himself as the dragon slayer. I can only imagine flaccid Dick speaking to the record label executives on the band’s behalf. 

Later, at the after party, when the band discovers the presence of DMT on a patron at the bar, they immediately beckon flaccid Dick over, who needs no arm bending. Within minutes they are both slumped over the table (Keith and flaccid), re-enacting another death of sorts, another birth of sorts. Shit it’s just another day, really, in Los Angeles. 

By all accounts, flaccid Dick embodies the trickster- tragic in a comedic way. 

Keith says- ‘I can make fun of myself in it, and still be revealing. And that can be healing for everybody.’ 

The trickster as the archetype as the shadow aspect of self. There are times not even Keith likes him very much. But like any pushy part of the subconscious, Mr. Dick has his place. He is the man wearing the blonde (or brunette) skullet. In fact, now Keith doesn’t leave home without one. One might never know when an alter ego becomes an asset or even necessary, for one’s survival. 

In my estimation, flaccid Dick emerged from the embers of Keith Gladysz, as he had all but disappeared due to Lyme disease back in his hometown of New York. His body, a shell of a thing, was being carried across the country in a separate trailer from his family, without the energy to rise. So racked by disease was the vessel that would go on to house both personalities, it was as if he had come to the end. 

But he returned from the crossroads, and when he did, Keith arrived with flaccid Dick on his arm- holding a flame thrower. It was in Joshua Tree, in the compound that Keith has been constructing with his family for the last year and a half, that flaccid Dick first raised his skulleted head. 

Now Keith reminds me that in fact flaccid Dick was not just borne from the illness- that he had been building inside of him for the entirety of his life. It was actually the illness that broke down the resistance and allowed him to come out. And he came out fierce. 

flaccid Dick can sing like a motherfucker. And dance. And how. And now he seems to be fronting Diet Kong- Keith’s mercurial synth-pop band of over a decade. A band that includes his wife at alternating stages, video installation and a suit painted white, bathed in talcum powder, hit by determined hands leaving clouds of dust above the beats of an 808 drum machine. 

Now with flaccid at the helm, bringing his frenetic moves to the stage, Diet Kong will be opening for Modern Eyes at the Troubadour in Hollywood in the spring. Everything is somehow in complete chaos around him and also completely connected. Keith has still not found his car. 

I am always happy to remind Keith that he is out of his mind. He acknowledges that he ‘does not walk as tightly on the same path as everybody else. And sometimes that makes people uncomfortable.’ 

‘Sometimes the process makes me uncomfortable,’ he admits. 

After several hours of scouring the neighborhood, we find the car. Once inside, a celebratory blunt is rolled and smoked. Keith takes a deep inhale. ‘I’m not really swinging towards the fences,’ he says to remind me. ‘I’m just playing around. 

‘When it’s all said and done,’ he laughs- ‘It’s just me with a wig on.’

‘Strong in work, weak in ambition, that’s the goal in Daoism,’ adds Keith. ‘That’s what I’m shooting for.’

He’s headed back to the self-imposed limitations of life in the desert. It is the silence that he covets but also the military operations that are executed in an almost daily sonic ritual, by his closest neighbor, the United States Marines. Once again there exists the dichotomy, the yin and the yang, in his experience. 

‘I’m no seeker,’ says Keith. ‘I’m a finder-seeker’. ‘Which means- discovering first, having the experience, and then going forwards.’ 

‘To have flaccid Dick at this point is a perfect vehicle for going through this change,’ says Keith. 

‘To have this aspect that buffers it for me.’

A month earlier I was visiting the compound outside Joshua Tree, filming a video for flaccid Dick. Like all his ventures, there is a spontaneous celebration at the core, which feels like being dangerously close to lit fireworks. Keith’s process embodies almost the opposite of perfectionism, it is sheer experience, often just for the sake of it.  

In the video, flaccid is digging a grave in the desert in which he will soon lie. And from which he will later emerge. He is wearing the now infamous skulette. But also a silver tiara around his neck, which somehow offsets the freaky nature that a skulette can bring to the table. The tiara reminds the audience of the material world, and something shiny, at that. 

‘I wanna bring it back to Earth,’ flaccid says.

The following morning at the compound, Keith is once again becoming flaccid Dick. His son, Flynt, enters the studio and bursts out laughing.

‘You can’t do that!’ Flynt says, pointing to the blonde skullet on his father’s forehead. 

‘That’s exactly why I have to do that,’ says Keith to his son. 

‘Why I’m compelled to do it.’ Keith laughs, (another element not to be missed in the story). 

It’s a great lesson from artist to artist, and also father to son- to have the courage to cross an invisible line. Particularly when that line is between the dark and the light. And the goal is to have both.