WHITE RABBIT – PART 1
Artemis and
Apollo, Barry Windsor-Smith
“White Rabbit”
is taken from the Grace Slick song of Lewis Carroll’s Alice. In Through the
Looking Glass, the land on the other side of the mirror is the world of
myth and fairy tale. That world is the opposite to a world of light, of
reflection. Critically speaking, light has to be destroyed in order for the
mirror to reflect its opposite (myth and fairy tale).
This is seen in
many contexts, which I’ll discuss later. The first thing to say is that a world
of reflected light is Apollonian (in the Nietzschean sense). It is a world of
logic and proportion but, in the lyrics of the song,
“When logic and
proportion have fallen sloppy dead
And the White
Knight’s talking backwards
And the Red
Queen’s off with her head”
The other side
of the mirror is the domain of Artemis – the twin and destroyer of Apollo – a
world of darkness and decadence. Artemis is fertility (Daphne, laurel) and the
enabler of the frivolous god Dionysus.
How many people
are aware that floral green is simply the subtraction by leaves of the rainbow
(spectrum)? Photosynthetic pigments. A rainbow is like a technical mirror –
telling us what colors are there – the red to blue spectrum. The other side of
the rainbow is simply the land beyond technique, the land of wilful
expression.. or of witch.. or the Wizard of Oz http://www.uvs-model.com/UVS%20on%20paradoxical%20effect.htm (see “Somehow I Don’t Think We’re In
Kansas, Toto” down page)
To put it in
simple English, there is a world of light, but there is a world of the
destruction and bending of light – forests, rainbows, bowers, glades. This is
actually the world of heroic fantasy, of which more anon.
Once light is
destroyed or bent, we have enclosure – leafy bowers, bows of light (the rainbow
bridge), decadent romance. We are in familiar time and space. Essentially, the
destruction of light (Artemis) is a creative act, an act of fertility.
Of course, we
are told we live in a spacetime continuum that is filled with light, reflected
light. It’s a very nice theory, since the continuum is supposed to just be
there, and bend light around it. However, light can be bent by other means,
such as a prism (rainbow), or heat as in a mirage.
If vortices
exist, the continuum is an Apollonian fantasy or “lightspace”. If something is
an Apollonian fantasy, all the followers are essentially following the light –
reflections – and not the dark (shadows, myths, dreams).
The other side
of the mirror is a type of atmosphere, invisible to an Apollonian order (like a
rainbow which is like a mirage). This is not the world of theory, but the world
of Artemis and Apollo, twin gods, a type of incestuousness or decadence.
The reality it
emblemizes is atmospheric. Its limbs are flesh and wood, like taverns of old,
of melancholy airs and raucous carousing.
This is an
alternate reality that destroys an Apollonian fantasy of logic and proportion,
replete with robots and economic pundits. Fill the halls with mirrors and they
think it’s real, not a reflection of a reflection.
The Song of Red Sonja
- Artemis carousing with Dionysus (Conan #24, 1972)
BWS’s trademark
hatching style is taken more from 18th century British illustrators
like Hogarth than 20th century American. The other point I want to
get across is the sense of space – whether clichéd and caricatural 18th
century Hogarth or 20th century comics – they are enclosed in a
recognizable space.
What is it that encloses
space? In the history of Man, it’s trees. Trees that capture sunlight, that
shelter us with overhanging boughs. Trees are the creators of space because
they destroy the radiation of the sun, converting it to trunks and greenery.
The basic point is that the destruction of light is needed because this lets in
Artemis. Artemis is darkness, decadence, romance and a type of almost
incestuous closeness.
That environment
is actually the environment of, say, a Sioux village. Also, of fairy tales set
in woods and ivied castles. If you look at the splash page of Song of Red
Sonja, there is a very strong sense of enclosure by wooden timbers – it could
almost be a ship’s hold. It looks sort of familiar. Dreamlike.
I’m going to be
taking up the theme of familiarity in further instalments. There is also the
more basic point that destruction of light is destruction of technique. It is
pure expression, wildness. This is actually therefore an ontological point.
The world “we”
are building is a world of reflections (light) in a continuum. Breaking the
mirror lets in the flame-haired Artemis. This is the world of enclosure, of
leafy bowers. It is an ontological distinction that recognizes that light and
the continuum have to be destroyed. We are then not in Einstein’s world; we are
in an enclosed, and greener, and dreamier land.
Cat Stevens,
Sun/C79
WHITE RABBIT – PART 2
“Without music,
life would be a mistake” – Nietzsche
“And the sun
lights the moon” – Cat Stevens (Sun C79)
Atmospheric
reflection of white light, that is. Mellow and mild, erotic and fecund,
wolflike. The harshness of light is destroyed, and we are in the realm of dream
and fairy tale.
Archetypally, Cocteau’s
Beauty and the Beast (1946) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsXkv1mpRUk
..made a
ravishing and endlessly satisfying allegory about truth and illusion, sincerity
and hypocrisy, with image sequences that swim through mirrors and flames, as
the characters hope to discover truth in love. – Marina Warner (2008)
The film moves
from the mundane farmyard and barnyard of Avenon and Belle (Jocette Day) to the
magic castle of la bete (Jean Maurais). Cocteau inundates the set with decadent
touches – ivy is even in Belle’s bedroom so that it is half forest. The castle
is cloaked in darkness (literally).
The magic mirror
reflects its opposite and truth is discovered through positive (Beauty) and negative
(Beast), day and night. The Beast in a sense is the creative aspect which, to
Cocteau, was a product of torment.
There are
references in the film to classical myths. The Beast’s pavilion of Diana
containing his treasure. In myth, Diana changed Actaeon into a stag for daring
to disturb her bathing ritual, another version of Beauty and the Beast. Cupid
also makes an appearance, from the 2nd century Appulius tale of
Psyche and Cupid, The Golden Ass.
Light has to
destroyed in order for the mirror to reflect its opposite. You are no longer in
the world of white light, because there is a dark side, an almost incestuous
closeness of atmospheric fraternity and melancholy. The shadow-land of Gustav
Dore.
This sense of
enclosure, not continuing expansion, is contained in BWS’s Pandora from 1975.
The tightly enclosed box represents the romantic, decadent nature of the
artefacts, their tangled connections.. mind, memory, allusion, dream and whimsy
(Boewulf, a stack of Cat Stevens albums). The tangled-up conundrums are
actually harking back to “practically Heraldic” medievalism, as BWS says in The
Studio (Dragon’s Dream).
The rainbow
effect represents technique – but the technique illuminates the interesting decadence
that afflicts mankind. Light illuminates human culture only because of its
enclosed nature (Artemis and Apollo).
This could
almost act as a definition of the psychedelic space that erupted in San
Francisco in 1965. The Fillmore’s scenic ambience represented the flower-power
surge, the rainbow sweat of dancers, incense and pheromones, Alice and, of
course, White Rabbit.
“It’s No Secret”
from Fly Jefferson Airplane https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw-6-stIFJc
The picture of
atmospheric space, of ballrooms and lightshows, circles of people holding hands dancing , all swirling
together around one thing, the drug scene. If you take that as read, which they
seem to, the whole scene erupts from inside the poppy, or LSD. The light shows
have a floral profligacy, the dancing a rite of spring ritual.
This is weirdly
similar to Richard Strauss’s opera Daphne, who was transformed into a laurel
tree. At the finale, you see weirdly flickering light effects as she
metamorphoses. Daphne – or Artemis-Daphne – is the moon aspect, so the light
effects are mellow, yellow, almost churchlike in their calm iridescence.
You’re no longer
in the world of logic and proportion but a fairyland of pure expression where,
as Kantner puts it, “wish upon a star” and it will happen. The essential point
is this is atmospheric decadence; the Fillmore is a happening place, you’re
among friends, there is a rite of spring essence.
Something very
particular has happened and, as the Jefferson family note, San Fran was the
centre of the universe. What has happened is a metamorphosis of logical space –
the gridlines of NYC – into pure expressive space. This is enclosed,
atmospheric space, singing with life and liberty.
The hippy
revolution is this circular sense of time and space, the creation of a scene
where people seem to be your friends and things just happen, for no reason.
This poses a
threat to the mainstream – this is something tackled later. For the nonce it’s
enough to say that the destruction of logic and proportion is necessary for the
shadowland to materialize. The shadowland is profligate, erotic, wild (Slick’s
epic Theme to Manhole is worth catching, 1974).
This is
something that’s quite difficult to grasp because there are two worlds that are
completely different, with no connection atall. In the world of pure expression
there is no technique. In the world of technique there is no pure expression.
This is why the
60s has an ontological basis, because it is getting at the root of things, the
fact that things “just happen”. The six musicians of Airplane were, as Spencer
Dryden puts it, “in search of an arrangement”. They were all very different and
individual artists and, on any given instance, might veer into, say, a Cassady
bass solo while the others just stood around waiting. Balin, the tunesmith has
nothing in common with Kantner the cavalier balladeer, but plays well with Slick’s
melodrama.
A scene
establishes enclosure, a sense of togetherness that can override differences as
we’re in the land of artistic differentiation. The people were part of a scene
for that reason alone. The scene destroys logic and therefore any overtly
political motivation. Kantner, the most “political” member, couches his advice
in the unreal language of hijacked spaceships, cruising the spaceways with
daisy-chained children, peering through portals onto a Jupiter starlight.
The scene is essentially
fecund; they are in enclosed space, a group of friends with an almost
incestuous closeness, almost like they are carrying a laurel tree with Daphne’s
essence to the universe. Kantner even makes remarks like, when talking about
ditching Signy Anderson for Slick, “The sense of presence in her voice was
overwhelming, nothing sexual, although of course that was an undercurrent”.
That is the
scene. If you want to live in a cloud of logic and proportion, then you will be
in a political, Machiavelian area. But that was not the scene which the druggees
indulged in in ’65. Cat Steven’s Sun/C79 has the lyric, “She was a junky then”.
The scene
encloses space so that “logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead”. This is
an ontological point, that the way we experience things changes when we have a
type of Daphne-like enclosure. Without the enclosure, we are in a state of
continuing expansion, where everything is logical and proportionate.
The sense of
completely unpreconceived happenings was taken to an extreme in ’68, when Jean-Luc
Godard got the Airplane to perform from a NYC rooftop. Typically Godard-esque,
the apocalyptic sound breaks down on the good citizens of NY with no warning.
Godard films it as a director who just happens to be there, catching events as
they unfurl.
WHITE RABBIT – PART 3
Since botanical forms are colored in hues
of yellow and green and grey ochres of lichen and bark, there is a palpable
sense of bending and shaping color. This appeals to an artistic sensibility and
the impulses of painters down the ages to be scenic.
A scene encloses
space, and with the bending, weaving forms of plants this is easy to achieve.
Man’s forms also seek to enclose, and I read somewhere that the form of Greek
temples originally derived from wooden temples, and those from groves.
An enclosure is
therefore tied-up with botanical forms which are bending and shaping the energy
of the sun for their own use. If light represents technique – a prism (rainbow)
– enclosure represents darkness and shadow.
Artemis is not
technique, Artemis is simply darkness, absorption, a type of serenity, also
wildness. The hippies and particularly hip-chicks identified with this. Grace
Slick’s 1974 album Manhole has a dedication to Bruce Lee, who advocated his
method of kung-fu fighting (Jeet Kune Do) as “no style” or no technique.
Don’t tie him
down
He wants to
run
Give him the
sun
Slick’s lyric to
Manhole is a very good precis of Bruce Lee’s “no style”. Every method ties you
down (to routine). So,
A person
cannot express himself fully when a partial set structure or style is imposed
on him. Fighting “as is” is total (including all “that is” as well as all “that
is not”), without boundaries or lines, always alive, and constantly changing. – Artist of Life, p162
Now, Bruce Lee’s
book is all about this, so he repeats himself in different ways. On the one
hand there is technique, which you learn. On the other, flexible response. The
two are totally separate, something that is difficult to grasp.
There is no
technique in flexible response; there is no flexible response in technique. The
reason is that fighting “as is” is total – reality.
Reality is just
a state of being, in time and space. There are two things going on. You learn
the technique, and the technique breaks down in the moment of response.
In other words,
you destroy the technique in order to act. If you are to have totally flexible
expression there is no alternate. You live in the moment always.
So another way
of stating Bruce Lee’s philosophy is that you destroy what is built-up. This is
again the land where “logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead”, down the
rabbit hole with Alice. Where “the Red Queen’s off with her head”, and
destruction and disorder rule. Artemis.
This is the land
of darkness, dreams and memories. The Underworld. In Orpheus and Eurydice,
Orpheus is given a lyre to play and charm his way out of Pluto’s kingdom with
Eurydice, but glances back and the spell is broken. This is one of the first
tragedies.
Darkness and
destruction are one thing, and completely separate from the world of light and
understanding. There are two worlds here, and they are totally separate.
Science is
building up a world of light that gives answers in that side of the world but
the point is the other side of the world is simply destruction of light.
That world is
Artemis and it is the land of fertility. The enabler of Dionysus. Frivolity and
music, but quick to vengeance.
Barry
Windsor-Smith, The Ram and the Peacock, 1975
This is one of
BWS’s versions of heroic romance (the other is The Enchantment), and you notice
the low shadow that gives it a sort of decadent feel – twilight. You notice the
shadow is very sculptural, and the hero’s face is only half-lit. He actually
says in an interview that the wizard is a fallen hero, and the barbarian is the
intruder in a scene of refinement.
The two symbols
of light in the picture, the sundial and the prism, seem to represent time and
space. A prism uses the angles of the glass to separate light into component
parts in the same way a rainbow does with water droplets.
The foliage in
the garden takes the form that Artemis has adopted to occupy this serene scene
that the barbarian has apparently invaded. It may even be that the Peacock is
the wizard whose spirit has fled his body (so he is the victor).
The scene that
we see is a setting in time and place upon which Apollo has cast his bounty.
Because light is bent and split, or transformed into multicolored hues of
flora, we are no longer in Einstein’s universe. We are in a universe where
light provides the bounty but not the form. It’s not a continuum, it’s an
enclosure, a refined scene.
The barbarian’s
shadow falling over the wizard is just the absence of light, and that defines
the form here. Basically, we’re told a continuum is something that’s supposed
to have a certain shape (that bends light), but it’s actually the destruction
and transformation of light that provides shape. Then you don’t have technique,
you have enclosure. The shadow that defines form is actually part of that
destruction or transformation. It’s a negative to a positive.
WHITE RABBIT – PART 4
All the
leaves are brown
And the sky
is gray
I’ve been for
a walk
On a winter’s
day
Mamas and Papas
The siren call
to San Francisco culminated in the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, a musical
exchange of ideas that was free on delivery (though not free on entry like
Woodstock). With ringlets in haystack hair and flowery costumes, it was a
perfect demonstration of a “happening”, establishing with ease an alternate
culture to the straightlaced stockbroker society.
Cultures that
are happening are utilizing time and space to re-establish a sense of
enclosure. There is always going to be some floral or botanical sense to
enclosure, mainly because it’s an alternate to a society based on logic and
proportion. Enclosures are often wooden like a wild west corral. Monterey did
the best it could to ensure a peasanty, Mark Twain-like gathering, where things
are carefree and hillbilly rather than organized along corporate lines.
The essential
thing is that there are two completely separate entities, one organized along
the lines of logic and proportion. The other is a “happening” that has people
coming together in a gathering of frivolity and not much money.
In the modern
world, any technique can be used for any purpose, whether it’s music or selling
bread. In the absence of technique you have a happening, just defined as
absence of technique. A happening corresponds to days of yore, and for our
purposes I want to take it back to 14th century medieval Europe.
The painters of
the early Renaissance –Giotto, Francesca – exhibited a sound basis in solid
geometry and perspective. In Giotto’s St Francis, Miracle of the Spring, the
cliffs are nowhere near natural, but they are modelled in relief so that the
figures are placed in a depth of field. Francesca would later develop the
modelling of geometric forms that create space.
Giotto, St Francis Miracle of the Spring
A model of
whatever kind, whether a sphere or a cylinder, depend on light and shade to
make them visible. Renaissance art is primarily the art of light and shade,
whereas Byzantine is more like flat relief. Space is created in that way, so in
order to even have the idea of a depth of field you need to have the sense of
light being applied to geometric shapes, and the resulting shadow.
Giotto, the Annunciation
The beam of
light alighting on the Virgin Mary is very effective against the dark greenery
and vaulted ceiling. So, early Renaissance scenes suppose the presence of
geometric forms and the effects on them of light. That is what creates space –
light and its absence (shade).
In Renaissance
terms, without shade you cannot have space. The absence of light is also a type
of atmosphere. Flashing forward to the famous Pennebaker film of Monterey Pop,
Otis Redding is filmed against stage-lights which silhouette him, or cause a
white-out. This sort of very atmospheric scene always has a mellow or twilight
dimness. The scene is an establishment of time and place, same as were the
Giotto scenes.
Where you have
an establishment in time and place, you can have a “happening” scene; something
with the type of atmosphere we’ve been talking about. This atmosphere – any
atmosphere worth its salt- is actually a product of the absence of light. So it
seems that these scenes are not in Einsteinian space, which is a continuum of
light, or lightspace. Where you have a space consisting of geometric forms, you
have to also have the absence of light (shade). Then you are in what is usually
called Euclidean space.
The modern world
has no classical geometry (in terms of architecture), and you could say we
therefore live in a continuum, of various types such as cyberspace. Whether
this is down to Einsteinian space doesn’t matter; if you want a scene then you
are in Euclidean space.
More than that,
a “happening” scene is an alternate way of life to one based on logic and
proportion. In the case of Monterey, they established a board of “elders” who
oversaw the construction. They issued this proclamation:
The Festival
hopes to create an atmosphere wherein persons in the popular music field from
all parts of the world will congregate, perform, and exchange ideas concerning
popular music with each other and with the public at large.
What it
symbolises is a retaking of space by the people, harking back to days of yore
when happenings were an everyday occurrence (almost medieval). You’d have to
say it’s Euclidean or geometric space, since we can see it’s moody and shadowy.
Flashback to a leafy grove, dappled with overhanging branches.
The leafy
abstraction of unspoiled scenery must be one of the first impulses on painters.
A scene, it seems, must be the retaking of unspoiled scenery by the people,
since these are the moody, atmospheric places. It seems that the idea of
Euclidean space has been eroded by various other types of space – the idea of a
world ruled by logic.
Page 1 of BWS’s
illustration to REH’s poem is cleanly cut almost like a woodcut – wood, stone,
hooves, leather, limbs, rock, hills. The first panel is particularly sparkling,
writhing branches framing a dim-lit glade, stage-lit. There is a sense in which
the setting of light against shade sets up a tension which is dramatic and
which lends itself to storytelling. It’s an endlessly fascinating scene, and
not resolvable since it’s the play of light on dark, like the glint of steel in
the gloom.
Drama and
staging, lighting and atmosphere is what I mean by a Euclidean scene. Something
that lends itself to contrast for effect. A scene is simply something like
Monterey created by the people. All it needs is a board of elders to outline
its aims, something like an Amerindian Nation.