History of
Fuller’s Earth,
Robert Robertson (at my
sister’s graduation, via my father’s clay mineralogy)
I put this in mainly because Fuller’s earth is
a found object that Man makes use of with no processing (see Levi-Strauss Hyborian Bridge 58) Like peat, its properties are unbeatable. Like teak and hardwood
planks for shipping.
The reason for that is something to do with
primordial rhythm and the stars above, the very things that don’t concern our
Martian buddies. Yes, since this is Earth Mother (Traylor’s anthem).
If the Martians have their land of order and
perspective illusion, we have the anarchy of things that are active (body) and
not inert (head). As I’ve been hinting for awhile, the society of free communal
action was the norm up ‘til the modern era. No competitive order; low-level
disorder, minor unrest, quarrels or even all-out brawls.
This is a quote I took from a review of Chaucer: A European Life (Marion Turner)
On his many diplomatic missions Chaucer
himself travelled through a dynamically networked continent in which small
kingdoms like Navarre and Hainaut, and city states like Genoa and Florence,
were engaged in continuous cultural and economic exchange. Chaucer, a
merchant’s son engaged in high-level diplomacy for much of his life, closely
associated with the internationally powerful house of Lancaster, saw and
understood far more of this than one would ever guess from his bumbling
narratorial personae. (Tim
Smith-Laing, DT)
It’s a vision of
freedom or, in other words, primordial rhythms of polyglot humanity under the
stars and over the earth. In that situation there is no perspective reality and
we are not “bugs in a jar” (Traylor). You wonder if that’s what the French artists
like Raphael (Caravane) to Capdevieille are struggling to
decipher?
Capdevieille later turned his hand to early Renaissance opera with libretti
in 14th century Italian – about the same era as Chaucer. Are we
hearing windows into the freedom of action that we, as human beings with
bodies, have lost to competitive order and perspective illusion?
This is the modern world that has no physical substance or psyche,
children of DNA – processed meat a la Aristophanes’ sausage seller –
profane and misplaced. The basic point is that without physical substance (of
proportion) and psyche (narrative content) we cannot know what is the cut of
the “beef” we see. It’s just a fact, like Katie Bouman’s famous black hole.
There’s no light there, right?
Elena is adding some taglines to her series of “Songline” prints, now
called “The Age of Acolytes”
sword and sorcery
the
land of the treasure hunt
physical and psychic substance
hidden by the
dragon