LYRICS

The applications are to blameAll the people do all dayIs stare into a phone (Placebo, Too Many people)

“Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints!” (Chief Seattle)

When rock stars were myths (Sandi Thom, I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker)

Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time, Now that it's the opposite it's twice upon a time (Moondog)

Time is an illusion (Einstein)

Monday 1 July 2019

Hyborian Bridge 63



The gloominess of Bruce Lee’s first film is in its atmospherically-lit chicken runs and primitive bushland setting in Thailand.

This is the film that launched a thousand kicks, and the wild war cries and quick kicks have never been better. The point was made that the Honk Kong audience of the time was uneducated and unsophisticated enough to appreciate the guileless hero as one of their own against their former masters.

If only Lee were still around he could do the same to the new boss, China. The neverending speech of the political class could do with a good kicking. Lee’s chaotic choreography would look even better by splicing Xi and Co’s heads into the frame – yiyiyi – wak!

Xi is just the purest example of authoritarian Asians, much more far gone than the bureaucratic Afghanistan encountered by Rory Stewart. One example was that Afghan villagers bathed in their courtyards where mud would get in the new sewage pipes. Mud, of course, is water and minerals so is much more healthy than pure hygiene. Tradition doesn’t fit with modernism, so way is that? Partly it’s that native societies aren’t ordered or hygienic, but it goes further (and further back.)

Native societies have empirical tradition; this is experience gained from living on Earth over centuries that is tabulated into rules (the empirical tradition of Mosaic Law for example (Tales of Faith 10) Modern societies have a high tendency to replace empirical tradition with the scientific version: empirical reason, dating from The New Atlantis (Pictorial 19) It’s not just the bureaucracy but the entire western system of scientific reason dating from Frances Bacon.

China, ironically, is the worst example of this, as it is a system of replacing dirt with hygiene. This goes by the name of infrastructure, be it railways, roads, dams, towns, sewage, wifi. Dirt is simply the earth, believe it or not, be it mud on river-banks, black loam for growing crops, the landscape of wooded hills and rickety bridges over sludgy streams. A typical scene of a hill tribe from Conan the Conqueror, say.

With dirt comes the moral duty of cleanliness (this goes back to Mosaic Law and places of power). So, where modern society has hygiene, tradition society has dirt and cleanliness which is both rugged and healthy and more in concert with animals that live in nature.

The traditional societies live much closer with nature, all the customs of bathing and rugged clothing; in other words, it is physically in contact with nature. Through this means it gains empirical knowledge of the surroundings. So empirical tradition really depends on the closeness to nature or it ceases to exist. Streams, moccasins, hides (also Fulling Hyborian Bridge 60)



A very good example is the ancient irrigation system of the Andes. I just read of this on pre-Inca canals and ponds found to feed aquafers from the hills that flow to habitually dry Lima in Peru
  (29 July) Closer to home, this letter appeared in DT. The gamekeeper is brought-up with empirical tradition and it is the entire mode and code of conduct (The House of Elrig Pictorial 42, 43). Why is the Scottish government not bothered by the Highlands? Because they don’t value empirical tradition which lives with Mother Earth, killing and skinning, providing carrion for crows, blood and the everlasting cycle (skraaaaw!)

The Acropolis, the hill to ancient Athenian monuments, has been hit by erosion, and wdider Athenian areas by forest fires and floods. What’s the connection? If you think about it, the canals meandering the contours of the Andes, scrub of the rolling grouseland, crows cawing high and alighting on firs sweeping down a rugged slope.. add the Afghan villagers’ courtyards and you have a merging ofr the artefacts of Man with rugged nature (see Rome Hyborian Bridge 2).

Man’s monuments in such settings have “thingness” (Heidegger “being”)
 
Cawdor Castle and gardens (old postcard)
What I tend to think is the less ordered and planned things are, the more likely that have thingness (see art deco skyscrapers Americana) Thingness is a type of freedom from ordered planning, and it’s true you see it where they still have art deco; but the rule is order, where there can be no freedom. Not only that, a competitive order has no disorder, be it decay or dirt or mud (prev.) And yet, creation of disorder is just part of the great cycle of rebirth (Dionysus, rustic revelry), the fertile crescent, the main religions of the Middle East, Egypt, Mesopotamia (Babylonia, Assyria), Israel.
The entire cycle of creation and destruction (rebirth) is outside of the scripted routine of competitive order. In this respect, it is a sorcerous system run by acolytes of dead sorcerers.
was the 3rd significant moment in British pop (after Beatles on Ed Sullivan andWuthering Heights on Top of the Pops, natch). I’m including this here because the sheer precision of all her acts invites comparison with Bruce Lee.
Tunstall had 24 hours to prepare and, beforehand ten years of hard grind around clubs in Edinburgh and elsewhere. Her Lee-like whoops are set up with a loop-pedal and the rhythm driven with some effective and straight-forward strumming.
Along the way, she picks-up a tambourine and loops a raspberry. It reminded me of Lee’s chaotic choreography where everything is very well prepared and then happens with nary a thought. In other words, the routines that are learnt become second nature and flow with pure grace (Liza Minnelli has that ability). Lee elucidated that philosophy in Artist of Life and it’s worth going into it somewhat.
Lee is to some extent against the western rational tradition (having studied western philosophy at UC). The entire notion that reality can be described in words amounts to a script, as opposed to being felt. This limitation of rationalism was exploited by Heidegger, Schopenhauer and of course Nietzsche (Thus Sprach Zarathustra), the latter emphasizing dance and will.
To Lee, there are always two things going on, and they are completely separate (The Big Pretence) One is the routines and techniques of fighting that are methodically learnt. The other is the act (art) of fighting, which is pure and spontaneous. You don’t fight with a routine; you fight with dance, will, power (watch Tunstall).
The entire principle of routine is anathema to Lee as it means you are not in the moment. One must be flexible in the moment and that means pure will, dance, power. This philosophy (Jeet Kune Do) amounts to a critique of western civilization with its complex routines that rely on scipt (not just politics but DNA, algorithms). And it is quite close to the ancient Chinese philosophy of Tao, chaotic expression (dragon), which was alongside Confucianism, or communal solidarity.
In the film, Lee’s character (as in most of his films) is a guileless peasant, and some of the fights have an almost cartoon simplicity. In one scene a guy is punched though a wooden shack, and the next shot shows a cutout figure outlined in the wood!
Lee is gestural, not verbal, and is apt to be crude. The toilet gag I mentioned (Combination of the Two 18) appears near the start of Way of the Dragon; the third film and his first as director. The physical crudity and lack of verbal pomposity is really a challenge to western civilization, and quite close to Howard’s own, expressed through archaic heroes.
If western civilization, as I tend to think, has become merely a scripted routine (of the head) both Lee and Howard are physically opposed. Some other artists such as Marley and KT Tunstall I get the same feeling (incidentally, Ed Sheeran is pure routine unlike KT’s nonchalant manner!)
Why has it happened? Because the ethos of America – which is cowboys and Indians – has been rejected. The carefree, vagabondish free-living on the range of dirt and cleanliness has given way to hygiene-machines and vast lots (Drama3)
All these things are scripted routines, run by satellites run by Branson, Bezos, Musk and other acolytes of the “smart” planet, as opposed to the physical reality of man, woman, horse, Apache and settlement on the plains under the sky above. Yeehaw!
I met my first love in Vermont, who grew up in a commune. I spent the summer there and it was the opposite end of the spectrum. I loved bathing in the lake. I was really drawn to that lack of need of things. KT Tunstall