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
