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)

Thursday 4 July 2019

Hyborian Bridge 64




The nonchalant manner of a high flying bird is a token of freedom in the physical world. The free-flowing fiddling of Orkney revellers. Off-duty cowboys dancing.
 
Denizens of the Netherworld 3
The physical act that is not a physical routine. What I would call freedom is the old rustic culture of milkmaidens toiling and the dirt-encrusted haylofts where Cider is with Rosie (Laurie Lee). Without the physical freedom of toiling in the fields of plenty, we are being fed a routine whatever “they” call it.
In the competitive order, there is no disorder, no dirt and no laissez-faire rustic activities that express sexuality (see Fulling Hyborian Bridge 60) Politicians are conduits for routine and that is the reason there can be no freedom. “They” say it’s a freedom, but is routine a freedom? Or the opposite? Freedom is more like the hippy communes that went topless a la Kantner’s Blows.
You know the clip from The Big Boss with Lee at a chicken-run brothel? That is freedom because it is has a rundown, frivolous aspect. That rundown or laissez-faire abandon is the inarticulate nature of the universe.
The gloomy aspect of The Big Boss is in the inarticulate sense of abandon. The universe is inarticulate and that is poetry. These opposites cannot occur in a world fooled by sorcerous routines of (political) conduits for the ritual language of shadows (dead sorcerers). One can only rightfully think in an inarticulate universe, the universe of Dionysian will and Apollonian vision, dream. That universe has no convincing routine, it has direct expression.

This is precisely what Lee’s philosophy is about and is articulated in his films – often inarticulately! Those who seek routine achieve a ritual language of shades; the world of decay without the inarticulate abandon of rebirth. The convincing routines of a scripted reality. A living death without the inarticulate, the Dionysian urge of gay abandon in a world reborn – groves of yore.
 
What we seem to have in lieu of this is pornography, but is that freedom or the opposite, a routine? I’ll leave that to you (see Lost Girls). The primitive grace of Lee’s films, their Kurasawan line, their sordidity, their crudeness strike at all that is shallow and without fabric in western civilization. Namely, that we live one big routine without once seeing through the words to the inarticulate truth of expression.
As I’ve been attempting to elucidate, expression is the simple and powerful – the rotation of Earth – as opposed to the complex and meaningless (see Hyborian Bridge 56, 62/1)

The expressive world of physical grace is the one you see in Lee’s films (a hazy crescent through the bush). From the inarticulate comes power, the Dionysian will to dance. From this same world comes Howard’s poetry. The dance of Earth through the cosmos is strong and simple, and from this comes empirical tradition and the basic maze of the labyrinth – 4 sided symmetrical, of Paleolithic vintage.
 
Is a labyrinth ordered or free? It could be both, if you liken it to a cosmic serpent which can either be solar (order) or more associated with the Earth (lunar). In Denizens of the Underworld 3 I must have been associating the maze with a solar serpent, but the other association is equally relevant, and then it is a labyrinth of meandering freedom or free-expression (somewhat like a Chinese dragon.)
A labyrinth, because it isn’t straight-line, can be a type of freedom from rote, free to become enmeshed in wooded by-ways or hutongs of free-trading ports in bygone days. There is always some inarticulate sense of night-ways that are ragged and of low esteem. One glimpses the moon through low arches.
This is equally the world of Howard; terrestrial and gloomy but also heaving and boiling with freemen and women of sundry trades and surly or wanton manner. The terrestrial freedom is maze-like, inarticulate and could be likened to empirical tradition (dirt and cleanliness).
The solar order, on the other hand, is pure scripted routine, but I suppose you could say there is still a maze-like confusion about it all. The pathological hygiene that builds our infrastructure of straight lines and no disorder, a world of decay but no rebirth, because rebirth comes from the inarticulate power of earth spinning against the cosmos. It is simple and primitive and an expression of destiny. Of shape, primeval and figurative – the physical universe of the ancients where figures are imagined amongst constellations.
This universe of physique (meaning) and power (ontology) has a primitive poetry that I’ve already likened to Weird Tales (C15) Man is attached to the stars as Earth spins in space; the human expression of a heroic destiny.
This universe cannot be articulated by pure routine because it is composed of physique (meaning) and power (ontology). The figures of the stars are imagined to be there (constellations) because the physical universe doesn’t rely on verifiable proof. Where there is rhythm and shape Man sees figures.
Celestial movements, the Homeric rise and fall of moon and sun over seas of green. Folk poerty that is simple and cosmic in a disordered universe of free expression. Folk relates youth to the cosmos just as Howard’s mother related the ancient folk tales, and Weird Tales the folk fairy spirit of the 30s.
A folk spirit, a revival, the unknown wonderer of youth are expressions of the inarticulate, the figurative, cosmic, powerful. Meaning (epistemology) and ontology (being), both ignored by acolytes of a parallel universe of the immaterial (Hyborian Bridge 56)
The more they persuade themselves that this universe of the head is material, the more fantastically delusional are the routines we will be obliged to follow, courtesy of Bezos, Musk and others of their order.