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.