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)

Saturday 6 July 2019

Hyborian Bridge 65


The Hegelian dialectic of ideal spirit that animates the rational universe was a systematic attempt to eclipse Kant’s transcendental mysticism, and therefore a much purer example of Enlightenment thinking. The Enlightenment will eclipse all mysticism because it does not recognize the Earth as a power in the cosmos.

Only the sun (order) has power, and so there is no sublime symmetry (Artemis and Apollo), no dark decadence of blood and bow, no figuration of planets and stars. In a word, no physical universe that we see from the streams and fields of yore.

Hegel, in that sense, is practically the philosophical equivalent of Newton, whose perspective universe of light (C5) becomes more immaterial as time goes by. “They” will seek to convince us we live in a material universe even though it becomes clearer we are only living in a convincing routine.


Newtonian physics is bound to be convincing since reflections and refractions of light inhabit a perspective universe that is very convincing. It resembles the sorcerous mirrors of Kharam Akkad from Conan #20 (Hyborian Bridge 20)
 
The perspective universe of reflecting and refracting light is a sorcerous one that convinces the acolyte. The systematizers – most notably Hegel – exist in the immaterial world (of the head) behind the mirrors. In other words, once the Newtonian world of mirrors exists, it serves to imprison the mind of Man in logic-chopping delusion.
The delusion is that the universe is rational (sun, perspective) as opposed to predatory and bloody, rebirth following decay in an inarticulate cycle of Dionysian gaiety (Greek drama, prev.) From opposites spring strength. We who live in a world of words find it hard to imagine the poetic fancies that emanate from a low-hanging moon over crumbling ruins. The will to dance and to chant melancholy refrains emanates from the inarticulate power we see expressed.
Such opposites cannot survive the logic-chopping mirrors of Kharam Akkad since they emanate from the physical universe (of sun, moon, earth, stars, planets). This is somewhat similar to Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy where the psyche emanates from the planets.

The bizarre state of affairs is that only those things that exist behind the mirrors are deemed real, since they are so convincing! The immaterial, electromagnetic world is deemed material, and run by acolytes (politicians) of the immaterial head.
 
Kharam Akkad’s voiceover speaks for all the acolytes. He says a mirror is truth when it is simply a convincing lie. Acolytes always confuse what is convincing for the physical truth. If Kharam Akkad’s mirrors penetrate the flesh with X-rays, there are those who would say that is truth. No, it’s a convincing lie; what you are seeing is the X-ray which deflects off the bone to give an accurate image.
Many accurate things are lies (Katie Bouman’s black hole Hyborian Bridge 56) because they exist inside a lens. In fact, the best lies are the most accurate! DNA fingerprinting is accurate in a world of scripted routine. The future of lies is robotic and not natural; to do with scripted routines (DNA, algorithms) and not action. Head and not body.

Conan’s actions shatter the death’s head mirror; and why should a mirror reflect death? Because it is not physical reality; it cannot be reborn from the fragments of decay. A universe of mirrors is living death, and this is what Conan beholds in the vast chamber “which folds reality back upon itself”. For the Tarim, as we know, is not a living man.
 
I know this can sound odd to you as dentists use X-rays routinely. Yes, but a dentist isn’t a universe! The universe is blood and decay and rebirth – the tooth itself, not the X-ray that detects it. Don’t confuse the two. One is a convincing lie (electromagnetism); the other is physical truth (tooth).
So, am I saying all photography and films are lies? No, I’m talking about accurate imaging only, like Katie Bouman’s black hole which is a very accurate and completely delusional misapprehension of fact. Films are products of the imaginative psyche, a dream landscape. Photography, well, could be getting a bit clinical I guess.
The imagination is needed to perceive something as real in the universe, or we are just robots. This goes back to Madame Blavatsky and the emanance of the psyche, the planets. Only the physical universe is real; everything else is a convincing illusion. Sorcerers’ acolytes (including dentists!) use these illusions because they are very accurate. That doesn’t make them real, it makes them useful.
If the universe were just accurate we would be robots, so this goes back to Bruce Lee. The other side of reality is flow, the primal rhythm that emanates. Combining the two expresses the fight, the fury (“natural unnatural”). It’s because our universe is convincingly accurate that it’s an illusion, an illusion that has no natural flow.
Because something is convincing, Enlightenment thinkers – and above all Hegel – systematized a rational universe (of perspective, or basically light). It took the “dark” philosophers – Schopenhauer and the ones who followed – to throw aside all the systematizers and just come up with the irrational will, being, power.
The question is, where do these come from? A good guess is they come from the physical universe that was abandoned by the Enlightenment, the stars and planets of the sky. Bruce Lee, as you know, hated all systematizers, and it’s true the philosophy of Gung Fu is very figurative (animal shapes, postures). Jeet Kune Do harks back to Tao and the chaotic expression of the Chinese dragon.
This expression is the power (ontology) of the physical universe which the Enlightenment abandoned. The logic-chopping Enlightenment philosophers cannot be said to live in a physical universe, and it’s not till Schopenhauer that western thought starts to match much more closely with the ancient Eastern truths of power and simplicity, grace and flow.
A lot of this is encapsulated in Jeet Kune Do, which to Lee was an attempt to do without all systems. In a way it’s quite modern since the body is fuelled and kept flexible by stress training. The aim of a fight is to flow and not be restricted by set moves.
It’s very clear from various interviews, though, that these moves are ingrained by training. The set moves are the robotic side to the training; the flow is the natural side. The two come together in the fight (action).
A fight is expression and, to Lee, that is reality. That idea is close to post-Schopenhauer philosophy, as well as close to ancient Chinese. The fight explodes all formulations and systems via the action.
Expression is the inarticulate universe that has poetic grace. So, this is really back to Howard and the explosive poetry of action. Poetry is the ability to give words to inarticulate things, to gloom and gaiety in a world of grimness and charm.
It’s not far from fairy tale, something that Clair Noto added to the Hyborian mythos (see “Red Lace”). In her version, the Hyborian story is expressed through body of Man, animal and plant, blood and desire.