ATHINA (15 plus minutes
in tracking shot)
To quote Enter
the Dragon, “The enemy has only images and illusions” (Shaolin master). The
perfect illusion is one of mirrors. Too perfect. Imperfect reality is a
labyrinth of twists and turns that has the perfection of vernacular charm.
Athens, thank
Athena, is too poor to build over its history which is all too visible in the
skyline and the low adobe walls alike. You may have heard of the Acropolis
Museum built to house the Parthenon marbles within sight of the imposing
monument to western civilization?
The missing
marbles – Elgin – currently languishing in the British Museum are a bit of a
slight. More than that, blood should flow to put them out of their subterranean
misery. Melina Mercouri – then minister for culture – did her best with toothy
grin flashing balefire.
The missing
marbles are a bit like western civilization: all image but all an illusion of
perfect order missing the imperfection of vernacular perfection.
I know that
sounds a bit Bruce Lee; it’s called art and life. Life is an art and not a
science; the lost art of living is a quest worth following.
Following to the
Parthenon, to the living sculptures originally painted in ruddy hues. That
sense of the stirrings of breath was prized by the ancients as a magical trick
of verisimilitude given to inanimate matter.
I’ve always felt The Enchantment one of BWS’s oddest prints as the statue sitting in the lake is the most animate object in it! Then again, perhaps it’s almost intentionally morbid? Whatever the truth of it, marble on monuments can have an eerie semblance of sensual awakening.
A depiction of the gods Poseidon, Apollo and Aphrodite, on
whose knees is perched a winged Eros. 442-438 BC (Acr. 856 and fragments Acr.
1226+. Two fragments in the BM, one fragment in Palermo)
So, Bruce Lee
says reality is expression, the kind of thing one sees in Greek marbles. A
mixture of fluidity of line and technique; of artistry and science. Always the
two go together, just as style needs a psychic content (narrative, frieze).
On the frieze sits
Apollo which, as everyone knows, was the name of NASA moonshots in the late 60s
to 70s. What most people don’t recognize is that before going to the moon, Man
had already gone to the sun!
What I mean is
they went to the illusion of the sun, since the sun is a very illusory object.
I mentioned previously the right-hand rule (Faraday Hyborian Bridge 21)
of electromagnetic induction whereby current, magnetic lines and movement are
all at right-angles.
Light also
splits at specific angles (refraction, rainbow) and so one enters a perspective
universe of mirrors – see C4 “Opticks” (under The Ram and the Peacock).
This is the sun; not the energy of the sun but the universe of perspective
illusions. This is the technical universe, the one of systematization and
scripted routines (C14/2). In order to have systematic order, you
first have to enter the technical universe, and this is what Newton did.
In order to see how essential perspective is for a systematic universe,
just take a look at any comics page at random, say Starlin.
Dreadstar (unknown issue)
It’s all
illusion, but what artists do is add to the technique a flow of line. The
expressive universe consists of technique and the animal flow in combat (Bruce
Lee). The problem with technique per se is it’s very convincing because
that’s what it’s supposed to be (CC Beck Pictorial 50/2). The systematizers
and the DNA-mongers cannot escape from it and it becomes a monetary/numerical compulsion
(Grace Slick quote Hyborian Bridge 62/1).
Transhumanists (like
Hameroff of quantum consciousness, prev) are stepping into this illusory future
which is outside of the physical universe of sun and moon, planets and stars
(figures in the sky); the result of Earth’s physical rotation against the
cosmos. The physical universe has physical codes-of-honour and psyche
(conscience or religion). Both you find in Starlin’s Dreadstar (story or
psychic content).
If you want a
good contemporary example, Cori Gauff at Wimbledon was it. Her physical grace
is reminiscent of Borg, broad in shoulder and long-armed with gazelle-like
springs. A mixture of stoic training (technique) with animal expression of line (flow) in combat (strength, fighting spirit).
The modern
illusion is so perfect it seems to Have escaped notice that it is, after all,
only perspective. Take that away and you have the things that really matter,
like the Parthenon marbles. Grace of line that is an expression of Man’s
physical reality in a psychic universe of cosmic deities (rotation of Earth).
Without that
simplicity there is neither a physical nor a psychic reality. Just a very good
illusion, one that “they” want us to step into, courtesy of MS hololenses, Musk’s
rockets and Bezos’s smart planet.