In ruinous
reverie is a type of revival, a revival of blood sacrifice that is the moonlit
hunt of yore. The old writers like Bennett were apparently not impressed by
electrification and the new assemblies of Henry Ford (“history is bunk”). See
Grace Slick quote from her memoir.
Slick says the
difference is “aesthetic”. Also I think the inarticulate state of stasis. Every
age of the Earth has a certain stasis, making it detectable in the geological
record.
Stasis means
simply being left to its own devices, which actually amounts to a ruinous
reverie. Things grow, die, decay, revive.. and that is strength. To seek to
deny this cycle is weak perfidy.
Bennett’s
descriptions hark back to candlelit siestas
Alone in the
hall O’Hara looked about with a judging, curious eye. His first impression had
been pleasant. The room was agreeably lighted by a hanging fixture, whose translucent,
cream-colored globe diffused a mellow radiance. A log glowed in the depths of a
fireplace of black dignity and size. (page
138)
The astronauts
quoted in Citadel of Fear 1 are obviously convinced of the illusory reality they saw from
space – that doesn’t mean it’s not an illusion! A perspective reality is by
definition convincing (sun) but certain things go with it.
If, as I tend to
suppose, it’s going towards the vanishing point of technique, then it is going
to have to be various things associated with technique. Apart from electricity,
it’s going to be algorithmic (AI).
You could also
assume it might be other things, like DNA. But technique is only one side of
reality; the other is flow (Bruce Lee). If things didn’t flow there would be no
perfection in form (figures in the sky, constellations).
The moon – seen
from Earth – is perfectly proportionate, hanging there in the twilight sky. The
moon is Diana, huntress with indefatigable hounds lusting for the blood of
hinds poking their noses out of moon-dark forests.
This is THE
moon, the one of myth that signifies physical action over wold and through
wood. With the spilling of blood comes decay and revival and strength.
Physical
reality, rather than convincing illusion born of technique (sun) that leads to
the vanishing point (of technique) in perspective illusion.
That is, an
illusion of the head that is weak; that cannot revive through ruin and decay
and reverie. These things all are from the Earth as it twirls in space.
What is missing
is a cosmology, since a cosmology is not something that is visually convincing.
It is inarticulate, but proportionate to Earth’s place in the cosmos. From that
“perspective”, perspective is irrelevant!
The sun is
illusory and so is water (Bruce Lee "Claimed" 2) but, taken together with air and
Earth, they form a cosmology. A cosmology is strong; it is not of the head, it
is of the body and blood and sacrifice (Christianity). This is the strong,
heroic world that Bennett and Howard are looking back towards.
The modern world
finds it impossible to leave things well alone and just to let them be what
they want to be. Two examples at random: Hong Kong (China) and Russia’s
national park at Yugyd Va.
The reason is
the modern world has no cosmology such as Rasputin’s Mother Russia naturalism (Pictorial
5) or China’s Tao. You can hear this in music; I happened
to hear Solomon Linda’s Mbube from the 30s, which was the original South
African Zulu choir of The Lion
Sleeps Tonight.
On the last chorus, Linda improvises a soprano melody that was later
lyricised into “In the jungle, the mighty jungle”. From freedom and naturalism
springs creativity – that is the lost world..
.. of tribalism, really, the Zulus as distinct from the ANC or
civilization.
He knew himself for an impetuous man,
more used to rough, forthright ways of the open then the ruled order of
civilization. (page 156)
There is a wild, animal-like ethos about O’Hara that is somewhat
similar to Howard’s.
The winds’ voice no longer defied him –
it was calling, pleading with him in great shouts and gasps of terror. It was a
reckless, impetuous messenger, tearing at his windows and his heart in gusty
throbs of wordless passion. (page 158)
The similarity is fairly blatant, and could even have helped to
crystalize Howard’s anti-civilization ethos round about 1920 when the stories
came out in Argosy. Francis Xavier Gordon may even
have been named after the writer, seeing as Howard had no way of knowing her
sex!
The wildness also affects the fay maiden he rescues from Reed’s
menagerie
Her green gown, wet as ever, clung to the
body and limbs in the revealing lines a thin bathing suit. Her dark hair hung
in the same beautiful but informal curls, and for the first time Colin was
aware of those worn places in her gown through which bare limbs shone whitely. (page 172)
The green-robed one is surely the Moth-maiden he met in Tlapallan, who
was captured by the high priests of Nacoc Yaotl. Now she is in the clutches of he
who prays to “the god of science” – none other than he who O’Hara left at
Tlapallan, the slithering Kennedy.
Once O’Hara finds himself in Kennedy’s clutches in a putrescence viler than
anything that is not as verifiable as scientific method, what happens is not –
as he expected – sudden death by claw and fang, but page after page of Kennedy’s
explanatory reminiscences. “Fool!” etc.
This is so true of this type of modernist weakling. O’Hara, of course,
recognizes the true power behind these self-serving ramblings as the carved
stone demon of Nacoc Yaotl himself.
Bennett actually mentions The Island of Dr. Moreau and that is
clearly a source (as is Shelley’s Frankenstein and Poe’s
macabre anti-scientism), but the sorcerous plot I find easy to identify with. For
science is only unbiased to a certain type of cold-blooded mind; the
cold-blooded compulsion to convincing rightness, irrespective of physical
desirability. “Convincing rightness”, meaning a scripted world of routine. The
routine could be experiment, or politics, or economics – it doesn’t matter. As
Bruce Lee says, that is one side of reality only (sun, perspective, rule,
illusion). The other side is flow, or what might be called the physical
perfection of primeval rhythm.
This is something that is the exact opposite of routine – it is a
beast, but a beautiful one. I mean, have you ever wondered how all animals are
able to swallow and how birds flit so meaningfully? It’s because they’re
physically perfect; there’s no need for thought.
From the inarticulate comes poetic expression. This sense of opposites
is what a scientific mind (acolytes of Newton and other dead sorcerers, including politicians, natch) can
never comprehend. Just to take one example, Boris Johnson became our new prime
minister, and he is known for glib speechifying. He’s clever enough, but the
idea that some things cannot be classified by words (script) would never occur.
Hence, the entire universe of inarticulate, proportionate physical
reality – sun, moon, Earth – is lost. The inarticulate that can be expressed by
poetry, blood-red and wolfish. Howard and Bennett. The sense of decay, that
there is a natural progression that should not be diverted, for that is evil. Perfidy.
We live in a world that is not physical, and therefore from decay
cannot arise revival. A form of living death that is bound-up in scripted
routines (of politicians).
From ruins and decay will come strength (predator-prey rebirth) and
that means leaving things well alone. The very fabric of reality is cyclical
rebirth, and that strength is undone by all the routines of a competitive
order.
The way “they” deal with this is by continually speechifying, one
routine following another, What we should realize is that if we travel to the
moon, or Mars, it’s immaterial. The REAL moon and Mars are proportionate seen
from earth. I’m not saying don’t go there, just that it’s not a physical
flight. There is no hunting up there, only algorithms and experiments on DNA.
The physical universe is seen from Earth as it rotates, facing first one way,
then the other.
Why should that be? Why do we have four limbs? It just is.
.. sweeping his Dusk Lady with him the
Irishman made a rush for the doorway. Under their running feet the floor had a
give and resilience like thin ice. Reaching the door, Colin would have closed
it but lacked time. On the very threshold he turned to meet the first
assailant, a thing of innumerable legs, rather like a magnified centipede, but
whose head belonged somewhere in the mammalian scale. (page 251) C9
“I personally do
not believe in the word style. Why? Because, unless there are human beings with
three arms and four legs, unless we have another group of human beings that are
structurally different from us, there can be no different style of fighting.” (Bruce
Lee)