Pictorial 54

Trying to outdo through order (competition) denies the strength of physical disorder that replenishes life from blood (see Noto Hyborian Bridge 71)

Competitive order – at least through Man- creates a precise universe of facts. It’s the very precision that makes it a parallel reality, convincing to the head but not physical (of the body).

The physical luster of things is completely absent from the parallel reality of facts. Physical luster is the sign of a naïve symmetry that is present in things that we see, from the pattern of stars in the sky - - to the lines on a palm.

Are these patterns arbitrary or do they have meaning? Well, in the parallel reality they are arbitrary facts; in a physical universe of naïve symmetry they have meaning!

It all depends if you want to live in a physical universe or a non-physical one that is very convincing (factual) but has no physical meaning.

I know this can start to sound quite circular so, being specific. If you asked a biochemist to physically draw a human it’s quite likely you would get a stick-man as generally they can’t draw. That is actually a good representation of a non-physical reality; one that has a lot of correct facts but no strong, tense presence. In a word, it’s absent (quote from Kantner’s STARSHIP)

Now, of course you’ll say what about photos, TV channels, X-rays and all the rest of the images that have presence? As I may have mentioned I live in near a Creative Quarter of artists, and have noticed more than half are copyists (of photos). The others often have an abstract sense of shape and line; the underlying presence of an object.

The combination of abstract and concrete is really the history of Western art. That to me is realism, while a photo is a good copy; a copy of a copy is still a good copy. Because we live in a world of photos doesn’t make it physical, it makes it accurate.

A physical world has a strong line and a sense of abstraction, the classic example being prehistoric cave art.

Lascaux grotto

Abstraction is the strength that underlies realism. That’s why I say Margaret Brundage’s Weird Tales covers are much more physically present than the vast majority of modern art and photography. They’re a combination of abstraction and concrete. The line is everything.

Photographic realism is almost too accurate for its own good. If there is some abstraction then it is physically more real (as BWS’s prints) It’s like the old Val Lewton horror films (Hyborian Bridge 53); they are quite abstract and have a tense ambiance.

Yes, so we live in a world of copyists which has the appearance of “realism”. Appearance is Apollo. As to what physical reality is, you see it in Weird Tales.

The Dionysian exuberance of life and death; blood and decadence; Artemis as well as Apollo. Without the exuberant freedom of the body in revelry and rites – the cowboy and Indian of yore – all is just Apollonian image. Appearance not reality. The copy, not the truth; the mirror, not the object.

The object itself has a meaning attached to it, as of blood, the hunt. Almost the best possible examples are the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux.

  The wounded man

As you can see there is a certain abstraction as well as formidable power. I was actually reading about this the other day, and there is an astonishing correlation between these hunter gatherers of about 17, 000 BC (?) with Egyptian and Zoroastrian myths.

There are credible reasons to believe the picture is an astronomical starchart, with the bull representing the constellation Taurus, and the wounded man Gemini. In the sky, Gemini is at this odd angle to the bull.

Notice that the man is drawn with two parallel lines to get the angle. In other words, the simplicity of the image is its celestial meaning, its “physicality” (compare to the biochemical stick-man). These two figures are associated with Yima and the Bull (or Yama in Hindu myth), and Ymir in Norse.

Not only that, the rhino represents Leo; see odd tail configuration..

 

Even more astonishingly, the bird on a pole is Sirius, which is associated with Horus in Egyptian myth (see Bilal C6 etc.) One obstacle to this interpretation is that Sirius wasn’t visible in the Europe of 17,000 BC..

Mr. Glyn-Jones points out that Sirius was not visible from the latitude of Lascaux in the remote epoch of 17,500 BC, and because of this he modifies his position to suggest that perhaps in the Lascaux cave the image represents Procyon instead of Sirius.

The physical meanings are breathtaking; a cosmic narrative of figures in the sky that are Man’s prey (totems) and his gods.

From this context, the hunt has a cosmic meaning that relates to the physical power of animals and their sacrificial blood. The power and meaning of these pictures contrasts with the accurate copying and almost zero meaning that we advanced societies are so good at! We live in a world of appearance but not of physical realism.

The physical world is not the accurate world of science (of the head of acolytes); it is the cosmic world of the hunt, blood, sacrifice. That world is vague because it has a myth of correspondances, of powerful figures, lines in the sky.

Yes, it is vague (and not verifiable through fact) because only a parallel reality is strictly accurate. Why should that be so?
Because if the universe were strictly accurate, it would be ordered and hence Apollonian. So therefore there would be no Dionysian rites of blood and decadence. No revival of Artemis, no cycle of lifedeath.

The competitive order that Man has created (via Darwin, or acolytes of) denies the strength of physical disorder (blood, decay) and creates a precise world of facts. These facts – such as DNA, or Katie Bouman Hyborian Bridge 56 – inhabit a parallel reality, not the real one of blood and power (or lewdness, natch.)

Our politicians are bearers of this world of weakness. Their speech and signs affirm a world of the head that has zero meaning to the exuberance of body in grace and motion, in country pursuits, in landed estates, the neglected Highlands, the Indians of Allegheny (prev), the cowboy of the mid-west.