As the LP’s
title implies, Kantner once more finds himself gazing both inward and upward at
the wonders of the psyche and the cosmos. Granted, he doesn’t always discern
much of a difference. Rolling
Stone
An online
reviewer said Kantner “may be confused – aren’t we all?” which seems about right.
I mean, if advance has been an exercise in entering an illusory hall of mirrors
devised by arcane sorcerers, that is an intentionally confusing situation.
How, for
instance, is it conceivable that photography is an illusion? Or recorded music?
Photography is light, while recorded music is sound vibrations. Well, it’s the
old chestnut that everything could be an illusion, so how do we know it isn’t?
(Hyborian Bridge 37); in terms of phenomenology, everything is data (Dark Star Pictorial 21)
The real point is music isn’t data, it’s
musical so affects our emotions. Photography and cinema have stories that are
myth-making, glamorous. So, the idea that everything is illusory has to take
into account emotion and storytelling.
The story of New York; the city of a thousand
stories (O’Henry)
Then, you could go back to 50s EC comics’
stories of invisible invasions and infiltrations of the highest echelons (They
Live!) The illusion I’m talking about is an effect of light – reflection,
perspective – and so is completely realistic.
A good example to take is the Hong Kong disturbances. For five months
nothing physical has happened – only sound and fury caught on social media. Why
haven’t they physically taken over the government? Because they believe their
social media acts are physical acts. That is confusion (they get shot).
A physical act involves the physical overwhelming of one group by
another. A rebellion or revolution. In the modern scene we only talk and take
images. In other words, where there are no physical acts that produce physical
results, we live in an illusory state (the whole of China is such a state.)
In China they have storytelling and music – but they cannot be related to
physical reality, only to the illusory non-physical reality. In western culture
the situation is more complex.
All you can really say is the ’68 rebellion and the hippy state of mind
have gone and been replaced by words and images. The physical state of being is
not there (Gilets Jaune in France do have a physical encampment of guys
who seem happy to coexist fraternally, but no sign of it spreading).
It seems to be what happens is that the stories that do well are those
that affect the heads of people, and to that extent are non-physical (body).
For example, Game of Thrones is highly political only with
gratuitous blood. If you compare old-time cowboy films, they are highly
physical action in remote landscapes and the physical action is usually highly
moral (communal). Anti-social elements are carefully delineated. The moral tone
is physically quite clear-cut.
In Spaghetti Westerns, it is still quite clear that the money-grabbing
anti-hero has moral scruples. This physical, moral world is no longer present
in western culture, as I see it. This is the world that Howard’s historical
adventures describe in all its purity. The physical, moral world is not ruled
by man (politicians) but by the spirit of place and the spirit of people.
In The Sowers of the Thunder, Red Cahal relates the news of the
fall of Jerusalem to a stunned retainer.
“Jerusalem – taken?” he mouthed stupidly. “Why, good sir, that cannot be!
How would God allow his Holy City to fall into the hands of the infidels?” (page 276)
The Machiavellian wiles of Baibars that ally him with the red-winged
infidel make him the villain of the piece.
“I have conquered,” answered Baibars, shaken for the first time in his
wild life, “but I am half blind – and of what avail to slay men of that breed?
They will come again and again, riding to death like a feast because of the
restlessness of their souls, through all the centuries.” (page 289)
Unexpected romance peppers the yarns, as when the Masked Knight is shown
to be none other than his treacherous lady love, gone in penance to the Holy
Land.
“Ah, Cahal, I have done bitter penance! I have died for the Cross this
day, like a knight.”
(Page 287)
John Watkiss
These are stories with romantic melodies set against the physical, moral
tone of faith and the great cities of the Earth. As Nietzsche said, “Without
music, life would be a mistake” and psalms and songs speak to the spirit of
Man in the cosmos. Howard, as a type of primitive, sees through to the essential
meaning of living, which is to perceive melody in the way things move both on
Earth and in the heavens above.
The psyche is a mirror to the cosmos which is borne of primitive lusts.
Living is a primitive act, a romantic playing out of lusts. Without the romance
(melody) one is left with the Machiavellian brain which seeks to affect the
head alone through words and expression – would that be Waller-Bridge?
I guess that might cause a culture-shock, but I’m comparing it with Mon
Pere, Ce Heros (C5) which has
scenes of sensual dancing amidst remote seashores and plant-life galore. The
modern mind, being “advanced”, is always going away from the primitive, sensual
body, when it is the body that expresses life and lust.
Without that, without melody, we are the prisoners of a land of pure
mental illusion.
So he stayed in the cave in the peace and delight of being in touch,
delighting to hear the sea, and the rain on the earth, and to see one
white-and-gold narcissus bowing wet, and still wet. And he said: ‘This is the
great atonement, the being in touch. The grey sea and the rain, the wet
narcissus and the woman I wait for, the invisible Isis and the unseen sun are
all in touch, and at one.’ (DH Lawrence, The Man who Died, prev.)
Strong, primitive feelings to do with life and death, moral issues of
good and evil alongside the feeling of cosmos and psyche. Such primitive
descriptions are at the polar opposite to weasel words of clever heads, or of
machines that imitate them.
