The mousepad of
Harlan Ellison’s I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream occupies a place of
pride in my domain. Harlan, who spoke against the onrushing tide of human
flotsam that desecrates the wild aspects of culture, be it a 20s Sullivan skyscraper
or the sea stacks on the Isle of Lewis, or a darting swallow on a Granada tile.
“The world is
getting sick of these ridiculous excuses.” Virginia Roberts
I just picked
that as typical of the ego that attaches itself to the octopus tendrils of
global media. They have an unnatural affinity; they deserve eachother. Because
the head is unnaturally attracted to propaganda.
Let’s go back in
time a short way to when instead of electronics there was neon bathing
city-dwellers in an ambient glow, head to foot, swirling along the sidewalks of
your mind. Say about 1979, when city countryside were more-or-less demarcated
by light and sound.
BACK TO THE NIGHT1-20 in
(spot the joke at 1-25)
“I like the
skinny burlesque queen”. That’s romance – the city of yesteryear. I remember it
well from the Soho of London. I noticed Picaddilly Circus has an immersive
proactive digital ad display – all aimed at the head, not the burlesque body of
gay romance gone by.
So, neon needn’t
be bad so long as it’s surrounded by dancing types, and is not just a stage on
the way to total immersion by “sons of neon”. Yes, the romance of city lights
almost goes back to Biblical times; harlots at street corners.
Where everything
is pitched at the head, the naïve gaiety of dancing and running, riding and
hunting are lost. The Bible – O.T. – has a naïve honesty with regard to pleasures
of the flesh.
I mean, all of
that is to do with movement and line; the dynamics of the body. Fashion
accentuates line to supplement the feminine mystique. When Prince Andrew said
recently, “sex is a positive act” (prev) I think he was being naively honest in
the same way. Someone who is active as a rider, a hunter tends to have a
physical turn of mind.
Joan “Armor-plating”
I also see as something of a naïve genius. Her songs more than hint at physical
infatuation, all done in a gay, romantic loose-rhythm style that is really
sublime. Guileless beyond hope’s
imagining. Byron
So, romance –
whether medieval or city lights – has a physical naivety which really
undermines the totalitarian head of digital propaganda and advertising. It’s
almost like saying Joan os more medieval than we are today – or how far down
the road we have gone in this new millennium to a society that is not sensual
nor virile nor feminine (DH Lawrence Hyborian Bridge 82 etc)
All of these are
the product of movement and line.
Hyborian
Bridge 22
The Song of Red Sonja is a story
with music and emotion. It is bewitching even if a mite clichéd. Everything I’ve
said here is completely abrogated by a society of information which bypasses
the naïve nervous disarming actions of the body – whether on the lamplit street
or in some medieval nunnery.
One could reel off a list of pre-modern/post-medieval
books/heroes/heroines. From Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Maid Marion to Moll
Flanders and Huck Finn. All the content and style is completely outside of a
society of information and completely inside of the charm of the active body in
its pursuits and adventures.
Howard’s fantasies are not really so different, just a shade bloodier.
Like the previous stories, they are honest and morally straight, and most of
the reason is down to their physicality.
A lot of the moral ambiguities in modern literature and entertainment is
down to the dishonest pitching of jokes and emotion at the head – verbally as
opposed to using the shape and power of the body in active, fluid, dancing
pursuits
(this was my dig at
Phoebe Waller-Bridge).
Millet
Pictorial 11
The body has a
shape and it has a power, and clothing accentuates both.
Ruth
Pictorial 7
Howard’s stories
and characters are naively truthful in the Biblical sense, outside of modern ambiguities
(Conan’s hot kisses to in Hour of the Dragon). All that really comes
from movement and line which are outside of rational information, and as much
to do with fantasy as reality (heroic romance).
All literature
is fantasy. The Bible is a history that is literary, so contains both aspects.
I say that because fantasy is the creative-unconsious speaking to us.
To live in a
world without psyche is to be told all that is hocus-pocus, when it is really
the beliefs of the psyche which influence events (in reality Hyborian Bridge
89)
This points to
the fact that a world (our own) of rational information is a parallel reality
without psyche, without physical power (of body, dance in rural pursuits). The
parallel reality appeals to the ego (of acolytes) but it is fearful of the
primeval physicality (Biblical, O.T. Hyborian Bridge 91)
