Well, I noticed one
of your compatriots has restarted his ancestral pile, Hopwood
Hall, near Manchester North England. There’s something about airy,
ramshackle halls with bats roosting that is bracing to the spirit; all that’s
needed to restart the ancestral culture is a meadowland of peasantry loyal
offerings of produce to the new laird.
Nothing of that
could happen without a paradigmic shift of practically 180%. Instead of information
being a god it would be trampled underfoot as a false idol, and the gods of the
mighty orbs raised to prominence (again). DH Lawrence had the idea that all
deities were variants of one primal theme. All religions have a moral force,
which one could imagine as the original wellspring of creation.
The demise of
information would mean the demise of Darwinism, since an unthinking dance of creation
is not evolution; it just is. Competition would then be trodden underfoot as
merely a possible pastime rather than a creative act – of story. It’s
noticeable that Howard’s historical stories are very fair and even-handed to
the faiths which congregate around the common middle eastern watering holes in
the early to late medieval.
The Blood of Belshazzar features a
giant Norman Cormac FitzGeoffrey, Arab Yusuf el Mekri, Persian Nadir Tous,
Turk, Venetian di Strozziand a Jewish retainer of the ogrish Skol Abdur. The
mix of religions is never a bone of contention, only the various allegiances and
shady dealings or outsight treachery of the races on display. Races often tend
to band together, though the mix of the story seems merely to balance the scales.
The pack only turns on FitzGeoffrey when el Mekri employs psychological ploy in
a foaming fit of avarice.
…the Sheikh suddenly tore away and
pointing a lean arm toward the giant figure at the foot of the stairs,
screamed, “Allah akbar! There stands the thief! Slay the Nazarene!”
(page 216)
John Watkiss
The medieval principle, which Howard fully embraces, is that a
particular place – here an outlander castle – harbours a diverse, ragtaggle
assortment of wayfarers. Their very differences manifest a distinctive ambiance
of mystery and intrigue. There is not a sign of the modern tendency for bigotry
– save Howard’s habitual depictions of Jews as househould majordomos, natch –
and one could hazard that the underlying reason is that at that point in
history they viewed their faiths as variants of one spiritual wellspring.
Jerusalem – see Tales of Faith 11, 13 – was a spiritual nexus
rather than a political capital. Politicians are the ones who gaze at their own
reflections through the mirrors of technology, the spokespeople for a world
built on information that smooths all differences. The logic of this is that –
at root – we ARE the same; but it’s based on false logic (the false Apollo).
The logic is that by dispensing information our needs are fulfilled.
This misses out the wellspring from which we (all) spring, which is the dance
of life itself. In The Blood of Belshazzar, the assorted
types conjure up a distinctive ambiance of bibulous effrontery, such as when
Jacob calls for FitzGeoffrey.
“The Great Prince, Skol Abdur,” announced
Jacob in pompous and sonorous accents, “would grant audience to the Nazarene
who rode in at dusk – the lord Cormac FitzGeoffrey.”
The Norman finished his goblet at a draft
and rose deliberately, taking up his shield and helmet. “And what of me,
Yahouda?” IT was the guttural voice of the Mongol. “Has the great prince no
word for Toghrul Khan, who has ridden far and hard to join his horde?” (page 201)
The sense is
that the very differences make for the interest – and hence the story. They don’t
necessarily like eachother, but neither do they necessarily kill eachother.
There is a rough frisson that sets one against the other. Previously I made
this same point about the TV comedy Rab C Nesbitt (Pictorial 13),
whereby there is a low-level fight – and this creates the humour. Humans,
unlike animals in an ecosystem, don’t kill and eat eachother. They indulge in a
low-level ribaldry, banter or maybe brawling.
This sort of
wild west atmosphere or frisson creates an ambiance made of differences. In
medieval times mean and women could bridge their differences because their
faiths were assumed to have a common wellspring. So, the political notion that
all we need is information actually seems to destroy the ambiance of what you
might call creativity.
In other words,
different faiths, or races, have a rough frisson and it is this which creates
the ambiance that makes life interesting and creative. The differences
epitomise strength of temperament, and strengths have an affinity. This is seen
in Howard’s tales of camaraderie between Christian and Saracen, such as in Sowers
of the Thunder between Haroun and Red Cahal (Pictorial 11).
The lie of the modern era is that living things are information rather
than a primitive dance that is as unthinking as the stars. Information is taken
to be DNA; but where something grows it grows into different places (parts of
body), and each place is surrounded by ambiance. DNA is the necessary order
without which all would be chaos. Ambiance and place are the dance of creativity
which makes things interesting.
Politicians, because they deal solely in facts, cannot see this
unthinking truth of story and myth. Different myths for different peoples from
the wellspring of cosmic creativity. Why have scientists come-up with an “information
theory” (quantum string) of the universe? Because the idea of an unthinking
dance is far from their minds, and so things get fantastically complicated.
For a start, how are songs written? If you take the Blues, they’re
written as a simple framework of chords and loose-rhythms that accentuate a
certain style. Simplicity is crucial for subtlety – a mixture of the two.
LET IT LAST (33
mins in)
To me that execution is as good as Mozart. Mozart is also simple and irresistible.
The modern scientific mind is really following Ayn Rand’s doctrine that mental
processes are a form of activity (The House that Rand Built 1). But
music is harmonic, not logical, and Black music is rhythmically loose. Songs
with a loose framework make improvisation easy – as Armatrading’s band do on
most of her tracks.
All this is something that happens in a particular place between
different performers, resulting in a distinctive ambience of feeling and texture.
Performers will rehearse, but you have to assume some of what they do is
instinctive - in time (see Grace Slick Hyborian
Bridge 67 and Bruce Lee prev.)
The ambient universe is almost what makes life
worth living, or one may as well live in a concentration camp with Martian
overlords. Empty space can generate ambiance
local Carnegie library
Ambiance is the “unthinking” quality that
bypasses the profit-motive of contemporary civilization (compare current and
historical Shanghai!) Ambiance is what you discover under the starlit skies.
What “they” would say is that it’s a subjective feeling of the mind. What if it’s
the opposite? An objective reality of the creative-unconscious cosmos.
Even if there is no definite proof of this
(since the universe is not logical), the proof is in the decline of ambiance in
our major centres under the anonymous profit-motive (see cowboy ranch demise Hyborian Bridge 56) I was reading about the decline of Black sharecroppers in the south
and Michigan and, while it’s true there were iniquities, the profit-motive of
large owners heralded by FDR’s New Deal didn’t help. Prices went up while tenants
went out (or up North).
The profit-motive rewards competition, while
downgrading the ambiance of places. It really depends on the value one places
on ambiance. What “they” say is that nature is forever competing and hence
evolving; if, however, the growth of living things – and by extension
neighbourhoods, shantytowns, ecosystems and ranges – is a song set to the music
of the spheres, then it’s not a competition. Competition can only occur as part
of a much wider ambit (of creation).
Hence, the idea of abstract competition is
merely a figment of acolytes’ brains. It does not occur in the real world of
action, moral purpose and the songs that express the wish to self-rule.
ME MYSELF I (12 mins in)
