The only answer
that I have found
Above the sky or below the ground
Is that there are no answers
There never were any answers
There will never be any answers
And as Gertrude Stein said, “That's the answer.”
Above the sky or below the ground
Is that there are no answers
There never were any answers
There will never be any answers
And as Gertrude Stein said, “That's the answer.”
Kantner’s lyric
would seem not very optimistic, but it depends how much you reckon the modern
world is an illusion. Kantner is not speaking as a scientist but as someone who
can feel, smell, hear, see.
While “they”
spout words, we can perceive the folly for ourselves. Compare with John
Clifton’s anti-scientific Bite Now Suckers! From TCJ 90 (1984)
The function
of art is not to challenge our knowledge, that meagre corpus of answers we have
managed to intuit from the experience of a few millennia of mortal history,
Rather the aim of art is to challenge the questions, to quell the analytical faculty of mind from
swallowing everything up in indecision and rationalism, by presenting ultimate
versions of those intuited truths, some lasting witness of a final rest for
things, some lasting witness to debunk the Garand Inquisitor.(page 108)
Clifton was
writing in defence of “the final version” of artists like Neal Adams; of art as
superior to analytical science; of formula as superior to culture-science
experiment.
There’s a lot to
be said for that view, in that comic books affect young minds on a basic level
of appreciation. Colour, shape, tonality, sequence, action. Comics are there to
be seen and felt; if the artist can make you feel and see then they’re good.
It’s almost the
opposite of the scientific mode of explaining laboriously and intellectually. I’ve
been questioning the answers (and therefore the questions) of science from the
basic level of feeling, hearing, smelling what is in the world.
There is also
Alan Moore’s essay “Blood From the Shoulder of Pallas” from Watchmen on
a similar theme (). It seems that it is possible to deceive the ego with a
convincing illusion through “the mirror of nothingness” (electromagnetism). The
result is physical boredom, whereby the numerical and sexual become one; tools of the dragon of data.
I know all this
sounds pretty fancy, but it’s actually a matter of simplicity. A good way to
put it is to take a classic comic book, say the silver age Flash by
Gardner Fox and Carmen Infantino. I was reading a review by Gene Phillips in TCJ
#58 (1980) the other day (as you do) and he had this comparison.
He brought to comics a storytelling style
not too far derived from early “sense of wonder2 SF, whose formulaic approach stressed
the wonder inherent in exotic worlds and bizarre devices (a la Jack Williamson)
(page
47)
The formulaic approach with stereotypical characters engenders a
classical formal style. The relation between pictures and words is also a
question of style. To inspire a good story, it’s often true to say that the
pictures 9sight) work independently of the words (“sounds”). They both supply something
different which together makes up the action.
RC Harvey in the same issue gives as an example the Daredevil
of Miller and
Roger McKenzie
Action is sight, sound and also feel, smell, atmosphere. In later
years, TCJ seemed to forget the old formulas of storytelling.
Now, if you have a world where there is no sight, sound, action (etc) then that
entire world is wrong. It’s also psychotic and sexualised. The reason is that
everything that lives expresses action (the fronds of plants waving in desert
breezes).
Action is the way something expresses itself. In terms of the human,
the body is the vehicle of expression. In the modern ear the body is no longer
a vehicle of expression. By “expression” I mean, say, a farmer shouldering a
spade, a hunter shouldering a carcass, a cowboy vaulting onto a saddle.. and so
forth.
If you go back to Hyborian
Bridge 60 there is the example of Fulling where women would
strip-off and engage in rhythmical actions. There are also the old
grape-treading rituals of Dionysus. I went to Newtown
Boarding School (class of ’69), an Irish Quaker-run establishment, and
remember rumpty-tumpty classroom rumbles and sex-games like wild animals
on-heat (is that normal?)
Essentially, the entire province of Dionysian physical expression is
missing in an electromagnetic universe (of the ego). Dionysian activity enables
people to engage in communal frolicks related to work that are by their nature
sexual. Man is a sexual animal and physique can’t be denied.
Therefore, the lack of Dionysian activity is bound to sexualise people
who are no longer engaging the body in the physical, communal acts which come
naturally. There is a looseness and a grace of free-form movement. Did you see
the clip of Monterey? This is free human expression of young, old and infant
with a communal setting.
Instead of this naturalistic freedom, we now have a state of boredom
which is numerical (machine). This physical state is like a straightjacket that
immobilises the body. We also get constant heat-pumps designed for serpent-men
(sun-seekers, slow-thinkers). The body is sexualised disproportionately – as in
social-media.
A universe of
physical boredom – the product of the ego – does not impress someone who is
able to feel, smell, hear, see with a mythical sense of freedom. The connection
is with art and comic books and the taste and values of our own “age of myth”
(prev.)
Our personal
“age of myth” is a safeguard to our perceptions, and another reason to discount
the answers “they” give. Their answers only convince the ego through “the
mirror of nothingness” that invites physical boredom, the numerical compulsion
that is the sexual tool of the dragon of data.
The reason comes
down to the cosmic reality we’ve lost through living in this numerical illusion
through “the mirror of nothingness” (cosmic silence). Instead of living through
a blood-cycle of decay and rebirth, modern civilization lives in the head.
This blood-cycle
is nothing less than meaning and power; the strength of red earth, of roots and
vines, places of power. This is the scene from Red Sonja #9 where Apah
Alah draws Sonja down into her underground forest kingdom.
This is feminine
power, physical substance, the moon rising over wooded hills, Diana bounding,
hounds baying in loping pursuit of deer bouncing away or slain bloodily. Red
Shiva, Red Venus, the bull-like Dionysus.. the destructive myths prev.)
Without
destruction there can be no creation; that is to say, a sequence of events that
takes place in the cosmos. This sequence is nothing less than the harmonic
cosmos that is red-blood female, muscular and manly, at one time dainty and
virile.
So, when I say “everything
is wrong” (in modernity), it’s that the feminine moon that animates our physical
blood-lust is no longer harmonizing with her brother. Artemis and Apollo are
close almost to incestuous levels in mythology. That link is broken to Man’s
eternal sorrow, for it is simply the physical reality of action – animal,
plant, stone, wind, celestial sounds and sights.
