Mr Howard’s
Son weaves a droll bit
of Western tomfoolery around the legend of the James brothers. Here, Bob Ford
buttonholes Rio while his brother Charley waits. Later..
Frank James
survived the numerous sprees, and wasn’t averse to quote Shakespeare and
Francis Bacon (The Old West Gunfighters, TimeLife, 1974 page 56)
(Page 87)
Wildey is
clearly an admirer, and portrays Jesse almost like A Marvel superhero (having
started his career drawing Atlas westerns). I’ll get back to Wildey’s plot
presently, but Frank’s espousal of Bacon caught my eye.
As previously
noted, The New Atlantis is the basis of all later scientific methodology
involving gathering data (facts) from the natural world, and conducting
experiments. In a way, this process of induction has been vastly profitable (eg
Newton’s optics.)
What exactly is
wrong about it was foreseen by Bacon’s 4 Idols (Tales of Faith 10.) “The Idol of the Den” being the type of mind
that correlates facts. With Newton’s optics, science enters a world of
appearance (Apollo) – as opposed to reality.
That is the
world we are in, where appearances are highly convincing to the ego, but also
illusory. What is missing is the physical substance, consisting of line and
movement. This is the world cartoonists like Wildey explore with atmospheric
grace.
Cartooning
explores line and movement – ie action – while appearance is just accuracy.
Hence, The Idol of the Den – appearance – convinces a certain type of mind that
is numerical and egotistical. This is where methodology has brought us.
Again, as stated
in P93, the movements of the moon and the spin of the Earth are actions
that take away the dominance of the sun (light) by having the moon as the
equal-and-opposite partner. While the sun is straight lines (perspective), sun
and moon combined are the symmetry of movement. In a world of facts, symmetry
can be ignored since it basically isn’t part of the experiment.
So, for example,
DNA is “fact” but not the symmetry of the body. The Japanese animated face (P96)
is not a whole body. “The Idol of the Den” – or a certain type of mind – is
convinced of these “facts”. Meanwhile, the symmetries of the body are ignored.
By that I mean up-down, left-right, back-front – see Weird 11
“The Enchantment”.
Facts are often
things which have no symmetrical basis in the world, but are numerical and
therefore convincing. The whole of economics, as well as DNA, algorithms and so
on. The problem is that symmetry is probably a-priori to fact. All
atoms have symmetrical orbits; galaxies are spiral. A human body above all has
a back and a front; a top and a bottom; a left and a right.
From this comes
meaning and power – for details see W11 above. So a world of facts (The Idol of the
Den) is highly convincing and numerical, but with no intrinsic symmetries. In a
sense it is null and void – hence the metaphor from P97. Meaning and power are
derived from manhood and maidenhood and strong symmetries. The universe is
sexual while the world of facts is asexual; the universe is active while the
world of facts is inert.
This seems to relate to the entire “industry” of green. Buffy
Saint-Marie’s motto HB70 (link to Andrea Warner) of drying things out, making fires of dried buffalo manure,
is a process of disorder that changes something into a useful product. The
appearance is changed through the process of drying.
This happens a
lot in nature so that useless things are changed to useful ones. In nature,
appearances change through processes of decay and renewal (action). That is a
good description of “green” yet it is exactly the opposite of what “they” mean.
Usually they mean hygienic tidiness and the use of electricity for travel. But
electricity – P97 – is not green! It is expressionless light that cannot
be burned as wood can.
What “they” say
is that electricity is green, while wood-burning is not, but the reverse is
true. Electricity simply creates a world that is null and void, that has no
physical substance, that is just light (electromagnetism).
This world is
numerical (algorithms), whereby the numerical and the sexual become one through
physical boredom (the Japanese animated head). It’s not green; it’s psychically
dead, psychotic.
A green world is
an active one where Man is free to work among trees, to make log cabins and log
fires. This world has symmetries that place Man in a landscape of sky-Earth,
day-night. The world of symmetries is much simpler than a numerical/electrical
one. They’re trying to persuade us that black is white, but the reality is that
a forest is a forest and some things never change.
Trees have roots
and they aspire to the sky. It’s simple and true rather than complicated and
false.
(page 66)
Woodsmoke is a
physical substance that has line and movement and that impinges on our psyche
as we gaze into its depths (P96). The romance of such an image is intrinsically outdoor and
active. It is the body as a symmetrical construct of nature in a milieu that
supplies story and myth.
What “they”
offer is “the mirror of nothingness” (electromagnetism); appearance without the
meaning or power of a world of physical substance.