Pictorial 108

Ecology = Oikos (Greek "house") "science"

Economy = Oikos (Greek "house") "management"

How can two words so seemingly similar be so miles apart in meaning and influence? It comes down to the word "management", meaning the head of the acolyte - numerical, monetary - which nowadays means the soulless machines of digital munificence.

Oikos has gradually mutated till it means whatever "they" choose. The best counter to this is Marvin Gaye's

WHAT'S GOING ON

a symphony for the ecology of the street. Whereas economy is number, ecology is action - dance, line, movement. As described HB106 the belief system of primitive societies has a feminine harmonic. Here, the Shemite Earth Mother Ishtar. The information they derive from nature is a product of this feminine harmonic.

Primitive knowledge is therefore much more like ecology (house or home) than it is economy (number or money). Gaye's album, with its repeated refrains of "sister", "brother", "hey man" etc features the ecology of the street in dance, line, movement.

The ecology of the street - see Detroit prev - which became poor but maintained its street culture, later attracting investors. Detroit took the route of ecology over economy - and won. Ecology has the decadence of living material, and so partakes of the scenic and picturesque (Drama3)

Because ecology is action (fertility or decay), there is always something there in terms of line and movement. Street culture can be deadly, as was so in the dark days of Detroit, and recovery equally dynamic.

Ecology represents the reality of living material (action), while economy represents the illusion of number; the expressive algorithm with a story full of nothing (see Japanese animated head prev.)

Action is line and movement, which is always very apparent in cartoony styles. Cartooning is very good at storytelling, since the line has a dramatic intensity of expression. Like Kayanan, Alfredo Alcala is Filipino with a great flair for drama.

In terms of cartooning, without the expressive linework there's not much there. These fantasy styles are quite close to wood blocks, and the old-fashioned book-plates of Margaret Ely Webb.

I happened to notice the cover to Savage Sword #113, by Jim Hoston, is photo-realistic, which brings in quite a visible problem.

Namely that cartooning is much less apparent in the blocking out and definition of the posture. Hoston in the inside feature admitted he used several different photos to achieve the effect.

At its most evident, photo-realism has a definition problem that can make heads appear disembodied. See the hag's head in Howard David Johnson's 

The thing about cartooning is it brings in a classical simplicity which photos don't have (see also CC Beck's comments on cross-stitch embroidery). The simplicity gives the linework the freedom to delineate and then tell the story dramatically.

Without drawing there can be no telling of myth with drama and intensity. Photo-realism is neither realism nor fantasy but illusory-reality (somewhat akin to Japanese animated heads, natch.) What you really lose is the psychic intensity that comes from the simple and stable design of face and figure.

Myth occupies the ecological side of reality that is to do with action, whether Wagner of Hansel and Gretel. The problem with Howard David Johnson's mythological pictures is that they negate myth by way of illusion!

An illusion is like a mirror; it has no physical reality. The psyche comes from the simplicity of drawing a stable and dramatic composition; without that stability and composed sense of dramatic tension, it's all illusion.

Illusion is the world we are entering because it doesn't partake of line and movement that give us the fertile drama of myth. By illusion I mean number, or photo-realism, or eletromagnetism, or algorithms (ones and zeros).

It all leads to the same sausage-factory of numerical sex P107 "They" will write stories for these illusory realities that have nothing to do with a fertile drama of myth, of blood, predator-prey cycles, of the hunt and Artemis.

It's all part of the sterilization of culture that is economically viable but ecologically dead. in our future are lies and viruses.

Pictorial 106

The mix of the rational and sexual in modernity is nowhere better mirrored than in Euripides’ The Bacchae (HB62/2) Pentheus, king of Thebes, is a totally split personality. He at omce cages Dionysus in the pursuit of social order, then succumbs to his temptations of wild and ill-clothed women frolicking on the hillsides.

He is almost the picture of someone who uses “nice calculations” (Euripides, The Bacchae and other Plays, Penguin Classics 1954, page 188) in a very bureaucratic sense, ticking all the boxes of officialdom, law and order.

But is that rational – or pettiness? “The insane man is the man who has lost everything except his reason” – GK Chesterton (The False Apollo). A rational man, in the classical sense, must have empathy so as not to be cut-off from nature’s call.

Pentheus’s rationality is only skin-deep so that, when Dionysus offers his thrilling sights from a wood,

“I would give a large sum of gold to see that.” (page 206)

Yes, indeed, money is the very heart and soul of reason, when it is applied to pleasure! Pentheus cannot release his mind from the petty calculations of officialdom in his wood-spying antics, persuading himself it is just research (“just”, legal) - and calls down berserk frenzy of the capering Maenads.

(page 215)  

It is this ungodly mix of petty officialdom with sex which is so very modern. This is what I call the dark metamorphosis whereby calculation (number) and sex become one through the dominion of thought.

This is wholly unnatural, since sex is a dance like the Maenads. It is being like the wild animals and, in fact, in the play,

(page 203)

Pentheus’s pettiness brings down the savagery of the wild women, who cannot abide his calculating infiltration.

Pentheus could be taken to represent number (or money) as against the spirit of dance that partakes of the beast in the field, running round with gay abandon (P14) This spirit when roused is blood and power, or as gentle as the lamb. The two sides of nature, predator and prey.

Also plants, since the women wear garlands and other bits of shrubbery. The spirit of the plants, I just recalled, was invoked at Findhorn community by Dorothy MacLean and others (having just seen her obit.)

Dorothy discovered that she was able to make contact with vegetable spirits called devas. The deva of the garden pea promised help, though it instructed them not to be too hard on the slugs. More practical assistance was provided by a local farmer who invited them to help themselves to his horse manure.

Soon there were stories of 40lb cabbages, broccoli so large it could barely be lifted, and winter-flowering roses. The gardens began to attract people to visit Findhorn to find out how it was done.

Is that spirit or horseshit? Well, both since horses are spirited beasts! Every living thing is a dance as opposed to a calculation of numbers. This points also to the fact that “nice calculation” is a type of hygiene that detaches itself from the dirt that enriches life.

The calculator – sorcerer or acolyte – can only conduct reports on appearance (Apollo) rather than the reality of blood and power that springs from the land.

Nietzsche associates this reality with Dionysus, though there is also the wild hunt of Artemis of the moon. It is true that Dionysus is the “Oriental” god most often associated with frenzied rites in forest groves.

In the play he is the “effeminate” god with ringlets in his hair. Pentheus also sees his “animal horns”, so it’s clear his animal nature can be sided with the destructive Artemis of the hunt, running silently under the silent moon.

The play does also make reference to the fate of Actaeon, the hunter who was turned into a deer and slain by the hounds of Diana (Artemis).

HB31

The 1972 Jean-Luc Godard film Tout va Bien does have a few similarities with the Euripides play. The scene of the factory takeover has a sequence of singing and dancing “grevistes”.

TOUT VA BIEN

Jane Fonda plays an American journalist trapped in the building with Yves Montand and the boss, Vittorio Caprioli. There is a lot of Union talk of “figures” (ie numbers) which are pitted against the anarchic closure of the building by “les marginales.”

There’s also an extended gag where the boss, locked with Fonda and Montand in his room, phones out to say, “Je veux pisser.” They escort him out but, lo and behold, as they tour the building every toilet is taken,

He is desperate, and starts running round the building. Finally he breaks a window. It is a sort of Latin humour, crude and lewd, that would have gone down well in ancient Greece (see Aristophanes P47) The reality of his distress is the savagery of the anarchists versus the rational and numerical.

Pentheus is torn apart by his mother and sister

Pictorial 105

Say Hello to Jupiter

has a fair agreement with a lot of my own material. Bouquerel’s summary of environmental “bad guy” Morlock and “good gal” Gaia, for instance.

 

  (Page 361)

There’s the affinity for art-deco skyscrapers.

  (page 364)

There’s the notion that Earth is a spiritual entity, like the stars. And there’s the “cosmic harmonic”.

(page 352)

There is also his apparent belief that evil is part of the system you inherit. Capitalism, with its emphasis on appearance, tries to do without this and falls into internal contradiction (see long quote, prev.)  

I don’t know exactly what he means by evil. From my perspective, it must be the bloodiness of nature that one can abhor but not ignore. Good and evil are quite closely linked by blood, and one has to acknowledge the lustiness of living to appreciate the finer principles of nobility.

The Christian centuries were no peaceful. The opening story of Jirel, Black God’s Kiss is a good case in point: hatred and battle are powerfully rendered. Jirel descends to hell to regain her castle, and only later does it occur to her she was prey to love.

The underworld, or decay, is something that has to be acknowledged by those who would aspire to nobility in a Christian or any moral order. There is a strength about decay that gives to the world strong style and psychic content. The primary reality to primitive Man is the earth and the beasts that inhabit it.

Their carcasses are the prize, as was shown in this link to a prehistoric temple composed of the bones of 60 mammoths in the Russian steppes. The body of the beast is the cosmic reality that sustains Man physically and spiritually. The great curved tusks and woolly hide are ornament and shelter.

This is the feminine principle of grace which nurtures information (prev.) Going back to Bouquerel’s quote on béchamel above; the microcosm and the macrocosm are one when leftb to be what they choose to be.

Every cell of the body is a certain size; every organ fits. Why should that be? Because there’s a feminine harmonic that makes it right. Sometimes they have mathematical proportion, like the petals of a flower, sometimes not.

It’s like asking why is Mozart a facile composer. He has a lightness and apparent thoughtlessness. Those qualities render ineffective the processes of thought because music at its highest level has celestial harmonies of grace (as with Joan Armatrading).

Why does modern Man not understand that plants, animals and Man have this aspect of grace that cannot be infiltrated by thought? That thought is the very thing that denies it via the masculine illusion of DNA?

There is a dark metamorphosis that accompanies this illusion, whereby the brain (numerical thought) becomes the body. The numerical and the sexual then become one via algorithmic sorcery (prev.)

What that does is deny a celestial harmonic which is really what the body is, that cannot be rendered by thought. Left to its own devices the body has strong style associated with psychic belief (in the land, commune).

The vacuity of capital-goods produces a dark metamorphosis that renders obsolete the heroic romance of the past. I happened to see legendary javeliner Dana Zatopkova’s obit with this quote.

The newly-weds set up home in Prague – she found a job as a secretary with a sports magazine – and their flat became a magnet for fellow athletes and athletics enthusiasts. Gordon Pirie, one of Zatopek’s English rivals, described it as “the gayest and merriest home I ever visited.” (DT)

The land, the commune whether Eastern European or Latin American are a state of grace. The very hegemony of capital is its weakness because it is now a dark metamorphosis of number and sex.

Metamorphoses are legion in nature, but they are always harmonic, tied-up with powerful internal dynamics. The latter day sorcery is the very antithesis of this state-of-affairs where many things are happening simultaneously, a cascade of effects.

If the body is like a universe where many things happen simultaneously in harmony then straight-line thought simply enters another universe of data, such as DNA.

The two are opposites; one cancels out the other. That is the illusion we live in where the information gathered from living in a state of relative harmony with land, animals, plants and stars is lost and sorcerers reign supreme.

(page 411)

The internal dynamics of a dog are visible in the sky to those who believe. Sirius P54 

P55

Pictorial 104

The name for a state of affairs where monetary value is based on false premises is fraud. The false premise is that living things can be defined by information (DNA), and information forms part of the cyber-area of numbers which are also words (ones and zeros).

This article on an Indian girl’s hand transplants seems to make the case that DNA is only the material used. It has no intelligence, while the body’s endocrine system – protein molecules or hormones – are what guide all the shapes and colours that make up one person.

What “they” like to say is that information is something separate and distinct, that numbers can be applied to – algorithmically, monetarily. Meaning that an algorithmic representation of a human face (expression] can approach the real thing.

The real problem with saying that is that there is no physical substance (body). It’s like saying everything is number – DNA, money, economics, politics – which is what “they” want. Everything in the same cyber-area that they then control.

A few counter-examples are called for. I noticed this illustration of prehistoric Andean sloth bears. The sloth bears had a wider nose than other giant sloths, allowing them to wet the dry air and maintain humidity while exhaling. (DT)

 

They are very curvy-wurvy in outline, and one can trace a wandering line something like this..

metamorphosis of line 

BWS Medusa VII

IDOMENEO Elektra succumbs to jealous rage and sees snakes!

A sloth like, say, a hunting dog, has a characteristic shape adapted to its pursuits. But the point is it’s all shape, there’s no information. The shape is a priori because it has to all hang together.

The tail of a sloth and the snout of a sloth are all one balanced thing that moves, feeds, breeds. That is only possible if one process directs everything.

The problem with information is it is all in bits. There are computer bits; there are quanta (atoms); there are even quantum computers (Hameroff C13) And there are the pieces of DNA in cells.

The process is nothing to do with information; it’s to do with sinuous grace, the primordial serpent that ripples as it moves. Another example; a donkey braying. The churlish cartoon-like face

 

That can only come from a sinuous process of rippling line and muscle. All these breeds and the millions more are products of sinuous grace. This is the feminine harmonic principle, - or the androgenous snake. Primitive societies have a belief in the female as the fertile symbol, the destroyer who ushers-in rebirth.

As with the Shemitic Ishtar (prev) temples are consecrated and lavishly decorated with ziggurats. Possibly there are animal sacrifices and blood flows on pagan altars.

From these beliefs, and from the animals utilized as beasts-of-burden or for their flesh, is the information of the society wrought. In other words, all primitive information is tied to belief and comes out of an a priori feminine harmonic.

Societies have blood-sacrifice, the land and animals associated with it, the commune and the belief-system. From the grace of this state of affairs one can find a story where events are predicated on strong style and psychic belief.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s just saying that the shape of things is not information; it’s a priori to the feminine harmonic (womb). Capitalist (money) democracies have a weakness that disregards strength of style and psychic content, that does not recognize commune, land, the beliefs associated with them.

I’m reading a Gallic pulp fantasy that purports to be the diary of one BB Bouquerel from the Jupiter of 4077. The guy is a musician and the book developed out of his stage-show with various eco and freako-science themes.

His conceit of the Voicemasters guide the human psyche through the hazards of space. I like that quasi-religious idea that the harmonics of the voice have ethereal meaning. He makes various pulp assumptions that strong beliefs are needed – for example in the Empress Ro’wheena of the Imperial Federation of Jupiter. Only local democracy can work with its “formulae”.

(page 65)

The destructive aspect is always shirked by democracy with its masculine advocacy of appearance. Yet only destruction can usher-in renewal and hence the Dionysian gaiety of ambient life.

Destruction means that things are changing their form; decaying or being left to dry or ferment. It’s Buffy Saint-Marie’s motto of leaving buffalo manure to become something useful (HB70). It’s the Shanghai of the 19th century (Tales of Faith 2).

Essentially, it’s any society that has a peasant base that is strong with a psychic belief in the land. It’s always been a puzzle to me why the East European communist era was so oddly romantic.. All I can think is that gaiety is not a political concern, it springs from the land that is left to just be what it’s always been. Communist countries were poor, like Latin American, where things happen communally as they always have.

Another way of saying that is that politics is a masculine pursuit, while the land belongs to Mother Earth. One is thinking, the other is unthinking but, as previously said, all primitive information comes out of an a priori feminine harmonic of fertility.

In other words, the information is useful to the feminine harmonic. Intelligence comes from a state of grace. Plants, for example, are not intelligent but they do act intelligently through the simplicity of grace. Hormones in plants act like water in a cascading fountain, the effect in all directions simultaneously.

It’s the opposite of straight-line thought and more like a harmonic-intelligence. Where do the harmonics come from? From the feminine principle or androgenous serpent, where rippling movements are influenced by the shape of hormones.

Hormones are generally aromatic compounds, with a pungency, and are associated with the lifedeath cycles of cells, leaves. With these cycles is attached a pungency that is earthy and strong. This is the land of the gay god Dionysus, where destruction sets in motion strong processes of growth and revival.

We live in the land of images and data which enter a cyber-area governed by numbers (ones and zeros). There is always going to be a phenomenological problem with this area, since it is not physical substance (prev.)

Physical substance dies and decays and enters a very earthy area. The strength and pungency of the earth – the life-giving loam – is redolent of this cycle. From this, the rituals and beliefs of Dionysus and Ishtar are ever-reborn, their temples rebuilt.

There is a bloodiness there, but also a gaiety in the strength the earth ever-gives. The feminine  principle is luscious and rules with grace, as in BB Bouquerel’s Say Hello to Jupiter.

 

Bouquerel’s spacetime fantasy has an optimistic lilt reeking of pseudo-science. For him, the temple to Man’s destiny can be rebuilt on Jupiter by Riemann equations, escapism from modernity via pseudo-science into fairy tale romance; while for me, General Relativity is simply the most perfect illusion of Newtonian ballistics!

 

For me, Earth’s feminine spirit (body) has a strength untold by the insular science of inductive reason (head), grace and pungency in equal measure. The dark forces of metamorphosis seen in timeless Greek myth (WEird 5)

Titian, Rape of Europa (detail)

 

Hyborian Bridge 107

Beliefs that incorporate sex, death, rebirth value social strength – not information. Strength of social norms is inevitably linked with fascist “supermen” of the 30s. However, as you could hear from the text being read out at the bookstore scene in One Plus One (actually Mein Kampf), the dictators value above all cervo-mechanisms of the (superior) mind, and downplay sentiment.

To them “soft” feelings are not strong – and this is where the difference lies (with fascism). Meaning that the lifecycle of sex, death, rebirth or regrowth is very much dependent on feminine values.

The feminine value is really action in the bush (pardon the phrase). The agile woman of loping grace, the huntress who is allied with the moon, the destroyer who precipitates creation and rebirth.

It is active strength of bodily grace and form. Information that accords with this strong style and psyche relates to fertility and the female body. These societies of grace then influence events with their belief in strength.

This is probably the opposite to fascist cervo-mania, which is itself almost a precursor to the modern ego-fixation on numerical “facts” that are hyper-realistic illusions (like pornography). In this situation, reality is much more akin to a pulp fantasy that has storytelling balls. Events in the story are predicated on a belief in strong style and psyche.

While our societies are predicated on competition (male ego), ancient ones are predicated on grace and style, and from that comes strength. Grace is the feminine virtue – the harmonic womb – and associated with fertility.

After all, what would Conan be without style and psychic allure?

 

  Savage Sword #212 1993

As a sequel to Red Nails, one can see Kayanan’s style is influenced by the BWS original. Languorous scenes of decorous repose were fairly frequent amidst the gruelling beast-infested slaughter.

In this case, having partaken of dragon-flesh, the fetid reek of entrails and general roughness and dirt invite the act of cleanliness. Places of power are bastions of fertility, whether a Stygian swamp or here under unknown jungles that border the black kingdoms, and the mud and slime that goes with it.

Ecology is pretty well the opposite of hygiene but, as Valeria attests to here, the ultimate satisfaction is vastly keener for the degradation endured. Fertility is the feminine domain of blood and power, and from this flows social grace. The hunt, the savage slaughter; and after the music, song, dance and raucous laughter.

The rough strength of ancient societies does not come from the masculine virtue of order (now hygiene and number), but from the feminine value of fertility. This is the hunt of Artemis under wooded eldritch blue-moon hills.

 

With the feminine vistas comes heroic romance, for the world is strong (again). Water, shrubs, nudity, fountains, springs to cleanse body and spirit. This is where the masculine virtues collapse into nothingness for lack of feminine mystique. We live in an ever-more convincing illusion of numbers since number is merely the masculine or ordered side of reality. Without the feminine there is no underlying harmonic of cosmic vibration (moon, planets.)

All atoms have an atomic number designating their place on the Periodic Table of elements, since nothing in nature is not ordered. However, nothing in nature is not disordered either, in that things are destroyed and built-up in a natural cycle of predator-prey.

The masculine virtue is like Euripides’ The Bacchae (The False Apollo etc), discounting all the gay power arising from the destructive cycle of the seasons, the springing buds, the vines of plenty and orgiastic rites.

Instead of this strength which is a virtue of harmony (the womb) we are given the weakness of numbers. Since everything is a number (including atoms), the logically most convincing illusion is for numbers to replace politics and economics.

Why do we not realize it? Because it’s so convincing, natch. In the UK, Sunak’s budget for the Conservatives has nothing right-wing, merely a game of infrastructure spending and borrowing while sticking to “fiscal rules” (same as Trump and the Fed?)

It’s all totally incomprehensible but, since it’s numbers no one notices. Same with computers, which are words (language) that are numbers (ones and zeros). Algorithms which express human faces (prev) will be given stories that replace the reality of blood and fertile beings.

This sort of reality is sex-by-numbers which makes pulp fantasies seem vastly more realistic. Unless a story is based on the power that springs from blood, land, commune there can be no beliefs associated with it.

The masculine virtue is appearance (Apollo), not reality (Dionysus). A world of hyper-realism is all appearance, while pulp fantasy has the strong style and psychic content that are influential. It’s what you see in BWS’ Red Nails  and the sequel by Kayanan. There is blood (the dragon); there is a land (jungle); there is a commune – the Ichiribu. There is water, shrubs, nudity, springs, fountains.

There is music, dance, song like the social virelai of the 14^th century (Outtakes 4)

LESCUREL

As noted in HB106, the Shemite goddess Ishtar was exportable to Koth as a Valkyrie-like Earth-Mother residing in languorous temples. The female has the decorous grace that maybe the more brutish Dionysus lacks, but both represent the destruction that precipitates revival and strength.

This entire area is a harmonic symphony as opposed to pure masculine order. The former is strong and can influence the psyche (and events); that latter is weak and only has the appearance of realism. It is an illusion of the masculine high-priests of the sorcery of number.

Carney meets Sunak

                                      “One Plus One = 25 trillion”                    “Right!”

IN THE YEAR 2525

Hyborian Bridge 106

What does it mean by saying that words ARE propaganda (prev)? Well, for the world of straight lines and light – electromagnetism, talking and expressive algorithmic heads. After all, computers ARE words – they read language (ones and zeros).

In a way, that entire area is a fantasy, an illusion (appearance). In HB92 it notes there that in medieval times the beliefs – of the psyche – influenced events profoundly. The psyche was held to be real, and belief in the far Eastern knight Prester John – whose kingdom was practically totemic – influenced the Crusades.

Taking it further, Christianity is “good news” – meaning for the psyche – and so medieval faith becomes the events. This is almost the complete opposite to the idea that there are events which are “real” and that reporters report on, completely independent of the psyche.

Jean-Luc Godard’s films such as One Plus One seemingly do take this on. The reporter interviewing Eve Democracy, for example, is supplying all the information, more or less including the answers. At the end of the Bookstore scene, the intoner does make the concession that faith is the vital factor in social power, which is pretty interesting for a fascist bookseller!

In his interview, Godard comments that morality is informed by events (paraphrasing) and that it is not important compared to politics. He almost implied it is a fantasy of the church. Yes, but modern events are so complex that something as simple as good or evil can appear fantasy. Equally, though, what appears as reality can just be appearance (Apollo, light).

Words propagandize this apparent reality by means of information. What about psyche and faith? To me, faith would imply temples; atmospheric monuments that seclude one from incessant words and impart instead poetic and allegorical truths that feed the psyche. All ancient societies venerate temples, and that goes equally for Hyboria, natch.

Eve Democracy could almost represent a fertile woman wandering the trees, which are a type of natural temple. But instead of Dionysian rites she is asked political questions. Again, there appears to be two direct opposites (One Plus One =).

In a democracy “the point” is always the numbers, rather than the land, community or temple. Yet in ancient Greece it would be taken as read that these things are inalienable rights. Only landowners of the commune could vote, and they gave offerings to the temple deities.

What seems to happen in modern democracies is that everything relates to the head – which is impressed by numbers – and not to the body which works the land of a commune, prays to the temple.

The commune has a psyche and a faith. The psyche of the commune will tend to influence events with its beliefs in harvest and fertility. The rural aspect of the society is therefore also a belief (see BWS Adastra in Africa Tales of Faith 2)

They will tend to value information that accords with their beliefs. The beliefs are to do with fertility and particularly the female body. This accords with the gods and goddesses of Hyboria, and especially to the Elder gods of Shem and Koth bordering on nighted Stygia.

As Robert Yaple notes in Savage Sword #8 (page 17) the Shemitic mother goddess would have a subordinate mate who dies and is reborn annually with the cycle of vegetation. Although nomads known as the Sons of Shem later initiated sky gods such as Pteor, only Ishtar went any way towards replacing Mitraic cults in neighbouring Koth.

Ishtar is typically portrayed as a Valkyrie-like Earth Mother in sumptuous temples. According to Yaple,

Her ivory idols combined southern sumptuousness with northern restraint. (Conan is restrained?)

City-states may have been political institutions but spent wisely on “lofty zikkurats” to adorn their temples. As I’ve been saying for awhile, while we live in a world of “facts”, reality in nature is to do with action, predator-prey, blood, death and renewal. That world is strong and fertile, Dionysian.

We live in a world of Apollo (light, appearance) but this is only half of reality. Mitra is the skygod of Hyborian lands. Erlik the dark deity of death. Ishtar the Earth-goddess who harbingers renewal, regrowth.

In this world, information and beliefs are tied together because we are no longer in the numerical land of the ego; the land of physical boredom where talk is about talk and not about the psyche that is strong and resurgent.

A lot of the Elder gods of whom Yaple writes were grossly obscene, animalistic. They represent what in nature is not talk or words but active events of sex, death, rebirth. Each god or goddess has a story associated with them.

Hanuman (SS #8)

Pteor

Going back to One Plus One

, in the bookstore scene the looseness of the sex counteracts the fascist text; the pulp magazines shown are also storytelling - gross, obscene or animalistic as it may be!

 

Pornographic pulp-storytelling is practically quaint collectors’ items compared to today’s “market”. Because life is a story; we are our bodies, not just our brains which get the juice of information. Beliefs incorporate sex, death, rebirth and from these is born a society that values strength, and not simply information.

Pictorial 103

ONE PLUS ONE

Eve saying yes or no is s sort of sequel to the scene in Weekend where Roland and Corrine meet Emily Bronte and Tom Thumb in a forest. The odious protagonists are baffled by the two fantasy characters, and end up setting Emily on fire as she recites a poem.

They are entirely caught-up in their own materialist fantasies and this type of nature romance escapes them utterly.

Somewhat similarly, the “interviewer” of Eve is utterly indifferent to the indifference of nature through which Eve wanders as he presents her with posers on the capitalist way of life.

In both films, it seems like two incompatible worlds appear alongside eachother. The indifference and romance of nature is set alongside capitalist mores, or against political certainties that are just as fanciful, in reality.

Then, the bookstore scene in One Plus One (prev) sets fascist ideology against pulp smut. This echoes the smutty opening to Weekend which sets up almost a monstrous pornographic road movie, seemingly centred on the anal fixation on capitalist-goods. In one scene, a guy called Balsamo hijacks the pair and reveals himself as the result of God sodomising Alexander Dumas. Even he, though, is repelled by their bourgeois fantasies, and turns their car into a flock of sheep.

Having seen One Plus One – plus the Godard interview included – I can see that Godard is very much the crude satirist almost in the mode of Rabelais (scatology and extended risqué jokes). Scenes like Eve are his way of putting straight-laced rationality against melodic form. “An orgasm is the only moment life cannot be cheated?” “Yes”.

In a way, One Plus One is a sequel to Weekend with virtually the same pornographic fixation. The black rebel amongst the hulks of cars with the three captured white women rhapsodises over the fascination of their white flesh to his ancestral black race.

Again, in the bookstore scene, the very straight-line racism of the intoned fascist text is counterpointed by the camera panning over ridiculous pulp titles of women whipping men and adventures in lingerie, with the odd Green Lantern. The ridiculousness of the body-fixations seems in direct opposition to the racial certainties being read out.

“When sex is problematical, in walks the totalitarian?” Eve is asked. “Yes” she says. “And the one thing you have learnt.. is not to make love when you don’t really feel like it?” “Yes”. There is the pulp voiceover of a seemingly sci-fi romance, which references a sordid fondling of fur. It could also be noted that the two girlish black interviewers of the car-hulk rebel are very appealing in a streetwise black fashion, loose and guileless.

It seems, then, that Godard is counterpointing the serious political content of his 60s films with louche body-oriented material which is really pretty appealing, whether black, white or pulp sci-fi.

As was said previously in P96 your body-responses are always real. At the beginning ofWeekend, where the girl is describing an orgy, the sordid fixation on anal erotica at least produces real responses in the participants. It seems that sex in Godard’s 60s films, whether sordid or simply pretty, takes on something real and that counteracts a fixation on words.

What you could say is that the reality if sex underlies capitalism, and that the more technologically vacuous the more the sex itself becomes vacuous, as in the scene at the start of Weekend.

Sex is a good metaphor as it can either be good or bad, bodywise. The body can therefore act as a metaphor for the brain and, in the case of physical boredom, the sexual aspect becomes totally technological. IE a robot (prev.)

Don’t forget these films are about 50 years old, as where we are today is much more advanced towards a state of physical boredom – a numerical world of algorithmic heads. Even looking at the Rolling Stones’ studio one soaks up the atmosphere of basically people just sitting around and casually coming-up with a groove. It can be pretty hard work with take after take, but there is also the fact that from out of nothing comes something.

I was reading-up on the Stones, and they started out as Blues and African-based, later, with Brian Jones departure becoming a Chuck Berry style band. You can see this in the studio, where Jones concertedly plays the bongos.

Music, like sex, is a very direct hit and is often accentuated by atmosphere. Atmosphere often means just the space to be able to feel something without conscious thought or the presence of words. Eve is in the garden is atmosphere, and indifferent to human words.

50 years on from the films one can see the advanced technology induces physical boredom and hence the numerical/sexual fixations that are more or less vacuous. In other words, the counterpart to a society of the head (word) is the vacuity of sex.

In traditional rural societies, again as previously noted, the supple strength, particularly of the female spine, is accentuated by bunched clothing (see Eve). Women is the fields are a source of strength to the well-bred human race (see also the rhythmic sexpression of Fulling Hyborian Bridge 60)

Millet (Ruth HB92)

The body in its natural state of activity is sexually expressive by its nature. The sexual aspect of rural societies is not detached from the work aspect, the economy.

What this really means is that the body is physically very expressive, supple and strong, and so very appealing. It’s almost the guileless appeal on associated with African tribes before the expansion of Western civilization.

Dahomey Amazons of South Sahara

Guilelessness is an aspect of the body-in-action, the natural state of human affairs. Ancient Greek culture was tied-up with the naked athletic pursuit; Minoan bull-dancing was another ancient European pastime.

Wild Horses

In One Plus One, there’s an intermittent voiceover that plays when the Stones are rehearsing in the studio and one hears bits of carnal pulp sci-fi. Meanwhile in the studio are seen the acts of the musicians, some of which are highly sensual.

Wyman plays bongos and writhes his torso; Jagger tweaks his leg repetitively and forcefully; the sleek grace of Richard’s limbs. In other words, the work the Stones are doing much more resembles old-time field-labour that inevitably has a sexually expressive aspect.

The atmosphere of the studio is appealing and joyful if stressful. By contrast, body movements nowadays are often bored and listless. The pulp proximity in Godard’s film adds spice and a type of gay abandon that counteract the sexless intonations of propaganda.

If you watch the bookstore scene, the intoning guy hands out a blank sheet to each punter as they give a fascist salute. This is very reminiscent of Carpenter’s They Live! Which I’ve also remarked on previously. Words in the modern scene ARE propaganda simply because they ARE words.

THEY LIVE!