The Record has some more archive footage (P124); this is
a Sunday dinner get-together in a Glasgow tenement, circa 50s
The ambience is a
free-form of the body that is freely expressive, whether sulky or sultry. Most
social areas nowadays are standardized into moo-eyed smugness.
The fish-wife from
Edinburgh is clad in loose work-clothes, bunched to accentuate strength of
female physique (uses head for strength, not thinking!) The Record says
these colorful pursuits in the centre of Edinburgh uses to "walk into
town" - so that is all gone to the era of distribution and desultory
numbers.
The predatory reptile
must be fed through its neck, and the colorful pursuits follow. Our bodies are
proportionate and symmetrical, and this gives meaning to the story of life
(Weird 11 "The Enchantment").
The head can be
persuaded that it is no longer living in this proportionate, symmetrical body
& and that is what has happened since the free-living 60s. The mainstream
now exists in the hall of mirrors of acolytes of sorcerers (HB20).
You could ask, why has
this happened now? And the answer is as one approachrs the vanishing point of
technique one gets closer to zero. Words become numbers, and numbers are
convincing to the ego.
We live in the age of
protests (Hong Kong, blacks), but not of meaning and power. The Hong Kong guys
should have taken-over the reins of power and declare common law. It's a power
game, not a social-media show.
Blacks might be better
off running their own affairs more as in Detroit (Drama3) rather than taking to
the streets. The ambience of a particular place is not a numbers game, it's a
dance of life, song and movement.
The more this dance is
denied by physical boredom, the more the compulsion of numbers runs affairs,
and the less the expressive body is in control.
Physical acts are the
reality, and fro this lack of boredom is physical strength derived. Ambience is
the visible sign of that story being written (see old photos of Harlem).
In the modern hall of
reflections, we are seeing multiple head (Hydra) in a sterilised hospital
setting, where profane meat is on the menu (GM, DNA P121). Back in the squalor
of a 50s Glasgow tenement there is dirt and cleanliness, psychic ambience and
sensuality of expressive physique.
Quite a lot of that
comes down to atmosphere - a substance that is in short supply in modernity.
Atmosphere is almost an opposite to appearance (Apollo), being something that has
shades of suggestion.
Chick Chalmer's
photographs of Orkney and of cowboys - Denizens of the Netherlands 2 - have
that type of feeling of something in the air.
You could liken it to
a type of shabbiness where the rhythm of living comes first, and order second.
Apollo - or order - is a false god in the sense that things are cyclical.
The cyclical state means
the sense of living amongst caustic substances of nature; the smell of a
sheep's fleece, the carrion of predators, the scavengers that squirm. Life's
ordure us caustic but strong and prey to the cycles of nature (see Duffy quote
on dried buffalo manure).
In Orkney, of course,
one finds stone circles which constellate the serpentine nature of things. Even
more nakedly primitive are the symbols found at New Grange in Ireland.
The serpent – the
primitive – cannot be denied, and if it is not there in its natural guise, it
will be there in unnatural, profane form.
The sinuous symmetries
of things are primitive, strong and physically alluring. Where there is
cyclical movement there is dirt and cleanliness, the process of decay followed
by revival.
Ambience is really a
product of the caustic nature of reality, of the cycling of materials. The
condition is fertile, and where there is degradation there is revival. Ignoring
this serpentine reality leads to a sterile order that is the product of the
detached head.
Since physique can’t
be denied, the head is caught in a compulsive numerical situation of physical
boredom. The Black Sun that shines where the sun don’t shine (see Wizards of
the Black Sun ).
Symmetry cannot be ignored
– after all, it is in quantum physics – and the barbaric strength and primal
ambience is there for all to see.
Adastra © BWS 2003
Sublime symmetry,
astonishing psyche