Saturday, 24 April 2021

Pictorial 164

I recall citing a Dan Dare story many moons ago where Dan is watching a game of cricket. He realizes they've bowled seven balls in the over instead of six. "Careless umpiring", he frowns. Following a few other discomforts, it turns out that he's not on Earth atall and it is all an alien masquerade.

The moral is if one thing is wrong possibly everything is. In our universe of straight-lines, spontaneity and anarchy are suppressed by the  ego of acolytes (of the mirror of illusions).

This is a relatively anal and numerical area, as others have pointed out (see Grace Slick HB62/1). Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 film Weekend broadens this vista to include the whole of capital, in a pornographic swipe at the Freudian phallus (prev, Speaking About Godard, Silverman/Farocki).

Another way to put it is that in a universe of pure reason, the pleasure-principle becomes subject to pornographic manipulation and loses its freedom and zest.

At the heart of that argument is the fundamental principle that love (psyche) and sex (physique) are very closely associated. If they're not then there is a massive vacuum. This is possibly the vacuum at the heart of capital for the sake of pleasure (goods, services).

Man has culture, but in previous eras the culture has been an extension of nature. In nature, love is a fundamental principle in that birds and other creatures pair-off for purposes of breeding. The physique and the psyche - or instinct - are closely related.

If much of that is spontaneous and anarchic then it can't also be ordered and Darwinian. There are two different universes there. 

What I mean is, if birdsong is spontaneous then it can't also be an ordered result of competition. Similarly, if the throat is a spontaneous growth, it can't also be the result of a competitive order.

Similarly for members such as arms and legs; they are spontaneously symmetrical via morphogenesis. What science seems to do is expand the role of data-collection till.it becomes all there is.

For example. DNA codes for mucus glands in the throat. However, it doesn't code for the throat itself, since that is just the shape the mucus is contained in. Both are necessary, not just one. A half-truth is still s lie.

Since DNA can be allied to algorithms (numbers, ones and zeros), this whole universe is relatively anal and suppressive. The suppressive universe can easily be linked to Apollo (sun); but Apollo without Dionysus is the false Apollo (Euripides, The Bacchae, prev.)

If it's true to say we live in a false order, then the pleasure-principle is corrupted (by the profane serpent, see prev on 'clean meat' etc.)

Pleasure has to be part of the fertile universe where there exist dirt and decay, revival and regrowth, ruins and restoration. Pleasure has to be free and easy and not "driven" by reason.

I previously quoted Liza Minnelli on her concert at the NY Lyceum. They decamped to the building opposite, which turned out to be a high class brothel. 'This is life, I love it!' she shrieked.

Squalor is an organic quality that has a type of strength to it (nowadays there is a mania for "tidying", vis zones of inert apathy and coffee-binging). The same probably applied to ancient Roman cities (or more so).

The false Apollo tends to suppress charm and wit and bawdy good humour; the serpent of spontaneity that weaves between reason and pleasure in an endless pirouette (the Pacific island principle).

Call.it anarchy. The zigzag serpentine motion of spontaneous action in the universe. Feeding and fertility.

If modern Man has lost contact with that primal essence, it's clear that unity can only exist as a type of nothingness, without any unifying principle.

When Carlos Santana was speaking of "unity" (P163), it seems that what he probably meant was that primal essence as a unifying principle.

I don't want to put words in his mouth, but it gets tiresome to hear hippies speak about unity when they are so clearly sensual and anarchic by nature.

In that universe there is fertility and strength. With them.comes the power of love and communal attachment (to the soil, seed, trees).

Without such strength and robust love (the rustic and anarchic kind), talk of unity is so much hot air. With love there is also the possibility of war and defence of territory.

Well, that's history. Henry Ford said, 'History is bunk.' He's now history, July 3 1863 - April 7 1947.