Destruction of the New.. by the Old (6)

 (from Zodiac)

Tying together preceding themes without forming a Gordian knot is fairly tricky, so keeping it somewhat short..

The Dionysian urge in modernity is distinctly absent, so we have the false Apollo, or the illusion of moving forward into the future (a perpetual vanishing-point of technique.)

The psyche is joined to the proportionate rhythms of the body by a sense of the primitive. The origin of things is primitive, and so one looks to the past rather than the future.

Primitive origins, or the egg, have a certain childish simplicity. Now, as a hypothesis, everything from the point of view of Earth is to do with opposites. Everything going away from Earth is approaching the vanishing-point (or an illusion.)

Earth is found (formed) at a focal-point of opposites (sun/moon). Not exactly original thinking, but the other point is that words lose their meaning when used capriciously in the pursuit of an illusion. It's a dark psychology of compulsive distortion of natural rhythms (by the ego.)

The non-capricious use of words is to accept that luck - Fortune - exists and to just go with it. If there is a psychic reality, it affects the free-form motion of the body in active pursuits (games, hunting.)

Fortune frees the mind and body from distortions of natural rhythm. The muscles operate in antagonist pairs; the action is graceful, not logical.

Pulp futures go into the past more often than not, as is the case with Dumarest's medieval-style houses and feuds. 

.. These internal conflicts echo his impact on the people around him. He's attractive to women (because rugged bad boy) but they know they can't keep him and their family disapprove. He's a potential ally in local conflict.. but - since he has no local network - politically and socially weak when he takes sides. (Page, Blackgate.)

In some ways Tubb is a Darwinian writer of survival, but if the body is itself primitive (by origin), this changes the way one sees it. Instead of forever going into the future, survival has to balance with the traditions of the past - and it is pretty savage.

On a similar tack, I had another tooth problem, this time on the other side of the face. The pain was bad but I held on and it took over a week to subside. In other words, the body if left to its own devices can be strong enough to protect you.

This argument comes into Dumarest. One shouldn't carry it to absurd conclusions, but to experience pain is an acceptance of bodily strength. One has to take the rough with the smooth.

EVERY TIME I CRYYoutu.be/CFMz9DOhaJ8

To be rough and tough is to also be calm and joyful (full of spirit). The hypothesis is that modernity is heading in exactly the opposite direction: into a future that is not balanced or antagonistic. 

This future is an illusion of the ego. It doesn't exist, hence the present confusion. Without the psyche, all that we have is personality. Putin is falling into the same trap as America in Afghanistan: the idea that technological might is everything.

It's an illusion without the psychic dimension of rebellion, antagonism, the ancient cities and beliefs. Rebellion is strong and conveys a type of rough harmony. Tyranny is ok if one can rebel.

With technology one has to believe, so it's worse than any religion, a type of ultimate tyranny of the mind. One can't have non-believers, and this probably harks back to the invention of the transistor or first semiconductor post war. 

This instigated the cybernetic era, and therefore we are in variable time (GPS). One is then bound to believe in an electric-green future which is always tending to electricity (cybernetics or variable time.) 

This is the future of the Amazon House (see Babcock Ranch TofF2). But without the antagonism of rough living (Shanghai pig manure) there can be no revival. The physical situation of revival from decay imbues a psychic strength.

If Earth is the focal-point of opposites, then this is the reason it's no illusion. We see infinity around us: to approach it would be illusory (variable time.) It's a concept (Dr Strange).

The pseudo-future we see has no physical antagonism; no roughness, harshness, pain, and therefore no revival and no psychic strength.

Destruction of the New.. by the Old (5)

 Physical perfection has a dark psychology owing to the dichotomy that something perfect tends to suppress the dragon - the primitive, reptilian source (spine, throat.)

Into the dark psychology go all the clean and sterile advances of modernity - 'clean meat' (prev), GPS calculation, DNA editing. The profane serpent of distorted rhythm.

The basic reason for the distortion is that there are large-scale similarities that go unrecognised. Where there are large-scale similarities, Man is part of the fecund cosmos, and harmonises with it (the UVS website contains comprehensive examples.)

A harmonic cosmos (of song) cannot be physically perfect (of calculation) because obviously harmonics overlap and vibrate in a fantastically subtle sense (water supposedly does this via H-bonds in homeopathy.)

The harmonic universe is fecund- Dr Strange- like - and contains dark elements - but the elements are not suppressed. Gothic medieval is a good enough term. The dark, or what you could call the ogrish, bloody elements are part of reality and make it pretty interesting (incidentally, the anime Attack on Titan has a Gothic medieval sensibility of ogrish giants that swallow humans whole, blood drenching the screen. Probably not surprising since it's by the creators of Death Note).

Where the dragon is not suppressed, of course it can be attacked by the pure knight. The presence of blood and decay are part of the dark reality that modernity suppresses - becoming the profane serpent.

While Relative time leads to physical perfection (information, calculation), invariable time has the darkness of myth and blood (sun and moon or Earthspin). Myth and melancholy and memory give meaning to the harmonic universe. Shoot the Sun Down is for sure melancholy as opposed to meaningless and modern!

To give an extreme example, the dinosaurs were wiped-out by a mighty asteroid hitting the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. From a mythical perspective, that could be taken as Fortune, that later gave rise to the ancient gods of Mexico (Quetzalcoatl etc.)

I have always believed that all things depend on Fortune, and nothing on ourselves. (Byron)

Whereas modern people are endlessly anxious about "the next hit", harmonic Fortune gives it over to the mythical realm. But this realm only exists in invariable time (of spinning-tops - P200); the era of calculation is also the era of anxiety.

You could say: but how do we know there isn't an asteroid heading this way? The point is, there is a calculated universe, but the universe of myth is the one of belief and faith. You could spend your resources on future anxiety and live in a permanently anxious state.

After all, what is the psyche? It can best be comprehended as a type of harmonics that ties into the cosmos. Yes, the modern era has personalities, but melancholy psyche is much rarer (guys like Cat Stevens, Buffy, Paul Kantner)

Melancholy is just the other side of the coin to freeing the mind from thrall to anxiety - the gaiety of youth ('Guileless beyond hope's imagining' - Byron.) Large-scale similarities - or what you could call harmonic reality - are fecund and speak of rites of spring. Dionysus and the bull.

Trees and bent boughs and limbs intermix in the youthful spring of revival.

Suddenly,as they passed under the spreading branches of a great oak, something descended from above - something long and shining and sinuous - and draped itself over the neck of Petronel before it slipped to the ground. The mare shied and danced on her hind legs..

'What on earth was it?' demanded Nicholas. 'I thought that she would have me off this time.'

Hal extended his right hand, carefully, so as not to alarm the mare again. He was holding a long silver band.

'It's a girdle,' he said. 'A lady's girdle.'

'But where did it come from?' cried Nicholas in astonishment.

Hal lowered his voice. 'There's a maid in the tree'..

'Oh, please,' said a voice from above. 'I didn't mean to do it. I only wanted to peep, and then my girdle came undone.'

It was a girl, a little girl, younger than Nicholas. She was sitting on a cross bough, with her feet dangling and her skirt rumpled all round her.

'Who are you?' asked Nicholas. An idea had come to his mind, but he just couldn't believe it.

'I'm Cecily,' she said simply. 'I wanted to see you before you saw me, and I knew you'd come this way. So I got up into the tree..'

The relief was so tremendous that Nicholas began to laugh. It was not only relief from the fright with Petronela, but also relief from his dread. He had worked himself into a state of misery about meeting his betrothed. And here she was, not a fine lady nor a prim young mistress, nut just a naughty girl up a tree. As he laughed Cecily began to laugh too. Then Hal joined in, and the three of them laughed till they could scarcely stop. (Cynthia Harnett, The Wool-Pack, page 103)

The gaiety and sexuality of living in the wild forest comprise really the myth of psyche, the song of the cosmos. Without the large-scale similarities, one is compressed by calculation in a mini-world that convinces the ego.

(illos by Harnett)

The day ends with a late dinner by candelight and congenial conversation with friends over a couple of mugs of mulled wine. While you and the dog enjoy the warmth of the big stone fireplace, you read a few pages of an essay on freedom by Thomas Jeffersob. Then you both climb the Dutch-tiled stairs. The distant sound of the grandfather clock in the hallway - eleven chimes - confirms it's time to retire. The last thing you see before you drop off to sleep is the view through the bedroom window: bright stars shining through a clear atmosphere, unclouded by smog or artificial lights of any kind. (Grace Slick, Somebody to Love? memoir page 25 chapter 1798 or 1998?) 

Psyche BWS

As was previously suggested (ND3), the wordless world is the original one (of myth), but we live in a topsy-turvy world where words define the physical reality.

The dark psychology exists in the calculated world, but cannot exist in the fecund cosmos. Words (news) nowadays have lost their reality for that reason. The neutralizing dragon sterilises reality in the compulsion to create illusory order.

The opposite tendency is to simply leave things to decay and fester and stage periodic revivals. Leaving things entails metamorphosis (see Buffy quote) and the disorder that creates order (songs round the campfire.)

In a world of calculation, leaving things be is not a ready option ('Let it fester, friends'). That's the dark psychology and compulsion that entices the ego of acolytes. The dichotomy of physical perfection with the personality that abandons psyche and melancholy for a futuristic illusion that can never exist without the profane serpent of distorted rhythms.

(see Zodiac)

Destruction of the New.. by the Old (4)

The film ends on a downbeat note with only Rainbow (Walken) and Sunbearer (Martinez) standing.

"Where will the wind take you?"

"To the Alamo"

(the Texan war standoff)

Leaping on his horse, Sunbearer hazards,

"The old ones say, nothing lives long but the mountains and the earth."

The last image is of the parasol, marking the woman's grave, blowing away.

The wheel of Montezuma they were rolling off, the hazy sun, the bullseye target, the parasol. Round emblems of a stark, desert symbolism.

Symbols of the desert are life and death things. The scuttling lizard, the vulture that lands on the staked-out Rainbow. They speak of psyche or the wordless meaning of the cosmos.

There was a piece on Raphael in DT, and I sent this (unpublished) letter.

Alastair Sooke has this tendency I've noticed of protesting too much about detractors of Raphael. If you divide art into the physical or the psyche as an experience, Raphael can't be faulted on the former. It's the psyche that lacks depth. This is presumably something like what the Pre-Raphaelites felt in the 19th century, that Raphael was the initiator of a trend to physical perfection at the expense of psyche. Now at the end of Modernism we have the physical perfection of science. What is lacking, is the question that springs to mind 

Modernism is the perfection of one thing at the expense of another, which is the meaning of the cosmos (epistemology). The words of Sunbearer are completely antipathetic to modernity, but it could simply prove that we live in a hyper-realistic illusion.

What appears to be physical perfection is illusory (Apollo) because without the psyche everything is an illusion. In other words, physical reality is far from perfection, but it is cosmically real.

The Beguiling of Merlin

Burne-Jones' gnarled boughs are tangled in an expression of Merlin's fraught brows, under the gaze of the Lady of the Lake. The physical reality is composed of large-scale similarities that are seen in branches, trunks, limbs, the strewn stars over the crescent moon.

The large-scale similarities (see Haeckel prev) enable differences to be perceived. The tangled and incestuously clinging lines (vines) of nature echo a type of cosmic fecundity.

Dr Strange (DNO3) has this cosmic erotic frisson (in the comely shape of Clea), gnarled and steaming. The human being is not alone in the cosmos because of these large-scale similarities, which is where myth starts.

Dr Strange #3 1974 (reprint of Lee/Ditko)

Lines metamorphose one into the other in a type of cosmic debauchery that knows no boundaries. The lines themselves animate the forms.

Where Ditko is all vibrant lines, Brunner is formal and less esoteric (still pretty good, obviously!)

The sun spins in the desert wind, the body reels under the sun, the wheel spins, the crescent moon flickers under the tired gaze. The spinning universe exists in invariable time because otherwise there cannot conceivably be any primordial rhythms (see spinning-top P200 HB209) and UVS.)

Invariable time is mythic time, and activates psyche. In other words, we live inside an illusion that appears physically perfect but where the psyche is inactive or dormant.

Psyche has to depend on invariable time, where all things are connected in spinning rhythms. The expressive line conveys this universal psyche. Japanese anime, for instance, is pretty good at this, and points to the opposite direction from Raphael's perfectionism.

Japanese popular prints strongly influenced Western art styles in the 19th century (Art Nouveau, Mucha) with their sinuously sexy and expressionistic verve. Large-scale similarities enable the psyche to be imbued.

Hokusai

Margaret Brundage
Sinuous, flowing vibrancy

If physical perfection is an illusion of the West (the ego or the head), this applies to literally everything. For example, the GPS calculations of Relative time that  distort cosmic rhythms (see prev.) The perfectibility applies to a universe of brainwaves or electromagnetism, akin to the corporate Cyclan demons in the Dumarest pulp series.

From Raphael to Einstein, the illusion is perfect, the psyche ever-more dormant.

Destruction of the New.. by the Old (3)

The expressive psyche of debauched linework is something that connects Egon Schiele (see HB199) with Ditko's Dr Strange. A line that is fertile, and without fertility there can be no renewal. The dichotomy of nature is the land of death and revival - even more clearly delineated in Noto's "Red Lace".

Ditko is a stranger to straight lines.

The Brothers Hernandez have synthesized a lurud and fascinating world out of Steve Ditko's paranoid skylines and the more shadowy and garbage-filled corners of Gasoline Alley..(Alan Moore, Love and Rockets book one.)

His linework contradicts his later enthrallment to Rand's Objectivism and, in Dr Strange, the deathlike figures such as Eternity and Dormammu's sister Umar of the Dark Dimension, speak of the conquest of fear that is associated with the forest of death and rebirth (see Gilgamesh).

This is essentially the Gothic situation that was partially usurped by Renaissance ideals (see especially Dürer, prev.) The idealism of death may seem somewhat negative, but within it harbours the physical strength that is our birthright.

Essentially, science only knows what science tells it (to know); it's logical as opposed to a dynamic balance of cosmic strength and fertility. Once the mirror of illusions is entered, the ego is convinced by the numerous straight lines that feed the logical processes 

This culminates in the Relativity of time and GPS calculations of distorted rhythm - see the spinning-top of Earth (and sun and moon) and BWS 'Artemis and Apollo' P200 etc.

GPS is convincing to the brain, and in fact leads to a universe of electromagnetism or pure brainwaves - as opposed to the physical reality of spinning bodies (the fates). The 'free' market enters the mirror of illusions, which is where we are now.

A free-market has no interest in revival from death and therefore no interest in strength or fertility. HB199 cites India PM Modi's reluctant acquiescence to the small farmers over free-market principles that would decimate their lifestyle.

As noted there, small farmers are economically inefficient but ecologically efficient, and the ramshackle habitats retain pests that otherwise are driven-out to become toxic parasites (as with Covid; see Minnesota Institute of Environment.)

Modi can count himself lucky; he has stepped-back from the Western - and Chinese - mirror of illusions; a world of weakness and infertility, of noxious chemicals and feeble cows.

Here's a link that spells-out how convincing the illusion is once inside. Genus (ignore pictures) is researching genetic ways to breed cows with 'friendly' digestive tracts. The trouble is, cows that are grass-grazed on Alpine slopes are not methane polluters; the research is purely for the enfeebled lifestyle of shed-kept herds (see prev.)

This leads directly to Weekend and Grace Slick's quote on "anal-compulsives". The physical strength and fertility of a natural system constitutes a lifestyle that is hardened and is not susceptible to genetic tricks of the ego-compulsive head. 

Where there is untidiness and a physical state of almost debauchery, the psyche is strong and relatively relaxed. One doesn't have to go as far as Charles Manson to reach this state; it's a physically natural situation of the fields and the herds.

This state is relatively visible if one watches certain old westerns. I picked-up Shoot the Sun Down the other day, and it is clearly superior to anything modern. There are long spells of silence; long shots onto rock bluffs and Apaches; close shots of horse fetlocks and dainty steps. There is zero shot/counter-shot (N3).

Deliberately Sergio Leone-ish, the score chimes with insolent Spanish brass. Filmic to a fault, an Apache and a Navajo are played by half-natives A. Martinez and Sacheen Littlefeather (known as Brando's rep!) 

The physical strength of the settings delineates psyche also to a fault. The problem with having excessive dialogue is that films are filmic and horses don't speak. We get strength and inherent fertility in the English maiden (Margot Kidder) sold to a surly sea-dog.

SHOOT

Strength is proto-verbal or poetic; the lost world moderns have all-but forgot; the dried buffalo manure of Buffy Saint-Marie (HB70) and

GENERATION