Hyborian Bridge 145

Well, I was reading in The Record on how Obama and Biden established an unequal corporate America which allowed-in Trump. If America is now a company, is that company corrupt in the way the mining franchises in Outland are (P148)?

As I was attempting to delineate, Outland is not so much corrupt as allowing the dollar to carry everything in its path including human flotsam. If the dollar is successful then everyone is happy – even if they’re not.

The flawed logic is behind Trump’s thinking and, as The Record says, is alomg similar lines to the Democrats. With Trump the process is easy to decipher since the lives lost to coronavirus don’t seem to worry him.

Superficially, this is much more like the Io franchise boss than others. However, the mindset that thinks the dollar is good goes right across the board; John Wayne said High Noon was anti-American, so I wonder what he’d have made of Outland?

The older books such as Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter are clear on this, as are events like the Salem witch trials (dramatized by Arthur Miller).

The corruption of the Indian wars is legendary. Corruption is unfortunate, like a sprained ankle, but it’s the product of natural societies that are not tyrannised by order and “fact”.

In Outland the officials are following instructions so that’s not so much corruption as lack of corruption. Connery, as the heroic lone wolf, is a law unto himself.

OUTLAND

The difference between a law officer and an outlaw un American history is moot, the one becoming the other. The chief thing is they possess the reflexes and instincts of a killer and so can do the job. This is as true of Django as of Outland.

What this implies is that both law and outlaw are governed by the body, as opposed to the head. They run on instinct. The body isn’t run by the CNS, it’s a product of muscle; of autonomic responses like breathing; of endocrine (hormones) all of which need to balance (yoga).

America as a corporation is heading towards a basic lack of balance owing to this fact. The ones that run it are white males that belong to the Anglo-fraternity that worships the dollar. Alongside the Silicon-valley data-heads.

However, the Earth is also a body, the body of Ymir, the fir trees, the boulders and canyons (). When Gates announced his pathogen-killing toilet () he must not have realized that the soil and its natural crumbling texture is the most effective pathogen-killer. He merely replaces a natural process with one that destroys fields and forests (see Adastra in Africa)

The reason he didn’t know this is probably that he didn’t want to. He is a true believer in number and algorithmic technology, and to “them” this is a green technology.

This allies with Biden’s “green revolution” () that would convert processes to electrical. All these trends go one way; towards order, number, algorithm (electromagnetism). But this world of the head is not the true world, which is one of balance.

The strength of an ecosystem lies in the different animals pursuing their different ways in a low-scale war that has no reconciliation.

Ian Botham (DT) has been writing bout how gamekeepers who manage predators for farmers, by shooting crows etc, are under threat from lobbyists. The lobbyists are under the impression shooting is unnecessary.

AS Botham points out, they’ve never seen the pecked-out eyes of new-born lambs. In nature nothing is reconciled and one can only achieve a precarious balance; the independent operator in-the-field has that in their sights.

What “they” call order is always a euphemism for a system that is run by the head as opposed to the athletic body (of a ranger) living amongst wild things. Different things have a strength of psyche that gives them a natural affinity (see Outremer

P11

)

When different things come together, the primitive simplicity conquers. Or that is to say that rhythm and instinct of the body-in-action predominate over the illusions of technological advance.

The head is in thrall to this advance while the body isn’t. There is no reconciliation; it’s a war. The warrior will use the technology as Django does a revolving machine-gun but he dopesn’t need it. A colt 45 will do just as well, so long as the reflexes are there.

DJANGO

You may recall Jean-Luc Godard’s quote cinema is truth “24 frames a second” (). That is to say, action and interesting things that transpire, such as the preceding clip. From the truth comes a story; destiny, faith, life and death.

The Godard-esque ideal is for the action to tell the story almost like a silent film. In this is a simplicity that conquers; the simplicity itself is the story.

This puts the body and its symmetries to the fore; the irreconcilable balance in that it’s impossible to change the form of a body.

ALPHAVILLE

Without the simplicity, physical reality is difficult to pin down and with it psychic strength evaporates. The head (of the acolyte) is able to achieve a reconciliation with order (“fact”), which then becomes the technological order of words (numbers).

While the likes of Perry () are able to work against technology with playful intent to simple effect, there is no reconciliation and we are in the world of the dancing body.

RETURN OF DJANGO

..but also the world of the decaying body, the physical reality of cyclical symmetries of body and earth. The lightness of Django is very affecting owing to the dark reality. We are psychically strengthened .

The exit mentality that seeks to avoid such dark realities is illusory and weak. Its very weakness attracts the ego (number). Outside of this illusion are the dark goddesses of fertility – Ishtar and obscene cults, see Yaple

HB106

Darkness is simply the other side of gaiety and rejoicing in the renewal of new life. The world of irreconcilable differences that is psychically strong, fairly filthy, clean limbed and often affable, unless..

Pictorial 148

As readers of L&R will be aware, Maggie quickly abandoned her Mechanicos sci-fi storylines, so much so that the title is almost a misnomer.

What is probably more true to say is that the characters live on the outskirts of a technological world; they use it but it does not use them. They get the leftovers of Capri and so forth (). Maggie lives in the physical world of decay, as her moniker from the first book might suggest.

Technology cannot share this world since it has the optimism of an exit from the cyclical underworld (P147)

If technology is “advanced” it is because it has this exit strategy via number from the underworld (see Gates’ tribal-culture destroying tech-toilet HB31) However, this leads to a future of rote that is psychically weak.

The primitive in reality is the figurative reality that gives life meaning. One way to look at it is that a future without the primitive is a technological hell-hole, somewhat like Outland, the 1981 sci-fi movie starring Sean Connery as a marshall resembling Gary Cooper’s in High Noon.

Taking a note from Lee Perry, hell is “very low” while heaven is “very high” (Oxygen 4). The primitive version of “very high” is figurative symmetry, or the notions of celestial heaven propounded by such as Milton.

The primitive version of “very low” would be primal chaos. There is a way of thinking that says chaos is simply lack of symmetry,. Such as the perfection of female form.

The notion of technology without the primitive is a figment of the exit mentality that is an ego-compulsion (of number). From that perspective, the Anglo-world is a compulsive one, while the Latin/Caribbean one is more natural. Perry’s imaginative light touch with technology reflects his philosophy of the “Super Ape”, something not unlike the comic book superhero.

UNDERGROUND

The Super Ape is Man as a species who lives underground as well as overground; who is aware of the primitive power that corrupts.

The romantics, from Byron to Howard to Kirby to BWS have a primitive power that doesn’t bow to technology. Stories are driven by primal forces. Mad Max is the archetypal example of technology that appears primitive owing to this war between the untamed and the technological.

The hero (here Mel Gibson) is a muscular throwback; never a robot, a natural man with a manly aura (Django is another archetype). His primal strength is never subdued; his untamed soul is at war.

This war is required for stories to have psychic strength and depth. The Kaluta/Lee Starstruck is another example of the neverending conflict between advance and primitive beliefs.

Beliefs are to do with physical reality rather than numerical compulsions. Without the physical there can be no revival from corruption and decay. The psychic strength that is contained in Jaime’s stories of Maggie is testament to this.

Corruption you could say is the lack of the tyranny of order (“fact”) that renders societies fascistic. This is the narrow escape that America has achieved from a 2-term Trump scenario. If one thinks of a future Trumps-scape allied with Silicon Valley assholes it’s as close to hell-on-Earth as one can imagine.

Outland is quite a good take on the age-old hero as an agent of integrity counteracting chaotic advance (in this case corporate). The strong have a primal belief in themselves while the weak are gullible suckers for any techno-escape that is an exit to nowhere.

Pictorial 147

Joining together the last several posts – from Jaime Hernandez to magic realism and psyche (Faith) – lines can express physically the psyche that is hidden in time.

Lines that are not factual are true psychically – through the magic realism of Jaime (P144, 145). Jaime’s brother Gilbert is known for his exaggerated female shapes and, actually, the female figure is an ideal example of a line that is not factual.

A factual line – whether curved or straight – doesn’t have the inherent stresses of rhythmic proportion. For a start, why is the female figure curved? The reason is to be able to give birth to the human head or, in other words, the wisdom of the species.

That tells you that the lines are fundamentally symmetrical, head to tail. The perfection of line is a product of primeval symmetry that articulates the figure.

Another way of putting it is that the numbers attached to a figure – 31, 25, 34 – demonstrate the inherent symmetry of the universe.

Whereas modern numbers are attached to algorithms and logical constructs (of politicians or economists), primeval numbers are not.

Taking that a stage further, men and women of faith in the Middle Ages were much more Pythogorean and mystical than are moderns. It all depends if you think the universe is symmetrical or not! (this goes back to Katie Bourman’s black hole HB56)

In that the information we’re given by “them” has no inherent symmetry, it could be a type of ego-compulsion that attaches numbers to certain things that are attractive to the ego (of acolytes). As I’ve been arguing for awhile, the ego-compulsion to remove dirt implies a society that has no decadence and so no revival from disorder or abandon (see Detroit Drama3). Decadence or decay is simply society left to abandon – as parts of America often are owing to economic downturn.

However, if the psyche is kept strong and independent, revival can take place. The physical world decays so that is reality. Strength of psyche comes from maintaining that as a basis of the society.

It is shown in a roughness of living that allows-in dirt and disorder. There is muscular action in-the-field and the lines of nature change through metamorphosis (growth, decay cycle). Compare this with the ego-compulsions of “clean meat” (prev) that allow-in the profane serpent! The traditional societies have a symmetry in terms of the fundamentals of life and death, the lifecycles of nature. The psychic reality is hidden within the symmetries of time that define a strong physical establishment.

A DAY FOR THE HUNTER, A DAY FOR THE PREY

Symmetries are not factual, but they are primal and powerful. One can see them displayed in the designs and lighting of religious establishments.

Religious societies, such as Turkey or India or Iran, have more proportionate, symmetrical power in their establishments that the West, for that reason. Despite everything else, the west’s financial power is weak and has no access to primitive realism.

We may scoff at Milton’s highfalutin phrases, but they have a primal power that Blake captures in his prints (HB145). By going into a factual reality, the west has departed from the primal power that lives in time and expressive line.

This world is found in comic books – be it Kirby or the Hernandez Bros – and also in 60s hippies and rhythmic patterns such as Jamaican dub or other West Indian styles.

The psychic truth is hidden from the compulsive-ego that is attracted to geometry and perspective (number). Blake’s print of Newton has him seemingly unaware of his surroundings in a fantastical coral deep underwater!

Scanning the net, I didn’t see a like interpretation to the one in P59 that the brain is transmuted into the body, ie looking at a silhouette of the brain. It seems to be a print that is capable of varied interpretations to those who prefer visions and fantasies to the cold hard “facts” of reality.

This is partly why I’ve been intent on saying that because the modern order is so attractive to the ego doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not an illusion (of the mind).

Facts are very convincing, by definition, but they may refer to an abnormal reality that is weak and nor strong. A primitive reality is strong, and physical as opposed to mental.

The physical strength of an animal in movement and combat is a type of music; the spine is the bass-note that defines the form, gives it flexibility.

If reality is really a war between the technical and the untamed (Bruce Lee prev) then the music of the spine is not recorded in the modern order. None of the musical aspects of figure appear in DNA. Basically, that’s why DNA is factual and not figurative. After all, a figure is a product of balance – where is balance? It’s something like Plato’s idealism.

While facts do not inhabit a figurative reality (of form) they cannot deny the physique, and hence this idea that the brain transmutes into a body which is as inert as Newton’s in Blake’s print. In other words, because numbers are so convincing to the ego (algorithms), there is a scatological compulsion owing to the reality of the physique (see Slick quote HB62/1). A society of pure number and ego seems to be one where rubbish-removal and work need to be almost equivalent. In other words, there is no work where the body is physically active in areas where there are processes occurring that are cyclical and not simply to do with exit. That is to say, dirt and metamorphosis in-the-field (fertility).

The seeming scatology of Blake’s print points to a physical reality. Milton’s Paradise Lost is full of scatological references in that that is the reality of processes that corrupt and so forth.

The active body is muscle-in-motion that weaves shapes and performs acts of athleticism. The body is strong because it is non-factual; the ego attempts to confine things to the factual area, and make them weak. Fact becomes infertile.

The moon – or the feminine principle of fertility– is equal and opposite to the sun. The problem with data is that there is no fundamental psychic reality. Where there is a fundamental – or absolute – reality, one has interpretations, myths and so on.

There is a real problem with the modern mainstream, which is hooked on numbers as the absolute standard! I noticed that John Bolton (DT) said let’s get back to Reaganism, which means the dollar. There is little to choose between Bolton and Trump really; both support and America of pure order with no corruption or decadence. Whereas it’s a strength that America can be corrupt (as India can). There’s a less monetary tyranny; it’s more natural.

Only Kanye West is into a sort of post-hippy hybrid-rusticity that incorporates lifecycle. In his case it’s cotton cutting in Wyoming, but could involve mixed plantations. No mainstream politico/economo can go that route since they deal solely in numbers ($), infertile facts. The underlying physical reality and hence psychic strength escapes them.

Pictorial 146

The Record, which posted some cute pictures of Connery and his granddaughter, also had a piece on his well-known comments in Playboy on the merits of smacking a bitch (first wife).

It’s easy to pick on this, but for someone with a primitive, manly vigour, physical acts tend to be instinctive. The restraint is there too, but what “they” want is for no acts to be physical, only verbal.

However, sex is physical. Clearly, they want no primitive vigour to be expressed unless in the bed! To my mind it’s just a way of departing from physical norms that are justifiable expressions of the human being – as a body not a detached head.

To be manly is to be restrained; the two go together. The body is an expressive instrument, 10s of thousands of years old in memory and meaning (story.)

"Sean of Steel"

“He was not able to express himself latterly. At least he died in his sleep and it was just so peaceful. I was with him all the time and he just slipped away. It was what he wanted.”  Micheline Roquebrune, who paints gaily but she and Connery must have hit it off quickly so you can assume there are certain similarities of resolute steeliness. Life is not completely gay in that things die; the story of the lifecycle is what counts.

There are foul-smelling waters that hint at decay and ultimate revival (prev). Dreams of rebirth are real.

"Then I dreamed I saw this man. I was in his arms. And I thought 'At last, peace'. The next day I went back to the tournament and that was that!

This stage of the lifecycle ends when the psyche departs the body. Ancient tribes used to put old ones out to die; it’s a tough way to slaughter someone, but in terms of the lifecycle it’s essentially correct. The earth will receive them and the cycle continues. Our societies think that the fact of life is more important than the psyche (cases such as Michael Scumacher.)

Roquebrune is content and that’s that. There is a strength there that in modernity becomes a suffocating weakness of care. There is a physical reality that moves things forward.

We in the modern scene are servants of the machine rather than its masters. This was brought home to me by an extended listening to Lee Perry’s (prev) early recosdings on Trajan from the mid 60s.

What started off as reggae and rock-steady gradually metamorphoses into something simpler and better, with a lot of voice overdubs and reworked sounds. Perry had his own radio-shack and was known for his idiosyncratic sleight-of-hand.

OPERATION

What struck me is that the primal elements are established by his imaginative colour of rhythm and melody, broken-down rumpty-tumpty rather than rote. Whereas a machine can become rote, Perry works against that to establish his mark. Feelings are playful and primitive and instinctive and childlike and this power conquers the tendency of technology to become banal.

A year or so later he established his Black Ark sound-studio which has become legendary (and later burnt down!) Primitive simplicity can conquer the tendency of technology to dominate and dictate. Think of a 60s VW camper van.

See Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, prev. Kantner’s Blows Against the Empire is another example of hippy vibes

HIJACK conquering technology.

The primal elements are simple, stark, clear and not dominated. As Bruce Lee said of his fighting style () it’s a war between a wild beast and a robot, the two are never reconciled.

The attempt of modernity to reconcile facts with robotics is doomed to failure. The likes of Richard Dawkins whining about memes and information are the polar opposite to Robert Robertson (HB60)

Robertson speaks of historical and physical truths that resonate psychically. He was, incidentally, a Scottish nationalist much like Connery; both men of steel who were ready to repel invaders!

Primeval elements conquer technology with simplicity. It’s a war, not a reconciliation. The primal female form is the triumph of swaying rhythmical simplicity and force over such minor details as DNA, which has neither primal rhythm nor psyche. Logical junk composed of “facts” which can easily be abnormal or weak (see micro-evolution HB132)

 

 

Pictorial 145

The intensity of line in Jaime is something else and self-admittedly this is something that has previously been made less than clear. Pictorial 12 comparing Durer and Leonardo with confusedly abstract results!

It’s worth noting that the complete mix of geometry with line is very classical, for a start. The fact the geometry ISN’T perfect makes the style so great.

Modern cartooning styles would be inconceivable without the geometrical underpinning; but on the other hand the intensity of line is equally essential or you end up with Pixar. The Spanish tend to have a flair for this, with guys like Esteban Maroto and Jaime (not to mention Picasso).

It’s the flair for dashing a line down that has a solid basis in geometrical curves. The line is expressive but the geometry is not.

Durer seemed to come at the midway junction between medieval and classical in that he was much more fastidious as opposed to classically geometrical. Leonardo had both cartooning ability and the eye for sensual line.

If you relate this to societies, feudalism is unresolved action and much more tied to the expressive line than to the certainty of geometrical space. Our societies are the exact opposite; everything takes place in resolved space, composed of factoid “bits” that are endlessly spouted.

A geometrical society of perspective and “facts” is very persuasive for that reason, but lacks the subtle grace and truth of the expressive line.

The expressive line is the world of action, of decay, the hunt, regrowth and revival. Cartoonists, because they have to deal in line, you could say have more facility in depicting those aspects of reality than does the mainstream media.

Free-form line doesn’t judge what is desirable from a perspective of order and government or economics, merely what is desirable aesthetically and morally. The socially undesirable are given equal sway. One thinks of Watchmen, Swamp Thing, facets of Love and Rockets. Kirby’s monstrous forms.

Kirby’s creative truth is a mixture of geometry and intensity (HB142). Smith’s insistency on his greatness demonstrates a faith in the power of line to express truth.

Line doesn’t exist without time – ie the expression – and this is what the modern world seems to have lost in its all-out pursuit of technique (geometry, perspective.)

If one looks at medieval philosophers, they were basically believers – people of faith – who dabbled in Aristotle. Faith was the given, the psychic reality that expresses truth.

Thomas Aquinas was a churchman first, a philosopher second. Quite a good example is William Ockham – of Ockham’s razor – to whom Aristotle dealt in facts rather than truth (faith). Facts can be manipulated. One example is that Aristotle talks of a coiled rope and a straight rope being “different things”. Ockham contradicts this by stating that a coiled rope can be measured and uncoiled, so it is the same thing.

These are purely technical matters of viewing nature (like Ockham’s razor that classifies by simplifying) rather than a psychic truth. However, since Galileo, maths has become “truth”. Where is the psychic reality hidden?

It could well be hidden in time. The Latino magic realist Borges wrote a great deal on time. Especially the idea of moving along a labyrinth that forks; the routes one takes dictated by temporal events.

If faith is temporal then it is also the expression of line in time. In terms of the rope cited, a snake coils in convulsive movements of line; it’s the line that is the reality, the muscular convulsions in time; oiled lightning.

The expressive force is primal and creative, a reality outside the geometrical one of maths and number. This reality is hidden in a modern society (of order, of the head) but become visible in comic art and rhythmic musical patterns like dub.

The modern order convinces the ego with a type of nothingness of number, almost a type of junk without the primal rhythmic patterns of old. Words displace the old order of muscular action in-the-fields.

Primitive expressive line is seen in the expressions of magic realism that reflect the psyche. The lines are not factual, but are true psychically.

HYborian Bridge 144

There are those I suppose who may think I’ve got snakes on the brain, like Elektra from Idomeneo (). Howard was keenly aware of the serpentine power in sorcerous hands; oddly enough, in The Shadow Kingdom, dragons are the enemies and destroyers of snakes, which seems to go against most mythology.

One could go round town on Jung and Campbell not to mention the Norse sagas. There’s also Milton and his illustrator Blake.

The 6-headed Jupiter Heliopolitanus from Paradise Lost

DEADLY FUNNY, OXYGEN 4  (Miltonian symmetry)

Rather than get into deep mythology (and water) it’s enough really to say that primitive rhythm has a double standard; it can go both ways, good or bad, wise or evil – cf “devi” or deity-devil.

The double standard is what you see in the rough gardening of Monty Don (HB143). Slugs or caterpillars are “bad” but the balance of the garden requires them to be there in sufficient numbers to be “good” by attracting feeding birds.

This double standard is the physical reality of flesh and blood and bone that the modern order has dismissed from the Garden of Eden (supposedly).

WOODSTOCK

Without the double-standard there is another standard which, as I’ve been saying for awhile, can become a type of logical junk. This could be known as the “zero standard”, where instead of a physical ambiance of irregular lines and a sort of mish-mash of roughness with some order, there is number and algorithm.

This is the mainstream order as represented by such new towns as Neom in Saudi Arabia - or Babcock Ranch in USA TofF2

A double standard has to let in foulness, which could be something like stagnant water (Jaime Hernandez P144). It could be just plain manure or dried-out for fuel (see Buffy quote HB70)

All these things basically metamorphose, so there is an ever-changing situation. In a land of pure order, the scents of metamorphosis that can waft on the breeze are repugnant to “them”. That is, the heads that run the efficient systems.

Except it’s not really efficient; the human organism requires some exposure to germs in order to acquire immunity and thus health – especially in free-ranging kids!

Therefore, the entire logical order that is science-based is fairly fallacious. The primal serpent has not  been ejected from our modern scene, merely replaced by profane meat (see prev.) There’s no denying primal rhythm – associated psyche – and it can be found in the 60s hippy era or Jamaican dub or

COOL BLUE

A society without primal rhythm is bound to be weak and psychically dependent on profane meat. Some places are better than others (see Detroit Drama3) but overall the picture is of increasing numerical dependency in a profane algorithmic universe of junk. Junk or “zero-standard”, neither strong nor wise nor evil.

The primeval and sinuous metamorphosis of materials is strength and lustiness. There is no such thing as pure hygiene in terms of health, only dirt and cleanliness. Hygiene, or logical junk, is simply the ego-compulsion that attaches number to the removal of dirt. Ironically, junk is lack of dirt! This is born out by the previous stuff on Fulling (HB60) where stale urine and mud were the first detergents used by early societies.

The reason is that dirt is strong, cleansing, as is the prairie on the fertile ground. All that’s fairly obvious so why do “they” not get it?
Because they don’t want to; they are true believers in number and subservient to their egos. In the land of the ego (head) they tell us stories to keep us subservient to number and the proclamations of politicians and economists.

Stories that tell us lies and abnormal facts about DNA and "clean meat" ( HB143

). Abnormal facts are the new normal that tells us fertility on the range is not a necessary strength.

The order they promote is infertile and this ushers in a new norm of infertile stock run by algorithms; a licentious base for sexualised gadgets of profane lust.

The abnormal facts of production deprive work of the strength of roughness and give us smoothness and psycho-sexual dependency. Facts that are a type of weakness that doesn't have the balance and proportion of things that run and hunt in the fields and forests.

The news we are given is factual, but not true in terms of balance and proportion. In order for that to happen the society we inhabit has to have a roughness and lack of order that allows in a primeval reality that is strong psychically, that gives physical health to kids. That has wisdom and sin if you like.

Our societies are neither psychic nor physical; they have only one standard, of number represented by the monetary order of the dollar. The old vernacular America and the old world had a dual standard of roughness – of freedom and order – that Howard and the Texas Junto were more or less in league with as rustic westerners.

Here’s hoping that Trump loses since he is just one more pseud in a society of pseuds. His so-called strength is a lie born of hi-tech and low-psychology; he lies with numbers because they have a pseudo accuracy (see Slick quote HB62/1 and Lindsay Anderson Outtake 6). If Biden gets in at least that leaves an opening for West in another four years. A rural upswing - fiddlers and cowboys out on the moonlit prairies.

Hyborian Bridge 143

“Slugs are a symptom of a problem – they always want plants that are dying or overfed. It’s all about having healthy plants and a balanced holistic garden. If you don’t want caterpillars, you need birds that eat caterpillars, but you have to have some or they’ll go somewhere else. It’s all about balance”.. Don now prides himself on being a bit scruffy to encourage hedge-hogs, bugs and the birds which feast on insects.. “Curlews have perhaps the most hauntingly beautiful of all birdcalls, and their call marks the seasons. Then they were silent. And starlings..” (Monty Don, DT)

In such milieux, line and time are more or less in rhyme, with the constant movement and metamorphosis of materials. An organic farm works on exactly the same principle of messiness that allows in predators.

Messiness and untidiness basically imply there are many more broken lines and interesting fiddly bits. Another way of saying it is that this isn’t resolved space.

Whereas modern societies increasingly live in resolved space, where such as mini-drones are cruising about, a healthy society lives in unresolved space – fields, prairies and the like.

Where there are dirt and prey and crumbs of soil the human organism is exposed to germs and develops immunities, especially frolicking children().

The problem is that resolved space is very attractive to the ego, being composed of numbers and perspective. This issue is hinted at in Greek pottery, where the abstract, geometrical designs are sketched out manually, meaning they are not perfect. They have individual expression.

The vitality of expressive line in Greek art is attested to by New York’s own Fine Arts Building

Motto “No day without a line”

Attributed to ancient painter Apelles.

Pliny tells two anecdotes – the first of which relates to skill of cartooning.

Many years later, while travelling by sea, a storm forced Apelles to land in Ptolemy's Egyptian kingdom. Ptolemy's jester was suborned by Apelles' rivals to convey to the artist a spurious invitation to dine with Ptolemy. Apelles' unexpected arrival enraged the king. Ptolemy demanded to know who had given Apelles the invitation, and with a piece of charcoal from the fireplace Apelles drew a likeness on the wall, which Ptolemy recognized as his jester in the first strokes of the sketch.^[6]

A straight line drawn by an artist is not perfect; it fluctuates with the tremor of creativity. The second anecdote could relate to this tensile vibration that animates even lines that appear straight.

Apelles travelled to Protogenes' home in Rhodes to make the acquaintance of this painter he had heard so much about. Arriving at Protogenes' studio, he encountered an old woman who told him that Protogenes was out and asked for his name so she could report who had enquired after him. Observing in the studio a panel Protogenes had prepared for a painting, Apelles walked over to the easel, and taking up a brush told the servant to tell Protogenes "this came from me," and drew in colour an extremely fine line across the panel. When Protogenes returned, and the old woman explained what had taken place, he examined the line and pronounced that only Apelles could have done so perfect a piece of work; Protogenes then dipped a brush into another colour and drew a still finer line above the first one, and asked his servant to show this to the visitor should he return. When Apelles returned, and was shown Protogenes' response, ashamed that he might be bettered, he drew in a third colour an even finer line between the first two, leaving no room for another display of craftsmanship. On seeing this, Protogenes admitted defeat, and went out to seek Apelles and meet him face-to-face

The two aspects of geometry and expression in nature and in traditional crafts (and Renaissance art) always go together, whereas in modern societies perfection is seen as the accurate and factual reality. The problem is, an expressive line is not factual, it doesn’t inhabit resolved space. It is muscular coordination, flexing of hand, primal rhythm and instinctive intensity.

Therefore, that entire area of expressive reality is outside the bounds of modernity. In one of CC Beck’s columns (TCJ 121) he describes his designing work for cross-stitch embroidery. The abstraction makes it a craft, in his opinion, and the good craftsman can be an artist.

These two things, abstraction and expressive line, define art and craft – but also a society that lives in time in the sense of allowing natural events and metamorphosis to take place in the messy, untidy areas of village, town and prairie.

The patina of time is stopped when everything that counts as rubbish is swept away and all is in resolved space. The ego () is satisfied and all is apparently well.

Except that the basic health – physical and psyche – is left out of the equation. A resolved space is right for robots and druggies! Irresolved space is healthy, messy and with a physical and psyche vigour that applies especially to kids. The tidy premise is essentially wrong and can just become a type of logical junk.

Another way of putting it is that a line has quality – see Pirsig 

HB36

Going back to ancient history, the portrait of Alexander the Great by Apelles’s contemporary Lysippos established a leonine type that resounded through the centuries.

As Kirby said in an interview, fans lionise the characters in comics, and the propagandist Alexander was the first in history to appoint an artist for that task.

Like all such illos, it’s not realism but heightened realism by way of the vibrant line of a master craftsman.

Without that establishment of line, the muscular hand loses its grasp on reality and the abstractions of the head take over. This is where we are today in the geometrical world of sorcerers! Geometry is not expressive – the greatness is lost.

Quality and rhythmic line cannot be kept hermetically sealed in a box that is specifically to attract the ego of acolytes. It is our physical reality, compulsive and erotic.

Alexander the Great’s mother, Olympias, was a devotee of Dionysus and allegedly slept with snakes.

Tensile stress of convulsive line and writhings. This is also the land of scatological puns a la Mozart and such jokes as “Cleopatra’s asp.” (see HB18)

The ancient world in that sense is realistic and expressive and not trapped inside a head of illusory reason (see Aristophanes )

P47

The problem is that a political world – of the head – is not aware of primal line, or the thing that expresses in time what things become.

Comic artists, since they deal in figurative art, have to constantly be aware of the expressive line. Their universes in that sense are more realistic in terms of the physical reality of flesh and blood and bone that we inhabit.

I tend to contradict BWS’s views, in that I can see value in the likes of Liefeld (and guys like Kordey) whose strength of style creates habitable worlds.

As I was previously saying, I live in an area where there is a lot of building work, and it gets steadily less habitable! (like London town, natch.) They are basically paving-over quality and line, as well as the patina of time.

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Pictorial 144

I admit the idea of a dried-up swimming pool as romantic decadence was a bit of a gagline (P143), but stagnant waters do run deep at a later date in the story.

One has to make an assumption that Jaime uses physical symbols that reflect Maggie’s romantic psyche. Foul-smelling water is a symbol of death (from Pelleas and Melisande), and also of romantic revival.

Maggie consistently holds onto things – her memories, faith in fickle human nature – and this is sometimes used against her by an uncaring world.

When her attachment to Vivian goes astray, she rebounds to the province of Izzy.

There is a fun scene depicting these pseudo moderns who care only for coffee

(CC Beck quote HB31)

Her dreams are a mix of real (the crucifix) and not real, the darkness at the heart of Maggie. Viewing the story through this symbolic prism, the fabulous elements are Maggie's psychic attachments to a physical world of darkness.

From that darkness springs regeneration, so it is a psychic strength that the modern order does not posses. It's living in the world of physical processes that can decay and that are real.

Jaime also makes quite a case of Maggie attempting to distance herself from her roots, without much success. She is town, they are country; she is north, they are south; she is "white", they are Mex.

The racial, fascist undertone is handled adroitly, in a way the mainstream media never do! For a start, is not Silicon Valley the white land where everyone is safe and drinks coffee all the time on safari-colored sofas? Once the Anglo-culture develops the cult of order to such a level, what is there to do other than drink coffee?

This is the world we're really in, since all the leading heads belong to the same-Anglo culture of the head. As I think was said elsewhere, once society is "ordered", how can one order order? It's what the Speaker says at the opening of debates, just a figure of speech.

Once one has pure order the only way to go is to have disorder. Meaning the power of dreams and the physical underworld of decay and regrowth, foul-smelling waters.

If one looks at people like Mark Carney - or even Trump - they are pure heads living in a world of pure money. Numerical/Anglo. Numbers or technology and the monetary system are two sides of one coin.

All the solutions they proffer - whether Biden or Trump - encapsulate the same monetary problem. The problem is neither physical nor psyche - simply number.

Instead of a flesh-&-blood reality (that lives and dies) Trump resembles a façade spouting numbers and supping drugs, a nightmare born of hi-tech and low-psychology. His seeming antipathy to the Californian Valleys is just a bad joke, as it is the same logical junk of the compulsive ego; a convincing nothingness in terms of the physical realism and dreams of the psyche (universe).

The lyrical universe of Jaime can seem sad (somewhat like Ghostworld) when one is living in an uncaring world. But in fact it's the realism that touches one in a world full of pseuds. This is also caught in an exchange with Hopey.

Pictorial 143

BWS has nothing on Jaime Hernandez who’s been working on Locas flat-out since 1985. I picked up a book the other day and it was literally like yesterday. Yes, the past figures in “Ghost of Hoppers”, and 35 years seems like a good time to get back into the groove of what has got to be the darkest fun read of all time (even Totown had got nothing on this!)

There are reviews out there, so I wanna pick up on elements that could more or less meld with mine. Jaime has kept his mojo on the physical front and these are bodies-in-action rather than turgid headscapes.

Where the physical/physique comes first, the moral dimension is not topsy-turvy as it is in our mainstream world. Not just swimming, housecleaning and the odd sex act do we get, but the physical symbols of the Capri housing apartments where Maggie is the live-in manager.

There are the faulty air-conditioners which she tinkers with to not much avail. There are the stray dogs whose shadows haunt stray conversations. There is the empty swimming pool which an attemptingly escaping Izze falls into, and which is covered in flies.

This image is decadent romance of the Pelleas and Melisande variety (P142) Again, BWS has nothing on this! What’s shocking in Jaime is that the fun characters inhabit such a bleak scenescape.

The nymph-like Hopey would be at home in the depths of the swimming pool had it water. As it is, the pool is more of a death-trap. From death and decay can hunting be far away? These are the shadowy dogs that seem to threaten by shadow alone.

Izzy here makes a telling or cutting remark on Maggie’s hopeless reliance on her nymph-like friend.

Implements that work haphazardly; stray dogs that are more or less invisible; nymph and waterless pools - of the underworld. Instead of the modern/future world of pure order, we have a past-historic one of disorder.

If the barrio they hail from was ramshackle, this is ramshackle in a more weirdly modernist way. Even the name you might think stands for crappy. Almost like a medieval castle, Maggie toils at cleaning and fixing and still the patina of neglect embraces the scene.

Like the comic itself, this makes it a liveable place, with a fertile ambiance and crustiness. As it happens, this is the exact thing that modernism seeks to displace. It’s only when attempts to keep places tidy and functioning smoothly DON’T work that the sense of interesting decadence is retained/revived.

When I was saying previously that modern work resembles rubbish-collection I was meaning that the state of interesting untidiness is continually being swept away (by work itself). Living things are by definition untidy in that they eat eachother. The hunting and predatory landscape is ba drag to “them”.

This is what makes pure order –the dragon of electromagnetic Big Tech – a figment of the acolyte’s brain, since we die and decay and so on. The dark elements in Jaime’s work hint at the physical reality that our societies of the head discard into fringe areas (like comics, natch.)

In a morally vacuous world of the head (order, number), the physical reality is king. In Jaime’s case it’s fabulous realism, the Latino penchant for making fairy tales of necessity.

Hyborian Bridge 142

Societies that engender a physical harshness and a roughness of spirit tend to be modelled on the ideals of nature, Sparta being the classic example. Athens, though somewhat more mild-mannered, was up for the conflict and neither side came off without bloody hands.

The roughness of the ancient world was part of an ideal of the free spirit of the body, whereby spirit and roughness of the flesh can’t be disentangled.

Rough living and germs impact health and the immune system (HB140); health and a healthy psyche are difficult to disentangle. This dualism of strength is now under threat from the cult of fact, whereby a “fact” is neither good nor bad, something either normal or abnormal – who knows.

Just to give one example, scientists have found “micro-evolution” is speeding up. Even though they call it evolution, the developments are clearly abnormal and related to our soft and easy living.

Wisdom teeth are normal in societies where children need to chew; the presence of an infantile artery is abnormal in an adult. What “they” call evolution just adds to the pot-pourri of “facts” that are also fictions. Reason being, there is no underlying strength born of rhythm and rough living, running, hunting and bloody pursuits.

Any change can be called evolution, when it’s entirely the opposite effect. Why are our societies so soft? The main reason is that they are completely planned and nothing is left to chance, since chance is the fortune of the brave, the free-spirit who lives by wits in an uncertain world. The history of Man.

Whereas an active society lives in a messy state –in that there is very little rubbish-removal and quite a lot of metamorphosis of waste-products on-the-hoof – a planned society doesn’t.

The softer the society seems to be, the more rubbish-removal is necessary. Roughness is the strength of cyclical living, whereas softness is the weakness of efficiency in all that is straight-line. Amazon and the rest are very attractive to the ego of acolytes of numbers, natch.

Our societies become rubbish-removal centres because that enables soft living that can be planned via straight lines (or numbers, algorithms.) This is very convincing to our dear leaders!

It struck me that the people who are often rebellious are oftentimes somewhat naïve; I don’t think they really follow these numerical matters. I mean guys like Ari Up, Paul Kantner, Harlan Ellison, BWS, Jack Kirby.. They have no truck with money, and are single-mindedly creative.

Yet these are the types who in past ages were founders of societies, honourable free-spirits of the commune. If there are two types of societies, these rebels are of the old-school type whereby most things were down to chance with very little bureaucracy and forethought.

Towns appeared on trade-routes, the greatest examples being Troy on the plain of Ilium that occupied maritime and land trade-routes between Europe and Asia; and Venice, which extended to Byzantium.

Where trade is purely a matter of logistics, these au naturel developments can never again occur. The au naturel even more applies to Hyborian kingdoms, where ports and trading centres occupy purely geographical positions of power and privilege, from Khemi in Stygia to Messantia in Argos.

Roughness is something that chance allows to occur, that is totally unplanned. Hyborian cities – such as Makkalet HB20 – are monumental establishments of church and state, and also mazy and stench-laden representing the low-life districts of living barter.

The two aspects – the monumental and degraded, the established and the happenstance – can’t be disentangled in that type of city that is free from the yoke of pure order.

A society of pure order is factual (number, algorithm), so fact becomes the way it is run (news). But facts without the underlying strength of rhythm and proportion are weak. It’s sometimes difficult to put things into words, which is why visual artists often appear rebellious! Fantasy artists tend to obey their instincts and just go with what they see as negative in society.

Caza’s 70s material for Pilote (as opposed to his psychedelic scenes for MH) revels in blood and gore, his muscular alter ego laying into soft human flesh left, right and centre. It’s even possible he wasn’t 100% sure what it was he was so livid about; can a left-wing radical also be a sabre-swinging pirate?

 

But this is fairly typical with creative-types who have a certain naivety. It’s their instincts they are obeying, not rational thought, and instincts are signs of strength underlying reality.

What I’m saying is that - beyond left and right – there is a strength to reality that is in the nooks and crannies of disorder. This is something Bilal observed in his dilapidated, pock-mark strewn buildings of nouveau Paris in The Nikopol Trilogy (prev).

Anything that is dilapidated and left to its own devices develops a patina of dirt and decrepitude that has aesthetic and moral worth. From this decadence springs rebirth. Ancient cities wear down, decline and are abandoned. They may then be reclaimed or overrun with vines; this is the Hyborian way that is a mixture of order and disorder.

Pure order only exists when the ego is drawn into the vale of numbers that make living easy; an illusion of facts that are fictions of acolyte-rule.

Naivety and lack of order go hand in hand, signs of instinctive strength, of the harmonious body over the detached head. The same I’m sure applies to BWS’s instinctive loyalty to 60s Kirby and the 70s New Gods (Young God & Friends 2003). Instincts that relate to the body also relate to development of the psyche. The psychical and physical power of Kirby can affect young people at a deep level of instinct.

The style is suffused with psychic content.. I read somewhere in TCJ to the effect that in the best cartooning the most is achieved with the least superfluous effort. That could be something to do with intensity, and I think applies to various people - Ditko, Adams, Gulacy, Byrne, Crumb, Jaime Hernandez. The Hernandez Bros for sure were influenced by the seemingly simplistic Archie style (one could also think of Manga). Jaime has got to have one of the most fluently concentrated styles of figure art ever - think Greek pottery!

Kirby’s futuristic societies – such as the Colonisers of Rigel – are physical in terms of bodily action, and psychically independent. Their individuals are freely-active forces under self-volition. Coloniser Nile really resembles a rebel! While she is the leader of a Rigelian Colonial unit on Earth, her actions are fully independent.

She comes-up against Rigelian authority only when Thor exerts sufficient opposition, and her mandate is then revoked.

In other words, Kirby’s futuristic societies resemble old-school ones – like Rome where regional governers are fully independent and free operators. They are all potential Caesars, and the only thing stopping them is brute force.

The seeming primitivism of Kirby is actually true to ancient societies – but not our own. Really, the main reason for this is that ancient societies were strong – physically and psychically – and ours are weak.

Ancient societies were run by rebels who happened to hold the reins of power. They were thoroughly independent thinkers and men-and-women of action, whether it’s Boadicea or Julius Caesar.

Societies become topsy-turvy when thought-processes are no longer independent, so that leaders are in name only. This has to be dated from the sorcerous invention of inductive reason (Newton, Opticks etc.) where experiments take place outside the conventional physical universe, and inside a parallel reality of pure order (light or electromagnetism.)

As I’ve been pointing-out for awhile, most modern experiments are experiments of pure order. DNA is detected because it happens to produce X-ray diffraction patterns (a type of lens or perspective view HB56).

Cells themselves are composed of gel colloid and water, both of which are highly disordered, flowing, viscous. Water may have intrinsic harmonics HB82. A harmonic is multi-faceted. All this is treated by science as ultra-fringe when one could easily make the reverse point! Pure order doesn’t exist except in the heads of acolytes like Dawkins and the Big Tech Dragons.

Pure order is weak and subsumes the independent thinkers of yore. It is physically barren and a type of numerical rubbish-removal. To be told by “them” that strength is not required in societies, only “facts”, is to abandon the deep layers of instinctive behaviour that are the history of Man.

Facts are illusory in that they are not physically strong. They convince the ego and take the place of instinctive stories. Pulps and comic books fill the gap.

The worrying thing is that, if “facts” can be normal/abnormal, good/bad then the very idea of work is compromised. A lot of what “they” call work has no quality.

Where I am is a lot of building – of all the renovation and flats the only thing that struck me as justified is a centre for urban-sports.

 

All the rest are logic that is junk. Rubbish-removal in the illusory numerical system of building smoothness and efficiency that has no dirt; no decadent strength of psychic and physical revival; quantity not quality (see Pirsig, metaphysics of quality HB36) Fertility, patina, ambiance.

Most facts have this underlying weakness that they can be abnormal or soft. A society that relies on facts is really a society of the detached head, as opposed to the harmonious body (on skateboards).

Harmony and the proportions of the body are products of primal rhythm. The world of logic inhabits a parallel reality that cannot recognize the primal. The rebellious spirit can be naïve, but that is their great strength. While politicians debate the running of society built on order, the strength of disorder entirely escapes their notice.

ARI UP

It is this dilapidated condition of abandon that beckons to the creative instinct of popular artists. From this condition springs the revival that is joyful and bold. To such as Amazon this condition is invisible, occupying as they do the weakness of number and algorithm. This society of the future cannot acknowledge the hippy mentality that is loose and rough; the two are incompatible.

The same probably goes for Kanye West (HB138 and prev.) West is an unpredictable operator in the conventional areas of business. You could say he’s a free-thinker in the mold of the 60s hippies though with money. His ideas seem to be physically-oriented, in that he is aware of the physical world of “free” resources like water. He wants to create a mini-ecosystem of cotton growth and textile design/production in Cody, Wyoming.

He would tend to fit the mold of an old-school rebel as opposed to a conventional numerical operator. His spiritual leanings also point to self-sufficiency. If the project in Wyoming turns into something fairly ramshackle that would be perfect; that’s for the future.