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

Destruction of the New.. by the Old (2)

 It all started in '63; the original pulp imagination that comes from primitive roots. Those same routes that are described by Kari Hohne in The Mythology of Sleep: the Waking Power of Dreams (prev.) The forest of belief and fear that the hero must conquer and integrate to the Self.

Pulps are our books of conquest, and the fighting never stops - until everything is neutralised by sameness. This was why I took an unpopular line vis-a-vis the Ukrainian war, since the neutralizing dragon of the West is somewhat more subtle than a Russian tank.

Once everything is neutralised there will be no more wars since what is there to fight about in a kingdom of the dead? The physical reality is acrobatic and not of the head (ego.) It was the acrobatics of a Kirby cover that enticed BWS, according to a YouTube snippet.

Pulps are the acrobatic world; the primitive expression that is lost to calculation of the head. A good indication of what has been lost is to pit Tony Stark against Elon Musk!

Both are ostensibly doing very similar things. Helping the military (in Ukraine or Vietnam); miniaturising electronics (in satellite arrays or iron suits); acting the playboy (in Hollywood or Monte Carlo.)

What is to explain the fact that Iron Man's gadget-laden universe seems to increase in interest with each passing year, while Musk's becomes an electrically neutralizing force of palpable dimensions?

The answer is that Musk lives in his head while Stark lives in the dreamland  of the pulps. Dreams are myths, and despite any modern futurist credentials, are rooted deep in the past; in the forest of fear and the serpents of lore.

Musk is on a one-way trip to the calculating land of ones and zeros - the dual-note of 'Jirel Meets Magic' (prev.) The end-product of that trip is the neutralizing effect of information, or the vanishing-point of technique (sun, the Relativity of time.)

Dreams are primitive, primordial, serpentine and cannot be distracted by these neutral types of technique that lead nowhere. The calculating head is ineluctably drawn into itself, into the universe of electromagnetic impulses.

Outside is the dream that animates reality; the forest of fear; the labyrinthine, serpentine ways. Into this delves the Iron Man, and it is the old world of myth rather than a Brave New World of nothing.

It is ever the case that delving into myth opens the route to a revival, a renaissance. From Greek ruins come majestic insights.

In Tales of Suspense #43, Stark labs are assaulted by the Netherland, in the delectable shape of the lady Kala, who wants Iron Man to help them conquer the overworld. As descendants of Atlanteans, their technology is sophisticated, but Kala discovers this is one conquest she can't win.

Like Proserpine in Pluto's underworld, she cannot emerge except as a symbol of the death that gives strength to growing things (spring.) Like Proserpine, her diaphanous undergarments are a symbol of the lower regions that entice only to destroy.

The primitive blood and corpse-like land of the pulps is a harbinger of vitality that is lost to the calculating head. Like the dog in Goodbye to Language (N3) that rolls on decaying matter and springs up invigorated, the germs and nasties that inhabit the physical reality also imbue strength. Metamorphosis and revival are linked to lifecycle and the psyche of childlike wonder (imago).

Pulps inhabit a primitive, dreamlike world where the psychology is one of conquering fear, one that Marvel's heroes epitomised. The timeless area is like a type of detritus that continually revives.

The strength of revival is forever attached to immortality or death, and this gothic principle runs through comics. The Eternal Vishanti; the Living Tribunal; Eternity.

Ditko's dynamics in Doctor Strange may be the opposite of Iron Man, but the dreamlike and the primitive vistas are eternally there. Anything else is a wasteland that vanishes the further one advances into it. The mirror of illusions; the head of the sorcerer; the promise of a future that vanishes into the mists of oblivion; the land where calculation is everything and physical reality nothing; time is relative and eternity is nowhere; primitive realism and psychedelic grandeur are lost to time.

Destruction of the New.. by the Old (1)

The old in this case is myth. One can analyse archaic stories - such as the Gilgamesh saga - through the prism of dream symbolism, as Kari Hohne does in The Mythology of Sleep: the Waking Power of Dreams. 

The hero is forever fighting - reminiscent of Marvel Comics - and the aim is the integration of different aspects of their persona. Enkidu, the forest dwelling wild man, is sent to kill the tyrant Gilgamesh, but they end up partners in arms. They set off to kill Humbaba, hideous guardian of the Cedar Forest.

Fear can take on monstrous proportions, especially when it is trapped inside of the forest of our beliefs. (page 190)

Humbaba is the Shadow Self, who must be confronted, challenged, defeated and integrated with the Self. This is the heroic challenge. Conflict and defeat are keys to integrating Self.

If we are angry, we meet a world that is angry. If we only know pain, we find ways to validate it. This is something we fail to realize as Victims. (page 194)

It seems to me our modern world of confusion is to validate the Victim ethos, as opposed to the Hero ethos. We live in a world of isolated egos, never able to integrate Self through conflict.

Conflicts cannot only be psychological in nature, they exist in a concrete world of differences that manifest in nature as predator-prey.

These two recognise their opposite in eachother, and it identifies, strengthens their belief in Self. Without conflict and the battle, the integration of Self is hardly conceivable.

This is where feudalism is much more of a forest of belief and fear than is our modern neutralised world of ego. I did say earlier that Putin's aggression in Ukraine was confused because, in the normal course of events, communes are rebellious places, and they respond best to tyranny 

But we do not live in normal times; there is not so much tyranny and rebellion as the tragedy of an ego that is incapable of integrating the Self.

The Self can be integrated through tyranny and rebellion, as it was on the Middle Ages - and in the field of heroic fantasy. It can only be integrated through differences, it cannot be integrated in a world where everything becomes the same.

Putin's point about the Victim status of 'cancel culture' was well-made (namechecking JK Rowling, prev.) It is possible the West is trying to cancel Russia, and the route to sameness could be Ukraine.

To make this point completely visual, here's a clip of Putin's daughter Katerina, performing as a competitive 

ROCK'N'ROLL ACROBAT

Acrobats throw eachother around, and it's noticeable the man is heavier and taller to accommodate the tricky routine. Physically that's very apparent. Compare this with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

While psychologically he might be a she, physically speaking it's apparent the spread of shoulder and narrowness of hip are male. This matters if we live in a physical reality as opposed to just a psychologically fixated one (of the ego .)

The trouble is that the Western way is composed of distorted rhythms that neutralise the psycho-sexual aspect of physical reality. Back in P200, it was pointed-out that a spinning-top must have invariable time if it is to have a primordial rhythm. The Earth is a spinning-top, so it must have invariable time (not relative.)

The sun is spinning and pulsating; the moon is spinning and orbiting. In space they are acrobatically linked through invariable time. The closeness of the connection is almost incestuous. 

Artemis and Apollo 

So what has that to do with Ukraine? Ukraine has become a proxy war of the West versus Russia, whereby GPS missile technology is showing dividends.

GPS is relative time, relying on ultra-accurate calculation (by machine.) Musk's Starlink array is a vital part of this war.

While Putin might prefer to have s conflict of tyranny versus rebellion (a type of balance), the actual conflict is a proxy war of West versus Russia. The proxy-war does not care for ideals or beliefs, and is part of the Victim mentality that the West fosters in place of a true religion.

Both the West and Putin are confused, and this confusion spreads like a cancer to all areas of modern rule (misrule.) The Victim status has now descended on the Caribbean. They cannot accept that conflicts of the past are part of an evolving process, and instead only know anger and pain. Prince William, unfortunately, on a Commonwealth tour with Kate, is bent like a weak reed.

In a world of victimhood only the hero can conquer; only primordial myth can defeat the weakness of a modern rule of order that is disorder; the disorder of sameness; of calculation as opposed to belief; of neutralising information as opposed to psycho-sexual action.

The neutralizing dragon (3)

 Goodbye to Language is another typically montage-like film where a lot takes place offstage, here in the house of a liaising pair. It's sometimes from the dog's eye view of Roxy, the mutt who spies things at home and wanders round the forest (in 3D though mine was 2D.)

Launching into a review is not really the intention, and this is exceptionally difficult to critique, so I'll start by going back to the aforementioned 'shot/counter-shot'.

A lot of people may have felt, "but this is ubiquitous", and for TV shows I think it probably is. At random I looked at 'The Doomsday Machine' Star Trek episode from 1966. The opening has Kirk walking round the control room. He first asks Lt Palmer a query (the stand-in for Nichols/Uhura), then he proceeds to Spock and asks him.a query. Both had shot/counter-shot, followed by a distance shot of Sulu. 

It's logical without being creative, and the documentary format itself - interviews - is 100% logical (uncreative.)

However, films are films. In Goodbye to Language, the living room of the liaising pair has a large screen continually showing classic pictures. The last one shown was a silent film, and of course this is more like a drama with masks as opposed to language.

Godard idealises the silent era of such as Chaplin, and an ideal film does not necessarily have language as it's about seeing the world as it is (through a dog's eye view.)

I took a look at the trailer of Power of the Dog, and there was an action scene followed by the typical duo scene where there is shot/counter-shot. To use that is lazy directing because it follows the language. The language is covering the visual sense, directing it.

Film doesn't have to be like that. Another old film playing in the background had the two characters, man to left foreground, woman to right background. The sense of romance in the lighting and expressions and sound was palpable.

The other thing is that a camera is something you point. It makes things very easy and therefore technically lazy. Technique rules rather than the visual. The technique of comic books is different because it's often better to show the two characters, or to vary the angles. This is the opening to 'All Around the World' Planetary graphic novel.

Shot/counter-shot puts language at the head of things,  whereas a film should be filmic - visual. The difference of a film from a TV interview should be very apparent! Godard's films are vehicles for ideas, not language.

There are various ideas and quotes. The Apache word for world is forest.' The labyrinthine land where Gilgamesh roamed (prev.) Untidiness and darkness, soiled beauty, soiled maidens.

A labyrinthine place has a physical cycle of repair and regeneration. Words do not count there. We live in a topsy-turvy world where words have come to define the physical reality but, in fact, the reverse is the case.

The snake-like, labyrinthine ways are the ways of action, and from these come the epics of past ages. Words are born of the wordless. The shots of water in this film (and the others) have an Odyssey-like depth.

Going beyond words is going into myth. Myth is reality without the Dominion of language (of 'fact'). If this is the Western way, Europe and America are both on the wrong side of history. The two characters wander the house in a state of ennui - inspired by words?

He has a scene and theme reminiscent of Weekend (1967), where Byron, Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft (writer of Frankenstein) are wandering the forest of lake Geneva, declaiming. The romantic era is long gone, only Frankenstein remains!

'If Russia becomes European it will never be Russian again'. Another saying that holds water. Putin's principles are confused, as was noted previously, but to have the endless interviews of shot/counter-shot is going nowhere very fast.

Not  only forests are labyrinths, but towns and ports back in the day. That is what is being lost. The scented decadence of movement and force that provides romance and dark ambiance. Action, not words.

AMSTERDAM

Where there is communal action, rebellion is always there. Even in Russia, if Putin is a tyrant rebellion is still possible as we've seen.

The neutralizing dragon of news (words) renders things neutral, partly through this trope of shot/counter-shot, partly through ignoring the physical sphere entirely. Sex-differences are no longer de riguer (see Rowling.)

A neutral world is also one that is compulsive- as opposed to fecund or sexual. This makes another link to Weekend, which starts with a description of an anal-oriented orgy. Here it takes the form of the 'equivalence' of toilet humour.

The neutralizing dragon (2 of 3)

 Notre Musique is satisfying visually with sweeping scenes of a war-struck Sarajevo - bridges and emerald green River, majestic edifices gutted to the bone, fleeting city-trams - and not least for Godard's appearance as himself at a conference where he espouses his antagonism towards the cinematic device of 'shot/counter-shot'.

I'll start with that, as to interpret what he means is tough, and without understanding this piece may as well remain unwritten! Shot/counter-shot' is a documentary method whereby two actors are shot at identical angles, and they are made to seem equivalent.

From that seeming triviality, he goes on a rigmarole. Elsinore in documentary form is a fairly plain castle in Denmark. It is only placed in the vision by the knowledge it is Hamlet's castle.

The way I understand that is that a documentary style appears real but lacks vision. Reality has two faces in that struggles are going on. Between men and women; between blacks and whites; between Red Indians and cowboys.

A trio of native Americans appear as 'ghosts'; Godard also shows a photo of Richmond, Virginia after the civil war. 

So, the film is a poetic exploration of violence and war - victors and losers - and possibly also feuding as I've been using it in a communal sense. Godard's films are known for being documentary-style, but they are nothing without the vision and here the fantasy-elements are rendered realistically.

What that means in short is that documentary style of shot/counter-shot renders reality without the vision and you have just the text, or words.

"Text has covered vision."

Vision is dark, sombre, tragic. Also gay.

The bridge bring rebuilt over the river has two faces representing the pain and guilt of war, struggle between peoples. The water is a rich emerald green - which I took to be the fertility of blood sustained in the conflict. The Noto-esque underworld (see 'Red Lace'..) is there all the time, and red changes to green (the Styx.)

In the sombre world that is not all text (head), the physical processes (body) create active areas of regeneration from degradation. Reality is two-faced because from the brute destruction and disorder comes ultimate revival and fertility.

Branching off from what Godard may have intended, there is an Arcadian reality where physical processes are left to themselves in relatively primitive situations of country, peasant-based smallholdings.

Arcadia is where Buffy's quote on dried buffalo manure (see quote HB70) rings true, because things are generally left to their own devices. Untidiness becomes tidiness through the natural processes that just happen.

In American terms, it's the country blues that seem quite simple stylistically, but actually have a lot of physical, tonal content.

GOING UP THE COUNTRY

Canned Heat in their third album have an extended country blues called 'Parthenogenesis/Nebulosity'. As the sleeve notes say, the meaning of that is not atall clear, but it could simply be literal. Parthenogenesis means (among other things) the unfertilised eggs of queen bees that give rise to male drones. 

I did a little reading on bees, and their lifecycle is astonishingly fecund and debauched! This is the very content of a blissful Arcadia, one that is heard only through (nebulous) pan-pipes. To some that would be reactionary, even an Uncle Tom-ism, and I think that may well be the case. Truth is no stranger to controversy. That is, the physical reality of the body rather than words of the documentary head (text.)

The next film I'm looking at is Goodbye to Language from 2014, which one might assume has a not dissimilar theme. The documentary-style head has no physical content - of Arcadia or the underworld - but has a lot of neutralising style (words, and words that can't be used.)

What we get is a world of policies (federal legislation) but where you can't insult people. As I've been saying for awhile, insults in organic communes are normal and just a recognition of differences that exist. Even words that are not insulting such as 'Redskins' are legislated out.

Shot/counter-shot in the documentary-style establishes a world of text that corresponds to the reality 'they' want. It's one that has not the physical untidiness (disorder, destruction) nor the gaiety of revival (psyche, Dionysian rites.)

As a director, Godard's aim is to "shine a light on darkness.. notre musique.' One must first have the darkness. Without the revival from darkness there can be no psychic strength.

The neutralizing dragon (1)

 Having watched about 1/3 of Notre Musique - from 6 years previous to Film Socialisme - it's a thematically dense piece so I thought I'd write something about the end of the end of one film and the beginning of the other, since they're thematically similar, followed by something on Notre Musique (follow that?)

Yes, cos Godard's gnomic utterances seem to inspire reflection along certain lines - though it's difficult to say where the film stops and the thought starts!

For a start, going back to his view of TV as 'the state', Film Socialisme has the line at the end that the state is 'We', the individual 'I'; in a drama we pull together; in a tragedy not atall.

While Notre Musique has the line

The dream of the individual is to be two; the dream of the state is to be one.

There is also the line

Democracy and tragedy were wed in Athens.

To weave these together, I have to start from my previous stuff on antagonism inside communes - the mini feuds that resolve conflicts. The friction of different personalities or between husband and wife or differences between clans. Feuding allows for a modicum of force to enter into relations; dueling or fisticuffs. Not everything is state-sanctioned by policy, basically.

Now, when Godard says 'democracy is tragedy', that might apply to a state-sanctioned democracy where the individual was submerged. But it doesn't necessarily apply to the type of feudalism that is inherent in communes where policies are not allowed to dominate (the example of Detroit and federal civil legislation was cited, Drama 3).

Antagonism is a physically active situation (of the body) where there is psychic strength enabled. Where the head becomes dominant (in policy), one is much more approaching a psychological situation where tragedy is unavailable.

In a sense, this is the modern world. As I said before, Putin's aims in Ukraine are confused (his principles) because he is not allowing for the fact that strong communes are feudal and should not be tyrannised or made to come around to one point of view (the unitary state.)

Putin is very verbal and uses words to instigate conflict of a unitary state on the communes. In actual fact, the word 'tyrant' was used as the nom de plume of a coin collector of British and Anglo-Saxon kings; he meant 'absolute monarch' but, in fact, the barons had en masse equal power to the king and it was all a balancing act.

'Tyrant' in antiquity, simply meant king, hence Oedipus Tyrannus. In the plays such as also Electra, there is a psychological wash over the protagonist who sort of retreats into their shells. The Greeks invented psychology along with other things 

In the drama of a commune, to paraphrase Godard, individuals come together at times of crises; but in a tragedy individuals are distinct, isolated.

This applies to the modern situation in general because of the doctrine of sameness as opposed to antagonism that enables differences to be resolved.

What I was trying to get at is that there is a principle of movement and force that gives a commune self-government through feuds (probably the blues!) This principle is being ironed-out through the neutralizing dragon of news.

It's a sort of 'zero' whereby differences of the physical reality cannot be tolerated (as in JK Rowling's case). Richard Ingrams of the 60s satirical mag Private Eye says

At 84 I would like to write another book.. but it's hard to be controversial these days, particularly if you're old. I spend a lot of time reading PG Wodehouse. He refers to a psychiatrist as a "loony doctor". That would cause great offence now. (DT)

The physical or sexual areas are not verbal but actually real flesh and blood. 

Going back to Putin, he is more like a tragedian than a tyrant. But, in a sense the same applies to the neutralizing West. Communes which are free - in physical state and free-spirit - are rebellious and so can be tyrannised by a king. It's a state of balance.

In a world where force and movement do not really exist in that sense, the neutralizing news creates a despondency of individuals, and that is the tragedy of democracy which I think Godard alludes to.

Pictorial 213

 Taking-up the devil's mantle again, the universe is experienced in a physical way when time and silence have meaning (staring at the stars). Movement is appreciated by the eye - rhythm, force - as Daredevil leaps along rooftops.

The wash of news, and now social media, dulls the metaphysical with the scourge of 'facts'.

Learn to see before you learn to read

goes one of the lines in Film Socialisme, the 2010 collage or collision of scenes by J-L Godard (then about 80.)

With the American Way battered, and the Russian way even more battered, seeing through a battered European perspective may be a wise alternative.

Battered, meaning shabby ambiance, soiled beauty, sultry decline and divine swine. The latter are the animals that peer through the screen at odd times. The purrs of cats from a YouTube meme, seen on-board a cruise-ship (also harbouring Patti Smith in cameo); the cloven-hooved creatures at a Core d'azur gas station..

FILM SOCIALISME

At about 3 plus minutes is a shot of the gas station's waterpump windmill (in shadow), reminding me of the Old West's iconic windmills. The film may not have much narrative flow, but Godard is a master of creating a sense of the casual and natural, people pawing like animals (the off-beats of off-screen music..)

What that could say is, the life lived casually and naturally comes first; the story comes second. For a start, why does the French gas station have a windmill? Presumably to pump water from a well, meaning either they have less plumbing or more water - as in the Old West.

If this is a French and French West African way, it is anti the Anglo world which is ruled by capital. By the 'cleanness' of smart plumbing and increasingly by algorithms (text or story.) Numerical efficiency rules (Ed Sheeran writes algorithmic pop songs for dollars?)

Outside the Anglo world is the shabby-chic European twilight. 'Facts', unfortunately, are no longer sufficient to run an order that is governed by algorithms.

Pam Geller, as noted previously, blatantly lied about Trudeau for the sake of her principles; the Russians are blatantly sidestepping truth in Ukraine for the sake of their principles.

"Putin plans to rebuild the USSR and have Russia back as a superpower. He genuinely doesn't see Ukrainians as their own people. He sees them as inferior Russians. (guy called Ingram.)

But, for Ukraine to be part of a new Russian Empire would clearly be superior to being just another capitalist country like, say, Denmark.

Principles have to have priority over 'facts' because only principles have the force and rhythm of movement, of purpose. Facts are always there to be argued over endlessly.

For example, American forces in Afghanistan committed similar acts to the Russians in killing innocent parties. It was either 'mistaken' or 'unavoidable', the result was the same.

The more primitive way of looking at reality is through force and purpose and movement. These supply principles which modernity lacks.

Putin's principles are confused, as was noted before, because the modern paradigm is confused. The same goes for America in Afghanistan.

The legitimacy of communes and free trade ports - see historical prev. - is a case of disorder and rebellion first. This enables legitimate physical action that establishes order.

These types of opposite statements and quotes litter Godard's film (a classic is, 'Islam is the occident of the East' by Rudyard Kipling.) The primitive sense of disorder and beauty and natural rhythmic force is necessary to create a renewed sense of purpose that is not purely the Anglo credo (text) of dollar, algorithm, number.

Pictorial 212

 The disorder of the underworld brings order in its wake. Put another way, the struggle between differences that becomes strength, that produces psychic luster. Storm-damaged trees that fall, that replenish the habitats of the lifecycles of numerous bugs (P211). All this is a way of simply leaving things be; leaving things to decadence and revival, the natural cycle of germs or Man (physical vigour.)

Instead of the law of supply and demand there is a much older law of trading-ports that become established by dint of geography and maritime conquest.

The entrepot of Amsterdam and the free trading ports of the Hansa have much in common with old Shanghai (TofF2) with its fermenting pig manure and decrepit wharves; romance and decadence entangled in the gloaming.

Unfortunately, that's all I can say of these archaic maritime trade-routes for now as I got diverted by watching 'Scenario Video', Godard's screen-notes for Slow Motion (prev.)

Godard is intent on discerning truth, which is the link of music to film, or between dialogue and movement. Film is above all the experience of time (27 times a second) and not simply of 'shooting the script' in post-Hollywood fashion.

Movements are the way we experience time, and dialogue interferes with that. There are punctuations of silence in much the same way as is practiced in action comics (or BWS Monsters for the sake of breathing and experiencing the character's state of mind.)

In terms of action, 'the silence of speed' allows us to experience time in an animalistic fashion. Do we have punctuations and pure silent action in our modern lives? is a question in point.

This tallies with our exposure to news, which is purely verbal. The war in Ukraine is clearly socially emotional, so doesn't that mean something is lacking?

Movement is rhythm and force, while dialogue is 'pure information' (in quotes). The Russians are apt to describe this as "misinformation" ("what is the source?") but in any case could be a case of information overload.

In a war the aim is to win, and Putin has a greater right than simply 'fact', which is the right of legitimate physical action.

It's a war of principle; as was said in P211 though, the principle loses legitimacy as modern wars create an order, when the disorder of rebellion is what brings order in its wake.

I mean, the legitimacy of communes and free-trade ports during the time of the Hanseatic League. Putin's (nostalgic) principles are confused owing to the modern paradigm of pure calculation (or Relativity.)

This in turn tallies with our experience of time. The divine rhythms which sailors used to steer by are denied us and we are assailed by a social and factual smorgasbord.

'The silence of speed' is an area where physical action has legitimacy in that the universe is being experienced in a physical way (not just through a verbal wash of news).

Where the physical universe exists, the psyche has a development over time. Silence is that experience, and has the assets of fantasy and poetry (as opposed to supply and demand.)

One other way to delineate it is that it's probably the opposite of Simon and Garfunkel's iconic 60s anthem The Sound of Silence! 'Hello darkness, my old friend' could take you to some other area of decadence that is in the nature of true living.

Time is fundamental to experience in a foundational way (dance, force, stillness, punctuation), and therefore an area where physical action has some legitimacy (in terms of reality or realism.) Where that is so, the psyche develops over time (childhood innocence.)

If we live in a nefarious area where illegitimacy rules, that is a fundamentally confused situation. Blaming Putin or anyone else is too easy when the paradigm itself invites confusion. To be ruled by a state of confusion is a recipe for rule by social media rather than the force and rhythm and stillness of dance (by the stars.)

The tyranny of the calculating head versus the unspoken force of the twisting body under the turning stars. The continuity of action; microcosm echoes macrocosm - P200. Like the Batman on the NY skyline making iconic shapes; meditating under gargoyles; finding meaning before speaking; natural strength before weakness.

The Batman, it's grim up there 

Pictorial 211

"Ukraine is an inalienable part of our own history,  culture and spiritual space." 

Putin's argument is a good one. Kiev Rus' from the 10th century Viking Volodymyr established the Orthodox religion. Although a thorough-going pagan with hundreds of concubines, he forged trade-routes and captured a princess of the Byzantine empire (legitimately).

On the other hand, is he paying lip-service to Orthodoxy as a way of establishing a universal order of his own choosing? Religious faith is a struggle that becomes a strength. Blood symbolism and warrior monks are nothing new, but faith is something that does not need to change God's plan, that takes the world as it is. 

Monks chant and meditate in surroundings of solemnity and power. Monks also grow herbs and vegetable gardens. The physical reality is a strength of the body that feeds the head ('White Rabbit')

Putin and his cohorts, surrounded by cameras and computers (the mirror that convinces the ego with straight-line logic and charts) live inside an illusion of the head.

Somewhat like the European Right, they are good at verbal - and that's all it is. One can't invent psyche because it comes out of organic strength. All one can do is play wargames based on a myth. The force is nostalgic, and harks back to the Soviet era.

The Golden Cockerel 

is folkloric Pushkin made into an opera by Rimsky Korsakov. Written just following Russia's disastrous defeat by Japan, it tells of the mythical Czar Dodon, who's astrologer makes a golden cockerel to warn of approaching enemies.

Dodon is reassured, and decides to go off to war with his sons. Bruised and bloody, they reach the fabled realm of Shemakha who's Queen seduced them into decadent ways.

HYMN TO THE SUN

In this production, the Czar and his sons wear phallic hats, with staging and costumes by Japanese. Duly married to the insurgent Queen, Dodon returns in triumph, only for the Queen to vanish and the cockerel to stab him to death. The astrologer sings in the 

EPILOGUE

The 'pure illusion' is conquered by decadence (a possible reference to the goat-like Rasputin), and this is a very apt description of the modern illusion. Decadence is the idea that things are left to be, and indeed to decay and become overgrown.

It's the world of fertility, which in nature is strength. Storm-damaged trees, for example,

..break down at different rates and.. that's good for the invertebrates and the general ecosystem and the carbon is restored to the soil. (DT)

Deadwood is an ideal habitat for bugs.

There are literally thousands of species of beetle and other sorts of insects that need decaying wood for at least part of their lifecycle.. The newly formed clearings also allow new trees to develop.

Human civilization cannot develop away from nature and become pure ego. Once that happens, psychic weakness is inevitable. The rebellious spirit is the natural way of saying no to an ordered universe of zero psyche. This occurs throughout Russian history. The Tatar Cossacks were more or less mercenaries employed by the Czar (Gogol writes of a Ukrainian uprising against Polish aristocracy in Taras Bulba.)

Cossack mercenaries were employed by the Persian Shahs and became the Caucasian (or Circassian) brigade that established the Pahlavi dynasty (toppled by the Ayatollahs).

These historical accounts are the struggles between differences that become strength, that produce psychic luster. Without the struggle, pure order is just a pure illusion.

This is so throughout history. On the very borders of Russia was the Hanseatic League of Baltic and German cities. Warlike merchants established trade-routes as far as Novgorod.

Without the struggle that has a psychic strength and without the disorder that speaks of decadence and debauchery, there is only the mental weakness of order (see Euripides The Bacchae where bestial rites tore Pentheus to shreds.)

The disorder of the underworld is always there, but the strength of decadence is denied by those who live by dogma. Zest and the children of Dionysian rites are lost in the quest for the neutralizing dragon of endless sameness. Putin is more dogmatic in his quest for the mythical creature than the West, but in the end will it really matter?

Putin makes a good case but the problem is, if you win you've already lost. With the dual-note illusion of efficiency (P210) that ineluctably draws the ego toward ordered sterility.

In the parallel reality where the psyche is more and more out of reach, Putin is trying to reach an anachronism, a state of mind that is on the wane. A social milieu that is the microcosm of a cosm of divine rhythms that mysteriously imbue the psyche.

We live in a confused state of distorted rhythms or what you could call the Relativity paradigm (HB209). A calculated war is ineluctably drawn further into that state of confusion.