Pictorial 217

 It's everything I've come to expect from the genre of that era; some people may be taken aback by the racism, lack of forethought for casting and dialogue, if it doesn't appal you it may garner some giggles. I contend that the genre contributed to the bigotry and rationale of at least two generations of viewers. (Queen of the Bungle on Amazon)

Ignorant, loud-mouthed, stupid pig of a man - a know-all, nasty, repulsive. (Warren Mitchel on his character Alf Garnett)

That's one way to look at it, but if everyone were the same, where's the drama? Drama could be said to come from the similarity of differences, in the way that the ornate rituals of China and India came against the pomp of the British Empire in the 19th century. Add Russia and you have 'the great game.'

Sax Rohmer was probably the first pulp-stylist to deliver this - predating Talbot Mundy's The Eye of Zeitoon - with the legend of Fu Manchu. Watching the Republic serial, the vaudevillian falsetto of Fu Manchu is giggle-inducing, nicely matched in this contemporary illo.

The comedy-value of devilish characters is nothing new, as in Cruella de Ville. Peculiarities of speech are reminiscent of the 50s pioneering comedy show The Goons, written by Spike Milligan and featuring the vocal talents of Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe.

The mask-like caricatures in Drums of Fu Manchu are clearly labelled bad versus the good Nayland Smith of the British Empire. Where there are powerful forces in opposition, the sensuous differences become apparent, and the accent is on the body language and ornate trappings of the civilizations.

The feminine principle of sensuous trappings flows through the action like incense smoke, and the Republic serial (directed by William Witney of Nyoka) is certainly atmospheric. Honour is the somewhat mystical force that pits the antagonists in continual hand-to-hand combat.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, these types of characters have gone out of fashion, and it does represent a warrior 'type', of the body as opposed to the head which, of the modern leaders, only Putin seems to have any recognition of. 

Nostalgia towards such antagonists is probably really to do with this notion of 'type' (see Radin, prev.) The warrior type expresses the similarity of differences through combat and ritual (or actually ritual combat in the Middle Ages.) But in the situation, caricatures and masks and peculiarities of speech are all part of the drama (the great game)!

There's a lot there, and where differences are acknowledged there's going to be bigotry and comic effects. The body and the elegance of rituals and the female dimension are all in the content of these old pulp adventures. Once you take that out there is much less content (psyche.)

In other words, the physical (body) imbues the psyche (behaviour). Nowadays, the way news is delivered seems to get in everything, and yet much less content is there. The war between Russia and Ukraine is a complete mystery to me at the moment.

Possibly Putin is trying to reestablish a 'Rus' psyche, so there is a mystical aspect to it. However, the way he is going about it doesn't allow for the rebellious psyche of yore that established 'Rus' in the first place (see prev.)

Modern news is like a ticker-tape that delivers a lot of facts that seemingly are everything, and yet is a type of nothing. One possibility is there is a capitalist agenda to the news, as in Carpenter's 

THEY LIVE!

Another possibility is that capitalism is just a way to calculate everything in terms of money (number, ego.) If everything is calculation, then everything is of the head and not the body.

Words can make grammatical sense while exploring a nonsensical (if logical) world. Reflections in the mirror of illusions; variable time; calculation; sun; electromagnetism; perspective; x-ray diffraction (DNA); measurement..blah blah blah.

The body can't be calculated because, as noted previously, articulate actions come from a fundamental articulate nature of reality. The warrior 'type' and the nomad and the Greek athlete are all fundamentally attached to reality. The body, the feminine dimension, imbues a psyche, be it Greek figure vases or

WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN 

Modern news is something like DNA in that it appears to contain everything, but that everything is instructions for calculation and so is also a type of nothing (in terms of the fundamentally articulate reality.)

The fact that bigotry exists in the old type of civilization makes it less than perfect. But a perfection that is a type of nothingness is an even worse option. In short, the tribal and the bodily aspects of civilizations are the realities and not the illusion of a global corporation of equality.

Pictorial 216

 

Adastra in Africa

The split-image of Ady is taken from Young Gods and Friends (The Pizza Story set in NY) to be honest, though the princess seems to have dug out some tribal gear from her African sojourn.

Distorted rhythms and perverse sex are the results of logic taken to its absolute extreme. Genes carry instructions for everything - which is the illusory reality that is so attractive to rhe ego (head.)

The accuracy is an illusion because genes are selected by a body as it swarms and spirals into shape, activating the articulated actions that provide feeling to life.

Well, how does a process of development activate the articulated actions of a body - say one that ends up as a limber Oriental maid (to take a random subject)?

Through the principle of continuity, or hierarchy (spin in invariable time, galaxies.) Genes because they are inert, static, can't control the process, and you have to begin with what you end up with.

One can't create movement from non-movement, or proportion from non-proportion. Genes code for growth-hormones that control height, not the actual proportions of, say, a limber Oriental maid.

Genes are persuasive because information always is. Articulate action is a snake or a fish-swarm. Spirit can't be achieved from non-spirit. Spirit is simple movement and the motif of a spiral (or Yin-Yang) that goes backwards and forwards antagonistically, a snake that coils to meet itself. 

From simple rhythms is articulate action achueved; without the rhythms one has a distorted illusion of accurate measurements (modern science of the head, the profane serpent.)

The accuracy of genes is an illusion without the hierarchy of swirling movements that give spirit to articulate motion, song. 

LOOK WHAT THEY'VE DONE TO MY SONGyoutu.be/sNrHj80Be80 (from Melanie)

Pictorial 215

 Indeed, anyone who has stirred a thick sauce will understand this: as you slowly turn the spoon, concentrate on the patterns formed by the various parts as they inevitably assemble into a satisfying, symmetrical whole, you are brought to wonder how it is that every time, without fail, all the composing parts will combine themselves into perfectly harmonious proportions. So you stir away, dreamily, gradually allowing your mind to plunge into the strange alchemy taking place inside the pot, and then it happens: all of a sudden you are given an understanding of the most primal workings of the universe. For indeed this is how the Universe works. A forming galaxy merely obeys the same simple laws as a béchemel sauce. (Say Hello to Jupiter, page 352)

If movement is the ancient orthodoxy that has dimensions, scientific orthodoxy is a mixture of accuracy and confusion. Movement carries over into the hierarchy of natural social interactions and, as cricketer-turned-gamekeeper Ian Botham says of anti-hunt protesters, they

"lack the intellectual and social skills needed to persuade.. What makes them all the more tragic is that they are so high on their self-righteousness that they cannot see that real animal welfare is about complex choices. The fox they save today may decapitate a dozen chickens tonight - and eat none of them. Equally, the gamekeepers are all that stands in the way of predators devastating rare birdlife." (DT)

A social-media of individuals delivers partial information; nothing is either wholly good or wholly bad. The development of the whole contains both. The ancient truth was development of the whole, and the information that becomes the wisdom of the tribal witchdoctor. 

The stigma of 'primitive' tribalism is merely the innate bigotry of warped science that devalues holistic development (in favour of parts.) Whole development, a whole person, rituals of puberty (time and hormones.) Today's 'facts' of transgender equality are taken outside of the development of the human from birth to puberty, and a recipe for warped confusion (see prev.)

A human as a whole entity has toiletry and genital functions that are similar, and the time-factor in the development is therefore critical. By ignoring invariable time (symbolised by a spiral), warped science ignores the whole development of an organism (in time and space) and hence the distinctions between front/back, top/bottom, inside/outside.

The accuracy is simply a result of confusion that distorts rhythms and has no elegance or proportion (the profane serpent of inarticulate words or news.) Quite a useful analogy is when the sun on a dull day can be mistaken for the moon. Perception confounds, but time, space and movement are the true feeling.

The confusing illusion of variable time isolates perception with the logic of measurement (NASA natch.) In Dark Star, the 1973 classic sci-fi film from Carpenter/O'Bannon, the AI (bomb) can be likened to an expressive algorithm that confuses data with reality. Phenomenology attempts to reconcile perception with intent, but any rational philosophy tends to minimise the role of articulate motion (rhythms) that one hears in African drums of the old jungle.

In like vein, modernity lacks the spirit of movement and hierarchy, epitomised in the monetary reason of Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Rational thought devalued into the illusory AI universe of ones and zeros. The mirror of illusions (so attractive to Ditko), persuasive to the head but deadly to the active body in pursuit of goals (hunting, mating, eating, drinking.)

Adastra in Africa

Pictorial 214

 Most of the potentially good artists today, it seemed to me, were employing themselves in de-coding a  writer's ideas...illustrations that if taken out of context were without meaning, reason or even, and this is by far the least of all, personal intensity... It was my intention to create pictures that either told their own story, or needed no such backgrounds at all. (BWS, 'A Fine Madness', Gorblimey Press Catalogue 1977)

BWS The Ram and the Peacock (images of time and space)

The gorilla in the room is why should so many follow modernity if it has no hierarchy? The answer has to be that it is ultra-convincing to the ego (of acolytes), and words are also convincing used as the handmaiden of 'facts' (for example, McCormick PH4

However, those like McCormick appear to support blandness musically for the reason it fits social conformity; in past decades rock had conviction, which is a force for rebellion.

If you saw the video for 'Fortunate Son', whoever filmed the images chose almost Apple Pie clichés of Americana (with Indians), for a song that's ostensibly rebelling against the draft. Then again, Don McLean's American Pie is exactly that! Rebellion can from some aspect be orthodoxy.

This invites the observation that Washington is run by Martians masquerading as human (as in Carpenter's They Live!) More fundamentally, though, scientific orthodoxy is dessicated, dissected into a form of living death.

The images on 'Fortunate Son' are of expressive movement, so that is another sort of orthodoxy that is fairly tribal (bikers etc.) That sort of orthodoxy carries spirit (zest) and the stars and stripes.

So, orthodoxy in terms of movement is pretty wild (rock), rebelling against scientific orthodoxy, or dessicated death. This obviously creates a heap of confusion. For a start, movement - expression of the body animated by the psyche - carries into a sense of hierarchy, whether it's a biker crew or a neighbourhood or small-town or cowshwd or Indian lodge. 

Spirit is something that is given to those that move - it doesn't need to be thought-out. Caravanserai. Spirit is the orthodoxy that opposes the orthodoxy of DNA that is the result of dessicated dissection or living death (meaningless, random.)

BWS's Monsters approaches the theme of genetic mutations as warped Nazi engineering. From what I've seen of the pictures, there is a wordless intensity that relates to a narrative flow of psychic force - quasi-mystical interactions between family members 

BWS has then achieved what he set-out in the quote, to produce a self-evident piece of standalone art. The pictures carry a narrative that is more than verbal (personally, I think this applies to other classics like Adams' Avengers and X-Men, both with Roy Thomas.)

Speaking of RT, I jokingly put it to him that BWS is a godlike figure, to which he he hurled abuse. What I meant to imply was that his ambition is more than most and, by achieving the standalone image as a narrative in itself, has a type of transcendence that reaches into the hierarchy of which we are (or were) part.

Lines are movements in time and space, and something innate to art (see prev, da Vinci study for the Virgin of the Rocks.) That entire area of movement and dimensions is the orthodoxy that scientific orthodoxy leaves behind. 

In that sense, BWS's Monsters is a rebellion against the dictatorship of measurement (DNA,  and the variable time framework we are given by 'them', ie Musk &Co.) Measurement is just another word for perspective, and the logic of electromagnetism, or the parallel reality which acolytes enter (the mirror of illusions.)

Conviction that is felt has a spiritual connotation, while conviction that is not felt has none. That's the difference between felt art and dessicated science (life vs death). Note here that Renaissance art was also a science, or a ience was subsidiary. 

Political systems that are a reflection of the scientific view are equally dessicated, as with South African apartheid. Feeling is movement and dimensions, and the ancient orthodoxy of spirit. 

"We were rebelling and we were trying to run away from... the regime that whites and blacks couldn't play together." (Louis Maholo of The Blue Notes, 60s South African integrated jazz band)

MAGWAZAyoutu.be/DX7-NJWFtDs (trad arr Johnny Dyani, melancholy spirit, joyful transcendence)

Polarity Hill (8)

Having read through the Medicine Dance, there is in fact nothing of departure or bad spirits and it's instead an initiation into origin mysteries. To be honest, the ritual takes nights and days in sweat lodge, bush and medicine lodge and is extraordinarily convoluted.

The one I could get my teeth into was the HOK'IXE'RE Dance in which manifestations of bad or departing spirits are part of the ritual of the bringing of scalps.

As many as are going to take part in this dance tonight should try to make the soul of our grandfather (the scalp) more amenable to our prayers. (page 332)

The dance(s) and ceremonial food are designed to placate the dead warrior (spirit) and sort of steal his unspent lifeforce. It's wild and goes on for several nights, and dishes of animal heads (spirits) are served, including dog (for this reason, it's sometimes known as the bowwowpowwow ceremony. )

That's all I really want to say on the book as the amount of detail is almost overpowering, and I want to expand on hierarchy a bit.

The body itself is hierarchical since that is what 'action' is; the body acts at the level of the body and all its systems, expressively and meaningfully. Ritual dances simply move the hierarchy to the next level of clan/village/tribe. 

In other words, there is a hierarchy going through creation, from the littlest atoms to the splendid galactic clusters. As I see it, a hierarchy implies time is invariable in the sense of spin - see P200 and elsewhere. 

However, since we live in a world of variable time and relativity, I'll leave it there for now. The only thing to note is that, in the sense that animals move and the dynamics contain spirit, the essence of spirit may be lacking from a variable universe (of calculation, number, logic.)

In other words, spirit as the Indians used to see it is contained in animal movements and in the physical substance of the universe. Of course, their view of the universe is naive, containing sun, moon, bears, father, mother, son.

However, all religions are somewhat naive, Christianity containing Father, Son and Holy Ghost (see DH Lawrence, prev.) The heavenly movements we see from Earth has the balance of sun and moon that appears to be proportionate, and animal shapes are turned by myth into the constellations (Great Bear etc.)

Movements that are balanced have possible spiritual connotations (the planets, see Theosophy, prev.) The problem with modernity is that movement is not a priori and, as was noted with DNA, it can be ignored (by measurement in variable time.)

DNA has neither movement nor dimensions (time and space) and by those criteria has no spirit as defined by the tribal beliefs. 

But, as has been said previously, spirit may be contained in matter that is essentially balanced and proportionate. How might that apply to DNA?

Well, it implies that mutations are meaningless (random miscopies) until acted on by spirit. The spirit is contained in the hierarchy of the body that is active (hunting, running, mating.)

Hierarchy contains spirit in the sense that a hierarchy connects lower to higher (the principle of continuity), and whatever one supposes gods or goddesses to be.

This tends to unify religions to a degree, but at the expense of measurement per se, which applies to such scientific 'golden calves' as DNA, variable time, and maybe the precision of atomic computers, hence algorithms. 

So, while Christianity seems happy to accept science as accurate in terms of measurement  that is simply not enough to unify religions (as in DH Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent.) Measurement in that it denies hierarchy enters a parallel reality that is ultra-convincing but basically false - the mirror of illusions. 

The ego or the priests of the system exist inside the mirror (electromagnetism) and the electrification continues apace. It's a one-sided advance (of the head) at the expense of hierarchical movements,  meaning, spirit.

Different (religions) at some level have unity; this is not to deny the differences or polarities. Spirit is not bland but hot blood, with force and charisma.

FORTUNATE SONyoutu.be/ZWijx_AgPiA

Polarity Hill (7)

 Summarising slightly, 'freedom' in modern societies implies a lack of hierarchical order in the universe; and the hierarchical order is dependent on oppositional encounters (such as in the Winnebego village symmetries.)

The clans are a higher-level hierarchy (than individuals), and one of Radin's typical themes (also in Primitive Religion) is the mismatch between the religious formulator (shaman) and the man-of-action (often called esoteric versus exoteric)

This comes out in the war-bundle feast (Thunderbird clan) and description of the Peyote Cult. The latter was a type of degradation of old rituals into the religious formulations of John Rave and others who offended traditionalists by 'going white' (ie Christian.)

The Thunderbird clan war-bundle feast was originally a gathering of warriors led by the Thunderbird host. As the pursuit of war became less important (owing to white influence)

..our original gathering of warriors, while still remaining a gathering of warriors, also became a ceremonial organisation, on which offerings were made to the entire Winnebego pantheon of spirits. (page 386)

Radin argues that the 'type' of individual required for a war-bundle was quite special, and thisctended to mean there was only one bundle in each clan - which then became associated with the clan as an emblem.

The reason for the small number of war-bundles is to be sought in the fact that there was a very small number of individuals possessed of the necessary qualifications, and that it was probably originally associated with villages or groups of villages. (page 387)

The distinction between individual and clan goes back to ancient Greek drama and the rebellious person/family who get into trouble with the authorities (city-state.) According to Radin, 

If, therefore, the actual owners resent this claim of clan proprietorship both by reason of actual possession, of inheritance and consciousness of the sacrifices and expense they and their ancestors have incurred in maintaining the ceremonial connected with these bundles it is nevertheless a fact that their viewpoint is probably wrong in so far as it is supposed to represent the entire truth, either now or in the past. The actual unit of organisation found at the feast is the clan and there, at any rate, the war-bundle is a clan palladium. (page 387)

This sort of in-depth argument between types and the 'state' or upper hierarchy goes through Radin's work and is truly enlightening. In other words,  the 'facts' depend entirely on interpretation. It puts all sorts of doubts into the testimony of people who are ostensibly Winnebego, but have lost the thread of the traditions. Their testimonies are varied and sometimes contradictory.

Part of the reason is there are different 'types'; part of the reason is the clan and the family of a warrior are different levels of hierarchy. 

The real problem with the present day Winnebego (or Cree) is that the active life is missing and is often replaced by a religious or ceremonial formulation (of the priest.) There's is a sort of religious overthought.

In terms of origin, The Medicine Dance is for sure the most authentic depiction in dance ritual of

..the popular cycles relating to the Trickster, Hare, Turtle, Red-Horn, and the Twins. (page 390)

The Medicine Dance is to do with the presence of death, and in some respects similar to the Orpheus myth, where Orpheus in the underworld rescuing Eurydice was told "not to look back" or she would be lost forever.

Around the earth they started. "Not to look back," grandmother said. "I wonder why she said it." Thus he thought. So he looked back just the least bit to his left. The place he had started from caved in instantaneously. "O my! O my! A man I thought you were a person of prominence, and I had encouraged you very much. But now, Grandson, decay, death can, in no way, be taken back." That is what she meant, it is said. (page 305)

Rituals of departure and bad spirits of course feature in the Dance. If the Medicine origin is to do with aging, it shows the overarching factor of time and how this is depicted 

All this implies movement - the athletic body, sinuous, the singing throat- and this is also so for the animal emblem of each clan. The animals are 'real animals' (bear, deer) and the ancestry goes back to the origin where animals could shape-change to humans.

The practice of having a ceremony where animals are depicted as spirits is almost a degradation of the active life of clan and communes.

Now, I want to extend this further to the idea that modernity is not an active society (of the body, dance), but a passive one of the head. Our 'priests' are the shaman and religious formulator. They don't deal with the body in an active (expressive) state of dance and ritual, but in an isolated state of dessicated, passive survival where the head is convinced by 'facts' (of its dominance.)

Interpretation of 'facts' (in ethnology) is dependent on theevel of hierarchy one chooses, be it isolated points at one extreme, or villages and star-constellations at the other.

Movement - of the body, in the commune - deter ines behaviour, in that a dance is movement in ritual behaviour. All this is a process of bone, skin, muscle, the finely stretched frame that dances and expresses stories of meaning.

This is meaning in the hierarchy; a hierarchy is the level above the body, the level where the body is moving and expressing itself 

In other words, the entire universe of hierarchical movement is something modern priests are not dealing with. They are concerned with isolated points (individuals), dessicated labs, a d the information they obtain, the algorithms that result. 

A Medicine Dance is movement, meaning and hierarchy  (clan, commune), something that is nor a millionmiles away from Buffy's

ADAMyoutu.be/WrgM3OpkTTw (from Illuminations, 1969, acoustic with Buchla 100 synthesizer)

Polarity Hill (6)

 Ostensibly Coldplay and hip-hop have almost nothing in common, in that Martin sings neurotic songs of individual confusion. The role he plays is somewhat like the neurotic Paul in Godard's Le Mepris (P13) who simply cannot make up his mind, and his marriage to Bardot falls apart.

THE SCIENTIST 

This is almost the total opposite of either trad rock or hip-hop, which are in general forceful expressions of view - especially contrary view ("bitch"). The connection between hip-hop and Coldplay is that hip-hop performers rely on interface-readouts, while Martin is the logical singer who has no specific point of view. 

There's a dichotomy that the more hip-hop is reliant on logic-boards, the more it is going into a universe with no specific view, and contrary to the language of anger and abuse.

The problem with being in a touchy-feely universe of digital readouts is that it anticipates the logical future of motion-capture (and expressive algorithms at some point) seen in the ABBA stage-show.

That universe is neurotic and weak and with no specific point of view. In other words, the contrary psyche existing in a digital universe is a contradiction in terms! A digital entity shifts the perception and choice is denied.

So, a good rule of thumb is to allow the psyche the freedom to choose when to be digital and when to be acoustic and to have a sense of proportion. Buffy's 1992 album Coincidence contains the first powwow rock song 

STARWALKER

with "different voices, although they all were my own" that "gave a richness to the powwow choruses.." (digital overdubbing with the acoustic chorus, biography, page 201.)

BB Boris devotes chapter 27 to a 90s style synthesizer stage-show, and it is hard-core spaceship rock a la Jefferson Starship.

I could mention the compelling paradox of watching this futuristic act showcasing old, almost forgotten musical accessories. Reviving a method developed forty years ago, BB Boris used a bank of multi-timbral Kawai synthesisers, driven by a MIDI sequencer that had memorised every note of every instruments' part and could play them all simultaneously on command.. 

As for the music, the material was definitely eclectic. (Memoirs, page 405,406.)

Rather than being driven into a universe with plugged-in heads sitting on their ass, neurotic and weak, the proportionate psyche has a baseline of freedom of choice, between acoustic and non-acoustic, leaving the body as an instrument in itself.

Freedom of choice is the baseline for expressing what is after all soundwaves in air, and not readouts on an interface. This is clearly especially so in folk music - of which Buffy and Tunstall are pop partisans - and one is reminded of the "Judas" incident at Isle of Whight (electrification of Dylan.)

Folk is a body and, having just obtained a copy of The Winnebego by Paul Radin, the same exists with religio-folklore. Winnebego clans were divided into a twofold division, one being of the sky (including Thunderbird clan), the other being land and sea animals. 

The animal/spirit totems imposed an order on the clans that is for example seen in the layout of a village.

The Winnebago, Paul Radin, page 140 (Bison)

The twofold division was largely imposed on marriage rites whereby one had to marry into the other division. Marriages were generally arranged at a young age - though the parents were flexible - and one could imagine the odd West Side Story tragedy.

But the essential point is that, while modern societies are 'free', the Winnebego are ordered, and the hierarchy of organization is extremely visible- even in the look of a village.

An ordered hierarchy is a process of oppositional encounters, and the same divisions occurred on the ceremonial lacrosse games.

Modern societies try to blank out oppositional encounters, and the underlying reason is probably that 'freedom' implies a lack of hierarchical relationship to the universe. In other words, of isolated individuals,neurotic and insular. Coldplay types who are convinced the universe is highly complex VERSUS the expansive, totemic animals of powwow rock. The psychic realm of friendly relations (and enemies) in a mythical universe. 

The social setup of the Winnebego is mythically body-oriented (animal totems), directing social divisions that are extremely visible and serve to divide the genetic material.

In other words, the higher divisions in the Winnebego, imposed by the religio-myth, imposes an order that is almost completely lacking in modern societies, where 'freedom' is related to either/or genetic mutations/digital devices.

But, as previously noted, both are a type of meaningless mutation, confusing freedom with a type of chaos run by machines (gene-machines, digital-machines.)

Modern advance is one-sided and lacks the hierarchical order that comes into social, folkloric, mythical, animal roots.

"Farewell everyone, and as you leave tonight, take a good, long look at the skies above you,  at those zillions of stars out there. You'll soon realise that all things, from the largest galactic cluster to the smallest atomic particle, are part of the same, incredible dance." (page 411)

Polarity Hill (5)

The elephant in the room is that I'm bearing down on black rappers and that hip-hop is mutating meaninglessly. For a start, I don't know a lot about it and am not a musical scholar,  having even given up playing guitar. I like Kanye West, but am by no means a scholar of his music.

No, I'm mainly coming down on media spivs like McCormick, who is clearly trying to lead the conversation into social mores and 'evolving' musical tastes, whatever that means.

Yes, what he means by evolution is meaningless mutation, but Coldplay are not hip-hop. McCormick is not so much critiquing music as leading the conversation into a preferred future of social conformity.

This is wrong from many different angles and, as I said in a (unpublished) letter to DT,

The 'homosocial' milieu had what might be called male faults of bad manners. But without bad manners we get a society of neutralised sex. The bad can be good because it is antagonistic and mouthy. 

It's all very clear what 'they' and their spokespeople in the media want is a future where opposing factions don't exist. In that sense, it is mutating meaninglessly. But that is what 'they' call evolution.

So, it comes down to the view that evolution has to be two-pronged: in order to be meaningful it has to be hierarchical. This involves large-scale rhythms (similarities) as previously noted (see Haeckel P206.)

Their future is 'bad' because isolated and numerical: the alternate future is 'good' because highly rhythmical and having contrary and feudal factors - between groups or between men and women, or within groups.

A future with no sense of hierarchy confuses the situation beyond repair! It's telling that so many pulp futures are appallingly hierarchical, starting from A Princess of Mars. Professor Brian Cox has a coy phrase that looking into the night sky is "looking into the past", because the stars are so far away and so old (going back in time). Ironically, though, pulp futures go back in time also socially.

These factors come into play in the fairly fascinating Say Hello to Jupiter, the future fantasy derived from his stage show by Canadian burlesque musician BB Boris (poss prev.)

Boris says goodbye to 'the illusion of freedom' in his future, and instead has an empire of mutual trust that comes up against a rogue throwback (somewhat like The Mule in the Foundation Trilogy.)

At one point, Boris has to explain

"My dear Gaia!.. The sovereigns in my time are nothing like the bloodthirsty conquerors of old.. They are highly trained, extremely ethical leaders. They provide the sense of mystical cohesion and the pageantry that Homo sapiens cannot, for all his sophistication, happily live without." (page 323)

That is a bit like having your cake and eating it . The time-travelling minstrel is also aware of the vitality of psyche (spirit), and when he goes back in time to our age, his quasi-mystical trappings no longer work.

All my personal units were powered by my strapowac, that quasi-mystical bracelet worn  y everyone in the Federation. But the strapowac can only function within a specific psychic environment, one where spiritual values are held in high regard. Needless to say, it was out of the question that it might be operational in a dismal, spiritually-bankrupt era such as this one.. (page 256)

It is quite easy to believe that psyche (spirit) will not work in a (democratic) society of individual freedom that is illusory (tied to the dollar and dynamics of money, or number). But the idea that one can have communal psyche without contraries and feuds is also illusory, as the conflict in the book suggests.

Polarity Hill (4)

 One way to look at a hierarchy is in things becoming linked through the structure of the mind. This would correspond to Claude Levi-Strauss's structuralism. The 'good' is the highest level of interrelated elements, while the 'bad' is the opposite. 

Put a bit less abstractly, technology tends to deal with separate elements, so could on some level appear somewhat meaningless. However, seeing as we live in a technological society, it would be less extreme to say one should be proportionate. 

Coincidentally, KT Tunstall's next due album is Nut.. 

..things related to the architecture of the brain (following a sequence of Kin - spirit - and Wax - body.) 

Rhythm controls development, and this is easier to see where the body acts in a psychic rapport with the 'instructions' of the brain, as in Black Horse and the Cherry Tree (PH3.)

Going into music technology a bit further, electronics can become pretty animated in processing sounds and samples, devices that are made for rap and hip-hop.

'Animated' is probably not a bad way to put it since it is something taking place in electronic space that is then translated into sound, texture. That's a long way from Tunstall's loop-pedal, but is there anything wrong with it?

Well, it's a case of proportion. Tunstall is herself keen on studio-technology, but is also keen on low-fi acoustics. The bottom line is that sound is airwaves and not electronics. Buffy was a pioneer in Apple Mac technology on Illumination, her album Coincidence was digitally engineered using MIDI files sent to London from her studio synthesisers (biography, page 200.)

Electronics copies very precisely. The only trouble occurs if everything is a copy! The bottom line is that the body itself and its mechanisms is a living rhythm that instruments generate.

The pioneering British turntable Linn Sondek, launched 1972, has a suspended chassis that isolates the playter from vibration, creating a crystal clarity of purity. Without that realism, one is in an electronic universe of copies and copies of copies (vinyl is simply mechanical movement of stylus.)

So, an electronic universe can achieve a good approximation to realism, but the insoucience of pure sound is the baseline for comparison. One can envisage a reaction against hip-hop of the raw rockers a la Tunstall.

Realism is raw and has meaning and is not simply sound-effects. Effects that are animated sort of leave behind the simplicity of the body as a rhythmic instrument. The body that is in rapport with the brain (Nut) has a level of meaning that is raw and can't be copied. 

You could sample it, and let the processes reduce the impact. So, rawness and meaning are body-defined related to psychic rapport. The reaction against hip-hop is basically that the genre just goes further and further into electronics; an animation of copying that represents the sun (pure technology, logic, ones and zeros.)

So the rapport with the psyche is fundamental, and the brain has a contrary structure that Levi-Strauss and others relate to tribal social levels, spaces in longhouse, etc. 

The brain in terms of meaning has a left side (reason) and a right (feeling.) It has a hindbrain (cerebellum) for movement, and a forebrain (cerebrum) for thought. It has a primitive spine derived from reptilian ancestors. 

So, the 'good' from that point of view will be interrelations between the contrary aspects of the brain (structure.)

An electronic future is 'bad' in that it goes away from these interrelations, and into the logic of the sun (ego.) That future will animate fairly realistically, through expressive algorithms and motion-capture (prev.) However, a good copy is still a copy and nor the original structure, rhythm. 

The question is how does the brain (and body) develop this structure from what is just information on genes? Well, it can't since the process is to do with meaning and rhythm. There have to be two disparate levels of evolution: one is meaningless mutation (genes); the other is hierarchical, rhythmical and has meaning.

Perhaps we need to stop defining rock by its past. Coldplay are what rock looks like when it has evolved to meet the needs of a new musical era, adapting to technological and stylistic change and emotional and sociological shifts, creating rock that is empathic, inclusive and in tune with the social constructs of post-millennial youth culture. They make Oasis look like dinosaurs. (Neil McCormick, DT)

In your fucking dreams.

Polarity Hill (3)

 Mutability and conscientious fact-merchants, a parallel reality corresponding to the sun (ego, Apollo.) The sun is the ultimate source of radiation and mutation, as seen in the classic Thomas/Adams X-Men #59.

I just saw a billboard ad for '100 connections' with a guy lounging on a sofa, and it struck me these are connections for the head, not the body. If that is 'a' future, it is like a poisonous mix of asshole with plugged-in head.

The classic use of the psyche in rapport with bodily movements and mechanism uses the technology with insoucience that frees it from control by either ass or head. 

Lee Perry used 4-track reels to eternal effect (see prev) with a fantastic lightness and balance of motifs, especially jungle basslines and vocal pyrotechnics. 

The psyche is in rapport with the body, symmetries that are fundamental to living, that harmonise the parts of the body. The head sitting on its ass is not.

In a symmetrical situation, there are bound to be hierarchies of development because each level has its own symmetries. The human body is controlled by the flexible spine, the pendulous top and the pelvic posture.

Symmetries are so vital that possibly people tend to forget them; the placement of figures on a landscape in narrative painting is dependent on meaning for left/right, up/down, depth of field (see BWS The Enchantment W11.)

The parallel reality (of the sun or ego) apparently doesn't see these symmetries,  and hence the epistemology (meaning) of language used. However, evolution without the hierarchy of symmetrical movement would just be the mutability and chaos of genes. 

Why is it that scientists see the symmetries of quantum physics but not of the body? Because it is of the head that is attached to number and algorithm.

A body is a higher-level symmetry; a commune or Algonquin longhouse have social symmetries. The problem is, without a view of higher-level symmetries, one doesn't know one's ass from one's elbow.

Cosmic obscenities (Revivalism7) are barely discernible, whereas to the ancient Greeks they were all around (in myth.) The most influential pop music of the 20th century was probably Motown, and it contains the sounds of the city, the patois, 'suger pie, honey bunch' turns of phrase of thr black citizens of Detroit (see Drama3.)

60s-style technology can be superior because it frees the psyche. The most classic example of lo-fi technology that frees the psyche in rapport with body gestures was KT Tunstall's use of the foot-pedal on

BLACK HORSE AND THE CHERRY TREE outu.be/FGT0A2Hz-uk

The insoucience and bird-like gestures are ineffably free (loose, under their own control.) KT of course gave birth to the gargoyle that is Ed Sheeran, and this brings in the point that good and bad are always present.

That is, in a symmetrical universe that has hierarchies and is not simply the province of number for egg-heads. Lee Perry makes the good/bad connotation very manifest on his version of

OXYGEN Youtu.be/GV9Rp57t0ZM

'Polarity Hill' (2)

 Once one accepts mutations are purely random, it's clear there are two disparate sides to evolution with no connection between them atall. One is meaningless but free; the other is powerful and goal-oriented. To confuse the two is to be in a parallel world where fact and fiction intermingle.

Genes are mutable which is why there is complete freedom of choice when the body is impelled to make a change to any of its functions. By 'function' meaning something thatbexhibits goal-oriented behaviour. 

One example happened when female synapsids - ancestors of mammals - who laid parchment-shelled eggs that lost water to the surroundings, changed the function of a hair-follicle to a lactating gland that started nourishing the thin shells.

The milk that developed over time incorporated nutrient compounds and anti-bacterial agents and eventually came to replace egg-yolk.

In terms of language (story) and semantics, the females of circa 300 million years ago were developing teats and eventually breasts in order to nurture their young. The birth of live young (instead of eggs) is a mammalian trait that enables long gestation and close bonds.

The language has a feminine angle, an ancestral origin myth. In order for this goal-oriented behaviour to be chosen, there has to be the absence of goal-oriented behaviour in the genes. One one side there is goal-oriented behaviour, on the other there is mutability (random change.)

Unless one realises there is a two-sided process, the confusion is that DNA contains a language that can be understood and have semantics (meaning.) No, the language is only there to be understood by RNA transcriptase, it has no meaning beyond that.

The body is balanced and proportionate, desirable to a mate with the mechanical power to achieve results. That is what meaning means! The mechanical efforts function in psychic rapport through connection to spine and cerebellum - breath, speech, blood, sight. That is what behaviour is.

The language (story) of behaviour is the language of evolution, and it is nothing to do with DNA. The fallacy is that because DNA can be understood it has meaning (as a language.)

It's meaningless because only the body has the behaviour because behaviour comes from the mechanisms of balance and proportion. 

Force and purpose are one side; mutability and meaninglessness are the other. Where there is force and purpose there is going to be meaning in terms of behaviour. Abuse - yelling at a kid; obscenity, absurdity, humour. There is going to be social-control. There are going to be differences. There is going to be messiness and germs. 

All that can be narrated by language. But the neutralising of language (see PM1) leads to the neutralising of meaning. Meaningless acts can recur. A neutral language has no meaning; it can only be understood as a type of confusion, a mutability of functions.

To avoid confusion, terms like purpose and destiny (motherhood) have to be used to impose semantics on a seemingly meaningless order (of the West.)

'Polarity Hill'

 The state of having two opposite or contradictory tendencies (male, female etc.)

Whether one likes it or not, the state of feuding in societies which live freely in nature, be it Greek city-states or Algonquin Confederacy, is endemic.

In Indian folklore, the trickster - scavenger, Coyote - is an intermediary who uses cunning rather than sheer force to gain his ends.

Tales of the Coyote can be pretty absurd, and were put into comicbook form by Englehart with Marshall Rogers and others. The absurdity of existence is not something that often occurs to numerically-besotted scientists, but it certainly does to poetic icons the likecof Emily Dickinson.

My nosegays are for Captives -

Dim - long expectant eyes -

Fingers denied the plucking, 

Patient till Paradise -

To such, if they sh'd whisper

Of morning and the moor -

They bear no other errand,

And I, no other prayer

Dickinson's individualist psychedelia has been compared to the Transcendentalism of Emerson and others of the mid 19th century, though her quirky punctuation was a law unto itself.

Now, the question with DNA is: does it have such things as punctuation and a type of 'grammar? It must have in order to be read by RNA transcriptase  but even so they have no meaning (no semantics.)

The reason is that DNA is something that is accessed by the body with complete freedom. The fact that it is ordered is just a figment; it has to be ordered in order to be read by RNA transcriptase proteins.

Any language has to be read, the difference is that Dickinson's poems have meaning (psyche) While DNA has none.

In order for the body to function freely by choosing strands of DNA (miscopies or mutations), DNA has to be functionless. That's just a logical necessity. If DNA had any function, the body would be circumscribed and could not gain evolutionary advantage. 

What that means is that the calculations on the meaning, language and function of DNA by scientist-clones are all without meaning. A figment of 'fact'.

All it means is that they enter a parallel reality of convincing illusions (numbers, algorithms.) The ego is triumphant. The more the analysis, the more of a figment it is (and the more convincing, natch.)

As has already been said (SR2,3), the body is a psychic rapport of mechanism and function through the hindbrain (cerebellum) and the spine and muscles such as diaphragm that empower mammals in running, hunting, mating. 

The mechanics of DNA are a figment compared to these powerful processes of active bodies in pursuit of goals. That has to be so in order for the body to function freely through choice through the random mutations of DNA, which is itself functionless.

In short, pursuing a mechanical model foe DNA is just one more illusion of the mirror of illusions, the neutral zone of numerical compulsion. The distorted rhythms that are the equivalent of the neutral zone of sex.

In other words, analysis of DNA is just another ego-compulsion of a compulsive order that has no desire for the fecundity of the natural order (obscenity.) No desire, since desire comes out of a recognition of opposites and that there is no tyrannical order that makes things the same (no obscenity, no filth.)

Sameness is an illusion, a parallel reality of ego-compulsion. The body is a product of teetering g balance that confounds logic. The illogical borrows from the logical (Corneille), a concept that enables freedom of choice in an order of natural rhythms, as opposed to distorted compulsions (ego.)