Savage Rebellion (6)

 To the Right capital is a resource; to the Left socialism is a resource. But at the very start of Godard's Film Socialisme (2010) is the following exchange set against seawater. 

Money is a public good.

Like water then?

Exactly.

This harks back to the 16th century and the establishment of the Royal Exchange in London () as a resource for the exchange of goods from the continent and further afield (the Silk route.)

Goods are themselves resourced from the natural world or basically the ultimate resource. IE, mountains, rivers, goatherds etc. Capital itself is not a resource since it is just a numerical system composed of money (used as exchange). The problem with the modern system is that for all its cleverness, it's illiterate in terms of the articulate reality. IE, the 3 dimensions of space and the 1 of time.

All that capital can do in the long term is to enable an uncertain reality (SR5) that is a type of hyper-real illusion built by machines. Machines are themselves numerical in that logic dictates that they become numerical as opposed to purely mechanical. 

So, the logical pursuit of capital is a fait accompli of logical machines (in variable time, natch.)

The certain world (of the psyche) is the one of images that inspire humans and activity, that imbues the psyche with some feeling of meaning. The world of certainty is acrobatic and goes by feel and touch (articulate motion.)

For example, there are the layers of a rainforest canopy harbouring diverse beasts and flora. The articulate reality has dimensions (height, depth), while what one could call the purely technical reality doesn't. 

According to Bolsonaro (or 'Bolshie'), the canopy can be cut to enable agribusiness,  ie cattle grazing. This is technically true, but illiterate in terms of articulate motion (and meaning.)

The rainforest topsoil is very poor in nutrients and the texture of the crumbs is insufficient to retain nourishment. The reason a rainforest is so fertile is that there is constant growth and die-back or decay. There is a lot of heat that degrades matter swiftly and only the growth sustains it.

Once the canopy is gone, the topsoil is no longer a carbon store but a carbon emitter. Cow manure is insufficient to improve the situation and one is left with what is a fairly artificial system of intensive agriculture who's only justification is the numerical one (of technique or number, ie capital.)

In other words, the resource of technique or number (capital) is illusory in the articulate reality. That's an exttene example, but the point is however clever the capitalist is in terms of capitalist resource, the ultimate resource has to be articulate and not technical.

We live in a world where the real dimensions have gone out of fashion, where the ego looms large. Apart from that, an articulate reality is fertile and has a sexual etiquette that feeds the psyche. 

By 'articulate', I mean mainly something that exists hierarchically (in layers or levels) and not simply in parts or in technical information. So, theoretically villages or schools or Indian camps all have that as a holistic trait (or, say, a summer camp for scouts.)

People being what they are, there is always some sexual etiquette going on, even between young ones. To attempt to stamp that out is detrimental to the psyche (development, sequence) and I guess understanding. 

I happened to go to an Irish boarding school, (Quaker run Newtown, prev), and the current newslwtter contains this quote by a son of one of my teachers.

My parents married in 1966 and because they were both residential staff were assigned accommodation in a flat at the top of the main house. Then when 55, 56 and 57 Newtown Buildings were bought and converted into girls' dormitories, my parents moved into number 57. And that is the house that I was born into. Apparently, there was some excitement in the school when I came along because everyone got a half day to mark the occasion. At least, that is how it's been related to me and that half-day likely remains my greatest contribution to school life..

The hallway of the main house was always humming with activity as the office was on the ground floor. There was also a junior girls' common room. There were always pupils sitting on the big black leather settee and sliding down the banisters when no one was looking..

My earliest memories are extraordinarily happy ones, and while so many of the people who populate them are now gone, I remain grateful to them. (Christopher McKevitt)

The fact that people are being born on campus instils an articulate sexual tendencjy that is pretty obvious. The physical reality is articulate as opposed to being purely technical. 

This instils psyche, and the spiritual sensation of Newtown to Christopher is obvious from his quote. To think of schools as purely technical institutions is to miss the point that the reality we inhabit is one of dimensions (not mental information or numbers.)

Because numbers are so sophisticated and accurate and convincing, the fundamental reality is mislaid (pun intentional.)

This applies to DNA (prev.) The neutralising trend in modern material reality is the diminution of physical or articulate differences (men, women, age, race) in favour of the machine (of capital or number.)

This could be likened to the neutral zone in sex as in Godard's films such as Weekend or Goodbye to Language. 

Savage Rebellion (5)

 

Mount Fuji

Jean-luc Godard in Notre Musique (2004) set in the post-war landscape of Sarajevo, develops a narrative of text versus image, where the written text is often the work of the 'winner', taking as an example Israel versus Palestine.

Going further back, Homer is the text of the Trojan war. However, he also has a story of Heisenberg (of the uncertainty principle) and Bohr walking in Denmark past an unprepossessing castle. Heisenberg says that's just a castle, but Bohr notes it's 'Hamlet's castle' 

Elsinore

This makes the point that text has to include image, but the image has a type of certainty that otherwise it would not. Godard himself adopted a documentary style of filmmaking that he would call 'Image' (as apposed to defunite narrative), but he psychically superimposed a narrative. Documentary and fantasy become intertwined. 

So, the idea of pure documentary is probably a non-sequitur as there is always an agenda. Taking it a bit further, if science is documentary (image) with no agenda then it could lead to a type of non-existence (zero or nothingness.)

This leads back to KT Tunstall's poster (P221) with the lyrics to 'Canyons', set in a physical reality of wide horizon and steep canyons. The 3 dimensions of space, plus the 1 of time or expression.

From this classic American landscape, Tunstall develops the lyrics relating to psyche (Nut). The psyche emanates from the physical in the sense of power. 

Tunstall is pretty insincere, if you listen to her spiel at performances; that is really to say she is not being that literal, she is being wry or deliberately offensive. She is not held by the material reality in front of her but by her peculiar interpretation of reality (psyche.)

The problem is that American material reality is very head-based (as I've been saying for awhile) and therefore not the true reality which is physical (the undulating lines of cattle trails, the range.)

The science-based material reality is uncertain, while the physical, undulating reality is certain. The American epic is a narrative about the image. In Godard-esque terms, this would mean American reality has now become text rather than image. The image is needed to form a psychic component,  and modern images have no psychic component. 

The exception would probably be comic book images, which are more fantastical. This trend is pushed even further in Japan, where various modes of Manga describe the etiquette of Japanese life assailed by various spiritual forces.

One story from Wings (devoted to women readers) is all to do with the humdrum activities of a dairy farm from Hokkaido, the prefecture which is likened to the frontier West of America. 

Creator Hiromu Arakawa is known for her Fullmetal Alchemist which gives an indication of the diversity.

(Neo #223)

This leads to the odd conclusion that, though the Japanese are homogeneous racially, they are heterogeneous in their psyche! Especially in the fertile area of sex and etiquette. Developing the psyche depends on physical awareness, and not on living inside the head. 

As previously noted, the physical, undulating reality contains 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time. All of this is tacitly ignored by a science of number and algorithm (and variable time or machine-time, calculation.)

In other words, the science of technique can be uncertain and unreal in terms of the expression of psyche in physical, undulating settings of work, acrobatics, livestock, the range. 

The physical reality is dirty while the technical reality is hygienic. But from dirt comes fertility and revival (see Buffy quote.) The Western obeyance to technique was clearly picked-up by Bruce Lee in Artist of Life (prev).

In the book he is discussing the demerits of traditional Chinese teachers of Gung Fu, but the same argument can be applied to the West.

The techniques, though they play an important role in the early stages, should not be too restrictive, complex or mechanical. Remember, you are expressing the technique and not 'doing' the technique. When someone attacks you it is not technique number one (or is it technique number two, stance two, section four?) that you are doing, but the moment you are 'aware' of his attack you simply move in like sound and echo without deliberation. It is as though when I call you, you answer me, or when I throw something to you, you catch it. That's all. (page 30)

In other words, technique takes one out of simple and effective action without need for thought. Note that Raducanu, for all her experiments with trainers, has not been able to match the fantastic free-hitting of her initial win at the US Open.

Techniques are only useful things; reality itself is the physical one of dimensions and the expression of time (music.)

The neutralising trend in modern material reality is the diminution of physical differences in favour of the machine. This could be likened to the neutral zone in sex (as in certain Godard films from Weekend to his last Goodbye to Language.)

Savage Rebellion (4)

 There's a certain similarity between Royal Kill () and Marvel Studio's Black Widow in the openings featuring planted foreign emissaries on US soil. But, while RK follows the obsessive illusions of a role player battling 'evil' forces, Widow is all about the reality of good and evil.

This is where the heart-to-hearts work well, interspliced between typical action sequences. However, it's not so much the reality of good and evil as the dimensions of unreality on which the action transpires that leads to a flawed work.

The most fun scene is the improbable high speed chase through the canyons of Budapest, much of the rest being held in a neutral zone of indeterminate space (see the neutral zone of sex, SR3).

On the one hand the film is a dimensionless illusion taking place in a digital universe; on the other it is full of human desire and the appealingly red-headed Johansson as Natasha.

There are appealing scenes, such as the young Natasha (then black-haired) threatening to kill anyone who touches her kid sister, following the furtive family's escape to Cuba. The film is a creature of two elements, one of which is acrobatics and articulate litheness, the other of which is a machine-universe of animation.

One shouldn't necessarily care, except that the 3 dimensions of space are the fecund reality we inhabit on Earth. The Widow takes us out of that to the extent we are approaching the universe of the expressive algorithm and motion-capture (3D animation, see prev.)

The one thing that prevents this happening is the effectiveness of the actors. That makes actors pretty priceless, whereas in the old adventure serials it's the school of formulaic performances. 

But, in the old-school dramas, the fecund reality of the jungle depicted does exist (even if it's in the studio!), the bluffs, crags and vegetation, down to the undersea horses (in-joke.) In the Widow and other blockbusters, the fecund reality is reality only to the actors, not to the scenes staged.

So, there's a sort of contradiction there. A fecund reality is seen typically in role-playing lore in the type of old charts and maps, such as these of Hyboria. 

(P65)

Typically, palm trees or brush or mountain ranges or islands are delineated to suggest the undulations of landscape/seascape. This is the articulate world of rhythm. Geology is really the rhythms of rocks over time that Man has managed to categorize into sedimentary, igneous, the residues of past epochs.

Without the higher level rhythms, there can be no cycles of decay and revival that are basically a staple of the fecund universe (of opposing motions.)

The psyche reacts to the fecund reality, and there is a rapport with the articulate body. This is the fundamental, physical reality where rebellious people can fend for themselves, establishing free societies (homesteads, trees, livestock, fences.) 

In terms of comics book dimensions, Ditko's Dr Strange has this as he portrays organic, branching, tree-like vegetable masses. Roger Stern and others have written wonderful yarns on the rebellious natives of the Dark Dimension, Clea the pretender, daughter of Umar etc. (when dynastic rulers had power and not empty ritual.)

(Destruction 3)

By contrast the film version of Dr Strange tends to go for the indeterminate look. The idea of indeterminacy comes up in Gilbert Hernandez' BEM (from L&R book 1, 1985), where Castle Radium is battling an endlessly mutating foe (prev.)

The films tend to take this to the extreme so that the background against which heroes fight villains is dimensionless and decidedly not organic or fecund.

That neutralising trend could be said to represent the neutral zone in sex, the compulsive and hygienic (number, algorithm - see Grace Slick quote HB62/1). This sort of mirrors a future where sex and race are neutralised by omnivorous news of the digital/electrical universe of machines.

Pictorial 221

 As a half-breed, Tunstall  may feel some affinity with the Red Indians of yore, and this poster came my way via Nut, signed and for a fee, natch. It seems to have three dimensions in the deep canyons and the wide horizon (shades of 80s Celt-rockers Big Country.) This is Indian territory, hence American territory,  which Tunstall's keen, birdlike mind has deciphered from the landscape.

Landscape is built for the body, in that hips rotate to pelvically articulate the walker or runner along the buffs, bow in hand. The human is the only animal that walks nomadically for days on end. At the end of the day joints stretch and crack.

The physical situation is the fundamental reality that imbues psychic well-being. The physical situation is composes of 4 dimensions and, see P220, none of those dimensions - including invariable time - are part of our illusory system of numbers and 'facts' (so favored by the head.)

We live in our heads in the phenomenological jar supplied by 'them'. They don't know their ass from their elbow (but know a lot of other things.) This is where it might pay to discuss just what is meant to by hierarchy in a society, in that any traditional society - like the body - has a hierarchy of organization. 

I think there can be some confusion here. For example, I was watching the Republic serial from 1945, Jungle Queen. The story is set in the lead-up to the war when Nazi agents are attempting to install a puppet in the jungle judge presiding over a powerful confederation in North Africa, and hence control Africa on the southern front.

This revolves round the secret of the sacred sword, and set against the Nazis is the mystical Lothel, the white Jungle Queen, who advises the British and US and tribesmen. As a review said, Lothel's powers are so formidable that the story lacks suspense. One could say it's pretty condescending, but makes thecpoint that tribal hierarchy is belief-based.

On the contrary, the Nazi high-command is organisation based. Or you could say the Germans believed in organisation. So, tribes are quite hierarchical institutions, as was medieval Euripe, but that doesn't mean to say that both can't also be anarchic (with no central control.)

The body is very anarchic in that there is no central control. The CNS does certain things it is capable of doing, while the majority of functions are autonomic (breathing, heartbeat, sight, movement.)

If you take the act of speed-walking, the arm goes down as the leg goes up, there is an antagonistic rhythm that is automatic. No thought is involved, the body is acting on instinct. 

An antagonistic system can never be centrally controlled. The German war-machine worked on the opposite principle that the high-command would have all the facts at their fingertips and be able to direct action. This seems pretty much a German failing. 

The British and Americans may have hierarchical organisation, but it is a flexible hierarchy relying on initiative. Not only that, but the banter between the two Americans keeps a light tone and the spirits up (psyche.)

The German tendency is to suppress the psyche for the sake of organisation (I mean, in war.) But the psyche is simply the expression of a physical situation where hierarchy exists - a flexible hierarchy  - and is needed for calmness, judgement.

Thr German failing is to not really exist in the physical moment, at least in war. The physical situation is a flexible hierarchy, since everything physical has to be flexible (Bruce Lee.) The throat could choke and needs to be able to flex snake-like to recoil and fix the problem (or you're dead.)

Sexual attraction is also highly antagonistic; breeding means survival. Life in the raw needs must be anarchic; governments may impose laws, but organisation itself can't run things. It has to be by a hierarchy that is innately flexible. 

By surveying her surroundings, birdlike, Tunstall is seeing thr physical situation that eludes the Washington heads in their phenomenological jar (imported from Mars.) Tunstall's America is the real America because it is physical to the touch, the same as Buffy's. From this, the psyche is imbued, songs develop, societies flourish  

So I think Americans have to realise hierarchy is not just British royals. It is a flexible physical situation of instinctive living of the body that acts on initiative inside the commune (the higher level development.)

There is a degree of anarchy involved, and this frees the psyche (from central control, propaganda.) The brain is a psyche and not simply CNS. Listen to KT and learn, friends. 

RIP J-LG

Pictorial 220

 

Nut is better than the web-crits would have you believe, seemingly lightweight with bright beats a zillions miles from Adele, and sardonically ditto (not the band.)

Drums and rhythms permeate the precipices of Tunstall's inner thoughts, articulating what several philosophy textbooks would not even perceive. Perception in modern philosophy is represented by phenomenology - as seen in Dark Star, P215 - but the intent is without the lightness of the Charleston (see Josephine Baker, prev), limbs weaving round the underbrush of the mind.

The hidden track points to the modern data-trap that may end with the expressive algorithm.

BRAIN IN A JAR

As one can see from the illo, 'the lady is a fruit'. In other words, there is a vegetable/animal symbiosis though, in this case, without the fierce feeding frenzy of Noto's 'Red Lace' (P218 The Citadel of Fear).

Flowers here are not brutal, though they are insidious and so probably equally life-destroying. That may seem an odd comment, but graveyards tend to blossom. Here, the insidiousness is more to do with the modern metamorphosis into an illusory Narcissus perpetually gazing at one's reflection.

PRIVATE EYES

The idea that vegetables are just for show is for the birds. For a start, Nut could also refer to the testicle, and the convolutions of both brain and testicles are not a million miles apart.

In other words, a seemingly inoffensive vegetable has hidden powers. These articulating elements of the body tend to not be perceived by the rational philosophers.

The notion of bloodthirsty plants is not a million miles from Mel Brook's 'Springtime for Hitler', the musical in The Producers set in the mountain retreat of Berchtesgaden.

Basically, things which seem inoffensive in nature are just the camouflage for the feeding of fertility. Good and bad are always going to be present, and the moral order is the gamekeeper's order that establishes a balance to stabilise a system (see Botham, prev.)

I was walking up the old High Street here and witnessed a twirling stream erupt from a side-pipe, to wind down the stones of the old street. Kids were delighted, and one was immediately put in mind of the dull green of shaded woods, the tinkle of stones (red Indians on the prowl.)

In short, the psychic calmness of such vistas cannot be overestimated. The body articulates in psychic vistas, or the higher-level developments of nature that just happen. 

BWS pencil art for Cimmeria 

Happenings, if one believes (with Byron) in Fortune, are psychic as well as physical. The illusory, phenomenological future is clearly devoid of all of that. Without psychic strength (stability, insoucience), weakness and confusion are the inevitable results of an illusory material advance. 

Pictorial 219

What I've been leading up to is that basically the modern head ('white man's head') for all its cleverness is essentially wrong or exists in a parallel dimension of logic as opposed to the real dimensions of up/down, left/right, back/front, inside/outside, all of which are of course rhythmically based.

The fundamental essence of symmetrical, spiralling reality is lost to modernity, and hence the actions of the articulate body that establishes hierarchical order in the universe. 

Our Queen has gone, but the hierarchy that establishes roots in the very soil of the Earth has been gone for centuries. Charles will be imposing his 'power over flowers' as that's all that it's possible to do!

There's a basic mismatch between the 'Land of Hope and Glory' pomp that speaks of power, and the abysmal lack of hierarchy that speaks of powerlessness. The empty rituals were at the root of Lindsay Anderson's rebellious films of the late 70s (see If A6 etc.) starring Malcolm McDowell. 

The Arcadian age of Gainsborough speaks of an aristocracy at ease with the roots of the earth, and their imperial spendor on country estates that traversed the Earth. Those days are long gone in the complete lack of hierarchy that is synonymous with Fleet Street propaganda for the corrupt political/economic system of basic sameness (individualism.)

We live in a resolved space (of parallel logic, electromagnetism, algorithms) that has none of the Arcadian symbols of yore because it has neither dimensions nor even the invariable time (of rhythm or spin.) This is another way of saying any hierarchical action (of the body) is impossible as a notable act in society. The Queen has her horses but there is no higher symbolic meaning in terms of the rhythms that inform music (pomp.)

Truss is the new woman in charge - in the Commons aka Martian colonialists - and the distinction between her and a robot is minimal. Where the head is in charge, the ineffable rhythms of reality are not. Distortion rules, instead of the fierce hunger that places corruption and evil in a hierarchical framework.

Part of the appeal of modernity is its strict regimes of hygiene (GM monoculture) but this is simply an illusion that disempowers the fertile soil, and hence the 4 elements of earth, air, water and fire (sun/photosynthesis.)

Without the 4 elements, the 5th element - as in Luc Besson's film - of psyche is gone too. Psyche is imbued by a state of reality (body) and cannot be invented by a head of state.

The pomp of the head of state is a figment with no primal reality. The dirt of the soil is where the fertility and regeneration of humus and clods of earth take place when allowed to just happen (P218).

WHEN THE EARTH MOVES AGAIN

Societies just happen when the fertile state allows them. This is where the psyche thrived, be it ancient Egypt ('They left the deserts golden') or Chick Chalmers' photos from the 70s of Orkney and Anerican cowboys. The psyche of a commune - or higher level than individual - that needs must cause a state of reflection on a higher plane (belief, tribe.) From that can come creativity and rebellion from a nefarious order of the illusory convictions of the head.

Denizens 2/3

Pictorial 218

 Ever since the publication of Freud's Three Essays on a Theory of Sexuality, we have become accustomed to thinking of affective relations in the language of capital: we invest libido in objects, thereby increasing their value but reducing our own psychic reserves.. However, whereas teems like 'investment', 'value', and 'bankruptcy' are for Freud only metaphors for the erotic, (Godard) refuses to subordinate one term to another. The economic is not merely metaphoric, but literal as well, and it not only signifies, but is signified by, the erotic. (Speaking About Godard, Silverman/Farocki, page 203,204)

This equates roughly to the feminine dimension of sensual mystique (P217). The Taj Mahal, built in memory of Mumtaz Mahal (who died in childbirth) is a monument to erotic value that signifies wealth by its sensual splendour. The sensual is an ancient attribution of wealth in the attainment of power - castles and country estates - whereas to Freud the opposite is true, and money simply signifies erotic power (usually of men.)

However, the idea that money per se signifies wealth does without the erotic as a source of primal power and wealth in itself (as in Greek gods and goddesses, natch.) This is one of the contradictions at the heart of modern capital. We seem to live on a world of distorted rhythms that have a scent of perverse sex. Jean-luc Godard in Weekend and Goodbye to Language (prev) and other films takes aim at these distortions of modernity (of head as opposed to body.)

The sensual or the fertile is something that happens naturally, and this gives it primordial power. The rhythmic writhings of the serpent. Where there is fertility, there is degradation and the fallen branches that decay are are home to myriads of bugs. From degradation springs revival, and the soil is an anchor for the fertility of the lifecycles of bird and insect. 

As has already been noted, good and bad coexist, and the job of the gamekeeper is to strike the right balance between bloodshed and stability. The modern 'type' who thinks in terms of a perfect solution to natural problems is living an illusion. 

The role of evil in the days of ancient civilizations is fairly common to pulp fantasy, one of the first being Francis Stephens' The Citadel of Fear.

In the story, the subversive subterranean scene of marshy rushes and prowling white wolves has a demonic fascination. It's somewhat reminiscent of Clair Noto's temple of wood and stone from Red Sonja ('Red Lace' prev.) The vegetable and the animal are crosscut and act almost symbiotically.

The evil of the blood-swollen plants in Noto, and the evil in The Citadel of Fear are somewhat akin. The fierce feasting of fertility harbours the demonic desires of a maggot inside an apple. To seek to rid the world of such happenings is simply illusory, and a denial of the body that decays. From 'happenings' comes revival, and from revival the rebellious spirit of youthful zest.

While modern science seems to specialise in gene-editing and GM crops, these are independent of the soil which is the source of all fertility in its gradually decaying humus content, water, airholes (drainage). The state of the soil can be dire, in other words. Modern gardeners are often specialists who reel-off Latin names and tidy tidbits (no offence.)

The soil is easily what could be called an articulate substance that contains the structures that enable things to become joined together; the earthworm castings (so unsightly in suburban pastures.) 

That structure could be said to be symmetrical between water, air, earth and the fire (sun) needed for leaves to transpire (produce O2 in the presence of water). It's just another way of looking at it and a simpler one 

It's fairly straightforward, if one just let's things happen, as Buffy Sainte-marie says of dried buffalo manure (HB70.) By leaving things be, the primordial forces of fertility and growth generally tend to produce useful products. The wild woodsman instincts revive spirit.

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