Hyborian Bridge 199

 

"A fellow with hate is better help in danger than the most trustworthy friend" (Roxanne book 2, Letendre, Loisel)

HB198 notes towards the end Michelle Roquebrune's favourite draftsman was Dürer, and the role of draftsmanship in storytelling us also very obvious, as here with the flowing grace of Loisel's line depicting the tree-death of a lost land.

Superb draftsmanship often has a ramshackle quality that can hint at sordid debauchery (Egon Schiele, HB198). The body and natural form echo one another in gnarled and twisted shapes; the fertility of shapes that match and fit one another.

While no one is saying Dürer is as debauched as Picasso or Schiele, linework so ramshackle is like the portrayal of fertility in nature. One sees in Dürer both the idealism of the Renaissance and the Gothic underworld of the medieval.

The power of nature comes from feuding, and this liveliness affects the psyche. Since the Renaissance, the scientific order has overwhelmingly crushed what was inspirational to the old-time artists.

This dichotomy of nature is the land of death and revival (see above picture). Without a type of debauched fertility, there can be no revival, only a sterile and lacklustre place fit for zombies (see also Noto's 'Red Lace'.)

The most clear idea of what I mean came this week with the news that Modi had finally caved-in to the demands of small-farmers, and repealed the 'free-market legislation for selling agricultural produce (see prev.)

"I apologize to India and with a true and pure heart we were not able to convince farmers"

Fair dos to him, albeit that several hundred died of the prolonged standoff and harsh ground conditions. The farmers stand for a system that is not just economic, but is strongly ecological as well as supplying economy to the farmholders.

They is to say (as previously expressed), the system is inefficient and there is wastage en route to markets. Waste rots and becomes an ecological product. Modern capitalism is based on sterile monoculture which is efficient but loses fertility of the soil and creates toxic waste-products that cannot be recycled (see Iowa pig farms; sewage runoff in English rivers prev.)

Ecology is a type of economic inefficiency, and this is what the small Indian farmer stands for. As the Minnesota Institute of Environment has said (prev), when ramshackle ecosystems are destabilised by development, pests and viruses are also disturbed from their hosts.

A stable ecosystem is able to harbour pests that do not become toxic generally. India,  compared to China, has vastly more of this stability and, of course, the toxic plague we currently endure cane from the latter.

Stability is ramshackle and has a type of debauched quality of raw fertility (see pulp examples in HB194); this is inimical to the standards of hygiene and efficiency that both East and West now espouse. Modi has come to know wisdom that the like of Belsonaro might eventually follow.

This language of debauchery may jar the ears of some, but it is said with a 'pure heart' to quote the Indian premier. There is no escaping it, and those who attempt it are merely prolonging the agony of a diseases planet.

I recently revisited the 70s TV series Survivors (poss prev), and in the episode'Law and Order' they have a house-party in which Greg and Jen discuss fertility cults.

They say something like blood fertilizes in rituals when satyrs roamed in ancient days, and blood of virgins rained (they were in their cups). Of course, this was to counterpoint the bloody end of Wendy, an English rose who is molested following the party.

Being 70s TV nothing is spelt out, but the hint of debauchery is plainly there. The reason it's there is because these post-apocalyptic survivors are living off the land and relying on the fertility of the land, its animals and plants. In a fertile situation there will be rites of fertility, dancing round maypoles, young kids and sexual symbolism.

Modern societies treat this as taboo while having a dark net. These things can't be hidden because they're out there in nature. It's the Cider With Rosie syndrome, where sheep-shagging and incest aren't unheard of.

A sterile order (of economic efficiency) corrupts these natural rhythms (the profane serpent); it's impossible to deny what is there in the natural order. You only have to look at the linework of Dürer or Egon Schiele (or Loisel.)

This active world of lively linework harbours the expressive psyche they is frequently diminished by modern establishments. I picked-on Survivors because it's a deliberately primitive setting that clearly harks back to ancient traditions and the archaic satyrs of wood and myth.

Where situations are deliberately simplified, the filming is much more fantasy-oriented, even if not to the extent of having zombies (which was what Is McCulloch went on to do in Italian cinema!)

The same I would say is true of Jean-Luc Godard's films (prev): they are simplified and cut to the bone to spell out his personal vision (Carpenter's budget horror too). This parallels Michelle Roquebrune, who said she "draws inside her head."

Perhaps the French are better at this but, in any event, the starkness of primitive fantasy is a counter to the complexity and obfuscation of modernity. I personally don't watch TV, but obviously know of series such as The Wire and so forth. These highly realistic 'procedural' shows can only obfuscate further what is a procedural reality (of talk as opposed to action, or vision.)

What I'm really getting at is one can only rebel in primitive circumstances. The 60s hippies were rebels and were known for debauchery and psychedelia. If they'd also been farmers perhaps history might have been different.

Incidentally, the Survivors party dancing scene is worth commenting on as the casual expression mitigates against routine, whereas dance-shows are now all routine! The point is, only an experienced pro can express a routine because they are so familiar. It's the Bruce Lee syndrome that a learnt routine is not expression in-the-moment. 

It seems like a small point, but it points to the diminished psyche; Survivors is a somewhat courtly variant of barn-dance coupling, expressionist and low-key.

Hyborian Bridge 198

 Since all sword and sorcery ultimately comes form Howard as the originator of the genre, here's a quote from book 2 of graphic series Roxanne by the French pair of Letendre (writer) and Loisel (artist).

Magic is tearing Akbar apart..seducing us..filling us with illusion..only to better enslave us..

Sorcerers seduce, and in so doing befuddle and obfuscate with signs and signals and incantations. is it possible that the more signs and signals and incantations the more likely it is we live inside a sorcerous illusion? Literally just driving down a double-track highway exposes one to more signs and signals than the entire medieval-Christian era! 

Of course, some take less care of these matters than others.

CAN'T GETCHA OUT OF MY MIND

Linda and her mates careering carelessly down the freeway are obviously not that bothered about the modern infrastructure they happen to be using.

This might seem a pop-pugilist's point but is actually of ultimate interest. The infrastructure is all about money (interest rates zzz); capital finances infrastructure and infrastructure is information (algorithm) or ones and zeros. It's clear that the more elaborate the infrastructure becomes (signs and signals), the more it resembles the internet. Next comes 'the internet of things'..then of people.

The problem with that wholesale modern operation is 'the internet of things' graduates to ones and zeros. Everything becomes nothing (the vanishing point of technique) and at the same time convincing to the eye. Capitalism in short, is hyper-realist and full-throttle like the sun beating down on a desert highway down the gay way of modernity.

A car driving down a highway has that vague sense of nothingness owing to the constant presence of the vanishing point. However, it's never more than an illusion that doesn't intrude on your reality - psyche, physique.

The way I'd put it is: money has no value, only things have value (cars, fur coats). Similarly, the internet has no value, but the modern order of severe logic is topsy-turvy: logic and straight-lines rule, while balance and proportion are lost.

The modern order is increasingly made by programmers and made of programs. We may not realize it because, well, the world of logical signals is very convincing to the eye!

A photograph is convincing because after all it's a true observer's eye-view, but if everything is from an observer's perspective there is no balance and proportion.

I was reading of Michelle Roquebrune (the painter/widow of Sean Connery, see P146), who says she is self-taught and in portraits "expresses features with line and colour". Although she can use photographs for ensemble pieces, she simplifies form and crops to fit shapes.

She cited the cloisonné of Gaugain and the arch-draftsman Schiele as major influences. All that you could say is to do with balance and proportion as opposed to perspective observation by an individual. It frees the spirit; it is free-form. 

An analogy is with Raducanu's free-form action that is uninhibited by training/routine (see prev Bruce Lee, Jeet Kune Do.)

A photograph - or any technical artefact like a microscope - is inhibitted by perspective observation. It's true in the logical universe, but has no uninhibited expression of free-form action.

The trouble is, this can only occur outside of a photographic world, inside the world of balance and proportion. DNA is known photographically, not in terms of balance and proportion.

They are only known by the end-poduct since that is physique and the accompanying expressive psyche. The finished product is artistically expressive, while the photographic 'illusions' are not. The information contained in DNA is only relevant in terms of activity of the body-in-motion, as previously noted. 

The notion of DNA as a panacea of cures is an illusion of the inert labs of acolytes. The illusion is really that psyche and action do not count, whereas that is the actual reality of any natural situation. The entire universe of things that are self-activating and expressive psyche is dismissed by modernity.

The real problem with this is that only things that grow and live and die can revive. The entire area of revival from the underworld of decadence is lacking from a modern perspective.

Roquebrune made the offhand comment that paintings are collectible because "they don't rot like tomatoes." It's a truism, yet that whole universe of living action is denied by a science of inert 'facts'. Where there exist foul-smelling waters (of Maetterlinck, prev), there persist natural forces of revival.

This could easily implicate the symmetrical feuding of the medieval era. Dürer, from the end of that era, in fact is Roquebrune's favourite draftsman! The dark aspects of the life of knightly action (Connery?) and the psyche of a priest are the counters to the sorcerous illusion of a logical order.

To every thing a time (the tragedy of the suspended animation of Michael Schumacher), and the timing has to be obeyed in the natural order of events. Hence, psyche and activity are renewed.

Hyborian Bridge 197

The unreal nature of the lyre has the ability to take us to places of darkness that are charmingly upbeat. You hear this in the classic R&B of Lloyd Price ('Stagger Lee', prev), and equally in the one-woman wonder called Joan Armatrading.

HELP YOURSELF 

The night, after all, us not intrinsically dismal since it has the neon of stars.

BACK TO THE NIGHT

On the track 'How Cruel', Armatrading notes that she has no control over the prejudicial views of others over her skin and sex, be they black, white, male or female or a mix of them all ('Rosie').

So far so lesbian, you might say, but it's noteworthy how 'fringe' people are often more keenly afflicted by truth than is the fact-dominated mainstream. They are living nature in-the-raw to a degree, and this is even more true of the fantasy figures like Red Sonja who delve into an underworld of decadence and revival - see Noto's 'Red Lace', prev.

Decadence is almost the missing link in the modern world in that nature in the raw is a ramshackle tapestry of tangled-up-in-green furtive activity.

Whether you take a furtive scene from Terry and the Pirates, or a furtive scene from some Hyborian city-state, much the same holds true. It's not only Darkwood that is furtive in these adventurous stories of the older world.

The tapestry of fairly furtive activity has a freedom of psyche we can only dream of (and do). Where the psyche is free, it can effect action, so the activity of the body comes into play. Could it be, then, that modern straight-line order is a way of inhibiting free psyche? The last psychedelic era was the 60s which of course also had an ethic of brazen bodily expression.

Classically-speaking, when the underwear is on show there are usually hints of the underworld (see HB194). The idea of raw sex or free expression is often linked to dark forces, since the fertile area is the soil where things take root.  

The carbon and nitrogen cycles are nothing if not frenetically active and almost diabolical! Dark forces within fantasy are easy to detect (from the pulp-genesis of Francis Stevens), queasily erotic and laden with pungent jungle aromas.

In short, an active universe - of the body - is bound to encounter the dark forces that circulate the globe . While scientists are busily studying the intimacies of DNA, logic dictates that only the mechanisms of the body-in-motion can select which DNA is ultimately useful in an illogical situation of action (as opposed to an inert situation in a lab - see P193).

DNA is the study of false information that resides in the copies and recopies and miscopies of various sequences. It has the logic of random information, without the illogic of a moving body in action. Action is the product of antagonistic muscle-pairs (see prev.)

If the natural order is antagonistic and tangled-up with the dark underworld of decadence and revival, then the study of DNA is the biggest red herring of them all. It merely invites a logical stance where none exists! Highly hermetic.

Natural law, in other words, has a feudal origin of death and resurrection as is common to the beliefs of pre-industrial societies (see Yaple on the spouses of Ishtar, prev.)

Basically, all this has to do with the innate fertility of Earth and the underworld, whereas inductive science is to do with all that is sterile in a logical order (of DNA etc.)

This world is innately ramshackle; the extent to which order can be applied is strictly limited. In terms of nature this is very obvious in the balance of predator-prey in an environment of active pursuits.

Ian Botham (prev) has recently taken-out a lawsuit against the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) on a document it released on baiting electric fences to fry alive foxes and badgers, which prey on ground-nesters.

Although the document was since taken-down, Botham found the cruelty intolerable.

On top of that, the notion of protecting birds without envisaging also the tangled-up environment that thrives on balance is inimical to natural law. That feudal state of affairs is something the anti-shooting brigade doesn't like to know about, so they take the nuclear option of annihilating what they consider 'pests'.

Protecting species is not necessarily being green, when what counts is protecting the ramshackle environment where predator and prey can exist in a balanced state. This is exactly what gamekeepers with guns are there for; they know the territory; their experience is pure and free of dogma. They have primitive tradition behind them.

Natural law dictates those who advocate unnatural methods of extermination face natural justice. This would be the (feudal) law of the just war, or what one could term a crusade.

This must involve a psychic revival, since that is the whole implication of what has been dubbed 'primitive religion'. The more advanced we become, the more sterile and electrical our methods. This decline is due to lack of strength, which comes from earth - the underworld of revival (see Noto, Red Sonja.)

There are four medieval elements - earth, water, sky, fire - and of these the modern world lives by fire. Forgotten are the ancient symmetries that occur in woods of ochre with shafts of rare sunlight or silent moon against the owlish reverie.

The brilliance of the sun is illusory without the corresponding depths and reflectivity of water, cool blue of sky and revival of earth (see Francis Stevens, Claimed). Without revival, the meaning of facts is eternally illusory.

As has been noted before of that most questioning of Renaissance artists, Dürer, the symmetrical feuding of the medieval era cannot easily be discounted by the straight-line logic of a new order that convinces the ego of acolytes of a sorcerous illusion.

Conversion of Paul

Hyborian Bridge 196

Planetary, Island Zero (prev)

She had seen it many times in her mind's eye as she saw it now from the high hill in the yellow light of sunset that turned every pool of the marshes to shining glass. The long causeway to the castle stretched out narrowly between swamps and reeds up to the gate of that grim and eery fortress set alone among the quicksands. This same castle in the marshes, seen at evening from the high hilltop, had haunted her dreams for many nights now. (Jirel of Joiry, Hellsgarde, CL Moore.)

The dreamland of fertile areas is as ancient as human psyche, which stretches back to the dawn of time ('We are five-billion year old carbon', Woodstock.) Psychic rebellion can only occur in tactile situations of ancient lineage - and these are the ones most at threat from an electric-green future.

In the countryside at large, tactile areas are needed for activity - that is, for animals - low-living and furtive. Man manages the territory and - as cricketer turned countryman Ian Botham has said before,

Nature does best when it is managed by pragmatists who live in the countryside. Every farmer and gamekeeper knows that it is full of unavoidable choices. We either have fewer foxes or fewer curlews. Fewer crows or fewer songbirds. (DT)

Those who abhor hunting also discount the predator-prey relationship which has to balance (the greatest game of all would be a T-Rex, a typical staple of adventure/sci-fi/pulp.)

The feuding of creatures is held in balance within a tangled-up-in-green environment of continual regeneration and decay. This is seen most clearly in peat moor; partially decayed plant matter held in water-logged soil.

Peat retains water, and the sphagnum moss terrain contains centuries-old nutrients. Typical moors will have not just grouse for hunting but sheep for grazing and possibly deer.

The diversity of balanced landscapes is echoed by the traditional mixed farm of livestock - which fertilizes the ground with manure - crops and fallow fields.

Like peat, manure in soil is humus, or rotted organic matter that holds rain and nutrients. This archaic cycle of decay and regeneration is under increasing threat from a political-green agenda that seems to involve planting trees, growing crops hydroponically and feeding cows seaweed (in sterile sheds, natch.)

As I tend to say, this is a monocultural future. Tactile situations of ancient fertile lineage imply feuding because the balance of predator-prey must be maintained. Again, as Botham says,

The press release (of lobbyists) says that driven grouse-shooting should be replaced by 'simulsted shooting' which would be a 'viable' alternative for the rural economy. But why should people travel for hours to the remote uplands to shoot clay pigeons when they could do that on the outskirts of any big city? Why would owners spend millions on he upkeep of our heather-clad hills? 

Hunting is active adventure, and adventure takes place in tactile situations of ancient areas - jungle, swamp, moors.

Nature is engaged in ongoing feuding, and this is what moderns of the likes of Chris Packham (prev) cannot abide. These types are busy creating/sponsoring 'smart-infrastructure' where no one need be different, all eat seaweed-fed Macburgers and drive plug-in autos.

Unfortunately, that future is not green, it's sterile. It would be an adventure-free world in that all adventure - from Enid Blyton up - relies on wilderness areas of ancient and cyclical fertility.

What I really mean to imply is that romance is highly related to decadence in the form of dark alleyways bordering grimy docks with the hint of sleaze.

Decadent areas are highly related to the irregular linework of the fertile and the decaying. It's the rich tapestry of the majority of pulps from the 30s on, obviously including Howard's Hyboria.

This was brought home to me by reading Milton Caniff's Terry's and the Pirates. Set in colonial British China, the main theatres of action are the free-trade ports such as Shanghai, Hong Kong and all places in-between.

British law should not be confused with government as these places were relatively self-governing. Caniff was interested in pirates of all descriptions, from submerged European scallywags to glamorous femme fatales and the notorious Dragon Lady.

The decadent ramshackle of his settings is caught in the irregular and shadowy linework of wood beams and uneven surfaces.

Being blunt, 'infrastructure' is a recent invention in that the Romano-British infrastructure of empire mainly consisted of roads and the odd watchtower! What 'they' mean is something that is run by the head as opposed to the active body.

It's worth investigating this more closely, since without the domination of the head the settings are not arranged so much by thought as by happenstance. This is typically seen in traditional Chinese hutongs and the general higgledy-piggledy appearance.

That state of affairs is economically inefficient but ecologically efficient in that the state of untidiness and general mess is healthy and cyclical. Whereas moderns are told to be sterile, the presence of germs is strengthening.

In other words, the traditional environment is green whereas the 'smart-infrastructure'is merely sterile. This isn't the only difference, since a ramshackle, fairly filthy environment carries not just odors but a psychic sense of calm (similar to the way one goes for a walk in the woods.)

An environment that is the creation not of conscious thought but of active needs is tactile and stimulating to the mind. In a word, the active environment is also home to the adventurer.

Because there is much less order in the sense of government, the interactions between people tend to be much more feudal. The illustration above shows Connie's first meeting with Big Stoop, where a couple of European scallywags are pelting him with stones. Connie quickly puts a stop to this and sends them packing.

The casual nature of 'law and order' is carried throughout the strip and is typical of 30s pulps. The individual has much more power to effect change without any interference from 'above', be they Chinese as with Connie, or European adventurers.

In other words, the psyche is much more independent and free-thinking in a state of decadent ramshackle. That state is more ecological than it is merely economic.

What we face in the modern order is the exact opposite of that; what we are told is green is simply increased efficiency via smart-infrastructure (of the economy.) There is nothing ramshackle or leftover.

The effect on the psyche is inhibiting; one cannot argue with 'them' since the constant repetition of the words 'smart-infrastructure'is like a mantra for the nouveau-green agenda.

Of course, the agenda is purely electrical, since that's what a smart-infrastructure is. This in turn means it becomes numerical via algorithms. The plot is to say that algorithms are bound to promote greenness (since they're smart) when in fact they merely promote sterility.

Pictorial 196

 In terms of pulps, nothing could be cooler than Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. The alternate comic, yes, but also the film as shot by John Carpenter. I'm talking Christine, the nostalgia-rage auto that picked-up Pete Cunningham (Keith Gordon) to the beat of Buddy Holly's

NOT FADE AWAY

Carpenter's drizzle-infested garage wasteland reeks of dinosaurs. It's not that you literally see them, they are everywhere in the sodden, post-industrial landscape of those seeking a return to lost glories. (All Carpenter's films are nostalgic cos he realizes how bad things are.)

Instead of more and more metal (that transmogrifies to plastics) a return to the bone-fields of the Pleistocene and the literal origins of fossil fuel. The landscape, in short, is

BAD TO THE BONE (Thorogood is 80s but harks back to 50s boogie)

Modernists abhor fossils, but remnants are real and harbor real dreams of shadowy love amongst the leafy equatorial lost jungles.

The fact that Christine's love for Pete is nostalgic is the reality that goes against modernist delusions. Nostalgia has the watery infestations of jungle dewdrops and, in a word, the fertility that modernism denies.

Fetid jungles are real - and harbor feral beasts - whereas the plastic-electric future 'they' promise is less than an illusion. It is an evil that has to be hunted down, as Christine hunts down those who would harm her love.

This reality is shown by two ilos that have previously appeared on these unhallowed pages.

Jaime Hernandez Mechanics from Love and Rockets

Tim Conrad The Black Stone from SS 17

Fertility is the province of empirical tradition, where customs and beliefs accrue from practices in-the-field (where ploughing in a line is not the province of GPS software.)

The power of a swamp is that carbon is kept and enabled to cycle in justifiable ways that attract different species and allows them to flourish, each to their own.

Differences flourish when the power of fertility is honoured by lore and empirical tradition. This s is the world of romance that allows feuding to occur through the power of differences.

Joe Manchin on his riverboat is displaying this Fenimore Cooper lost world of greenery that hovers beyond any political manifesto of numbers and carbon-neutrality (see prev.) The wet peat of a wild moor is vastly more productive than any political agenda (let alone the dollar-fixation of Biden.) 

In Christine, 'wet Pete' is given a tough ride by his domineering parents, before his ancient automobile forges him into manhood with true - and deadly - love. Move forward to Musk's sterile electrical delusion, and we see a psychic diminution.

The psyche needs tactile situations - green fronds of ancient vintage - and it can only get this from the fertile areas, the swamps of yore. The problem of the modern scene is that domination of the head is highly convincing to the ego, and it creates a heady delusion (numbers, algorithms.) But only the active forces, the fertile areas, empower the psyche and allow it to dream.

The dream, the unreal, penetrates reality through the fertile swamps of past vistas. The unreal (the animated line) produces an active terrain of putrid growth, while the 'realism'of an electric-green future is a mental infection spread by Greta-Muckeros and their gullible followers.

Tribal or free-form action - song, dance - cannot fall for these mental illusions of the modern order. As in the film, the love of Christine - of the 50s that harboured psychic rebellion - is stronger than the domination of sterile normality that passes for reality.

CHRISTINE SHOWS HER HUMAN SIDE

Pictorial 195

 Talking of hides..

Why should picturesque old-timers with tomahawks be a better breed than modern fashionistas? In short, what makes one person wrong and another one right?

For a start, I'm not writing against any one person so much as modernism, and the things that are said in the name of modernism. I take succour from old-stuff that is pre-modern, of a rebellious spirit, so the question is really, 'What is modernism?

As The Light says, it's the electricalization of reality. The reason for that is that the head (of acolytes) is attracted to ones and zeros as it is satisfying to the ego (algorithm.)

With the ego satisfied, the modernists are naturally inclines to think they're right, even when they're totally wrong. Electricity is the electric-green (clean) future where there is no hassle with dirt.

From beach cleaners in Swansea to food growers producing crops without a scrap of soil, Joanna hopes to prove there is still lots of positive action that can make a real difference to global warming. (Lumley&Co on TV prog)

Clearly that's not green, since the soil is where riches both material and organic come from, the underworld and the great recycling basin of nitrogen and carbon (along with sea and sky, see prev.)

But the cycling of carbon isn't necessarily a global-warming issue. Mixed farms cycle manure into crops and have fallow years for the field to build fertility.

Fertility is a cyclical issue (see prev on Minnesota Institute of Environment) the enemy of which is monoculture. Fertility encompasses dirt, as well as cleanliness or regeneration - as in compost - while a monoculture is just sterile junk that is economically efficient.

As has been noted of the Indian small- farmers, economic inefficiency is the same as ecological efficiency, or fertility (vegetable litter). This is the area that is covered by Minnesota's Institute of Environment.

Ecological stability maintains fertility and also maintains pests within the host population (which has defences.) The basic point is that dirt is inefficient for an economic monoculture, but maintains health and fertility.

The cycles of materials maintain purity and strength, but that's not how moderns think. Only an electric-green future to them is clean. This is the ego talking that is convinced by meta-calculations; the head as opposed to the tactile body.

Within this meta-world exists the profane serpent that is simply the technological corruption of natural rhythms (such as 'clean meat' and gene-editing.) The world of dirty French women - like Claire Bretécher, prev - and old-style hippies in electricity-less farmhouses - see Caza - is the world of natural rhythms and song cycles.

From this world is derived empirical tradition.

I think it's a misrepresentation of the Cherokee people or Native Americans in general. It just depicts them as this kind of caveman-type people who aren't intellectual. (Baseball player Ryan Helmsley of the Cherokee speaking about Atlanta Braves, DT)

That's right because empirical tradition isn't a product of the head only; it's a product of activity in the field amid free-expression of the psyche.

The feudal world of rough justice has no place for modernists who have to talk as if all are one, when in fact only nature is one.

Nature is one because it is composed of differences, and differences have similarities of line. Claire Bretécher speaks this language, but Greta Thunberg doesn't. Despite her inimicism to politicians, she speaks their language.

We say no to more blah blah blah, no more explanation of people and nature and the planet. No more whatever the fuck they are doing inside there. (Greta Thunberg at Glasgow)

That is to say, the language of insults as opposed to the language of actively living with the divisions of nature and gaining the song of life from this experience.

This is the old-style body-positivism represented by Hawk-eye and the Old West. Only nature has the physical presence to activate the psyche with the intensity of experience that is the origin of culture.

Those like Thunberg - or indeed 'Muckeros' (the combined Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos) - are heading into the land of the convinced ego; of ones and zeros or the dual-note of Jirel Meets Magic (prev.)

The Greta-Muckeros will end up with an electrical future that complements the head, which is where they're coming from. Away from this ego- dominated carnival of clowns exists free-form action of the Raducanu variety; excellence of grace, unrestrained coordinated movements.

This is the area of active strength which spokespeople for American Indians seem inclined to forget. If the world of the ego is highly convincing and numerical - spot the percentages in Thunberg's speech - the world of communal action has the unreality of dance and song.

The unreal penetrates the real with the line that connects us to nature (like Pavlova's Dying Swan). An active society has a nascent feudalism, whether it's the historical dances of the Bolshoi or a high school class. Rivalries that are allowed to exist can be creatively explosive.

The basic problem is that a world of the head (ego) occupies the area of empirical reason that tends to convince with numbers. An active society occupies the area of empirical tradition that is convinced only by activities in-the-field, which then influence their behaviour, customs.

This basic dichotomy is pointed-up nicely in the classic 67 film To Sir With Love, where the entire plot comprises feuding- both within the class of unruly delinquents, and between the class and the latest sheep-to-the-slaughter in the new guy, played by Poitier.

Despite the best efforts of the ringleaders, the new guy's rigorous standards of truth in education begin to wear down resistance. The turning point comes when he declares, 

We will talk about life. Love, marriage, death, sex, rebellion.. anything.

Now, what Poitier is really saying here is that education need not be all facts and empirical reason - it can also be empirical tradition..which is just living. The tribal aspects of life are also there, with a baby in a crib.

The gritty traditions are a factor, and when a trouble-maker asks the teacher about some pictures he saw of semi-nude blacks in the jungle, he responds that they are the product of climate, of custom.

He means empirical tradition, which is the way of all active peoples.

In short, western education can be the bane of modernity. Those of the Greta-Muckeros are explicitly bound to empirical reason, because that is the reality of the ego. The percentages they chant, and the carbon-neutral agenda are well-meaning but wrong-headed.

Life in-the-field is not a numerical game. For example, gamekeepers are wont to burn heather on grouse-moors to encourage breeding. This has come under criticism that wet peat - a carbon-sink - is being dried, and calls have been issued for a ban on seasonal burning.

However, grouse-hunting is an active country pursuit and gamekeepers are running the sport, not governments or campaigners. The idea of burning is to maintain a state of balance of populations and gamekeepers are skilled at assessing situations while campaigners are not.

There are two ways of looking at things. One is there are predators and prey and an active state of balance is required. This impacts on the scenery and moors. The other is that Man should leave nature be and at most plant trees.

The first attitude is that of the regeneration of fertility from seasonal cycles, from the mixture of crops and herds and fallow fields. The second attitude is that of a carbon-neutral society where everything is electrical and algorithmic (numbers.)

But, as I've repeatedly said, the carbon-based problems are monocultural, where the emphasis is on sterile efficiency and not fertile cycling. Grass foraging herbivores that are fed hay are not methane-polluters. 

The convictions of carbon-zero folk disregard the fertile area of carbon-cycling that incorporates herbivores, crops and fallow spaces.

The carbon-zero agenda is an ego- centric one and essentially a product of empirical reason. For those in-the-field, none of the technological advantages they accrue can escape the fact that by-and-large their yearly activities are the product of empirical tradition. 

And that is where feuding and tribal origins are to be found. Differences that attract despite everything. The psychic affinity of differences.

TO SIR WITH LOVE (spot the red dinosaurs)

Pictorial 194

 I suppose proof may be required of the possibility that humans are becoming convincing copies as opposed to original spawn? If so, I give you the uneasy alliance of creative talents from Pilote circa 1979.

(#68)

The history of Pilote under René Goscinny could be said to be one of creative feuding, whereby disaffected types branched-off to front their own journals. Thus, Claire Bretécher, Gotlib and others started L'echo des Savanes in about 73. Though Bretécher has stated she would have preferred to work in tandem, the tactile patriarchy of Pilote had already debased her sex.

One of the first recordings of 'MeToo' shows two animal-like office-drones ambushing and despoiling her pristine body.

A few years later saw the launch of Métal Hurlant by Gir, Druillet and a couple of others, including Dionnet. However, Bretécher is notable for forging her early path by resolutely tracking-down those she admired from the school of Tintin.

'That was how I got to know Delporté, Jijé and Franquin. This was 1967 and it put me over the moon; Spirou was a totally mythic magazine.'

The venerable Belgian comic accepted her Gnagnan (adult-talking babies). 'Ligne Claire', as TCJ dubbed her, is highly appropriate as this quote suggests..

Franquin..might sketch a pig three hundred times before, in the end, he had something that satisfied him.

Bretécher dealt in 'types' that require a tactile line, an animalistic dexterity that was taken for body-positivism in women.

Her teen, Agrippine, premiered in 88, has been compared to the 'texto-speak' of modern teens.

These dialogues, half overheard and half made up, were Bretécher's invention. Yet now they seem uncanny - a preview of our texto-speak. (TCJ)

Yet, equally, her idiosyncratic dialect is the opposite of something that makes everyone the same. Even her feminism is not formal, since,

'I've always hated militants. The people who are sure they're right, who think they're the only ones equipped to right the wrongs.. It's they who embody the wrong and that's the end of the story.'

What I want to get to is that 'texto-speak' is machine-speak, whereas Bretécher speaks for the body. Texto-speak is designed for quickness, not for expressive acts. 

The female body expresses itself elegantly, as Bretécher herself is elegant. While social-media makes people the same, Bretécher's line identifies foibles of the female anatomy.

'Whatever I do, it's not actually observation. It's more like assembling an arsenal.'

Her females are somewhat animal-like, forging connections to chimps and free-swinging ways. Possibly not coincidentally, one of her first strips was for an ecological monthly called Le Sauvage. 

What is called body-positivism in women could also be seen as a desire to return to nature and away from the follies of suburban man and his over-eager ego. A return to nature implies something archaic and deadly, tactile and erotic in a Weird Tales way.

One only has to think of the first writer of a parallel world in The Heads of Cerberus, Francis Stevens (see prev.) There are the deadly plants of queasily tactile suckers in The Nightmare; the luridly spectral white wolves of Citadel of Fear; the salty and sultry sea-maiden of the lake of fire; horses gone to sea in Claimed.

The unreality of these scenes has the effect of amplifying the cosmos as an animated circus of tactile types that swirl around humankind. Unreality is something that one is not literally going to see except in dreams, but is true on a cosmic scale.

Being one with nature one can imagine being inside the belly of a whale (as in Pinocchio or Jonah). The unreality of the lyre in the mythical quest of Orpheus for Eurydice in Hades only to find

J'AI PERDU EURYDICE (Kozena)

Classical music is unreal because it pulls the strings of the lyre in an original way, harking back to beginnings (the difference between KT Tunstall and Ed Sheeran.)

What is real is also unreal for the reason everything has an origin. Instead of going even more inside the head as modern Man is wont (see Zuckerberg's 'Meta'), one should recognise that this so-called reality has no basis in psyche.

The psyche is expressed in tactile gestures that express the will of a commune. Going back to Bretécher, the joke of 'MeToo' is that modernism tends not to get the joke! A commune is made-up of various types of feuding, more or less resembling a school class. You may recall I mentioned my days at Newtown School in Ireland as a kid, and it was a wild time. As a coed, mock-copulation was not unheard of, and the boisterous goings-on gave clues as to how to respond. It’s called a free psyche with coordinated action that one is not told but has to learn. Boisterousness and tactile responses are the order of the day at that age. Have women forgotten how to slap men?

  Communes are feudal, tactile, they do not work on pure information. They are much more organic and visceral. The question with a 'Meta' future has to approach the basic problem that without unreality  - that is to say, the inaccurate imagination - then reality is not psychically real. A mere façade.

This is even more apparent in the communal organs like Argosy that Francis Stevens wrote for in the 20s. There is a culture of savage squalor and salty maidens/mariners.

The psyche is above all tactile, and this can also be seen in the 30s Junto and Robert E Howard's play-acting with swords (prev?)

Without the coordinated activity of the body, the psyche cannot express itself except in terms defined and restricted by that of a Meta-system that is itself a façade.

So, the links between these two women from almost a century apart are clear, as are the links to the imagineers and adventurers (Disney, Howard.)

Bretécher's bizarre faces can convey any feeling or any mixture of feelings and her expertise at using a minimum of background to situate the strips perfectly is evident throughout. (Kim Thompson)

In a word, unreality penetrates reality. The real problem with a 'Meta' reality is that it cannot penetrate beyond what 'they' set-out as the limits to perception- namely, the head.

But the head is nothing without the psyche, and this is expressed through the tactile freedom of the body (historically in country pursuits such as hunting, or even feuding!) This in itself is an adequate argument against the Meta-tyranny of tomorrow, since it's clear its aim is to indoctrinate with false stories read by expressive algorithms (see prev.)

In a world filled with Smileys and Likes there is now a bit less room, a bit less taste, for truths that bite. (TCJ)

The body requires freedom of expression, and this frees the mind. The imprisoned body enslaves the mind. The feisty Bretécher - for all her Bardot-pout - is clear on this.

..what counts is how you feel.. Whenever some guy tried to pay me a compliment I would think he was making me into a joke. I'd respond aggressively and he would think 'What a bitch!' What all that depends on is your frame of mind, and what creates that? It's created by Elle, by Marie Claire, by all those shitty papers and magazines. Publications that, instead of telling girls 'Make the best of what you've got, you too are beautiful', want them to spend eight thousand francs on some charlatan who sticks needles in their thighs to fight their cellulite!..I'd like to have their hides..

Hyborian Bridge 195

Arch-fantasist Druillet is a dab hand at pulling-off graphic tricks in his universe of the deadly and eggly. The top page appears to feature a breed of cosmic roosters, while in the other the Earth rests resplendent, poached on a plate.

The 6 Voyages of Lone Sloane

The dark origin of dark gods that he traces is given a trick of realism with the judicious use of perspective, both for the space-wall and the view of Earth. There is a connection here to the Renaissance narrative art of the likes of Botticelli or Titian.

Myth springs from the night, the land where the perspective illusion of day is sorely lacking. Giving the semblance of reality to such visions is a neat trick. The classical trick is to retain the sombre vision while giving it a semblance of illusory reality.

In the modern scene, the dark, cosmic vision has well nigh ceased to exist. One can see the scope of this in Greek myth, where Zeus claimed the sky, Poseidon the sea and Pluto the underworld (with Gaia shared between them.)

Scientifically, this entire area is covered by the carbon and nitrogen cycles that flow through sea, sky, earth. So, it's clear that both scientifically and mythically all these zones depend one on another. 

Nevertheless, the dark reality of that truth of cosmic debauchery and decay is nowhere seen. Unlike Druillet, who simply tricks the eye into accepting his gloomy fantasms, the modern eye is deluded into imagining such cosmic visions belong to history.

In other words, instead of a perspective illusion acting as an interesting trick, it deceives us into thinking reality IS a perspective illusion! The way this is done is simply with parallel lines, since the more parallel lines there are the more visible perspective there is.

For example, if Bezos builds a space-station, it will be full of cylinders and simple geometrical shapes. No one is going to build a Gothic cathedral in space!

Vanishingly small - Bezos's erection

I don't know about you, but Druillet's pages put me in mind of lush scenes of animated nature that one might find at Knossos or old China.

The dark forces of nature incorporate also the splendor of sea and sky, the flocks and shoals that cruise globally. Chinese porcelain or the Cretan dolphins (see prev.)

Druillet's structure is also vastly more massive than the egg-like Earth, representing a symbolism of the forces that animate the globe.

Animated life breeds, eats or is eaten, decays to the seabed or through earth. This in turn is sustenance for microbes that breed, and the cycle continues. The vast scope of this cosmic wheel amounts to far more than simple human motivation.

It is animation itself that Druillet seems to celebrate; the dark that leads to the light. The strength can be repellent, but one is still drawn to its spell.

This atmospheric reality is often what appears to be missing in modernity. It is the ripe smell of flesh at a market; the mud of a riverbank; gangplanks and blisters.

To take a current example, the recent British film Last Night in Soho sets out to celebrate the seediness of 60s and 70s Soho. Rita Tushingham of 70s classic A Taste of Honey (prev) has a cameo.

But where A Taste of Honey had genuine squalor somewhat skin to tribal mud huts on a riverbank, and Tushingham an animal-like sense of abandon, the modern stars gad about with no innate sense of melancholy.

What seems to be lacking is any celestial sense of realism, as opposed to the purely human. In our culture, to be human is to be a copy as opposed to an original spawn of the universe.

The likes of Bezos and Zuckerberg symbolise this trait. A copy is something that is very accurate but has no depth of light or shade.

The mirror of illusions, or electromagnetism, is a reflection that appears real. The more accurate it becomes the more realistic it appears. The 'Metaverse' of Zuckerberg is simply another perspective illusion that replaces visceral reality.

A Metaverse is always going to be composed of straight-lines (that appeal to the ego); what is missing is the animated realism of what is not human. Humans respond to this realism in original ways, culturally.

Culture and nature have this type of symbiotic relationship. The gods represent the animation that is not simply human motivation. Fate decrees otherwise. Byronic Fortune and destiny.

Hyborian Bridge 194

The ancient and medieval world appears to be a complete mix of what would today be termed squalor with beliefs of the cosmic underworld.

In the Tintin scene from HB193, the disappearance of the sun would to the Incas be equated to the dire region of the underworld. As Kari Hohne delineates in Decoding the Night Sky, to Babylonians and other peoples the sun travelled round the sky, going into the underworld at night.

Night is the fertile time of copulation. Western myths, particularly Greek, have goddesses in diaphanous clothing - scant, like underwear.

According to Hohne, the Babylonian astrologers of the constellations were the precursors of later Greek myth, which the Greeks more-or-less refined. The sky was read as a cuneiform text by the shapes of the constellations.

The night-attire of goddesses relates the underworld to underwear. Night is the fertile time of copulation; it fertilizes the sky. These diaphanous maidens have a way of being deadly if caught. There is the famous painting of Diana and Actaeon by Titian (prev). 

The fertile female body and the dire area of the underworld are linked by their underwear, and much the same might be said to apply to Red Sonja, particularly in Clair Noto's 'Red Lace' (prev.)

Where one sees a diaphanous goddess one might just glimpse the underworld as well. Remember the famous scene from Conan #16..

(from Dark Horse)

The ancients have a curious way of equating the sordid aspects of the body with both the deadly and the cosmic; Howard's classic tale carries all three off beautifully.

As Hohne says, the constellations carry cuneiform stories in their shapes, shapes which are visible at the nocturnal time of human fertility. The Greek gods embody those passions.

At the same time, the underworld is totally connected to the cosmos (even more in Egyptian glyphs). Proserpine (spring) spends six months of the year with Pluto in Hades before rejoining her mother Ceres (harvest).

This has the obvious meaning that the harvest emerges from the dormancy of winter from the cold earth. In a somewhat similar sense, the beautiful Venus is married to the greasy and ugly Vulcan in his vaults.

The mix of beauty with sordid din; of the fertile spring with the blighted winter; diaphanous maidens everywhere. Relating this to the sky, the nighttime is fertile and fertilizes the sky. The sordid situation is also strongly linked to death and decay (winter, Pluto.)

The reason for the revolutions has to be that the celestial sphere is s nighttime event; as Hohne says, Babylonian astrologers from 10,000 years ago gave the stories to the sky in cuneiform that the Greeks later developed.

To that way of looking at things, the night sky is a text written in stars and wandering stars (planets). It is connected to both female fertility and decay (the underworld.)

Our culture is very much the reverse: the fertile body and the underworld are nowhere. We look at the cosmos literally through perspective mirrors. This has the effect of putting the head (of acolytes) at a premium. Of course, the head is infertile. It has only ego.

In other words, the way we look at things very literally takes away the fertility of the cosmos - which includes the underworld - and its relation to diaphanous maidens in our culture.

In our universe, you (the observer) are the origin. Wherever you go in the universe you are viewing a perspective system with yourself as the origin.

This is what I tend to call the vanishing-point of technique, since the technical side of things (sun) approaches ones and zeros (algorithm.) This is the universe represented above all by electricity and spokespeople like Musk (of Mars.)

They are the origin of the universe and the it is made in their image - meaning the head or various forms of electromagnetic senses.

Outside of the head (of acolytes of the mirror of illusions) is the real universe with a real origin. Meaning the body, or anything that develops from an egg/seed

The real universe is fertile while the illusory one is infertile. From this perspective, perspective itself is just a good illusion that fools the head. While perspective appears to hold a lot of information, in reality it's just parallel lines and a vanishing-point.

It's useful, and is used in classical art, so long as the reality is there. So, what is that reality? Well, you could call it culture and nature in animation; the narrative myths of Titian or Turner; the erotic satyrs of Krenkel.

The myth needs anatomy and balance and proportion since this is the way things grow from an egg/seed. Life has an unreal aspect in that this animated miracle happens spontaneously.

Myths often illustrate erotic strength or athletic grace because this is the miracle that grows from an egg. The strength of myth is in its spontaneity of form. The unreal is made real (again.)

The night sky is a stockpile of Earth's myths - from the Feathered Serpent of the Incas to the morning sun or Venus of all men - for the reason that it is outside a perspective system.

If the universe can be thought of as growing spontaneously, the proportions of the night sky are a spontaneous occurrence that maps Earthspin (day and night.)

If one chooses not to believe in spontaneity, then one is left with a perspective system that looks real but has no origin apart from the head of the observer. The system continually approaches the vanishing-point of technique, which is where Musk&Co are determined to head for. 

While pondering that over, have a listen to something that might just be a narrative myth (or urban myth)

INCA ROADS

 

Hyborian Bridge 193

From animate nature to animate culture. While the facts of the sterile modern system are to do with sameness, the facts of animated nature/culture are to do with antagonistic differences.

An easy way to see this is to take the case of female elephants slaughtered for their tusks which are now breeding tuskless owing to the survival of tuskless females.

The gene for tusklessness is favoured in the female offspring. But, of course tusks are symbols of antagonistic opposites. The deselection of the gene is clearly created by antagonistic activity in the field; in other words, an illogical desire for the tusks by poachers.

Genes are like dollars: they have no value in themselves, only by what they specify in the animated reality. The modern system is back-to-front in that the specification itself - dollars or genes - is the value, not the thing itself.

The reason for this is partly that the ego is attracted to sterile systems. But these systems are bound to be non-antagonistic and run algorithmically (logic.)

Sterility means essentially no dirt; but as has been repeatedly pointed-out, dirt implies epistemological (meaning) such as the tracking of animal spoor by a hunter.

An animated nature/culture has to implicate dirt in order to have meaning/fertility. Another example is a recent discovery in England of a 17th century 'witch bottle'.

Healers in 17th century England used witch bottles as anti-witchcraft devices when someone was cursed by illness or other misfortune diagnosed as bewitchment. They would be filled with ingredients such as the victim's hair and urine, along with 'protective' pins, nails or thorns. Sealed within vessels, they would be placed around the hearth or buried under floorboards. (DT)

'Untidy' societies, whether medieval or early 20th century South America, have the exposure to benign microbes that confers disease-protection and hence allows the practice of witchcraft. The practice of witchcraft in 'untidy' situations allows for the strength both of herbs and of dirt to permeate the atmosphere. This environment is far from scientific as it is not sterile but fertile.

Fertility means life, and living things require dirt for their sustenance. This basic principle of animate nature/culture is denied by a sterile science. Hence, the facts are going to be different facts to areas where fertility is rife (such as planet Earth, as opposed to Mars.)

DNA, for example, is only a specification for animate fertility; it has no value in itself. Any selection is animated by antagonism and fertility(as with the elephant tusk.)

DNA is just part of the illusion of 'facts'of the order of empirical reason that approaches the vanishing-point of technique (or ones and zeros of algorithms), and away from animate nature/culture.

The information derived from animated nature/culture is empirical tradition- as opposed to empirical reason which dates from Newton (see passim.) So, the area one looks for facts is in animated nature, as opposed to a sterile lab (see prev, Mosaic Law.)

Another very good example is a medieval castle; symbol of a feudal establishment. A castle itself would have been a mixture of dirt and cleanliness; the rush floors would be laden with herbs to mask any rank odor.

Cleanliness is not hygiene, but two types of strength - one of dirt and one of freshness - that counteract one another (see also prev on Fulling.) Where there is dirt there will exist benign microbes, which is why it is a form of strength and disease-prevention.

As with the physical side of things, so with the psychology of feuding. One doesn't need to go back to medievalism to see this principle in action. Traditional communes have low-level feuding, as was noted previously of Lloyd Price's Louisiana memoir. 

Physical untidiness or squalor, and psychological conflict are two sides of one coin. Anything that is untidy will not be run efficiently and therefore will not have the degree of sameness that western democracies now do.

This point was brought-home by reading the Tintin volume 'Prisoners of the Sun', set in Peru.

Herge's stories tend to be set in places with rough infrastructure where local government is highly corrupt and inefficient. Hence, the way disputes are resolved is almost inevitably via feuding!

Here, Tintin gains an Inca accomplice who sees him come to the aid of a tile. As in DH Lawrence's The Feathered Serpent (prev), where differences in type are paramount, they have the affinity of their differences. Strength prevails as, later in the story, the Inca explains his gesture to the high priest..

..The high priest's decision allows Tintin to make use of a total eclipse of the sun.

Hyborian Bridge 192

Viewed from the alternate side, Pinocchio could be seen as a 'super-classic' which is better than the original fairy tale, owing to a crazy-eyed or loony-tune topicality.

The basic plot may be similar to the original, but for once Disney lets the grotesque distortions of animation work to horrific effect. Seduced by the applause of bright lights, Pinocchio has his 15 minutes of fame (some 20 years before Warhol) and is then caught lying to the blue fairy.

We then have the progressive elongation of his nose in one of the grotesque transformations of the body which can only really have a fairy tale origin (being unreal.)

Animation makes the unreal real, and similarities become apparent in macabre situations. Physical appearance is then ripe for offensive comments.

This is just an exaggeration of the reality that differences have similarities. Traditional communes have low-level feuding where psyches clash through strength, thereby forming affinities (as Pinocchio does with Pinshaw.)

If cartoons have a type of physical realism (as in stereotypes a la CC Beck, prev), this is what 'they' don't want as it ushers in normal abuse! They want a universal sameness, weak psyche.

Only a strong psyche has the lowdown on reality, and is not simply given the illusion of facts and figures (by our beloved leaders.) What is real is the physical state of innocence that can be seen in cartoons.

Those who look within awake (Jung) - spiritually, and therefore also to the physical reality.

People say I'm a Pollyanna Utopian, but I am still with purity and innocence. A state of grace is a state of mind. I have learnt through spiritual discipline that no matter what the world throws at me, I'm immune. (Carlos Santana, DT)

However, Carlos is also down with the physical reality of life on Earth.

I'm not discouraged, because the world is literally vomiting. And, you know, when you vomit, you're gonna feel better, because you're getting rid of something that doesn't belong in your system.

This double-faced nature of innocence and realism is a Mediterranean trait that goes back to the ancient Greeks -  the ideal Apollo, the degenerate Dionysus. (See also Raducanu insouciance.)

Without the realism, imagination can just be illusion (of the Musk order); without the idealism there is no cosmic vision.

When you're washing dishes and scrubbing big pots and pans, cleaning the yard and bleaching the floors, it's glorious to dream.. It's incredible how much imagination takes you into a realm of fruition. That, if you believe it, you can achieve it..

What I'm diving into is learning how to go deeper and deeper into the note.. You can take a melody outside of time and gravity. That's what real musicians do.

Classical music is unreal, and likewise animate nature is connected to the unreal, and myth to the physical reality. Myth and reality are linked by physical acts (Raducanu's free-form play). Somewhat similarly, Wung Fu has stylised animal forms of fighting (see Jeet Kune Do, prev.)

Unreal (transformations) have similarities in the movement of line, and the implied meaning - along with the subsequent scene on Pleasure Island - is obvious. One doesn't need to be told something that is so obvious, and in fact in the commentary no mention was made of this point.

However, in the 'real world' fame is an aphrodisiac to increasingly banal amorous pursuits of neither physical realism nor any sense of psychic purity. No one seems to notice owing to the convincing illusion we seemingly are supposed to cohabit.

Fairy tales clearly work because the story and imagery have archetypal significance (to the id) and so one doesn't need long-winded explanations. In Pinocchio, songs are often used to advance the story in clever, music hall-type routines.

Fairy tales, because they deal with the differences of form - human, animal, trees - have also the similarities of form in terms of the movement of line. This could be a branch on a trunk or antagonistic pairs of muscles, in the way opposites tend to adopt balanced positions in nature.

As has been noted previously, when things are different they also have similarities - in antagonistic principles of balance. The principle of similarities and the idea of differences are just two sides of the animate universe.

Humour and parody and caricature are clearly made possible by this eventuality, from Aesop to the late 20th century (see Pilote prev.) The donkey transformations just show how humorous the honking asses are, but of course in the context a mortally threatening earful. The macabre state of affairs is true to archetypal form and has the realism of form.

Whereas modem science ignores form in its DNA-style labs, the reality of transformation is utterly horrific. What passes for'their' reality is really only a pseudo-reality that convinces the ego (in terms of chains of reasoning etc.) Highly hermetic.

The unreality of fairytales has the realism of form that often plays-up the similarities of differences for comedic or horrific effect (the wolf in Red Riding Hood). 

Life lived as an antagonistic pursuit cannot possibly be logical (it can only contain logic, see prev.) Only the illogical (balanced) use of logic (DNA) can give us the simple braying of Dionysus's donkey. 

A logical world has to ignore the fertile ground that is where Dionysus and his beast frolic and celebrate the seasonal harvest (of the grape.) The active world where the donkey is in a field or carrying firewood in traditional country pursuits.

A simple fable is often right simply because it exists in the physical world of direct action where donkeys and crickets have their places. The world of the ego has an abstraction that is essentially illogical! Where Dionysus's donkey roams there exists fertile ground, forest and therefore the ritual pursuits of the hunt.

It is no abstraction but a coordinated countryside pursuit that creates gay abandon. In such a situation, the psyche is strong and pure, attached to natural processes and the cultural practices of skinning, storing etc.

On a maritime scale, this pursuit has been going on for hundreds of years on the Faroe Islands (Denmark), where dolphins are ritually slaughtered. The bloodiness of a recent event predictably incited comments, such as this from Zac (see 'the unmentionable').

This is one of the most sickening sights I've ever seen. It shames our species.

One suspects he means the visible blood (as opposed to invisible slaughterhouses) and the traditional use of blades to kill by anachronistic reactionary peoples of the island. On a historical scale, American Indians would slaughter buffalo in a cultural practice allied to the fertile grounds wherein they dwelt.

The fertile world has to contain opposites since it is to do with life and death (revival from decadence). The ancients were not slaves to hermetic systems but had the two-faced theatrical pursuits of comedy and tragedy (see prev on Aristophanes.)

A fertile world has the macabre gods and goddesses of Hyboria (see Yaple, the old gods.) The twin masks of sorrow and lightness have a somewhat Mediterranean bias, where a melancholy air can refresh the psyche (the counter to Adele.)

PORQUE TE VAS? Because You're Leaving (ignore question mark)