ANCIENT WORLDS
I’ve always been
a sucker for maps of ancient lands, and they can be fantasy or reality, it’s
all the same.
I sort of dig
those cute camels and hand-drawn arrowheads and skulls. Far out! Part of the
appeal is they have a narrative, stories associated with them.
One way of
looking at it is they are plans of a world that is unplanned. They’re as
accurate as they need to be, but a lot is unknown such as streets of a town and
so on.
If you take a
single building or structure, such as Sulis-Minerva (post 5), the plan is very
accurate.
Roman
construction and engineering was more planned than that of the Middle-East as
all schoolkids know (or did know). This leads to quite a leading question: is
there any limit to planning? Can you be too accurate?
Alan Moore has
an essay in Watchmen called “Blood From the Shoulder of Pallas” which
asks that type of question and the answer he gives is yes (through the
fictional Owl). Taking the ultimate example, they do speak of “mapping the
genome”. This would be a case of mapping a map, since it’s obvious the genome has
to be very accurate. Is there anything wrong with that?
I think there
is. It would seem to be redundant since the information is already there. I
understand they can use this to pinpoint trouble spots, so what they’re saying
is their logic is better than nature’s.
I understand
that, but there is a bit more to it. Cancer may be a product of multiple
factors in the environment, so is it more logical to tackle the genome or the
environment?
- It is logical to tackle the genome, but
- This type of logic may be illogical
I think this is
because logic is being applied to logic (the genome). So you assume you are
more logical. But actually you may be too logical.
What I mean to
say is that planning something that is already planned is not always wise
because it is, after all, already logical. There are other things going on that
are much more multifaceted. These things are just the world at large.
We live in the
world, so the best we can do is plan the things which are unplanned, as best we
can. This thinking applies in quite a wide capacity. Our towns are planned so,
rather than planning what is already planned, we could move out to the country
and start planning that.
There is always
vastly more scope to plan something that is relatively disordered, and in many
ways it is much more valuable (socially, economically, healthwise,
psychologically). As a bit of a folkie and barn-dance aficionado, I’ve a soft
spot for what are termed boutique pop festivals, as opposed to what is more
often a corporate entertainment experience (Reading, Glastonbury, even Isle of
Wight). To be honest, one glance at the site-guide with tents galore and my
eyes glaze over. I know it’s all for elucidation, but the very act of
navigating defeats the object of spontaneity for me. Call me a fuddy-duddy;
nevertheless, there is more to it than a liking for ambient music and
round-dances.
I was
re-watching A Boy and his Dog (1972), the film “sanctioned” by Harlan
Ellison of his novella (and graphic novel with Rich Corben). I say sanctioned
as director LQ Jones is old-school, where visuals are everything. It’s
interesting visually, nice lighting, good sunsets, atmospheric scenes as well
as being in cinemascope; the shape of the screen is all-important (as with 2001,
A Space Odyssey).
Unlike
mainstream films where action is spelt out, the emphasis is on a lot of
suggestive scenes (sexual and physical), and techniques like ambient sound when
Vic descends into Topeka. Jones says at one point in the commentary, “The
specificity of films has killed them.”
I know what he
means. That the desire for realism makes everything appear too similar. I was
actually reminded of The Prisoner by the underground scenes in Topeka,
where the impression of tyranny is depicted in a surreal manner. I like the
film for other reasons. Vic’s hick speak, the song by Ray Mazarek of The Doors,
the general old-school approach (harking back to Val Lewton).
Japanese cult
film Battle Royale I find similar. The sex-obsessed types have
Quilla-June’s hysteria, the violence is sudden and superficial. In both cases,
suggestion and impression are everything, and your imagination is on fire (not
literally, I mean as a figure of speech).
This expands the
world, in other words beyond what you’re shown onscreen. I feel this may be
what Jones meant (he also mentioned radio, old US radio-serials of the 40s,
50s, as mind-expanding). Going back to these mainstream pop festivals, they are
“Google’s little helpers”; all very specific and nothing left to the
imagination.
Google, as we
all know, is mapping the world (to the nearest meter), so you could say the
future is in the specificity of maps. To me, that is like the world as an
ultra-grand corporate pop-festival (with the ubiquitous Coldplay headlining).
It’s not an experience; it almost dismantles experience.
What is the
experience of time, for example? It’s nothing specific, since time is not
something that exists in that sense (see post 1). In actual fact, you
experience time easily by being In The Woods (boutique festival in Kent)
because the site is completely non-specific – very atmospheric, meandering and
mellow.
The next point
is that if you have a good experience of time, you are open to impressions.
Rather than being driven by site-specifics, you are open to suggestions. So,
you are almost in a different world, one more of the mind and less of
“realism”.
The overall
conclusion is that Google, by specifying time and place to the ultimate, are
actually dismantling the experience of time and space! This is because time is
not actually a technical phenomenon; it just has to be experienced. Far from
being a merely utilitarian measure, there is a case for saying Google is the first
sign of a future which is anti-experience and anti-suggestion. “Realism”, when
time is not realistic. It’s just how we experience where we are. I said at the
start of post 5 that Google are a “political” future, seeing as they are so
ultra-pragmatic. It goes further than that, though, because Google occupies
that side of reality where you find E=MC₂
I mentioned
being In The Woods as being a pleasant, meandering experience, and of course
this is a place where you find leaf-mulch and lofty trunks, where you not only have a pleasant experience of time passing but are
surrounded on all sides by ambient space. This is that side of reality which
absorbs light, as described in post 1. There are 2 realities here. Google’s
reality belongs to E=MC₂. The
other reality – actual experience – is balanced and lets in the dark that we
all need.
The “political”,
pragmatic reality that we tend to inhabit now is a maze, one lit wholly by
light, or the light of logic. It does not have the balance that is actually a
part of experiential reality. What this implies is that Google’s version of
reality is actually dismantling reality; this is only a speeded up version of
what pragmatic politics does.
This trend of
the future can only be nipped in the bud by a much more experiential approach
and therefore, I would say, a de-politicised one too.
