LYRICS

The applications are to blameAll the people do all dayIs stare into a phone (Placebo, Too Many people)

“Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints!” (Chief Seattle)

When rock stars were myths (Sandi Thom, I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker)

Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time, Now that it's the opposite it's twice upon a time (Moondog)

Time is an illusion (Einstein)

Friday 23 August 2019

Hyborian Bridge 74


The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune reads a bit like Plato’s riddle of the cave. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and give names to these shadows.”  Are we humans but shadow projections of an infinitely more verdant universe, in Howard’s case, on the other side of the mirrors?

Howard’s descriptions are somewhat reminiscent of Francis Stevens’ Claimed

Sometimes it seemed that he gazed upon hard shallowness; at other times gigantic depths seemed to loom before him. Like the surface of the sea was the mirror of Tuzun Thune; hard as the sea in the sun’s slanting beams, in the darkness of the stars, when no eye can pierce her deeps..

As one might notice, the sea can be mighty illusory, as can the sun. So can the air..and what is earth but merely wads of clay? Yet together is a symmetry formed that has the feel of unspeakable truth.

A mirror is one facet of this illusory world, and in a way is the most convincing. Yet a mirror is also the least real, since it is composed of light beams; so it is a combination of “truth” and physical non-existence.

This is the sense that Tuzun Thune uses in his hall of mirrors. His tongue takes Kull away from the sense of his corporeality - Grace Slick’s Be Young You Hyborian Bridge 73. A tongue – or a language – is articulate reality. This is the reality we live in and –actually – a lot of that takes place behind this very same hall of mirrors.

Mathematics is a language, and you remember Hyborian bridge 73 says that “mathematical vistas were opened-up” by crystal diffraction (Ramachandra)? Crystal diffraction is simply another type of mirror illusion; light is bent and an angular image formed.

I’m not saying it’s not real; it’s a combination of “truth” and physical non-existence. Physical existence is our bodies, our corporeality. Diffraction patterns are mathematical entities created by light. Since light is non-corporeal they have no physical existence.

Like Kull’s “entity” on the other side of the glass, they exist (in light), they are not our shadows. They speak another language – mathematics – which is essentially a creation of light (diffraction). It’s the angular language of crystals which is both logically true and a logical fallacy in terms of our own physique, which is fairly disordered and pliable (to use Bruce Lee’s expressions).

The body is not ordered in terms of straight lines and angles – like a crystal – only in terms of symmetries. It therefore makes some sense to think of the cosmos in terms of symmetries – however naïve that may appear to the acolytes of the mirror illusion.

Yes, but that’s because a mirror is highly convincing (to the head). Let me give a concrete example. If you walk through a town you see a lot of signs; you could follow them, and they would be “true”. They also tend to exist in a universe of straight lines and angles. There also exists another universe of symmetries; you could also follow that one, but the signs would not be as concrete!

So it’s no wonder Kull was “mazed”. A mirror is devilishly confusing; it’s the combination of “truth” (image) and the mathematical non-physicality that drags us into a language of acolytes; the tongues that speak a mixture of “truth” (image) and physical non-existence, merging us into a world of (their) minds, and away from (our) bodies.

The nations pass and are forgotten, for that is the destiny of man.”

“Yes,” said Kull. “Yet is it not a pity that the beauty and glory of men should fade like smoke on a summer sea?”

“For what reason, since that is their destiny?

Yes, the “destiny” that leads inevitably to AI – algorithmic language that articulates the aims of the acolytes (of the head). So it’s all about tongue, or as the song says,

“The tongues of some men are made of silence

And your eyes will listen - “Be Young You”

Perhaps these are the laconic rovers who work pack-horses and mule-trains with a shotgun on their saddle? This is a different destiny, for one skins rabbit or bones a fish. One is then living, experiencing the cyclical sense of things dying, being eaten, morsels being scavenged, the squawk of the crow in the pine.

This primitive physical existence is no less than the origin of culture and all its products. To forsake our own origins does feel weirdly like being dragged through Tuzun Thune’s mirrors.

“See and believe,” droned the wizard. “Man must believe to accomplish. Form is shadow, substance is illusion, materiality is dream; man is because he believes he is; what is man but a dream of the gods? Yet man can be that which he wishes to be; form and substance, they are but shadows. The mind, the ego, the essence of the god-dream — that is real, that is immortal.

The land of pure-ego, of course, is the non-physical land of mathematical AI, articulate, algorithmic, and we know where that leads (see Katie Bouman’s black hole Hyborian Bridge 60).It seems to lead to a reality that is not physically active and therefore cannot revive through decay (via hunting, carrion).

The heads (of acolytes) may not be physical but cannot deny the physique (Claimed1), and so the result may well be physical boredom. Again, this seems to relate to Grace Slick’s quote on numerical compulsion (Hyborian bridge 62/1), that relates to the physique and attitudes of boredom.

Since we can’t escape from the physique, you could say that it is our destiny, whether or not we use our heads or our bodies. If that is our destiny, then it has to be related to the physical universe – of sun, moon, planets – which again the acolytes deny.

What you could say is that acolytes are adopting attitudes of boredom in their own physiques, and that the alternative is something like Bruce Lee’s intelligent body, whereby the attitude is the exact opposite of boredom, a vital awareness and response to threat. One has to be aware (to catch fish) and in surroundings that fit our bodily needs.


Anything that exists in the head – in the ego – cannot exist in physical reality of the body that is active in the field. But it’s this physical reality that revives through decay, and that has strength and purity.
Something Ic Waes
If this universe is the physical universe, then it does seem to have a certain naivety. And poetry, if you include Papa Hemingway. The naivety is that of the hunter, the adventurer who sails the sea or roams the forest, the river. The places that don’t have straight lines or angles but have cosmic symmetries. Now, according to the universe of order (illusion) these places are just real estate, hence Bolsonaro’s razing of Amazanian forest for intensive cattle raising..and so forth.