Pictorial 142

The childhood of the race before Man understood facts (Heinlein, Orphans of the Sky, page 22)

This is the view of the orthodox scientists abord a runaway starship, a vast centrifugal cylinder resembleing Silent Running but closed and hermetic to the heavens, to whom "facts" are simply the servicing of the ship which, to them, is the entire universe.

Later in the story, following a rebellion, captain Narby is shown the evidence of the stars in the astrodome, but still refuses to believe.

'I'm surprised that you did not see it. When an apparent fact runs contrary to logic and common sense, it's obvious that you have failed to interpret the fact correctly. The most obvious fact of nature is the reality of the ship itself, solid, immutable, complete. Any so-called fact which appears to dispute that is bound to be an illusion. Knowing that,. I looked for the trick behind the illusion and found it.' (page 129)

This is a case of having different interpretations of the same facts, in this case the view of the stars. Narby is someone without a trace of poetry in their makeup, being the counter to the eventual hero, Hugh Hoyland, a "foolish romantic" to whom the "ecstacy of beauty" of the stars is all the proof they need.

What relation do imagination, beauty and poetry have to truth? If the UVS website is on the right wavelength, then the truth is not simply a question of hard facts.

“To the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.” - William Blake

Childhood is when the imagination develops and when you first read comics. A prev post () made the suggestion that Howard's primitivism stemmed from his childhood exposure to the mystical tales of his Irish mother.

The relation between something early and psychic in life, and the primitive psyche of past ages is quite clos. The primitive impacts on childhood in the same way as Kirby impacted on the 60s.

Loyalty to early memories inspired such as BWS and Harlan Ellison to believe romance of physical and psychic power in contradistinction to the "factual" world we inhabit.

Loyalty to the naivety of childhood imagination. The romance and the past, as personified in Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

 

A world of fact that is devoid of childhood imagination is prey to the profane dragon of corrupt lusts. The reason being that scientific facts are only persuasive when they come from the mirror of illusions (electromagnetism) that is attractive to the ego (of acolytes).

 

The physical and psychic realms of imagination, beauty and poetry are neglected and rendered more as things of childhood. The Apollonian vison of Kirby is like a primitive fairy tale that facts cannot eclipse when the romance is present. Romance is belief in the primitive power of psyche and the physique.

 

The facts that science gives us drag us further inside the mirror where they are ever-more convincing. Outside of this illusion exist symbolist areas of decadent growth. These invite decaying castles, deep forest glades, shafts of sunlight. These are areas where Pre-Raphaelites have trod and where blood and earth have a Noto-like ambiance.

 

In one of the original symbolist yarns, Pelleas and Melisande, the heroine is a water-nymph whose destiny is to descend to the depths. Fatalism and mysticism (Poe Annabel Lee) frequent these folk tales.

 

Rackham 

Whereas facts invite us into a sterile future of the head, romance harks back to the physicality of foul-smelling waters and collapsing caverns. The lifecycle of the underworld.

 

Inside the mirror of illusions, we are typically stunned by words into submission; the news a nightmare repeat of hollow phrases. Outside, we are haunted by the beauty of line, the arch of a throat (song).

 

Words alone, within the illusory world of fact, give us the sterility of number, where rubbish-removal replaces the beauty and felicity of line.

 

Words, like those of Atten-bore (prev) which tell us there is continual competition, when what we see is the beauty and fertility of line. That is more like the world of fairy tale storytelling than it is the pseudo-statesman of bore. Competition for “them” is what exists inside the mirror of illusions, a type of endless electromagnetic repetition of signals, signifying nothing.

 

 

Pictorial 141

But Stan Lee's writing, which used to flow through me and I thought was exciting, invigorating, stylish, any number of things.. But today I cannot read a single balloon of it. And yet, the staging, the drawing, the drama, the natural intellect of Kirby really hasn't diminished, in my perception.. Even though these are impossible heroes in blue tights. You look past that nonsense.. There's a reason for the extraction and the abstraction and the process of thought. Kirby still holds up! That fucking wonderful guy still holds up. (BWS from 1996 interview in TCJ)

To have this disparity is somewhat baffling, but one possible reason might be that the zeitgeist - the thing that was happening and flowing in the world of the 60s - is no longer there. Lee, for all his slickness, could follow the zeitgeist, and the mix between social realism and fantasy was adroitly handled.

The fact that BWS is so unflattering about most of the latter mainstream artists might have something to do with the lack of flow of the 60s zeitgeist which Kirby's work was immersed in. The rebellion against the conventions of authoritarianism that lead to war and dehumanisation.

Kirby's early 70s News Gods and particularly Forever People embellished these idealisms of spiritual quality over numbers and war - Big Bear, Beautiful Dreamer. When the zeitgeist fades, disillusion and outright depression follow. In a way, the super-science that Kirby depicts is completely the opposite of what in fact seems to develop.

Instead of spiritual gadgets like the Mother Box that combines human energies in harmonies, we get humans that more and more resemble numbers, or algorithms.

One way to look at it is, if the universe is harmonic - see prev - then math is a mere subset of this. Harmonies are origins for the analytic breakdown into numbers and logic.

However, the origin of modern society is the exact opposite. The origin is inductive reason, which is the pure logic of light and perspective. The origin of our societies is therefore not the origin of an imaginative universe, and imaginative artists are caught on the horns of that dilemma.

The 60s was an era of musical and spiritual rebellion that the comics - particularly Marvel, natch - rode. After all, it's quite difficult for an artist to create something out of whole cloth in a spiritual vacuum.

The BWS disdain for the Jim Lee/Leifeld types may have something to do with the times we live in. It's very hard to go against the flow, and once the future-parables of Robert Heinlein have been proven "false" all one can do is sing the same song over and over.

Paul Kantner, as a fan of Heinlein, did this his entire career! Not only are our societies numerical, but the mirror of illusions - electromagnetism - harbours the profane dragon of corrupt rhythms (prev.) The more we advance into a numerical future, the more profanity we encounter in the expressive algorithm, "clean meat", the mainstream campaign against animal-husbandry and pelts and fertilizing pasture.

The reason is that the numerical illusion professes to be sterile while harboring rhythmic profanities. The rhythms of nature cannot be denied and are simply corrupted into profane areas.

This future is like a great exercise in rubbish-removal, as opposed to the fertile Elysium that Man has left. For the same reason, Silicon Valley resembles a giant, pondering ass. If this is the background against which mainstream comics are promulgating future fantasies, it's not surprising they come across as ridiculous.

It's not simply that Kirby's vision (Apollonian) has become attenuated to the nth degree, it's that his vision in the 60s didn't jar with the reality.

It's all very well to dis Smith for being depressive, it's quite possible the reasons are not limited to the comics genre, but have something to do with the increasing disparity between future fantasy and future reality.

Origins are everything - not just in comics - and if Kirby is one origin, so is Newton's light-box and the corrupt rhythms it unleashed.

The creative mind is fertile and needs a fertile world. This world has visceral downsides and dark corners and is rough and raw. It's not "kind to animals" in the Carrie Symonds mode, but is strong, virile, feminine and on the side of the liberty of physical reality as opposed to the authority of humans as numbers.

The Big Tech Dragon is the future of number devoid of harmony, a story told by sterile minds inside a sterile illusion.

Pictorial 140

In the vortical universe, is it true to say the origin has a harmony akin to music?

Yes indeed, more akin to tones manifested with its vibrations.

 It involves time, rotation or space, and the substance or mass that has energy, all of which has a primal shape? 

Yes the cosmos does has a primal shape, check this out:

The cosmological model of UVS

That shape could be something like the helixes found at Newgrange in Ireland, a repeated motif.

If you are referring to the attached image, yes it is. That is one torus-transformed variant of a vortical hypersphere cluster.

Most of the information physics finds is therefore an illusion of energy, such as at CERN? The illusion at the same time is real in the geometrical shape. 

In other words, a Big Bang could be manufactured in CERN.

This one is difficult to put into perspective. First of all, the Big Bang is a mathematical postulation that has never happened in the objective reality.

Think of the objective reality illusion as an imagination of nature, but its realism is absolutely real to all the physical entities that are vortically manifested therein.

“To the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.” - William Blake

These are Vincent of UVS replies to..

On Tue, 22 Sep 2020, 4:14 am neil mcewan, <neilnv22@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

In the vortical universe, is it true to say the origin has a harmony akin to music? It involves time, rotation or space, and the substance or mass that has energy, all of which has a primal shape? That shape could be something like the helixes found at Newgrange in Ireland, a repeated motif.

Most of the information physics finds is therefore an illusion of energy, such as at CERN? The illusion at the same time is real in the geometrical shape. 

In other words, a Big Bang could be manufactured in CERN.

The attached image is a caption of a vortical cluster of clouds on Earth.

Such similar vortical cluster patterns were also observed on the atmosphere of Jupiter as well as Saturn.

The plants of a Scottish moor are hardy for the reason that they inhabit virile and hardy terrain, attractive to hunters and birds of prey. The confusion of the UN and other logical thinkers is that the wild and self-regenerating landscapes are somehow separate from Man in his ivory tower. The truth is that the same rules of regeneration apply to livestock and prairie, and the same laws of hardiness and metamorphosis are apparent.

Metamorphosis, where life becomes death, where primal fertility is strong and pure on the moor, where strength is seen in the dancing line of gorse and heather and the short, stubby grass that rabbits adore.

'Anyone that wants to buy fur really is sick. Fur belongs on animals only. Nuts to think some of Britain's department stores still sell fur.' (Carrie Symonds)

 

Boris Johnson's girlfriend Symonds is speaking the language of the UN appealingly enough on the said moor, seeming not to notice the lines of growth and decay she is traipsing over.

Line is a  primal fertility that only Man can seem to ignore under his/her feet. The reason for that has to be that the head is speaking in a detached sense, unaware of the life and death going on all about. Strength is fertility because the limbs of the body are held together by supple sinews, by waves of muscle attached to sculptural bone.

MWK The Sacrifice

While the sorcerer scratches their head and desperately consults, the hero has leapt and grabbed. The primordial serpentine rhythms of this picture are pulsatingly Howard.

While our dear leaders - like the hapless conjurer here - ponder their portfolios of abject sterility, what escapes their attention is the reality that Symonds steps over on her grouse moor; primeval line.

Strength and fertility are never born of information for the simple reason this ignores the primal root of things. The ability to grasp and leap. The active world is primal, while the world of the head is immolated in sterile illusions.

Their lies - such as that cattle-breeding is a carbon-hazard (prev), or animal pelts are a moral hazard - become the truths of a world built on weakness and ego.

The members of

The Studio (telling stories and chewing gum)

are one in that they are all driven bodily (I mean, Jeffrey Jones was driven to be a woman!) The sense of the flesh that clings to bone. Life is fertile and of the body, or it is essentially sterile and of the head.

Animals fertilize pasture through the strength of their muscular physiques. Cutting down forests is a sterile act (prev) that enables the sterilization of animal flesh (just as "clean meat" is flesh without bone - weak and characterless with no chops P130)

In the US, mixed pig farming that would fertilize neighboring crops are now intensive hog farms that have a by-product of massive storage of waste.

As is usual in a sterile system, the chief work is carrying away rubbish. What the sterile mind of officialdom never grasps is that natural materials metamorphose into useful products (TOFf2). The smells and visceral quality of such primitive scenes have a downside, but they are physical as opposed to an illusion of the mind. They are healthy as opposed to a health-hazard.

There are always negativities because that's reality; the question is, do you want to live in a strong and fertile land, or a weak and sterile illusion of the ego?

What exists outside of the ego is the body, a product of absolute time or rhythm. The body is strong and skeletally sculptural (Moebius Arzach). Jointed hips swivel and define shape and sex. Where the body is extant, physical attributes of action and fertility are displayed in-the-field. Man and maid riding horses through a region of mixed farmland.

On the prairie exists absolute time, which is simply rhythm (prairie songs). Relativity exists in geometrical space, which is an infinite reflection of the mirror of illusions (HB135).

The mirror of illusions is electromagnetism - Faraday's solenoid (P136). Faraday is himself a reflection of Newton's light-box (Newton's knives C4-C6)

The infinite mirror-illusion constructs a space that is geometrical and logical and attractive to the ego of acolytes (see Ayne Rand versus Perrine Sandrea P135)

Now, you can turn round and say to me, "The modern world is highly convincing, our senses tell us" (see "phenomenology"). The point is an illusion IS convincing; the more you get into logical junk the more convincing it is to the ego and THEREFORE the more illusory (virtual).

Outside the ego exists organic decadence, which is represented by the physical attributes of Man and animals. From decadence springs revival in-the-field. The cycle is strong and pure.

A relative world is simply the reflection of infinite mirrors - a geometrical illusion. Within the mirrors exists the profane dragon - the corruption of natural rhythm(prev.)

Relativity exists in geometrical space (CERN). It may also exist in perspective space which is more or less a product of lenses - see HB56, DNA diffraction patterns HB71)

When we see line in organic things, we also sere time - the absolute expression of primal movement in space to define shape (see top image).

Why does the palm have lines that palm-readers use to judge character? Because they are a product of absolute time where  rhythms are present.

In relative time the primal rhythms are hidden and corrupted by the profane serpent hidden in the mirror of illusions (electromagnetism, sun, perspective). Relativity is an illusion that appears real because of the illusions of geometry and perspective.

As Einstein himself said,

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

Meaning math can be a fantasy of the Big Tech dragon; this is the land of sorcerers we inhabit, both real and illusion, weak and physically infertile, harbouring the mirror of illusions wherein resides the profane serpent of corrupt rhythm (and no lamb chops).

Pictorial 139

As I was saying to Roy Thomas, the greatest comics stories often have an element of chance, that things just happen. Epics like the War of the Tarim are only partly thought-out and the artist improvises to gain dramatic altitude.

Much the same applies to other standout narratives such as the Lee/Kaluta Starstruck, where the silliness of the story spurs the artist to extra flight’s-fancy. Artist’s flights-of-fancy are the meat-and-bread of comics, and I suppose you could say of narrative art in general from the early Renaissance. Stories which are attempting to be “thought-out” are often too much of the head and with the spontaneous touch absent.

If art is spontaneous so is life so what is it? The natural line is explored by such as Leonardo in cartoons (). A line in nature is spontaneous because it is a product of primeval rhythm. Narrative artists are more true to this in their flights-of-fancy than science is in its thought-out world.

The scientists are unaware of this fact since they live inside their heads. Only the other day the UN announced that for future carbon safety Man should become primarily vegetarian!

The logic for this bizarre statement must be the clearances of Brazilian rainforest and their replacement by cattle which are carbon-producing. However, as previously cited (), cattle which are prairie-fed are really carbon-storers; the carbon is simply cycled back into the prairie through manure.

In Brazil, you assume what happens is “they” build advanced cow-sheds on the cleared forest, so that is not a cyclical system (prev.) It’s more like a logical, sterile system which goes for yield, not balance (strength.)

There is a weakness to that modern system that is to do with a sterile mindset. The ego of such as Baloroso is attracted to a type of logic that is essentially junk. Without the cycles of fertility, there cannot possibly be a carbon balance; hence “they” tell us to do without free ranges.

The best way to achieve a carbon balance is to keep the carbon in the system by fertilizing the prairie. This is old-school organic, mixed farming and for that reason is frowned on by the sterility-merchants of logical junk.

However, there’s no escaping the facts of fertility, and all that happens is that natural rhythms are replaced by the profane serpent, that hides in the mirror of illusions (calculation or the Black Sun, prev.)

This happens in the queasy sexuality of “clean meat”, where you don’t know your ass form your elbow ( ). A fertile system is symmetrical, and the cuts of meat are taken from loin, rump, cutlets etc. This is why a logical system of the head is a type of junk, because it doesn’t know its ass from its elbow. If the modern scene can be taken as a type of Pandora’s Box, there are two ways to look at that.

BWS gives us the convincing illusion of a rainbow that fades like the dew but that attracts the eye and ego with bright colours. Our advances are endless, but are they advancing in to the same thing – a sterile illusion? Are we getting a type of endless repeat – reflections from infinite mirrors – rather than the fertile plains of Elysium (see The Mirror of Tuzun Thune).

Artistic flights-of-fancy often strike a chord which approaches the modern dilemma through esoteric settings. Moebius’s wordless Arzach from the early 70s created memorable dizzy images of a seemingly alien landscape and its weird practitioners.

illo missing here

The engineer is attacked by wilting drones who’s virility it may be the machine of the engineer renders weak.

illo missing here

Images of fertility turned profane also appear – the tongue, reptilian urges held dormant? Artists deal in flights-of-fancy in the sense that a line is not a thought-out thing of logical order; it’s just a mark, a shade a rhythm. That is what reality is if it is to have the primal fertility that is strong and pure, undiluted by corrupt reason.

Hyborian Bridge 138

If West is something of a philosopher, this comes-out in his good intuitions on the design of a textile factory/farm that could almost be a model for an American ecology.

This has to be seen as contrary to the “green” future envisaged by the likes of Musk, which is simply electricity – or electric-green TofF2

The “electric-green” future is just more of the logical junk occupying the heads of acolytes of the mirror of illusions (number, algorithm). Ecology connects the physical to the psyche through the symmetries of nature and the body.

Symmetries imply a cyclical system that sows seed, that fertilizes it, that stores manure from animals, that harvests the crop.. All of which use human labor, and that then creates textiles in situ in a way that benefits the community, in this case Cody, Wyoming.

Apart from the manure which I’m unsure of, all of that is in West’s plans. The scheme is locally oriented (as opposed to logically), placing human values well above dollar value. Having purchased two large ranches, he is planting hydroponic cotton in a manufacturing process “from seed to sew”.

It’s worth expanding on the human benefits of this, in contradistinction to the gobbledegook of most capitalist ventures, whether by Trump or Musk.

Whereas a non-symmetrical system is attractive to the ego of the “Californian” mindset (prev), a traditional farm brings in the smells and roughness that kids love.  I’m assuming that animals will play their part in the Wyoming estate, as it is beef country. Even is not in the initial plans, it may accrue.

West’s cyclical system sets the scene for farsighted folks to see the human benefits of smaller, mixed estates that fertilize pasture. The re-ecologizing of the American west (by West) will be a tragedy for the intensive beef lots, and a revival of animals as a way of life.

A cyclical system is not logical but it is symmetrical, and benefits the locality through the pastures and physical presence of animals. There is an absolute world of smaller plots of land and fertility that exists – see P47 the Cash ditty.

That is, a system that is of the body and not simply the detached head. To quote Hesiod,

“It is from work that men are rich in flocks and wealthy, and a working man is much dearer to the immortals”

By contrast, Hesiodian idleness is to do as drones do in the hive, which might strike a modern chord. The good life is to work your own land, or the land of your commune (extended family, prev.) This is the ecological life that West’s Wyoming textile plant has an organic feel for.

With the organic/communal way of living in vogue again, Dionysus and his donkey are riding along behind. The life of the body is languid and has a seductive grace; the feminine principle of being at ease instead of constantly being on the job.

That might seem like a contradiction to the merits of honest harvest toil, but the point is a life lived in the symmetries of fertile nature is much pleasanter and easy in the long run (Hesiod’s poetry was apparently written during hours of idleness on his plantation.)

 

The pseudo-Seneca now thought to be a fictional representation of Hesiod (generally thought of as the first poet of antiquity known as a person)

To work for the benefit of the head a la Silicon Valley is an illusion of the ego that merely ushers in vile parasites of the body – the profane serpent that preys on lusts (prev). West’s notions of an extended family that cares and shares is harking-back to classical ideals of the farmer-poet that could include both Johnny Cash and Hesiod, the curmudgeonly ploughman whose didactic words extol the wisdom of country living over vainglorious rulers.

This is a fairly American notion, harking-back to Ralph Waldo Emerson. There is a strength is living close to nature, with its smells and all that entails. Instead of a world built on sterility and rubbish-removal, letting things be enables nature to develop useful products. Instead of the weakness of the numerical head, the strength of action on the ranges of life. The work of man and animal showing the sinuous line and graceful movement of self-sufficiency. Not “green energy” but cyclical movement (the serpent of primeval rhythm) that enables metamorphosis (see Buffy quote on dried buffalo manure HB70.

Without these symmetries, all that’s left is a sterile system, attractive to the ego but much more resembling an illusory reality of words and numbers (politics, economy). This is really the future marketed by Big Tech as electric-green; in reality a sterile illusion.

The strength of the fertile land of symmetries is the home of Dionysus and his donkey. The weakness of Cali Big tech is the home of the mirror of illusion, harbouring the profane dragon. Wyoming offers a virile alternative that may yet attract the Muses. The poetry of the muscular body in action in the field.

Pictorial 138

The 2^nd part of Kanye West’s interview with Nick Cannon was not a thrill a minute as it was somewhat fashion-based, and I just picked-up on a couple of things.

As the reviewer on YouTube noted, West’s ego can let rip and he views himself as real in a phony world. He is on a “different wavelength” and bipolar is his “superpower”.

Yet, his wealth is thanks to God, and he is ready to lose it is situations change; he is ready and humble. As a sidenote, he had a fight with Nike to establish his own manufacturing base in Cody, Wyoming; whether that was God’s gift or ego is anyone’s guess.

He has a long-term view of events and his destiny, and is much keener on a black future than the past. This inevitably brought in Powernomics by Claud Anderson which I’ll studiously avoid. Or at least go round from a different direction, as mention was also made of what people meant to him in his youth. Both Trump and Bill Cosby were pop-cultural heroes, and both he supports.

Leaving Trump to one side, youthful memories of the trend-setting Cosby Show are somewhat rooted in the psyche. The truthfulness of the psyche seems worth hanging onto. I have somewhat similar memories of the 60s Batman.

Cosby’s infidelities bring-in the physical side of things; you could almost relate that to Batman in that the kinky leather can act on kids in a hair-raisingly sexual manner. If Batman is quite a white product, the Cosby Show and black-culture in general is more laid-back and funky. That’s what I recall from the show, regardless of how straight-laced and mainstream-friendly.

What I’m saying is that blacks are more sexually laid-back than whites. Groups like the Stones try to mimic this, but I doubt they’re as effective as Marvin Gaye was. Rather than look at another book by a black intellectual (Powernomics), I propose looking less at the head and more at the body.

The body has symmetries and, as was noted elsewhere, is a sort of mirror of the cosmic symmetries between sun and moon, the planetary and astrological constellations.

Those who are stuck inside their heads are not aware of these symmetries, and the epicentre of this culture is California. The non-symmetrical culture of California aims to merge the head with the physical so that the two become one. I’m using “California” as a term which could even include Musk’s car factory near Berlin, as what was Cal is now global.

The image that brings to mind is of Blake’s print of Newton as a giant brain that has transmogrified into a body (P59). When that happens the physique can’t be denied, and the obsession of all the Silicon Valley heads with a sterile, numerical culture leads one to suppose that the whole thing may be the ponderings of a giant ass.

This is something that ignores the symmetries of the body, and replaces them with the profane serpent that resides inside the mirror of illusions (electromagnetism.)

The profane serpent attracts the head (ego) with expressive algorithms and sexy gimmicks that are almost a case of mating with the machine (a la Zuckerberg P1). The sterile, numerical culture exemplifies trivia at the expense of story, which is the physical expression of the body.

 

At this point you might stop me and say, what about KUWTKs, featuring West’s wife Kim? I’ve never seen it but did see Kim has announced it’s stopping, and they are switching to Instagram. That could just be an indication of the trend away from story and to pure image. It’s difficult to make sweeping statements, but the iconic status of Rigg’s Avengers is vastly more assured in terms of athletic story and psychic luster.

I admit the Kardashians had dramatic moments, but the trend to trivia may become all-pervasive with the body really there only for show. The strong physicality and strong psyche associated with the Avengers are indicative of a culture that is not dormant and just being fed teasers and tidbits by numerical agents.

That is really the profane serpent that corrupts natural rhythm and symmetry through meaningless applications that attach to the head, that is also the body. This is the sterile numerical culture whereby the physique can’t be denied, a type of numerical ego-compulsion.

As was noted elsewhere, the symmetries of the body can represent a universal. Symmetrical meanings are quite different to logical ones. There was Kate Bouman’s black hole (HB56), whereby the lewdness was never alluded to. Are we being misled by logical junk? A universe without symmetries is attached to the head (of the acolyte) so, in a sense, you are inside the ego of the acolyte.

If this ego is logical junk then it’s not a very good place to be. To be aware of symmetries is to be aware of lewdness and the physical acts of the body that the psyche is attached to in a universal way that has strength and meaning. Story and truth (P47).

Hyborian Bridge 137

The modern world of the algorithm has its origin in Ada Lovelace, Byron’s legitimate daughter. But, as noted in HB136, Lovelace was deliberately kept clear of Byron’s legacy of bodily temptations by his wife, Annabelle Milbank.

 

That split is no longer possible in a world where the Big Tech Companies are all about merging the two. Something similar cropped up in Kanye West’s interview with Cannon. Is the sci-fi world we are entering bound to advance whether or not we like it?

 

These questions never occur in “conventional” mainstream politics. From what I gathered, West’s view of most metropolitan areas was that the design is bad for living. He specifically cited alternates such as Kibbutzim, from his focus of being a type of extended family (tribe) that shares and cares.

 

West seems to pick-up on rustic models as alternates to the urban sprawl that dominates western culture and seems to value the rustic aesthetic. This goes contrary to what you could call the super-confident western espousal of built-up areas over desolate wilderness. You could also call this an American way of life – whether that’s totally fair or not – and this idea of confident tricksters was pilloried in the famous 30s operatic play City of Mahagonny.

 

ALABAMA SONG

 

Set in Alaska, it’s a parody of the great plans of roughneck lumberjacks to establish a city of pleasure in the snowy wastelands. This basic theme of the super-confident paving-over of nature could also be likened to a type of sterilization of nature. In Mahagonny, as in 30s Berlin, prostitution is rife, but it could be as time goes by that’ll get cleaned up and pure boredom will return!

 

One thing you get from Mahagonny is that weasel words take the place of idealism pretty quickly, and there’s a descent into chaos. There’s also the idea of continual protests, which has a modern sound.

 

In his interview, West makes a point of saying that words are never enough. There will in the future be a fight for scarce resources, and it’ll be a case of “water” over “words”. This is something no self-respecting politician would ever say, as words to them are “things” (in Byron’s phrase). The “thing” is number (the monetary system) and politicians only differ in the numbers they cite!

 

Tweedledee, “The retail price index should be 1.1”

Tweedledum, “The retail price index should be 2.2”

(based on Paul Kantner’s line at end of Stairway to Cleveland on JS DVD)

 

In some ways, then, West seems to espouse a primitive and more tribal approach to living with the planet, in its green and blue vastness, as opposed to what “they” call the inevitable sci-fi advances – that “inevitably” pave-over nature.

 

From that perspective, West has a poetic sense of the physical (land) and psyche (of farmers, herders) which mainstream politicians don’t (be they Kamala black or Biden blue.)

 

It’s not only mainstream politicians but also protestors (such as XL) who get their sureness of ready-fire words from numbers. Mahagonny takes the place of the original wilderness – or reality – and puts sterilization in its place (once the prostitutes are moved-out a la Bloomberg).

 

The modern scene is a very convincing illusion (of the ego) that depends on the sterilization of culture and nature (see P135 pictures of Ayn Rand versus Perrine Sandrea).

 

The ego is convinced by numbers that occupy these illusory spaces (reflections, repetitions) and endlessly recites them (somewhat akin to the mantras of Dawkins!)

 

With repetition comes ever-more conviction, and numbers become the only news. The sterile culture doesn’t even seem to realize that the symmetries and proportions seen in nature are always the result of differences – a basic untidiness.

 

Predators chase prey, and the cycle of fertility is strong and pure. Dirt is essentially fertility, as in the fields of wheat, and the cycle is essential for strength and health. This cycle can never occur in a sterile factory setting such as a city, and the connection to the land is paramount (Lil Abner?)

 

Eating dirt is actually healthy; children develop immunities by playing in the fields. Empirical tradition treats less clean things as healthier and cleaner in the long run (for the exposure to germs) – Mosaic Law HB70.

 

There’s a connection to Robert Robertson’s book on Fulling where earth and stale urine were the original detergents on river banks (HB60) Pure cleanliness never exists in nature, as that mitigates against strength and defence.

 

Empirical tradition teaches people that dirt can be cleansing; empirical reason (The New Atlantis prev.) appears to teach the opposite. Sterilization is simply another word for rubbish-removal so you might say neverending rubbish-removal is the city of the future (Motter’sMr X). This attracts the ego, in the form of numbers, so we’re back to Grace Slick’s quote on numerical eho-compulsion (HB62/1)

 

The sterile land is the economy but, as noted previously of Hyborian trade, economy and ecology were much closer in past ages. Pack-animals would carry a mobile ecosystem of pests; health was a question of balance. Anything that goes away from ecological balance in the long term is weak, and this applies to the current economy. The ego is attracted to weakness because it is attracted to number, which is the sterilization of culture.

 

Mahagonny could be taken as the city that practices the facile rituals of pleasure over the stronger, long-lasting ones that are grounded in physical and psychic reality – physique and action, Diana and the hunt over vale and dale.

 

The physical reality is the cycles of country living; the psyche that benefits from the fertile symmetries born of strength, of blood and rebirth.

 

AGNETHA

 

I found this track as a member of the Facebook group. You might call it European ethnic, which might seem less American. On the other hand, the ethnicity of Last of the Mohicans is very American. As I was saying to the group, you can’t have Agnetha wearing cornrows instead of braids as they’re not Nordic. The Abba stage-style was Nordically inflected just as West’s clothing range is urban-black inflected. Both have international appeal.

 

As was said previously of Howard’s Outremer (W11), differences make for psychic affinity. The politicians’ formula is that only the numbers are different, everything else is the same. The natural formula is that differences make for affinities outside of the sterile land of dormant egos. The sun or the mirror of illusion (Mahagonny, electromagnetism).

Hyborian Bridge 136

Going into the mirror of illusions – the sterile zone of electromagnetism – is akin to going into reflections (repetitions). The factual and numerical are attractive to the ego, outside of the strong physical style of nature seen in shape and symmetry.

Number and repetitive   take the place of natural origins which are reptilian and primeval. Instead of primeval rhythm, the profane serpent resides inside the mirror (since rhythm can’t be denied).

Instead of the clean rhythms of symmetrical animals that are associated with fertility and sex, the profane serpent is really an attachment of number to meat. This is most easily seen in “clean meat” () where cells multiply in queasy ways in trays.

But also DNA, since this is the body’s factory that supplies molecules by rote. DNA is to do with quantity (number), while primal rhythm is to do with quality (shape).

Of course, Richard Dawkins (with his ego) is attracted to the former, and he goes so far as to say the pleasure is a by-product of genes in breeding (The Selfish Gene.)
That’s like saying the shapes that we use in sex acts are arbitrary and that it’s the genes that are supplied that are the useful things.

If you think about it, though, sex is easy for the reason that the shapes we use fit into eachother in a highly symmetrical fashion. Pleasure is the benefit we gain from that act, which makes it even easier to accomplish.

Breeding has to be simple and beneficial or it wouldn’t work and God would be back at the drawing board. To say genes are the “overriding value”” is to miss the point that what is bred is iconic shape.

 Blue fin tuna

If it was information that was bred, Dawkins might have a point, but then we would be cyborgs (prev.)

Shape is simple and clean and pure, composed of lines in time. That is physical reality, whereas genes are just quantity (number).

Shape can’t be explained by quantity, only by rhythm. DNA attracts the ego of acolytes and thereby takes the ego outside of primordial rhythm and essentially into sex-by-proxy. This could well be an aspect of the profane serpent that breeds numerically rather than through the symmetries of nature.

Algorithmic calculation of gene sequences makes one suppose they’re essentially the same thing – as with Dawkins’ “memes”, natch. Information pure and simple (actually complex).

On the active side of nature that hunts, swims in shoals, flies in flocks, animals have to breed in simple fashion. Pleasure is more of a primordial principle that accompanies primordial shape. In the active areas, decline and death are related to fertility and revival.

In the sausage-factory envisaged by the likes of Dawkins and his breed, there is no primordial aspect that has dark meaning and power, the hunt and fertility, blood and newborn, the dark female principle (Noto “Red Lace” HB67 etc)

Inside their mirror of illusions, there are only numbers (quantity or information0. That is a type of repetition (reflection) that seems to attract the ego. But inside this mirror lurks the profane serpent, since physique and rhythms can’t be denied, only corrupted from within.

It might be worth going into this with reference to The Young Mutants film, to give a basic story as opposed to pure information.

X-gene mutants here are all teens with psychic angst. Their trauma and guilt – bad girl Illyana killing eighteen “one by one” – are the engines of this film. As with all adolescents, sexual pangs play their part, particularly in the lycanthropic lesbian Rahne’s dalliance with native psychic Danielle.

As always, the psyche and the physical join, delivering emotional meaning to a claustrophobic setting of creepy proportions. Whether the teens are X-gene mutants or not, the physical acts of closeness, and the emotional psyche always tell the story. No story is ever told by way of quantity over quality. This theme of the overriding value of quality is also found in Robert Pirsig’s 60s counterculture classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Quality is a human value that can be found where humans are physically and emotionally present. Possibly that was what Ada Lovelace () meant by saying she was a "poet scientist". Her mother - Byron's wife - Annabelle Milbank deliberately kept her away from the Byronic life of the sensational body. What you could assume is that an algorithm is a thing really of the head, and the poetry of Lovelace's algorithm was in its simplicity. Once number becomes mixed with the sexual and sensational body, corruption is inevitable.


The physique can't be denied, and algorithms tend to make head and body one thing (see print of Newton, prev.) A type of numerical ego-compulsion (see Grace Slick quote HB62/1).


The physical and emotional sphere is a foreign land to those who inhabit their own egos; egos which are attracted to the mirror of illusions (number, quantity.)

This is the illusion that causes repetition (reflection, sun) to replace the primordial rhythm that comes into physique and psyche both.

Illyana, by the way, carries a pet dragon which she talks to. Dragons can be sort of sexy (like Japanese cartoons) and, in a way, they are what make life go round

BABY SNAKES

If you call that the seedy side of life, there is a way in which seediness fertilizes dryness with gay limber movement and zestfull colour (see prev on Times Square).

In contrast to the previously seedy areas of New York, we now have the Dragon of Big Tech. This is the area where men like Zuckerberg are almost mating with machines, so close are they. He, for one, wants to be “merged” (P1).

The Big Tech Dragon is the corruption of primal rhythm – fertility and natural symmetry – by number. The associations of DNA and algorithms and other aspects alluded to are all aspects of the profane serpent.

Rhythm cannot be denied, and is simply replaced by a profane version, seemingly sterile but actually queasily sexual – as with the expressive algorithm (prev.)

This is the mirror of illusions “they” are marketing, with no relation to human fertility and the activities of rustics. Hunting, tilling the land, living in nature. The crumbs of the earth, the wriggling worms, are the reality that cannot be denied, only corrupted by Big Tech.

The baby snakes simply mutate into Big Tech Dragons. This could be likened to the Stygian city of Khemi, where snake-worship sanctions the giant reptiles coiling in the streets, striking at passers by when they please.

There is no denying of the primeval; it simply takes other forms. The sorcerers and acolytes take the place of the warrior and farmhand. Only by regaining the land from Big Tech can the human spirit revive and thrive in active lands.

Pictorial 137

It has to be said that Musk lacks a poetic bone in his body and wants to build a mobile hospital to house the future hospital-cases of the brave new world envisaged.

So, how is it not right to want to treat illness? Because Man is more than illness; he is poetic experience in the world. What Musk wants is for us to be cyborgian, and hence conquer the threats of disease and machine-advance by becoming one with the machine.

In that case, the cure has killed the human patient. Musk is in the vanguard of those who are attracted to electromagnetism (the mirror of illusion) which is “more real” for the reason that it is logical (perspective illusion.)

This attracts the ego of acolytes of algorithms and numbers. But, as was alluded to, this is a sterile reality without the fertile symmetries of nature (or the physique.) The ego is attracted to sterility for the reason it is logical, numerical (the ego compulsion, Grace Slick HB62/1)

Outside of this attraction that is too real for comfort exist primitive serpentine rhythms of nature and physique.

She crawled with a rustle of grass towards me, quick and superbly assured. Her hand in mine was like a small wet flame which I could neither hold nor throw away. Then Rosie, with a remorseless, reedy strength, pulled me down from my tottering perch, pulled me down, down into her wide green smile and deep subaqueous grass. (Laurie Lee, Cider With Rosie, page 209)

The primitive animality of the rustic physical passion is close to Darkchilde (P136), even if Rosie appears so innocent.

 

This is what innocence is; Rosie, like Illyana, is a perfect product of nature needing no artificial enhancement.

Time squared itself, and the village shrank, and distances crept nearer. The sun and moon, which once rose from our hill, rose from London now in the east. One’s body was no longer a punching ball, to be thrown against trees and banks, but a telescoping totem crying strange demands few of which we could supply. (page 230)

Poetic descriptions and spasmodic interludes are gradually replaced by the new world of information. According to Musk everything is information, whereas the priapic endowment of meaning and power is primitive physical reality which urges the psyche to conquest and achievement.

The physical, meaning the basic rustic living of pigs and frog-ponds and horses, human activity with animals and plants, snakes in the grass. In such settings there is dirt and cleanliness, sin and dancing. As Laurie Lee recounts it, the kids were rough and rowdy and practically criminal. There is a dark edge to the community which is part of their strength.

Illyana’s rough treatment in Limbo is a lesson in hatred which builds her psychic strength to become mistress of the dark land. Only through strength can anything psychic be achieved, and strength requires rough treatment.

 (barber-shop pages of Darkchilde from New Mutants #72 missing)

The old days were not kind and gentle but their rough handling does not confound the mind with an electromagnetic reality, a convincing illusion to attract the ego, not the beauty of the primitive body in the rustic and rhythmic situations of peril and pleasure.

The head doesn’t need to be told what to do; that’s the job of the psyche. In effect, Musk’s implants are a parallel reality of information as opposed to the content of a strong psyche that has direction, ability to initiate action in the rhythms of nature.

The strong physical style of nature informs the psyche of values that are primitive and powerful, lusty, rough and ready for action, bloody and fertile (the hunt, the chase.)

The contrary case is the attraction of the sterile and factual to the dormant ego. It seems possible that ever-more reflections (repetitions) create ever-more convincing illusions for the benefit of the ego! They are real in a parallel system that is cyborgian as opposed to physically and bodily of the active human specimen.

This parallel system is outside reality, which is primitive and reptilian – a priori rhythm. This a priori rhythm is seen in rustic situations which are active as opposed to passive, where the unashamedly priapic is exposed, where lusty milkmaidens cart their wares, where there is more physique and less speech.

Information attracts the ego to a parallel reality of perspective illusion, seemingly real. For example, DNA is detected by X-ray diffraction (see HB71) or a type of lens (refection). This then becomes reality, rather than the a priori reality of primal rhythm that cells (gels) are composed of physically (the male and female physiques).


 


Those who follow men like Musk are gazing into the acolyte’s mind. Less speech is needed and more rustic physique that is active, sweaty, dirty, lusty. Speech that takes place in an information zone is increasingly blurred between fact and fiction due to this lack of physical reality, of communal self-governing. Take the current election for starters!


 


The physical world is less confusing because of the primitive sense of line and rhythm. It’s easily seen in the pleasant lands of stately decline, where the rural base has not lost its connection to the urban advance.


THE NIGHT THEY DROVE OLD DIXIE DOWN


Beirut (see prev.) is almost a case-study in the dichotomy between Ottoman decline and fantastic urban sprawl. I happened to read about Yvonne Sursock Lady Cochrane (who married into Irish gentry) of an ancient Greek lineage that was established in Lebanon and surroundings with estates of wheat and cotton.


 

Palais Sursock

The rural landowner – as in the days of ancient Greece or 17^th century England or the Old South – was connected politically and culturally to the urban centres.



 During a famine in Beirut in August 1918, Yvonne’s father had 58 camel-loads of wheat brought from his farms to be distributed to the city’s starving poor.


 
Yvonne founded Apsad, L’assoctiation pour la protection des sites et anciennes demeures, and fought many battles with politicians and developers. The dichotomy between the defence of decline (what they call restoration) and, as noted of Rafiq al Hariri,


 
She was pleased with the restoration work he had done; but surveying Beirut overall was increasingly glum. “Beirut has become an enormous slum,” she said recently. “You go from one hideous place to another.”


 
The politicians, in their land of information and straight-line planning, are cut-off from primitive rhythms that are a priori reality of decadence and revival. Simply  leaving things to decline is a picturesque act. Nature does the work. Decline and revival occur in fertile landscapes, not sterile ones of modern advance (see Neom city.)


 
Since primal rhythm can’t be denied, the sterile zone is prey to the profane serpent that corrupts the clean symmetries of nature and physique. Everything has an origin; modern societies have an origin in the inductive system of Newton et al. Yet primitive origins cannot  be denied by reason, only corrupted within the mirror of illusions.


 
This is the modern way, whether a rebuilt Beirut or the desert Neom. Information which takes the place of the primitive sense of line that informs a fertile reality. Like comicbooks, as was noted elsewhere, the expressive line tells a story – no matter how fantastical –and that is the reality. Without that finesse, the primitive realism of life and death are left high and dry without meaning or power.