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.