Pictorial 145

The intensity of line in Jaime is something else and self-admittedly this is something that has previously been made less than clear. Pictorial 12 comparing Durer and Leonardo with confusedly abstract results!

It’s worth noting that the complete mix of geometry with line is very classical, for a start. The fact the geometry ISN’T perfect makes the style so great.

Modern cartooning styles would be inconceivable without the geometrical underpinning; but on the other hand the intensity of line is equally essential or you end up with Pixar. The Spanish tend to have a flair for this, with guys like Esteban Maroto and Jaime (not to mention Picasso).

It’s the flair for dashing a line down that has a solid basis in geometrical curves. The line is expressive but the geometry is not.

Durer seemed to come at the midway junction between medieval and classical in that he was much more fastidious as opposed to classically geometrical. Leonardo had both cartooning ability and the eye for sensual line.

If you relate this to societies, feudalism is unresolved action and much more tied to the expressive line than to the certainty of geometrical space. Our societies are the exact opposite; everything takes place in resolved space, composed of factoid “bits” that are endlessly spouted.

A geometrical society of perspective and “facts” is very persuasive for that reason, but lacks the subtle grace and truth of the expressive line.

The expressive line is the world of action, of decay, the hunt, regrowth and revival. Cartoonists, because they have to deal in line, you could say have more facility in depicting those aspects of reality than does the mainstream media.

Free-form line doesn’t judge what is desirable from a perspective of order and government or economics, merely what is desirable aesthetically and morally. The socially undesirable are given equal sway. One thinks of Watchmen, Swamp Thing, facets of Love and Rockets. Kirby’s monstrous forms.

Kirby’s creative truth is a mixture of geometry and intensity (HB142). Smith’s insistency on his greatness demonstrates a faith in the power of line to express truth.

Line doesn’t exist without time – ie the expression – and this is what the modern world seems to have lost in its all-out pursuit of technique (geometry, perspective.)

If one looks at medieval philosophers, they were basically believers – people of faith – who dabbled in Aristotle. Faith was the given, the psychic reality that expresses truth.

Thomas Aquinas was a churchman first, a philosopher second. Quite a good example is William Ockham – of Ockham’s razor – to whom Aristotle dealt in facts rather than truth (faith). Facts can be manipulated. One example is that Aristotle talks of a coiled rope and a straight rope being “different things”. Ockham contradicts this by stating that a coiled rope can be measured and uncoiled, so it is the same thing.

These are purely technical matters of viewing nature (like Ockham’s razor that classifies by simplifying) rather than a psychic truth. However, since Galileo, maths has become “truth”. Where is the psychic reality hidden?

It could well be hidden in time. The Latino magic realist Borges wrote a great deal on time. Especially the idea of moving along a labyrinth that forks; the routes one takes dictated by temporal events.

If faith is temporal then it is also the expression of line in time. In terms of the rope cited, a snake coils in convulsive movements of line; it’s the line that is the reality, the muscular convulsions in time; oiled lightning.

The expressive force is primal and creative, a reality outside the geometrical one of maths and number. This reality is hidden in a modern society (of order, of the head) but become visible in comic art and rhythmic musical patterns like dub.

The modern order convinces the ego with a type of nothingness of number, almost a type of junk without the primal rhythmic patterns of old. Words displace the old order of muscular action in-the-fields.

Primitive expressive line is seen in the expressions of magic realism that reflect the psyche. The lines are not factual, but are true psychically.

HYborian Bridge 144

There are those I suppose who may think I’ve got snakes on the brain, like Elektra from Idomeneo (). Howard was keenly aware of the serpentine power in sorcerous hands; oddly enough, in The Shadow Kingdom, dragons are the enemies and destroyers of snakes, which seems to go against most mythology.

One could go round town on Jung and Campbell not to mention the Norse sagas. There’s also Milton and his illustrator Blake.

The 6-headed Jupiter Heliopolitanus from Paradise Lost

DEADLY FUNNY, OXYGEN 4  (Miltonian symmetry)

Rather than get into deep mythology (and water) it’s enough really to say that primitive rhythm has a double standard; it can go both ways, good or bad, wise or evil – cf “devi” or deity-devil.

The double standard is what you see in the rough gardening of Monty Don (HB143). Slugs or caterpillars are “bad” but the balance of the garden requires them to be there in sufficient numbers to be “good” by attracting feeding birds.

This double standard is the physical reality of flesh and blood and bone that the modern order has dismissed from the Garden of Eden (supposedly).

WOODSTOCK

Without the double-standard there is another standard which, as I’ve been saying for awhile, can become a type of logical junk. This could be known as the “zero standard”, where instead of a physical ambiance of irregular lines and a sort of mish-mash of roughness with some order, there is number and algorithm.

This is the mainstream order as represented by such new towns as Neom in Saudi Arabia - or Babcock Ranch in USA TofF2

A double standard has to let in foulness, which could be something like stagnant water (Jaime Hernandez P144). It could be just plain manure or dried-out for fuel (see Buffy quote HB70)

All these things basically metamorphose, so there is an ever-changing situation. In a land of pure order, the scents of metamorphosis that can waft on the breeze are repugnant to “them”. That is, the heads that run the efficient systems.

Except it’s not really efficient; the human organism requires some exposure to germs in order to acquire immunity and thus health – especially in free-ranging kids!

Therefore, the entire logical order that is science-based is fairly fallacious. The primal serpent has not  been ejected from our modern scene, merely replaced by profane meat (see prev.) There’s no denying primal rhythm – associated psyche – and it can be found in the 60s hippy era or Jamaican dub or

COOL BLUE

A society without primal rhythm is bound to be weak and psychically dependent on profane meat. Some places are better than others (see Detroit Drama3) but overall the picture is of increasing numerical dependency in a profane algorithmic universe of junk. Junk or “zero-standard”, neither strong nor wise nor evil.

The primeval and sinuous metamorphosis of materials is strength and lustiness. There is no such thing as pure hygiene in terms of health, only dirt and cleanliness. Hygiene, or logical junk, is simply the ego-compulsion that attaches number to the removal of dirt. Ironically, junk is lack of dirt! This is born out by the previous stuff on Fulling (HB60) where stale urine and mud were the first detergents used by early societies.

The reason is that dirt is strong, cleansing, as is the prairie on the fertile ground. All that’s fairly obvious so why do “they” not get it?
Because they don’t want to; they are true believers in number and subservient to their egos. In the land of the ego (head) they tell us stories to keep us subservient to number and the proclamations of politicians and economists.

Stories that tell us lies and abnormal facts about DNA and "clean meat" ( HB143

). Abnormal facts are the new normal that tells us fertility on the range is not a necessary strength.

The order they promote is infertile and this ushers in a new norm of infertile stock run by algorithms; a licentious base for sexualised gadgets of profane lust.

The abnormal facts of production deprive work of the strength of roughness and give us smoothness and psycho-sexual dependency. Facts that are a type of weakness that doesn't have the balance and proportion of things that run and hunt in the fields and forests.

The news we are given is factual, but not true in terms of balance and proportion. In order for that to happen the society we inhabit has to have a roughness and lack of order that allows in a primeval reality that is strong psychically, that gives physical health to kids. That has wisdom and sin if you like.

Our societies are neither psychic nor physical; they have only one standard, of number represented by the monetary order of the dollar. The old vernacular America and the old world had a dual standard of roughness – of freedom and order – that Howard and the Texas Junto were more or less in league with as rustic westerners.

Here’s hoping that Trump loses since he is just one more pseud in a society of pseuds. His so-called strength is a lie born of hi-tech and low-psychology; he lies with numbers because they have a pseudo accuracy (see Slick quote HB62/1 and Lindsay Anderson Outtake 6). If Biden gets in at least that leaves an opening for West in another four years. A rural upswing - fiddlers and cowboys out on the moonlit prairies.

Hyborian Bridge 143

“Slugs are a symptom of a problem – they always want plants that are dying or overfed. It’s all about having healthy plants and a balanced holistic garden. If you don’t want caterpillars, you need birds that eat caterpillars, but you have to have some or they’ll go somewhere else. It’s all about balance”.. Don now prides himself on being a bit scruffy to encourage hedge-hogs, bugs and the birds which feast on insects.. “Curlews have perhaps the most hauntingly beautiful of all birdcalls, and their call marks the seasons. Then they were silent. And starlings..” (Monty Don, DT)

In such milieux, line and time are more or less in rhyme, with the constant movement and metamorphosis of materials. An organic farm works on exactly the same principle of messiness that allows in predators.

Messiness and untidiness basically imply there are many more broken lines and interesting fiddly bits. Another way of saying it is that this isn’t resolved space.

Whereas modern societies increasingly live in resolved space, where such as mini-drones are cruising about, a healthy society lives in unresolved space – fields, prairies and the like.

Where there are dirt and prey and crumbs of soil the human organism is exposed to germs and develops immunities, especially frolicking children().

The problem is that resolved space is very attractive to the ego, being composed of numbers and perspective. This issue is hinted at in Greek pottery, where the abstract, geometrical designs are sketched out manually, meaning they are not perfect. They have individual expression.

The vitality of expressive line in Greek art is attested to by New York’s own Fine Arts Building

Motto “No day without a line”

Attributed to ancient painter Apelles.

Pliny tells two anecdotes – the first of which relates to skill of cartooning.

Many years later, while travelling by sea, a storm forced Apelles to land in Ptolemy's Egyptian kingdom. Ptolemy's jester was suborned by Apelles' rivals to convey to the artist a spurious invitation to dine with Ptolemy. Apelles' unexpected arrival enraged the king. Ptolemy demanded to know who had given Apelles the invitation, and with a piece of charcoal from the fireplace Apelles drew a likeness on the wall, which Ptolemy recognized as his jester in the first strokes of the sketch.^[6]

A straight line drawn by an artist is not perfect; it fluctuates with the tremor of creativity. The second anecdote could relate to this tensile vibration that animates even lines that appear straight.

Apelles travelled to Protogenes' home in Rhodes to make the acquaintance of this painter he had heard so much about. Arriving at Protogenes' studio, he encountered an old woman who told him that Protogenes was out and asked for his name so she could report who had enquired after him. Observing in the studio a panel Protogenes had prepared for a painting, Apelles walked over to the easel, and taking up a brush told the servant to tell Protogenes "this came from me," and drew in colour an extremely fine line across the panel. When Protogenes returned, and the old woman explained what had taken place, he examined the line and pronounced that only Apelles could have done so perfect a piece of work; Protogenes then dipped a brush into another colour and drew a still finer line above the first one, and asked his servant to show this to the visitor should he return. When Apelles returned, and was shown Protogenes' response, ashamed that he might be bettered, he drew in a third colour an even finer line between the first two, leaving no room for another display of craftsmanship. On seeing this, Protogenes admitted defeat, and went out to seek Apelles and meet him face-to-face

The two aspects of geometry and expression in nature and in traditional crafts (and Renaissance art) always go together, whereas in modern societies perfection is seen as the accurate and factual reality. The problem is, an expressive line is not factual, it doesn’t inhabit resolved space. It is muscular coordination, flexing of hand, primal rhythm and instinctive intensity.

Therefore, that entire area of expressive reality is outside the bounds of modernity. In one of CC Beck’s columns (TCJ 121) he describes his designing work for cross-stitch embroidery. The abstraction makes it a craft, in his opinion, and the good craftsman can be an artist.

These two things, abstraction and expressive line, define art and craft – but also a society that lives in time in the sense of allowing natural events and metamorphosis to take place in the messy, untidy areas of village, town and prairie.

The patina of time is stopped when everything that counts as rubbish is swept away and all is in resolved space. The ego () is satisfied and all is apparently well.

Except that the basic health – physical and psyche – is left out of the equation. A resolved space is right for robots and druggies! Irresolved space is healthy, messy and with a physical and psyche vigour that applies especially to kids. The tidy premise is essentially wrong and can just become a type of logical junk.

Another way of putting it is that a line has quality – see Pirsig 

HB36

Going back to ancient history, the portrait of Alexander the Great by Apelles’s contemporary Lysippos established a leonine type that resounded through the centuries.

As Kirby said in an interview, fans lionise the characters in comics, and the propagandist Alexander was the first in history to appoint an artist for that task.

Like all such illos, it’s not realism but heightened realism by way of the vibrant line of a master craftsman.

Without that establishment of line, the muscular hand loses its grasp on reality and the abstractions of the head take over. This is where we are today in the geometrical world of sorcerers! Geometry is not expressive – the greatness is lost.

Quality and rhythmic line cannot be kept hermetically sealed in a box that is specifically to attract the ego of acolytes. It is our physical reality, compulsive and erotic.

Alexander the Great’s mother, Olympias, was a devotee of Dionysus and allegedly slept with snakes.

Tensile stress of convulsive line and writhings. This is also the land of scatological puns a la Mozart and such jokes as “Cleopatra’s asp.” (see HB18)

The ancient world in that sense is realistic and expressive and not trapped inside a head of illusory reason (see Aristophanes )

P47

The problem is that a political world – of the head – is not aware of primal line, or the thing that expresses in time what things become.

Comic artists, since they deal in figurative art, have to constantly be aware of the expressive line. Their universes in that sense are more realistic in terms of the physical reality of flesh and blood and bone that we inhabit.

I tend to contradict BWS’s views, in that I can see value in the likes of Liefeld (and guys like Kordey) whose strength of style creates habitable worlds.

As I was previously saying, I live in an area where there is a lot of building work, and it gets steadily less habitable! (like London town, natch.) They are basically paving-over quality and line, as well as the patina of time.

null

Pictorial 144

I admit the idea of a dried-up swimming pool as romantic decadence was a bit of a gagline (P143), but stagnant waters do run deep at a later date in the story.

One has to make an assumption that Jaime uses physical symbols that reflect Maggie’s romantic psyche. Foul-smelling water is a symbol of death (from Pelleas and Melisande), and also of romantic revival.

Maggie consistently holds onto things – her memories, faith in fickle human nature – and this is sometimes used against her by an uncaring world.

When her attachment to Vivian goes astray, she rebounds to the province of Izzy.

There is a fun scene depicting these pseudo moderns who care only for coffee

(CC Beck quote HB31)

Her dreams are a mix of real (the crucifix) and not real, the darkness at the heart of Maggie. Viewing the story through this symbolic prism, the fabulous elements are Maggie's psychic attachments to a physical world of darkness.

From that darkness springs regeneration, so it is a psychic strength that the modern order does not posses. It's living in the world of physical processes that can decay and that are real.

Jaime also makes quite a case of Maggie attempting to distance herself from her roots, without much success. She is town, they are country; she is north, they are south; she is "white", they are Mex.

The racial, fascist undertone is handled adroitly, in a way the mainstream media never do! For a start, is not Silicon Valley the white land where everyone is safe and drinks coffee all the time on safari-colored sofas? Once the Anglo-culture develops the cult of order to such a level, what is there to do other than drink coffee?

This is the world we're really in, since all the leading heads belong to the same-Anglo culture of the head. As I think was said elsewhere, once society is "ordered", how can one order order? It's what the Speaker says at the opening of debates, just a figure of speech.

Once one has pure order the only way to go is to have disorder. Meaning the power of dreams and the physical underworld of decay and regrowth, foul-smelling waters.

If one looks at people like Mark Carney - or even Trump - they are pure heads living in a world of pure money. Numerical/Anglo. Numbers or technology and the monetary system are two sides of one coin.

All the solutions they proffer - whether Biden or Trump - encapsulate the same monetary problem. The problem is neither physical nor psyche - simply number.

Instead of a flesh-&-blood reality (that lives and dies) Trump resembles a façade spouting numbers and supping drugs, a nightmare born of hi-tech and low-psychology. His seeming antipathy to the Californian Valleys is just a bad joke, as it is the same logical junk of the compulsive ego; a convincing nothingness in terms of the physical realism and dreams of the psyche (universe).

The lyrical universe of Jaime can seem sad (somewhat like Ghostworld) when one is living in an uncaring world. But in fact it's the realism that touches one in a world full of pseuds. This is also caught in an exchange with Hopey.

Pictorial 143

BWS has nothing on Jaime Hernandez who’s been working on Locas flat-out since 1985. I picked up a book the other day and it was literally like yesterday. Yes, the past figures in “Ghost of Hoppers”, and 35 years seems like a good time to get back into the groove of what has got to be the darkest fun read of all time (even Totown had got nothing on this!)

There are reviews out there, so I wanna pick up on elements that could more or less meld with mine. Jaime has kept his mojo on the physical front and these are bodies-in-action rather than turgid headscapes.

Where the physical/physique comes first, the moral dimension is not topsy-turvy as it is in our mainstream world. Not just swimming, housecleaning and the odd sex act do we get, but the physical symbols of the Capri housing apartments where Maggie is the live-in manager.

There are the faulty air-conditioners which she tinkers with to not much avail. There are the stray dogs whose shadows haunt stray conversations. There is the empty swimming pool which an attemptingly escaping Izze falls into, and which is covered in flies.

This image is decadent romance of the Pelleas and Melisande variety (P142) Again, BWS has nothing on this! What’s shocking in Jaime is that the fun characters inhabit such a bleak scenescape.

The nymph-like Hopey would be at home in the depths of the swimming pool had it water. As it is, the pool is more of a death-trap. From death and decay can hunting be far away? These are the shadowy dogs that seem to threaten by shadow alone.

Izzy here makes a telling or cutting remark on Maggie’s hopeless reliance on her nymph-like friend.

Implements that work haphazardly; stray dogs that are more or less invisible; nymph and waterless pools - of the underworld. Instead of the modern/future world of pure order, we have a past-historic one of disorder.

If the barrio they hail from was ramshackle, this is ramshackle in a more weirdly modernist way. Even the name you might think stands for crappy. Almost like a medieval castle, Maggie toils at cleaning and fixing and still the patina of neglect embraces the scene.

Like the comic itself, this makes it a liveable place, with a fertile ambiance and crustiness. As it happens, this is the exact thing that modernism seeks to displace. It’s only when attempts to keep places tidy and functioning smoothly DON’T work that the sense of interesting decadence is retained/revived.

When I was saying previously that modern work resembles rubbish-collection I was meaning that the state of interesting untidiness is continually being swept away (by work itself). Living things are by definition untidy in that they eat eachother. The hunting and predatory landscape is ba drag to “them”.

This is what makes pure order –the dragon of electromagnetic Big Tech – a figment of the acolyte’s brain, since we die and decay and so on. The dark elements in Jaime’s work hint at the physical reality that our societies of the head discard into fringe areas (like comics, natch.)

In a morally vacuous world of the head (order, number), the physical reality is king. In Jaime’s case it’s fabulous realism, the Latino penchant for making fairy tales of necessity.

Hyborian Bridge 142

Societies that engender a physical harshness and a roughness of spirit tend to be modelled on the ideals of nature, Sparta being the classic example. Athens, though somewhat more mild-mannered, was up for the conflict and neither side came off without bloody hands.

The roughness of the ancient world was part of an ideal of the free spirit of the body, whereby spirit and roughness of the flesh can’t be disentangled.

Rough living and germs impact health and the immune system (HB140); health and a healthy psyche are difficult to disentangle. This dualism of strength is now under threat from the cult of fact, whereby a “fact” is neither good nor bad, something either normal or abnormal – who knows.

Just to give one example, scientists have found “micro-evolution” is speeding up. Even though they call it evolution, the developments are clearly abnormal and related to our soft and easy living.

Wisdom teeth are normal in societies where children need to chew; the presence of an infantile artery is abnormal in an adult. What “they” call evolution just adds to the pot-pourri of “facts” that are also fictions. Reason being, there is no underlying strength born of rhythm and rough living, running, hunting and bloody pursuits.

Any change can be called evolution, when it’s entirely the opposite effect. Why are our societies so soft? The main reason is that they are completely planned and nothing is left to chance, since chance is the fortune of the brave, the free-spirit who lives by wits in an uncertain world. The history of Man.

Whereas an active society lives in a messy state –in that there is very little rubbish-removal and quite a lot of metamorphosis of waste-products on-the-hoof – a planned society doesn’t.

The softer the society seems to be, the more rubbish-removal is necessary. Roughness is the strength of cyclical living, whereas softness is the weakness of efficiency in all that is straight-line. Amazon and the rest are very attractive to the ego of acolytes of numbers, natch.

Our societies become rubbish-removal centres because that enables soft living that can be planned via straight lines (or numbers, algorithms.) This is very convincing to our dear leaders!

It struck me that the people who are often rebellious are oftentimes somewhat naïve; I don’t think they really follow these numerical matters. I mean guys like Ari Up, Paul Kantner, Harlan Ellison, BWS, Jack Kirby.. They have no truck with money, and are single-mindedly creative.

Yet these are the types who in past ages were founders of societies, honourable free-spirits of the commune. If there are two types of societies, these rebels are of the old-school type whereby most things were down to chance with very little bureaucracy and forethought.

Towns appeared on trade-routes, the greatest examples being Troy on the plain of Ilium that occupied maritime and land trade-routes between Europe and Asia; and Venice, which extended to Byzantium.

Where trade is purely a matter of logistics, these au naturel developments can never again occur. The au naturel even more applies to Hyborian kingdoms, where ports and trading centres occupy purely geographical positions of power and privilege, from Khemi in Stygia to Messantia in Argos.

Roughness is something that chance allows to occur, that is totally unplanned. Hyborian cities – such as Makkalet HB20 – are monumental establishments of church and state, and also mazy and stench-laden representing the low-life districts of living barter.

The two aspects – the monumental and degraded, the established and the happenstance – can’t be disentangled in that type of city that is free from the yoke of pure order.

A society of pure order is factual (number, algorithm), so fact becomes the way it is run (news). But facts without the underlying strength of rhythm and proportion are weak. It’s sometimes difficult to put things into words, which is why visual artists often appear rebellious! Fantasy artists tend to obey their instincts and just go with what they see as negative in society.

Caza’s 70s material for Pilote (as opposed to his psychedelic scenes for MH) revels in blood and gore, his muscular alter ego laying into soft human flesh left, right and centre. It’s even possible he wasn’t 100% sure what it was he was so livid about; can a left-wing radical also be a sabre-swinging pirate?

 

But this is fairly typical with creative-types who have a certain naivety. It’s their instincts they are obeying, not rational thought, and instincts are signs of strength underlying reality.

What I’m saying is that - beyond left and right – there is a strength to reality that is in the nooks and crannies of disorder. This is something Bilal observed in his dilapidated, pock-mark strewn buildings of nouveau Paris in The Nikopol Trilogy (prev).

Anything that is dilapidated and left to its own devices develops a patina of dirt and decrepitude that has aesthetic and moral worth. From this decadence springs rebirth. Ancient cities wear down, decline and are abandoned. They may then be reclaimed or overrun with vines; this is the Hyborian way that is a mixture of order and disorder.

Pure order only exists when the ego is drawn into the vale of numbers that make living easy; an illusion of facts that are fictions of acolyte-rule.

Naivety and lack of order go hand in hand, signs of instinctive strength, of the harmonious body over the detached head. The same I’m sure applies to BWS’s instinctive loyalty to 60s Kirby and the 70s New Gods (Young God & Friends 2003). Instincts that relate to the body also relate to development of the psyche. The psychical and physical power of Kirby can affect young people at a deep level of instinct.

The style is suffused with psychic content.. I read somewhere in TCJ to the effect that in the best cartooning the most is achieved with the least superfluous effort. That could be something to do with intensity, and I think applies to various people - Ditko, Adams, Gulacy, Byrne, Crumb, Jaime Hernandez. The Hernandez Bros for sure were influenced by the seemingly simplistic Archie style (one could also think of Manga). Jaime has got to have one of the most fluently concentrated styles of figure art ever - think Greek pottery!

Kirby’s futuristic societies – such as the Colonisers of Rigel – are physical in terms of bodily action, and psychically independent. Their individuals are freely-active forces under self-volition. Coloniser Nile really resembles a rebel! While she is the leader of a Rigelian Colonial unit on Earth, her actions are fully independent.

She comes-up against Rigelian authority only when Thor exerts sufficient opposition, and her mandate is then revoked.

In other words, Kirby’s futuristic societies resemble old-school ones – like Rome where regional governers are fully independent and free operators. They are all potential Caesars, and the only thing stopping them is brute force.

The seeming primitivism of Kirby is actually true to ancient societies – but not our own. Really, the main reason for this is that ancient societies were strong – physically and psychically – and ours are weak.

Ancient societies were run by rebels who happened to hold the reins of power. They were thoroughly independent thinkers and men-and-women of action, whether it’s Boadicea or Julius Caesar.

Societies become topsy-turvy when thought-processes are no longer independent, so that leaders are in name only. This has to be dated from the sorcerous invention of inductive reason (Newton, Opticks etc.) where experiments take place outside the conventional physical universe, and inside a parallel reality of pure order (light or electromagnetism.)

As I’ve been pointing-out for awhile, most modern experiments are experiments of pure order. DNA is detected because it happens to produce X-ray diffraction patterns (a type of lens or perspective view HB56).

Cells themselves are composed of gel colloid and water, both of which are highly disordered, flowing, viscous. Water may have intrinsic harmonics HB82. A harmonic is multi-faceted. All this is treated by science as ultra-fringe when one could easily make the reverse point! Pure order doesn’t exist except in the heads of acolytes like Dawkins and the Big Tech Dragons.

Pure order is weak and subsumes the independent thinkers of yore. It is physically barren and a type of numerical rubbish-removal. To be told by “them” that strength is not required in societies, only “facts”, is to abandon the deep layers of instinctive behaviour that are the history of Man.

Facts are illusory in that they are not physically strong. They convince the ego and take the place of instinctive stories. Pulps and comic books fill the gap.

The worrying thing is that, if “facts” can be normal/abnormal, good/bad then the very idea of work is compromised. A lot of what “they” call work has no quality.

Where I am is a lot of building – of all the renovation and flats the only thing that struck me as justified is a centre for urban-sports.

 

All the rest are logic that is junk. Rubbish-removal in the illusory numerical system of building smoothness and efficiency that has no dirt; no decadent strength of psychic and physical revival; quantity not quality (see Pirsig, metaphysics of quality HB36) Fertility, patina, ambiance.

Most facts have this underlying weakness that they can be abnormal or soft. A society that relies on facts is really a society of the detached head, as opposed to the harmonious body (on skateboards).

Harmony and the proportions of the body are products of primal rhythm. The world of logic inhabits a parallel reality that cannot recognize the primal. The rebellious spirit can be naïve, but that is their great strength. While politicians debate the running of society built on order, the strength of disorder entirely escapes their notice.

ARI UP

It is this dilapidated condition of abandon that beckons to the creative instinct of popular artists. From this condition springs the revival that is joyful and bold. To such as Amazon this condition is invisible, occupying as they do the weakness of number and algorithm. This society of the future cannot acknowledge the hippy mentality that is loose and rough; the two are incompatible.

The same probably goes for Kanye West (HB138 and prev.) West is an unpredictable operator in the conventional areas of business. You could say he’s a free-thinker in the mold of the 60s hippies though with money. His ideas seem to be physically-oriented, in that he is aware of the physical world of “free” resources like water. He wants to create a mini-ecosystem of cotton growth and textile design/production in Cody, Wyoming.

He would tend to fit the mold of an old-school rebel as opposed to a conventional numerical operator. His spiritual leanings also point to self-sufficiency. If the project in Wyoming turns into something fairly ramshackle that would be perfect; that’s for the future.

Hyborian Bridge 141

Reading about the archaeology of the Ilium plain in laphamsquarterly, there are something like 19-22 layers and sub-layers, of which Troy VI-VII almost undoubtedly represent the Homeric period.

However, there are tantalising details along the way that point to a dark poetry of legend. For a start, Schliemann and his direct successors were digging into the fortified citadel; modern remote-sensing has unearthed Troy-proper which is approximately ten times the size.

This population of about 25,000 easily matches the one described in the Iliad. However, what is fascinating is that Homer describes the walls of the citadel, for instance in the scene where Hector runs around the walls.

According to Laphams, Homer describes the actual Trojan war of Troy VI-VII but compresses descriptions with the ancient citadel that dates from about a thousand years previous. In other words, Homer uses poetic licence. They also suggest that the Trojan horse scene could be read as a poetic metaphor, since Troy VIh was levelled by an earthquake, and Poseidon the god of earthquakes, is represented by a horse!

Following this earthquake disaster, Troy VIIa was gutted by fire and evidence of new pottery (meaning a new population) is extant. That is so convincing it hurts, and I was reminded of The Ten Commandments that elsewhere was discussed, with its supremely literal interpretation (P10).

Could it not be, in an equal sense, that the crossing of the Red Sea by Moses and the Israelites is another poetic metaphor? In ancient days there were far, far fewer facts and no easy way to check details. The facts to the ancient Israelites would be basically that they started out in Egypt and ended up in the land of Canaan.

I read a bit more, and “Yam Suph” in Hebrew can actually be translated “sea of reeds”. The image there is more of Egyptian chariots getting stuck in the mire in a sign of good fortune for the rebels. To Byron, fortune is reality (TofF8) – or the fates, destiny.

Etymologically, Karl Hoffmeier writes,

The crossing of the sea signalled the end of the sojourn in Egypt and it certainly was the end of the Egyptian army that pursued the fleeing Hebrews. After this event at Yam Suph, perhaps the verb soph, meaning “destroy” and “come to an end”, originated.

Another possible development of this root is the word suphah, meaning “storm-wind”.. The meanings “end” and “storm-wind” would have constituted nice puns on the event that took place at the Yam Suph.

Nowadays, all we know are facts; contrariwise, we have no knowledge of poetry as metaphor. On top of that, facts are very persuasive to the ego, and this invites in the mirror of illusions – perspective and straight lines. Our world of “facts” leads to the world of algorithms – or number – as opposed to the real world of rhythm and proportion.

Bending facts is poetic, whereas rigidly sticking to them is an ideological vacuum that appeals to acolytes of the sorcery of numbers.

Therefore, I would say that going by Troy, poetic interpretations of history are physically and psychically justifies. It is a rip-roaring yarn, after all!

As CC Beck has said, to overplay verisimilitude is to tell the audience what to think (P4). If life has a story it’s not also factual. Fact is DNA, fact is algorithm. Story is rhythm, symmetries, proportions, balance. Also rhyme.

Poetry amplifies reality not in a literal sense, in a descriptive and narrative sense. Facts in the modern scene lock us into a looking-glass world of distorted reflections. Fiction becomes fact; lie becomes truth.

Facts, meaning news, are the dominant way “they” keep us in-line. Rhyme and the primal strength of rhythm are the reality in the physical and psychic sense of living with power and independence.

Pavillon Noir, Caza 1975 (Pilote)

"Tremble, prefab suburbs, grey skyscrapers, demi-lux residences armed with concrete, surrounded by glass and steel, tremble mammoths.. Soon I will have accumulated enough gold to leave my mooring and arm for the running of skyscrapers in action.

At their gaping portholes I will put one hundred canons, their deep holds refuelled with white rum and gunpowder. At the outpost of guy wire I will raise my flag of death..

Soon on top of my armored poop, under the black wind of urban chimneys, running myself like a wedge through the obscure suburbs.. I will pilot a leviathan of reinforced concrete, a terrifying giant.

And the sleepyheads will sink on its passing. And the sad commuters will tremble more so when they see floating on high the shadow of the black flag of the last of the pirates."

Far from the light of news channels lurk the dark inglenooky areas only regeneration can occur. Where the psyche is free to ride on imagination, on pulp fantasies. Where the physical strength of growth destroys light; where there is green revival on the seas of fate - see HB31 destruction of light by forests and the strong shoots, the roots of human culture. Revival from decadence.

Destiny is a tiller-man, a freedom-fighter against the dual entities of businessman and shopper. The one feeding the other with ever-more persuasive words; lies of straight-line diplomacy. On the seas of fate pirates seek out their own destiny – the dream of the universe.

MUSICAL TERRORIST (Ari Up)

HYborian Bridge 140

Creating a society is a rough and ready exercise born of human labour; not of the head but of the body. The active body in motion; naked Greek youths oiled their limbs for balanced and graceful muscular effort. Sexual and athletic male or female labour in the fields, thighs and hind-muscles, corded neck.

Decline is an opportunity for growth that empowers the human spirit. Troy was built five times on the ruins of its past. The rough bones and sinews and blood of nature are the foundations of cities (Ymir). Why else was Venice built on a lagoon? (see Portmeririon) Artists then chronicle the exploits (Egyptian glyphs, Roman columns, Simon & Kirby). Societies that have a signal failure of decline are doomed to forever repeat themselves, signifying nothing.

Roman engineering worked the rough ground and grew powerful (HB2) The primitive physical and the psyche are strongly connected. Man honors the spirits of earth and water (see Sulis-Minerva).

Roughness and dirt, the presence of germs in natural surroundings impart health (immune-system response); the physical roughness where the body is free to roam in field and forest renders the psyche immune to meaningless lust (see Cider with Rosie prev.)

Our technologies are disconnected from Mother Earth, whereas Romans worshipped the ground and springs. The balance between so-called advance of a numerical reality and the reality of primitive rhythms has been lost in the mainstream. Lost to the convisctions of countless egos.

Technology can be used in a rough and “au naturel” manner that speaks to a wilder spirit. Dub, for example, roots reggae with the earthy offbeats, dreamlike vistas and rustic dreads is a force of nature that the likes of Lee “scratch” Perry and Ari Up personify. They are society’s foundations in the same sense as Fairport Convention.

DEFEDING RIGHTS & JUSTICE ISLAND GIRL DUB

Roughness connects to the free spirit that is not bound to the smooth virtues of a high-tech dragon that corrupts natural rhythms with profane lusts whereby the numerical becomes the sexual, the expressive algorithm that tells stories to take away the stories of children’s fairy tales.

Without the childish imagination, impure lusts take over from the pure. Imaginations are forged by the immortal physique in much the way of Kirby’s purely moral tales of the 60s and early 70s.

A society is physical first; the primitive and the rhythmic, followed by the spiritual. Without the primal foundations all that is left are illusions supplied by countless words. Rather than historically being the “norm” where obvious statements are recited ad nauseam, they are more like Hyborian kingdoms where often obscene and arcane deities hold sway in rural areas (see Yaple

HB106)

 

Modern societies are based on the order of a city. Not the strength and growth of nature; the blood and the hunt and feminine settings of roughness. Erotic entities stalk the labyrinth of forest and vale where the strong growth supplies Man’s foundations. The rustic order is disorder.

Strong societies are built on goddesses of fertility. Ari Up is one of the strong personalities who appear in a physical guise (as a former member of The Slits) while having a spiritual foundation which revels in the independence of wild places. Much as the ancient Greek Oracles danced in flimsy raiments and gave utterance to prophecies of spiritual voices. The two are difficult to disentangle.

Whithin the cycles of nature exist the Noto-esque underworld of roots and fallen-n roofs and the sprays of blood as a pure fertilizer HB67

The strong and physical scenes are the basis for trade and of the cities that breed growth Yoemen and warriors honour women in the chivalrous order for their pure fertility. The primitivism of past ages is mainly represented in children’s fairy tales and – see prev – in the heroic figures of Kirby.

Trading and social needs are never products of numbers and money alone (HB6) They spring from roots of the Earth, the sea and maritime channels (the glories of the Venetian Empire, of Byzantium).

Hyborian Bridge 139

The frustrations of hearing words, trumpetings of numbers within the island of illusion inhabited by political heads is nowhere better illustrated than Biden/Trump. Each consumed by a self-deception conceived of planning and order. The illusion of a sterile order convinced by numbers, versus the primitive reality of dirt and disorder. Words at the call of a primitive reality of rhythm and rhyme expanding with cosmic urge and psychic power.

It seems we living the american dream
But the people highest up got the lowest self esteem
The prettiest people do the ugliest things
For the road to riches and diamond rings
We shine because they hate us, floss cause they degrade us
We trying to buy back our 40 acres
And for that paper, look how low we a'stoop
Even if you in a Benz, you still a nigga in a coop/coupe

ALL FALLS DOWN (Kanye West feat Lauryn Hill)

The idea that society can just happen would never occur to a political head steeped in false optimism. When things happen the independent spirit is free to soar, and this is the story of Man, cities and societies. Societies that happen and decline; decline is part of the nature of societies since from decline comes revival (Detroit).

Societies that happen are composed of a fiery breed since they are not so much governed as laissez-faire. If something happens – as opposed to planned – it has a natural strength born of collapsing earthworks. That is to say, the lifecycle is forged in the sediments surrounding the habitation. The fetid swamps that harbour wealth of life and death.

These concepts can be found in comic art. The sequel to Red Nails HB118 HB114 where Conan and Valeria trail through fetid and pungent caverns underneath Xuchotl. The collapsing caverns, like images from some Noto-esque situation, breed ferocious strength, rancid stench and colors of ochre.

Politicians are unconcerned unplanned events of growth and decay, yet without these events can come no revival and strength. The sort of weakness of illusory wealth is caught in West’s lyrics.

A 40acre holding has a psyche and moral and physical reality that no material good has. A society of words is unreal because words are not physical things. Words exist in modern societies in a rational space that does not exist. Realism in natural terms is also abstract, in the sense of having balance and proportion. Natural objects appear real because of an underlying abstraction.

A primitive physical society is rough and inclined to decline, rising from the ashes. Decline is part of strength just as abstraction underlies realism. The aesthetic appeal of decline was caiuht by French comics artist Nicole Claveloux in the 70s

The ennui of dreamlike mansions where the psyche burns in midnight oil. Much the same strength is seen in Weird Tales

Or Artemisia Gentileschi

Artists depict from their own visions the psyche that pervades the physical. If that is realism, it has an underlying simplicity. Kirby’s depictions of futuristic societies are more true to that historical vision.

The abstract behind things is a sure sign of strength. Kanye West’s rap lyrics are not designed to further a numerical/monetary creed, they are subtly implying something is rotten in the system.

Subtlety takes the form of rhyme and rhythm (as with Byron), words at the call of a primitive reality, not at the beck-and-call of illusory numbers. Numbers that words elucidate, convincing the gullible ego. The result is the expressive algorithm and stories that are barren, that cannot rise from the strength of the earth and blood (the hunt), the feminine mystique of the moon.

SURRENDER DUB (Ari Up)