LYRICS

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

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

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

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

Time is an illusion (Einstein)

Thursday 23 September 2021

Pictorial 192

 (Note to Sheila - see prev.)

Strong blood. The primitive link with action in the wild is the perennial hunt. Where there is hunting there is the skillful dismemberment of game – see description in The Green Knight  HB188.

The ripe exposure to nature’s entrails necessitates a bath, and bathing rituals are perennial products of active and psychically-healthy cultures (Roman, Japanese.)

When Max Friedman falls into the Danube in Hungarian Rhapsody, it’s only natural that he washes-off the mud and detritus.



Dirt isn’t selective, so far as the body is concerned. The modern trend seems to be to puritanically clean the ‘dirty bits’ while leaving the rest! That simply implies the body is not actually encountering dirt which is a normal by-product of active life in the field, necessitating regular water and mineral bodily exposure in tubs, or at least basins.

A basic problem with modernity is people think they don’t have to encounter different things; that everything is the same. But dirt is simply another word for a strong, fertile environment that is self-sufficient, as opposed to being inert and hygienic.

Scientists in their labs have this continual assumption of sameness as they fiddle with RNA/DNA routines - genes are interchangeable for many species. The culture in Wuhan seems to have been approaching bat-human proxies, where both species were spliced into mice genes.

Moderns think in terms of sameness instead of differences all the time. Boris Johnson on his recent trip to the US made this comment.

"We are awesome." Every day green startups are producing new ideas, he said, highlighting initiatives to feed seaweed to cows to restrain their traditional signs of digestive approval and to use AI and robotics to enhance food production.

"It is these technological breakthroughs that will cut the cost for consumers, so that we have nothing to fear and everything to gain from this green industrial revolution," he said.

The technological-over-reliance makes false problems out of the assumption of sameness. Traditionally pastoral cows that are fed hay and allowed to free-graze are not methane-polluters. Spokespeople like Boris tend to assume that efficiency dictates monoculture on gigantic scale where there is only sameness and the problems arise from monotonous living regimes.

Diversity and difference – mixed farms – are ecologically attractive solutions that have the active life of plants, animals and humans at their core. Where there is active diversity, stable environments are created where the viruses and germs that are present remain within the core populations (see Minnesota Institute of Environment, prev.)

These areas have a high self-sufficiency, and the need for modern technique is correspondingly less. Modern techniques are simply the result of more and more sameness, which is being artificially propelled by random gene-splicing.

We are led by news to accentuate this techno-premise of modernity, basically since it is attractive to the ego. We are living the ego-dream – or nightmare – of genetically-propelled sameness that creates false problems that ‘naturally’ rely on ever-more technical solutions.

The problems are authoritarian – unnatural – but even more they diminish the psyche. As Carl Jung said,

Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakes.

As we dream our lives away, the natural strength of life on the range is lost to use. With strength comes the clarity of dream, instead of the misdirection of a dreamlike stream of news. Blood, dirt, strength, health in self-sufficient communes. The coordinated actions of bodies-in-motion, animal and human.

This is what is being lost to the genetic cult of sameness, that does without primordial action in areas of diversity and health. A logical universe of ‘fact’ is without the coordinated actions that alone can generate a vigor of community that instils also an atmosphere of collective psychic calm (Carl Jung, natch.)

The inner life of communities is represented by atmospheric emissions (candlelit mosques) that reassure with ethical messages or good dreams. Dreams like The Arabian Nights that are above all tales of physical action.

The antagonistic muscles of the body (physique) that represent action in the moral dimension are exactly what is not present in the modern universe of bad dreams.

The human head will always dream, but it can either have an ethical basis (in physical reality), or s basis in random logic. 

The Green Knight, Clair Noto ("Red Lace") or The Arabian Nights represent good dreams that are fully clothed in animal flesh - antagonistic movements, grace (woman, the hunt, blood.)

The modern bad dream cannot have antagonism because it speaks in the language of logic (non-biological.)

In a quote that would be widely repeated in the following decades, she (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) said: "The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life.." 

In the version that the ACLU shared on Twitter, it removed any reference to women. (DT)

While biological organisms operate antagonistically in their functions and movements, they have to be the product of balance between and among the different elements.

Balance is primordially what we are in the ancient Greek sense of ideal proportions. We can either make an ethical decision to follow balance in ecosystems and culture, or follow the logical path of random techniques such as gene-editing.

Genes are not a controlling element because they have not the primordial reality of balance that comes from opposing features. Those who follow genes are merely following a random red-herring of cosmic proportions!

Creative redundancy (prev) is the clue that organic bodies above all require coordination of their antagonistic, opposing features. Because this is a product of opposites, it cannot be logically derived. It's basically pre-Newton, pre-inductive reason and takes place in the active universe of people, plants, animals.

The end-poduct of inductive reason is of course a machine universe, where ethical issues are bound by random processes. This basic dichotomy is one interpretation of Moebius's The Airtight Garage. Giraud (like BWS) has intuitive senses that seem to bypass whole chunks of information-speak.



On one reading it seems to be composed of incompatible elements, in that the garage is 'hermetically sealed', but also 'Hermetic' in the ethical sense (historically, both these words refer to Alchemy, not to machines as in the story.)

The story is an investigation of who is running the garage of worlds-within-worlds. Jerry Cornelius, Major Grubert, or Sper Gossi? 

The concept of levels of reality is reminiscent of spiritual Hermeticism. Cornelius calls on the aid of the Nagual, or animal spirit. However, the top level is the universe of machines, implying the garage is simply a device that is programmable.




This incompatibility endures in the ending, where Major Grubert goes through door 9 into a modern subway. How can an artificial asteroid in space lead to a subway on Earth?



In short, has Moebius written (drawn) a 'Shaggy Doge' story of pure nonsense? It's possible, and it's a fun idea. While The Green Knight and other tales have nonsense elements, the ethical purity is always contained in physical reality.

In our age, the physical reality itself - the coordinated, antagonistic features of opposing elements of the body in action - is not there, not in control. The Airtight Garage could be read as an allegory of a nonsense land of authoritarian rules. A topsy-turvy land where, in the words and song of Moondog..

STAMPING GROUND


Pictorial 191

 

Daily Mirror header

'It's messy in there', be it a teen's bedroom or a functional body-cell (prev.) For a start, mutations are a type of imperfection; if everything were copied perfectly and there were no problems there would be no mutations or progress.

Creativity and tidiness are not generally associated. In a cell the way things seem to function is through creative redundancy, with a lot of pseudo and misread genes that may at some point in the future become useful.

What does the 'use' apply to? Well, it applies to a body (physique) that exists in a state of balance; actively coordinated and proportionate. The imperfect redundancy of genes only makes sense if these are selected for in a balanced and coordinated universe of active bodily proportions.

In order words, the body reacting to events without the constant interference of thought! Not only the presence of routines, which I suppose will be present in any society to some extent, but the omni-presence of news.

News is the apotheosis of specialised routine, especially in the way that the more specialised something is the more it is convincing to the heads of acolytes (of the mirror of illusions, electromagnetic reflection, number, algorithm.)

So, what news does is interfere with the communal antics of bodies-in-motion which are reacting with noise and speech to the events around them. Whereas news is information that has to be taken-in (by the head), the dynamic self-sufficiency of a community is controlled and coordinated by sounds and speech and graceful motions.

The throat yelling wares in a bazaar; the hulabulu of desert-sore camels in a caravanserai; or, in a pulp-mode, the dance of Leyla in The Eye of Zeitoon (or the swordplay and taunts of Helene in Tros of Samothrace.)

While news is always convincing, it always has the weakness of information. Life in the raw is vastly more dependent on the proportionate throat - that swallows food, drinks, sings, breaths - than the mere sound of convincing information relayed by news channels.

Raducanu said she has a problem taking plates away "like any teen"; it's easier to be messy than tidy. Mess is also creative in that everything becomes an ecosystem in time - through decay - and tidiness is just delaying the inevitable.

Life in the raw has this primitive aspect - food and cleanliness loom large. 

One starlet, though, was much more down to earth, confides Ward Kelly. During a party, Kelly thought he should rustle up some food for his tipsy guests, and a young woman came into the kitchen to help. "He had her boiling hot dogs and he asked 'What's your name?' She said 'Marilyn'. It was Marilyn Monroe." (Gene Kelly's wife, DT)

One word for that is culture, that is attached to or attempts to improve on nature, but doesn't move away from it.

By contrast, news is becoming more and more algorithmic (numerical/monetary) and entering a parallel universe away from natural balance. Hence, away from control and coordination by song, speech, movement, rhythm.

European ligne-clair comic books often bring-out the natural rhythms of places because artists don't have to invent the atmosphere of places like Budapest.


Hungarian Rhapsody

Vittorio Guardino's style is different to that of Bilal (The Nikopol Trilogy, prev) but in both there is the same reliance on dramatic architecture to invest the story with atmosphere.

The Gothic trait of Batman has the same aim. It often strikes me there is a lot of fantasy in the 'realism' of atmospheric architecture because it lends itself to drama (BWS does the same in the opening of Young God's.)

These stories are a lot more than plot (in fact, plots can be threadbare). They are more like theatrical set-pieces that use realistic dramaaa and fantasy. Dramatic, naturalistic architecture has the stasis of stone against which the action is a counterpoint.

In a word, buildings are like bodies - as the Earth is (Ymir) - static bodies like sculptures. Instead of the confidence of routine news, there is the stasis that has the patina of age and where there are signs of untidiness or decadence.

The decadence is life in the raw; the sounds and speech and movements of food and frolics (a pig on the loose.)

The rawness is real and allows in the atmosphere of fantasy. The life lived physically is messy and has the aspect of a healthy psyche. The physical life has the tendency to approach an ecosystem, being close to nature.

I would liken Raducanu herself almost to a throwback, since her physical actions (on court) dictate her psychic disposition. She brutally sacked Richardson, the coach who had taken her into a grand-slam, owing to his lack of experience of grand-slam touring! Her freedom and looseness on the court will probably dictate what she takes from any training method, and not the other way round, as with so many athletes. It's the traditional oriental or Bruce Lee approach.

It wasn't a case of friendship but of the brute physicality of life on the court chasing majors. There was also throwing the match which McEnroe implied was nerves and which she coolly asserted was probably "not mental but physical" (excess.)

All of this indicates a closeness to nature in the raw that is a Howard-type hallmark. By contrast, news routines approach the vanishing-point of technique because they is where information and algorithms are heading (ones and zeros). Specialist routines convince the ego and they enter the mirror or illusions.

Being messy and normal is essentially the counter to this unreal future seen through mirrors. It's physically real and also allows in the psychic atmosphere of fantasy, the patina of age.




Creative mess is essentially what is found inside a cell, which is why scientists' DNA routines are really in a parallel reality that convinces the acolytes of what is far from real.

What seems to have happened in Wuhan (going by 'news'!) is a lab-chimera (hybrid) with enhanced spike for human-protease. Humans have plans, but once a virus gets released it is subject to the random mutations of nature.

Nature's only 'plan' is to create stable environments which are actively coordinated and proportionate. A lab does not have it; a body does have it and a jungle has it even more. Nature's plans rely on randomness, and scientists are drawn to the random because of the ability to tamper with RNA/DNA.

They then enter a parallel reality that has logical functions - that attract the ego of acolytes - without the underlying strength of the coordinated pursuits of animals, plants and people in stable environments (places of power.)

Scientists rely on doing without primordial precepts of active parts in order to a achieve results - in other words, in a logical universe that appeals to the ego of acolytes (of the mirror of illusions.)

As has been noted, techniques approach the vanishing-point of ones and zeros ( the dual-tone of Jirel Meets Magic, prev) or electromagnetic stimulation. All senses are forms of electromagnetism. This s is really a nightmare-land where nothing is either completely real or wholely false; where reality becomes dream and humans sleep with the machines (Kantner lyric.)

The way out of the predicament is to recognise the primordial and the primitive are harboured within our bodies; that our coordinated reactions in-the-wild link us to a physical reality and to an inner psyche they is truthful. Strong dream; strong wine.


Wednesday 15 September 2021

Pictorial 190

 

Memes like genes often give out too much information. One such meme was the 'spike protein' that mRNA copies and that supposedly might build-up in cells with multiple copies. Owing to degradation of mRNA, that seems not to be the case, and in any case the spike proteins are just junk that the cell degrades.

If something is present in a cell that is not recognised it tends to be regarded as junk. I don't think it's so much that mRNA vaccines are not necessarily effective, as that they will inevitably be used over and over again as is becoming more apparent.

Why should they be necessary? It has to be because mRNA works to stimulate the immune-system quite well, but the immune-response itself is weak. Therefore, we get more shots.

What I think is happening is that, while a celli's not a cybernetic universe (being cytoplasmic organelles), it can be treated like one owing to the sheer amount of copying and duplication between RNA, DNA and viral RNA that goes on inside the cell. Insertions, deletions and pseudogenes - inactive degraded mutations - are literally rampant.

Genes are partially junk owing to the number of miscopies and duplicates that exist. It's messy in there, but the positive angle and s that it can allow for selection of new genes that may be useful elsewhere. If the process was perfect, no mutations would occur (mutations are mistakes, in a way.)

So it's not so much that mRNA insertions for the purposes of a vaccine are adding much to the mix. They get degraded and all's the same as before. It's that the cybernetic treatment of cells allows the experts to think they are getting on top of the problem (the ego becomes misguidedly confident owing to the fact the issue seems to be 'getable'.)

But, life is not cybernetic. It's a physical game of antagonistic parts - muscle-pairs - that are freely balanced and proportioned for the purposes of active pursuits (running, hunting, fishing - well, maybe not the latter, deep-sea or netting, say.) 

When the body is in the game of active pursuits, life tends to be tougher and dirtier, and the emphasis on tidiness or clinical hygiene is much less. In a word, germs are probably rampant.

So, you have things like mud, animal detritus, microbes in soil. These things humans have been exposed to over evolution. 

The interior of a cell is one very small part of s reality that is extremely messy. Scientists don't really like things that are messy, and so they try and treat it as a cybernetic problem with a cybernetic solution.

But this does without the strengthening materials found in soil and in messy environments that are there to tell the immune-system that there are invaders and just to be ready and active to repel in case the more dangerous critters appear.

If life is an antagonistic game, the antagonists have to be around. Mud and dirt and messy stuff contain things that are not always beneficial, and the immune-system has to be exposed to such targets.

A cybernetic system - even given the fact that it works fine on its own terms - does not do this. It leads to a sense of false safety while requiring multiple doses just to stay still.

The complexity of copying and degradation in the cell lends itself to specialisation (which inevitably includes AI) , but it is not reality. Reality is the mess outside the cell that the cell needs exposure to. This happens when activity is antagonistic, muscular and outdoorsy.

The physical reality is also an inducement to psychic health. Both these doors are closed by the specialised doctrine of treating cells as cybernetic machines rather than as simply one small part of a messy reality.

The physical universe - or the natural one - is superior to any invented one for the fact that it has the uninhibited spark of creativity. Creativity in nature comes from the antagonistic motion of pairs of muscles - the world of action.

Man's brain has its uses in cultural advance - seemingly away from nature and into a cyberverse - but only if the cyberverse is s inherently superior can it be thought of as a true advance, and may instead be retrograde.

At this point, I have to admit that Raducanu's performance in winning 10 matches to take the US title has settled the issue for me. The ability not to think and just to act is an Oriental superiority that was previously demonstrated by Bruce Lee (Jeet Kune Do, prev.)

Training inhibits pure action because the thinking brain is over-reliant on routines. There is a limit to training, and that limit is when the brain merely acts to tactically adjust the body - which is then unleashed from thought.

The ability not to think but to act in what is a tactically superior position gave Raducanu the edge. The weakness of Western training methods that rely on strength and routine was exposed.

I put this down to an Oriental superiority of inner belief in the ability of the body; the lightning spark of creativity is unleashed.

The body is not a reasoning machine, it is a graceful product of antagonistic tension of opposites. If she had fallen, one might then have thought that perhaps the universe of cybernetic reasoning machines is as good or better, but she didn't.

Of course, you're entitled to ask why China in general doesn't do that well at tennis. Because they're not behaving in a very Chinese way! Their methods of training are routine and more routine.

The method of development inevitably leads to a false value of progress that inhibits free-flow. Free-flow is what a body in active, superior mode does with muscular athleticism (Nadia Comaneci). Training can only prepare it for that occasion, then the body's mechanisms take-over.

Scientists who study cells are simply imagining a parallel cybernetic universe that doesn't exist in reality. Reality is the physical condition of the muscular body-in-motion that has superior grace.

The scientific mind is looking through the reflection of a mirror of illusions that gives out the 'facts' of cellular mechanisms. But these are small facts compared to the facts of a body-in-motion, hunting or playing in the field amongst other creatures and the soil and plantlife of Mother Earth.

As has been stated previously the active life has its own empirical tradition derived from the tradition of living alongside nature, and in places of power. Fertility, strength, mineral, spring (see HB2).

The superiority of this world to the West's scientific illusion of empirical reason (induction, Newton) has been verified by the games witnessed a week or so since.

inspired by the royal 'R' (Raducanu, match)

Monday 13 September 2021

Pictorial 189

 Having seen the Raducanu post-victory press, it occurred to me she may not agree with my statements. This is someone who as a student was immersed in calculus and likely has faith in science.

Assuming that, if you look at the match highlights, she wins one point with a forehand down the line; there is no thought because thinking slows you down. She is intimidating owing to that quality.

It's something the person may no even realize. They are better than the practice because they are natural. The faith in science is misplaced owing to the intellect giving too much credence to the logic; it will be interesting to see the if she stays this natural or is gradually corrupted by 'them'.

Well, the comment I posted on swordsofreh above seemed to sum-up the T-shirt design coming-up from artist Elena, which is titled "Destruction of the new.. By the old".

A specialist, trained in routine, lives in the head of rather than in physical reality. Routine cannot compete with natural flow. The paradigm we live in has now been comprehensively defeated by Raducanu, so I think it's worthwhile summing-up what aspects of tennis reflect this old-order that is being revived.

From the purely visual aspect, the looped forehand winner in the 2nd set (shown in slo-mo) is a Bjorn Borg trademark. Apart from the sex of the performer, there's totally no difference in the stroke; it's a purely instinctive and lethal use of reaction with no thought. 

It happens because the racket is being swung freely with no predetermination. The bane of the modern game is when the power-shot overrides shot-making; why should tennis advance if it is no longer a game, and more like an ordeal? 

Raducanu has some habits - such as playing a forehand to open-court from return of serve - but is able to adjust to each game.

What caught people off-guard was her breezing through 10 matches with not even a set-point against her; this simply points to how similar the opposition is. They are power first and placement and free-swing second. The only exception is the other teen, Fernandez.

These two are able to destroy specialization that is too alike with the old-time values of a game that flows freely - flows in spontaneous rhythm. Specialists agonize about psychological tension because they don't fully inhabit the game. In the days of Borg/McEnroe, any tension came from the ebb-and-flow of the match rather than from some physical problem that is really masquerading as mental (vis Sakkari quote.)

In the same way, the physical problems of the modern world - that are numerous - masquerade as mental (by contrast, Raducanu's injury was manifest.) Instead of a physical solution to our problems - which would entail a revival of free-ranges and jungle-beats (see Lee Perry) - we get endless specialist routines, duly relayed by news networks.

Since we live in a world of the head, we maybe don't often recognise it as such, but that is what news is; if there were fewer specialist routines there would be less news!

As was already noted, the biggest specialist routine of all is DNA, since that attracts the ego of acolytes like flies to a dungheap. Modern methods often depend on a weakened system - immune, psychological - in order to treat it with ever-more advanced methods.

This is what you call big-hitting, that deals with life as a routine rather than a set of balanced, coordinated responses. Some responses are lightning - as with Raducanu or Borg - and their spark is lost.

America has now become the false $ (Apollo) of pure routine and throwing money at problems, rather than allowing the body-in-motion to simply act. This applies to whether it's cowboys on the range, Indians or streetwise blacks in relatively self-sufficient communes (see Foxy Brown, prev.)

The same point was made awhile back on Detroit (Drama3), which kept its communal identity in the face of federal pressure, became poor and rough, then revived through investment and solidarity.

What I'm basically saying is news is information that applies increasingly to the head as opposed to the body. The head is attracted by routines and specialist schemes that involve logic and manipulation of numbers (dollars), but in the process the coordinated game of life is lost.

Instead of this false sameness of physical weakness that has a corresponding psychic confusion, athletes are antagonistic on the court - 'the smiling assassin' - and the body functions are antagonistic, coordinated pairing of muscles. Push and pull.

I mean, the freedom of physical response inevitably leads to psychic calm; one is living by one's wits as a hunter did. Life lived as a muscular game cannot be micro-managed by 'them' to the detriment of freedom of physical expression. 

Raducanu has shown the way with her uninhibited play; it is still possible to defeat routine and stymie advance when the future of the game is at stake. We are advancing into a cage that attracts a certain type; the type that advocates robotic routine with no possibility of recovery through physical strength and resilience. The type that lives in the head is psychically weak because psyche is thoroughly dependent on the physical reality.

Saturday 11 September 2021

Pictorial 188

 'Is there any expectation?' responded Raducanu after her semi-final victory.

This is a key remark, since the Raducanu's seem to 'raducalise', as a family unit, a paradigm-shift from the head - sports psychologists and motivation - to the body - flow-of-action.

Yes, with the extensive coverage I've been reading about the family unit. Chinese inner strength was already mentioned; her Romanian father is raducal in another way, apparently taking the attitude that each shot deserves a separate trainer!

This is probably apocryphal,but is still a trail-bossism that says the person doing the action tells the coach what they want and not the other way round.

This brings-up the second difference, that the specialised heavy-hitters are now facing the return of real tennis in the form of shot-making.

A specialist is trained, is told what to do, and when two specialists meet it's fairly routine. By instead saying routines are what you do off the court, Raducanu (as well as her opponent Fernandez) changes the game back to speedy, flexible shot-making.

This probably explains why the old-timers (the unspoilt old) are really digging the young blood (the unspoilt young).

Raducanu hits the ball low and early, which is more a directional than a power-shot. The Telegraph also had an analysis of her return, which goes at the feet of the server.

I suppose that latter might've true, but even more so for more ponderous, robotic heavy-servers. Someone like Fernandez should be able to adjust and step sideways or back-off.

The general drift is the robotic, specialised game of routine power is now under attack from shot-makers who are above all flexible and don't rely on rote.

At this point, you may ask why all this discussion of a mere game? The answer is that a physical game gives clear indications to the false reality of specialist routine that we unfortunate moderns appear to inhabit. Sakkari, for example, seemed like she was totally bemused by the sudden rise of realism, and thought she and the others 'hadn't been at their best.'

Seemingly implying a mental rather than physical lack, or that physical shortcomings are somehow psychological! The same applies to the entire Western paradigm; a weak, destabilised system can only recover through physical strength and resilience.

The physical and the psyche are related, and one could almost say Raducanu has an Oriental insouciance that is the mark of the Mongolian warrior. The Eastern warrior-in-action is not thinking, they are moving and acting.

They are not team-players (somewhat like Illyana Rasputin, prev) and can be harsh,but the physical is constantly related to psychic insouciance.

Of course, this is the total opposite of a Western-style democracy where psychological motivation is the only game in town. Politicians become the same logical egotists of the false $ (Apollo).

All this is really the confusion of specialised routine with playing the game of life.

In Rome, Pliny the Younger had his gardener trim his own name out of topiary right next to that of the master. Pliny himself was held in high esteem as both a lawyer and a Curator of the Bed and Banks of the Tiber and the City's Sewers.. Politicians doubled as priests. Mathematicians were engineers and philosophers.. In our obsession with specialising.. we've lost all sense of the joy that can be found in combining different types of knowledge. 

We should stop worrying about how pursuing any particular branch of knowledge makes us look, and follow the Romans - learning this, learning that, doing what satisfies us most. Not everything has to be useful, not everything has to be goal-oriented. As any ancient builder could have told you, learning always has been more than just another brick in the wall. (Daisy Dunn (classicist), DT)

Or the illusory brick of DNA, which is the biggest routine of all and attracts the ego of acolytes of the mirror of illusions.

Instead of a logically 'getable' routine, life is a physical game of antagonistic parts, where balance and coordination are the winners.

Forgetting this fact opens the door to weakness and illusion (the egotistical head) and closes the physical reality that is related to psychic calm.

The planets spin; the psyche emanates in Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy; physical attributes are real and imbue us with mental fortitude.

Anything else is not reality; it is a specialisation that sooner-or-later comes up against reality- and is stymied.

Wednesday 8 September 2021

Pictorial 187

 Picture a dollar bill. Ostensibly it's a means of exchange, the symbolic value of exchange whether Roman coins or later with the Royal Exchange in Tudor London (prev.)

Exchange has now given-way to a monetary system where money is spent but not paid for. The logic of this system.is only that it has a monetary logic that appeals to logically-inclined heads. Since money has no intrinsic value (unlike goods), the value is non-human. Let's call it Martian.

All modern politicians are non-human or Martian economists, spending money that does not exist and isn't paid for. Biden, Johnson, Bolsanero, Xi. The only exceptions might be Baerbock of the German Greens, or Marine le Pen of the French Rally, but neither seem destined for power. 

Why do politicians become the same 'type'? Because they are attracted to logic and tend to be convinced by logical arguments, as opposed to balanced human objectives (health, happiness.)

Anything human is "four days, five days ago", whereas logical trains of thought have an abstract, egotistical value that never dies. The process is just the more obvious sign that we are entering a future of algorithm instead of human reality.

Human reality is inarguably of the body. As Anita Roddick of The Body Shop says,

The fashion industry wants to control you. And the way they do it is through your body. Once they control your body, theyy control your purse and the products you buy. It's a fantastic strategy and it's working.

The body is run by the (corporate) head, the language of which is monetary. The language of the body is balance. As noted previously, the illogical proportions have their own internal logic (the logic of desire - see prev O Henry and the old-style tenements.)

The language of the jungle is dank and furtive (see Lee Perry); the language of economics is dead and sterile. But since a jungle has its own power of recovery and certain physical dangers, it is not as logically viable as an economic system.

All this is a matter of fairly recent history - far less than 10,000 years, more like 200. But the 'accelerating future' (of Anisimov and the futurists) becomes more rapid owing to the speed of algorithmic 'thought' (information).

Has it occurred to anyone that China may be ahead of the West here, in that they can concentrate brains in a type of hydridisation with the machine?

They achieved on Mars in one-shot what took NASA decades of development and, as has previously been noted, space is the algorithmic frontier. Apart from that, we are living in the effects of the Chinese virus (originating in Wuhan province.)

The virus, as certain right-wing sectors have pointed-out, makes authoritarian rules much more universal. Could China have planned this algorithmically?

I'm not anti-Chinese; I'm anti a certain type of thought that gives credence to algorithms over human balance. As was previously noted, Minnesota University's Institute of the Environment is a world-leader in 'ecological economy', and they have determined that destabilising rough ecosystems (such as jungle) releases viruses that were hosted by the jungle inhabitants.

Balance is a physical phenomenon (of fertility and strength) but also one of psychic integration. Emma Raducanu, who's half-Chinese, was quoted as saying the ancient Chinese tradition of inner self- belief (as opposed to simple achievement) was very important to her.

Raducanu is a good example of a very balanced individual, the very balance that modern China has lost to Communist misrule. A land of logic and brain cannot have the language of the antagonistic body that is psychically integrated. It can only have a sterile language of advanced boredom - or advance into boredom. The land of ones ones and zeros - the duo-tone if Jirel Meets Magic (prev.)

So this is not bigotry against China since, after all, they are doing much the same as we are, maybe better! It's just stating visible facts anyone can see, and asking questions. 

The jungle is strong - eternal. The Martian arena of non-human value is weak and cannot outlast the strength of the jungle. Coming to terms with that equation calls for balance, nimble footwork in places of power on Mother Earth well away from the domain of boredom occupied by the white man's head (Musk &Co) and its oriental counterpart.

Modern techniques work, as has been pointed-out previously. But technique is not everything; there's also balance. Without the balance of a jungle (or even a tennis court), the vigor of physical reality is no longer there, and the techniques are always treating symptoms of weak, destabilised systems. Added to that is loss of inner self- belief, psychic disintegration.

Monday 6 September 2021

Hyborian Bridge 188

 Long-term readers may recall the long quote from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight detailing the skinning and butchering of newly-slaughtered deer at a hunt from one of the castles on the virtuous knight's jaunt.

I just thought of this looking at Kemp's antiquarian blades, since whether it's a knife used for skinning, a butcher's cleaver or a short-thrust dagger, the technique and type of instrument are related 

A blade is a dealer of death or a dealer with death. Almost the best thing about a medieval-style banquet is that one gets to dismember and butcher the game. It's ripe, but with a decent edge the pieces fall to bits with artistic panache

The ripeness of life is not something one is aware of nowadays; one is living so much in the head as to be inside an illusion. This is what I meant by the head attached to the body as the prime-mover instead of the body and the hidden processes of the body dictating most activities.

In the latter guise, one gets the logic of the illogical (Corneille) - meaning the antagonistic masses of the body that slot into position. Instead of this truth of ripeness that is the stuff of life (and death), the modern ego is attracted further and furthr into a parallel world of the head where smells and ripeness are almost verbotten.

The ultimate problem of this future is that all sense-impulses are forms of electromagnetism, and one is simply being led into a future where AI is the reality, in terms of expressive-algorithms and so on (see prev Japanese example.)

A head may be expressive, but one can be sure the stories it is told to recite by "them" will be the ones they desire for their own purposes; that is, of sameness as opposed to difference.

But the fact is a body is composed of disparate elements, as is a traditional commune of hunters or priests or women-of-the-field and crops and burns and pond-life.

Differences and antagonisms contain logic and illogic. Anything else is simply a parallel realiy of sameness and delusion of acolytes of electromagnetism.

On a contemporary footing, I noticed teen-sensation Raducanu was trained to think of her blocked-backhand as a shield, and her full-blooded forehands a sword.

The language of the body is ever-antagonistic. The way out of the modern dilemma is asserting the physical footing of the athletic body - the use of language - over and above the sterile language of Bezos, Musk and other robots of a future of neverending boredom and psychic disintegration.

Friday 3 September 2021

Hyborian Bridge 187

Where modernity approaches the vanishing-point of technique -algorithm or ones and zeros - it is forever departing from the primitive, something fundamental to a body. I mean above all rhythms that interweave and interlock and release or counterpoint.

Advance is simply an escape from the primitive; the body is a jungle of assorted activities that somehow combine their disparate elements into one.

In a way, the heavy, murky rhythms of Lee Perry's dub recordings - especially Super Ape from 76 - are a good signpost to bodily, as opposed to logical, creativity.

Perry may be a genius-level creator, but his body is attached to his head as he dances and works, rather than the conventional Western method of attaching the head to the body in a relatively dormant position.

"My insides are my outsides.. See, I take my insides and I put them outside for my fans, and all the people who love my music. For I give them the light. I'm Mr Lee Perry. Ha ha ha! I am the President, the Upsetter, Death's conqueror, I am everything.. I am flame, flames of fire. Scratch on the wire. I am on top of the music, walking on top of the music, it is under my feet (DT)

Nor exactly humble, but I guess someone in that synergistic state doesn't need to be. The simplicity of having 4-tracks also gives the edge to chance in the choices that Perry makes in transferring the 3 single tracks onto the 4th multiple recording.

The airy notes of "Black Vest", that relocates Max Romeo's " War Ina Babylon " to the distant sounds of a beach band heard from the thickets of primeval undergrowth 

BLACK VEST

The sensual, bodymorphic (underclothes?) disparity of sounds is a rebuttal to a world of pure logic and information-flows. The primal.nature of things is always going to be rhythmic and sensual; information is always a secondary event from the one.

Living things are semi-compartmentalised, and their very disparity provides unity. There's no such thing as unity without difference; it simply means a parallel reality of sameness.

Schismatic effects create united form (see prev). Athletic grace is the end-product. The head is always useful at this point in the game, but the body is primal and assertive. Balance is always the key.

Hence, one can see Perry as a shamanistic type of mind, the mind living off a jungle of effects that is millions (billions) of years old. Everything has a part to play, from.the phlegm of respiratory passages to the fungus of some ramshackle jungle clearing ("Fungus Rock/Dub", a metaphor for sex-viruses.)

The real.problem is that a logical universe is very convincing to the ego (of acolytes) even if it is in a parallel illusion. This is always a slight flaw of the comic book fantasy, actually. Starlin's Warlock is great, but has the limit of having to be logically-consistent when inconsistency can be more dramatic and haphazard (Avengers: Illuminati is the ultimate in the over-consistent illusion of logic.)

A magician has logic as part of their equipment along with haphazard chance, and the disparate sounds and effects of the environment. Most logical processes on Earth, after all, are absolutelt haphazard.

The carbon and nitrogen cycles are composed of bodily remains and respiratory processes that are events of the random environment. The fact us that logic is not logical simply because the power of natural processes overridrs everything.

There is a place for logic; and there is also a place for haphazard power. There is a place for marine bone (in red clay for building); and there is a place for Man's constructions.

A little reasoning goes a long way. Excess nitrogen in fertilizer creates algal blooms and the good, nitrogen-fixing microbes in soil go to waste. Every haphazard process has a logic (such as an animal hunting prey), but the point is that both are necessary for power.

Forest and jungle are sources of power and psychic health (wisdom or apothecary). This sense is felt throughout the fantasy of, not only Howard, but also Noto and various Conan yarns such as the aforementioned "Gods of the Mountains".

In the latter story, Valeria accompanies the Cimmerian on a delirious trek through caverns under the forest in a sequel to " Red Nails". The phosphorescent splendour is not unlike Noto's underworld scenario from "Red Lace" (prev); instead of carnivorous plants, the duo encounter rotten-smelling moss (which is apparently edible, if not to Val) and giant fungus, as well as the skeleton of a dragon amongst other hazards.

Fungus is known as 'suspicious meat', and this odoriferous subterranean world of twilight has s sense of decadence and decay that are sources of strength in organic substance.

The process of digestion and intestinal fauna are the equivalent of the breakdown of decay, and the strength that results is bodily strength.

A subterranean world of horrid meat and smelly plants evokes also the insides of the body; possibly this was an implication of Perry's remarks on his creativity.

A funky or murky rhythm brings into the picture bodily strength which is hidden or obscured by the visual aspect of form. A source of strength is mor logically derived from the head, but is harboured inside the body.

This is a decadent area that contains at least the scents of decay because this is also a source of strength in life. Perry makes the point thstbhw contains'both positives and negatives', but is a source of light.

That point is that stories that are lusty and gusty as with this one, need a source of Dionysian gusto. It could be the wind wheeling down a mountain; it could be caverns measureless to man. A logical.order of the head cannot contain a gusto that is hidden by the form of the body; that is not advancing into a sterile future of ones and zeros, but is harbouring decadence and decay.

The rhyming cadences of Perry might not be as clarified to modern ears as is an algorithmic routine, but he makes the point of 'inside worth' quite explicitly in "Blackboard Jungle Dub" (from Doublestandart.) This ancient source of strength is also found in Fulling (P156).

If living things are antagonistic by nature and design (athletic), they contain multitudes in Whitman' expression. The murky and odoriferous zones are strong in Noto, Howard and assorted Howardesque yarns, as well as the jungle fastness of Perry's domain.

They are not found in a logical (Apollonian) order since such an order has not the primitive gusto of underground beats. 'Underground route to Hollywood' (Perry lyric). Weird Tales.

In the sense that antagonism and schism (prev) are needed for bodily function, these decadent fantasies and murky rhythms have the truth of the matter.