Hyborian Bridge 210

 GROTH Isn't there a difference between what they do on television, which is basically to move the camera as frenetically as possible, and what Welles did which could be considered a legitimate artistic advance.?

BECK It was because things were frozen at that time and he kind of jogged them loose. But then the imitators came along and just ran hog wild. And they pushed Welles aside. He's never had a decent job since.

GROTH Do you think highly of Citizen Kane.?

BECK Well, I can't remember it anymore, except it was known for his moving the camera and getting special effects..

.. GROTH ..what would you say are the wrong things about Eisner's work?

BECK .. they just picked up the superficial angles, that he always draws a lot of wrinkles, and it always has a lot of action. He uses the same method I did of suggesting action..old age and stereotypes and so on and not actually doing it. But then they go one step farther and show everything, and end up with just the frosting on the cake, and there's no cake inside.. (TCJ #95, 1985)

In terms of film, the use of camera 'extravagance' is what could correspond to the psyche the director chooses to impose. 

"I have always wanted basically to carry out investigation in the form of spectacle. Producers say, 'Godard talks about anything he pleases, Joyce, metaphysics or painting, but he always has his commercial side ' I don't feel that atall; I see not two things, but one." (Godard on Godard, Preface page X)

'Investigation' is the subjective or psyche, while 'spectacle' is the narrative flow. Godard is seemingly able to integrate the two to create something larger. The camera represents physical reality combined with a psychic overlay of ideas.

Without the psychic content, the extraneous use of camera is arbitrary, but with the psyche there is added content to the story.

If psyche is content, how is it possible for a material world to have content? It can only be false or very partial. This is the Apollonian area of sterile logic we inhabit (see prev, the false Apollo.)

If the fertile universe imbues the psyche (HB208/209), the psyche is clearly outside of the modern order.

This makes sense because a universe based on measurement is pure order (see Korvac) and zero in terms of psychic content. Does the modern 'story' then have no meaning, for all its emotive flow?

First of all, measurement creates inconsistencies in the physical universe; instead of the Earth spinning as a top, time becomes variable (HB209).

So, how is it that measurement - the unassailable indicator and most fundamental axiom of logical space - produces inconsistencies?

It has to be because the physical universe is not only physical; it has a psychic component. But this component is imbued by a fertile universe. The sterile order cannot possibly have a fertile component by definition, and so is devoid of psyche. This is actually the parallel reality we are entering through measurement!

The logical space is devoid of fertility and psyche. You could easily say it's the one pictured in Godard's 1965 sci-fi film 

ALPHAVILLE

The material reality causes confusion because it's not actually reality; reality is two-pronged, but the two come together somewhat like Godard has it.

Psyche, as in Madam Blavatsky's Theosophy, emanates from the planets and the mighty physical presence of the cosmos.

This is now approaching what could be called fantasy, and it strikes me that in Godard's films there is almost no difference between his depictions of fantasy and realism. Alphaville is a sci-fi dystopia set in a fuzzed-out Paris. There are no spaceships or anything of that order, just a lot of lights and dark architectural ambience.

By combining physical and psyche, Godard is being accurate to the fertile universe. Exactly the same could be said of other creators. Bilal's sci-fi opus The Nikopol Trilogy, with its superb flair for decadent architecture and fashion (again set in Paris). Probably the same holds for BWS' Monsters though I've not read it. 

The point is, a non-fertile universe has no meaning (epistemology), only measurement. This creates real confusion amongst the egotistical types; how can something hyper-real be an illusion?

For that exact reason. The hyper-reality and neutralising news (desexed as per JK Rowling) could easily be represented by a fire-breathing dragon, as previously noted.

I happened to notice Zendaya is playing Michelle Jones-('MJ')-Watson in the Spider-Man films. What reason could there possibly be for the name-shift from Mary-Jane? All I can think of is it neuters the vibe of street-hip lingo that characterized the 60s Marvel revolution.

It's not even that clear; CC Beck back in '85 fforeshadows this.

Now the latest thing they've come out with is a revised reading of the Bible.. "In the name of God, our Father and Mother, and the only child." And they've even taken out all references to darkness, because of the dark people and so on. They (liberals) want more stereotypes instead of less, they want everything a sexless robot, or a wax figure. Same as in Bernini's day when all the angels had to be sexless, ethereal creatures, you couldn't tell they were boys or girls.. And that's what I hate to see go by the board, because it's a sign of a declining civilization.. (TCJ #95)

It's not just the liberals though; it's more to do with the fact we are now inside a gigantic (if profitable) mistake, that we should aim for sameness as opposed to differences.

We're not brains, nor are we bodies. Brain and body are separate but integrated; chemicals course through the blood that alter behaviour and calm the psyche. The mistake is to separate the two entirely for ideological ends (not simply liberal diktat.)

The spine is strong and connects us to reptilian ancestors of the primordial jungle. In the jungle, opposite tendencies are apparent - mates and prey - and that is the fertile universe (of myth and classical allusion, Diana.)

We can't switch off from the body - the sexual differences that are preordained - because the head is a neutral zone. Children used to get dirty and thereby stay healthy. Social media aims at the head and the inert, neutral, sterile zone of sameness.

LET THE CHILDREN PLAY

You can't view the brain simply as a separate organ; children who play and get dirty are healthy in their heads as well as their bodies. The end-result of the social-media indoctrination of kids is Alzheimer's further on. It's inevitable in the polarization of head from body (I noticed in the darklordbob interview of a gamer, mention was made of outdoor pursuits such as archery.) Similar arguments go for vaxx: what's the 'control', to use a scientific term? In a sterile system the only fucking control is the voice of expertise! That exists outside the fertile universe of oppositional activity (that is youthful health or gaiety.)

Going back to Darkchilde (P136); Limbo could be said to represent the neutraised, sterile setting inhabited by the egotistical 'dragon' (actually demon) N'Astirh and his cohorts.

Darkchilde represents revival from the bestial, bloody and decaying interior of her feminine soul - represented by her sword. Feminine revivalism is a combination of a fiery psyche with the bloody sexuality inherent in femininity.

To deny that is to live inside the neutralised head - neutraised by the fire-breathing dragon of a sterile order. N'Astirh loves the Darkchilde, and that is his redeeming feature.

New Mutants#71

There can be no revival without a dark descent, of body and mind combined (see Noto "Red Lace", prev.). The cosmos emanates psyche only because of the great physical masses that were in past ages represented by Ymir (by the planets in Theosophy.)

The mirror of illusions attracts the ego, lulling it into abandoning the combined revivalism of myth (or the 60s.) Anna Karina - the once wife of (Swiss dual-citizen) Godard - said in an interview he was more than just a brainbox; a champion skier and fine swimmer.

This is what reality is ('film is truth 27 times a second'); the peaks of a Swiss mountain; the depths of Lake Geneva. That is the cosmos we inherit from our ancestors. It is (or was) fully integrated while we are dissociated (CERN is a symbol for that.).

The cosmos is great and we are but a

SPECK

Hyborian Bridge 209

 As a way of tying-up the Ovid/animation mash-up, the Western world seems confused in rather a big way, so is it down to these large-scale similarities that appealed to Ovid (The Metamorphoses)?

For a start, Ovid is clearly studying the natural universe that has a divine order (rhythm), so is it this order that has been overturned? Are we then ruled by persuasive Martians selling words and images, as in Carpenter's They Live!(Or the neutralizing dragon of news in a sterile capital system of numbers)?

Large-scale similarities can only occur in rhythmic space, as with the Earth spinning through space. But, as was seen in P200, time cannot be variable or the spinning top of Earth cannot have a primal rhythm.

It's not possible to have primal rhythm in a Relativistic universe of variable time (as in GPS navigation.) So, how is it we fall for this bizarre system? For the reasons outlined: the persuasiveness of straight-line calculation; a type of hyper-realism that attracts the ego (head).

Our logical order is seen through the head as we drive round in Musk's electric satnav vehicles and goggle his algorithmic rockets. However, logic is the 'dull science' whereby associated processes operate according to strictly valid criteria (that can be detected and tested.)

In a system of the body (proportionate balance), logic still exists but, unlike the mirror of illusions, it exists inside a system of large-scale similarities (see Corneille: "The illogical borrows from the logical.")

These are the divine rhythms that were studied by Ovid and other classical figures. The problem with Einstein's theory is it is only convincing to the ego (of acolytes), not to the body (of action.)

It is an intrinsically confused system for that reason. The hyper-realism is highly calculated and algorithmic (head). The accuracy and measurement are undeniable.

At the same time, though, the accuracy and measurement lead into the mirror of illusions and away from proportionate balance (body, or body of universe.)

The divine rhythms cannot possibly be Relativistic since the definition of rhythm is to have invariable time. All one can say is the Relativistic universe is extremely accurate and fitting for machines that measure accurately. 

Accuracy and precision are not reality. Primal reality is large-scale similarities that from this enable one to interpret differences.

The large-scale physical similarities allow for rebellious and strong psyches of difference. The parallel reality we are in does not allow for large-scale physical similarities, and we exist in a land of psychic confusion.

I think you can see that, by critiquing the animated X-Men in this way, it's seen that rebellious psyches (of difference) exist in a universe of primal fertility, where the similarities of things (in a divine order) are everywhere apparent.

This would apply fantastically to the deities of fertility (Ishtar); the Noto-like revival from decadence (Red Sonja "Red Lace"); Dionysus and the rites of spring; gaiety, abandon, psychic lustour, maidens-a-dancing.

If the universe could be measured, it's something like the situation in Korvac (W8) where everything in an ordered universe becomes zero (or ones and zeros, see Jirel Meets Magic). The vanishing-point of technique.

It's hardly surprising a logical universe is convincing (to the ego) as that's the definition of logic. By the same token, if the universe were logical it would have zero content. What is content? It's an oasis versus Neom City.

Natural rhythms can't be controlled, but are left to grow and decline. From decadence comes revival.

School in mosque, Afghanistan

Syrian refugee camp (HB202)

Frayed fabrics and ancient stones; dim-lit, dismal and dirty, all are the accoutrements of renewal and gaiety! Content is in the divine rhythms that cannot be governed by human agents. Strength is in revival from the cycles of decay.

The efficiencies of capital are illusory. Modi, in India, eventually bowed to the small farmers opposed to big business (). Communal rhythms of physical decadence imbue the psyche with strength. The inefficiencies of small farmers - such as fruit husks lying by the roadside as 'waste' - are ecologically efficient.

What is waste? Boars will eat it and add gaiety to the forest! India is impossible to govern logically because of the chaotic inefficiencies and differences. But this adds to the physical rhythms and the psyche is empowered, given to difference and the affinity of differences.

Apart from all this, rotting food contains germs that strengthen the immune-response. The West, by pursuing a policy of efficiency, is simply sterilising environments and hence weakening the immune.

Western policies are all about the vanishing-point of technique - or pure logic. The end-product of that is to have zero content in terms of communal rhythms, and the physical and psychic weakness that follows.

Even on the urban front, it's clear that decline that follows a natural cycle is preferable. Detroit - see Drama3 - avoided the entrenched civil rights legislation of the 70s and retained its communal self-government. A spiral of drug-provoked violence followed. This was followed by inward investment. The communities retained their cohesion and the likes of Diana Ross are still there. Strength is a cyclical resistance (to arbitrary legislation.)

What is content? It is natural justice and the revival of youthful gaiety from situations of decadence and what nowadays might be called unsanitary conditions. Balance is called for. Dirt and cleanliness; both are strong and combine in health.

Thieves World Graphics, 1986, art Tim Sale

Hyborian Bridge 208

Linking back to P136, it had best be stated at the outset that primitive animal eroticism is one of the subjects, and Darkchilde is the best example of that. (This is quite reminiscent of Greek comedies (see Aristophanes P47) and the lewdness of Roman graffiti (see Cleopatra HB18).)

In the post, I compare Darkchilde's venemous tongue to the picture of Einstein's, meaning that the primitive or reptilian is always there owing to large-scale similarities in nature.

The similarities are the physical reality which the modern order has replaced; the fertile has become sterilized, and we live in a convincing illusion of the vanishing-point of technique (logical induction.)

(are you convinced yet?)

A primeval universe of bestial action is beset by primitive resemblances because their strength does not die. The warrior resembles a wolf or lion; Diana resembles the lithe deer she pursues.

Primitive means physical power, and the physical imbues the psyche with gaiety and grit. While the modern order has abandoned primeval physical reality, the psyche languishes in a state of random confusion, unable to act through wont of the action principle.

This state of affairs is physically and psychologically 'safe' in the sense of sameness, but inhabits a dark land of perpetual optimism. The mental domination of electromagnetic impulses as opposed to the elemental - touching, alluring strength.

That sounds pretty weird, but in fact without melancholy there can be no psychic strength and no possibility of revival. Primeval physicality imbues the psyche with strength; revival comes from metamorphoses that connect us to nature; death, decay or transformation. The truth of that primitive strength of the soil was pursued in BWS's Adastra in Africa (prev), bit I want here to apply it in a more literary sense.

If comicbook myths are a form of detritus, they revive by being transformed. This is somewhat akin to the classical Ovid cited in HB207, where the myth of Daphne is related to Virgil (Aeneid) and Homer, although less explicitly erotic.

Comics 'advance' by transformation, but the primitive elements remain intact since they inhabit a primeval world. A primeval physical reality imbues psychic strength, which is precisely what the modern order lacks.

The primeval physicality is animalistic, brutal and somewhat erotic, and imbues a psyche of strong empathic connection. This is so in the animated X-Men described earlier.

The animation captures the strong empathic solidarity of the characters very well, while shifting and merging plotlines into a more compact narrative (not difficult with Claremont!)

While in Ovid the closeness and resemblances of difference can take-on quasi-incestuous tones, in comics it's more a case of the resemblance of ALL the characters in a primeval universe of fertility.

Extreme interrelation and inter-breeding is typical of the X-Men universe - Corsair being revealed as Scott's dad, etc. All the characters resemble eachother or, in other words, they have large-scale similarities. But this enables the differences to be strongly delineated.

In the modern order there are no primeval similarities, only small differences. In the primeval world everything is bigger, stronger, more blatant.

As with Darkchilde, lust, hunger, beauty, danger are ever-present. Instead of the head being dominant, it is the throat and the song of the heart.

GONE WITH THE WIND (In Godard's Band of Outsiders, one of the cinema-obsessed characters remarked that the older he got the harder it was for him to determine when movies ended and real life began - sleeve notes to Social Call)

The primeval world has similarities that are almost bestial; there is a closeness to nature that makes for an animal erotic situation. The other element of a primeval situation is the powerful predator-prey element, since this is the other element of a physical reality.

In the best stories the two become one, as in the Phoenix saga where Jean Grey becomes a predatory danger. The predatory famine is quelled by the Shi'ar and Scott's love. 

Then there's the Storm/Forge story (P208), where their love turns into a dangerous obsession and then a rivalry. The other X-Men characters have similar attributes. The chaste Rogue who indulges in dangerous games. 

CAN'T WE BE FRIENDS

Beast who falls for a sentient female spaceship owned by Apocalypse. Professor X who has a psychic rapport and stong affinity of mutual interests with Princess Lilandra.

Strong affinities of a rebellious psyche can only occur where large-scale physical similarities of a natural order maintain the primeval force that the modern order denies in the name of the sterile sameness of the mirror of illusions. The electric future of inductive logic. We are run by mini-mini Einsteins who use inductive logic as s tool of self-aggrandisement.

Capital is simply the practical application of the use of the ego/illusion. The head dissociates the body from the song of the throat, which connects us to the supple, reptilian spine and all the active pursuits of the natural hunt (Diana) and Noto's underworld of revival (see prev.)

Physical strength is denied by the omnipotent head of acolytes. The X-Men's Beast may be discrete, but the pursuits of the primeval are still his - if his choice of mate is wanting.

The primal physical and the strong psyche go together. It's somewhat equivalent to the Nightclub settings of Dazzler. The Inner Circle's Edwardian serving girls and svelte settings are a warped version (the Hellfire Club on which it was based was hardcore, by all accounts.)

The needs of a commune are empathy of psychic solidarity, which comes from the primal physicality of decadence and revival - the divine natural rhythms.

Action is directed to primal needs. The material emptiness of capital is simply a sign of the numerical compulsions and illusions of the head; the mental as opposed to the elemental.

Hyborian Bridge 207

 Taking the last bit of P208, the physical setting and the psyche are most closely aligned in the province of myth. Daphne, the naiad nymph, allies herself with the riverbank flowers of the Ladon of Arcadia and twittering birds of the tree she becomes. 

Her metamorphosis is just one of the many in classical myth; animals and constellations abound. As I've been saying for awhile, large-scale similarities are primal (rhythm), and only with similarities can differences be meaningful.

The elemental world is full of large-scale similarities and differences, while the world of inductive-science is full of minute differences - the vanishing-point of technique 

These minute measurements attract the ego that itself gives rise to the neutralizing dragon of psycho-techno sameness. While the elemental world of large-scale similarities is a physical setting that imbues the psyche with power, a world of minute differences eliminates such physical reality.

The physical reality is melancholic and involves processes of metamorphosis (see prev), while the egotistical reality of modernity is emptily positive.

The unfortunate truth is, without melancholic nostalgia for past times, there can be no youthful revival, as in the 60s. The entire province of classical literature is predicated on nostalgia for a glorious past.

Myths are, after all, elemental stories of large-scale similarities that imbue all nature with psyche. Such similarities are notably manifest in Ovid, and I happened on a classical link that covers the Apollo/Daphne story.

(Para 16) Ovid's Apollo contends with Daphne in a race for sexual possession. Sibling rivalry has turned into something more troubling, a contest to achieve a quasi-incestuous coupling of Apollo with a Diana lookalike (Was this indeed what Apollo found irresistible in Daphne, tempted to break the taboo to which Ovid alludes..when he describes passionate kisses as qualia credible est non Phoebe ferre Dianam?) Philip Hardie

(Diana, incidentally, has vowed chastity somewhat akin to the Red Sonja mythos.) It's clear Apollo has an incestuous attitude to Daphne from the nymph's resemblance to his divine twin. Daphne herself is an elemental nymph - somewhat akin to the dryad in CL Moore HB206 - who swims under the light of the moon (Artemis/Diana).

Origins, and elemental closeness, are of primal fertility. A pastoral nymph who impersonates a goddess is prey for the brother.

There is also a type of 'literary incest' of similarities and allusions, the type of thing that is also found in comicbooks, actually!

Myths are a type of detritus that is continually scavenged, somewhat repetitively but also shifting focus with altered perspectives, made possible by the large-scale similarities of s physical reality that is elemental.

The retelling of myth in animated X-Men (prev) is a case-in-point. The origins of each character are different but loaded with the elemental. From the erotic (Rogue), the morbid bayou (Gambit), primal psychic force (Phoenix, Professor X), animal (Beast, Wolverine), primal physical force (Storm).

The animated retellings are loaded with semi-incestuous comicbook allusions - such as the Garokk/Storm story set in the Savage Land - and actually vastly more accurate than the somewhat realistic film versions.

Myths are real because they contain the large-scale elemental similarities that imbue primitive psyche to the cosmos. The force is greater both physically and psychically. Melancholy and nostalgia are real concepts and inspire continual revival, the youthful spirit of the flower in the field.

Pictorial 208

 As a type of exercise in interpretation, some examples of myth starting with BWS' Adastra in Africa

Somewhat infamously, This was adapted from a Storm piece whereby the sacrifice of an individual for the good of the commune was deemed to denote suicide preferentially. The wider ambit of Smith's exploration was the closeness of the souls of the departed to the roots and branches of the land; the fertile pastures that reinforce the rebellious psyche to the techno-dominion.

A myth is a connection of the soul to the physical surround and setting, and depends on the emphasis one places on head or body, psyche or matter.

Arguably, the modern order has dispensed entirely with this s dichotomy, and matter is now simply a branch of the great head or ego - see Blake's Newton, prev. Primal surround of natural force are no longer part of the picture (in the head.)

Euripides' The Bacchae (prev) is always capable of reinterpretation. For awhile it was thought Euripides had backtracked on his denigration of the gods, and Pentheus' fate was seen as just punishment for his disavowal of Dionysus. 

Dionysus is always a slightly insecure deity, as even his own family scoffed at his a mother's liaison with Zeus. While travelling around Asia, though, he gained a loyal following, especially of women or Maenads.

Arriving in Thebes in Euripides' play, he is determined to assert his divinity, and his followers take matter into their own hands.

By the 19th century, though, the interpretation switched to assume Euripides supports Pentheus's social reforms and his punishment was unjust by a false god.

An earlier play, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, has another very liberal interpretation of the 'facts'. According to Hesiod (7th century or about 200 years previous), Prometheus was a trickster who stole fire and ushered in the era of Pandora. His fate was just; but in Aeschylus's retelling Prometheus lists all the good works he is responsible for, such as metallurgy, architecture.

Parting on many details, Promethesius's fate was unjust (Prometheus Unbound is a sequel which is largely lost.)

Tragedy is a physical situation or setting acting on the psyche, and creating a physical reaction. The two parts, psyche and physical, have to act together, and there is always a capacity for interpretation.

The world is not neutral, in other words, and the physical contains the primal rhythms of life; the psyche reacts to this situation. This physical aspect of tragedy was emphasized by Nietzsche, who took the 19th century view that Euripides had intended to disparage the god Dionysus through his play, and had lost the classical roots (note: Aeschylus is the earliest and Euripides the latest of the Athenian tragedians.)

Whether that's so or not, interpretation is a part of the physical acting on the psyche- whether in warrior mode, gaiety, or the joy of the kill (hunting, Diana.)

X-Men #222 P32

These physical situations are also seen in Daphne, who was attracted to Apollo and vice versa, but also repelled as he was her brother. She ended up as the laurel, a symbol of purity and evergreen immortality (Daphne is an aemula or emulator of Artemis.)

Contradictions are inherent in physically primitive situations where the psyche is concerned. I suppose you can see where this is leading to? Where the physically primal situation is suppressed, conflicts are neutralised. The modern scene resembles a gigantic head from which the body is a mere outgrowth. There is no dialogue and the primal strength is suppressed.

JK Rowling's whole problem is the defence of natural rhythm (menstrual) that emboldens the psyche to aspire to difference, and the affinity of difference. The modern scene neutralizes that strength with sameness. Psychological darkness overtakes the gaiety of living and pronounces 'judgment'.

This happens on a global scale with GPS technology, the smart things and metaverse of the future, corrupters of natural rhythm and psychic strength in physical situations of power and fertility (myth.)

The fire-breathing dragon of neutralising news is quite a good symbol of the electromagnetic tyranny of the ego of acolytes of the mirror of illusions (inductive logic.)

Artemis and Apollo

Smith's picture is an ambiguous interpretation of the divine twins' relationship. On the one hand, anything that hints of incestuousness is bad, as in Sophocles's Oedipus Rex. On the other, without the closeness, Daphne's joy in uniting with Apollo as a laurel would never be.

Interpretation and reinterpretation are part of the blood of life and death that modernity seeks to eliminate with the neutralizing dragon of the psycho-techno future of zero primal rhythm. Rebellion happens when the physical setting imbues the psyche with power, inspired creativity, youthful revival.

Hyborian Bridge 206

 The sparks of independent teen/hippy thought from the 60s have petered to a feeble flutter. As Grace Slick says, psychedelic drugs were an entry to an alternate reality, and clearly that alternate counter-culture was anti-logic. 'Head trips' were really anti-psychological trips that connected psyche to body.

Instead of the body being an outgrowth of a dominant head that is oblivious to its primal surroundings - see Blake print of Newton - head and body are both very aware of the fertile areas.

Psychological darkness in the modern sense could be said to be the dissociation of head from body, and the psychedelic setting is a way out of that predicament. Psychedelia disrupts the mind in fertile pathways.

Psychological darkness is also associated with black magic; the hypnotic illusions, mirrors and reflections of the dual-tone in Jirel Meets Magic (HB205).

Psychological darkness is associated with a head-based system such as our own, as opposed to the physical connection to the psyche which is associated with revival and fertility.

The illusion of darkness is therefore associated with the crumbling of physical reality in the modern order. Grace Slick's song seems to refer to a sort of vanishingly small physicality.

FAT

Head-based systems distort primal rhythms which have to be of the physical body, rather than the neutral mind. Our system depends on hyper-realistic measurements which distort the natural rhythm (see P200).

The measurements convince the ego, and enable a type of psychological darkness that is dissociated from physical revival (of the fertile body). A psycho-techno identity that connects mind to machine, and away from body.

As suggested in HB205, psychic toughness comes out of the physical revival of fertile situations. Youth and lightness of spirit are associated with the morbid fertility of a bayou.

The reality of modernity distorts the physical and the fertile in the name of sterility; psychic darkness. The truth is that life is dark when there can be no revival!

White magic is the dryad in CL Moore's story.

And dimly she recalled that, so legend said, a tree-sprite never survived the death of its tree. Gently she turned the girl over, wondering if she were beyond help.

At the feel of those gentle hands the dryad's lips quivered and rose. Brook brown eyes looked up at Jirel, with green swimming in their depths like leaf-reflection in a woodland pool. (page 89)

The physical association with growth, the herbal potions and naked satyrs. The physical and the psyche are connected in white magic.

On the comicbook front, some of that is contained in a comparison of BWS' Monsters with more typical teen fodder like the X-Men animation (prev.)

Myths are a connection of the physical and psyche with the associated gaiety of revival. In the animated episodes Stormfront, weather goddess Storm becomes besotted by the tyrannical Arkon, who builds statuary in her honour.

It becomes apparent that a propaganda machine is at work suppressing rebellion with pain, posters and a cult of personality. Storm finally twigs and unleashes her fury.

It strikes me that myths, and certainly comicbook myths, have a teen following. Partly because the teen years are exciting and have changes. The American Indian trickster Coyote, for example, has life-lessons for those in peril (adapted for comics by Englehart/Rogers.)

Myths contain useful energy that teens can convert, similar to comics. In the X-Men animation, the histrionic vocals and love-hate dynamics are typically teen. The team itself exemplifies the affinity of differences, psychic strength.

BWS' book seems to be beloved of academics and mainstream press for its literate tone (unlike, say, Kirby's New Gods). The pictorial verisimilitude is certainly awe-inspiring, and it is clearly an example of a darkly psychological piece. Unlike myth, there is no counterbalance of lightness from which revival can transpire.

My hunch is that it panders too far to the modern psycho-techno darkness, as opposed to the psychedelic transcendence of mind and body together. Not druggy enough. Not cartoony enough and more like Cerebus-type domestic abuse (paraphrasing John Clifton, prev.)

As CC Beck said, comicbooks can do these things but they don't have to (paraphrasing). The animalistic toughness of teen comics are the fertile content of myth, and thereby revival.

Hyborian Bridge 205

 People have asked me how it is possible to make a film out of Lolita when so much of the quality of the book depends on Nabokov's prose style. But to take the prose style as any more than a part of a great book is simply misunderstanding just what a great book is.. The quality is the result of the writer's obsession with his subject, with a theme and a concept and a vision of life and an understanding of character..

The dramatising has to find a style of its own, as it will do if it really grasps the content. 

What Kubrick is talking about is action. Nit-pickingly, this could be divided into diegesis (story) and camera-movement (as in Citizen Kane, say), but in any case all action requires psychic content. The style of the film only comes out of psychic richness, or it is mere façade.

Clearly, also, psychic richness requires a physical basis, so a film with a good style is grounded in physicality. Without the physicality, you can't necessarily say anything is there - save a convincing illusion.

Without a physical side of things there can be no coherent sense of the moral or immoral. Lolita is somewhat immoral but, as set-out in HB204, likewise has the moral strength of physical tussles that are felt and produce an affinity of opposites.

Incidentally, Lyon gave a couple of interviews in which it's clear she had no problem with the film; anything else is lies spread by the press. She specifically says at the audition she was asked about her personal routines, which intrigued her. Owing to censorship Kubrick got her to act older than her years, and the scene at the end, where she is a slightly frumpy housewife, is telling since it is love rather than the purely erotic that fells Mason (incidentally, Kalin in the Dumarest saga by pulp writer EC Tubb has that theme, prev.) So, what Lyon said was against the press and nothing against the creative types.

On that note, a story without a physical basis would approach zero in terms of content. The style would be basically banal, and approach the 'neutralising' trend of modern news. The fire-breathing dragon of neutralising-news sterilises the area of fertile, oppositional decadence (HB204).

If modern news has zero content, what I mean to say is the psychic gaiety of youthful renewal is not there. The myths and symbols of this are not there either. 

The tough psyche is a quality of irresolvable opposites that are part of the physical foundation of reality. Sun and moon.

Artemis and Apollo (study)

Smith's picture captures the fertile areas of psychic renewal. Artemis and Apollo are practically incestuous in their uncomfortable closeness; the symbols and myths that surround them - from Buddha to a Chinese lion - are delineated with the patina of age and luscious growth, ambiguous symmetry and hints of carnal lust. 'No mud, no lotus' (Buddhist saying.)

Where psychic toughness is apparent, the physical opposites are displayed gracefully, as with Japanese Geisha. Toughness is therefore a form of rebellion against neutralising trends, whether sexual as in JK Rowling's case (prev), or generally the fertile area (the Indian small-farmers' victory over Modi's sterile efficiency - see prev.)

Toughness, roughness and physical opposites; the psyche of rebellion. Modern news is 'unbiased', by which it means advancing the scientific (inductive) cause of sterility, as practiced by capital.

The stifling sense of monotony that is modern news can easily be likened to a sorcerous illusion.

From very far away she thought she caught the echoes of a song when the wind blew, and there was something subtly irritating about its simple melody that seemed to seesaw endlessly up and down on two notes. (Jirel Meets Magic, page 85, Jirel of Joiry, Ace)

The news can appear convincing for the precise reason that it's a convincing illusion.

That monotonous music came to her through the quivering lights and reflections, now strongly, now faintly in the distance.

The whole place was a chaos of blaze and confusion. She could not know if the room were small or large, a cavern or a palace hall. Queer reflections danced through the dazzle of it. (page 107)

As has already been suggested, the future awaiting us will be 100% electrical, which means algorithmic (see the expressive algorithm.) This means ones and zeros or the dual-tone note of Jirel Meets Magic.

The illusion contains no spark of youth or of physical revival from degradation. The practically incestuous or morbid fertility of a bayou. Sterility is gained at the cost of psychic toughness; the ability to rebel; to be immoral; to be different and to have the affinity of opposites.

Ranged outside the circle that enclosed the two women sat what was surely the strangest company ever assembled. They were grouped with a queer irregularity which, though meaningless to Jirel, yet gave the impression of definite purpose and design. It had a symmetry so strongly marked that eve though it fell outside the range of her comprehension she could not but feel the rightness of it. (page 112)

Ambiguous symmetry. The stars above. 

Modern news has no content from the point of view of the fertile universe of differences and subtle affinities. But it's also hyper-realistic, since it depends on very precise measurements such as for GPS Relativity - see P200 primordial rhythm.

All of that is highly convincing to the ego of acolytes of the mirror of illusions (logical induction), where resides the profane serpent of corrupt rhythm (the DNA merchants, 'clean meat' prev.)

Using the language of myth: the sterilising dragon sells this agenda with news, while the two-tone note of the electrical piper plays.

As a footnote, Dark Knight started the trend for interspersed newsflashes in comicbook yarns. That seems to work when the news is highly selective or, in fact, part of the fantasy itself!

Hyborian Bridge 204

 As a coda, primitive physical revivalism was a lot of what the San Fran scene was about in '67. The young and footloose made their way there and - guess what - found a ready door at the newly-rich bands of the day.

MARTHAYoutu.be/-dFaq6mqcjY

She does as she pleases, She waits there for me

Women match men by being different; they desire freedom and free expression in mutual exchange for monetary rewards.

The young women or the nymphets bring primitive gaiety that is the signal of physical revival from decay. They are free to choose their mates because freedom is what they choose. The fact that they end up with older men is both moral and logical, monetarily-spealing!

In Lolita, Humbert seemingly rises above the consumerist culture, and also seemingly above the Freudian one (Nabokov was a Freudian sceptic.) The logic of the relationship is primeval, while in the modern context the filth is hidden.

However, comparing this situation to Weekend (P207), Godard has the entire capitalist system in thrall to neutral-value, and by extension the anal-compulsion of number and measure.

Morality cannot simply be a measure of expertise since this in itself holds out the immorality of being outside the physical reality of natural power (youth.)

Viewed as a book or film, there's no clearcut moral signal in Lolita; but viewed from a perspective of the obsessions of modernity, the filth that Lolita practices has an honesty and naturalist persuasion that gives it some credence.

This also comes out in the screaming fits which are a double-pronged tussle ("Here we go again"), the opposite of a slimy dictatorship. Lolita has no fragility, unlike Humbert, another link to the 50s heroines espoused by Grace Slick who act as tough as hombres (P206).

The theme I've been developing is that differences contain similarities; the affinity of differences is something the modern order tries to do without in the great neutralising agenda of 'news'.

Affinities are strong and physical and constitute tussles of wills (psyche) - see Howard Pictorial 11. The tussle is itself the resolution of the conflict in its dynamic splendor. Now, essentially the State represents the neutral-value of inductive science - as practiced by capital.

The fire-breathing dragon of neutralising news (P206) enters a parallel universe of measure and sterile expertise that is attractive to the ego (of acolytes of the mirror of illusions.)

Measure and sterile expertise move away from the fertile area of rhythm, force and movement (see proteins, spiral galaxies,DNA and fish swarms.) It is this fertile area where tussles of free-spirits occur, and where affinity of strong psyches reigns.

Science is 'unbiased' because it has no physical reality of primeval rhythm; measure is everything. The ego is convinced, and even "Television means the State" (Godard on Godard, page 191).

Without a physical tussle (isn't that sex?) the instruments of the State institute a neutralising agenda. The 60s hippies attempted to break-free of this in their immoral fashion. Lolita is a similar conflict, where the tough and seemingly immoral actually have the morality of psychic rebellion (from the neutral state of being.)

The physical reality is dirty and vibrant- attractive to the psyche as opposed to the inert ego. Without Dionysus, according to Nietzsche, Greek tragedy could not exist. Tragedy is the eternall struggle between individual and collective.

When that brightness (a rebellious streak) ceases to participate in reality, the unbiased and non-physical expertise of measurement maintains an illusion of order. Illusory because, without physical degradation there can be no Dionysian revival, no gaiety in the fields. No milkmaids a-waiting, and even Geishas are getting the cold-shoulder in parts of Japan (under the Western yoke.)

The tough and immoral brutality of a reality built on the tussles between individuals and states is as good a definition of the moral strength of Hyborian kingdoms as any.

Nietzschean immorality of the physical tussles between individuals and between individual and the State produces the morality of psychic toughness. The affinity of differences. "Here we go again."

Hyborian Bridge 203

A feeble consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I seem to recall quoting Grant Morrison's pseudo-science from Supergods awhile back, with the rejoinder it was pure hyperbole. From a fantasy standpoint he'd dearly like to believe fantasy is reality; since it's only fantasy, the idea is to cut him some slack, in the words of Emma Raducanu.

The creative mind works in odd ways, and it may be Morrison thinks everything is a creative fantasy. What comics have, though, is illustration, so I think it's fair to say that the illustrations have a realism of form and figure that casts a stabilizing influence on the most putrid of scripts.

While Morrison's scripts may exist in some madhouse of a world gone mad, the pages assuredly exist in physical space of rhythm, force, movement and sequence. His creative juices given free rein in time and space may then perhaps delineate how insane is the future prophecied by the likes of Zuckerberg.

A universe where the physical pages are merely an offshoot off a hyper-reality is ideal for a temperament of Morrison's stature to satirise. No wonder it's physically insane since it's the exact opposite of what is physically possible. Without a physical reality there can be no decadence and therefore no revival from the degradation of matter, of form.

With revival comes gaiety embedded in folklore. Memories are made of this, and memories are formed by rhythm, force, movement and sequence.

Imagination, in other words, needs the revitalising effect of physical revival, gaiety. This was driven home by another road movie inculcated in modern folklore; namely Lolita (Kubrick, 1962.)

It's one of the few 60s movies cited by Godard in Godard on Godard(1967). Watching it got me to wondering what is it contemporary films lack they the classics have, and it could be something like nostalgia. In fact, the whole movie is told in a flashback which has an implicit nostalgic aura, with another voiceover of "3 years later" metamorphosed into a domesticated doll.

Godard's own opus is nostalgic for the silent era as well as the 50s and Kubrick, while no Bogdanovich, has a practically screwball sensibility.

Of course, it's on the dark side and he has here the talents of Peter Sellers (also in the future Dr Strangelove.) Seller's rolling eyed extravaganza is epic, but the pair of Mason and Lyon are by no means outdone. It should be stated at the outset that this tale is true to Nabokov's novel in that Lolita is a nymphomaniac (accomodating two rivals), and the emphasis is on animal naturalism.

If anything, she reminds me of my own 'lost love' Perrine Sandrea (Outtake 6) in her naturalistic brutality. Lolling on the settee when Mason gets over-protective, she just drawls, "You're sick."

The type of performance goes back to Grace Slick's quote on 50s heroines (P206), and to the screwball era of Jean Arthur. Instead of 'pure acting', it's a mixture of action and reaction with charm and winsome attraction. Give her a sword and put her in the Arena with Margaret Markov.

Mason/Humbert is drawn like a bee to nectar as Lolita on the lawn goes through a hoola-hoop routine. The film has no agenda, by which I mean the predatory one; it's just a natural pairing of animals in lust.

The physical rhythms of natural power that occur outside the neutralising aspect of measurement. By 'measurement' I mean the entire trend for defining wellbeing by means of expertise. Humbert may be an intellectual, but he is not part of that trend.

That is represented by 'Professor' Zelf', played by Sellers/Quilty, who is actually an invented psychiatrist who suggests to Hum that Lolita is "repressing her libido"!

The ruse is meant to persuade him to let her act in the school play (written by Quilty), an innocent symbolic piece.

"To the dark kingdom - away, away!"

Following that is a screaming fit scene, again played with animal activity. Following this the road movie restarts. They stop at a petrol station and Mason sings, "Fill her up."

By this stage I was so caught up in the action, I thought out loud in an impromptu fashion, "What about the car?"

In short, the physically natural aspects of attraction are intensely suggested, and the proof is you fall for it. What's the value of cinema unless the psyche is affected, rather than numbed by explicit details?

Value (see Weekend ) has to be psychic and nostalgic and memorial, since this is related to the physical reality (that is primitive and not simply a measure of expertise.)

This is what we live by, and the psyche is strongly affected by differences that are attracted to eachother. Humbert is honest and inspires empathy.

A world of no agenda and no measurement by experts is a world that inspires nostalgia because it has the physical rhythms of natural power. This takes us logically to the Hyborian kingdoms, so I'll leave you with an appropriate illustration.

Conan #24 'The Song of Red Sonja' (1972)

(RIP Woodstockian Lang)

Hyborian Bridge 202

 The easiest way to exemplify what Godard's Weekend (P207) may be seeking to redeem is with Hyborian exemplars.

'Neutral value', for a start, is not physical but mental, in that our own world is ruled by the brain (of acolytes of the mirror of illusions or inductive logic.)

Capitalism is the practice of inductive logic. In other words, it's the obsession with numbers (monetary). Grace Slick recalls in her memoir (HB62/1)

Then, on October 30, 1939, at Chicago Hope Hospital, Virginia Wing gave birth to Grace Barnett Wing at 7;45 A.M. Well, not really. I don’t actually know my actual time of birth or the name of the hospital, because they weren’t written on my birth certificate. Back then, record keepers weren’t as anal-compulsive as they are today, so I’ve always made up my own stats when it was time to fill in the blanks. (page 12 – compare with Lindsay Anderson quote on ‘numbers’ Alternates 4)

The 30s/40s/50s obviously wasn't as 'bad' as the 90s when the book was written, and not so bad as today. Why? Because numbers are algorithms and we now live by algorithms. We are all machine-code. 

The mental attribute is hard-wired and leads to ever more sameness. In the opening car jam in Weekend, the irony is that all the people strive to be different while they are all in the same predicament (of being in the same intractable situation.)

So the open question has to be: are the compulsions of capitalism and consumption the same as those of the inductive parallel reality? I think they have to be, since capitalism is simply the practical application of induction on the population.

Induction has a neutralising influence, whereby psychic reservoir is gobbled-up by goods in the capital system (P207). News is likewise the domain of expertise and 'neutral facts' that cannot be challenged.

Inductive wizardry goes right back to Newton, which Blake's print captures -see P201 - the body becomes almost an outgrowth of the dominant head, and the compulsion of the ego is oblivious to primal surroundings. This parallel reality is compulsive and ineluctably attracts the ego to its sterility.

The body contains reciprocal value in the opposing elements of the physique, but the universe of primitive action occurs outside the parallel universe of numbers and algorithms.

Sorcery is the expertise that delves more and more into this illusory reality. The reality of the brain is electro-chemical impulses as opposed to the physical reality of the fertile universe.

At this point, one has to state what the fertile universe is! It's not simply a case of being erotic and frolicking in the woods; it's the large-scale similarities that are apparent in nature.

Different things grow irregularly, and irregular lines create vibrancy of colour and mottled ochres.

Classic fragment ornament in my domicile

A line can go left or right, so there is a continual vibrancy in the way it moves. There tends to be a sense of casual degradation, that the natural world is trying to get in there. The worm wriggles in the nooks and crannies.

The physical ease of such settings has an effect on the psyche, much like a campfire that soothes the vagabond after a day's exertions. All that is seductive to the area of bodily and psychic ease. Cynthia Harnett's illustrations to The Wool-sack (prev) are another case-in-point.

In the fertile universe, metamorphosis is allowed, which means that degradation and decadence are part of the scene ,a sign of the powerful forces of nature in operation.

Smith's print has a broken wood carving on bottom right. Rotten wood is a powerful symbol of physical processes that decay and regenerate.

Before going full-on into Hyborian motifs, here are another two pictures that speak of dim lights, mottled hues, frayed fabrics and an old-time vibrancy of decadent living (P202)

school in Afghanistan mosque

Syrian refugees

It's a type of casual attitude to living in nomadic ways of a 60s hippy/beatnik culture; a Bedouin tent come VW campervan ethos.

The big question is, why did this ethos decline and capital surge forward once more following the '68 fracas in France, Woodstock and all that jazz? It seems that people honestly believe in the benefits, but it seems also that a half-truth is being promulgated.

Optimism is electric and the future we are being sold is essentially 100% electric that one's brain then plugs-into, one with the machine. But as has been noted previously, this implies the stories we are told do not broach the dark side of existence; expressive algorithms (prev) will only tell optimistic stories.

The Noto-esque, dark and bestial underworld of debauched metamorphosis is totally not there (see The Rape of Europa, Titian.) You will only get it in fantasy; you will get it in Grant Morrison and Ye West, the mainstream will blithely stay the same.

The problem is, without the dark underworld of the carbon-based soil that harbours things living and decaying, there can be no revival (no Dionysian rites of jollity.)

The half-truth is that the psyche is much more like an algorithm - humans become half-machine, while algorithms become half-human. In a quest for sameness and what 'they' call camaraderie, one gets stories of optimistic nothingness.

The parallel reality can give stimulation (and simulation, natch), but not the casual sense of being freely active in the animal sense.

"A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.." (Beast from animated X-Men 'Weapon X, Lies and Videotape', quoting Alfred Lord Tennyson.)

Pictorial 207

It's never a bad idea to compare a Jean-Luc Godard film to genre in view of the often American source of for example Alphaville (Lemmy Caution, the mythical PI.) Viewing Weekend (1967) as a perversely erotic road movie might therefore be a wise move, especially in view of this extended tracking shot.

WEEKEND

The film starts in anal erotic mode, and the word ANAL YSIS appears onscreen as a woman describes a sordid orgy (). Later on in the ride, Roland and Corrine encounter Balsamo, a 20th century divinity, who owes his lineage to 'the sodomy of Alexander Dumas by God' (quoting from Speaking About Godard, Farocki and Silverman, 1998).

Godard criticism is two-a-penny, frankly, and Farocki/Silverman have the advantage of not supporting some agenda, either pro or con. Balsamo, according to Farocki, means 'holy lubricator' (page 95)! It becomes apparent throughout we are ona surreal ride through a devastated landscape of rotting cars (on pyres), the symbols of commodity culture, figures from romance (Emily Bronte) and, finally, primitive revivalists in a tribe of hippy cannibals. 

The film investigates 'value', and particularly the value humans lose to the value of commodities. In effect, Roland as a consumer has lost his psychic reservoir and becomes neutral in value. He ends up on the hippy barbecue, and is declared "not bad" by Corrine.

A later film, Nouvelle Vague (1990), again explores the erotic in terms of value, and I think this passage from Silverman was quoted previously.

..whereas terms like 'value' are for Freud only metaphors for the erotic, NV refuses to subordinate one term to another. The economic is not merely metaphoric, but literal as well, and it not only signifies, but is signified by, the erotic. (page 204)

Reciprocal value, or real value, involves physical things and notably the erotic. That is, not the phallus but the human physique, male or primarily female (the Taj Mahal was dedicated to the deceased wife of Mogul emperor Shah Jahan.)

Ostentatious erotic value is real value represented by marble and sculpture and minarets. The reality of this Godard seemingly tries to redeem from Freudian capitalism.

The hippies, according to Farocki/Silverman, are still commodity fetishists owing to their ritualisation of the cannibal feast. If so, it goes to show how difficult it is to rebel against mainstream values (as the 60s hippies found!)

If modern consumer values are essentially value-less, with 'every character on a par with every other' (page 98), Farocki/Silverman ally this trend to shit. However, it's clear that this also has a value, namely in fertilizer or compost. The metamorphosis into sweet-smelling, pathogen-killing strength, as opposed to sterile technology - see prev Adastra in Africa, versus Gates' techno-toilet. The primitive sense of strength, dirt and cleanliness

SING OUR OWN SONG

The sense of neutral value, that Godard allies with the anal, more likely applies to something that has no cyclical value in terms of fertility. That is to say, serial consumption in a world of no psychic reservoir or resources.

Neutral commodity-culture, going by this assumption, has no value in the fertile universe. The fertile universe is the universe of action where Man uses his/her body to perform acts that are psychically calming.

The more physical and primitive aspects of the film seem to point to this eventuality. The shots of ripe grainfields, the sultry meadows, the hippies on the Last of the Mohicans style river.

Neutral value, as was previously noted, applies equally to the mainstream news that wafts over our heads. There's an assumption of expertise that can't be challenging except by conspiracy theories (as with the 5G/Covid one.) What other news is out there?

Clearly, it's the more primitive, active one that doesn't need to be told things. The universe of opposing elements, and also the one of reciprocal value or real value (body.) Cyclical value in areas of fertility.

When the X-Men are forced to fight the Shi'ar Imperial Guard in the Dark Phoenix cycle (X-Men animation, prev), Beast makes the comment, "Opposition mocks justice"

Alternatively, one could say, "The law is an ass", and sometimes opposition or rebellion is a neat way out. Where justice is a rigmarole, opposition is just, in the sense of being clean-cut.