Watching the Detectives Part 4: Coal Slaw, or Fire Walk With Meme

After a moment Emmanuel said, "Then I can do nothing regarding the universe without consulting you."
     "And you can do nothing regarding the universe that is contrary to what I say," Zina said, "as you yourself decided, in the beginning, when you created me.  You made me alive;  I am a living being that thinks.  I am the plan of the universe, its blueprint.  That is the way you intended it and that is the way it is."
     "Hence the slate you gave me," he said.
     "Look at me," Zina said.
     He looked at her--and saw a young woman, wearing a crown, and sitting on a throne.  "Malkuth," he said.  "The lowest of the ten sefiroth."
     "And you are the Eternal Infininite En Sof," Malkuth said.  "The first and highest of the sefiroth of the Tree of Life."

Philip K. Dick

The Greater Adept's mundane consciousness is portrayed by the yellow of Atziluth. This symbolizes that the person is living through the Individuality instead of being ruled by the Personality. 

Freud wrote, mystified, "The unconscious is not aware of its own mortality," and Aleister Crowley, more perceptively wrote, "The unconscious is aware of its immortality."

Robert Anton Wilson

It should never be forgotten for a single moment that the central and essential work of the Magician is the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. 

Aleister Crowley

Cohle describes the possibility of other dimensions existing, and he says that’s what eternity is.  He says that if somehow you existed outside of time, you’d be able to see the whole of our dimension as one superstructure with matter superimposed at every position it had ever occupied.  He says that the nature of the universe is your consciousness, and it just keeps cycling along the same point in that superstructure: when you die, you’re reborn into yourself again, and you just keep living the same life over and over.  He also explains that from a higher mathematical vantage point, our dimension would seem less dimensional.  It would look flattened, almost.

Nic Pizzolatto

The kabbalists insisted that the Ein Sof and the sefirot formed a unity “like a flame joined to a coal.” 

I plan on writing an epic poem about this gorgeous pie.

Gordon Cole

I see dead people.

Cole Sear

It's like, in this universe, we process time linearly.  Forward. But outside of our space-time, from what would be a fourth-dimensional perspective, time wouldn't exist. And from that vantage, could we attain it, we'd see our space-time look flattened, like a seamless sculpture.

Rustin Cohle

C:\>(MYTH)>RELIGION>(POLITICS)>
SCIENCE>(SCHIZOPRENIA)>MAGI

The Zohar rarely describes the entire sefirotic system.  It even avoids the term sefirot and instead speaks of lights, levels, links, roots, garments of the King, crowns of the King, and dozens of other images for the individual sefirot.  The reader must interpret the symbolism and identify the corresponding sefirah.

As noted above, the term sefirot originally meant numbers or numerical potencies, but in medieval kabbalah the sefirot became stages of God’s being, aspects of divine personality.  Their pattern and rhythm inform all the worlds of creation.  Prior to the emanation of the sefirot, God is unmanifest, referred to as Ein Sof, Infinite, God as Infinity cannot be described or comprehended.  A fourteenth century kabbalist writes “Ein Sof… is not hinted at in the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, or the words of our Rabbis, may their memory be a blessing, but the Masters of Service (the kabbalists) have received a little hint of It.”

Critics charged that the theory of Ein Sof and the sefirot was dualistic, that by positing and describing ten aspects of Divinity, Kabbalah verged on polytheism.  The kabbalists insisted that the Ein Sof and the sefirot formed a unity “like a flame joined to a coal.”  “It is they, and they are It” (Zohar 3:70a).   “They are Its name, and It is they” (3:11b).  From the human perspective, the sefirot appear to have a multiple and independent existence.  Ultimately, though, all of them are one; the true reality is the Infinite.  Nevertheless, the mythological character of the system cannot be denied; it is a prominent feature of the Zohar.

The sefirot are often pictured in the form of Primordial Adam or a cosmic tree growing downward from its roots above.  As the kabbalists were quick to point out, these images should not be taken literally; they are organic symbols of a spiritual reality beyond normal comprehension.

Daniel Chanan Matt and Arthur Green

PORTRAYING THE DEVELOPMENT OF EGO CONSCIOUSNESS

The colours for Malkuth on the Qabalistic Tree given by Gareth Knight in A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism and Dion Fortune's Mystical Qabalah are:

Assiah: black rayed yellow

Yetzirah: citrine, olive, russet & black, flecked gold

Briah: citrine, olive, russet & black

Atziluth: yellow

Of the four worlds we will look at Atziluth as the highest world and Assiah as the lowest. Thus the development of the ego would be from Assiah to Atziluth. In the Assiatic world the colours of Malkuth are black-rayed yellow. When a baby is born it comes into the physical world in an egoless state. The child's mundane consciousness is a blank slate on which the impressions of life will be written. This is symbolized by the black colour. Also black is the colour of Binah in Briah. The child's first impressions of the world are through its mother (before and after birth). The yellow rays are the Spirit which maintains and supports both mundane consciousness and the physical body. As the child starts to mature it comes into contact with the Yetziratic World. This is its own inner world and the desires and needs can be identified. Then an effort can be made to fulfil them. The citrine is a Yesodic colour and shows that the child needs to be nurtured and to develop its imaginative and intuitive faculties. The infant then starts to explore its feelings. The breast feels good and so does sucking on it. Being left alone is painful.

How many parents have had sleepless nights due to babies discovering this fact? This is symbolized by the olive colour which portrays Netzach (instincts, feelings and emotions) coming into consciousness.

As the child grows it starts to learn mobility and verbal communication. After a few years the child becomes a pupil at a school and the years of education begin. Russet is the colour applicable to this phase of consciousness and it symbolizes the Sephirah Hod (communication and intellect). The fourth colour of Malkuth in Yetzirah is black which in this world represents Binah the All Mother. This suggests that good mothering (whichever parent does it) is crucial in the balanced development of the child, especially on all the inner levels of being.



The circle of Yetziratic consciousness starts again at puberty, represented by the citrine of Yesod which starts the full flowering of the adolescent's Netzach with the onset of sexual feelings symbolized by the olive colour. Late adolescent and early adult intellectual maturation is again represented by the russet of Hod. And the Yetziratic wheel spins on. This cycle can occupy the whole of a person's life. How many elderly people have we met who still show this juvenile psychological make-up of Malkuth in Yetzirah? Some people even regress back to infantile psychology through senility. Thus for a lot of people the upper worlds exist only in their unconsciousness.

Before I discuss the Briatic level of ego consciousness, I would like to illustrate the common way that Western Qabalists draw Malkuth in Briah:

The first symbol that struck me was the quartered circle: a sign of unification and balance. The black quarter is at the bottom. On the left is the russet quarter at the gate of the 31st path leading to Hod. The citrine is at the gate of the 32nd path and the olive quarter relates to the Sephiroth at the end of these paths. I think and feel that the energies of these paths flow freely and with full consciousness into the mundane consciousness of Malkuth. Thus the person who can achieve this level of consciousness would be extremely aware of him/herself.

Before the Briatic level of consciousness is opened, the person must go through a crisis. Our Western mythologies support this fact: Christ crucified; Odin hanging on Yggdrasil; the Mad Merlin of the Vita Merlini; and the wounded Fisher King. For a lot of 20th century people, the mid-life crisis can be the impetus to find themselves. For men, it should be the start of raising into consciousness of the Anima (their unconscious female Self). For women, it is the acceptance of loss of fertility due to menopause and thus the integrating of the Bearded Woman who is an aspect of Binah. The black is this crisis and it is at the bottom of our diagram showing that Briatic consciousness is achieved by passing through the Dark Night of the Soul. In the lower worlds I likened the black to Binah; here it is the awakened Shekinah (and it doesn't matter what sex the person is) preparing to meet the Divine Bridegroom.

The spiritual crisis when successfully resolved stops the cyclical pattern of Yetzirah. The inner tides are subdued and brought into balance. Thus the symbol of the quartered circle: this shows that the elements are in harmonious conjunction within the consciousness and are working at optimum levels in the Ego as represented by Malkuth. This is the level of the Lesser Adept. The Greater Adept's mundane consciousness is portrayed by the yellow of Atziluth. This symbolizes that the person is living through the Individuality instead of being ruled by the Personality. The person is consciously living according to Divine Will or, to express it another way, this person is living his/her Dharma. 

Chris Scott

Watching The Detectives Part 3: No Noose is Good Nous

The Hanged Man of the Thoth Tarot still symbolizes the descent of the light into the darkness in order to redeem it, but the word "redeem" no longer implies an existing debt that needs to be paid.  Instead, redemption in the Aeon of Horus is the noble duty of the enlightened to bring enlightenment to the unenlightened.

Lon Milo Duquette

The Hanged Man:  Noose

"I saw you in my dream.  You're a priest too.  I know what happens next, you're in Carcosa now."

Reggie Ledoux

In the Old Aeon of Osiris, The Hanged Man represented the dying God, the formula of the crucified Christ, signifying sacrifice and redemption.  

"I contemplate the moment in the Garden, the idea of allowing your own crucifixion."

Cohle

Lon Milo Duquette writes that "the gesture of Sacrificial Suicide is not only obsolete, it is counterproductive".  This is what keeps Cohle asleep at night:  not only will suicide not work, it is a step backward.  He has no choice but to forge ahead.

The Yellow King:  Nous

In the New Aeon of Horus, The Hanged Man is a card of sacrifice and duty.  On the Tree of Life, The Hanged Man falls on the 23rd Path, that of Mem, the path of the mystic, the annihilation of self.   This is not a journey to the great beyond, but rather a journey inward.

Mem-Brain Theory

We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, this accretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each 
somebody when, in fact, everybody's nobody.

Cohle

The formula of the old Aeon is LVX as found concealed within the keywords INRI-IAO… LVX, lux, the Light of the Cross: the dying and resurrecting god-trip, which formerly opened the Gates to the Temple of Initiation, as seen in the Adeptus Minor ritual of the Golden Dawn. It has been superseded by a new formula: NOX, the Dark Night of the Soul, the Night of Pan…

L.V.X.

“The Night of Pan is the Annihilation of All.”

Further still…

“This is the Night wherein I am lost, the Love through which I am no longer I”

Beth Kimbell

Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink behind the lake,

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,

And strange moons circle through the skies,

But stranger still is

Lost Carcosa.

Are you Lost?

"You're a Priest too."

Redemption is a bad word; it implies a debt.  For every star possesses boundless wealth; the only proper way to deal with the ignorant is to bring them to the knowledge of their starry heritage.  To do this, it is necessary to behave as must be done in order to get on good terms with animals and children: to treat them with the absolute respect; even, in a certain sense, with worship.  Note on the Precession of Aeons:  "The Hanged Man" is an invention of the Adepts of INRI-IAO formula; in the Aeon previous to the Osirian, that of Isis (water), he is "The Drowned Man".

Aleister Crowley

Watching The Detectives Part 2: Form and Void

"People out here, it's like they don't even know the outside world exists.  Might as well be living on the moon."
"Can I ask you something?  Are you Christian?"

"No."

"Well then what do you got that cross up there in your apartment?"
"That's a form of meditation."
"How's that."
"I contemplate the moment in the Garden, the idea of allowing your own crucifixion."
"But you're not a Christian.  So what do you believe?"
"I believe people shouldn't talk about this shit at work."

"I tell what I have seen and what I believe; and whoever shall say that I have not seen what I have seen, I now tear off his head.  For I am an unpardonable Brute, and it will be thus until Time is no longer Time.  Neither Heaven nor Hell, if they exist, can do anything against this brutality which they have imposed on me, perhaps so that I may serve them….Who knows?  

In any case, in order to lacerate me.

What exists, I see with certainty.  What does not exist, I shall create, if I must."

Antonin Artaud

HBO's True Detective premiered on January 12, 2014, 42 days before the 25th anniversary of Laura Palmer's death on February 24th, 1989.  This is appropriate because True Detective works like the magical child of David Lynch's strange and mystifying masterpiece.  And just like Twin Peaks, everything that happens in True Detective takes place within a dream.  A nightmare.

The mystery before us then is, whose dream is it?

history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake
James Joyce

why should I live in history, huh? Fuck, I don't want to know anything anymore.
This is a world where nothing is solved.  Someone once told me, "Time is a flat circle.
Everything we've ever done or will do we're gonna do over and over and over again."   
Rustin Cohle

in eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow.  Nothing can become.
Nothing changes.
So death created time to grow the things that it would kill and you are reborn but into the same life that you've always been born into.  I mean, how many times have we had this conversation, detectives? Well, who knows? When you can't remember your lives, you can't change your lives, and that is the terrible and the secret fate of all life.  You're trapped by that nightmare you keep waking up into.    Rustin Cohle

In 1995, a young woman is found murdered, and two CID homicide detectives are called in to investigate a crime scene that suggests ritualistic intent.  The case of Dora Kelly Lange is officially opened.

Our first clue that we are in fact in the world of the dream is that the case of D. Kelly Lange is reopened 17 years later.  This not only mirrors the 17 years it took James Joyce to write his epic book of dreams Finnegans Wake, it also mirrors the structure of the book, as the final sentence on the last exhausting page of FW does not bring closure, it simply reopens.

Coincidence?  

Our second clue is embedded in the title of the first episode,  "The Long Bright Dark".  This is a pretty decent description of a dream.  It also includes the last name of our victim, as "Lange" is German for "long".  "The Lange Bright Dark", maybe this is simply Lange's dream (maybe TP was Laura's dream?).  If I was murdered, I would hope that my life warranted a thorough investigation, and that brave individuals would risk their lives to bring my killer to justice.  Let's look a little closer before we close this case.

Our next clue is the spiral symbol painted on the body of the deceased.

Grand Guignol

Where else have we seen that symbol?

Log Boy

The spiral symbol painted on the body is the same spiral symbol we find in front of another haunted detective (also hunting an underground chemist), and is utilized as a kind of logo for the 'Pataphysics of Alfred Jarry.

This term 'Pataphysics first appears within the text of Jarry's play Guignol, and the most direct definition is "that which is above metaphysics" (or shit you don't talk about at work).  The killer's use of the symbol is odd.  The murder scene suggests the use of sympathetic magic, a work that is "below metaphysics" (below not in a critical sense, but in a directional dense).  Something very bi-polar is going on here.

From Antonin Artaud's The Alfred Jarry Theater:

Our inability to believe, to accept illusion, is immense.  Dramatic ideas no longer have for us the brilliance, the bite, that quality of something unique, unprecedented, whole, that continue to characterize certain ideas in literature or painting.  The moment we introduce this idea of pure theater and try to give it concrete form, one of the first questions we must face is the question whether we will be able to find an audience capable of giving us the necessary minimum of confidence and trust, capable, in short, of joining forces with us.  For, unlike writers, or painters, we cannot do without an audience; indeed, the audience becomes an integral part of our undertaking.

To entertain someone pataphysically, to take an audience's thinking beyond metaphysics requires an absolute shit-ton of confidence and trust.  I consider David Lynch to be the consummate pataphysician of our time.  He bravely recognized that the American television audience was ready for the pataphysical mind-fuck of Twin Peaks (bi-polarity) in 1990.  If True Detective really is the magical child of Lynch, it makes sense then, at least for me, that the best way to approach True Detective is pataphysically.  Like a true detective (we have a title!).

In The Alfred Jarry Theater, Artaud insists that the audience plays an integral role in the success of the show.  He demands that for the theater to work, there must exist at least a "minimum of confidence and trust" within the audience.  The bare miminum of this confidence and trust is represented in the character of Detective Martin Hart.  His shallow, hypocritical defense of the sanctity of marriage and his eye-rolling disdain for anything beyond his ken will clearly not solve the case, but his participation is still essential.  As much as they would like to believe, pataphysician's do not exist within a void, even they require someone with heart, someone a little more grounded in "reality" to make sure that they don't go too far off the rails, and Woody fulfills his role admirably.

The person closest to our Tall Man, our true detective, is the one with the tall boy, a Lone Star trekking across the desert abyss with his trusty Camel.

"I don't sleep.  I just dream."

Detective Rustin Cohle can't sleep.  He can't sleep because he already knows he is in a dream ("a jury rig of presumption and dumb will . . . it was all . . . a dream you had inside a locked room.  A dream about being a person").   He continues to search for clues because he isn't quite sure the dream is his or the killer's, or someone else entirely.  If he was sure it was his dream, he would just put a bullet in his head and end it.  But if it is indeed the killer's dream, a bullet in his head won't solve a thing.  The nightmare won't end until he puts a bullet in the killer's head.

As Cohle searches for the killer, we realize what he is really searching for is salvation.  Not the kind that is promised by ordinary metaphysics, and not the kind delivered by sympathetic magic, but the kind that promises the total annihilation of doubt.  The answer not to "what?" but to "why?".

We are told that you're supposed to fit your experience into the model which science gives you, which is probabilistic, statistical, predictable, and yet it's…..The felt datum of experience is much more literary than that.  I mean we fall in love, make and lose fortunes, we inherit houses in Scotland, we lose everything, we get terrible diseases, we're cured of them, or we die of them, but it all has this sturm und drang aspect to it that physics is not supposed to have but which literature always has and I think, I don't know if it's true, but what I think Joyce believed and what I'm willing to entertain at some depth is the idea that salvation is somehow an act of encompassing comprehension.  That salvation is an actual act of apprehension of understanding.  And that this act of apprehension involves everything.

Terence McKenna

Dale Cooper played the role of our true detective in TP.  He spent two seasons searching for the killer of a young woman, searching for salvation.

Salvation?

There was also a physician in TP, Dr. Lawrence Jacobi, played by Russ Tamblyn.  

RussT.

It is no coincidence that Dr. Jacobi looks like Terence Mckenna, because the character was based on Terence McKenna.  McKenna is most widely known for his views on psychedelic drugs, but for those who really spend time with his work, you will find him to be one of the more astute pataphysicians around.  His examinations of Joyce, coincidence, and the plain old weird happenings of life in the twentieth century led him to a pretty bold conclusion:

I think that the whole of the twentieth century is informed by this hyper-dimensional understanding, and that, you know, Jung tapping into it in the twenties, the Dadaists in 1919 in Zurich, the surrealists, even earlier the Ecole de Pataphysique, Lautréamont, Jarry, all of these people…it’s what it’s about.  

Terence McKenna

We are asleep in a nightmare called history.  We will never achieve salvation (wake up) until we solve the mystery before us, until we catch the killer whose crimes keep happening over and over and over again.  Joyce, Lynch, McKenna, and now Nic Pizzolatto, are compelling us to join forces with them, because even they can't do it all by themselves.

A.A.:  Lone Star In Sight

For a long time I have felt the Void, but I have refused to throw myself into the Void.  I have been as cowardly as all that I see.  When I believed that I was denying this world, I know now that I was denying the Void.  For I know that this world does not exist and I know how it does not exist.  What I have suffered from until now is having denied the Void.  The Void which was already within me.

Antonin Artaud

"You ever heard of something called membrane theory, detectives?" 

 "It's like, in this universe, we process time linearly.  Forward. But outside of our space-time, from what would be a fourth-dimensional perspective, time wouldn't exist. And from that vantage, could we attain it, we'd see our space-time look flattened, like a seamless sculpture. Matter in a super-position—every place it ever occupied. Our sentience just cycling through our lives like carts on a track. See, everything outside our dimension—that's eternity. Eternity looking down on us. Now, to us, it's a sphere. But to them, it's a circle."

THERE IS NO MORE FIRMAMENT

Hear Here Part 3: Is It Shining

"A more perfect Logos" is what we are looking for.

Why is that two people can watch a film by Kubrick and come away having seen two radically different films?

The Logos is essentially an informative type of thought; Homer was the first rockstar of the Logos, as he orally communicated the story of Odysseus.  The oral transmission is one step down, one degradation of the Logos.  Think of it in terms of Beethoven's music: "you think this is good, you should hear what I hear."  Beethoven heard the "pure" sound, and did his best to translate it with the instruments available to him.

In an effort to preserve the Logos of Homer, the story was written down into manuscripts, a second degree of degradation.  In an effort to preserve the sound of Beethoven, he wrote the sheet music.

Logos>Homer>The Odyssey
Sound>Beethoven>Sheet Music

Depending on how much you agree or disagree with McLuhan, typographic print is a degradation of manuscript.

Modern film (sound and vision) degraded the Logos even further.  Just like hearing Beethoven on CD is degraded from a live orchestra.

Logos>Homer>The Odyssey manuscript>The Book>The Film

We always say "the book is better than the film" because we are closer to the source, the Logos.   This is why we have only one Wizard of Oz book, but ten different filmed versions of it.

Film is an extension of man;  if clothes are an extension of skin, film is the extension of dream.  When Kubrick says "If only you could see the film I have in my head" he is saying "If only you could see the dream I have in my head."  Kubrick utilizes the best of what is available to bring the Logos through to us.  This is why he delayed projects for years (AI) because he needed new technology to better bring the vision to us.  After watching Kubricks initial representation of the dream, we attempt to reduce by association:  turn the film into an audio-book, something closer to literature, something closer to the Logos so that we may better see Kubrick's dream.

To make this more explicit, Danny figures out how to escape the nightmare by retracing his steps.  

Defending The Dream, W. Klaus

Disorient the senses.  Meditate, intoxicate, abstain, or indulge. Explore the wider range of seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling.  New and unusual thoughts rise to the surface.  Discover new facets of creation, new facets of the creator.

Disorient the media.  Cut-up, juxtapose, reverse, mash-up.  Explore the wider application of sound, color, form, narrative.  New and unusual thoughts rise to the surface.  Discover new facets of the art, new facets of the artist.

The first time I disoriented the media was when someone suggested that I isolate the left stereo channel while listening to “Strawberry Fields Forever”.  If you haven’t done this before, try it out.  And play it LOUD.  You’ll discover just how much of a bad ass Ringo was.  It's a simple little trick, but worth it when you find buried treasures like this.

Lot Wizards

I discovered a new way to disorient the media thanks to those old-school? wizards the Flaming Lips.  Zaireeka, released in 1997, included four separate CD's designed to all be played at the same time.  After the novelly of the project wore off, I was inspired to experiment with my own record collection.  I spent a few months playing more than one album at a time, sometimes three or four, to see if they merged into something more than just chaos.  I mean, what else are you gonna do with your Sven Väth CD’s?

It quickly dawned on me that DJ’s do this all the time, with more defined edits and more complex equipment.  But there was something slightly more organic, more archaic, this way.  Sure, more often than not the product of these experiments was pretty bad, but every now and then a certain synergy would take place that was oddly listenable.  Fine, blame it on the weed, but it was exciting!  These experiments were intriguing enough for me to finally go ahead and watch The Wizard of Oz with Dark Side of the Moon.

Even though I entered into Dark Side of the Rainbow with incredible doubt (doubt is essential), the experience of watching Dark Side of the Rainbow blew me away.  Really, it changed the way I looked at everything.  There wasn't any specific moment that I really held onto, it was more the overall ebb and flow, as well as the opportunity to experience a film and album that I had seen and heard my whole life in a completely different way.  With just one viewing, both the album and the film transformed for me, but I wasn't exactly sure how.  No surprise, I soon began experimenting with combining other films and albums.

It Is Shining

For me, all great art, regardless of form, delivers an undeniable excitement, and a distinct feeling of awe.  These different experiments helped me to recreate that initial excitement.  As a bonus, I was discovering details and themes that had otherwise escaped me.   All because of a few simple but unorthodox twists and turns from the norm.  Too much time on my hands, maybe, but fuck the critics, this shit works. 

Link

Over the last year, I have been experimenting with a new technique.  Instead of isolating the images of certain films, I have taken to isolating the audio of films, and listening to them as if they were audio-books.  This would have been incredibly difficult 25 years ago, but it is ridiculously easy today.  Simply download a film to an iPhone, put headphones on and the phone in your pocket, and walk outside your front door.  I'm sure this seems rather unexciting, and often times it can be.  But like any "book," it all  depends on the "author".  I first got inspired to do this while walking through Lincoln Park Zoo.  Having no music I wanted to listen to, I remembered that I had downloaded 2001: A Space Odyssey to my phone.  Inspiration for me usually presents itself as a good joke, so, up for a laugh, I fired it up.

Go do this, it is incredible madness.  Especially if you are high at the zoo.

A Clockwork Orange followed a few months later, which was a complete and total revelation.  It was as if I had never seen the movie before.  It just completely changed for me, and I haven’t re-watched the movie proper since.  Not sure if I ever will.

And then it hit me.

Just like the "aha" of  “To Serve Man,” the title of Kubrick's last film became an explicit instruction, a reversal of the Ludovico brainwashing technique.

So eyes wide shut.  Yeah, that destroyed me.

The next film up for my listening pleasure was, obviously, Kubrick's swan song.  Until I listened on headphones, I wouldn't have considered Eyes Wide Shut Kubrick’s masterpiece.  But things change.  Why do we consider just the visual architecture of Kubrick's work?  His arrangement of sound is just as incredible, and when isolated, reveals deeper elements of his genius.

Wing Boss

At this point in my re-education of Stanley Kubrick, and of film in general,  I started feeling that my excitement wasn't in the realm of "discovery".  I wasn't revealing anything that wasn't there, and if I was simply late to the party, that was ok.  I just felt lucky enough to have found the password.

I considered booting up The Shining next, but decided instead to go with Dr. Strangelove.  I'm not sure why I avoided The Shining, maybe I was saving the best for last?  Anyways, Strangelove was an utter disappointment.  Meaning, it was...boring.  And the same thing with Lolita.  Nothing really grabbed me with these experiments.

And then I put off these experiments for months.  I'll say this, I never felt like this was something to do indoors.  Intuitively, it just seemed like something to do outside.  So fall turned to winter, and the lab was closed.

After staying inside for most of the winter, on a lovely spring day, I decided I needed to get out side for a walk.  To keep me company, I downloaded The Shining to the phone and stepped outside.  It was time.

The opening music began playing and it was as haunting as it ever was, but larger.  So large it felt like I might get devoured.  And it seemed to last an eternity.  Then I saw it.  I mean, I saw it man, it was crystal clear.  A green grassed playground, filled with children laughing and playing.  And a dog.  I mean, it was all just there.  For the life of me, I had never seen a playground in that movie before, ever.  I stood motionless in the middle of the sidewalk, intent on rewinding to restore my sanity, when the conversation between Danny and Wendy ruined everything.

          "Anyway, there's hardly anybody to play with around here."
       "Yeah I know." 

When I watched The Shining traditionally, like normal folk, I never saw the playground,  My ears might have picked up the sound, but I didn't see it, and it's impact on the conversation between Danny and Wendy was purely subconscious.  It was only when I removed the images and isolated the sound that I discovered the reality of this playground, the absolute sadness of it, and it's impact on the story.

Was the inclusion of this audio picked at random or was it intentionally placed?

 -What is a ghost?  Stephen said 

with tingling energy.

Hear Here Part 2: Hardly Anybody

In the film version of Stephen King's novel The Shining, Stanley Kubrick plays the role of Wendy.  Well, Shelley Duvall plays the role of Stanley Kubrick playing the role of Wendy.  Our first clue that this is the case is when the camera first pans in to the apartment complex where Wendy and Danny are eating breakfast.  The clue isn't obvious at first, especially upon an initial viewing of the film, but it is loud and clear, especially if you are able to listen to the film on headphones (I highly recommend listening to the entire film on headphones only; you will be amazed at the things you "see").  It is one of Kubrick's cruelest jokes as well.

As the camera pans in, we can hear, out of sight, but obviously present, the sound of a very crowded playground.  We hear the sounds of many children laughing and playing in the morning sun.  It would seem impossible that these children are unattended, so it is safe to assume that there are at least a few parents supervising the fun.  Most likely these are the children and parents who live in the same apartment complex of the Torrances.

As the camera makes it's journey indoors to the kitchen where Danny and Wendy are reading and watching, the dialogue addresses Danny's growing confusion about what the hell is going on, and, with the flattest of flat affects, Danny challenges his mother yet again with a completely false statement of fact.

          "Mom?"
          "Yeah…"
          "Do you really wanna go live in that hotel for the winter?"
          "Sure I do, it'll be lots of fun."
          "Yeah.  I guess so.  Anyway, there's hardly anybody to play with around here."
          "Yeah I know.  It always takes a little time to make new friends."

What bullshit.  Danny can not only hear what's going on outside his windows, he has probably driven by that playground full of kids many times.  His eyes and ears tell him that there are plenty of nice people having fun, plenty of friends to be made, but his mother, his protector, tells him no.  This perversion of reality is a confusing and bizarre game for a six year old child, let alone an adult, to endure.  The psychic stress of this discrepancy between reality and authority compels little Danny to look deeper, beyond the surface reality of his surroundings, in order to reconcile the "illusions" that are so damn confusing.

          "Yeah, I guess so."
          "What about Tony, he's looking forward to the hotel I bet."
          "No I aint missus Torrance."

Enter Tony.  Tony is the fractured part of Danny's personality, the only voice of reason who isn't afraid to speak the truth.  Tony exists to express the truth for Danny, as violence and or verbal abuse seem to be the consequence of choice for getting out of line.  But not for Tony.  Tony is imaginary.   When the shit hits the fan, Tony disappears before anyone can lay a hand on him.

It is curious that Tony speaks in slang, and not the proper grammar of a school teacher.  This introduces the first connection between Danny and Dick Halloran, who, one assumes, adopts a different mode of speaking when removed from the stilted confines of the Overlook Hotel, and who also knows the frustration of having one's personality fractured by a dishonest and repressive regime.

          "Do you know why I pulled you over Mr. Halloran?
          "No Officer, I don't."
          "Do you khow fast you were driving Mr. Halloran?"
          "Yes Officer, the speed limit is 55 mph and I was driving 55 mph."
          "Step out of the car Mr. Halloran."
          "I don't know why I have to-"
          "STEP OUT OF THE CAR."

Stanley Kubrick, in his role as Wendy, assures the audience that what they are about to watch is a movie version of Stephen King's best-selling novel, The Shining.  It has all the characters, it takes place in the same hotel, and it describes all of the frightfully spooky action of the book.  But the Danny's in the audience realized that Stanley was lying.  The smart ones saw through the Stephen King cover story.  And, like Danny, were probably shamed by popular opinion when expressing an alternative view.  Of course Stanley, like Wendy, knew the cover story was crap, but if given the choice between explaining the real horror of the situation, or telling a story, both Stan and Wendy protect the story at all costs.

Enter Room 237.  Rodney Ascher's documentary spotlights our imaginary friends, our Tony's.  Our truth telling weirdos, freaks, and nut jobs who aren't afraid to speak up, who have seen through the bullshit and are speaking up to defend the battered senses of the confused.  These brave voices, like Tony, strive to reveal something that we used to see and hear clearly, but have been battered and hammered and taught to ignore.

Hear Here: The Disappearing Right Hand Path

"Isn't this where we came in?"

An excerpt from an early, unpublished draft of The Hallows of Death, written sometime in 1995:

Late in the day, when school ended, Harry Potter decided to try the Hermetic transform once again, so that he would know the world around him.

     First he speeded up his internal biological clock so that his thoughts raced faster and faster.  He felt himself rushing down the tunnel of linear time until his rate of movement along the axis was enormous.  First, therefore, he saw vague floating colors and then he suddenly encountered the Watcher, which is to say the Boggart, who barred the way between the Lower and the Upper Realms.  The Boggart presented itself to him as a nude female torso that he could reach out and touch, so close was it.  Beyond this point he began to travel at the rate of the Upper Realm so that the Lower Realm ceased to be something but became, instead, a process;  it evolved in accretional layers at a rate of 31.5 million to one in terms of the Upper Realm's time scale.

     Thereupon he saw the Lower Realm-not as a place-but as transparent pictures permutating at immense velocity.  These pictures were the Forms outside of space being fed into the Lower Realm to become reality.  He was one step away, now, from the Hermetic transform.

     The final picture froze and time ceased for him.  With his eyes shut he could still see the room around him; the flight had ended; he had eluded that which pursued him.  That meant that his neural firing was perfect, and his pineal body registered the presence of light carried up its branch of the optic conduit.

     He sat for a little while, although "little while" no longer signified anything.  Then, by degrees, the transform took place.  He saw outside him the pattern, the print, of his own brain; he was within a world made up of his brain, with living information carried here and there like little rivers of shining red that were alive.  He could reach out, therefore, and touch his own thoughts.  The room was filled with their fire, and immense spaces stretched out, the volume of his own brain external to him.

     Meanwhile he introjected the outer world so that he contained it within him.  He now had the universe inside him and his own brain outside everywhere.  His brain extended into the vast spaces, far larger than the universe had been.  Therefore he knew the extent of all things that were himself, and, because he had incorporated the world, he knew it and controlled it.

     He soothed himself and relaxed, and then could see the outlines of the room, the coffee table, a chair, walls, pictures on the walls:  the ghost of the external universe lingering outside him.  Presently he picked up a book from the table and opened it.  Inside the book he found, written there, his own thoughts, now in a printed form.  The printed thoughts lay arranged along then time axis which had become spacial and the only axis along which motion was possible.  He could see, as in a hologram, the different ages of his thoughts, the most recent ones being closest to the surface, the older ones lower and deeper in many successive layers.

     He regarded the world outside him which now had become reduced to spare geometric shapes, squares mostly, and the Golden Rectangle as a doorway.  Nothing moved except the scene beyond the doorway, where his mother rushed happily among tangled old rosebushes and a farmland she had known as a child; she was smiling and her eyes were bright with joy.

     Now, Harry thought, I will change the universe that I have taken inside of me.  He regarded the geometric shapes and allowed them to fill up a little with matter.  Across from him the ratty blue couch that Ron Weasley prized began to warp away from plumb; its lines changed.  He had taken away the causality that guided it and it stopped being a ratty blue couch with Butter Beer stains on it and became instead a Hepplewhite cabinet, with fine bone china plates and cups and saucers behind its doors.

     He restored a certain measure of time--and saw Ron come and go about the room, enter and leave; he saw accretional layers laminated together in sequence along the linear time axis.  The Hepplewhite cupboard remained for a short series of layers; it held its passive or off or rest mode, and then it was whisked over into its active or on or motion mode and joined the permanent world of the phylogons, participating now in all those of its class that had come before.  In his projected world brain the Hepplewhite cabinet, and its bone china pieces, became incorporated into true reality forever.  It would now undergo no more changes, and no one would see it but he.   It was, to everyone else, in the past.

     He completed the transform with the formulary of Hermes Trismegistus:

     Verum est . . . quod superius est sicut quod inferius et quod inferius est sicut quod superius, ad

      perpetrando miracula rei unius.

     That is:

     The truth is that what is above is like what is below and what is below is like what is above, to

     accomplish the miracles of the one thing.

     This was the Emerald Tablet, presented to Maria Prophetissa, the sister of Moses, by Tehuti himself, who gave names to all created things in the beginning, before he was expelled from the Palm Tree Garden.

     That which was below, his own brain, the microcosm, had become the macrocosm, and inside him as microcosm now, he contained the macrocosm, which is to say, what is above.

     I now occupy the entire universe, Harry realized;  I am now everywhere equally.  Therefore I have become Adam Kadmon, the First Man.  Motion along the three spacial axes was impossible for him because he was already wherever he wished to go.  The only motion possible for him or for changing reality lay along the temporal axis; he sat contemplating the world of the phylogons, billions of them in the process, continually growing and completing themselves, driven by the dialectic that underlay all transformation.  It pleased him;  the sight of the interconnected network of phylogons was beautiful to behold.  This was the kosmos of Pythagoras, the harmonious fitting together of all things, each in its right way and each imperishable.

     I see now what Voldemort saw, he realized.  But more than that, I have rejoined the sundered realms within me;  I have restored the Shekhina to En Sof.  But only for a little while and only locally.  Only in microform.  It would return to what it had been as soon as he released it.

     "Just thinking," he said aloud.

     Hermione came into the room, saying as she came, "What are you doing, Harry?"

     Causality had been reversed;  he had done what Voldemort could do: make time run backward.  He laughed in delight.  And heard the sound of bells.

     "I saw Chinvat," Harry said. "The narrow bridge.  I could have crossed it."

     'You must not do that," Hermione said.

     Harry said,"What do the bells mean?  Bells ringing far off."

     "When you hear the distant bells it means that the Saoshyant is present."

     "The Chosen One," Harry said.  "Who is the Chosen One, Hermione?"

     "It must be yourself," Hermione said.

     "Sometimes I despair of remembering."

     He could still hear the bells, very far off, ringing slowly, blown, he knew, by the desert wind.  It was the desert itself speaking to him.  The desert, by means of the bells, was trying to remind him.  To Hermione he said, "Who am I?"

     "I can't say," Hermione said.

     "But you know."

      Hermione nodded.

     "You could make everything very simple," Harry said, "by saying."

     "You must say it yourself," Hermione said.  "When the time comes you will know and you will say it."

     "I am--" the Wizard said hesitantly.

     Hermione smiled.


I never fully understood Harry's relationship to Voldemort, or why Voldemort was threatened by a child until I read this.  It wasn't Harry's ability to resist the Dark Arts that threatened Voldemort; he would have been perfectly fine if Harry had ignored the Dark Arts altogether.  What most threatened Voldemort was Harry's ability to master the Dark Arts, his ability to control them, something Voldemort never could.  That's some pretty deep shit.

This Is Your Drugs on Brain

The above story is a fake.  The "early, unpublished draft of The Hallows of Death" is actually a mash up of Philip K. Dick's The Divine Invasion with Harry Potter.  Other than some of the names, J.K. Rowling had nothing to do with it.

Hardcore Harry Potter fans probably recognized the shenanigans right away and stopped reading before I even had the chance to confess.  Casual Potter fans probably sensed it was some kind of a fan-fiction stunt but stuck around long enough for the punchline.  To the observant Dick-heads?  We are a fractured bunch, so I have no idea.  And to the few of you that might have trusted me, I apologize.  If you feel deceived, deception was not my intention.  Let me try to explain.

Mash ups are everywhere.  In music, film, collage, video games, anything really.  The most complex field to utilize mash ups is probably quantum physics.  Finished in 2008, the Large Hadron Collider is a high-energy particle collider designed to test out and prove different theories about particle physics.  It mashes and smashes like a beast.  The most famous function of this nine-billion dollar machine was to find observable proof of that elusive particle known as the Higgs-Boson, which for decades existed only as a mathematical theory.  Amazingly, only five years after the completion of the LHC, those incredibly smart people working at CERN provided observable proof of it's existence, which means apparently one of two things.  Either millions now living will never die OR everyone living right now is already dead.  That's some pretty deep shit too.

I wonder what Marshall McLuhan would think about all of this?  I think he would laugh at first and then calmly explain to the perplexed that the Large Hadron Collider is also a fake, a ridiculous, expensive fake.  The real technology, the largest high-energy particle collider ever made, is that great gray lump in your head, and every second of everyday it is busy mashing and smashing every conceivable component of reality.  And this is just when we are awake!   When we go to sleep, or when we ingest certain plants, we really let the fucker rip.

So why build the LHC?  Why the fake?  And what does this have to do with Roger Waters?

"So ya, thought ya, might like to go the show….."  

R.W.

Nu-Beta Blues Pt. 5: The Magic Theater is Not For Everybody

“In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.” 

Herman Hesse