Helter Skelter Vol. 1

Around four years ago, I discovered Christopher Knowles blogspot The Secret Sun.  It was and is a consistently brilliant source of history and insight, and a doorway into the mysteries of our culture.  Thanks to The Secret Sun, I also discovered many other writers in the blogosphere, many of which proved to be just as thought provoking.

I had been an avid reader and student of most of the major names of occult and esoteric field since college, and felt that I had, as Robert Anton Wilson so eloquently put it, constructed a pretty good bullshit detector.  I was confident that these new voices I was reading were no bullshit, and that I was very lucky to have found them.

It was a very lonely journey on the path, but with each new writer I discovered,  I couldn't help feel that I had found "the others".  Slowly, and awkwardly (and sometimes a bit bizarre), I started to not just read the emerging dialogue, I started to also participate in the dialogue.  To be honest, it was probably one of the happiest times of my life.



And then at some point Stanley Kubrick entered the picture.  I don't know the specific article that did it (probably Rob Ager, another brilliant writer and source of endless insight) but I became obsessed.  I had seen most of Kubrick's films, or at least I thought I had, but I had never realized the depth of genius that everyone seemed to be arguing was on display.  I had to know more.  This is where Mark LeClair enters the picture.  No other writer seemed to hint at the Truth (whatever that is) more than Mark.

Over the next few weeks/months, I am going to share the entire e-mail correspondence that occurred between Mark Leclair (The Wrong Way Wizard, Artislav Mel) and myself.  This correspondence reflects the work that ultimately led to the discovery of the Kubrick Transformer.

Unless noted, this will be completely unedited and uncensored.  It is a completely honest account of the research Mark and I shared as we hunted down the mystery.

This first section is a conversation Mark and I had in the comments section at the Wrong Way Wizard blogspot.  I had posted this Top Secret comment in the oldest post at the blog, so that only Mark could read it.  Like I said, awkward, geeky, and a bit mad.  It led to the beginning of the email correspondence that follows.

*I can only speak for myself here, but this correspondence documents an eight month period of intense experimenting and research, and will reflect a process of learning.  At times other people's work will be questioned, and hubris will always be lurking in the shadows.  


From the Comment Section of Angel In The Morning.  I am WK23, and Mark LeClair is Herbie Mimbitz:

March 6-10, 2011

WK23-

I bury this nugget, because anyone on the path should wake to the fact that your blog is a contemporary stepping stone, a brick in the cosmic wall. You do good work. Here is my offering: Inception, pause at 2:03:06. Rewind frame by frame to when the clock hits 2:03:04 exactly. Cue up side one of Meddle and push play on both. Watch. Replay the second time with subtitles. Boo yah. ! .


March 6, 2011 2:38 AM

 Herbie Mimbitz: The Ping Pong Pandava said...

Hey WK23,

I am a Cosmic Class Procrastinator. I have yet to go to the mall which is just across the street, and buy that media. Now I will add Inception to the list. Truth is, doing these Meddle plays has been on my mind non-stop. Why I have delayed allows me to share a bit about my life, in the spirit of our Net Friendship.

I suffer from pretty bad agorapohbia. I don't mind being around others, I have no fear, so to speak, but I can't bring myself to step outside my front door.

The problem started when I was in a bike accident in the summer of 2000. I suffered a head injury and well, I haven't been the same since. For a while things were pretty rough.

Anyhow, I hope this isn't the proverbial "too much information". I don't really feel the need to tell you my life story or anything, but I feel you deserve a comprehensive explanation for why I am so desultory with so much data at the doorstep.

You can count on it that I am very interested in what you may choose to share regarding your own research. I'm am downloading Inception and Meddle right now, and will do the lab tonight.

Pax Owt for Now

Da WWWiz

March 6, 2011 6:02 PM

 WK23 said...

Wiz-

This Meddle/Inception is just a monster, and I am looking forward to hearing your interpretations.

No need to apologize for sharing personal info with me. Too much info is almost impossible these days. Agoraphobia is an awful state of mind. I can imagine how difficult the simple things I take for granted must be. Keep the faith Mark.

March 6, 2011 7:37 PM

 Herbie Mimbitz: The Ping Pong Pandava said...

My Dear WK23,

I have done the Meddle w/ 2001 and The Shining.

Awesome... I mean, what a trip. Jay Weidner proposes the use of "Echoes" over the same 2201 sequence you recommend and all I can say is...score one for WK.

The Shining Meddle is great too, and I spent my day (all of it) looking at it and sliding it over a bit here and there--totally wicked. I have some ideas about the perfect place for it to sit that are a little different than you suggest, and I want to experiment a bit more... but it is all you man. Totally bitchin'.

Haven't done the Incept yet... my download failed.

And what a great album is "Meddle". I had heard only Echoes previously, but I like side one muchos grande.

Thak you, my friend, for the gift of your vision. I might like to do a post on this matter, but will talk more w/you first.

DaWWWiz

Pax Owt for Now

March 9, 2011 2:53 AM

 Herbie Mimbitz: The Ping Pong Pandava said...

WK23,

It is 7 am and I'm still at it.

Boy have I got a find for you, to return the joy as it were. If I am telling you something you have already discovered, then it is a double thank-you from me. Either way, thanks to your Meddle Mash, we both win.

Here are your instructions.

Put your music player on ALL PLAY REPEAT. Very important.

Proceed with the 2001/Meddle Mash according to your discovery. I find it easier to use visual cues, so I line up the first track to begin exactly as the Monolith begins to fade away, at about 2:01:31.

Watch your own discovery unfold before your eyes and prepare yourself for a treat.

When the movie ends, let it (and the music) play on to the final title card which reads THE END.

Here you will need a little volume on the movie track. Listen for the final note of The Blue Danube. When Danube has ended, quickly slide the movie time bar selector all the way back to the beginning of the DVD. The slide should be executed in 1.5 to 2 secs, maximum.

This should take you back to nearly 3 min of black screen (overture) followed by the MGM Title Card, and then the credit sequence and so on. "Echoes" will have been playing for a while by the time the movie proper begins.

Let it play and you will be fucking blown away, my friend.

I'm still watching now, onto the second play of "One of These Days". Up to this point is it really splendid, and I'm gonna stick with it a while longer...

... but up to the end of "Echoes" is fah shizzle most hizzy my nizzy.

Jay Weidner should be so on the money...

Your Meddle Mash is killer.

Pax Owt 4 Now

March 9, 2011 5:36 AM

 Herbie Mimbitz: The Ping Pong Pandava said...

WK

By the end of Danube I mean the end of the phrase. Time code 2:24:25. Slide to the start at this point.

March 9, 2011 6:24 AM

 WK23 said...

Wiz-

Right on. I am excited to take it further with 2001 as you suggest.

Make sure to complete this Meddle Mash with both Inception, and, of course, A Clockwork Orange. ACO doesn't work as a whole as well as the others, but starting at 1:56:00, it delivers some worthy moments. Inception, for me, is really the true fireworks, especially reflecting on the experience of watching it the first time. I really stress taking it in first without subtitles, and second with.

A few notes:

I have been equating the iPhone/iPod with the Monolith for a while now, as I am sure you do as well. In 2001, right before the start of the Meddle Mash, the image of the planets in vertical alignment with the Monolith/iPod completing the Cross resonates with my own completed picture of 2001/Inception/The Shining/ A Clockwork Orange all being projected at once, stacked on top of each other, a cinema totem pole (another Inception image, and a totem)and synched to Meddle. Each film than becomes a planet.

The McCluhan first edition of Understanding Media is eerily similar to the cover of Meddle. The eye on UM, the ear? on Meddle. I forget where I read this but it is dead on.

Weidner's article of the hypersphere is excellent, and ties into the totem image of Inception.

I really believe that the synch of all films together will bring much added value to some of the images.

I actually expect a post from you on this, I don't think there is any one else who can map this out. Just make sure to digest the Inception Mash (one spoiler: Nolan actually works in the image of the album cover).

March 9, 2011 2:05 PM

 WK23 said...

Wiz-

I have a MAJOR work to share with you, probably sometime next week. It connects a lot about what we are discussing in this thread, and I know it will be crystal clear to your critical vision. There are elements that I am happy to broadcast here, buried in this, the first comments section of your blog, but it might be prudent to communicate the initial components of this next discussion via email. I really believe it will be a catalyst to a possible integration of a lot of your ideas.

March 10, 2011 6:56 PM

This series of messages led to the email correspondence that begins here.  The emails are grouped by the title of the email thread.

Back To OZ:  
March 10-15, 2011

Klaus :

My plan was to see if I could synch a film correctly the first time I ever saw it, with out any knowledge of the film.

I think I can carefully go on record as saying that I might be the only person in the world to have experienced this next connection in the theater, and very possibly the only person ever (unless it was executed with intent).  I didn't want to broadcast this one until you have the opportunity to take it in.  Only one other person knows about this, and he's a good guy, also a fan of your work.


I identified my film.  I had a good feeling the film was going to be loaded with imagery conducive to a good synch, but what album?

I had to choose between Meddle and DSOTM, and it became quite obvious which one to use without much thought.

So, I bought a ticket the first week the movie was our, sat in the last row with my iPod, and trusted that I would know when to push play.

Who would have known that it fucking worked.  So well, that I had to leave after one cycle of the album just to process what I had seen (once you see it, you'll also understand that there was almost a built in instruction to leave after one cycle).

I proceeded to go back and watch two cycles, and once again leave the theater.

I returned and finished the film on the third viewing, which took almost three cycles of DSOTM.  I went back a fourth and finally watched the movie without DSOTM.

Just imagine if someone somehow experienced 2001/Meddle the first time they ever saw the film?  Also, to know that the packed audience in front of me was experiencing something completely different--unravelling that dynamic is central to the debate.

Well, I hope you haven't seem the film I'm referring to so you can take it in fresh.

I'm going to see if you can guess the film.

LeClair :

OK, from the hip, I'm gonna guess either No Country or True Grit, but there are a few others that seem possible. The Social Network?


I remember a comment you once made that expressed a mutual interest in the Coen Bros., but I admit I am grabbing at straws. If I am wrong, I'd love a chance at another guess. Give me some kind of a hint. Or if you aren't a fan of such games... please SPILL THE BEANS... you're killin' me here (and I love it).


I am seriously intrigued, and if the flick is still on the big screen, I would love to go and give this a try myslef. I see two or three movies in theater per year, at most, but I can--will--make it happen. For a look at the wonders you have intimated, I would make it happen ASAP. Am I too late?


By the way, now that we are on email and in case you don't already know, my real life name is Mark LeClair.


Pleasure to meet you William Klaus of Yahoo.


Pax Owt and I Await Your Dispatch


You've really got me going. Your title "Back to OZ" makes me think maybe it's Tron Legacy.

Klaus :

The ultimate chaos magick initiation flick for the next generation:  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I've seen the previous films, and actually did this same experiment for the previous Potter.  It is quite thrilling to walk into a movietheater and know that you are "sacrificing" it in some way, in essence, altering the director's version, by receiving it through a filtered lens the very first time.  It is taking control of virtual reality, especially when the masses around you are all under the directors spell, while you are fully aware that you are the only person under a different spell.

I had done the first Dark Potter with "The Half Blood Prince" as a kind of media dare: I would not know the plot, the dialogue, new characters names.  I would have to tell myself my own story based on image and soundtrack alone.  It was incredibly entertaining; I have only seen this movie once, that initial time, and will some day revisit it.

It would be two years before I retried this experiment, but this time I KNEW, or rather, expected some definite marriage between the two.

To repeat, I have not read these books, and in regards to the previous movie, I had "remixed" it into my own story.  "Hallows" was the organic sequel to my own Dark Potter vision. (Obviously, we always tell ourselves our own story of reality, but, well, you know what i'm saying here)

There is no doubt that whatever is bubbling beneath the surface of these types of media marriages/synchs/mash/eclipses is in full focus with DSOTM and the Deathly Hallows.

The film comes out on DVD next week.

Til then:  No Country/Side One of Meddle is nice.  Do this at the BEGINNING of the film.

Tron:Legacy with DSOTM was, in hindsight, actually pretty awesome.

After "Deathly Hallows" registered so completely, I pretty much saw all movies with DSOTM, not necessarily for the synchs (which are there) but mostly to divorce soundeffects/dialogue from film, and focus on IMAGE, and to see what story my brain was telling me based on these images alone  These experiments were over a one month period, and all funnel into my initial readings of McCluhan, and all greatly influenced by a lot of your writing.  Heavy stuff bro.  King's Speech, Mega Mind. Narnia, The Fighter, some Russel Crowe movie I walked into late.  Taking in these films this way had a profound effect on me.

That most amazing part of this process,   based on my experiences,  is how this affected my dreams.  I'm thinking that this is major breakthrough type shit, not sure which direction it will take.

Needless to say, there is a lot going on here.

To conclude:  the synchs made way to the process, the process opened up a conscious dream state.  I call it iAhuasca.

LeClair :

You are becoming my hero. iAhuasca indeed! Brilliant.


The Deathly Hallows Mash, eh? I am into to it. I have yet to see the film, so I have a clean slate for the experience. I'll pop you a line when I've got the movie, to receive my instructions.


Have you tried the Meddle/2001 loop around yet. You won't be disappointed.

Klaus :

Re: 2001/Meddle Wrap Around:  Majestic.  Just a beautiful transition and book end to this work.  Thank you for sharing.  The return "ping" when Moonwatcher looks at the bones about killed me.  Plus, I don't think I'll look at that floating pen in the same way ever again.

I equate the line "One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces" as this type of editing, something impossible in the 1970's.

Google "Meddle Mash", you should get the lyrics to a song by an aptly named artist.

I think the wrap around ends nicely with San Tropez, around 41:28,  when the photographer (young Kubrick) announces that he is through, so that they can announce Dr. Floyd, who begins his speech.  Let the movie take over from there...perfect balance.

One last note:  starting Echoes at 1:37:52.  Subtitles on.

I'm going to say that starting "Seamus" at 1:35:36, and letting the album play out is the one.  Gotta love the teamwork.

Start Inception at 1:37:21 with Seamus.  The story of Mal.

LeClair :

Your interpretation of the lyrical reference to "cut up" is chilling, and I do not choose this term lightly. I hope I can live up to your standard on this, because right about now, I'm feeling it bro, and I am shaken. Have you seen "The Phantom of the Paradise". There are certain pieces of music that are remarkably similar to those found on "Meddle". There is a reference to "cut up", vis, "...all this cutting up ain't easy and it isn't for the queasy or the weak of heart...". The song, called "Life at Last", is on my blog at the very bottom of "Quiz Show Holocaust". There is a musical riff in "Echoes" that is found quite literally note for note in "Somebody Super Like You".


And my dreams are off-the-hizzy lately.


Life at last.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mQ0nzo_rU4


Somebody super like you.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2iHPnmAT0o&feature=related


Something interesting about the initials WK. "Meddle" is 46 minute and 44 seconds long. With track spacing that's about 46:46


Listening to Weidner on RedIce radio.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssnlbnAGGV0&feature=feedu

Klaus :

Using my iPod, I'm starting Seamus at 1:35:35.5, and I'm just in AWE

Gonna check out that Weidner later tonight.

Owsley Stanley died today, nicknamed Bear.  Amazing guy.

Thoughts on Weidner:

It's always hard to process talk of Satanism, especially the whole pedophile/sex/death cult.  I know that it existed or exists in some form, but it just doesn't seem to register as a cult institution.   It seems essentially a societal mirror, or a psychological moat that one must cross.  No one crosses with the guilt of knowing they create damage in the realms of children, sex, and violence.  It seems like a test of some kind.  The Monarch thing seems somewhat legit as a technology.  I have trouble processing those angles.    

I do think that the most evil thing vampiring the world today is pornography, especially Internet pornography.  Vampire city.

The whole Elite thing is an intellectual trap to me, the final tempation of Christ/Buddha.  Maybe Kubrick was deceived, and is atoning with these embedded confessions.  The creepiest connection to his insider knowledge is the sound of the tennis ball in The Shining, echoes of the bodies hitting concrete on 9/11.  I think I might buy into that angle you suggest, that Kubrick knew of the plan.

  I don't really like that Weidner sells his info, makes DVD's.  There has to be some disinformation going with that.  I have to say your blog always has the authenticity of a true seeker.


Start "Seamus" at 1:37:21 in Inception with subtitles.  For 2001, I'm going with 1:35:35.5.  Shame On Us indeed Stanley.

LeClair :

Yeah, I agree about Weidner... he seems to be holding back as much as he reveals. Good for business, I guess. Nevertheless the Monarch, Pedophilia angle is present in Kubrick, especially in The Shining and EWS.


I basically agree with your idea that it is all "some kind of test". But what a test!!


I keep on digging. I have no doubt you do the same. Perhaps we can really break this wide open. I don't know, but I do know I am committed.

Klaus :

So, starting The Shining with Seamus, to complete through side one, the first pings of Echoes strike when Hal and Charlie appear on the radio.

I'm starting Seamus at 1:36:30.  Over Larry's right shoulder is an ad for "pooch" air fresheners, as well as what appears to be a dog in the cartoon on TV.  The Garage is a male version of the Kitchen.  Dig. It.

There's that Grand Piano behind Jack...

The climax to Echoes in The Shining and 2001 seem to focus on the major conspiracies.  Or not.  But something was orchestrated.

Careful With That AXE SprayYou Teen:  
March 16 -18, 2011

Klaus:

Rob Ager's essays have a wealth of insight, but I agree with your opinion that he seems to stop short of piercing certain veils.

I like his cycles of abuse, culminating in the picture of Jacks grandfather at the end.  The abuse/amnesia component works perfectly with "shining".  Sexual and violent abuse is an archaic form of mind control, with healing psychic eruptions, manifested as waking dreams,  paralyze with insight.  But does Kubrick hint at the newer tech, a cleaner form of mindcontrol?  Something not done in shadows, but out in the open? This newer mindcontrol, Kubrick might be suggesting, is escapable as well.  A genetic  "shining", deeper than repressed unconscious "shining", that works with codes rather than simpler forms.  (PKD with his visions).

Ager doesn't seem to make that leap into the non-local weirdness, which is fine, but it shouldn't be ignored.  This must be Kubricks Finnegans Wake, the nighttime  to compliment 2001's  daytime Odyssey.  In space, it is always daytime, the sun always shines.  In the Overlook, it is the son that shines.

LeClair:

I am overwhelmed by events in Japan. My brother and his family live in Tokyo, and he isn't taking it well. My mom has aged 5 years in the last week. I feel , for myself, like I am in suspended animation. I can't seem to think or make decisions. I sleep and listen for updates and nothing else.


Anyway, just wanted to touch base. I have enjoyed your discoveries so much, and hope there is more adventure in the future. Please keep in touch.

Klaus:

Mercy.  Completely understand.  My thoughts go out to you and your family.

LeClair:

I appreciate your thoughts. It's weird. I feel like the world is coming to an end. I want to just forget it and move on, or even revel in it, as I have in past catastrophe, but for some reason this event has heavy hooks in me and I can't shake them.


There are six reactors a Fukushima, each housed in a Cubical Cooling Tower. The two color paint job on the cooling towers are white and pale blue, and looks like sun dappled water. The tower colors are eerily like those on the flag of Israel, which sports the hexagon and in turn the Cube. The Hebrew letter Mem means "water", and the letter form for Mem is described by Kaballists as "cubical". Mem also means "forty". Forty years ago were the events of "Watergate" and not coincidentally, the Fukushima Daiichi Facility goes on line in 1971. The Tepco Logo is devised of Six Rings which harkens both the number Six and also Saturn and its hexagonal polar anomaly. From "tepco" I find "octep" like "octopus" and also "optec" as in "optic".


As silly as is seems, I consider the possibility that Stanley planned all of it.


It is madness, I admit, a divine madness, though.


My thoughts are also with you, WK, whoever you are. Take care of yourself and loved ones in these crazy times... and as it all unfolds, keep in touch.

Visions of Urbana

"We sit here stranded though we all do our best to deny it"

 

"The Ghost of electricity"

open the        e        y        e                                   p        o        d           door HAL

"In this room the heat pipes just cough…"

"And Madonna, she still has not showed

We see this empty cage now corrode

Where her cape of the stage once had flowed

The fiddler, he now steps to the road

He writes every thing's been returned which was owed

On the back of the fish truck that loads

While my conscience explodes"

--Bob Dylan

Overlooking The Perilous Chapel 3: Doc-Man

A Sirius Man Eats Whole Wheat Bread

Samuel Beckett wrote of James Joyce:  "To Joyce reality was a paradigm, an illustration of a perhaps an unstatable rule…It is not a perception of order or of love; more humble than either of these, it is a perception of coincidence."  Before we can comprehend reality, we must perceive it accurately, we must examine closely.

Upon closer examination, the apparent continuity error in the game of chess between HAL and Poole in 2001: A Space Odyssey was not an error, it was simply a bluff made by HAL to gauge the perception of Poole.   This truth, although in plain sight, was buried by Kubrick, and would only be discovered by the majority of his audience until many years later.  It appears Kubrick, like HAL, was also bluffing.  Was it for the same reason HAL bluffed Poole?  To gauge the perception of the audience?  Sneaky bastard.

Joel and Ethan Coen are a couple of sneaky bastards too.

There is nothing wrong with simply appreciating A Serious Man as a dark comedy, or enjoying 2001: A Space Odyssey as an epic special effects driven science-fiction film.  But the Coen's are, as I said, sneaky bastards.  And like Kubrick, they are offering us something much more profound than just a comedy.

In A Serious Man, Lawrence "Larry" Gopnik and Arthur Gopnik are brothers, who both involve themselves with extremely complex and intellectual exercises.  One embodies the madness of artistic creation, the other the burden of proof.   

The Mentaculus

Arthur is a lonely lumpy soul who spends his time gambling, lurking, and obsessively scribbling into print a work called The Mentaculus, a title that conveys a calculus of mentation.  It is his "probability map of the universe", and is written in a language that seemingly only makes sense to Arthur.  One quick glance and it looks as though poor Arthur is quite ill, mentally.  Yet it reminds me of something else written in a language no one can seemingly understand….

James Joyce, one of the most highly respected artists of the 20th century, spent the last 17 years of his life working on what he called his Work In Progress, which eventually became Finnegans Wake.  Finnegans Wake is a work of literature that makes absolutely no sense to 99% of the people who attempt to read it.  The other 1% claim, rather loudly, that it is a work of genius.  It would be a whole lot easier for the majority to dismiss this book if it weren't for the fact that so many intelligent and respected people populate the 1% who revere Finnegans Wake.  What the hell do they know?  What do they see that the rest of us can’t?

It is possible that The Mentaculus is Arthur’s Work In Progress.  Unfortunately, Arthur is living in Minnesota in the 1960's, and cannot command the kind of audience that Joyce did.  We don't even know if Arthur has ever allowed anyone else to read it.  Ironically, he lives with the one person who might make sense of his masterpiece, his brother Larry.

Schröedinger's Cat

Larry is more successful than Arthur, he has a wife and two children, a career, and a solid social identity.  

Larry is very intelligent, a Professor of Physics, and spends his time lecturing on the laws and theorems  calculated by people even smarter than he, yet he remains the epitome of "those who can, do, those who can't, teach."  Larry is shown lecturing on the Schröedingers Cat thought experiment, and it is a good reflection of Larry's life.  Larry is both Teacher and Student, Married and Alone, Faithful and Faithless, Found and Lost.  It all depends on the observer.

Schröedinger's cat is also a good reflection of the Standard Model of Quantum Physics at the moment, as it remains both Fact and Fiction.  The calculations and equations of quantum physicists promise a unified theory of everything, an explanation for the existence of time, space, and the universe that we live and die in.  The mathematical equations have promised that matter is composed of certain scientifically observable objects, the most important being the top quark, the bottom quark, the tau neutrino, and the Higgs Boson,  So far the bottom quark (1977), the top quark (1995) and the tau neutrino (2000) have been discovered, just like the calculations have promised.  But the Higgs Boson remains the elusive companion of this group, and is still referred to as the Hidden Variable.  We can't claim the Standard Model to be fact until this is finally observed.

"In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork". Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark". Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of the gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark", as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork". But the book represents the dream of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau" words in "Through the Looking-Glass". From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark", in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature."

 Murray Gell-Mann

Arthur and Larry (Art and Law), two very different brothers, are actually both searching for the same thing, the hidden variable to life, but all they have to show for in their search is loneliness and divorce.  It is said that it is always darkest before the dawn, and for Arthur and Larry, it's getting pretty dark in Room 2³ of the Jolly Roger Motel.  

"Arthur, you've got to pull your self together"

"It's all shit Larry.  It's all shit."

"Arthur don't use that word."

"It's just fucking shit."

"Arthur."

"Look at all that Hashem has given you.  What has he given me?  He hasn't given me shit."

"Arthur, what do I have?  I live at the Jolly Roger"

"You have a family.  You have a job.  Hashem hasn't given me shit.  He hasn't given me bubkes!"

"It's not fair to blame Hashem, Arthur.  Please.  Sometimes….please calm down.  Sometimes you have to help yourself."

"Hashem hasn't given me shit.  Now I can't even play cards."

We have two brothers embracing in the void of an empty swimming pool, lost in a world where Hashem, the divine God they were raised with, has abandoned them.  

There is a message next to Arthur, (a sign?),  that is painted on the concrete, a message that neither are paying attention to.  The audience is most likely not paying attention to it either.  

The message is never revealed completely, but common sense tells us that 3 FT NO DIVING is painted on the concrete as a warning to those who would jump into the shallow pool.  Nothing profound.  But a knowledge of James Joyce and quantum physics is not a common sense, it is a rather uncommon sense, and in this scene, seen through a lens informed by Joyce and quantum physics, the perception of a very curious coincidence occurs.

James Joyce uses the symbol "Ǝ" in the architecture of Finnegans Wake to represent what the Buddhists call "void" and the Taoists call "wu-hsin" or NO MIND.  This NO MIND represents the "class of all possible minds", meaning the aggregation of all possible minds.  This mind does and does not exist, like that damn cat, and is best expressed in the paradoxical language of mystics and the mathematical equations of quantum physics.  Robert Anton Wilson in his brilliant essays on Joyce equates Joyce's Ǝ with the Hidden Variable of quantum physics.

If we allow ourselves to fill in the missing letters through this lens, this message, written on the edge of a void, might be trying to say:

Ǝ

NO 

DIVINE

WHY?  Well, we have two brothers embracing each other, one a poor man's James Joyce, the other a poor man's Schröedinger, and both are lamenting their relationship to the divine.  The message is both pessimistic (NO DIVINE = NO GOD) as well as optimistic ( Ǝ NO DIVINE =  the Hidden Variable, the class of all things Divine is right by you!).  The Coen's have planted a message that seemingly embraces both the pinnacles of artistic and mathematical expression, a message buried as deep as the bluff of HAL.

But do the Coen's believe that the message is the pessimistic one or the optimistic one?  

There is a clue, another message buried somewhere else in the film, one that is more explicit even though it only appears for a brief second of screen time.  If you are paying very close attention, I think the Coen's are very clear as to their answer, because it seems that the elusive companion of the quarks, the Hidden Variable of the Standard Model of quantum physics is as close to Arthur and Larry as the coincidental message painted in black by the side of the pool.  It's right there in The Mentaculus.

A Really Big Shew Pt. 2: A Quest Called Tribe

Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy: the making of typographic man was published in 1962, and possesses an uncanny understanding of the world we live in today.  The language has a very modern feel, and is even structured in a modern way.   It reads like a newspaper, or more accurately, like a blog, eschewing long chapters for shorter bite sized chunks introduced by microcosmic titles like these:

The Gutenberg Galaxy was theoretically dissolved in 1905 with the discovery of curved space, but in practice it had been invaded by the telegraph two generations before that.

The twentieth century encounter between alphabetic and electronic faces of culture confers on the printed word a crucial role in staying the return to the Africa within.

Why non-literate societies cannot see films or photos without much training.

McLuhan argues that that the phonetic alphabet and the development of literacy had a profound effect on our sense ratios.  It changed the way our brain works.  To build his case, he references a paper by Professor John Wilson of the African Institute of London University from 1961 entitled "Film Literacy in Africa".  Wilson was using film to teach the native tribal people how to read.  A film was prepared to show the proper techniques for removing standing water,  Everything in the film was done slowly and deliberately in order to make clear the instruction.  When the audience was asked about what they had seen in the film, they replied simply that they had seen a chicken, which baffled the filmmakers because they did not know a chicken was in the film.  After carefully reviewing the film the frame by frame, a chicken did in fact appear for about one second of screen time through the righthand bottom part of the screen.

Question:  Do you literally mean that when you talked with the audience you came to believe that they          had not seen anything else but the chicken?

Wilson:  We simply asked them: What did you see in this film?

Question:  Not what did you think?

Wilson:  No, what did you see?

Question:  How many people were in the viewing audience of whom you asked this question?

Wilson:  30-odd.

Question:  No one gave you a response other than "We saw the chicken."

Wilson:  No, this was the first quick response - "We saw a chicken."
Question:  They did see a man, too?

Wilson:  Well, when we questioned them further they had seen a man, but what was really interesting was that they hadn't made a whole story out of it, and point in fact, we discovered afterwards that they hadn't seen a whole frame - they had inspected the frame for details.  Then we fond out from the artist and an eye specialist that a sophisticated audience, an audience that is accustomed to film, focuses a little way in front of the flat screen so that you take in the whole frame.  In this sense, again, a picture is a convention.  You've got to look at the picture as a whole first, and these people did not do that, not being accustomed to pictures.  When presented with the picture they began to inspect it, rather as the scanner of a television camera, and go over it very rapidly.  Apparently, that is what the eye unaccustomed to picture does - scans the picture - and they hadn't scanned on one picture before it moved on, in spite of the slow technique of the film.

Of this McLuhan writes:  "The key facts are at the end of the passage.  Literacy gives people the power to focus a little way in front of an image so that we take in the whole image or picture at a glance.  Non-literate people have no such acquired habit and do not look at objects in our way.  Rather, they scan objects and images as we do the printed page, segment by segment.  Thus they have no detached point of view.  They are wholly with the object.  They go empathically with it."

McLuhan is saying that the human being not subjected to the demands of literacy is simply not  programmed yet.   McLuhan argues that in order to do so, the sense ratios of the human brain must be adjusted like the levels of an equalizer on a stereo.

This is demonstrated quite nicely by the Magic Eye 3D picture phenomenon:

Remember, McLuhan writes that "Literacy gives people the power to focus a little way in front of an image so that we take in the whole image or picture at a glance."  The Magic Eye requires that the observer focus a little way behind the image in order to see the embedded 3D image.  The brain must be adjusted in the opposite manner, an adjustment many people find impossible.  I don't think anyone would judge a person to be of less intelligence for not being able to adjust their senses in order to see a 3D image.

READ MARSHALL MCLUHAN.  

Immersion in the Gutenberg Galaxy has changed the structure of the human brain and has created a kind of tunnel vision in some that prevents them from experiencing the world in a natural way.   I think it helps to explain this:

You can't fault a microscope for not being able to see the rings of Saturn, and you can't fault a telescope for not seeing bacteria.  Each instrument is designed to focus in a certain direction.  A ultra-literate man in a Gutenberg Galaxy simply cannot see or cannot even hear certain things because of the sense-ratios programmed into the brain.

Now, if you were to walk around this subway station with eyes crossed, in the Magic Eye Galaxy, you might get lost in the beautiful sound of the violin, but you also might walk in front of a train.  

READ MARSHALL MCLUHAN

(This large, bold print is only obnoxious to the literate man)

Now, I don't think any of this is breaking news now, and I know most people understand this concept.  But remember, McLuhan wrote about this in the early 1960's, and if you claimed to understand McLuhan in the 1960's you were considered either extremely educated or a liar.  

History is a Nightmare From Which I am

       Trying to Awake  James Joyce

In the modern world, the slightly in front focusing technique of literacy is a requirement, necessary hundreds and hundreds of times a day.  What kind of strain and stress does this require of the brain?  Try to imagine if the slightly behind cross-eyed focus of visualizing the Magic Eye was required hundreds of times a day.   Try to imagine the stress and strain of incorporating that into your daily life, and I think it becomes apparent that any permanent reprogramming of the sense-ratios will have a profound effect on the brain.

McLuhan theorizes that this reprogramming of the mind is not only responsible for tunnel vision, he also theorizes it is responsible for certain types of mental illness, specifically schizophrenia.  Now, obviously if this was a black and white issue, everyone who learns how to read and watches films would be mentally ill, and this is clearly not the case.  But this doesn't mean that McLuhan isn't on to something.  I suggest comparing McLuhan's theory with what we know about alcoholism: some people can drink alcohol, some people shouldn't drink a lot of alcohol, and some people shouldn't drink ANY alcohol.   Literacy, like alcohol, affects different people in different ways.

INSERT REFERENCE TO COSMIC TRIGGER HERE

When I was about four or five years old, my older sister learned how to read.  Now, I had no idea specifically what it was my sister was doing, but I must have recognized that she was receiving a lot of positive attention for doing something I couldn't do, attention that I was jealous of.  This became my first obsession, and with the help of a very patient mother who would read Dr. Seuss books out loud so that I could follow along, I effectively programmed my brain and learned how to read.  Now, I don't have a crystal clear memory of all the details, but I can still recall the feeling of that "AHA" moment, when the markings on the page became words, and the words on the page became sentences, and my brain locked into the ability to read.  It was disorienting and extremely powerful.  A switch had been magically switched and a whole new universe emerged out of thin air.  This is nicely mirrored in the "AHA" moment of the person staring at the Magic Eye picture for forty-five minutes who suddenly sees the 3D image that had been there all along.

I was considerably younger than most when I learned to read.  This distinction gave me all the positive attention that I was looking for.  It gave me identity, as I was now considered "gifted",  and it gave me an incredible amount of confidence.    It also may or may not have been responsible for the emergence of "night terrors".  

  

Everyone knows the image of the frightened child as the boogey man emerges from the closet or the monster under the bed starts to creep.  I might have been afraid of these monsters in my room, but I was deathly afraid of falling asleep, of the monsters in my head, in my dreams.  My mother has told me of the many nights she was awakened by my screams, and of being unable to wake me up as I climbed the walls of my bedroom.   I think about my mother trying to console me, a frightened, suffering child, and not being able to simply because she could not wake me up.  Not good.  But a pretty good metaphor for Human History in the Gutenberg Galaxy.

I don't know for sure if my obsessive quest to reprogram my brain was responsible for the emergence of my "night terrors", but the two definitely seem connected in some way.

INSERT REFERENCE TO VALIS HERE

A Bun In The Oven

McLuhan was an optimist though, and he was very supportive of the new electronic media that was beginning to change the landscape of the world.  In 1961, he predicted that electronic media would reduce the worst symptoms associated with this phonetic dark age within the Gutenberg Galaxy, symptoms best illustrated in the conformity and schizophrenia of Industrial Revolutions and Nazi Germany.   McLuhan saw the rigid border lines of kingdom and country becoming vulnerable to an emerging tribalism that was being made possible by electronic media.

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READ MARSHALL MCLUHAN

It is 50 years since The Gutenberg Galaxy was published, and, as I see it, we are living in the future world that Marshall McLuhan foresaw.   The World Wide Web has replaced the book, the film, and the television as the most ubiquitous form of media in the world.  We literally carry it around with us in our cars, in our pockets, in our schools and in the office. Take a few moments to really grok how many new modes of communication exist, how many new channels of communication it provides, how many new "tribes" are forming.  Facebook is only eight years old, and it has already been turned into a movie, an Academy Award nominated movie.

The dominance and monopoly of The Book is dissolving, and today's students are no longer subjected to hours and hours of phonetic instruction.   Modes of education have become more "empathic", and are not as invasive.  It seems as though the Sensual Revolution is near.

It is important to stress that the World Wide Web is not a Home, or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  It is an oven, a global electronic alchemical oven.  A digital Tower, and successor to that Tower of old, that multi-national alchemical melting pot known as America.  In my opinion, as long as the fires of the Web are burning, we have a fighting chance to improve the conditions of life on this planet.

INSERT REFERENCE TO THE DIVINE INVASION HERE

(or The Invisibles, The Matrix, The Truman Show, Dark City, etc)

Despite All My Rage I Am Still Just Rat In A Maze In A Cage