Blackstar Child

I'M NOT A WHITE STAR

I'M A BLACKSTAR

Start David Bowie’s Blackstar 4.4 seconds after the end of the Intermission of
2001: A Space Odyssey.  Allow album to repeat.

 

 Burroughs took another stiff drink and shook his head. 

"But why do they leave so much of it out in the
open? I mean, not merely the really shocking things you told me about the Bugs Bunny cartoons, but putting the pyramid on the dollar bill where everybody sees it almost every day?“

"Hell," Stanley said, "look what Beethoven did when Weishaupt illuminated him. Went right home
and wrote the Fifth Symphony. You know how it begins: da-da-da-DUM. Morse code for
V—the Roman numeral for five. Right out in the open, as you say. It amuses the devil out of them to confirm their low opinion of the rest of humanity by putting things up front like that and watching how almost everybody misses it. Of course, if somebody doesn't miss something, they recruit him right away. Look at Genesis: 'lux fiat' —right on the first page. They do it all the time. The Pentagon Building. '23 Skidoo.' The lyrics of rock songs like 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'—how obvious can you get? Melville was one of the most outrageous of the bunch; the very first sentence of Moby Dick tells you he's a disciple of Hassan i Sabbah, but you cant find a single Melville scholar who has followed up that lead in spite of Ahab being a truncated anagram of Sabbah. He even tells you, again and again, directly and indirectly, that Moby Dick and Leviathan are the same creature, and that Moby Dick is often seen at the same time in two different parts of the world, but not one reader in a million groks what he's hinting at. There's a whole chapter on whiteness and why white is really more terrifying than black; all the critics miss the point"

"Osiris is a black god" quoted Lynch. 

Robert Wilson

Dumb America Pt. 4: President Trump

Dumb Starbucks

Dumb CBGB's

Dumb America

"That airport CBGB's...it's clearly a Nathan For You type think piece.  I think it's fantastic.  A commentary on cultural appropriation in the smartphone age.  Hilariously subversive don't you think?  You can really see the dividing line in this country between those that get it and those that don't."

Donald Trump,  Hilton Head, SC 12/30/2015

Trump #23: Save Ferris

Dumb America:  The Final Joker Card of Anti-Novelty

Dumb America Pt. 3: Synchronisieren Titten

"Bless Madison Ave zur Wiederherstellung der magischen Kunst der Höhlenmenschen zu suburbia"

"Mit Informationsflut konfrontiert , haben wir keine andere Wahl, als die Mustererkennung"

"Sentimentalität , wie Pornographie, ist fragmentiert Emotion ; eine natürliche Folge einer hohen visuellen Gradienten in jeder Kultur"

Marshall McLuhan

Er saß eine kleine Weile, obwohl "kleine Weile" nichts mehr bedeutete. Dann fand nach und nach die Transformation statt. Er sah außerhalb von sich das Muster, den Abdruck seines eigenen Gehirns; er befand sich in einer Welt, die aus seinem Gehirn bestand, in der lebendige Informationen hin und her transportiert wurden wie kleine Flüsse aus leuchtendem Rot, die lebendig waren. Er konnte daher die Hand ausstrecken und seine eigenen Gedanken berühren. Der Raum war von ihrem Feuer erfüllt, und riesige Räume erstreckten sich, das Volumen seines eigenen Gehirns außerhalb von ihm.i

IPhilip  K. Dick

Dumb America Pt. 2: "Have You Ever Seen 2001....on Marshall McLuhan?"

"I blame Sirius!  I blame the Grateful Dead!"

                                                                                                                                        

"What is The Message?"

"Well, how we missed it no one knows, but Nicky Tomalin, a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Chicago, is working on deciphering it with a team of cryptologists at a research think tank called Cypher.  Dr. Tomalin is trying to decode a message received from outer space seventy years ago, we think."  

"Come on!  That’s a good set up, I’m interested."

"I'll be honest with you.  Driving around in my car, and I'm feeling relaxed because I enjoy driving.  But, uh, ok...I'm gonna cop to it.  I'm thinking like, 'Maybe a little weed would be nice'.

*

"When you’re a sober person yr like 'shit man, I shouldn’t be thinking about weed, where’s that coming from?  I better get to a secret society get together and get straight with my program'."

Stella Blue

"But I couldn't figure it out man, I was feeling' pretty good, yet I'm still thinking about smoking weed.

And then I put it together."

*

"I know why I wanted to smoke some weed.  I know what reawakened that urge in my mind and in my heart"

"I blame Sirius!  I blame the Grateful Dead!"

All quotes from WTF Episode 654

--  When you’re a typographic-man you're like "I shouldn’t be thinking hyperdimensionally, where’s that coming from?  I better get to a Book club and get linear with my sense-ratios."  --

*Magic Eye is a series of books published by N.E. Thing Enterprises (renamed in 1996 to Magic Eye Inc.).  The books feature autostereograms (precisely, random dot autostereograms), which allow some people
 to see 3D images by focusing on 2D patterns   Wikipedia

Dumb America: Metamorphosis by Chiasmus

"Ask not what Marshall McLuhan can do for you..."

"I have read Finnegans Wake aloud at a time when takers of LSD said 

'that-is-just-like-L-S-D'.  

So I've begun to feel that LSD may just be

 the lazy man's form of Finnegans Wake."

Marshall McLuhan

"I have taken LSD at a time when readers of Finnegans Wake have said

 'that-is-just-like-Finnegans Wake'.  

So I've begun to feel that Finnegans Wake may just be 

the working man's form of LSD."

Watching The Detectives Part 5: The Hipster Awoke Before Dawn

The hipster subculture is one of affluent or middle class young Bohemians who reside in gentrifying neighborhoods, broadly associated with indie and alternative literature, a varied non-mainstream fashion sensibility (including vintage and thrift store-bought clothes), generally progressive political views, organic and artisanal foods, and alternative lifestyles.  The subculture typically consists of white millennials living in urban areas.  It has been described as a "mutating, trans-Atlantic melting pot of styles, tastes and behavior".

wikipedia

"Rabbi's of old called students of Kabbalah aged 40 and under "hipsters" because, intellectually speaking, they stood only as tall as the Rabbi's hips"

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.