Intruder
Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2024 12:36 pm
Douglas Mercer
October 5 2024
That the god returns is by now a scene a faire of the drama, it is for free use without licensing as no patent is pending; I’ll be back is the promise of everyone from Jesus Christ, to Douglas MacArthur to Arnold Schwarzenegger; Lovecraft has his Old Ones who return to haunt; they say the past is prologue or maybe it’s just the harbinger of the omens coming on; indeed, they say the past is not even the past. To return is simply to turn again, like one more turn of the screw (I do not hope to turn, Eliot). You can repress it or suppress it Freud says but it will pop up like the Jack In The Box to haunt you at the moment most inopportune; perhaps the monsters are buried in the earth or maybe we create them; in the movie Jew William Shatner plays the intruder as a White racist who causes unrest, which is a transparent trick; will there be clouds of glory? Will we be caught up in the air? Or will a machine descend to cure the earth of the pleurisy of its peoples? On such questions philosophy will always hang. Movies have their jump scares and things that go bump in the night which is also a scene a faire, hoary with time. They say people love scary monsters (as long as it is safely within the confines of the drama but not when we become characters in the game) because it purges us of toxic emotions. Better yet is just not be scared of one’s own shadow. Everyone has bated breath and will feel it in the air that night, after all we have been waiting for this moment all our lives. And at the moment of decision, when the time is right and the truth comes to pass, they will be standing still.
In his 1980 song Peter Gabriel got into the act or into the swing of things:
I know something about
Opening windows and doors
I know how to move quietly
Creep across creaky wooden floors
I know where to find precious things
In all your cupboards and drawers
Slipping the clippers
Slipping the clippers through the telephone wires
The sense of isolation inspires me
I like to feel the suspense
When I'm certain you know I am there
I like you lying awake
Your bated breath charging the air
Intruder's happy in the dark
Intruder come
Intruder come and leave his mark
Leave his mark
Leave his mark
I am the intruder
***
Notes:
Intruder is a song written and performed by the English rock musician Peter Gabriel. The song was the first to use the gated reverb drum sound created by Hugh Padgham and Phil Collins, with Collins performing the song's drum part. The gated drum effect was later used in Collins' own In the Air Tonight, and appeared frequently through the 1980s, on records such as David Bowie's Let's Dance and the Power Station's Some Like It Hot.
Creepy crawl was a method used by Charlie Manson.
A scène à faire (French for scene to be made or scene that must be done; plural: scènes à faire) is a scene in a book or film which is almost obligatory for a book or film in that genre. As such it cannot be copyrighted as the information wants to be free.
From Middle English mark, merk, merke, from Old English mearc (mark, sign, line of division; standard; boundary, limit, term, border; defined area, district, province), from Proto-West Germanic marku, from Proto-Germanic markō (boundary; boundary marker), from Proto-Indo-European marǵ- edge, boundary, border). Mark, tally, stamp.
Now, my excellent friend, said my companion, you are in possession of all you need to follow my argument. We see that in the organic world, as thought grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and decisively. But just as a section drawn through two lines suddenly reappears on the other side after passing through infinity, or as the image in a concave mirror turns up again right in front of us after dwindling into the distance, so grace itself returns when knowledge has as it were gone through an infinity. Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god. Does that mean, I said in some bewilderment, that we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence? Of course, he said, but that's the final chapter in the history of the world.
October 5 2024
That the god returns is by now a scene a faire of the drama, it is for free use without licensing as no patent is pending; I’ll be back is the promise of everyone from Jesus Christ, to Douglas MacArthur to Arnold Schwarzenegger; Lovecraft has his Old Ones who return to haunt; they say the past is prologue or maybe it’s just the harbinger of the omens coming on; indeed, they say the past is not even the past. To return is simply to turn again, like one more turn of the screw (I do not hope to turn, Eliot). You can repress it or suppress it Freud says but it will pop up like the Jack In The Box to haunt you at the moment most inopportune; perhaps the monsters are buried in the earth or maybe we create them; in the movie Jew William Shatner plays the intruder as a White racist who causes unrest, which is a transparent trick; will there be clouds of glory? Will we be caught up in the air? Or will a machine descend to cure the earth of the pleurisy of its peoples? On such questions philosophy will always hang. Movies have their jump scares and things that go bump in the night which is also a scene a faire, hoary with time. They say people love scary monsters (as long as it is safely within the confines of the drama but not when we become characters in the game) because it purges us of toxic emotions. Better yet is just not be scared of one’s own shadow. Everyone has bated breath and will feel it in the air that night, after all we have been waiting for this moment all our lives. And at the moment of decision, when the time is right and the truth comes to pass, they will be standing still.
In his 1980 song Peter Gabriel got into the act or into the swing of things:
I know something about
Opening windows and doors
I know how to move quietly
Creep across creaky wooden floors
I know where to find precious things
In all your cupboards and drawers
Slipping the clippers
Slipping the clippers through the telephone wires
The sense of isolation inspires me
I like to feel the suspense
When I'm certain you know I am there
I like you lying awake
Your bated breath charging the air
Intruder's happy in the dark
Intruder come
Intruder come and leave his mark
Leave his mark
Leave his mark
I am the intruder
***
Notes:
Intruder is a song written and performed by the English rock musician Peter Gabriel. The song was the first to use the gated reverb drum sound created by Hugh Padgham and Phil Collins, with Collins performing the song's drum part. The gated drum effect was later used in Collins' own In the Air Tonight, and appeared frequently through the 1980s, on records such as David Bowie's Let's Dance and the Power Station's Some Like It Hot.
Creepy crawl was a method used by Charlie Manson.
A scène à faire (French for scene to be made or scene that must be done; plural: scènes à faire) is a scene in a book or film which is almost obligatory for a book or film in that genre. As such it cannot be copyrighted as the information wants to be free.
From Middle English mark, merk, merke, from Old English mearc (mark, sign, line of division; standard; boundary, limit, term, border; defined area, district, province), from Proto-West Germanic marku, from Proto-Germanic markō (boundary; boundary marker), from Proto-Indo-European marǵ- edge, boundary, border). Mark, tally, stamp.
Now, my excellent friend, said my companion, you are in possession of all you need to follow my argument. We see that in the organic world, as thought grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and decisively. But just as a section drawn through two lines suddenly reappears on the other side after passing through infinity, or as the image in a concave mirror turns up again right in front of us after dwindling into the distance, so grace itself returns when knowledge has as it were gone through an infinity. Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god. Does that mean, I said in some bewilderment, that we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence? Of course, he said, but that's the final chapter in the history of the world.
