Douglas Mercer
August 21 2024
Before you can say come and go
And breathe twice and cry so so
Each one, tripping on his toe,
Will be here with mop and mow.
Many have had their memory systems based on buildings or some other imagined artifice where one can put the image at sites and return to it later; it’s a technique like any other, but Occam’s Razor posits that one should be rid of all unnecessary entities in a radical simplicity; the best system is simply to use words themselves as sites, the words then support like bone; ever changing quicksilver and protean language is alive, and is a living entity, it the true mother of the muses, and the daughter of time, and it’s swirling forms sweep through the world, say something, and then quickly move away like a lingering but vanishing smile. Language is the sum of everything said and as such is a growing and moving target but though there is no privileged position (other than the one you find yourself in) some bits of language are closer to the center; most is but chatter that is swept away, but language proper is in formation always and trying to say what it wants to say, once and for all. One day it will write a poem in a letter, now that we are getting the faculty together, once the thinking is correct.
Some posit that the cosmos is alive and that cosmologists should behave like biologists but that’s not true; cosmologists should behave like philosophers; language is alive but philologists (word lovers) should not behave like biologists but literary scholars.
The poets are now the acknowledged legislators of the world, the ones who are legitimate. And when the canaries rise alive from the coalmine the workers can strike the ore.
In Cornflake Girl (1994) Tori Amos creates a female figure who was never a cornflake girl but rather hung with the “raisin girls,” that is she is not a “normie” but a bohemian: it is said she has gone to the other side and is giving us “the heave ho”, that is trying to pull the rest of us to the pool of thought; going to the other side is a common trope for esoteric knowledge, crossing the River Styx to the land of the dead and returning, break on through to the other side (Doors); She then says “she knows what’s going on” that is she has secret knowledge of the workings of the universe (I am Superman and I know what’s happening, Stipe); and then she reiterates that she had gone to the other side but this time she has done so with her encyclopedia; Eliot says something similar when the speaker in Animula when he is perplexed by his experiences of synchronicity says the small soul curls up behind the Encyclopedia Britannica. This runs correctly but also counter to the main strand of mysticism (the cloud of unknowing) by correctly valorizing knowledge. Finally she ironically says this is not really happening but then emphatically contradicts herself by saying you bet your life it is, leaving in no doubt that “this” is real, that this is in fact happening, she will swear to it on her very life.
In Slippery People (1984) David Byrne references a tub from which the water is being drained (see Pool Of Life, White Biocentrism, August 14 2024). Being drained are “little creatures” which come to life (see The Winter’s Tale, 1609 when the statue comes to life, the inanimate becoming animate, Pygmalion). By saying “try to recognize what is in your mind” he shows that he is one of the secretly organized who has found the method, as it is the inner contents of one’s mind, when taken in their totality, which lead one to the solution; “don’t play no games” is an ironic reference to the fact that it is a game, or rather has aspects of game playing but is deadly serious and in that sense is no “game”; the slippery people are an ironic idol or emissary of the god who will “help us understand”; but then they will leave and we will be on our own, a reference to the fact that the purpose of the creator is to make us independent of itself so we will be free, having created our own parentage we will assume adulthood as independent gods; the speaker says “you best believe this thing is real”; which possesses the exact same meaning as “this is not really happening—you bet your life it is.” Naturally the common understanding must deem such statements as farfetched, outlandish and indeed impossible; but the speaker in both songs challenges this simplistic notion and assures them that all is true.
It is obvious from these songs that both Amos and Byrne have gone into the cybernetic field or pool where the sacred information flows but is it clear that they are not circulating near the center; indeed, Byrne says god help us help us lose our minds, and his most famous quote is stop making sense; indeed, losing’s one mind in a psychotic break is the hallmark danger of the dreamer but the faculty must be kept together; we can make the necessary connections; and Amos ends her song by saying “the man with the golden gun thinks he knows so much”; here we can see that she has yet to reach the merging and sublimity of Toast (see Toast, White Biocentrism, June 29 2024). In fact having given “thinking” a try it’s not a matter of thinking we know so much; and if you wonder why I stood in a field of rye and was washed in an English rain. Just watch the word and listen for the peal. No doubt this is an odd way of doing business but there is a reason; and the truth is plain to see. Either way the only thing you can be sure of is that that Holy Ghost and those vestal virgins are heading for the coast; if you look closely enough you can see them leaving now, and they won’t be coming back.
***
Notes:
The story of the breath of life in a statue has parallels in the examples of Daedalus, who used quicksilver to install a voice in his statues or to make them move; of Hephaestus, who created automata for his workshop; the trope of a sculpture so life-like that it seemed about to move was a commonplace with writers on works of art in antiquity. An example of this trope appears in William Shakespeare’s play, The Winter’s Tale, where the king of Sicily is presented with an extremely lifelike statue of his wife (which is actually his wife, long presumed dead).
Never was a cornflake girl
Thought it was a good solution
Hanging with the raisin girls
She's gone to the other side
Giving us the yo heave ho
This is not really
This, this, this is not really happening
You bet your life it is
It's a peel out the watchword
She knows what's going on
Gone to the other side
With my encyclopedia
Thought that was a good solution
Where did you put the keys, girl?
And the man with the golden gun
Thinks he knows so much
Walk lightly
Think out of a time
You best believe
This thing is real
Try to recognize
What is in your mind
These slippery people
Help us understand
Don't play no games
From the bottom to the top
See for yourself
Turn like a wheel inside a wheel
God help us
Help us lose our minds
I remember when
Sitting in the tub
Pulled out the plug
The water was running out
Cool down
Stop acting crazy
They're going to leave
And we'll be on our own
They were living creatures
Watch them come to life
Right before your eyes
The heavy burden of the growing soul
Perplexes and offends more, day by day;
Week by week, offends and perplexes more
With the imperatives of " is and seems"
And may and may not, desire and control.
The pain of living and the drug of dreams
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Everything is connected, everything in the Creation: this is the ontological underpinning of Pynchon’s mindboggling formal audacity. The world is a unified field; its power explicates itself in discrete entities. A market needed no longer be run by the Invisible Hand, but now could create itself — its own logic, momentum, style, from inside. Putting the control inside was ratifying what de facto had happened — that you had dispensed with God. You experience a singular point, a discontinuity in the curve of life—do you know what the rate of change is at a cusp? Infinity, that’s what! That’s getting hit by lightning, folks. And lo and behold, it turns out you’re not alone. They’re out there, the lightning-struck, the secretly organized.
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Douglas Mercer
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Douglas Mercer
- Posts: 10963
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
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Douglas Mercer
- Posts: 10963
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
