Kinda feels like I’m an astronaut who can’t pay attention. Other interpretations welcome.
I’ve been pretty stuck lately, hard time writing, harder time finishing anything. This drawing was just a bunch of doodles that didn’t mean anything, but it kinda shows where my head’s at lately. Lots of activity underneath, not much happening in my consciousness.
There’s a place in the eye where the nervous system meets the retina. That area can’t detect light. There’s a simple experiment you can do that will show you where it is.
What blows my mind is you have to try to see it. It’s not a black spot. It’s a blank spot. Same color as the background. Your mind fills it in with what it assumes must be there.
There are conditions that make it obvious. When I have a migraine (it’s been a while thank God), I can’t see what’s in the very middle. I had a migraine on press day once. Reading words on a screen was excruciating. I could only see the edges of whatever I looked at. Luckily I spent a little time in a dark office and it went away.
The old woman I met on a Greyhound bus once, was an even more extreme example. She said she couldn’t see the middle of anything. It sounded pretty disabling, but she seemed to get a kick out of it.
“I looked out the window at my little weenie dog yesterday and he was just a dog’s head attached to a tail,” she said. “Then he turned to look at me and he disappeared. Haw haw.”
I’ve been pondering what all that implies. First of all, it’s always possible you could miss little things, just because you literally can’t perceive them.
You don’t even have to get into how we can’t see infrared or ultraviolet. There are just… holes in our perception. Our brains hide them from us.
If a critter had been riding on that woman’s dog, she never would’ve seen it.
If you have reasonably good eyesight, it isn’t likely that anything you need to see will be hiding in your blind spot. But it could.
We can only see, hear, feel and taste what our bodies will allow. There will always be a layer between us and what’s truly there.
I was in the pool this morning and couldn’t resist staring at the light show on the wall and ceiling. It was beautiful, like fire, but not. I think I was the only one who noticed.
Got me thinking about the nature of things, and how so much of what we think of as real or solid, is just a pattern caused by ripples crashing into one another.
I wonder if you had enough computing power, could you examine the reflected light and discern how many people were in the pool and what they were doing?
As my exercise class got underway, the ripples of reflected light became more chaotic, as we thrashed around with our styrofoam “weights.” I thought how hard it is to detect a pattern when there are so many patterns going on all at once.
So much of what we take for granted makes sense when you think about it that way – society, culture, politics. Ripples intersecting – and the interference patterns they create.
Can you think of those 3D-looking shapes in the center as “objects” or are they just the effect of the concentric circles that make them up? I think culture is like one of those shapes, an interference pattern.
Interference patterns fascinate me. Back when I was a college art student, I got on an Op Art kick.
It was apparently fashionable in the 60s to decorate clothing and other items with distorted black and white checkerboard patterns. Most of it was eye-poppingly hard to look at, but the principle of it attracted me.
Especially the moire effect – the crazy patterns created when things like window screens and lace curtains intersect.
This was long before I had a computer, so all I had to work with were a compass, paper, pen and ink. My mother got annoyed over it. “We sent you to school to study art and you’re sitting around drawing circles?”
And distorted checkerboard art, which I decided was cooler.
Particle physics fascinates me. Muonium is a thing! Who knew? I at least try to follow news from the Large Hadron Collider. I know just enough to be dangerous, but I am familiar with the idea that a thing can be a wave or a particle depending on how you look at it. How strange.
It occurs to me lately that Western culture has maybe leaned a bit too hard on the particle side of things. Particles are like bricks. You can make things out of them. What would it feel like to see more of the world as waves?
Even a mountain is a kind of wave. Just an incredibly slow one. Usually. Icelanders can verify how fast and wavy “solid rock” can become. The crust of the earth floats on a sea of hot magma. You have to expect there are going to be ripples.
Cultures are like ripples, and ripples intersecting with other ripples. Sometimes, maybe most times, what you see as a defining pattern is an intersection of other patterns.
I think of a culture as concentric circles of influence. Art, music, movies, ideas about the world, how it works, how it should work, who’s good, who’s bad, what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s important, what isn’t.
There are dissonant ripples within. There are ripples from outside. The patterns get messy and chaotic like the lights on the wall when we began to splash around.
And sometimes they come together and form a new pattern, recognizable as an object. The ideal is to appreciate the beauty of that pattern in itself and not think you can or should pull the concentric circles apart.
I think Americans have been going through an identity crisis for quite a while now. What are we? People try to identify with one heritage or another, but it doesn’t quite capture it.
I’ve decided American culture is an interference pattern. We’re the shapes created when those circles intersect, not any of the constituent parts. I think that’s a better metaphor than melting pot. We’re not just this mushy stew. People abroad can tell we’re Americans.
They don’t recognize us as Europeans, Africans, Asians or what have you. We have an identity. It’s just not an easy to define identity. We’re like that light show on the wall at the pool. And I kinda like that.
Just watched Dune 2 for the second time and it was a very different movie this time. But this time, I tried a little experiment. I decided to pretend like I believed in magic and see how it came across.
That’s where Dunes 1 & 2 succeeded magnificently. The fact that you can choose to do that or not and the movie still works is ingenious.
I think Villeneuve managed to do something Damien Walter has been calling for in his essays: bring the mythos back to the modern world. He gave us a story that kind of reenchanted the world.
The modern world has improved a lot of people’s lives, but at the same time taken away a lot of meaning. I don’t think people live well without meaning.
The fact that people are discussing and arguing about their interpretations of the Dune movies and books is a very good sign. I look forward to seeing more like it. Hopefully Dune Messiah will get made.
Where it falls short for me
I’m not sure how effective Villeneuve or even Frank Herbert himself have been at spreading these messages: 1) Beware of following charismatic leaders and 2) absolute power will rob you of your humanity.
The problem with the first message is point of view. In Dune, the Fremen chose Luke Skywalker and ended up with Darth Vader. But the main character is not one of the Fremen.
Most people, particularly young men, are going to root for Paul Atreides all the way to the end, no matter how dark he gets.
Hollywood let the hero off the hook in the Star Wars trilogy. In this story, Luke was always going to choose the Dark Side.
To get the point across, I think we needed a main character who believed in Paul and became disillusioned. Something like a first person account of a Bedouin warrior who believed in T.E. Lawrence then saw his people freed from the Ottomans, only to wind up under the thumb of the British.
Villeneuve made Chani a stronger character than she was in the book in an attempt to get Herbert’s main point across. I felt it: Paul had betrayed his lover and the Fremen. What a shame.
But not everyone did (I saw someone say Villeneuve did it to please SJWs). The problem is Chani wasn’t the main character. People were still excited about Paul’s victory. Chani was just an acceptable casualty.
Watching Dune 2 as if I believed in magic made the power more… powerful. It felt like metaphysical cocaine, pouring out of the screen. Intoxicating.
Regarding point number 2, the darkness of power… well, that’s just a hard message for anyone to get across. I’ve never published a book or directed a movie so who am I to judge?
In particular, how are you going to convince young men who feel they have little or no power that absolute power wouldn’t be a bitchin’ great time?
It’s one of the worst addictions you can have, because you need it to survive. It’s like food. Not having it could kill you.
And yet I agree with Herbert’s point. Absolute power will take your humanity. The fact that major powers looking to one-up one another find it acceptable to threaten each other’s populations with nuclear destruction is rather monstrous, isn’t it?
Empires used to just sack each other’s cities and leave it at that.
Herbert makes his point by portraying power-hungry characters as ugly. The Baron Harkonnen is Jabba the Hut. Leto II turns into a worm.
Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings makes the same point: Don’t go for the One Ring or you’ll turn into a gigantic flaming eyeball.
The problem is, I think Herbert and Tolkien underestimated the number of guys who aren’t afraid of turning into a giant worm or a flaming eyeball.
My drawing capabilities aren’t what they used to be, but this is close.
When I was two I dreamed I was inside a playland of soft clear tubes, inflated with air like the bounce house at the kiddie park.
Countless children filled the tubes, which appeared to be endless. It should have been a fun dream, but it wasn’t.
Children slid down slides. They shouted and squealed. They tossed beach balls around.
There were no adults, only small children. Everyone could play and play as long as they liked.
And all around was that clean yet cloying smell. The smell of fun, the smell of a new toy, the odor you could taste when you stuck it in your mouth.
It should have been fun. But that clean yet cloying smell was wrong in a way I couldn’t explain.
The fun went on forever and no one was in charge. I was uneasy. I didn’t know how to feel.
Anytime I smell a beach ball, buy new shower curtains or blow up an air mattress, I get a flashback to that dream. It’s the fragrance of fun, but still I feel uneasy.
I put a lot of stock in dreams, especially the ones that stick around. Sometimes it takes years to understand them, sometimes I never do. But they feel like messages.
I’m not sure why the above dream stuck around. Maybe it was toddler’s version of the Rapture Machine dream. A hint of falseness about the world I was being sold.
I loved Godzilla movies when I was a kid. I saw Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster(Godzilla vs. Hedora) in the theater. My brother was crazier about Japanese monster movies than I was. “Dear God, please don’t let a giant monster step on my house. Amen.”
Most of those movies were targeted at kids and were a lot of fun. As an adult, Godzilla movies have not impressed me. Until Godzilla Minus One. I didn’t expect to receive so much food for thought.
Setting the story in post-WWII Japan gave the movie an interesting dynamic. Especially since the main character was a failed kamikaze pilot. I cared about the characters and their predicament.
Instead of a disaster movie with a giant lizard, we got a man finding his purpose. Risking his life for his community, regular people dealing with an existential problem the “powers” were too preoccupied to take care of.
I’ve been told Godzilla represents the atomic bomb for Japan, but I think it goes deeper. I think it’s an expression of a hyperobject – something big and amorphous and impossible to ignore. Like global warming or the Cold War.
I’ve just begun reading Timothy Morton’s book about the concept, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World. I’ll get into it in this space once I’ve finished.
A while back I wrote that the movie Cloverfield is the best attempt I’ve seen to portray a distinctly American hyperobject – the imaginal monster that confronted us during 9-11.
I thought it might be interesting to compare the two hyperobjects based on some of my impressions from Godzilla Minus One. You could sum both imaginal monsters up as “powerful thing that might wipe us out,” but Godzilla has its own character.
Godzilla is Japan specific in a number of ways. For one thing, I feel like there’s an element of punishment. Shintoism has the concept of a Kami, a godlike entity that sends a tsunami when you’ve pissed it off.
Maybe throw in some resentment over how your cities got nuked thanks to the hubris of your leaders. getting nuked over the hubris of your leaders. And anxiety over being caught in the middle of an existential game of chicken.
I thought of that in the movie when the U.S. wasn’t available to help with the monster because it didn’t want to inflame the Russians. When monsters fight you’re bound to get trampled.
America’s “monster” a bit different in that there’s an element of Damocles’ sword. Having the power of a king means having a sword hanging overhead by a hair. America took on the role of a superpower and it still didn’t make us safe.
It isn’t just a king on a throne looking up nervously. It’s the whole country and in fact, the whole world.
Civilian populations are now bargaining chips. Because of us. Maybe it was called for at the time, but in any case, the bomb is one hell of a hot potato. And like the Japanese in Godzilla Minus One, we don’t really enjoy being put in this position.
There’s a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
When I think of it, it’s all the same monster though it shows different faces to different cultures: the thing that shouldn’t exist, can’t be ignored and can’t be defeated.
“History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man… Godzilla!” Blue Oyster Cult got it.
Outlaw country singer Johnny Paycheck, CB’ing truckers for a cocaine hookup. From Tales from the Tour Bus.
I’ve been amazed, learning all sorts of insane lore about various outlaw country artists.
I found out about this series of videos via Bill Burr’s podcast. I’m kinda like he is about it. How did nobody tell me about this? It’s hilarious.
Mike Judge, creator of Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill and a whole lot of other great stuff, made a series called Tales From the Tour Bus. It’s apparently on Hulu which I’m not gonna get, but I’ve been watching these little shorts on YouTube.
The stories are insane. Of course I’d heard stories about guys like Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis being into drugs, but I had no idea how crazy the scene got.
You have to watch this one, where George Jones develops multiple personalities, one of which talks like Donald Duck and gets in arguments with his old man personality.
The above two videos are pretty damn crazy. Billy Joe Shaver shoots a guy through the cheek in a bar fight (he lives) and gets away with it in court.
When people call this stuff outlaw country, they mean OUTLAW country. These guys lived like gangsta rappers. It’s barely even a question of whether they were good or bad. They were a mess. Alcohol cocaine mental illness and guns.
And yet I love a lot of these songs. I probably would no matter what I learned. I’m not a huge country fan, but when I hear them I remember the words. They were part of my childhood.
Which got me thinking about the whole “can you separate the art from the artist?” question. I don’t think we have much choice especially once a work of art becomes part of the culture.
You can cancel Michael Jackson but it’s too late to cancel Thriller. Some things want to be in the culture and they’re going to be in it whether you like it or not.
I like how philosopher Timothy Morton refers to songs as entities in this exchange with Bjork. Entities… Not quite alive, but not exactly “things.” Almost spirits, because they can inspire.
Sometimes I feel like art wants to get into the world and it only needs a vessel. I don’t think it has a moral preference as long as it finds one.
For some reason I haven’t been in a writing mood. I’ve been in a movie watching mood – which has me back in a writing mood.
I’ve seen around eight movies since Christmas, some very good, some that at least made me think. Movies that make me think qualify as good even if they make me squirm.
I’ve been watching them differently. Or at least more consciously. I recently discovered Science Fiction YouTuber/Writer/Blogger Damien Walter, who talks about our movies having a mythos – the dreamlife of a culture.
He makes a pretty good argument. There are certain tropes, character types, surprise blockbuster and slow burn classics, that just have to tell us something about what we didn’t know we were thinking.
It’s going to take a while to write down those thoughts, so I’ll start with a list of the ones I feel motivated to write about: Godzilla Minus One, Beau Is Afraid, The Batman, Videodrome, The Colony, Anon.
I also saw The Boy and the Heron, at the theater, but I don’t have much to say about it at the moment. I’ll see it again sometime when I can pause it to the bathroom. Maybe I’ll have more to say then.
I know it’s heresy, but I haven’t really enjoyed Miyazaki’s movies, despite their reputation, except Howl’s Moving Castle. I still want to see Graveyard of the Fireflies if I can find it. I respect him, he just doesn’t speak to me.
Not right now, but youwill be eventually, or someplace like it. We all will. What will the future make of us?
Thoughts and dreams emanate from the human race, crashing into rocks and soil above. Rocks and soil that don’t yet exist.
Most disintegrate on impact. Some are caught between layers of sediment, never to be seen. Some wait, like treasures or bombs, and explode into minds and cultures all over again.
Only to be reentombed after the cultures that found them have had their day.
That image popped into my head when I think about archeology. Particularly discoveries like Plimpton 322, a 3,700 year old clay cuneiform tablet that pushes back the discovery of trigonometry by over 1,000 years.
Plimpton 322, the clay tablet that shows the Babylonians invented trigonometry more than a thousand years before the Greeks.
Babylonian trigonometry used base 60 math, as opposed to our base 10. I find that fascinating, because we didn’t have to dig up base 60. We already use it to tell time and map the globe. They passed the baton and when it was our turn, we grabbed it.
At first I wondered if a 60-fingered alien taught the Babylonians to count, but if you use your thumb to count the segments of your fingers, you get 12 per hand. Count 12 on the five fingers of your other hand and you get 60.
How do we project thoughts and ideas and relics “up” into the future? I think of it like a psychic cannon or a big shotgun, but it’s nothing we do intentionally. We’re just living our lives.
The art we make, the towers, the symphonies, the museums and libraries, the ephemera we leave behind. They’re all part of that energy wave telling the universe “this is who we are.”
Consciously or otherwise, the human race tries to push its way through as many layers of future rock as possible. We’re doing it now. Whether we’ll succeed, we can never know.
But I’m pleased we’re still picking up those transmissions. Maybe we’ll find something else we’ve missed that could help us launch our cultures further into the rock.
You might have royalty in your family tree, but if you go back far enough, they were all just people. People who danced and told stories around the fire, people who hunted with spears and plucked food from the ground.
Their world was full of spirits and the sun and moon were living things.
Modernity has mowed down or absorbed most of the “people of the earth” at this point.
Somewhere along the line, we decided those ancestors were barbarians, savages. How embarrassing.
When I watch them I can’t help but feel like they have something we don’t. We, being the citified folk whose bare feet never touch the ground.
We’re civilized now, don’tcha know. We have running water. We wear shoes. Meat comes from stores, cut into pieces and neatly wrapped. Hunting is only for sport.
There are so many layers between us and the ground we can’t tell what’s real anymore.
I’m mostly thinking city culture and modern living. Losing the idea of the family farm even. These days you never have to touch soil with your bare skin if you don’t want to.
I grew up in the country. I wasn’t surrounded by unspoiled nature, but by farms and ranches. Most of my settler ancestors left that life a long time ago. Still it felt like the land was ours.
We went barefoot in the summer and swam in rivers and stock tanks. We climbed barb wire fences and went fishing in creeks.
Now I’m a city person of sorts. It’s not a large city, but I’m not country anymore. As I got older the culture began to chafe. I felt bored and restricted. I became disillusioned with the religion and politics. I wanted to be sophisticated and modern. I refused to listen to country music out of spite. It took decades to afford it but I needed to live in a city. And I was right. It’s the closest thing I can get to finding a tribe. But something is missing. I get sadder about it every year. I didn’t understand how much I needed the country. And city people who never had it just know they’re missing something.
We gained a lot when we built our civilizations. But it came at a cost and I think we know it.
I’m a native Texan. These days we’re mostly just regular Americans.
But there was a time when we were something else. We had customs, an accent that’s growing less common.
We also used to hand folk songs down the generations. We had family members who could play the fiddle.
We gave most of that up so we could become modern. Nashville reminds us of what we gave up. It’s not the same. But at least now we get to have air conditioning. I have a Norwegian friend who reads folk tales religiously, reads them to his kids. Some of them are quite dark and they can get nightmares. I have nothing like that and I’m jealous.
I suspect that drive explains the rise of New Ageism and practices like neopaganism. We’re trying to reestablish something.
You must be logged in to post a comment.