View From The Treetops (1 Aug '06)

Lebanon

Just how accurate are those Israeli missiles?

The school bullies are out of control.
The Teacher has no desire to control them and is using them in order to lay claim to the playground. Everybody’s lunch money is up for grabs.

Robert Fisk gives a ground level view from a Red Cross vehicle in Lebanon.

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Beirut

a nice chat - Mazen Kerbaj

For non-verbal commentary from Beirut I advise everyone to check out Mazen Kerbaj’s Kerblog.
While managing to be simultaneously serious and humorous this is some of the most original and powerful artwork I have seen in a long time.

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A Scanner Darkly

As a long time fan of the works of Philip K. Dick I am getting used to being disappointed by film adaptations of his stories.
Some come close to capturing the atmosphere (Blade Runner) but Hollywood cannot (or will not) do without a hero, so Dick’s usually confused main characters are invariably beefed up to Tom Cruise type requirements.

Some time after writing A Scanner Darkly (Pub 1977) Dick suffered a schizophrenic interlude, or as he claimed, was contacted by god or rather a Vast Active Living Intelligence System (VALIS).
He wrote two versions of the story: Valis and The Divine Invasion in an attempt to portray what he came to understand during his epiphany.
Both are well worth reading.
A Scanner Darkly is however the peak of his writing career, a career spanning 30 odd years, 44 novels and numerous short stories. It has all of the elements that Dick came to represent: paranoia; dislocated reality; schizophrenic visions; mind altering drugs and existential despair.

With bated breath, fans of Philip Dick have been waiting and watching the progress of Richard Linklater’s movie adaptation of A Scanner Darkly, released now (at least in some parts of the world) and judging by reviews I have seen appears to have done justice to the man’s work.

The ubiquitous Keanu Reeves plays Bob Arctor, the deep undercover cop who is sent to investigate himself for drug offences. Arctor is so deep undercover that even his superiors do not know his true identity.
Also starring (all in cell painted effect) Robert Downey Jr, Woody Harrelson and Winona Ryder.

Residing as I do in this backwater in New Zealand I shall have to wait a while longer to see the movie.

Spawn

Constellations

I swim upriver with the hook deeply embedded in my cheek.
All manner of occult lures do tempt my eye; all manner of angler.
And guilt shines bright on my scales; the water in my soul bent heavenward when the moon pulls hard.
That which I scratch on the riverbed green, I hold to be honest and straight as the line that holds me on course to the end of the rod.

I swim upriver to spawn my dying breath
I dream the world devoid of games and of the manners that bind.
I live in the hope of jumping free from the hook and heading out to sea; away from the land and its lack of up and down; its limited room for manoeuvring.
For though I swam with the shoal; I swam quite aware of the angler awaiting.
Of society’s yoke that would bind me in its net

But the riverbed is beautiful; the moonlight is blue and aglow with all promise.
It’s seductive and clean and devoid of malice; represented as it is by light alone.

In Daylight Realised

Scene from Shinji Aoyama's Eureka


What is this blade that hangs over your head
from a thread made of fragile and hopeless dreams
of lost childhood friends and existential dread
of life’s prospects bursting apart at the seams?

What are the words that lull your work-weary mind
on a pillow stuffed full of the system’s green feathers?
What fractal visions in political turmoil entwined
run through your dreams; your futile endeavours?

Is it the cries of brown children with flies in their eyes
or the bloody remains of bombers and bombed?
Do the diviner’s bones fortell the empire’s demise
or justice forthcoming for those who have wronged?

And who hears your cries
in night-terror born, in daylight realised?

And in daylight too the awful truth must fade
To lift our heads above the night’s horror
To venture forth beyond the bed that’s made
To make your move; to head out for tomorrow

Reflections in a Golden I

John William Waterhouse - Echo and Narcissus

They say that if you could bend light you could shine a torch all the way around the world onto the back of your head.
There is little more disconcerting that to see the back of one’s own head. You know the feeling: when the hairdresser (or progressive barber) waves that oval shaped mirror behind you so that you can admire the exquisite work performed on the back of your head.

René Magritte - Portrait d'Edward James (La Reproduction Interdite)

Many cultures have thought the mirror to be a bad (or a dangerous) thing. Narcissus fell in love with the image he saw there, perhaps not fully realising it was himself, for who among us can truly love that person we see there in the mirror every morning? David Hasselhof maybe.
Love is not a visual emotion; it requires mystery and familiarity in just the right measure.

Salvador Dali - Metamorphosis of Narcissus

To love yourself in a visual way is pretty creepy; a bit like hearing your own voice on tape, or seeing yourself on video.
Let’s face it; it’s hard to be narcissistic about the back of your head.

A Bouquet of Sunshine

Diogenes - John William Waterhouse

I’ve been accused once or twice (a week) of cynicism.
A little word that dismisses all of my views.
“Oh but you’re so cynical”
As if to be a cynic is to be

a hippie

a liberal

a faker

a fakir

a fucker

a trouble maker

a risk taker

a polemicist

an alarmist

a science fiction writer

a green

a dreamer

a conspiracy schemer

a kook

a spook

an oddball independent

a delinquent

a johnny-come-lately

a speaker in tongues

To be a cynic is to be negative;
one who doesn't pull with the team;
lacking in good old fashioned optimism;
(That which makes the world a better place).
Well let me tell you: I am a fucking optimist.
If I weren’t, I'd have given up ages ago,
I’d be drowning my sorrows with all the other dead guys.
Yes I’m a cynic; cynic with a capital See.

The Theory of Relativity is a Load of Pish

Necropolis - Glasgow

The obsessive belief that facts and figures explain the world around us is false.
Just because an animal has four legs and hoofs doesn’t make it a horse.
There is more obscure information, deeper meaning to be gathered. Not from listening to an expert list the parameters and statistics, but rather by looking beneath the surface offered and finding those meanings that are more difficult to catalogue; by using peripheral vision; lateral views.

For example: Friends recently informed us that they were going to take their kids on a guided tour of the local cemetery (a service provided sporadically by the local council). They explained that they felt it would be educational for the kids.
I agreed enthusiastically since I believe that our culture does its best to ignore death, and given that the tour was free (a very unusual event in NZ; to get something for free) Sagittarius and I dragged the kids off their respective cybernetic jack points and went along.
A group of about thirty people had gathered and we were led to the first place of interest by a clipboard-wielding council worker who proceeded to reel off names and dates of varying interest to the crowd, those of us on the outskirts muttering in the manner of the ‘blessed are the cheese makers’ scene in ‘The Life of Brian’.
By the end of the tour I was bored stupid – the highlight for me being the inscriptions on a set of very old graves (un-remarked upon by the guide) bearing the legend ‘Killed by Maori Raiders’ one of which had had the word Maori scratched off.

As counterpoint to this experience, a couple of years previous to this Sagittarius and I had taken the kids for a walk through Glasgow’s Necropolis.
We wandered through reading the inscriptions (many dating back to Victorian times), took photos of the kids lurking in front of mausoleums and soaked up the atmosphere of gothic splendour.

The comparisons between these two cemeteries are irrelevant - it could have been the other way around – the point is that we took far more from the latter tour during which no official information was given than from the former with all of those dates and ‘interesting facts’ about the town’s dead rich folk.

Perhaps the subject matter has a little to do with it – the feeling that we can address difficult subjects by breaking them down into their facts and figures. Or perhaps we do not know how to deal with those difficult subjects and feel justified in glossing over the surface like skates on frozen lake, not wanting to contemplate what lies beneath.
But I do believe that we can extend this rather more poetic view onto many things in life; especially those particular subjects that the powers-that-be feel the uncontrollable need to prescribe to us with the aid of facts and figures, graphs and statistics.

As my friend Paul half jokingly used to say "Trust nobody; expect the worst"

The Oracle of Silence

The Empire of Light - Rene Magritte

she would gently chew at the inside of her cheek when pondering; her eyes focussed inward where her heart continued to hold sway.
no amount of intellectual growth could change where she was coming from – he heart [her gut] always defined whether she was wrong or right in her diagnosis of the situation.
and her heart was always right.
and her factual misdemeanours where not enough to convince me that she was wrong in trusting her heart.
and it tormented her sometimes to know she was right against all empirical evidence to the contrary.
and when she was wrong [or felt she’d made the wrong decision] she would become angry with herself; and then she’d become angry with the world.
and when she was right she would glow with happiness and enjoyment at the fruits of her labour.
and she never once said i told you so
and she never let me cross the line between being who i was and being who my ego sometimes said i was.
she was/is a goddess.
she looks out at me from the image of her face on the inner surface of my space; I cannot bring myself to animate that image, for it is only that – an image of the person I shared my life with.
the interface asks: “this font is not available on your system. do you want to use it anyway?”
i answer ‘no’ for fear of what the interface would lose in the translation.
some things are better not rendered visually.

Excerpt from MARKOV CHAIN

This voice is still in progress. I had thought the story basically finished but this character appeared last week. So I'm not exactly sure where he's going.

View From The Treetops (7 July '06)

The Politics of Fiction


This post on Global Echo pricked my interest. It ponders the impact of fiction on our political awareness.
This particular post is No 5 in a series by Martin Johnson, read the previous chapters on his blog tamplins entire.

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He's The Man

"You lose your grip, and then you slip into the masterpiece"

In this LA Weekly (28 June) article entitled Exquisite, Greg Burke (55) talks to Leonard Cohen (71) about the tribute movie ‘I’m Your Man’.
Lenny proves once more to be both a great and a humble man.

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Being There (1979)

"As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden. "

In a recent post Barbara at Flaskaland reference the movie 'Shampoo' directed by Hal Ashby in 1975. Among other movies, Ashby later directed 'Being There' starring Peter Sellers and Shirley Maclaine.
The novel which was written by Jerzy Kosinski is a work of perfection and which suffers from not one wasted word. Kosinski also wrote the screenplay which renders the movie faithfully to the novel.
Sellers, in what turned out to be his last (and arguably his best) role, plays it straight and delivers the goods perfectly and without any of that barely contained mania normally associated with comics playing straight roles (ref: Jim Carey)
This of the story of Chance the gardener, who, when his millionaire patron dies, is ejected from the house where he has tended the garden for all of his life and the confines of which he has never once left. His only reference to life is via the television and his only topic of conversation is the garden.
Chance takes Chance into the limo of a senators's wife and he finds himself moving in Washington's highest circles.
This is satire at it's best.
Chance remarks while gazing from the limo's window: "This is just like television, only you can see much further."
This movie is one of that small group of movies which are as good as the novels that spawned them.

Multi-tasking For The Undead

From McGill Centre for Intelligent Machines
Chaos and Fractal music
© James Clark 2003

[sys_init]user_i\face_firstrun[x**xbit*complex]

As I record these words; [these black hieroglyphs of a language which for all I know is indecipherable to those on the other side of the interface]; as I record my thoughts another language plays to a soft array of colours on the surface of my space: music.
Music which I have drawn from deep within the system that constitutes my environment; music of spheres; music created from the memory and from moods remembered; from golden sunrays and summer silence; from moments of peace and from moments of ritual’s passing; music containing lyrics relevant not only to the my world now gone but also to the me that lives on; music containing mood triggers and trance enhancers; creative reference points beyond the power of language; colour from and alien palette; landscapes of the mind; structures remembered from cities of sound visited on the fly; a past where earphones plugged reality evoking colourful melancholia in the grey dread of travel; faces averted in the bustle of city life.
This is how I remember.
The sense of smell [being in life a trigger for memory that short-cuts directly to the experience] is the most difficult to emulate in this space where the body does not require maintenance.
But if I work really hard at the music I can sometimes evoke the perfume of the memories – a backward experiment indeed – reverse engineering for a vampyr.

Excerpt From MARKOV CHAIN

Declaration of Revocation*

To the citizens of the United States of America, in the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories except Utah, which she does not fancy.
Your new Prime Minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a Minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium." Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour', ‘colour’ and 'neighbour'; skipping the letter 'U' is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters. You will end your love affair with the letter 'Z' (pronounced 'zed' not 'zee') and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise".
3. You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra' e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to re-spell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you can't cope with correct pronunciation. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary".
4. Using the same thirty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as uhh, like and you know is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up ‘interspersed’. There will be no more 'bleeps' in the Jerry Springer show. If you're not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn't have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary, then you won't have to use bad language as often.
5. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "ize".
6. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney, upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier). You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents --- Scottish dramas such as "Taggart" will no longer be broadcast with subtitles. While we're talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is "Devon". If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become "shires" e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.
7. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters. British sit-coms such as "Men Behaving Badly" or "Red Dwarf" will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can't cope with the humour of occasional political correctness.
8. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.
9. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "Football" but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full Kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a decent US Rugby sevens side by 2007.
10. You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the 'World Series' for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls' game called "rounders", which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.
11. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don't believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
12. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day".
13. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap, and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.
14. All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
15. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call 'French fries' are not real chips. Fries aren't even French, they are Belgian! Though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium.
16. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps; Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat. Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.
17. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.
18. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling "beer" is not actually beer at all, it is lager. From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer", and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager". The substances formerly known as "American Beer" will henceforth be referred to as "Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine", with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as "Weak Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine". This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in the Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.
19. From November 10th the UK will harmonise petrol (or “gasoline” as you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2007) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon -- get used to it).
20. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.
21. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.
22. Tax collectors from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your co-operation.

* This piece has been around for a year or two and is most often attributed to John Cleese. There is no evidence to support that it was written by Mr Cleese and he is unfortunately unavailable for comment since being incarcerated for questioning in a secret camp somewhere in the Carribean (Pronounced Carry-be-an)
Nevertheless it is amusing to imagine Mr Cleese uttering these words in his best matter-of-fact tone.