The Limits of Physics

A very interesting article over on Aeon:

On the one hand, then, physics is taken to be a march toward an ultimate understanding of reality; on the other, it is seen as no different in status to the understandings handed down to us by myth, religion and, no less, literary studies. Because I spend my time about equally in the realms of the sciences and arts, I encounter a lot of this dualism. Depending on whom I am with, I find myself engaging in two entirely different kinds of conversation. Can we all be talking about the same subject?

All It Takes Is The Right Story. Mythos Media

The Liminal Spaces pt 2: The Hidden Architecture

Part 1: Get Creative: The Liminal State

Most people understand writing as a function of the conscious mind. You have an intention, you sit down and express it best you can.

However, the actual writing process is far more convoluted than that, and there are many "off-label" uses for the lesser understood parts of consciousness, where writing is involved. Nowhere is this more true than with the long-form creative process, which is more like a marathon than a sprint, and more like a surrealist "drift" than even a marathon.

Indeed, many of these byways, alleys and side-paths lead us through a meandering labyrinth, and we may even care to engage the physical process of one foot before the other.

Ambiguity is the labyrinth’s central nature. It is always unstable, changing its personality and ours as we change perspective. ... Like a psychic nuclear reactor, the labyrinth generates creative emotional and psychic processes in whatever guise it appears. It is continually breeding new versions of itself that demand we revisit our categories and redefine what the symbol means to us in our time. ... the experience of the labyrinth is not only ancient, it is hardwired into the brain structure of the earliest humans, biologically indistinguishable from us, who first recognized its ineffable potency.
In pre-literate antiquity, the labyrinth design and its cousins, the spiral and the meander, were symbols that occurred worldwide in rock art and weaving patterns, on pottery, and was scrawled as ancient graffiti on a wall in Pompeii. From the Near East to New Grange in Ireland, and from the American Southwest to Siberia, the labyrinth pattern is one of the oldest symbols in the history of mankind and one of the most universal.
--Dancing at the Edge of Death, Jodi Lorimer.

Much that has been written about "drifting" might be equally applied to writing, and vice versa.

One of psychogeography's principle means was the dérive. Long a favorite practice of the dadaists, who organized a variety of expeditions, and the surrealists, for whom the geographical form of automatism was an instructive pleasure, the dérive, or drift, was defined by the situationists as the 'technique of locomotion without a goal', in which 'one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there'. The dérive acted as something of a model for the 'playful creation' of all human relationships.
Unlike surrealist automatism, the dérive was not a matter of surrendering to the dictates of an unconscious mind or irrational force. Indeed, the situationists' criticisms of surrealism concluded that 'the unconscious imagination is poor, that automatic writing is monotonous, that the whole genre of ostentatious surrealist "weirdness" has ceased to be very surprising'. Nor was everything subordinated to the sovereignty of choice: to dérive was to notice the way in which certain areas, streets, or buildings resonate with states of mind, inclinations, and desires, and to seek out reasons for movement other than those for which an environment was designed. It was very much a matter of using an environment for one's own ends, seeking not only the marvelous beloved by surrealism but bringing an inverted perspective to bear on the entirety of the spectacular world. 

--The Situationist International in a postmodern age by Sadie Plant

I've found this to be nowhere so true as in a city such as Boston, where the streets themselves seem to serve as a spatial metaphor for the creative process -- not a circle cut into 4 quadrants, as in the classical plan, but rather an organic structure built from original Indian walking paths, grown, cut-down, re-structured and -purposes over the years. Get lost in the city, letting your mind get lost as well, and you just might find the solution to that scene you've been struggling with for a week.

But maybe even this will not do. Some problems will not dissolve by way of drifting, and the only means I've found left at that point is to fall asleep.

I've often joked that the best parts of my novels are written when I'm asleep. Like many jokes, this isn't entirely untrue. How often do you suddenly happen upon inspiration, or unexpected connections, as you drift off? If you manage to wake yourself, you might scribble notes that can later take a form, or merely serve to perplex you. "The slashes on her hands, the angel's trumpets, a flower," the note reads. What did you mean by that? The transcription process is not the writing process.

As I've shared in many interviews about my novels, this isn't as absurd or uncommon as you may think. However, the common wisdom that inspiration has been born from dreams is, if my experience is any indicator, a misunderstanding. It is not the dream state that is so fertile, as the threshold of sleep, those liminal lands that offer up many connections and solutions, if we can only drag their glamour from those depths and connect them with more substantial matter.

Of course, not all such fragments are captured. And fewer still take to the soil they're given.

There is probably a hidden architecture behind most texts, of what never made it to the page. Like an actor holding a prop none of us can see on screen, I'd like to believe these "hidden architectures" still inform the corpus.

I have developed a number of fairly simple practices to help capture more of this gossamer stuff, and I'll share what I can with you, though as is often said, "your mileage may vary."

...To Be Continued...

All It Takes Is The Right Story. Mythos Media

First Tales From When I Had A Face Contributor Announced

The first contributor I'm going to announce here is P. Emerson Williams. He'll be doing storyboards and pencils for all the comic sections in the 4 issues of Tales From When I Had A Face: The Summer Tree, The Fall Tree, The Winter Tree, and The Spring Tree. I've worked with him on a number of projects in the past, and am very happy to have him help me navigate the immense scale of this project.

---

P. Emerson Williams is an artist and illustrator whose work takes shape in physical and digital media, and covers wide modes of expression. His passion is for embodying the mythic in visual media and melding visual art with narrative form.

He illustrated Bedlam Stories - The Battle for Oz and Wonderland Begins, a novel set in the universe of Bedlam Stories, a twisted world of horror created by cult film director Pearry Teo (The Gene Generation, Necromentia, Witchville). among a number of projects coming up for P. Emerson Williams in 2015 is Adagio Fine, the first in the Star Crossed Chronicles, a series of heavily illustrated novels penned by occult author Nathan Neuharth.

As a core member of UK theatrical company FoolishPeople, P. Emerson Williams took on many roles in London productions of The Basement - Ward 12 - in partnership with Secret Cinema, The Providence Experiments - co-produced with Mythos Media, A Red Threatening Sky, The Abattoir Pages - presented with Guerrilla Zoo, Cirxus and Terra:Extremitas, performed at Amsterdam's NDSM-werf. These roles includes creating a score for choreographer lohan Stjernholm as part of the production A Red Threatening Sky and a solo musical performance at the famed Horse Hospital in London, creation of soundscapes and scores for every production on which he worked, as well as set and graphic design and on top of all this, Williams was in the cast as both voice actor and live actor.

Williams straddles the worlds of industrial music and black metal, electronic dance to dark Americana to pure goth with Veil of Thorns as well as adding elements of his sonic alchemy as a spice to projects with Sleep Chamber, Manes and more extensively as half of the creative core of kkoagulaa with cern.th.skei from Manes. Recent collaborations include playing cello on UK black metal band Ethernal's upcoming third album, subverting the nature of guitar playing with industrial noise merchants Dead Skull and a collaboration with avant garde trumpet player Mark Cunningham.

He is the host of the Necrofuturist Transmission on Nottingham's Nightbreed Radio, was the editor and producer for Music Tuesdays on Alterati.com, and art director for Weaponized , the publishing imprint of FoolishPeople. Articles and reviews by P. Emerson Williams can be read online at Terrorizer.com, Modern Mythology, Disinfo.com and Intravenous Magazine. His visual art can be seen on book covers and interiors for Original Falcon, Weaponized, and Westgate Press, the pages of magazines including Culture Asylum, Isten 'zine, Ghastly, and Esoterra , album and CD covers for Rat King, Primordial, Katatonia, Ethernal, Ptahil, Lethe, Misanthropy Records, SLEEP CHAMBER, Veil of Thorns, Choronzon and kkoagulaa. In 2013, P. Emerson Williams was on guitar and vocals on tour with the legendary Jarboe that took them through the US, Western and Eastern Europe and concluded in Moscow.

[All It Takes Is The Right Story... Mythos Media]

Hexadic Dreams Me

Six Organs of Admittance is a succulent, sweet piece of fruit hanging ripe and ready on the grand old tree of American music. A welcome gift, like a persimmon's sugar sparkling delight in late summer, Ben Chasny has guided me on long road weary highway journeys up and down the eastern edge of this rot worn country - his angelic hymnal of guitar ambiance and his Sybillian, lullaby voice giving me space to feel safe as my shoes collect a thin layer of purified piss in the temple space of truck stop bathrooms and my stomach gets a ragged layer of sacred scar tissue from sipping slow drags on the hot acid nectar of rest station automatic coffee.

Hexadic, the latest offering under the guise of Six Organs, gives us all a new language for dreaming. God smiles and devils dance to suck on the thirsty throb that underlies these vicious guitar musings. These trustworthy truthes have been assigned by an unseen hand of The Process  - I would advise you to whisper then a blessing, if you understand that hidden gift guiding the album's composition. This selection of songs is a visceral act of divination, created using a self-developed system inspired by Cornelius Agrippa, Raymon Llully, and whatever quiet spirit of genius stirs in St. Chasny's magnificent mind.

"The System builds all of the tonal fields, chord changes, scales, and lyrics on Hexadic, creating the framework of the songs that the musicians engage with. Yet the System is open; within the framework, Chasny's own personal aesthetics - such as the production mode of loud guitars, the order of songs, the editing of length, were all conscious decisions made to communicate the pieces. The exact same combinatorial patterns used on this record would generate infinite results, depending on the choices of the individual. Ben's years of study have produced an operational agent that has not only built all the songs on Hexadic but is also a system anyone can use to restructure their ways of habit."

A French review of the album says that the listening experience accords with "stabbing the listener tirelessly for 9 tracks and 38 minutes that seem to be 666." This is Dario Argento pushing his production aides aside with a sensuous smile, slipping on the black glove and stabbing with the most delicate and meaningful thrusts imaginable. When Hexadic, unflinching, slaughters you screaming in the gaudy red and blue light of true musical mastery, you know you were slaughtered with love.

As Ben says:

"This release is the result of years of working on a new way to compose music. We’ve been using the word “system,” but it would probably be more accurate to describe it as an “open system.” It is very malleable. The particular songs on this record were bent toward the idea of rock music. I composed 30 pieces using this system. Of those 30 songs, I chose 9 that could best be worked into a rock format for Hexadic. I wanted to make a rock record. So there you have it."

Bow your heads children, we are moving into holy space - emptiness and light dancing with unrestrained delicacy and wanton sensitivity. Lay down and let these sounds wash you clean again, if you feel a darkness, it is within you already and if you feel a freedom, sing it out to those who can bear to hear it.

God save such a lovely one as this - thank you Ben - thank you.

To order this gift - go to Drag City by Clicking Here.

To read some thoughts on the composition from Ben - Click Here.

Or, just lean back and enjoy a selection from the album...

On Fantasy: How Zizek Reads Lacan

The difference Between Lacan and ‘naive realism’ is that for Lacan, the only point at which we approach this hard kernel of the Real is indeed the dream. When we awaken into reality after a dream, we usually say to ourselves ‘it was just a dream’, thereby blinding ourselves to the fact that in our everyday, wakening reality we are nothing but a consciousness of this dream. It was only in the dream that we approached the fantasy-framework which determines our activity, our mode of acting in reality itself.

This is incredibly relevant to the points made previously in our first Critique of Jung.

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]