Do You Crave Independent Media?

Independent film, art and media is important.

It enables us to create new ways of thinking and being. It attacks the grinding status quo.

Do you crave independence? Do you value your own choices, and wish you weren’t constantly being hammered by media, advertising and society? Are you sick of the powerful telling you what to eat, what to think, what to do and who you can love?

The good news is, you’re not alone. Not by a long chalk.

We’ve covered uprisings, we’ve taken apart the narratives of the powerful wolves in the board-room, we’ve explored the ways we can subvert and use the Drone-Future to our advantage.

We’ve used ancient archetypes to shed light on today’s patterns.

You’re not alone.

Throughout the world there are countless folks like you, who crave that independence, who have that urge to steal the fire from the newsrooms, and the studios, the corporations and the 1%.

And that’s the thing - the ones you think hold all the cards? They’re actually in the minority. A vanishingly small selection of people inhabit the shells of corporations and the halls of power.

Big empty rooms, echoing with the occasional footstep.

But imagine for a second - imagine what would happen if those empty, hollow spaces were filled up with a plethora of voices?

Even traditional media cannot deny the heaving crowd, the seething mass of all those individual voices raised. It’s just not possible any more.

You’ve probably read how Clark: A Gonzomentary is appearing at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival.

 Think about that. Independent people coming together to celebrate their achievements, to create things because they want to, because they need to.

Because dammnit, there is a way to do it, despite what you’ve been told.

And if you look, there’s always more:


Strange Factories - Trailer from FoolishPeople on Vimeo.

On Monday, FoolishPeople announced their collaboration with London’s Cinema Museum, to release their crowdfunded independent film, Strange Factories

Through that collaboration, a live cinema event occurs in October, the characters coming to life and interacting with the audience!

You can pre-order Strange Factories now, download it then, and stream it to join in with the rending of the veils on opening night.

You can explore its world through the doors of Theatric Arcana wherever - and whenever - you are, on the damn planet.

And this is possible because you are not alone.

We are not alone.

Collaboration and interdependence means exactly that.

In today’s networked society, you can lend your voice to the crowd, you can give politicians bloody noses and corporations kicks in the profit margins.

You can support blazing visions that burn brighter than the sun, and you can spread laughter that reminds you to be alive.

You are not alone, and it’s time we reminded you of that.

Independence is not isolation, it comes from inter-dependence. It comes from hundreds, thousands, millions even, supporting each other in any way they can.

Time to spread the word.

Be seeing you.

*** 
Craig 'VI' Slee is a Consultant & Theorist dealing with Mythology, Folklore, Storytelling & Culture.

Currently, he serves as Writer and Content Developer for FoolishPeople, an internationally acclaimed immersive theatre company who create ritual experiences, books and films. Their latest work is STRANGE FACTORIES, which will be released to worldwide distribution October 2013.

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

Murdered Soldiers & the Mythology of Terrorism

Wednesday 22nd 2013, 1421  - Woolwich, South London.

That’s when the call was placed to police - that’s when the authorities became aware that two men were hacking another to death with machetes. But there were witnesses to this act - it happened in broad daylight. Bloodstained hands were caught on camera-phones, tweets going viral while the perpetrators explained why they had done it, to passers by.

They didn’t run, they waited for police. Fourteen minutes later, armed police showed up, and were charged by at least one of the perpetrators. They promptly shot him. Both perpetrators are now in hospital, under guard.

The dead man was a serving soldier. The perpetrators were young black men, who were Muslims. Media makes much of them shouting ‘God is Great’ in Arabic, and their statements that the reason for this is Western troops in Muslim countries.

There will be countless other editorials on this act, and terrorism in general, for many years to come, but as a Briton of a certain age, I grew up with mainland terrorism. Irish Republican paramilitary groups were making threats and blowing things up and killing people throughout my childhood. It’s nothing particularly new, because ultimately, yesterday’s act was an ideological murder.

And those have been going on for hundreds of years - just look at the work of violent political messages throughout the years.

Here at Modern Mythology, ideas and myths are our speciality - and though ‘Terrorism’ has entered the mind of many across the world, if we break things down to their most fundamental level, ideological attacks - indeed any kind of violence are ultimately designed to effect some kind of change.

The techniques grouped together under the moniker of ‘Terrorism’ are asymmetric warfare designed to maximise their affect by influencing whole populations. The efficiency of a suicide bomber is that, until detonation, that person may be indistinguishable from any other person on the street. Threat may thus come from any direction - the entire population becomes weaponised, in a sense. Equally, with the Woolwich attack, the weapons used were easily obtainable - and the perpetrators did not resemble the traditional post-2001 image of terrorists.

They were not of Asian or Middle-Eastern appearance. They do not appear to have been part of a larger network - rather individuals only connected by the ideology of radical Islam, of which it is simply impossible to monitor every subscriber.

But let’s break things down even further, even beyond the murderer’s message or ideology. Let’s get down into the guts, to the action itself.

What's your Superhero Origin Story?

Let’s get one thing straight. I hate the word Superhero, but I don’t hate superheroes. I think that’s because like many things, the overuse of hero has dis-empowered the word. A hero, in its original sense, meant more than mortal. A person worshipped, honoured and elevated above others. Some of them were demigods, others made it to godhood and had shrines raised to them which lasted beyond their deaths.

Superman is an alien raised by kindly adoptive parents, one of the last scions of a destroyed world. Batman is a man who is forged in tragedy, becoming a symbol which casts long shadows. Captains' America and Britain are elevated by science and magic respectively, to become symbolic as defenders of the world. The X-Men are mutants, set-apart by genetic quirk and the merciless pressure of evolutionary selection.

And all of them, all of them, have an origin story. They’re not just their powers - they’ve been shaped by their experience, those events which change them, make them different.

They do not stand in isolation - whether it be genetics, radiation, magic, or being child of a god, a hero is nothing without their origin. So, where does that leave us poor ordinary mortals who have our everyday lives? It’s highly unlikely we’re going to get nuked in a particle accelerator and come out with godlike powers. And yet, if you look, it is once again the apparently ordinary which they strive to protect.

Whether its the fireman, the paramedic, the doctor, the librarian, the alien ubermensch, the Dark Knight or the trench-coat wearing magus who chain-smokes his way through apocalypses, laughing all the while. Whether it’s the barbarian or the wizard, the soldier or the king, they all come from somewhere. They don’t just pop into existence - they emerge somehow. Without the ordinary, they have no fuel, no way to claw their way into existence, to drive their stories.

So, let me ask you - where is it that you come from? What’s made you who you are? Just think about it.

That hero was nothing without that difference. Your neighbourhood, your childhood, your family, your beliefs, your food, your drink, your culture - all of these shaped you. You are one of billions on this planet; one of those staggering numbers which boggle the mind, force it to take shortcuts, to create categories like race, sex, gender, politics. All that to make sense of things.

Because gods forbid you look at yourself in the mirror and see the Mystery that you are. Gods forbid you conceive of the sheer wonder of life - not that it may have meaning, or otherwise - merely that it exists at all!

Look over your shoulder and imagine the countless choices that brought you here. Imagine the memories and nuances you have, which no-one else does.

Now:

Imagine all those things that made you what you were, and then look back at the screens and the newspapers and wonder - “Why the hell are they trying to get us to buy these things? Why the hell do they want me to conform to this body-image, dream this particular dream?”

You are the proverbial miracle, hiding in the common-place. The diamond in the rough - the commonest carbon compressed by a billion pounds of heat and pressure into a multifaceted gem. You may not have a nuclear explosion or genetic code that warps notions of humanity. You may not have billionaire status, or be a member of an alien aristocracy, but you have the fuel, the experience that you can arrange, the difference that makes the difference.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s time to give up on the secret identity, claim your birthright and assume the mask of the hero.

*** 
Craig 'VI' Slee is a Consultant & Theorist dealing with Mythology, Folklore, Storytelling & Culture.

Currently, he serves as Writer and Content Developer for FoolishPeople, an internationally acclaimed immersive theatre company who create ritual experiences, books and films. Their latest work is STRANGE FACTORIES, which will be released to worldwide distribution late 2013.

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

Big Brother And His Drones: What YOU Can Get Out Of Surveillance and the Machine Future

It's time to face facts – technology advances by harnessing human drives, and the most primal are sex and death.

Drones and cybersex. So, what can YOU get out of it?

Pornography and the military-industrial complex are often the prime funders of technological research. Without DARPA, we wouldn't have the internet, and without the urge to stream porn, we wouldn't be constantly trying to improve data compression techniques.

Without lust, there'd be no YouTube – and without the urge to achieve maximum effect with minimum effort, we wouldn't develop labour saving devices. We wouldn't develop technology to extend our reach, and refine our apparent control over the situation. Without apparent scarcity and rarity, we wouldn't consider certain things precious, and we certainly wouldn't care about loss. We wouldn't care about extending our sphere of influence, or expanding our territory.

Here in the UK, we're seemingly constantly under the eye of CCTV. According to the BBC, one London Borough, Wandsworth, has more cameras than Dublin, San Francisco, Johannesburg and Boston COMBINED. Manchester has more than 4 times the number of CCTV cameras than Paris.

Where is your attention?

Leaving aside the use of drones in current conflicts across the globe, the increasing militarisation of police forces may be reaching its zenith in California. A County Sheriff wants to buy one for use over his area, right over your back yard. The EFF and other civil liberties organisations are protesting however.

Ultimately drones – small unmanned aerial vehicles - are here to stay, whether or not they're weaponised or otherwise. Futurist and military strategist John Robb points out that they could be used for logistics and other things – a Dronenet, or 'internet of drones'. Combine this with the advances in 3D printing, and crowdfunding platform,s like Kickstarter and IndieGogo, things are going to get interesting pretty fast.

Fairy Tale Journeys: Storytelling, Media & Framing

 By Mr. VI

Do me a favour and think about beginnings, would you?

Specifically, think about that moment, that gap before you start something new - the moment; that breath you take before you begin to speak, when you're moving thought into speech.or idea into movement.

Think about reaching out to grasp something, maybe picking up that mug of tea or coffee, or perhaps closing your hand around something and lifting it. Moving it from one place to another. Most of us us don't think about such things, which is why I ask it of you as a favour.

After all, there's a lot that you do without thinking, and I don't know if for you, the reader, it's simply habit or muscle memory that carries you through life. I don't know how you move when you walk, how the weight of your body feels as you plant one foot in  front of the other, how it shifts as you're increasing speed, as you're avoiding obstacles.

I don't know what kind of joy you take in getting to where you want to go, and I certainly couldn't guess how you'll feel after a day on your feet, doing all that you need to, day after day, minute after minute, hour after hour.

More to the point, I don't know what it's like to begin to walk, while your mind is on other things - to just blithely amble along. You probably didn't know either, until I asked you to think about it, as a beginning.

I asked you this favour because I don't know any of that, and nor will I ever do so. I can't go for a stroll, for a jog, for a run - there's no sidling, no sashaying; no hopping, skipping and jumping. No hopscotch, no tag, no home runs, no tries, no touchdowns.

I'm curious, you see. So do me a favour and think about beginnings, about the transition between not walking, and walking. Between silence and speech, and thought and action.

I can't walk.

Invasive Stories: Wombs, Brains & Survival

By Mr. VI

Allow me to tell you a story – and I say allow, because you will have to give consent. A story can't be told without the audience participating in some way, even if it's simple suspension of disbelief.

The written and spoken word require a little more effort, because that kind of story requires the audience to use their imaginations, and we've already spoken of how communication and storytelling actually require – and produce- a kind of bizarre neurological entanglement.

(If you've not been following this blog long enough to read it, or need your memory refreshing, it's here – Red Riding Hood: Narrative, Neurology & Storytelling. Go on, I'll wait, because it really is essential to what you're going to be reading next, and will help you see where we're going.)

One of the interesting things about stories is that they build on each other – they provide a referential framework. A story is not just one event, it is in fact an arrangement of events. Story, as a word comes from the same linguistic roots as history:

history

late 14c., "relation of incidents" (true or false), from O.Fr. estoire, estorie "chronicle, history, story" (12c., Mod.Fr. histoire), from L. historia "narrative of past events, account, tale, story," from Gk. historia "a learning or knowing by inquiry; an account of one's inquiries, history, record, narrative," from historein "inquire," from histor "wise man, judge," from PIE *wid-tor-, from root *weid- "to know," lit. "to see" (see vision). Related to Gk. idein "to see," and to eidenai "to know." In Middle English, not differentiated from story; sense of "record of past events" probably first attested late 15c. As a branch of knowledge, from 1842. Sense of "systematic account (without reference to time) of a set of natural phenomena" (1560s) is now obsolete except in natural history.

As you can see, it's quite literally a recounting of events – an order of experience conveyed to you.

That same earlier post you will have read was collected in a best-of Modern Mythology 2011 – a selection of our work last year. It's a peculiar thing, because it ends up giving you a snapshot of events which may lead you into looking back on 2011 with new eyes. Certainly, many of those posts were inspired by events in our lives and the wider world.

Those events spawned those pieces, which even now are spawning this piece, folding in current events, reacting and changing in accordance with circumstance and stimuli. No story, no myth, no recounting of events is immune to this.

Not even the Bible – or at the very least, the interpretation of it.

#Myth: But Why Do That Hoodoo That You Do?

By Mr. VI

At the risk of treating your like three-year-old children, let's answer the question posed by this subject title. After all, I'm certainly not picturing you whining plaintively as you ask why exactly is myth so important, am I?

Othala #1 – Recovering the Occult Mythology Of Ancestors In Spite Of Nazi Bastards.

By Mr. VI

Eþel byþ oferleof æghwylcum men,
gif he mot ðær rihtes and gerysena on
brucan on bolde bleadum oftast. 

An estate is very dear to every man,
if he can enjoy there in his house
whatever is right and proper in constant prosperity. - Anglo Saxon Rune Poem.

I'm not a Nazi but...

Actually, there is no 'but'. I'm just plain not, so sorry if you were looking for a crypto-Nazi (neo or original) beneath my beard. This is as much a disclaimer as you're going to get, because frankly if I had any sympathy for the vile policies of a potty Austrian painter and his mates, I would have committed suicide long ago because I'd see myself as a drain on the volk.

(It's a cripple thing, all right?)

However, the very fact that I put a disclaimer at the beginning of this article should tell you something, because here at Modern Mythology, it's exactly what we're interested in. This is the first part in a series of posts on the recovery of Norse and Germanic mythology from its status as Nazi source material.

Hot Catgirls and Cold Dead Philosophers R Us

By Mr. VI

OK, so it's confession time – who finds cat-girls hot? The fusion of animal and human, the exaggerated feline attitudes? Of course, here at Modern Mythology we don't really give a fig about gender, sex or species – except as interesting things to examine and play with, so please feel free to mentally ascribe your felinoid paramour any characteristics you damn well like, yes?

Perhaps in the spirit of overkill, we'd like to bring a dead Greek guy into the sexual equation – because let's be honest, a little necrophilia always spices things up. After all, copulating with corpses seems to sell well – just look at the amount of vampire-based Pornonormal Romance in your local bookshop.

Our ancient nec(e)rotic newcomer goes by the name of Xenophanes (Ξενοφάνης) which, roughly translated, means 'Of Foreign Appearance'. He's a playwright, philosopher and general interesting fellow known only by fragments.

Now, we don't know about you, but a guy with a name like that seems to us to be ripe for engaging in some heretical thought. It's like his mum named him 'X. The Edgy' on purpose, and he spent a great deal of time living up to it.

After all, he has a go at Homer and Hesiod, plus criticising the notion of a pantheon of anthropomorphic gods – sort of the equivalent of knocking Shakespeare, Keats, and the theory of General Relativity all at once.

The Ravens' Head: The Press Release

By Mr. VI

I acknowledge that I've been quiet here lately - that will change soon - however, the reason for this near-silence can now be revealed. I'm working on a book for the publishers of Immanence of Myth called THE RAVENS' HEAD.

Over the course of the coming months, I'll be giving you an insider's view of the mythic themes explored in the book - some of which are are already beloved by readers and contributors to this blog, so I invite you to come along for the ride!

Be Seeing You

- VI
_______________________


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - LONDON 5TH SEPTEMBER 2011

Weaponized is proud to announce the publication of ‘The Ravens Head’ a powerful new book by author Craig VI Slee.

Once upon a time, the first story was told – somewhere deep within the fields of memory, a vision was transmitted from one person to another. Once upon a time, a tale touched you and changed your world. It transported you somewhere else and left its fingerprints upon your life, and then when others saw the marks, you told of how they came to be. Over time, you wrapped yourself in stories, tattooing them upon the skin of your existence to make sense of all that happened. When others offered you stories, you took them gladly and spliced them with your own, until you could no longer discover where yours ended and theirs began.

Who exactly is it that tells your tale, guides the monologue and direct your actions? How much of your world is actually your own, and how much of it is painted scenery put there in the years before you were born? What is actually wallpaper over Plato’s cave walls, put there to soothe humankind and conceal the bare, unyielding rock?

What happens when you boil it all down and you are left with ash, ground down to the bone and struggling under the weight of loss and incomprehension?

Welcome then, to The Ravens’ Head.

Echo-gnomicks: Financial Meltdown and the Sound of the Underground

By Mr. VI

Okay, who did it? Who went and angered the Gnomes of Zurich? Who screwed the dwarves out of their rightful tribute? Who went and annoyed the boys at Gringotts? I know somebody did, because otherwise we wouldn't be in this mess.

No, really we wouldn't. Of course, it always happens this way – humans get greedy for gold and it all goes downhill from there. All you have to do is keep your head down and don't go near them. Instead, like magpies in their black and charcoal plumage, the suits decided to plunder the shiny realm, help themselves to the pots of gold.

Look where that has got us – another financial meltdown. Stocks plummeting, doom upon the horizon. Some part of me wouldn't be surprised if Ragnarok was around the corner, except of course it always is – just at the corner of your eye, but that's another story.

Economics – or as Terry Pratchett puts it 'reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits' a.k.a. Echo-gnome-ics – purports to be the art of dealing with such things. But as anybody who understands the myth of Echo will tell you, there's a bit of a problem.

Echo was doomed to repeat the words of others, her voice taken away by Hera in revenge for consorting with Zeus. Essentially, her communication was reduced to that of a cargo cult – mimicking and repeating sound with little hope of understanding.

Now, notwithstanding the fact that all communication is a bit like this, economics is about appearance. Those bankers and stockbrokers are doing the equivalent of listening to the voices of the gnomes and other chthonic spirits, echoing down mining tunnels and fissures in the Earth. They interpret echoes and make decisions based upon them – an entirely virtual construction based off second or third order perceptions.

It's no wonder really, considering that Paracelsus states that gnomes are capable of passing through solid rock as easily as humans pass through air, so for those of you who enjoy Harry Potter it might help to envisage them as being masters of the Apparate spell.

As apparitions, their substance is by nature more loosely bound than those humans – their outline lest fixed and form more fluid. It makes sense then, that they are masters of the physical, because their ability to modulate matter is a massive engineering boon. This is why in Norse myth, the dwarves are the creatures that create the weapons and tools of the very gods themselves.

This excerpt from Neil Gaiman's award-winning novella The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, which is available in full here, illustrates this really quite well:

Murdoch, Media & Mythology: A Hermetic Tale?

By Mr. VI

When you get down to it, the news is Chinese whispers. Despite claims to be fair and balanced, or that they do things in the public interest, the news media have placed their own spin on every event you have read about, seen, heard, or experienced indirectly.

By definition that's what media does, it mediates experience. Marshall McLuhan famously wrote:

"The medium is the message."

Irrevocably, the information becomes part of the medium – events become part of the output of a given signal. The recent events in the UK regarding Rupert Murdoch and so-called 'phone hacking' are the property of those who disseminate them. For example, the BBC coverage of the event is just that – it becomes part of the BBC message. It's exactly the same with Fox, MSNBC or any of the rest of the outlets.

Unless you are directly experiencing the events yourself right now, then you are reliant on media. Even if you are directly experiencing events right now, they are mediated themselves through your senses. Of course we don't like to think about that, because if that's the case then the media could be altered – our senses are equally open to bias, just as a newspaper or television show.

Our culture places great primacy on the phenomenon of the eyewitness, yet recent research suggests that even eyewitnesses may not recall actual events, but in fact recall their own arrangement of events which are influenced by many factors, some internal and some external.

There is a level at which you may think that this is irrelevant, but consider this:

If in fact we cannot say for certain that what we perceive is some kind of truth, then by definition the whole duality of truth versus lie is called into question. The current coverage of the Murdoch scandal has provoked public outrage – employees of his corporation have allegedly committed criminal acts, conspiring to bribe police officers, obtain information illegally and intruded upon the privacy of the families of murder victims and war dead, not just politicians and celebrities.

It's not just Rupert Murdoch and News International which engage in dodgy dealings, because certain forms of journalism operate in grey areas – their acceptability is often backdated once their claim of "public interest" is validated by the audience. In fact, such things are pretty endemic within almost every form of communication, from the white lies you tell yourself and others, to the work of speechwriters and spin doctors.

I've previously referred to Murdoch as a "lizardly Methuselah", and indeed my inaugural post on Modern Mythology made a metaphorical reference to the reptilian agenda, an indirect nod to the wildly strange fears of David Icke and others. Consider this to be if you like, a statement of my credentials – I think Murdoch is a leathery old bastard with billions at his command, and exceedingly cunning ability to get what he wants at almost any cost.

But right now, in this place and time, he is widely regarded by some to be almost as bad as the devil himself. This makes an interesting to us because in actuality, Murdoch and his ilk have a long, long mythic pedigree…

New Disease: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Superbugs

By Mr. VI

Not to worry you, but you're going to die. If it's not old age that gets you, it's probably going to be some mutated form of the primordial killer – as much an apparent monster as Godzilla, rising up from the depths to cause chaos and destruction in your life.

Unless you're extraordinarily unusual, or a little bit morbid, you don't like to think about it much. After all, there is so much to see and do in life that thinking about it and can be a little distracting, can't it?

But vast amounts of future tech notwithstanding, you're not going to be rejuvenated, or immortal any time soon. Of course, even if the future tech arrives, initially it'll probably belong to this sinister lizardy Methuselah-types like Rupert Murdoch due to the billions of dollars they have in their bank accounts.

The fact is, the majority of the world still doesn't have access to decent healthcare – and those that do tend to live in the richer nations. In the UK there is state healthcare, but in America? Staying healthy is the province of those who can afford it. Now, imagine all those folks in countries which we laughably call the Third World or the developing world.

Imagine what happens when they get ill, and what they do when it comes time to die. Technology and medical care and such may have advanced way beyond the four humours – rationalism may be slowly doing away with snake oil sales but what good is that if you can't get your hands on what you need?

What stories do they tell themselves to make sense out of death and dying? Are they that different to the ones we tell ourselves when disease strikes, seemingly out of the blue?

Toasters, Bladerunner and Schizophrenia: PKD & Gnostic Agnosticism

By Mr. VI

Do you know who you are, and can you honestly say your awareness encompasses the whole of the biomechanical system which is you-as an organism? May you be aware of the functioning of each organ; the pulsing of the heart, the filtering of the liver and kidneys, or the electrical crackle in your own brain?

Do you sing the body electric?

They say it's bad to ask questions of your audience. It's disruptive; breaks the flow, tears at the weave and begins to fray the threads by which they draw themselves into your narrative. But what better way to examine, to dig underneath the skin?

We're all skin-jobs.

That's the derogatory term for Replicants in Ridley Scott's seminal film Bladerunner, just as 'Toaster' is used for Cylons in Battlestar:Galactica.

Actually, this whole post was inspired by Edward James Olmos live-tweeting Bladerunner the other Sunday:

@edwardjolmos: #movienighttweet it all came from this film... BSG skinjobs... replicants.... thus toasters...

Behind both epithets lies the notion of falsity, of facsimile. In both narratives, we are presented with the notion that there are those who look like us, but are not like us. In Bladerunner, we are left with Deckard's humanity as an ambiguous question, while in BS:G the hybridization and shift into flesh leaves us with the possibility that the markers of 'humanity' are perhaps not so clear-cut as we would like to believe.

Bladerunner uses a test known as the Voight-Kampff to test empathetic responses -and if those responses are off, 'retirement' is not far away. The film itself is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and it's no secret that I'm a total and utter Dick-head.

In fact, anyone with an interest in philosophy, storytelling, myth and SF should be one too. Just look at the following:

'I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel & story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation.

Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, &, for them, my corpus is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an integration & presentation, analysis & response & personal history.' - Philip K. Dick

In 1974, Dick had a series of mystical experiences which influenced his writing from then on, exploring his own version of Gnosticism. For us, it's the Gnostic view combined with schizophrenia that's interesting.

In 'Schizophrenia and The Book of Changes' he writes:

What distinguishes schizophrenic existence from that which the rest of us like to imagine we enjoy is the element of time. The schizophrenic is having it all now, whether he wants it or not; the whole can of film has descended on him, whereas we watch it progress frame by frame.

This, combined with the Gnostic idea that the world is a creation of the demiurge, which presupposes itself as sole Creator, can may be seen in a rather strange light: that 'reality' as we know it is defined by mediated perception.

It's our perception which ascribes the notion of 'real' or 'false' to a thing, and our perception is a direct, inextricable product of our sensory organs. The flesh, the body, is the only reality we know, and indeed can know.

Crossroads of absence

By Mr.VI

Let me tell you a story.

Let me tell you a story because well, we're here together. I'm writing this and you're reading it, and even though these two events are distinct and separate, we come together, and occupy the same idea-space for its duration.

Perhaps it'll help if you imagine the things that make you think of storytelling. I don't know what that is for you, what ideas and things let you relax and pay attention and enable you to put aside distractions and focus on a tale.

And I don't know what it is about the memory of a twilight sky, the crackle of fire and the scent of woodsmoke. I don't know what it is about the dance of flame; the way it flickers and dances like a live thing as the fuel hisses and pops.

I don't know how the taste of honeyed mead comes so easily, conjured out of the past with sweet thickness and potent intoxication of boozy warmth. All these things, I don't know how they arrive like heralds, like doorways, signals from a distant space that's somehow wrapped in skin.

And you have them too, those things that arise and bring a smile and the sense anticipation, though I don't know who you are or what they may be. But you do, and because you know, it's there too, drawn in the form it always had.

You don't know me, except in these moments, through these words and the others I have written. In a way we're two strangers sharing a moment, each never seeing the other fully. It's like graffiti on a toilet wall, all we have in common is the space and the words; the time and the unknowing.

And this story is about Time and Unknowing, which means we're already there, beyond the edge of the woods. Our old paths and guardians into story have met us here and led us on as always, because they were always here, waiting.

That's their function, these psychopomps, these mind-conductors, these soul-guides. It's always the same; each excursion is both familiar and strange, like deja-vu or a dream. It might be the first or last time we leave the known world. Equally it could be one of countless journeys, but somehow we've always been here before.

Venturing out, into the unknown.

All we have to share is ourselves, and here, and now?

That's everything we have been.

It's the crossroads, the place where it all intersects, and you know how the story goes; the traveller meets a stranger at the crossroads, and contact is made.

“Would you like to sell your soul?”

Now, I don't know what that soul is, and indeed, in such tales we often don't. Not until we do, if you follow me?

But of course you follow me, for you've come this far, and so the question hangs there. The stranger stands inscrutable, more a silhouette than anything; a sketched out shape almost indistinguishable, camouflaged in shadows.

Just what is that intangible soul, and more to the point, what is it worth? When it's gone, what will the absence feel like?

And to focus on the absence makes it real, brings it forth. There at the crossroads, there's a decision to be made. It can be easy, like peeling off an old set of clothes we no longer want, or it can be difficult, like the step into the precipice, the leap into the void.

Whichever it is, we still have to consider a thing and its absence, and each of these has a weight. So they are weighed and measured up; that heaviness is felt by hand and mechanism and then inside, at the traveller's core.

Inside at the core, because whichever path is taken, a change is made. The traveller never returns home the same as before. It is as if the eye, the very gaze has been altered, and nothing is perceived as-was.

As if, no matter the decision, the consideration of the soul had opened a new door, propelled the traveller into an unfamiliar country; presented with the notion of the intangible essence, such things were carried back with them, into the lighted clearing of the world.

Imagine it thus; that such things were spoken of at home, but never known. That everyone talks of an immortal soul, that intangibles are conceptualised in language, but hardly ever weighed or explored. To do so would be ridiculous, because all know what a soul is, whether they believe in it or not.

The traveller then, is alone in their experience, in their consideration.

They become a stranger to what was once familiar; alien in some way. They carry stories of their travels – exotic places, strange thoughts. Fey, touched, changed. Such is the affect of the stranger at the crossroads, be they devil, god, wizard or fair folk.

The breath in the lungs of a human often flows without interruption – the mechanism is elusive intangible. To think of it, to focus upon that sensation in the chest and abdomen; feeling the inhalation and expiration, the rhythm that occurs outside of conscious control – that focus brings it in from the unexamined dark.

Suddenly, the breath occupies space in your awareness. Now mindful of that sensation, how might it feel to consider its cessation?

The absence of breath.

Might you dare to focus on that, to examine the absence of a previously unknown thing?

Because the story of the traveller and the crossroads is exactly that, and we are strangers to each other. Even our intimates are undiscovered lands, so what of our own psychogeography?

Practice the wanderlust. You'll need it.

Be seeing you.

Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011.(Or sign up to be notified of its release on Amazon.com)

Unlearning Reality : Afragility, Twitter, and Embodying Myth as Incunabula

I personally don't suffer with the problem that Hunter S. Thompson did, the problem which he elucidated in the 1978 BBC documentary, and James recalled in his post on Living and Embracing Ego:

I'm never sure which one people expect me to be. Very often, they conflict — most often, as a matter of fact. ...I'm leading a normal life and right along side me there is this myth, and it is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say, speak at universities, I'm not sure if they are inviting Duke or Thompson. I'm not sure who to be.

There is no conflict between the myth and reality for me. The Roman numerals which make up VI are as much a signifier of my self-hood as the name I was given at birth. Gonzo is the insertion of self into the narrative - the breaking of the notion of objectivity. The author goes native, becoming a native of the text or medium.

Native has its roots in natal, relating inextricably to birth and innateness. There is only a conflict if you were ever born somewhere else; the ontological and cultural tensions induce a kind of schizoid existence.

A double life, like Clark Kent and Superman or Bruce Wayne and Batman. We've all read enough comics or seen enough of the films and other media to realise that this tension is manufactured by the environment we're in.

Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne are masks. Batman and Superman are the faces behind those masks. Those faces are the real identities, and they are made of myth, born of it. In Immanence of Myth James and I talk a great deal about the body, the corpus of myth as living flesh.

Whether it be the twilight world of cannibalism, butchery, or simply eating fucking and dying, the reasons for such discussions are horrifically simple:

Our bodies, these flesh and blood machines; by their creaking, groaning, pounding and pulsing they are our method of experiencing the universe, and they are the only one we will ever have.

Going native, becoming part of the narrative; this requires that you become myth. It is in a sense, a second birth, a second Nativity - to become the 'rough beast that slouches toward Bethlehem to be born'.

The body becomes the text, the medium. That is when you have become a native, when your very flesh has been juiced with myth, suffused with and marinaded in it.

It may sound insane, to aim to become a living being composed solely of myth; a thing of dream and nebuluous, quixotic creative potential. After all, if there is no dividing line between fiction and reality, one is insane, no?

Except, there's things like this, where fictional characters tweet supportive messages to the people of Japan:

In the light of last week’s events in Japan, a twitter account has recently surfaced with encouraging comments from previous heroes on tokusatsu shows such as Ultraman, Super Sentai and Kamen Rider.

Tokusatsu means 'special filming'. Of the like seen in, y'know, Godzilla movies or Power Rangers for those of us not up on Japanese culture. Miraculous effects.

This isn't some mystical 'becoming-myth'. No, it's an attempt to help people parse the enormity of a catastrophe. This is an attempt to give people hope.

And it's happening right now, in a so-called 'rational' age. Seriously, am I the only one seeing the connections here? As I said in my last post, albeit obliquely - Godzilla and fellow mythic monsters serve a need that goes way beyond rationality.

Incunabula vol III: Necropolis, Necromancy and the Walking Dead

By Mr. VI

'I am the police, and I say, "Don't move" Snow White. You move, you're dead. Eric'
'And I say, "I'm dead," and I move.' - The Crow

(This is the third of a series of linked posts - one and two.)

A necropolis is a city of the dead; it is a settlement and home for those who have undergone a shift from the processes of life into the processes of unlife. Make no mistake, just as the living have their movements, their currents, so do the dead. They shift from the movements of life to the apparent stillness of death.

In truth that stillness is a lie, and we know that deep down in our hind-brain. That stillness is a counterfeit thing, wearing the face of someone we once knew. Bacterial replication and liquefaction, putrescence and decay – all these occur under the guise of the still, until we are forced to acknowledge the alien nature moving under the skin of familiar features.

Is any wonder we transport the dead, either literally or figuratively? If they remain amongst us, they become possessed, animated by a kind of inhumanity. But if we send them on their way, they settle with their new kind, joining with the rank upon rank of serried ancestors.

Or so we hope.

The necropolis is a place where they can move how they like, doing their dead-things. They're not possessed there, they're in the right place, slowly descending downward, settling out. Maybe, just maybe, if they want another chance at life, they mix into the underground flows of the Deep Below and emerge as part of the welling stream that gives us new life.

It's the same with a graveyard – a bounded space that is the place of the grave. The dead exist; it's only modern Western culture that says you cease post-mortem. I'm not even talking about some metaphysical afterlife – quite simply, in Western culture, the dead as a conceptual idea and/or space have become something to be ignored and deliberately avoided because of the implication that you *will* become one of them; your life and all its important constructions, shall pass away, all your investment is hence more than a little foolish.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust – if you don't take it out and use it, it's going to rust.

And that is what has happened to the dead as a concept. As a mythological space, they have atrophied, and I believe our culture is poorer for it. Sure we have vampires, the walking dead and shambling zombies – but the zombie is purely a shambling unstoppable thing, an expression of unending consumption and the vampire now a glamorised sexual predator.

Our culture is obsessed with the notion of remaining vital; with husbanding the resources that make us prime physical specimens, and yet because of this, the population of the elderly is steadily increasing. More humans are thinking about their impending doom than ever before, and yet it is a blank wall. What could be a creative space enabling society to evaluate and learn from its experiences is, in essence, a no-go zone.

But for those in crisis conditions, the veneration of the dead and death itself provides a grounding which allows a re-apprehension of life – for example the cult of Santa Muerte in Mexico, supposedly a fusion of Mesoamerican and Catholic belief.

This of course makes sense because for those under relatively affluent conditions, the status quo perpetuates the myth that it it is unceasing, and that change and transition are threatening.

In actuality, this produces a climate of denial – the dead are denied because they illustrate transitions and enable the thought that everything is precarious. Indeed, our bodies are filled with the furious replication of bacteria when we are alive; the flesh is a veritable ecosystem of strange organisms – just see James' post on the strange world of the Puppet Masters for examples.

The dead are not seized by an alien external unlife - they merely reveal what was already present within us all along; the skull as momento mori, the caput mortuum or death's head.

Strip away the pretty flesh, the rouge, the make-up; the muscle, the manicure and the moisturiser and you have the slick grin that never shifts in its mirth, the shining glory that is your essence.

And here's where we bring in the incunabula again. I bet you were waiting for them, no?

Because the incunabula use myth like ordinary humans use food – it is broken down and rearranged to incorporate it into their bodies, cut into their texts. So the dead actually provide them with sustenance; they make them stronger and more vital.

“More Human Than Human.” to quote White Zombie!



After all, the larger one's hunting ground, the more chance of gaining the necessary resources for existence – this is the essence of hunter-gathering; to move on before things are depleted. What then stops you from arriving at the necropolis and feasting with the dead?

Imagine this:

Icunabula vol II: Cut ups and Becoming

By Mr. VI

"When you cut into the present the future leaks out." - William S. Burroughs.

Previously, I've spoken of the incunabula - natives of the mythic. I've argued that the distinction between between myth and reality is meaningless because 'reality' as we know it is a model, a narrative created to comprehend our perceptions; reality as we know it is born out of the same construction process that we use to make myth and spin our tales.

You can't separate it from physicality, because the physical is our interface with the wider universe. It's as intimate as blood, breath and bone, as vital as sexual secretions and just as rich.

And just like those fluids, it's a lubricant; a fluid-smooth space that allows flow and tranverse movement. It contains the potential for life, and also death and disease of the psyche

It's not a thing of top-down authority and hierarchy, indeed if there is any movement which could be described as solely vertical in terms of myth, it's an upwelling - born from the ground of being itself - bottom up.

Urðarbrunnr. The Well of Wyrd; the dwelling place of the Weird Sisters, the Nornir who lay down and weave the events of a person's life into what they will become.

Cut, arrange, and put together; folding events in and under over. Perhaps Burroughs was more right than he knew, perhaps it's not the future that leaks out when you cut the present, but the wyrd-fluid, the raw material for becoming?

Make the incision, cut the flesh and the vital fluid wells up - for incunabula the blood of their body flows free, an opening is made to serve as entrance and exit. It becomes an access port to their own becoming-as...

Endorphins get you high, get you flying, get you soaring, get you awake and alive. Opening yourself, creating a gate to the unknown, the unintelligible spaces beyond the senses. It's blood magic, to feed and gift yourself to all comers.

We'll come back to that later - for now recall that the body-as-text is an essential of the incunabula. That being the case, who owns the text? Who has the right to edit and re-write its narrative?

Glossy magazines and moral prohibitions; eidolons of form to aspire to - these are not bottom-up processes. No, they are hierarchical and top-down. The individual must operate as a thrall to such imagery - authorative texts.

Taxonomy via text - classification and definition; truly People of the Book, an inviolate and holy manuscript.

An immovable arrangement of form, sanctified by divinity because YHVH made humanity in his own image and there's only one divinity, yes?

The brimming cornucopia of myth says otherwise; this apparent transcendent authority is not alone. Kami, landvaettir, alfar, dwergar and muses. Annunaki, shedim and lilitu, bodhisattvas, asuras and daevas. Nagas, tulpas, piskies, puccas and ghul.

Not one text - and the knowledge of this is reaching common awareness now - for did G-d have a wife? Anyone with half an interest will smile and tell you this is nothing new. Asherah has been around for years, god-wife or no.

But the incunabula makes the ink into blood, running on skin, carving out new juxtapositional language by dismembering the old - powerful creation. Just ask Odin, Marduk or any personages - human or not - who've broken things down, remixed them and come up with something new.

There's a glorious multiplicity of form here; the fluidic spaces of becoming certainly echoing the amniotic fluid.

The poem by Gabe Moses entitled How To Make Love To A Trans Person speaks loudly of such wonderful becomings and though it's a little long to reproduce on this site, here's an excerpt:

Forget the images you’ve learned to attach
To words like cock and clit,
Chest and breasts.
Break those words open
Like a paramedic cracking ribs
To pump blood through a failing heart.
Push your hands inside.
Get them messy.
Scratch new definitions on the bones.

Get rid of the old words altogether.

Godzilla's Rage: Japan's Doom, Myth, Magic and Black Swans

By Mr. VI

Godzilla is distinctly annoyed. So is Mothra, and it’s not good to annoy giant monsters, whether they be saurian or of the genus Lepidoptera. Earthquake, tsunami and radiation? Japan knows what’s happening - it’s known for years.

Don’t tell me otherwise. This is the realm of strange beasts, the kaiju; the giant monsters, the daikajiu. Plumes of atomic fire, thousands dead, cities crushed while valiant nuclear workers struggle to stop their power stations from meltdown.

Across the world, the panicked peoples twitch and bulk-buy radiation pills, echoes of Chernobyl reverberating up from the memory of the past. Whole cities emptied, half-ruined in irradiated moments - petrified by absence as man fled.

Go back a quarter of a century. Wormwood blazed out then; bitter blasted grass marking the passage of star-fire - and yet people have the gall to ask ‘what’s in a name?’

And the inexorable biological movements continue. The biosphere creaks and groans, an alien speech which is way beyond hominid primates. It adapts and shifts, moving with epochal speed; tellurian movements ripple and shudder like the scales of some great monstrosity beneath the waves.

The gloaming is Cherenkov blue; between today and tomorrow the chaos is raising its head, birthing monsters like Tiamat from the salty seas.

The Tower’s been blasted, and everything is in free-fall.

Listen to the narratives, the white noise - the babble of confusion. Myriad voices, all striving to be heard. Experts rise and fall like the wave of a tsunami. The fact that Japan wasn’t totally destroyed by 9.0 earthquake is conveniently forgotten.

Yes, Godzilla is pissed off. The kami stretch and yawn; mountains shiver in their beds. In time, the risk assessors will sagely nod. Oh yes.

And yet:

'The Japanese Nuclear Commission had the following goals set in 2003: " The mean value of acute fatality risk by radiation exposure resultant from an accident of a nuclear installation to individuals of the public, who live in the vicinity of the site boundary of the nuclear installation, should not exceed the probability of about 1x10^6 per year (that is , at least 1 per million years)".

That policy was designed only 8 years ago. Their one in a million-year accident occurred about 8 year later.'

The Fog Of War: Myth and Battle: LA

By Mr. VI

So, this weekend, the blockbuster Battle:Los Angeles comes to cinemas. Supposedly a tale about the military in the face of alien invasion in an urban city, its roots are embedded in an actual historical event - as all the best stories are.

They receive nutrients from their connexion to actuality - the best lies contain the truth. Consider the way rumour spreads; the harder something is to believe, the more effort must be expended to keep it in mind and not simply dismissed, but if something is likely then it endures more easily; circumstance and past history provide a bulwark -there is a body of experience which must be put aside for reasonable doubt to mushroom into disbelief.

War movies are so popular because they are phantasmal versions of actualities, ghostly offspring and things that could be possible. They are primal things; ordinary people in extreme circumstances and threats.

As I mentioned in a previous post, it is this extremity that crosses boundaries and connects the audience, playing on the natural human ability to empathise.

And the actual event was just that: The Battle of Los Angeles, or the Great Los Angeles Air Raid on the 24-25 Februrary 1942. More detail is available here, but suffice to say it was believed that LA was under attack by hostile forces and artillery responded for over an hour.

According to the new movie, the objects which were retaliated against were an alien scouting mission, and the film concerns what exactly happens when the main body of the alien invasion fleet arrives.