Talking about Food

How can we talk about food?

It is an incredibly complex issue. It is impossible to discuss diet without raising issues of economics, ethics, and consciousness that would take many books -- if not lifetimes -- to give ample time and consideration.

It's easy enough to see sex as the central issue of life. One could say that it is death that in fact sheds the greatest life upon life. But maybe a more biological perspective would be that it is food that leads us most evenly to all the central issues of life. Our very history is contained in the culture of our food.

"How is food a perfect road map of myth? In the same way that it tells the story of history. It tells of interbreeding, it tells of times of peace, it tells of rape and pillaging, of occupation, of diaspora and exodus."

"You are what you eat." Maybe so. But what led us to decide what we should eat, and what we should avoid? What level of responsibility do we have as individuals for the cultural and global repercussions of our food choices?

Most of us are not prepared for this. We are provided food as a child, and take on the habits that presented to us. Or perhaps as a teenager we rebel against these cultural habits, so that Veganism is to mainstream America in this light much like Satanism is to Catholicism.

The ethical dimension of food also brings in knee-jerk reactions. I lived in a house of 7 college students my junior year. Three of the housemates were vegan, two were vegetarian, and two were meat eaters. This lead to food wars, with bacon thrown in the trash leading to bacon put in beds lead to--well, it escalated, and got quite ugly. So food politics involve dehumanization, as well.

Those ethical issues, and the fact that culture is so blindly inherited by many people--though less so by the average Modern Mythology or Mythos Media reader I'll wager--make it deeply challenging. They charge it through with emotions and posturing and politics.

Transcending Obligation: Buddha and Christ

After a nice group meditation session tonight, I was thinking a bit about Buddhism, and watching several documentaries on "his" life. I thought I'd make a little joke:

1. 2 hrsMythos Media ‏@Mythos_Media

   People often overlook the part of the story of the Buddha where he abandons his wife & child. The Buddha was a total dick.

   
   

   Image will appear as a link

   1. 1 hrMad Scientist Mclean ‏@IDMclean

      @Mythos_Media The wife he had an arranged marriage with and who was a blood relative. Not saying that doesn't make him a dick.

      Expand
   2. 6 minsMythos Media ‏@Mythos_Media

      @IDMclean the story goes that he was deeply in love with her, cousin or not. But it was a joke too. Buddhas life is best seen as myth

      Expand
   3. 5 minsMythos Media ‏@Mythos_Media

      @IDMclean in the context of myth...well, his son was called "fetter." Ball and chain.

      Expand
   4. 5 minsMythos Media ‏@Mythos_Media

      @IDMclean it was the cultural dimension he had to transcend, that we have to transcend to be ourselves

After transcending that dimension presented by his child and wife, he was presented by Maya with his future: he would become a great king of men. This too he had to go beyond, and at this point he entered the spiritual realm and was then presented with temptations there after demonstrating his attainment.

The tests under the Bo tree are almost beat for beat similar to the tests of the Christ. It is the way that the Christ and Buddha myths were differently interpreted that spelled the primary differences between these narratives. The cultures that bore the stories into existence were different, and the future mutants of those stories were also different. It is interesting then that there is so much overlap between these redeemer/savour myths, though of course that cultural different winds up producing such different practices. 

It's also worth noticing that if you're planning on marrying someone that is to become a religious figure, you're pretty shit out of luck. Cause it really didn't go well for the women in Siddhartha's life, nor Jesus'. 

Reality is an Art Project

Portlandia : Art Project

Gonzomentary: Clark

From Hyperallergic re: Art Project, Portlandia:

 For those uninitiated into its history, conceptual art can often seem like a trick — is that really a urinal in an art gallery? Is sticking yogurt caps on gallery walls really great art? Unfortunately for Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, the stars and creators of the sketch TV show Portlandia, it turns out that conceptual art can actually trap you, even outside of a gallery opening ...
The danger of anything being art, as we are wont to argue these days, is that everything can be art if you want it to — and no one else has to agree with you to make it so. The Portlandia folks are living in a world in which postmodernism has run amok, sparing nothing, not even the coffee shop.

From Film Threat re: Clark, A Gonzomentary: 

What results from Warwick’s footage is a “gonzomentary,” a mix of fourth-wall busting filmmaking, mockumentary, Gonzo journalism and whatever else can be added into the mix, which includes: Uncle Binky the pedophile clown; a Christian producer/investor who wants the film to contain no swearing, no drinking and no drugs, right before she has a crisis of faith and becomes a mime; a silent film; Tito the drug dealer, who is actually a British actor (David Proch) stuck in a Method acting Hell and Warwick’s own descent into madness while chronicling the adventures of Clark and J.C. And penises. Lots of penises.

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

A World of One's Own: Sine Qua Non

"I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art." -Anaïs Nin.

Why do you create?
Where do you belong? 

For me it is also a matter of Sine Qua Non: Without which, not.

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

Subjectivity?

Add sleeping, dreaming, and waking
to the list of our existential uncertainty. 

Centuries of thought have been directed toward subjectivity, which makes me feel like a bit of a fool to offer it up for consideration. But I'd like to share some of these videos with you, so here we are.

What is an obvious and immediate consideration when we recognize our own existence? Any question of our experience immediately brings up its existence separate from us. What is it? Which is 'more' real, the logical source of our experience that lies outside of experience (object) or that which recognizes and becomes aware of that occurrence.

The branch of philosophy retroactively entitled "continental philosophy" could be seen as deriving itself from this single issue. In asking that one question we are forced to consider not only our experience, old our existence and finite, and the apparent cleavage between representation and source, numinon and phenomenon. We must also crack open a dank can of "What the Fuck" (it comes in regular and diet) in contemplating the limits of the methods we might use to explore these issues. And so epistemology joins cosmology.  Is the real real? Emphasis floats in one philosophy, and one generation, and the next.

Frankly, the words start to sound just like noise being made by flapping lips.

Be that as it may, here are some different perspectives:

Alchemical Alembics & Desert Wines - An Interview with Maynard James Keenan

Last year I had the opportunity to speak with Maynard James Keenan for a short Q & A that ran in Alarm Magazine. Keenan's work with the bands Tool, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer have penetrated deep into the cultural consciousness, but it was another passion of his that provided the impetus for the article. In the heart of the Verde Valley he is currently developing the Arizona Stronghold Wines partnership, which includes development of Merkin Vineyards, and creation of his own winery, Caduceus Cellars.

In researching for the interview I came to realize that there's far more to what Keenan is doing with his wine craft than I'd first expected. A focus on community growth, desert permaculture, and sustainable, socially integrated business practices demonstrates a different side of Keenan's genius, which in other applications has allowed him to become one of the most successful artists in the contemporary music industry. There is also an esoteric component to his wine making, which is hinted at in the title for the Blood into Wine documentary produced a few years ago to introduce people to his vineyard and winery.

Through understanding the place history of the Verde Valley, Keenan is working with bringing to his wines the sense that they are literally transmuting the blood of those who have lived and died in the area, and whose work has made the desert community possible. With an awareness of how specific climates, soil types and other environmental factors affect the development of the wine, he has added an additional layer of cultural understanding which brings out a more subtle sense of what happens during the fermenting process.

Aptly named after Hermes' staff, Caduceus Cellars brings an alchemical approach to wine making that returns the craft back to its origins. Another way that Keenan stays true to this alchemical tradition is in his focus on renewing the society which supports his pursuits. One thinks of the legendary donations of Nicolas Flamel which are still remembered through street names and plaques in the areas in France where he was said to have provided for the community through his transmutations.  In a similar sense Keenan's work with the local community to not only create business, but also to build an infrastructure that supports further development, is a beautiful example of integrating all aspects of one's passion and craft into something that benefits everyone in the community.

The interview as it originally ran in Alarm was significantly shortened due to space requirements, and I am happy to have the opportunity to publish the unedited version here on Modern Mythology.

You’ve been involved in wine making and viticulture for a little over a decade now, haven’t you?

Yeah, pretty much, maybe a little bit longer. Right around 1999 is when I started messing around with orchards here. And broke ground for the actual vineyard  in 2002 I believe.

The Vacuum Metastability Event: New Evidence

"If you use all the physics that we know now and you do what you think is a straightforward calculation, it's bad news," Joseph Lykken said at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on Monday. "It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable and at some point billions of years from now it's all going to get wiped out. This has to do with the Higgs energy field itself."


The first thing I see on my facebook feed this morning: If Higgs Boson Calculations Are Right, A Catastrophic 'Bubble' Could End Universe. Recent work in the world of physics provides new evidence that something far worse than "the nothing" ought elicit our cosmic angst, as I wrote in: Ex nihilo nihil fit: Heidegger's Vacuuity and False Vacuum Decay.

Reincarnation into Computers: Cylons?

six-three-eight who do
we appreciate

He doesn't outright say it, but it's an amusing thought that the Dalai Lama believes in the premise behind Cylon resurrection  In the 'new' Battlestar Galactica, humanoid cylons are immediately reincarnated in a new, identical body so long as they are within range of resurrection ships. This was one of the many conceits used by the writers of that show to introduce cosmological and theological concepts, along with other philosophical quandaries, into a "sci fi" setting so as to produce a truly Modern Mythology.

Of course there's a big difference between attributing such things to the theoretical consideration of Maybe, and thinking of them as material Necessity. A point made within the Immanence of Myth is that thinking of them as either is exactly the same, however much different a bash over the head and evil thoughts may be at the surface.

But of course there are less literal ways that we can interpret ressurection.
In the cosmological sense, it takes on a different meaning:

How do we make the leap from one to the other? I honestly have no answer there, though I'm curious to see what others think on that. 

There is a sneaky danger that lies between the two -- what happens when someone believes that thought and matter are identical twins -- ... 

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

Taoism and Chuang-Tzu

Many people think of Taoism as being restricted to Lao Tzu, the Tao Teh Ching, and possibly some hand-wavy interpretation of the yin-yang symbol. However, it is a very old shamanistic tradition that, in its explicit origins, came into being both to expound upon and also contradict the Confucian idea of order in celestial bureaucracy. Taoism confuses many Westerners as it is a religion that is not a religion, a philosophy that is not a philosophy, and the practices and beliefs that have followed from its sources are as divergent as Catholicism and Satanism. (Which is to say, opposed and yet tied -- much like Taoism and Confucianism.)

I'd like to provide some more resources on those interested on exploring Taoism beyond Lao Tzu, and even Chaung Tzu, though some of you might like to begin there.

• First, Sasha's blog "Shaman Science" has many ruminations on the 5 element system.
• My health video playlist contains many Taoist based practices and martial arts. I will continue adding to this -- it is already over 8 hours long! 
• Simple breakdown of the 5 elements.
• Motion sensors attached to a Baguazhang practicioner demonstrating one of the most common movements in the form. 
• Taiwan Bagua Documentary
• Internal alchemy. 

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

Drunk for your Amusement Doug Stanhope

By James Curcio
(First run on Alterati.)

No Refunds.

Doug Stanhope Deadbeat Hero from a decade ago.

For years now, I’ve wondered who the next Bill Hicks was going to be. As things grew more and more grim I wondered if maybe we would have no more fool messiahs (Eulogy is the track I’m referring to…) because the meter was just fucking broke and we’ve all become too whitebread and insecure to recognize the rallying call if it comes. “COMEDY IS DEAD, GO HOME, GAME OVER.”

Comedy is a dicey topic these days. In fact, you can't go within a hundred yards of many topics without engaging a twitter boat load of hate your way--sometimes with good reason, and sometimes not. Consider this. The point is that comedy makes people engage with ideas, sometimes incredibly subtle or complex ones, without realizing that they are doing so. Comedy is, in other words, a means of making the public engage in philosophy. I realize that may seem absurd. Just as absurd as it is to suggest that Doug Stanhope is a philosopher? But even if the comedians themselves don't recognize it--and I think Doug does, actually--this is the real task of the comedian. To get people engaged with uncomfortable topics. Laughter is a defense mechanism. But it isn't just a method of diffusion.

Ripple is coming soon

We will be syndicating a podcast series that was first run on Alterati, featuring a number of established but still underground artists and acts such as Estradasphere, Lustmord, Pygmy Love Circus, and so on. 

General credits: This show was narrated by Ray Carney, and the interviews performed either by Ray Carney himself or Rusty Shackleford. They were produced by myself (James Curcio) and occasionally co-produced by Wes Unruh.

Expect the first episode in a few days.

 [Where's the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

Utopian For Beginners

Check out this article from incunabula:

There are so many ways for speakers of English to see the world. We can glimpse, glance, visualize, view, look, spy, or ogle. Stare, gawk, or gape. Peek, watch, or scrutinize. Each word suggests some subtly different quality: looking implies volition; spying suggests furtiveness; gawking carries an element of social judgment and a sense of surprise. When we try to describe an act of vision, we consider a constellation of available meanings. But if thoughts and words exist on different planes, then expression must always be an act of compromise.
Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process that leaves them teeming with irregularities, quirks, and words like “knight.” No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English, Mandarin, or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today.
“Natural languages are adequate, but that doesn’t mean they’re optimal,” John Quijada, a fifty-four-year-old former employee of the California State Department of Motor Vehicles, told me. In 2004, he published a monograph on the Internet that was titled “Ithkuil: A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language.” Written like a linguistics textbook, the fourteen-page Web site ran to almost a hundred and sixty thousand words. It documented the grammar, syntax, and lexicon of a language that Quijada had spent three decades inventing in his spare time. Ithkuil had never been spoken by anyone other than Quijada, and he assumed that it never would be.
In his preface, Quijada wrote that his “greater goal” was “to attempt the creation of what human beings, left to their own devices, would never create naturally, but rather only by conscious intellectual effort: an idealized language whose aim is the highest possible degree of logic, efficiency, detail, and accuracy in cognitive expression via spoken human language, while minimizing the ambiguity, vagueness, illogic, redundancy, polysemy (multiple meanings) and overall arbitrariness that is seemingly ubiquitous in natural human language.”

This feeds directly into past (and future planned) articles on linguistics and meaning.

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

Ad Space For Sale

We are now offering ad space here, in targeted posts or in the sidebar that appears on every page. Rates forthcoming, or contact me if you want to get positioning immediately. ~1000 visits / day plus RSS, niche readers of above average intellect. Such as yourself.

The skinny... This decision comes after several internet marketing companies approached us asking for rates or just making an offer out of the blue, and the decision to start focusing on this site and the content that we run again in a more concerted manner moving into 2013. It got me thinking - regular cash flow would allow us to easily double or even triple traffic rates. I know this from past experience. (For reference, the last funded group blog / web mag project I managed got up to about 10k visits/day.)

Chapel of Sacred Mirrors Deep Puddle Dynamics

By James Curcio
(first run on Alterati, 2007)

I'm lying on my back on the floor, on a mat in the middle of a long hall surrounded at both ends by singing bowls and enormous gongs. To my left is a girl, curled in a ball, who has been rocking back and forth for five minutes, sobbing, repeating the mantra, "I want my mommy, I want my mommy." To my right is another girl, lying in corpse pose as I am, who merely periodically sighs, "this is amazing." And here I am in the middle, eyes closed, clear-headed, and more or less invisible.

Though it would strike me as no surprise if hallucinogenic drugs were involved, there is no doubt in my mind that some of this reaction is the result of amplification. The Greys have really built a sacred space here. I first noticed it during my initial visit to the space-- I was one of the speakers for the Generation Hex launch party November 2005. About halfway through the presentation it struck me that many people were behaving as if they were on LSD, and they were people who, I knew for a fact, had taken none. This was later confirmed by comments from a number of the people in the audience later. As with a church when it is really serving its cultural function, the Chapel is a space which, if you're open to it, unhinges you from your everyday experience and expectations, and allows you to percieve everything, including yourself, from a new vantage point. (Also, like a church, you only get out of it what you bring to it.)

Words of Traitors (trailer 1)

ORDER THE BOOK NOW

A full color illustrated book available now from http://www.mythosmedia.net -

Hope and faith, sex and death, excess and deprivation, loss. An illustrated collection of treacherous memories. These dark modern fairy tales will stick with you long after you've put the book down.

"Beautiful!" -David Mack, (Kabuki, Daredevil, Dexter.) Full color art by an international collection of artists.

Trailer 1:
Editorial: James Curcio.
Art: James Curcio. Alexey Andreev.
Music: Scott Landes.