Resonances and Dancing Babies

In "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," Borges sets up a fascinating thought experiment.  Can someone stretch their mind far enough to be able to re-create (word by word, but without actually "copying") a classic text that someone else wrote hundreds of years ago?

Borges is sly, so he's not really suggesting that anyone really attempt such a feat.  However, there are times when I've come across a text that channels my own experience to quite a spooky degree.  If I started writing about those experiences, who's to say whether I would put down the same words in the same order?  I once mentioned a resonant certainty about one line in Dylan's Tangled Up in Blue, but there is another. 

Well,
In this life, I've seen everything I can see, woman
I've seen lovers flying through the air hand in hand

In 1990, that was me, flying to London with the woman that I would ask to marry me at Stonehenge a few days in the future.

I've seen babies dancing in the midnight sun

In 1997, that was me, walking through Oslo's Vigeland Park in June, not realizing it was 11pm because it was still well-lit daylight.  Those creepy statues of babies, yes, dancing, but doing even weirder things, too, have stuck with me for decades.  I'm glad that I'm still close with the two friends that explored that place with me.

And I've seen dreams that came from the heavenly skies above

Oh, you don't want to know about 2002, when I was in the hospital for 11 days, and the morphine produced three consecutive days of dreams that I wrote down and will never forget.  Actually, this was more about 2012, when another (non-substance-assisted) dream had me standing at the foot of a thousand-foot high temple to the ancient Greek gods.  Despite not being an actual Hellenic pagan, in the dream I looked up, and sang and sang and sang.

I've seen old men crying at their own grave sides

In the late 1970s, channel 9 (WOR) in New York would play Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol every December.  (Link required because who would believe such a thing existed?) We all know what the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showed to ol' Ebeneezer, but in cartoon form, that just messed me up.

And I've seen pigs all sitting watching picture slides
But I never seen nothin' like you

In a proper life, the lows are low, but the highs are high.  It's one big package.

Do ya, do ya want my love? (Woman)
Do ya, do ya want my face? (I need it)
Do ya, do ya want my mind? (I'm sayin')
Do ya, do ya want my love?

Well I heard the crowd singin' out of tune
As they sat and sang 'Auld Lang Syne' by the light of the moon

Back to 1990 in London.  Nearing midnight on December 31, we went out and joined crowds near Big Ben.  However, when this group of American tourists started singing this, um, distinctly Scottish Hogmanay song, the Brits around us started giving us a bit of the stink eye.

I heard the preacher bangin' on the drums

In 1991, I was on a midwestern college campus, and I followed a classmate who wanted to gawk at the crowd gathered around "Brother Ted," a traveling preacher serving up some fire and brimstone (with, I'm pretty sure, some others on the drums and tamborines) in the quad.  My classmate began to heckle the guy something awful.  I was still mostly a skeptical atheist at the time, and I suppose I agreed with the content of the heckling, but I really didn't like the vibe.  I never went back for subsequent rounds of "debate."

And I heard the police playin' with their guns

Well, I think I've told the story before that I had a ticket on American Airlines Flight 11, Boston to LAX, on Saturday, September 15, 2001.  That flight was cancelled (you can do the rest of the math) and the airports were full of guns for the next few years.

But I never heard nothing like you

The rest just follows logically, doesn't it?  It's one big package.

In the country where the sky touches down on the field
She lay her down to rest in the morning sun
They come a-runnin' just to get a look
Just to feel, to touch her long black hair
They don't give a damn

But I never seen nothin' like you

Do ya, do ya want my love? (Woman)
Do ya, do ya want my face? (I need it)
Do ya, do ya want my mind? (I'm sayin')
Do ya, do ya want my love?

Well, I think you know what I'm trying to say, woman
That is, I'd like to save you for a rainy day
I've seen enough of the world to know
That I've got to get it all to get it all to grow

Do ya, do ya want my love? (Come on now)
Do ya, do ya want my face? (I need it)
Do ya, do ya want my mind? (Alright now)
Do ya, do ya want my blood?

Oh, look out
Do ya, do ya want my love?
Do ya, do ya want my love?

The New Game: Completed

With huge apologies to anyone out there who has been waiting for this, I'd like to bring to a close the TenStones Glass Bead Game that I started in December 2021.  In blog posts since then, I added four shiny stones to the board.  Since I really wanted to post this post today, I decided to sum it all up and briefly present the remaining six stones.  Here's the full board:

 
Going from bottom to top, I'll list all ten of the shiny baubles and give links to the earlier posts...

1. At the bottom is Ad Orientem (move #4), with thoughts about how we try to orient our souls in the right direction.
   
   
2. One up from the bottom is Hozier's Take Me To Church (move #1), which illustrates how "the right direction" sometimes takes the form of an idealized other person.
   
   
3. On the bottom right is O Henry's Gift of the Magi (move #3), further pounding home the point that self-sacrifice is a key that can unlock the doors discussed above.
   
   
4. On the bottom left is the first of today's new beads, which I suppose I can call Inversion (or maybe "The Upside Down").  In life there are often false dawns, feasts of fools, Yin's inside Yang's, and other times when everything seems flip-flopped.  Traditions around the winter holidays include Saturnalia, the Lord of Misrule, and Boxing Day... often with temporary swaps between the people in charge and the ones who do the dirty work.  My mind goes also to Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown, who ominously sets out on his journey at dusk instead of the usual dawn.  Or Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do," in which the protagonists flout convention by drinking beer at noon on Tuesday.  The connection to O Henry is "right idea, wrong time."  The connection to Hozier is "no masters or kings, when the ritual begins."
   
   
5. At the center of it all is an enlarged bead in which I deposit Liebestod, the love-death.  (Why was I on such a roll with this loving self-sacrifice thing?) The image includes the alchemical pelican, who supposedly pecks itself to bleed in order to feed its children.  Is this the central heart, the ground-zero, of what it is to love?  Or does it go too far?  In my 20s, I know that I read way too much Joseph Campbell, and he made far-ranging connections between Wagner's Tristan & Isolde, Christian mysticism, and the way that knightly chivalry essentially redefined the concept of romantic love in the middle ages.  Is AMOR an inversion of ROMA?  Don't know, but I suspect that it wins even when it loses.
   
   
6. Above and to the right of center is good old Rory Williams, the Last Centurion (move #2).  Who doesn't love Rory the Roman?  Jerks, that's who.
   
   
7. Above and to the left of center is some combination of Indigo and The Blues.  This was the last puzzle piece to be filled in, and I'm still not quite sure about it.  There's a century of sadness in this musical genre based on flattened notes and minor keys.  I've heard that one reason that the color blue is associated with melancholy comes from certain African cultures in which one wears indigo-dyed clothing when in mourning.  (The image is from an online museum exhibit of those fascinating textiles.)  I'm pretty sure Blue Mondays are a necessary element of the Game, though.  If we have free will, it demands the possibility of mismatches in feelings... and you know where those can lead.  The connections with Liebestod should be clear.  Inversion?  Well, they say Robert Johnson had a similar adventure as did Young Goodman Brown.  Rory the Roman felt down & out quite a few times, too, but I don't think he'd ever think of erasing any of those moments across space & time.  I've said much more on this.
   
   
8. At the top-right is the Freemason's symbol of the Rough Ashlar, the rough-hewn raw material that each of us have as we set out on our moral journey.  Some compare it to "the stone that the builders rejected," which eventually becomes the cornerstone of the temple.  (Jesus wasn't playing around when he whipped out Psalm 118...)  You've got to learn to spot the good stuff when you see it, despite its outer appearances or circumstances.  This also reminds me of that old song "Swinging on a Star" -- yes, the one with the mule and the pig -- which isn't playing around either when it says you can be BETTER than you are.  The link to Rory is the cubical Pandorica.  The link to Liebestod is that all this hewing is what makes you worthy of someone else.
   
   
9. You'll know what's at the top-left if you zoom in on the image.  Yup, it's The Matrix, the movie from 1999 that introduced a lot of us to some interesting byways of philosophy, including the "simulation hypothesis" and transhumanism.  However, here I'm thinking more about the boots-on-the-ground choices that many of the characters needed to make:  Is the life I'm living as real & authentic as it could be?  Are dull illusions better than dangerous reality?  Is that mysterious other person... The One?  The link to deepest Indigo is mostly vibes... the dark glasses and goth discontent.  The link to Liebestod is everything Neo & Trinity did for each other.
   
   
10. Who's that at the top?  If you know your Al Hirschfeld Playbills, you may recognize Dulcinea, also known as Aldonza, the female lead of the musical Man of La Mancha.  I'm not going to provide a full plot summary, or even an opinionated lesson on the importance of this character to the Story.  All that I'll say is she's both subject and object for many of the examples of self-sacrificing love that I've highlighted across the rest of this game board... and, simultaneously, her final line of the play is a white-hot anthem of personal autonomy and individuation.  If you see these as contradictions that cannot possibly coexist, go watch this play.

This Glass Bead Game didn't quite go where I thought it was going to go, but it was definitely worth the exploration.  Seeing this cacophony of specific examples juxtaposed next to one another really does help make sense of the more abstract underlying ideas.  At least for me!

A Travel Guide to Neverness, version 2.0

A very long time ago, in a blogosphere far, far away, I gushed about my appreciation of the Neverness stories of sci-fi author David Zindell.  Then, about 13 years ago, I posted a PDF of what I called a Neverness FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) document.

Now, since Zindell recently came out with a new novel set in this universe, I thought it was time to update that very old PDF.  I'm happy to announce version 2.0, linked here...

If links get broken, please also try:  https://tinyurl.com/nev-faq-2025

As before, this FAQ is spoiler-free for the plot, and it's split into four main parts:

1. The Geography of Neverness (with a new & improved map)
2. The Calendar of Neverness
3. The Professions of the Order
4. Glossary of Miscellaneous Neologisms

It's awesome that Zindell included his own glossary, timeline, and some other juicy behind-the-scenes material at the end of The Remembrancer's Tale, but I still think there's some unique value in my fanboy-ish production.  :-)

I'm also excited to see hints that Zindell is going to continue writing new books... there are hints out there of a Canterbury Tales-ish round robin, with The Scryer's Tale coming next, possibly followed by The Eschatologist's Tale, The Timekeeper's Tale, The Hakuist's Tale, and so on?

Oh, also, a quick bonus quote from The Remembrancer's Tale, just to make sure I never forget to highlight Zindell's transcendent prose...

His newly found zest seemed to create around him a sphere of diamond that shielded him from the stares of the passers-by no less than the wind.  And so he skated and skated, up through the Old City and the sparkling red glidderies of the Pilots' Quarter.  And up through a rising current of hope, as well, up through the deep blue sky and straight into the stars.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now.  Now I need to hunt down those old blog posts and add updates that point to the new version of the FAQ.  But more will be coming with this ol' blog, hopefully later this month.

Unexpected Bounty

I just wanted to make a quick note about the happy coincidence that some new books from my favorite writers have been coming out in recent days.

First, the dearly departed Harlan Ellison continues to publish, with the help of his literary executor -- and top-notch scribbler himself --  J. Michael Straczynski (see my paean to the latter's TV masterwork here).  I now have my copy of the "Greatest Hits," and I'm waiting until this fall for The Last Dangerous Visions.

However, I'm not sure what was more surprising to me: that TLDV is actually coming out, or that another favorite author of mine, David Zindell, has put out a new novel in the Neverness universe!  There's no need for me to summarize it here, since I've posted again and again about my enduring love for this setting.  I anticipate updating my "Travel Guide to Neverness" (a kind of spoiler-free FAQ) after a 13-year hiatus, too.

Now, what am I waiting for?  Off to read!

Dark Days?

Where has the year gone?  Today is the winter solstice, and I thought I'd revamp a quote-post with some wise words (not mine!) from the first year of this blog:

On this darkest day of the year (at least for those of us north of the equator), I thought a few inspirational words may be in order.  This was written by someone named "Knight Monk" in a LiveJournal group a few [2023 update: so so many] years ago.  I'm not omitting any intro; what follows is the entire post:

I am writing about more than sunlight, you know... although the swift-passing window of the Winter Day is no small matter either. These are the shortest days. And for many they are filled with hectic activity. For others they are cold and barren desert of Depression. Lao Tzu writes: "Movement overcomes cold."

Translating this into one's own practice means that during darkest days of Winter, instead of hiding under a comforter and napping all day, one should keep active. Do many things even if you feel like sitting still - this is how one makes it through the worst Winters, even the most terrible Winters of the mind.

 The converse also holds true. During the hot days of Summer, or even the most hectic and anxious times of any season, one should seek to still the mind and body. "Keeping still overcomes heat."

The words hold not just literal truth for the thermostat of the human body. Properly applied, the words can govern our moods. They put into the hands the reigns of the intellect. Anxiety and panic are also ruled by the still Player.

I wish everyone actively contemplative Dark Days and a fantastic New Year!  I'll try my best to finish that solo GBG, honest!  ;-)

Dinners with Erik and Andre

At some point, I'm really hoping to surprise everyone by bringing this ol' blog back to vibrant activity again.  We'll see if 2023 is the year for that.  Soon, I definitely plan to complete the "New" Glass Bead Game that I started in... um... December 2021.

For now, I've got two parallel quasi-reviews to share in this post.  I feel like the two things I'm discussing -- the 1981 movie My Dinner with Andre and Erik Hoel's 2021 novel The Revelations -- sort of rhyme with one another in some abstract analogical way.  I'm definitely recalling the late Charles Cameron's concept of "Double-Quotes" here.  After both, I'll muse about the why and how of this pairing.  But first, let's get to them:

Dinner #1: Andre and Wally

A few months ago, I recommended this iconic 1981 movie to a friend.  I'm forgetting the key detail of why I thought this particular movie was the ideal thing to recommend at the time, but I haven't forgotten her response: it was a strong dislike of, and visceral aversion to, the guy who did most of the talking: Andre Gregory.

Okay, that meant I had to rewatch the whole thing, then.  I idolized this movie when I first saw it in my mid-20s.  I remember being kind of envious of the life Andre led.  Spiritual experiences that make you feel truly alive?  Hey, I want that.  Seeing through the hypocrisy and shallowness of the world?  Yeah, man.

But now, in my mid-50s, I definitely saw it with new eyes.  I got the feeling Andre was leaving out some key details -- like, how okay was his wife with all this spiritual gallivanting?  It really looked like he was describing a combination mid-life crisis and nervous breakdown.  Despite the guy trying to get away from it all, it still really seemed like he retained many of his upper-class NYC pretensions.  "40 Jewish women?"  The suckling teddy bear?  Blech.  If you don't know what these phrases mean, please don't feel the need to find out.

After talking through those weird experiences, Andre pivots onto a tangent that could only be described as self-loathing and resentment.  THEN it's all the fault of a shadowy dystopian government or something?  Our man Vizzini eventually gets up the gumption to poke some holes in the most excessiest of Andre's excesses, but it still doesn't shift away from the overall feel that the audience is supposed to end up nodding along with Andre anyway.

Now, I'll say, starting around 1:22:40, there's a bit that still enthralls me.  Andre gets optimistic about rebuilding the human spirit on a small scale.  Repairing the world through art and constructing a new language of the heart.  His focus on movements like Findhorn pointed me in some inspiring directions, back in the day.  But I think one can work to build these kinds of things without all that other self-indulgent crap.  :-)

Dinner #2: A Neuroscientist's Paean

Right around this time, I was in the middle of reading Erik Hoel's newest novel.  I admit to being suckered in by the author's Substack post about the publishing process... which maybe was his secret plan all along to boost readership.  I'm still not 100% sure about whether I can actually recommend this novel to others, but I can try to say some spoiler-free things about it.

There were things that definitely weren't my cup of tea.  The main character was unlikable, somewhat by design for sure... but the author was also going for some undiagnosed mental illness that made it a bit hard to step into his P.O.V.  The main female character seemed to be a bit of authorial wish fulfillment (brilliant scientist... but with a history as a fashion model...)  There was ample discussion of the animal research done in the neuroscience lab, which carried definite squick factor.

However!  Hoel's choice of narratorial voice was nothing short of fascinating.  I don't think I've seen "omniscient third person" done so... omnisciently!  We spend a lot of time in the main characters' heads, but we randomly bop into the heads of a dozen others, and also into the "heads" of some animals, plants, and inanimate objects.  And those unannounced "bops" go deep, even if they're brief.  All befitting for a novel about consciousneess, I guess.  At one singular place in the book, the narrator pivots briefly -- but hard -- to second person.  That kind of floored me.

Hoel also drops adjective non-sequiturs, about once per page, which often had me scratching my head.  Why that word in that place?  Again, because everyone's thinking about consciouness and the mind, these often feel inexplicably right.

About the actual content of the characters' discussions about consciousness... interesting to say the least.  I prefer the times when they're just talking to one another about these ideas, rather than when the main character is just thinking about them.  (The Joycean stream of consciousness has a bit of an undertow.)  For a few months after finishing the novel, I was continuing to follow up on various bread crumbs of theories and ideas on the internet.  The author based some of it on his own experience as a neuroscientist, and he knows academia, for sure!  So, while it maybe wasn't everything I hoped it would be, I'm still glad I read it.

- - - - - - -

So, why this pairing?  Both the movie and the novel are about people who think deeply about what it means to be human in this modern age.  They both ask tough questions about how we can better understand our inner natures to figure out how to live better.  But they also both show (maybe unintentionally?) how we can never fully purge ourselves of the full range of foibles and rough-edged imperfections that make us human in the first place.

Ten Years of Weird

I'm interrupting our regularly scheduled programming for a quick anniversary acknowledgment.  This blog passed its official ten-year anniversary more than a year ago (the first post was on January 2, 2011), but I assert that today is an even more special day.  Exactly ten years ago today, I began my first April A-Z challenge.

Even though that wasn't even my first month-long blog challenge, I still see it as the birth of the true voice of this blog.  Prior to that, I had been focused much more narrowly on the two original topics of the blog: old-school D&D and Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game.  I think I even tried to always "pay the Joesky tax" (does anyone even remember what that means?!) on RPG posts, too.  But on April 1, 2012, I began to mentally remove those fetters.  That's when things really started to bloom.

To be clear, there's nothing at all wrong with my original topics.  I keep pondering & writing about them quite a bit.  But I think I really needed the freedom to more completely follow my weird, as they say.  (Note this internal blog link is from December 2011, so I think these juices were stewing prior to that fateful day exactly a decade ago.)

In April 2012, and over the next few years, I met quite a few fascinating people, one of which I count as one of the most important people in my life despite having never met in person.  I've gone through a lot in the last decade -- a new job, moving across the country, loss of a parent, hitting my 50s -- and this blog & its people have been lifelines at times.

I can't promise a return to super-active blogging over the next decade, but I still value this place and the chance it gives me to, well, be Cygnus!