Monthly Archives: March 2012

Carmelo Bene, genius

I guess most of everyone who may read this would have no idea of who Carmelo Bene is. And this is fine since he was an Italian avant-garde playwright and actor who died about 10 years ago and was probably the most important figure in Theater that we had.

I mention him here, this blog, because he was inspired by a similar sets of ideas, or beliefs. At some point he worked closely with Gilles Deleuze and was interested in the complete annihilation of the “self”, intended as a conscious entity. From my point of view he essentially represented in “art” Scott Bakker’s Blind Brain Theory. He refused to “exist” and became a rather popular figure in Italy because he was controversial and every time he appeared on TV he aroused all kinds of outrage and scandal. In particular he was accused of speaking in riddles, of nothing and being just a clever trickster who kept fooling the audience with his nonsensical, artificially shocking performances, just to draw the attention. Most of everyone was against him, he was deliberately an antagonist, and had a very troubled and animated relationships with his critics, who were continuously trying to frame him, diminish him or celebrate him, depending on their credo.

But he had a point. This is what happens when you are “misunderstood”. You keep talking of THIS, but people think it’s about THAT. Your stream of (post)consciousness goes in a direction, but everyone else is on another frequency. But when you instead understand the symbols he uses, the hooks, then the ephemeral nonsense of his words transforms into absolute clarity. He then used those ideas to speak about everything: theater, literature, philosophy, politics, his work, his private life.

His purpose, if there was a purpose, was to perform a checkmate on theater and literature. Destroy and deny everything there is, going beyond the post-modern, to some non-entity lying beyond. In order to be “there”, he had to deconstruct, not as conscious analysis, but to remove himself from the scene, to transform the voice and language in a form of non-language. In order to be there he had to “turn off the lights”. To quote Erikson again, two posts down, “look away to see”.

This is not a theory, he only works on the art, and so he only tries to represent it, give it some shape. He described himself as an “actorial machine”, he himself becoming a performance. Only by channeling some demon inside he could say something true. Get closer to the whole, the misshapen lack of identity and voluntary act.

“He considered his work to be about a “constant becoming” in a perpetual state of incompletion. Bene believed that to merely repeat the written lines of famous playwrights was to murder theater. His art, therefore, is an art of repetition through extreme variation. By experimenting with classical dramatic texts, Bene became known as a notorious destroyer of texts.”

I’ll try to translate some of his ideas to better understand what feeds the process. If you’re curious you can also see here one of his performances (it seems the whole thing can be seen here, but obviously in Italian. It’s, huh, quite NSFW). Instead I extracted some of the quotes from a TV show where he spoke directly with the public about himself and his work. The public was, obviously, badly attuned, but it made the show lively.

If someone has defined the “phonè” as a dialectic of thought, then I deny being part of it. I’m looking for the emptiness, which is the end of every art, of every story, of every world. The language of the Great Theater, incomprehensible by definition, becomes completely comprehensible on a different level of understanding, being all about the signifier, and not the signified, or sense.

Language creates failures, it is only made of black holes and failures: (quoting Montale/Nietzsche) “Only this we can now say: what we are not, what we do not want.” Who says “I say I exist, I say this” is two times a stupid. First because he believes in his self, secondly because he’s convinced of saying, and even a third time because he’s convinced of saying what he’s thinking. Because he believes that what he thinks is not signifier, but signified, a sense. That happens under his authority. It’s all noise. I think conscious intelligence is misery. I refuse to consider the ontology.

I do not speak, I am being spoken.

“The gods, plural is the noun, played yourself. The gods returned you to the mythical dawn of times. They carved you empty of simulation. Freed you of codes.”

“We are but ghost lights, representation and model. You and I, in the illusion of being. Sincerity in the lie, truth in contradiction. As truth does not exist, given only in the delirium of language.”

“Voice and language, delirium of omnipotence. Delirium because it’s not there. It does not exist.”

(talking of amplification through a microphone, in theater) The actorial machine is the consequence of the Great Actor, stripped of expressive corporeal human capabilities (vocal, facial expression, gestures, etc..) to wear an amplified attire, both visual and voiced. The voice of the actorial machine is not just a simple amplification, but an extension of the tonal range, becoming a whole. The autorial machine is a fusion between actor and machine; amplification is not a prosthesis, but a further organic extension where the voice is defined by the process. In the same way one doesn’t “have a body” but one “IS a body”, so one is or becomes amplification, equalization, etc…

This amplification is not a mere enlargement of the sound. As an example, it’s as if I’m reading this page at this distance. So I see and understand. But if I bring this page very close, the outlines begin to blur. Closer and closer till they vanish, and I see nothing. At this point, “everyone has his own visions”. What is infinitely large, as discovered in physics, corresponds to what is infinitely small. A step beyond the threshold. That’s why I make myself smaller, “so that he can augment, I have to wane”. It’s the conscious “self” that needs to get smaller. The emptying of the “I”, the abrogation of subject, and so of history. I refuse to be in history. I stepped out of thought.

Art has always been bourgeois, consolatory, idiotic, stupid, it has been especially blathering, whorish and pandering. Art has to be incommunicable. Art has only to overcome itself. That’s why it’s up to us, once we get outside ourselves, to become masterworks. Exit modality to reach the place where modality ceases to be. I can only try to explain my discomfort. I can’t engage with what’s real, what’s obvious, what’s rational. The darkness. Turning off the lights. I even hate symbolism as an artistic language. Poetry is shit. We’re still within words, trying to find a way and unable to come out. I have found in myself a desert, and I speak to the desert who’s the other, and not to someone else’s desert. I possess absence. That’s all. I am being honest because I am not myself.

Universe is one, one only. The pluriverse… is. One can’t say the pluriverse is “what’s left”. The universe is just a tiny, tiny sliver of pluriverse.

(question) What can I do to not exist?

Depose your will. Cut the strings. Will and consciousness are never good. Consciousness does not exist. Look for surrender if you can. But you can’t. You can’t find it. Because when we are not in surrender, we do not realize it. Because once we are in surrender we aren’t “us” anymore. You can’t even exploit it, because you aren’t there anymore when you are there. It doesn’t belong anymore to the dialectic, it comes before and after words.

Another Earth

When early explorers first set out west across the Atlantic, most people thought the world was flat.
Most people thought if you sailed far enough west you would drop off a plane into nothing.
These vessels sailing out into the unknown…

We’re not real.

We’re a projection of the imagination of Earth Two.

It would be very hard to think “I am over there”…
And “Can I go meet me?”…
And “Is that me better than this me?”
“Can I learn from the other me?”
“Has the other me made the same mistakes I’ve made?”
Or “Can I sit down and have a conversation with me?”
Wouldn’t that be an interesting thing?

The truth is, we do that all day long every day.
People don’t admit it and they don’t think about it too much, but they do.
Everyday, they’re talking in their own head.
”What’s he doing?”
”Why’d he do that?”
“What did she think?”
“Did I say the right thing?”

In this case, there is another you out there.

In Plato’s allegory of the cave, the people living in the cave all they knew what was in the cave, and one day one of them gets out… and goes out and sees the real world, comes back and tells the others.
You know what happened to him?
They beat him up. They didn’t believe it.
“That can’t be,” they said.
I don’t think we’re ready to know what’s out there. It’s a bad idea.

So you’d rather stay in the cave?
I mean, if Galileo had felt that, we’d still think we’re the center of the universe, that the sun is orbiting us.
I mean- They tried to burn him at the stake for that.

Yeah, maybe they should have.
We still think we’re the center of the universe.
We call ourselves Earth One, and them Earth Two.

Within our lifetimes, we have marveled.
As biologists have managed to look at ever smaller and smaller things.
And astronomers have looked further and further… into the dark night sky, back in time and out in space.
But maybe the most mysterious of all…
Is neither the small nor the large.
It’s us, up close.

Could we even recognize ourselves?
And if we did, would we know ourselves?
What would we say to ourselves?
What would we learn from ourselves?
What would we really like to see if we could stand outside ourselves…
and look at us?

A visit to Christopher Priest’s site drew my attention to this movie (and made me bump up his book in my reading queue, so you should see “A Dream of Wessex” up there now). It’s a very good one and I recommend that you watch it.

The quotes above are extracted from the script but they may even give a wrong idea of what this movie is about. It carries its Sci-Fi “gimmick” (suddenly “another earth” appears in the sky, looking exactly as our own) well and convincingly, but the gimmick is not the point. This is a movie about characters and their stories, the focus never shifts away. It’s not like what they clumsily tried to do with Alcatraz (TV series), where they added to the standard procedural some mysterious elements as “flavor”. This isn’t a weird mix of parts that do not belong. The gimmick is instead just a point of view to observe something specific. A lens. You’re supposed to look through it, not at it.

“We structured it as a typical, straight drama, with all the reversals and character arcs, and then embedded it in this larger science fiction concept just for metaphor.”

I think it’s a movie that fulfills its goals perfectly and deals with its mystery well even if it’s not the focus. It illustrates well the distinction I make between “ambiguous” and “ambivalent”. It’s just a simplifying schema I use to define the ending of a mystery drama. Ambiguous is when you get no definite answers, what happened stays quite murky, you’re left confused and without an explanation about what went on. David Lynch, for example, usually falls in this category. And then there are ambivalent endings. These I consider much more satisfying because you’re given all the pieces to complete the puzzle. The movie is not deliberately obscure and ungenerous. The only problem is that you’re not given a definite, univocal solution. It’s open-ended. Meaning that you’re offered more than one solution to the puzzle. The movie doesn’t say which one is specifically the right one, it’s up to you to imagine the rest, you’re given this kind of power. But there aren’t parts that are missing or that you cannot properly reach, things that the director deliberately took away to prevent you to understand things as clearly as possible.

A very good quality of this movie compared to, say, Donnie Darko, is that it lacks pretentiousness and can be “held”. The end of the movie will spark a lot of questions, but you aren’t forced to watch it a second time with the hope to catch things you missed. What you need to know to understand it fully is all there. As a metaphor, its meaning is in the intent, not in the gimmick.

It’s curious because it’s part of the style of the movie too. It resembles some “found footage” movies or documentaries, where the “eye” of the camera is discreet. Giving the idea of observing objectively and passively. Yet in this movie I perceive a contradiction, since this eye is not discreet at all and is at times even invasive. See for example some conspicuous, sudden zooms. It almost seems creepy because it makes felt the presence of an observer, whose eye lingers and is precisely interested in details. It’s not a passive observer that disappears and is unnoticeable. It’s instead very deliberate. Usually I would criticize something like this, but in this context it matches the gimmick as a very deliberate and specific point of view. In this, it doesn’t pretend to be “true” or clinging to a pathetic idea of truth, but just tries to have an honest insight into this impossible situation. It’s fiction, it doesn’t pretend to be true, but it is honest.

In about a month a kind of companion work titled “Sound of My Voice” should come out in theaters in the US, I’d definitely watch it if I could.

Someone said that Sound of My Voice just keeps going deeper and deeper into more claustrophobic situations, while Another Earth just keeps going more open and open. They’re moving in different directions, and yet they’re working on something subconscious and magical.

Midnight Tides – Steven Erikson

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

Don’t be fooled, the quote above may have a likeness to Malazan, in theme, but is not written by Erikson. It’s Shakespeare. Now, beside the brashness of putting these names together, I have a point. I mentioned in the blog that I’m reading “The Wayward Mind” by Guy Claxton, and it works like a handy manual to the Malazan world. That quote from Shakespeare also comes from this book, exploring the mystery of unconscious along the centuries, in philosophy, science and literature. This has been a key to Erikson’s series and its mythological forms I’ve held long before reading Claxton or Midnight Tides. “The forms of things unknown” is at the same time defining possible mythology, as well the hidden things that lurk in the darkness of the human soul. What stands well lit on the page, defined by consciousness, and what lies deeper, unseen. The outward, “explicit” projection of that darkness within is essentially the theme of human unconscious, as well the manifestation of a mythological world where gods are very real. That’s why I see “Midnight Tides”, the title of the book, as a suggestion to what hides below, a force unseen, lingering just below the calm level of consciousness. I’m not even sure I interpret this correctly, as I can’t grasp the whole of it, or what Erikson intended. In the past I’ve been right as much as I’ve been wrong. Yet this theme is powerful through the whole book, so I’m sure there’s at least some truth in the ways I intuitively see it. In particular there’s a page, right at the beginning of the book, but coming after the Prologue, so as part of the specific story and not of the larger arc, that is extremely evocative and hard to pinpoint (I quote only a fragment but all of it needs to be read). Making it fit perfectly with Claxton’s description of symbolic language as used by the Romantics and Shakespeare before them, the “multiple layers of resonance beyond explicit comprehension” and the “hint at buried complexities”.

Between the swish of the tides, we will speak of one such giant. Because the tale hides within his own.

The theme echoes through the rest of the book but it is especially strong in one of the last pages:

For such was the rhythm of these particular tides. Now, with the coming of night, when the shadows drew long, and what remained of the world turned away.

For that is what the Tiste Edur believe, is it not? Until midnight, all is turned away, silent and motionless. Awaiting the last tide.

And finally in the Epilogue:

And it is this moment, my friends,
When you must look away,
As the world unfurls anew
In shapes announced both bright
And sordid, in dark and light
And the sprawl of all existence
That lies between.

This lingering, shifty theme runs like an undercurrent, a midnight tide proper, since what “surfaces”, with light (attention) shining brightly on it is the central plot about the Lether empire, ever expanding, and on the move to conquer the Tiste Edur tribes in the North of the continent. An avid empire founded on the myths of money, progress as destiny, and dominance as an intrinsic vocation. Versus less “civilized” tribes that have still not resolved their relationship with their past history, bound to a more static and ancient vision of the world and way of living. One could very easily read this like a direct metaphor of modern times and western capitalism, but Erikson has clearly pointed out that he was more interested in catching the wider form of it, and its constant repetition through the whole of human history (he says: “one thing Midnight Tides taught me was that once a certain system of human behavior become entrenched, it acquires a power and will of its own, against which no single individual stands a chance”). So already two levels embedded in the whole arc of the book, to which another is added: the characters themselves, and especially two sets of three brothers. The Sengar and the Beddict, representing the two sides, the Edur and the Letherii. Each of these brothers quite different from the other, providing a different viewpoint. Six mirrors carefully placed to reflect each other and the world around, so let the game of light and shadows begin…

I won’t even try to attempt a careful analysis because it’s beyond my skill and what I’m supposed to do with a review. I’m just proceeding in general terms. This book is the fifth in a series of ten, whoever may read this review will likely know what it is about and maybe it’s more interesting for me to say of my personal reaction to it, and how it fits in the larger context of the series. I’ve said before that I considered each volume better than the previous, up to the fourth one, that I liked the most for a number of reasons. I know that Midnight Tides is ambivalent for many readers, either being the favorite or way down the scale of preference. This is mostly because the context of the story is momentarily separated from the rest. It’s set on a secluded continent away from the rest of the story of the previous four volumes and with an almost completely new set of characters. A relatively blank state that carries the obvious risks. The familiar characters and context abandoned to “linger” on something new, and so having to win once again the attention and willingness of the readers. In my personal ladder of preference I’d decidedly put MT behind the previous three volumes, and only above Gardens (the first). But not because of lack of familiarity or unease with new characters and stories.

My problem and criticism sits mostly in the execution. I’ve only admiration for how Erikson sets things up and the power of his vision at all the levels he engages with. What instead I found lacking and not quite fulfilling its task in this book is what goes on page by page. Something not quite reaching in the writing and execution of the single scenes. I’m not pretending to know better, but it is simply my reaction to the book, limited as it is. I found a certain legitimacy to the criticism leveled at Erikson, in particular about the characters. The problem is not that Erikson can’t do good characterization, but I believe he was here too brazen in the way these characters are made into “devices”, carrying a message. Erikson is honest to the message, he is not unsubtle and never facile, but he seems to reduce these characters to what they represent. What I’m trying to say is similar to a problem that Pynchon recognized in some of his own work: fist coming up with a theme or an idea, and then shaping a character around it, following with the plot and everything. Characterization well done, but coming after.

There is so much, many levels embedded in this book, that Erikson plays with (or could have played, since I always find so much in his novels that is untapped). But there’s also a feeling of scarcity. In the prose especially, but carrying over to characters, plot and setting. In the greater arc this is almost a blank state, so requiring more attention than usual to shape up things again. Pour life into this continent and the people living on it. It needs to be made “true”, to feel true. Become visceral and, so tangible. Linger with the characters and their lives, so that they acquire that true life, in the eyes of the reader. But Erikson steams on and only indulges in deep, solitary introspection, that doesn’t help shaping up these characters. It carves them inside, like tunnels down their personality and feelings, but lacking a certain “outward” development (see how I described it here). Too much bone, not enough flesh. It’s too pared down to the essential, to characters playing their complex thematic roles, in a complex thematic plot. Carrying along meaning heavy with implications but lacking the simplicity of a life and external relationships. I even felt a lack in descriptions, something quite rare in this genre. I’m used to Erikson’s style, but maybe I felt like he needed to shape things more fully, more all around, in this brand new context. Instead he only, selectively shaped what was immediately meaningful and relevant, without offering the illusion of this world existing and continuing just off the page. It felt so surgically precise and deliberate and purpose-full that it was cut off. Barebone, all too naked and dismaying in the way it seemed to carry little import.

At other times I narrowed down this problem to the blatant lack of “slice of life” type of narration in the Malazan series. Every character is a major player, or becomes one. Normalcy seems almost completely banished. And so characters sit more as plot devices, or thematic devices, or viewpoint warping, than some real people whose life you start believing in. That, for that reason, I’m able to follow and appreciate, but from the distance (the opposite of my reaction to This River Awakens). Another, shallower, problem is also born of something I started noticing in previous books, especially in the writing of the action scenes. It’s in these cases where I need the power of descriptions the most. The need to visualize and make tangible so that I can believe (I guess I’m also describing a failing of my imagination here, by voicing this). Erikson can write some powerful and evocative descriptions, but he always does this in very broad strokes, plus a tendency to “accelerate” the prose to match the action, so that the lines get shorter and just indicative. I find this counterproductive, as it achieves (for me) the opposite effect. Dramatic intensity is lost, because stuff happens without “weight” in the text. Being so succinctly described it is trivialized, quickly outpaced, moved off the page, so losing the staying power it requires (I’m also thinking at how modern movies tend today to do all action scenes in slow motion). And then I also get very easily confused by what is going on that quite often I have to read a scene two or three times to be really sure I understood what happened. So the whole point is defeated (acceleration of prose, I guess, to drive momentum, and dramatic intensity). Whenever I felt that the prose had to step up in the execution, Erikson instead seemed to withdraw even more. Become even more stingy with the prose, making it more perfunctory.

That’s mainly the nature of my criticism on this book. Descriptions are about the “action”, as much having in common that “lack” I lament about the characters and “life” around them. At some point there’s a scene, I think from Seren’s PoV, where she overhears some men talking about Hull in a tavern. I was almost surprised at the odd feeling of characters (Hull in this case) actually existing, written in the world. Because I usually get this feeling of them being so secluded in their own dimensions, like independent pockets. And I have a similar feeling about the rest of the book and the story. As if made of chunky bits, ably aligned, but not smoothly flowing and feeling connected.

Once again I should point out that, yes, Erikson is my favorite writer in Fantasy, but I am nitpicking. Being far less indulgent in writing a review of his book than how I’d be with any other writer. It’s because Erikson is my favorite writer in the genre that I expect the most, and more. And maybe the silly desire to see Erikson legitimately seen by other readers above other writers (or in as high regard), and so my implicit attempt to “flatten” his personal style to certain set of expectations I project on him (which would mean that all I wrote here is bullshit, a realistic possibility).

Putting all this aside, there’s still so much to admire in this book but that goes unmentioned because it is implicit in Erikson’s work and part of his specific set of expectations. I have admiration for his recklessness, as he always sets impossible high goals and then gets measured on those, even if the attempt itself is of mythical proportions. I was surprised that Theol and Bugg being so well received by readers in general, because it’s a kind of quirky humor based on wordplay and nonsense that is not a so safe bet. Their scenes work rather well and help to balance the other side of the novel, with the Sengar brothers, that is instead more moody and serious. I’m instead more doubtful at the end, where these two sides join to deliver the convergence and conclusion, the two different tones, humorous and bleak, clashing a bit together and giving me a sense of unbalance (that may as well be deliberate). The scenes at the Azath, through the book and especially at the end, never seem to come out of comic parody. The introspection, that I briefly discussed above and that is sometimes criticized by readers for burdening the text too much, is actually what I enjoyed the most, and considered the most inspired in the writing. It’s true that maybe it could have been spread more uniformly across the book, especially if there was an equally developed outward aspect. A character I was dissatisfied with was Ruhlad, because I felt his possession disfigured him too quickly, one moment going through unbelievable horror, the next already fixed on his task. He was misshaped, but not broken as I expected him to be. A too sudden transition where the character almost completely disappears into his functional role. Some characters, like Mayen, have a meaningful arc, but it’s so selective and surfacing only at times that it is quite hard to follow as a whole. You are forced to piece it together off the book, on your own. Sometimes these transitions are lost and feel sudden or disconnected. As if a lot of the quality of those characters stayed too submerged in the text, failing to surface and being fully appreciated.

I’ve said that the conclusion has an odd mix of tones, but it also carried a problem of being so sudden. As if you’re 50 pages from the end knowing it’s absolutely impossible that there are enough to make sense of all that is going on. As if the momentum that the plot gained would punch right through the back cover. When it comes to this Erikson is rather good at tying so many loose ends and give a number of character some kind of wrap up. In fact the ending definitely gives a sense of closure pretty much to everything. Satisfying. But it’s in going through the book again in my own mind that I wondered about a million of little things that seemed to go off stage without a mention. I thought there were in this book a number of Chekhov’s guns that did not fire, or misfired, completely subverting the expectations on which they seemed to be built. While in many cases the answers are explicit and right in the book, only requiring me to be more mindful and perceptive than how I was able to be (hence rereads being recommended). And others again being deliberate loose ties because intended to latch on following and previous books, to the greater arc of the Malazan series. I closed the book and more questions popped up at that moment than while I was reading it, but at least without undermining the experience (bad would be the opposite scenario: that the book provides all possible answers while still feeling unsatisfactory).

This also being the last of the “short” books in this series, at 270k (wordcount). From Bonehunters onward it will be about veritable doorstoppers, and I’m curious about the reaction I’ll have about the rest of the series, since I’m the one absurdly complaining that Erikson’s prose is too parsimonious. It took me an unbelievable amount of time to read this book, even if not because of its quality or enjoyment. But maybe this extremely drawn out experience I got of it also affected my opinion and the criticism I wrote here.

I wanted to conclude quoting a poem in the middle of the book whose message comes out with a particular clarity, so a nice contrast with those more heavily symbolic and hard to pinpoint. It also describes well a theme of the book, bringing it down to the most direct and explicit level.

The man who never smiles
Drags his nets through the deep
And we are gathered
To gape in the drowning air
Beneath the buffeting sound
Of his dreaded voice
Speaking of salvation
In the repast of justice done
And fed well on the laden table
Heaped with noble desires
He tells us all this to hone the edge
Of his eternal mercy
Slicing our bellies open
One by one.

In the Kingdom of Meaning Well
Fisher kel Tath

Kurt Vonnegut

I started to get interested in Kurt Vonnegut a couple of weeks ago, and the more I read about his books the more I felt the desire to start reading. My interest is especially focused on the level of meta-fiction, for example on the character Kilgore Trout that ends up appearing in a number of different novels.

I enjoy these kinds of meta levels, but in those cases where they are not a self-serving gimmick, like a thread that ties together all the works of an author. A message embedded in a certain worldview. I perceive an intriguing level of mythology in this, with a curious idea of time. Kurt Vonnegut has been defined humanist, which makes this level of metafiction and metaphysics quite interesting because it’s obviously not the proclamation of a “belief”. It’s instead the search for meaning where there can be none.

(and there are a number of “conceits” that are in common with the stuff I’m reading and writing about in the last months, such as: determinism, free will and time loops. As well as a number of “framing” devices and various playful “meta” structures that I always loved)

Considering where it was better to start reading, and considering that I was going to focus in particular on Kilgore Trout, I noticed a Library of America edition that collected all four of the novels I was interested in the most: “Cat’s Cradle”, “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater”, “Slaughterhouse-Five” and “Breakfast of Champions”. Of these four only the first is not Kilgore-related, but Cat’s Cradle is still the one Vonnegut himself rated the highest, so it’s a collection with all top tier material. This hardcover is not cheap but now that I have it I can say the quality is exceptional. This is what books should be. It has a smaller format than typical hardcover, very good paper, clothbound etc… Just excellent. So if you intend reading Vonnegut go for it.

At the end of the book there are some short stories, notes and other material, but I noticed in particular an introduction to Slaughterhouse-Five that I’ll quote below and that I think represents well that jaded, truthful and unmerciful look that I expect to find in the stories. A kind of disheartened honesty that finds absolutely nothing in self-celebration.

And there’s also this:

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder ‘why, why, why?’
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”

This is a book about something that happened to me a long time ago (1944)-and the book itself is now something else that happened to me a long time ago (1969).

Time marches on-and the key event in this book, which is the fire-bombing of Dresden, is now a fossilized memory, sinking ever deeper into the tar pit of history. If American school children have heard of it at all, they are surely in doubt as to whether it happened in World War One or Two. Nor do I think they should care much.

I, for one, am not avid to keep the memory of the fire-bombing fresh. I would of course be charmed if people continued to read this book for years to come, but not because I think there are important lessons to be learned from the Dresden catastrophe. I myself was in the midst of it, and learned only that people can become so enraged in war that they will burn great cities to the ground, and slay the inhabitants thereof.

That was nothing new.

I write this in October of 1976, and it so happens that only two nights ago I saw a screening of Marcel Ophul’s new documentary on war crimes, “The Memory of Justice,” which included movies, taken from the air, of the Dresden raid-at night. The city appeared to boil, and I was down there somewhere.

I was supposed to appear onstage afterwards, with some other people who had had intimate experiences with Nazi death camps and so on, and to contribute my notions as to the meaning of it all.

Atrocities celebrate meaninglessness, surely. I was mute. I did not mount the stage. I went home.

The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is.

One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I’m in.

Hopelessly fallible: two sides

Reading “The Wayward Mind” made me think, among other things, that we always deal with past writers/thinkers/whatever in a really close perspective. We always relate these figures to their own times and what was the cultural trend at that time. Instead we always put ourselves on a privileged, external position. Partly this is true because we do come “after” everything that we know. We’re surfing the wave that moves on and on. Riding on the edge. So as long as we’re alive we’re also ahead. Yet we perceive ourselves as objective and unbiased, free of ties and subordination. This must be so obviously a misconception. We know much more than an ancient Greek philosopher, but our condition isn’t significantly different. And we’re also stuck within our own time.

A possible interpretation is that the modern Quantum theories actually drive our beliefs. The post-modernity is the system we’re trapped in, and that system colors our sense of reality and of possibility.

It’s curious that in the context of the purely agnostic (“we lack tools to understand what is really going on”) there are two opposite possibilities that seem quite popular these days. In one you could put Scott Bakker and a certain nihilism: the more we know, the more we realize we’re nothing. We decide nothing. Consciousness is not the center of the world, but the true fabric of the lie we cling to. We’re just trapped in a number of consolatory, vulnerable narratives that get constantly crushed under the heel of reality. The more you know the more you fail, because success is that vulnerable, erratic lie you tell yourself. It can only work as long you’re gullible, and quick on the self-deceit.

Then there’s the opposite belief. That we are world-creating devices. Having the powers of the Creator and shaping realities in ways that can be literal. In Constructivism the definition of “Observer” is: “who creates an universe”. Make some Google searches about “reality creator” and similar permutations and you come out with all sort of crazies, right with the first link you have there. That’s quite an absurd website, even if it can’t compare with Val Valerian’s Matrix. If you enjoy “mythologies” in general like I do, there’s plenty to have even if you don’t dig into Fantasy. People build the most complex and fantastical mythologies in THIS world.

This was also a curious perspective I came to on my own last summer, following some thoughts on the Malazan series. One thought I was toying with is about the “location” of god. God is usually an external agent because this property of being “outside” is required to explain reality. If the world is created, then the creator has to be out of the specific realm of the world. So being external means being authoritative. Pretty much all ideas of gods are about entities that sit outside, looking in. My idea was: what if the gods instead hide inside? Not inside the creation, but inside the dark corners of the soul. This specific perspective is exactly what most of “The Wayward Mind” is based on, so this personal speculation of mine wasn’t entirely shallow and hubris.

But returning to the idea of the “reality creator”, what got my attention was the idea of responsibility. There’s some of this even in Von Foerster’s Constructivism. The “participatory universe”. If there’s no god and reality is “constructed”, then it means that humanity has its destiny in its own hands. There are no moral impositions if not those that men impart on themselves. It’s really up to you, you’re completely free. Morality becomes even MORE important than if there’s a god who’s going to judge you, because everything is at stake, and power at its maximum (it’s like the apex of Stan Lee’s most famous line). The model is even quite neat because it surfaces right from quantum theory (for the dummies) and explains why we’re not so omnipotent. The reality creator hypothesis relies on two big constraints. The first is that the process is not conscious, the obvious one, so what truly comes to happen is influenced by what you truly expect and believe, not directly what you “want”. The other constraint is about the “participatory” aspect. Everyone of us influences reality, so reality is more like an entity that manifests out of a collective mind (a Jungian “collective unconscious”). Some kind of large scale ritual that takes place and “evokes” what we consider our reality. So it’s obvious that our personal omnipotence gets only one “vote” on what is going to happen, like some kind of democratic model of reality.

As I said this fits nicely with the simplified idea of quantum theory we have. We dig down in the fabric of matter and continue to find smaller particles. Then at some point we figure out we can’t even determine their position, so small that it all becomes an abstract, almost metaphysical game of probabilities. The intuitive leap is about the human mind being able to influence these probabilities, being connected with the True Source, the energy that is in everything, the quantum foam, the aether. Which, since I’m now coming from “Bakker’s school”, is THE PROOF of being bullshit. It feels nice thinking up abstract, metaphysical theories that seem to explain so well a number of things, yet this simplistic, intuitive ease is exactly what undermines their validity. These theories “work” merely because they feel gratifying, not because they offer some actual insight. We believe in them because of how they feel, not for what they are. Wherever we see chaos, we imagine a pattern, and then we persuade ourselves that the pattern is “really” there. It’s similar to the “reality creator” principle, but it’s about our own bullshit.

Take these two broad ideas and you see how everything else kind of falls in the middle. They represent the two extremes. From a side human beings and consciousness as marginal entities whose whole existence is a big delusion, and from the other side human beings so central in reality that everything depends on them, they create it. Obviously, most people will tend to believe in what they like better, not in what it is more likely. Which reminds me a legitimate position to have (if the goal is targeting a tactical position to take).

Surprisingly, I found out that these discussions seem quite frequent and popular. For example I found them more than once while visiting that internet cesspit that is 4chan. A true cesspit in the original sense that gave the title to my old blog. A place filled with garbage, sometimes even disgusting, but also with piles of interesting stuff if you’re good at fishing. Some arguments I found were insane and rather messed up, for example the ideas of Tulpa and thoughtform. Especially the way they are pushed to the extreme: if you don’t like your life, what is wrong in deliberate hallucinations? I can actually see this working, but it’s not exactly something I associate with a pleasant experience.

Among one of these discussions I found a number of interesting links that I’ll repost as I found them. I’d link to 4chan, but it’s pointless because of its volatile nature. So here these links for posterity. Dig into them and you can find interesting (and crazy) stuff:

* http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html
* http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9704009
* http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0646
* http://swc2.hccs.edu/kindle/theoryofnothing.pdf
* http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0011122
* http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510188
* http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.5434
* http://www.i-sis.org.uk/organis.php

From time to time, reading this stuff, you notice some baffling echoes. Take this for example:

The current textbook universe started in a big bang and consists of billions of galaxy clusters each containing billions of stars, probably many with a planetary system. But this is just the visible universe. According to inflation models, which are needed to explain the homogeneity of our universe, the “total” universe is vastly larger than the visible part.

The context of this is cosmology, but it echoes directly with a pattern we see in the human brain: what we see and presume to know is only a tiny part. So again the Russian Doll structure. These echoes are just too powerful to be random, but maybe too easy to be solved intuitively. What are they truly saying?

My intuitive theory is the Mise en abyme, what we see outside is a reflection. The cosmology we see is a model of consciousness. “Shaped like itself”. As large as the whole universe (and beyond), as small as the smallest particle (and beyond), spiraling into infinite. From infinite to infinite, endlessly repeating.

“As above, so below.”

What to make of all of this I have absolutely no idea. I know it’s fascinating, and in “The Wayward Mind” there’s also something that describes why it is so fun, and why it has so much in common with “epic fantasy”, and why I like it so much:

“Our imagination loves to be filled with an object or to grasp at anything that is too big for its capacity. We are flung into a pleasing astonishment at such unbounded views, and feel a delightful stillness in the soul at the apprehension of them.”

In picturing vistas which dwarfed human beings, both in age and scale, artists such as Turner reminded their viewers of the power and grandeur of the natural world of which they themselves were a microcosm. Landscapes that are ‘huge, obscure and terrible’, said Edmund Burke, ‘arouse feelings that invigorate and elevate the mind’.

Inhuman Revolution

From what I’m reading in “The Wayward Mind” one of the essential Kabbalistic tenets is, at least, as old as Pythagoras. The essential worldview is all there. But what caught my attention at an intuitive level was the following passage:

Well before Plato’s famous metaphor of the shadows on the cave wall, it was Pythagoras who turned the world, and especially the person, upside down and inside out. That which was visible and tangible was to be disdained, and that which was merely an idea was to be taken as the only true worthwhile reality.

Behind murky, complicated, changeable appearance lurked, if one could only understand it well enough, The divine, pristine, eternal forms that were the only things on which one could truly rely […]

The intuition is about how all these attempts to explain the human soul essentially circle the truth, and the truth can justify and explain all of them. I’m coming to this right from Scott Bakker’s own cynical perspective, so based entirely on the evidence of science and neuroscience.

From the center to the periphery. If consciousness is truly just a marginal event with no concrete hold on “choice” and intent, then, intuitively, this new model revolutionizes what we think about ourselves. Bakker broadly divides the progress of science in three big movements/revolutions: the discovery of the earth orbiting around the sun, the evolutionary theory, and finally the third movement about to happen, the discovery of the peripheral role of consciousness in the brain processes. All three built on top of intuitive assumptions (earth at the center of the universe, man at the center of creation, consciousness at the center of the soul) only to be consequently and forcefully dislodged by science. All three met with a whole lot of resistance, even if at least the first has been completely “surrendered” in modern times.

Yet, the “human” being, as we consider it, IS a thing of consciousness. This is why this isn’t one of the themes one can talk about. This is THE frame. It represents the whole encapsulation of experience. As human beings we live and exist within “culture”. As some philosophers would say, our world is entirely made of language. If it is culture then it is made of language, and if it’s made of language it can be codified. We think, therefore we’re language, because there is no thought without language. We live of symbols and stories. Through which we make sense of life, and self-describe.

Now, it’s this whole level to go into a crisis. It’s the whole of consciousness, and so, of perception. Everything we know that is not consciousness, say the physical feelings and the inanimate world, is still something we know through consciousness. We exist in a realm and look outside its window, but we know of what’s outside of the window because of what arrives to us. So we perceive ourselves as “separate”. That’s why identity and consciousness cease to be almost entirely in a dream. Consciousness is asleep, we surrender the pretence of control, and hope everything will be alright when we wake up again. That the world will be still out there.

So there is this big gap between “us”, the perception of what’s an human being, and what’s truly the human being, the body and all its functions. We’re merely trapped “in there”. If we turn off the light of consciousness then EVERYTHING ceases to be. For you. I mean for you as a conscious being. As that specific, omnipresent feeling you have of being yourself. It is your whole world to be at stake.

I’m talking of perception. I’m now thinking and writing, and, to me, this “feels” happening into consciousness. Whatever sits out, is for me dark. Invisible. If something passes through and “appears”, a good or a bad feeling, then it is surfacing on consciousness. In fact we believe we can go through surgery and bypass the pain, as long our consciousness is “shut down”. A momentary lapse. We can cease to be, we can stop existing, because we are only a small part of ourselves: a consciousness.

Now consider again the quote above. If consciousness is peripheral then it’s true that all we hold dearly is essentially vain and empty. And it is true that the mystery of what’s out there (out of consciousness, so including the parts of us excluded from it), call it “divine, pristine, eternal forms” for the lack of better terms, is what’s actually “real”.

Our journey as a species seems a journey of knowledge, and surrender. More than two thousands years spent to figure out ourselves, as narcissistic constructs. Eventually we’re finding out. Maybe someone can even see a sense of harmony into this, if not something consolatory. We had a beginning and we will have our end. This place, right here, right now, in the whole universe, belongs to me. I’m worth no more and no less. Seems like the message at the end is similar to the one in LOST. “Let go”.

We’re locked in some sort of passive observation. It seems like in the end we’ll have to break the loop we’re caught in. It’s the entire encapsulation that is either there or it is lost. If we’re truly agnostic then we have no claims on the world, and we only have our illusory perception. We can be SURE of being illusions. Transient dreams. Wakeful states of passive observation. And we can be CERTAIN that something out there is “real”, whatever it is. Whatever it is excludes us, is antithetic. So, in order to go there, we’ll have to surrender consciousness itself.

The more you stay radical and scientific, the more you surrender to metaphysics. Science is way too radical to be walled into a story, or by consciousness. The story we make of science is merely one stop, on the way to knowledge. A place where to catch breath, to then move again. All stories, philosophy, all the books written, the scientific progress, the metaphysics and esoteric beliefs, all pivot around a gravity center. The gravity center is the human being and the human soul. We wrote stories so that we could fill the gaps in all we couldn’t know. Within consciousness and language we created a world we could live in, that could bear us.

But consciousness is artificial, it is faked. It’s a trick that served whatever purpose. Our whole history, of events, of thoughts, is just the music that followed us. It’s a glorious story that had a beginning, and will have an end.

Two styles of writing

I often try to pinpoint and understand certain things. One of these is about narrowing down the reasons why George RR Martin is immensely popular, and why his prose and style of writing feel so strong and vivid. I compare writers all the time, but not to decide who’s “better” and coming on top. I compare things because it lets me carve out stuff I’d otherwise miss. Because stacking things together lets me better appreciate in what and how they differ. So I constantly try to do this “gauging” of writing styles, but I lack the proper tools and knowledge to analyze a text, and so have to resort to my own vague, unspecified “feelings”.

In the last few months I’ve deliberately juggled writers to juxtapose the most different styles. Jumping between Abercrombie, Glen Cook, Martin, Erikson, Donaldson, Gene Wolfe. And especially reading twenty pages of Erikson and then immediately moving to read twenty pages from Martin’s “A Clash of Kings” (that I’m reading also because I want to clear the book before the TV show starts), and the opposite, from Martin to Erikson. As I said, since I can’t analyze, I need this so I can understand how it “feels”. Because I believe there’s something quite relevant that I’m missing and so that is hard to describe.

It’s important for me because it’s the opposite of “flattening” writers to a singular measure of quality. The comparisons I do are instead meant to “bring out” the differences so that I can better appreciate them.

What I found out is that moving from Erikson to Martin there is not so much to notice. It makes a kind of uneventful transition. I notice differences, obviously, but it’s not something that draws the attention. But if instead I do the opposite, reading Erikson after I’ve read Martin, the feeling is strong and I can only describe as: dismaying. It’s truly dismaying because this transition modifies the way I read Erikson. Suddenly I perceive something missing in Erikson’s prose that otherwise I wouldn’t notice. A strong feel. A gaping hole. After reading Martin, Erikson’s writing appears as barren and lacking. This is what I observed, but what I believe is important is the fact that all of this comes out only in one direction, but not in the other. From Martin to Erikson.

When trying to describe these feelings I thought that a good example retaining the quality of the comparison is about food. Martin’s way of writing is like a very rich meal. A banquet not unlike those described in the books. Bountiful and seducing. Going to read Erikson (notice that I’ll dramatize a lot to draw out these differences) is like being offered a plate of bones. You crunch noisily bones with your teeth and is not exactly as pleasant and gratifying (fulfilling) as sinking those teeth in juicy meat, grease dripping down your chin. It goes without saying that going from that kind of banquet to a plate of bones is definitely dismaying.

Looking into this I was wondering that the idea is also alike the writers themselves (at least what I see in pictures, since I’ve never met either). Martin himself has this charming, generous and bountiful, benevolent figure. While Erikson is wiry, a more nervous, withdrawn, angled figure. I’d say that if you put them side by side you’d notice Erikson definitely “missing” something (see where I’m going). It seems to me more than a mere coincidence that the way they are reflects so well in their respective writing styles.

It’s an interesting observation because it consequently leads to something else. I believe that Martin writes in a style that is strongly “outward”. It’s what I notice the most in everything, from descriptions to characterization. Martin is colorful and explicit. He’s not “unsubtle”, since the characters have admirable depth, but it’s still a style of characterization that I define as outward. Reaching out, to expression and the reader. Spoken sincerely, but manifest and specific.

Where I’m going with this? I noticed that most of ASOIAF style of plot and intrigue, including character focus, is essentially the same of the gameplay of Crusader Kings 2. These big families seeking to secure powers, betrayal, fratricide, arranged marriages and so on. Thematic greed, selfishness, survival in a cage with wolves. Yet, don’t you notice? There’s a HUGE missing element in this particular recipe: religion. Crusader Kings 2 (as well the historical reality it is inspired to) is all about religion. It makes a significant axis that is curiously missing from ASOIAF. In Martin’s series there’s religion, but it makes a very superficial, immaterial layer holding no weight. Martin doesn’t seem really interested in it.

I’m writing all this because I believe it brings out a certain thing. Read this blog post by Scott Bakker, I think it explains well why my reactions above were one-directional only (from reading Martin to Erikson). Both writers have a style of writing that on its own feels “sufficient”. Maybe Erikson’s style isn’t so warm and welcoming, but whether you like it or not you don’t feel like there’s something that is lacking. It’s sufficient, perfectly walled as meant to be. So is Martin. But if you pose one against the other then differences surface and become visible and significant. You may think that this was a consequent rationalization, but my thought actually went down this path in reverse. I suddenly noticed that the kind of characterization that Erikson was doing was also completely missing from Martin. It’s just not there. You can take out paragraphs of text and, even adjusted or rewritten, they just wouldn’t belong to Martin’s book. They are alien. It’s stuff completely missing.

So the whole deal is figuring out that Martin writes “outwardly”. Because Erikson is blatantly the opposite. He writes inwardly. They go in opposite directions. Realizing this made me discover a number of different aspects. Erikson’s plate of bones is the result of meticulous carving, as a writing research. It’s the result of that inward, personal path. Peeling of layers, like skin, then fat and muscle. I can make an effective comparison with the movie industry. Compare Hollywood, or western in general type of narration, that is “outward”, explicit and loud, very carefully driven to an effect, compare it with the “indie” or eastern style of narration. That is quite often feebler, more intimate, quiet and understated. Easy to blot. Martin’s style has the power of drawing you in regardless of your disposition. Eventually you’re won even if you weren’t fully willing. It’s like a movie that drags you in using competently all its devices. This is what “swallows” the big public, being (the public) so fickle and capricious, heterogeneous, and so hard to capture (and hold down) as a whole. Erikson is the opposite. Either you are “devout” to listen carefully, or it pushes further away if you try to stick to it even if it doesn’t immediately grab you. It’s almost hostile, uncompromising, unforgiving. It’s quite selective, which isn’t exactly a good thing for a book.

In the end it seems coming down to spirituality, which is why I pointed out how religion is absent from ASOIAF. Spirituality is about going inward, is the kind of personal journey. The interpolation of this model underlines many things. You can see outward and inward characterization, you can see how the world and things are described. In Martin’s story there’s always so much the characters have on their hands, that is immediate and tangible, that they never really stop to think. It’s interesting for example that Martin deals with “mystery” either in a classical way (folk tales and similar), or he gets quite clumsy and awkward. He fumbles whenever his characters aren’t earthly guys (and excels when they are). Whenever he steps out of his outward approach, he is less effective. The meal is rich and so you don’t notice if something’s missing, but this is an illusion created by abundance. If you know where to look, you’d notice certain “lacks”.

It’s again so similar to the recent discussions about consciousness. Moonlight versus bright, dominant sun. Midnight tides versus Kings. How the argument is not symmetric, and how the slanted vision makes you see things wrongly. Intuitively they are in that way, but intuition is often wrong. The same was my “feeling” moving between Martin, Erikson and back. Noticing how Martin conquered spaces, of attention, appreciation. Marching on uncontested. In this, similar to a western school of movies that are all projected out toward the public, to reach and draw the public in. Like the Oscars, or the Hugos, ideally meant as external, overreaching institutions of absolute judgement, closing down on everything. But then there’s this very manifest risk that the loud voice will completely overshadow the feebler ones. A problem of domination, of doing things “better”, more effectively. Flattened to a single path. Of seeing rising popularity to obscure everything else.

You have to listen carefully.