Bodies Mystical and Medical

I'm still musing at the moment on chakras and all-things-tantra as found in the writings of those whose understanding of the body is informed by readings of "sacred" Hindu texts; an understanding which is ultimately not only lacking in scientific legitimacy but comes close to being nonsense at times (and dangerous nonsense at that). 

It's a view of the body I'm vaguely familiar with thanks to my knowledge of D. H. Lawrence and his interpretation of the Irish theosophist James Pryse, author of Apocalypse Unsealed (1910), a work that significantly influenced Lawrence's thinking on physiology and the material unconscious which, he argues, is rooted primarily not in the brain, but in the solar plexus:

"This is the great centre, where, in the womb, your life first sparkled in individuality. This is the centre that drew the gestating maternal bloodstream upon you ... for your increase. This is the centre whence the navel-string broke, but where the invisible string of dynamic consciousness, like a dark electric current connecting you with the rest of life, will never break until you die and depart from corporate individuality."

- D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (CUP, 2004), p. 75.  

Thanks to Pryse and others, Lawrence is led to the conclusion that esoteric doctrine is fundamentally a mapping of the body; not in terms of organs and anatomical function, but in terms of hidden centres of power and spiritual potential. And so, whilst Lawrence is prepared to admit that our medical-scientific understanding of the body is fine as far as it goes, he also insists that it by no means explains everything and invariably presupposes a corpse; i.e. it fails to consider life in terms of vital experience.

And so, contra objective science concerned with observable phenomena, Lawrence posits his own subjective science which proceeds in terms of intuition and the re-imagining of an ancient body of knowledge which has, he says, been repressed for thousands of years. Via the awakening of the seven principal nerve centres and the snake-like force of kundalini latent within the lower body, Lawrence believed mankind could restore the balance between the spiritual and sensual planes of being and thereby discover what Zarathustra referred to as the greater health.

Now, time was when I would have been enthusiastically supportive of all this. Indeed, I still think that the best way to counter idealism is to relentlessly emphasise the corpo/real; I still share Nietzsche's suspicion that all philosophy to date has been a misunderstanding of the body and that nihilism is first and foremost a pathological condition; and I still believe that the schizoanalytic project of building a body without organs is of import.

However, I now have zero-tolerance for New Age therapies, alternative medicines, or any anti-scientific quackery that purports to cure all via faith healing or other magical means. In as much as Lawrence's pollyanalytics and prejudices lend support to these things then shame upon them, and him, and his readers who let his opinions pass unchallenged without comment. 

For advances in medical science have produced genuine miracles; from the eradication of smallpox to cochlear implants inside the ears of tiny infants so that they might hear their mother's voice and smile. I wonder if those shamans and gurus who subscribe to what is a mystical notion of the body (more often than not based upon ignorance and religious superstition) have ever made people healthier, or a single child happier ...?   

         

Towards a Democracy of Touch

The very lovely Bethany Leach: a young advocate of the 

democracy of touch; see her blog 

 democracyoftouch.tumblr.com

Amused by Tim Pendry's recent posts on the notion of touch in relation to tantric practices and teachings on his Position Reserved blog, I thought it might be a good time to remind ourselves once more of Lawrence's thoughts on this subject.

According to Lawrence, when our industrial-scientific civilization falls - as fall it must - the only bridge into the future will be the phallus. The phallus will lead us towards a new type of humanity and a new form of society based upon the mystery and inspiration of touch. He calls this the democracy of touch. 

It is, I suppose, an intriguing idea which cries out to be developed and given flesh. As a form of libidinal materialism, it involves actual physical contact born of passion and not merely a new idealism. It also calls for the proliferation of touch not just between men and women, but people and animals, people and plants: 

"The touch of the feet on the earth, the touch of the fingers on a tree, on a creature, the touch of hands and breasts, the touch of the whole body to body, and the interpenetration of passionate love."

This sounds to some ears suspiciously like mysticism, but in attempting to articulate and substantiate the mystery of touch Lawrence is actually trying to climb down Pisgah, not seek out spiritual or transcendent truths. The democracy of touch may be a form of fourth dimensional bliss, but it's very much a heaven on earth involving bodies and their pleasures. 

In other words, the democracy of touch, as Lawrence envisions it, is a kind of natural paradise; one where men and women learn to live like animals in accomplished innocence, walking naked and light upon the open road in a Whitmanesque manner: 

"Exposed to full contact. On two slow feet. In company with those that drift in the same measure along the same way. Towards no goal. Having no direction even. Only the soul remaining true to herself in her going."

All of which sounds very nice - even comforting (as meaningless things may do).

Note: See D. H. Lawrence, The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 323 and Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (CUP, 2003),  p. 156.

  

H. P. Lovecraft and the Sordid Topic of Coin

Isabella Rossellini as Lisle von Rhoman in the 1992 dark 

comic fantasy Death Becomes Her, dir. Robert Zemeckis

Sometimes, as Michel Houellebecq points out, it is necessary to fail in life in order that one eventually succeed in one's work as an artist or philosopher. Although, even then, failure in a worldly sense (i.e. absence of any financial reward and complete lack of recognition) doesn't necessarily guarantee results.

For sometimes, opting to remain aloof and outside of the commercial realm - displaying no interest in the sordid topic of coin, no desire to make a name for oneself and practicing as it were a policy of complete non-engagement vis-a-vis mundane realities - carries with it the risk of falling into poverty, apathy, and suicidal despair.  

The writer H. P. Lovecraft provides a good example of someone who was prepared to risk these things and hold out against them. As Houellebecq tells us in his excellent study, Against the World, Against Life, Lovecraft never quite experienced utter destitution, but he was extremely constrained financially and had to always watch every penny. He also kept a small bottle of cyanide at hand - just in case. 

For Lovecraft, it was simply not dignified for a gentleman to worry about money matters "or to express too lively an anxiety where his own interests were concerned". In any case, his writings earned him very little - not that he considered literature a particularly noble pursuit and cared nothing for building a career or readership. He wrote "for the sake of his own pleasure and that of a few friends, without worrying about the public's taste, fashionable themes, of anything else of the kind". 

Obviously, such an individual is afforded no place within the modern world; Lovecraft knew this, but always refused to sell himself. Indeed, he refused even to type his texts and would send editors soiled and crumpled manuscripts; though one might wonder whether such an act doesn't betray at last self-contempt as much as defiant anti-commercialism.  

 

Nevertheless, Lovecraft provides a role model to all of us who hate to ask for payment and prefer simply to give ideas away in the same manner as the sun shines freely to no end and without thought of preserving energy, or securing the morrow. 

And this - along with his aggressive anti-theism and virulent anti-humanism - is another reason to love him.   

Note: lines quoted are from Michel Houellebecq, H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, trans. Dorna Khazeni, (Gollancz / Orion Publishing Group, 2008), p. 92.       

Aurora Contra Airfix

As a child, I was never much interested in building complex models of planes and ships and certainly wouldn't describe myself as belonging to what Geoff Dyer has termed rather nicely the Airfix Generation.

I did, however, love assembling the luminescent body parts of the great movie monsters manufactured by the Aurora Plastics Corporation. 

Founded in New York in 1950 by engineer Joseph E. Giammarino and his business partner - the wonderfully-named Abe Shikes - the company became famous for these terrifying figure kits that delighted children who had a certain gothic disposition and a fascination for the morbid and macabre, rather than military history.

Of the dozen monsters that followed their 1961 Frankenstein kit, I remember having five: the Wolfman, Dracula, the Phantom of the Opera, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and, my personal favourite, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. 

At night, I would lie in bed and shine a torch upon them to boost their glow-in-the-dark power when the lights went out, deliberately attempting to induce nightmares - although, in truth, they weren't particularly scary; perhaps not even as scary as those hairy gaping vaginas that featured in 70s porno mags conveniently stashed in the woods by persons (or perverts) unknown which also captured my youthful imagination and taste for the monstrous. 

Audrey's Ghost

Framestore Chauffeur ad for Galaxy/Dove (2013) 

dir. Daniel Kleinman 

I have to confess that upon first viewing the Galaxy TV ad which appears to star Audrey Hepburn alongside male model-of-the-moment Nick Hopper, I thought it was just a particularly lovely lookalike.

But then, watching it for a second and third time, the realisation dawned that there was more going on here than initially met the eye; that it was in fact a commercial reliant upon the very latest in visual effects and, although filmed on the Amalfi coast, it was ultimately an Uncanny Valley production.

And, sure enough, upon investigation, it turns out that the ad does use CGI in order to create what is not only a chocolate lover's fantasy, but a spectrophile's wet dream.

The only concern, perhaps, is what it tells us about our digital culture; is there not something cadaverous beneath the technological wizardry?  

Why have cotton when you can have silk?

Why have live actors when you can have dead icons?

 

On Not Taking Any Shit From Magicians

The fact that there is a dark and primitive religious subtext to National Socialism is surely indisputable. Many top-ranking Nazis clearly had esoteric obsessions and controversy only arises when we try to assess the influence of these obsessions upon their political thinking.  

Hitler's position in relation to this question remains somewhat ambiguous however - despite the huge amount of serious research and often crackpot speculation in this area. On the one hand, he did have some knowledge of Ariosophical ideas and did seem, in part, to endorse views first advocated by racial mystics such as Guido von List.    

On the other hand, however, Larry David is right to say that one of Hitler's more admirable traits is that he didn't take any shit from magicians, occultists, or the preposterous and posing völkisch crowd with their neo-pagan pretensions. This is clear from the following passage in Mein Kampf:

"The characteristic thing about these people is that they rave about old German heroism, about dim prehistory ... but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined ... they make a ridiculous impression on the broad masses ... For all this, these people are boundlessly conceited; despite all proofs of their complete incompetence ... Especially with the so-called religious reformers on an old Germanic basis, I always have the feeling that they are sent by those powers which do not want the resurrection of our people." 

 
  - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Hutchinson, 1989), pp. 327-28. 

Whilst Hitler may share in the reactionary politics, revolutionary dreams and Wagnerian fantasies of the above, he ultimately wants nothing to do with them. Lanz von Liebenfels may have regarded Hitler as one of his pupils, but the latter did not acknowledge him as one of his masters; in fact, he never even mentioned his name in any recorded speech, conversation, or written document. I think this is evidence of more than mere ingratitude. Hitler may have read Ostara whilst a young man in Vienna and it may have helped shape his Manichean and apocalyptic worldview, but ... well, I refer you again to the Larry David line above.  

We must conclude that Hitler was always more concerned with Realpolitik and exercising industrial and military muscle, than with mystical fantasy and the impotent posturing of magicians. The NSDAP under his leadership and control became a powerful war machine radically different in character to any of the secret societies or occult orders that are sometimes said to have paved the way for it.  

Note: This post is based on a revised and edited section of a paper presented at Treadwell's Books on March 18th, 2008 and which can be found in Volume IV of The Treadwell's Papers (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). The original artwork for the paper appears above.

On The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and Its Critics

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly by Billy Perkins

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in the title roles respectively is, according to Quentin Tarantino, the greatest film ever made.

He's not alone in this assessment; many people love it and name it as the purest example of cinematic art brought to a moment of absolute perfection thanks not only to the performances of the three stars and the directorial skills of Leone, but also the magnificent photography by Tonino Delli Colli and the famous score composed by Ennio Morricone.

It's surprising, therefore, to discover that upon its release it was met not with universal acclaim, but, on the contrary, fairly widespread hostility and critical disdain. Not only was the violence found objectionable, but the length of the film led some to label it dull and interminable. Meanwhile, the fact that it was an Italian re-imagining of a classically American art form - a so-called spaghetti western - led even Roger Ebert in his original review to deduct a star purely on the grounds that, as such, it could not be art.  

It was Italian-born Renata Adler, however, who really took against the movie in her New York Times review from 1968, dismissing it as "the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre". This is particularly disappointing coming as it does from the pen of a woman with a background in philosophy and comparative literature.

Disappointing too is the review of Pauline Kael in The New Yorker, published two months after that by Adler. Kael - described by some as the most influential film critic of her generation - called the film, garish, gruesome and stupid. She particularly objected to what she perceived as the mindless sadism and fascistic nihilism of the film in which all noble and heroic elements of the traditional (American) western have either been omitted or spat upon. 

What this demonstrates, I suppose, is that even very smart, very well-educated critics can sometimes get things very wrong; particularly when confronted with the genuinely New (i.e. that which comes to us from the future and shatters the past). 

One recalls in closing Woody Allen's remark about Kael to the effect that she has everything a film critic needs except judgement: 'She has great passion, terrific wit, wonderful writing style, huge knowledge of film history, but too often what she chooses to extol or fails to see is very surprising.'

The N-Word

 N-Word - Nieema Foster

Many words once branded obscene and not fit to print or be spoken aloud in decent society - words mostly related to parts of the body below the navel and to acts associated with them - have now lost much of their power to shock. Gradually, their letters have been reinstated and the little stars removed and we should all be grateful for this.

Unfortunately, however, this hasn't stopped society from engaging in word taboo and today there's a new list of terms branded as so offensive that even to speak them when reporting their usage or read them in an entirely appropriate historical context is now thought unacceptable. Indeed, it can cost you your job, your reputation, and perhaps even your liberty if some oafish policeman or other exercises his right to arrest you. 

The word nigger is perhaps the term most likely to cause moral outrage and horror today and we are expected to write and to say the n-word whenever its usage becomes unavoidable. Obviously it's a term loaded with a lot of shameful cultural baggage and carries ugly and violent racist associations. Obviously it would be a nicer world if the word was not used in order to insult and dehumanize persons of colour.

But, nevertheless, it's absurd and unbecoming when a term such as this is allowed to terrify social consciousness and haunt the conscience of white liberalism. The more we attempt to repress usage of the word and drive it into a non-discursive limbo, the more it returns and looms up magnified out of all proportion, frightening us silly beyond all reason. 

As Lawrence writes, when certain words, certain ideas, and certain memories become taboo and subject to censorship then we risk driving ourselves insane with a degraded sort of terror and nothing is more dangerous in the long run in a society such as ours as mass-insanity. And so, ultimately, I find myself in opposition to all those who react with a kind of hysteria whenever they hear a taboo word; ready in an unthinking instant to take to Twitter and other forms of social media in order to express their mob-indignation and mob-condemnation. 

Further, I don't support the cleaning-up of history, the alteration of literary texts, or the use of euphemisms which are not only dishonest and hypocritical, but patronising to the people directly affected. As the African American comedian and social activist Dick Gregory points out, using the phrase n-word instead of nigger ultimately denies the hard truth of the modern black experience in relationship to the white world.   

Note: whilst this post was partly written in response to the Jeremy Clarkson eeny-meeny-miny-moe case, I in no way wish to defend him. For if he wishes to wilfully engage in casual racism either as an act of bluff bravado or in order to court controversy that's his choice, but he must then be prepared to accept the consequences. His absurd and embarrassing attempt to both explain and apologize for reciting a nursery rhyme which contains the word nigger whilst filming an episode of Top Gear, only added insult to injury.       

In Praise of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, is twenty years old this month having premiered in Cannes, May 1994. 

It's a fabulous film: a cinematic desiring-machine in which everything magically comes together and functions perfectly at the same time, despite being cut across a trio of stories and a non-chronological assemblage of scenes that involve violence, humour, romance, and plenty of what Mia might describe as mindless, boring, getting-to-know-you chit-chat which dazzles and delights in its very banality.

The critic who said, rather sneeringly, that whilst it has several great scenes, it's not a great movie simply fails to understand that whilst Tarantino is concerned with creating a singular work of art, he is not attempting to bring its various elements together so as to form a Whole; the kind of unified work which cries out to have 'The End' stamped upon it and is consummated by this.  

For Tarantino belongs to a super-smart and super-literate generation of film-makers who understand that breaks in the flow of action or even moments in which the narrative stalls leaving viewers confused and bored, are in and of themselves productive and vital processes of becoming and eternal return.

In this respect, Tarantino is the Marcel Proust of Hollywood; one who knows that we live today in the age of partial objects and multiple scenes in which the artist's task is not to produce a finished masterpiece in which heterogeneous bits have their rough edges rounded off so that they might all fit together smoothly. Rather, the task is to think fragmentation, difference, and multiplicity. 

     

Believe in the ruins ...!  

There's Nowt so Queer as Folk

 Rolf Gardiner performing with folk dancing friends in 1939

Photo: www.dorsetlife.co.uk

It's perhaps not widely known or remembered, but Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover ends with a long letter written from Mellors to Connie in which, amongst other things, he proposes a non-conventional solution to the industrial problem as he understands it: train the people to live in handsomeness without the need for money.

What this means in practice is a neo-pagan folk revival in which men and women reject capitalism and consumer lifestyles and relearn old skills and handicrafts, as well as how to sing their traditional songs and dance the old group dances (preferably whilst naked). It's an anti-urban as well as an anti-modern fantasy, based on a rejection of the present in favour of a mythical medieval golden age that we can literally hop, skip, and jump back into. 

This utopian dream of a Merrie England was not one peculiar to Mellors or to Lawrence, however. Figures such as Cecil Sharp, Mary Neal, and Daisy Daking all played a part in the English folk revival that took hold in the early twentieth century. 

As of course did Lawrence disciple and Kibbo Kift Gleemaster Rolf Gardiner. A far more controversial and politically extreme figure than Sharp, Gardiner illustrates how neo-paganism and attempts to rejuvenate the nation via folk cultural and faux spiritual activities such as morris dancing, nude calisthenics, and solstice worship can very quickly turn fascistic.

Gardiner believed that morris dancing, for example, was a form of magical ritual that connected the fourfold of earth, mortals, sky and gods. As - for some unexplained reason - female participation would disrupt the elemental energies at play, he insisted that morris dancing should be for men only. But not all men: only virile Englishmen and others of pure Nordic stock for whom it was an expression of their racial soul. 

Little wonder then that by 1936 Gardiner was an open supporter of the Nazis and became a close friend to Walther Darré, a leading 'Blood and Soil' ideologist who served as the Reichsminister of Food and Agriculture from 1933 to 1942 in Hitler's Germany. Admittedly, during the war years and once the full horror of Nazism was exposed, Gardiner modified his unpleasant political views and his racist interpretations of folk culture.

    

But it was too little, too late - although that's not really the point of this post. Rather, the point of the post is this: David, you have more to worry about in being a morris man than how it might reflect on your masculinity or sexual orientation; Lawrence-loving activists and pagan folk practitioners can dance to a dangerous tune if they're not careful ...