5a) Chani (Sean Young) and Paul Muad'Dib (Kyle MacLachlan) in Dune (1984), Director: David Lynch
Saturday, May 29, 2021
4a) It Ain't Easy Being Green
4a1) Mort Garson "Music to Soothe the Savage Snake Plant"
4a2) See 052821_6a
Addendum 053021
4a3) Listening to a Cannabis Plant with MIDI Sprout
6a) She comes in colors
6a1) As Abby begins to hallucinate, Swamp Thing explains the fruit is not just a fruit but a gateway into the Green itself, giving Abby access to the grander consciousness of all living things. In eating the fruit, Abby gains access to Swamp Thing’s interior being which is, in a way, access to life itself. Together, the two experience the vastness of it all in a way that is both erotic and so much more.
Every blade of grass, buzzing insect, and blooming flower, Abby begins to understand, is connected in deep and powerful ways that most humans could never fully grasp. But that connectedness extends beyond the flora and fauna of the swamp. Because she has now (temporarily) tapped into the Green, she’s also linked with Swamp Thing in the most elementary, primal way. Together, Swamp Thing and Abby explore and experience the summation of life in a way that’s unashamedly sexual in its visual manifestation on the page.
As Abby’s perspective shifts, so too does the orientation of Rite of Spring‘s panels. Together, Bisette’s lines and Wood’s colours move into a distinctively psychedelic space that convey just how mind-blowing an experience Abby is having as she journeys thought the Green. The expansion of Abby’s mind is something that Moore is able to write brilliantly, but it’s in Bisette and Wood’s illustrations that you can viscerally feel the magnificence of it all.
There is something profound and surprisingly progressive about Rite of Spring‘s conceptualisation of sex that you seldom see in most parts of pop culture, let alone a comic book about a swamp monster. The way that Swamp Thing and Abby are intimate together is simultaneously tender and wildly ferocious. Their rhythm of their intercourse is set by the all-encompassing, pulsing throb of life, and their shared climax comes as they both let go of their discrete selves and become part of the Earth itself.
Convinced that her 30 year old, still-single daughter was cursed, my mother had arranged the whole affair. She believed that I suffered from what Hindu astrologers call Mangal Dosha, a condition in which a person born under the influence of Mars signals marital misfortune. One remedy is Kumbh Vivah, a ceremony in which you marry a towering banyan or banana tree—but that day, we settled for a barely-sprouted basil plant.
Next to my betrothed sat a candle to symbolize Agni, the fire deity present at every Hindu wedding. It was nothing like the ceremonial fire pits used in India but it got the job done.
[...]
A decade went by before I started to comprehend the meaning of my matrimony. I reached a shallow understanding that through the ritual, all the troubles your malady carries are transferred to the tree and the curse is lifted, freeing you to find a partner. I discovered the practice is not uncommon. If I had been the cultivated academic I thought myself to be, I would have done my research ahead of time to contextualize the ceremony that meant so much to my mother. Instead, we never talked about my marriage again.
6a2b) With fertility rates falling, increasing consideration of alternate love and sexuality choices, and the environment in desperate need of protection, plant/human marriages might be something to consider...
6a3a) Or maybe sex is just better when the synthetic symbiosis of plant and human produces hallucinogenic phantasmorgasms.
6a3b) Phillipe Caza – Kris Kool at 50 Watts
6a4) The Rolling Stones - She's A Rainbow
Addendum 053021
6a5) Yes, naked gardening is a thing, and our readers should not be that surprised. A story about nudist cooking recently appeared in our Dining section, delving into the history and practices of naturism. If you cook in the nude, tending to your vegetables that way is the logical prelude.
For the nudist gardener seeking friendly environs, a recent study by Lawnstarter.com may be revealing. The website, which connects users with lawn-care services, ranked the largest 100 U.S. cities, from best to worst, for naked gardening.
The study used a number of metrics, including: the percentage of nudists and the friendliness of laws governing public nudity and toplessness in each city; local Google searches for “nudist” and “World Naked Gardening Day”; safety concerns, addressed by measuring the number of registered sex offenders amid the population; weather-related factors such as temperature, rain and wind speed; and a previous Lawnstarter study ranking the best cities for urban gardening. The resulting top and bottom 10 cities are uncovered in this week’s chart.
3a) Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse
3a2a) The painting is especially notable for [...] the fact that Christ's face, hands and feet, as well as the wounds in his torso, are depicted as realistic dead flesh in the early stages of putrefaction. His body is shown as long and emaciated while eyes and mouth are left open.
3a2b) The panel has attracted fascination and praise since it was created. The Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky was captivated by the work. In 1867, his wife had to drag him away from the panel lest its grip on him induce an epileptic fit. Dostoevsky saw in Holbein an impulse similar to one of his own main literary preoccupations: the pious desire to confront Christian faith with everything that negated it, in this case the laws of nature and the stark reality of death. In his 1869 novel The Idiot, the character Prince Myshkin, having viewed a copy of the painting in the home of Rogozhin, declares that it has the power to make the viewer lose his faith. The character of Ippolit Terentyev, an articulate exponent of atheism and nihilism who is himself near death, engages in a long philosophical discussion of the painting, claiming that it demonstrates the victory of 'blind nature' over everything, including even the most perfect and beautiful of beings.
3a3a) There are only two really priceless pictures in the whole Museum, one of them being the Dead Savior, a marvelous work that horrified me, and so deeply impressed Feodor that he pronounced Holbein the Younger a painter and creator of the first rank… [T]he whole form [of Christ] is emaciated, the ribs and bones plain to see, hands and feet riddled with wounds, all blue and swollen, like a corpse on the point of decomposition. The face too is fearfully agonized, the eyes half open still, but with no expression in them, and giving no idea of seeing. Nose, mouth and chin are all blue; the whole thing bears such a strong resemblance to a real dead body… Feodor, nonetheless, was completely carried away by it, and in his desire to look at it closer got on to a chair, so that I was in a terrible state lest he should have to pay a fine, like one is always liable to here.
Anna Dostoevsky
3a3b) When I arose to lock the door after him, I suddenly called to mind a picture I had noticed at Rogozhin’s in one of his gloomiest rooms, over the door. He had pointed it out to me himself as we walked past it, and I believe I must have stood a good five minutes in front of it. There was nothing artistic about it, but the picture made me feel strangely uncomfortable. It represented Christ just taken down from the cross. It seems to me that painters as a rule represent the Saviour, both on the cross and taken down from it, with great beauty still upon His face. This marvellous beauty they strive to preserve even in His moments of deepest agony and passion. But there was no such beauty in Rogozhin’s picture. This was the presentment of a poor mangled body which had evidently suffered unbearable anguish even before its crucifixion, full of wounds and bruises, marks of the violence of soldiers and people, and of the bitterness of the moment when He had fallen with the cross—all this combined with the anguish of the actual crucifixion.
The face was depicted as though still suffering; as though the body, only just dead, was still almost quivering with agony. The picture was one of pure nature, for the face was not beautified by the artist, but was left as it would naturally be, whosoever the sufferer, after such anguish[…] It is strange to look on this dreadful picture of the mangled corpse of the Saviour, and to put this question to oneself: ‘Supposing that the disciples, the future apostles, the women who had followed Him and stood by the cross, all of whom believed in and worshipped Him—supposing that they saw this tortured body, this face so mangled and bleeding and bruised (and they must have so seen it)—how could they have gazed upon the dreadful sight and yet have believed that He would rise again?’
Dostoevsky – The Idiot
3a3c) Excerpted at Arstor: Dostoevsky and the challenge of Hans Holbein’s Dead Christ
3a4) Two signs tell us that this body is also that of Man made God in order, once again, to pay for the sins of the world. Everyone knows the story. Two signs like as much flesh; two pieces of flesh like as many signs. The navel and the genitals. A protruding navel, a button on the surface of a belly of muscle, no fat – that’s the ascetic ideal for you. It testifies that even if you are born of a virgin, you’re no less of a man for that. (Only Adam should have been born without a navel. Take a look through the history of painting, he always has one.) Navel and genitals: a real membrane of flesh, not a symbolic phallus, not a shadow or a concession, but a true penis normalis – and divine, judging by the size suggested by the fabric.
In this painting, a sign may be read in both directions: Son of God or Son of Man. The hand. At least the sign made by the hand, at the exact point that divides the canvas into two parts – right and left. The middle finger outstretched, the other fingers folded back into the palm. And yet in the West this gesture is currently read as an obscenity. Because this finger is associated with penetration. Of the female genitals, certainly, but also of anything that can be similarly penetrated, even in men. Diogenes was happy enough to use his middle finger to insult Demosthenes.
3a5) Looking in the matrix of lack, fragility, and mystery is the proposition that iconoclastic viewing tenders whenever art and religion intersect. Because perhaps most importantly, fertile absence reminds viewers not to discount quite so quickly the rhetoric of doubt that objects perform in the umbrage of pictorial illusion. In the words of the Cubist Georges Braque, another unapologetic deconstructionist-creator, “Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.”
3a6a) Body Double (1984) Brian De Palma, Director
3a6b) Jake’s kindness does not entirely explain his ability to confront Gloria and go out of his way in helping her. Will isn’t enough for him to act: in the film’s opening scene, he finds himself physically unable to rise from the coffin in which he lays while playing the vampire in a horror-porn film. Unable to even move, he can act as neither an actor or person. He must come to the realization that acting, as pretending, is necessary to survive in Hollywood and the deceptive world at large. After discovering his girlfriend had played the loving fiancé just too well, Jake is literally told that he’s “gotta act” by a ruthless acting coach who purposely confuses the two meanings of the word in a shock psychoanalysis session. To finally become the master of his life and discover the truth about Gloria, Jake needs to combine his kindness with his acting skills.
De Palma’s screenplay, however, complicates Jake’s progression from inaction to action by doubling up on the idea of the world’s illusory nature. Jake wasn’t only deceived when he was a passive man: he is again duped when he starts convincing himself that he can and deserves to have control — that is, when he begins peeping on who he thinks is Gloria Revelle. Voyeurism is itself only an illusory, imaginative form of control, one to which Jake does not give in easily. As Donaggio’s entrancing yet delicate theme, “Telescope,” begins, Jake hesitantly approaches the device and repeatedly looks around as De Palma’s camera remains on him, stressing Jake’s unease with accepting even this moderate form of agency. Yet the deception goes further as the woman he fantasizes over will turn out to be someone else — and, like him, a trained pretender. Lost in this web of illusions, he will not manage to control Gloria and what happens to her.
3a6c) Frankie Goes to Hollywood "Relax" (Body Double version)
Friday, May 28, 2021
5a) Georgian Ministry of Highways in Tbilisi
5a1a) Georgian Ministry of Highways in Tbilisi, 1970
5a1b) More at Weird Russia
5a2a) Bank of Georgia headquarters in Tbilisi, 2015
5a2b) The Bank of Georgia headquarters is a building in Tbilisi, Georgia. It was designed by architects George Chakhava and Zurab Jalaghania for the Ministry of Highway Construction of the Georgian SSR and finished in 1975. The engineer was Temur Tkhilava. This 18-story building was acquired by the Bank of Georgia in 2007.
Thursday, May 27, 2021
4a) Interzone Archives – Fire from Heaven
4a1) An Altered Beast mode of brown acid psych from its roots to more recent (r)evolutionary forms. Or as I put it then, a space truckin' playlist informed by the psychonautically fevered psychic thread of Michael Moorcock, Philippe Druillet, Alan Moore, and Julian Cope.
4a2) Tracklist available at kyrs.org/playlists/interzone-2-9-18.
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
4b) Whole Lotta Love Comin' Around
4b1)
4b2)
3b3a) Led Zeppelin would often perform an instrumental of [It's Your Thing] in a medley format with "Communication Breakdown". Led Zeppelin included a four-bar snippet during the opening song sequence of their Playhouse Theater performance on June 27, 1969
4b3b)
4b😳)
4a) Miles of Smiles
4a1)
4a2) Jazz musician Miles Davis, a trumpeter who was one of the major influences on jazz from the late 1940s, was born in Alton, Illinois.
4a3) Happy Birthday, Miles!
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Monday, May 24, 2021
4c) Daily Zen
4c1)
Brian Eno's sole contribution to David Lynch's Dune film score. Wikipedia has an uncited rumor saying Eno had composed a full score. But this is the only track that survives. Toto's score is adequate to the operatic vision of Lynch–Fellini's Satyricon meets DeMille's Ten Commandments, but this track is really the highlight of the score. An odd inclusion, but lucky for us it exists.
And speaking of lucky. It being Monday and all, here's 3 hours of daily Zen.
4c2)
4b) Tunes of Dune
4b1)
As far as I know, this was not inspired by Dune. But besides being the perfect soundtrack to Fremen wandering across the face of the desert (without rhythm, of course), it's hard not to make the connection to this early cover painting.
4b2)
Commissioned by CTI record exec, Creed Taylor, David Matthews (no, not that Dave Matthews!) put together a funky jazz and disco-lite album of Dune-related compositions and covers of other SF movie scores.
Frank Herbert was not involved, and the album was pulled shortly after being released. Which is unfortunate. David Matthews is a superb arranger and composer. While the link to Herbert's books is little more than in name only, for fans of the sound of CTI, Matthews album is well worth tracking down. Who knew Muad'Dib got jiggy with it?!
4b3)
French prog-rocker, Richard Pinhas of Heldon, visited the Dune theme more than once. A sample from his 1978 album Chronolyse.
4b4)
Former member of Tangerine Dream, and krautrockers Ash Ra Tempel and Cosmic Jokers, this is synth wizard Klaus Schulze's entry.
4b5)
Bernard Szajner, inventor of the laser harp, released a full-length tribute to Herbert's world, Visions of Dune in 1979. Originally released under the name Zed, it was remastered and rereleased in 2014.
4b6)
Walk without rhythm, it won't attract the worm
Walk without rhythm and it won't attract the worm
Walk without rhythm and it won't attract the worm
If you walk without rhythm, you never learn
4b7)
Long before Elon, she was one of us.
4a) I Bless the Rains Down in Africa
4a1)
Paul (Kyle MacLachlan) and Chani (Sean Young) in Dune (1984), Director, David Lynch
4a2a) "Hurry, boy, she's waiting there for you."
4a2b)
Sunday, May 23, 2021
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