House-keeping and flashbacks

I will revive this old blog for a while, as I want to get away from the constant response to the moment (in Facebook, etc) and dig around a little in the past.

First of all, I have worked on computers since about 1999, and that formed part of my work, as well as play, so I have a lot of back-ups, moved on from old computers.  Of course, stuff must have got lost in all the shuffling over 20 years, but some treasure still exists.

For instance, as my work included figuring out the newly-growing internet, and passing on that knowledge to both library stuff and customers (we stopped calling the 'borrowers", and 'users' sounded a bit druggy) I had to experiment with everything, so often had a couple of accounts (so I could look at an account from inside and out).  I have no idea how many leftover blogs may exist (or have since died), and websites, and FB accounts, etc.

Most became inactive when social media took over, and we all moved into 'the moment'.  Of course, occasional memories pop up, on anniversaries, etc, but generally we live in ephemeral, linear time.

I miss deeper immersion in mythic time.

And so much of that past got recorded.  These items seem like the digital equivalent to the boxes of papers that still sit in my den in Cardiff (some of which, but not all, will move up here to the cottage).  I will have to go through the boxes and get ruthless.  Not easy.   I have the same relationship to all this digital material, as back-ups generate duplicates and variations, etc.  However much pruning I have done, these things get copied around.

So anyway, will register my progress here, and that includes working on finishing the autobiography, which has hovered about for years, incomplete.  Again, it got taken over by 'real-time' interviews and chats, and posts, so that I got bored with much of the material (both memories, and opinions) and didn't feel like going through it all again.

Maybe this rummage through the old stuff might spark a new burst of motivation.  We'll see.

The Three Degrees of initiation

Years ago, I became interested in the theme of initiations, trials, ordeals, etc - as part of the Hero's Journey, of course, but also in relation to the Gnostic approach, which considers our essential nature as a spark of light, that has slowly fallen into matter, and becomes trapped, and seeks to escape again.

I came across an interesting book, in my mother's collection, by Colin Still, "Shakespeare's Mystery Play - a Study of The Tempest".  The only review I can find of this appears on a theosophical site, and doesn't really elucidate the story as he tells it.

I made the above 'chart' as a way of clarifying for myself the ideas the book contains.  I can not find this model in any other traditions, and can also find almost nothing about Colin Still (although T.S.Eliot and W.H.Auden seem to have known of his work), so this stands alone.

He uses the four elements, and the three 'transitional' phases between them, making seven steps, in all.

In regards to The Fall, we can see how light/consciousness gets tempted down to this earthly plain, and then can - with sufficient effort or luck, escape again, through a series of initiations, which appear in many traditions.

[edit]

It turns out that Colin Still is not quite as obscure as I assumed, and I found more references to his work in Northrop Frye's late notebooks, etc.  More research needed...

Just get on with it!

Hey ho, sorry 'bout this, but most of my typing vanishes into the ephemeral trivia of social media, and blogs have slowly gone dormant.

I keep meaning to complete an autobiography, which I already started on, and which I even commissioned a cover for, from the excellent Bob Campbell (which is ready to go, on standby).

Of course, I remain schtum about the title I chose, so let's call it Work-In-Process...

Back in the day, I challenged myself with writing 50,000 words in a month, as part of NaNoWriMo - a personal marathon to write a short novel in the month of November.  At that speed, an autobiography could get finished before Christmas.  I actually finished the marathon half a dozen times.  No great books emerged (although I quite liked Infinite Monkeys - and even played the game of getting a cover and promo image from Bobby Campbell, and then publishing it on Lulu, as paperback or ebook, just to see how it all worked).  Still, I failed to go back and do a serious edit of most of the other attempts, and the editing process matters much more than just dumping out a first draft.

November looms, so perhaps I should push myself to write at that frenzied pace (1667 words per day) and get the damned autobiography into first draft, at least.  I might even enjoy it!

2007:  I wrote "Foolproof", my very first attempt at fiction.  I struggled, but completed the task.  It muddled up bits of my own life, with bits of imagination, and prove simply a slog to the finish.  I can't re-read it.

2008: I decided in advance, at least, on a theme, of a quest, and hidden items, and puzzles, etc.  This led to "Infinite Monkeys".  I still quite like to read bits of this...and I love holding a real book!

2009: This time I wrote "Handwaving", more or less about "Art" and the empty space, the white room, the blank canvas.  I think I included a small esoteric group, as well, as a source of inspiration.

2009a: enthused by the process, I also did a film script, on Script Frenzy, "One White Crow".

2010:  I wrote "Does Not Compute" aka "Spooking the Herd" which I can't remember much about. Something to do with business, and money, and hustles, etc.

I skipped 2011

In 2012, I decided to actually work to some kind of game plan, so read and analysed a bunch of conspiracy thrillers.  I didn't want to have a hero who was ex-SAS, though, who could field strip a bunch of weapons, fly a helicopter, etc, so made him a diffident Englishman abroad.  But apart from that...

2012: The Columbus Caper  I quite liked this book, and really should go back and look at it again, do some editing, and maybe even follow through with a Lulu version.  If it amuses you to see the process, I did the work on Scrivener, and used this blog as a diary of the days of November 2012.

I tried using 2013 to work on the autobiography with the same level of motivation, but it felt like cheating, as NanoWriMo has a specific brief of writing fiction. 

And then I pretty well put it all aside.  And six more years drifted by...  Hey ho.  So it goes.

The Ten Thousand Things

Anyone who knows me realises that I have little time for 'religion' or its partner word 'spirituality', simply because I don't understand them.  Until someone gives me a clear definition of 'spirit' without bringing 'soul' (an entirely different entity, seems to me) into it.

Still I love the philosophical little text called the Tao Te Ching (for its brevity, if nothing else). 

Here's part of Chapter 42:

From Tao comes the One.
From the One comes the Two.
From the Two comes the Three.From the Three come the ten thousand things.

I won't go into what I understand from this enigmatic (and profound) little poem, but I like a description of the actual world we live in as 'the ten thousand things'.    When I emerged from the buzzing, blooming confusion of childhood I remember feeling delighted at those ten thousand things - from butterflies to books, from other countries and other languages to art and science by-products, from simple to exotic foodstuffs, and on, and on.

In fact, in the modern idea, we know of millions and millions of things, but a symbolic 'ten thousand' seems a manageable amount for any one human to deal with.  After all, I will never meet all the people, read all the books, visit all the countries, watch all the movies, etc.

The 'ten thousand things', to some extent, represent the illusory part of life, called Maya or Lila, the things that we eventually have to let go of, when we finally leave.  At my age I have already started simplifying my expectations - I may never get to visit China, or South America, or Africa.  Whole clusters of possible experiences now eliminated.  I sometimes feel I am shedding layers, in preparation, like Ishtar entering the Underworld.

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that for many people, these days, their apparent wide range of experience (their own ten thousand things) may well consist, almost entirely, of pixillated experiences, rather than direct, sensory ones.   We think we have seen youths skateboarding over street furniture, dolphins rounding up fish, football matches, Royal weddings, disasters, heroic behaviour, etc - but all this through just one channel - a screen.

Less to give up, I guess, when we finally leave!   We just turn off the screen, or run out of battery life, and we're gone.

Always Assuming…

This is something I contributed to Maybe Quarterly in 2006

By BogusMagus   (21 June 2006)

Consider an artist as a dreamer in control of hir dreams who invents a world and invites others to live in it.
A con artist does the same.

Have you ever felt conned by teachers, priests, politicians, acquaintances or family?
To achieve this outcome the scam-artist has to control the channels of communication.

Usually we 'potential victims' have multiple channels of input that we can use to verify our perceptions.
Cults, the military, the major religions, state education, practical jokers, hoaxers and confidence tricksters attempt to isolate us from a complete range of checks and balances, and ideally they control the few channels left available to us, through which they feed us data and models of their choosing.

If they can’t completely control our use of other channels they can create false trails, strange loops, confusion, social pressure, a hint of illegal activity, paranoia, manufactured evidence or misinformation to encourage us to distrust these alternative viewpoints, or reality checks.

The world they create differs from the ‘real world’ because it contains some of the hoaxer’s fictitious creations – a chair has gone when someone sits down, an account will prove empty when someone tries to take out their money / winnings.

We fail to distinguish the evidence of our senses from conclusions drawn – and maybe we secretly want to believe their version (easy money, eternal happiness).

The process usually involves a period of induction to build up the false world picture, which should appear consistent to any test the victim can apply.

RV Jones wrote a paper drawing parallels between practical joking and the work of the scientist confronted by a universe, as the scientist constructs a world based on any evidence he has, then tests it for consistency
with what he already knows, and takes action on the assumption of accurate data.

Beware - Be Aware - Be Wary

Thanks to The Pleasures of Deception by Norman Moss - hard to find a copy of this.

Check out R. V. Jones,  [find it in Scribd, here] “The theory of practical joking – its relevance to physics”

Bulletin of the Institute of Physics 1957, p. 193 - partially reprinted in A Random Walk in Science

Archetypal astrology - notes on the course

The second class in this course on Archetypal Astrology consisted of  Stanislav Grof taking us through the pre-birth (perinatal) phases of development.  Bear in mind that the astrology appears minimal, as the tutors do not employ to the familiar Sun Signs, nor do they consider that charts 'influence' individuals or generations.

They simply refer to the angular relationships of the planets, and Transits (if you celebrate your birthday, or a Full Moon, or go visit an Eclipse, you are already into this stuff).  So away with the objections based on precession of the Equinoxes, or 'influence of the stars' or rising signs, Sun signs, etc.

All they are indicating, it seems, are a set of correlations, which you may prefer to consider synchronicities, or cyclic behaviour.

Here's a Reality Sandwich article as background.

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This week was not so much about astrology.  Of course, astrology is highly focused on the moment of birth (in space-time) but I know relatively little about its consideration of the moment of conception, and nine months in the womb.

My own conception and birth

The war had ended when I was conceived (I seem like a celebration baby, on or about VE Day), and in spite of rationing, my mother must have been less stressed than in the previous few years. I imagine I could hear her singing.  I was born at home (mid-wives were available during the war, so newborns would not be all in one place, should a bomb hit).  So my mum was surrounded by family, and in a comfortable place.   As it was a very cold winter, she then carried me around (in the traditional manner) with a shawl tied over her shoulder.  And I was breast-fed.  So lots of positive experiences (as preferred in The Continuum Concept).  This could explain my tendency to 'trust Universe' even though I have no religion.

On the down side, one or both of my parents may have had what we call PTSD now, after five years in a bombed city.   And although my sister was born during the war, after that my mother delivered a stillborn boy, so I was a 'replacement', and didn't get an elder brother.

Still overall I had a good start, I guess.

Grof''s model divides the perinatal into four stages.

In the womb, linked to oceanic sensations, mostly blissful, etc.   Mythical link to Neptune.

When the contractions start, the environment becomes threatening, and the blood flow comes and goes, and there seems no way out.  Mythical link to Saturn.

The third phase is when the pressure begins to become directed towards escaping, the end of one way of living and the start of another, birth-death scenario.  Mythical link to Plutoig.

The final stage happens when the child emerges into a new world and the umbilical cord gets cut.  Mythical link to Uranus.

Fascinating stuff to contemplate.

Jupiter Return

Doing a lot of reading in preparation for the archetypal astrology course.  It dawned on me that today 'is' my Jupiter Return.

If you don't do the jargon, what you may think of as your 'birthday', in astrological language gets described as your 'Solar Return' (i.e. the Sun has returned to the same place in the sky as the day you were born). It happens once a year, and some people consider it important.

Jupiter Return happens about once every twelve years, and most people don't notice it, or know about it, or care.  Today, it has returned to the exact same place in the sky...for the sixth time since I was born.

As it happens, I checked back, and last time Jupiter returned to my birth point, I found myself in the middle of an online learning course, entitled "Tale of The Tribe" with the inestimable Robert Anton Wilson. 

I guess it bodes well for expanding my knowledge at this time.

Gimme Shelter.....Weathering the Storm in an Archetypal Cosmos

I have felt the urge to re-investigate a language for the cycles of events I perceive, having lived long enough. (Well, not quite long enough, yet).

Stanislav Grof has always fascinated me, but I have never found my way to a place to investigate Holotropic Breathing, and my psychedelic adventures seem far in the past, now - but he offers a course in Archetypal Astrology (along with Dr Richard Tarnas) and I feel sufficiently intrigued to commit some time to that study.

I did have an intense few years, studying astrology, in the late 70s and early 80s, so at least know something of the language (jargon), and some of the embedded imagery of the myths etc.

This video (from July 2017) offers a glimpse of the kind of subject matter, with Dr Tarnas.

PS: a question about the influence of Eris turns up at the end (1:47)



And here you can listen to the two of them together (Mar 2017)

 

Interesting resource, Archai - online journal (The journal of Archetypal Cosmology).

Richard Tarnas's website

When your number is up

I got through this life by sometimes (when lost) simply paying attention to patterns to steer  me, and that includes what Jung called synchronicities (i.e. coincidences that seem to carry some kind of significance or meaning, over and above ‘mere coincidence’).

I don’t intend to go into a discussion of this right here, rather note a recent cluster of ‘significance’ as an example.

The two members of the KLF recently announced that they will create some kind of event in August 2017 (23 years after burning a million pounds in a strange media event).    I turn to John Higgs’ wonderful book about the whole strange story - The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds -

and enjoy it all over again.

That reminds me that I bought a limited edition of a book from Mr. Higgs at the Cosmic Trigger play event in Liverpool in 2014 - Standing on the Verge of Getting It On - so I dig it out, as it seems related to the wonderful social history of the period he  included in the first book.     I have copy 43 out of a limited edition of 111.   I didn’t ask him, at the time, what significance that number had.

As I read through, an extraordinary man called Brian Barritt walks in on one of the musicians who is reading “Cosmic Trigger” and he says “I appear on page 111 of that book”. 

[This is not true of current editions, where you find Brian on page 115, or 116 – although there is a reference on page 111 of the old New Falcon edition to John Lilly mentioning ‘angels’  (Cosmic  Coincidence Control Centre) – and page 111 of the most recent release,from Hilaritas Press has material about cabalistic numerology and communication with Higher Intelligence.]

So I dig out my signed copy of Brian’s book – The Road of Excess - that I bought from him through the mail and feel surprised to see he lived at number 111 of a street in London.

Which triggered memories of studying online with Robert Anton Wilson (hereafter ‘Bob’) who was, among other things, a Joycean scholar, and we did some work on Finnegans Wake, in which the number 111 appears quite frequently.  Bob seemed to think of it as indicating Renewal and Creativity.   Joyce links it to Anna Livia Plurabelle (the feminine influence in the book), who also represents the River Liffey.  The book not only contains a myriad of puns (the river of life, for instance) but also offers a series of coded materials (possibly drawn from Cabbalism) and numerology, ALP = 111.   [the Hebrew A or aleph=ALP=111]

Other variations with the same value include APL (apple?), LAP, PAL, etc.

Again, I don’t want to side-track into all of that material here and now.

I don’t know a lot of numerology, so decide to Google it, and found that people consider 111 as an ‘angelic’ number.   Given that Cosmic Trigger covers a period when Leary and Wilson thought they were getting messages from ‘alien beings’ or higher intelligence, or their Holy guardian Angel (or something)  I perceive some kind of connection.

And in that same research, I saw a reminder of the odd fact that Robert Anton Wilson died on the 11^th January, 2007 (11/1 in the UK, or 1/11 in the USA, as a palindrome it works both ways).  Even odder, given that I only just noticed this (a heads up from DJ Fly Agaric) Bob managed to die on the 101^st birthday of Albert Hofmann (inventor, discoverer of LSD, who was still alive and well, at the time, as I described in a post on our shared blog).   As we are now approaching the tenth anniversary of Bob’s death, that makes it Uncle Albert’s 111^th birthday on Wednesday!

These things go on, and although some seem done consciously (like creating 111 copies of a book), I start to perceive particular significance when unrelated areas also get drawn into the net.  For instance, my hobby is magic, and a few weeks ago I ordered a DVD about close-up magic called (I kid you not) “LAP” and am right now awaiting delivery.   [Update:  11/01/2017   Of course, this DVD arrived today, just after I posted to our group blog.]

Steve (DJ Fly) took this a step further, when he turned to Finnegans Wake (which always gets published, in all editions, with the same page numbering):

If the page numbers are significant then dates can be determined from them. The first time I saw this type of correlation is of page 111 of the Wake with Robert Anton Wilson's death on January 11th.

...peraw raw raw reeraw puteters out of Now Sealand in spignt of the patchpurple of the massacre, a dual a duel to die to day, goddam and biggod, sticks and stanks, of most of the Jacobiters...

That not only contains references to RAW (another nickname for Robert Anton Wilson), "to die to day", but also to RAW patatows (a pretend currency we invented to amuse him).

Here’s Bob himself:

"This 1:11 business turns out to be more curious than we realize at first, even if we note that it is connected with Bloom's son, who died at age 11 days, Shakespeare's son Hamnet who died at 11 years and the 22 (2x11) letters in the Hebrew alphabet or the 22 words in the first sentence of Ulysses. If ALP and APL invoke all this, the LAP, a further permutation, invokes the LAP where a Freemason wears his apron, as in Aleister Crowley's BOOK OF LIES, Chapter 54, in which some Freemasons guess that the lost Mason Word is AMO, whose number is 111, and some guess that it is LAP which also has the number 111. (By Cabala, AMO=A which is 1, M which is 40, and O which is 70, 1+40+70=111, while LAP=L or 30, A or 1, and P or 80, and 30+1+80=111.) William York Tindall, a Joyce scholar who likes to count, has noted that many long sentences in FW have 111 clauses. Anna Livia Plurabelle's untitled "mamafesta" in Chapter Five has 111 alternative titles; when sad, she is described as "wan wan wan"; in Chapter 8, she has 111 children. Most books on Cabala hint at transcendental meanings in the fact that the Hebrew A or aleph=ALP=111 when spelled in full as aleph-lamek-pe."    

from Wilson's book Coincidance  (a new edition of which I find myself helping to proof-read right now).

Here's another little piece of the jigsaw.   Julian Cope appears in both the Higgs books mentioned above, and has done the definitive work on stone circles, megaliths, etc.  The Modern Antiquarian.

So imagine my surprise, in my Google trawl, when I came across this:

 ...echo in the conjunction of archaeoacoustic research focused on megalithic tombs and the frequency of the number 111 in Finnegans Wake: ‘the majik wavus has elfun anon meshes’ (FW 203.31): the magic wave has 11+1 meshes.

...‘the ride onerable’ (FW 328.13) – three ones – of ALP’s gematric value, 111 Hz is also a natural resonance frequency identified for Neolithic tombs and chambers in Ireland and Britain, which cluster mostly within the ‘myrioheartzed’ (FW 331.23) range of 110-112 Hz (Mills 2014: 66-67). In the context of ‘chambermade music’ (FW 184.4) this frequency has consciousness-altering effects: at 110-112 Hz the patterns of activity over the prefrontal cortex abruptly shift, resulting in a relative deactivation of the language centre, with regular exposure to resonant sound at that frequency ‘turning on’ an area of the brain that relates to mood, empathy and social behaviour.

All of which, as ever, leaves me puzzled.  What I may take from it comes from pages I would normally ignore (I don’t have a lot of respect for much of the New Age stuff online).  If the frequent appearance of 111 in your life has to do with Manifestation and Prosperity, then it seems a good idea to stay optimistic and positive – so as to manifest the good stuff…  A reasonable message, after the horrific year just passed.

Another think coming

Having survived the loss of many of my peer group in 2016, I still don't have much of a plan for getting through 2017.

Noticing that the KLF guys plan an event for 23 August 2017 gives me some sort of target - 23 years on from when they burned a million pounds, and deleted their back catalogue.  Actually, they seem to have reverted to the incarnation before the KLF, the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (sic) - or JAMs.

Now for those of you who already have no idea what I am talking about, I can't recommend highly enough John Higgs' book "The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds"

This book enthralls me every time I read it, not only because it seems so well-informed, and has such a lucid style (for such an enigmatic subject), but because I remain a fan of everything that John Higgs has written (that I can get my hands on), and of Robert Anton Wilson (who I studied with online), and  the Illuminatus! trilogy (which I first read in the 1970s, and contains the first references to the JAMs).  I got my copy of volume one (back in the days when they got published separately) at the same bookshop (Compendium) that Ken Campbell got his, which inspired him to create a stage show out of all three volumes, starting in Liverpool at the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun, and ending up in the National Theatre in London (where I witnessed the whole series of five plays in one day - something like ten hours).   Recently, Daisy Eris Campbell (who may have been conceived backstage of that show) has staged another of Robert Anton Wilson's books - Cosmic Trigger - again in Liverpool, and again coming to London, soon.

Too much for one paragraph?

Well, I will use this blog the way John Steinbeck used the left-hand pages of his ledgers, as a place to warm-up, make notes, write letters, etc - while actually writing his novel on the right hand pages.

Apart from anything else, Robert Anton Wilson encouraged optimism, and having dragged myself through 2016 I feel the need to renew my reckless cheerfulness.

Ten Good Reasons to Get Out of Bed in the Morning.  Originally published in OUI Magazine, 1977.
  (audio version).

All the more reason...

I am a fan of Print-on-Demand, and have dabbled with everything from Lulu publishing to one-off books of Wikipedia compilations, Blog to Book variations, and collecting a bunch of PDF articles into a portable book.

I like a paper copy of a book, instead of simply a digital one.

Having said that, I just saw Facebook compilations which seem pretty high-priced to me.  Do people really want coffee table books of their own FB interactions?

All the more reason to finish an autobiography I can sell for a tenner!

Writing it down

I can lie awake at night, savouring memories, and creating anecdotes, but have fallen back into the traditional writer's problem, of not actually getting the damned things written down.

I dug out the draft I created a couple of years ago, and enjoyed parts of it, but there is so much more to capture.

I may have to invent a game plan for overcoming the block - like writing at least one anecdote for each period of my life; or 300 words a day; or writing in longhand (notebook); or something I have not thought of yet.

I did do the NaNoWriMo project 6 times, which involved writing 1666 words every day for a month, and managed it, so I have little excuse. That commitment worked.  One year, I even ignored the rule about it being a fiction challenge, and tried to use the same tactic for the autobiography, and somehow it didn't work - well, it was cheating, I guess!

I quite like the conspiracy thriller I wrote in November 2012 - The Columbus Caper - so perhaps I should just go back and edit the fiction, and leave the personal story until I spontaneously feel like pursuing it again.

I gave myself a format to follow, I remember (after reading a bunch of these kind of novels).

Quite the opposite of a new year's resolution.   New Year indecision.

Yeah, yeah, the title changed...

Autógrafo o autobiografía

I can't believe we lost Carrie Fisher and her mother in two days.

In however small a part, I contributed to some scenes with Carrie (as Jabba).

This year, we lost David Bowie (who I worked with on Labyrinth).  Previously we lost Bob Hoskins in 2014 (who I worked with on Roger Rabbit).

And we all lost Jim Henson in 1990.

Although I can still go out and sign autographs, for people who consider that some kind of Olympic torch connection ( I was in the same room as these people), for me it works the other way.

I feel I have to get down my stories before I go.

So I will be concentrating on the autobiography this year, and see if I can complete (at least) the first edition.

Oh, and I plan to improve my Spanish (as a project) which explains the title of the blog entry.

Wishful Drinking

Just after I decided to leave Facebook for a while, I heard that Carrie Fisher had died, but I didn't want to go back and find the cascade of tributes and all that - as it might draw me back into my FB addiction, so I have decided to put this up here, to remember how hilariously funny and self-deprecating she could be.

Peace Out.     RIP.

Backwards and Forwards in Time

Giving up Facebook is a bit like giving up smoking, or rather (as it is probably temporary) like fasting – you suddenly have a couple of extra hours per day, to do something else with, that used to be filled by smoking or eating.

When I first got onto the internet (1999) I soon started on a website, which grew and sprawled for years, with experimental pages, biographical content, idea pages, etc.   I supplemented that sprawl with a blog, as the more linear form seemed right for a kind of diary.   I started one, but after 9/11 I restarted the blog, and it continued for years, although it faded.   I still raid it for content occasionally.   Language ‘is’ avirus.  (2001 – 2015)

As my job with the library involved learning and teaching computers and online stuff, I had to explore other platforms (I generally use Blogger) so I put an e-learning blog on Word Press.

I also put up a librarian blog (2008 – 2015), when trying to convince the management that the library should have a blog.  Anon the Librarian’s unattributed ideas remained ‘personal opinion’ while the Council ummed and ah’d about how safe such a project would be.

I was lucky enough to become part of a fascinating online community and study group in 2004, and we began a collaborative student blog (in addition to creating magazines) which still continues: Only Maybe (2004 - 2016)

Of course, in 2004, Facebook also started up, and slowly took over my online writing, and interactions, but I find it very ephemeral and far harder to search for old content.  

These blogs remain full of material, links, and ideas from over the last few years, so I plan to dig through them a bit, as well as using my spare time to get some more writing done.   I saw Will Self on tv, and he uses a typewriter (the same as the one I have in the cupboard) to avoid the distraction of the web.   Of course, one could simply disconnect the WiFi, but perhaps the temptation is too much.  I noticed he also never learned to type, but two-fingers on a typewriter looks incredibly slow.  I think I may still need my word processor, and Scrivener.

Then there is a blog where I can stash my stuff about magic, juggling, hypnotism, etc – called Intelligence Increase.    (2006 – 2014)

Each of those may lead you to other places online.  I am all over the place!

This blog, that you are reading now, supports my writing projects.  I have completed NaNoWriMo six times (writing a 50,000 word novel in a month).   I started on an autobiography, but it stalled when I started working on an archive for NoFit State Circus, which took up all my mental space.  I even followed through on a couple of those bad novels (no re-writing, as yet) to see how easy it would be to actually produce a paperback book, using print-on-demand through Lulu.  I also put up a couple of other experiments, a book by a friend who died young, my mum's unpublished book on the use of the voice, etc.

Anyway, I commissioned a cover for the autobiography, and that is ready to go; I have 50,000 words written, and some research already done; I even have a title.  I just have to sit down, and finish the damned thing.

Back to the drawing board...

...sorry, writing pad.

My autobiography stalled about a year ago.  My excuse is that my head has been filled with the history of NoFit State Circus - which forms and informs 30 years of my life.

So it has not been wasted time in terms of research. I should get at least a couple of chapters out of it.

I have spent a year of paid work (Heritage Lottery Funded - the only way to get money from a lottery, as a wage) - gathering up all the material to donate to Glamorgan Archives, to create a website, and contribute to an end-of-year exhibition, which is now open in Cardiff.

You can find the website here.

At the end of the year I will cease to be paid, but I suspect I may carry on updating the website for a while, unless they claw my Admin status away from me!  Self-exploitation (long hours of unpaid work) have been a feature of keeping the circus going this long.

Just got to tidy up the material to hand over to The Glamorgan Archives in January, add 'archivist' to my cv of jobs done, without qualifications - where it will join my honorary 'librarian' title.

What next?  Who knows.

Wising up the Marks - You Can't Cheat an Honest Man

As ever, with internet, I find it far too easy to discover how hard it can prove to have an original thought these days.

Reading William Burroughs today I suddenly made a connection between him and W.C.Fields.

The odd trigger?  One simple word.  Fields occasionally made an extremely un-PC reference to "a Ubangi in the fuel supply" - and in Junky I came across this:

"Did you ever have the good fortune to see the Italian master Tetrazzini perform?" Lee lit Mary's cigarette. "I say 'perform' advisedly, because he was a great showman, and like all showmen, not above charlatanism and at times downright trickery. Sometimes he used smoke screens to hide his maneuvers from the opposition—I mean literal smoke screens, of course. He had a corps of trained idiots who would rush in at a given signal and eat all the pieces. With defeat staring him in the face—as it often did, because actually he knew nothing of chess but the rules and wasn't too sure of those—he would leap up yelling, 'You cheap bastard! I saw you palm that queen!' and ram a broken teacup into his opponent's face. In 1922 he was rid out of Prague on a rail. The next time I saw Tetrazzini was in the Upper Ubangi. A complete wreck. Peddling unlicensed condoms. That was the year of the rinderpest, when everything died, even the hyenas."

The thought crossed my mind while reading some of the routines in Queer - which echoed the meandering tall tales that Fields drifts into at times - and of course the drawling voice which I heard in my head.  Did Burroughs borrow this from Fields?

They both displayed a misanthropic and cynical view of the world; we remember both as 'addicts'; they share a black sense of humour and a dislike for censorship, and both appear fascinated by con men, hustlers and other petty criminals - to whom they gave exotic names.

So I Google the connection, and find this:

Burroughs and Fields

William S. Burroughs & W. C. Fields: A Lover’s Quarrel With The World

Dr Benway?

Bored now...taking a Facebook sabbatical...

I have enjoyed most of the phases and waves of the Internet so far, from making a website (now very old-fashioned, and in need of renewal) to writing blogs.  Only this blog and the collaborative one (Only Maybe) still seem to get updates from me - but I have decided that Facebook (fun though it is) steals too much time (and energy) right now - so I am going to take a break.

Facebook? We don't need no steenking Facebook!

Every time I get a hankering for exchanging trivia, I will have to spend an equal amount of time working on the autobiography.

“I'm exhausted. I spent all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out”

We'll see how that resolution goes.

Apart from having a couple of conventions to go to, I will also be helping run an online course through September / October, and just want to focus on those less ephemeral pastimes.

To think!  I only got on FB because of my job as a computer whisperer for the libraries.  I needed to sample the things that customers wanted to use, to see if they worked correctly, etc.   I started off thinking I wouldn't actually be using it myself.  I joined under a pseudonym.

Addictions are tricky things.

Work in Progress

Just shaping up some text for the Maybe Logic Academy sessions we intend to run in parallel with the 'Find The Others' festival, which accompanies the Cosmic Trigger play in Liverpool.

I have volunteered to moderate a couple of weeks, one on E-Prime, and one on the 8-Circuit Model.   I will use this blog to post the rough drafts.

WEEK ONE

Tools for Thinking   - To Be, or Not To Be

Language as a Virus

Much of RAW's work revolved around perception and 'belief systems', and most people use words to create their models of the world, which may (or may not) have a close match to the non-verbal 'reality' in which we live.  Other ‘languages’ include mathematical ones, music, art, dance, etc.

Although many cultures (and religions) consider humans somehow different from 'animals', much of our behaviours remain rooted in our primate nature.

We humans may prove unique in our development of a verbal language (although communication in some form pervades the animal and plant kingdoms).

The particular aspect of language that we will look at now relates to the human ability to pass messages down through the generations (Korzybski called this time-binding) and we can receive messages not just orally, as with most tribes, but through writing, which can store information indefinitely.

Unfortunately, such messages may pass on information accurately, or create distortions.

NLP (which owes a lot to Korzybski’s work) refers to deletion, distortion and generalizations, as ineffective ways to communicate.

War of Words

Korzybski spoke several languages, so seems far more likely to have understood how each language imposes a 'grid' over the world. He also worked as an engineer, and understood the precision of mathematics, compared to the ambiguity of words. People who only speak one language can easily mistake their verbal description for 'reality', rather than 'just one way of describing the world'.

In the 1930s, even the maths of Quantum Mechanics began to throw up strange results, undermining the old certainties of scientific language and creating paradoxes (when translated from maths to verbal language). Korzybski set out to 'clean up' English, to avoid the distortions inherent in each kind of language, and create a more rational or objective form of communication.

He devise a series of tools to help formulate the language to avoid ambiguity, and misleading implications, as he thought improvements in the way that we think could help eliminate prejudices, avoid the risk of war over belief systems, etc.

Some of those tools we have already incorporated into modern thinking: the hyphen to link things that language otherwise appears to separate (body-mind, space-time); 'air quotes' around phrases, etc.  You can check out “Science & Sanity” when you have plenty of time available to you.

Bob (and Alfred K) call two-value logic ‘Aristotelian’ – which does not allow any grey areas (the Excluded Middle) or the flexibility of Fuzzy Logic.  Mr K calls his work non-aristotelian or non-A, Bob calls it Maybe Logic.

E-Prime

David Bourland developed one particular aspect of the work, by suggesting the use of English without the verb 'to be'.  Specifically, the 'is' of identity and of predication.  So many arguments take the form of flat assertions: “There is a God,” the certain of which may well elicit in someone else “There isn't”.  The sea is blue; my favourite band is the best, and so on. Such two-vale logic offers little in the way of resolution, but to say “I believe in a creator god” at least owns that it is a personal belief, not a description of “the way things are.”

It can feel awkward at first, to use E-Prime (like learning any new language), and if you find it difficult to make the above distinction (the ‘is’ of identity and predication) then you may prefer to hunt down and eliminate all uses of the verb 'to be'. However, even Bob found it difficult to speak in E-Prime continuously, so when it proves too difficult you can always let yourself off the hook, in what we call E-choice, rather than struggle with alternatives.

e.g. How old are you?   I am 25.

Note: The spook of the continuous present (I am going) is not so important, as it is a quirk of English.

Je vais (French), voy (Spanish) = I go, I am going, I do go.   The use of the verb 'to be' as an auxiliary does not create big problems, just as “I have seen...” does not have anything to do with the possessive (to have).

Occasionally replacing 'is' can feel convoluted, just as writers, feeling bored with 'he said, she said', can get carried away with 'he emphasised, she shouted, he answered, she clarified, etc.'

Many objections got raised on Bob's course.  People complained about how it made the language longer and less elegant, that it sounded clumsy, etc.  In fact, many people resisted before even attempting the exercise (often the sign of a taboo).

On a more positive note

Sometimes the verb ‘to be’ gets used on purpose, particularly in advertising and propaganda:

Guinness is good for you.

This is your brain on drugs.

You will often find it used in making flat assertions [There is a God], or affirmations.[Don't worry, be happy]

John Lilly’s Beliefs Unlimited (a self-hypnotic script) contains lots of uses of the verb, and attempts to convert it to E-Prime proved difficult for me. 

 “What is believed to be true, either is true, or becomes true, within limits to be discovered through experience and experiment.”

In the province of the mind what one believes to be true either will result in accurate predictions now, or will later fulfil any predictions (?)

"In the province of the mind there are no limits."

The province of the mind does not appear to me to have any limits.

"There are no limits."
No-one has ever found the edge.

When asked about my translation attempts, Bob replied:

For ritual I think the Milton Model works
better than the Meta Model.

In NLP, the Meta Model tries to remove deletions, distortions, generalisations, etc – to improve the accuracy of the intended communication. E-Prime would fit here, as a useful tool.  Indeed RAW invented the word 'mosbunall' (most but not all) to soften the effect of generalizations.

The Milton Model, on the other hand, deliberately employs ambiguous language, allowing people to project their own ‘content’ into the material.  You can see why advertisers might prefer that.

In the section of Bob’s book “Everything Is Under Control” (note the ‘is’ in the title) called Language as a Conspiracy, he says this:

“The present author has written two books in E-Prime and finds it does tend to clarify, to de-dogmatize, and to make prose somewhat more scientific. Attempts to write the present book [i.e. Everything Is Under Control] in E-Prime quickly proved hopelessly baroque and created unreadable prose. You need the ‘is of identity’ to describe conspiracy theories. Korzybski would say that proves that illusions, delusions, and ‘mental’ illnesses require the ‘is’ to perpetuate them. (He often said, ‘Isness is an illness’)."

Exercise

Let's just treat it as an exercise for the week, to discuss the subject of language, communication and how we model the world, employing (as best we can) E-Prime.

Consider it a simple experiment (like not using the word 'I' for a week) – to raise awareness.

The original motto for the MLA forums offers an example:  “We only have one rule in this area of cyberspace - if you can't achieve tolerance, at least attempt courtesy.”

(Not “if you can't be tolerant, at least be courteous.”)

Further reading

William S. Burroughs

The influence of Burroughs on RAW remains one of the things we never got around to in the MLA - The 23 Enigma; authoritarian control systems; conspiracy; distrust of verbal systems and a preference for hieroglyphics or pictograms (RAW ran a course on The Ideogrammic Method); alternative calendars; non-linear writing and, of course, Cut-Ups, which Bob employed to describe drug and dream states in his fiction.

In this context, Burroughs actually studied with Korzybski, and promoted not only avoiding the 'IS' OF IDENTITY, but disliked the EITHER/OR (aristotelean) construction (right or wrong, body or mind, true or false), and use of the definite article "THE" (as in 'the universe', 'the way, the truth and the light', etc).

For more on that, have a look at WSB's The Electronic Revolution; "Journey through time-space" in WSB's The Job;

Robert Anton Wilson

As proof that E-Prime does not have to end up with inelegant language, Robert Anton Wilson wrote the whole of “Quantum Psychology” using E-Prime.  I doubt most readers feel aware of anything odd in the writing.  You can find the section about E-Prime online here, and it also contains exercises you might like to practice with. http://www.rawilson.com/quantum.html

The same chapter appears here, but with links to additional reading.

http://www.nobeliefs.com/eprime.htm  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime  Background reading in Wikipedia, including the whole matter of Korzybski's General Semantics.

This blog offers an amusing take on why some people get so angry about E-Prime:

http://inconvenientbody.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/a-review-in-e-prime/

You can find details of the Milton Model, and the Meta Model, here.

The influence of Korzybski's General Semantics on Sci-Fi writers.

WEEK TWO

The evolution of an idea – the 8 Circuit Model – "the latest model, not the last"

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model, that makes the existing model obsolete.”   Bucky Fuller

RAW often called himself a 'model agnostic' – in the sense that, using mental models as tools to understand things can prove very useful, but ideally you don't mistake your mental model for 'reality'.  The map is not the territory.  The model is not the mind.

He particularly liked the 8 circuit model from Tim Leary, which both Bob and Antero Alli expanded and added to.  Antero Alli still runs courses on the subject – with lots of practical work, too.

You will find the model explicitly referred to in both RAW's fiction and non-fiction, and, once familiar with it, you will also notice implicit references to it. Fnord.

In the Illuminatus Chronicles, Sigismundo Celine is aware of the first three ‘souls’ (from Aquinas, drawing on Aristotle) – the Vegetative, the Animal and the Human.  His initiations will supposedly open up the ‘fourth soul’ (connection to the NoMind) and no further distinction gets made).

Bob wrote those books with full knowledge of the later evolutions of this model, which teases out various other levels within that psychedelic ‘fourth soul’.

In these later models, a fourth level appears within the ‘terrestrial circuits’ – related to the pack or tribe, and the price we pay to feel part of the group.  It mostly gets described as including mating and reproduction, so naturally folds back to a new life, beginning again in Circuit 1.

For individuals who get out of that endless loop, the escape takes various forms, and other levels unfold as the individual follows that path.  This higher realm gets divided (in this model) into four other systems, whose attributes vary, their names have changed, and even the sequence doesn’t seem fixed and final.

In brief, the first circuit refers to the most basic spatial dimension, approach – avoidance, just as the plant reaches for the sun, or the amoeba avoids things it does not wish to incorporate so some things appeal to us, and others repel. The second circuit relates to the mammalian aspect of space, dominance – submission, finding our place (I’d say up & down, but Bucky Fuller considered those an illusion of beings living on the surface of a planet). The third spatial dimension, we know as left and right (sometimes they mirror each other, sometimes they seem different). This circuit is linked to the human, using both sides of the brain, and relating to language (in the complex form we have uniquely evolved), and the opposable thumb – our preferred way of considering ‘intelligence’. The fourth circuit relates to time, the tribe, our links to others, and the rights and responsibilities that go with that, including reproduction.

That fourth circuit appears far more limited than the ‘fourth soul’ of the Illuminatus Chronicles.  In this later model all those higher aspects of mind get teased out into four further circuits, which not everyone necessarily discovers. Ecstatic realization of the body-mind; thinking about thinking; the genetic adventure which may not yet be over; the Quantum Field, No-Mind, etc.

History of this model

Leary appears to have originally got it from 24 images relating to a Tantric map (you can read the story in What Does WoMan Want?)    He and Bob later elaborated on what he had learned, and they spent much time correlating information from other models (astrology, tarot, kaballah, etc).

In Leary's The Game of Life the 24 get divided into 8 'sets' of 3 phases - (reception, storage/integration/analysis, and transmission of information).  Exo-Psychology continues in that mode.

Generally, later work has ignored this complexification, and concentrated on the 8 circuits.

In fact, early on, in Neurologic,  (1973) Leary only describes seven systems.

Sometimes they get called 8 circuits, 8 systems, 8 channels, 8 modes, etc (RAW's own course he called 8 Dimensions of Mind, and based it on the sequence found in Prometheus Rising) – and although the model may seem to imply a hierarchy (e.g. 4 'terrestrial' and 4 'post-terrestrial' circuits), we could consider them all functioning simultaneously (like blood circulating, the autonomic nervous system, the central nervous system, digesting, walking, seeing, etc) – but with difference degrees of conscious awareness, perhaps.

This one week could never prove enough for someone new to this model, so you will find links to useful reference material here.  It might work out better to focus on the 'lower' four circuits as we all have experience of them, and can observe them – the 'higher circuits' may seem more interesting, but not everyone has necessarily experienced them all. 

Feel free to play with this material as much as you like.

Antero Alli (on his dedicated course) suggested we create a set of ‘tarot’cards to carry around – you can make them up with collage, illustrations, etc.

If you look at these PDFs of Bob's texts you may notice that the 6^th and 7^th circuits were reversed in “Prometheus Rising” (1983) – which contains exercises for each circuit - and yet RAW had used the more common sequence in Cosmic Trigger (1977).  By 1990, he had re-aligned with Leary and Alli in Quantum Psychology – surely an invitation to play around with this model yourself.

When asked about the anomaly (by email) Bob replied:

“Leary revised this model several times.
The version in Prometheus Rising contains a few revisions
of my own.
Scientific models often need revision.
The model in this course is the latest, not the last... “

Discussion about people's perceptions of the 'higher circuits' might prove a fruitful discussion point in a thread of its own – especially as they may appear more elusive in their characteristics. 

However, if we look at the basic 4 circuits (common to virtually everyone) we may find it easier to discuss the value of them as a model to help analyse our own everyday experiences.

Suggestions and provocations:

·         Read through the 24 brief Tantric descriptions (see link above) and see how they correlate with (or have inspired) the current model

·         Browse the Winner and Loser Scripts for each circuit, see if anything sounds familiar – especially if you are familiar with NLP, or like to use positive affirmations, etc

• Make up a set of cards to note down details picked up here and there in the research, and for jotting down your own insights.
• “The map is not the territory”.  Korzybski argued that ‘is not’ does not have the same damaging effect as using the word ‘is’.  Does that feel right? 
• When using maps we need several other tools – we need to know the scale; the orientation; our current position (in relation to the map); and what the map emphasises - no map contains all the data, so we need to understand the features highlighted by any particular map – using the icons in the delightfully named ‘legend’ that goes with the map.
• In Cosmic Trigger Bob dismisses astrology, more or less, but Antero Alli shapes all his work around that map, or model.  Do you have other tools/maps/models that  you find useful?
• 1. The map is NOT the territory
• 2. The map does not show ALL the territory
• 3. One can make a map of the map

No more ephemera or procrastination

Yeah, yeah, and write with simple words (not words with four syllables).

I have gone back to this blog because I simply stopped writing that planned autobiography.

Social media sure seems a tempting way to pass the time.  You can heckle The Olympic Games or defend The World Cup.  You can boo the politicians, and despair of the war zones.  You tip-toe through the possibility of posting something stupid that draws the trolls, or goes viral. You take inane quizzes (designed by who?) about which film star you look like, or what kind of animal you resemble).

As only a small sample of the people you know on Facebook (itself a tiny sample of the possible crowd) actually see anything you post, you end up working to a crowd of 80 or whatever.  Or you can fall into self-promotion to attempt to expand your fan/friend base.

If you are Ricky Gervais or Amanda Palmer (on Twitter) you get to have conversational exchanges with millions of people - so do you speak the truth, or polish one-liners, or just throw out provocations?

As a pseudo-Buddhist I appreciate how ephemeral all phenomena can appear...

I can't do this for now.  Nothing I say about Gaza will really speed up the resolution of the problem. I become a sub-editor of opinion - either trying to provide a wide-ranging and balanced set of links, or to narrow people's focus to my own take on things.

Crazy.

So, I prefer blogs as ways of storing some of my stuff (I can never find anything again in social media, they seem totally addicted to the moment).   And I don't really care if anyone else reads it.   I like the idea that I can just use it as a diary, but that friends can peer over my shoulder if they care.

"If you write as good as you talk, nobody reads you."  Lou Reed, dealing with a heckler on Take No Prisoners - a live concert album that cracks me up - Lou doing stand-up.

I might have to go stick that on, now, although some of his fans don't like it. 

See, in a blog I can wander around, instead of sticking to some kind of thread, or train of thought.