F is for Fake Orson Welles 1973

Monkey on a Stick Haiku: anti-highbrow, absurdist, three-line rant, suggestive rather than descriptive, intriguing wihout being provocative, memorable... but to whom?

an apple is good

to keep the doctor away

what, this is monkey!

 

In this matter I disagree with Borges (What would Wittgenstein say?)

Language is part of reality. It is what we utter as we do things in the real world and it has real meaning and real uses.  Of course, language can be absurd, but for the nonce let's set those cases aside.

First case: When I ask you, "Would you like an apple?" do you picture a monkey on a stick?

Next case: Let's suppose we agree on the definition for "apple." I ask if you would like an apple but substitute a monkey on a stick.  When I ask if you are surprised that the apple I handed you turned out to be a monkey on a stick and you say, "Yes! I am surprised! I was expecting an apple!" could it be possible that by "I am surprised" I think you mean "Thank you" or "I am grateful [that you handed me a monkey on a stick]"?

Otherwise, of course Borges writes good stories.

"Apple"

"Monkey on a Stick"

Visiting Marx's grave... Morgan: a suitable case for treatment, 1966, David Warner and Irene Handl

Tonight: Tessa B. Dick and Betsey Lewis on Hyperspace Night Files with Solaris BlueRaven

Quoted from the announcement:

Tune in Friday April 25, 2025 at 05:00 PM ET on Revolution.Radio Studio A for two fantastic guests. Betsey Lewis in hour one and Tessa B. Dick in hour two.

Betsey Lewis is a published author, radio personality, and Earth mysteries investigator. At eight months old Betsey and her parents encountered a UFO in Northern Idaho and under hypnosis revealed she and her parents were abducted by aliens. This began a lifetime of paranormal experiences and investigations for her. For nearly 50 years, Lewis has investigated UFOs, cattle mutilations, ancient petroglyphs, and ancient civilizations from the Northwest to Central America. She was a keynote speaker at the 2013 UFO Conference near Las Vegas, featured guest on Fox’s KTRV News, and on Coast-to-Coast AM with George Noory, Ground Zero, KTALK’s The Fringe, and Fade to Black, and Hyperspace. 

 

Tessa B.Dick met Philip K. Dick in 1972 and assisted him with his writing. She edited and contributed to several of his works and co-authored his novel A Scanner Darkly. They married in 1973, and they remained friends after an amicable divorce in 1977. Mrs. Dick holds a master's degree in English literature and has taught English and Communications at Chapman University, National University and Riverside Community College. She retired in 2004 due to serious illness and now devotes her time to writing books, stories and poems. Her published works include Philip K. Dick: Remembering Firebright; Conversations with Philip K. Dick; and the surrealist novel The Darkening of the Light. She has also contributed to the periodical PKD Otaku.

Tessa B. Dick is a regular contributor to Emanations. 

To access tonight's program, click HERE or the following image.

Analytic Philosophy for Beginners

A farrago of clips from the television program starring English comedian Diane Morgan as the irrepressibly bored Philomena Cunk. Somewhat funny, but also correspondingly dark, and even if, as sometimes happens, the experts are playing along, as in the main the experts come across as narrow, unimaginative, and infertile, which possibly reflects a nation that is coming apart.  If such are Britain's experts, no wonder the populace keeps voting for weirdos.

Two pipe smokers

Otto Dix - Soldat mit Tabakspfeife (Soldier with Pipe), 1918

Joan Miró - Gardener Smokes in the Moonlight, 1939

Pivot to Highbrow Modernity: History and Reason in Theology

There is a two-paragraph section in Culture and Value (notes from 1937) in which Wittgenstein writes on faith, reason, and the historical veracity of the Gospels. His purpose is evidently a rejection of the criteria of reason and historical verification in theological argument. The two paragraphs of this section are as follows: 

The passage is a bit opaque. Nevertheless, here I disagree with Wittgenstein. First of all, the (admittedly controversial) material in Josephus reporting on a historical Jesus is conducive to belief; and this still holds even if I am missing Wittgenstein's point here; and regardless, too, if the material in Josephus is legitimate or not.

Indeed, the historical context--the politics on the ground in that period--calls us to the necessity of the theological understanding that Jesus represents.

Following this thread further still, the story of Jonah--which after all leads to many of the same conclusions as the Gospels--attends not belief or some sort of loving emotion, but rather a reasoned revelation of theology, of human nature, and of ethics. At the end of Jonah, moreover, it is not belief or even love that moves Jonah, but rather God's sense of humor and irony. Ah, and is it not incumbent upon us to ascribe that same humor and irony to Jonah, the author of the piece?

These are opening salvos, but I find that I am already bored of the section, which anyway is muddled and not very interesting; not really. So I'll close with two criticisms:  First, Wittgenstein also neglects apophatic theology; second, his language is rather ruffled and lacking elegance: lacking elegance of thought, and lacking suitability of language, which certainly is a kind of elegance. 

Wittgenstein is very good on language and conceptual confusion, but, in contrast, he is rather weak on theology. We need to go in search of a more capable and fluent writer. Like Nabokov, for instance. See HERE.

Pivot to Modernity: the amazing case of Argonaut Jr, concept demonstrator and commercial inspiration

"The Argonaut Jr was built by Simon Lake in 1894 of pitch pine, an inexpensive way to demonstrate his principles of submergence that would ultimately change the development of submarine technology. When submerged to a shallow seafloor, a diver's door could be opened and he could retrieve articles or exit & re-enter the little 14-foot submarine by maintaining a pressurized compartment.The Argonaut was named after the Argonaut sea creature, better known as the Portuguese man-o-war, because both could navigate on the surface, on the sea-floor, or anywhere in between. A novel feature of Simon Lake's early submarines was the use of wheels to keep the vessel from getting stuck to the bottom and to provide mobility by the use of interior hand cranks. The success of the demonstration amazed on-lookers at Atlantic Highlands NJ and inspired investors to support the establishment of The Lake Submarine Company in 1895 and to build a proper steel submarine vessel, the Argonaut I, by 1898."

                                                                 -- NavSource Online

Happy Easter

There is a subtle and gentle humor in the text that's missing from the video, but that's OK; Easter is a deeply serious and moving occasion, after all. 

Still, Easter is a happy time, too. Click HERE.

From Moby-Dick, Chapter 9, “The Sermon”

“Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come down from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of you reads me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me, as a pilot of the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him along ‘into the midst of the seas,’ where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and ‘the weeds were wrapped about his head,’ and all the watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the reach of any plummet—‘out of the belly of hell’—when the whale grounded upon the ocean’s utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and earth; and ‘vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;’ when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten—his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean—Jonah did the Almighty’s bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!

“This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!”

 

                                                                                              (bold added)

 

 

Chromostereopsis

Chromostereopsis

New Measures of Contextual Understanding: #792 Best Practices in Postmodern Education

 

The YouTube description reads: "Young Invaders attend an Academy where they learn the basics of psyops and how to manipulate the primal instincts."

Oblique view of Saturn’s rings: intimations of wave packets, group velocity, phase velocity, signal velocity--the distinction between physics and the language of physics propagating like a meditation on conceptual confusion and philosophical credulity rooted in the misapprehension of langauge...

Situational Awareness in Literature: when emotions and “peripheral” observations yield suspicion and insight

Initially, I found this theme in Hawthorne and Melville, and my reading in their books led to my discerning the theme in Milton. How (and when) do people translate impressions, feelings, emotions and “peripheral” observations into clear, true and therefore actionable facts about their environment and the actual character of the people they are dealing with? These feelings and emotions might, in a larger consideration, be “metaphysical” notions or impressions. Thus even outlandish (and, ahem, not so outlandish) “shamanic” activity might lead to solid psychological, ethical and political insights.

In The Scarlet Letter, important thematic junctures in the text are driven by Hester and then Dimmesdale identifying Chillingworth as THE ENEMY.  This is related, too, to their identifying that the society and ethos of the theocratic Calvinist Massachusetts Bay Colony is a gross distortion of revealed Christian theology. Interestingly, The Scarlet Letter represents an—if not the—American national epic, and so typifies a handful of novels that literary scholars casually call the “Great American Novel.” Other books falling into this category include Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, and Samuel Clemens’ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Interestingly, the theme of “suspicion, discovery, insight” figure as salient philosophic and plot-driving themes in these novels. Here I will reflect on Hawthorne, Melville and Milton. I will return to The Scarlet Letter at the end of this note.

In Moby-Dick, the problem is explored through Ishmael at last recognizing that Ahab is evil and that an affiliation with his leadership and his monomaniacal quest to slay the white whale will lead to destruction. In the novel there are a number of similar instances of emotions and impressions leading to important insights; for example, insights into the character of the mates: first mate Starbuck (lower-middle-class conformist, i.e. clerk; Melville concludes this sketch seeing in Starbuck a “lack/loss of manhood”); second mate Stubb (coward, despite appearances--indeed, a moral coward); third mate Flask (reckless, self-effacing, superficial—an uninvolved ghost of a man). Melville examines his own narrator along such lines. Through much emotion, superstitious exploration, rationalization, philosophical speculation, theological re-examination, and so on, Ishmael discovers and rejects his own Platonic tendencies (transcendental reverie, aloofness, sophomoric cynicism unchecked by a proper and sensible (albeit closely-related) skepticism). Among Melville’s conclusions are that these weaknesses are: 1) hard to see, and 2) fatal.

In The Confidence-Man, Melville offers a series of scenes or vignettes in which people have odd impressions leading to insight (though, more often than not, people dismiss their impressions, and much to their peril.)

In the novella Benito Cereno, Melville offers a grotesque examination of the subject of indifference to one’s surroundings and the presence of an enemy. Delano, an American ship captain happens upon a slave ship taken over by the slaves; the slaves successfully deceive Captain Delano into believing they are “friends” with the captain of the slave ship, Benito Cereno, who has given the slaves the run of the ship. Melville describes the American captain overlooking all sorts of emotional and physical clues as to what has actually transpired aboard the ship.  The scenes are amazingly striking and incongruous, including Delano watching with beneficent, indeed almost pious, naiveté as a slave holds a straight razor to Cereno’s face and shaves him. Suspension drives much of the plot as the reader waits for Captain Delano to figure out what is really going on.

In Paradise Lost, Milton offers scenes in which Adam is suspecting what the angels (and God) have told him about his state, his nature, Paradise, the motion of the planets, and so on. Being very clever, Adam notes the contradictions in the angels’ statements, but he keeps his cards very close to his chest and doesn’t let on that he suspects. There are of course many such “clues” in the poem, including the notion that an orthodox reading of the poem is itself as misleading as Adam and Eve’s prelapsarian perceptions of Eden, each other, and the universe. We might consider, too, that the language of the poem—and, more largely, human language (and notwithstanding the sophistication of late-Renaissance/early-modern understanding)—is subject to error, misrepresentation, conceptual confusion, philosophical credulity, and thus requires much careful and attentive review.

Complicating the matter—and I address this in the Afterword in the International Authors edition of The Scarlet Letter—is that we are bound by our language, and thus, for example, Hester and Dimmesdale are delimited and circumscribed by Calvinist language, and so when they transcend the mores of the community and the community’s theocratic catechism, they are very confused. Initially, Hester and Dimmesdale are forced to interpret their dissent in theological terms, believing they are very great sinners, and so on. Of course, Hester gets beyond this. Poor Dimmesdale, however, is rather like Starbuck in Moby-Dick, and he is destroyed by his desire for “community respectability,” even though the criteria of that “respectability” are false and destructive to his well-being; indeed, they lead to his death.

There is much more to be said on these matters. Suffice it to say we mist be on guard and pay close attention to all of our impressions, and no matter how odd, absurd or weird they may be.

Click the cover image to view the Amazon page for the International Authors edition of The Scarlet Letter with my Afterword “‘A’ is for Antinomian:  Theology and Politics in The Scarlet Letter.” 

Chronopolis, 1982

Two "unsuccessful" Kandinskys

Why do I find these paintings unsatisfactory? What does (or what could) such an inquiry contribute to my understanding of these paintings? To my understanding of the art of painting? To my understanding of Kandinsky? To my understanding of myself? To my understanding of Philosophy? 

Progression into Abstraction

Pablo Picasso - The Bull, 1945-1946,  series of eleven lithographs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What does this tell us about language, conceptual confusion and human understanding?  Click HERE.

New Amazon Reviews of the Invisible Tower Trilogy

An intrepid Invisible Tower trilogy reader has left reviews of all three books.  Click the cover images to view the respective Amazon sales pages.

Echoes 

Fantastic Adventures

I am writing reviews of all three novels in the Invisible Tower trilogy. In this review of the first book, I will introduce the trilogy and review Book One: Echoes.

The trilogy tells the story of Bronson Bodine and the mysterious spy organization he belongs to: the Invisible Tower. There is a manifesto for agents, but it remains unclear sometimes if there really is an Invisible Tower, or if the Invisible Tower is in the heads of its members. This kind of ambiguity characterizes all three books, where often things are not at all what they seem. On the surface the novels tell larger-than-life adventures with aspects of science fiction, fantasy and surrealism. There is also a lot of satire. The manifesto of the Invisible Tower has been written by an espionage mastermind named Eddie Allan, who is Bronson Bodine’s best friend. Eddie is moreover the alienated stepson of John Allan, a mad scientist trying to take over the world. Eddie Allan and John Allan compare to Edgar Allan Poe and his step-father, John Allan, with whom Edgar had a very bad relationship. The theme of dysfunctional family relationships is very important in the trilogy.

Echoes is a collection of stories about Bronson Bodine and his field assistant, Eskimo Nabnak Tornasuk. Set in chronological order, some of the stories are very short—little more than a page—but there are also long short stories and a novella. Bronson Bodine and his fellow spies go on adventures ranging all around the world: the Middle East, the American West, the South Pacific, Antarctica, the Marianas Trench, computer-generated virtual worlds, and so on. The science fiction elements are described in great detail and are very believable. I got so wrapped up in the amazing and “fun” stories that I was sometimes shocked to realize that I was also believing some things that were actually impossible and dream-like. This really is a work of art, and when the surrealism and satire kick in things are so believable that you don’t fully realize how really really bizarre everything is. One moment I was reading a kind of wild spy story, and the next I was looking up from the book and going, “Man, this is really weird!” However weird things get, the narrative has a strong logic suggesting that Bronson and his fellow spies are in control—until the last story, when they return to the “real world” of a civilization in rapid decline. The world is about to melt down.

 We Reign Secure

The End of the End of History

The Second Book of the Invisible Tower Trilogy is very political, but the nature of political organization and “political consciousness”—politicians, news media, institutions, celebrities, entertainment, education, law, economics, culture, and so on—is very unclear. The point seems to be that this confused state is very much like the real world—maybe! In the novel, the military-industrial complex has taken over society and culture, and rather than government a number of private corporations (which function like spy bureaus) are in control, or are anyway fighting for control. People live in an environment of constant propaganda, competing billionaires, drugs, electronic “mind control” fields, planned and managed poverty, environmental devastation, and so on. But however crazy things get, as in the first novel the narration is fluent and very detailed. The most impossible situations and people are very believable. Even the mad hallucinations and delusions of many of the characters are believable. Meanwhile, Bronson Bodine is the focus of what could be described as a 300-page chase scene stretching from Lake Superior to Niagara Falls to… Well, I don’t want to spoil anything. Everything that happens in this novel is suspect—and later in the novel you find out things were not what you thought they were at first, so describing any plot event in detail runs the risk of being a spoiler. Things move very quickly, and to keep things moving (and they do move!) there are plenty of submarines, fighter planes, hydrofoils, aircraft carriers, commandos, gangsters, drugs, go-go dancers, pirates, mind-control satellites, fake news networks, child soldiers, religious fanatics, con artists, anarchists, commie stooges, fake foods, semi-trucks, motorcycles, bikers, gun fights, fist fights, and so on.

The Sky-Shaped Sarcophagus

The Mystery of the Sky-Shaped Sarcophagus

The blub on the back cover of the novel asks, “Can you solve the mystery of the Sky-Shaped Sarcophagus?” This question is indeed the crux of the matter, and the novel is full of “clues” that suggest an answer. The “real” answer, however, is something like students in a lit class debating the “real” meaning of Moby-Dick. The mystery and the answer to the mystery could be anything. Like Book One and Book Two, it is hard to describe this novel without spoilers. Very simply, Bronson Bodine and his fellow spies from the Invisible Tower are seeking to preserve (or re-establish) civilization, but the real meaning of the novel is the story itself—or the telling of the story. There is a lot of detail, lots of action and adventure, and the “plot” is very clear, but the deeper themes of the novel are pieced together in a hallucinatory flow of impressions, images, historical allusions, comic situations, and hard-edged satire. There are also a number of rather savage insights into the human condition that are both frightening and philosophical. Here the author really demonstrates his literary powers. Like the first two novels in the trilogy, The Sky-Shaped Sarcophagus makes readers see and feel, but the novel also makes readers think very very deeply, and in new ways. The result is pure art.

T-Class: climbing the technological trajectory, an innovative British submarine of WWII

"A Madcap Blonde and Her Reckless Lover Challenge a World of Rollicking Chaos"

Richard Powers cover art for Hell's Pavement by Damon Knight

 

The back cover blurb reads:

"Here is a brilliant new novel of adventure in a maddened age, where the human brain is crammed with devils and angels, the world with temptation and revelry--and the women with fury and fun."

"We reached the end of the defile, entering upon a wide space. Near the entrance a number of the plant-creatures stood and tended amazingly complicated keyboards."

Wonder Stories, Artist: Frank R. Paul

Possible allegory of expressive genius: implications for considering a moral ambiguity in the deceptive nature of representational artifacts?

artist unknown

 

 

 

 

 

“‘You were the seal of perfection,
    full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
¹³ You were in Eden,
    the garden of God;
every precious stone adorned you:
    carnelian, chrysolite and emerald,
    topaz, onyx and jasper,
    lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.
Your settings and mountings were made of gold;
    on the day you were created they were prepared.
¹⁴ You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
    for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
    you walked among the fiery stones.
¹⁵ You were blameless in your ways
    from the day you were created
    till wickedness was found in you.

                                       - Ezekiel 28:12-15

"Birds Film Part 1" by Egle Saka, 2024

Filmmaker's statement

BIRDS is about observing:

the slow glitch hum

electric murmurations

fluttering distortions

underwater winds

 

Video and sound design by Egle Saka, London

"Surface and Layers" by Nobxhiro Santana

#250402-01 「表層とレイヤー」

JAPAN AIR 2025 で私が展示している作品です。

この作品はアルミフレームとアクリル板で構成された立体投影装置のインスタレーションです。

このシステムではプロジェクターでAIのサポートによるイメージを投影しており、所謂外部世界の現実が投影された表層と層間を同時に鑑賞することが出来ます。s

#250402-01 "Surface and Layers" is a work I am exhibiting at JAPAN AIR 2025.

This work is an installation of a stereoscopic projection device made of an aluminum frame and acrylic panels. This system projects images with the support of AI using a projector, and you can simultaneously view the surface and layer on which the reality of the so-called external world is projected.

 

 

 

 

 

Nobxhiro Santana has regularly appeared in Emanations since he made cover art for Octo-Emanations in 2020.