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The Scriptures of the Church of VirtualityReality 02
\qix\1999.sty
\pippin\cloud\bits.not
\pippin\cloud\false.txt
\pippin\cloud\conshus.not
\pippin\cloud\longevit.not
\pippin\cloud\chat.not
\pippin\cloud\amnesia.ide
\pippin\cloud\roaches.ide
\pippin\cloud\babel.ide
\pippin\cloud\rain.rav
\pippin\cloud\dark.poe
\pippin\cloud\grey.poe
\pippin\cloud\madness.poe
\pippin\cloud\life.poe
\pippin\cloud\cliff.poe
\pippin\cloud\rok.poe
\pippin\poems\sun.poe
\pippin\poems\pig.poe
\qix\essay86.txt
\qix\bent.rav
\qix\1999.sty
1999 - a short story [written 4 August '91]
In Brisbane the nineties were ending on a rainy Friday night. Wanting to
spend the final countdown in the company of strangers, Robin began her search
for the new cafe when she saw there was less than an hour to go.
Cafe Cafe was located in an arcade in the old Queen Street mall. Robin had
heard it was a safe haven for upmarket bohemians, a place to hide from the
street and the city air. Standing outside, looking in through the plate-glass,
she saw a large space, furnished with a jumble of tables and chairs, bean bags
and slouch couches. It looked like a good place to sit out the rest of the
decade.
On the other side of the doors the air was dry and still, and the cafe
turned out to be even more crowded than it had appeared. Robin didn't want to
join any of the groups at ground level, and the only unoccupied chairs seemed
to be in a series of open booths along one wall. Each booth contained two
chairs and a table, isolated from its neighbours by partitions festooned with
paisley fabric. As she looked around newcomers took two of the booths: all
that was left now was a vacant booth close to the doorway. And an empty chair
opposite a handsome young Sikh, who was drinking something through a straw. So
she hurried for the self-serve queue.
On offer were sweets, pizza, fruit, rice, an odd mixture of things. Ahead of
her a Chinese couple were helping themselves to chocolate cake. Vegetarian
pizza seemed cheap, so she picked up four slices. She got the checkout kid -
a pudgy green-uniformed teenager, whose lapel pin said:
"My name is BHAJAN - Welcome to CAFE CAFE"
- to get her some orange juice as well.
Carrying her tray towards the booths she saw the Chinese couple setting up
shop opposite the Sikh. Damn! He seemed to know them; he was smiling, and they
were laughing as they tried to squeeze onto the seat opposite him. Looks like
it's the empty booth for me.
Robin placed the tray on the table and saw someone had left a magazine on
one chair. A cheap fantasy mag called "Hot Ducks" she'd seen on sale in
newsagents. INTERNATIONAL ISSUE! proclaimed the cover. She picked it up and,
before she dropped it to the floor, took a last look at the cover. Blond guy,
intense stare, wearing shredded lederhosen, lifting suspender from one
shoulder. Too Aryan for me anyway. She let him go.
The pizza was still too hot for her liking, so she settled down and waited,
scanning the cafe from the inside now. TVs hung from the ceiling, live
coverage from someplace in New Zealand that had already entered the year 2000,
sound turned off. Background music was new-millennium house. Different
subcultures in groups on the floor: gothics, flower people, Krsna devotees.
Like tribespeople camped around fires. Seated at tables: four African guys in
suits, maybe in town for the conference on Afro-Australian relations, "Into
the 21st Century". A guy chuckling to himself, wired up with videogoggles and
earphones, probably watching a pocket video. Some retro yuppies in the far
corner.
There was a sudden cold draft. Looking away from the Sikh and his Chinese
friends, Robin saw the doors swinging shut. Someone had come in. She
discreetly tracked the stranger across to the counter: loping walk, jeans and
leather jacket, lots of studs, shaved head but wearing a weird woven skullcap
... no, not a skullcap: tattooed scales, covering every visible centimetre of
skin. The stranger was a DinoPunk.
As Bhajan took the order, the Dino whirled, like a kid. Robin saw it was a
male; even his face tattooed. Despite myself I am disapproving and, I guess,
contemptuous. Slightly contemptutous. Never talked to a Dino, so I can't
judge; only saw them on TV. Dino rock group, Hazchem. European documentary.
But the attitude: The dinosaurs had the right idea! We're headed for
extinction anyway, so let's make sure that WE are the last generation! You
don't want to miss the END OF THE WORLD, do you man? Nihilism. Doesn't help
anything.
Once Bhajan handed him his drink, the Dino turned his back on the counter
and stalked across the cafe straight for Robin's booth, stepping and leaping
over the floor people. Oh no! Not here! But he was only headed for the door,
back out into the rain. Outside, he stopped to open his incongruously floral
umbrella, and Robin was able to observe the care that had gone into the
tattooing, how truly reptilian he looked. As if the dinosaurs had survived
and evolved into more humanoid forms. A row of studs ran down his jacket's
back like vestigial armor plates.
Under his jacket his T-shirt said:
SUPPORT WEAPONS PROLIFERATION.
Your philosophy sucks, thought Robin. She stared at him as he walked away,
wondering where he was going next. What does someone like that spend his time
doing? She realized there was someone standing next to her and turned away
from the windows.
A guy. Holding his tray. A pull-tight sack hanging from his shoulder.
"May I?" he asked, gesturing towards the empty seat opposite her.
"Yeah, sure." She pulled her tray back so he could fit his on the table.
She glanced at him as he sat down and set himself up - he was white, looked
thirtyish, plain, had shaved recently - then looked back out the window,
thinking of the Dino.
After a while the guy said, "You're thinking about that DinoPunk who was
just here?" He pronounced it "DIE-no"; Robin always thought "DEE-no", as the
Germans on the documentary had pronounced it.
"Yeah." Still looking out the window.
Silence. The guy tried again.
"Well, at least he's thinking of the future." Pause. "I mean, every previous
subculture like that has always been focused on the present, so it's progress
of a sort to have one that looks ahead. I think."
Robin looked at him. He had his tray on his lap, and he was transfering his
meal to the table. He was looking at her, but glanced toward the mall as she
turned around, then glanced back again.
"Do you really believe that?"
He giggled. "It's just a perspective. I mean, I think most things are
progress in some way. It's like war, you have two sides that fight and
consciously they think, we hate each other" - he held up his hands and,
watching them, moved them around as if they were circling cobras, facing each
other and ready to strike - "but really they're getting more and more, um,
involved with each other" - he held up his arms, showing how they were twisted
together. After a few seconds he untwisted himself.
Robin glanced at the roof TV that hung down at the end of the row of booths
- it was showing a map of North Africa. She was reminded of how someone had
once tried to convince her that the Russian Revolution, and the dictatorships
it gave rise to, had been progress, because the horror of totalitarianism
taught the whole human race of the dangers of the ideological state, even
when the ideology's intent is noble. I don't buy that. "Yeah, well, I think
that disasters and mistakes happen, but people don't want to think that
anything is just entirely negative, so they rationalize things." People like
you? That was pretty blunt. She started on the pizza, now it had cooled.
"I think that's a silly way to think." Doesn't seem insulted. Probably
thinks I'm just a cynic. "You know the 'You create your own reality' idea?"
Ah, here we go. I've heard this on campus a hundred times. Another form of
fundamentalism. At least it's more cheerful than the older sort. May as well
find out his version.
"No, what does that mean?"
"It's ... It means that, you can only think of what you allow yourself to
think. Um, a guy called John Lilly once wrote, 'In the province of the mind,
what is believed true is true, or is true within limits to be determined by
experiment.'"
"Can you give me an example? Like, of me creating my reality?"
"Well, absolutely the best example is only half an hour away for us. The
year 2000. There's nothing necessarily special about this point in time, but
... we've made it important, the whole human race, and it's a catalyst that's
making real changes happen. Just like they supposed to!" Robin was about to
speak, but he added, "That's what physicists mean by a self-organizing
system. One that creates its own reality." He put his tray down on the floor;
Robin noticed him notice the issue of "Hot Ducks".
Not exactly the whole human race: there's China, Japan, Islam outside the
Christian chronology, for them all this is just the West being universalist
again. Interesting, what he said about self-organization. Must ask Dr Nguyen
what he thinks of that.
"Mmm ... can you give me an example, of a change happening because of the
approach of the year 2000?" This is weird, this guy sits down and we're
straight into a real new-millennium conversation. "I'm Robin, by the way;
you're -"
"Dave." He sipped his coffee. "An example - what about all those people out
in the streets tonight? A lot of them probably never thought much about the
future or the world at large, until the start of the nineties. But as the year
2000 got closer, the whole world moving into a new era - it's focussed
everyone's mind. There's a whole new consciousness, a planetary progressive
one."
"Mmm ... if I look outside tonight, I see people who want to take part in
'History's Most Humongous Party'. I don't see them working out how to get
water to the Middle East, or sanitation to South Africa, or what to do about
gene hacking."
"So you think the world's headed downhill?" He looked at her with a more
serious expression.
"No, it's more complex than that ..." How can I describe the possibiities I
see? A totalitarian world-state with an anti-technology ideology. Or a world
where elites in Europe, America and Asia keep the developing regions divided
and powerless, while they go about projects like space colonization and life
extension. "I'm doing a Bachelor of Management Science, and one of the things
we study is Complex Systems. One of the characteristics of a complex system is
that it's resilient but unstable, so it will survive most of what you throw at
it, but it will achieve that by reorganizing itself, usually radically... Hey,
maybe you should just read my project." She laughed.
He nodded, still serious. "It sounds very interesting. Is it - does it
mention Gaia?"
"Only a bit. I don't actually believe in the Gaia Hypothesis myself - I
don't see why a self-regulating system should evolve when there's nothing like
natural selection operating. The anthropic explanation makes sense to me - you
know, we're here, so the biosphere must have lasted long enough for us to
evolve, which is why the climate seems to have been stabilized, historically."
He nodded again, but he was obviously not interested in all that. He munched
for a while on a sandwich, then said, "Well, I have tremendous hope for the
future. I think we're seeing the birth of a whole new world." He paused
significantly. "Have you ever heard of the New Essenes?"
"Aren't they like a new-age Christian group? Religious group, I mean, not
rock group."
"Yeah, I guess that's sort of right... I'm not an Essene myself, but I have
a few friends who are..."
There was a blast of cold air again as the doors swung open, and a
wheelie came in. Robin realized this was probably why her booth had been empty;
all the regulars avoided it.
"... and they have this idea, that Christ was born 2000 years ago, and the
Second Coming is due to happen, but Christ is being reborn as the whole of
humanity. We're like, cells in His body."
"Mmm, okay. Is this related, to what you were saying about self-
organization? And who, or what, were the Old Essenes?"
"The original Essenes were a Jewish sect who wrote about Christ a few
decades before he was born. They were into astrology and a few other things
too. So the New Essenes, today, it's like they see their purpose as being here
to alert people to the coming change, the new world order. Um, what was your
other question?"
"Self-organization. How it fits in."
"Oh, I read about that in a book they lent me. The idea is that the
universe is a self-organizing system, and Christ is the universal self. As
experienced by humans."
Universal self. Don't understand what that means. Won't ask, it will
probably get boring. "So in, ah, twenty-five minutes we're going to become
cells in the body of Christ?"
"Well, it's a way of speaking, if you want to think of it like that... But,
I mean, there's a whole cosmology here, like it's quite detailed - when's
your birthday?"
"June 19th."
"Yes, well that makes you a Gemini - which, yes, that fits exactly. Each
sign corresponds to a part of the body, Christ's body. Gemini stands for the
brain and nervous system, which is why you're such a thinker, who worries
about things. Whereas, I'm a Pisces, which corresponds with the feet, which
makes me a supporter, a burden-sharer. And so on."
Robin smiled inwardly. This is a zodiac I've never heard of before. Gemini
the Brain, Pisces the Feet. "This applies to everyone - according to your
friends? No one is left out?"
"Yes, everyone has a role, like in an ecosystem."
"What about people who don't use the Christian calendar? Or in China, for
example, in their culture this isn't even the beginning of the new year."
Another blast of cold as the wheelie left.
"Well, the anno Domini system really is global ... And besides, whether
you're part of the West or against it, you're part of the one event, the
convergence of humanity. The West has just been a means, um an instrument that
originated the devices of unification - imperialism, capitalism, the media, so
on. Even got China in the end."
"Mmm ... I don't know. I look at India and China, how they are rising in
power every year, and I sometimes think it's going to be the oldest
civilizations that will take over if Euro-American culture eats the dust. But
yeah, everything is everywhere now. The Church of Scientology even has a
building in Beijing."
"You've been to China?"
"Yeah, earlier this year. Missed the restoration of Goddess of Democracy by
a couple of weeks - I couldn't afford to stay." Memories of China. Everything
so wide - the roads, the Square. Young Chinese keeping themselves so clean in
the middle of all the pollution. Watching CNN in the Hong Kong airport, as
Israel and the Arab League made their joint appeal to the world community for
assistance during the water crisis.
Dave was standing up, opening his sack. "Look, I'm meeting some friends in
King George Square for the Big Event. Some of my Essene friends'll be there.
Do you want to come along?"
Can't be bothered. It's warm and dry in here. Robin shook her head. "I'm
sorry. I didn't want to be in a big group this evening. I guess I'm not much
of a party hound." She smiled.
"Well, then, nice talking with you." He offered his hand; she shook it. He
pulled an umbrella from the sack. "Aha! I've broken the cycle. I've been
leaving it at home all the time. Bye!" He opened the doors and strolled away.
"Bye, Dave." I wonder if he forgot my name. Robin squinted at the TV screen;
six minutes to go. She started on the last slice of pizza.
That ended suddenly. I was sure he was about to start asking me about
myself. Maybe he would have if I'd tagged along to the square. Where are you
from? Wellington. My parents are American, they moved to New Zealand in the
eighties so they'd survive a nuclear war! Where are you studying? Griffith.
What do you want to do? Something in environmental economics.
The music changed. After a few seconds the cafe filled with groans, mostly
from the floor: it was the remix of Prince's "1999", the end-of-the-world
anthem. Robin had come to quite like the song. Probably the result of
conditioning, she thought; it was being played everywhere. Someone had even
analyzed it in a Semiotics tutorial.
I was dreamin' when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray
But when I woke up this mornin'
Thought this mornin' was Judgement Day
"Hey look", said one of the gothics, "it's stopped raining out. Let's head
for the square."
The sky was all purple
There were people running everywhere
Tryin' to run from the destruction
You know I didn't even care
The floor people were standing up, gathering their personals, leaving in
droves. Soon the cafe was half empty. Bhajan watched them enviously.
Yes, let's head for the square. Why not? The Sikh guy was gone, and his
Chinese friends were now on opposite sides of the booth, leaning forward,
staring into each other's eyes. Robin reached down and grabbed Dave's tray and
the fantasy mag, placed them on the table, said goodbye to her booth. Get
ready for the cold ...
Outside the mall was as crowded as she'd ever seen it, with long queues
stretching outside the nightclubs. It was still raining, but only very
lightly. "1999" was playing from everywhere, from the clubs, in the place of
the usual mall Muzak, from the stereos of hot-dog vendors. Robin was reminded
of the scene from Douglas Adams, in which the Vogon's broadcast the news of
Earth's demolition from every TV and radio.
Police speaking into walkie-talkies, millenarians haranguing passers-by.
Partygoers singing along with Prince and the Revolution: "Say it one more
time! Two thousand zero zero, party over, out of time! So tonight I'm gonna
party like it's nineteen ninety-nine!"
People were converging on King George Square, where the climax of the
mainstream celebrations was taking place. All the major TV and radio stations
had broadcast teams there. As she reached the edges of the crowd, Robin saw a
dozen Aboriginals at the edge of the Square, watching silently. What were they
thinking? Prince was fading out.
1999! Don't you wanna know?
1999! Don't you wanna know?
1999! ...
There was the sound of a helicopter overhead. A resonant computer-
synthesized voice spoke from above.
"ARE YOU READY TO ENTER THE NEW MILLENNIUM, BRISBANE?"
"YES!" called the crowd.
"THEN JOIN ME IN THE FINAL COUNTDOWN. TEN ... NINE ..."
At the centre of the square a giant cube had been erected, its faces each
covered with dozens of television screens. As Robin watched it displayed the
giant blue Earth, rolling by under the space station; and then the image was
replaced by a hundred fragments: faces of the people of Earth. Women, men,
every color and race and continent.
"EIGHT ... SEVEN ... SIX ... FIVE ..."
It's real, she suddenly saw. The whole enormous world, all six billion of
us, we're really here. Together.
"FOUR ... THREE ..."
To her astonishment, she felt tears trickle down her cheeks.
"TWO ... ONE ..."
The picture of the whole Earth came back, half in light, half in shadow,
Australia still in shadow. She imagined the year 2000 as a plague sweeping
westward around the globe in quantum jumps, claiming another timezone every
hour.
"ZERO!" said the crowd. There was an electric sound. The television screens
flared blinding white. The sky was illuminated.
As the fireworks went off there was pandemonium. People hugging, cheering,
screaming. Joining hands and dancing in circles. Someone, faced turned
upwards, yelling: "We did it! We're here! We're still here, damn you!"
Someone took Robin's hand. She looked down. It was someone she'd never seen
before, a teenage girl with cropped red hair, wearing a T-shirt bearing the
motif of the double-bladed axe.
"We did it, hey," she said.
"Yeah, we did it," said Robin, and they hugged, tightly.
Did we? What have we done? I don't know. We're still here. In the arms of a
stranger, brushing tears from her cheeks, crying still, she looked up, and
watched the sky explode with purple.
[ps when this story was written Cafe Cafe was completely fictional, now there
is such a place in Brisbane! -Qix]
.../?..*...\...
\pippin\cloud\bits.not
Feelings we make up for ourselves.
We live in the Devil's playground.
Do petrol.
I got an award in 1986 for being able "to talk under water with a mouthful
of seaweed." The prize was a band-aid.
B.Y.O. Pronunciation to an anti-party
B.Y.O Sanity
public access computer room probably by the Cyberpunks
The substance of conversation that goes unremembered.
A Nutri-grain packet goes shopping.
T-shirt slogan -- "I hacked NASA, and all i got was this lousy T-shirt."
QUT UNIX, has all of 5 commands that aren't security risks, called PUNIX.
Coincidensity -- a measure of the rate at which coincidences occur
around you.
\pippin\cloud\false.txt
Within the circle of its action, every word creates that which it affirms.
Do you have:
(1) Invincible obstinacy
(2) A conscience at once hardened to crime and most prone to remorse
and fear
(3) Affected or natural ignorance
(4) Blind faith in all that is incredible
(5) An utterly false idea of god
Then Know this:
He who affirms the devil creates or makes the devil.
\pippin\cloud\conshus.not
So the Earth may not be conscious.
How did we evolve consciousness? If it evolved, what is to say that the
Earth has not evolved consciousness? Or even the cells?
It is the interactions that make the system that is the key
to it all. The human brain is supposed to be the most advanced computer known
to us. Consciousness probably evolved to be the most efficient way of
transferring data from one part of the brain to another.
If a brain can do it, why can't a computer? Or even the Earth, if the Earth is
indeed a system.
\pippin\cloud\longevit.not
LONGEVITY
We used to live much longer than we do now.
We, human beings, are supposed to be the only animal that has
sex when the female is not "in heat", fertile.
Woman ovulate once a month. Once they could have children in a
month. Gestation was only a month, and children took much less time to
grow up. So women could have children 12 times a year (groan).
But why would they need this? Living much longer than we used
too?
The catastrophes. When the humans were down, they had more babies.
Since we are not really endangered at the moment, gestation takes a long
time. And we don't live very long.
After a catastrophe, when the human population is devastated,
the women can have more children due to shorter gestation, and we would
live longer. The number is people on the earth is proportional to the
quality of life ie the length of life.
Perhaps evolution will only occur when a certain number of
species have became extinct. Like after a catastrophe.
\pippin\cloud\chat.not
What would it be like to talk to every person in the world, that has
ever lived and will live, one person per day? How long would it take?
Is this question relevent? We could have all the time that would be
needed. Have we already done this, and this idea is just a memory?
\pippin\cloud\amnesia.ide
THE DAY OF THE KILLER TOMATOES FROM DJEMFI
"I think I will go to Xahito today," said Sean. He jacked in
and began to create a new world called Xahito.
Sean was not to realize that a giant god-like science-fiction writer
called Dave was going to drop a piano on his head later that day.
"I think I will go to a New Planet today," thought Sean. "Somewhere
very far away. Somewhere so far away that we can't even get there yet. It is
beyond the realms of light-speed and suspended animation." Sean pulled a old
keyboard forward from a desk full of clutter, and attached it to an equally
antiquated terminal. He projected into the terminal, dropped his fingers on
the keyboard without actually looking at it, and came up with a name for his
planet. "Xahito." He didn't have a cat. Otherwise, he might have got the cat
to walk on the keyboard and produced a name that way. He stared at the name
for a long time, letting the new planet grow in his mind. He decided to
pronounce it with a Z sound, like Za-Hee-toe. As in tomato. "And maybe all
the creatures on Xahito could be afraid of the Giant Tomatoes," he thought to
himself. "They can come from the Planet, Djemfi. The "D" would silent of
course. Pronounced Jem-fee."
Presently, Sean observed that he wasn't using the keyboard anymore.
The Giant Killer Tomatoes had invaded the planet Xahito many thousands
of years before. The dominant life form on Xahito had been a race that called
themselves "the Wise Ones" in our tongue, or "Flythes" in theirs. The Flythes
practiced a form of non-violent society, so they had been nearly decimated by
the arrival of the Djemfi. What the Djemfi did not know was that Xahito itself
hated Tomatoes, and was secretly plotting to invent a herbicide that would wipe
them out. It was allergic to Tomato soup, so that was not an option.
Xahito was not ruling out the possiblity that a passing comet might
bring a bug to the planet, that was ravenously hungry for some Tomato Plant.
Since it was a little difficult to predict comets colliding into you, it decided
to invest most of its time in "encouraging" all of the minds on itself to go
into agriculture, or botanical chemistry.
Sean let a thought grow in his mind. The carbon dioxide content of the
planet's atmosphere had greatly increased since the arrival of the Tomatoes.
The Tomatoes actually engineered the atmosphere of the planet to make it more
favourable for plant life. The higher life forms, like animals and Flythes, had
their population kept at an equilibrium low level so that they would not
jepordize the quality of life of the plants.
\pippin\cloud\roaches.ide
THE DAY OF THE ROACHES
Cockroaches actually come from Venus. We hate them so much
because the memory of cockroaches comes from the collective unconscious.
The memory is of the meteorite that brought the roaches here and
smashing into Earth causing all sorts of catastrophes.
The roaches were the last surviving life form on Venus.
Well. They can survive being nuked in a microwave oven. Why couldn't
they survive the climate of Venus?
\pippin\cloud\babel.ide
THE STORY OF THE TOWER OF BABEL
It is said that the first people spoke one language and wanted
to make a monument to mankind because they were so wonderful. The
"language" that they spoke was not one language, but telepathy.
We have lost telepathy. We had it before. That is why we know
what it is.
\pippin\poems\alone.poe
June 19, 1992
John Woodley's House, Sunshine Beach.
BEING ALONE
To Be Alone
To Be Quiet
How long before the quietness seeps into your soul?
Can U stand it?
Will it drive you mad?
How well do U know yur own thoughts?
Are they yur friends?
Or will they drive you mad?
The silence sinks in
into the mind.
Like rain soaking into the earth.
But there is no silence.
There are crickets outside,
The fridge talks to itself.
The clock ticks.
your tinitus will not be still.
If you listen carefully, the other sounds will come in.
The occasional car, the people yelling outside.
A cat fight, and the loser mourning
crying his heart out to the moon
But the moon is impassive
if she hears the caterwaul,
she does not tell.
But can you stand the silence?
Or will it beat you?
Drive U mad?
Can you find the stillness
And hold it?
And cherish the company of your own thoughts?
For they get lonely sometimes.
\pippin\poems\rain.rav
Albion train station, March 4, 1989
Why is the rain so utterly depressing? Is it because of the
grey? that there is no colour? Then it would be the grey, the lack of
colour, that is depressing. Why is grey depressing? Is it because you
get wet? but then people get wet in the shower and they don't mind
that. Is it damp clothes that stick to skin and turn cold? COLD but
the sound of rain is comforting. It is hard to describe, drip is so
inadequate. or patter. Impossible to describe. When it's raining
thoughts turn to sun and being light and warm. Why are some colours
warm and others aren't? Picture a warm green or a cold red. Then try
to picture a warm blue, or a cold orange. The earth likes rain. So
do trees, and flowers and grass and others. Ducks and frogs like it.
Why do we like dry?
\pippin\poems\dark.poe
THE DARK
(The evil dark)
Then perhaps the darkness will creep into your soul.
The darkness, the void.
The fear that drives you to noise and chaos.
The utter blackness, the grinning darkness, yawning cavern
It will steal your soul, and your energy.
It knows you better than yourself,
for it is your Shadow Self.
Can you confront your Shadow Self, all the things you don't want to be
and are.
For if u know yurself, u can drive the darkness away.
But if you can't...
It just sits back and laughs
at you.
When you flick on the light or some music,
Because you want to stop thinking
or to think in peace,
to drive away the fear.
The coldness, the darkness is like the cold stone churches
that you went to as a child. that frightened you.
The coldness, the darkness erode you, your thoughts, your emotions,
replacing you with itself.
...ooo000ooo...
Imagine if U will a room, full of happiness,
and warmth and light and a spiral staircase.
The top of the staircase is dark.
U must go to the top of the staircase
And face the screaming, smothering darkness.
U must not resist it. If you resist it, it will laugh at you
And plucks secretly at another thought.
But you can welcome it. Open your arms, and your heart, embrace it.
It will become familiar.
As it becomes familiar, it will be a friend to you,
and will keep you company.
It will talk to the Great Mulberry Depression when it comes
to visit you.
And they will love you.
It will become the warm, soothing darkness
when nothing else gives you solace
from your thoughts
and your broken dreams.
the blues
When the Great Mulberry Depression comes to visit,
Invite it in. Introduce it to the warm, soothing dark
Introduce it to your pain.
Then sit at their feet and listen to them,
Their thoughts are not your thoughts, but you can make them
your thoughts
There are no words in them.
Just a feeling of nothingness
Of Voidness,
Of the Grey Land of the Uglydig
But feeling
the feelings are rich,
intense,
like the colours of an opal
These can never be yours,
They will come and go as they please
As they see that you need them.
\pippin\poems\grey.poe
Grey
Grey is, indeed, a strange and abominable colour. It is not the colour
of death, but of the underworld, the colour of everything that lives
away from the sun, everything that lives in the shadows. It is the
fishes' colour, the reptiles' colour, the colour of those who hunt in
the twilight. Grey is wet fungi and corruption, grey is snails, grass
snakes, vultures, hyaenas, wolves. Grey is not a blow on the cheek, but
a pressure - like that of a blanket - over your whole face. Grey is the
most evil colour in the world because of the things of which it reminds
you. It is a shivering, shuddering, plaintive, perspiring symphony of
memories of all that was and is over and done with. It sings the grey
paper you yourself put round your school books, the books you took from
your worn satchel and read in stealth under the grey roof of corrugated
iron in the grey schoolyard during the grey break; it sings of porridge,
grey fish soup, grey woollen socks and grey knee-breeches, sings a
gasping song of pouring grey rain and grey clay beneath oil-leather
boots and grey sand between the cans in the backyard; but its saddest,
most heart-rending song is that of rainy days, of the ordinary everyday,
when the streets were shiny and grey, and you, as a child, sat in the
window watching the grey water in the gutter transporting sand and
matches and cigarette-stubs and slush and paper and withered leaves
away to the drumming drain with the iron-grating over it, and of Sunday
afternoons when it was raining outside and the room lay in a
semi-darkness and you had to sit quite still, because somebody wanted an
afternoon nap after eating steak and apricot blancmange and cream, and
there you sat at the table, from which the cloth had been taken, doing
your prep. or reading a Boy Scout book and clasping your throat to
stifle the cry of tortured despair that was rising it it, making you
angry and full of hate.
The colour of grey reminds one of wet and moisture, of sleet and
rain and mist, of spates and flooding; but it also reminds one of heat
and drought, of scorched dusty fields, of sizzling asphalt and concrete
and burning sand and dry lips. Grey may be the colour of the grey smoke
rising from a campfire in the woods, or of a new factory optimistically
started in a village, but do not forget that grey is also the colour of
the blanket of smoke that covers our towns and big industrial centres
and not only blackens the walls of the factories and tenements, but
sticks to people's skins and to their hearts.
-- Ash Grande
\pippin\poems\madness.poe
MADNESS
The wind! It blows where it wills!!
Catch it! Catch it! Try to harness it.
The wind all of all the days drive
drives the thoughts and feelings
from your heart
and leaves it cold.
@}-,'->---
I must love what I destroy and destroy the thing I love.
Use it, abuse it, squeeze it dry, grok it.
Leave it dry empty shell to be driven by the cold,
aching wind. The hungry wind to dry it out.
And burn it. Let the ashes fall
at your feet.
---(--(*
The MADness
The madness, it is all madness, it has to be madness
the darkness that pull you into the black hole
of itself.
it hates, it plagues you.
It throws its thoughts at you, darts to pierce you.
and the dance the mad kaleidoscope
crashes, crashes, craves your energy and your thoughts
Begs and pleads to be fed, like some lost puppy
looking for crumbs
to fill the gnawing void inside itself, that will never be filled
until it is changed
...ooo000ooo...
Everything changes.
inevitable, ineffible, unknown, and misunderstood
Fear of the top of the staircase holds us back.
Even the grinning darkness is held back
by its own fear of the unknown.
It hates itself. It hates me. It hates you.
Even misunderstands itself.
But we change it. We will. We must.
Or it will change us. But who can tell which
will change the other.
It doesn't even matter which.
It is the inexorable pulling of life to itself
that says:
We Must Change.
It is a Race Against Time
And Against Each Other
@}-,'->---
For within you is a candle
A candle of light that will light the way
There is always a flame
a single solitary flame
that will not
go away.
June 19, 1992
John Woodley's house, Sunshine Beach
ooo /=+*o0o*+=\ ooo
\pippin\poems\life.poe
1983
I
glance up.
I see as
I climb to the peak,
An eagle, wheeling
near its
brow.
I
look down,
long and clear.
Ground so far below.
Something I see
there on the
ground.
It
is a
bitter chill
Whipping wind. I
will go down now.
So far to
go. Its
cold
\pippin\poems\cliff.poe
March 12, 1989
The Cliffs of Shorncliffe
Alone. To be the last person on the earth. To look over the
sea from the cliffs. To watch the sun go down in the east. To watch
the moon rise. To watch the silver spill over the crests of the waves.
To watch the tide go out and expose the crescent sand bars. To sit
still and breathe the air. To walk and walk and to not go anywhere. To
climb to the bottom of cliff and to the top. To watch strata of
sandstone and shale be laid down over millions of years. To feel the
plants and the stone and the water splashing your soles. To live, to
be. To be nothing and anything and someone.
To be utterly alone. You are able to do anything at all. There
is no one with which to confer. Just you. And your thoughts, your
emotions, your spirit, your body, and God. Nothing to clutter you.
Nothing to hinder you and the earth. Mind overflows. You are no longer
the ultimate. You are only one in a mass of creation. A mass of
earthly voices reaching out to God. Perfect communion. There is the
potential to understand so much.
To watch pink and orange, and gold on the edges of the
thunderhead cloud made of ice-cream. To watch the stars come out
blinking at night.
\pippin\poems\rok.poe
Queen St Mall, Saturday, March 11, 1989
The Migmatite
It is a wonderful flowing, rhyolitic rock. Some finely
crystallized with large chunks of quartz, rushing, violent, molten,
acidic rock. It is actually going somewhere, but it is still. It is a
large plate, the whole picture, telling the story of magma. How was it
formed? Some rock overtaking the others, layers and layers of lava and
magma, piling on top of each other, being exposed, flowing on, cooling
down, chilling, crystallizing, large and small. It is a record of a
moment in time or many many moments in time. The illusion of perpetual
motion, of endless energy, of never stopping. It goes on and it will
never stop. It will never stop telling its story. A frozen moment.
\pippin\poems\sun.poe
Where The Sunlight Is
Queensland's body has two main arteries. Cut one and it bleeds
sunshine. Cut the other and it bleeds waves. Sometimes the ocean is a
smooth blue, corrugated by long lines of south easterly ground swell
that swing in slow motion on to the sunniest, prettiest point breaks on
the face of the earth. And the wind just keeps blowing from the
south day after day, and the swell just keeps coming day after day.
Sometimes for a week. Sometimes longer. You set the same pace as the
waves. Live the same rhythm as the tides. You take off your watch and
put it away in the bottom of your bag. If you're working, you throw in
your job until the swell stops. You get up early and go home late, and
in between you surf for hours and you lie in the sunshine. And the
sunshine gets inside your head and your chest and flows through your
veins. It's a commitment of a sort. You give your whole self to the
sea and to the waves and ask nothing but to be allowed to do it. Places
like Kirra Point tube themselves silly, day by day. And you get in
there where the sunlight is, shafts that flash momentarily through tube
roofs and then are eaten. Kirra tubes longer and hollower than anywhere
else. Fast and heavy over shallow sand on the right tides.
And Greenmount Point eats surfboards. Breakfast, lunch, and
tea, it survives on a diet of crushed rails and knocked out fins and
blood from unwary bodies. But it's so beautiful in the evenings.
Yellow light and dark water to bounce it off and soft semi-hollow
four-five footers gurgling on the point and running out over the bank
into the bay quiet. Each day is complete when there's surf. You rise
early and surf. Then you eat and surf all afternoon. When you leave
the surf as it gets dark, you don't talk much and you don't think much,
you just go home and have tea and maybe read or play cards or do nothing
and then you go to sleep. A healthy satisfying exhaustion in your body
and weighing it down. And you know tomorrow's going to be the same.
But you don't even think about it. Just take it when it comes. It's
good. It's good.
-- John Hogan, "Surfing World"
\pippin\poems\pig.poe
1983
A Tribute To The Pig
"A tribute to a pig?" I hear you ask. Yes, the pig! The pig is
a magnificent animal, and we really have the wrong idea about them.
Where would we be without smoked ham, fat pork, and bacon that is so
popular with eggs? Pigskin shoes, handbags, and wallets are practically
a necessity. Yes, the pig is one of the most versatile animals that God
has given us.
On the farm the pig is a pioneer. If you have some weedy plot
of ground that you think is useless, put some pigs on it. He will clear
the ground, plough it up, and manure it all at the same time. He will
enjoy himself and derive sustenance from it. He is the animal that will
blaze new trails on your farm.
As I said before, we have the wrong idea about the pig. We have
sayings like, "He eats like a pig.", or "That is only fit for the
pigs." Maybe, some of them do apply, but we still have the wrong idea
about the pig. We may think that the pig is a dirty animal, but really
he is the cleanest of all the domesticated animals. His environment
maybe one of mud and dirt, but if he were given a clean environment, he
would keep it very clean. The pig is really a magnificent animal.
Raising pigs is a very profitable enterprise. The Irishmen
call him "the gentleman who pays the rent." Pigs are easy to keep,
easy to feed and fun to have. Raising does not depend on the weather,
and in good years and bad, pigs will pay yours and their bills. The pig
is an animal that well-deserves a tribute.
\qix\essay86.txt
[essay excerpted from TGS annual '86]
"WE CREATED THE WORLD"
We live in a world of abstractions and symbolisms. No two cultures
express the basic human drives in the same manner, but every culture hides
them with elaborate convention. Aggression is released by mock fights between
Kenyan warriors, by chess games between Soviet grandmasters. Vicarious
excitement is provided by gladiatorial combat, or the A-team. And so forth.
The very act of communication involves comparable abstraction: patterns of
ink or sound carry "meaning" from one mind to another. Like clay sculpture
or high-rise construction, these are all ways in which we shape our
world.
But we do not lose our way in this jungle of abstraction. We move through it
with the unconscious confidence of a native, taking for granted the
idiosyncrasies and moral assumptions of our society. These conventions are
with us so constantly they never need explanation. Like household furniture,
we are comfortable in their presence, they are symbols of tradition and
security to which we become attached, we are not even aware of them most of
the time. Some may seem quaint or get in the way, but we accept these with
good humour.
However, all our laws and languages and libraries are of human construction,
even if they are the work of master craftsmen. We are the first to have built
our own world, and it has changed us. Our artifices, mental and physical, have
become so real to us that we think of them as defining the fundamental nature
of the world rather than being structures we have imposed upon reality,
structures which might have been formed in many other ways. The world we have
created was only potential until we came along.
Philosophy is an attempt to understand the world; trying to understand it,
we have formed ideas like essence, causation, experience and so on. Then we
have asked ourselves about the nature of these things. While we never agree
about the answers, there is always the tacit assumption that there *is* a
correct answer. But these are concepts *we* formulated, which we have no
reason to believe exist outside our minds. So how can we assume that questions
about them will have one true answer? There may be several answers logically
consistent with everything else we believe, among which choice can only be
arbitrary, or no such answers at all.
When we read, we do not have to remind ourselves that these blotches of ink
before us are intended to convey meaning. It seems natural to us that
something should "stand for" something else. In fact, we go further - we
confuse the symbol with the thing represented. Human minds tend to form links
of association, and in our mind things and their names are bound. Most of the
time we think in words, living as we do in such a verbally crowded
environment. But words are our creation, our way of dividing the world into
manageable chunks, and are not somehow inherent in the richly complex reality
they try to represent. They are not even the result of a systematic attempt to
describe the world; they are centuries' accumulation of shifts in usage and
meaning - so is it surprising when communication is imperfect, when feelings
or ideas seem inexpressible?
The growth of science has been more orderly than that of language. Science
has been the discovery and refinement of patterns and mechanisms that might
explain the world's workings. Scientists have professed strict objectivity
until recently. But behind all of traditional science was one assumption -
that even if we cannot know every detail of existence, at least we can
understand its guiding principles. Only in the 20th century has this view
been undermined. In mathematics it has been shown that there is no system of
logic which can infallibly determine the truth or falsehood of any statement
about the counting numbers - for each system there is an undecidable
statement. But if there are things we cannot know about 1, 2, 3, ... - our own
creations - it becomes a very real possibility that reality is humanly
indescribable, in that it is too complicated for human beings to understand in
a more than superficial manner.
We tend to assume that there is some absolute system of ethics which will
provide a `right' response in every situation. We are disappointed with the
law when it displays less-than-Solomonic wisdom. But even if a code of ethics
is developed which is the kindest and fairest possible, it may be unable to
cope with dilemmas brought about by the new situations and technologies we
continually create.
We created the world. While we should keep aiming for our ideals of truth
and justice, we must realise that perfection may not be attainable for us.
While we keep working towards our absolutes, we should enjoy the little
imperfections like love and loyalty and remember not to expect too much of
anything human.
<*...^^^...*>
\qix\bent.rav
[This will be an attempted transcript of Side A of a tape labelled "TAPE",
recorded at the Bent St home of Jodie Eden in 1990, found at 23 Ada St on the
night of 27 July 1991...]
MITCH: ... um you have a surface folded over on itself so you <follow> a
particular path and so you have a dis ... continuous [MALE VOICE: mmm ...]
um drop, um ... which is like your stack collapsing. A third thing is
this book I'm reading at the moment, the quantum-mechanical one, The Quantum
Self, which, um, is talking [JODIE: That sounds interesting ...] about things
you'd find interesting, yeah.
Something else interesting which came up after I read that book ...
There's a thing called a Frohlich system, mentioned in the book discovered by
Doctor Frohlich, which is a type of resonant behavior you get in biological
systems. It's like um, in a supercounductor or a laser you get lots of
particles all behaving as one, their um ... their wave-functions, in
quantum-mechanical terms, all merge so that their properties become
interdependent and they all cooperate. And this Doctor Frohlich has discovered
the same things happening in certain types of, of biological matter. Um, and
this author's proposing that consciousness, the integrated aspect of
consciousness is a sort of a quantum-mechanical correlation, a Frohlich system
occurring in the brain. Now, funny thing, just after I read that book and came
across Frohlich system, um, I ran into Rodger and he lent me a photocopy of an
article on a "deconstructive a/theology" ... ah, I won't try to explain what
all that's about but it just mentioned, that ... um ... ah, Nietzche, when he
was - like, Nietzsche is now regarded as the founder of postmodernism in
certain senses, I won't even try to explain what postmodernism is -
GAVIN: <Nietzche> wrote some really weird sort of stuff -
MITCH: He wrote something called The Gay Sciences - Anyway, 'gay' in German
is 'frohlich' ... and, like, 'frohlich' is what this book which Rodger had
lent me this review of was, sort of, all about. Like it was about cultivating
a 'frohlich' attitude of mind. So, here was 'frohlich' and 'mind' linked
together in two different ways on the one day, which, was an interesting
experience.
Does that happen to you all the time? You come across, ideas, which sort of
coincidentally integrate?
JODIE: Yeah, yeah, all the time, it's just amazing.
[several voices at once]
GAVIN: I just plod along through life, you know ...
[laughter]
JODIE: Yeah, I think it's observation though, it's like...
[Gavin I think makes joke and laughs]
MITCH: I don't think so ... I think there's a transpersonal integrative
force behind it all.
JODIE: You really think so?
MITCH: mm.
GAVIN: ... transpersonal integrative ...
JODIE: Sometimes I think that ...
GAVIN: ... like a force bringing people together, [MITCH: Um...] or ideas
sort of, [MITCH: ... yeah, why not?] sort of having an influence over the
probability of two people coming to[gether] ... yeah ...
JODIE: Well, what I was thinking before, you know how I said we have to get
rid of the thing of ideas ownership, well um what, how I see it is it's a bit
like the idea of ownership of kids. You know, you produce the kids sort of
thing. But, as soon as they're born you've got to see them as, as people of
their own. And like ideas are the same thing, you know. YOU gave birth to the
idea but it came from lots of other things before as well. And you've just
got to let it go <on> in the world and do whatever, whatever it's got to do.
And, um, maybe the ideas are really like lifeforms, maybe they're like actual
living things in your brain, but lie dormant, or come up at certain times and,
at the same time, maybe they do have some sort of effect out there in the real
world to bring things towards you - The idea is so strong that it wants some
evidence, from the scientific world, and so you go into a bookshop and you see
The Tao of Physics or something like that, and um ...
MITCH: Yeah, that doesn't help explain how two things can come together,
like, um, ah .. well, I mean that, tghat, for instance ... one of, one of the
authors who I read sometimes is a computer scientist called Jacques Vallee
who's interested in the psychology of UFO experiences. And he was once
researching a medieval writer called Melchizedek, and at the moment he was
going to a library to um, this was in New York to look up Melchizedek, um. He
was picked up by a taxi driver called Melchizedek. Now, um, how does the idea
of 'Melchizedek' in his mind sort of pick that out? [JODIE: Oh, oh ...] See, I
think that if, if, if this can be understood at all, either it's going to be
understood in terms of, of the <?? seffian> idea, like that there's this
invisible conspiracy to arrange things, ah in such a way as you believe them
to be. Or else, um, something which * might * make sense in terms of quantum
mechanics and that is that, in a certain sense the future can shape the past,
so that, that things come together so that these things will happen, because
there, there does seem to be a sort of potential for that to happen, that, in
some sense an event here can ... can ... because it has to be, things will
logically be so that they arrange for it even though they're sort of
improbable. That's why I think chaos is sort of important, because it's the,
it's the crack through which this can operate, if anything. Like, if the world
was not only, um ... um, physically determined, but also practically
determined, so that we could always know what was going to happen, then there
wouldn't be any opportunity for a meaningful coincidence to happen, but
because even if it is deterministic, it's still in principle, unpredictable,
ah, then that gives, ah, the organizing force room to maneuver, to surprise us
with things.
JODIE: Yeah. Oh that's beautiful! You, oh, you just saying exactly what I've
been trying to say for about, three days. But, I've got ... what did you say?
It gives us a chance to be surprised, the fact that, it's to do with ... it's
magic as well, because, because ... we haven't believed in magic all of this
time because there's been all these other ways of explaining things, but magic
is a really important concept, because it allows new things to come out, new
things to emerge ...?
MITCH: Well, I wasn't saying that [JODIE: You weren't saying...] but that's
something which could be said ...
GAVIN: Another, another thing is, um, <his> sort of purpose of life came
down to being, fountain of surprises. That life would be a fountain of
surprises. See, he had <prescience> ... there's not prescience in the first
<lot> of the book, or books < ??? > out of six ... So, one of the guys in
there had this problem that he knew his future; he got to a point, he got to
some sort of, he got to a critical, nodal point sort of. And he knew, he could
see before he got there he knew that this was going to be pretty severe, and
he got there, as he thought ... <???> ... he could see his future, he knew
everything that was going to happen to him in advance, he knew his future
absolutely, he had perfect prescience. So then his life was boring and
couldn't be a fountain of surprises. And he said about trying to destroy the
potential for this state to exist because it could lead to stagnation, and in
the end, there's, there's Leto the God-Emperor, who's a worm [laughs] and
he's huge, and he's the God-Emperor of the universe for ten thousand years,
and he enforces a golden age of absolute, sort of, stability on, on this
galactic society to teach them a lesson [Mitch laughs], that this is not what
[MITCH: Stability is so boring] - yeah, that it's basically, you know, <he was
on> an anti-boredom trip, and <that> stability is boring, <they need> change.
And he got, he deliberately went about researching, trying to create these
people whose futures could not be predicted, who were outside the prescience
that. The prescience was discovered, right, and then it existed, and then,
you know, people went around trying to discover ways to avoid it. And they
had <node> ships and [JODIE indistinct] it's really good, [JODIE, something
about boredom] yeah, it's a really good book 'cause it's got all different
sorts of factions, like he's got the Bene Geserrit which are, females, and
they're all sort of into human powers, and developing human potential, and
abilities, and there's the Tleilaxu which play with things in tanks and
stuff like that, and they're shape changers and so they play with genetics and
that kind of stuff, and they can grow things in their axolotl tanks, and they
can give you, you know, cybernetic eyes and stuff like that. Then there's the
Guild, which operate the transport, they've got complete monopoly on the
transport, and he's really into power struggles as well. The Guild have
absolute power over all transport, and so they develop these <node> ships
which can't be tracked by prescients ... <???> that's what I said before ...
so there are all these different factions .. and he, he postulates, like it's
in the far future, and one of the early things is that ah, there's no
computers, and there's no atomic weapons. They exist, but there was a
<?? Valkyrian Jihad> in which everyone smashed up the computers and they made
this big pronouncement that Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a
human mind. So, he's got this far, far-future vision that doesn't involve any
computers or robots and doesn't involve atomic weapons 'cause there's, there's
a convention against ...
JODIE: That's an interesting idea, um, not being able to create a computer
like the human mind, separating tools and the mind, focusing on the important
points.
GAVIN: Yeah, like, i.e. making a deliberate decision we're not going to make
- [drowned out by]
MITCH: Yeah, well, yeah the idea is I think that would sort of destroy
culture in a sense that you would, um, if you have something which is like a
person but is empty, um, then ...
JODIE: You wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
MITCH: Well, more than that... like, you can treat that in any way you like,
maybe. That might be part of the rationale. And so that, if you then start
treating *people* like that as well ... [JODIE: Yeah, yeah ...] not a
desirable consequence. So .. you issue your pronouncement.
[a few seconds of silence or murmurs]
JODIE: Yeah, I think laws are -
GAVIN: I think another major point is that they could become competitive.
[MITCH: Oh right ..] Suppose you do do that, then it's not such a smart idea,
you could have signed your death warrant of the species, [JODIE: I don't - ]
which is a very old sort of concept [JODIE: I don't see that as ... <??>]
JODIE: I don't really see that as, it's sort of like -
GAVIN: Not necessarily < ??? >.
JODIE: I read this book called, ah, Amusing Ourselves To Death. It's a
really good book, I've got to find it actually, and it's all about television
and the medium, and the society and everything, and anyway he says that, you
know, Huxley said that - no, Orwell said that, What we hate will kill us, or
destroy us, and, you know, Huxley said, What we love will destroy us, and
the book was saying this is that Huxley might have been right. And that, you
know, television and all of these classic entertaiments [GAVIN: Yeah! There
you go ...] are <drugging us like soma ??>.
GAVIN: And, <this is> the good of evil, and the evil of good.
JODIE: Yeah ... [GAVIN laughs] Yeah ... ah, what was I going to say?
MITCH: Amusing yourselves to death.
GAVIN: Yeah ...
JODIE: .. what did you just say before about ... oh yeah, that the trouble
is, that the computers might take over and, I think that's like saying,
Orwell's point of view, that's the thing we fear, but I think that's much less
likely to destroy us. The things we fear are much less likely to destroy us
than the things that we love, because if you can't tell the difference -
If you, you just sit there and you hate television and everything but you keep
on watching it anyway because it's such a passive, enjoyable thing, it does
much more damage than something someone who is deliberately restricting you.
[softly] I don't know ...
MITCH: Can I mention something here? [GAVIN: <..so insidous..>] This guy,
who I think Adrian was translating or reading or whatever when he was talking
to Rodger, Jean Baudrillard, he - He sounds really interesting, he's like an
inversion of Marx. Like Marx was saying that you have this industrial society
where everyone is, is alienated because, um ... [birdsong in background] you
have capitalism which puts an exchange value on things but that's not the real
use-value, that was Marx's invention, the concept of the real value of a
commodity in relation to the real world instead of this artificial system of
prices. He said because we couldn't use things at their use values but instead
we had to use exchange values then we weren't really, or we were alienated,
separated from the things we produced, [JODIE: Oh yeah!] and that the workers
would realize this collectively and therefore that would lead to the
revolution, and they would establish a regime of use value rather than
exchange value. Baudrillard says that's wrong. Marx didn't overturn
classical economics far enough, like classical economics said that exchange
value IS use value, Marx said exchange value is not use value, Baudrillard
says, um,
exchange value is not desirable, um, he argues that the real,
social - [JODIE: <.. got to find> this guy?] you won't be able to find him in
the library anyway, he writes in French, he's very pessimistic and there's
only one English book which Rodger reckons has been stolen, so [JODIE laughs]
all we can talk about is what other people have said about him. But anyway,
um, he argues that social functioning is "best" - I mean, he dislikes words
like functioning, um, when you indulge in voluntary exchange, when you give
gifts [JODIE: Yes!] and you reciprocate and so on.
GAVIN: ... Chinese do that. Chinese have a gift-giving economy. Neil was
telling me about it, he's writing to [MITCH, unclear] <???> stuffs up their
central planning, of the economy, because there's this whole gift-giving
economy [MITCH, indistinct] which is not ... is not counted. [GAVIN laughs]
[ringing noise]
MITCH: Well Baudrillard reckons that every time you do something like that
you're striking a blow against, um, every sort of measuring, classifying,
codifying regime. Anyway, his argument against Marx is that, that um, Marx
didn't go far enough because he's still supposing that you have to put a value
on things whereas what you want is spontaneity and so on. Ah, so, he argues
that we used to have societies where you had symbolic exchange, and a symbol
is a sort of a ... well, it's like a force of nature, so the sun in say Aztec
culture was a symbol because it was a force of life and death at the same time
whereas he reckons that symbols nowadays have been replaced by signs which
are, have replaced ambivalence by equivalence. They're all exclusively
positive, so nowadays the sun is simply, a source of good and warmth and so
on, and it's opposed to non-sun, this is like the sort of images you get out
of a media culture, so on. He reckons that because they no longer have this
ambivalence and their own energy and drive that that's what makes modern life
so deadening that, we live under the regime of the sign rather than the
symbol. But Baudrillard doesn't think that we can return to the regime of the
symbol, he thinks that's impossible, so his solution or rather what he thinks
will happen is that the masses - um, will drive the regime of the sign to its
end by um developing it too far, so in other words they'll become more and
more passive and just consume things continually until lives will become
totally meaningless and that will make um the regime of the sign collapse,
because it will be driven to its extreme. So he argues that for people
nowadays, um consumption is meaningless and politics is just entertainment,
but that for politics and production to continue they need at least, or
politics needs, the sort of the pretense of meaning, and production needs an
alibi, of value, but if those things are taken to their extremes then it will
sort of bring about an apocalypse in which everything collapses, so
Baudrillard's really sort of a nihilistic thinker, like, according to one
account of what I've read - [GAVIN: What, and he provides no sort of - ] No,
he's not interested in a more positive society, he just wants to bring about
the end as quickly as possible.
JODIE: That's really interesting, because that sounds exactly what I'm
talking about in the Fun Park except I've got the positive thing of trying to
turn it into something fun. And, making money out of it as well.
MITCH: That's why he sounds like a really interesting writer to me -
[GAVIN and JODIE agree.]
GAVIN: He's really into semiotics as well.
MITCH: Um .. well, I think .. more than that, like he, he ... I think he
would agree with semioticians that their account of society is correct, that
you have [JODIE: What is semiotics anyway?] these signs, semiotics is the
study of signs and how they determine things, they determine the way people
think, what they do so on.
GAVIN: It goes, gets into ... it lends itself nicely to this media sort of
<rave> [indistinct voice, possibly BRETT] <??> all about how people are
oppressed by the way things are portrayed in the media and stuff.
JODIE: Women draped over cars and stuff like that ...
GAVIN: Yeah, this is a sign which means, bla-bla-bla and <has> people give
you stuff ...
MITCH: Yeah ... but ah I think the difference between Baudrillard and
say, someone, a semiotician, is that a semiotician is just trying to
scientifically describe signs, whereas Baudrillard actively opposes it ..
or, rather, he doesn't really oppose it but he wants to bring it to as swift a
conclusion as possible [GAVIN laughs] by embracing it in the extreme... Found
that a fascinating position for someone to hold, because it's so inverted on
everything you would usually think ... I think that's also a clue to
understanding a lot of the other people Rodger refers to, like Derrida and
deconstruction and so on. 'Cause, what they're doing, is they're inverting the
usual priority we place on things so that for instance they're saying that
culture preceds nature, something like that, which sounds really odd in the
West because we're used to thinking of um, ah, animal drives like sex, hunger
and so on as being somehow more fundamental than, um, the impositions of
culture, whereas, say Baudrillard for instance, rejects the notion that, um,
the struggle for survival preceds this exchange thing? So he would say that
for primitve cultures, if people eat or speak or drink or whatever, those
things are done um for the purpose of the exchange or not at all. So in other
words even if they're going to starve or something like that they tend to sort
of die for cultural reasons in a sense, so even at the earliest stage of human
beings, the culture is still there in a primary sense, rather than a secondary
sense ... But, yeah, there's lots of fascinating ideas there and all this was
in that book Superstructuralism which you said was really boring. That's where
I got all of this from
JODIE: Superstructuralism? Oh...
MITCH: Remember? You -
JODIE: Oh, I only read about half a page of it.
MITCH: Yeah, and you thought it was really boring. I remember you saying.
[JODIE: Yeah ...] [MITCH laughs] That's something else I thought was really
funny.
JODIE: Oh no, that's awful ... I, I've got to stop, I've got to overcome
this thing. [GAVIN laughs] <???> people... I just hate it, when you get um...
I think there was a sentence in Feyerabend's book that really put me off, I
don't think I've read anything since [MITCH laughs] that sentence, because it
was so difficult to understand, oh. I should find it, it was about, you know
about six lines long, this sentence ... and I wrote it all down, and tried to
work out what he was saying, and it was such a simple thing. He'd actually
repeated himself in a much more complicated way. He'd explained something
through an example, and then he summarized it in a really complicated way
using big words making it difficult to understand. An idea that had already
been clear to me; and I thought 'Oh, he's just repeating himself!' You know,
it was - [sound of crows in background]
GAVIN: Getting more ... Getting more text out of his ideas ... [laughs]
JODIE: Yeah ... I guess, I guess you should just look at it as like
everyone, [GAVIN: You can't be perfect.] yeah, everyone's not perfect, the
important thing is his ideas not his style, and - [whistling in background]
GAVIN: He was interested in getting published, just like a lot of other
people who write things that are not <as> worthwhile.
JODIE: But what I think I'd like to do, except for this idea that certain
people own ideas you know, I'd really like to rewrite Feyerabend or rewrite
de Bono, you know, <as> the pop-up de Bono [GAVIN: Yeah] or [GAVIN: The
comic-book Feyerabend] the comic-book Feyerabend or something like that, um,
to get a, trying specifically to get across their ideas. Or wouldn't have to
be their ideas. It'd be just to do it in a more interesting way <then> anyone
could read it.
MITCH: That's something I want to do with computers some time this semester,
like I want to get an Amstrad like Dayalan's - I don't know if you've ever
seen his, it's a laptop a portable one - and I want to learn about the maths
behind chaos and neural networks and so on, and then write some software while
I'm doing that which will allow people to sort of play with it and see the
basics as they go [JODIE: Oh yeah] - I think that's what computers are really
<useful> for -
GAVIN: <I saw in Scientific> American how to do a thing with the Mandelbrot
set.
JODIE: Really! How long was it?
GAVIN: Well, I mean, way before cha - like in Grade Eleven or Twelve, I read
this article in Scientific American about the Mandelbrot set, I think that's
when he first discovered it maybe. <?? it's about the> right timing. Anyway,
it gave the, it gave the formula sets you know, and I think it might even have
had some code ... anyway, it told you how to set you know [MITCH: Yeah] <??>
this program this formula -
MITCH: Was it in the Mathematical Games column?
GAVIN: Yeah, that, they might have had that Mandelbrot set article and then
the Mathematical Games in a subsequent issue ...
MITCH: Yeah, I think I remember that ...
GAVIN: '86, '87, something like that, and then away you go with your
computer graphics, and Dayalan's graphics would probably be good enough to
get really pretty Mandelbrot sets.
MITCH: Ah ... I don't know ...
GAVIN: You don't know ...
MITCH: Yeah, I want to do something more than that, like there are all these
concepts like chaos, strange attractor - um, bifurcation, sensitive dependence
on initial conditions, so on - concepts, which I think are best illustrated
not just by, um [GAVIN: By some <artificial...>] a textbook thing, yeah, but
having visual dynamic representation of what they're about -
JODIE: That's why programs are really good -
GAVIN: They could make so much use of that in teaching all sorts of things
in university, especially maths and computer science. Especially when they
have things like, bloody microcode that's just sooo boring, and you could
absorb the process, like when they tell you this register does - you know,
this bit is ANDed and ORed and with that, and out comes THIS, you know - if
they had a bloody graphic presentation of when, uh-uh-uh, and you can follow
with your eye, this goes there, this goes there, that's all you get, [JODIE:
Well why don't you do it?] and you have to wade through heaps of shit -
JODIE: Why don't you make one?
MITCH: He can only do that now that he's learnt it, that's the thing.
JODIE: Yeah, but the, but the point is you know how you were going to write
a letter to the Dean to change the department or whatever so it's less boring,
well, if you, you know, *gave* them something like that, showed them how to
do something in an interesting way, that's one way of really changing a
system.
MITCH: Outline a software package which would allow you to learn about
things like, um, [GAVIN: It requires - ] registers and so on. Well, I mean,
what I'm suggesting is that -
GAVIN: What sort of thing would the software do? [MITCH: Um ...]
GAVIN: You need, what you need is a software package that allows you to draw
things, like you need, you need ... well hardware you need projection, you
need projection of VGA-quality graphics ...
MITCH: I was thinking more like people sitting at a terminal and doing this
some time.
GAVIN: Yeah, but no, it'd be more efficient if you project it in a lecture
room and I dislike the smallness ...
MITCH: Is there a way you can do that? Project something on ...
GAVIN: They have them for LC - They have LCD things they place on top of an
OHP, and it projects a screen ... [MITCH: Okay ...] and they can be color and
reasonably good. They need to be better and cheaper and quieter, 'cause OHP
goes <nnn...> making a <big> noise. I want, I want my computer to be silent. I
want it to be a lot of things that <you could quite> easily do. Anyway, have
that, you need software to sort of be able to easily draw things and then,
easily write them, which is pretty general ... [indistinct] But like you could
teach so many things even if you had it in schools ... [indistinct] .. maths..
because concepts are visual, you, like you wade through all ths text and
explanation that you receive from the teacher, and from that you get a
visualization and half the time that's most of what your understanding of the
concept is, is getting a visualization that <does> their sort of thing, and
that's how you recall it, when you later, that's how you recall that
understanding to help you re-understand it when you need to come back to it
again later.
JODIE [made somewhat indistinct by shouted conversation from outside]: This
is <also related to the fact> I was saying about charting runes, I think that,
you know, you've got to work out what's best in your mind for remembering
things and usually it's a visual thing, like ... you can have all these neat
systematic ways - filing cabinets - and a lot of the logic and methodology
that they teach in lectures, which is generally boring, and it's difficult to
remember because it's placed in, sort of, the lecturer's mind - someone who
already knows the subject matter. And ... I think ideas should be presented
much more ... much more visually and much more ... sort of ... so that you can
put them in any order you like. It's a bit like ... and a lot of attention
should be paid in teaching to building up your own method of, of note-taking
and stuff like that, so you're not just copying down points ... like they
often, often you have lectures like that, where they specifically are getting
you to write things down in a certain form ... and it usually ... well, it
doesn't suit the way that i think, I find it really difficult, I don't take it
in at all, I just sit there and write -
MITCH: Yes, you're going to rewrite everything in this visual form, half-
visual form aren't you? [JODIE: Yeah ...] When you've completed that, like at
the end of the semester when you don't need the notes any more, if you don't
plan to refer to them give them to the lecturers. [JODIE: Yeah, yeah, that
<would be really good...>] I think I'll do that in CS as well. [JODIE: Yeah,
that would be really good ...] Because, I mean since I don't go to lectures I
have to find my own systematic way of learning all this anyway [JODIE, largely
drowned out: <...excellent way...>] <???> ... something like that I'll give it
to them. [pause] You can do that too Gavin.
GAVIN: What sort of notes do you mean?
MITCH: Well, well um, [JODIE: I'll get some ...] I mean I have a few specifc
ideas as to how to alternatively deal with things like concepts in physics,
for instance. I have a concept of a sort of a visual diagram which would
relate all the mathematical concepts in a particular way. So if I can actually
make that something concrete and I'll put that in my notes, and at the end of
physics I'll give it to the lecturer and I'll do the same thing with CS if I
can think of something which really achieves what I'm after.
JODIE: Yeah, and my note-taking's just sort of like putting different words
and connecting them and having little bubbles and stuff, and I do them all in
different colors so that you can -
GAVIN: Yeah .. see, if you had ... if you had like this thing I was talking
about, with the large screen and you were able to draw anything, like if you
can draw a box, put text in it, it'd make like a lot - have you done
conceptual schemas? [MITCH: Yeah] Yeah, see, like just drawing conceptual
schemas could just, if you can do any sort of combined visual and text sort of
thing, so like you could do a thing like that using a general facility for
drawing boxes and writing text at the same time. And then if you can just
click on that and drag this over there so you can like rearrange those things
[JODIE: Oh yeah ...] to ... whatever's most convenient, stuff like that
[JODIE: Wow ...] ... that would be just such a, such a basic thing, but it'd
be a good tool for thought, you know, [drowned out] -
MITCH: You know, it's not so basic in the sense that it's very hard to
implement, like you need all this hardware ...
GAVIN: Well they've got things pretty close to it now ...
[pause]
MITCH: Yeah, I guess so ... Yeah, they could probably do it in the labs ...
or certainly, yeah, the first year labs, because they've got um, I mean they
don't have OHPs in there but they've got boards up the front so on they could
use them, certainly, and I'm sure - [GAVIN: They could use the terminals.]
Yeah, so, they could have people sitting at all the Macs, um, with appropriate
software, and then they could have whatever this LCD/OHP device is up the
front as well, that would be <?? men> good [GAVIN?: Yeah - that can be done]
[pause; sound of shifting cardboard]
JODIE: <I was just thinking like,> you know you were asking about the um,
my different ideas in my room? I had the compost, and the tools, <?? toys>,
this is just I'm starting to do a map of the ideas which I ... [indistinct]
[pause] Oh yeah, this is what I was talking about before ... I think it's what
you were talking about, having a computer program that's um, that helps you
move around ideas and is much more the way your mind thinks ... [indistinct]
'cause I was thinking, if you could have um -
GAVIN: You know when I was talking to you before about pages?
JODIE: Yeah.
GAVIN: And you'd have just, you've got a computer screen big enough to fit
as many pages of A4 as you can fit on your desk [JODIE: Oh yeah] display A4
size [distant laughter] not quite this big, so you -
MAZ [entering]: We won we won we won! Wahoo! The Dragons won. Yeeha!
[? MITCH: The Dragons.] The <Drag-Ins>. The Rejects. You know how <we were>
the reject team that <changed over> to the <Anzacs> we WON!
JODIE: You WON? That's fantastic!
MAZ: And he probably .. And made his team so pissed off at us -
JODIE: And you were the ones that had all -
MAZ: We were the ones -
JODIE: Hung over -
MAZ: Because -
JODIE: I have to <tell you> the story now. Mitchell, this is Maz. [MITCH:
Hi] [sounds of panting from Maz] ... and Gavin ... [GAVIN: <Hi I'm Gavin>;
laughs]
MAZ: <Shut up, shut up!> You know, like nine of us came over from New
Zealand, 'cause there was a whole lot of us who wanted to come, and there's
only, you can only have a team of six, but nine of us came, thought, Oh ...
we'll just pretend we're one team. You know. And then New South Wales people
did that too, you know, everybody wanted to go so they had people left over
too [indistinct] All these people got together [indistinct] Well we got there
and they said no, it's got to be six. Six people in a team so, all these
people got together, said we'll be in a team together, bla-bla ... we were
the ones left over, that no-one wanted, ands they called us the Dreg-Ends team
which is so horrible and [transcription ends]
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