luka

Well-known member
I agree. I can't do that in my stuff cos I'm too thick but I like it when they do it. I like the claims that using it makes for poetry apart from anything else. Same with economics and other discourses that are Jnr,used in the cantos and in prynne
 

luka

Well-known member
That clip of him reading on the previous page is awful. Some people know how to bring their work to life, some don't. He definitely didn't.

His voice and manner is ridiculous. A ridiculous man. But a good poet.
 

version

Well-known member
I agree. I can't do that in my stuff cos I'm too thick but I like it when they do it. I like the claims that using it makes for poetry apart from anything else. Same with economics and other discourses that are Jnr,used in the cantos and in prynne

Totally. I read something recently where it was pointed out that the categories of wind in a particular dictionary read almost like poetry, the tension ratcheting up, a short burst of words describing each.

0 - Calm - Less than 1mph - Calm: smoke rises vertically
1 - Light air - 1–3mph - Direction of wind shown by smoke but not by wind vanes
2 - Light breeze - 4–7mph - Wind felt on face; leaves rustle; ordinary vane moved by wind
3 - Gentle breeze - 8–12mph - Leaves and small twigs in constant motion; wind extends light flag
4 - Moderate breeze - 13–18mph - Raises dust and loose paper; small branches are moved
5 - Fresh breeze - 19–24mph - Small trees in leaf begin to sway; crested wavelets form on inland waters
6 - Strong breeze - 25–31mph - Large branches in motion; telegraph wires whistle; umbrellas used with difficulty
7 - Moderate gale - 32–38mph - Whole trees in motion; inconvenience in walking against wind
8 - Fresh gale - 39–46mph - Breaks twigs off trees; generally impedes progress
9 - Strong gale - 47–54mph - Slight structural damage occurs; chimney pots and slates removed
10 - Whole gale - 55–63mph - Trees uprooted; considerable structural damage occurs
11 - Storm - 64–72mph - Very rarely experienced; accompanied by widespread damage
12–17 - Hurricane - 73–136mph - Devastation occurs
 

luka

Well-known member
It's a good thread that. But everything I would have said on there I think I've said loads of times elsewhere. The stuff about changing the size of your computer characters tits/how far the jaw protrudes/recedes/angle of the brow/how deep set the eyes are.

I do that one a lot.

And I take a photo of that page with the fish from the pound era a lot too. Like in mvuents phenomology of electro.acoustic noises thread.

A
Then there's some Leonardo da Vinci stuff. Which again is to do with the jaw partly. The belligerent type. The soldier. Um, one sec
 

version

Well-known member
I love this from the one you posted on the first page: "... vines burst from my fingers...".
 
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version

Well-known member
I've still got that thing you posted on 'RELATIVISTIC PHYTOSOPHY' bookmarked to read. I like it when people seriously engage with plants too. There was someone who used to post all sorts of mad stuff on Twitter under the name Crypto Cuttlefish who had some theory about Pynchon discussing eugenics projects in California via boysen berries.
History of Walter Knott explains why Pynchon is always namedropping boysenberry yogurt in his books. In the first chapter of "Inherent Vice" Denis orders a pizza topped with boysenberry yogurt from a pizza place that will put anything on a pizza. In "Vineland" Zoyd raids Mucho Maas' fridge to get food for his infant daughter Prairie, and feeds her boysenberry yogurt. One of those weirdly particular references that connects characters from all 3 of Pynchon's California novels (Mucho Maas being better known from Crying of Lot 49 but making a cameo in Vineland that links the 2 stories and gives Pynchon an opportunity to explain how the liberatory potential of LSD had been captured and subverted and the hippie counterculture turned to destructive hard drug use.)

Anyway boysenberries are a hybrid of 4 other berries (technically "Aggregate Fruits" not true horticultural berries) that were first grown in California by Rudolph Boysen, but popularized by Walter Knott who was the "Knott" in the "Kott's Berry Farm" amusement park and also a major funder of the John Birch Society. So even something that seems offhand and random in Pynchon like the boysenberry references can be read as a reminder that California and Californians are the product of these far-right eugenics programs.

"Aggregate Fruit" could also be a specific nod to the continuation of the Nazi V-Weapons program in California, as the rockets were known by their code name "Aggregate" to the Germans. And the whole "creamy bacterial culture on top, sugared-up eugenicized aggregat fruit on the bottom" thing about yogurt becomes a little metaphor for how to read the lurking subterranean fascism of the California Dream.

If Rudolph Boysen was the father of the Boysenberry, then Luther Burbank was its grandfather. Burbank created over 800 plant hybrids, including the ubiquitous "Shasta daisy". The "Shasta" in "Inherent Vice"'s "Shasta Fay Hepworth" is a reference to this eugenicist California lineage (can't help but think of the "Daisy Girl" from the 1964 Johnson vs Goldwater campaign ad in this context).

(also - follow up on "Sauncho Smilax" aka "Blessed Sarsaparilla" and the history of soft drinks)

California has a long history of treating human beings as an agricultural product to be bred or exterminated at will. Luther Burbank was a major proponent of eugenics, publishing a book called "The Training of the Human Plant". Burbank feared that immigration to America would lead to a disastrous mingling of races; while stopping short of calling for extermination of the "abnormal" Burbank did want to forbid "abnormals" from marrying. Burbank was in this way a "liberal eugenicist" in the same way Pynchon's Dr. Hilarius character did "liberal SS medical experiments."

The theme of hybridization, mixing traits from different species, explains the transformation of the California police state in 1970. The police were using the "Golden Fang" cult to create police / hippie hybrids from the local surf music scene, which could be used to expand the powers of the police state into environments where they formerly couldn't thrive. The protagonist "Doc" Sportello is himself a hybrid character in this regard, a hippie private detective who got his start as a repo man that used CIA drugs to interrogate debtors.

(Doc being a former repo man makes a nice circular allusion with the Alex Cox movie)

Burbank's "Training of the Human Plant" was a major source of inspiration for Paramahansa Yogananda, one of the first popularizers of yoga in the US. Yogananda dedicated his "Autobiography of a Yogi" to Burbank.

Autobiography of a Yogi" was hugely influential on the California counterculture despite (or specifically because of) its origins in the "master race" fantasies of California agricultural barons of the early 20th century.

(For the British Equivalent, see Gerard Wallop and Moral Re-Armament)

"Autobiography of a Yogi" claimed that yoga would give you superpowers like teleportation and clairvoyance. Yogananda created the "Self Realization Fellow" to teach these techniques, but much like in Scientology, the scripture and techniques are the intellectual property of the Fellowship and anyone who discloses them to outsiders can be sued.

Gateway to the SRF retreat in Hollywood. Note the hybrid use of Christian symbols.

So what kind of hybrid would you get when you crossed Luther Burbank with Paramahansa Yogananda? What would be the spiritual practices of Lutheran Yoga? Whose agendas would it serve?
 
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poetix

we murder to dissect
My daughter - the teenage one, not the six-month-old - came into the room while I was slowly incanting one of the Cantos in this thread to myself, mock-Pound style, and I had to explain to her what I was doing. Something about the way it's written makes you read it slowly, sonorously. You could try rapping it I suppose, but it seems to have its own internal drag. It wants to pull you into its own sound-world.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
a huge breakthrough for me, last year, was reading this



and realising that the economics arent a crank adjunct but a crucial outgrowth of this understanding. it is how i came to formulate the concept of Flowy Zoe. "Flowy Zoe is not a Mental State it is a state beyond mental."

I want to read that book.
 
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