Historicity Destroys Legend

The following is an email sent from Art to the group on 10 April 2016.

The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon by Edward Burne-Jones

I love aphorisms. Nietzsche is particularly good to read as a collection of isolated aphorisms, most especially at The Nietzsche Family Circus. I also took some inspiration from Liza's cut-outs from The Believer article on the writing style of Roland Barthes. (Wow, that had a lot of subordinate phrases, but that's the reality—frames within frames!)

I've begun to think that it might be fun to do a bunch of aphorisms that are ostensibly taken from a full-fledged text that doesn't exist, such as The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas, or the seemingly more pamphlet-like “What is Knology?” I am especially proud of “Joseph Lazarus is not only the most complete guitarist of his generation, but also the most complete human being,” which is a rip off of Sartre's comments on Che Guevara. How would that have ever come up in the pamphlet (or treatise or interview or feature article) on Knology?

I would love some of the more philosophically trained among you (Allison? Joe?) to start trying to “connect the dots” as to what this philosophy actually is, kind of like what some have tried to do with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, which is to try to systematize aspects of their philosophies after the fact due to the often oblique and evasive styles of writing.

Will, your “tons of likes” statement brings me back to an original strategy for the project. We've talked extensively about the significance and importance of likes, favorites, retweets, reposts, embeds, but, as we well know, we get nearly none of those things. And I understand the reason for that, namely, that the posts are too confusing to inspire anyone to mouse over and give us a thumbs up on anything. Not to say that what all of you have contributed hasn't been incredible—it has—it's just the way we frame it makes it hard to contextualize. Plus, we have so little actual existence in the “real” world.

Still, in accepting any of this as an excuse, we've lost sight of the critical aspect of the project, its fundamental and essential donnée.

The project is supposed to show how in our current age, the frame is more important than its contents, the proscenium is more important than the scenium, the smoke is more important than the fire, the echo is more important than the utterance. In fact, the project attempts to take this to the degree where those former things—the antecedents or referents—no longer exist. So many reasons for this that have been discussed ad nauseam and I don't want to get into it all over again.

Will, in addition to a central contributor to the project, you've been pretty much its only groupie. My main point in this email is that we may need more people willing to be groupies, to be frames, to be echo chambers. And I'm going to argue that this groupie-hood should not be based on any quality inherent in the content. It should be groupie-hood for the sake of groupie-hood. Call it groupidity. This is a central precept of Knology. Gotta get that on an inspirational meme soon.

I'm not saying that this should be any of you by the way. Honestly, I appreciate any likes you can give, but I don't want you to give them unless it makes any kind of sense to you. Perhaps, you have some better ideas of how we can cause this to flourish without attempting to endow any further reality to the original, which should remain shrouded in doubt.

Once this dynamic is established, I believe we begin to harness the power of infinite regress, the infinite series of receding images produced by two facing mirrors. I understand the argument that we should strive to make the primary as meaningful, sincere, relevant, interesting, entertaining, engaging, helpful, good, true, or beautiful as possible. But I also argue that's just what they'll be expecting us to do. More importantly, that's missing the whole point—the whole dynamism of the Female King, the Symbolism of Ophelia, the Wisdom of Silenus, the Tunnels within Tunnels, the Restaurant within a Restaurant, and so many others.

It goes back to the idea hinted at throughout Tennyson's Idylls of the King: that of Arthur and Camelot's nonexistence. It is this absence of historicity that makes Arthur—not Richard the Lionhearted—England's enduring image of king.

In other words, anyone looking for an underlying principle in any of this will be disappointed. There is no principle; there's only what comes after. That's why we're always dodging, refusing to go on record, why every narrator is untrustworthy, etc. We're hinting at an absence, a lack. We're trying to get people to stumble across the event horizon of a black hole.

This isn't to say that I don't love all the ideas. I love Liza's zine idea. (I wish we could somehow mass produce “Cartography of the Mind”!) I love Will's podcast idea. I love Nick's journalistic idea. I love the recording idea. I'd love to do as many of those things as possible. That said, I also love Joe's documentary-footage-on-a-dead-computer idea.

Because historicity destroys legend!

All One, Alone

The following is an email sent from Art to the group on 8 April 2016.

Utterance is its own rationale: by speaking one dispels the reigning silence, creates the clearing, floods in to fill it.

Speech is its own rationale: it partakes in the self-referential “I Am Who Am.” It is how we bring being out of nothingness. To a greater or lesser extent, every creative work arrives at a stage where the circus animals desert.

So abandonment, desertion, desolation, the profound aloneness—these are necessary for one who would become creator, a little god made in the image and likeness of the One.

Abandonment is itself a word. Abandonment is both a curse and a summons. Abandonment is not (nothing is) the absence of word. It is full, superfluous, gratuitous.

It is the way the creating word echoes in our ears. Not nothing, not every thing, not many things, but one. All one. Alone.

What seems at first to be a curse is still more a summons, a prophesy, a promulgation, a fable, a preface--spoken to us by the Father, singling each of us out individually as son or daughter. We abandon ourselves with wild abandon!

Deserted = summoned into the desert

No blue bloods in this world as those who were born blue blooded know. No mountaintop, only a swamp primordial. No parade of prophets who precede us. Only paths that can be made straight, a highway or a river.

Nothing to be dug up or discovered, no more sound basis than this malarial marsh. No basis in other words. Everything comes after.

That is why abandonment is necessary. The action of speaking toward, the moment at which God addresses me, speaks to me. His speech is a summons, a prohibition, a curse, a proclamation.

At that moment I am again an infant—literally, not able to speak—in the face of the ineffable.

Brought out of nothingness, brought out of the malarial swamp, brought out of blood, washed, adorned with jewels, earrings, nose ring. In this is our dignity, but still more is the moment of abandonment.

The verdict is a tolling back, a remembering: all one, alone.

If that moment of adornment is critical, still more is the moment of abandonment.

We aren't the Word, but we are a word.

A remembrance, a dismembering, a pruning, a lopping, a stopping, a stemming the flow. At once a remembrance and a dismembering. A recollection. A return. Because those branches have bankrupted the core, the spring, the seedling.

O to be an infant in the face of the ineffable, no more casting forth of fibers! O dimensionless, infinitesimal infant!

Not infinite, you infinitesimal you. Infant small.

This speech is a summons, a prayer, a request, a pledge, an acknowledgement, an admission, an utterance--cacophonous, euphonious, blasphemous. An abandonment to the fabulous, to fate.

Hiding in the lee disturbs the river, ripples eddy into swirling worlds.

Myth of Sizzliphus

The following is an email sent from Art to the group on 2 April 2016.



Since I have some time, I'm going to explore a little more about the cult/LGAT. After giving them a lecture on the major themes of existentialism, I showed my students the Sizzler promo commercial and asked them to analyze it.

There seemed to be two major interpretations:

One was that this was a kind of heaven for übermenschen, ones who are capable of facing the full extent of their freedom. I know Sartre said that rational human beings, faced with the full extent of their freedom, rightly experience nausea and anguish. But we entertained the notion that perhaps they had somehow transcended that and were now Nietzschean “birds of prey,” triumphantly reveling in their restaurant within a restaurant, laughing fearlessly as they are confronted its dizzying array of options. There are a few characters in the video that support this interpretation. I think of these two and the dismissive way the Italian guy looks at the camera, showing a Nietzschean scorn for the timid, insipid values of the imagined viewers. Another point in favor of this view is the many vertiginous elements incorporated into the camera work (for instance, here and here), suggesting that, although the inhabitants of this world seem to relish their experience of contingency, we the plebeian viewers are nauseated.

The second and more popular interpretation was that all these people are living in bad faith, that, terrified of the full extent of their freedom, they instead accept “mediated choices” (thus, “Sizzler is the one that gives us choices”). The “restaurant within a restaurant” implies that they have buffered themselves from their freedom and subjectivity even further. The doubling, as mentioned in the previous email, suggests that this method of escaping one's subjectivity can be repeated ad infinitum, as one flees endlessly down this tunnel toward a theoretical dimensionless restaurant within an infinite series of restaurants where one would finally and definitively objectify oneself. The dizzying array of choices available in Sizzler's restaurant within a restaurant can be explained as another attempt by the herd to appropriate the values and prerogatives of the ruler caste. The paradox of fleeing one's freedom while ostensibly embracing an ever-expanding array of options is simply the inherent hypocrisy of the “lie to oneself.” Indeed, following this line of reasoning, the dimensionless restaurant at the end of this long line of nested restaurants would promise an infinite array of choices. The vertiginous camera work can be explained in that, even as they try to situate themselves within the seemingly stable environs of the restaurant within a restaurant, their efforts are doomed to failure: the anguish of repressed freedom can never be fully repressed; they are, as Sartre puts it, “condemned to be free.”

In looking at how any of this could provide inspiration for Knology, I like the idea of Farthington being an übermensch who has found a way to package and peddle the values and lifestyle of the ruler caste to the herd. I honestly think that this is exactly what people like Werner Erhard and L. Ron Hubbard did.

They did it by serving up the paradox of the restaurant within a restaurant ad infinitum.

Sheer Vertiginous Horror

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 1 April 2016.



What is the significance of two?

You need two mirrors to create an infinite regress, an infinite series of receding images produced by two facing mirrors.

This has been an ongoing motif in our project in terms of dialectics and dichotomies; retweet, repost, embed; the proliferation of Joe Lazarus's clones; the multiplication of y's in Rustyy Kryystyylz's name; the postscenium and proscenium with their telescoping arches; tunnels within tunnels means an infinitude of nothing; not to mention more beneficent pairings like being made in the image and likeness of God and the holy rivalry concept.

What am I missing?

Joseph Conrad's obsession with the double, the shadow self, the doppelgänger, Lord Jim's “I--you--I”

One other area that has interested me recently is that of the entrepreneur or inspirational speaker who helps people find their passion or succeed in business. I find this to be so postmodern and Baudrillardian and unacceptable. Is it acceptable that a person's passion would consist in helping other people find their passion? Is it acceptable that a person's successful business is helping people have success in business? Is it acceptable that a person successfully leverages social media to teach others how to successfully leverage social media? To me, that seems “contentless.” To me, that snaps me back to the image of the proscenium with little or no scenium.

My first experience with this was the large-group awareness training organization I joined at the end of the 90's. It was all about living an transformed life, but to do that one needed to not only take the course (and ideally, many subsequent courses), but also to “enroll” people in the fact that you had undergone said transformation.

Going along with Heidegger's “Language is the house of being,” you needed others to “get” your transformation, otherwise the transformation wouldn't have any real meaning or existence. Who you “be” is a function of who you speak yourself to be. Word = world. And for a while at least, this notion of enrollment was collapsed with the act of registering those same people to take the course. Toward the end of my time there, they endeavored to “uncollapse” these two concepts, but the notion persisted, namely, how do you know that you've fully enrolled people in your transformation? They register for the course themselves.

I've already talked about modeling Knology (Farthington's cult or LGAT) after this concept. I've also mentioned Sizzler's “restaurant within a restaurant” idea, which to me captures the sheer vertiginous horror of the 90's.

Twins, doubles, and clones have been favorites of postmodernism because they convey its notions of circularity, self-referentiality, Baudrillard's collapse of polarities and the endless reproducibility of the simulacrum.

Farthington's Voicemail: chilean way of thinking about art

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience.

11/20/15 4:49 PM 3 months ago (910-541-3466)

So I think I'm interested in this I need we away is that 10 verse engineered, and that are this is one of the maybe the main ask the trip to him first so is that you know there is no insurance day the ality and then bases in a petition off and everything chilean way of thinking about art is that the the our defense that actually comes first the and and that the reality hallows. Alright the hybrid reality falls, and you know there's been some instances the system or example what I'm doing right now. It's recording a message on to presents, and see if it's there isn't enough itself, but we've got a lot of interesting things that God be here just checking in God help me Eric night. I think next time you got that I that whole idea we got is is what the which was Justin. It's transcription was something that I said I have no idea what I said originally, but the Google voice transcription sad is is what being and so that is sent speak of them kind of the central Mantra Central slogan of knology. Is is what's being? And so that seems to be a pretty interesting idea and and I'm I'm seeing this by having to get on the phone like this is personally because I haven't had any sort of time to philly right to the extent that I thank you and of like to and I feel bad about that but that's one of the aspects of this project is that some of the more interesting things have come out of really intent based on. Reality something other than reality reality in terms of other sounds coming out of my mouth right now, but they're being misunderstood and then we'll stories are being based on those misunderstanding seems to be seems to me to be a nother. Manifestation of this not on

Is is What's Being!

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 17 April 2015.



After our recent exchange on Facebook, I think this is a pretty important thread to start following. The Sizzler promotional commercial truly opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me.

I think we've gone through a bit of a platonic process: first it was just you and me, then we opened things to Allison and Liza, now it's supposed to universalize.

We've talked about the pros and cons of going the cult route vs. that of the large-group awareness training organization. I think the Sizzler video settles it: LGAT all the way.

And, like Sizzler, a "restaurant within a restaurant" is where it all starts.

The flip side of this spark of inspiration is the ongoing frustration that our growth has been incremental at best. Without forgetting about the music, I think we need to change our tactics. We've been leading with the band when we should be leading with the organization, figuring out what this whole Knology thing is and getting people to join it.

Why can't we involve others, they who would sell all their belongings and join Knology in a heartbeat? Buy them a loose-fitting tunics and tambourines!

Glasnost!

Some other topics: It's been a while since we've talked about Iceland and why it's so important. Obviously there's the element of Journey to the Center of the Earth, also Captain Walton's frame story from Frankenstein. Check out this story about the sMars simulation. I'd like to have a moment where some seafaring vessel becomes encased in ice like the Belgica. Maybe in the process of piloting the Ericsson from Tokyo to Iceland?

Back in Ann Arbor, my housemates and I had something we called "The Whitewater Tapes," recordings made by a secret commission appointed to investigate the Whitewater scandal. Something went wrong and they were later found dead having interred themselves in a school bus (dubbed "The Lincoln Bus") beneath the White House. All those tapes were lost.

Is is what's being!