From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #89 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Monday, April 24 2000 Volume 02 : Number 089 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: stillpt-digest V2 #88 ["Jennifer Stevenson" ] Re: stillpt-digest V2 #88 [meredith ] b/upcoming&past ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/comments4/23 ["Donald G. Keller" ] o/lemper/carthy ["Donald G. Keller" ] o/alchimia confusa ["Donald G. Keller" ] o/carthy [Greer Gilman ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 08:06:21 -0500 From: "Jennifer Stevenson" Subject: Re: stillpt-digest V2 #88 Meredith writes, > But I've greatly enjoyed Dan Simmons - his _Song of Kali_ is hands down the scariest > book I've ever read. *That* gave me nightmares. You couldn't pay me enough > money to get me to go to India after reading that, ever. Second that emotion! The scariest moment in the book for me was his time in the cellar alone with the statue of Kali, and every time he gets a match lit it has moved --not only toward him, but changing position, addressing him. As for SILENCE, Why was the movie scarier than the book? - -Jennifer ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 15:09:25 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: stillpt-digest V2 #88 Hi! Jennifer responded: >Second that emotion! The scariest moment in the book for me was his time in >the cellar alone with the statue of Kali, and every time he gets a match lit >it has moved --not only toward him, but changing position, addressing him. Oh god, yes. That's what gave me the nightmares. >As for SILENCE, Why was the movie scarier than the book? The direction. It was so intense, when it was over everyone in the theater sat in stunned silence through the entire closing credits. The scene near the end where Clarice is trapped in the pitch-black basement, while Buffalo Bill is chasing her with the night-vision goggles on literally had me on the edge of my seat and freaked me out for weeks. And Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of Lecter was perfect. Literally, for several days afterwards every time I closed my eyes I saw his Hannibal Lecter sneering at me. Reading the scenes in the book that affected me the most from the movie was a much different experience. Maybe it would have been different had I not seen the movie first, but the book just wasn't so heart-poundingly intense. Or maybe I just don't have enough imagination. :) +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 22:19:47 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/upcoming&past And =next= week's =TV Guide= makes the second set of new episodes sound, if anything, better than this week's; and again, I anticipate =Angel= being as good, if not better, than =Buffy=. =Angel= may save its season yet. Spent sometime this weekend re-watching my first tape (first three episodes of each show this season), which I hadn't watched in a good while. Didn't change my mind about any of them, but it was fun to see the memorable moments again, including two of my favorite lines of the season: Buffy to Xander, after he gets tangled up in his "fear leads to hate" etc. speech: "Thanks for the dadaist pep talk--I feel much more abstract now." Xander to Anya, when she comes to visit him (altogether too matter- of-fact behavior to be described as "seduction"): "The amazing thing? =Still= more romantic than Faith." And two startling moments. An early episode of =Angel=, where Cordelia finds out about Doyle's "gift" of visions: "If it were =my= gift, I'd give it back." When they wrote that line, did they =know= they were going to be dramatizing it eight or ten episodes later? In that above-mentioned scene with Buffy and Xander, where she's expressing her feelings of being overwhelmed, he says, "You're Buffy," and she says, "Maybe I =was= Buffy, in high school," and (honestly not remembering his response), I had a wild surmise: is he going to call her Betty, I wondered? Sure enough, or almost: "And now you're Betty Lou?" he says. Bet they didn't know they were going to echo =that=, either. Found the epigraph for my dream-analysis piece, from "Living Conditions" (Giles to Buffy): "Perhaps it would be more productive to examine your dreams-- determine their meaning." And just to demonstrate that the writers know what they're up to, how about from the same episode this line of Willow's about Buffy? "OK, so that was the =evil= twin, right? Because she was bordering on Cordelia-esque." ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 22:21:42 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/comments4/23 Jennifer: Yes, Freud is as much a symptom as an influence; but he has been =so= influential that he has to bear some of the blame. It's an interesting point I've seen several commentators make, by the way, that one reason Freud became so pervasive in our culture and Jung did not is because Freud is a =much= clearer and more elegant writer, Jung sometimes being a bit turgid (something he himself recognized). I laughed out loud when I read your bit about my hypothetical rock novel, because of course you're right. "Absolute mimesis" means (among other things) "everything the writer noticed, and nothing he didn't." Which of course is not the same as "reality." I'm just an observer, and I don't =know= all the gritty details of the underbelly. I quite understand your hesitation about getting into the "repressed memory" idea. It is indeed extraordinarily controversial; I just read Frederick Crews' =The Memory Wars=, which is basically a diatribe against the whole thing, and I find his arguments very convincing. I hasten to add here that Crews is very careful, and I want to be careful, too, to make a distinction, and say that all this has NOTHING TO DO with =genuine= sexual abuse, which in many cases is not forgotten at all. From my still-superficial reading of Jung, I will put in, mildly, that incest (= sexual abuse) and shadow-stuff (= Satanism) are absolutely primal nightmare fantasies of humanity (they're all over fairy tales and mythology), and so are exactly the sort of thing that would surge up whenever the unconscious is given full rein (in a therapy situation, for example). I would like to hear you elaborate a little more on "the one true lie of the heart's desire." I've heard you refer to this before, but I'm not =entirely= clear on what it means. (What's Buffy's "true lie"?) I like the description "tool-gathering" (maybe also "wool-gathering") for the library scenes. But they are in fact expository lumps as well; that's where Giles explains the details he's found in his research, and/or where Buffy (or someone else) has the brainstorm that gives them the idea of how to proceed. They're only "tea parties" at the end of the episode when it's denouement time. Phaedre and Meredith: Interesting stuff about =The Silence of the Lambs=. I founder once again upon the fact that I don't seem (at least sometimes) to make =as much= genre distinction as other people do. I'm really stumped by this idea that something isn't "horror" if it's not "supernatural." When did =that= creep in? So I'll ask (again) the two questions I always ask about =The Silence of the Lambs=: 1) Is it horror? 2) Would it change the way you think about it if Hannibal Lecter were a vampire? My experience is that most people answer 1) No 2) Yes (=then= it would be horror). My answers are 1) Yes 2) No (because, vampire or not, Lecter is a Monster, with all the "charisma" of the breed, even if he doesn't have any supernatural powers). Phaedre: Oh absolutely, Will Graham and Clarice Starling are the protagonists of the two books, and the stories are "about" them, and the effect of their work (and of Hannibal Lecter) on them. (Just as =Buffy= is always about Buffy.) I'm no judge of these things (since they don't give me nightmares), but I found =Silence= much more horrifying, really, than =Hannibal=, and flipping through the latter I'm at a loss to figure out what happened in the first 52 pages to give someone nightmares. Even if you're not going to read the book, I recommend looking at page 30 of the hardcover, which is where the letter from Lecter to Clarice begins. It's truly amazing. I still have serious reservations about the last 50 pages (the final section) of =Hannibal=, but much of it is at the same level as =Silence=. (Meredith: Absolute agreement on =Song of Kali=. One of the great horror novels.) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 22:23:03 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: o/lemper/carthy Noticed this weekend that some car commercial (which? I dunno; so much for product placement) is using Vaughan Williams' "The Lark Ascending" (an all-time favorite piece of mine); it's the kind of violin cadenza in the middle (the lyrical high point of the piece). Gets my attention big time. Jennifer: Yep, I know about Ute Lemper. Her two volumes of =...Sings Kurt Weill= are what I recommend to anyone interested in sampling Weill. She's what you'd describe as a =chanteuse= or a cabaret singer (i.e. neither a classical singer nor a "pop" singer). Though I understand that her new project is fronting a rock band, performing songs by such not-quite-"pop" songwriters as Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Scott Walker and the like. I'm curious about it, but =cheap= tickets for her New York gig are $25, so I'll keep an eye out for a used CD instead. Greer: Belated thanks for the report on Joan Baez and Eliza Carthy concert. I missed the New York version due to lean budget, but now that I gather Carthy only played =with= Baez and didn't do her own set, I'm a little less disappointed. Although I'm sure I would have enjyed the show; I've liked Joan Baez at least mildly for a long time. Still, I'd prefer to see Carthy do her own music. (And it's really annoying to have to wait so long for her album.) It's really going to be Sensory Overload May for me; not only are there new =Buffy= and =Angel= episodes every Tuesday, but Kristeen Young, my fave singer/songwriter, will be playing every Thursday at 10 p.m. at CB's Gallery, where she's done some of her best shows. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 22:32:20 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: o/alchimia confusa "The displacement and overlapping of images are as great in alchemy as in mythology and folklore. As these archetypal images are produced directly by the unconscious, it is not surprising that they exhibit its contamination of content to a very high degree. [(Jung's footnote:) The best instances of this interconnection of everything with everything else can be found in dreams, which are very much nearer to the unconscious even than myths.] This is what makes it so difficult for us to understand alchemy. Here the dominant factor is not logic but the play of archetypal motifs, and although this is 'illogical' in the formal sense, it nevertheless obeys natural laws which we are far from having explained." - --C.G. Jung, =Mysterium Coniunctionis=, pp. 293-294 Well, he warned us. Meredith: What follows is a continuation of what we've been talking about (Madonna-and-child imagery, etc.), though I'm not sure (see above) I'm going to be able to make sense of it even to myself, but the material is so striking that it seems worth my taking a stab at it. During my metaphorical machete-wielding way through Jung's =Psychology and Alchemy= last week, I came across a 16th-century illustration with the caption "Mercurius as =virgo=...with the dragon as her son" [p. 94]. Stopped me dead in my tracks. So I started index-surfing under entries like "virgin," "dragon," "Mercurius," etc. Came across a 17th-century illustration with the caption "The =prima materia= as the dragon, being fertilized by the Holy Ghost (the 'Hermes Bird')" [p. 475]. Pause for definitions. The =prima materia= (or =massa confusa=) is the primal/chaotic matter that the alchemist begins with in the process that produces the Philosopher's Stone (symbolically equivalent to the chaos before God created the world). Mercurius (Hermes) is the spirit/deity who gave the Hermetic texts to human beings; he is the symbol of =both= the =prima materia= and the Stone. Since he symbolizes the beginning as well as the end of the alchemical process, another symbol for him is the =uroboros= (as in =The Worm Ouroboros=), the snake/dragon that eats its own tail. Mercurius is also equivalent to the Virgin Mary (because purification is necessary in the process to bring forth the Stone) and Christ (who is equivalent to the Stone)...but he's also a trickster-figure (=servus/cervus fugitivus=) and therefore equivalent to the Devil(!)--see =Faust= (an alchemical drama) and the figure of Mephistopheles. And the "Hermes bird" is, it seems, =among other things!= 1) the peacock, whose tail of many colors is a symbol of many-in-one and whiteness 2) the phoenix, born anew from the ashes, and oh by the way both are symbols of Mercurius. Let's quote Jung again, in the "Summary" section of his 50-page essay "The Spirit Mercurius" (=Alchemical Studies=, p. 237): "The multiple aspects of Mercurius may be summarized as follows: "(1) Mercurius consists of all conceivable opposites. He is thus quite obviously a duality, but is named a unity in spite of the fact that his innumerable inner contradictions can dramatically fly apart into an equal number of disparate and apparently independend figures. "(2) He is both material and spiritual. "(3) He is the process by which the lower and material is transformed into the higher and spiritual, and vice versa. "(4) He is the devil, a redeeming psychopomp [spirit-guide], an evasive trickster, and God's reflection in physical nature. "(5) He is also the reflection of a mystical experience of the artifex [alchemist] that coincides with the =opus alchymicum= [alchemical process]. "(6) As such, he represents on the one hand the self [the whole psyche, conscious plus unconscious] and on the other the individuation process and, because of the limitless number of his names, also the collective unconscious." [brackets mine--DGK] Dizzy yet? (I sure am.) But it gets worse. Another symbol for Mercurius is the dragon; looking at the virgin- and-dragon picture, I wondered whether the unicorn entered into it as well. Sure enough, there's =lots= of stuff about dragon = unicorn = Christ = Mercurius, and how the unicorn in the maiden's lap is equivalent to the Pieta (the =dying= Christ in Mary's lap; remember Mercurius as beginning =and= end of the alchemical process), the unicorn sometimes being depicted as wounded in the side after the virgin captures it. Here's a particularly dense paragraph on the subject by one of Jung's chief explicators, Edward Edinger: "In alchemy the unicorn in the lap of the virgin was clearly associated with the dead Christ in the lap of Mary. This brings the whole idea of the incarnation of the Logos into this symbolism. Incarnation is an aspect of =coagulatio=. The alchemists were concerned with how to coagulate, capture or fix the elusive mercurial spirit. One way represented pictorially was to transfix the mercurial serpent to a tree or nail it to a cross just as was done to Christ. Tree and cross are feminine symbols and hence equate with the virgin's lap and the lunar aspect of the [Philosopher's] Stone. These images defy facile explanation..." [Edinger, =Ego and Archetype= p. 281] No %$#@, Sherlock. This is perilously close, even for me, to the point where non- academic thinkers throw up their hands and say, "Well! if anything can stand for anything, then everything is meaningless! Why bother?" It's not =quite= that dire, however; there is a thread (or rather a web) of logic that can be followed; one has to remember the many- signifiers/signified and the inverse. But that's still not all. Jung discusses at length a 15th-century poem, Ripley's "Cantilena," an allegorical description of the alchemical process, the climactic image of which is a green lion (=another= Mercurius symbol peculiar to alchemy) in the lap of the Maid/Queen Mother/Bride, suckling her breast, while she drinks the blood from his wounded side (in a cup borne by Mercurius). In Edinger's =Mysterium Lectures= (a very useful reader's guide to =Mysterium Coniunctionis=) he describes it as "a kind of bizarre image of the coniunctio as a dynamic double cibatio, a double feeding process." And goes on to say: "This condensation and overlapping of images from totally different sources is an expression of an assimilation phenomenon. The unconscious connects images that consciousness would keep apart, and it connects them because of the innate archetypal similarity of the images--they belong together psychically even though consciousness has separated them. By making these interconnections the unconscious is, in effect, urging the ego to achieve a larger synthesis" [all quotes from p.202]. (A sidebar. One of the "overlapping images" from "a different source" that occurs to me in this context is vampirism: the mutual feeding which creates a =kind= of renewal, i.e. immortality. It's interesting to note that vampirism, an image-complex that is extremely common now, seems to be completely absent from the pre- Enlightenment image-set of which alchemy is a prime example. I don't know exactly when the vampire idea arose--Greg Cox would know--but it didn't settle into the Western collective unconscious, I don't think, until the 19th century. But it's ubiquitous since then.) This image kind of sets off Jung, who though practiced in the ways of comparative religion and mythology still considered himself a Christian: "Here the apotheosis of the Queen is described in a way that instantly reminds us of its prototype, the coronation of the Virgin Mary. The picture is complicated by the images of the Pieta on the one hand and the mother, giving the child her breast, on the other. As is normally the case only in dreams, several images of the Mother of God have contaminated one another, as have also the allegories of Christ as child and lion, the latter representing the body of the Crucified with the blood flowing from his side. As in dreams, the symbolism with its grotesque condensations and overlappings of contradictory contents shows no regard for our aesthetic and religious feelings....The images have lost their pristine force, their clarity and meaning. In dreams it often happens--to our horror--that our most cherished convictions and values are subjected to just this iconoclastic mutilation....The image of the Virgin with the wounded lion in her lap has...[a] kind of unholy fascination, precisely because it deviates so strangely from the official image to which we are accustomed. "I have compared the tendency to fantastic distortion to a melting down of images, but this gives the impression that it is an essentially destructive process. In reality--and this is especially so in alchemy--it is a process of assimilation between revealed truth and knowledge of nature....These melting processes all express a relativization of the dominants of consciousness [by which he means, for example, "official" religious imagery--DGK] prevailing in a given age. For those who identify with the the dominants or are absolutely dependent on them the melting process appears as a hostile, destructive attack which should be resisted with all one's powers. Others, for whom the dominants no longer mean what they purport to be, see the melting as a longed-for regeneration and enrichment of a sysem of ideas that has lost its vitality and freshness and is already obsolete. The melting process is therefore either something very bad or something highly desirable, according to the standpoint of the observer" [=Mysterium Coniunctionis=, pp. 324-25]. There's more, but that's more than enough. Interesting how he's basically contrasting the religious attitude with what we would call the creative attitude towards archetypal imagery. One more thing I found. This is from a 16th(?) century text: "The ethereal heaven was closed to all men, so that they descended to hell and remained imprisoned there forever. But Christ Jesus unlocked the gate of the ethereal Olympus, and threw open the realm of Pluto, that the souls might be freed..." [=Psychology and Alchemy= p. 425] Sound like =Xena= to you? So what does this add up to? What does it mean? Search me. But a couple of things seem true: 1) It confirms your statement that Christianity appropriated (and narrowed down) a rich fount of symbolism 2) symbolism is a slippery thing. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 00:55:46 -0400 (EDT) From: Greer Gilman Subject: o/carthy Don, if you're curious about the new Eliza Carthy songs, there are a couple of snippets over at http://www.elizacarthy.com (what else?). There's just a hint of the unseely in "Train Song," about a girl's obsession with a "daemon lover." He doesn't know she's been stalking him: "I stood by his shoulder and I blew on his face. His eyes were the pastures of a much greener place." Witchy. The girl can write. Greer ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #89 ****************************