At a significant stage in my life, I quite believe I had the perspective that this life is so arbitrary that it has no interior value. My experiences coincided with what were popularly being interpreted of the Cathar Gospel “Hell is not some other place, some other time ; Hell is the world now! “.

In my poetic ramblings at that time I used to call existence in the world a sickness tiring out the intellect, draining out the last resides

of soul. Today, if I turn on the radio, at some time in the day, Black Eyed Peas “Where is the Love?” will inevitably be playing…not thats a nice song full of hopeful desperation, perhaps more in keeping with our times – when I awoke with these visions of the world, a dark harrowed place, at least Norwegian culture were divided into two camps completely disinterested in eachother and working at cross purpouses – lets say I thought of myself as participant in “the other camp” – listened to Punk Rock, read anarchist classics, joined angry demonstrations against the “establishment” – all the while thinking

no justice could ever grace the “world” and only luck and coincidence would ever secure anything of the kind for myself.

I agreed with the catchphrase at the beginning of “Bullet with Butterfly wings” by Smashing Pumpkins:

The world is a vampire!. The topic, which is insiduous in “post-modern” culture – I only have to say the word “Matrix” and only the most detached and uninterested “initiate”, that is to say, viewer of that

cinematic experience, will not get what I mean.
Im wondering if more people, especially the young and impressionable, while keeping it a secret, wakes up with a scream, in a cold sweat, all tangled up in their bedsheets… drawing back the curtains, not to be entirely comforted… I was, but perhaps it was because I had an “overactive imagination”, perhaps also, if you are twelve in 1984 you are destined to have your ears propped full of dystopian rants and the screeching moral anxiety of a generation that did not push over the “Status

Quo”, but joined it, the 68`ers, now in their late 30`s and with a serious ideological hangover..

Now our culture has elevated shallowness,superficiality,so-called irony and decadence to the position equal to any

other behaviour and expression of our humanity and our civilization

Jim Jones was nothing, if not an idealist. Now youre worried I am going to glorify the man and what he did – or made others do. But, while I suppose you shouldnt care, wouldnt care – the story told by the

tabloids arent exactly true, a lot of generalizations and ignorant banter doubtless is justified when speaking of infamy which is undisputeable. Let`s say that someone as supposedly detached as Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple thought of themselves as, spoke of themselves as – the Pastor,

or rather “father”, the Patriarch -would never allow what happened to begin to happen, it was a process and thats what scares all of us well-established,sane,analytical brainboxes looking at the photos circulating

today. I wouldnt have mentioned it in my blog if it hadnt been for the disgraceful way a tragedy is being dragged in front of us because someone thinks it is interesting to give whatever he dislikes a kick. I dislike Media as the animal it is, I despise it – not individual papers, not individual television companies, not the radios, the corporate tabloid mill, the commercial and private Internet.. but what, bunched up like a fist, the Media is, in the experience of one soul. I watched the Gulf War with the infrared, night-goggled

vision of an “innocent assassin”, some young man, like the pilots of Enola Gay, just flicking a switch, following orders… 30 years after Stanley Kubrick`s Doctor Strangelove!…If I resented, felt strongly against,

despised,loathed, wished the demise of one Iraqi president, and partied with the ranting lunatic in Washington – I could subsconsciously slip my hand in, and support the killing hand.. so easy, like a computer game, like

pretending -like crashing toy tanks against eachother in the sandbox.
There`s no doubt in my mind that the right temperature for ignition, as far as the massacre at Waco,Texas – were supplied by the national Media,

the Media of course, is innocent by definition – even propganda does not draw the killing blade against people, it puts images in front of the eyes, and voices inside the heads – that does these terrible things.

Im saying these things because these brown eyes saw the world, when the curtains were drawn apart and

daylight could come in – when the demigod in the livingroom, whether radio or television doesnt matter – droned on, when the inkblots of newspaper headlines could be visible.. much in the same manner as Jim Jones did. The world werent significantly different in terms of Zeitgeist, we lived in the same century,

the west were the west, when I think of it, despite a suspiciously communist friendly regime plodded along and created good little socialist citizens in Norway – it was much the same as some suburbian Texas or California or wherever at that time.. I am not sure how it is with everyone else, but I am desperately trying not to become a product of my own envoirment – in my view you have lost everything if you allow that to happen, as a sociologist concession to the fact of criminal behaviour, perhaps its barely workable, but only the most defeated will resort to it on their own behalf. From what I see from the CIA tapes and other materials published in the wake of what ensued, which actually originated either from Jim Jones himself or from Jonestown – there are quite in evidence that he and the whole demographic he associated and which drew his audience, his supporters, his family – were worried about what would happen if a war broke out which no one could stop, which would keep on escalating, he was worrying what would become of humanity, of the children – of our world, if a nuclear war was unleashed between the two superpowers.
Jim Jones was “unamerican”, he was not an ordinary patriot, and with regard to fundamentalism, if you bother to read up about what it is, and consider that we are dealing here with Christian theology, you`ll see he was not a fundamentalist – I am saying this because he said he believed that America would drop the bomb on communist China or Soviet because America

could and would profit, probably just briefly, from the carnage; which is a political statement, his symphaties for the prophesied victims of such an action did not make things better. He quit talking about the Bible, God and Jesus

– he went over the top and out of some strange whim began to speak about Principles and Divine Socialism, of how real justice, real freedom and real salvation only could be the product of people`s efforts and hard work…

This is what his moral supporters in the 1960`s heard, this was what he was saying – while not as extreme at the time, and in a proper evangelical christian vocabulary, at the very beginning of the congregation which became

the Peoples Temple. People denigrated and pestered over their early symphathy for Jim Jones included Martin Luther King Jr., none of them would ever agree with the extremist, radicalist, defeatist action done on

the “White day” (they planned a “white” or “dark” – lik Elijah Mohammed, Malcolm X`s former guru, Jones thought that the english language and its definitions attaching to “black” and “white” were racist and furthered

racist thinking, as a measure against this he shared his enthused conviction that God was Black, probably also a Woman, when you think about it – or why just one woman or one man… and so forth) – that day was about how a dream

had died in one person,upon whom “everyone” relied and who the collective would not allow to be questioned, Jim Jones, as we perhaps say it in the vernacular, had gone over the top and become insane, mad, crazy..

as a consequence of the extreme violence, not merely physical – but psychological, unfortunately, the Media has had to make a cartoon character out of him, and by consequence, his victims.. the Media does not allow

these to have choices, invidiuals lives, personalities… and the priorities necessary. Media exaggerates the power of influence of one person to vindicate the “innocent”, which is any body laying around dead when the

smoke has settled..

All over the world a very little body of human beings will have remembered the horror, the violation which this “white day” of November 19th 1978 in Jonestown represented. To the immediate family (913 chiefly Americans died) and survivors of this “utopian” “socialist”

“experiment” in the jungles of French Guyana it is still a heavy day, a difficult day, a day unreconciled.

Apropos – you can find A brief CNN interview with Laura Johnston Kohl, Jonestown survivor –

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/West/11/17/cnna.kohl/index.html

On the occasion of the 25 years of attempted healing after “event Jonestown” – when media pissed all over itself as if there hadnt been a World War 1, World War 2, Holocaust, Hiroshima Bomb, Stalag death camps, Vietnam, Cambodia and so forth…

This really should be under a miscellaneous header..but it`s okay.

Yesterday I finished reading Umberto Eco`s new novel Baudolino.

I am very satisfied, it was well worth the time and effort – while I suspect quite a few of us will be surprised reading the book through a second time, as certainly were the case with his epic The Name of the Rose – when details, subplots,symbols,characters,coincidences will begin to form new coherent patterns – it read like a “tall tale” , a tradition Eco does homage in his story of young Baudolino`s coincidential entry into capital letter “H” – History…
From a squalid,poor background as the surviving son of his farming parents in rural Fraschetta – his qualities as a fantast, a “liar” with qualities of imagination and fervour unparalleled by your common con-artists, impresses a passing red-haired, red-bearded German Knight, who just happens to be Frederick the IInd, nicknamed “Barbarossa” (red-beard) – thus Baudolino became the adopted son of what would become the first Holy Roman Emperor. Eco has Baudolino following on the campaigns of his “father”, and have him studying in Paris, and introducing the idea of intellectual freedom and self-sovereignty in the universities(?).. whiling the time as students would, only a fraction of daylight spent in the intense quest for erudition – Baudolino plots for the advantage of his father, Frederick II. This is where the story speeds up and grows… Byzantine.. in intrigues..

While not desiring to give any more away.. there are some ingredients which perhaps isnt too obvious from the blurbs and reviews, but which are quite interesting to the type of people I associate and correspond with.. these are, in no particular order: Continue reading →

Me and my gal got handed two tickets 5pm for a 8pm performance in the city of the (in)famous Musical Cats…”Do you want to go?” my father asked. Me and my girlfriend bandied around a bit, but do you know.. we went, and I suppose I shouldn`t say anything about it, but it was good. What did we expect except a few cheesy, but catchy tunes.. and entertainment all-around and a tiny bit over-the-top? That`s precisely what we got. So I have condescended into accepting an invitation into the glorious world of pop culture once again… usually such endeavours comes out of my own pocket, so those times are remarkably few.. OK: The dancing were breath-taking,the costumes looked good, the songs were ..catchy.. That`s all youre going to get me to admit, OK?

I am currently having Umberto Eco`s most recent novel, Baudolino, as company on my bus trips to work… I really loved The Name of the Rose

and The Island from the Day Before, and feel I am getting much the same fare now , and I am not complaining. Baudolino`s exploits as the adopted son of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa have fascinated me and held me in thrall for almost a week now. I read the book when I have my hands free and can spare some time, I am sure I would have read it from start to finish in one go if my life had been as vacant as it was when I discovered Eco through his brilliant novel The Name of the Rose. Being fascinated with the myths,folklore,poetry,legends,religious mysticism,occult and metaphysical speculations,art and architecture of the middle ages..and reading a lot of more or less entertaining scholarly works on the history and nature of that time period – I feel that with Baudolino that world, which has been, and which, phantastically still is – comes even more alive. The style of Baudolino is that of long narrations interjected with banter between the storyteller, Baudolino himself and his Byzantine scribe, Nicetas Choniates..Constantinople is burning, the latin crusaders have entered the holy imperial city with orders to humiliate and devastate the Byzantine empire as much as possible. With this as backdrop, Baudolino begins telling his story, which spans from his childhood in the “hicks” to his assassination of whom he claims is the murderer of emperor Frederick, his fosterfather.

As far as I have come into the book now, about 1/3 – I warmly recommend it.

So how do you really manage a blog that has a commentary ability when people working in the Sx industry use search engines to find searchwords

(in this case a species of bird) that suits their liking and post their ugly links all over our pages. This is the old tagging business isn`t it, someone sees a piece, it is nice, hell – let me just scribble my ugliest initials around it so good people from now on will think its crap.. Can I choose to audit and manually admit posted commentaries somehow? I`ll have to look up the manual or something.

Sigh! Hate to see this happen, isnt it enough that those bastards rob the bandwidth of the entire internet?

“The teachings of the Church had a doctrine of the theosis of man, but in this theosis there is no man at all. The very problem of man is not even put. But man is godlike not alone because he is capable of supressing his own nature, and thus freeing a place for divinity. There is a godlikeness in human nature itself, in the very human voice of the nature.”

Nicolai A.Berydaev, Meaning of the Creative Act, 1955.

I have just finished reading Neil Gaiman`s childrens story Coraline . Since discovering Clive Barker`s The Thief of Always I have grown to expect more from my favourite authors, among which I count Neil Gaiman, than before..I began reading “adult literature” (I do not mean “adult” magazines) at 12 and became, I suspect, more and more preconceived concerning newer childrens literature.

Back to the story: Coraline moves to a new place with her parents,who – while they have chosen to be freelancers, being around all the time, nevertheless seems quite distracted from Coraline..so she gets to explore the flat, the garden and visit the strange neighbours. Readers will find that she will not be disappointed, the place isnt as boring as she suspects…but now she looses her parents, and her “other parents” wants to change her…

I recommend it..

Here`s a flash presentation of the story – Neil Gaiman`s Coraline at Mousecircus.com

It`s almost been a year since I put a little post up about Matrix and the conclusions and theories a lot of people put up about its mythology.

Star Wars director and creator George Lucas, as some of us know, were a student under Joseph Campbell, the famous comparative mythologist…he appears to have learnt from Campbell that all the good stories have already been told, all we can do is piece the component parts of these stories into new tapestries and stories. Since the 19th century and the influx of both romanticism, which re-examined and re-invented the golden age of the late antiquity religions,cosmologies and mysteries – and Orientalism, which did much the same with the oriental and asian religions and philosophical systems – our culture has appreciated, again, Mythologies and Legends as having religious significance, in addition to the historical and literary significance which were accorded it prior to this. The Gothic Novel, the Romance Novel and eventually the first movies – borrowed themes from such Mythology and fed these back to us, some of the most beloved of fictions were believed to be true, albeit in a more subtle way, many generations before.

George Lucas sure as hell is no Guru or spiritual advisor, nor should he arrogate to himself the role of an educator…I do not suspect him of this either, but the situation with Lucas is much like the situation with the Wachowski brothers and their prodigy – The Matrix – as has been tirelessly observed by Science Fiction afficinados, the suggestions made in The Matrix reflects a developement within the Genre, informed and increased by writers such as Philip K. Dick whose stories inspired among other cinematic fantasies the cult movie Blade Runner and subsequently a whole genre of movies with an Dystopic (the dark, caustic and apocalyptic counterpart to sunshine Utopia) theme. Fantasy and Science Fiction are genres which freely and sincerely mixes the components of our cultures – be it religion,myth,dreams,gods and technology.. the most mythomanic of these, as have been demonstrated by mythologists production of literary output in this genre, is of course the Fantasy genre, the stories told at the twilight, or while immersed in the dream-like atmosphere of “another world”.

There is a lot of Blade Runner in Matrix, a lot of other earlier fantasies of being immersed in an “almost reality”, part of the thrill being introduced to riddles about the fabric and constitution of “our world” which have been shared, perhaps candidly, between thinking men and women from the days humanity began walking upright, or even before that.

First and foremost The Matrix is a high-tech Visual and Aesthetic experience – a demonstration of the suggestive and alluring spin technology has for us; recently there was a Mobile Network breakdown in this city and the entire population saw demonstrated how helplessly and pathetically dependent they had become of the little gizmo that enables wireless transfer of data: be it a conversation by voice, by SMS or by computer… if you think a little further you will find how radio communication, the transfer of millions of unobtrusive and invisible signals…has become the infrastructure of our cities “lives”..does not our lifestyles and our homes come to resemble more and more like a Cocoon?

And if we are swaddled up in a cocoon, what will crawl or fall out of it once it bursts? Neo erupts out of a cocoon in the first installment of The Matrix, this theme of humans being batteries for technology, or the providers of necessary things are outline in Jean-Luc Godard`s paranoid noir movie Alphaville already in 1965, and before him in Fritz Lang`s Metropolis, also it features in Dark City.. which even features the chanting of “Go Back to Sleep” from the monstrous chief-computer`s droning voice..and the hero of that movie discovers finally that his world is not real, but a fabricated illusion as well… Could it be our dear Wachowski brothers aren`t that refined.. that they are feeding us bits and pieces of our own mythology, from the dreamworlds of our pulp fiction novels,Sci-Fi magazines, Twilight Zone on TV and a plethora of movies.. that this is the reason we recognize themes from exotically oriental metaphysics to recognizable “Biblical” themes, is that this compartment of our culture has been recycling the ancient myths again and again…?

At the time I write this, my dear friends, I have still not seen the second installment of the series; Matrix:Reloaded, I might go this weekend ..

The Journal of Religion&Film have put online a new article on the phenomenon of the Matrix(es) : Reassessing Matrix/Reloaded by Julien R.Fielding – I think I will leave it for a better study after I have seen the wildly popular sequel.. but thought I`d share it with those of you who have…