_________ _______ ______ /___ ___\ / __ \ / ____\ / / / /__\ / / / / / / __ / / __\ / / / / \ / / / /__/ /__/ /__/ /__/ THE ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN A JOURNAL OF CULTURE ON THE EDGE... TEXT ONLY - ISSUE #3 The Annihilation Fountain & TAF Copyright c 1997-99 Neil MacKay ISSN 1480-9206 http://www.capnasty.org/taf/ the_annihilation_fountain@iname.com CONTENTS: --------- *DISINFORMATION DETECTION *I STINK, THEREFORE I AM *STATE OF THE WORLD INDICATORS *THE FUTURE OF OPERA: A PROPAGANDA PIECE PART III *THE TRAJECTORY OF A BULLET - PART I: A MAN SCREAMING SO LOUD COLOURS ARE COMING OUT OF HIS MOUTH *3 POEMS BY CHRISTOPHER STOLLE *3 POEMS BY HOLLY DAY ************************************************************************ DISINFORMATION DETECTION by Rainbow Sally ************************************************************************ Let's say we had telecomm fifty years ago. What would you think if you heard a story evolve quickly, like the one below. These are headlines from various newspapers for one day with a thumbnail description of the associated articles. Note that 5:00 in Chicago is 4:00 in New Mexico and is only 3:00 in California. You Are There... ------------------------------------ July 8th, 1947 ------------------------------------ FACTS: Chicago Daily News (evening): "Army Finds Air Saucer On Ranch In New Mexico" (Disk goes to high officers.) Roswell Daily Record (evening): "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch In Roswell Region." (No details on flying disk are revealed.) Sacramento Bee (evening): "Army Reveals It Has Flying Disk Found On Ranch In New Mexico." (Saucer details of North Staters vary considerably.) LA Herald Express (evening): "Army Finds Flying Saucer." (Airforce says platter picked up on ranch.) Second story appended, "General believes it is a radar weather gadget." The next morning all the papers said it was a weather balloon. (Source: Stanton Friedman's newspaper search.) ----------------------------------- In Sept '47 the Air Force became a separate body from the Army and all the air base's names were changed. ----------------------------------- ... I thought, therefore I was. -Descartes 10/6/97 Anyone got any other good "mutating stories" on UFOs? It may not prove anything about the UFOs, but it can help us get a bead on who's not holding up their part of the "informed public" bargain. Here are a couple more examples to give you an idea what kind of "funny sounding" reports we're looking for. Non-UFO Examples ------------------------------------------------- | \ / THE WELL INFORMED PUBLIC --- APPLAUSE! --- / \ | I subscribe to cable TV for a couple months every time the government threatens to "change." The event I will relate below occurred shortly after the Clinton's first moved to Washington DC--I don't recall the exact date. I was listening to CNN when the report about the shootings in front of the CIA building in Langly came around. And around. The first times, they had interviews with people in a bus that had seen the gunman and the brown van he was in. Most got down on the floor of the bus and didn't see the actual shooting, but they did see him drive away in a brown "van." (I got the impression that Americans that have cable must think people that ride buses can't tell an airplane from a submarine. Show you why in a sec.) An hour later, the story was pretty much the same. Same clips of the witnesses, and everything. But you guessed it, by the third time the story came around, CNN had put some professional polish on the story and it was ready for the consumer market. And here is what was consumed: "Police have impounded the brown van and have ruled it out as the getaway vehicle." And then, apparently willing to risk earning every epithet the media has ever received: "Police are now searching for a brown station wagon." There was no indication of stress in the announcer's voice. So it was evident that these farcical statements weren't coerced by a cadre of armed terrorists. So I conclude that it was probably just a joke. And though I didn't get the joke myself, I base my opinion on this: ----------------------------------------------------------------- As with any "endangered species," independent journalists find their environment becoming inhospitable. The atmosphere of greed and corporate mergers is choking out these journalists as "media managers" take over--managers more concerned with making a buck than reporting the news. (From Ed Asner's Forward to "Unreliable Sources." More below.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- News is not really so different from any other kind of entertainment, is it? Some like Asner, "whine about it" while others revel in the glory of it. So it appears that CNN --perhaps to keep ratings up-- tossed in a little comic relief. Humor is a great tonic, after all. But without sounding too much like Ed Asner (absolutely GREAT foreword, by the way) I would like to say that I'm concerned too. I think that the humor in the "news" sometimes goes right over the American public's head. So as much as I hate sit-coms, I think a laugh track w o u l d be very helpful. Here's the evolution of another media screw up, and another example of how this kind of thing might . --- -------------------< Excerpt From >------------------------- --- --- Unreliable Sources: A Guide To Detecting Bias In News Media, --- --- Martin A. Lee & Norman Solomon (foreword by Edward Asner) --- --- ------------------------------------------------------------ --- THE CONTRA COCAINE NON-STORY In July, 1989, four high-ranking Cuban military officers were executed by firing squad after a show trial--in which they had no right of appeal--convicted them of drug trafficking. It was a sensational story that grabbed big headlines in the United States. A week after the Cuban officers died, another sensational drug- related story emerged. An in-depth investigation by a Costa Rican Congressional Commission on Narcotics found that the contra re-supply network run by Lt. Col. Oliver North was deeply connected to narcotics smugglers. North, Poindexter, Richard Secord, former CIA station chief Joseph Fernandez, and former U.S. ambassador Lewis Tambs were subsequently barred from entry into Costa Rica by an executive order from Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. Unlike the Cuban drug connection, North's involvement with narcotrafficers in Costa Rica received hardly any attention in the United States. It could have. On July 22, 1989, an Associated Press wire story carried news of the Costa Rican government's finding into nearly every American newsroom, but the North drug link was downplayed or ignored entirely by mass media. The 'Washington Post' and the "Miami Herald' relegated it to a few muddled sentences on the back pages, while the 'New York Times' and the three commercial TV networks didn't say a word about the story. One noteworthy exception was the 'San Juan Star', which ran a lengthy version of the AP dispatch. The story certainly wasn't downplayed for lack of interest. After all, 1989 news polls showed a majority of U.S. citizens viewed drugs as the most important problem facing the country. The American people probably would have been interested to know that U.S. government officials were providing cover for a major drug-running operation in Central America. This media-obscured fact helps to explain the four-fold increase in cocaine entering the U.S. during the Reagan administration, while Veep Bush was titular head of the "war on drugs." [Here's where it gets interesting. -RS] HOW THE STORY SLIPPED OUT The U.S. press, acting more as a gatekeeper than an aggressive proponent of truth, skipped lightly over the highly embarrassing and potentially explosive contra drug connection for a long time. The First comprehensive expose' of contra drug trafficking appeared in late 1985, when the Associated Press ran a story by Robert Parry, a career AP reporter, and Brian Barger, who had covered Central America for ABC News and the 'Washington Post'. (Earlier that year, Barger won the Polk Award for breaking the story on the CIA assassination manual distributed to contra troops in 1984.) As it turned out, the contra drug story got onto the wire by accident after their boss tried to kill the story. "It was probably the most heavily edited story in the history of the bureau," recalled one AP staffer in Washington. "They start out questioning sources. They weaken and weaken, then they say 'Why is the AP doing this story?' Which, by then, is a good question since all the good stuff is on the cutting-room floor, so to speak." Parry told Joel Millman of the 'Columbia Journalism Review' that he had "bitter' arguments with AP editors about the story. Each rewrite was sent up to AP headquarters in New York for approval. Only much later did the two reporters find out that Oliver North was speaking with their boss, Charles J. Lewis, on a regular basis. [Cue up the laugh track. -RS] Just when it looked like the story was going nowhere, and editor working overnight at the AP's Spanish-language wire called up the text on the computer and, without checking to see if it had been okayed for publication, translated the latest draft and sent it out over the wire. The next morning Spanish-language papers in New York, Miami, and throughout Latin America picked up the story, which quoted a U.S. law enforcement official saying that drug smuggling had become an established practice among "virtually all" contra groups in Costa Rica. Three days later, on December 10, 1985, the AP ran a heavily - edited English- language version, which omitted the quote from the U.S. official linking "virtually all" contra factions to the narcotics trade. This version bore the earmarks of damage control, as it focused only on the soon-to-be-expendable contra group led by Eden Pastora--a spin undoubtedly preferred by Lt. Col. North, who had grown increasingly frustrated with Pastora's refusal to unite with contra forces in Honduras. Even though the piece had been watered down considerably by management, the Parry-Barger revelations were still sensational. But, the story ran in the 'Los Angeles Times', 'Newsday', and the 'Philadelphia Inquirer', it didn't get much more exposure. The 'New York Times', which published other AP riffs on the contras, let it slide; the 'Washington Post' held it for a week, then buried it in the middle of the paper. Aside from passing mention by Tom Brokaw on 'NBC Nightly News', none of the networks touched the story. In March 1986 'San Francisco Examiner' reporter Seth Rosenfeld documented links between cocaine traffickers and top officials of the main contra group in Honduras. but it was just another drop in the big media bucket. A year would pass before CBS 'West 57th' interviewed convicted American drug pilots who told of flying weapons to the contra base camps in Honduras and backloading cocaine and marijuana to the United States. PBS 'Frontline' also presented an in-depth report on the role of U.S. intelligence in the narcotics trade. But these disclosures came and went without causing much of a stir--in large part because U.S. officials, for obvious reasons, were not inclined to push the story. Instead, the Reagan administration sought to divert attention from the contra connection by claiming that the Nicaraguan government was involved in drug trafficking. Whereas U.S. media were squeamish about publicizing contra smuggling, they eagerly embraced allegations of a Sandinista cocaine link, despite a lack of evidence to back up the charges. -=-=-=-=- One CBS interview (not sure if its the same one(s) they are talking about above) ran against the Rose Bowl on the other networks. Nobody seemed to pay much attention to these revelations. (Source: "Out of Control" by Leslie Cockburn who had been doing interviews. And was laid off soon after.) This scheduling screw up was either the work of an extremely well-connected tactical genius or just some extremely bad luck for the "informed public." Perhaps someday we can subject this to a "black box" analysis--where all we do is look at outputs in relation to inputs--disregarding how or what makes the thing "tick." ...ET phone Congress {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ************************************************************************ I STINK, THEREFORE I AM by Paul Laurendeau ************************************************************************ Hey! Nihilo-Fountainers! Ever heard of THE CRISIS OF THE CARTESIAN COGITO? Well, maybe you should, since it gives a flat and simple example of the importance of the debate I described and exemplified in my first contribution to THE ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN, the one about the BIG BANG THEORY. "COGITO" ("I think" in Latin, from COGITO, ERGO SUM) is the name given, in our contemporary culture, as one says when one tries to look flashy, to a buzz-statement farted in 1637 by a guy, who signed CARTESIUS when he was writing in Latin, and who carried the more modest name of RenŽ Descartes (1596-1650). The CARTESIAN (from CARTESIUS i.e. Descartes) COGITO though is simply nothing other than the following sentence: I THINK, THEREFORE I AM. That statement, one of the most renowned philosophical mottoes of the millennium, stinks ambiguity and sweats duplicity big time. And that particular equivocal stench that I will describe here, makes of the COGITO a juicy example of the fundamental struggle between Idealism and Materialism in philosophy. IDEALISM is the belief in the fact that spirit and spiritual entities determine the organisation of material life. MATERIALISM is the conviction that the organisation of material life determines our spiritual representations, meditations and fantasies. The problem which lead to the crucial debate between Idealism and Materialism comes from a struggle over which category, MATTER or SPIRIT, is to be considered FUNDAMENTALLY OBJECTIVE. This can be explained by using the example of the question which is the most tightly connected to the Cartesian Cogito: HOW IS IT THAT I THINK? "... we see that to answer the question "How is it that man thinks?" there can be only two quite different and totally opposed answers: First answer: Man thinks because he has a soul. Second answer: Man thinks because he has a brain. According to which answer we give, we will be lead to give different solutions to the problems which flow from this question. According to our answer, we are idealists or materialists. (Politzer 1976: 13 - published in 1936) In that situation, the IDEALISTS (who provide the first answer in Politzer's example) and the MATERIALISTS (who provide the second answer in Politzer's example) both agree on the supremacy of the OBJECTIVE over the SUBJECTIVE. What they do not agree upon is to which category, MATTER or SPIRIT, the status of fundamental objectivity should be given. For the idealists, a spirit (namely God) is the supreme OBJECTIVE being that penetrates every human SUBJECT and determines them through the soul. The idealists do not deny that we have a brain, but for them the fact of having a brain is not specific to the human SUBJECT, who is the only one with "a soul" that "will survive" after the death of the body. For the materialists, the human brain is a particular organisation of OBJECTIVE biological matter characterised by the possibility to develop a complex mind that reaches the level of SUBJECTIVE self-consciousness. The body and the brain are mandatory supports for the mind. "Thus when the body is dissolved by putric action, its power of thinking entirely ceases" (Priestley in 1778, quoted in Plekhanov 1967: 91). The materialists do not deny that we have a spirituality, but they describe it as being the production of our SUBJECTIVITY. For the Idealists SPIRIT (God) is the objective being that created our material individuality. For the Materialists MATTER is the objective being that gradually evolved from inorganic, to organic, to organic with a social organisation leading to a subjective conscience able to create ideas, including fictive ideas such as the myth of God. Descartes was sitting between two chairs on that fundamental debate between Idealism and Materialism. He was a scientific mind who introduced significant developments in Mathematics and Physics, and who strongly believed in the determining action of matter on mind. But at the same time he evolved, specially by the end of his life, into the typical 17th century moral oriented GodAssLicker/MotherMaryFucker. The point is also that, even in his materialist phase, he always had the jitters vis-ˆ-vis the (pro-blind-religion) monarchic power, which at the time did not only tended to burn the "subversive" books but their authors too. Therefore, if we come back to the Stinky-Statement itself, we observe that there are two possible opposite meanings to the Cartesian COGITO, one idealist and one materialist. a) THE IDEALIST MEANING OF THE COGITO: This meaning comes from the ontological value given to the statement. If, when you make the statement, you are talking about WHAT IS EFFECTIVELY EXISTING (ONTOLOGY is the Doctrine of Being), the existence of the fact of thinking appears as the foundation of your own existence. Then you are claiming that your spirit determines your matter. Speaking of Descartes, the idealist Hegel (1963, vol.III: 224) said that "the spirit of his philosophy is simply knowledge as the unity of Thought and Being." Another way to put the statement in its idealist meaning is I AM BECAUSE I THINK, standing for: DESCRIBING MYSELF AS A BEING, I CLAIM THAT IT IS THE FACT THAT I THINK THAT MAKES ME EXIST. In the general ordinary opinion, this idealist version of the COGITO is often believed to be what Descartes meant. Almost everybody is ready to follow Hegel's idealist exclamation (1963, vol.III: 228): "Thought as Being and Being as Thought - that is my certainty, 'I'; in the celebrated COGITO ERGO SUM thus have Thought and Being inseparably bound together." This belief is probably wrong, and the real meaning of Descartes' view is quite likely to have been distorted by the idealist interpretation. "The Descartian thesis has been distorted into the statement that nothing is evident to man but his own subjective conception. And the ideology has been carried to the extreme of calling the whole world an idea, a phantasmagoria. True Descartes needed God in order to be sure that his conceptions did not cheat him." (Dietzgen 1906c: 427 - written in 1887) On the God-Garbage, see my second contribution to the ANNIHILATION FOUNTAIN. Despite the accuracy of this observation by the materialist Joseph Dietzgen (1820-1888), it is important to realise that the COGITO does not belong to Descartes anymore since its celebrity status made of it a common sense motto... with the idealist meaning. Descartes' main philosophical adversary of the time, Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), who criticised him from the materialist point of view but with the old fashioned instruments of traditional logic, demonstrates how difficult it is to give precedence to THINKING over BEING in that type of reasoning: "Furthermore, when you say "I think", you make a statement about yourself at the present time; it is the same as if you said, "I am thinking". In fact you are the subject and thought is the attribute. However, you cannot say that you are thinking without saying "You are". Logicians declare this when they teach that the verb makes a statement about time, namely TO NUN HUPARCHEIN, the fact of existing now. Accordingly, when you say "I think," you are saying "I am"; and when you then draw the conclusion "therefore, I am", you are adding nothing but what you have presupposed; and so you are proving something by itself." (Gassendi 1972: 180 - published in 1644) And we are brought to: b) THE MATERIALIST MEANING OF THE COGITO: This meaning comes from the gnoseological value given to the statement, being acknowledged that "It is a fact of experience that men think" (Dietzgen 1906a: 72). If, when you make the statement, you are talking about YOUR OWN ACTIVITY OF REFLEXION (GNOSEOLOGY is the Doctrine of Knowledge), that activity of thinking appears as the confirmation of your previous existence. Then you are claiming that your matter determines your spirit. "The fact of my thinking, says the philosopher, proves my existence" (Dietzgen 1906b: 195). Another way to put the statement in its materialist meaning is I AM SINCE I THINK, standing for: IN MY INVESTIGATION ABOUT MYSELF, I NOTICE THAT I THINK. THEN IT PERMITS ME TO CONFIRM THAT I EXIST. This meaning is at the origin of the absolutely crucial para-Cartesian statement that constitutes the title of the present contribution: I STINK, THEREFORE I AM (the fact of stinking does not make me exist, but definitely confirms my mere existence). Along the same line of interpretation, one can also quote the paronymic dog-Latin COITO ERGO SUM ("I fuck, therefore I am"), stimulated, so to say, by exactly the same type of materialist hypothetical-deductive reasoning grounded in an obvious empirical fact of existence... This materialist version of the COGITO probably corresponds to what Descartes really (and hypocritically... CF his compulsive fright of the gendarmes of Louis XIII) meant in his famous Discourse on Method for Rightly Conducting One's Reason and for Seeking Truth in the Sciences .It is also the interpretation our collective common sense forgot. "Materialism - which, it should be said here, is in general the logical consequence of Descartes' doctrine - " (Plekhanov 1967: 253) appears to be his option only if the approach to the statement is gnoseological. Thus, despite a very odoriferous ambivalent manner of formulating the explanations that accompany the COGITO itself, we can affirm that Descartes was talking about his METHOD OF INVESTIGATION rather than about EXISTENCE. "Descartes' method is the method of the clear understanding merely" (Hegel 1963, vol.III: 240). At the exact moment of stating the COGITO, he was describing himself working on his methodology's starting point. This starting point was the attempt to formulate the only thought he was certain to be able to trust as true and totally free from any other preconceived idea. He then claimed that that pure initial judgement was I THINK. As Spinoza (1961: 12) puts it, Descartes follows the three following gnoseological steps: "I DOUBT, I THINK, THEREFORE I AM". That very specific situation in which the COGITO is formulated permitted Pierre Gassendi, using the old logical procedure of the syllogism, to oppose Descartes again on the METHOD as he had opposed him on the BEING: "So a syllogism must be made up, either in the first and perfect figure, to use a technical term, as follows: "Whoever thinks is; I think; therefore I am." or, in fourth figure, generally disapproved of and called Galenic, as follows: "I think; whoever thinks is; therefore I am." But in either form, your collapse is evident. For if you draw your conclusion according to the first form, the statement "Whoever thinks is" becomes a preconceived notion, antecedent to the one you wish to establish as the first judgement. And according to the second form, your minor premiss "Whoever thinks is" becomes a judgement that does not depend upon your statement "I think" and does not follow your conclusion "I am" upon which you want all judgement except "I think" to depend. (Gassendi 1972: 180-181 - published in 1644) All these speculations are supposed to be about the starting point of the procedure (the "method") of investigation. "The first of the fundamental determinations of the Cartesian metaphysics is from the certainty of oneself to arrive at the truth, to recognise Being in the notion of thought" (Hegel 1963, vol.III: 240). From that, we can say that there is a clear irrealistic abstraction in the Cartesian reflection leading to the COGITO: that futile attempt to clean mentally the mess of our thoughts to find the pure original idea (I THINK) that will permit us to deduce intellectually our own existence (THEREFORE I AM). Shit! Yes! How irrealistic to see our own existence presented as a simple hypothesis, merely a burp coming from no stomach!. "For, as regards ourselves, when I know that I exist, I cannot hypothesise that I exist or do not exist anymore than I can hypothesise an elephant that can go through the eye of a needle..." (Spinoza 1955: 19). One of the most prestigious African materialist philosophers, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), showed the "speciousness" of Cartesian methodological conceptions by the simple fact of looking at them with a free mind: "Descartes says that he can think of himself as being without eyes, or as being without arms, etc. In short, he claims that he can think of himself as having been deprived of any of his physical features which anyone might care to name. Whatever be the truth value of this, he sets it up as a reason for saying that he can think of himself as being without a body. Though one may not wish to deny that Descartes could indeed have been physically deformed, one must, I think, resolutely maintain that disincarnation is not a physical deformity! There still remains a distinction between mere deformity and disincarnation. Descartes' reasoning is of the same level of speciousness as the notion that because one can think of a cow without a tail or horns, etc., one can think of a cow without a body. Thinking of a cow without a body is as different from the thought of a cow without a tail, as thinking of Descartes without a body is different from his thought of himself without arms." (Nkrumah 1964: 16) But, despite that obvious irrealistic abstraction (and even because of it!), something ontologically crucial is on the move around that so simple little Stinky-Statement. The struggle between IDEALISM and MATERIALISM is flagrant everywhere in Descartes' Discourse on Method, and especially around the COGITO. This strong presence of the fundamental debate of philosophy deeply rooted in it, is certainly what explains a good part of the fascination the statement I THINK, THEREFORE I AM still exerts on the philosophical culture of the turn of the millennium. Now let stick our noses right in the middle of the ambiguous dung. Let us put the motto in its broader context and see how ambivalent its orientation is. In red text are the portions of the fragment that pull the COGITO in the direction of Materialism. In yellow text are the portions of the fragment that pull the COGITO in the direction of Idealism . Quoting from the Discourse on Method for Rightly Conducting One's Reason and for Seeking Truth in the Sciences, Part Four: "As there are men who make mistakes in reasoning even on the simplest topic in geometry, I judged that I was as liable to error as any other, and rejected as false all the reasoning which I had previously accepted as valid demonstration. Finally, as the same precepts which we have when awake may come to us when asleep without their being true, I decided to suppose that nothing that had ever entered my mind was more real than the illusions of my dreams. But I soon noticed that while I thus wished to think everything false, it was necessarily true that I who thought so was something. 1 Since this truth, I THINK, THEREFORE I AM, was so firm and assured that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were unable to shake it. I judged that I could safely accept it as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking.2 I then examined closely what I was, and saw that I could imagine that I had no body, and that there was no world nor any place that I occupied,3 but that I could not imagine for a moment that I did not exist.4 On the contrary, from the very fact that I doubted the truth of other things, it followed very evidently and very certainly that I existed. On the other hand, if I had ceased to think while all the rest of what I had ever imagined remained true, I would have had no reason to believe that I existed;5 therefore I concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence was only to think and which, to exist, has no need of space nor of any material thing. Thus it follows that this ego, this soul, by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body6 and is easier to know than the latter,7 and that even if the body were not, the soul would not cease to be all that it now is.8 Next I considered in general what is required of a proposition for it to be true and certain, for since I had just discovered one to be such, I thought I ought also to know of what that certitude consisted. I saw that there was nothing at all in this statement, "I think, therefore I am", to assure me that I was saying the truth, unless it was that I saw very clearly that to think one must exist.9 So I judged that I could accept as a general rule that the things which we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are always true,10 but that there may well be some difficulty in deciding which are those which we conceive distinctly." (Descartes 1956: 20-21 - published in 1637) Tied result! The fragment of the Discourse on Method containing the Stinky-Statement shows very clearly what the CRISIS OF THE COGITO is: a jittery stop-and-go wishywash between Idealism and Materialism, between rational progress and mystical regression. So typical of these last ten centuries, donât you think so, O Nihilo-Fountainers! Personally my stand is taken: it is the materialist stand. I STINK THEREFORE I AM, such is the most convincing syllogism of this stinky, juicy, sloppy, sweaty dying-out millennium. It is a truth, a mere truth! REFERENCES: Descartes, R. (1956), Discourse on Method, New York, Macmillan/Library of Liberal Arts, 50p. published in 1637. Dietzgen, J. (1906), The Positive Outcome of Philosophy, Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Company, 444p. Dietzgen, J. (1906a), "The Nature of Human Brain Work - A Renewed Critique of Pure and Practical Reason" in The Positive Outcome of Philosophy, Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Company, pp 39-173. written in 1869. Dietzgen, J. (1906b), "Letters on Logic" in The Positive Outcome of Philosophy, Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Company, pp 175-323. written around 1884. Dietzgen, J. (1906c), "The Positive Outcome of Philosophy" in The Positive Outcome of Philosophy, Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Company, pp 325-444. written in 1887. Gassendi, P. (1972), The Selected Works of Pierre Gassendi, New York, Johnson Reprint Corporation, 442p. published between 1624 and 1658. Hegel, G.W.F. (1963), Lectures on the History of Philosophy, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York, The Humanities Press, vol.1, 487p.; vol.2, 453p.; vol.3, 571p. published in 1840. Nkrumah, K. (1964), Consciencism - Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization and Development with Particular References to the African Revolution, London, Heinemann, 122p. Plekhanov, G.V. (1967), Essays in the History of Materialism, New York, Howard Fertig, 288p. published in 1896. Politzer, G. (1976), Elementary Principles of Philosophy, New York, International Publishers, 171p. published in 1936. Spinoza, B. de (1955), On the Improvement of the Understanding - The Ethics - Correspondence, New York, Dover Publications, 420p. published in 1677. Spinoza, B. de (1961), Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, London, Peter Owen Limited, 192p. written in 1663. NOTES: 1)Original quote: But I soon noticed that while I thus wished to think everything false, it was necessarily true that I who thought so was something. It is highly materialist to acknowledged that the objective existence of the thinking being resists any attempt of self-denial. This fragment is to be related to the Cartesian notion of "horror of void", one of the running gags of 17th century mechanist materialism. 2)Original quote: I judged that I could safely accept it as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking. In the purest idealist tradition on gnoseology, Descartes believes that a system of philosophical thought can have a starting point and that that starting point is non material, being simply one of the ideas or argumentative verbal statements of the philosophical system itself. This approach is to be related to the mythical Christian notion of creation. 3)Original quote: I could imagine that I had no body, and that there was no world nor any place that I occupied, Speculative abstraction fluffed in the direction of the intellectual denial of empirical reality is one of the key methodological elements of philosophical idealism. The procedure is similar to the movement of abstraction used in elementary geometry when you deny finity to the line or thickness to the plane. This is what Kwame Nkruma was after. 4)Original quote: I could not imagine for a moment that I did not exist. The incapacity for speculation to reject the existence of the speculating being testifies that in order to have thought you need an objective material being capable of thought. No light without a source of light. No fart without a digesting organism causing it. No imagination without an imagining brain. Highly materialist view. 5)Original quote: it followed very evidently and very certainly that I existed. On the other hand, if I had ceased to think while all the rest of what I had ever imagined remained true, I would have had no reason to believe that I existed Despite its highly speculative dimension, this fragment is arguing in favour of materialism. Thought, even doubtful, is the symptom of the existence of the thinking being and the absence of thought would be the symptom of the absence of existence of the thinking being (this reasoning is not applicable to non thinking beings without reintroducing Idealism). The perpetuated objective truth of what I thought about after the extinction of my own thought confirms my disappearance or my "non existence" as a being. Even if I do not produce thoughts about my children after my death, their life will continue. 6)Original quote: a substance whose whole essence was only to think and which, to exist, has no need of space nor of any material thing. Thus it follows that this ego, this soul, by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body The belief in a complete autonomy of the thinking self from the material being is called Transcendental Idealism. Actually the fundamental claim of every type of idealism i.e. the existence of a spiritual essence independent from material reality is very purely presented in that fragment. 7)Original quote: is easier to know than the latter, The fact that intellectual or spiritual reality is easier to know i.e. less complex than objective material reality is one of the key element of the gnoseology of materialism. The quasi- compulsive priority given to clarity and simplicity in Cartesian rationalism is grounded in that distance taken by the philosophical speculation toward the complexity of the material world revealed here. 8)Original quote: if the body were not, the soul would not cease to be all that it now is. This is nothing other than the standard belief in the "soul" and its immortality as swept along through the reactionary idealism of religious ideology. This is certainly the most obvious concession to theological thought made in the section of the Discourse on Method surrounding the COGITO. Incidentally that whole section is included in Part Four of the text, titled itself: PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD AND OF THE HUMAN SOUL, what is not a good sign either! The guy had good reasons to have the jitters after all the materialist position he had already introduced. 9)Original quote: I saw very clearly that to think one must exist. Once again it is highly materialist to acknowledged that the objective existence of the thinking being resists any attempt of self-denial. The existence of a thinking being (with a brain, a social life, etc) is a necessary condition of emergence for thought. What is seen clearly here is the materialist doctrine of the subordination of subjective thinking to objective being. 10)Original quote: the things which we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are always true Idealist and positivistic position in gnoseology. The clear and distinct idea becomes the key criteria of knowledge. Then that key criteria is an idea and the manipulation of the subjective self on it is obliterated. The quasi-compulsive priority given to clarity and simplicity in Cartesian rationalism is grounded in that tight connection made by the philosophical speculation between truth and apparently obvious opinions or conceptions. {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ************************************************************************ STATE OF THE WORLD INDICATORS from http://www.igc.apc.org/millennium/inds as of 1 September 1997 ************************************************************************ World Population: 5,864,351,641 Years Until Insufficient Land - Northern Diet: 8 Years Until Insufficient Land - Southern Diet: 39 Species Extinctions Per Day: 104 Years Until 1/3 of Species Are Lost: 9 Years Until Half of Crude Oil Is Gone: 3 Years Until 80% of Crude Oil Is Gone: 23 Percent Antarctic Ozone Depletion: 70+ Carbon Dioxide, Years Until Doubling: 60 Water Availability (000 cubic meters/person/year): 10 {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ************************************************************************ THE FUTURE OF OPERA: A PROPAGANDA PIECE PART III by The "Puffin" ************************************************************************ The Future of Opera parts I & II apeared in TAF Issue #1 In order to elaborate the Future of Opera, we must first clear up a pertinent issue in contemporary cultural discourse. Let me, in a postmodern spirit of merciless and irreverent appropriation, offer the following aphorism: The medium WAS the message. If you read that book, you got it then. Once you've got it, forget Mcluhan. His message was: pay attention to the medium. Once you understand that, the Content becomes the message once again, only now we know that the medium of conveyance plays a part in the reception of the message. Good one, Marshal! I've brought this up for a reason. (1) "The medium is the message is a FUCKING DISEASE now. Every jerkoff with a glimmer of creative spirit is buying up technology, pushing all its buttons, and pretending the first thing that burps out is art. They use their little culture calculators to dress up bad theatre in garish spectacle, then they l iposuction some pretty young thing and stick it out front for the masses to gawk at. Why do you think we have to put up with a creature like David Burnham? .(2) Who needs a perfect Donnie Osmond? well, they do. It's all part of getting the slack jaws pointed toward their extravaganza. If you think the message is the medium, then you might believe that there is some reasonable reason to pay attention to Joseph and the Amazing Technovomit Dreamspank. Its not like it has any content to offer, it just has media to pummel you with. The zombies have absorbed our beloved Marshal and created CITY TV. They've dressed everything up in neon and explosives, but all we end up with is exploding Penguins and neon Hags and fucking David Burnham. It isn't even new. Its just Wagner with a lobotomy and a rocket up his ass. (And don't get me started on the internet...) The content is fake, boring old myth, Bible stories; the medium is the Technicolor dreamcoat,(3) and the present reality is a vacant skull staring blankly out from behind the big teeth and the big hair and the technological media that is necessary to get the desensitized zombies to pay attention at all. If the medium is the message, then I get that the world is just one fake disaster or simulated sex act after another. Sorry folks, but this is just too stupid. I'd rather have a massive heart attack. At least that would be real. But then I'd be dead. Good thing you're not taking me seriously. So what then? I wonder what happens if, instead of exploiting the medium of conveyance, we simply try to remove as much media as we can? What if we pare away everything except the stage, the players and the audience, and look for the simplest way to make this situation interesting? Well, lets start with a game. Say, a race. Nothing simpler than that. First across the line is the winner, and winning is the point. And while those guys are racing, we can watch and decide who is good and who is bad. But that's obvious, isn't it? Win is good, loose is bad. Why then do we feel sympathy for the loser? are we bad? And we like the winner too, at the same time. Are we sick, or what? Well, as some old bum told me once: it's not the winning or loosing, it is the playing that means something. There can be bad winning and good loosing. Many levels and approaches are possible. So out of this simple process comes a whole drama, a theatre of intense human interaction. A game presents a situation in which the structure of the world is simplified and focused. There is none of the putrid froth of small talk and petty bickering thrown off the tidal movement of existence, the soap opera crap which only the bored housewives and the unemployable unemployed will tolerate as the substance of entertainment. That stinking spray is too diffuse to represent anything - it is just the wasting away of more seconds until you go die like a good human. Here, in this rarified context, one is supposed to play the fame, fundamentally; to follow the rues and within those bounds perform some prescribed task. And through that process, I believe, we can get with the tidal flow, ride the big wave, lay it out for the masses, and even cash in big after the show. So how's that then? Well, beyond the initial simplifying ritualization, the process of sport elaborates these basic themes, articulating them through finer and finer transforms by applying the three drives that all religions say underlie our existence: affirmation, denial and reconciliation, or in this context, talent, competition, and the race meeting. Competition says you must fight to get what you want, talent says you are capable of winning that fight, and the race meeting reconciles the two by providing a proving ground and an audience to pay attention, giving it all meaning. Avoiding any half measures, I propose Grand Prix automobile racing as a model for the Future of Opera. (4) Premodern competition augmented with modern technology makes for postmodern art. Very loud, very fast, highly technical, completely beyond any sort of reasonable justification. This is not a rational activity, any more than zombie opera is. It exists because the audience loves it, and as we all know, love is not rational. Those folks are not there to look good, and God knows they don't. They all buy up those gaudy overpriced logo festooned costumes like they might not mind being seen dead wearing them. But there is a genuine passion behind the bad taste, showing up the snotty condescension of those champagne crackheads at the zombie opera. race fans stand and cheer when they want to, not when they're supposed to. And, more telling, they in fact will sometimes refuse to cheer when they are supposed to, or even jeer inadequate performance. They still know how to act the way they really feel. (5) What is it they are they applauding? I say it is the content: the genuine drama, the presence of real heroes, the actual spectacle, the fact that it is not trying to look like something, but actually is something. It may be an irrational thing, but then, when you find your eyes following someone on the street, what's rational about that? It may be an artificial context, but then, as the Buddhists say, any and all contexts are ultimately artificial. (6) If you can suspend disbelief, you can be there too: witnessing the humans doing battle, brandishing the weapons of our technology, doing magic with the elements of fire, water, earth and air. In short, we can live the theatre that the humans have always been willing to pay good money to live. Grand Prix automobile racing is one prototype of the Future of Opera. Getting into the details, what is it that those racer guys actually do? Let's start with the challenge of the truly difficult corner. The general rule is to approach on the outside, brake down, turn in, clip the inside curb in the middle of the turn, and accelerate out again, sliding the car to the outside curb. You know, just like playing the piano is, in essence, pushing down little levers according to written instructions. Some can do it better than others. And, of course, there are important distinctions between a Liszt sonata and 'chopsticks.' (a friend of mine broke two fingers playing a particularly difficult passage in the Transendental Preludes, you could hear the snap at the back of the hall... (7) Central to the understanding of Grand Prix racing is the notion of 'the limit' or 'the edge,' the point at which a racing car is cornering fast as the laws of physics allow. Two time World Driving Champion Michael Schumacher says "The secret of driving quickly as to corner at the limit, with the car balanced on the throttle. Most drivers do it, but some are jerky, which costs you speed. I try my absolute best to be smooth, and right on the limit, all the way through a corner. Quite a few drivers find the limit on the exit of a bend, but they aren't on the limit going in, or in the middle of the corner. It's all very well being on the limit coming out of a bend, but you'll never make up for what you've lost." (8) What he doesn't say, but certainly implies, is that it is much easier to find the limit when you are approaching it from the safe side, accelerating out of the bend. To enter a corner on the limit is another thing altogether; he must often brake down from speeds approaching 200 miles per hour, well on the wrong side of the limit, and get it precisely right time after time. Fellow driver Julian Baily describes Schumacher at the wheel: "He was on the limit, and you could see the car was alive, the back end working. [Former World Driving Champion Ayrton] Senna could do the same, dance a car around at the limit. You see [Jean] Alesi do it, too. Others seem to have their cars on railway lines, which isn't the same thing at all." (9) I've seen it myself; at the first corner of Montreal's race course, Schumacher's 700 horsepower Ferrari braking from about 180 mph, turning in on a line unlike that of any other driver, and proceeding to carve an arc through the turn at an angle described by neither the front nor rear wheels. It was a stunning kind of dance, one which, in an uncanny way, brought the machine to life, at least to all appearances. This performance, then, presents a vivid symbolic representation of the great struggle of mankind to become God, to breathe life into the inanimate objects we create. We can't really do it yet, but this is an Opera of the Future, remember? Others can tell us more about this dance. The technical nature of the sport makes the car engineer's view particularly germaine. Here's one to talk about the toys our heroes play with: Watching the 1995 racecars from Williams and Benetton, it is clear either that the Williams FW17 is more stable, or that it has more grip... To maintain the same speed through a corner, the Benetton B195 must be driven nearer the edge of its smaller [performance] envelope. It will therefore be nearer the limit of stability and control. It is possible that the Benetton has had to be set up with a lower stability margin than the Williams, in order to slightly 'stretch' the envelope in these key sectors to male up for an inherently slightly smaller envelope. [Then Benetton driver] Michael Schumacher has recently alluded to this. He has also suggested that this may be the key to the large difference in performance between himself and other drivers who have raced the Benetton. This becomes clearer if we define "stable" and "unstable" respectively as "the tendency to return to a position of equilibrium, when disturbed; and "the tendency to diverge from a position of equilibrium, when disturbed." While a stable car will inherently correct small disturbances itself, a driver must not disturb an unstable (or marginally stable) racecar in order to take it to its limit and hold it there. If such a car is disturbed, very fast reactions are needed to correct the disturbance before it diverges beyond the available control authority, which is itself small or zero at the limit. Schumacher drives very smoothly as well as having fast reactions. He knows the car well and where its limits lie. He approaches them carefully, so as not to overshoot or disturb the car unnecessarily once the limit has been attained. [Former World Champion drivers] Senna, Prost, Stewart and Clark all had this characteristic. While the engineers at Benetton work to expand the performance envelope of the B195, Schumacher pushes its edges. Even he occasionally discovers that it is not possible to escape from its confines...(10) So that's something of what they do, but who are the guys who actually do it? Lots of unfamiliar names, I'm sure, but behind the names there are unique personalities, each reflecting particular talents and expressing them through different sorts of ego. The general trend is, of course, toward the highly competitive and strong willed type, but individuals range from the elegant aristocratic type to the blustering lout. (11) They all must have extensive technical understanding of the car, and a background in racing that involves a lot of travel all over the world, as well as a lot of track time. They are all very fit, as the performance envelope of the current cars requires the driver to keep a clear head while absorbing high acceleration loads for periods of up to two hours. Their minds must be sharp in order to make the kind of instantaneous decisions required when something strange happens in a high speed corner. They are all highly ambitious and successful, having had to win races consistently in the 'lower formulae' (go-carts and a series of cars of increasing performance and complexity). They come from many different countries, backgrounds and lifestyles (though they are all pretty much white males.....and many are rich). Some are virtuoso performers, 'aces,' others are journeymen who pick up the odd win when the best drivers make mistakes or have their engines ventilate themselves. But they all WANT to win, and are sure they are the best on their day. Imagine a group of guys like this playing any game and you get some idea what competition is like on the track. Of course, substantial rivalries develop. The following passage, from an interview with Team Williams technical director Patrick Head, outlines distinctions between two types of racing personalities: Damon [Hill] was a skilful, calculating driver with a lot of [Alain] Prost in him. In the fast corners Prost would always calculate the odds and give himself a margin. That wasn't because he was frightened - F1 [Formula 1, synonym for Grand Prix] drivers don't get frightened - it was just that when your front and rear tires are half on the track half in the dirt, you are only so far away from a big one [crash]. Once or twice in 1993 we saw Alain severely pushed to his [fastest] time by Damon. Then he would start using up more and more of those margins. He didn't like doing it, and when he got out of the car he would be gnawing at those fingernails. But he did it when he had to. Somebody like Damon, whose brain is always in gear, will always leave himself a margin in places where he knows he could have a very serious accident. Whereas with Jacques [Villeneuve], at Suzuka [Japan] last year [1996], it amused him to go through 130R [dangerous turn!!] absolutely flat [without slowing down]. He set that as his target. Until last year, I'd never seen anyone do it, but after he'd done a 1 minute 38.9 seconds, he was grinning all over his face. He came up to me and said: "I told you. It is flat!" I said: "No, it isn't." But when I went to have a look at the throttle trace [on the telemetry graph], there wasn't a ripple before the corner. He'd come out with half of his tires in the dirt on the outside and had absolutely no margin at all. With Damon, there was a lift [of the throttle]. He had decided to leave a margin. Damon Hill and Alain Prost are the Apollonian type, cool, calculated, perfect. Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve are Dionesians, stylish fiery risk takers. Mixing the two types on the racetrack can lead to interesting confrontations. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the major rivalry was between Frenchman Alain Prost and Brazilian Ayrton Senna. Both were ace racers, known for beating everybody. Prost had been doing it for a few years when Senna showed up and gradually took over the sport. Prost was a thoughtful guy; he understood every aspect of the game and could balance the importance of all these factors as it shifted from moment to moment, both on the track and off. His car always handled well, and he always drove smooth and fast. But when Senna turned up Prost was in successful mid career, working from a sound and proven strategic base, and no longer willing to take extreme tactical risks. Enter Senna, young, very skilled, very brave, and very aggressive. He learned to drive perfectly, and then figured out what risks were beyond Prost. He proceeded then to take those risks himself. I know, it reads like a comic book. When the rivalry came to its climax at the 1991 Japanese Grand Prix, both went off the road in the first corner, and abandoned their undrivable cars in the gravel. The difference going into the race had been that Prost had to beat Senna on the road in order to become World Champion, and if he did not finish the race, Senna would automatically win. So, going into the first turn after the start, Senna, having been beaten off the line, simply drove into Prost, and both crashed out of the race, with Senna getting the championship. Senna didn't admit deliberately crashing Prost off at the time, but everyone suspected it, and he eventually confirmed the suspicions. What kind of human would pull a dangerous stunt like that? Senna, three time World Champion racing driver, said this of his experience driving at the limit: It [is] fundamental to me that I concentrate as deeply as I can... And in that state I am somehow able to get to a level where I am ahead of myself... In effect, I'm predicting what I'm going to face, so I can correct it before it actually happens. You need a lot of concentration for that, as well as instant reactions; so a lot of tension goes through the body - like electricity... I use everything I have.... (12) Remind you of anything? Here's a hint: "I think of the various degrees of frenzy in my fellow actors, the desperate pitch to which I had been pushed, the charged and silent concentration of the audience upon my wildly dancing body, and the infinite web of electromagnetic energy of which we are all a part and which constitutes the current scientific definition of reality, I wonder if there might be times when a man becomes so charged with electrical potential that the normal boundaries of the mind dissolve for a moment as the charge is released. This sudden, lightning like transit would be what the ancient Greeks called 'ecstasy.'" If you want to read the whole quote, go here.(13) He's not as eloquent, but Senna actually said it with the car, if you saw him race. He was clearly describing an ecstatic experience, in the ancient Greek sense, complete with a kind of functional clairvoyance. There were times in races where he did things that did not seem possible without some sort of knowledge of the future, just as with Wayne Gretzsky, at his best; he would see opportunities taking shape before they happened, plot the openings, and simply skate through them. A small miracle, but a damn sight better than some sweaty statuette 'crying' in some dismal religious dispensary. The danger inherent in Grand Prix racing makes Senna's feat all the more astonishing. The danger is what makes racing the only surviving gladiator sport, and while safety measures have made it more remote, the possibility of having the really 'big one' is always there for those who push hard. Ayrton Senna was one who pushed harder than any other, and many people were watching in May of 1994 when, leading Schumacher at the front of the pack, he went off the circuit in Immola and pushed a metal rod through his forehead, causing his death. (14) The whole scene was highly dramatic, the wreck viewed from above, with the fallen hero still at the wheel, his head moving once. We couldn't see the blood, and didn't know until sometime later what exactly had happened to him. As I write this, there are still legal proceedings afoot to try and figure out why it happened. Did the car break, or did his extraordinary skill simply fail on this occasion? In the moment, however, it was just stunning, an event that no one expected, but which made perfect sense in the big picture. Of course Senna, the greatest ever to drive, would die at the wheel, leading the race in a car that was not particularly good, driving it faster that it wanted to go.(15) Opera needs the big scene, and the death of the hero is as big as it can get. Opera needs the big message, and there it is. You can figure it out. I'm not the first to notice the power in the image of a man dancing with a machine at the edge; of course auto manufacturers and other more parasitic corporate interests (read tobacco) have exploited this image complex for decades. Hollywood produced the movie Grand Prix in 1967, a film which was very technically advanced at that time, at it has been recently announced that a new film on racing is to be made, starring (gag) Sylvester Stalone as (double gag with hiccups and saliva) Ayrton Senna. Politicians have even used racing. For example: back in the 1930's, Hitler financed the dominant Mercedes and Auto Union race teams and also built the Nurburgring, the world's most challenging race track. Oh oh. Shit. I forgot. The medium is the message. Nasty shrieking machines, lots of power and speed, a nation's technology and pride used to dominate others. Remember, Wagner made Hitler's opera of the glorious past, and now we see that Grand Prix racing was his opera of the glorious future. So, I guess, car racing is for us an opera of the present, and its glorious light casts a creepy shadow. Sorry. My mistake. (16) But There is something here that which leads us toward our understanding the opera of the future. There is something that is real in the Opera of the Present that had died in zombie opera. The living core of the sporting spectacle is something to respect, and from it we can move closer to a relevant Future Opera. (17) That, however, will have to wait. I've been thinking about bacon, and I gotta go kill a pig now. See you next time. Notes: 1. Actually, two reasons. The technomedia warlords also have politics by the balls (as good a reason as any to get more women into government). My stand on contemporary politics is this: Hit me with the propaganda! Let me roll in its fetid stinking mass, let me get to know it real good. I want to know when I'm spinning, that way I can adjust my guidance mechanism. This is important in ballistic culture. It doesn't matter where you are right now, it only matters where you end up. Maybe we are selling our children to McDonalds and Players Ltd. today, but I expect that the human spirit can learn to go with the spin and in time reverse the parasitic relationship. I bet that someday a clown will be forced to deliver wholesome meals and nicotine patches to your door by court order. 2. David Burnham is the replacement for Donnie Osmond in the Toronto production of David and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. His existence is, I propose, direct evidence that human cloning experiments have been going on for some time. 3. And NOT the coat of many colors. That's another medium. 4. Not as seen on TV! If you are sitting in front of the TV, then you are watching television, not the event itself. You must get over this habit. Go look at some real life! (Keep looking at your computer though.) 5. Which is good, because I want as much accurate information as possible about how the 'folks' are feeling; that way I can predict their behavior, and stay out of their way if they are getting dangerous. I'm much less likely to get caught up in random gunplay if I learn to spot the danger signs. The kind of disaster more likely to befall me would result from the actions of some alienated and disturbed cultural eunuch deciding he should wield his power over me because he doesn't like something about my 'stats'... 6. Well, no Buddhist ACTUALLY said that... 7. That's a lie. I DO know a lot of people with muscle and tendon problems and many musicians, especially drummers, eventually go deaf. And you know the 'violin hickey' most players have? Those things bleed and get infected. I wonder if you could get AIDS from playing someone else's violin? Music is dangerous! Think about it! 8. F1 Racing Magazine, April, 1997. P. 42. 9. Ibid. 10. "Defining the F1 Performance envelope" in Racecar Engineering, vol. 5, No. 3. P. 18. 11. Elio De Angelis and Nigel Mansell 12. This was from F1 Racing Magazine in an article on Villeneuve. I forgot to get the reference. So fail me! 13. I don't believe in supernatural phenomena, and this experience, ironically enough, has only strengthened my bias against them. It seems more reasonable to assume that the world is a coherent place in which every event is a natural phenomena; to relegate an event to the supernatural is to make it in some sense unreal. So when I seek an explanation for what happened, I think of the various degrees of frenzy in my fellow actors, the desperate pitch to which I had been pushed, the charged and silent concentration of the audience upon my wildly dancing body, and the infinite web of electromagnetic energy of which we are all a part and which constitutes the current scientific definition of reality. I wonder if there might be times when a man becomes so charged with electrical potential that the normal boundaries of the mind dissolve for a moment as the charge is released. This sudden, lightning-like transit would be what the ancient Greeks called "ecstasy". In its original usage, "ecstasy" (from the Greek ek , "out" + stasis , "standing") had two meanings: the state either of someone who was "out of his mind" or of someone whose soul had been transported from his body in religious trance. Since the word was regularly applied to the cult of Dionysus, it's tempting to think it was used in the first sense by those who opposed his orgiastic and theatrical rites and in the second sense by those who actually experienced them. Whether ekstasis meant madness or the liberation of the soul from the prison of the body would have thus depended on one's own experience. >From Squires, Richard. The Meaning of Ecstasy, Gnosis Magazine, Fall 1994. 14. Autosport October 26, 1989. P. 23. 15. This accident also deprived us of the nest great rivalry, one that could have been more breathtaking than any other in recent memory. Both Senna and Schumacher are absolutely fierce and spectacularly talented. Since the accident, Schumacher has had only Damon Hill to challenge him - a competent and fast driver, but not a great racer (that is, one who can make the big pass when necessary). Today, Jacques Villeneuve is probably Schumacher's equal as a racer, but for sheer speed it seems Schumacher still has the edge. Jacques is my guy, and I hope he can pull in the gap - at present he looks like the only one who can. 16. At the beginning of 1994, the Williams was not a good car. The 1994-95 Autocourse annual says that "Initially, the [Williams] FW16 seemed a difficult car to handle, Senna trying so hard on his first outing in Brazil that he spun off during his pursuit of Michael Schumacher's Benetton. Both Senna and [teammate Damon] Hill also experienced rear-end grip problems during practice for the Pacific Grand Prix, having carbon-copy spins at the same corner during the same qualifying session." (p. 42) 17. Oh, Fuck that! October 12, 1997, Suzuka Japan. Villeneuve vs. Schumacher. I want to see those two running together at the front going into the last laps. If all goes well, I expect to be in tears as the checkered flag falls. Jacques has done it to me before. But those damn Mclarens are looking hot, and my cat is cheering for Mika Hakkinen... {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ************************************************************************ THE TRAJECTORY OF A BULLET - PART I: A MAN SCREAMING SO LOUD COLOURS ARE COMING OUT OF HIS MOUTH by Joe Tomorrow ************************************************************************ Dark night. City lights, The distance hangs like thunder· If this car would only go faster. Concrete Jungle air, there's a difference, big difference. Real air excites your lungs, Concrete air insults (assaults) your lungs. I can remember being paid a good wage to help me forget I lived in a plaster box in the Jungle, in the sky. I remember dry heaves in the morning. I remember trying hard to forget· LANE CHANGE I haven't seen another car for hours/miles of wet ribbon road. My thoughts aren't as fast as the painted lines or as slow as the radio's liquid amnesia· I could be dead. ACCELERATE CASSETTE TAPE "Hellhound On My Trail" I'm chasing a dream that's a nightmare chasing through my childhood/youth/adult life. The windshield wipers beat it back with fluctuating rhythm· ROAD SIGN Turn off to where-ever/when-ever DOWNSHIFT/CHILDHOOD Brick walls and darkness·windshield Staring at myself staring, I still think I'm twenty years too late but I'm driving to forget all that shit, driving to forget why I remembered it in the first place. ANIMAL! BRAKES LOCKED TIRES SQUEAL Rear end of car drifts slightly· Control feels powerful, like I'm in control ACCELERATE Country roads like big city lust gone sweet· headlights piercing darkness in surgical foreplay being folded over and over until afterbirth is all that's left. "I keep on hand on the wheel and one hand on the shifter I keep one eye on the road And one eye on your sister" Teenage sex is better on record than reality; clumsy and rushed headlong into death Teenage sex sung about by grown men remembering/wishing "How many guys out there over 30 can still get 16 year old girls to go down on them?" "How many really want them to though?" RIGHT TURN Full moon on the horizon Full tank in the rear I remember helping a stranded female motorist. I gave her a left. Her car broke down in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night and I was on one of my nightly cruises into tomorrow· She didn't think much of the handcuffs hanging from my rearview mirror. She turned pale· I dropped her off at the top of a street she said was hers·I wonder if she remembers/thinks about me or my handcuffs. FLIP THE TAPE When I was a child I thought that all the traffic in the world is what made the planet rotate {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ************************************************************************ 3 POEMS by Christopher Stolle ************************************************************************ THIS HAPPENS WHEN YOUR LOVER LEAVES To Her Deep down, somewhere on the surface, there is fear seeping from an earmarked loose vein. Chunks of nightmares and drama traumas glob from the gaping, disconnected cylinder flux. Blood rains across the silky innards, refreshing this half-cadaver from possible drought crops. In these valleys and hills, nooks and creases, flows a bittersweet liquid of immense commercial viability. Little germs and molecules irrigate organs, only to drown from busting clots that line flesh corridors. Few notice this wound, this tiny slip cut, that's deep down, somewhere on the surface, flooding passion. July 28, 1997 ~~~~~ TRANSLATING AN INTERVIEW WITH THE GHOST OF AN IMPATIENT, UNHAPPY JOHN LENNON John, suppose destiny forgave him or it? (depending on the wound) What would you be doing today? did you eat well? did you sleep? you crying? We're still hungry for love, waiting for word, listening. Some sit idle, some heal glass. did you resist, John? you laughing? What maker has the dreamer? what image? what tone? what?! We're still fighting, still singing, waiting for help, bleeding. John, can you be our savior? come home. speak to us. What wrinkles do you have now? do you age? can you see? you must cry. And this dew mirrors your wish. what's your third wish? what do you think? have you seen Buddy? And Jimi and Jim and Jim and Harry and Janis? my grandfather, John? and Jon? Still in jeans and black shirts? do you pray? do you hurt? you must laugh. We tend to believe heroes are forever. until they die. are you dying again? John, who do you miss? who did you miss? we miss. How's the moon doing? make it rain. forget the snow. what do you hope for? We can't change time, it hates us. we cry. we feel alone. These years grow like weeds. souls erode. we stopped praying. Can you see our faces, our futures? try to stop us. please. We used to laugh with you, John. we stopped one winter. And we teach our children your name. we fall silent at sound. your voice heals. June 19, 1997 ~~~~~ P.E.A.C.E. (Please Eliminate All Cultural Executions) Echoes imprinted in wood remind travelers of the path they prepare to endure and there is a whisper which left the mark from the past to keep them from death Mothers smile at their children to hold them in their heart's mind when the nights are cold and there are tears which release laughter from the past to keep them from worry Music stifles lonely pain leaving colors as shadows bring back the romance and there is a chorus which holds our hands from the past to keep them from violence June 8, 1997 {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ************************************************************************ 3 POEMS by Holly Day ************************************************************************ Confessions to a Child Just Born I went through my old poetry last night, thinking of you left behind in the hospital, tiny arms pinned down with IV needles, tiny feet scabbed and swollen from heelsticks and pulse monitors trying not to think of you, first a monster swelling in my stomach something I tried to kill with alcohol and cigarettes and failed herbal exorcisms plucked from New Age magazines to a soft twisting kitten keeping me awake with dreams of who and what you might be, praying always I hadn't hurt you too bad. Now I'm having to deal with an early separation after a day-and-a-half of forced labor too many drugs sitting in my bedroom among these piles of poetry destroying every piece I ever wrote that says I didn't love you ~~~~~ Dreams of the End I had nothing to do with my ex-husband ending up at the bottom of the lake (we used to make out at) plastic bag secure around his head enough Valium in his system to tranquilize a bull rhino I had nothing to do with the bold streaks of red gouged flesh on his face (damned near lost a nail there) know nothing about the blond hairs in his fist smeared lipstick on his mud-soaked collar (tricked me into bed one more time) fading surprise in his eyes, mouth still a round "o" but I can't help but feeling a little bit safer now that he's dead ~~~~~ Pen Pal I have walked through your burning dreams and I forgive you, seen children on fire, trapped beneath fallen timbers and I know the smell of burnt flesh and I forgive you. I have walked through silent houses seen unsuspecting sleepers through your scarlet blooming chrysanthemums and I forgive you your gasoline-scented fingers and trains of braided fuse. Tell me how it feels to be completely an element, to be a force of nature. Tell me how it feels to decide a man's death, how you pick the right houses to loose your fury on. Your letters bring me God. I will always be here for you, outside÷write again soon. {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ************************************************************************ CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE... ************************************************************************ HOLLY DAY lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her son Wolfegang and their cat Calypso. She is the submissions editor of The Squealer music magazine, also out of Minneapolis. RAINBOW SALLY is one of the human beings still living on the central coast of California. CHRISTOPHER STOLLER (aka The Poet Man) is a senior this fall at Indiana University majoring in journalism and education. He has published poems extensively throughout the U.S. and overseas. This past summer, he was able to experience Texas and California, with an internship in the former and a visit to an aunt in the latter. Both fostered many poetic ideas. PAUL LAURENDEAU is an associate professor in linguistics at the department of French Studies, York University. Influenced by the thought of Spinoza, Diderot, and Marx, he is currently working on a book titled MATERIALISM AND RATIONALITY (PHILOSOPHY FOR THE SOCIAL ACTIVIST). Describing himself as a materialist rationalist atheist, Laurendeau formulates the religious debate in philosophical terms in the tradition of the progressive struggle against the mystical and irrationalist tendancies of philosophical idealism. His previous contributions to TAF enclude On a Philosophical Implication of the Astronomical Big Bang Theory, which was featured in TAF issue #1, and The Doom Of Religion, which was featured in TAF issue #2. "THE PUFFIN" is a magical creature who comes up for air when the moon is full or there is a good Formula 1 race on the television. "The Puffin's" The Future of Opera parts I & II was featured in TAF issue #1. S/he/it can reached c/o TAF. JOE TOMORROW in an unknown entity. Contact may be reached via TAF. {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} The Annihilation Fountain & TAF Copyright c 1997-99 Neil MacKay http://www.capnasty.org/taf/ the_annihilation_fountain@iname.com