Talking Brains

Christabel is repressing something while Bracy is driven; the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, I suppose. Repression can be prophetic and prophecy can be repressed. If Christabel is repressing something, and we discerning readers are able to detect it, then that tells us something about her character. Of course, we can get the whole thing wrong, misreading the piece like the mammering, base-court scuts we are--then poor Christabel is misunderstood.

I have often wondered how a psychologist would perceive some of the crap my brain comes up with. Though not necessarily equipped with the same literary arsenal as us, Psychologists still have to read the significance of symbols. Prior to embarking on my first jaunt on a plane, back in the dismal '06s (maybe...dementia is setting in), the anticipation spurred a variety of odd incarnations in my sleep. I suppose I should include a disclaimer about why I am not crazy, but that effort would be fruitless even prior to reading the following, and certainly hopeless after.

I wake up to that kind of sickly orange peel-dusk/dawn of Finley, which generally only occurs in my dreams, but I have seen it before in waking realms also. The National Communications Coordinator, Mr. Eric Trumble, comes roaring down my dirt and gravel driveway wearing a large cowboy hat whilst driving a red station wagon; my friend Ben's grey Chrystler LeBaron accompanies. He jumps out of the driver's seat and shouts, clapping his hands "Get your ass out of bed! We have a plane to catch!" I am already out of bed, and somehow my brother has procured my luggage. Mom is on the deck, staring at the red-thing on the lawn, while Dad vaults into a string of obscenity-laden tips for travel: it's all in good humor. I get in Ben's car.

I am riding in the LeBaron on roads that don't exist, speeding quickly up spiralling ramps on Columbia Center Boulevard. We follow Trumble up at high speeds. As we ascend the ramp, the road gradually begins to turn into a massive sand dune--massive may even be the wrong word--"collossal" is perhaps more representative. We near the apex of the Dune and Trumble disappears over the crest, along with the rest of the delegation. Rodney screams something, though not in fear. This is normal.

Ben's car cannot quite make it, and I tell him that I will have to run the rest of the way. He wishes me luck, but doesn't say anything. I find climbing the dune is much more difficult than I originally had imagined, but I make it to the top nonetheless. I see an infinite vista of desert, and two red orbs that must be suns blot out part of the horizon, though I can see much furhter than I should. It seems as if everything flows visually to an explosively bright point a fathomless distance away--golden rays are reflected on the tops of dunes, resulting in a kleidescopic effect of galactic proportion. I think to myself, "Holy crap."

After standing for only a moment on the brink, I notice that Trumble's red suburban-thing is scooting down the dune mountain at rapid speeds, raising a trail of dust in his wake. The dune slopes outward gradually, becomming level again at the base, and eventually the red-thing is on a dead-ahead course for a giant sandworm, maybe a mile away. Just in case you were wondering, my brain stole those sandworms from Dune. I wave my arms frantically, but the red-burban doesn't stop.

Thankfully, a giant robot lands in between the vehicle and the worm, and its enormous foot opens to reveal a parking garage. Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) steps out, bedecked in his tan overcoat, and shouts "Come on, hurry!" The suburban and its delegation make it safely into the confines of the giant robot.

I scurry down the hill, trying to beat the oncoming sandworm. I spy movement on the horizon--it appears as if the desert is moving. Countless giant worms with spiky maws rocket toward me. My dream legs don't work so well in the sand, and I struggle to close the distance. Dr. Loomis turns and yells something inside--the robot's feet begin to emit fire. Obviously, it is getting ready to launch back into space. He turns to me and shouts "Hurry!"

Something happens--a frenzied blur of sand and wind--and I am in the giant toe. Lo! Captain Kirk, Scotty, Chekov, and Data are sitting at a full bar. Trumble, Ben, my brother, and the delegation are all there as well. Dr. Loomis bids me have a seat, and a drink. Everyone is drinking martinis; I ask for extra olives; Scotty obliges.

We then fly out into space. The process is not so stressful as I would have thought: though I feel a lifting sensation, my innards ne'er jump. This is a good thing, as Van Halen was not playing.

I take a look out one of the port holes in the giant Robot foot; debris from what apparently were other ships ominously floats about. I don't look too closely, there could be bodies. By now I understand that this is a dream, and take appropriate precautions: whenever I see bodies in dreams things take a decidedly unpleasant turn for the much, much worse. Scotty explains that we are at war. I think to myself, "Holy crap."

We are in the process of taking in a scuttled ship, and I see someone I recognize. I can't remember who it was now, but he had pizza, which is always a plus.

I can't remember anything more. At least the gloom was mitigated by pizza.

I feel compelled to add "***", centered in the middle of the page. So much time has passed since my brain authored that madness, I am disturbingly disconnected from that moment of waking. The dream itself is still vivid. Engaging it now is very different from being in that period between sleeping and waking. I actually have to work to remember. Dreams themselves are terribly slippery; maybe that is how Christabel (and everyone else for that matter) can overlook those anxieties manifested during sleep. While asleep, it is difficult to supress anything, as the mind operates subconsciously. That period between sleep and wakefulness also is telling: as the mind begins to slip, so does conscious control over the repressed. As dream Jacob would say, "Holy crap."

To Boldly Go...

We employed the now rather cliché Star Trek trope--"To boldly go where no one has gone before." Some rabid trekkies would correct me, "it should read 'where no MAN has gone before." My riposte: "We grew up in the Next Generation era. So sod off."

We did grow up in the Next Generation era, my brother; friends (like brothers); and sister (also like brother). Perhaps there was a sort of popular culture inclination in the '80s to explore. Apart from Star Trek, all sorts of adventure-travel type films were pervasive in my home--If you were alive then, you can probably think of at least ten. Tolkien's works were also required reading at an early age. Well, not required, but both my mom and dad were avid readers, and their reading interests spilled onto their film and television interests, which in turn spilled onto us, and eventually we began reading books that originally inspired those films in order to fill in the narrative blanks left by director's interpretations of the source material. In other words, the movies and T.V. weren't telling the whole story, and we wanted it. Regardless of the inspiration, Tolkien was there. Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf were my first literary heroes who undertook grand adventures, and walked a lot.

When I was supposed to be digesting the significance of Magellan, Pollo (not just a water sport you know), and all those other rather European boat dudes, I kept thinking about how much more honest walking is. That, and how it really sucked that there weren't any new places to go see because boats, planes, and automobiles greatly expedited exploratory travel. Hell, Columbus never went anywhere no one had been before--apart from having a really bad sense of direction and a bad case of conquistidor syndrome, he just claimed to have seen peoples no one had previously encountered, ignoring the fact that those peoples had discovered themselves just fine and were even on very famliar terms. The cursed rush to map the rest of the world helped to demolish any sense of mystery that we grade-schooler Star Trek/Ground Trek/high adventure afficianados had hope of harboring during the labored hours of 1st grade.

As fate, and an overdeveloped sense of adventure would have it, we land-locked "Goonies" decided that there were vast expanses of hill country to be explored in Finley, Washington. The oppressive asphalt and concrete jungles of the Tri-Cities had yet to penetrate our wind-blasted paradise. We had heard tales of lost treasure, devil worshippers, the ghost of a suicidal Indian, and drunken teenagers, all inhabiting the hills not quite north of Oregon and sort of south of Washington. I was a partial perpetrator of such tales, as I had originally lived back in that vast, untamed expanse that is almost Oregon--apart from our cousin's house, there were no other houses as far as the eye could see, save for the humongous air hangars used to store farm equipment (amongst other treasures), and our trailer. Until my brother was born, the youngest children I had regular interactions with were at least 13 years my senior. Thus, my hill-bound adventures started early.

Upon setting out, my comrades and I thought ourselves as public servants: how famous we would become once the silent springs of Jump-Off-Joe were discovered! We would be no less exalted for demolishing a coven of devil-worshipers and harassing teen-aged drunkards who were probably even smoking pot. The stories concocted by local elders only surved to fuel our wanderlust--if they had said a Dragon lived in those hills, you can be sure that we would have devised some means of defeating it.

There was only ever one rule our parents demmanded that we keep: never stay past dark. While we were invincible so long as the light hours shone on, our powers somehow weakened at the onset of night. At times, we cut it close--too close. More than once rampaging trucks filled to the brim with beer careened past us in our hooded coats and cloaks. We were clever--holes on the sides of the hill afforded us well-concealed hiding places. We knew how to erase our tracks quickly. We knew the lay of the land. We had a Ranger's handbook!

Sun-swept fields, green or beige grasses, earthen smells with sandy sod, and the looming shadow of Jump-Off-Joe pervaded. By the end of the day, our senses were assaulted and our sense of adventure excited, yet sated for the time being as hunger and thirst drew us back to home base. Certainly tomorrow would yield even greater treasures...

Decades later my brother and I are drunk on Tequila playing Yatzee with our mom (well, I am drunk). I am fat, bearded, and careworn in ways that I never thought possible. I am not that old, you must understand, though I have started getting gray in spots--my hair will likely prematurely lose its color. My brother is in similar condition. Only two of us are present, though our group has stayed very close over the years. Once one shot too many goes down, I come to the realization that we never found what we were looking for in those hills. Now they are inacessable, as the railroad in their draconian litigation have barred anyone from venturing too close to their property. Increasingly paranoid farmers threaten lawsuits that are serious rather than the bullets that were not in the old days. I can't even bring myself to drive out in the direction of our expeditions anymore, as the area has become a yuppie-warren. Windmills dot the landscape that we once walked on--filthy tributes to supposedly "green" power sent to California or some other place not here; murderers of birds; murderers of view; murderers of memories that I lie to myself about being able to keep unpolluted. Our last outpost into the unknown is now owned by someone else, as our friend's family were forced out due to financial hardship the year we graduated high school. Then he disappeared into Iraq--we write him still. I think about all of this; I don't know why; as the last bit of "too much tequila" streaks down my throat. Then, somehow, it becomes audible. I don't remember what I said exactly, or how my brother affirmed and expanded on what I was saying, but that doesn't matter--our reasons for those adventures came rushing out of nowhere. Despite all the hair-brained childish reasons for seeking out ghosts, pirates, and whatever other specture spurred us on, there is an ultimate truth here--we need to go.

I think that the cheesy lyrics to the Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit sum up this impetus best:

The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.
The chances, the changes are all yours to make.
The mold of your life is in your hands to break.

The greatest adventure is there if you're bold.
Let go of the mold that life makes you hold.
To measure the meaning can make you delay;
It's time you stop thinkin' and wasting the day.

The man who's a dreamer and never takes leave
Who thinks of a world that is just make-believe
Will never know passion, will never know pain.
Who sits by the window will one day see rain.

There were a lot of other words that were said that night, in all probability even cheesier than these lyrics. However, my brother and I, in a manner frustrated by the limitations of language (regardless of inebriation level), were trying to explain how it is that we "work." The lyrics above do not really encompass the entire issue--being "useful" also plays a role.

Our last journey through the hills, undertaken sometime when we were all in high-school, was the most significant of the many, many quests we had undertaken over the years. Some four or five of us got a really bad feeling that day. Whatever the reason, something told us that this would be our last march together, and something else suggested that we were actually needed this time. Though all of us were in our late teens, we still found the possibility of having a reason to go out into the hills intoxicating. As children, we could not isolate the reason or even make audible the need to explore--it was a silent understanding, until that tequila night. We set out early in the day (by our standards): noon I think. Despite how savvy we should have been, none of us bothered bringing anything for food or much to say about water either. Those hills, by the way, are parched dry, unless of course there is a silent spring to be found still.

The day wore on and we came to the base of a hill called "Jump-Off-Joe", a landmark that none of us ever dared cross. It takes several hours to climb to that point--we went further than we ever had that day. Sitting upon the ground at the base, the sun began to creep west over the Rattle Snake Mountains; it was still taboo to remain after dark, even after all these years. Our throats were parched and we were all hungry, sure signs that it was indeed time to turn back. However, some of us (myself included) wanted to venture further up the hill: if we could get to the summit, then there would be little else we could hope to accomplish in Finley, save for exploring the deep ranges where I used to live. As we deliberated, someone noticed a trail of smoke up to the south behind the apex. After a few minutes, the trail transformed into ghastly plumes. As long-time residents, everyone knew what that meant--grass fire. Such fires are very common in Finley, and incidentally, very dangerous. Many skilled firefighters have been overwhelmed by the fast-spreading flames; assailed, encircelled, and trapped. For most of us, such a bad omen signalled that we should indeed retreat as quickly as possible. Though it was unlikely that the fire would reach us for a long while, the risk seemed unecessary. Yet still, something seemed very necessary about taking this risk. Something told all of us that we needed to explore past the summit, to make the journey and see what was burning.

Days later we discovered (via newspaper) that our trail of smoke was emanating from a crashed helicopter. The pilot survived, but was so injured that he was unable to move from the wreckage. Though he was found alive, he was in poor condition, and his recovery process was slower than it should have been--slower because we didn't take up the one quest in that we would have served some purpose. Our final journey was an abysmal failure, and we know it.

I know it. We were sensible, careful, prudent, and very, very grown-up. I say "grown-up" because we were more worried about worrying other people and eating than sharing in grand adventure. As children, we at least would have seriously reported the smoke, rather than our glib, taciturn contribution we provided as young adults, despite our gut feelings.

Yet none of it was ever about accomplishing anything specific--that is why our goals were so fantastical and ultimately why we caved in at the prospect of serving a true purpose: either we were too afraid of being disappointed once again, or even more afraid that we would actually be needed.

I have taken walks since then in hills unknown to me. One was on a retreat, where my brother and I were chastised for "trail-blazing" (i.e. not walking on the proscribed path, despite knowing how not to disturb flora and fauna). Thus, we decided to venture on ahead, to hide in the hills, to show those bastards that we knew where we were even though we had never been there before. Our president (this was a student government thing) convinced us that the looming thunder-storm was not so condusive to expansive travel: he had found us at the furthest edge of a plateau leanding downward, as we left signals for him that we knew the rest of those dolts would never catch. We even almost convinced him to come with us; I could see the glint in his eyes. "It will only be five hours out, and five back. Easy money." Then there was really no purpose other than to show that we had the constitution to undertake such a trip, to prove to ourselves that we could have found that pilot if we had just acted. After all, "to measure the meaning can make you delay."

Generally speaking, being sensible is a good idea. Jumping into too many things impulsively can lead to very poor outcomes--most of us have made those types of decisions. Nothing done can really be undone. On the other hand, nothing done means just that: nothing done. Nothing ventured, nothing ventured. Here I yet again struggle to put into words the significance of those journies. Looking back on it, as children we were desperate to replicate something "authentic" in terms of adventuring. Even those European boat dudes were legit in that respect, while we never gave ourselves any credit likewise. Now, it seems to me that everything we did then was in the spirit of adventure in the purest form it ever could be--we lacked the understanding that what we were doing was ludicrous, thereby affording it an authenticity unparalleled by any administrative designation we would have loved back then. In having no one's sanction, we truly were explorers in the sense that we sought to expand our understanding and sense of the world around us without a compulsory impetus. We saw roads everywhere. For whatever reason, those roads called out to us. In a way, they still do.

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.
Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

In the film rendition, as the above song plays, Bilbo notes "There are moments which can change a person for all time...I suddenly wondered if I would ever see my snug hobbit hole again. I wondered if I actually wanted to." Though I generally am fond of the food and drink that "hobbit holes" provide, I must say that I can understand Bilbo's sentiment. During his walkabout, though more directed and focused with a clear beginning and end, Bilbo wanted that freedom to do as my friends and I did as children. The sentiment even makes sense for Tolkien biographically--he harbored many of the same gripes I do about changing landscapes and industrialization in his home. Worse still, nearly all of his childhood friends were killed in the trenches--both at least partial parallells to my own origins for similar feelings now, an eerie aside considering that I knew very little about Tolkien biography up until a few years ago. Back then we were caught up on a Tolkienesque purpose, everything had to be a quest--that desire still stands after a fashion. On the other hand, I at least partially understand now why I wake up in the middle of the night and feel like driving someplace not here. I wonder if that same impetus, at least in part, drove on the Romantics to also go there--Someplace not home.

Can Art Grow Out of Theory?

Well, can art grow out of theory, Jacob?

I certainly hope so.

I only say this because some of my favorite "artists" have created art with theory in mind. However, I have never deeply considered the question of whether the means of art justify the ends as art. Though William Blake is the inspiration to this prompt, and it seems ludicrous to challenge the artistry of his works, the question, no matter how terrifying the implications, is legitimate. In all fairness, I remember once spying a bit of online CG landscaping--projects often undertaken with liberal borrowing from already existing works of art, and perhaps completed only through minimal effort--and raging about how such drivel could not possibly be art. Somewhere, in the dank recesses of my mind, a stifled, angry voice chided me. Then I crushed it with my ego.

Well, that voice is back, and has some more authoratative things to say. First, I must committ heresy, and just for a moment place Blake in the same league as those CG-rearranger landscaper people. Don't both sets of artists employ theory to their ends, and ultimately construct a product that is beautiful? As I argued before in my "Imagination" post, humans don't really spontaneously create anything but rather rearrange ideas into some new kind of whole. Thus, it seems as if Blake is just rearranging stuff using a framework that he himself created: the same technique those CG wizards employ. Don't CG barbers have to use a program to compose their arrangements. Aren't those programs developed through the use of theory? The question of medium, for the moment, is irrelevant to the larger picture, especially since we are talking about art.

What is art by the way? I could show nearly anyone replications of any one of Michelangelo's paintings at the Sistine Chapel and I would bet all of my pennies that he or she would respond in the affirmative. "Sure that's art, you dolt."; "What are you, some kind of iconoclast?"; "Where is the bathroom"--stuff like that. However, if I were to proffer up Dali, the responses would vary. Pollock would suffer even more ambivalent reactions. Even Hendrix would not escape such wash.

I really do want to escape the question "is art relative?" As a person who hails from the land of Anthropology, I must immediately say nay. Art, some anthropologists would argue, requires skill, direction, and ultimately effort. Stuart Plattner argues that "art" is not so much applied aesthetics, but rather "an activity embedded in an art world" (15). Thus, a thing does not exist in and of itself as art without those human relationships. "It is wrong to focus on the unique art object, and ignore the complex set of human relationships which contributed to its creation" continues Plattner. Thanks a lot, anthropologists, for mucking the waters up even more with all of this context crap. Can't we just get to the good stuff?

I don't suppose we can simply get to the good stuff without regarding the muck. The first bit that has to be expunged concerns the lens through which art passes through--according to Plattner, art must be regarded holistically, as any other component of society should be. Otherwise, something gets lost in the meaning.

AH HA! MEANING! That's where I can escape all of this mess and get back to Blake, right? Anthropologists would certainly regard what Blake does as art, even being oriented in theory. His theory is the lens through which he filters his ideas. Can we, then, understand what the hell he is trying to say without taking his theory into consideration? I suppose the answer to that question is "it depends." The casual reader can still get something out of Blake without swallowing his theory, but in order to get at the really good stuff the reader must proscribe to his vision, his world, that he is presenting--the context, as anthropologists would put it. Thus, his means not only assist in producing his art but also define his work as art.

"So now we can't have art without theory? I bet you hate watermelon and think Edward De Vere is Shakespeare."

Despite being related to an art history professor, I do not think that theory must accompany art for art to be art. Theory often gets proscribed on top of stuff without that stuff actually proscribing to it. Rather, I agree with anthropologists in that art needs some kind of context in order for it to say something. Art does not just pop out as something pretty and then we say, in such a reactionary way, "Oooo art!" Blake's theory is an integral part of his context.

I have an insidious, and possibly better, question--Can art stem from anyone but an artist? The easy answer is "nope", or some close variant. We have all of that "context" stuff to protect us now, and it even allows us to stretch our imaginations and definitions. Can we stretch the definition (or do we even have to?) to those CG sorcerers? How about babies? Hey, nature makes some pretty cool stuff that we can instill meaning into. Nature, babies, and sorcerers are the movers; artists are the dreamers that proscribe meaning onto something. Beautiful things can happen and not actually be "art." Art is something that is moved through agency, something that is made, be it beautiful or horrible. Humans don't need to call natural (without human direction) processes and formations "art" in order to appreciate their beauty and/or horror.

"What about those CG artificers?"

I have a rather scientific answer for their case: it depends.

"On what?"

The context!

What makes a text both environmental and a theory of the imagination?

When I first titled this post, my final piece of punctuation was a period. Upon reviewing it an instant later, I decided to change my period to a question mark. Periods denote ends, while question marks leave space for means to a better kind of truth--I certainly do not want to mislead readers into thinking that I know what the hell I am talking about, at least initially, concerning either environmental or imaginative classifications. However, my question mark is doing far more than simple butt-covering: It allows me to make an attempt at answering a question through a set of definitions that does not necessarily have to conform someone else's.

We should wonder what exactly makes a text environmental. While naturalistic imagery and a kind of processural leaning towards "pro-environmental" stances seem like obvious criteria, I submit that an "environmental" text denotes "stuff around us" in a very basic sense. I am assuming that all "stuff" is ultimately a product of the natural world, whether humans have altered it for their purposes or not. The word "stuff" should be further filtered into "physical spaces": places that humans and other "stuff" occupy. Basically, an environmental text talks about containers--the inside of a cavern, a laboratory, a wood, a plain, the world, space, and the like--even though I am proscribing that all of existence is somehow a container, and also skirting over the political implications "ism" and "ist". The "container environment" postulation will do for now, despite its obvious limitations. Identifying environmental texts that harbor a theory of imagination will be easier to frame, for me at least, without all of those other implications muddying the waters just yet.

The imagination draws from its experiences and its trajectories of experience. Things that we touch, taste, feel, hear, and smell all assist in contributing to the base materials that imagination draws from and rearranges. Senses are the initial medium of the imagination, and humans can create entirely new sensations based on projected trajectories that other senses provide. Imagine, if you will, how a peach tastes, feels, and smells like in your mouth. Now pretend those are the only sensations available to you. How many ways can those sensations be recombined to produce something else entirely different from a peach. Let's play a game!

Peach, fuzzy, cold, squishy, sweet, hard core, soft else, yellow-orange-red, earth, and soft sinews.

"The fuzzy earth and soft elsewhere felt cold and orange against my sinews."

Alright, perhaps that was an entirely alien and silly example, but my point still stands--the imagination needs some sensation. However, we also need words in order to frame those sensations. In my sad attempt to illustrate imaginative recombination, I eventually ran out of stuff: I wanted to make squishy walls, but I then remembered that the peach was the only thing allowed in my imaginative environment. On the other hand, I could have trajectorized an infinite number of complete peaches that formed a kind of wall, or even a flying saucer. The basic building block of my peach allowed my imagination to soar, but the limitations on language prevented it from being filtered the way I wished. The imagination transcends language, yet for it to occupy text, it must first filter through the medium of language.

Texts that are both environmental and a theory of imagination draw from their surroundings in ways that have something to say about how the imaginative process works. Perhaps my own text in the form of this particular post is a theory of imagination that is not quite environmental--my piece does not express itself through the filter my provenience as a writer: the environment is not interwoven into the very fabric of my text, nor is it used to explain/qualify the imaginative process. The environmental text not only hearkens linguistically unto the physical space (or the idea of such a space) pervading the writer's thoughts, but also employs, or at least considers, environmental processes in its consideration of the imagination (the imagination is like the falling of leaves from a tree--dry and brittle after a geological moment of pure understanding).

I hope that my definition and description of environmental texts is inclusive rather than exclusive, though classifications necessitate an exclusionary nature. I would rather hate to write an environmental text and then learn that my assumption was incorrect. On the other hand, classifications are often used posthumously or through some other means outside of the author's agency to classify her or his own work, and do not necessarily serve as oppression, but as a means of organizing understanding. Perhaps my essay works best as a suggestion or inspiration to a different means of classification. It's also nice that mine can be easily junked without any horrendous repercussions to wider discourse--I do not wish Linneas any ill, but there are potential alternatives!