Hi, 118 -
In my opinion, one of the great analogists for Western Tao was Alan Watts.
Watts was a lovely guy. Unhappy life, happy writer. Underrated breath of
fresh air. Hope someone takes him seriously as a philosopher - he deserved
it. His musings on cybernetics and control systems/loops in general are
pregnant. Interesting overlaps with William S. Burroughs. WSB: "If the
universe is pre-recorded, the one thing that can't be is the recordings
themselves." (Quoting from memory.) When I was little I took to writing
little BASIC programs - "it pleased" me to create programs that looped, yet
terminated after a *set* number of loops; infinite loops distressed and
repelled me at age eight, little Apollonian that I was. Found them ugly,
annoying.
It is interesting that Pirsig considers himself to be Classical, while
Phaedrus was Romantic.
It's a lovely "In Search of Lost Time" note in his work. The ox he seeks is
himself, yet not himself. (Not his empirical, conscious self - yet he has to
become present to something in him, so he can become present to his son.
Phaedrus must *speak* - not just isolatedly think or isolatedly write. A
*male* voice must be recovered; that's a twist on feminist memoirs and
narratives. Any feminist takes on ZAMM/L? The Z-narrator is tough and rough
on Chris, unsympathetic. I was a bit shocked at the hardness. So honest! Is
Chris Phaedrus' son? The Z-narrator's? Both? Whose? Where's Mom? The Z-world
is as female-absent as the L-world is female-centric. Who'd think that
Phaedrus' re-emergence and reintegration would create a connection? Yet it
does.) ZAMM is Classic+Romantic, while L is maybe Impressionist+Modern. Or
Modern+Post-Modern? There's a Post-Modern fragmentation to L. The watery
element dominates. I'll need to reread, but it struck me on first go as
having a notebook'ish quality. (A logbook?) I felt lurched about. (Choppy
seas?) There wasn't the same smooth continuity, the beautifully controlled
contrapuntal architecture of Z. But I think L will fit better when I reread
now. (It's been ages, and I've matured.)
In this way, RMP is able to refer to himself in the third person past
tense.
I need to read everything over again to find where this literary artistry
came from. Has anyone ever found Bob's technical writing? : ) And one really
must find his paper on Freshman Composition. It's the Ur-text.
While at the end of ZAMM he claims that Phaedrus is back (written in the
present first person)
Isn't that a lovely thing? I can't speak too highly of the ending's
inspirational quality. A *full* satisfaction, rare in writing. The author
gives all, and it only makes sense (and draws the requisite power) from
everything that preceded. A triumph of design, maintenance, care. The
journey really is a long downhill ride, and at the end we're going to either
fall off the cliff or hit smooth riding on the Bridge. Does the Z-narrator
mention that to get that final, hopefilled view of S.F., you have to go - on
the unified Route *1* and, simultaneously, the digital-suggesting Route
1-0-1 - through a final tunnel?
the subsequent publication of Lila belies this possibility.
Isn't that like life, though? We have breakthroughs, we feel everything's
cleared, we are *released* - and then after a while life gets a little more
horizontal and some stuff comes up again, both old and new, and we have to
fight again. The ox-herder has to descend and enter the marketplace with
helping hands. "I’m a fighter. It's bad luck to wish me peace, unless it be
a fighter's peace." - D.H.L. (Quoting from memory.) I hope the ox doesn’t
get slain in the eleventh or twelth picture? The ox is stubborn. I think our
author is, and has to be, stubborn to get done what he had to do. Contrast
the ox with Plato's cave and Zarathustra's "down-going" and D.H.L's Rupert
and Gerald falling in love up in the Swiss mountains, then coming "down to
earth" and acting all manly and indifferent to one another. Ain't it all one
big story?
I did find the difference in narrators curious. I wonder what happened in
the space between books? Will someone write sequels or prequels, 200 years
from now?
I find it ongoingly fascinating how Lila brings Chris' and the narrator's
mental-health challenges again to the narrator. Chris could only be healed
by the Z-narrator becoming present and whole. What does Lila require the
L-narrator to do? Assuming a substantial continuity of narrative between the
two books - which is not as simple as it appears - what further challenge
does Lila present? She and the L-narrator have no biological tie, no
history, and it’s not even clear they should be together. Their relationship
is sort of like a Zen teacup - beauty is found in the imperfections, the
incompleteness. And it all gets poured out (for the love of the world).
Verily, "Lila" takes places in The Floating World!
Lila is highly analytical despite the attempt to provide the adventure
narrative presented in ZAMM.
Here's a comparison: "Rocky Horror Picture Show" - a great myth, in my
opinion, a tragic myth, religio-poetic. The little-known sequel, "Shock
Treatment" (an obvious relevance re. Phaedrus) shows Brad and Janet quite
forcibly and obviously brought to Earth and forced to make choices based on
what they've learned from Frankie. I privately title it as "The Last
Temptation of Janet Weiss." In other words, the lesson has been delivered -
so what the hell do you do with it? How do you live, day by day, once the
Revelation has been delivered?
After all, if Phaedrus post-ZAMM had stuck around, all powerful, or there'd
been a perfect fusion between Phaedrus and the Z-narrator and the
L-narrator, what would we have had? A plaster saint. Someone sitting around
mechanically applying a perfectly recovered MOQ and coming out on top. The
writer *had* to make the L-narrator "imperfect" to give L its open, fluid
quality. He has to be there, still working to recover and make real the MOQ.
That makes it dynamic and interesting. That engages us. If he'd sat on a
Quality throne dispensing wisdom, he'd have lost. The fact that the
L-narrator "loses" at the end of L - and loses Lady L to another man - how
naked is the writer in doing that? How honest and vulnerable?
I feel intuitively that we are called on to help. L is an appeal, of sorts.
And look what happened - "Lila's Child"!
As such, the views of the original Phaedrus are lost due to the electrical
"normalization" of his brain.
I'm delighted to see the word in quotes from you. I play piano, and
something that drives me crazy is how dynamic levels get normalized in so
many video recorders and old cassette recorders. Flatness! They even did it
to Horowitz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki5ur78jdUQ - then it takes my
digging to find the un-normalized recordings -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDsGExHHSuw .
I see "normalization" of peaks and valleys happening all over in culture,
and it drives me nuts. Flatness isn’t good. Do you know that kids now prefer
the sounds of lossy MP3s to lossless high-Quality sonics? Not to mention the
popularity of the Autotune sound, which does something similar:
http://www.hometracked.com/2008/02/05/auto-tune-abuse-in-pop-music-10-examples/
- "If you’re unfamiliar with Auto-tune, and especially if you listen to
much pop and rock, you might not hear it initially. When overdone, the
effect yields an unnatural yodel or warble in a singer’s voice. But the
sound is so commonplace in modern mainstream music that your ears may have
tuned out the auto-tune!"
Do you know when the sequel to the Rand movie is due to premier?
The last word from the production team is September 2012. DVD of Pt I will
be out shortly - 20th Century F. is distributing. I might get to help a bit,
but shhhh - don't tell.
MRB
http://www.fuguewriter.com
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