Howard Zinn died this evening. The legendary rabble-rouser was one of our best. An old football coach of mine always encouraged us to be "the firstest with the mostest" when it came to tackling ball carriers. Zinn exemplified that kind of practical enthusiasm when it came to the causes of peace and social justice. His website is the best source for finding out more about the man and this sad, late news.
A few thoughts:
I cried a bit when Howard Zinn Died, and the coffee was cold in the cup. Bitter lips speak no peace and this prayer is forgetting how to fly. Somewhere, now, there is a hole in this world and it's shaped like a straight-standing man. I cried a bit when Howard Zinn died, but my heart is ignorant like a bill of sale or a new coat of paint on an age-old throne. I cried a bit when Howard Zinn died, but now my tears have organized.
Haven't posted in a bit and wanted to blow the dust off of this illuminated scroll to fill you in on some of the recent hap's.
The latest version of the Disinformation World News podcast has been kicking around on the site for some time now. This latest episode features pieces on robotic limbs controlled by the mind, Nigerian witch hunters and the Wal-Mart Gestapo. Yours truly chimes in with a short biography on the 19th Century sex-magician, Paschal Beverly Randolph.
Randolph was notable as an African American magician in the Western ritual magic tradition at a time when most black practitioners were root workers, practicing the various systems that evolved out of the African diaspora. Randolphs sex-magic system of Affectional Alchemy is considered to be the first fully-developed, modern system of erotic ritual.
If you'd like to explore more about Randolph, here are a number of the sources I used for the report:
If you missed the last episode which featured new stories about the South American rape-monster: the Popobawa. Check it out here. You can also read the transcript to my segment - the 2nd half of my report on the Hollow Earth - right here:
In our last segment, we discussed the early history of the Hollow Earth. Many cultures around the globe have their own unique beliefs regarding the various kingdoms that may reside beneath the surface of our planet, and respected scientists like comet discoverer Edmund Halley and noted politicians like Continental Congressman John Cleve Symmes promoted early ideas about the Hollow Earth and created the hypothetical models that the theory is based on.
Simply speaking, by the 20th Century, proponents of Hollow Earth theory believed that the Earth was a hollow sphere with large entrances to the interior world at the North and South Poles. Generally, these theories posited civilizations that thrived beneath the ground in a climate provided by an internal sun.
One modern evangelist of the Hollow Earth model was Dr. Raymond W . Bernard. Born Walter Seigmeister, Bernard grew up in New York City, where he attended Columbia and NYU. An intelligent successful young man, Bernard was was also an eccentric in the making. Although his parents hoped he'd earn an M.D. Bernard instead took a PhD in education, writing his dissertation on the controversial educational philosophies of Rudolph Steiner. Steiner's writings were also Bernard's entry into theories about Atlantis and other esoteric subjects.
By the mid 1940's, Bernard began dressing in all black and growing his hair out. Soon, he abandoned the Judaism of his childhood for a hodge-podge of Eastern mysticism and bizarre dietary restrictions. It was around this time that Seigmeister adopted his alias in order to avoid authorities who were after him for selling bogus nutritional supplements. After moving to Mexico for several years, Bernard returned to the States obsessed with ideas about the Hollow Earth. In 1964 – Bernard published The Hollow Earth - The Greatest Geographical Discovery in History Made by Admiral Richard E. Byrd in the Mysterious Land Beyond the Poles - The True Origin of the Flying Saucers. Not only is Bernard's volume in possession of what may be the greatest book title of all time, it is also one of the most important contributions to Hollow Earth theory.
Bernard filled his book with accounts of different explorers who claimed to have made successful journeys into the Hollow Earth. Admiral Byrd figures heavily in the book. Bernard latched on to a brief mention in Byrd's memoir where the Admiral writes about seeing a patch of green oasis in the midst of the endless white at the North pole. For Bernard, this passing observation was a hook on which he hung a fantastic cosmology and a fanatic belief in the world within the world. Bernard went on to write the book Flying Saucers from the Earth's Interior and to claim that he was in contact with legendary mystics dwelling in secret ashrams as well as Blavatsky's Tibetan Grand Lamas. It was either madness or moxie that eventually led the good doctor back across the border - this time all the way to South America - where he was rumored to have disappeared or died from pneumonia, searching for a tunnel to Agartha deep in the interior jungles.
If the theory of the Hollow Earth had to be associated with only one man, that man would be Richard Sharpe Shaver. However, it's impossible to tell Shaver's story without including Ray Palmer the publisher of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.
In 1943, Shaver contacted Palmer at the magazine with an amazing tale of his own. Shaver claimed he had stumbled upon an ancient language called Mantong. In fact, Shaver claimed that Mantong was the root of all human languages and that by applying a few rules to any word in any tongue, a secret meaning could be revealed. Quizzing Shaver as to how he came across the discovery, Palmer realized he was tugging at the threads of an even stranger yarn.
Shaver replied to Palmer's inquiries with a 10,000 word document entitled A Warning to Future Man. In the document, Shaver let fly with one of the most complex Hollow Earth cosmologies that has ever been conceived.
Shaver's Hollow Earth was populated by a highly-advanced race of extraterrestrial Titans who had populated Atlantis and then the entire globe. This early race had built vast, complex underground caverns to escape damaging radiation from the sun. These ancient astronauts eventually left the earth for another planet, leaving behind the Teros: a race of servants they had created through genetic engineering. However, the rigors of life underground took their toll and many of the Teros transformed over time into Deros. Shaver explained that the “Deros” term was an abbreviation for “detrimental robots”. The Deros were organic creatures, but they were robot like in their brutal, sadistic behavior. Shaver also insisted that many of mankind's ills – from train wrecks to lost car keys – could be blamed on the Deros and their use of the advanced technology that they still manipulated in their underground cities.
Ray Palmer knew a great story when he heard one and he immediately began readying Shaver's tale for publication. Palmer added a long narrative plot to Shaver's account, eventually crafting a 31,000 word story that he entitled “I Remember Lemuria”. However, the most ingenious device Palmer employed was his insistence that Shaver's eye-witness account was absolutely factual. Whether or not Palmer was a true-believer, casting the account as an eye-witness report was a masterstroke. The “Lemuria” issue of Amazing Stories resulted in a record run that saw the magazine's circulation jump by 50,000 copies. Reader response went through the roof and the steady trickle of letters that Palmer had come to expect became a deluge of thousands, with many readers corroborating Shaver's tale, claiming they too had had contact with the Deros.
Before Shaver began to publish his stories in post-war America, another group on the other side of the world had begun to search for an entrance to Agartha at the South Pole. However, these were not science fiction fans, they were miltary men and their leader was Adolph Hitler.
In addition to an array of esoteric devotions that included astrology and the search for many ancient artifacts, Hitler and his top advisors were convinced that the Earth was hollow and populated by a race of great Masters that Hitler hoped to create a super-race of god-men with.
The most intriguing story of the Nazi's quest for the Hollow Earth states that in the last days of WWII, Hitler, his closest advisors and a number of German soldiers made a mad dash for the South Pole, entering the Hollow Earth where they remain to this day.
The idea that Hitler made such an escape persists because of a number tenuous speculations and the novelty of the Nazi's occult fascinations. While there is little evidence that Hitler and his henchmen actually found an interior earth, there is at least one document that keeps the speculation alive.
According to official records the German U-boat 209 reported for the last time on May 6, 1943. According to the report the submarine had been badly damaged in its confrontation with fighter planes from the Royal Canadian Air Force vessel the Canadian Catalina. U-209 was called back to base but never arrived. The crew was never heard from again.
Or were they?
The International Society for a Complete Earth claims to be in possession of a letter that was sent from a naval officer on U-209. They claim that the family has corroborated the hand writing on the letter as being that of their sibling and son.
The letter states that the sub did indeed make a bee-line for the South Pole at the end of the war and escape into the Hollow Earth. The sailor goes on to remark that his fellow crewmen were also safe and that – though they would not be returning to the surface world - they were not being held against their will.
Hollow Earth theory is as vast and complex as the subterranean kingdoms it strives to explain and – although we've only scratched the surface – it is my hope that we have entertained you dear listener with a fantastic tale populated by strange creatures in wondrous lands dwelling just over the horizon at the very edge of the human imagination. But more importantly it is my hope that this report has inspired you with the stories of men like Dr. Raymond Bernard and Richard Shaver. Individuals who stood their ground against one of the cruelest enemies known to man: the prejudice that is reserved for those bold souls among us who would abandon the complacencies of their times to live in a world of their own making.
For Disinformation World News, this has been another installment of Insomnia.
I'm Joe Nolan.
Stay awake.
I'll be back sooner than later, loved ones. I won't be a part of the next Disinfo podcast, but I'll be back in the flow on the next one.
Really feeling the spirit today. Was recently, nearly reduced to tears of joy hearing "Feliz Navidad" at the bean aisle in Kroger.
Check out this performance of the song, live in Denmark in 1973. Hippest caroling ever!
Regardless of your religio/mystico/philosophical relationship to the world without and within, this season really does put people in mind of others. Within such sudden selflessness there lies that great, untapped potential for Total Revolution: psychic, spiritual, personal, interpersonal, galactic...
This tree will grow. I saw it in a dream.
Here is the text for the poem I recited in an audio post in the last entry in this luminescent journal:
"Origami Gunship"
There is a truer truth to be known beneath the smoldering sky of starving leaves as winter takes over the South.
(A Yankee front sweeping down from Connecticut. An icy grimace in Union Blue).
There is a knowing to be known between myself and the girl with the black hat and the red bag and the white teeth. She smiles like a friendly Nazi and she laughs when I reach past her for the hot sauce.
There is a light to bright this grey window with the frost in the corners and the dead hornet: legs up; tobacco-colored wings more delicate than Chinese paper; memento mori; origami gunship; an abdomen swollen with frozen poison. A glinting light breaks across the tip of the stinger. The sun roars to life for the first time in weeks.
One of my most enjoyable projects was being asked to edit an issue of Number: An Independent Journal of the Arts. I've been writing reviews, reports and interviews for the publication for years and this opportunity allowed me to make an issue that focused more exclusively on the Nashville art scene (The journal covers Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee and is a publication of University of Memphis).
I recently turned in new piece that features an interview with TSU curator Jodi Hays Gresham. Browsing through the Number site last night I noticed that the back issues have been updated. You can now download a .pdf version of all the recent issues.
Click here to download the Joe Nolan edited Number:62
And here is a special Holiday treat. In a recent post I offered this track for download and had so much response from the folks who heard it that I've decided to make it an open link so people don't have to keep emailing me here and on Facebook to get it. This is a demo for my new song "Phantom Punch". Inspired by the second boxing match between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston, my pal Jean Paul Lilliston and I had some audio problems so I recorded these vocals on a cell phone in Nashville to a speaker phone in Chicago. Most people who've heard this insist that I have to use these vocals as they turned out surprisingly good. See what you think...
Just returned from seeing Lars von Trier's new film Antichrist.
For those of you who may not be up to speed regarding this flick, it is a disturbing film peppered with very graphic sexual/violent images. It was both panned and praised at Cannes earlier this year. Here is the breakdown from IMDB:
A grieving couple retreats to their cabin in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.
That really is the truth of the plot of the film. It is a very simple movie and the cast is made up almost exclusively of a husband and wife: She and He.
Ok, here we go...
The plot is very simple - and so is the theme. Although this is a movie full of symbols and layers it is a very basic fable dealing with the triumph of civilization over nature and reason over chaos. Mythological stories have layers and tangents - as this movie surely does - but - at their core they are simple tales that tell a basic truth.
This movie is full of rough hewn symbols and telling dialog, but there is not that much to it, and the hand wringing over the violence in the third act is also over-hyped. Although you will surely see some unique images in this part of the film it is actually less disturbing than the first and second acts. Remember how scary Jaws was until you saw the shark?
Although it may seem callous or a bit crazy to some viewers, I was actually relieved when the brutality got going. At that point in the film LVT simply leaves us with a schlocky horror film that I no longer had to fear.
At that point, it's just a movie.
This film is gorgeous in many ways and disturbing as well, but it's ultimately very flawed despite its ambitions. A lesser film for LVT without question, but not a failure by any stretch. However, this movie won't break your heart, strain your brain or sicken your stomach. The grief at the center of the film is never really communicated in a moving way. The simple fable at its heart will never withstand over-intellectualizing and he gore is ultimately silly movie tricks that fail to convey any real horror.
Again, they actually break the tension and create more relief than revulsion.
Anyway. See it for yourself and leave a comment or two. My thoughts may seem to be on the negative side, but I absolutely recommend the film. Gainsbourg and Dafoe are relentlessly brave in their roles and the cinematography is the best I've seen this year - outside of the gorgeous black and white in the film Tetro.
Joe Nolan was born under a bad sign on June 13th in Detroit, Michigan in the last Metal Year of the Dog. Polymath, provocateur, inter-media artist, his tell-tale signs have turned up in music, visual art, journalism, poetry, fiction, video and film. A double Gemini, his interests range from the pharmacology of phenomenology to fly fishing; from mysticism to mixed martial arts; from Chaos to counting angels on the heads of pins. He has finished recording his third CD,
"Blue Turns Black"in Nashville, Tennessee. Click on
here, to visit his homepage and explore the rest of this site.
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