From The Christian Challenge: The Only Worldwide Voice of Traditional Anglicanism, Volume XLII, No. 3/ May-June, 2003
BUBBLING BELIEF: And here we thought we had just about heard it all.
It was a few months ago that we reported on a San Francisc group's ideas about "sacramental" drug use at an Episcopalian parish. Now we hear of a Dallas-area group known to treat nitrous oxide (laughing gas) as a sacrament- and to throw Jacuzzi parties. Welcome to the "Hot Tub Mystery Religion."
"It's adherents hold to no particular spiritual dogma, borrowing freely from such sources as Jewish mysticism, Roman paganism, Islamic heresy and experimental art," reports www.reason.com. "One of its founders has compiled a reading list for the faithful; it includes a collection of Tantric exercises, a text on Sufism, one of Philip K. Dick's Gnostic science fiction stories, and a novel by Catholic apologist G.K. Chesterton."
Perhaps it is just the kind of "hot water" that Frank Griswold- ECUSA's presiding bishop of "pluriform" truth, who not long ago quoted a Sufi poet- wouldn't mind getting into.
Then again, the hot tub faithful are said to number well under 100 practitioners- not exactly a socially influential force. That would never do for the boy from Bryn Mawr.
The story, by the way, notes that the Jacuzzi group, while part of a wider syncretic trend, is unusual because it is so radical. "Most people do not feel the need to be the authors of their own religions," said reason,"though quite a few are happy to be the editors." Yeah, we've noticed that.
***End of Article***
What is particularly interesting about this little barb is the pretense that there is anything unusual in the idea that drugs, particularly certain plants and fungi referred to as entheogenic, can be sacramental. Indeed, many scholars suggest that the kykeon elixir of the mysteries was a psychedelic blend.
As for nitrous oxide, William James ,the father of modern psychology, wrote of his laughing gas experience in terms that echo the mystical experience of coincidentia oppositorum ,"It is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this experience. I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxixation, which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality. God and devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thous, sober and drunk, matter and form, black and white, quantity and quality, shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and swallowing, inspiration and expiration, fate and reason, great and small, extent and intent, joke and earnest, tragic and comic, and fifty other contrasts figure in these pages in the same monotonous way. The mind saw how each term belonged to its contrast through a knife-edge moment of transition which it effected, and which, perennial and eternal, was the nunc stans of life. The thought of mutual implication of the parts in the bare form of a judgement of opposition, as "nothing--but," "no more--than," "only--if," etc., produced a perfect delirium of the theoretic rapture."
The Christian Challenge's witty religio-cultural denigration seems to be part of the largely unquestioned war against indigenous folkways perpetuated by the Roman Christian Church and its Protestant variants. One need only consider the fate of indigenous peoples and their entheogenic traditions at the hands of this tradition's staunch defenders to see one culmination of such marginalization. Stick with bread, folks, and let us tell you what God meant.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
Lluvia Acida visits Tlön
Inspired by the novel "La Segunda Enciclopedia de Tlön" by Sergio Meier, from the Lluvia Acida CD Audioficciones.
¡TLÖNISTA!
“Who are the inventors of Tlön? The plural is inevitable, because the hypothesis of a lone inventor-has been unanimously discounted. It is conjectured that this brave new world is the work of a secret society of astronomers, biologists, engineers, metaphysicians, poets, chemists, algebraists, moralists, painters, geometers . . .”
-Jorge Luis Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
Our world has long been mythologized by some as a metaphysical Prison, a Gnostic nightmare in which human beings have been incarcerated as slaves or indentured servants with assigned numbers. Such a claustrophobic, seemingly paranoiac premise inspired some of the most talented artists of the 20th century. Franz Kafka masterfully depicted the nightmarish aspects of this phantom penal system in several works, while Joseph Heller (in Catch-22) and Thomas Pynchon (in Gravity’s Rainbow) studied its paradoxical bureaucracies, secret societies and metaphysics. With the advent of Situationism, artist Guy Debord charted the shift from Prison to “Spectacle.” The Spectacle is seemingly more mall than prison, a world in which every desire must be channeled into thoughtless consumer impulses while hypnotic media imperatives ooze out of every conceivable outlet. For his brilliant television-defying epic The Prisoner, Auteur Patrick McGoohan brilliantly satirized this aspect of modern life when he created an allegorical though recognizable Prison called “The Village.” And speculative fiction writer Philip K. Dick spent years unraveling his own Gnostic epiphany of a Roman Empire which continues to dominate human beings everywhere (“The Black Iron Prison”) and its divine antithesis that will one day penetrate reality and undo this menace (the “Vast Active Living Intelligence System”).
In the last century of the second millenium C.E., the implications of this Prison myth mutated with the advent of certain technological developments: television (originally presented as the “iconoscope”), electronic surveillance, telecommunication, and ubiquitous computerization. While it must be noted that technological progress presents us with tools which are intrinsically neither good nor evil, to even question the wholesale acceptance of technological trends in some quarters is to risk being branded a reactionary or Luddite. In our rush toward an ill-defined Technotopia, only “heretics” question what impact these advances will have on our cultural and physical environment as well as on our brains. As Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, grandfather of televangelism, stated bluntly, “Radio is like the Old Testament, inasmuch as it is hearing without seeing. Television is the New Testament, for in it the Word is made flesh and dwells in our living rooms.”(1)
At its core, the Gnostic Prison myth is a tale of social control by a self-appointed elite class, depicted as either earthly or cosmic, bureaucrat or archon. Fortunately, this snug-fitting myth is often coupled with another idea: that escape from this prison is possible and that there are secret histories to guide us. More than this, it may be possible to liberate and reshape this world.
In the first part of John Crowley’s Aegypt cycle of novels, a book-within-the-book tells us, “But history is made by man. Old Vico said that man can only fully understand what he has made, the corollary to that is, that what man has made he can understand: it will not, like the physical world, remain impervious to his desire to understand. So if we look at history and find in it huge stories, plots identical to the plots of myth and legend, populated by actual persons who however bear the symbols and even the names of gods and demons, we need be no more alarmed and suspicious than we would be on picking up a hammer and finding its grip fit for our hand, and its head balanced for our striking…The story remains; and if it changes, and it does, it is because our human nature is not fixed; there is more than one history of the world. But when we believe that we have proved that there is no story, that history is just one damned thing after another that can only be because we have ceased to recognize ourselves.”(2)
There can be as many secret histories as there are thinking people. In fashioning such histories for ourselves, from hidden and neglected sources, we not only discover more about our world but also learn much about the worlds within us. The novels written from such explorations are a unique, deeply personal type of meta-fiction, charting not only neglected paths into the past but also exploratory attempts showing possible futures and strategies for achieving them: The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton; The Aegypt Cycle of John Crowley; Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed; Illuminatus! by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson; Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco; The Jerusalem Quartet by Edward Whittemore; and even the hidden history gumbo of Grant Morrison’s graphic epic, The Invisibles.
But it was Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges who broke radically new ground with his meta-fictional story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.” This curious story meticulously details the not-so-subtle invasion of our world by the culture and philosophies of another hidden (or perhaps spurious) realm. The beachhead of this invasion is a single entry from a possibly apocryphal encyclopedia said to be written in English, funded and directed by an eccentric American millionaire named Ezra Buckley. Elsewhere in the story, the mad scheme is traced to alleged Rosicrucian philosopher John Valentine Andrae. In its entirety, the encyclopedia supposedly fills forty octavo volumes bound in Yellow Corinthian leather and embossed with the legend “ORBIS TERTIUS.”
In this story, Borges not only toys with the role of fiction, he uses it as a vehicle for the subversion of mundane consensus reality. The shifting depths of the story require creative, interactive hermeneutics even as they subject the reader to Tlönist memes. The idea of indoctrination by exposure to a text can be viewed as a mere literary fantasy, of course. But one may also consider it as an astute anticipation of the discovery (creation?) of memes and a brief manual for metaprogramming reality.
According to Borges: “The metaphysicians of Tlön do not seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding. They judge that metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature.”
Here is a revolutionary praxis for the aspiring Tlönista movement: the penetration/ reconstruction of our world from an Imaginal(3) source, in the sense that Henry Corbin coined the term.
If an invasion from the Imaginal realm seems unlikely, consider that Orson Welles handily mounted a Martian invasion that wrought prankish havoc while playing with belief and symbol systems. He also deftly adapted Kafka’s The Trial. Similarly, the unknown artists of the original German Rosicrucian Brotherhood sewed fantastic oats which grew and yielded many harvests. As Napoleon mused, “The truth is not half so important as what people believe to be true.” On one level, it could be presumed that Napoleon was insulting the gullibility of the masses. But to Tlönistas his remark could be a tribute to the power of belief and imagination to change the world. Shakespeare’s magical assertion that the “world is a stage” insinuates that existence may be enhanced by those working diligently in the dark to change the scene.
If the simulated reality is indeed a Prison, then the Tlönistas are its escape artists. They are also architects of possibilities and implementers of dream stuff. Whereas the Gnostic Archons seek to impose a restricted illusion of reality on human beings, the Tlönistas are Anarchons of almost unimaginable freedom and creative fulfillment. With the claws of moles, they dig their secret tunnels. Blessed with secret wings, they soar above internment of body and spirit. Pouring through forgotten books, they re-edit the shape of history. Their dream blueprints unfurl like magic carpets in sub rosa sanctuaries. With energized craftsmanship, they will forge and implement ideas which interpenetrate the mundane world and resonate in sympathetic minds. Once unleashed, such ideas unfold subtly yet tenaciously until they take root and sprout into manifestation.
And all the protection their endeavor requires is that it is, by ordinary standards, completely preposterous and unbelievable.
¡Tlönista!
1.Quoted in PR! A Social History of Spin by Stuart Ewen, 1996, BasicBooks, NY, NY.
2.Aegypt by John Crowley, pgs. 75-76, Bantam Spectra, 1987, NY, NY.
3.“We observe immediately that we are no longer reduced to the dilemma of thought and extension, to the schema of a cosmology and a gnoseology limited to the empirical world and the world of abstract understanding. Between the two is placed an intermediate world, which our authors designate as 'alam al-mithal, the world of the Image, mundus imaginalis: a world as ontologically real as the world of the senses and the world of the intellect, a world that requires a faculty of perception belonging to it, a faculty that is a cognitive function, a noetic value, as fully real as the faculties of sensory perception or intellectual intuition." From Mundus Imaginalis: Or The Imaginary and the Imaginal by Henry Corbin, Golgonooza Press, 1976.
-Jorge Luis Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
Our world has long been mythologized by some as a metaphysical Prison, a Gnostic nightmare in which human beings have been incarcerated as slaves or indentured servants with assigned numbers. Such a claustrophobic, seemingly paranoiac premise inspired some of the most talented artists of the 20th century. Franz Kafka masterfully depicted the nightmarish aspects of this phantom penal system in several works, while Joseph Heller (in Catch-22) and Thomas Pynchon (in Gravity’s Rainbow) studied its paradoxical bureaucracies, secret societies and metaphysics. With the advent of Situationism, artist Guy Debord charted the shift from Prison to “Spectacle.” The Spectacle is seemingly more mall than prison, a world in which every desire must be channeled into thoughtless consumer impulses while hypnotic media imperatives ooze out of every conceivable outlet. For his brilliant television-defying epic The Prisoner, Auteur Patrick McGoohan brilliantly satirized this aspect of modern life when he created an allegorical though recognizable Prison called “The Village.” And speculative fiction writer Philip K. Dick spent years unraveling his own Gnostic epiphany of a Roman Empire which continues to dominate human beings everywhere (“The Black Iron Prison”) and its divine antithesis that will one day penetrate reality and undo this menace (the “Vast Active Living Intelligence System”).
In the last century of the second millenium C.E., the implications of this Prison myth mutated with the advent of certain technological developments: television (originally presented as the “iconoscope”), electronic surveillance, telecommunication, and ubiquitous computerization. While it must be noted that technological progress presents us with tools which are intrinsically neither good nor evil, to even question the wholesale acceptance of technological trends in some quarters is to risk being branded a reactionary or Luddite. In our rush toward an ill-defined Technotopia, only “heretics” question what impact these advances will have on our cultural and physical environment as well as on our brains. As Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, grandfather of televangelism, stated bluntly, “Radio is like the Old Testament, inasmuch as it is hearing without seeing. Television is the New Testament, for in it the Word is made flesh and dwells in our living rooms.”(1)
At its core, the Gnostic Prison myth is a tale of social control by a self-appointed elite class, depicted as either earthly or cosmic, bureaucrat or archon. Fortunately, this snug-fitting myth is often coupled with another idea: that escape from this prison is possible and that there are secret histories to guide us. More than this, it may be possible to liberate and reshape this world.
In the first part of John Crowley’s Aegypt cycle of novels, a book-within-the-book tells us, “But history is made by man. Old Vico said that man can only fully understand what he has made, the corollary to that is, that what man has made he can understand: it will not, like the physical world, remain impervious to his desire to understand. So if we look at history and find in it huge stories, plots identical to the plots of myth and legend, populated by actual persons who however bear the symbols and even the names of gods and demons, we need be no more alarmed and suspicious than we would be on picking up a hammer and finding its grip fit for our hand, and its head balanced for our striking…The story remains; and if it changes, and it does, it is because our human nature is not fixed; there is more than one history of the world. But when we believe that we have proved that there is no story, that history is just one damned thing after another that can only be because we have ceased to recognize ourselves.”(2)
There can be as many secret histories as there are thinking people. In fashioning such histories for ourselves, from hidden and neglected sources, we not only discover more about our world but also learn much about the worlds within us. The novels written from such explorations are a unique, deeply personal type of meta-fiction, charting not only neglected paths into the past but also exploratory attempts showing possible futures and strategies for achieving them: The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton; The Aegypt Cycle of John Crowley; Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed; Illuminatus! by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson; Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco; The Jerusalem Quartet by Edward Whittemore; and even the hidden history gumbo of Grant Morrison’s graphic epic, The Invisibles.
But it was Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges who broke radically new ground with his meta-fictional story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.” This curious story meticulously details the not-so-subtle invasion of our world by the culture and philosophies of another hidden (or perhaps spurious) realm. The beachhead of this invasion is a single entry from a possibly apocryphal encyclopedia said to be written in English, funded and directed by an eccentric American millionaire named Ezra Buckley. Elsewhere in the story, the mad scheme is traced to alleged Rosicrucian philosopher John Valentine Andrae. In its entirety, the encyclopedia supposedly fills forty octavo volumes bound in Yellow Corinthian leather and embossed with the legend “ORBIS TERTIUS.”
In this story, Borges not only toys with the role of fiction, he uses it as a vehicle for the subversion of mundane consensus reality. The shifting depths of the story require creative, interactive hermeneutics even as they subject the reader to Tlönist memes. The idea of indoctrination by exposure to a text can be viewed as a mere literary fantasy, of course. But one may also consider it as an astute anticipation of the discovery (creation?) of memes and a brief manual for metaprogramming reality.
According to Borges: “The metaphysicians of Tlön do not seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding. They judge that metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature.”
Here is a revolutionary praxis for the aspiring Tlönista movement: the penetration/ reconstruction of our world from an Imaginal(3) source, in the sense that Henry Corbin coined the term.
If an invasion from the Imaginal realm seems unlikely, consider that Orson Welles handily mounted a Martian invasion that wrought prankish havoc while playing with belief and symbol systems. He also deftly adapted Kafka’s The Trial. Similarly, the unknown artists of the original German Rosicrucian Brotherhood sewed fantastic oats which grew and yielded many harvests. As Napoleon mused, “The truth is not half so important as what people believe to be true.” On one level, it could be presumed that Napoleon was insulting the gullibility of the masses. But to Tlönistas his remark could be a tribute to the power of belief and imagination to change the world. Shakespeare’s magical assertion that the “world is a stage” insinuates that existence may be enhanced by those working diligently in the dark to change the scene.
If the simulated reality is indeed a Prison, then the Tlönistas are its escape artists. They are also architects of possibilities and implementers of dream stuff. Whereas the Gnostic Archons seek to impose a restricted illusion of reality on human beings, the Tlönistas are Anarchons of almost unimaginable freedom and creative fulfillment. With the claws of moles, they dig their secret tunnels. Blessed with secret wings, they soar above internment of body and spirit. Pouring through forgotten books, they re-edit the shape of history. Their dream blueprints unfurl like magic carpets in sub rosa sanctuaries. With energized craftsmanship, they will forge and implement ideas which interpenetrate the mundane world and resonate in sympathetic minds. Once unleashed, such ideas unfold subtly yet tenaciously until they take root and sprout into manifestation.
And all the protection their endeavor requires is that it is, by ordinary standards, completely preposterous and unbelievable.
¡Tlönista!
1.Quoted in PR! A Social History of Spin by Stuart Ewen, 1996, BasicBooks, NY, NY.
2.Aegypt by John Crowley, pgs. 75-76, Bantam Spectra, 1987, NY, NY.
3.“We observe immediately that we are no longer reduced to the dilemma of thought and extension, to the schema of a cosmology and a gnoseology limited to the empirical world and the world of abstract understanding. Between the two is placed an intermediate world, which our authors designate as 'alam al-mithal, the world of the Image, mundus imaginalis: a world as ontologically real as the world of the senses and the world of the intellect, a world that requires a faculty of perception belonging to it, a faculty that is a cognitive function, a noetic value, as fully real as the faculties of sensory perception or intellectual intuition." From Mundus Imaginalis: Or The Imaginary and the Imaginal by Henry Corbin, Golgonooza Press, 1976.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Callithumped, Jugged and Punked, Part Two
Whence came punk rock? In his grand tome Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus argues convincingly (or at least appealingly) that its philosophical roots can be found in the great heretical social revolts of the Middle Ages, with particular emphasis on the Movement of the Free Spirit, citing Situationist Raoul Vaneigem’s astounding study of the same name. “Today, so many years later, the shock of punk is that every good punk record can still sound like the greatest thing you've ever heard,” Marcus gushes. His secret history of subversion is an imaginative, tasty literary gumbo flavored not only by centuries-old heresies but also by early 20th century radical art movements including Dadaism, the Lettrist International, and the aforementioned Situationist International. Along with charting a kind of punk spirituality, he sheds light on the often overlooked fact that much of early punk, while frequently shocking and outrageous, was also intellectually stimulating and creatively groundbreaking at a time when rock & roll was largely mired in a Beatles-inspired symphonic tar-pit.
Jeffrey Lewis’s brilliant History of Punk on the Lower East Side posits that punk was hatched from Magician Harry Smith’s roots record collection, inspiring hilariously crass jug band revivalists The Fugs and Holy Modal Rounders, just for starters. Between the minds of Marcus and Lewis a curious synergy takes place, one that recasts history as a creative and sometimes speculative endeavor which posits a chain of transmission for punk gnosis. Surely, between them, a kinship of spirit emerges from seemingly diverse cultural sources culminating in a style of music that was so effectively subversive that it remains conspicuously absent from most 1970s revival radio stations. Traveling back in time from this decade, the signposts of a perennial explosion of social inversion appears not only in music but also in spirituality and social movements of yore like the Levellers, Ranters and Diggers.
If we stick to the history of recorded music, there is no shortage of exemplary anarchic spirit like that found in the chorus of Blind Willie Johnson’s Old Testament growl “Tear This Building Down” (recorded in Dallas, Texas on December 3, 1927) which seems as proto-punk in its way as any MC-5 song, its lyrics as nihilistic as anything howled by an inspired Ranter. Even when humorously re-imagined by pop genius T-Bone Burnett, the lyrical edge of the refrain still slashes across its peppy pop arrangement like a razor:
“If I had my way
Well, if I had a, a wicked world
If I had a, ah Lord, tear this building down.”
Johnson's refrain echoes down the decades, inspiring new generations of raw, self-taught musicians to take up the hammer with wit and gusto.
Jeffrey Lewis’s brilliant History of Punk on the Lower East Side posits that punk was hatched from Magician Harry Smith’s roots record collection, inspiring hilariously crass jug band revivalists The Fugs and Holy Modal Rounders, just for starters. Between the minds of Marcus and Lewis a curious synergy takes place, one that recasts history as a creative and sometimes speculative endeavor which posits a chain of transmission for punk gnosis. Surely, between them, a kinship of spirit emerges from seemingly diverse cultural sources culminating in a style of music that was so effectively subversive that it remains conspicuously absent from most 1970s revival radio stations. Traveling back in time from this decade, the signposts of a perennial explosion of social inversion appears not only in music but also in spirituality and social movements of yore like the Levellers, Ranters and Diggers.
If we stick to the history of recorded music, there is no shortage of exemplary anarchic spirit like that found in the chorus of Blind Willie Johnson’s Old Testament growl “Tear This Building Down” (recorded in Dallas, Texas on December 3, 1927) which seems as proto-punk in its way as any MC-5 song, its lyrics as nihilistic as anything howled by an inspired Ranter. Even when humorously re-imagined by pop genius T-Bone Burnett, the lyrical edge of the refrain still slashes across its peppy pop arrangement like a razor:
“If I had my way
Well, if I had a, a wicked world
If I had a, ah Lord, tear this building down.”
Johnson's refrain echoes down the decades, inspiring new generations of raw, self-taught musicians to take up the hammer with wit and gusto.
Callithumped, Jugged and Punked, Part One
(Portions of this essay appeared in a different form in Bust Down the Doors and Eat All the Chickens)
Consider the mysteries of the fart. No matter how eloquent the tongue may be, the fart crouched in wait like a restless and unbidden guest. One may negotiate with the fart but seldom repress it. Born in a labyrinth, it seeks its ecstatic moment of escape and dissipation, a gaseous Theseus prompted by scarcely imagined molecular catalysts. When it bursts forth, its song is spontaneous and disruptive, the bane of ostensibly polite company. At other times, it cloaks itself in silence and invisibility, rising like a whispered curse to offend the olfactory heavens. But despite all, its beholders largely eschew its subtlety and deny its complexity. But there are celebrants of the fart, too.
For those with a peculiar ear for discernment, there is music and wonder in the fart. Its music and biochemistry may be expounded up to a point, but never its mystery. In the temple of the body, one must give careful consideration to the “gods of the underworld,” i.e. those urges, exhortations and expulsions which so often seem to run contrary to the spirit of the heart’s sanctum sanctorum or the head’s conference of the senses. As this raucous blast of nether wind is not without its music, consider the idea that there is music in everything and, by extension, in everyone. Contrary to expectation, the musicians of the School of the Fart often let slip a sound that, though rough, also features a subtlety and art that rewards the adventurous listener.
From this anal breach charges a mad assortment of untrained, wild-eyed, would-be musicians. For the lion’s share of musical history, such outsiders were arrogantly dismissed. Surely, though, the humble origins of music have more in common with these self-taught thumpers, strummers, howlers and blowers than with practitioners of highbrow harmonies. While our brief history of cacophony arbitrarily starts with 19th century callithumpian bands, its roots lie in Saturnalia and grow to include charivaris, jug bands, 1960s garage bands, and even the seminal punk rock of the 1970s. All of these forms share the common bond of carnival culture, particularly its presumption to invert society and its presuppositions, placing fools in power while imposing menial status on members of the alleged “ruling class.” And the music of this inversion, perhaps present before the dawn of Saturnalia, has been that of mockery, lewdness, noise and caterwauling. Often it was scored as a lampoon of sacred or subtle music, as with the Medieval Feast of Fools that satirized the Roman Christian Mass under the direction of a Lord of Misrule or Abbott of Unreason. That there is sometimes a sly sophistication at work in what may be the world’s oldest intermittent folk tradition can be heard from the New London Consort’s recording of the music from this mock mass.
In the 19th century, a more chaotic din of iniquity erupted in the tradition of the Callithumpian band. During those long ago winter holidays, Callithumpian processions in the United States would blurt, bang, whistle, razz, squeal and fart with a motley assortment of kitchen utensils, noisemakers, rattles and anything else capable of making noise. As they marauded from house to house in the neighborhoods of the landed gentry, demanding entrance and booze from startled residents, a wall of sound preceded them. Ultimately, the law cracked down on this early form of trick-or-treat when drunken Callithumpians stumbled out of bounds, smashing windows, setting fires and spreading hooliganism. And it’s at this time, rather than the dawn of rock & roll or the advent of garage bands, that we find the real proto-punk, sadly overlooked, unrecorded and largely forgotten.
As the keepers of the cask exclaimed at the Feast of Fools, “Occasionally the bunghole must be uncorked, simply to relieve the pressure.” Such festivity may be contagiously revived, an antidote to modern repression or simply an outlet for unbridled glee. In Callithumpia we can see a sweetly deranged state of mind, one that hints at outsider music yet to come. It is the first cousin to Jes Grew and granddaddy to the vulgar jug bands. From its tangled roots in historical night soil, this raucous sound will perennially sprout and thrive in the 20th century, carrying its anarchic, rebellious bag of tricks with it.
NEXT: Secret Origins!
Consider the mysteries of the fart. No matter how eloquent the tongue may be, the fart crouched in wait like a restless and unbidden guest. One may negotiate with the fart but seldom repress it. Born in a labyrinth, it seeks its ecstatic moment of escape and dissipation, a gaseous Theseus prompted by scarcely imagined molecular catalysts. When it bursts forth, its song is spontaneous and disruptive, the bane of ostensibly polite company. At other times, it cloaks itself in silence and invisibility, rising like a whispered curse to offend the olfactory heavens. But despite all, its beholders largely eschew its subtlety and deny its complexity. But there are celebrants of the fart, too.
For those with a peculiar ear for discernment, there is music and wonder in the fart. Its music and biochemistry may be expounded up to a point, but never its mystery. In the temple of the body, one must give careful consideration to the “gods of the underworld,” i.e. those urges, exhortations and expulsions which so often seem to run contrary to the spirit of the heart’s sanctum sanctorum or the head’s conference of the senses. As this raucous blast of nether wind is not without its music, consider the idea that there is music in everything and, by extension, in everyone. Contrary to expectation, the musicians of the School of the Fart often let slip a sound that, though rough, also features a subtlety and art that rewards the adventurous listener.
From this anal breach charges a mad assortment of untrained, wild-eyed, would-be musicians. For the lion’s share of musical history, such outsiders were arrogantly dismissed. Surely, though, the humble origins of music have more in common with these self-taught thumpers, strummers, howlers and blowers than with practitioners of highbrow harmonies. While our brief history of cacophony arbitrarily starts with 19th century callithumpian bands, its roots lie in Saturnalia and grow to include charivaris, jug bands, 1960s garage bands, and even the seminal punk rock of the 1970s. All of these forms share the common bond of carnival culture, particularly its presumption to invert society and its presuppositions, placing fools in power while imposing menial status on members of the alleged “ruling class.” And the music of this inversion, perhaps present before the dawn of Saturnalia, has been that of mockery, lewdness, noise and caterwauling. Often it was scored as a lampoon of sacred or subtle music, as with the Medieval Feast of Fools that satirized the Roman Christian Mass under the direction of a Lord of Misrule or Abbott of Unreason. That there is sometimes a sly sophistication at work in what may be the world’s oldest intermittent folk tradition can be heard from the New London Consort’s recording of the music from this mock mass.
In the 19th century, a more chaotic din of iniquity erupted in the tradition of the Callithumpian band. During those long ago winter holidays, Callithumpian processions in the United States would blurt, bang, whistle, razz, squeal and fart with a motley assortment of kitchen utensils, noisemakers, rattles and anything else capable of making noise. As they marauded from house to house in the neighborhoods of the landed gentry, demanding entrance and booze from startled residents, a wall of sound preceded them. Ultimately, the law cracked down on this early form of trick-or-treat when drunken Callithumpians stumbled out of bounds, smashing windows, setting fires and spreading hooliganism. And it’s at this time, rather than the dawn of rock & roll or the advent of garage bands, that we find the real proto-punk, sadly overlooked, unrecorded and largely forgotten.
As the keepers of the cask exclaimed at the Feast of Fools, “Occasionally the bunghole must be uncorked, simply to relieve the pressure.” Such festivity may be contagiously revived, an antidote to modern repression or simply an outlet for unbridled glee. In Callithumpia we can see a sweetly deranged state of mind, one that hints at outsider music yet to come. It is the first cousin to Jes Grew and granddaddy to the vulgar jug bands. From its tangled roots in historical night soil, this raucous sound will perennially sprout and thrive in the 20th century, carrying its anarchic, rebellious bag of tricks with it.
NEXT: Secret Origins!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
