Xan Cassavetes: 'Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession' (2004)

Xan Cassavetes: Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004). 

This is an alluring documentary that dives back into the 1970s and 1980s, beginning as an origin story and ending with the collapse of Los Angeles-based Z Channel (1974-1989), after a murder-suicide perpetrated by its talented, mentally ill main programmer, Jerry Harvey (1949-1988).

Subscription TV (now streaming, too) began in earnest with the likes of Home Box Office (HBO) in 1972, The Green Channel in 1973 -- which morphed into The Movie Channel (TMC) in 1979 -- and Z Channel. The latter included an influential sampling of international movies with subtitles, director's cuts, B movies and independent films. 

Z Channel had a profound impact on its market, especially among directors, writers, and other "creatives." Xan Cassavetes gives us a taste of representatives from this class, ranging from Penelope Spheeris to Jim Jarmusch. 

When a cool movie or director was featured on Z Channel, this was an event that could be shared in "real time," not just recorded for later, or plucked out of the ethersphere at will, or binge-watched down the pike.  

We may well wonder about delivery and recording systems now vs. then, and now vs. in the future. In those years, battle was also joined globally in the videotaping field between Sony's Betamax (Beta) and JVC's Video Home System (VHS) tapes, with Beta starting in 1975, VHS in 1976, and both lines ceasing production only in 2016.

Digital services now available dwarf what was around in the 1970s. All you need is money, access and time!

In 1975, the global human population was about 4.079 billion, 38% of it urbanized. As of 2018, it has already jumped to 7.633 billion, with 55% urbanized. What do you suppose those numbers will be in 2060?  Imagine the delivery systems forty-two years from now, when handheld devices, streaming services, driverless cars and delivery drones are old hat?  

Today's Rune: Movement.  

Jean-Luc Godard: 'Adieu au Language' / 'Goodbye to Language' (2014)

Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au Language / Goodbye to Language (2014) comes in 3D and 2D versions, take your pick. 

Marshall McLuhan probably would have liked this, a playful and colorful response to the world and its changing modes of communication. Godard, like McLuhan, is quite aware of the "electronic envelope" surrounding us; that "the medium is the message;" that we live in a "global village" and are actively participating in a "global theatre." Godard wants us to remain aware of our surroundings, and of our modes and methods of communicating. If all else fails, his dog Roxie will lead the way.

Goodbye to Language is not Dada. It's not a cut-up experiment such as might have been done by Brion Gysin, William Seward Burroughs, David Bowie or Mick Jagger. It has some similarities to a David Lynch film, so a touch of Surrealism, and to Woody Allen's philosophically toying with the lenses and filters of reality (such as in Deconstructing Harry, 1997, or Melinda and Melinda, 2004). 

"The present is a strange beast." People reading from a three-dimensional book. 

"This morning is a dream."

What is most important?  "Infinity and Zero." "Sex and Death."

"A line of zeros along the sea."

Writing in a journal with a pen. Do you write letters and send them off via postal service, or is that way not your way? 

"Do something."

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

The Electronic Envelope

In working at a library with people whose ages range across a span of sixty plus years and whose experiences derive from multiple cultural and socio-economic backgrounds and geographical locations, it's clear that we utilize, to varying degrees, layers of technology, some ancient, some new, some borrowed, some blue. Yet we all are, as much or more than anyone in the greater global society, living within the aura of an electronic envelope, as Marshall McLuhan prophetically observed in the 1960s and 1970s. 

It's also clear, from direct observation, that many, perhaps most people, shuffling or stumbling around as they stare into flickering mobile devices virtually everywhere they go and regardless of what else they may be hoping to achieve (indeed, if they are hoping to achieve anything at all), take their present state of consciousness for granted. That is, they are used to it -- rather than fresh to this provisional and incomplete state of their reality, nor are they refreshed by their techno-social links and life-perceptions.

The Electronic Envelope: we are all utilizing some kind of technology, but with different expectations and proficiencies and to wildly and widely varying outlooks.

Some adults still write letters, send cards, email (& doesn't it sound more beautiful in French? Courrier électronique, or courriel?). They make voice phone calls, text. Others just post on social media like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, &c. Click "Like" buttons and emoji icons to express our feelings or lack thereof. 

Some even speak with other people in a three dimensional sense, though if you go to an American post office, the chances are greater that you'll be speaking with a postal worker than a fellow customer. 

For purchasing stuff, you can go online, or use an app, or use a magic card, or use a mobile device, or draw cash from a so-called Automatic Teller Machine (ATM), or interact with a human teller, or negotiate, bid and barter. And I know about all of the above because I engage in all of the above. How about you? 

Marshall McLuhan pointed out that it's good for one's sanity -- and autonomy as a person and human being -- to remain vividly aware of the electronic envelope that surrounds us. This is partly what he meant with his various quips, such as "The Medium is the Message." This is how we perceive, or filter, or translate, social life itself. Which means there are also other ways, so let's not confine ourselves, or box ourselves in, from other means of perception. Seems like a good idea, eh? Oy!

The Electronic Envelope. Some things are quaint, obsolete, art objects, or no longer even in operation -- if so, just barely. Of the first three categories, consider the typewriter, the vinyl record, the fountain pen. Of the fourth type, consider the 8-track, Beta videotapes, telegrams, facsimiles (fax machines) and beepers.

I recently asked student workers about voice recognition services. They were aware of these and laid out the following. Are you?

Amazon: Alexa (via Echo)
Apple: Siri (via iPhone, iPad, iPod, &c.)
Windows: Cortana
Google: Google assistant / Google Home
The Internet of Things

Different workers have different preferences and some don't use any at all. 

I also asked about dictation (speech recognition) systems: you dictate or speak and your device "types" or keys out the words into a text document that you can then edit and refine. I remember using a Dictaphone system in the 1990s, for a temp job: this involved a tiny cassette recording of a boss's voice, played back with foot pedals while listening with headphones and word processing my interpretation. I also remember trying an early version of Dragon speech recognition software to mixed results. 

Google Docs has a function if you have a microphone built in your device, or attached. Google Cloud Speech API (application program interface)
Dragon -- multiple versions
Voice Finger (is this a good image?)
Tazti 
E-Speak  

Do you work with or have you tried any of the above? Does any of this "spark joy?" (As Marie Kondo aka KonMari might ask).

When I was working with international documents at Duke University's Perkins Library in the Public Documents and Maps Department, there were a variety of machine translation systems coming out. Now, Google Translate is highly useful for basic translation. But these have a long way to go as far as nuance and slang, &c. Hardly the Universal Translator envisioned on the original Star Trek fifty years ago. 

Do you utilize translation systems?  Why or why not?

Any further thoughts about the Electronic Envelope?

Looking Back but also: Onward!

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

Werner Herzog: 'Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World' (2016)

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, Werner Herzog's free-wheeling documentary about the rise and impact of the internet inspires thought. Though low-key, the film is consciousness-raising, like Marshall McLuhan's concept of "the electronic envelope" into which we are folded, or McLuhan's "Global Village" (1962) and "Global Theatre" (1970).  

Here, Herzog asks several globally-connected people: "Does the internet dream of itself?" Not coincidentally, Philip K. Dick's dystopian vision is brought into the mix at one point (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- the 1968 novel that morphed into the 1982 movie Blade Runner). 

A scene from LO AND BEHOLD, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. The memorably strange choice of interview setting and style in this scene speaks volumes about Herzog and his creative crew.

In Lo and Behold, Herzog interviews all sorts of people, including the visionary Elon Musk. 

As one fellow movie-watcher noted, Herzog really knows how to shake people out of the trees. 

Several facets of the internet are covered, including cyber attacks, other disruptions in the net, collaborative research, social media personae, self-driving vehicles, people afraid of "the rays," the rise of the robots and upcoming plans for colonizing Mars. 

It's not all good to think about, but behold, even the most oblivious users of the internet are daily immersed in its ways. Much to be aware of and ruminate upon.

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

Party Like It's 2033: Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), directed by Frederick Francis Sears. Starring Joan Taylor as Carol Hanley Marvin and Hugh Marlowe as her newly minted husband, Dr. Russell Marvin. 

This streamlined film is so bare-bones it might seem ludicrous at first, but it works. The aliens are compelling, as is their back-story. The way they understand time and distance is plausible and cool. Ranging from spaceships to weaponry, spacesuits to mind de-scrambler and universal translator, the alien technology is nicely designed. 

A weakness in the story is in how earthlings quickly pull together implausible counter-measures, but that hardly matters. It's all imaginative good fun.

Carol is the only woman in the whole movie as far as talking parts. Most of the characters -- talking or silent -- are men, and they are almost all depicted as technocratic drones with no more flexibility than the spacesuited aliens, which in turn are of indeterminate gender (assuming they have such distinctions). 

Carol, the daughter of a general, is sharp and daring as well as resilient and reliable. We even find her doing what in more recent decades of pop culture imagery is a man's prerogative. On screen, one's now more likely to see a Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) or Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) flipping burgers and hot dogs than any woman at all. What does it mean?  I have no idea. I do hold that Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is pretty cool, though.  

P.S. Bowie and Prince are probably piloting their own spaceships now, so never fear of their eternal return. 

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Nicholas Carr's 'The Shallows' (2011): Take I

Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011 paperback edition).

Well, how's your noodle holding up inside the electronic envelope?  Has the internet made mush of your attention span and ability to think deeply?

These are essential questions raised and explored by Nicholas Carr, using Marshall McLuhan as a jumping off point. 

"The Net has become my all-purpose medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind," Carr notes on page 6.

He cites a study that observed how many people don't read in a traditional way, but rather "skip around, scanning for pertinent information of interest" (page 9).

This is how I seek out "news" and "updates," certainly, though I read books, longer articles and poetry in basically the same "left to right" manner that I've done since childhood, regardless of format (that is, I do this with both printed materials and digitized etexts). Also, I make sure to take plenty of time away from "the madding crowd" -- online or in my actual 3D physical space -- for deep reading, contemplation, writing, connecting, thinking, or zoning out. 

How about you?  How about people born within the digital age?

To be continued: No sense in making this post any longer or heavier: online readers tend to devote only about ten seconds per webpage and read (or skim) only about 18% of content, missing or ignoring 82% of the rest (page 135). Still, thanks for reading even that much.

Today's Rune: Signals. 

McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed

And now it's time to step out of one alternate universe (whatever we were last discussing) and into another: that as perceived by Marshall McLuhan. 

First off, keep in mind that he was both Catholic and Canadian. 

Secondly, that his books are fascinating, but so are his media appearances. His spirit moves within a universe parallel to yet also distinct from that inhabited by the spirit of William S. Burroughs. 

Regarding Language & Communication. 

McLuhan: "The media is the message" and "The media is the massage." 

Burroughs: "The word is now a virus," the cut-up, and "towers open fire."

W. Terrence Gordon's McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Continuum, 2010) delves into the background and context of McLuhan's ideas; swats away criticisms that Gordon believes are due to misunderstanding of McLuhan's train of thought; and follows McLuhan's evolution and extension of ideas and his revision of older ones. He particularly shows the continuity in McLuhan's work, beyond seeming oddities, randomness and diversions.

Gordon's book "rekindled" my interest in McLuhan. I just happened to pick up a physical 3D copy of the book -- rather than read it on a Kindle -- but either way, it's slow going at first, picks up speed, then finishes off with play.

McLuhan was very much into art and artists as well as science and communication. 

Start anywhere. How about page 121?

". . . art is the sharpening of clichés into probes, into new forms that stimulate new awareness." 

I agree completely here: take something "ordinary" or "routine" and show it, or see it, in a new way, employing a fresh perspective, looking at it from a different angle. 

That is, change how we see or express something from an "automatic everyday way" into another way, so that we no longer "take things for granted" but are "granted" expanded consciousness.  

For anything, anywhere, anytime: stop being "used to it" and start getting "new to it."

"Escape into understanding" (page 95).

Some nitty gritty:

'Media are powerful agents of change in how we experience the world, how we interact with each other, how we use our physical space, how we use our physical senses -- the same senses that media extend. They must be studied for their effects, because their interaction obscures those effects and deprives us of the control required to use media effectively' (page 107).

Attention must be paid to what we're doing and how we're doing it. 

All one need do is consider, if one is old enough, some of the daily behavioral changes engendered by the deployment of mobile digital devices and wireless communication, even within a single decade, especially in the early 21st century. 

If young enough (i.e. too young to have lived through the analog to digital morp), consider horse and foot culture vs. rail and steamship culture vs. automobile and atomic bomb "drive-thru" culture.

Armed with imagination, just about anyone young, old or in between can "escape [bleary everyday myopia] into [sharper, more farsighted] understanding."       

There's much much more, but I'll stop here for the purposes of inspiration beyond "pattern recognition." 

One can only absorb so much at one time without chucking all of it out the window, becoming a litter bug, and who wants that? Not I, said the Fly. 

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Madrid: Objects and Mysteries of the Air and Ether

Interior yellow mailbox / buzón de correos. Sociedad Estatal de Correos y Telégrafos ~ i.e., Correos. I'm always on the lookout for post offices and mailboxes, no matter what the country, town, village or city. There's always mail (noun) to mail (verb).

"Old" pay phone, not old at all in the grand scheme of things. In all of June,  by avoiding direct calls to and from Spain, I spent less than $2 extra on my mobile phone / cellphone bill. Incoming texts were five cents, outgoing, fifty cents. There are several free alternatives to resort to, including correo electrónico (email).

Or you can use your third eye. Here, the flower eyes have it ~ what the hell, what the heck?

Today's Rune: Signals.    

Interview with the Buddha

I go back to artwork and gardens -- antidotes to prolix patter. 

What is the sound of 

cellphone clapping?

Pablo Neruda, Muchos Somos / We Are Many (1970)

Of the many . . . whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing,
they have departed for another city. . .

De tantos hombres que soy, que somos,
no puedo encontrar a ninguno:
se me pierden bajo la ropa,
se fueron a otra ciudad.

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this . . . has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to describe my choices,

I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.

Mientras escribo estoy ausente
y cuando vuelvo ya he partido:
voy a ver si a las otras gentes
les pasa lo que a mí me pasa,
si son tantos como soy yo,
si se parecen a sí mismos
y cuando lo haya averiguado
voy a aprender tan bien las cosas
que para explicar mis problemas

les hablaré de geografía.

Does wireless have 

the Buddha nature?

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

The Great Blackout of 2003 in the US and Canada

For those who found themselves on this date ten years ago located within any swath of North America ranging from Detroit to Toronto to Manhattan, here's an oft-evocative writing prompt: "How did you respond to the Great Blackout of 2003?"

I've already gotten more than 100 responses so far, forming a mosaic of tales tall and short, muted and loud. The folks trapped in an elevator when the power failed. The heat. The food sizzling on grills in backyards and alleyways. The mad dashes from place to place grand and small. Generators. Boozing. Car radios. Dancing in the streets. Bartering by flashlight. All of it and more! How about you? 

Of course, some folks ain't never even done heard of nothing like such a thing. But there ya go, that's the way of the world and all the people in it. Go ask them that's stuck in Cairo or Aleppo on this date today, in the year 2013. Or in the parlance of our day:

***What?***

Today's Rune: Journey.   

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

Another precious gem from the book mines -- Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982).

And I'm seeing a clear series of interconnecting patterns, along the lines of the quip (inspired by a thought that is longer and more complex) by Søren Kierkegaard: "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" (1843). Clever lad, but when shortened to virtually slogan length, not entirely true. We do have some understanding, some inkling, of where life is going, or could go, when (or if) we take time to muse.

But as for All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, Kierkegaard makes appearances, as do Gogol, Baudelaire and Dostoyevsky (Berman goes with the Dostoevsky spelling) -- among a gob of other groovy writers, thinkers, dreamers and knowers. In a nod to Bob Dylan and the 1960s, there's a chapter called "The 1970s: Bringing It All Back Home." And throughout this book, everything that might seem eclectic and loosely based is seen holistically, even as constant change often makes people feel as if they (along with the years and decades) are blowin' in the wind.

Technological-communications, town and city planning, transportation, time itself as measured and understood by human beings -- all through the past couple hundred years have brought and have seen and have experienced dramatic change.

Take some examples, and then some water and an aspirin. Ha:

Railroads
Telegraph lines
Engine-powered ships
Electricity
Widespread indoor plumbing
Telephone lines 
Airships and aeroplanes, submarines and jets
Automobiles
Radio broadcasting
Air conditioning
Poison gas and rockets, nuclear bombs, napalm
Television
Reliable birth control
Spacecraft and satellite communications
Personal computers, internet
Digital, mobile wireless devices
Pilotless drones and miniaturized robotics
Social Media
3D Printing/Micro-manufacturing
Holographic projections, image cloaking
The known and the unknown
The foreseeable and the unforeseeable

Yeah, Steve Miller has it this way:

Time keeps on slippin,' slippin'
into the future . . .

And don't you know it?  That's why, I suppose, it's somewhat comforting to have or develop some kind of feeling of continuity, some grounding, some context, some historical and philosophically glimpsed sense of things.   

Today's Rune: The Self. 
      

The Cachet of the Geocache

If you're looking for adventure, have you heard of geocaching?  It's almost mind-boggling, but there are tens of thousands of hidden "caches" to be found all over the world. To begin finding some of them and leaving your mark, one needs a certain amount of mobility and some sort of GPS device (including smartphones). Access to the internet helps. Check out a website for your area, see where the treasures are located, and -- depending on your starting point -- either "get out of Dodge" or "go to town." Specific examples can be found via this link: http://www.geocaching.com/

 

Today's Rune: Warrior. 

The Time Tunnel: It's Déjà Vu All Over Again

I. Once upon a time, traveling by canoe, dugout, boat, ship or ferry was the most practical way to go. Horses, mules, oxen and traveling by foot also helped. Villages, towns and little cities were made for walking.

Then came the trains, the railroad, the telegraph, the street cars, the big cities fed, clothed and kept informed about everything from sports teams to market prices.

Down the line came more changes: horseless carriages, automobiles, cars, lorries, trucks, telephony, radio, dirigibles, aeroplanes, fast ships and submarines, the U-boats, nuclear powered rockets, jets, satellites, wireless communication.

At some point, the waterways became more obstacles than practical avenues for travel, unless one was rich and shipping ores, petroleum, slag, or goofing off on yachts, motorboats, sail boats.



II. Look how geography hems Detroit in, thanks partly to a lakes-and-riparian international boundary. Where are those students and workers to come from, when the fact of Canada blocks off nearly half Detroit's geographic draw?

A few tunnels and bridges, ferries, commerce bottlenecked by a military border dating back to the War of 1812, back to the Seven Years War and frontier fighting, tribal trade routes and internecine warfare.

The rise of the automobile, the killing off of streetcars and much of civil society, the destruction of the walking city, expanding suburban blight, strip malls, gas-fueled expansion in every direction away from the international border, much of it privately "owned" on the US side vs. public parks and walkways on the Windsor, Ontario side.

How about we uncork the bottlenecks between Canada and the USA, make movement easier, less hostile both ways? How about we lay down new track for passenger rail between suburbs and cities, across borders?



III. Reality. Watch a movie. How about Marion Cotillard (here pictured) in Ridley Scott's A Good Year (2006), set in France and also featuring, among others, Russell Crowe and Abbie Cornish? Better to dream of France than try to sell a new French Quarter for Detroit, even though it could be way cool and way civilized.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Enlightened

Laura Dern, Mike White, Diane Ladd and Luke Wilson rock in the HBO series Enlightened (2011-present).  The whole cast does. 

For now, a couple of things to note. One, at the start of the series, Amy Jellicoe is relegated to the H (= Hell or Hades) level of Abaddonn Industries, a demotion, despite having worked there for fifteen years.

Why Abaddonn? 

"Sheol and Abaddon are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied" (Proverbs 27:20).

Sheol = Hell; Abaddon(n) = Destruction. That's certainly one way to look at it.

Mike White is a cool writer -- and an excellent actor, too, here playing Tyler, a "mole" also relegated to H level, working on Cogentiva, a software program that tracks workers' "productivity."

Today's Rune: Signals.

The Three-Dimensional Printing Revolution

3D printing has the potential to morph into something right out of a Jetson's + Star Trek dream. Already just about anyone could make all sorts of things with these gizmos. Can you imagine their expansion into popular culture by, say, the year 2020? Drop these into the only recently developing heady mix of digital, wireless, mobile devices, the internet, globally networked social media and all that jazz, and where do we go from here? Clone yourself a wig-hat, customize your own clothes, generate God knows what next? Life on planet Earth is already wild. But brace yourselves, it's about to get a whole lot wilder, folks . . . 

Grok it, man!

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Over the Wires

Technology and change. Communication. Time and distance. Information. Before wireless mobile phones, cellphones and any telephones at all, there is the period of new railroads and new telegraph networks. Telegraphy transmitted by Morse Code kicks into gear in the 1840s, just in time for the US-Mexican War. By 1852, the US has gone from zero miles of wire to 23,000. 

Images in this post are closeup "snapshots" derived from Charles B. Barr's Telegraph Stations in the United States, the Canadas & Nova Scotia (1853). Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C. 20540-4650. Chosen font: Courier.

Old Northwest Territory area, telegraph lines in 1852 (1853).

Louisiana and Gulf Coast.

Note: On the Western fringe, Texas is just barely emerging from annexation and the US-Mexican War. 

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Jean Cocteau's Orphée / Orpheus: Take Three

Jean Cocteau's Orphée / Orpheus (1950) continues to creep into my thoughts and imagination. Early yesterday morning, one scene was transposed into a dream, a waxing moon pushing me out into REM sleep of some kind or another. In the dream, I was escaping a big storm or flood by canvas-covered military truck but later found myself detained and isolated in a room full of Scientologists. They would not allow me to leave or make calls. Eventually, I escaped and ran to freedom -- and woke up with the chills.

In Cocteau's film, there's a lot to delve into. One major strand gets into the "War of the Poets," rivalries of style and substance. There's also a split beteen the idea of being "a writer" and "a poet." Are they different entities, or overlapping?

Then there's the contested essence of art and aesthetics through publication. One minor exchange between an older writer and Orpheus the poet:

She's* not from here, but she needs to be among us. Here's her review.
Every page is blank!
It's called Nudism.
It's absurd.
Less absurd than if it were full of absurd writing.
No excess is absurd!

*The "Princess" (Maria Casarès, pictured above), an apparent agent or avatar of Death. In "real life," one of Casarès' paramours was no less a luminary than Albert Camus.

Juliette Gréco (pictured above) as Bohemian Aglaonice (Aglaonike in Greek), enemy of Orpheus and leader of the Bacchantes (or Maneads in Greek). In this particular Cocteau variant on the Orpheus myth, Eurydice is Aglaonice's friend and a former Bacchante herself, drawn into domesticity by Orpheus, who is now more absorbed than ever in the mysteries of creativity and art -- at times, to the point of sometimes comical neglect of everything else. What's remarkable about Aglaonike's character is how much more cagily she'd fit in today, in 2012, than in 1950, when Orphée / Orpheus was first released. In addition, there was a "real" Aglaonike, a noted astronomer/astrologer of her time (second century B.C., some 2100-2200 years ago) in Thessaly, Greece, one of the so-called "Witches of Thessaly." Watch out, more strange dreams may ensue . . .

Today's Rune: Journey.