Los Angeles As An Insane Painting

Thinking about painting Los Angeles,
I’m thinking about using earth colors
but earth colors mixed with high-tech pigments
that increase the basic intensity
while staying true to the earth color’s hue.

Painters have to look at the thing they paint.

I don’t think Los Angeles will notice.

But that is something I’m thinking about.

Painting Los Angeles In Earth Colors

I was reading a book when she came in.

She said, “Well, now, you know, this is just wrong.”

I said, “Why? Have they made it official?
Is it against the law now to read books?”

“It’s not against the law. But you won’t read
‘The Tempest’ till you’re living on a boat.
It seems to me you shouldn’t read ‘Macbeth’
until you’re staying in Los Angeles.”

I laughed. “I’m thinking if I read ‘Macbeth’
it will be as if I’m already there.
And maybe then I won’t want to go there.”

“Los Angeles is just another place.
There’s no reason to be afraid of it.”

I stared. “There’s no reason to be afraid?”

“A city is just a created thing.
It’s like a three dimensional painting.
And would you be afraid of a painting?”

She took the copy of ‘Macbeth’ from me
and flipped through it looking for a passage.

LADY MACBETH

The sleeping and the dead
are but as pictures. ’Tis the eye of childhood
that fears a painted devil.

Macbeth, Act II, sc. 2

I laughed again. “But Lady Macbeth dies.
She goes insane and commits suicide.
And, really, shouldn’t you be more afraid
of Los Angeles, whatever it is,
a city or a painting, than I am?”

“I’m not afraid of Los Angeles. Why?”

“Did you ever read why Polanski changed
the first ending Towne wrote for ‘Chinatown’?”

I took another book from my bookshelf
and flipped through it looking for a passage.

In Towne’s original script, Evelyn Mulwray kills her venal father, Noah Cross. In other words, a happy ending in which innocence defiled is avenged and evil is punished. For Polanski, the world was a darker place. ... Concludes Towne, “Roman’s argument was, That’s life. Beautiful blondes die in Los Angeles.”

quoted in “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls”
by Peter Biskind

Talking about Los Angeles and death,
but she smiled, then, leaned forward and kissed me.

I stared at her. I said, “What was that for?”

She said, “You called me a beautiful blonde.”

I gasped. And laughed. And I pointed at her
and said, “It’s that city in a nutshell—
Even before we’re in Los Angeles,
Los Angeles already is in us.”

Laughing, she took both books away from me.

She put both books away, back on the shelf.

Inspiration As A Trick

“Ray Winstone has been offered the role of Noah’s nemesis in the Darren Aronofsky-directed Biblical epic Noah. Negotiations are underway for Winstone to go mano a mano against Russell Crowe in the film, which also stars Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth and Emma Watson.”

Ray Winstone Offered Villain Role In 'Noah'
at Deadline

Ray Winstone as the villain? Granted, I haven’t read the source material in a while, but isn’t the bad guy in the story God?? After all, he’s the one committing genocide against the entire human race — pretty villainous move right there! Either way, I’m actually totally fine with Ray Winstone playing that role…he was great in Sexy Beast.

Comment by DH
— Monday June 11, 2012 @ 8:43pm

Is it really genocide if you created that which you are destroying? And, I think it was more of a starting over type of move. If you build a lego house and decide to take it apart and start over, does that make you a villain?

Hmm….

Comment by Vincent Hanna
— Tuesday June 12, 2012 @ 2:30pm EDT

from the comments
to the story at Deadline

I said, “Bright lights make it hard to see stars.”

She said, “Bright lights help you read books at night.”

I said, “Yes. Of course they’re closing bookstores.”

She smiled. She said, “You think books were a trick
to get everybody hooked on bright lights
and now that we are all hooked on bright lights
nobody needs to keep bookstores around?”

I said, “Did you ever hear that theory
fundamentalist Protestants worked out
that books were invented by the devil
so people would come to see the Bible
as just another book and not God’s Word?
It’s a kill two birds with one stone type thing.
Books redefine scripture as just writing
and since you need lights to read books at night
books change the sky into a starless void.”

She laughed. She said, “And are you conflicted
that you’re a writer making up this stuff
to film something that can only be seen
in the bright light from a computer screen?”

I said, “Well Noah didn’t make it rain
but his ark floated on the rain water.”

She laughed harder. She said, “Oh so you’re not
conflicted you are divinely inspired?”

Carefully I said, “Do you know I’m not?”

She was laughing too hard to go on then
so I won and she had to make dinner.

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On A Loch Ness Kind Of Wind

Thinking About Real And Fake Villains

A Flute Landscape

Machines Of Loving Grace


‘Lost Horizon’ Versus ‘Camelot’ — #4: Fie On Goodness!

“The Parthenon Code”


The Occult Technology Of Guitars And Keyboards

“What did the wives think?”


Blows Against The (Expensive) Empire

“Have you seen the stars tonight?”

The Occult Technology Of Guitars And Keyboards

Beethoven’s power to inspire is a matter of historical record. But to inspire what? In China, in the 1970s, his music was condemned for its representation (among other things) of “the decadent, chaotic life and depraved sentiments of the bourgeoisie.” Most western composers were vilified, but none as stridently as Beethoven. For none was more feared. No other had his power to excite, to uplift, to nourish the soul and embolden the spirit. No other so transcendently represented the triumph of the individual over seemingly insuperable odds.

Jeremy Siepmann
writing in “Beethoven: His Life And Music”

Gaia created a great sickle and gathered together Cronus and his brothers to convince them to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus was willing to do the deed, so Gaia gave him the sickle and placed him in a bush and in doing so he became the King of the Titans.

When Uranus met with Gaia, Cronus attacked Uranus and, with the sickle, cut off his genitals, casting them into the sea. As Uranus lay dying, he made a prophecy that Cronus' own children would rebel against his rule, just as Cronus had rebelled against his own father. Uranus' blood that had spilled upon the earth, gave rise to the Gigantes, Erinyes, and Meliae, and from his semen from his cut genitalia, Aphrodite arose from the sea:

"...so soon as he had cut off the members with flint and cast them from the land into the surging sea, they were swept away over the main a long time: and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden..."

from “Titanomachy” at Wikipedia

In the traditional Judeo-Christian story of Noah and the Flood, when God so-to-speak “cut off” the generations of mankind by the Flood, the reproductive hopes of the human race were cast onto the surging waters of the Flood in the ark, eight humans, four men and four women.

Traditional Judeo-Christian readings of Scripture focus on the men, Noah and his three sons. But the book of Genesis says a little about the relationships of men and women in those days. Godly men, Scripture says, so-called “children of God,” took their wives from among the “children of men.” So while Noah and his sons believed in what Judeo-Christians call “the one true God,” the wives of Noah may have had other beliefs entirely.

Noah and his sons according to Scripture interpreted the Flood as God’s punishment of mankind, for in those days most men embraced the human-centric civilization established by Cain.

What did the wives think?

Did one or more of the women on the ark with Noah maintain her beliefs in the human-centric civilization? She would have regarded the Flood as wanton destruction, as the actions of a vicious, hateful god destroying good humans. She would have regarded that god as a god to be derided, a god to be fought against.

After the Flood, children would have heard two interpretations of their past. One from their fathers, another from one or more of their mothers.

The children who believed their mothers would have viewed their mothers as rebels. Those children would have seen their mothers as something like glorious rebels struggling against the vicious, hateful god who destroyed the great civilization mankind had struggled to achieve before the Flood, glorious rebels struggling against the complacent men who accepted the judgments and actions of that hateful god and even continued to worship that god.

A woman who had the character and fiery passion to rebel against all that, the insight and courage to persevere, to maintain her own beliefs about right and wrong and civilization itself, to keep her beliefs alive after the Flood and encourage those beliefs, watch them grow once more and struggle once more against the beliefs of the men around her—such a woman would be regarded herself as something like a goddess.

Who could not love such a woman?

The green witch said, “She’s in Los Angeles doing what you call villainy.”

I said, “It won’t be the same without her.”

The green witch smiled and asked, “If she were here, what do you think would be the same?”

quote from “The Primitive And What Came After”

I don’t understand—
Are guitars and pianos
more than instruments?

Some musicians think
there’s an entire orchestra
in a piano.

A folksinger strums
a guitar one musician
alone with music.

Is an orchestra
civilization itself
man making mankind?

When guitar players
play music alone is that
something more than man?

I don’t understand
civilization or God
but I like guitars.

I like gadgets and
the easy life they bring but
I love music more.

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The Occult Technology Of Lost Songs


Beautiful Queen Of All The World’s Gadgets


This Scary, Pumpkin Time Of Year, Part Two


Tiny Purple Fishes Swim Laughing


Thinking About Arranging “Layla”



‘Lost Horizon’ Versus ‘Camelot’ — #1

‘Lost Horizon’ Versus ‘Camelot’ — #2: It’s May!

‘Lost Horizon’ Versus ‘Camelot’ — #3: Two Different Worlds

‘Lost Horizon’ Versus ‘Camelot’ — #4: Fie On Goodness!

‘Lost Horizon’ Versus ‘Camelot’ — #5: Shangri-La



The Orchestra As A Mythical Creature

“Perfect In His Generations”

Today will be a relatively short post and I’m going to jump around a bit.

Basically I wanted to link to a story about to Dr. Craig Venter creating a synthetic cell in his laboratories in Rockville, Maryland. And I wanted to speak in the same post—not to draw a connection, but just to juxtapose the topics—of an obscure conspiracy theory built from a seemingly trivial Bible passage.

Synthetic cells: It's life, but not as we know it


Okay. That’s the link to the news story. As I understand it, Dr. Venter didn’t create “life” from scratch, but rather digitized functional DNA, copied it synthetically and implanted the copy in a cell and the cell functioned. This opens up the possibility of engineering real, emergent DNA rather than just copying it and re-introducing the modified DNA into a cell. Scientists—and the people who fund them—can create modified plants, animals and presumably people.

*

One of the few bits of Biblical prophecy many people have heard directly is from the gospel of Matthew, 24:37, where Jesus characterizes the future end-times by saying, But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.


Nobody really knows what the world was like in the days of Noah. But there is a little known passage back in Genesis that many people either haven’t read or just skipped over, but which some conspiracy theorists have fixed on.


Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. — Genesis 6:9


That one sentence, nine words, has gotten a lot of attention.


For an interesting and straight-forward Biblical exposition, Richard T. Ritenbaugh has a nice page on the web: 'Perfect In His Generations'


But it’s interesting to note that just before that sentence in Genesis, there is another passage that also has generated a lot of attention from translators and conspiracy people.


There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. — Genesis 6:4


Nobody knows what that means, either.


Many fundamentalists interpret the ‘sons of God’ phrase to mean that the Fallen Angels interbred with human beings. This is consistent with certain other Biblical injunctions for women to wear “coverings” to protect them from the angels.

Conspiracy theorists note that as Ritenbaugh points out in his exposition of the phrase ‘perfect in his generation,’ the Hebrew phrase translated as ‘perfect’ really means ‘complete.’


So the conspiracy theory is that the Flood happened because Fallen Angels—Satan and his minions—interbred with human beings so extensively that by the time of Noah only Noah and his immediate family retained a ‘complete’ human genome.


Now, today, for the first time in history, scientists have the means to fiddle with the human genome themselves.


In the old days Satan was able to destroy humanity—from within—by using sex to corrupt the human gene pool. Today what physically makes us human—our genes—can be ‘improved’ by science. Regardless of whether the changes are in fact improvements or not, the bottom line will be that we will cease to be completely human, in the historical sense, when the human genome becomes changed, corrupted.


And, remarkably, this change might mirror something that may have occurred many thousands of years ago through the direct intervention of incarnate Evil.

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When We Meet Monsters


“She’s A Pussy Cat”


Freedom From The Wild



“This Was A Different World”