Some Notes and Queries Regarding Some Persons And Things
1 Civility becomes
Chorus in the Residents' amnesiac adventure.
The Character and Section names are radically different in the finished work that became available. Which is consistent with the Theory of Phonetic Organisation. It also indicates the methodology of the Theory Of Obscurity: The Work facilitates The Forgetting. The German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885) studied Memory and concluded that forgetting occurs in a systematic manner, beginning rapidly and then leveling off. By using the Theory of Phonetic Organisation in tandem with the Ebbinghaus
Über das Gedächtnis the Theory Of Obscurity was grounded in respectable Science. The fact that The Residents rapidly move on to the next project is well known. This, too, is part of the Ebbinghaus contribution to the Theory Of Obscurity: by avoiding spaced repetition of any specific work, the Residents never exactly remember precise details of why a thing was created.
Ebbinghaus gave a formula for Retention of Memory.
R=e
-(t/s)where R is memory retention, S is the relative strength of memory, and t is time.
Which gave the amount of time between Creating The Work and Forgetting The Work. At the point of forgetting, there is the maximisation of Obscurity and the minimisation fo the Strength of Memory (S) or the maximisation of time (t). So, The Work is made Public when memory retention (R) falls below a minimal value - approaching zero.
Senada would not be alone in appreciating that releasing The Work at the maximal point of Obscurity into the World would make the Residents become, potentially their own Unaware Audience. Thus ensuring that the Residents are, in fact, incapable of producing work for the purpose of celebrity or adulation. Senada had closed a loop making the Theory of Obscurity, when practiced, an autotelic discipline. The outcome of the practice of the Theory Of Obscurity is to become a daimon.
The Ancient Greek word daimon denotes a supernatural power, much like the Latin genius or numen. Daimon most likely came from the Greek verb daiesthai (to divide, distribute) and notably appears in the works of Plato, where daimon describes the inspiration of Socrates - an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of his students Plato and Xenophon and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Socrates, like Senada, may well not have existed.
2 Young Goal becomes
Young GirlThe Work has a repeated fascination with homophones and punning. Which gradually disconnects and unanchors the Signifiers from the Signified. Punning or paronomasia comes from Ancient Greek. para, "alongside" and onomos, "name" and suggests "to alter slightly in naming", or, technically metaplasm: changing the form of things. Thus when a "Young Goal" becomes a "Young Girl" there may well be some wordplay but, also, there is a layer of sinister heaping up of meanings.
The sinister exaggeration might well be an oblique reference to Adrien Wettach Grock (1880-1959) the Swiss Circus Performer and contemporary of ND Sendada. The violin playing son of a Watchmaker, Clown and Writer helped Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) to develop some ideas of writing-beyond-writing. Which is, most clearly, seen in the
Young Goal sections of
Pathway One. The phrase was used in
Le Figaro, quoting Alain Vernay - a member of the Scientific Committee of the Journal
Politique étrangère when refering to McLuhan and the concept of writing beyond writing.
Grock managed to write about a life as a Clown and to go beyond the merely functionary writing, that biography normally achieves, to become something of the
Open Work described by
Umberto Eco. The
Young Goal becoming
Young Girl becomes a stunning insight into the Method of both Phonetic Organisation and of The Theory Of Obscurity. By transforming the original text systematically, from
Young Goal to
Young Girl, the Creators of the
Not Available are obliged to return to the Work with new expectations of the words. No longer are the characters exactly correct; their identities have become subtly blurred and demand interpretation thus confounding autobiographical elements.
3Upstart Remus becomes
Uncle RemusThe Work again covers meanings in such layers as makes the actual recorded Work ironic in terms of being layers of meaning beyond the Original Work and ironic in that the Audience are incapable of knowing the original Work's text.
Rhea Silvia was a vestal virgin and the daughter of the former king, Numitor, displaced by his brother Amulius. Rhea Silvia gave birth to Romulus and Remus, who were born in Alba Longa, an ancient Latin city near the site where Rome would be. Through Rhea Silvia, the twins were descended from Greek and Latin nobility. Their father, Mars, having visited Rhea Silvia in a sacred grove dedicated to him. King Amulius ordered the death of the Upstarts Romulus and Remus. Abandoned on the bank of the River, they were saved by the Father of the River and survived with the care of others, unaware of their own identity.
When the
Upstart became the
Uncle the identities of possibly different Remuses were conflated. This was of no real concern to Senada whose Theory of Phonetic Organisation allowed for the use of punning. Phonetic and Phronetic Organisation acting as guides to both the construction of The Work and of the Constructors of The Work. Phronesis - from the Ancient Greek: phronesis - is a type of wisdom or intelligence. Specifically a type of wisdom relevant to practical things, requiring an ability to discern how or why to act virtuously and encourage practical virtue, excellence of character, in others. Indeed, Phronesis was the proper pursuit of the Daimon. An attribute of Demons that was lost in a Christianised culture. The underlying principle of translating the Theory of Obscurity into practical action, the Praxis Of Obscurity, not only changes language and the form of signs but also the people it touches.
4 Pot becomes
PorcupineThe relationship between Edweena and the Porcupine is complex. A key to understanding is in the parallel lines:
Edweena went to calumet and libertarian from there to commencement;
She took along a pot whose neighbour was known as land;
Now their repayment was fraught with parchments of loving icon.
The Pot could rabble-rouse all, but all she knew was sneaker.
Edweena went to calumet and left from there to college;
She took along a porcupine whose name was known as knowledge;
Now their relationship was fraught with pangs of loving hunger.
The Porcupine could question all, but all she knew was slumber.
Calumet is a Norman word, recorded in David Ferrand's
La Muse normande around 655. Norman-French settlers, in Canada, used calumet to describe the ceremonial pipes of the First Nations peoples with a meaning of "sort of reeds used to make pipes".Calument corresponds to the French word chalumeau, meaning 'reed'. The name of the Calumet Region in Illinois and Indiana may derive from the French term or may have an independent derivation from Potawatomi.
In some colonial historical sources, a ceremonial pipe, referred to as a calumet were used in the Catholic conversion rituals first in Illinois and then in Mi'kmaq territory and later as trade goods and gifts; but, calument is also various regions of the Americas and a Ship. By careful choice, transforming the original,
"a pot whose neighbour was known as land" into
"a porcupine whose name was known as knowledge" the layering that takes place in creating maximised Obscurity comes into play. Porcupines exist both in the Old World and the New World. Which, given the scarce narratives around Senanda, suggests Edweena might well be an incarnation of ND Senada.
Edweena is a rare variant of the male name Edwin. Which carrys the meaning of "rich friend" from the Old English elements
ead "wealth, fortune" and
wine "friend". A 7th-century Northumbrian king, regarded as a saint, held the name. Edwin Aldrin, known as Buzz, the second man to walk on the moon and a synonym for the drug experience of pot use. Which conjours to mind the notion that Edweena was, somehow, the patron of Senada and Senada the patron of Edweena both summoned by the power of the calumet. Calument was not merely a pipe but a lake freighter, the second of that name.
The vessel was built in Detroit, Michigan, in 1929, by the Great Lakes Engineering Works. The Wastelands of the North where Senada was known to wander in pursuit of jars of Arctic Air. The Calumet was in service right up to 2007, giving credence to the possibility that Edweena merely went to Calumet High School in Chicago before meeting Senada in some maritime tryst. Calumet High School had opened in 1909 and so, that would make Edweena a contemporary of Senada. It would also mean that Edweena and Senada could have been aware of Duchamp's Ampoule of Paris Air and the replicas Duchamp made of that 1919 work - a decade after the High School opened and so a time when commencement speeches would have been commonplace.
The parallel of pot and porcupine knowing only sneaker or slumber gives rise to the notion that their relationship was, of some necessity or other, a clandestine one. Sneaking about at slumbertime for whatever it is that German Musicologists do in the Dark Hours. Again, this illuminates how The Work facilitates The Forgetting. How the layers upon layers of storytelling obscure the underlying narratives. The mainly solitary and nocturnal porcupine has a good memory but, like Humans they forget. Which might be aided by the calumet. Perhaps they were the staff of the Calument. Nobody can really know. But Calumet High School gave Oscar Meyer a jingle that endured from 1963 to 2010. Something was happening.
5 Catbird remains
CatbirdAt first glance, this is a straightforwards failure of the changing names that have characterised transforming The Work into The Forgetting. Yet, a simple check of Catbirds makes it clear that the Catbird could be one of two: the gray catbird (
Dumetella carolinensis), or, the black catbird (
Melanoptila glabrirostris). The change from Catbird to Catbird makes it all the more confusing, neatly illustrating the role of confusion in the Theory Of Obscurity. A single specimen of a black catbird collected from Brownsville, Texas in 1892 is controversial: it never happened according to some experts and it may have been a dirty gray catbird. The gray and the black have songs in common and nobody really records the harsh rriah, nasal chrrh and grating tcheeu in enough detail. The shiny cowbird (
Molothrus bonariensis) might push the catbird from near threatened towards extinction and that ensures that the name changing separates anybody wanting to understand the role of the Catbird from the actual Catbird.
Which is a central working principle of the Theory Of Obscurity: hiding things in plain sight. Those things that are visible are the things that you can respond to but the things that created them are forgotten. Not only does The Work facilitate The Forgetting but it becomes, in the terms of
Baudrillard or
Debord or any of the various Philosophers concerned with semiotics:
Simulacra.
The Stages of the Simulacra are outlined as being: faithful images that copy giving way to simulation. We can believe, and it may be a justified true belief, that a sign is a reflection of a profound reality and a good appearance. This honesty gives way to a perversion of reality. We come to believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, and justifications are undermined by an evil appearance in the order of maleificence that mask and hint at the existence of an obscure reality which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating. Which gives way to the image masking the absence of any profound reality. The sign is pretence to faithful copying has no original and truth exits. Signs and images then claim to represent something real in terms of other signs but this is deception and arbitrary which nobody can believe. Justified, true belief becomes Obscure and we are left with the irony that gives way to pure simulation and the end of knowledge. The simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is misleading. Culture ceases to be ordinary and pretence of reality in a naïve sense. Personhood becomes the experiences of consumption obliging all claims to be phrased in artificial, terms. Any naïve claim to reality is perceived as oversentimental and bereft of critical self-awareness.
Which is the process that Senada has employed in transforming the Theory Of Obscurity into a practical methodology for the production of The Work. Nobody can tell who, what or even if the Catbird exists despite the Catbird not changing its name. Such is the powerful technique that Senada has created that nobody notices how it has transformed the World since 1937. These are the intellectual gymnastics that Senada had perfected in the creation of
Pollex Christi. The slim canon of Senada might well not impress a world greedy for volume of production but the effectiveness of The Theory Of Obscurity has secured his position in the intellectual history of a the World.
6 The Enigmatic Follow-Through becomes
The Enigmatic FoeOnce again, the Theory Of Obscurity achieves something subtle with the minimum of change. The
Follow-Through and the
Foe pervert the reality of the agonist and antagonist in the drama. Which brings the Daimon from being a Socratic inspiration to being a Simulacra. Nigel D. Senada not only ceases to exist but ceases to have relationship to anything other than the
Senada's that have ceased to exist for every person who participates as an Audience. The Enigmatic Follow-Through is simply the inevitable Enigmatic Foe. Unless the Audience discover Senada there is no Work at all.
7 All remains
AllLike the Catbird, the All conceals deeper occurences. The All acts as the Antagonist - quite distinct from the Enigmatic Follow-Through - to the Agonist of Civility. Civility becomes the Chorus in The Work as made Public. AW Schlegel proposed, in 1846, the Chorus demonstrated how the audience might react to the drama. This view of the Chorus is as "the ideal spectator". Conveying to actual spectators interpretations that raise the spectator to heights of contemplation. The Chorus is significantly different to the notion of the All. The Chorus is directed to act by some external power - some Author or Composer - while the All acts because of some internal, creative urge.
The All is an Audience: an Audience that first experienced The Work and must experience The Forgetting. Which makes the All the Antagonist of the Chorus. Unlike the Simulacrum of the Catbird, the All and the Chorus are, by being two separate entities, a mechanism for the reversal of the Stages of the Simulacra. The All and the Chorus are much like Beckett's Lucky appearing in the first and second acts of
Waiting for Godot.
As Estragon observes, Lucky appears to be an idiot and Lucky's speech gives the impression of total dissolution of language and thought. In
Not Available there are the appearances of the opposite process: of the increasing manifestation of language and though. Lucky's Speech is deceptive. The rambling tirade punctuated with gasping interjections seems nonsensical. Yet, the truth is that it is the Speech of one who is delivering multiple stories at once:
"
Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann
of a personal God quaquaquaqua
with white beard quaquaquaqua
outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia
loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell
and suffers like the divine Miranda
with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell
are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues
and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say
blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast."
Like WH Mallock's 1892 novel
A Human Document which transformed into
A Hummument in various stages and multitudionous measures since 1965 when Tom Phillips read an interview with William Burroughs in
Paris Review and began to to experiment with his own variant of 'cut up' technique, the columnedge poem. A routine Saturday excursion with Ron Kitaj, resulted in the purchase of
A Human Document at Austins Furniture Repository Peckham for thrippence. Thus beginning a decades long process of finding the Voice in the Murmuration of the Crowd.
Which is a relationship the
All and the
Chorus have: delivering all of the Message before succumbing to learning or remembering. The
All guarantees that the only authentic arena for any practice of the Theory Of Obscurity would be in Popular Culture. The endless streaming, Lucky-like, emanating from the Ur-Geist of the World. Gradually making known The Work despite The Forgetting.
8 The Sou'wester becomes
The SonWhich transformation makes the Theory Of Obscurity, in the context of the recurring religious imagery, a kind of Death and Resurrection Theatre. The recurring flirting with religious imagery approaches, without ever reaching explicit mention of deities who die then subsequently rise such as Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis and Attis, Dionysus and Jesus, in a kind of epiphany. Not the religious epiphany of the
Sol Invictus cultus or the secular epiphanies of Joyce and Stephen Daedlus, nor, even, the dissembling epiphanies of Simulacra, but a kind of Anamnesis of the anaphoras of the Creative Act.
In Ancient Greece, the Anemoi, were Daimons of the Winds. The metamorphosis from Boreas to Eurus to Notus to Zephyrus was a subtle shift. Unlike the metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa into a massive insect, the transformation of the Anemoi was predictable and unshocking. Later the transformation from Aparctias to Apheliotes to Argestes to Caiciasto to Circios or Thraskias, and, then to Euronotus and finally Lips and Skeiron were added and make prediction more fraught - but still possible. The Transformation from
Sou'wester to
Son implies the transformation from
Lips - synonymous with the Winter Sunset - to someone with personhood.
Which is consistent with every subsequent work: the exploitation of the death and rebirth mythology.
Lips was depicted as a winged man holding the stern of a ship. Lips, when striking the budding vines from the Saronic Gulf, blights their buds. According to Pausanias, two men cut an all white male chicken in two and run around the vines in opposite directions to frustrate the blight of Lips. when they meet again at their starting place they bury the bird. Which gives a sense of why the
Sou'wester is obliged to become
The Son. It is little more than a death and rebirth story.