Reading Jeffery Kripal's book 'Authors of the Impossible', I came across the passage in chapter four, 'Returning the Human Sciences to Consciousness', where Jeff writes about Bertrand Meheust and the metaphysics of history, especially about "the cultural forgetting" of various things, and sums up Bertrand's feelings of the social culture we find ourselves in by saying, "Put a bit differently, we think, feel, and experience today according to the battles of yesterday, but had these battles come out differently, we would be thinking, feeling, and experiencing quite differently now. The world can be otherwise. The impossible is possible. Fort had it exactly right again then: "Or that the knack that tips a table may tilt an epoch"."
I think it is true that we arrive today as a society and as individuals from the battles of yesterday that we survived and made us who we are, but the mental(and real)war is still raging around us now, and like a golfer who finds himself in a sand bunker, he, or she has to play on from yesterdaywhere the ball placed them in the game.
Today is the day for transforming your thinking, yesterday is the trap
The trouble with thinking about Yesterday is that the troubles lay ahead in Today and Tomorrow, not Yesterday.
Which is why Yesterday seems such a warm place to visit in our heads, because instead of playing ourselves out of the sand, we can put our heads into it.
Of course, the thing also about yesterday is just how much of it that we think we know about it is true?-)
No wonder I came across these thoughts in chapter FOUR!!!;-)
Scene ofBowie falling in'The Man Who Fell to Earth'
Emma Louise(born July 16, 1991) is an Australian singer-songwriter who I've previously mentioned, or featured in older posts like - Interstellar Syncs Emma is known(in Australia at least) as the girl in the Adelaide'Breathe' commercial that was played mainly in cinemas as an Adelaide tourism drive.
Emma's green (alien hybrid?-)eye
The ad features Emma falling from the sky into earth's atmosphere dressed in a spacesuit.
Also interesting is that Emma is born on the anniversary date of the Apollo 11's blast off into space, July 16th.
Emma's green(alien?-)eyes
Not only that but Emma has green eyes (like I do), which of course we are told in UFO lore is a sign of someone who might be an alien hybrid, as I wrote in this post -
Hmm ... I notice Chelsea Wolfe has green eyes, as well;-)
Maybe?
My Pick of Dark Mofo Would Have to be Chelsea Wolfe But all of that aside, I just bought Emma Louise's new album on iTunes and have to say that her voice and songs do seem otherworldly, and I think that she has a long career ahead of her ... as long as she stays grounded and just stays true to herself. Grounded ... get it?-)
Good to see another talented Australien like Emma Louise making great art.
Here's a few songs of Emma's you might like to listen to if you have never heard of her before.
And here is a recent interview of Emma talking about her life and new album in the You Tubes below.
I find the song 'West End Kids' rather haunting, as my Nana's house was in West End in Brisbane and I would spend a bit of time there as a kid growing up and walking up the end of her street to watch the
Souths Magpies Rugby League team play at Davies Park. She died of a cerebral in that West End house and since then the house has been torn down and where once was factories and workshops are now ten story apartment blocks. My Nan would never recognize that street now ... I barely do myself when I drive down it. My father grew up in West End in that house, too. So, he was a West End kid. But he has dementia now and barely remembers the house we all grew up in, so West End is buried in that brain fog for him. My ex-father-in-law, who's now dead, also grew up in West End . West End is a good area today, but like the lyrics in the song say, "All my loneliness is the only thing to find here ... And seeing these places only brings back pain" West End Kids [Verse 1] This is the suburb where we found love There was chair where you wrapped your arms around me So maybe you could walk me to my car Kiss me down to my bones, we were gone from the start
[Pre-Chorus 1] Oh, oh, oh, oh Walking these streets only makes me sad Oh, oh, oh, oh Gone and lost, the realest thing that I ever had [Chorus] And it breaks my heart just to see us there Hand in hand, standing on the corner in a hologram And I reach but we disappear All my loneliness is the only thing to find here West End kids, always stay the same, always stay the same West End kids, always stay the same, always stay the same Always stay the same, always stay the same
[Verse 2] We never did have much, living in a house of fire Friends were in and out, you and I were getting high most of the time But when our old house burned down We all huddled in the blankets knowing everything was different now
[Pre-Chorus 2] Oh, oh, oh, oh And seeing these places only brings back pain Oh, oh, oh, oh Gone and lost, the only thing that made me feel sane
[Chorus] And it breaks my heart just to see us there Hand in hand, standing on the corner in a hologram And I reach but we disappear All my loneliness is the only thing to find here West End kids, always stay the same, always stay the same West End kids, always stay the same, always stay the same
[Bridge] We had it all, it all, it all We had it all, it all, it all Too much, too much of everything We had it all, it all, it all We had it all, it all, it all We had it all, it all, it all Too much, too much of everything We had it all, it all, it all
[Chorus] And it breaks my heart just to see us there Hand in hand, standing on the corner in a hologram And I reach but we disappear All my loneliness is the only thing to find here West End kids, always stay the same, always stay the same West End kids, always stay the same, always stay the same West End kids, always stay the same, always stay the same West End kids, always stay the same, always stay the same
Time claims all West End kids eventually, until onlythe ghosts of memory remain.
Michelle Law on the cover
I was surprised to find that a suburb like West End even has its own glossy magazine, which is for sale all over and outside of Brisbane. I picked this West End magazine (pictured above) up at a newsagent at Victoria Point.
I wrote about seeing Michelle give a talk at Woodford in this post - Wednesday at Woodford ... Again My dear old auntie who I really liked and was around a lot when I was growing up also passed away in her house at Woodford, but Woodford never had the same memories for me that West End dredges up. I don't mind visiting Woodford, and especially the folkfestival held there every summer, but West End tends to bring me down, so I tend to avoid the area now. Memories are a funny things.
"Hermeneutics was initially applied to the interpretation, or exegesis, of scripture. The terms "hermeneutics" and "exegesis" are sometimes used interchangeably. Hermeneutics is a wider discipline which includes written, verbal (and non-verbal) communication. Exegesis focuses primarily upon texts. Modern hermeneutics includes both verbal and non-verbal communication as well as semiotics, presuppositions, and pre-understandings. Hermeneutics has been broadly applied in the humanities, especially in law, history and theology."
I was reading Jeff's book where it was written, "Meheust also employs mythical language to say the same thing. Hence, he can describe the entire UFO phenomenon as a "technologized Hermes", after the Greek trickster god of lucky finds, language, and communication, doorways, and dreams(and the etymological base of our own "hermeneutics"). Here he points out that in reading the abduction narratives one often has the impression that the victim has "penetrated" into the UFO as if it represented "the other side of the mirror." Like Alice in Wonderland, the victim has somehow entered another universe, this one of an atemporal and non-spatial order.... He thus sees these narratives as a return of the repressed Hermes archetype, as a lived embodiment of the most basic of Hermetic principals, "where the high and the low cease to be perceived as contradictory"." I couldn't help thinking what you would get if you crossed a man's genes with Hermes' genes, like some kind of Frankenstein experiment, and the thought popped into my head that you would get Her/man monster:-)
"Most folks don't know it, but Herman Munster was a HAM RADIO OPERATOR! In episode number 18, which first aired on January 21, 1965 Herman is goofing around with his ham radio set (which is apparently a homebrew -naturally- transceiver with headphones, microphone, large horn style speaker, a large quantity of tubes, one HUGE tube and a bank of dry cell batteries) when he overhears some kids playing Martian with their walkie-talkies. Naturally the kids lead Herman and Grandpa into thinking there really ARE Martians on Earth, and being good citizens they notify the airforce." Herman Calling Mars!
Unlike Hermanon his HAM radio, I think Jeff Kripal is doing some really good work in his books with his theories about the strange and paranormal ... or should I say The Super Natural?-)
The Detached Art structure which would tower over Hobart
Detached Art Tower: Hobart locals not warming to proposal which would change Hobart's skyline "About 100 people have gathered at a public forum in Hobart to discuss plans for a building in the CBD higher than the Big Ben, which has been proposed as part of the eclectic winter festival Dark Mofo. At 117 metres, the Detached Art Tower would stretch 50 metres higher into the sky than Tasmania's tallest building and higher than the Statue of Liberty."
"Connecting the boardwalk and the Round House library is this potential commission from perennial Mona favourite, Wim Delvoye. Towers seem to be the flavour of the century in Hobart, and with the proposed light tower for Hobart, I hesitated before publishing it. But we’ve been working on it for years, and it’s kind of beautiful. Maybe Hobart, in the tradition of Tolkien, could use two towers?" Stuff we are planning to do I think these towers are great ideas to get people to go to Hobart, but then again, I don't live in Hobart ... not yet anyway;-)
The Dead Man's poker hand, a pair of aces and eights. 1881?
I see that in recent months my blog has attracted the attention of a large Russian audience and that the post that seems to be the most popular to that audience is my post titled - "Touch" theDeadman's Hand Coincidence I have no reason why it is so popular with Russian readers of this blog.
Maybe they like'The Church''s You Tube songs in that post, and/or are fans of the TV show 'Touch'?
I did write about one of my favourite beers in that post, "This is one of my favourite
Australian beers and I've been drinking it on and off all year, and it
was only today that I noticed on the bottle that it has been brewed
since1881!?!"
The t-shirt I bought at Boag's brewery
I ended up doing a brewery tour of Boag's Brewery on the one day that I spent in Launceston, and I ended up buyinga deck of playing cardsand a t-shirt.
"The Lame Dog Hotel(later known as the Tamar Hotel) was constructed in 1826 and by the 1930s the Georgian-style building had become one ofLaunceston's most notable hotels. George Radford and his family operated the hotel for 26 years. The building was restored to house the
Boag's Centre for Beer Lovers."
Oddly enough, the young lady who took our diverse group of travelers(travelers fromBrisbane(me), two guys fromPerth, and one fromAdelaide) around the brewery was a pastor at a local church.
I sampled all of the Boag's beers after the tour and by the time I hit the footpath to walk back to my motel room, as the lights had come on at the brewery. Great tour and I highly recommend doing it, if you like beer.
My"no smoking" gun motel room in Launceston, Tasmania:-)
Inside room 233 ... not room 237:-)
I think my motel room may have been haunted, as well, as every now and then a very violent banging sound would come out from the front of the bathroom sink when no water was running through the pipes. This happened a few times during the night I was there, and I couldn't work out how this was happening, as it wasn't something like pipe hammer. This sink would just make a violent and very loud banging sound at random moments.
It was like a medieval room, which was cozy, but a bit spooky at the same time.
Lifting the Venetian blinds to look across to the King's Bridge Bar
Fish and chips and a Wizard Smith to wash it down with
I bought one of the beers that I had sampled at the brewery that afternoon to have with my meal that night and kept the bottle as a souvenir to take back to Queensland, as this beer is only available in Tasmania at the moment, but a little cute birdy told me that this beer may soon be hitting the mainland of Australia. Fingers crossed.
I love the story behind the making of the Wizard Smith Ale, worthy of a major motion picture I thought, as I had never heard it told before. "Wild and wet Tasmania was even wilder and wetter than usual in the
autumn of 1929. With 10 inches of rain on the old scale, across two
sodden days, Launceston was inundated and 4000 residents left homeless. James Boag’s, of course, kept heavy draft horses to deliver beer
around town and malt to the brewery, and these hefty animals were
stabled right in the thick of it on the town’s river flats. Fortunately for the horses, Tasmania’s unique and rugged environment
also yields unique and rugged individuals. And the drayman at James
Boag’s Brewery was one such, with the unlikely name of Wizard Smith. Wizard rushed to the river, waded through the rising floods, and led his
valuable and much-loved charges to dry ground and safety. James Boag III, who knew quality just like his father and
grandfather, awarded Wizard with a job for life and, eventually,
a pale
ale in his honour. And with respect for a legendary Tasmanian, the
legendary James Boag’s Wizard Smith Ale is only available in Tasmania." Now there is a movie for Joel Edgerton and his brother to make, orRussell Crowe. I'll let them fight over that one;-) Oddly enough, I would be leaving Tasmania on June 23rd, which happens to beJoel Edgerton's birthday, as I just found out. Consider the idea about the movie agiftfrom me Joel;-)
"This is a tourist attraction based on the original
Penny Royal Windmill which was built in 1840.
Completed in the 1970s, it now comprises accommodation and reconstructed 19th century mills and attractions. There is a 16.5 metre windmill, a fort, a gunpowder mill, a paddlesteamer and a cannon foundry."
I wish I had have had more time to spend in Launceston, but I had commitments in Melbourne for that coming weekend and couldn't stay longer. So, I would like to spend some more time in this town to look around in the future if I'm ever down this way again.
That's dependent on the cosmic dealer in life's poker game I guess;-)
