BITS AND PIECES OF TROOF

a more elaborate rationale of POEMS & SNIPPETS

Like all my other work, the POEMS & SNIPPETS are very responsible about maintaining what I’d like to call a ‘thread of righteousness’. The sheer amount of information available today makes it virtually impossible (unless one cultivates an upright teaching of ‘The Law’) to discern straight from crooked, aboveboard from underhanded, righteous from wicked or, simply put, ‘good’ from ‘bad’. The whole conspiracy scene, for instance, has been infiltrated by yet higher conspiracies and those again of even higher ones in order to establish a covering of tracks and a climate of utter confusion, leading to deception within deception, without the hope to see any light amidst an endless loop of digging in dirt. The ‘Powers’ (let’s call them that way for now) have essentially used any possible flaw of human frailty and its tragic pettiness to lead them astray from true history, the truth about the human body and any true human heritage. The goal of this undertaking is essentially something everyone is supposed to enlighten to for themselves and shall thus be labeled – in here at least – ‘unspeakable’.

The ridiculous theory of evolution is a good example of how such large-scale deception can take place. I was indoctrinated myself as a kid in school. Charles Darwin had been timid, apparently, when he was putting it forward (one could almost say he was ‘bullied’ into publication by dark forces around him). It also had, it must be repeated, an embarrassing racist innuendo to start with. He, like most people of his social sphere, honestly believed that black people were an evolutionary link between humans (them) and monkeys. They glossed that over later on, after Hitler and during (hypocritical) bouts of ‘political correctness’. But regardless, there was and is up until today not a single piece of evidence for any intermediate species although the geological column as well as the present world should be flooded with exactly those forms of life, if any reasonable logic is to be put into tangible practice. Later ideas to tackle this problem like Elliott Gould’s ‘hopeful monster’ or anti-pope Richard Dawkins’ snobby adult children fairly tales simply take the piss for those who do know. Which is not to say that those authors haven’t actually lost the plot themselves (due to their flawed an used attachments for fame and glory perhaps) to be ‘earnestly’ wallowing in such complete delusion. Anyway. Charles Darwin, after there still haven’t been unearthed any fossils to prove ‘his’ theory,  was in great doubt about it in his later years. But for the higher purpose to be achieved –  to separate the human reasoning from the dignified notion of ‘design’ to be led into the black hole of ‘randomness’ and ‘meaninglessness’ –  the machinery was already rolling out impeccably at that stage. Information about all of this does exist, but within the established mud-pit is really not easy to be extracted aboveboard and righteously (‘The Evolution Cruncher’, behind its creationist packaging, is maybe as concise as it gets …).

Meanwhile, the cultivation community, (Gnostics, Hermeticists, Qabalists, Freemasons, religious scholars, yogis, etc), essentially everyone higher up in the food chain of ‘knowledge’, is obviously well aware of this. One just has to look into the infamous ‘protocols’ from the British library to realise the disdain of those well-versed in the Human Tradition towards ‘ordinary’ human beings, or the ‘mob’ (also known as the Hypcrites or the Ignorants), who’re deemed to be devoid of any kindness, human reasoning or virtue – and any student of history would agree on them having a point there. Why is this so? Until our present day, all of human history is essentially shrouded in mystery entirely. Why has the teaching of re-incarnation or transmigration mainly been passed on through the Wicca tradition in the West, for example? Why is almost everyone lying and seemingly, on the surface, even rewarded for it? Why are there still people left then, despite this prevailing ignorance, mediocrity and darkness, who’re still upholding and even cherishing truth, virtue and kindness? Why are we born into suffering all along and die not knowing anything for most part. “Like a dog”, as G. I. Gurdjeff has aptly put it.

In this light, segregation from the contaminating dye vat of a ‘mob’ that just mindlessly follows any however ludicrous flights of fancy or wherever they’re sheepishly being led astray by tapping into their petty ‘flaws’, makes a lot of sense as cultivators everywhere and at all times were very aware of. Following the crowd, although giving the fake-impression of safety, doesn’t resolve any of our core problems. To be answering the ultimate question of “why am I here?” is solemn and requires our utmost attention, solitude and dignity. Does it need bravery as well? In a hyped-up stream of vanity, pretending to not die, perhaps. Or while being entangled in ridiculous games or power struggles among each other or between the sexes. Or while being busy with finger-pointing at various ‘authority’ figures to put our blame for any twitching unease. The true tragic, perhaps, of human existence might as well be that by trying to fool someone or something – fate, friends, god(s), society, life, the system, whatever – we’re only fooling ourselves, really, and the only one to blame for this ‘notional habit’ is again, only ourselves. While the loss and the regret might as well be eternal beyond the mere cycle of transmigration (if, let’s say, the Asura realm Buddhism talks about does indeed exist – the nine layers of heaven forming the three-realms of our perceptual confines: Heaven, Earth and Netherworld).

This is getting quite large now but just to conclude, coming back to deception, I’d like to use modern science as another example. Any trail of thought is based on axioms or working models. If the axiom at some stage turns out to be not valid anymore then the whole building, however vast, crumbles like a giant deck of cards. It is thus, that science follows ‘avenues’. The avenue that the ancient Greeks followed was different than the avenue that the civilisation who came to build the first pyramids in Egypt. And the Chinese human body science leading to things like acupuncture, say, followed a different trail altogether again.

What cultivation is, essentially, is the ‘highest science’. Why it has been kept ‘secret’ for most part is a question that touches pretty high levels. Like, why has the Divine created this environment in the first place? Certainly not because the Gods were bored. The Gnostics, Qabalists, Alchemists, etc were all studying ancient scriptures to learn. Knowledge was primarily encoded in stories as they provide the amazing ability to be passed on through centuries on one hand, and on the other hand offer the initiates to decode them according to their own level of understanding while concealing their message to those ‘unworthy’ of knowing.

Even more secret teachings involved the human body and the magic arts – elixir, the philosopher’s stone, the third eye, chakras, apertures, etc. What is widely known as ‘meridians’ in Chinese medicine is only the very tip of an iceberg of knowledge that has been passed on secretly over millennia through Daoist cultivation practices, for instance, who talk about ‘small heavenly circuit’ and ‘great heavenly circuit’ or about the Microcosm of the human body being equally vast than the Macrocosm of the universe outside of it. Studying the human body, life and nature directly is consequently a much more advanced science than the geeky probing for smaller particles through the prosthetics of clumsy machinery or the stretching of one’s imagination through mathematical formulas relating to the origin of the cosmos –  while all-the-while ignorantly taking oneself out of the picture. “It’s a particle if you look at it and a wave if you don’t” (Quantum physics). Right.

Molecules that are constantly moving (waves), connected with everything else in the cosmos through mysterious intricate rotating mechanisms are rendering a three-dimensional animation for our equally molecular flesh eyes that we have been taught to call, perceive and regards as ‘tangible reality’, that’s the true situation, isn’t it? Meanwhile, the theory of gravity is only yet another theory. Doesn’t sand actually fly off a plate when we spin it?

So much so well. Happy digging with an upright mind and a compassionate heart.

Hope you enjoy the show :)

Reinhard Schleining
London, 5th July 2012

© 2012, all rights reserved

POEMS & SNIPPETS

this particular piece of work came about while putting together promotional stickers for my books. although those stickers have meanwhile been doing a good job unlocking people’s awareness about the real extent of deception executed by the so-called ‘media’, there still seemed to be a big gap between levels that makes my work beyond comprehension for most. the series of 12 poems tries to tackle this problem. interspersed with the visual snippets as a reading aid and tonal backdrop, they can be decoded on each individual’s own terms, according to their level of knowledge and their desire to ‘see’.

you can find a more detailed rationale >>> here <<<.

please feel free to download and distribute them at your convenience. i’ll also be using some to bolster my present marketing campaign of both writing and art related products. hope you enjoy :)

 [ ps: also viewable as a VIDEO ]

 

STICKY PRO MOTION

***UPDATE spring 2024:

while repairing my present website (another server explosion / deep hack) i decided to keep these stickers as a historic reference. i did quite some sticking with these.

there are no ebooks anymore.  while amazon is still an option i am actively encouraging LULU as my vendor as the author options are more reasonable and pretty over there.

Continue reading

ASTROLOGY

so the ASTROLOGY BOOK finally did happen. that’s always how it goes, isn’t it, the bigger  and more ambitious the project, the more adversities pile up attempting to make it falter. but it came through the other day, eventually, and it does look fantastic, i’m well pleased.

i’d like to leave some brief words for the record on this occasion: this project brings to a closure the study of the whole esoteric tradition (aka mysticism) and the human emotional workings (aka psychology) that i’ve been involved with since i was a child. in hindsight, i find it rather strange but back then i just started to read up everything i could get hold of about the world of magic and mystery and the insanely intricate workings of the human psyche – i’d say, ever since about the age of 12. leaving aside gaps during more engaging ‘live involvements’ with people (relationships in other words), this quest for knowledge and understanding has usurped my conscience throughout most of what i’ve been doing. ‘truth’ was simply too fascinating and life thus too serious to possibly miss the whole point.

as i confidently say in my pitch on the back, this book, in the process of unfoldment for more than ten years, finally contains the entire wealth of the western tradition right at your fingertips.

hope you cherish and enjoy  :)

london, autumn 2011

CITY OF GOLD

finally new work again. feels great. as i’ve been saying to my friends that ever since finishing the astrology book, i feel like starting my whole life anew. part of this is redefining my stance to art and illustration. somehow the ultimate test and opportunity came along through an inspiring ‘call for entry’ by STERZ, an austrian literature magazine …

we have my ‘old’ style handing over to my ‘new’ style here in this surreal double-spread clash of filmic imagery. colours are not longer needed, at least for the time being. the ink layer and tracing paper (which always reminded me of condoms for some mad reason) are now gone as well, freeing up more time and thus lessening my karmic burden, i guess. what’s left is a more thorough and sensual treatment of lines into the actual matter of paper.

as to the story, i originally had the idea of contrasting an unredeemably depraved babylon with a ‘golden city of jerusalem’ from scriptures. and then there was the association with a woman being like a city, in a way (again we have babylon there and also frank miller/ willl eisner’s ‘spirit’ which also references such gnostic metaphors). it all went from there. hope you like and feel inspired. there’s plenty to look at and to discover for those who are looking and able to see :)

london, autumn 2011

STILL LIFE II

 

after having been working on and off for the past 3 years on this, i’ve managed to finish the second series of 52 episodes. the drawing and colouring bit was quite a lot of work (graphic novel, grrr) – but in the end, a seriously beautiful book came into being —> STILL LIFE <— containing both the first and the second series (making it therefore quite a ‘large’ compendium, arching over 10 of my years in total) …

—> from ocober 2010 also running at ELECTROCOMICS

here are a few sample strips of the new series:

Continue reading

NANOBOY

the first draft of the script i’ve been working on for almost a year is now finished!

Synopsis

This is the story of MARTIN, a disturbed and withdrawn thirteen-year-old boy, who in the midst of a severely malfunctioning environment is coming to use his prodigious skills at Nanotechnology to spread mayhem and disaster around him. As his increasingly destructive inventions grow in scale and power, government ploys of even vaster significance spring up almost simultaneously, putting his childish ventures in catastrophe into the broader context of anyway looming global deterioration of values and meaning. A world of lies and deceit falls entirely apart as the detrimental danger of Nanotechnology displays its true face to everyone.

Played out as a morally unbiased mixture between dark comedy and classical disaster movie we witness each character’s tragic trajectories towards failure. We’re being gripped by the increased urgency to bring to a halt complete world destruction – when in a surprising twist NANOBOY suddenly enlightens in a beatific paraphrase of Buddhahood. His final, most devilish concoct of a Nanovirus, meant to be rendering everyone into an identical copy of himself, turns out to be the literal and metaphorical ‘seed of salvation’. NANOBOY’s suffering and ultimately innocent journeying of Truth enables Mankind to be truly set free and ascend.

reinhard schleining
london, june 2009 – january 2010


following are the beginning of the script until the end of the opening credits. enjoy!

1 EXT. WOODLANDS ON A HILL – NIGHT / FULL MOON

MARTIN, a cute but withdrawn boy – NANOBOY – sits crouched at a damp tree trunk in the woods, shivering from cold and fear. The MOON is full and tinting the SCENE in a SILVERY LIGHT.

A horde of WOLVES surrounds MARTIN, growling and howling. ONE of them approaches him fiercely, snout snapping, saliva dripping.

MARTIN tightly embraces his legs and bends his head down on his knees as the WOLF closes in on him with grinding, bared teeth.

CUT TO:

Continue reading

ON RANK AND STATUS

***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of the SYSTEMICS book.

(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)


 

 [written for FLUX magazine, issue 69: ‘ideas that could change the world’]

LIKE A SALT-CRYSTAL, or a colony of ants, every framework has its structure. The structure of our human journey has been the societal network of Rank and Status. We spend our lives mainly chasing illusory promises and dreams within this structure, ultimately moulding ourselves into the Persona / Profile / Stereotype which our parental, cultural and sociological programmes compel us to become. These mechanisms are what game theory utilises. A loophole of human consciousness. We’re predictable. We’re not free at all. The Paradigm of Outside-answers, Outside-blame, runs through most of our Human Endeavours. We can ‘do whatever we want’ (capitalist piss-take freedom) as long as we’re not looking Inside, discover ‘something’ (Truth) Inside of ourselves, lest the ultimate punishment of social segregation is awaiting.

Continue reading

LOVE ETC BOOK

 

this eventually came together during the past couple of weeks and i suppose it makes a lot of sense. five years of fictional work packaged into a nicely polished and concise product. as most people who know me know, i’m detesting any form of ‘hype’ and will market this carefully and slowly (if one can even call that marketing) – with people i meet, shops i run into, the almost primal systemic workings of ‘word-of-mouth’ – as well as any other opportunities for public exposure i naturally stumble upon …

as a further illustration reference (but also because i think this is one of the maddest images i’ve done to this day) – i’ve decided to put the actual artwork online whose purpose was to combine all seven different angles of the book into one key visual:

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TRAGIC IMPOTENCE OF MONEY

***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of the SYSTEMICS book.

(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)


[ or ‘off the the other shore’ ]

 

CONDITIONS

We’re born naked. We die naked. As not only religion but also logic suggest, no matter how much funds we raise throughout our worldly journey, in the face of Ultimate Reality, even the most beautiful diamonds and castles merely amount to worthless chunks of mud. There is of course the argument of safeguarding relatives and loved ones, putting our kids on golden thrones and what not – but, honestly, can we really ease their various, vastly unpredictable hardships – emotional havoc, political corruption, abusive encounters, ageing, deterioration, madness – with monetary ailments? Besides, are we doing such an apparently altruistic act really unconditionally, with only their best interests in mind, or do we actually expect a return-of-investment, where we need them to do certain things in exchange, behave in certain ways, before our hard-earned juices will change bank accounts at the end of the day? As most of us haven’t been loved by our parents unconditionally, there is usually a wicked agenda behind the way how we interact with each other. Most exchanges are burdened with crooked meanings underneath and beyond the actual surface transactions. Like the sticky fingerprints we leave as soon as we touch it, Money involved in human transaction inherently corrupts any relationship through its conscious and unconscious strings attached – its Conditions.

Continue reading

WHEN THE SHIT HITS THE FAN

***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of the SYSTEMICS book.

(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)

 


 

I – SATURN & PLUTO

SO WE’VE HAD the first hit, from around new year’s eve up until a couple of weeks back. Several aspects of what it means, Pluto in Capricorn, have already shown their first, subtle glimpse. Since Pluto is now back in Sagittarius again, until later on in November, we have a chance to reconsider our stance towards those passing Jupiter related issues (Jupiter as the ruler of Sagittarius), which we’ve had to integrate into our  collective framework since 1992. The overindulging, celebrity-worshipping credit-card-spenders compulsively feeding on cultural and culinary junk food, as well as the Viagra-popping whore-humpers earning big bucks under the magic wings of multinational corporations will both have to cut down quite a bit on their life-styles. The learning outcome, according to modern Astrology, will be for us to be stripped bare of any illusions and hopes [JUPITER] which do not adhere to the ultimate, naked truth at this time and age [PLUTO]. We’re asked to display a healthy, mature attitude towards our vision of growth [JUPITER] and this way understand our actual role in what we commonly perceive as our fate or destiny [PLUTO]. Any over-inflated ego might easily burst like a bubble, leaving behind the bleakness of what is left, without fake, glitter and fame.

This streamlining of excess during the next couple of months will pave the way neatly for what is about to come, once Pluto will finally start its full journey through Capricorn. Capricorn’s ruler, Saturn, is an Astrological symbol for our concept of Reality, of the Framework, the perception of Time passing. It also stands for our internal fabric, the wiring in our brain as well as the molecular structure of our DNA. Everything we perceive as the visible, tangible reality around us, is traditionally associated with Saturn (it is also the furthest away Planet we can still see via the retina on our flesh eyes). Saturn is also The System, the political / social structure. Psychology, the mechanics of our day-to-day interactions, is therefore also a Saturn related issue. Boundaries are Saturn. The skin as the interface between Me and You is also Saturn related, as well as the bones, the structure we stand on. To express the planetary transit in a nutshell we could say that Pluto would probe into our understanding of Reality [SATURN] and squeeze out the essence of what we need to do [PLUTO] in order to keep growing as a human society [PLUTO, SATURN]. Part of the truth is that everyone is connected with everyone else, we’re all in the same boat – namely a planet which can go, from time to time, through some really serious trouble. Whilst at the same time, our brains are making this all up, aren’t they, inexplicably wired into the Holo-movement of what we have come to call the Universe (according to the ingenious Quantum Physicist / Philosopher David Bohm – 1).

Let’s try and coin this Pluto / Saturn constellation into more practical terms: All our defence mechanisms to face the truth about ourselves and other people [SATURN] will be ruthlessly disintegrated [PLUTO]. How will this happen? Through the public awareness that Psychological Literacy is paramount in order to live a healthy and balanced life – not money, status, guns or religions. Because at the end of the day, what we call ‘our reality’ are simply those people around us, how they treat us and see us and how we ourselves feel about them. The eventual insight into our unhappiness – the psycho-mechanics of it – will compel us to get a grip on the reasons why our Life Scripts keep running the way how they do (as one of the true heroes of modern psychotherapy, Eric Berne, calls the emotional patterns set in place – through mother’s breast, family bathroom and dinner table – all before we even reach the age of six – 2).

Where does this lead us? It would point exactly at the ‘collective rise of consciousness’ as the more serious predictive sources would usually claim. And as a consequence, the breakdown of any too-rigid frameworks (corporate / religious / political) incapable to cope with this ever accelerating speed of collective growth. Through gaining psychological / emotional literacy we would be able to heal inside [MOON], work through our insecurities, anger and sadness, whilst we increasingly feel the need to do our own thing [SUN], whatever that means to us, in our sadly too-short life. A lot has to do with regaining the freedom to do what we should, according to what our heart really tells us. Failing it would result in an increase of pain [SATURN] as long as the deterioration of our core potential [PLUTO] continues. In a general public climate of emotional maturity, feelings like jealousy will increasingly come across as silly, embarrassing or even pathetic. In a world of ignorance, devilishly fuelled by the mystery of a cycle-of-abuse, there is simply no one to blame for any painful buttons being pushed on our fragile emotional space-suits. We just have to let go of any invalid suits – get real / naked – and all of a sudden we could be happy even under the cheapest, shabbiest of duvets. Instead of compensating with money the constant craving for a hot piece of meat (men) or hopefully one day meet somebody special to enter symbiotic salvation (women), we feel it is alright to accept the truth that we’re all alone in this Life – as soon as we can relax and actually enjoy it.

And yet, Psychology is of course not the highest plane of what we, this time and age, perceive as Ultimate Reality. There are many Planes, many Angles, many Dimensions. Each of us has vastly different ones and they furthermore even change all the time. Preferably, our Planes / Views are supposed to be constantly rising, so everything makes more sense as we look back on our own, individual growth patterns and thus become able to clearly identify many of the others around us. In the end, we need to subscribe to Beliefs and Values which are as much in touch with the Truth as ‘humanly’ possible. As long as they can convincingly describe what we really feel inside, we should be absolutely fine. But if not, we’ve got a problem, since any decisions we arrive at from those subscribed Beliefs and Values are essentially political. They systemically pave our way into a quite predictable outcome of personal – and therefore, however marginal, collective – future. I feel that this is somewhat the crux in our historical development as a society, that psychology, culture and politics are in fact intrinsically linked. Any political concept, be it Socialism, Capitalism, Democracy, will be bound to fail if it cannot ensure the psycho-hygiene of its people, thus creating the fertile cultural soil from which society can be successfully nourished from within, grow in the most beautiful way.

It would be difficult enough to achieve such an Utopian state of society. But there are quite a few other things involved, it seems. Stargates, other dimensions, extra-terrestrials, timespaces and space-times. Sub-quantums, holographic universes and shuffle brains. All sorts of sometimes more, sometimes less reasonable conspiracy blurb, as well as fairly inexplicable post-ice-age sudden seeding of knowledge – not to mention 2012, of course.

II – 2012

WHAT’S THE latest story on this? According to David Wilcock, anyone who’s either been gifted enough by supernatural abilities, or by otherwise using one of the apparently existing time-travel devices (reverse-engineered from the pineal gland and UFO navigation chairs found back in the forties!!!) only encountered White Light as they hit the date 21st of December 2012 on their journeys. Whilst further down the timeline they’d all see entirely different futures. Like so many other mythologically encoded clues embedded in our culture, this reminds us of a scene in a movie. In this case it is Luke Skywalker having to face the illusion of Darth Vader in a small cave on Yoda’s planet where whatever he takes with him into the cave is what he is eventually going to be confronted with. Could this be the way how it works? Are we really – to such an mind-boggling extent – creating our very own futures?

In this light, it is definitely important for the existence of timetravel technology to be kept strictly secret, since our flawed ego-states would inevitably lead to rather horrifying, selffulfilling time-feedback loops, the closer we would get to the 2012 date. But on the other hand, perhaps that is what’s already happening, the White Light is the shrieking feedback, and perhaps it is true, that we can be anything we want to be, a grain of sand, a superhero or a galaxy, as we roll over the galactic centre on that miraculous date. It would be a paradigm-shift indeed …

I personally quite like the idea, however radical, so instead of going on about global catastrophes, conspiracies, aliens and the likes, let’s stick with the White Light for the moment. It also ties in nicely with the general concept of psychology, that through our emotional outlook we are masters (or slaves) of our very own, customised future. This way, a paradigm-shift would already mean that maybe external growth – doggedly pursuing our worldly interests – will not be that important anymore. It happens on its own anyway, as time passes, people come and go and new overall growth patterns are constantly being created, even in ‘stillness’. And then, perhaps, our lives will be more about internal growth – self-cultivation – about becoming a ‘better’ human being. “Returning to our True Selves”, as the Dao School, for Millennia, has succinctly described it. Could there be something like ‘salvation’, then, in the end?

Why not? Perhaps major religions do actually allow us to cultivate our Souls / Selves into different unitary Paradises (as contemporary Master of both the Dao and the Buddha School, Mr. Li Hongzhi, suggests – 3). And so do perhaps other, more solitary pagan / shamanic cultivation ways of mind and body. Perhaps we can arrive in Heaven even within our lifetime, as preferrably conceptualised in the East, when we for instance reach Enlightenment / Consummation / Unlocking through successfully cultivating Buddhahood or the Dao. We would then be able to use our Third Eye to see the Ultimate Truth and our real place within the hitherto unfathomable Fabric of the Universe. Perhaps it is then all really true, as Sages throughout thousands of years have always adamantly been claiming, that what we see with our flesh eyes (or telescopes and microscopes) is only a veil, a ‘deception’, covering ‘hermetically’ what actually, really is there.

Being born into blindness, without ever being able to see before we inevitably crash into ingorant death, sounds like a rather cruel predicament, doesn’t it? It might therefore as well be that Earth is in fact a ‘prison planet’, as many of a counter-historian is bold enough to claim. But also, perhaps, it’s just the way how it is, that we’ve completely lost touch with our True Nature, on our hefty sail-ride throughout History. The truth is, we don’t know anything about our True History. We’ve only been given hints through scripture and by ourselves came up with all sorts of funny theories. Behind the back of the currently envogue Darwinist Canon, for instance, there is an entire ‘Hidden History of the Human Race’, reaching back Hundreds of Millions of Years (all meticulously recorded in a book by the same name). In this staggering scope, we’ve certainly been faced with total annihilation numerous times, lately not long ago, only between 15.000 – 7.500 BC, the most recent ice-age. In the more remote past, there must’ve been many meteorites, tsunamis, volcanoes, earth quakes, continental drifts – even earth-crust replacements or tectonic shifts could have taken place. There also used to be an atmosphere on Mars, in most likelihood, to remind us of the reality of complete planetary annihilation. And the asteroid belt could’ve been part of our Earth once, as well as our dear, beautiful Moon. Maybe a tenth planet hit us and split us apart, we simply don’t know.

Countless theories have been put forward to shed light into the entire Mystery of ‘why we are here’. But the word ‘theory’, as David Bohm wisely points out, comes from the Greek word for theatre. It is being put forward, presented on stage and it is therefore only another angle which happens to make sense – seems to be real – to the rest of us, at one particular time-spacecoordinate on our galactic journey. Without having our third eye / pineal gland open, and by being trapped in the Three Realms of our concurrent dimensional plane, we can only perceive as Reality what our alleged monkey-brains allow us to ‘see’. In terms of Quantum Physics, the torrent / stream of Matter, the Explicate Order (David Bohm), persistently permeates Us Beings – and is thus being decoded in realtime, like a flickering movie, by our desperately grasping Consciousness / Mind – before it dissolves back into the unfathomable Implicate Order of the Ground (God, the Aristotelean Unmoved Mover) where everything originally comes from.

Contemplating all of this, perhaps those who until the 2012 deadline, either through science, religion or self-cultivation, can penetrate through the illusory curtain of in-your-face reality, will be able to truly ascend on that prodigous day. Perhaps some of them will be levitating in ‘broad daylight’, perhaps with a glass of champagne in their hand, over a planet which has just been saved from extinction by everyone’s collective efforts. Or perhaps nothing will happen at all and life goes on as usual, similar to back in 1999, when no ‘millennium-bug’ brought everything to a worldwide, hyped-up standstill.

In any case, the planets will keep moving. From around 2011 to 2015, for instance, electrifying Uranus will join deep-grinding Pluto in a tensional square to unearth the same issues which the Hippies first raised during the conjunction of the 1960’s. Whether by then we’ll be throwing computer-generated Molotov cocktails into fascist corporate mainframes or whether we’ll have successfully learned how to ‘fly’ – be truly free – the likely reality will largely depend on how we cultivate / conduct ourselves in the years to come. Pluto’s next stop in Aquarius at around 2024 will then give us a lift into yet more lofty realms of existence. By then, everything should be eventually ready to progress into the 2.160 years of the next Precessional Age – the long-anticipated Age of Aquarius – which will be ruled by emotionally detached, but utterly collective-conscious Air-planet Uranus.

The bottom line is that our future is entirely up to us, really. My final prognosis therefore is:

We Shall See!

London, July 2008
© 2008, all rights reserved

—————————————————————————————-
 

1 – David Bohm, ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order’, 1980 & ‘The Ending of Time’ (with J. Krishnamurti), 1985

2 – Eric Berne, ‘Games People Play’, 1964 & ‘What Do You Say After You Say Hello?’, 1972

3 – Li Hongzhi, ‘Zhuan Falun’, 1999 & ‘Zhuan Falun Volume II’, 2008

SALON KITTY

***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of the SYSTEMICS book.

(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)


[a contemplative review. appeared in FLUX magazine 65: ‘sex, lifestyle, death’]

SERIOUS FREAK SEX

 

THIS IS A serious movie. Very serious. Quite sad, in a way, that it has somehow ended up in the ‘porn’ pigeonhole, or even in the so hysterically called ‘exploitation’ niche (as if the rest of the movie industry were in fact based on altruism :). This complete misconception certainly stems from the nerve it hits, which with its dark, shocking cocktail of power and sex reverberates deeply in our collective psyche, so that people could easily feel intimidated, even ashamed of themselves, for possibly opening up to it – perhaps even liking it – and they therefore have to resort to scapegoating it instead. Another reason could be its blatant political impact, its shrill post-68 outcry of anger against a continuously repressive environment, which might have been simply ‘too much’ for many political corners and therefore reason enough to belittle and suppress it.

In any case, for those who haven’t seen the film, briefly the plot: In a 1936 Berlin, the Nazis have the splendid idea to set up a high-class brothel, in order to spy on its clients and gather all sorts of embarrassing information about them. The idea involves not to use professional hookers and then train them in ‘intelligence’ but instead to opt for girls, as suggested by ‘himself’, the Fuhrer, who display an unshakeable faith in national socialist ideology – and then train them in both, servicing sex and sucking off vital political clues. So far, all of this actually happened. Brass then wrote a story of true love in-between where one of the girls, Margherita, falls for a German pilot and he really falls for her, too. But he’s subsequently being annihilated by the Nazis after telling his lover about his decision to surrender to truth instead of killing another bunch of people for a mere political lie. This is all centred around the strangely elevated power freak Wallenberg who’s in charge of setting up the whole thing. Within his underlying, secret belief not in ideology at all but purely in power, he also feels that he can find love through blackmail and sexual enslavement. In the end, as it is usually the case with power, the sword has always got two sides and it is only a matter of time until it eventually turns against him.

With Salon Kitty Tinto Brass unfolds an eerie tale of messed-up and messing-up people, stuck in their manmade human tragedies, as they play along ‘games’ related to power, in a world of blind belief, hatred and fear. The naked human, whether physical or psychological, is the canvas upon which the wickedness and perversion of the political agenda unfolds. The seamless interweaving of cabaret songs, seedy boudoirs, Nazi stuff, true love and ‘fucked-up’, explicit sex scenes is absolutely priceless. As a director, Brass’ psychological insights and attention to emotional details are staggering and not many in the industry can claim to see equally far – or deep for that matter (except perhaps someone like Todd Solondz with HappinessPalindromes and Storytelling or Julia Davis with her powerful British comedy series Human Remains and Nighty Night).

FRAMEWORK FOR FUCKING

THE MOST FRIGHTENING aspect of Salon Kitty is its depiction of how sex can be ‘institutionalised’ so bloody easily, in order to meet any whatsoever surreal political ends. If it hasn’t already been before, in a movie like this it becomes perfectly clear again that romantic / sexual love is the ultimate system-subversive trait of us humans and therefore has to be carefully kept in check. Sex / love can be ‘allowed’ or ‘sanctioned’ only within a particular framework for fucking which political (slash religious) systems hand down to its people. Of course, somewhere down the line, love in itself is such a deep-rooted force that it always has to be at least insinuated as an incentive to carry on with our lives. Like winning the lottery, it is the dream-come-true for those of us who’re really ‘lucky’ in life, whilst in reality it hasn’t got much to do with luck at all, but mainly emotional health, confidence and maturity. But even health and maturity, in a screwed-up, viciously grinding-away system, does not guarantee fulfilment of such an actually modest human need. You could easily end up on a meat hook instead (like Margherita’s lover) because your jealous comrades scapegoat you for their own political and therefore personal failure. Or quite literally as a ‘hooker’, a neurotic repetitor, if you erratically attempt to escape the world of your brainwashed parents. Since whether you do what they tell you or just the complete opposite doesn’t make much difference in terms of the psycho-mechanical laws of destiny.

The scene where the women are being lined up in the huge Nazi gym, saluting naked with Heil Hitlers, before the SS guys are marched in to test their feasibility for providing uninhibited sexual favours, while the ‘authorities’ play some demented propaganda tunes on the grand Steinway, is easily one of the most startling I’ve ever seen. It is being closely followed by another one (censored for most of the movie’s history) where some of the girls undergo further testing in sterile, kafkaesque prison cells, having to please all sorts of ‘real freaks’ in order to show their blind determination to the political cause. Sometimes, having been born into a ‘liberate’ climate, the impact of blatant political force is quite easy to forget. And yet, even today, in a way we still are trapped in a world of sexual / emotional abuse – and that is exactly the deep nerve this movie is hitting. Only that today, instead of concentration campssocialism / communism / dictatorship and brainwashing / propaganda, the abuse is being masqueraded as broken homes,capitalism / consumerism or one of the many other contemporary ways of abuse / prostitution for economic, corporate, personal, political, intellectual – or even religious ‘causes’.

But the most underlying message of Salon Kitty is how power, in the end, will always be corrupting people, why power is so attractive to already corrupted people in the first place – and above all, why it is so incredibly sad, for power-freaks having to resort to killing, breaking and raping in order to create the illusion that they are being loved by someone (or even by many, haha) – although they deep down bloody well know that this is not at all the case. Obviously, there is an element of power involved in any form of sexual attraction – taken, being taken et cetera – but the separation between sex and love, in other words the assertion of power to achieve intimacy with another person, is psychologically an irresolvable dilemma. Perversion, or better ‘deterioration from core humanity’ (for when it comes to sex itself, according to Brass, there is no such thing as perversion) is without a doubt the ugliest manifestation of our tragic human condition. Its mechanics compel that anything healthy and pure must be defiled and destroyed in order to keep the dream / madness alive, feed it with ever more blood and despair.

Perhaps therefore the movie for its time did go too far, and this is the reason, why after his hassle with trying to make Caligula work, Brass left any political messages completely aside in his later work, almost overnight, in order to put his attention entirely on sex itself with the production of real, honest Erotica in which he purposefully avoids “using sex as a metaphor for something else”. For such a talented person as Brass this must have been quite a radical step to take. But in another way also probably quite a reasonable one. Sexuality has just been repressed for too long throughout our history and keeping this repression alive is what provides some of the strongest hooks for any system built mainly on power. What is therefore needed, more than anything else before ‘real’ political awareness can happen, is plain simply sexual / emotional healing. And this is exactly what Tinto Brass’ later work offers. The permission to explore sexual / emotional self-expression for those of us who’re kind of stuck in boring or otherwise institutionalised love lives. Once we are free to open up fully to the right person, at the right time, without getting hurt or abused or otherwise ‘fucked’, we can still dig out another movie milestone from the dusty archive, Michelangelo Antonioni’s incredible Zabriskie Point (which is, interestingly enough for such a cinematographic masterpiece, very difficult to get hold of at the time of writing) and proceed with matters of personal political responsibility from there.


 
London, April 2008
© 2008, all rights reserved

 

THE COOL

(invited pitch for atlantic records to promote the new album by LUPE FIASCO as a graphic novel / game ‘sitelette’).


CONCEPT:

From amongst all the characters, features and scenes within the world of THE COOL, there is one detail, one element of the story, which I felt has an extraordinarily powerful potential, conceptually and emotionally. I thought it could serve as the red thread, ‘the key’ if you will, on which we can build the whole purpose and incentive of our game:

It is THE LETTER, written by MICHAEL YOUNG HISTORY’s eight-year-old sister.

By arranging three different episodes, on two pages of graphic novel narrative each, we have THE LETTER prominently featured as the pivotal mystery of the underlying story. Both LUPE FIASCO and THE STREETS are continuously trying to get hold of it (although for obviously completely different reasons). Its content, the innocent writings of merely a little girl, wield a power none of the evil forces will ever be able to content with. It is brimming of genuine, unconditional LOVE.

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