Arlen and Mavericks of the Sinclairularity

John Sinclair recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of his release from Jail, for the most part due to the massive ‘John Sinclair Freedom Rally’, a fairy-tale like happening, that featured John Lennon, Stevie Wonder and Allen Ginsberg and many more, organized and communicating through music, rock and roll, Jazz, and spoken word to successfully fight injustice.

The Bentley Museum and Ann Arbor Library added rich multi-media presentations featuring digitized magazines, audio clips and posters. John Sinclair will be re-launching radio free Amsterdam on January 1st 2012 after a nine month hiatus featuring new shows of Jazz, Blues, Soul, New Orleans Music, and beatnik infused spoken word.

David Jay Brown recently published an article on MDMA as a treatment for some forms of Autism which I liked and that led me to discover the fabulous renewed MAVERICKS OF THE MIND: Thought Provoking Interviews on Consciousness by David Jay Brown. RAW seems to sit perfectly among many contemporaries and like-minded individuals. I would like to pay special attention, here, to a beautiful and thought provoking interview with Arlen Riley Wilson. RAW’s greatest supporter, influence and ‘beautiful mind’ in her own right. Praise Arlen!

I just discovered that there’s a ‘Pun Detector’ (see video below) in Watson, the A.I. (Computer) And was reminded of one of BOB’s comments somewhere, that I think he attributed to Arlen, whereby she imagined that a ‘Bull-Shit’ Detector could be wired into the cable box (a Bullshit App), especially during speech’s from Politicians and Religious leaders. WATSON seems to be navigating the data-fields to choose, with delicate ‘confidence’ to RING that BULLSHIT’ alarm!

RADIO FREE BARBELITH (Join The Invisibles Reading Group!)

"Fuck Man, I'll tell ya, when I was a kid I read Robert Anton Wilson and all this shit, and here we are, we're standing here, we're talking about this shit, and it's real." – Grant Morrison



Friend of the show, Davis, @widefidelity on Twitter is kicking off 2012 w/ an Invisibles reading group over at RADIO FREE BARBELITH. Here's his description of the project:

"I consider RADIO FREE BARBELITH a convivium, a gathering grounds, a tribal assembly, a coming-together of readers looking to breach the walls of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles and loot and pillage the contents together. This will be an exploration of fertile noise, a networked ebb and flow of dialogue and discovery centered around, but certainly not limited to, The Invisibles. We'll read through the series at a relaxed pace, aiming to wrap it all up on December 21, 2012.

The proceedings will most likely operate with the shambling in-efficiency of a working prototype - my sincerest apologies in advance for any kind of technical/social/cultural/national/personal issues that float to the surface or muddy the waters.

We'll start with the first issue in January, so until then, relax! Any questions? Comment here, or drop me a line at Davicimo@gmail.com.


ROLL CALL

Join up! Join in! Don't consider this an interrogation, an inquisition, but a friendly probing, an opportunity to set some initial experimental conditions - Cast your role! Build yourself a body an immerse yourself! Select your player! Who are you? Why do you want to engage with The Invisibles? Why now? Why here?"

Continues over at http://radiofreebarbelith.blogspot.com/2011/12/insert-coin.html

This seems like a fun idea to me, and so I wanted to echo the clarion call thusly:

THE INVISIBLES COMPLETE SERIES
(Bootleg digital versions)

HTML DOWNLOAD
TORRENT DOWNLOAD
You'll need a .cbr reader for these, like:
FFView for Mac
or Comic Rack for PC
 (Official print versions)
TRADE PAPERBACKS ON AMAZON.com
(and the forthcoming...)
THE INVISIBLES OMNIBUS HC
Available August 21st, 2012
$150.00 US, 1,536 p 

Writer: Grant Morrison
Artists: Steve Yeowell, Jilll Thompson, Dennis Cramer, Chris Weston, John Ridgway, Steve Parkhouse, Kim DeMulder, Paul Johnson, Phil Jimenez, John Stokes, Tommy Lee Edwards, Dick Giordano, Mark Buckingham, Mark Pennington, Michael Lark, Keith Aiken, Marc Hempel, Ray Kryssing, Philip Bond, Glyn Dillon, Ivan Reis, Warren Pleece, Sean Phillips, Jay Stephens, Frank Quitely, Grant Morrison, and others
Collects: THE INVISIBLES #1-25, THE INVISIBLES VOL. 2 #1-22, THE INVISIBLES VOL. 3 #12-1 and a story from VERTIGO: WINTER’S EDGE #1

[It seems maybe fair enough to balance piracy w/ promotion? Free educational material in exchange for free viral marketing, win/win style?]

For more on GM check out the documentary Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods (Available free on Hulu)

Grey Lodge Archive

According to Joseph Matheny's blog, Grey Lodge Occult Review links will redirect to TubeGnosis for the time being - although he hints that a relaunch may happen some time next year, perhaps offering access to the other documents, etc.

Having said that, the video collection certainly seems worth a browse!






The same story appeared in Boing Boing today.

GENERAL semANTICS

A general semanticist is someone who, upon encountering a person with a beard, would say it was probably a man, but would hold open the possibility that it might be a bearded lady.  - Richard P. Marsh

The subject of General Semantics (and Count Alfred Korzybski) came up quite often when studying with RAW, even if only indirectly (as in discussions of E-Prime, for instance, or Non-Aristotelean Logic).

GS aims to improve one's ability to evaluate the world and one's place in it.

The younger generation(s) appear to know little of GS, but it had a period of great influence on people like William Burroughs (born 1914) who actually went and studied with Korzybski in 1939. 
Details of that amazing sounding set of lectures, here.

I guess RAW learned about GS later, perhaps via Burroughs, and A.E.Van Vogt, etc - or through the founders of NLP - Bandler and Grinder (say). Or maybe Bucky Fuller, Alan Watts or Gregory Bateson.

Bob himself gave a lecture at the Institute of General Semantics - here in PDF format.

More recently, Graham Rae gave this interesting presentation:

GENERAL SEMANTICS MEETS EXPERIMENTAL LITERATURE: THE LIFELONG EFFECT OF ALFRED KORZYBSKI ON WILLIAM S BURROUGHS

He posted the text of the talk on this forum at Reality Studio.


This OM post has appeared now in response to our hearing about  a huge biography of Korzybski written by Bruce Kodish which sounds fascinating (to me).

Kodish has a blog related to this material here.

And here, on the relationship to Burroughs.

For those who do not know anything about the subject, this brief summary by Piero Scaruffi might give you a glimpse, although whether such a brief description may confuse more than enlighten, who can say?

Synopsis:

• Animals: hunters and gatherers = bind to territory, i.e."space-binders"
• Humans: agriculture = bind to a memory of the past and prediction of the future, i.e. "time-binders"
• Time-binding is enabled by a nervous system that is capable of constructing and manipulating symbols
• Time-binding allows to transmit knowledge to succeeding generations
• The rate of growth of human knowledge is exponential  (aka the Jumping Jesus Phenomenon)
• Language allows time-binders to categorize/generalize experiences and communicate them to others
• General Semantics to remedy the limits of language:
• We have fewer words and concepts than experiences: we "confuse" similar situations
• We must evaluate a situation less by intension (its category) and more by extension (its unique features)
• We must avoid categorization/generalization and spot the unique characteristics of a situation

This link goes to the Institute of General Semantics, relating to the new biography.

New York Society of General Semantics - about Korzybski by Susan and Bruce Kodish

Random Research

fUSION aNOMALY on Korzysbski

fUSION aNOMALY on Burroughs

Steven Lewis - brief bio of Korzybski

Steven Lewis on General Semantics

Donald Fagen mentions GS, RAW, Van Vogt and Burroughs

Language, a virus?    By Florian Cramer

The Road to Interzone: Reading William S. Burroughs Reading    by Michael Stevens

Michael Stevens - The Road to Interzone Interview        by Paul Hawkins

JUMPING JESUS ON A POGO STICK!