Anyway. I wrote a eulogy. And it's down below. And I "composed" the music for the piece as well.
I've been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and it has changed my life. It gave me the realization that I could express my soul through motorcycle repair: this is because a motorcycle is a rational system that can be tinkered with methodically, and then the act of riding is a romantic experience because it is just that—pure experience—, and then when we combine the two things (pure experience and the rational) you can arrive at a third thing—quality.
Unfortunately, I am too poor to purchase the ideal vessel for quality, so I settled for a broken lawn mower on craigslist. I drove 1.5 hours away from Seattle to south of Olympia to pick up a broken mower with the intention of fixing it.... If you watched the video, you will see that I was not particularly successful. I gave up. (In the words of the author, I ran out of gumption—and cash too...) But I learned a lot. So, I have that going for me.
I also wrote a long reddit comment in which I did a symbol amplification of a few HR Giger paintings and spent a lot of time working on one featuring a baphomet. The post is down below:
Existential Dread
Picture 1: This appears to be a humanoid individual who has totally lost the ability to use his natural organs. He is beholden to a machine. He exists in a twilight state of being. It is unclear to me if this being is capable of consciousness; perhaps he is a cell in a larger organism. It looks as if the character is a male angler fish, intertwined and consumed by his machinoid-maternal mate. I fear this is what will happen to humanity when we fail to maintain the boundary between self and tool.
Picture 2: The dead are not allowed to rest and decompose. Their souls are kept and used. They are the technological undead.
Picture 3: The undifferentiated soul has been given a weapon. (this reminds me of Vietnam era problems)
Picture 4: The soul is unable to find sleep in its sarcophagus of bone-metal. Burial and stasis.
I should mention that I really find his work beautiful in a profound way—dark or not. I'm just digging for a message; I want to see if I can tease out a warning from the fear that I feel that this art was born from.
Regarding picture 1: I have the strongest feelings about this one. I think that the body has been totally mutilated by technology; to me it appears closer to death than transcendance. I suppose there is an important question that needs to be asked, "what is proper to sacrifice?" I'm not ready to give up on my body; I would rather improve upon what I have rather than irreparably mutilate it, which is what this picture represents to me—a dubious point of no return.
Regarding the Baphomet: There is so damn much to unpack here; it's a huge effort to just name all of the symbols. I'm going to try to amplify some of the symbols here because no one thing in particular comes to mind.
- Two twisting Pale Serpents between two children who are merged with Pan, sitting on his lap
- The serpents are not twisting around a rod, rather it looks like a fluted gun barrel or a sheathed sword which introduces the element of air into what is traditionally symbolized fire.
(Air = intellect, fire = emotion) - I think these children are perhaps one of the most important symbols that may be easily overlooked. The children appear to be holding grenades. (I will have to look again when my copy arrives since the resolution on this picture is dubious). They appear to be a perversion of the God-child holding a globus cruciger which is a symbol of divine authority. It appears that the God-child is now under the Dual-natured Pan rather than the virgin mother: divine salvation is unlikely but rebirth within the dark underbelly of The Machine seems possible.
- Steam/Smoke and Metal pipes in background: Obscuration, imprisonment, confinement, structure, scaffolding, the depths from which we build.
- Janus Face Monster woman (Top Right): Seems to be the opposite of the muses on the top left. It is a spirit that is attempting to hide behind a mask. It is perhaps an evil muse or the ability to lie. I feel the name Maliscious-Maya come to mind.
- Two Tentacle Haired women (light and dark): They are both in a submissive coital position, and upon close inspection, it appears that they are being passively penetrated by their mechanoid-chair which give the painting a sense of constant sexual/erotic tension.
- Dark Woman on Right
- Snakes with the heads of elephants: behemoth and wisdom is the phrase that comes to my mind, but I am not sure what to make of it. War, perhaps?
- Upside down black pentagram: left hand path of magic, destruction
- Light Woman on Left
- Snakes with normal heads
- Right side up pentagram: passive white-magic
- Angelic/Ghostly women (Top Right): these appear to be human-like; they are the most human element in the picture. They bring light to the Light tentacle haired women. This is the transcendent divine feminine. (i.e. Goethe's eternal feminine). There is a lot of flowing hair here which I see symbolizing vitality.
- White-light woman, holding two rods, spread across two pentagrams (one light one dark), while being vaginally penetrated by a phallus which is protruding out of a vaginal opening in Pan's forehead (Top center): Sexuality. Creation. Union of opposites. It's important that she is white; this skews this painting toward the light side and "The Eternal Feminine" despite how dark the rest of the painting is. I think this balances the darkness of the rest of the painting.
Thoughts: This is not merely biomechanoid. This is a dense image that contains nature—animals, machines, and paganism. This is, for lack of a better word, dark magic. It is a symbol of creation that is heavily laden with sexual energy;—meaning, it's largly concerned with unions of opposites.
Here is what Socrates says about Pan in Cratylus when he is discussion the origin of the word Pan. I am very surprised at how relevant it feels.
...it is reasonable to for Pan to be Hermes' double-natured son. [...] You know speech signifies all things (to pan) and keeps them circulating and always going about, and that it has two forms—true and false.
Well, the true part is smooth and divine and dwells among the gods above, while the false part dwells below among the human masses, and it is rough and goatish (tragikon); for it is here, in the tragic (tragikon) life, that one finds the vast majority of myths and falsehoods
Therefore the one who expresses all things (pan) and keeps them always in circulation (aei polōn) is correctly called 'Pan-the-goat-heard' (Pan aipolos). The double-natured son of hermes, he is smooth in his upper parts, and rough and goatish in the ones below. He is either speech itself or the brother of speech, since he is the son of Hermes. And its not a bit surprising that a brother resembles his brother.(paragraph 408 in the Cooper translation of Plato's collected works)
So what I gather from Socrates' dialogue regarding Pan is relevant to this: Pan is a double-natured creator god, hence the many opposing pairs. I mean, obvious. What is art with one some contrasting opposites?
Okay. I have spent faaar too much time on this. But I had a lot of fun!
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