PRAXIS

This is Brigadier Kerla, speaking for the High Command. 

There has been an incident on Praxis. 

However everything is under control. 

We have no need for assistance. 

Obey treaty stipulations and remain outside the Neutral Zone. 

This transmission ends now.

THE NIGHTMARE

“Are you sure,' asked his companion, 'that this is the nineteen-eighties?'

The Doctor looked around. 'Which nineteen-eighties did you have in mind?'

Conversations that never happened.

“I began to dream absolutely unbearable dreams. 

My dream life, up to this point, had been relatively uneventful, as far as I can remember; furthermore, I have never had a particularly good visual imagination. Nonetheless, my dreams became so horrible and so emotionally gripping that I was often afraid to go to sleep. I dreamt dreams vivid as reality. I could not escape from them or ignore them. They centered, in general, around a single theme: that of nuclear war, and total devastation – around the worst evils that I, or something in me, could imagine:

My parents lived in a standard ranch style house, in a middle-class neighborhood, in a small town in northern Alberta. 

I was sitting in the darkened basement of this house, in the family room, watching TV, with my cousin Diane, who was in truth – in waking life – the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. A newscaster suddenly interrupted the program. The television picture and sound distorted, and static filled the screen. My cousin stood up and went behind the TV to check the electrical cord. She touched it, and started convulsing and frothing at the mouth, frozen upright by intense current.

A brilliant flash of light from a small window flooded the basement. I rushed upstairs. There was nothing left of the ground floor of the house. It had been completely and cleanly sheared away, leaving only the floor, which now served the basement as a roof. Red and orange flames filled the sky, from horizon to horizon. Nothing was left as far as I could see, except skeletal black ruins sticking up here and there: no houses, no trees, no signs of other human beings or of any life whatsoever. The entire town and everything that surrounded it on the flat prairie had been completely obliterated.

It started to rain mud, heavily. The mud blotted out everything, and left the earth brown, wet, flat and dull, and the sky leaden, even grey. A few distraught and shell-shocked people started to gather together. They were carrying unlabelled and dented cans of food, which contained nothing but mush and vegetables. They stood in the mud looking exhausted and disheveled. Some dogs emerged, out from under the basement stairs, where they had inexplicably taken residence. They were standing upright, on their hind legs. They were thin, like greyhounds, and had pointed noses. They looked like creatures of ritual – like Anubis, from the Egyptian tombs. They were carrying plates in front of them, which contained pieces of seared meat. They wanted to trade the meat for the cans. I took a plate. In the center of it was a circular slab of flesh four inches in diameter and one inch thick, foully cooked, oily, with a marrow bone in the center of it. Where did it come from?

I had a terrible thought. I rushed downstairs to my cousin. The dogs had butchered her, and were offering the meat to the survivors of the disaster. I woke up with my heart pounding.

I dreamed apocalyptic dreams of this intensity two or three times a week for a year or more, while I attended university classes and worked – as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on in my mind. 

Something I had no familiarity with was happening, however. I was being affected, simultaneously, by events on two “planes.” On the first plane were the normal, predictable, everyday occurrences that I shared with everybody else. On the second plane, however (unique to me, or so I thought) existed dreadful images and unbearably intense emotional states. This idiosyncratic, subjective world – which everyone normally treated as illusory – seemed to me at that time to lie somehow behind the world everyone knew and regarded as real. But what did real mean? The closer I looked, the less comprehensible things became. Where was The Real? What was at the bottom of it all? I did not feel I could live without knowing.

My interest in the cold war transformed itself into a true obsession. I thought about the suicidal and murderous preparation of that war every minute of every day, from the moment I woke up until the second I went to bed. How could such a state of affairs come about? Who was responsible?

I dreamed that I was running through a mall parking lot, trying to escape from something. I was running through the parked cars, opening one door, crawling across the front seat, opening the other, moving to the next. The doors on one car suddenly slammed shut. I was in the passenger seat. The car started to move by itself. A voice said harshly, “there is no way out of here.” I was on a journey, going somewhere I did not want to go. 

I was not The Driver.

I became very depressed and anxious. I had vaguely suicidal thoughts, but mostly wished that everything would just go away. I wanted to lay down on my couch, and sink into it, literally, until only my nose was showing – like the snorkel of a diver above the surface of the water. I found my awareness of things unbearable.

I came home late one night from a college drinking party, self-disgusted and angry. I took a canvas board and some paints. I sketched a harsh, crude picture of a crucified Christ – glaring and demonic – with a cobra wrapped around his naked waist, like a belt. 

The picture disturbed me – struck me, despite my agnosticism, as sacrilegious. I did not know what it meant, however, or why I had painted it. Where in the world had it come from? I hadn’t paid any attention to religious ideas for years. I hid the painting under some old clothes in my closet and sat cross-legged on the floor. I put my head down. It became obvious to me at that moment that I had not developed any real understanding of myself or of others. 

Everything I had once believed about the nature of society and myself had proved false, the world had apparently gone insane, and something strange and frightening was happening in my head. James Joyce said, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” For me, history literally was a nightmare. I wanted above all else at that moment to wake up, and make my terrible dreams go away.

I have been trying ever since then to make sense of the human capacity, my capacity, for evil – particularly for those evils associated with belief. I started by trying to make sense of my dreams. I couldn’t ignore them, after all. Perhaps they were trying to tell me something? I had nothing to lose by admitting the possibility. I read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, and found it useful. Freud at least took the topic seriously – but I could not regard my nightmares as wish-fulfillments. Furthermore, they seemed more religious than sexual in nature. I knew, vaguely, that Jung had developed specialized knowledge of myth and religion, so I started through his writings. His thinking was granted little credence by the academics I knew – but they weren’t particularly concerned with dreams. I couldn’t help being concerned by mine.

They were so intense I thought they might derange me. (What was the alternative? To believe that the terrors and pains they caused me were not real? Nothing is more real than terror and pain.)

 

Much of the time I could not understand what Jung was getting at. He was making a point I could not grasp; speaking a language I did not comprehend. Now and then, however, his statements struck home. He offered this observation, for example:

“It must be admitted that the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious can often assume grotesque and horrible forms in dreams and fantasies, so that even the most hard-boiled rationalist is not immune from shattering nightmares and haunting fears.”

The second part of that statement certainly seemed applicable to me, although the first (‘the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious”) remained mysterious and obscure. Still, this was promising. Jung at least recognized that the things that were happening to me could happen. Furthermore, he offered some hints as to their cause. So I kept reading. I soon came across the following hypothesis. Here was a potential solution to the problems I was facing – or at least the description of a place to look for such a solution:

“The psychological elucidation of... [dream and fantasy] images, which cannot be passed over in silence or blindly ignored, leads logically into the depths of religious phenomenology. The history of religion in its widest sense (including therefore mythology, folklore, and primitive psychology) is a treasure-house of archetypal forms from which the doctor can draw helpful parallels and enlightening comparisons for the purpose of calming and clarifying a consciousness that is all at sea. It is absolutely necessary to supply these fantastic images that rise up so strange and threatening before the mind’s eye with some kind of context so as to make them more intelligible. Experience has shown that the best way to do this is by means of comparative mythological material.”

It has in fact been the study of “comparative mythological material” that made my horrible dreams disappear. The “cure” wrought by this study, however, was purchased at the price of complete and often painful transformation: what I believe about the world, now – and how I act, in consequence – is so much at variance with what I believed when I was younger that I might as well be a completely different person.

I discovered that beliefs make the world, in a very real way – that beliefs are the world, in a more than metaphysical sense. This “discovery” has not turned me into a moral relativist, however: quite the contrary. I have become convinced that the world-that-is-belief is orderly: that there are universal moral absolutes (although these are structured such that a diverse range of human opinion remains both possible and beneficial). I believe that individuals and societies who flout these absolutes – in ignorance or in willful opposition – are doomed to misery and eventual dissolution.

I learned that the meanings of the most profound substrata of belief systems can be rendered explicitly comprehensible, even to the skeptical rational thinker – and that, so rendered, can be experienced as fascinating, profound and necessary. I learned why people wage war – why the desire to maintain, protect and expand the domain of belief motivates even the most incomprehensible acts of group-fostered oppression and cruelty – and what might be done to ameliorate this tendency, despite its universality. I learned, finally, that the terrible aspect of life might actually be a necessary precondition for the existence of life – and that it is possible to regard that precondition, in consequence, as comprehensible and acceptable. I hope that I can bring those who read this book to the same conclusions, without demanding any unreasonable “suspension of critical judgment” – excepting that necessary to initially encounter and consider the arguments I present. These can be summarized as follows:

The world can be validly construed as a forum for action, as well as a place of things. We describe the world as a place of things, using the formal methods of science. The techniques of narrative, however – myth, literature, and drama – portray the world as a forum for action. The two forms of representation have been unnecessarily set at odds, because we have not yet formed a clear picture of their respective domains. The domain of the former is the “objective world” – what is, from the perspective of intersubjective perception. The domain of the latter is “the world of value” – what is and what should be, from the perspective of emotion and action.

The world as forum for action is “composed,” essentially, of three constituent elements, which tend to manifest themselves in typical patterns of metaphoric representation. First is unexplored territory – the Great Mother, nature, creative and destructive, source and final resting place of all determinate things. Second is explored territory – the Great Father, culture, protective and tyrannical, cumulative ancestral wisdom. Third is the process that mediates between unexplored and explored territory – the Divine Son, the archetypal individual, creative exploratory “Word” and vengeful adversary. We are adapted to this “world of divine characters,” much as the “objective world.” The fact of this adaptation implies that the environment is in “reality” a forum for action, as well as a place of things.

Unprotected exposure to unexplored territory produces fear. The individual is protected from such fear as a consequence of “ritual imitation of the Great Father” – as a consequence of the adoption of group identity, which restricts the meaning of things, and confers predictability on social interactions. When identification with the group is made absolute, however – when everything has to be controlled, when the unknown is no longer allowed to exist – the creative exploratory process that updates the group can no longer manifest itself. This “restriction of adaptive capacity” dramatically increases the probability of social aggression and chaos.

Rejection of the unknown is tantamount to “identification with the devil,” the mythological counterpart and eternal adversary of the world-creating exploratory hero. Such rejection and identification is a consequence of Luciferian pride, which states: all that I know is all that is necessary to know. This pride is totalitarian assumption of omniscience – is adoption of “God’s place” by “reason” – is something that inevitably generates a state of personal and social being indistinguishable from hell. This hell develops because creative exploration – impossible, without (humble) acknowledgment of the unknown – constitutes the process that constructs and maintains the protective adaptive structure that gives life much of its acceptable meaning.

“Identification with the devil” amplifies the dangers inherent in group identification, which tends of its own accord towards pathological stultification. Loyalty to personal interest – subjective meaning – can serve as an antidote to the overwhelming temptation constantly posed by the possibility of denying anomaly. Personal interest – subjective meaning – reveals itself at the juncture of explored and unexplored territory, and is indicative of participation in the process that ensures continued healthy individual and societal adaptation.

Loyalty to personal interest is equivalent to identification with the archetypal hero – the “savior” – who upholds his association with the creative “Word” in the face of death, and in spite of group pressure to conform. Identification with the hero serves to decrease the unbearable motivational valence of the unknown; furthermore, provides the individual with a standpoint that simultaneously transcends and maintains the group.

The Man Who Killed Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master

In every Generation there is a Chosen One – He alone will stand against The Men Behind The Curtain, The Lord of La Mancha and The Legend of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master

He is, The Man Who Killed 

Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master

This Cannot be Stressed Often Enough — 

The Actual, Historical and Literal Meaning of ‘Hero’ specifically refers to a DEAD Man Who is Worshipped, Venerated and Appealed-to in The Afterlife.

So, as George Lucas has always been absolutely explicit in stating, The Star Wars Saga  is NOT about Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, 

Star Wars is about Darth Vader.

So The Hero of The Star Wars Saga, Episodes IV-VI and for the first 6 Episodes as a whole is Anakin Skywalker, because he is a Dead Man who is idolised by his son to the extent that he journeys into The Underworld of The Death Star (Hades) to release him from eternal torment inside his own broken, mutilated reanimated corpse of a body, after being cast down into a lake of fire and clawing his way back up from Hell by his fingernails and cast iron will.

As of 2017, for the first time, Luke Skywalker became The Hero — 

Because he is now DEAD.

“I dreamed that I was running through a mall parking lot, trying to escape from something. I was running through the parked cars, opening one door, crawling across the front seat, opening the other, moving to the next. The doors on one car suddenly slammed shut. I was in the passenger seat. The car started to move by itself. A voice said harshly, “there is no way out of here.” 

I was on a journey, going somewhere I did not want to go. 

I was not The Driver.”

— Jordan Peterson

In every Generation there is a Chosen One – He alone will stand against The Men Behind The Curtain, The Lord of La Mancha and The Legend of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master

He is,

The Man Who Killed 

Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master

Wrestling With Shadows

work

1.  (noun): Anything planned to happen, or a “rationalized lie”. The opposite of shoot.

2.  (verb): To methodically attack a single body part over the course of a match or an entire angle, setting up an appropriate finisher.

3.  (verb): To deceive or manipulate an audience in order to elicit a desired response.

"It took me a long time to reconcile myself to the idea that almost all my thoughts weren’t real, weren’t true – or, at least, weren’t mine.

All the things I “believed” were things I thought sounded good, admirable, respectable, courageous. They weren’t my things, however – I had stolen them. Most of them I had taken from books. Having “understood” them, abstractly, I presumed I had a right to them – presumed that I could adopt them, as if they were mine: presumed that they were me. My head was stuffed full of the ideas of others; stuffed full of arguments I could not logically refute. I did not know then that an irrefutable argument is not necessarily true, nor that the right to identify with certain ideas had to be earned.

I read something by Carl Jung, at about this point, that helped me understand what I was experiencing. It was Jung who formulated the concept of persona: the mask that “feigned individuality.” Adoption of such a mask, according to Jung, allowed each of us – and those around us – to believe that we were authentic. Jung said:

“When we analyse the persona we strip off the mask, and discover that what seemed to be individual is at bottom collective; in other words, that the persona was only a mask of the collective psyche. 

Fundamentally the persona is nothing real: it is a compromise between individual and society as to what a man should appear to be. He takes a name, earns a title, exercises a function, he is this or that. In a certain sense all this is real, yet in relation to the essential individuality of the person concerned it is only a secondary reality, a compromise formation, in making which others often have a greater share than he. 

The persona is a semblance, a two-dimensional reality, to give it a nickname.”

Despite my verbal facility, I was not real. 

I found this painful to admit."

Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadow

The Man of Strength hero archetype is further characterised by their tendency to be arrogant, supremely overconfident oafs who are punished and forced to learn to think by submission through trial by ordeal :

• Thor is total oaf who Loki constantly makes a complete fool of.

• Heracles is forcibly humbled by being tricked into being responsible for the deaths of his wife, his children and his best friend, Abderis.

• Samson : Worst Priest EVER....

So there *is* a wrestling connection to the Montreal Screwjob with the finishing submission-Hold — in the documentary, Brett Hart (The Man) maintains that Brett ‘Hitman’ Hart (The Character) never submitted in his final bout against Bad Guy Wrestler Shawn Michaels, which is True.

[Corridor]

(Troi rings the bell of 08-1402 and Timothy opens the door. He's wearing a jumper with a gold body section like a starfleet uniform) 

TROI: Hello, Timothy. Are you ready to go? 

TIMOTHY: Yes, Counsellor. I am ready. 

TROI: How are you feeling? 

TIMOTHY: I am functioning within established parameters. 

TROI: Established parameters? You sound like Data. 

TIMOTHY: I am an android. 

TROI: I see. Well, let's go for our walk, shall we? 

TIMOTHY: That would be acceptable.

[Ten Forward]

TROI: So, what would you like? 

TIMOTHY: Androids do not need to eat or drink. (spots a dessert being carried by a waiter) However, sometimes we like to taste things. A Tamarin frost, please. Would you like anything, Counsellor? 

TROI: No, I'm fine, thank you. 

TIMOTHY: As you wish. 

TROI: So you're no longer a human? 

TIMOTHY: I'm an android. 

TROI: When did this happen? 

TIMOTHY: I've always been an android. 

TROI: What's it like being an android? 

TIMOTHY: I am designed to exceed human capacity, both mentally and physically. But I do not experience emotions. 

TROI: You don't? No emotion at all? 

TIMOTHY: That is correct.

[Ready room]

(Data is included in the meeting) 

PICARD: An android? 

TROI: I know it sounds unusual, but it is understandable. Technically, it's called enantiodromia. Conversion into the opposite. Timothy went from human to machine, from being emotional to being emotionless. But the underlying trauma is still there. He's just found a new way to suppress it. 

PICARD: Counsellor, how long will this behaviour last? 

TROI: As long as he needs it to. Timothy is rebuilding his identity as best he can. The android persona is just one step along the way. As soon as he feels stronger and more sure of himself, it should drop away naturally. 

PICARD: I assume this is not a time to confront him about what happened to his ship. 

TROI: Not yet. The best thing we can do right now is to let Timothy take us where he wants to go. We should support the process and even encourage it. 

PICARD: Data, I would like you to make Timothy the best android he can possibly be.

[Timothy's quarters]

(Data checks his appearance in the mirror, then tries to brush Timothy's hair to match his own) 

DATA: Timothy, your head movements are counterproductive. Can you be still? 

TIMOTHY: But you do it. 

DATA: The servo mechanisms in my neck are designed to approximate human movements. I did not realize the effect was so distracting. 

TIMOTHY: I like it. Data, are there any other androids in Starfleet? 

DATA: No. I am the only one. 

TIMOTHY: How come you're not Captain? 

DATA: My service experience does not yet warrant such a position. 

TIMOTHY: Data, what's the scariest thing that ever happened to you? 

DATA: Fear is a quality that I do not possess. 

TIMOTHY: Because it's an emotion? 

DATA: Correct. 

TIMOTHY: But what if you had a nightmare? 

DATA: I have never had a nightmare. I do not require sleep. Timothy, are you having disturbing dreams? 

TIMOTHY: I do not require sleep. 

DATA: Is that satisfactory? (the hair) 

TIMOTHY: It's perfect.

[Sickbay]

CRUSHER: 

Transfer circuits are functioning properly. 

TIMOTHY: Within established parameters? 

CRUSHER: 

Absolutely. Input processing, pattern recognition, all within established parameters. 

DATA + TIMOTHY: 

Thank you, Doctor.

[Data's quarters]

(They are both painting - Data is doing a traditional pastoral landscape whilst Timothy's image is, well, angry) 

TIMOTHY: 

I ran out of red ochre. 

DATA: 

You may use mine. 

TIMOTHY: 

Thank you.

(yawns) 

DATA: 

Perhaps you should return to your quarters. 

TIMOTHY: 

I'm fine. 

The servo mechanisms in my mouth are designed to approximate human movements. 

(Data tries a yawn) 

TIMOTHY: 

That is not bad. 

DATA: 

Thank you. 

(re painting) 

It is very expressive. 

TIMOTHY: 

Thank you. 

DATA: 

Is your painting representative of something? 

TIMOTHY: 

It's just a painting. 

DATA: 

Timothy, you understand that you may speak with me about anything you wish? Any subject? 

TIMOTHY: 

I understand. 

DATA: 

At times, I too find it difficult to share my thoughts with others.

 I am not always confident that I am expressing myself in a manner which humans can comprehend. 

But do I know that —

(Data sees that Timothy has fallen asleep and carries him to the couch)

Scene 23 — Superstition

23 EXT. CAR PARK - BASEBALL GROUND - DAY - (1968) 23 

CLOUGH rushes out of the doors, straightening his cuffs, straightening his hair, buttoning his jacket. 

First out to greet the arriving team. 

 He turns the corner to see the LEEDS COACH a hundred yards down the street, the PLAYERS getting off the coach and walking towards him.. 

CLOUGH 

What are they doing? 

JIMMY They've run out of petrol. 

TAYLOR 

No, it's that superstition, isn't it? 

Every away cup ties, Revie makes them walk the last hundred yards. 

TAYLOR mutters under his breath, "Soppy twat". 

CLOUGH cranes his neck. 

Watches DON REVIE, 40's. Thick-set. Severe, forbidding, intimidating, in a huddle with his coaching staff, Les Cocker and Syd Owen. His henchmen. His assassins. His "Goodfellas". His right and left hand. 

 CLOUGH walks towards him. Hand outstretched.. 

CLOUGH 

Welcome to Derby, Don. 

Pleasure to meet you. 

I'm Brian Clough. 

 But REVIE walks past without shaking hands, without talking, without even breaking stride.. ..and disappears into the stadium, deep in conversation with Les Cocker and Syd Owen.

CLOUGH stares. Hand still outstretched. He looks over at PETER TAYLOR, who can't help smiling, `Forget it'. 

 TAYLOR and JIMMY GORDON walk off, but CLOUGH still stares at REVIE in disbelief. 

Heroic Vomiting

“One man kebabed, hundreds scarred forever by a shared blood ritual — and yet, an astonishing sense of Community here now, a positive atmosphere, a sense of a job well done, a shared sigh of relief, very much like the bizarre euphoria at the end of an hour's vomiting.”

Sancho Panza, who also regarded the amendment of his master as miraculous, begged him to give him what was left in the pigskin, which was no small quantity. 

Don Quixote consented, and he, taking it with both hands, in good faith and with a better will, gulped down and drained off very little less than his master. 

But the fact is, that the stomach of poor Sancho was of necessity not so delicate as that of his master, and so, before vomiting, he was seized with such gripings and retchings, and such sweats and faintness, that verily and truly be believed his last hour had come, and finding himself so racked and tormented he cursed the balsam and the thief that had given it to him. 

Don Quixote seeing him in this state said, "It is my belief, Sancho, that this mischief comes of thy not being dubbed a knight, for I am persuaded this liquor cannot be good for those who are not so." 

"If your worship knew that," returned Sancho—" woe betide me and all my kindred!—why did you let me taste it?" 

At this moment the draught took effect, and the poor squire began to discharge both ways at such a rate that the rush mat on which he had thrown himself and the canvas blanket he had covering him were fit for nothing afterwards. He sweated and perspired with such paroxysms and convulsions that not only he himself but all present thought his end had come. This tempest and tribulation lasted about two hours, at the end of which he was left, not like his master, but so weak and exhausted that he could not stand. 

Don Quixote, however, who, as has been said, felt himself relieved and well, was eager to take his departure at once in quest of adventures, as it seemed to him that all the time he loitered there was a Fraud upon The World and those in it who stood in need of his help and protection, all the more when he had the security and confidence his balsam afforded him; and so, urged by this impulse, he saddled Rocinante himself and put the pack-saddle on his squire's beast, whom likewise he helped to dress and mount the ass; after which he mounted his horse and turning to a corner of the inn he laid hold of a pike that stood there, to serve him by way of a lance. 

All that were in the inn, who were more than twenty persons, stood watching him; the innkeeper's daughter was likewise observing him, and he too never took his eyes off her, and from time to time fetched a sigh that he seemed to pluck up from the depths of his bowels; but they all thought it must be from the pain he felt in his ribs; at any rate they who had seen him plastered the night before thought so.

ARMOUR

Jonathan Pryce's costume as Don Quixote is the one Jean Rochefort wore in the 2000 attempt, as seen in Lost in La Mancha. 

Carlo Poggioli, the assistant of Gabriella Pescucci, costume designer for the 2000 version, rediscovered it while browsing for costumes for an opera. 

Pescucci gave her blessing for the costume to finally be used in a film. 

In the end, Lena Mossum, costume designer for the new version, did some adjustments, and the costume fit Pryce perfectly. Gilliam said that otherwise, "with the money in the budget, there's no way [they] could make something as good as what was on screen".

The first thing he did was to clean up some armour that had belonged to his great-grandfather, and had been for ages lying forgotten in a corner eaten with rust and covered with mildew. He scoured and polished it as best he could, but he perceived one great defect in it, that it had no closed helmet, nothing but a simple morion. This deficiency, however, his ingenuity supplied, for he contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard which, fitted on to the morion, looked like a whole one. It is true that, in order to see if it was strong and fit to stand a cut, he drew his sword and gave it a couple of slashes, the first of which undid in an instant what had taken him a week to do. The ease with which he had knocked it to pieces disconcerted him somewhat, and to guard against that danger he set to work again, fixing bars of iron on the inside until he was satisfied with its strength; and then, not caring to try any more experiments with it, he passed it and adopted it as a helmet of the most perfect construction.

YES — BREATHE

Laurie Kaye: “Can you tell us about that meeting?”

JOHN: “With Yoko? Well, it was sort of 1966 and, uh, I got a call from a guy called John Dunbar, who used to be married to Marianne Faithful – you know, everybody’s connected. 

And he had a gallery in London called Indica Gallery, an art gallery. And, I used to go there occasionally to see whatever art show was on, you see? 

And he said, ‘Oh, I’ve got this… there’s this fantastic Japanese girl coming from New York, and she’s gonna do this other thing but she’s also gonna put on an exhibition at my gallery. And it’s gonna be this big event’. 

Something about ‘black bags!’ and I thought, ‘Ooooh, orgies’, you know? These artists, they’re all ravers, you know? It was in the days of happenings, paint, and all that stuff, right? 

So I go right down there, you know, for the opening. ‘Goody, goody!’, you know? Lennon goes down to see what’s happening. I get down there, and it’s the night before the opening. I mean, I thought there was going to be a big party, and an opening and the whole bit, you know? A big hap…  I didn’t wanna get involved. 

I wanted to watch, you know? I get there and its all white and quiet and there’s just these strange things all on display, like an apple on a stand for 200 pounds – when the pound was worth 8 dollars, or something. Whatever. 

And there’s hammers, saying ‘Hammer a nail in’, all this very peculiar stuff, and a ladder with a painting on the sky… or it looked like a blank canvass on the ceiling with a spyglass hanging from it. 

So, I’m lookin’ ’round and there doesn’t seem to be many people. There’s a couple of people downstairs. And I didn’t know who was who. 

So, I get up the ladder, and I look through this spyglass and it says, ‘Yes’. And I took that as a personal, positive message, because most of the avant garde artists of that period were all negative. 

Like, breaking a piano with an axe; it was mainly male… I’m looking at the female…  it was mainly male art, and it was all destructive, and sort of ‘nay, nay-na-nay nay’, you know? 

But here was this little crazy message on the ceiling. And then the guy introduced me to her. And she didn’t know who the hell I was. 

She had no idea. She was living in a different environment altogether. And, uh, I was sayin’ ‘Well this is a good con, isn’t it? Apples at 200 pounds. Hammer a nail. Who’s gonna buy this?’, you know? 

I didn’t know what concept art was; which, in a nutshell is ‘the idea is more important than the object’. So that’s why you won’t see many rich concept artists around, because you can’t really, you know… like the guy that wraps up, uh, what’s the guy that wraps up the… ”

Kaye: “Christo… ”

JOHN: “Christo wraps up things. He doesn’t expect you to buy the canvass. What he’s doing is selling you this idea, whatever it is he’s projecting. It was the same kinda thing, but I hadn’t come across it before. How do you sell a ‘nail in a hammer?’ So anyway, I said, uh, the gallery owner was all fussin’ ’round saying, ‘Is he gonna buy something?’ And she’s not..she’s ignoring me. So he introduced us, and I said ‘Well, uh, where’s the event?’ you know, ‘Where’s the happening?’ ‘Cause I’d seen the bag. So she just takes a card out and gives it to me and it just says, ‘Breathe’. So I said, ‘like that?’ She said, ‘You got it’. I said, ‘Uh huh, alright’. I’m beginning to catch on, here. So, and then I see this hammer, this thing… ”

YOKO: “I just remember his nose… He did it exactly like that.”

JOHN: “… well, you know, what else are you gonna do? This was the big event. I mean, all the way from New York for that? So, I see the hammer hanging on the thing with a few nails. And I said, ‘Well, can I at least hammer a nail in? You know, I’ve come all the way from the suburbs for this’. And she says, ‘No!'”

YOKO: “‘Cause it’s before the opening… ”

JOHN: “… it’s before the opening and she didn’t want the thing messed up. So, anyway, the gallery owner has a ‘little word’ with her. Then she says, she comes over to me and she says, ‘Alright.’ No smiling, or anything. Because, you know how she is, she doesn’t… she’s not runnin’ for office – she never was, though. She looks at me and she says, ‘You give me 5 shillings’. Well, that’s about $10 or maybe $20… ”

YOKO: “$10?!? Are you kidding? 5 shillings was about 50 cents… ”

JOHN: “No, no, in those days the shilling,… well, whatever, she says ‘Give me 5 shillings and you can hammer a nail in.’ So I looked at her and I said, ‘I’ll give you an imaginary 5 shillings and hammer in an imaginary nail in, okay?’ And that’s when we connected really, and we looked at each other like… you know that sort of… something went off. Well, I didn’t see her again for a few weeks. We went to a Claes Oldenburg opening and we were all… we… I went with Paul, and I don’t know who she was with. But I got separated from Paul, and I felt this sort of vibe behind me. And I looked ’round and there she was. And, we’re both very shy – believe it or not. And we… I don’t know what I said. We said something… uh, we didn’t really get together until 18 months later. We didn’t make love ’till two years… You think we’re rock and rollers, you know, all the… life that people lead. And, uh, it’s alright coming on with someone you know its not going to go anywhere. It’s easy to one-night-stand, and groupies and that. But for a real relationship… I was so paranoid and it was 18 months or a year before we got near to, uh, each other physically, as it were. ‘Cause I didn’t know how to treat somebody – a real woman. I only knew how to treat groupies, really. That’s not to say anything against me first wife, but that was when we were kids and our relationship started when we were both kids, so it was a different thing altogether. But this was quite a shock for me, and somebody who demanded equal rights right from the word ‘go’, you know? It was quite a long trip. But we’ve been together now longer than the Beatles. You know that?”

YOKO: “That is interesting… ”

JOHN: “People always think, ‘well, John and Yoko just got together and the Beatles split’. But we’ve been together longer than the Beatles.”

PATHETIC

pathetic (adj.)

1590s, "affecting the emotions, exciting the passions," from Middle French pathétique "moving, stirring, affecting" (16c.), from Late Latin patheticus, from Greek pathetikos "subject to feeling, sensitive, capable of emotion," from pathetos "liable to suffer," verbal adjective of pathein "to suffer" (from PIE root *kwent(h)- "to suffer"). 

TULPA

Tony Clifton takes over Jim Carrey’s  press conference for Man in the Moon...

The Knight of The Mirrors

The Chorister : 

What is the one thing evil cannot face? 

Not ever. 

TEGAN: 

What? 

The Chorister : 

Itself. 

ADRIC: 

But you said the Kinda would react to the mirror. 

They aren't evil. 

The Chorister : 

Ah, Hindle captured their INNOCENCE. 

The Mara will rebel. 

They cannot face themselves, don't you see? 

TEGAN: 

No.

Stop.

Enough.

It's been two weeks.

Get up off the damn mat.

You wanted Don Quixote? 

Oh.

This is it.

By the way, this is what brought him down.

Nobody's brought you down.

The Knight of the Mirrors.

He holds up a mirror and shows him.

- Stop it.

Shows him! I mean, he doesn't fight him with a sword.

He shows him with a mirror what a total fool he looks like.