rev Aug 29-30-31/ Sept 1, 2021.
with mention of cryptophasia and Caroline Kent; Hoare Albert and the Whale; Thomas Mann Doctor Faustus.
Apparently, James Glickenhaus thought this, his only movie, The Astrologer (1975), was a terrible movie, so happily let it disappear. Nor is this the Craig Denny cult lost film, The Astrologer (197SIX), but, here again, I have a different standard for judging things, and found a great deal of interest in this 70s movie. Once again, too, it sometimes happens that movies made by somewhat amateurish directors have a chance to let in some raw material from a time that more polished directors might block, so that is of interest too.
The first thing to consider here is that, once again, a 70s movie seeks to find an essence or truth that can solve the problems of earth, but in an all-or-nothing matter that in the end serves only to dissipate that force in the real culture outside the movie. That is, in the 70s, such explosive, or all-or-nothing constructs served to provide compensation forms for a culture quickly moving away from the 60s, if not demonizing it, and thus replace real activism with fictional hope in the context of a movie (the irony of this expansive pulse in movies being that it is the opposite trajectory from the recoil that brought forth from the ruins of modernist binaries postmodernism, a word I began to make use of as a undergrad at this time). This is another example. Here, the spy works for InterZod, which is a secret company funded by the US government, which crunches numbers on birth charts, or zodiac charts, to determine people’s zodiacal potential, in effect, the fingerprint of their potential in terms of in the future doing evil or good. Very much like the power to make dreams real in The Lathe of Heaven, then, this movie posits that one’s birth, and the alignment of the stars at that moment, interjects into one a personality potential to do either good or bad in the world. This is an extreme example of essentialism, 70s style, which I argue is in compensation for lost power on the streets and in the culture as a whole. A good part of the movie is based on the fact that they found that in 1949 a man was born in India with an appallingly negative chart, so much so they suspect he will become a terrorist and cause mayhem to mankind, so they try to locate him, Kajerste, and kill him. Fine, but much more interesting is an apparent subplot, which turns out to also be part of the spy’s work, and a project, and the flip side of the search for perfect potential.
Things start out with a sort of wink toward conspiracy theory, and the glamor of the belief that the true power in the world is secret, and happens behind the scenes where the strings are pulled. We enter in by way of some pictures of the men on the moon, 1969
we focus on the shield of the man on the moon
and then it closes in, this because in that conspiracy theory universe people have found things to dispute or wonder about in this inadvertent unintended picture, always a trope in conspiracy theory world
the movie has nothing to do with this, or the moon, but it is here to simply suggest that what is under discussion is likely just as incredible, and un-believable.
Then we are talking about a biblical prophecy
and we see a moon man as if dissolve in a kind of halo, wondering, the second coming, they say, is ten days away, who will it be? and we come in on Washington DC
I am not particularly interested in this part of the movie, but will pick up on it as I stroll through. More interesting, in terms of what I guess I have to call unintentional movie making, is that there is a subplot focused on Kate, the spy’s wife, who is struggling in her new marriage. We see her come by a tarot card reader
she has become so distraught, and therefore passive, that when the reader chastises her for giving her false information about her birth date and hour, she tells her to go behind the screen, take your clothes off, and then we try to get at the truth, and…she does.
This is an interesting shot, from behind the dressing screen (which is odd, it being there). On the right, Jesus, on the left, a kind of rug that was popular at the time, you can see one in Five Easy Pieces, which featured both JFK and RFK as the bookends of the 60s which are fading away fast.
I noted of this on a post, as it is shown better when the spy comes back to ask the reader what she was up to with his wife
indeed, one reason I might be reluctant to let Sirhan Sirhan go (it was in the news) go is that his part in history was epochal and era-changing, he changed to course of history, making the assassination a “prophetic” event
“He’s an old man now, I suppose, but still a twinge. He changed American history. What if? what if Bobby had defeated Nixon in 1968*? what if Nixon-Hoover hadn’t’ve declared war on the war at home? what if there was no Watergate? what if the neutralized old left hadn’t of stepped aside, exhausted, for southern centrist Democrats for the whole next generation? what if Edward Kennedy had not had to say farewell to his aspirations (“the dream will never die”) in 1980? what if the Reagan reaction had not happened? what if, forty years later, we were not still stuck in poison politics gridlock? WHAT IF? the man altered the course of American history, but go thee thither, fade away”.
The fact of this coincidence is extra-cinematic, and cultural, in the sense that it is part of a culture of the streaming time, which nonetheless somehow echoes a bespeaking of 2021, as in 1975. But it is also a hint that the reader takes her work very seriously, and her ethos is that one’s birth chart is important. She also seems to worship personages in history who maybe had terrific or troubling birth charts, case studies proving the importance of her craft. Since both Kennedys were killed, the bookending of that, making of them the martyrs of a time stolen of its what if? potential, is an icon which proves her point, destiny counts. As such, JFK and RFK each, and then together JFKRFK becomes as if a DNA strand, a counterpart to a birth chart, twinned, as if, to suggest an evil fate, which nonetheless bespeaks the fact that such a strand of omens or chart positions can become one’s destiny. Thus, this movie places the DNA strand of selfhood, in this case one’s birth chart, and what they call, crunching it numerically, as one’s “zodiacal potential,” is the key to one self, and in effect one’s soul. Still more importantly, they exploit it, as they take it from theory into practice, and the practice part is if they find a person with a truly terrible chart, predicting that this person will unleash chaos on the world, they will want to take him out; and, likewise, they want to find and cultivate those who have an excellent chart, as more of them, people with high positive potential, could save the world. Much in the manner of contemporary CRT, a theory is immediately applied to spying in an entirely spurious way, but nonetheless bespeaking the effect of 70s movies to take everything to its end. So, this is important.
The seer, who is Indian, has a Virgin Mary behind her, and that will factor in, in the final answer
we see a glimpse of nudity, Kate seems to have no problem stripping in the room with complete strangers, this sort of surprises one, and goes against the grain of her personality as she generally presents herself. Her one nipple is hard, however, indicating that she might be turned on by this, as again she is not having sex with her husband, that is why she is here
we also see, however, she is in the real world, so there is a peeper
then the movie blacks this out, to move on
to then give us a computer-style squareletter shift, too many of these.
This fade out is curious, somehow. The fade out picture could be construed as another type of picturing, we’ll see.
I also picked up, in second viewing, that Rhav has a middle name, Reborne, or “reborn’, (this is the only movie that Alison McCarthy appeared in, I quite like her, another little detail of uniqueness)
Next up, she gets her husband worried. First, he is surprised that she agreed to take off her clothes. Why he is so antsy about that, at this point, we do not know. Also, he is concerned that by protesting that the facts of her life were false, the reader risked giving away their secret, which we also do not know at this time. The distance between them, and that there is something going on that we or she does not know about, is indicated by a strange primitive celt statue set on the floor between them.
In fact, it is a modern statue, my guess, and since it is a nude it is a sign indicating that he cant believe she got naked for a stranger, or outside of the house, that he would be interested in that, but, for some reason, he can’t be, and it also could serve as a Woman at the Fountain statue to bespeak the darker potential of her sexuality, which goes beyond the confines of the marriage as it is currently playing out, unconsummated.
In Pretty Maids All in a Row, the book, I found a good deal of strange verbiage describing the influence that being close to women had on men, in the words of the time. Pollini talks of the “warm form” of the woman, and her form in general, and that the form emits an energy, which has a sexual element, but is really a life force, a general charisma that makes one want to be around them. In the language of film this is not objectification, but it is figuralization, that is, she is seen here not as a real woman but as a figure of a sense epitomized by the statue and thus more a spirit, a dream guide, a dream figure, put in the movie to movie things here or there, without the complications of her real humanity. In this scene, it appears that Kate is this kind of figure.
The same thing happens in the next sequence. A congressman meets the spy and then is invited by him back to their private jet flying to Washington DC immediately. At this point, aboard, they meet a colleague, a very pretty and vivacious woman, Rhav, who also seems to have a charisma that outsizes her actual role in the movie. She has about her a love at first sight aspect. As such, she too is a figure, a dream guide, and not “real” in the movie. That is what accounts for the effusion of her aura off screen to the viewer. And her charisma is expressed even if all buttoned up, and completely professional. She cannot help it, because she is not “real.”
though it is amusing that when she retreats to the bedroom, and it is dormitory style, she has no trouble stripping and being found later by the congressman all spread out, deepening his smitten state.
Kate is also repeatedly made to feel marginal and not real by not being entirely filled in on what is going on. The host at this invitation to dinner, which is quaint, is unaware that she is not in the know, so when he talks of the zodiacal potential chart of the Virgin Mary, when Kate goes to the restroom, he has to be scolded, he said too much
The reference to the Virgin Mary is curious, he sounds like a mad science, if he thinks he can somehow capture that profile again. The science gets weirder at the office. Not only do they crunch the numbers and learn the zodiacal potential profile of every human being on planet earth, but they also isolate those which are outside the norm, evil or good, and those they seek out in practice to exploit. He sees this ZP graph as a sort of DNA string, the essence of a person, a key which they can eavesdrop on and exploit. The idea is reinforced by a strange picture on the office wall, in an office, some office art, in the shot
it is a variant on Durer’s Adam and Eve, a picture of the origin of human life, but of two women.
It is also strange that Kajerste practices a kind of sex magic by firepit, and what he does is pose as the Renaissance man, then ask the subject, here a woman, to strip and stand before him, point to point
and then it is as if he has “intercourse” with her by means of a kind of spirit formation of paralleling of bodies as he presses her over, we never see her breasts
and with sighting of a severed head, I think, on a post, this must entail some method of transferring of his power to her, to make her an acolyte
and then it goes black out
it strikes me as yet another example of body magic involving twisties, that is, like the extreme crucifix made by witches to be swum tying big toes to thumbs opposite handedly, that the being an extreme full-body sign of the cross, all over apotropaia, I call this extreme body magic
it could also be construed as an example of the three-stars of Orion’s belt translated into the ZP symbol
but as they are practicing 70s not 60s mad science, they have lost faith that a progeny of man and woman can result in a high zodiacal potential, in fact, almost in the manner of a neo-eugenicist, he says that most people have very average profiles and no wonder they just fade into the woodwork. What he is interested in, what makes this science fundable, is that they are looking for the zodiacally privileged
this chart then exists like a key to the self, or a type of self, he says that it is incredible important that they can look into souls, by this methodology.
these prototypes, he actually calls them, can be learned and reproduced and improve the human race because they have the models
it is therefore strongly implied that normal birthed people born of man and woman are not going to have high profiles. Therefore, a purer type of sex is needed, to produce with greater average these privileged. Though we are going to find out that the means to create the absolute most privileged forms is an extrema example of parthenogenesis, unpolluted by the randomness of sexual reproduction (just like in The Wicker Man, a small culture mad for breeding), so here (in the picture) lesbianism would be seen in the 70s as an almost supernatural means of sex, which could serve to host a kind of parthenogenesis, no? We have seen (Vampire Ecstasy), that, indeed, lesbianism, yet considered a perversion at the time, was nonetheless attracting to it a rhetoric which declared it to be transcendent. It is all but pictured as supernatural. So, in an office, this is an intercessional wish picture, pointing the way to where they will have to go with this.
Again, movies scores points with one, based on current interest. Deep summer has surprised me this year, by spilling out into days after. Indeed, for fun, I have let a certain rhetoric of essence inhabit my dream theory. I argue that if you are suspended in a state of Syngogy, as a result of a second nightmare in the Eldritch formation, that second dream will entail searching for a series of breadcrumbs all of which add up to one’s “Umwelt” (Uexhull’s term), or DNA, on the basis, then, of bringing that telesmatic discovery back to consciousness, to live in a state of “white album”. I do not believe this, technically, but poetically, in dreams. Also, my interest in the sweet spot which all artists, abled or disabled, must find, from which to generate flow and power as artists, is the practical outcome of theory. This IS on my mind, as indicated in my comments on Niki de St Phalle.
I had this idea with Senga Nengudi as well, a show she did recently at the museum level. I thought it would be better served with a progressively bootstrapped presentation, in a corridor or tunnel, released bit by bit as a series of breadcrumbs, that is, as an Umwelt. Here I call this sweet spot the perischoinismus, a roped off place, often of a lightning strike, then it is also, as per my recent treatment, a “hor-izon”, a good binding. It is also my belief that disabled artists end up working in a strictly controlled binding or hor-izon in order to enhance the possibility of them operating out of that sweet spot. So, his rhetoric echoes of the moment, the belief that one’s star chart is all but DNA, deterministically then expressed in the world, and that then exploited in a suspect practice.
For my cult, of course, that Umwelt would have to be part of my being as a sequitur, second born twin. And so I was surprised again, WHILE WATCHING THIS MOVIE, to find mention of Caroline Kent at MCA, and that she paints abstractions and sets them in milieu or incubative spaces in ways to enhance cryptophasic communication, because she is an identical twin. It would follow that for an identical twin, one’s Umwelt, or hor-ion, the special formula or equation that is one’s sweet spot, would have to be framed by twinship, and then involve cryptophasia. It then surprised me when making a quick post on her work, some other thoughts occurred to me.
Text, “Excitingly strange doings as Caroline Kent at MCA Chicago expands the scenographic to explore cryptophasic communication between identical twins. Another identical twin artist! three things wow this younger identical twin: I think I’ve been intrigued by her sculptures before, but here I see they function as what I call Cassandra statues, palladial warnings maybe unlistened too; in Victoria/Veronica not here but in 2020 show the presence of houseplants as whisper forms makes me wonder if my houseplant trope fascination have something to do with my position cryptophasically and a twin thing; I have NEVER seen a painting talk to and sotto voce through the wall it’s on before like this, ever, so have to work that out. I can’t tell if Kent is the older or younger so at present I assume she’s just trying to grasp the overall wyrd doubleness of crypto communication, which has always confused outside observers, we don’t seem to communicate at all but everything that needs to be said is, sort of. Up to April, 2022”.
“The green is at MCA, Chicago, others, Victoria/Veronica, is from 2020 (personal response, could my obsession with the “true image” (veron icon) be a twin thing? And my ongoing parsing of all the ways between the gates of horn (truth) and ivory (deception) dream statues communicate too? (Kent’s use of the word “shorthand” also reminds me, unthought of in years, I was so fascinated by my mother knowing secretarial shorthand, which I assume is obsolete now, that as a teen I taught myself how to do it. So, for these, I think I’ve been intrigued by her sculptures before, but here I see they function as what I call Cassandra statues, palladial warnings maybe unlistened too; it looks to me like her sculptures are like herms, which negotiate the crypto communication”,
is, in fact, my interest in Houseplants, and alibi formations in general, a twin thing? That is, does my sensitivity to them indicate my need to understand their unspoken communication. Is it a special sequitur skill to be able to read tropes? Certainly, my bespeaking movies, that is, other people’s work, and ferreting out by tea leaf reading hidden tacit meaning of them IS a sequitur skill. In the same way, when she mentions Veronica, is my need to map out where all these types of statues vis a vis truth are located, in a chain of “translatio” from the veron icon, to multiple copies of it, then the cultus developing, is my drive to map this out ALSO a twin thing? that is, a need to be able to interpret unspoken communication. This strongly suggests, for now, that it is in sequitur-POV cryptophasia that my ho-rion lies, and where also lies the Orion’s belt of my deepest inosculation.
I mention often the scene in Constantine (2005). So, her cryptophasia was letters fingered transparently on blown breath spots on windows. Mine would be, I have decided, the secret meanings embedded in maps, based on the game we used to play with those, then. So, for example, a map
I would then leave a message to him, by way of playing the war game, something like this,
then in a progressive map, as the next action took place, and THERE, in the battle results, I would hide a bit of information, whatever it might be (in fact I do not have much in the way of this mental capacity anymore), and that would be a clue, leading to a place, that would go on and so and on, and THAT would map out, in the medium of our cryptophasia, my message from beyond. or something like this
Thus, an Umwelt is recorded and used to convey messages. And that cryptophasic sequitur communication would be the hor-ion of my soul and deepest truth. Then, however, getting back to the movie, we see a strange crypto form, in a painting, apparently
the image had an uncanny quality as it seemed to relate to an image in a book I was reading in the time, the geometric form in Durer’s Melancholia, this from Hoare, as the image was made use of on the original cover of Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus
and he argues that the form on the cover is the geometric device in Melancholia
with the elements of the riddle, hourglass, scales and musical notes fed in, like this
meaning that this image is a transposed involution of the above
containing in it, fate, harmony and justice, it strikes me that whoever designed the cover thought that the “building” behind the paralyzed angel is in fact the roving Rosicrucian college, not a building, but an allegorical vehicle trundling across the land of Germany
with an occult meaning. And, then, too, with three elements, all of it then transposed to a geometric star form, this is also a transposition of my concept of the horion or Umwelt or Orions’ Belt of one’s go-to signature dream form, or found of creativity in one, as noted yesterday, so, stunningly weird synchoretherrhoe coincidence.
But, now, in addition to the theory of the hor-ion, and cryptophasic communication, brings me back to the strange and unique form in Kent’s show at MCA in Chicago, which I at present have no answer to
The reality of a spirit depth to this form, of course, dismissed in a hyperallergic review by the singleton who thinks his wonderful soul is all that is required to get to the meaning of things. And following from the scene in Constantine (2005) that there is, indeed, one medium of communication by which identical twins cryptophasically speak to each other (in Weisz’s case it was finger writing on the blown breath on windows, as noted) but for me I would guess it is the Map Game we played at, which means that if I left behind a message from the grave in a cryptophasic form it would have to be some sort of progressive symbolization by way of pareidola seen in steps in conquest on a certain map, that he would relate to, something like this (though I do not have a meaning now).
More proof supporting the notion that a drawing game could lead to a style of drawing, with an element of cryptophasia from the artist Kim Jones.
In other words, Jones played a drawing game in his childhood, as did I and my brother; but, then, he developed a simple system of xs and o’s into a drawing style; which would mean that in order to recover the cryptophasia of the game I would have to go back, look at the language of marks or signs made use of in old maps of that sort, from the World Book, and then abstract and recreate them, as marks as the basis of drawings. The question is, then, are Kent’s abstract forms also derived from a cryptophasic medium origin).
hen, too, the above (the Faustus cover) is a star, but not entirely, it might also be a dreidel, no?
so, the fact that all this relates to this form, in the prologue
spun out from the face of the man in the moon, then did take an ultimate form in the movie, the maximum positive zodiacal profile
More evidence that as the 70s pulled away from 60s the popular culture began to abreact despair by displacing real hope into fictional fantasies of instant totalist solutions, after watching The Astrologer (1975) in which secret organization seeks a eugenics magic bullet to building better humans and Alexei finds out from crunching birth chart-based “zodiacal profiles” data of everyone that the “maximum positive profile,” ie, perfect human prototype, appeared only twice in history, once, in the first century for a girl who would become Mary, BVM herself, and, then, a second time, in 1953 (yes, 1953! my heart skipped a beat) which leads to one of the most curious performances of the decade by one-movie-only 1973 Playboy Model Monica Tidwell* who is utterly miffed why Alexei won’t touch her but then later when they figure it out has one of the most joyful happily naked nude scenes in all of 70s indie movies!
which may be explained in the book, to be continued
and then it all bears upon Tidwell’s performance, here effaced as the ghostly road in the painting, perhaps bespeaking the mystery about her hymen
it all relates, strangely. So, right as I am watching yet another 70s movie interested in discovering a magical theriac to solve all earth’s problems, I am converging on playing with similar ideas, this adds greatly to my viewing.
Then, after Alexei gives the congressman the talk, of the privileged few
the telescope opens up, I guess it was once used to read the stars at certain star chart moments to identify who is among the elite, and thus a certain ethos of catasterism here, meaning that the special ones are also enshrined in the stars
but then this dissolves into Kate, at home, preparing for Alexei to come home. This identifies her, in the subtext, as the one with the MPP profile, strange shot with her illuminated by the opening in the observatory
end of pt. 1,
rmarts 