Friday, November 14, 2008

Kwaidan - The Black Hair

Dye in the water
To moving shadows
Samurai leaves wife
Future seperate
Wife weaver
Cut to
Bride ceremony
Relief at her marriage
Parents to son-in-law
Cut to
Running water
Bucket, rope, well
Functioning of society
Built around her
Red umbrella
Green kimono
Pampered
voice over
New bride to new post
Good family, respect & notoriety
Village, shops, covered as a ghost
Pale faced husband
Dissolve to
Ex weaving. Sound carries over cut back to husband
New wife
Dawn, prayer, long drawn out silent, slow moving moments
Selfish and callous
All in blue
Still in love with first wife
Regret
Red dress pushed to the ground
Images of ex
Arrow striking wood
Horseback contest of skill
Missed third mark
Off angle rotate in memory
Throws off shot
Sound carrying over
Right to left
Hits targets
Slow close up, cut to weaving sounds, focus on hair
Hits target
Purple, eyebrows, yawn, throws fan
Playing game, she quits
Husband reading, passed out, hidden
Pushes her away, hits him, twice
She calles him out on living in the past and using her
Eerie clang music
Nurse and husband
Sends her back to her parents
Find Ex and make amends
Years later returns home Kyoto
Heavy shadows, all doors locked
Wife spinning wheel, turns to him
Camera swoops in opposite her turning
How did her find her in all those black rooms?
Maze, labyrinth
He professes his love, asks for forgiveness
True love, dedication, she was not worthy of him
Poverty
So happy to be together again if...
Only for a moment?
Hair monologue
Red bedspread
Letting go of sorrow, telling the past
Dawn
Bridal chamber
No sleep
Past, present, future
dream
Wakes up
Head rolls left to right to face the sun
Rolls her over, close up
Corpse!
No sound
Bird's eye view
Dragging, wood sounds, faint strings
Hair moving, he lashes out, flailing
No sound
His face paler all the time
Crashes through
Camera twists slowly as he runs
His own hair is growing long
Falls through the floor, crawls,
Water, inverted reflection, freeze frame
Sunken, rotting face

Joseph Campbell Notes - Emanations: From Psychology to Metaphysics

It is not difficult for the modern intellectual to concede that the symbolism of mythology has a psychological significance. Particularily after the work of the psychoanalysts, there can be little doubt, either that myths are of the nature of dream, or that dreams are symptomatic of the dynamics of the psyche.

According to this view it appears that through the wonder tales - which pretend to describe the lives of the legendary heroes, the powers of the divinities of nature, the spirits of the dead, and the totem ancestors of the group - symbolic expression is given to the unconscious desires, fears, and tensions that underlie the conscious patterns of human behavior. Mythology, in other words, is psychology misread as biography; history, and cosmology.

The entire spectacle is before us. We have only to read it, study its constant patterns, analyze its variations, and therewith come to an understanding of the deep forces that have shaped man's destiny and must continue to determine both our private and our public lives.

But if we are to grasp the full value of the materials, we must note that myths are not exactly comparable to dream. Their figures originate from the same sources - the unconcious wells of fantasy - and their grammar is the same, but they are not the spontaneous products of sleep. On the contrary, their patterns are conciously controlled. And thei understood function is to serve as a powerful picture language for the communication of traditional wisdom.

They link the unconcious to the field of practical action, not irrationality, in the manner of a neurotic projection, but in such fashion as to permit a mature and sobering, practical comprehension of the fact-world to play back, as a stern control, into the realms of infantile wish and fear.

And so, to grasp the full value of the mythological figures that have come down to us, we must understand that they are not only symptoms of the unconcious but also controlled and intended statements of certain spiritual principles, which have remained as constant throughout the course of human history as the form and nervous structure of the human physique itself.

Psyche life energy = libido
"On Psychic Energy" C.G. Jung
Theory of the Libido

The apprehension of the source of this undifferentiated yet everywhere particularized substratum of being is rendered frustrate by the bery organs through which the apprehension must be accomplished. The forms of sensibility and the categories of human thought, which are themselves manifestations of this power, so confine the mind that it is normally impossible not only to see, but even to concieve, beyond the colorful, fluid, infinitely various and bewildering phenomenal spectacle.

The function of ritual and myth is to make possible, and then to facilitate, the jump - by analogy. Forms and conceptions that the mind and its senses can comprehend are presented and arranged in such a way as to suggest a truth or openness beyond.

Myth is but the penultimate; the ultimate is openness - that void, or being, beyond the categories - into which the mind must plunge alone and be dissolved.

They are mere symbols to move and awaken the mind, and to call it past themselves.

This recognition of the secondary nature of the personality of whatever deity is worshipped is characteristic of most of the traditions of the world. In Christianity, Mohammedanism, and Judaism, however, the personality of the divinity is taught to be final - which makes it comparatively difficult for the members of these communions to understand how one may go beyond the limitations of their own anthropomorphic divinity. The result has been, on the one hand, a general obfuscation of the symbols, and on the other, a god-ridden bigotry such as is unmatched elsewhere in the history of religion.

Sigmund Freud "Moses and Monotheism"

The lapse of superconciousness into the state of unconciousness is precisely the meaning of the Biblical image of the Fall. The constriction of conciousness, to which we owe the fact that we see not the source of the universal power, turns superconciousness into unconciousness and, at the same instanct and by the same token, creates the world. Redemption consists in the return to superconciousness and therewith the dissolution of the world.

The hero is the one who, while still alive, knows and represents the claims of the superconciousness which throughout creation is more or less unconcious. The adventure of the hero represents the moment in his life when he achieved illumination - the nuclear moment when, while still alive, he found and opened the road to the light beyond the dark walls of our living death.

God assumes the life of man and mand releases the God within himself at the mid-point of the crossarms of the same "coincidence of opposites," the same sun door through which God descends and Man ascends - each as the other's food.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Notes

Action Comics. The first superhero punch expanding into imaginary mindspace in an evercontinuing fracturing and expanding explosion of superhuman force.

The ripples of epic violence shattering through the minds of humanity. A spear thrust straight through the serpent end of alpha male ego.

Straight through to a kid punching a bully. Action Comics #1 rolled up on the ground.

Man of Tomorrow. Scheduling Superman.

Superman as a superexample of how a man should be.

Man of Steel. Supermechanics.

Superman repairs the damage his battles cause.

Last Son of Krypton. Superhumanity.

How can they be so human? Why can't they see?

The Flash.
Speed Force. The impulse of the universe. Spark of humanity. Divine thunderbolt. Quicksilver. Mercury. Primordial energy. Velocital center.

The Universe ended. Infinite Crisis. Company versus the people. Batman is our inside man. The pull upwards of our gods forces our consciousness to expand to heights we would not reach otherwise.

Barry Allen was prepared to exist on a higher plane: the Speed Force. It was here that he was able to examine the problems of the DC Universe, or the force that guides it, it's wavelength if you will.

Examining the heroic ideal. Perfecting humanity. The scientist looking at the patterns and making connections.

Hal Jordan. He doesn't exist. But his will makes it so. So malleable was the matter of his world that he was able to remanifest himself. Order. Form. Structure.

Flame. The torch in the darkness. Giving shape by the casting of the light from the Lantern. The first tool against the unknown.

Brave and the Bold.

Hypertime x Speedforce = existence

Enjoying every instance of existence. Nirvana in slo-mo.
Time to think. Time to plan. Eternity adrift.

Power pulsating, emanating from within, down your arm, up into your fist, and fired from your ring. The Green of creation.

The Trial. A cop crosses the line. His record tarnished. He had no choice. It was all determined before he was born. It was the stuff of lightning striking.

The Sun. You unleash on your friends. You destroy your entire life. Everything that made you a hero instantly negating your entire existence. Does reigniting the dark make good?

Justice League.
Superman's reality shattering raw power. Batman's mind focusing the beam. Wonder Woman tempering it with ruthless mercy. The Flash keeping the world spinning generating a containing force. Green Lantern forges the form upon the river of hypertime.

Green Arrow shoots straight. Black Canary shows how the chicks bring it.

The Atom drops it down a notch. Martian Manhunter helps out with a hand. Hawkman barges in and demands. Aquaman acts like it doesn't matter.

Plastic Man. He needs a job.

Mercury University.
Wally West needs to settle down. Wife Linda, and supersped siblings Jai and Iris, have to act like a family. A professor position? Seems being a superhuman since you were ten gets you a little far in today's economy. What do you mean DC 1,000,000? What do you mean by 853,000 BC? The end of the Universe? On the planet Merecury? Where a school exists with a dark secret that is keeping the entire DC Universe from plunging into the final moments of entropy of the human mind?

Wow, that's a lot of info. Good thing you have such good teachers such as Coach John Fox who jogs on the cosmic treadmill before breakfast each morning. Or Dr. Jesse Chambers who teaches abstract mathematics, philosophical physics, thirteen languages (including Interlac), as well as business ethics. Professor Chunk's lecture may be agonizingly slow, but every word out of his mouth on the subject of metaphysical mechanics will blow your mind.

Wally's all set to instruct the younger generation, the hyperactive kids he's always had a bond with. Didn't he? The joke's gotten old and now it's time to grow up Wally. You got two kids after all. Jai and Iris try to make friends but with their family legacy they're either made fun of or ignored. Each copes in their own way. As does Linda. A 21st Century gal (extra-dimensional/temporally displaced mother of two) living in a superspeeding society that blurs around her like a strobelit social club.

Bart Allen. Loner. Rebel. Longhaired slowpoke. He doesn't run anymore haven't you heard? Grew up too fast that poor boy. Only lived a handful of years and look how grown up he is. He's the traitor to the bloodline. He wants to be an Allen. All he can ever hope to be is not a Thawne. Anything but that.

But at least he's got Turtle. He moves slow despite being the son of the great Flash of the 38th Century. A King of the Multiverse. All is perfection under his rule. All are content. An embarassment who can not run.

Xs at least brings in some cheer. She won't let either of these two brood for very long. She hides her heartache but racing past it all and keeping pace are not that far apart.

Max Mercury will not let him get away with this. His body may not even be his anymore, but his mind, that spark, that eventual existential moment where what you are pulses through each beat, that's where he'll hide until the moment is right. Then he'll strike.

The Rival may be the bizarro Zoom, energy altering my flesh, and Eobard may have the passion to drive this plan, and Hunter can think he's in charge. But they're all pawns.

It's Savitar. That sonofabitch. I know it's him. He thinks he's god and of course he'd find a way here. Scheme his way, play us all, just so he could get what he wanted: to peer out upon the final moment of existence and withhold the entire world from unexisting.

It's not the natural way though. And not even those thugs, mercurial mercenaries all, the Rogues, could stop the natural order from taking place. The countdown must begin. The very end of everything must begin.

Kid Eternity! is going to die. And Kid Eternity! shall live. Two opposing forces collide in this explosion of intense energy! Superhero power. Mystical heroism. Timeless travels. He might have to guide your soul to Valhalla, or perhaps unite conflicting ideals, forge concepts into functional form. Wisdom from lives lived. The ideal of that person. Memory layered over fiction, human pressed upon power, igniting the spectacle. The spark of eternal creation. The grindstone of superpowers. The rock of eternity. The flint of form.

Marvel Family. Rock. Eternity.

Superman Family. Mineral. Force.

Batman Family. Body. Discipline.

Flash Family. Knowledge. Energy.

Wonder Woman. Spirit. Mercy.

Green Lanterns. Space. Willpower.

Aquaman. Government. Tranquility.