John & Blake before Kelowna
1. Cosmos
The hero is born in strange circumstances. A Blight is upon the Land. What
used to be whole, natural & healthy has been ruined. The people call it the
Half-World. They are afraid to go out. The landscape of the Half-World is a
futuresque ruin, comprised of spirit & material entities – it is very much a
devastated “emotional” landscape, shot through with fragmented memories &
images of loss. There is very little pleasure there.
He grows to puberty & sets out into the Half-World to seek his fortune. He
wanders about. He is looking for something but he doesn’t know what. He is
full of anger and regret about his childhood.
One night on the full moon he stops by a graveyard. He witnesses a man
changing into a wolf. He is bewitched & realizes that he himself has been
transformed into a were-wolf. For a while he is a criminal & as a wolf robs
& pillages with his fellow wolves.
He continues to wander about carrying on, half-man, half wolf but he is
wounded while a wolf & when he changes back into a man he gets very sick &
while sick he has a dream in which he sees how he can be delivered from his
sad & difficult state. (He meets a helper of some sort here – some aspect of
the Spirit of Deliverance. This could be an animal helper or it could be a
child or the voices of children.) He takes some medicine & burns the
wolf-skin & is free. He is released from his animal transformation but the
links with wolves & animals in general are still strong. (This is because he
has made contact with the healing aspect of the animal transformation which
is at the root of such shamanic transformation. The transformation into a
were-wolf or any were-animal is actually a superstitious degradation of the
earlier heroic journey.)
* The First deliverance: the reversal of the spell & movement from were-wolf
back to human.
2.
Nomos
He continues on his journey moving towards the centre of the Half-World
which is Metal City. The landscape starts to change, the country-side
disappears & now everywhere he turns there are RV parks, strip malls,
used-car joints.
He travels to the Metal City, a place which is polarized between animals
& machines. The animals are essentially stigmatized as criminal &
the machines are the Moral Police. The “animals” are were-animals
(humans that are controlled by their animality) whereas the “machines”
are were-machines (humans that are controlled by their mechanistic
attributes). Note: Nomos is characterized by boundary-making & naming
– thus Metal City epitomizes the system dualistic categories that is
created by the search for perfection. This is so because by searching for
the “good” one automatically creates the “bad.” By trying to do away
with ambiguity (the kind of raggedy anxious ambiguity of the Half-World),
one creates the dualistic categories of man/woman, animal/machine,
good/evil, etc.)
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3.
Confrontation
The hero’s past intimate association with animals & wolves is
recognized by the Metal City Police. He is arrested & put into one of
their “Renovation Dream-Cages” in order to purge him of his animal
nature. The machines want to transform all the animals into machines like
themselves. In the cage, the hero dreams of a battle between Animals &
Machines. In his dream he again meets with an aspect of the Spirit of
Deliverance – woman, animal helper or child -- who helps him realize that
just as he did not want to be controlled by his animal nature (were-wolf),
he also did not want to be transformed into a machine (one of the Moral
Mechanics – the MC police.)
* The 2nd Deliverance: deliverance from becoming a machine (Note:
To become a machine is essentially the Eastern mystical ideal – to detach
oneself from all that is human via discipline & the technology of the
sacred.)
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4.
Meditation
He leaves the Metal City & finds himself in a Child’s Fairy Story
land. He comes to the Door-Between-The-Worlds. After some wandering
about he finds the House of the Bright One. She tells him a story &
sings him a song & looks after him. She sends him off with directions
for the next part of his journey. She tells him he must find the Secret
Society of ANTIC & go to their Hidden Laboratory. The scientists of
ANTIC have rejected the originary myth of innocence & likewise the
backward mystic journey to recover the innocent state via re-birth. They are
of “this world” & rather than re-birth, they desire the Regeneration
(the chameleon-like healing of the body) via the joining of the machine
& biology. They see this as a “transcendent” move which takes them
outside the world of normative categories (Metal City) but one which places
them into a world of radical ambiguity, a world of transformative boundaries
& energy flow rather than a world governed by the Master Symbol of
“Rebirth” into innocence & the icon of “we are all one.” There
could also be child chorus here.
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5.
Transformation
The Hero travels on until he finds The Junkyard Of Old Technology where the
hidden laboratory of ANTIC is. He is taken in by the scientists & begins
a period of learning or re-education which concerns the next transformative
cycle in human history. He begins to learn about the Cyborg Revolution. He
realizes that his journey up until this time has, in fact, prepared him for
entering into a world of radical ambiguity. (He “wandering,” his
“dreaming,” his transformation into a were-animal, his contact with
“The Spirit of Deliverance,” his capture by the Metal City Mechanics.)
The cyborg is the ironic & ambiguous entity – free of fixed
gender assignments, free of ordinary bodily constraints & mental limits.
One night he falls asleep & dreams that he is transformed into a cyborg.
He rises up a composite of animal & machine. He has an incredible sense
of freedom. He wakes up & wanders off. (Note: this waking up &
wandering off is a central aspect of the life of the coyote trickster figure
in North American aboriginal mythology. Green River is a trickster in the
making.)
*The Third deliverance: transcendence of the oppositions animal &
machine. Green River is delivered from the old mythology of a unified self
& an originary innocence.
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6.
Celebration (Triumph)
He wanders down the road &
eventually makes contact with the Cyborg Circus. He winds up at the Fair
Grounds called “New Flash City” – located near the new Elevated Hyper
Mall. Inside the tent, things begin to look like a celebration. There is a
triumphant march around the big circle. It takes on the trappings of a
medieval festival of the fool. Carnival. He is dressed up & it turns out
that the celebration centres on his transformation into a cyborg. The
performers are not limited to the possibilities of the human body. They can
do all sorts of amazing things. They are paired off in sexual liaisons that
seem to change & change. The are the Circus of Desire, cyborg mutations
that replenish themselves. People fall & then are put back together. The
song of triumph. He is now fully in the zone of shifting borders, the zone
of ambiguity, the world between the worlds.
In the Cyborg Circus there are beings that look like animals but with
minds, beings with human faces & the bodies of animals, old looking
robot types with faded plastic ornaments. Sleek cat women, hyper-handsome
lion tamers. Girls that were so beautiful, so perfectly shaped in the human
ideal that they seemed to be surrounded by an aura of popular love songs.
They had a kind of honeyed magnetism that it was impossible to deny, so he
didn’t. That night he slept with a lady named Celia Strong. It was quite a
celebration. He became drunk and the adrenalin rushed through his hybrid
body.
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7.
Reunion
He leaves the circus & is re-united with the animals. There is a wind in
the trees. He is alone & he can hear wisps of the siren song. He moves
his metal arms. Tears form in his beautiful eyes, the light filtered by a no
24 filter, infra-red beams falling from the eyes of the starlings in the
tree overhead. The sound of water flowing.
He is now fully in the ambiguous world, the world of tricks & he has a
cunning mind. He is a border crosser, a messenger, a musician & a poet.
2.
Nomos
3. Confrontation
4. Meditation
5. Transformation
6. Celebration
7. Reunion