J. H. Prynne

[linebaugh]

Bare face to give, stringent paste - 'bare face' to me reaffirms the inevitability- its naked, primal, instinctual.

Stringent paste is an oxymoron. Giving bare can also be read as an oxymoron. What do you guys think of this line? and are they giving the stringent paste, or are they being likened to it?

 

[version]

This is what I said about the opening the other week,

The opening of To Pollen's so percussive, so many short, hard sounds. Ds and Ts.

It's interesting the word 'engraving' comes up in the second section as i was thinking along those lines from the off. He's gouging and scratching some of these words onto the page.

Herded, particle, cell, bred, cell, destruction. There's a wrangling with nature and the language we use to describe it here. Also reminds me of William Gaddis' fixation on failure.

The second section's even more visceral than the first. The transformation scene in American Werewolf in London. I'm picturing things growing and changing and cracking apart. The second epigraph - "Sometimes the field sprouts nails, so much does the field long for water" - feels apt. I don't know whether he means human nails or nails, but I'm assuming the latter and picturing the ground literally forcing metal to protrude from its body. Hellraiser.

Impossible for me not to think of the industrial revolution. Mills and textile factories belching out thick, black smoke. Creaking and clanking machines. The battlefields of WW1.

 

[constant escape]

The same thing seen through communicating eyes makes a diversity of impressions that can be averaged together, despite, or perhaps in favor of, their inconsistencies? More informed than a single, consistent impression?

 

[version]

The same thing seen through communicating eyes makes a diversity of impressions that can be averaged together, despite, or perhaps in favor of, their inconsistencies? More informed than a single, consistent impression?

Sidney Stencil's theory of The Situation.

 

[linebaugh]

The same thing seen through communicating eyes makes a diversity of impressions that can be averaged together, despite, or perhaps in favor of, their inconsistencies? More informed than a single, consistent impression?

Does scatter grab on or bet to ground one or two regulars, at root in blanket score, attempt.

 

[version]

Sidney Stencil's theory of The Situation.

I can't remember whether I used the actual quote or paraphrased it, but this was what I said when I had to do the write up in one of the Pynchon groups,

"Sidney long ago came to the conclusion that any given Situation has no objective reality and only really exists in the mind of those aware of it, this resulted in an obsession with teamwork as he believed that to a single mind it would appear as a four-dimensional object to a three-dimensional perspective."

 

[linebaugh]

"Sidney long ago came to the conclusion that any given Situation has no objective reality and only really exists in the mind of those aware of it, this resulted in an obsession with teamwork as he believed that to a single mind it would appear as a four-dimensional object to a three-dimensional perspective."

The same thing seen through communicating eyes makes a diversity of impressions that can be averaged together, despite, or perhaps in favor of, their inconsistencies? More informed than a single, consistent impression?

this seems like what Prynne is getting at in this first section. Or at least I can map it onto the text and it feels right to me

 

[linebaugh]

What does all the scientific lingo lend to this interpretation? kinda gives it a Burroughs like feel- making acts of immaterial communication feel alive with biomatter

 

[version]

Wonder whether he and Pynchon have read each other. There's some overlap, imo. Kirghiz for one, and that's explicitly mentioned in that piece Luka's posted before. There's also a poem of Prynne's called Die A Millionaire which reminds me of Gravity's Rainbow quite a bit. I mean...

the prime joy of
control engineering is what they please
to denote (through the quartzite window) "self-
optimizing systems", which they like
to consider as a plan for the basic
living unit. And thus "accelerating the con-
vergence of function", we come to our
maximal stance.

Imperialism was just
an old, very old name for that
idea, that what you want, you by
historic process or just readiness
to travel, also "need"-and
need is of course the sacred daughter
through which you improve, by
becoming more extensive. Competitive
expansion: if you can designate a
prime direction as Drang nach Osten
or the Western Frontier, that's to
purify the idea by recourse to History

J.H. Prynne – Die A Millionaire

(pronounced: "diamonds in the air") / The first essential is to take knowledge / back to the springs, because despite / everything and especially the recent / events carried under

genius.com

 

[constant escape]

I've only a quack's understanding of Godel - but thats the philosophic point, no? That no answer, or system of answers, can be both complete and consistent?

But I don't believe that guides us to the next question, which is: how can systems/answers with different consistencies, be woven together and rendered compatible from/in a higher order? Thats the schizo point, where every "personality" asserts its own thesis, and gears its own system, consistently, around that thesis. Because each perspective (position of eyes) is different, the thesis will be different, and thus each system will have a different consistency.

 

[version]

This could come straight out of GR.

There is no other break in the
descent, since without that it's all break
anyway. The purity is a question of
names. We are here to utter them. This is
a prayer. I have it now between my
teeth and my eyes, on my forehead. Know
the names. It is as simple as the purity
of sentiment: it is as simple
as that.

 

[constant escape]

But we seem so hardwired (or softwired? Dunno) to uphold consistency (schizo is pathologized), that any such approach is anathema or outright ostracized.

 

[linebaugh]

But I don't believe that guides us to the next question, which is: how can systems/answers with different consistencies, be woven together and rendered compatible from/in a higher order? Thats the schizo point, where every "personality" asserts its own thesis, and gears its own system, consistently, around that thesis. Because each perspective (position of eyes) is different, the thesis will be different, and thus each system will have a different consistency.

We can take that back to the title. Pollen is doing essentially this

 

[version]

I've only a quack's understanding of Godel - but thats the philosophic point, no? That no answer, or system of answers, can be both complete and consistent?

But I don't believe that guides us to the next question, which is: how can systems/answers with different consistencies, be woven together and rendered compatible from/in a higher order? Thats the schizo point, where every "personality" asserts its own thesis, and gears its own system, consistently, around that thesis. Because each perspective (position of eyes) is different, the thesis will be different, and thus each system will have a different consistency.

What runs
back, or could be traced upstream by simply
denying that conspiracy of "cause", is the
question of names & the seven tribes,
which are not "predictions" and socially can
be grouped only by the thinnest of
generalising systems. As these are not
economically self-centering, they cannot be
used as designations for targets (like
the gun sight on what "we want").

 

[version]

We can take that back to the title. Pollen is doing essentially this

How do you read the title? Is it dedicated to pollen? Is he telling us to look to pollen? Is he telling us to become pollen? Is he saying everything turns to pollen?

 

[linebaugh]

Thinking about this section through the communication/information lense sheds light on the epigraph

 

[version]

Thinking about this section through the communication/information lense sheds light on the epigraph

The field putting up antennas? Does metal attract water?

 

[linebaugh]

How do you read the title? Is it dedicated to pollen? Is he telling us to look to pollen? Is he telling us to become pollen? Is he saying everything turns to pollen?

The field putting up antennas? Does metal attract water?

What Ive got brewing is that pollen operates the same way as whatever process is being described here. I think he's just saying pollen is an inevitable flow. The epigraph suggests suggest something like an economy of this flow, the flow is inevitable but not how its distributed.

When I think of a field sprouting nails I think of all the prickly thorns that spawn in arid environments. The first epigraph about light lends to the the communication/information/knowledge interpretation, as thats a pretty common metaphor.

 

[version]

Maybe he was just stoned out of his mind.

How high will weed pollen get you and how to smoke it?

So my dealer haesn't got any weed for me but he said he has some weed pollen. He told me its compressed hash. Will weed pollen get you high? How do you...

forum.grasscity.com

 

[constant escape]

Pollen is the means by which one system can bank on the ether (ether relative to what is known to the plant) to communicate with a kin system? Funny how these hail marys sort themselves out, and rather fruitfully.