just watched “the mindscape of alan moore” with my parents.
my dad seemed to snooze in and out, and my mom seemed to get notably antsy (but paid close attention).
I greatly enjoyed it. It’s kind of embarassing. it’s still very powerful.
It’s another one of these “idea polemics”. a seemingly random rambling rant from an important smart person, laced with pretentious imagery and excessively dramatic editing (as if the filmmaker wants you to stop every 5 minutes and “PONDER THAT SHIT, PEASANT! OOOOOOH!!!!”).
but still, it was very effective for me. And i dig these sorts fo videos. I’m thinking of william gibson “no maps for these territories” (which i loved, but no one else has been able to enjoy). and that “what the bleep do we know” which i had to turn off halfway through, due to my burning anger at their lazy strawman arguments. Almost every jodorowsky interview wants to be an idea polemic, but almost every one leaves me wanting to smash his smirking condescending drug hazed face in. i mean, clearly gibson and moore have done more than their fair share of drugs as well, but i find them both deeply loveable and interesting. jodorosky just strikes as someone who can’t stop sucking himself off, every second of every day. He edits himself into constant “ponder that shit, moron! ooooHhhh!” moments. whilst moore seems to come to charming tangential summaries that have deviated from the point, but are still delightful. and gibson seems to stumble into fascinating contrasting ideas all the time and almost be embarassed that anyone else was there to notice.
blah blah. i have many thoughts about the details of this alan moore “conceptual catalyst” movie. many important ideas. but i hesitate to pick one and run, because i think i should stew a bit further in them. just in case i die in my sleep, the ones that are stuck in my craw right now: advertisers holding the true shamans of culture (writers/artists) hostage to their psychotic short term mass synchronized retardation tricks. the notion that the explosion of information leading our culture into a steam state (arguably asynchronous chaotic consumption of many disparate unrelated information clumps, which doesn’t sound good to me. or sustainable. and i think we’re already steaming in it. and i wonder how i can tie it into some sort of steampunk story). must be the notion that the value of a human civilization is measured by the number of physical inventions. and did China really rival europe for naval ability at the time of columbus, but instead choose to turn it’s back on the external world? if true: whyyyyy (and what can be learned)?
and i’m left eager to write a story where all the modern shamans are made explicit for the audience. so we see a leathery skinned old aborigine, all wild haired with face paint hash pipe and loin cloth, sitting down with ad execs to discuss the best symbols, music, and words they could use to sell some ridiculous apple jack cereal tube. and some other shamans being ridiculed for bothering to create art. (in my mind, andy warhol deconstructed art in the 60s/70s and the world still hasn’t recovered. hasn’t started to focus on putting it back together, as alan moore also rants about).
annnnd, i’m slipping into it. soo i’ll stop. … i used to day dream of monitors throughout my house which just played endless looping concert footage. Now i think there should be a few rooms that just have looping “ponderous polemics” videos. … and maybe i should look up polemic to make sure i’m using the word correctly.