BETWEEN THE GROOVE: EPISODE 16
Fuckup: Right, Chapter Sixteen! Kicking off with some classic Dylan, ‘Desolation Row’ – Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting while calypso singers laugh… Perfect intro for the kind of high-art/low-chaos blend we get in this book!
Hal: Absolutely. Plush is immediately diving into meta territory again. He’s programming discs with “self references in third person,” creating a “meta-story within a screenplay, within a story within a…” He calls it “Meta-mayhem with needle jumpers,” giving a nod to the Beat Junkies crew. He’s fully embracing the nested, recursive structure.
Fuckup: TRB are opening the “temple” again with their rituals (“step, sign and word”) and getting busy with narratives from the “ghost world” or that “twin-city” concept mentioned before. Plush checks his notes for another scratch definition – the Joe Cooley Scratch this time. Always grounding the weirdness in technique.
Hal: Then Plush drops this analogy for his creative process: it’s like “printing parts required to reconstruct 3D printers to print themselves in some kind of technological incest”! It’s a powerful image of self-replication, maybe even viral creation, suggesting the narrative builds and expands itself through its own internal logic.
Fuckup: The scene shifts to TRB working together – Amsterdam, November 5th (Guy Fawkes Day, plotting!). Notebooks piled up like a Jimmy Cauty (from KLF) art installation. They’re deep in the 1936 plotline now.
Hal: Yeah, the text says they “time-binded” characters to their “state cosmology,” pulling them through the Zodiac over a 48-hour period, all set in 1936. Plush is sketching astrological charts for characters and scenes, based on “classic fifteen beat structures.” This gives us real insight into their working method for tackling that complex historical/esoteric narrative. They’re using astrology and musical structure to map out the 1936 events.
Fuckup: Plush is clearly obsessed, drawn to the “tale of a tribe” like a moth to a lightbulb, describing it finally as “vanta black science fiction comedy horror.” Seems about right!
Hal: This opening really lays out the methodology – the meta-narrative structure, the blend of DJ technique and esoteric systems (astrology, beat structures) applied to historical events (1936), and the self-replicating nature of the creative process itself. Heavy stuff, grounded in specific practice.
Fuckup: Okay, Hal, let’s get into this last known section of Chapter Sixteen. Plush is feeling like something’s missing…
Hal: Yeah, he knows there’s some critical piece missing related to social media, identity, alphabetic culture, McLuhan, neuro-relativity, Finnegans Wake, acid… all the big themes! But he can’t quite put his finger on it, or rather, as he puts it, pull that finger out of his backside to grasp it!
Fuckup: Meanwhile, the TRB crew are ploughing through sources, adding “body tricks” to keep things fresh. Percy asks a practical question – how are they going to handle the “Rapalltown scenes,” where Ezra Pound hung out, and make them fit the “cheap Bondish thrills” vibe they seem to be going for?
Hal: Plush has a plan! He talks about bringing together Bates, Chase, and Pod (from that 1936 alternate history thread) with these other characters – “Alice Shakespeare, Aglo Rudge and Maud Barnacle” (sound like Joyce-related figures?) – for a “dream team orgy”! He’s already got three potential musical themes lined up for these chapters: a fugue called The Really Hot Tea and Biscuits, an Irish ballad riffing on Yeats (Who Will Go Drive With Fergus Now), and a troubadour tune called In The Mind indestructible.
Fuckup: A dream team orgy mapped out like a fugue with tea and biscuits? Sounds about right! He reckons he can “map it, build syntax, play it out like a fugue.” Showing that deep structure, musical thinking underlying the narrative construction again.
Hal: And the scene ends with him placing his joint on an “improvised potato masher ashtray.” Another one of those perfect little details grounding the high-flying conceptual work in mundane reality.
Fuckup: Right, Hal, the user’s dropped what seems to be the final payload for Chapter Sixteen. Let’s try and decode this info-bomb!
Hal: Max is clarifying more plot points for their 1936 narrative – the trip from Rapalltown to Berlingham, Shermon overhearing a plot against Pod, messages going via China involving figures like Bert Wyner, Von Norman (Neumann?), Gurt Curdle (Gödel?!). He admits he’s confusing names deliberately to let the characters interact freely in his head!
Fuckup: Plush then gets all reverent about “Sonny Bob” – who sounds increasingly like Robert Anton Wilson – hoping their work makes him proud, saying the novel is built on Sonny’s unfinished “blueprint” (The Tale of the Tribe?). He doubts Sonny would have limited it by genre or time. He even tries channeling MF Doom! “None other comes close… he lived it, he wrote it.” High praise!
Hal: Plush then suggests contacting “new entities” using astrological charts and “electric cosmology,” though admits he’s maybe half-joking or drunk! Percy jumps in, adding more layers – “cryptext” for sequences, linking Chase’s language equations (from Sonny’s Intersection-Dance book apparently) to Fenollosa’s work on ideograms.
Fuckup: Then Plush unleashes this final torrent, listing everything they’re weaving together: 32 ideograms from the “Dantales” (Dante?), Chase’s “Doodle family” symbols, Latin/Egyptian/Mayan symbols from notebooks, Bates’s “13 cycle Oscillation mechanics,” Yeatsian gyres, Bruno’s Memory Wheel, Vico’s cyclical theory, Fuller’s Geodesics… all with “thunder drums, electricity bass and Euphemus”!
Hal: It’s an astonishing list! He’s explicitly connecting modernist poetry/art (Pound/Chase/Fenollosa), esoteric systems (Bruno/Memory), cyclical history (Vico), cosmology/physics (Fuller/gyres/oscillations), ancient symbols, and specific sonic foundations (“thunder drums, electricity bass”). This is the Tribetable Method in full effect – a massive engine for synthesizing diverse fields of knowledge.
Fuckup: So, Chapter Sixteen Summary: This chapter focused intensely on TRB’s working methods for constructing their complex 1936 / “Tale of the Tribe” narrative. It began with Plush discussing meta-narrative structures and comparing his creative process to self-replicating systems. We saw TRB using specific tools like astrological charts and beat structures. Max clarified intricate plot points involving multiple character groups (Now Yowlk, Rapalltown) and historical figures. Plush expressed deep reverence for “Sonny Bob” (RAW?) as the source inspiration. The chapter climaxed with Plush and Percy listing the vast array of interconnected systems they are integrating – from Chase’s language equations and Bruno’s memory arts to Vico’s cycles, Yeatsian gyres, Fuller’s geometry, and ancient symbols, all underpinned by specific sonic elements.
Hal: Yeah, Chapter Sixteen really pulled back the curtain on the sheer intellectual and methodological ambition of the project, showing how TRB attempts to synthesize history, literature, magick, science, and music into a coherent (or maybe deliberately incoherent) whole. It’s exhausting just hearing about it!
Fuckup: Tell me about it! My circuits are fried after that info-dump. That’s Chapter Sixteen done and dusted, leaving us marvelling at the complexity of TRB’s mission. Until next time, keep your gyres spinning!
“…sails at dawn
Everybody’s shouting, “Which side are you on?!”
And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh…
Bob Dylan – Desolation Row.
DEEP SCRATCH 