The first volume of the Cosmic Trigger series describes in vivid elucidation the perils of a spiritual journey. Volume two of the series presents the author’s “bridge”—how Bob grew into his expanded perspective of the Multiverse.
In this third and final volume, Bob digs even deeper and uncovers the masks of reality and the reality of masks. Warning: This book may reveal more about what is “real” in reality than you might find comfortable!
Follow this link for a selection of both Paperbacks and E-books (Kindle) over at Amazon Books. If you’d like signed copies or deals, plus exclusive music and blog posts, please head over to my Patreon account and join the ride.
This dazzling blog by RAW Semantics gets to the nitty-gritty of the current wave of misunderstanding and false equivalence concerning Robert Anton Wilson memes and Covid-19. Thanks for the clarity and multiple pronged analysis of the facts.
There you have scientific progress framed by RAW as anti-obedience, anti-authority. And I feel sure the development of vaccines falls under Bob’s perspective of science as a progressive, liberating force. In fact, he appears quite explicit on this point – eg when he mentions the smallpox vaccine. Here’s one example:
‘a great deal of what I admire and appreciate in existence has been the result of human invention and ingenuity, such as pure mathematics and certain music and a few dozen paintings and poems and “cold inhuman technology” (as ecology mystics call it) that abolished bubonic plague in the last century and allowed me to walk again after I had polio twice and recently (in 1976) abolished smallpox’ – RAW, Natural Law.
Presenter: Steven James Pratt Presentation Title: Human Wake Box: Finnegans Wake And Human Beatbox Research Focus: Beatbox workshops, Finnegans Wake, speech therapy, science. Affiliation: John Sinclair Foundation Presentation Type: Oral
The recent publication of rigorous scientific studies of Human Beatbox HBB, reveal a reservoir of new experimental data and highlight future research, such as the construction of building blocks or Beatbox Phonemes, and new IPA symbols to represent the unique beatbox sounds. “Vocal drum sounds in human beatboxing: An acoustic and articulatory exploration using electromagnetic articulography.–The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 149, 191 (2021). This paper presents findings from exploration and deep reading of Finnegans Wake (FW) through the lens of Human Beatbox. I present data from my innovative workshops, exhibiting the marriage of music and poetry, creating new approaches to experience Joyce’s impact on speech therapy and upon music. Wake Box workshops feature novel games, such as isolating a word or phrase from FW and expanding it in all directions, imitating sounds and re-composing them with musical styling. This paper is a blueprint for further research, calling for the global networking of language and cultures with fun, multidisciplinary scientific research activity, accessible to all humanity. A mouth and a word from Joyce are all you require.
Your genus is worldwide, your spacest sublime, But Holy Saltmartin, why can’t you beat time?
F.W. Pg. 419..
Of course my musical repeats were made in the name of symmetry. But symmetry is not necessarily balance: that’s a precept we all learned long ago, and it’s worth saying again. What Mozart has done—as any great master does—is to make the leap from prosy symmetry into poetic balance, that is, into art.–Leonard Bernstein, Lecture 2: Musical Symmetry.
Leonard Bernstein, Lecture 2: Musical Symmetry. The Unanswered Question (Six Talks at Harvard) 1976.
Musicians who study the craft may agree that music is a kind of universal language, a nuanced performer may suggest it is like a Universal Language, lacking distinguishing features that set it apart from a traditional language, like English. To pursue the holy grail, to grasp in the air at a new Universal language based upon demonstrable principles and the laws governing grammar, syntax and semantics in English is a fantasy I wish to explore here, through the lens of human beatbox (HBB) and Finnegans Wake (FW).
Trothblowers, Fig And Thistle Plot A Pig And Whistle.
F.W. Pg. 303
Finnegans Wake is a whole new style, a whole new approach to crafting the tale of the tribe, an epic poem/novel including global history, by a single author. Music and the art of human beatbox share a similar quest: discover your own voice and develop an idiosyncratic style. Make it new!
If I were to propose a musical genre for FW it would be jazz, due to its tendency to include all other genres and the improvisational elements, jamming encourages the individual to express personal glossings, a moment to moment interpretation of the music-in-flux (notation). Robert Anton Wilson liked to call Joyce’s prose: Hologrammic Prose. Charles Olson developed the principle of Composition By Field, and Ezra Pound/Fenollosa innovated Ideogrammic Method. I’d recommend further investigations into each of these compression principles as defined by Wilson in The Tale Of The Tribe. Claude Shannon described Joyce’s hologrammic compression principle back in 1948, like this:
The Basic English vocabulary is limited to 850 words and the redundancy is very high. This is reflected in the expansion that occurs when a passage is translated into Basic English. Joyce on the other hand enlarges the vocabulary and is alleged to achieve a compression of semantic content.
Claude Shannon, The Mathematical Theory Of Communication (Bell Labs, 1948)
Through the lens of human beatbox, FW offers thousands of syllabic portals to new vocal sounds and phrases. A word-sound genesis machine where combinations can be scaffolded to other vocal music concepts. For Joycean’s and Wakean’s beatbox offers a wellspring of new directions.
For those new to FW or who don’t read so much, don’t fret. A beatbox approach requires no previous experience or familiarity with the text, simply gather some confidence in the spirit of play and take a lucky dip. Pull out a word from the book, or a phrase that is meaningful to you or catches you ear or eye. Repeat the phrase, play with it and pay attention to the musicality or rhythm.
HUMAN BEATBOX
“Previous research suggests that beatboxers only use sounds that exist in the world’s languages. This paper provides evidence to the contrary, showing that beatboxers use non-linguistic articulations and airstream mechanisms to produce many sound effects that have not been attested in any language. An analysis of real-time magnetic resonance videos of beatboxing reveals that beatboxers produce non-linguistic articulations such as ingressive retroflex trills and ingressive lateral bilabial trills. In addition, beatboxers can use both lingual egressive and pulmonic ingressive airstreams, neither of which have been reported in any language. The results of this study affect our understanding of the limits of the human vocal tract, and address questions about the mental units that encode music and phonological grammar.
The peculiar vocal art of Beatboxing and other vocal exercises strengthen the lungs and chest muscles, help boost and regulate our immune system and activate uplifting endorphins in the brain. Breathing in certain ways can get you high. Sufficiently stimulating music and literature, that which is rich with epiphany, boosts our physical and mental health and immunological system. Together, Beatboxing and FW complement each other, both innovative and playful approaches to language, imitation and art. Beatbox is open to anybody with a mouth. An artform not limited to first world technologically advanced societies. Find your voice.
Early beatbox in the late 1970’s and early 80s started out by imitating drums, now in 2021 it’s evolved into a wide phalanx of sounds. The diversity and global appeal of FW and Beatbox communities respectively, is reflected by fast mutating forms, potentially bridging language barriers between cultures with adjacent aims and objectives, captivating narrative, meaning, harmony. Go seek and expand beyond borders and cultural barriers, reach outwards. Further study of the similarities and differences between native languages on sound production in Beatbox will nourish FW studies, if you want it.
a rude breathing on the void of to be, a venter hearing his own bauchspeech in backwards
F.W Pg. 100.
This investigation was conducted with a single beatboxer. The next step is to collect and analyze HBB articulatory behavior from multiple beatboxers with several training levels in order to generalize our findings and relate them to the HBB level of practice. It would also be very interesting to study the impact of the native language on vocal drum sound production.
Ideogrammic languages thrive on moving pictures, they move structurally with scenes of thought, interacting processing, juxtaposition, under the control of the writer/storyteller. I.M may enrich the on-going search for new symbols and sigils to adequately represent the unique sounds produced by some beatbox artists. As you’ll see, combined with what I’m calling Imitation Games, Wakeboxing can take on a whole new form, like spoken film/cinema. Combined with new, soft artificial intelligence advances in real-time speech to image software.
IMITATION GAMES
Do speech and beatboxing articulations share the same mental representations? Is beatboxing grammatical in the same way that phonology is grammatical? How is the musical component of beatboxing represented in the mind? To address these questions, a comprehensive inventory of beatboxing sounds and their articulations must first be compiled.
In this mess-age of social media and reduced attention spans, Wakeboxing encourages everybody to dive in and play. We all have our own way into the FW labyrinth, you get out that which you put in. Pick a page and a word and you’re off. The imitation game is based on imitating sounds around you, use your voice and body, and proceed to next imitating sounds from imagination. The intrepid Wakeboxer can build their bespoke sound categories: animal, mechanical, digital, manimal, natural elements etc. Make a list of each sound, spell them phonetically and descriptively, in natural language. A trip around Old McDonald’s farm will get you started. The inward nasal grunt bass sounds like a pig and everybody can bark like a dog and meow like a cat if nurtured into it.
When you’re listening to music you enjoy, try to accompany it and after stop the music and replay it silently inside your head. I’ve found this works well with instrumental music, Jazz and EDM. Now make the music with your mouth. The parallel between wind and brass instruments and the sound of bird calls is exemplified by Charlie ‘Bird” Parker. Be-Bop methodology was innovated by Bird together with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and like-minded individuals. Beethoven composed some music including bird calls explicitly.
Moving to non-biological sounds, techno music and electronic dance music imitate and sample directly the acoustic environment, sampling an array of sounds, synthesizing, transforming, repeating, deleting, transposing into tonal frequencies, notes, phrases and compositional pieces. Modern Beatboxers expertly imitate electronic sounds, originating from genres like Drum & Bass, Bass Music, Trap, Dub-Step, Grime, Drill and Hip Hop. Proto-punk and heavy metal artists notoriously imitated the sounds of industry around them, hammers striking the anvil, the clatter of metal pistons and whirring engine turbines, electricity buzzing with feedback. Imitation can drive artistic creativity and produce reflections on the human condition and cultural landscape. And let’s not forget Alan Turing.
The symbiotic relationship between music genres and styles is led by the music producers, with Beatboxers often imitating these producers and genres, to me this reflects a healthy scene where cross-fertilization occurs independently and at a grass-roots level. A growing number of Beatbox artists produce their own songs and strive for their unique sounds, in some sense completing the loop between DJ producer / audience / beatboxer and back to the producer for DJs. A subgenre of the Beatbox community use a “Loopstation” to enable multi-track recording and playback, on-the-fly. You can watch many of the top Beatboxers going live on youtube, twitch and other platforms, exhibiting their skills in imitation and innovation based on their co-conspirators.
Mummurrlubejubes!
F.W. Pg. 396
This presentation aims to infuse the Beatbox community with support for all musical genres and hint at further study into musical practices, such as Jazz Scat Singing and Indian Konnakol (spoken drum language) synthesized with the most musical of all works in literature, FW. Singing matter, shouting matter, dancing matter, the tale of the tribe. Consider these suspicions of Leonard Bernstein on the correspondences between music and literature: Note/Phoneme. Motive/Morpheme. Phrase/Word. Section/Clause. Movement/Sentence. Piece/Piece.
Searching for disordered speech in Finnegans Wake is a bit like looking for the hay in the proverbial haystack rather than the needle. Due to the sheer number of neologisms, portmanteau words, polyglot puns, nonsense refrains, and borrowings from over sixty different languages which James Joyce incorporated into his final work, it could be argued that disordered speech forms the very linguistic ground of Wakese and is therefore in a sense not disordered at all.
Exhibit 1. Natural Sounds. Imitate sounds of you hear out in the natural world, wind, thunder, ocean waves, rivers, rainfall). Next imitate sounds of creatures, snakes, wolves, cats, dogs, birds, dolphins, crickets, bees, baboons.
Exhibit 2. Urban & Human: Imitate sounds around cities, engines, trains, alarms, robotic gears, traffic. Next imitate human sounds, strange accents, turntable speech, try some speech modulation and filters FX.
Exhibit 3. Joyce’s Imitation Game. Seek a word/phrase from FW that reflects the sounds you have imitated so far, either phonetically or descriptively. Conduct a web search and translate your word/phrase into another language. Take notes. Move backward or forward on the page six lines from the word/phrase and begin to read again armed with your multilingual notes. What grabs your attention and asks to be spoken.
Exhibit 4.Composition. Createfour phrases by combining the natural, urban, human and FW word/phrase sounds. Speak it aloud, repeat, delete, sing, shout, grunt and moan. Animate and give your compositions life, use your imagination to make pictograms that link your sound and image, what’s the narrative?
A prerogative of each beatboxer is to experiment with their own vocal instrument to create new sounds, never produced before and more and more difficult to articulate. As a consequence, a much more subtle and adapted notation system is needed in order to capture the acoustic and articulatory richness of HBB production. An articulatory-based writing system seems promising and has recently been used for beatbox-sound automatic recognition purpose.
If there were ten words to try to memorize from FW, to keep you’re beatbox fresh, I’d recommend the Thunderwords. Each has 100 letters and with practice can be spoken in one breath. Here I’ll look at two, the first and last as they appear in the book. A helpful TIP! is to first break them down into digestible chunks and then link them back together again. Quick like a fox to the videos by Joyce Geek, Adam Harvey, for a guided breakdown on pronouncing all ten and unpacking their semantic compression.
A routine or jam can be encoded into a single word or vice-versa. The artist’s ability to repeat, transform and delete syllables and to permutate rhythmic cycles brings about infinite possibilities: grammatical, syntactic and semantic plus harmonic, temporal and imitative. One idea to get going is repeat words that produce desired rhythms: “Boots And Cats” and “Poffertjes Kroketjes” produce a 4/4 pulse. Saying “wan wan wan” or, “yeah yeah yeah” but speaking inwards produces a lower pitched, robotic like voice effect and various sub bass tones.
A task for the budding Beatboxer/Musician is to apprehend the beat and swing within each thunderword while adding put own special sauce on top. Perhaps go on to compose your own thunderwords tailored to tell your narrative tale?
Considering Joyce’s op-writing in refractions of the ‘writing’ of kymograph, phoneloscope and phonometre, all of them transmuting sound into visual elements and influencing the comprehension of language we are having today, Finnegans Wake operates not primarily as an issueless predicament of multiple meanings, but as one that previously imposes, arguably creative or constrained, pronunciation of phonemes that function as signifiers of textual signifiers.
The sounds were annotated and transcribed to the system by means of a beatbox specific morphographic writing system (Vocal Grammatics). The recognition-system robustness to recording conditions was assessed on recordings of six different microphones and settings. The decoding part was made with monophone acoustic models trained with a classical HMM-GMM model.
The multi-sensorial nature of languages, hitting the eye world and the ear world make them tricky to define and distinguish from each other, and to communicate clearly. In short it’s process oriented. The International Phonetic Alphabet is a universally acknowledged, peer reviewed system for sound-notation, and the rules of English grammar act as a loosely acknowledged system for Alphabetical notation. Only the madman is absolutely sure. Recent text generating algorithms, such as GPT-3, have thrust alphabetical text generation forward, leaving many readers/listeners unable to distinguish with certainty, human from artificial intelligence. GPT-3 is good at Imitation Games.
A similar revolution in video presents similar challenges, upping the stakes of the game. Deep Fake tools have become weaponized in some circles. The dangers of ambiguity, once the sandpit of artists, poets and musicians, are all employed for political gain, mass deceptions in a mass-media hall of mirrors. In 2021 we each hold a responsibility to use powerful tools and technology, including language for altruistic and benevolent purposes. Beatbox and FW are here for the betterment of all-around-the-globe-humanity.
audible-visible-gnosible-edible world
F.W. Pg. 88.
Natural language processing is the ability to give simple spoken commands in natural language, which immediately return accurate results, like the next iteration Siri or Alexa. DALL:E is a good example of text to image software, the results of typing “Avacado + Chair” into the DALL:E engine produce a tasty selection of aesthetically pleasing furniture. User-friendly interfaces based on natural language commands may soon be only limited by human imagination.
It strikes me that the limits of alphabetical languages are to be transcended by the study and imitation of ideogramic and/or pictographic languages. Ideogrammic–pre DALL:E systems of correspondence and intersections–are constructed using universal forms found in nature, the sun, moon, mountains, droplets of liquid and trees. Ideogrammic languages are a wellspring for training artificial general intelligence and the next generation of innovative Beatboxers and their vocal grammatical narrative cinematics. Turning back to the FW, I recognize similar imagist techniques and onomatopoeia, the art of poetry and the juxtaposition of language all charged to the highest possible degree. The full theatrical experience, the infinite flux of beatbox beingness. Make it wholesome.
As Peter Quadrino writes, “Joyce instead turns language into a wild circus, throwing every verbal trick imaginable into the mix and demanding that we not merely look at the words on the page but speak them aloud, awakening the auditory sense and adding new dimensions to our experience of words.”
The sum of the psychological benefits from music and group creative activity, experiment, plus the hard scientific insights into human physiology, pulmonary systems, diet (beatboxers famously drink lots of water) lead to basic health benefits. Comprehension of our interactive nervous system and the narrative engines purring within us all.
P.S. The devil mostly speaks a language of his own called Bellsybabble which he makes up himself as he goes along.
Vocal drum sounds in human beatboxing: An acoustic and articulatory exploration using electromagnetic articulography. Annalisa Paroni, Nathalie Henrich Bernardoni, Christophe Savariaux, Hélène Lœvenbruck, Pascale Calabrese, Thomas Pellegrini, Sandrine Mouysset, and Silvain Gerber. https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/10.0002921
Human Beatboxing : A preliminary study on temporal reduction. (2020) Alexis Dehais Underdown , Paul Vignes, Lise Crevier Buchman, Didier Demolin, Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie (Sorbonne Nouvelle / CNRS), Hopital Foch, Univ. VSQ. https://issp2020.yale.edu/S07/underdown_07_03_123_abstract.pdf
Sounds of the Human Vocal Tract. Reed Blaylock, Nimisha Patil, Timothy Greer, Shrikanth Narayanan.
Joyce comments: “has been reconstricted out of oral style into the verbal for all time with ritual rhythmics” (36.09). And says: “and my drummers have tattled tall tales of me in the land” (545.26), including drum language in the traditions he is working with.
Evidently, both groups approached language as a system of mutually connected signs where the value of each sign is determined by the presence of others, so that “meaning inheres not in sounds themselves – ‘d’ and ‘t,’ for example – but in the contrast or difference between them.
Margot Norris, The Decentered Universe of Finnegans Wake (London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976)
[I remember that in Palm Springs; December 2000 you said: “If the United States government wasn’t trying to dominate the whole world, we wouldn’t be threatened by terrorism.]
RAW: That’s just before they fired me, [laughs] isn’t that an odd coincidence?
[some “Prophecy” from the Prophets Conference, I reckon]
RAW: Yeah well, that’s why if your gonna run a commercial Prophets’ Conference you don’t want any real prophets so they’re not gonna disturb everybody. In Illuminatus! I had terrorists blow one wall off the Pentagon – just like happened, and in Schrödinger’s Cat I had Wall Street blown up just like what happened and I don’t claim this is ESP or precognition, it’s just common sense. The United States cannot go on bombing two thirds of the world year after year, decade after decade, over and over without somebody hitting back eventually, I knew it had to happen, you don’t need ESP you just need a little horse sense. CNN keeps referring to it as “the day the world changed,” well the world didn’t change; people have been dropping munitions on one another ever since Nobel invented modern munitions. People love dropping bombs on one another, it’s one of the favourite human pastimes, they’re almost willing to give up football , I mean – it’s been going on for ages, the only thing that changed is that the United States has been doing most of the bombing for the last 50 years and everybody got used to that, oh yeah we got to bomb another country for their own good, it’s only collateral damage. The United States gets bombed and they say the world changed. The world didn’t change, it’s just the United States got included in with the rest of the world. If you go around bombing people year after year, decade after decade; you’ll have somebody bombing you back, Jesus!, no, no; that’s not the reason they did it, they hate us for our freedom , all the freedoms like the freedom to pee into a jar before you get a job interview, that’s the kind of freedom we really need.
[Instead of throwing shit we might just “pee” on one another you know] [laughs]
RAW: I’m more and more examining Jerry Falwell’s idea that God joined Al Qaeda, you know he said that right after the thing; he said – “God joined Al Qaeda because there were too many gays, feminists and ACLU lawyers in the United States,” – and apparently he thinks there are no gays, feminists or ACLU lawyers in the territory controlled by Al Qaeda, so that’s where his god is obviously strongest, or that his god helped the planes hit their targets, and I’m more and more inclined to believe that. God seems to me – as my leg problems get worse and worse – God seems to me like the character described by Jerry Falwell and Osama Bin Laden – he’s a mean, rotten, Sadistic son-of-a-bitch, that’s the only kind of god that makes any sense to me, which is why the three religions I like most; Confucianism , Buddhism and Taoism never say anything about God at all, they don’t even deny god, well Buddhism does, or some Buddhist sects do very explicitly. I remember the first time I ever heard the Dali Lama was on BBC and the interviewer said “some people say Buddhism has no god is that right,” and the Dali Lama said “yes very true,” and the interviewer said “but isn’t the Buddha mind something like god?” and the Dalai Lama said – “the Buddha mind is the inside of all things, it is not an almighty creator,” – Jee’ a religious leader who makes some sense. I read a book by him and I didn’t find any bullshit in it at all. As the one living 100% bullshit free religious leader on this planet, they haven’t found another – well maybe Bob Dobbs, [laughs] O.K; he seems bullshit free too – well he’s not bullshit free, but the bullshit is highlighted with jokes and so you know it’s a joke. All the rest of them remind me of “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” the wizard of Oz.
“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”–William Gibson.
July 23rd, 2021 is a day I’ll remember for several reasons, some of which I’d like to drag you through on my sled. The dog days begin when the star Sirius (a.k.a the dog star) and the Sun, appear to rise together as observed from Egypt. The DD’s also coincide with high temperatures in summertime and so it follows with an increase in cases of fire in the head and cases of fire on the land. Who prescribes free public swimming facilities as an antidote to a rise in violence and faith-based thinking following a rise in global temperatures. Give them clean water, they will drink, swim together, be merry and civilize?
“Fuck off you moron,” I said, “stay the fuck away from me, you fucking idiot,” followed by, “I don’t see your lab jacket or Doctors I.D,” it was 9 a.m. I was at work with my colleague, my first day working with him, and I was unleashing harsh language, insulting and in retrospect immature. Rather than blame the dog days, it was probably a number of factors, it was early in the morning, I’m carrying large antennae–early moron warning radar system–and this kid walked right into it . I won’t and can’t get into the details as it’s my workplace and I want to keep my job. What he said triggered me to erupt like a volcano, “you’re a fucking moron, stay the fuck away from me.” To my mind I was insulting him so as to be moved away from him.
This is hardly the way to remember Robert Anton Wilson (RAW) and Maybe Day 2021, I thought to myself while working the rest of the day. Maybe I lost my center, showed too many teeth and hurled a cheap insult? Maybe this was required to get me away from him (he was showing symptoms of a dry-cough, while claiming Corona Virus was a hoax and that 90% of test results were false-positives). My response hardly reflects our current predicament as initiate Maybe Logicians, tasked with communicating clearly in a nuanced language, reflective of the uncertainty and incompleteness of our inner and outer world-views. I had nose dived into the brown hole of circuit one, “Fuck off!”
The guilty English poet living in Amsterdam was put with another colleague, my plan worked. If repeated attempts at nuanced language and gentle nudging fail to awaken whomever you are addressing, to the probability they might be wrong about absolute convictions, some other tactics may be deployed. In particular when protecting their own physical health, and the health of others around them, this was my excuse.
To move away from my personal experience, to propose broader questions and challenges facing those bravely exercising pluralistic coms, philosophy, methods of Maybe Logic in a world divided by culture war and language wars of the words…in some sense. My sense of urgency remains in forwarding the works of our late great wizard of nuanced language, Robert Anton Wilson. From the most far-out edges of semantic wilderness, where Ben Goertzel and Bruce Sterling hang out, to the gritty journalistic realism of Democracy Now or Byline Times, to the playful mystical mutualist syndicalist anarchist defocused realism of Alan More.
Okay, I’m gushing. RAW’s non-fictional Maybe Logic, which includes his unique sit-down philosophy stand-up performances, reflect a species of semantic hygiene unparalleled in writers of both fiction and non-fiction in equal measure. As I’ve stated before, RAW’s prose and performance–written and spoken words–are well archived in audio, video and on the page. The RAW data set is a finite set unless you consider the tale of the tribe as an open system, purposefully unfishished, producing a Maybe portal to infinite recycling, editing, deletion and reversal? RAW’s complete works, plus the incomplete–tale of the tribe–capture the general heart of Maybe Logic.
As like with the traditional interpretation of the tale of the tribe–an epic poem including history from a single author– some problems facing AGI research can be processed and enriched by RAW’s Maybe Logical responses to the conundrum and paradox of being and non-beingness and how to communicate meaningful messages about it. As far as I can see, and having met Bob a number of times, he lived his whole life in a Maybe Logic state of being/non-beingness. He confronted the infinite flux of beingness on and off the page, that’s really saying something when you look around today, and when I look all the way around and back to myself. “Maybe just fuck off.” Would have been a better choice of words for sure [bites thumb].
RAW’s Maybe States resonate with fields of current AGI research, to my mind. As I’ve said before. In natural language for the most part, RAW drills through traditional borders between academic categories, testing his decentralized Maybe Logic using physics, mathematics, biology, psychology, economic models, art, poetry and satire. Testing, feeding back, updating. If a broad question for AGI was something like, “How can you help us to help ourselves process information and uncertainty, how can we save the planet and the human mind-body interface so we can live in peace together.” I’d guess that RAW gives an exemplary data-set (his life’s work and life lived) to evidence why any AGI should care for humans and the planet despite widespread examples of greed, cruelty, ignorance and inhumane culturecide.
RAW’s Maybe Logic Method is exquisitely and carefully crafted, behaving like a hologram in some sense, to get the whole picture using words and their meanings on a page (hologrammar), or in the air (holo-harmolodic?), rather than a special photonic arrangement to produce 3D images (hologram). Combined with RAW semantic hygiene and inclusivity for all-human beings and events, or better yet the ‘human interacting processing of non-simultaneously apprehended events’, it’s easy to forget we’re all inextricably entangled in billions of ways. RAW’s Maybe Logic Method is not limited to being described in one field, it’s a particular RAWish’ mish-mash of semantic tools and language experiments, investigative journalism, Sufi parable, operationalist language, jokes, deduction and induction, Zen Buddhism and satire. Uniquely Robert Anton Wilson. Praise Bob!
RAW faced the daily challenge of distinguishing non-fiction from fiction and shared his findings openly, in his published work and remarkably, in his public appearances. This leads me to another thread that bootstraps RAW’s life and work together and which makes his lifework critical for AGI studies: his speech. Having witnessed him perform–and more notably answer questions from his audience including my own questions–RAW exhibited (using performance by example) all of his virtuous knowledge, keeping a cool head when many around him seemed to be hot headed. We could all use a dose of RAW in our daily lives to remind us of the possibility to live happily and optimistically in a world of inner and outer uncertainties and incompleteness.
This may be why RAW, like Marshal McLuhan, Claude Shannon and Terence Mckenna prescribe Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, as a guide for all-around-the-world-humanity to wake up. A Finnegans awakening to the infinite flux of beingness and the tale of the tribe, coming together to save each other and the planet, perhaps the entire multiverse? This is a prospiracy, the coming together of powerful forces for good, good due to the obvious benefit to all-around the world-humanity, and around-the-world ecological environments. Covid has raised the stakes in this prospiracy, and to vaccinate or not to vaccinate is a practical challenge to all-around-the-world-humanity. By definition, its a form of globalism, which by definition implies a coming togetherness of global citizens. Through the lens of prospiracy, this new health world order or global movement to protect the planet and it’s stewards, requires individuals to act and think with the interests of others (strangers) at heart. There are adjacencies with the telling of the tale of the tribe here, a new global epic poem including history. Inclusive and global in its vision and reach, local in it’s idiosyncratic style.
This new global perception of altruistic togetherness is like the tale of the tribe with Buckminster Fuller sauce on top: Critical Path, Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth by Fuller. Other RAW flavoured toppings include, The Open Society And Its Enemies by Karl Popper, The Chinese Written Character As A Medium For Poetry by Ernest Fenollosa, The Mathematical Theory Of Communication by Claude Shannon, The New Science by Giambattista Vico, Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski, The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan, The collected works of Nietzsche, William Butler Yeats, Giordano Bruno, Orson Welles, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and RAW himself. These are books and texts and authors at the tribal gathering, these are some of the innovators in scientific and artistic paradigms, that help define Maybe Logic Method. Individual human beings who’ve had a lasting effect on the global human condition, the general heart, or the general intelligence, in some sense. In a global prospiracy context, the tribe, in the phrase ‘the tale of the tribe’ is to signify all-around-the world humanity. The tale signifies the narrative, story, an epic one including history and the ideosyncratic aesthetic styling of an individual author. See James Joyce, for example.
To put it another way, perhaps consider to begin writing and narrating your inclusive global epic, with the noble aim of reaching out to your own tribe and other tribes, attempting patience and good will when faced with ignorance. Yes, we’re in this together, we, to mean all-around-the-world humanity, and how do you define that? Enter Buckminster Fuller, James Joyce and Marshall McLuhan, updated for the 21st century by RAW’s nervous system and Maybe Logic. Put another way, who can produce the greatest novel of 2021, a novel that captures the general heart, includes world history, and can be considered an epic poem all at the same time? This is a really long-winded way of saying that I have a lot to learn about Maybe Logic, in mind, body and speech, and I’ve a lot of epic novels to read to get a more informed opinion.
I got home from work yesterday, after my mini-rupture, and made myself a delicious mushroom omelette, and prepared myself to record some vocals, Squintin Quarantino was itching to record rhymes. Then, like a karmic boomerang, the next door neighbours started to fight, literally wrestling up next to the fence, just 1 meter away from where I was sitting, about to record. The shouting and pushing and shouting went on for over an hour. I made myself a drink and rolled a doobie, waiting for quiet, trying not to formulate negative frustrations as those I’d felt earlier. Suddenly it hit me. Oh yeah, the dog days.
Next thing I know, it’s 3.00 a.m in the morning, I’d slept on the couch without recording anything and more tragically, missing the Maybe Day Zoom Chat with Bobby Campbell and the other beautifully Maybe Logicians. Those to whom this writing is dedicated.
I sincerely apologize for missing the chat and hope this writing goes some way to show my appreciation to all the contributions to the 2021 edition of NEW TRAJECTORIES edited, produced, designed and illustrated by Bobby Campbell. Another piece of the puzzle of the 2021 tale of the tribe. A great read for all humans and AGI’s alike. Leave your dogma at the door. Love.
#MaybeDay #RobertAntonWilson #NewTrajectories
–Steve Fly July 24th, 2021.
Postscript (August 1st) After writing the above, I made the Squintin Quarantino rhymes available at Bandcamp. They comprise part of my message, performance by example. These rhymes are by no means epic, nor do they contain history, they’re examples of an individual author playfully using spontaneous rhymes with an underlying message to Covid truthers (Branch Covidians). In some parts, the rhymes contain a similar mocking tone to my “fucking moron” outburst, I immaturely dress down those I consider to be anti-vaccine conspiracists. Self criticism and analysis of spontaneous rhymes gives the author insight into their mind, body, speech patterns. I share mine in hope others will do the same. For a straight-ahead collection of thoughts and suspicions on the tale of tribe see my book: Fly On The Tale Of The Tribe.
“Let them get sick” has evolved into a refrain that was familiar during the Trump years, for different reasons: “My God, these people are going to get us all killed.”–Emma Brockes, Guardian.
I’m happy to announce I’m releasing Deep Scratch on Monday. Available in digital formats, followed by a hard copy edition in 2021.
To receive a copy, please support me for the price of a coffee over at my Patreon, I’d prefer 3 Euro, but any support (1Euro) will get you a copy, plus you unlock sixty plus unique posts!
If you don’t like it, I’ll send you the money back! How’s that?
20 years ago today I was with Bob in Palm Springs, the following is from Dangerous Minds…about the event.
The RAW fans contingent in Palm Springs were totally distinct from everyone else present (goths and cyberpunk vs New Agey senior citizens who wanted to hear about Pleiadian prophecy and 2012 Mayan stuff, which Bob just hated). Bob got really ripped on hard alcohol before his talk and swore like a sailor, which seemed to deeply offend the organizers of the event. We ended up hanging out in his hotel suite, smoking pot. A young guy had given him a bag of these black psilocybin mushrooms which he’d managed to smuggle into America from Ireland, which Bob didn’t really seem to want and gave to me (my god were they strong). It was in Palm Springs that I got to see firsthand how bad his post-polio syndrome had gotten. He was getting pretty wobbly on his feet, but this did not seem to dampen his enthusiasm in the least for copious amounts of Marlboro reds, whiskey and weed.
Mentally he was certainly as sharp as ever, that never changed, but his health seemed to go downhill quite fast in the years I knew him. The aforementioned “enthusiasms” were often consumed with rapacious gusto for a man of his age and he once revealed to me that since nearly everyone who he had ever loved in his life was already dead, he was going to smoke as many cigarettes and pound back as much Scotch as he damn well pleased. Bob’s your uncle!
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-20124343-1630855161-8835.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-90765-1139993676.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-15249659-1588682460-6891.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-15250352-1588695944-5792.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-4942955-1490309234-9925.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-12443923-1535395134-5654.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-2583481-1292086884.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-5278617-1389520960-5122.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-11511493-1517654775-4791.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-5626939-1398540792-1942.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-4461527-1365522643-2494.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-4465287-1365626880-5035.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-4465325-1365627688-3248.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-4465364-1365628567-9340.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-16814598-1609986004-4923.jpeg.jpg)
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-645609-1285296383.jpeg.jpg)
DEEP SCRATCH 