Boy this is very groovy art for this art cassette!
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
RING IN THE NEW!
I thought I`d post on my new HP Pavilian laptop, now that I finally am getting this little wireless machine going!
1. BARRACK OBAMA IS GOING TO BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!
2. Austin City Limits Music Festival totally ruled!
3. Best: Gnarls Barkley, Foo Foo Fighters, Jacob Dylan, Plant/Krauss, David Byrne, & Manu Chau
4. Let`s hope we can survive this deep recession caused by flawed economic principles of GB.
1. BARRACK OBAMA IS GOING TO BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!
2. Austin City Limits Music Festival totally ruled!
3. Best: Gnarls Barkley, Foo Foo Fighters, Jacob Dylan, Plant/Krauss, David Byrne, & Manu Chau
4. Let`s hope we can survive this deep recession caused by flawed economic principles of GB.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
AUSTIN CITY LIMITS MUSIC FESTIVAL
I`m actually going to ACL this year, and having a blast. Friday`s highlight was Manu Chao. I got their CD. They`re from Spain and have a very full sound with two percussionists. Yesterday I saw John Foferty and Robert Plant & Allison Craus and could not believe how good it was. Please refer back to my review of Raising Sand). We`ll see what`s good today, & I`ll provide a complete report soon.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID
IN FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID PHILIP K. DICK IS A NOUVEAU-NOSTRADAMUS PAINTING OUR FUTURE WITH SUCH TRENDS AS IDENTITY THEFT, GOVERNMENT SURVELLANCE, AND THE REVIVAL OF VINYL RECORDS. By John G. Kays
“The exclusiveness of space, we`ve learned, is only a function of the brain as it handles perception. It regulates data in terms of mutually restrictive space units. Millions of them. Trillions, theoretically, in fact. But in itself, space is not exclusive. In fact, in itself, space does not exist at all.” Phil Westerburg-LA Police Agency Coroner
It is suddenly the year 1988, (fourteen years into the future from the publishing date of 1974), October 11th to be exact, and Jason Taverner, a television star and pop singer with 30 million viewers is casually cruising home in his Rolls flyship, after taping his show, with his present girlfriend, Heather Hart, a starlet in her own right. Oddly enough, the very next day on October 12th, Jason awakens natty-eyed in a shabby, bug-riddled shack-of-a-hotel, and nobody knows him anymore, whatsoever. Zilch, nada, caputski, nie one living soul has so much as even heard of him. He is now a living zero, and neither his business agent, his girlfriend, nor any of his 30 million fans have any clue as to who he really is? The rest of this Science Fiction novel, penned by Philip K. Dick, is the curvilinear journey of this ‘nobody’ scrapping vapidly for his former famous self.
The frame for this story is a United States that has transformed into a totalitarian state after emerging from a “Second Civil War.” Traces of democracy emerge ever so latently, but a most sturdy police infrastructure is in place, with the National Guard (“Nats”) and US police force (“pols”), identity checkpoints, and national data banks operating smoothly to monitor its citizens for transgressions. Previously, the black population has been pruned voraciously via sterilization and the student population is burrowed like gophers, entrenched that is, in sub-terrestrial kibbutz units `neath most major universities. Furthermore, other so deemed dissidents are incarcerated in forced-labor camps, that have in recent memory witnessed altering states of liberation and oppression, depending on prevailing political winds. In the current decade (mid 1980s) society is chilling ever so slightly as hints of democracy sprout up shyly. Blacks are more respected now a days yet public affairs are laced with indiscretions, such as incestuous relations and flagrant drug abuse. The residing government is a dictatorship with a “Director” and police marshals and generals in place to owl-eye any iota of civil discord.
The machinations of plot are, in design, the journey of Jason Taverner to retrieve his frittered identity. Also, the Police Academy in LA, and especially the Police General Felix Buckman, are utterly confounded by the fact that they have no info on Jason in their central data banks. The Police General is convinced that the data has been misplaced. “Somewhere, some obscure place, he`s overlooked a microdocument of a minor nature. We`ll keep searching until we find it.” Much of this SF novel provides vivid descriptions of the police surveillance apparatus in all its refinement. A specific fact in chapter one, that piqued my interest, was when Marilyn Mason, a jilted lover, hurled the Callisto cuddle sponge on Jason, for his womanizing ways. Did this in some way contribute to his loss of identity that appears in chapter two? I sense that there is a connection, but am not able to draw a line between the dots.
One thing I liked most about this book was the assortment of flaky characters that pop up in the story. Kathy Nelson comes to mind; she`s an expert forger who creates some docs for Mister Taverner to aid him in clearing checkpoints. “Most of it called for pol-nat standard postcurfew tags, with thumbprints and photographs and holographic signatures, and everything with short expiration dates.” Kathy is a state-of-the-art forger alright, and she is only nineteen years old, but she is also an informer for the state police and can`t be trusted. When Jason takes her to a tacky restaurant she freaks out and commences to scream. This results in her being thrown out by the management. Then there is Inspector McNulty; he is a yes man to Felix Buckman, but does much of the dirty work in terms of investigating the case. Later I`ll touch on some of the other big players.
I love Philip K. Dick`s style, in spite of its awkwardness, for he is a brazen ‘paperback writer’ that is not afraid to slap down some words on his trusty typewriter and let them exist on parchment. He uses a lot of snappy, corny dialogue and one may think of hard boiler stuff, such as Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, but come to think of it, they may be a mite more arty than PKD. I had much to choose from, but I`ll give you this quote `cuz it will no doubt flip you out (from chapter 27)! “Someday your story, the ritual and shape of your downfall, may be made public, at a remote future time when it no longer matters. When there no more forced-labor camps and no more campuses surrounded by rings of police carrying rapid-fire submachine guns and wearing gas masks that make them look like great-snouted, huge-eyed root-eaters, some kind of noxious lower animal.” Images of the 1968 Democratic Convention immediately popped into my head!
Anachronisms are welcome weeds in Flow My Tears, a round peg in a square hole is a good fit in this case. As you mull over the leaflets you get a surreal sensation; is this the ‘Disco Era’ of the 1970s or a ‘Brave New World’ of the future? A little of both essentially. Citations of vinyl records herein are mondo. “Carrying the enormous record albums he ran back to the house.” And: “He lifted at the lid of the phonograph but it wouldn`t open.” Wisely, PKD is prophesizing the revival of vinyl record albums! Here`s another hoot for pasé-isimoniciousness. “Does she still read the Book-of-the-Month?” And good old reel-to-reel tapes still peek (or rotate) from the pages. “Moodily, General Buckman opened the third drawer of the large desk and placed a tape-reel in the small transport he kept there.” Let`s not leave out the trusty retro-video conferencing that pops up here and there. The out-of-time ephemera that occupy this landscape are comic conundrums that tax our linear perceptions of history.
Jason Taverner is a genetically engineered six, an older model, a crooner, TV star, and a womanizer. I picture him looking like say a Pat Boone or Glen Campbell during the 1970s. White shoes, curly golden locks, a glassy smile, he pipes pop songs through a microphone to 30 millions viewers. PKD uses him as a conduit to channel theories of identity loss. Taverner is a breathing torso of Andy Warhol`s fleeting fifteen minutes of fame. It is noticeable, Jason`s robotic and predictable, a cartoon for Dick`s imaginative playland. Heather Hart is a six also, a cool movie starlet who digs Jason, and yet she is the object of a plot twist that could well be the crux of the matter. This must be coveted at this ink spot. Mary Ann Dominic is a suburban unknown soldier who café-hops with Jason through some troubling moments and is a skilled potter whose ceramic vases become cherished ware for the museums of the future.
Paranoia is the primary mood or tone of this paperback. Jason spends most of his time attempting to evade the police. And losing your identity is not such a pretty thing. The state apparatus is geared towards universal surveillance of society. The fruits of technology are recycled into maintaining a well oiled state. The spirit of George Orwell`s 1984 oozes out of every page. During the bust on Ruth Rae`s apartment the pols nonchalantly perform their duties. “Parked in one of the slots was a police van, with several pols standing idly around it, weapons held loosely. They looked inert and bored.” One gets the feeling that PKD knew that the paranoia factor within our society, manifold in all its tentacles, would do nothing but increase as we move through time.
A body pert near naturally seeks out data on the life of PKD, a passionate pursuit of proof for his quirky oracles and phantasms of the future, his on-the-mark predictions that echo through the nearly half dozen decades since his typewriter first clattered. The volume Divine Invasions-A Life of Philip K. Dick by Lawrence Sutin is a handy tool for Dickian dogma as well as biographical tidbits that helps to fill in the potholes. An example would be the need of info about Science Fiction publishing and how PKD fits into that bigger picture. Furthermore, it is mandatory that you view the documentary The Gospel According To Philip K. Dick with its funky animation of PKD pecking at his trusty typewriter; oh, so this is what a real writer looks like. Brain storm! Facts about his personal story are friendly bookends to the telltale upshot of his weird novels.
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said would make a stunning movie, visuals out of this world, air-bound quibbles, yellow or orange in color, that look like VW bugs with Mr. Natural decals. The checkpoints would resemble the border bridges of Nuevo Laredo or Ciudad Juarez, but pols in spacesuits inspect IDs-fingerprints, voiceprints, EEG prints appear on the monitor. The wardrobe people will be making whoopee with Alys Buckman, her tight black-belled patent leather pants, gold chains, beaucoup blue eyeliner, black wig long and wavy, witchy fairy boots, and a bag of potions as big as Cleveland. Another good one would be the raid by the pols on Ruth Rae`s snazzy Las Vegas apartment to arrest Jason Taverner; think a low key, intergalactic-like ATF raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco (that`s outer space-like already).
The Epilogue is a new feature in Flow My Tears for PKD as his MO is to usually leave loose-ends pertaining to outcome of his kinetically-charged SF novels. Fully fifty-nine years are telescoped with such flagrant ironies, that prediction of destinies for characters are floating debris in some foamy waves of uncertainty. Those outcomes are hazy mist for your eyes here, but the police state endures and many artifacts are preserved in museums such as pottery and the delicate collection of S & M art of the basket case lesbian twin of Felix Buckman. Dick telescopes aftereffects of the story: a thawing of the police state, liberation of the subterranean student population, new constructs of politically correct, yet impudent and lame universities; seventies déjà vu in the twenty-first century? A mother of all police manuals? Huh?
While reading Flow My Tears, the word parody will rear its homely head. Gulliver`s Travels by Jonathan Swift comes to mind, for when Gulliver arrives in the land of the Lilliputians they are at war with the Blefuscudians. This is a parody of the wars between England and France. PKD spuffs the Nixonian Era where the ‘student movement’ had to be dealt with by undercover agents of Nixon. Recall the fate of the students in this US of 1988. Another comparison is that Swift`s world is first a land of mini-people, then a land of giants-sharp contrasts keep coming up. PKD`s world is similar; one time Jason is famous then the next he is a nobody. In one moment he is in a swinging Las Vegas lounge with a synthetic old flame, then in the next he is under the hot lamp of an pol interrogator, sweating like a possum in a pot destined for the evening vitals. This composition (the pristine manuscript was in tact in 1970) predates the exposure of the Watergate break-in, thus reinforcing a vision of parody of a secret police state before all the facts were revealed.
A significant arsenal of brain cells have been expended (both by myself and other PKD aficionados) by way of theories for the brassy loss of identity of said Mister Taverner. One explanation for his sudden anonymity is that Alys Buckman took the powerful drug KR-3 and she uses a most mysterious mutation of mind control ever fathomed by mortal coil; she, with the craft of a wizard, projects him in a parallel world where he is unknown. Alys is a replicant police agent for her brother/lover (another odd theory of mine). The drug itself dictates how the atoms of reality will be assembled. I don`t know exactly how this works, but I believe that whatever her will is then becomes the prevailing corporeal model, and physical matter rearranges to simulate her mindset. As such, data in info banks vanishes, Heather Hart`s memory of Jason disappears, and Alys can abduct him (as she stealthily does so) to a vestibule as a silly toy to play with; she morphs to a black-burned skeleton, like a puff of smoke (an inside joke for lost comrades), when the poisonous KR-3 fries her system to a crispy critter. My theory here would be that she strains her mind to the outer limits and the KR-3 turns on her and makes her identity-less instead of Jason. The spell is broken-then he returns to his old universe-it goes without saying, though, this is an ify-at best-return to reality.
And then it could be political. Think of the Great Purge of Joseph Stalin. People were erased from the face of the earth. Felix suspects that Jason is getting a green light from higher ups. He`s not at the top of the pyramid and is expendable. Paranoia reigns. How could the file have been purged? Is Jason an agent of the state with a clearance to perform strategic intelligence? Think of Lee Oswald`s waiver to stay in the Soviet Union. Was the parallel world manufactured by Alys political in nature? People that perished in Russia during the Great Purge were whited out completely-photographs, personal records, families too scared, did they ever really exist? Kathy and Jason are afraid of deportment to forced labor camps. Who is really manipulating them? Is the mind control of Alys an early form of ‘identity theft’? Cults do this too. Jim Jones and Charles Manson-need I say more? Devotee are reduced to zombies who kill and worship, kill and worship-zealots with empty promises and brainwashing destroys free will. David Koresh did it too. Die for me! Felix Buckman was the architect of a seamless, efficient state. Taverner was used in conspiracy of Alys to confound her paramour-a spell on socity for reasons unknown.
Dick is commenting on fame too. Is it not an illusion? A Maya-here today, gone tomorrow. This happens all the time. Celebrities crash and burn. Britney Spears, Fatty Arbuckle, Tiny Tim (no, he not fade away). In Sutin`s biography PKD`s philosophy is revealed. Orthogonal time is real time. Linear time is a Maya. The two types of time run parallel to one another. An example would be a vinyl phonograph record. When it is played it is exactly the same every time-same cracks and pops, but your perception alters. Once an event becomes history it is a permanent record. It can be played back over and over again. Once it happens it is permanent through eternity. It is not linear, but rather rotary. It stands still but is time nonetheless. Jason enters a time/warp, a forgotten memory of when he is unknown. This is a valid rotary record, but just has never been played before. Alys taps into the lost memory and makes it a living experience. Have you ever gone to a cut-out-bin and purchased a platter and played it when you got home? Say the Purple People Strings that Ruth Rae so loved? All records are valid evidence of history. Yet some get more playback. Some are never played even once. This was a first for the playback of the anonymous Jason. If no one ever reads what I am writing right now, that doesn`t mean that it`s not part of the collective record of the current chronicle.
Much has been made of the humanity of Felix Buckman when he visits the self-service quibble gas station. Yea, he goes back and hugs the black man after he had given him a sketch of a heart with an arrow through it. I thought this was but a sidebar to a novel about cruelty and paranoia in a totalitarian state. One could see this as parody also. Buckman is giving a token salute to a black man who he has helped to oppress in the past. It was a nice touch, but not really a conversion or anything. He was just feeling sorry for himself, and his twin sister had just ODed in an embarrassing way. A cover up was in place to marginalize the mess up. It is interesting though, that PKD had a similar thing happen to him after he wrote the book. The bit about the John Dowland song is just some gentle ribbing, I thought. “I`ll play it on that big new quad phonograph of mine when I get home.”
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU is the real theme of Flow My Tears. Every page, nearly, oozes fear and confusion. Some funny stuff is on every page too. This is comic relief when butterflies dance in your stomach. But make no mistake, this is Orwellian in nature. Recently I saw on the news that when you show your passport at the border a file will be created by Homeland Security. Eerie chills trickle down my spine. It was implied that HS could use items in your file thereafter. PKD is weeping upstairs as he sees his predictions come true.
Identity loss can result from multiple consequences. It could be the result of disturbing political manipulation. It most certainly will result from mind some form of mind control. Sometimes drugs will play a role, as they did in this case. And best of all identity loss can be a function of quirp in the time/space matrix that sensitive to slight gyrations. The outcome of history can change with any alteration in the sequencing of events. PKD plays with these themes and urges us, vicariously I suppose, to contemplate the tenuousness of our existence. *I do hope my piece is granted a clearance certificate from you readers, then the electronic gates shall open to millions of Science Fiction devotees who have memorized every word of Philip K. Dick.
The best fan page for Philip K. Dick is right here. There is a wealth of information about his life and writings here, and tender loving care is present in abundance. You can find the article “The True Stories of Philip K. Dick” on that web page too. This was a very groovy Rolling Stone piece by Paul Williams that appeared in the November 6, 1975 issue.
“The exclusiveness of space, we`ve learned, is only a function of the brain as it handles perception. It regulates data in terms of mutually restrictive space units. Millions of them. Trillions, theoretically, in fact. But in itself, space is not exclusive. In fact, in itself, space does not exist at all.” Phil Westerburg-LA Police Agency Coroner
It is suddenly the year 1988, (fourteen years into the future from the publishing date of 1974), October 11th to be exact, and Jason Taverner, a television star and pop singer with 30 million viewers is casually cruising home in his Rolls flyship, after taping his show, with his present girlfriend, Heather Hart, a starlet in her own right. Oddly enough, the very next day on October 12th, Jason awakens natty-eyed in a shabby, bug-riddled shack-of-a-hotel, and nobody knows him anymore, whatsoever. Zilch, nada, caputski, nie one living soul has so much as even heard of him. He is now a living zero, and neither his business agent, his girlfriend, nor any of his 30 million fans have any clue as to who he really is? The rest of this Science Fiction novel, penned by Philip K. Dick, is the curvilinear journey of this ‘nobody’ scrapping vapidly for his former famous self.
The frame for this story is a United States that has transformed into a totalitarian state after emerging from a “Second Civil War.” Traces of democracy emerge ever so latently, but a most sturdy police infrastructure is in place, with the National Guard (“Nats”) and US police force (“pols”), identity checkpoints, and national data banks operating smoothly to monitor its citizens for transgressions. Previously, the black population has been pruned voraciously via sterilization and the student population is burrowed like gophers, entrenched that is, in sub-terrestrial kibbutz units `neath most major universities. Furthermore, other so deemed dissidents are incarcerated in forced-labor camps, that have in recent memory witnessed altering states of liberation and oppression, depending on prevailing political winds. In the current decade (mid 1980s) society is chilling ever so slightly as hints of democracy sprout up shyly. Blacks are more respected now a days yet public affairs are laced with indiscretions, such as incestuous relations and flagrant drug abuse. The residing government is a dictatorship with a “Director” and police marshals and generals in place to owl-eye any iota of civil discord.
The machinations of plot are, in design, the journey of Jason Taverner to retrieve his frittered identity. Also, the Police Academy in LA, and especially the Police General Felix Buckman, are utterly confounded by the fact that they have no info on Jason in their central data banks. The Police General is convinced that the data has been misplaced. “Somewhere, some obscure place, he`s overlooked a microdocument of a minor nature. We`ll keep searching until we find it.” Much of this SF novel provides vivid descriptions of the police surveillance apparatus in all its refinement. A specific fact in chapter one, that piqued my interest, was when Marilyn Mason, a jilted lover, hurled the Callisto cuddle sponge on Jason, for his womanizing ways. Did this in some way contribute to his loss of identity that appears in chapter two? I sense that there is a connection, but am not able to draw a line between the dots.
One thing I liked most about this book was the assortment of flaky characters that pop up in the story. Kathy Nelson comes to mind; she`s an expert forger who creates some docs for Mister Taverner to aid him in clearing checkpoints. “Most of it called for pol-nat standard postcurfew tags, with thumbprints and photographs and holographic signatures, and everything with short expiration dates.” Kathy is a state-of-the-art forger alright, and she is only nineteen years old, but she is also an informer for the state police and can`t be trusted. When Jason takes her to a tacky restaurant she freaks out and commences to scream. This results in her being thrown out by the management. Then there is Inspector McNulty; he is a yes man to Felix Buckman, but does much of the dirty work in terms of investigating the case. Later I`ll touch on some of the other big players.
I love Philip K. Dick`s style, in spite of its awkwardness, for he is a brazen ‘paperback writer’ that is not afraid to slap down some words on his trusty typewriter and let them exist on parchment. He uses a lot of snappy, corny dialogue and one may think of hard boiler stuff, such as Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, but come to think of it, they may be a mite more arty than PKD. I had much to choose from, but I`ll give you this quote `cuz it will no doubt flip you out (from chapter 27)! “Someday your story, the ritual and shape of your downfall, may be made public, at a remote future time when it no longer matters. When there no more forced-labor camps and no more campuses surrounded by rings of police carrying rapid-fire submachine guns and wearing gas masks that make them look like great-snouted, huge-eyed root-eaters, some kind of noxious lower animal.” Images of the 1968 Democratic Convention immediately popped into my head!
Anachronisms are welcome weeds in Flow My Tears, a round peg in a square hole is a good fit in this case. As you mull over the leaflets you get a surreal sensation; is this the ‘Disco Era’ of the 1970s or a ‘Brave New World’ of the future? A little of both essentially. Citations of vinyl records herein are mondo. “Carrying the enormous record albums he ran back to the house.” And: “He lifted at the lid of the phonograph but it wouldn`t open.” Wisely, PKD is prophesizing the revival of vinyl record albums! Here`s another hoot for pasé-isimoniciousness. “Does she still read the Book-of-the-Month?” And good old reel-to-reel tapes still peek (or rotate) from the pages. “Moodily, General Buckman opened the third drawer of the large desk and placed a tape-reel in the small transport he kept there.” Let`s not leave out the trusty retro-video conferencing that pops up here and there. The out-of-time ephemera that occupy this landscape are comic conundrums that tax our linear perceptions of history.
Jason Taverner is a genetically engineered six, an older model, a crooner, TV star, and a womanizer. I picture him looking like say a Pat Boone or Glen Campbell during the 1970s. White shoes, curly golden locks, a glassy smile, he pipes pop songs through a microphone to 30 millions viewers. PKD uses him as a conduit to channel theories of identity loss. Taverner is a breathing torso of Andy Warhol`s fleeting fifteen minutes of fame. It is noticeable, Jason`s robotic and predictable, a cartoon for Dick`s imaginative playland. Heather Hart is a six also, a cool movie starlet who digs Jason, and yet she is the object of a plot twist that could well be the crux of the matter. This must be coveted at this ink spot. Mary Ann Dominic is a suburban unknown soldier who café-hops with Jason through some troubling moments and is a skilled potter whose ceramic vases become cherished ware for the museums of the future.
Paranoia is the primary mood or tone of this paperback. Jason spends most of his time attempting to evade the police. And losing your identity is not such a pretty thing. The state apparatus is geared towards universal surveillance of society. The fruits of technology are recycled into maintaining a well oiled state. The spirit of George Orwell`s 1984 oozes out of every page. During the bust on Ruth Rae`s apartment the pols nonchalantly perform their duties. “Parked in one of the slots was a police van, with several pols standing idly around it, weapons held loosely. They looked inert and bored.” One gets the feeling that PKD knew that the paranoia factor within our society, manifold in all its tentacles, would do nothing but increase as we move through time.
A body pert near naturally seeks out data on the life of PKD, a passionate pursuit of proof for his quirky oracles and phantasms of the future, his on-the-mark predictions that echo through the nearly half dozen decades since his typewriter first clattered. The volume Divine Invasions-A Life of Philip K. Dick by Lawrence Sutin is a handy tool for Dickian dogma as well as biographical tidbits that helps to fill in the potholes. An example would be the need of info about Science Fiction publishing and how PKD fits into that bigger picture. Furthermore, it is mandatory that you view the documentary The Gospel According To Philip K. Dick with its funky animation of PKD pecking at his trusty typewriter; oh, so this is what a real writer looks like. Brain storm! Facts about his personal story are friendly bookends to the telltale upshot of his weird novels.
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said would make a stunning movie, visuals out of this world, air-bound quibbles, yellow or orange in color, that look like VW bugs with Mr. Natural decals. The checkpoints would resemble the border bridges of Nuevo Laredo or Ciudad Juarez, but pols in spacesuits inspect IDs-fingerprints, voiceprints, EEG prints appear on the monitor. The wardrobe people will be making whoopee with Alys Buckman, her tight black-belled patent leather pants, gold chains, beaucoup blue eyeliner, black wig long and wavy, witchy fairy boots, and a bag of potions as big as Cleveland. Another good one would be the raid by the pols on Ruth Rae`s snazzy Las Vegas apartment to arrest Jason Taverner; think a low key, intergalactic-like ATF raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco (that`s outer space-like already).
The Epilogue is a new feature in Flow My Tears for PKD as his MO is to usually leave loose-ends pertaining to outcome of his kinetically-charged SF novels. Fully fifty-nine years are telescoped with such flagrant ironies, that prediction of destinies for characters are floating debris in some foamy waves of uncertainty. Those outcomes are hazy mist for your eyes here, but the police state endures and many artifacts are preserved in museums such as pottery and the delicate collection of S & M art of the basket case lesbian twin of Felix Buckman. Dick telescopes aftereffects of the story: a thawing of the police state, liberation of the subterranean student population, new constructs of politically correct, yet impudent and lame universities; seventies déjà vu in the twenty-first century? A mother of all police manuals? Huh?
While reading Flow My Tears, the word parody will rear its homely head. Gulliver`s Travels by Jonathan Swift comes to mind, for when Gulliver arrives in the land of the Lilliputians they are at war with the Blefuscudians. This is a parody of the wars between England and France. PKD spuffs the Nixonian Era where the ‘student movement’ had to be dealt with by undercover agents of Nixon. Recall the fate of the students in this US of 1988. Another comparison is that Swift`s world is first a land of mini-people, then a land of giants-sharp contrasts keep coming up. PKD`s world is similar; one time Jason is famous then the next he is a nobody. In one moment he is in a swinging Las Vegas lounge with a synthetic old flame, then in the next he is under the hot lamp of an pol interrogator, sweating like a possum in a pot destined for the evening vitals. This composition (the pristine manuscript was in tact in 1970) predates the exposure of the Watergate break-in, thus reinforcing a vision of parody of a secret police state before all the facts were revealed.
A significant arsenal of brain cells have been expended (both by myself and other PKD aficionados) by way of theories for the brassy loss of identity of said Mister Taverner. One explanation for his sudden anonymity is that Alys Buckman took the powerful drug KR-3 and she uses a most mysterious mutation of mind control ever fathomed by mortal coil; she, with the craft of a wizard, projects him in a parallel world where he is unknown. Alys is a replicant police agent for her brother/lover (another odd theory of mine). The drug itself dictates how the atoms of reality will be assembled. I don`t know exactly how this works, but I believe that whatever her will is then becomes the prevailing corporeal model, and physical matter rearranges to simulate her mindset. As such, data in info banks vanishes, Heather Hart`s memory of Jason disappears, and Alys can abduct him (as she stealthily does so) to a vestibule as a silly toy to play with; she morphs to a black-burned skeleton, like a puff of smoke (an inside joke for lost comrades), when the poisonous KR-3 fries her system to a crispy critter. My theory here would be that she strains her mind to the outer limits and the KR-3 turns on her and makes her identity-less instead of Jason. The spell is broken-then he returns to his old universe-it goes without saying, though, this is an ify-at best-return to reality.
And then it could be political. Think of the Great Purge of Joseph Stalin. People were erased from the face of the earth. Felix suspects that Jason is getting a green light from higher ups. He`s not at the top of the pyramid and is expendable. Paranoia reigns. How could the file have been purged? Is Jason an agent of the state with a clearance to perform strategic intelligence? Think of Lee Oswald`s waiver to stay in the Soviet Union. Was the parallel world manufactured by Alys political in nature? People that perished in Russia during the Great Purge were whited out completely-photographs, personal records, families too scared, did they ever really exist? Kathy and Jason are afraid of deportment to forced labor camps. Who is really manipulating them? Is the mind control of Alys an early form of ‘identity theft’? Cults do this too. Jim Jones and Charles Manson-need I say more? Devotee are reduced to zombies who kill and worship, kill and worship-zealots with empty promises and brainwashing destroys free will. David Koresh did it too. Die for me! Felix Buckman was the architect of a seamless, efficient state. Taverner was used in conspiracy of Alys to confound her paramour-a spell on socity for reasons unknown.
Dick is commenting on fame too. Is it not an illusion? A Maya-here today, gone tomorrow. This happens all the time. Celebrities crash and burn. Britney Spears, Fatty Arbuckle, Tiny Tim (no, he not fade away). In Sutin`s biography PKD`s philosophy is revealed. Orthogonal time is real time. Linear time is a Maya. The two types of time run parallel to one another. An example would be a vinyl phonograph record. When it is played it is exactly the same every time-same cracks and pops, but your perception alters. Once an event becomes history it is a permanent record. It can be played back over and over again. Once it happens it is permanent through eternity. It is not linear, but rather rotary. It stands still but is time nonetheless. Jason enters a time/warp, a forgotten memory of when he is unknown. This is a valid rotary record, but just has never been played before. Alys taps into the lost memory and makes it a living experience. Have you ever gone to a cut-out-bin and purchased a platter and played it when you got home? Say the Purple People Strings that Ruth Rae so loved? All records are valid evidence of history. Yet some get more playback. Some are never played even once. This was a first for the playback of the anonymous Jason. If no one ever reads what I am writing right now, that doesn`t mean that it`s not part of the collective record of the current chronicle.
Much has been made of the humanity of Felix Buckman when he visits the self-service quibble gas station. Yea, he goes back and hugs the black man after he had given him a sketch of a heart with an arrow through it. I thought this was but a sidebar to a novel about cruelty and paranoia in a totalitarian state. One could see this as parody also. Buckman is giving a token salute to a black man who he has helped to oppress in the past. It was a nice touch, but not really a conversion or anything. He was just feeling sorry for himself, and his twin sister had just ODed in an embarrassing way. A cover up was in place to marginalize the mess up. It is interesting though, that PKD had a similar thing happen to him after he wrote the book. The bit about the John Dowland song is just some gentle ribbing, I thought. “I`ll play it on that big new quad phonograph of mine when I get home.”
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU is the real theme of Flow My Tears. Every page, nearly, oozes fear and confusion. Some funny stuff is on every page too. This is comic relief when butterflies dance in your stomach. But make no mistake, this is Orwellian in nature. Recently I saw on the news that when you show your passport at the border a file will be created by Homeland Security. Eerie chills trickle down my spine. It was implied that HS could use items in your file thereafter. PKD is weeping upstairs as he sees his predictions come true.
Identity loss can result from multiple consequences. It could be the result of disturbing political manipulation. It most certainly will result from mind some form of mind control. Sometimes drugs will play a role, as they did in this case. And best of all identity loss can be a function of quirp in the time/space matrix that sensitive to slight gyrations. The outcome of history can change with any alteration in the sequencing of events. PKD plays with these themes and urges us, vicariously I suppose, to contemplate the tenuousness of our existence. *I do hope my piece is granted a clearance certificate from you readers, then the electronic gates shall open to millions of Science Fiction devotees who have memorized every word of Philip K. Dick.
The best fan page for Philip K. Dick is right here. There is a wealth of information about his life and writings here, and tender loving care is present in abundance. You can find the article “The True Stories of Philip K. Dick” on that web page too. This was a very groovy Rolling Stone piece by Paul Williams that appeared in the November 6, 1975 issue.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
AN EARLY VERSION OF IDENTITY THEFT FROM PKD
This is my very favorite photograph of Philip K. Dick! I have added some color pencil to it to give it my own touch. I know that`s kind of stupid, but I like to doddle a little with art supplies like color pencils; maybe it`s a nervous habit or a juvenile form of kicks, sort of like some of the zany characters in a groovy PKD SF novel. He is actually holding a copy of Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, & he`s dressed sorta funky like he`s a celebrity. This would be true, I should think. My latest theory as to why Jason Taverner lost his identity, is that Alys Buckman sorta stole his celebrity identity, she put a curse on him by using mind control & with the aid of PK-3, the drug that ended up zapping her & turning her into a skeleton. I`m thinking of this metamorphosis to obscurity, including eradication from all government data banks, as an early version of identity theft. The same thing happens with totalitarian regimes such as the Nazis or the chilly Stalin communist regime. They steal peoples identities or reduce them to non-existing entities. Cults do this too, such as Jim Jones People`s Temple or The Manson Family. Devotees are reduced to zombies who worship their crazy leaders & are willing to die or to kill at the zeolot`s command. This is identity theft also. Jason Taverner goes from popularity to obscurity in the wink of an eye! This is very strange indeed!
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Philip K. Dick characters in Flow My Tears...
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said would make a stunning movie, a feast for the eyes, with flying quibbles as air-bound VW bugs, cloned movie stars, free-thinking, erudite cops (but nonetheless corrupt), & drug overdoses so severe that that the victim is reduced to charred skeleton remains. The ID checkpoints are chilly reminders that this is a thawing totalitarian state where the government police have complete records on every living person. One exception is Jason Taverner, who has been mysteriously de-identified from the data banks of this 1988 U.S. The characters that Taverner comes across in this science fiction novel are interesting, to say the least. He picks up Ruth Rae in a Las Vegas nightclub and gets involved with her, even to the point the police can trace him to her luxury condo because of an electronic bug that is on his body. Ruth Rae`s main personality traits are that she`s a lush, a sex pot, and a gold-digger. In the epilogue PKD reveals that she had married 52 times and dies of an alcohol/drug overdose. Like Alys Buckman she too had used the phone-grid sex network, a futuristic kicks addiction that has permanent metabolic side effects . Alys Buckman herself, an important pivotal character in the plot, was exceedingly eccentric. She was an expert on S & M art and her collection was committed to a museum of popular culture. If this book is ever made into a movie, the wardrobe people can do much with her costumes giving her tight black paten leather pants and metal chains, blue eyeliner and long wavy hair with a dark tan! Alys is not really evil, but she has the key to much valuable information that she uses to her advantage. Her undoing is drug addiction to KR-3, a concoction even stronger than heroin or crack cocaine.
The break in of PKD`s apartment in November 1971 is of much interest for the color it lends to PKD`s writing. Theories are provided in the 1975 article in Rolling Stone by Paul Williams. I believe I had this Stone at the time because I remember the cover with Rod Stewart. Lawrence Sutin discusses these theories in his PKD biography: “Divine Invasions-A Life Of Philip K. Dick.” He suggests the plausibility that PKD actually did it himself, but I am not inclined to believe this. There were many strung-out hang-abouts that could have easily done it. The documentary (the title escapes me at the moment, but it`s really cool...) hints that there may have been heroin in the file cabinets and this would provide an ideal motive for a bunch of junkies to snag-up some horse. The theories that it was the CIA or the Black Panthers are fairly far-fetched, but it was, after all, the Watergate era. Sutin does not rule out that it was an illegal search and seizure by the local San Rafael police. To say the least, this mishap haunted PKD for the remainder of his days and fueled his paranoia more, if that is even possible. He did clean up his act though and managed to write “A Scanner Darkly” without the crutch of amphetamines. Aspects of the break-in may be detected in some of his last novels such as Scanner. It may be in “Flow My Tears…”. But I couldn`t give you an exact citation. When they bust him in Ruth Rae`s condo though, & had traced him with the electronic bug, a Watergate chill came over me, ala the Democratic Headquarter burglers!
The character of Felix Buckman is perhaps the most important in this SF novel. In the epilogue he apparently penned an authoritative manual entitled: “The Law and Order Mentality”, that chronicles an efficient planet-wide police bureaucracy that functions properly and keeps society in order. He is somewhat more tolerant than some police marshals and in the day eased some of the restraints on the inmates of forced labor camps. Tensions are easing somewhat as the U.S. society comes out of the Second Civil War, but the students are still on the lam. These seems to reflect the freeing up of tensions in the U.S. when the Sixties became the Seventies and the Vietnam War ever gradually... wound down and people morphed to a ‘pleasure principle’ life style philosophy, as relief from the all-consuming war. Theories can abound as reasons for Jason Taverner`s sudden lost identity, but it seems to be tied-in with an occult drug called KR-3 and mind control can be induced by its use. But gee wiz, the side effects are too harsh-turning into a smoking skeleton is a little over-the-top, if you ask me!
An interesting little approach to the SF novel would be to dig up some of the items of technology and of popular culture. For instance, what did the quibbles look like? How did they operate? What did the juke box look like when Jason Taverner and Mary Anne Dominic were conversing in that quasi-greezy spoon? And what did some of Taverner`s records sound like, such as Taverner and the Blue, Blue Blues or his hit single, 'Nowhere Nothun` Fuck-Up'? Did it sound like Iggy Pop in the late seventies? ...Probably not...I thought that Bladerunner did a good job of visualizing PKD`s zany, futuristic world, but I`d like to see this one with more of a 70s disco sheen in a SF wrapper, of course! I envision much of this to look like the art work on a 70s juke box or say a pinball machine, or a semi-truck mud flap with a curvaceous dame; as much retro as futuristic panorama! And can you imagine what Ruth Rae would look like? If you had been married 52 times you might look rather disheveled, like Linda Blair in the Exorcist! Boy am I glad I never took KR-3, but would like to watch the experience remotely as a simulation of some sort!
PKD plays with a number of intriguing ideas in Flow My Tears..., & being an idea man by nature, he spoofs his current culture & packages his U.S.A. of 1988 with the foibles of a 1970 U.S. The youth movement is squashed, but the police apparatus flourishes and grows, due in part to the wisdom of Felix Buckman, a sort of Erasmus of the cop culture. Another theme is that dispite the totalitarian presence of Big Brother, society at large is loose & inundated with drug use and free living. Buckman himself practices incest with his own sister Alys Buckman, who is a shadowy figure that leads a hedonistic life and beyond. Technology florishes but the oil companies are nationalized like in Mexico or Venezuela. Radicals, intellectuals and minorities have either eliminated or parked in forced labor camps to rot. Felix Buckman himself is an architect of these camps and favors a more tolerant approach, believe it or not. The police control the data banks and thus can keep a tight control over the people. This gave me a creepy sensation with I thought of the new found authority of Homeland Security, a new institution whose reach is just now being defined. PKD would shutter at the thought of this new age of electronic surveillance.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
PHILIP K. DICK-FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID
I continue to be fascinated by Philip K. Dick. And there are still so many of his books that I can read. This is a warmup for Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, so I can start to shape some theories about what the book is about. As usual, much of this is about drugs and a totalitarian state that resides in the future. Jason Taverner, a television star with 30 million viewers, is suddenly whited-out. That is, he finds himself unknown, without any data on him in the state data banks. When he calls an old girlfriend, Heather Hart, she has no idea who he is. Jason gets some fake identity cards made by a crafty forger, Kathy Nelson, but he is picked up at stop point for questioning. It seems that the students from the universities are in rebellion and this future US is just coming out of a Civil War, so things are still very tense.
It`s my understanding that Mister Dick wrote this SF novel in 1970, then edited it for a 1974 publication. This got the John W. Campbell award for best novel in 1974. I won`t reveal the resolution to the lost identity of Jason Taverner, but I will say it has a lesbian S & M queen at its core, and the consciousness that she embraces. I have two essential articles that are a great aid in getting familiar with Philip K. One is in The New Yorker, The Return of Philip K. Dick by Adam Gopnik. The other one is The True Stories of Philip K. Dick by Paul Williams, that was in Rolling Stone, November 6, 1975. These are required pieces to have around when probing the mysterious world of Philip K. Dick. Much of this is about the break in of Dick`s crash pad where file cabinets with pristine documents were blown up. Many theories were postulated as to who the culprits were, and apparently this fueled the imagination of Dick (not a very hard thing to achieve) and he put this spice into his writing. I`m sending you the biblical web page for Philip K. Dick for you to start to study, if you find yourself moving in the direction of Dickian worship! I will continue tomarrow with some observations on the novel and the mystique Dick himself....
The main bullet to this story is how did Jason Taverner lose his identity? My best theory is that it was through the mind control of Alys Buckman. She controlled him with the drug KR-3 and put him in a parrallel world-a sort of space/time warp where everyone had x him out of existence. I too have experienced subliminally of course...in my earlier frontier days. Mind control is a strange thing...but such things really do happen. By way of analogy, think of when Stalin would eliminate supposed ememies...then their identities would completely erased from the face of the earth! They would even be whited-out of photos...yea, completely gone. Soviet Union memories are coming quickly lately with the invasion of Georgia, me thinks. Well, got to get ready for the factory...more tomarrow for sure!
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