Click to enlarge:
See also "Wild Palms" in this journal.
Sunday, October 9, 2022
Sunday Sermon
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Wednesday, November 6, 2019
Soul Snatchers
From All Souls' Day 2015 —
Related entertainment —
Invasion of the Soul Snatchers (Wild Palms review, 1993).
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Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Requiescat in Pace
The Chicago Tribune today —
H. Wilbert Norton, college president
and Christian missionary, dies
Norton reportedly died at 102 on Feb. 20, 2017.
This evening's previous post linked the death dates of two
academics to two Log24 posts that both contained the
following image —
For some backstory, see the Log24 posts from the date
of Norton's reported death, February 20.
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Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Signature Backdrop
"The Bitter End’s signature stage backdrop —
a bare 150-year-old brick wall — helped distinguish it from
other popular bohemian hangouts like the Village Gate
and the Village Vanguard. It appeared on the cover of
Peter, Paul and Mary’s first album."
— The New York Times this evening on a Sunday death
“Looking carefully at Golay’s code is like staring into the sun.”
See also Schwartz in "The Omega Matrix," a post of 5 PM ET Sunday:
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Sunday, March 5, 2017
The Omega Matrix
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Saturday, November 7, 2015
Clarifying Dyson
The previous post quoted a passage from Turing's Cathedral ,
a 2012 book by George Dyson —
It should be noted that Dyson's remarks on "two species of
bits," space, time, "structure and sequence" and logic gates
are from his own idiosyncratic attempt to create a philosophy
based on the workings of computers. These concepts are not,
so far as I can tell, part of anyone else's approach to the subject.
For a more standard introduction to how computers work, see
(for instance) a book by an author Dyson admires:
The Pattern on the Stone , by W. Daniel Hillis (Basic Books, 1998).
PREFACE: MAGIC IN THE STONE
I etch a pattern of geometric shapes onto a stone.
To the uninitiated, the shapes look mysterious and
complex, but I know that when arranged correctly
they will give the stone a special power, enabling it
to respond to incantations in a language no human
being has ever spoken. I will ask the stone questions
in this language, and it will answer by showing me a
vision: a world created by my spell, a world imagined
within the pattern on the stone.
A few hundred years ago in my native New England,
an accurate description of my occupation would have
gotten me burned at the stake. Yet my work involves
no witchcraft; I design and program computers. The
stone is a wafer of silicon, and the incantations are
software. The patterns etched on the chip and the
programs that instruct the computer may look
complicated and mysterious, but they are generated
according to a few basic principles that are easily
explained. . . . .
Hillis's title suggests some remarks unrelated to computers —
See Philosopher + Stone in this journal.
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Monday, December 12, 2011
Techno-Shamanistic Keys
From a review of the film "Wild Palms" in The New Yorker by James Wolcott
(issue dated May 17, 1993, pages 104-106)—
"The MacGuffin that will determine the outcome is a piece of
software [sic ] called the Go chip, its name taken from the
strategy board game. (There's a nod in the script to the Japanese
novelist Yasunari Kawabata, author of 'The Master of Go.')
Whoever possesses the Go chip possesses the
'techno-shamanistic key to eternity'…."
"In tomorrow's techno-pop tyranny, reruns are the basis of order."
"As Kreutzer's mistress, Kim Cattrall has excellent posture."
From Saturday Night Live on December 10, 2011, a portrayal of Kim Cattrall—
See also "Sex and the City" fans in The Crimson Passion.
For other keys (perhaps related to the Wild Palms "image sickness"),
see "Claves Regni Caelorum (Escher)" — Images, 1.9 MB.
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Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Tuesday December 9, 2008
The Simplest Terms
“Broken down in the simplest terms, the story centres around two warring factions, the ‘Fathers’ and the ‘Friends.'”
Today’s birthdays:
Kirk Douglas,
Buck Henry,
John Malkovich.
In a nutshell:
The Soul’s Code and
today’s previous entry.
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Sunday, December 14, 2003
Sunday December 14, 2003
Riddle
From Robert Stone's Damascus Gate:
"God… that Great
(See the Web site "Stone, not Wood.")
Christianity may be a religion of lies, but it sometimes has a certain charm. If in fact there is a heaven, part of it must strongly resemble Paris in the 1890's, as suggested by the picture below.
From today's New York Times:
"The Very Rev. Sturgis Lee Riddle, dean emeritus of the American Episcopal Cathedral in Paris, died on Tuesday at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He was 94.
His death was reported on the cathedral's Web site."
From the cathedral's Web site,
a Christmas card:
Après l'Office à l'Église de la Sainte-Trinité, Noël 1890
(After the Service at Holy Trinity Church,
Christmas 1890) Jean Béraud
"Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you."
— Ernest Hemingway,
Death in the Afternoon, Ch. 11
"There is never any ending to Paris…."
— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
See, too, my Paris-related entry for December 9, the date of Riddle's death, and recall that in Wild Palms, "the much sought-after Go chip [is] the missing link in the Senator's bid to be immortal, 'like Jesus.' "
Scene from Wild Palms
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Tuesday, December 9, 2003
Tuesday December 9, 2003
Street of the Fathers
From Bruce Wagner’s Wild Palms —
Robert Morse sings in Kyoto
as negotiators discuss
the Go chip:
Coordinates for a 4×4 space:
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From
Université René Descartes,
45 rue des Saints Pères,
Paris
Today’s birthdays:
Kirk Douglas
Buck Henry
John Malkovich
Wednesday, November 5, 2003
Wednesday November 5, 2003
"Everything that has a beginning
has an end."
— The Matrix Revolutions
Matrix, by Knots, Inc., 1979.
"Easy to master — A lifetime to enjoy!"
The object for 2 players (8-adult)
is to be the first to form a line
consisting of 4 different
colored chips.
Imagist Poem
(Recall the Go-chip
in Wild Palms.)
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Wednesday, January 8, 2003
Wednesday January 8, 2003
Work in Progress
From the website “Conrad Hall Looks Back and Forward to a Work in Progress” on a cinematographer who died on Jan. 4, 2003 (see today’s earlier entry):
“Hall concentrated on writing an original script and another based on Wild Palms, a William Faulkner novel. He was determined to direct his own films based on those scripts. Hall explained that just once in his life he wanted to control the process of making a film from beginning to end. It’s still a work in progress….
If he discovered Aladdin’s magic lantern, and had only one wish which could be granted, Hall says he would use it to bring Wild Palms to the screen.”
Crazy Protestant Drunk
An Amazon.com review of Faulkner’s novella Wild Palms:
***** “A Great Introduction to Faulkner”
Reviewer: Stephen M. Bauer from Hazlet, N.J., July 7, 2002 —
I love this guy Faulkner. I read another half chapter of The Wild Palms on the train. Never read anything by him before.
Faulkner’s characters don’t sit around and examine their navel. They just Do. Yes act on their passions they Do. His characters are not beautiful people. They have scars, injuries, poverty, depraved morals, injustices, suffering upon suffering. What makes The Wild Palms beautiful is the passion of people living life right on the bone.
A married woman is planning on abandoning her husband and two kids and running away with another man. The other man asks her what about her two kids. On page 41, she answers, “I know the answer to that and I know that I cant change that answer and I dont think I can change me because the second time I ever saw you I learned what I had read in books but I never had actually believed: that love and suffering are the same thing and that the value of love is the sum of what you have to pay for it and anytime you get it cheap you have cheated yourself.” No Catholic saint-mystic ever said it better. Pretty good for a crazy Protestant drunk.
“The oral history of Los Angeles
is written in piano bars.”
— Joan Didion in Slouching Towards Bethlehem
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Tonight’s site music, “Long Ago and Far Away,” by Jerome Kern (with lyrics, including “Aladdin’s lamp,” by Ira Gershwin) is from the 1944 Rita Hayworth film “Cover Girl.” It was featured in the 1987 film “Someone to Love,” the final performance (on film) of Orson Welles. |
See also “For the Green Lady of Perelandra,
from the City of Angels,” my entry of December 21, 2002.