Iron heels and possible worlds
Oct. 17th, 2004 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusWell, I haven't heard anything back from the TV producer who mailed me last week, so I'm sure it was a hoax or a casual feeler dashed off on the spur of the moment. And, you know, even if I were sitting there in a TV studio, shoe-horned into the formula of some formatted show, what could I say that would be useful or stimulating? If 'the arrondissement dresses the man', doesn't the TV studio, in a sense, also speak the TV guest?
Pondering this, I remembered something I heard Brian Eno say on TV once. It was on The Tube back in the early 80s. Eno was only on for a couple of minutes, and he could have used his screentime just to tell us he had a new record out while Jools Holland reminded us what interesting people Eno had worked with and what a nice guy he was. Instead, Eno used his two minutes to unleash an idea which would change the way I think forever. He did it with a twinkle in his eye and a kind of nervous laugh, as if his idea were slightly naughty. The exchange, as I recall it, went like this:
Holland: Your recent releases have been coming out under the title Possible Worlds. What is a 'possible world'?
Eno: Well, I've always thought that art is a lie, an interesting lie. And I'll sort of listen to the 'lie' and try to imagine the world which makes that lie true... what that world must be like, and what would have to happen for us to get from this world to that one.
I think they then went on to discuss how art can be different things for different people, at which point Eno produced a photograph of a little dog from his breast pocket and said that, for him, that was art. Which was cute, but I was still reeling, dizzy with the idea of those possible worlds that we build around lies and tweak until the lies are true, and how comparing those parallel worlds with our own might give us the answer to so many questions.
Now, I'm sure this idea comes from Einstein, or Systems Theory, or Cage or somewhere. Maybe it pops into pop direct from Popper. I don't care whether Eno 'invented' it, just like I don't really care who made Ambient music first. What impresses me is that someone went beyond the call of duty and used TV so well. Someone said something in a banal formatted record puff which re-structured the way I thought forever. It doesn't happen so often.
Possible worlds and parallel worlds, the lies that tell the truth, are a constant in art. And they're especially topical now, with the US electorate on the verge of choosing between two different Americas which are, for the moment, fictions. They're also topical because Philip Roth, in his new novel 'The Plot Against America', imagines in detail what America might have become had aviator Charles Lindbergh swept to power and led the country towards fascism and appeasement in the 1930s.
I haven't read the new Roth, but I've been reading two other novels that make parallel worlds central to their plots. You can get them both free online. One is Jack London's The Iron Heel, a tale of revolution and counter-revolution set in an imaginary America shortly before 1920.
The hero of 'The Iron Heel' is a dashing socialist firebrand called Ernest Everhard. Apparently the phallic pun is entirely intentional; female narrator Avis tells us: '...there was never such a lover as he. No girl could live in a university town till she was twenty-four and not have love experiences. I had been made love to by beardless sophomores and gray professors, and by the athletes and the football giants. But not one of them made love to me as Ernest did. His arms were around me before I knew. His lips were on mine before I could protest or resist. Before his earnestness conventional maiden dignity was ridiculous. He swept me off my feet by the splendid invincible rush of him.'
This highly flammable, highly erectile socialist alpha male finds himself in an America ripped asunder:
'The situation was bitter and bloody. In many places, scattered over the country, slave revolts and massacres had occurred. The roll of the martyrs increased mightily. Countless executions took place everywhere. The mountains and waste regions were filled with outlaws and refugees who were being hunted down mercilessly. Our own refuges were packed with comrades who had prices on their heads. Through information furnished by its spies, scores of our refuges were raided by the soldiers of the Iron Heel. Many of the comrades were disheartened, and they retaliated with terroristic tactics. The set-back to their hopes made them despairing and desperate. Many terrorist organizations unaffiliated with us sprang into existence and caused us much trouble. These misguided people sacrificed their own lives wantonly, very often made our own plans go astray, and retarded our organization.'
Yes, almost a hundred years ago Jack London wrote a novel set in a parallel world America which seems to share a lot with the real (yet no less fictional) America of today. Sure, London's story hobbles along on feet of clay, hamstrung by simplistic binaries and bodice-ripping cliches, but so does the master narrative the neo-cons have spun for us. We have the terrorism, and we have the 'iron heel'. All that's lacking is the revolutionary socialism.
The other text I've been reading is more to my taste. It's utopian rather than dystopian (for I don't think I'm giving too much away when I say that the Heel ultimately defeats Ernest Everhard and the book ends with a defiant sentence broken off, as if narrator Avis has been seized mid-line). It's News From Nowhere by William Morris.
Morris, a lifelong champion of socialist revolution and vernacular crafts revival, wrote the book in 1890 but set it two hundred years into the future, in 2102. In this world, hidden machines cope with the heavy chores, allowing man to live in a post-money, post-property rural utopia of communistic brotherliness where 'from each according to his ability and to each according to his need' has become the rule. It's a bit like a more idealistic version of Woody Allen's 'Sleeper'. Instead of Alvy Singer, we have William Guest as the man from the past, questioning the calm and happy socialist utopians as curiously as they question him about the sad old, bad old 19th century. But Morris saves his most heartfelt lines for a wise rustic called Old Hammond:
'It is true that a man no more needs an elaborate system of government, with its army, navy, and police, to force him to give way to the will of the majority of his equals, than he wants a similar machinery to make him understand that his head and a stone wall cannot occupy the same space at the same moment.
'The wares which we make are made because they are needed: men make for their neighbours' use as if they were making for themselves, not for a vague market of which they know nothing, and over which they have no control: as there is no buying and selling, it would be mere insanity to make goods on the chance of their being wanted; for there is no longer any one who can be compelled to buy them. So that whatever is made is good, and thoroughly fit for its purpose. Nothing can be made except for genuine use; therefore no inferior goods are made. Moreover, as aforesaid, we have now found out what we want; and as we are not driven to make a vast quantity of useless things, we have time and resources enough to consider our pleasure in making them. All work which would be irksome to do by hand is done by immensely improved machinery; and in all work which it is a pleasure to do by hand machinery is done without. There is no difficulty in finding work which suits the special turn of mind for everybody; so that no man is sacrificed to the wants of another.'
A similar passage occurs in 'The Iron Heel'. Ernest is addressing a meeting of small businessmen. Although he agrees with their desire to break the monopolies of the big corporations which are putting them out of business, he compares it to the Luddites who tried in vain to smash the looms that would put them out of work. That, says Ernest, was a mistake:
'I'll show you another way!' he cried. 'Let us not destroy those wonderful machines that produce efficiently and cheaply. Let us control them. Let us profit by their efficiency and cheapness. Let us run them for ourselves. Let us oust the present owners of the wonderful machines, and let us own the wonderful machines ourselves. That, gentlemen, is socialism, a greater combination than the trusts, a greater economic and social combination than any that has as yet appeared on the planet. It is in line with evolution. We meet combination with greater combination. It is the winning side. Come on over with us socialists and play on the winning side.'
Many of the futuristic visions of these two books have proved prescient and true. But the winningly fervent belief in socialist utopia both authors reveal seems to have disappeared into some far-off parallel world. Such thoughts seem almost taboo to us, 'dangerously naive'. Candidates of the left and right frame their rhetoric in very similar neo-liberal terms. Ideologically, the boot is now very much on the iron heel. To deny that would be the kind of lie maybe only artists are allowed to tell. But, you know, these are exactly the conditions in which a possible world -- a world of incredible inversions, differences, taboos, hopes -- begins to take shape. The darkest moment is just before dawn, when mushrooms and fictions come and grow.
Pondering this, I remembered something I heard Brian Eno say on TV once. It was on The Tube back in the early 80s. Eno was only on for a couple of minutes, and he could have used his screentime just to tell us he had a new record out while Jools Holland reminded us what interesting people Eno had worked with and what a nice guy he was. Instead, Eno used his two minutes to unleash an idea which would change the way I think forever. He did it with a twinkle in his eye and a kind of nervous laugh, as if his idea were slightly naughty. The exchange, as I recall it, went like this:
Holland: Your recent releases have been coming out under the title Possible Worlds. What is a 'possible world'?
Eno: Well, I've always thought that art is a lie, an interesting lie. And I'll sort of listen to the 'lie' and try to imagine the world which makes that lie true... what that world must be like, and what would have to happen for us to get from this world to that one.
I think they then went on to discuss how art can be different things for different people, at which point Eno produced a photograph of a little dog from his breast pocket and said that, for him, that was art. Which was cute, but I was still reeling, dizzy with the idea of those possible worlds that we build around lies and tweak until the lies are true, and how comparing those parallel worlds with our own might give us the answer to so many questions.
Now, I'm sure this idea comes from Einstein, or Systems Theory, or Cage or somewhere. Maybe it pops into pop direct from Popper. I don't care whether Eno 'invented' it, just like I don't really care who made Ambient music first. What impresses me is that someone went beyond the call of duty and used TV so well. Someone said something in a banal formatted record puff which re-structured the way I thought forever. It doesn't happen so often.
Possible worlds and parallel worlds, the lies that tell the truth, are a constant in art. And they're especially topical now, with the US electorate on the verge of choosing between two different Americas which are, for the moment, fictions. They're also topical because Philip Roth, in his new novel 'The Plot Against America', imagines in detail what America might have become had aviator Charles Lindbergh swept to power and led the country towards fascism and appeasement in the 1930s.
I haven't read the new Roth, but I've been reading two other novels that make parallel worlds central to their plots. You can get them both free online. One is Jack London's The Iron Heel, a tale of revolution and counter-revolution set in an imaginary America shortly before 1920.
The hero of 'The Iron Heel' is a dashing socialist firebrand called Ernest Everhard. Apparently the phallic pun is entirely intentional; female narrator Avis tells us: '...there was never such a lover as he. No girl could live in a university town till she was twenty-four and not have love experiences. I had been made love to by beardless sophomores and gray professors, and by the athletes and the football giants. But not one of them made love to me as Ernest did. His arms were around me before I knew. His lips were on mine before I could protest or resist. Before his earnestness conventional maiden dignity was ridiculous. He swept me off my feet by the splendid invincible rush of him.'
This highly flammable, highly erectile socialist alpha male finds himself in an America ripped asunder:
'The situation was bitter and bloody. In many places, scattered over the country, slave revolts and massacres had occurred. The roll of the martyrs increased mightily. Countless executions took place everywhere. The mountains and waste regions were filled with outlaws and refugees who were being hunted down mercilessly. Our own refuges were packed with comrades who had prices on their heads. Through information furnished by its spies, scores of our refuges were raided by the soldiers of the Iron Heel. Many of the comrades were disheartened, and they retaliated with terroristic tactics. The set-back to their hopes made them despairing and desperate. Many terrorist organizations unaffiliated with us sprang into existence and caused us much trouble. These misguided people sacrificed their own lives wantonly, very often made our own plans go astray, and retarded our organization.'
Yes, almost a hundred years ago Jack London wrote a novel set in a parallel world America which seems to share a lot with the real (yet no less fictional) America of today. Sure, London's story hobbles along on feet of clay, hamstrung by simplistic binaries and bodice-ripping cliches, but so does the master narrative the neo-cons have spun for us. We have the terrorism, and we have the 'iron heel'. All that's lacking is the revolutionary socialism.
The other text I've been reading is more to my taste. It's utopian rather than dystopian (for I don't think I'm giving too much away when I say that the Heel ultimately defeats Ernest Everhard and the book ends with a defiant sentence broken off, as if narrator Avis has been seized mid-line). It's News From Nowhere by William Morris.
Morris, a lifelong champion of socialist revolution and vernacular crafts revival, wrote the book in 1890 but set it two hundred years into the future, in 2102. In this world, hidden machines cope with the heavy chores, allowing man to live in a post-money, post-property rural utopia of communistic brotherliness where 'from each according to his ability and to each according to his need' has become the rule. It's a bit like a more idealistic version of Woody Allen's 'Sleeper'. Instead of Alvy Singer, we have William Guest as the man from the past, questioning the calm and happy socialist utopians as curiously as they question him about the sad old, bad old 19th century. But Morris saves his most heartfelt lines for a wise rustic called Old Hammond:
'It is true that a man no more needs an elaborate system of government, with its army, navy, and police, to force him to give way to the will of the majority of his equals, than he wants a similar machinery to make him understand that his head and a stone wall cannot occupy the same space at the same moment.
'The wares which we make are made because they are needed: men make for their neighbours' use as if they were making for themselves, not for a vague market of which they know nothing, and over which they have no control: as there is no buying and selling, it would be mere insanity to make goods on the chance of their being wanted; for there is no longer any one who can be compelled to buy them. So that whatever is made is good, and thoroughly fit for its purpose. Nothing can be made except for genuine use; therefore no inferior goods are made. Moreover, as aforesaid, we have now found out what we want; and as we are not driven to make a vast quantity of useless things, we have time and resources enough to consider our pleasure in making them. All work which would be irksome to do by hand is done by immensely improved machinery; and in all work which it is a pleasure to do by hand machinery is done without. There is no difficulty in finding work which suits the special turn of mind for everybody; so that no man is sacrificed to the wants of another.'
A similar passage occurs in 'The Iron Heel'. Ernest is addressing a meeting of small businessmen. Although he agrees with their desire to break the monopolies of the big corporations which are putting them out of business, he compares it to the Luddites who tried in vain to smash the looms that would put them out of work. That, says Ernest, was a mistake:
'I'll show you another way!' he cried. 'Let us not destroy those wonderful machines that produce efficiently and cheaply. Let us control them. Let us profit by their efficiency and cheapness. Let us run them for ourselves. Let us oust the present owners of the wonderful machines, and let us own the wonderful machines ourselves. That, gentlemen, is socialism, a greater combination than the trusts, a greater economic and social combination than any that has as yet appeared on the planet. It is in line with evolution. We meet combination with greater combination. It is the winning side. Come on over with us socialists and play on the winning side.'
Many of the futuristic visions of these two books have proved prescient and true. But the winningly fervent belief in socialist utopia both authors reveal seems to have disappeared into some far-off parallel world. Such thoughts seem almost taboo to us, 'dangerously naive'. Candidates of the left and right frame their rhetoric in very similar neo-liberal terms. Ideologically, the boot is now very much on the iron heel. To deny that would be the kind of lie maybe only artists are allowed to tell. But, you know, these are exactly the conditions in which a possible world -- a world of incredible inversions, differences, taboos, hopes -- begins to take shape. The darkest moment is just before dawn, when mushrooms and fictions come and grow.
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New Realities
Date: 2004-10-17 10:48 am (UTC)"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
Re: New Realities
Date: 2004-10-17 01:01 pm (UTC)Re: New Realities
Date: 2004-10-17 07:34 pm (UTC)"It's considered unfashionably shrill to refer to the Bush administration as fascistic, but this is pretty clearly the language of totalitarianism. Indeed, in her seminal 1951 book "The Origins of Totalitarianism," Hannah Arendt wrote, "Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it."
Why does reality transformed by politicians scare me so much while reality transformed by artists is essential to keeping me alive? Actually, it's pretty obvious why.