The Ocean, Techne, The Presenting of Consciousness, the problem of Death (13), and the Gathering of Logos

This is more of a purist look at the ocean. I have hurried to this image: the 14th image, because superstitiously I did not want to leave this web-log on the 13th image. 13 is the number of death in the Tarot, among other things. 14 has its difficulties, two sevens, and so on, but seems an even number. 13 in Christian iconography is the number of betrayal: Judas the betrayer. It is no small coincidence that 13 is also the number of "La Eme," the Mexican mafia, who's name, like the name of the Devil ("speak of the devil") in ancient times could not be uttered without fear of drawing forth its terrible literal presence.


In point of fact, between the devil and the deep blue sea (at least as blue as the sea pictured here), one could say that the most ancient form of magic is the simple connection of voice and manifestation: speaking of the devil still sends superstitious shivers down my own spine in the age of technological enlightenment.


Still, which is the thirteenth web-log? Could it come before or after the literally placed thirteenth web log? Is such a web log radically futural? Could it be that numerical value has little, if anything, to do with the actual thirteenth web log?


This image, like the previous two deals with water: there are fragments of shoreline, but essentially we have a kind of Rothko blue painting:

Image courtesy of another web log (!): http://nathanabels.blogspot.com/2008/01/blue-monday.html (I will disavow any direct relation to pseudo-pop-psychological speculations on the blueness of monday, except I believe that "The Beach" was the "B-side" of the New Order single "Blue Monday." I think that the image at top was actually taken on a Tuesday: its folder bears the date 5/6/2008

Rothko's mondays or paintings, or whatever you will, still seem to be too saturated, possibly with his alcohol or depression, or literalism (suicide is taking the death instinct literally: Rothko, dead at age 66 on February 25, 1979, from an overdose of antidepressants, slit wrists in the studio sink, what a fucking pity, what a horrible pity!). I really have always liked this form of abstract art, contrary to friends who cannot fathom why I would take an interest.

My own image of the ocean, in contrast to Rothko's painting, if you can call it "mine"-- since it is a temporary framing of a natural event, which itself charges no fee for the electrons reflected and diffused from the various surfaces to be transformed into an electronic matrix.... My own image is a single sheet of blue: not a blue dividing blue from blue: there is just enough of the sky left to mark a division of heaven and earth: in a sense the Rothko painting presents a balance: the waters of the unconscious are balanced and clearly demarcated from the image at the top. My own blue ocean photograph carries a single blue abstract intensity of the ocean, the fragments of stones: black clear cardiographs of rocks, the curl of a wave, the sun at this morning hour is presented in reflection, or perhaps diffused through clouds on the wave....

I suddenly have a fantasy about an alien civilization that essentially is blind coming to visit us. They would look at our culture, understand electricity and so forth. But the ability to understand anything of our civilization takes this photo-electric phenomenon called light sensitive eyes. We should include that all instrumentation, and mediation should include the eye apparatus: and instrumentation such as computers relies on this heavily at this time: there may be a future where it will not have to rely so heavily on our "far seeing" capacity of ocularization of consciousness/techne:

(The beautiful Roman Oculus: The Pantheon used the retina of light to express consciousness reaching in: casting the true light on the nodding numen of the statues...) Source: http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320Hist&Civ/slides/05space/oculus.jpg

It follows that we have the following drift of the ocean of consciousness: or, conversely, the casting of light on the following complexes:

1. The presenting of the ocean itself, flat blue, moving to horizon


2. The initial digression: number 13, the number of betrayal.


3. The issue of "speaking of the devil" literal presenting: probably the technological question in a nutshell.


4. The issue of the power of speech in magic as the presenting of the object: the essence of technological attainment: invocation = manifestation.


5. Instantaneous gratification of libidinal drives (Freud).


6. However: the number 13: Is betrayal: the "speaking of the devil" the very essence of technology: some kind of demon or djinn appears who's power is appalling: who clearly means to kill the summoner.


7. Jung's telling of the story of the wood cutter (Holzfeller!) who finds the Spiritus Mercurius in a bottle under a tree: burried there for 500 years or so: the woodcutter listens to the little black frog in the bottle who cries in a tiny voice: "Let me out! I will give you your reward!" When the Holzfeller actually lets the spirit out of the bottle: it grows to an enormous size and threatens to devour the man, saying, "This is your reward!" the man however says "If you are so smart there is no way you could have come from or could return to that bottle, prove it to me!" Whereupon the spirit actually does return to the bottle, the Holzfeller returns the cork and then bargains for a better deal. (Smart Holzfeller!)


8. The exhaustion of the digression into number, representing and presenting


9. Rothko (who at least has an interesting name) and abstract art: which never "speaks of the devil"--- at best it can only speak of itself: "I see brush strokes and blue paint on a canvas in squares..." and so on...


10. further digression into the topic (or non-topic of "blue monday" presented in another web log as the frame for the Rothko painting: in point of fact because Rothko was pretty depressed Blue-ness itself would be appropriate to speak of him in this manner.)


11. Final Digression into the symbolism of the eye: the oculus: as counterpoint to the image of the ocean: the light of the eye penetrates into the pantheon of shapes: the ocean receives:


12. A pure abstract modern work of art: a representation of an ocean that is not an ocean: the fine granulation of rocks and stones: the intensity of the blooming blueness that does not make this representation but act of music, dancing, energetic brilliance, that is all:


13. Neither the penetration of the oculus, technology nor the passivity of the ocean as ocean, but some substance, perhaps pure horizon, that stretches out with potentiality in between


14. All of us know that we live and work on a sphere, and that however illimitable we see the horizon in our abstract work the sphere works to finitize the ammount of matter and resources we have: once again curvature has to do with sein-zum-tode.


15. The relation between the turning points: ocean to life, life to consciousness, consciousness to self consciousness, self-consciousness back to ocean once again... and so on: self-consciousness to consciousness, consciousness to life.


16. The techne of the pantheon is the gathering of the light into a light beam. The techne of a photograph is the gathering of a landscape into and through itself back to consciousness: the techne is in the lens: since we cannot point to the earlier artifice of the temple: we point to the fact that representation has become so fine that it can now turn to a more subtle contemplation of "nature" as presented through the "ocean" of this photograph: the condition of a space apparently devoid of techne (but through the techne of the photograph!), as opposed to the Pantheon which could only "naturally" present techne of the psychological complexes gathered under one roof, under one all seeing eye of the sun.


17. And so on.


18. And yet remains the question of 13 in the Freudian sense of Thanatos in "Civilization and its Discontents": the silent aspect of death, if life is boisterous and noisy enough: the retreat of Being in Heidegger's language: an absenting in the midst of the boisterous technological presenting of all that is present. A-ides, the unseen and, for the Greeks, unspeakable one.