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This nOde
last updated December 30th, 2006 and
is permanently morphing...
(5 Caban (Earth) / 10 K'ank'in - 57/260 -
12.19.13.16.17)
film _Waking Life_ (avi parts 1
& 2)(360megs
total)/(vhs/ntsc)directed
by Richard Linklater
"My narrative aspirations are to
follow the thought process
or the way time
unfolds, or I'm thinking about how the brain works or how you make connections--the
constructive aspect of our memories
and how we construct the world visually through our brains.
Thinking about it, it seems like you just kinda imagine
the story, or you're hitching ideas onto a narrative. I think [the two films]
are both primarily about ideas, but they're very different in tone. For one, _Slacker_is
very much in a time structure and a place. _Waking Life_ is probably another reality
altogether, so there's no real time or space structure to it. Yet it's a similar
idea. It's a narrative that really hitched to a bunch of ideas."
"It was that contradicting
notion of being awake in your dreams
that intrigued me. Y'know, like once you're at that level, then it's sort
of like being aware you're watching a film. See, it was really my feeling
that dream and film are so similar that to make [one] about [the other]
is like a redundancy that sort of cancels out the whole thing. People don't
want to go see a movie about dreams. I don't. To me, what happens in _Waking
Life_ isn't about dreams; it's another experience. It's about being awake
and in another state of reality."
[...]
"I like the idea of the aesthetics
of the idea at the moment
you're hearing it. Like, not that you're disagreeing with it necessarily,
it's just to be sort of taken in and processed. Obviously, some are gonna resonate;
others, y'know--people are going to take it differently. It's all about
your own personal, highly subjective
experience. I don't think it would ever be the same for two people. "
[...]
"I think I'm more of an observer
in my own head. Y'know, I'm not saying that it's a good quality at all,
but I just kinda wish I had more of an immediacy
sometimes. I'm always questioning. "
(A boat car drives up in front of the airport)
[...]
Not a problem. Anchors
away. So what do you think of my little vessel? She's what we call seeworthy,
s-e-e, see with your eyes. I feel like my transport should be an extension
of my personality. Voila. And this, this is like my little window to the
world and every minute's a different show. Now I may not understand it,
I may not even necessarily agree with it, but I'll tell you what, I accept
it and just sort of glide along. You want to keep things on an even keel
I guess is what I'm saying. You want to go with the flow.
The sea refuses no river. The idea is to remain in a state of constant
departure while always arriving. Saves on introductions and goodbyes. The
ride does not require an explanation, just occupants. That's where you
guys come in. It's like you come onto this planet with a crayon box. Now
you may get the 8-pack,
you may get the 16-pack, but it's all in what you do with the crayons,
the colors that you're given. And don't worry about drawing within the
lines, or coloring outside the lines. I say, color outside the lines. You
know what I mean? Color right off the page. Don't box me in! We're in motion
to the ocean. We are not landlocked, I'll tell you that. So where do you
want out?
[...]
(A blonde woman is talking in her office)
Creation seems to come
out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration,
and this is where I think language
came from. It came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have
some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it
was just simple survival. Like the word water, we came up with a sound
for that, or saber tooth tiger right behind you, we came up with a sound
for that. But when it gets really interesting is when we use that same
system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things
that we're experiencing. What is frustration? Or what is anger? Or love?
When I say love, the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other
person's ear, travels through this byzantine conduit in their brain, through
their memories
of love, or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say
yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand, because words
are inert, they're just symbols, they're dead, you know? And so much of
our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive
cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know when we communicate
with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're
understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And
that feeling might be transient,
but I think it's what we live for.
[...]
(A very intense
man is talking in his office, gesturing wildly)
 |
If we're looking at the
highlights of human development, you have to look at the evolution
of the organism, and then at the development of its interaction with the
environment. Evolution of the organism begins with the evolution of life,
proceeds through the hominid, coming to the evolution of mankind: Neanderthal
and Cro-magnon man. Now interestingly, what you're looking at here are
three strains: biological, anthropological -- development of the cities
-- and culture, which is human expression.
Now what you've seen here is
the evolution of populations, not so much the evolution of individuals. And
in addition, if you look at the time
scales that are involved here, two billion years for life, six million years
for the hominid, 100,000 years for mankind as we know it, you're beginning to
see the telescopic nature of the evolutionary timeline. And then when you get
to agriculture, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution,
you're looking at 10,0000 years, 400 years, 150 years, and you're seeing a further
telescoping of this evolutionary time. What that means is that as we go through
the new evolution, it's going to telescope to the point we should be able to
manifest it within our lifetime, within a generation.
The new evolution stems
from information.
And it stems from two types of information, digital
and analog. The digital is artificial
intelligence, the analog results from molecular biology, the cloning
of the organism, and you knit the two together with neurobiology. Before,
on the old evolutionary paradigm, one would die and the other would grow
and dominate. But under the new paradigm, they would exist as a mutually
supportive, non-competitive grouping, independent from the external.
And what's interesting here is
that evolution now becomes an individually centered process
emanating from the needs and desires of the individual, and not an external
process, a passive process, where the individual is just at the whim of the
collective. So you produce a neo-human, okay, with a new individuality, a new
consciousness. But that's only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle,
because as the next cycle proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence.
As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles upon ability, the speed
changes. Until what? Until we reach a crescendo. In a way, it could almost be imagined
as an almost instantaneous fulfillment of human and neo-human potential. It
could be something totally different. It could be the amplification of the individual,
the multiplication of individual existences. Parallel existences. Now with the
individual no longer restricted by time and space.
 |
 |
And the manifestations
of this neo-human type evolution, the manifestations could be dramatically
counter-intuitive. That's the interesting part. The old evolution is cold,
it's sterile, it's efficient, and its manifestations are those of social
adaptation: we're talking about parasitism, dominance, morality, war, predation.
These will be subject to de-emphasis. These will be subject to de-evolution.
The new evolutionary paradigm will give us the human traits of truth,
of loyalty, of justice, of freedom. These will be the manifestations of
the new evolution. And that is what we would hope to see. Yes, that would
be nice.
[...]
(Main character walking down the street with a man who is holding a can of gasoline).
Self-destructive man feels
completely alienated,
utterly alone. He's an outsider
to the human community. He thinks to himself, "I must be insane." What
he fails to realize is that society has, just as he does, a vested interest
in considerable losses, in catastrophes. These wars, famines, floods and
quakes meet well defined needs. Man wants chaos.
In fact, he's got to have it. Depressions, strife, riots, murder, all this
dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state created
out of death and destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in it. Sure,
the media tries to put a sad face on these things, painting them up as
great human tragedies, but we all know the function of the media has never
been to eliminate the evils of the world. No! Their job is to persuade
us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that
be want us to be passive observers. You got a match? And they haven't given
us any other options outside the occasional purely symbolic participatory
act of voting. You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left?
I feel the time has come to project my own inadequacies and dissatisfactions
into the socio-political and scientific schemes. Let my own lack of a voice
be heard.
 |
(He pours gasoline all over himself and lights himself on fire.)
[...]
(A couple are in bed talking -- Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke)
I keep thinking about something you said.
Something I said?
Yeah. About how you often feel like you're observing your life from the perspective of an old woman about to die. Remember that?
Yeah. I still feel that
way sometimes. Like I'm looking back on my life, and my waking life is
her memories.
Exactly. I heard that Tim
Leary said as he was dying that he was looking forward to the moment
when his body was dead but his brain was still alive. You know they say
that there's still six to twelve minutes of brain
activity after everything else is shutdown. And one second of dream
consciousness, well, that's infinitely
longer than a waking second, you know what I'm saying?
Oh yeah, definitely. For example I wake up and it is 10:12, and then I go back to sleep and have those long, intricate, beautiful dreams that seem to last for hours, and then I wake up and it's 10:13.
Yeah, exactly. So in 6-12 minutes of brain activity, that could be your whole life. I mean, you are that woman looking back over everything.
Okay. So what if I am. Then what would you be in all that?
Whatever I am right now.
I mean, maybe I only exist in your mind, but I'm still just as real
as anything else.
Yeah. I've been thinking also about something you said.
What's that?
Just about reincarnation and where all the new souls come from over time. Everybody always says they are the reincarnation of Cleopatra or Alexander the Great. I always want to tell them they were probably some dumbfuck like everybody else. I mean, it's impossible. Think about it. The world population has doubled in the past 40 years, right? So if you really believe in that ego thing of one eternal soul, then you have only 50% chance of your soul being over 40, and for it to be over 150 years old, then it's only one out of six.
Right, so what are you saying? That reincarnation doesn't exist, or that we're all young souls, or half of us are first round humans?
No, no, what I'm trying
to say is that somehow I believe reincarnation is just a poetic expression
of what collective
memory really is. There was this article by this bio-chemist I read
not long ago, and he was talking about how when a member of our species
is born, it has a billion years of memory to draw on. And this is where
we inherit our instincts.
I like that. It's like
there's this whole telepathic
thing going on that we're all a part of, whether we're conscious of it
or not. That would explain why there are all these seemingly spontaneous
worldwide innovative leaps in science and the arts, you know, like
the same results popping up everywhere independent of each other. Some
guy on a computer figures something out, and then almost simultaneously
a bunch of other people all over the world figure out the same thing. They
did this study where they isolated a group of people over time, you know,
and monitored their abilities at crossword puzzles
in relation to the general population, and they secretly gave them a day-old
crossword, one that had already been answered by thousands of other people,
and their scores went up dramatically. Like 20%. So it's like once the
answers are out there, people can pick up on them. Like we're all telepathically
sharing our experiences.
[...]
(Philosopher professor talking in his office)
 |
In a way, in our contemporary
world view, it's easy to think that science has come to take the place
of god. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take
the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time,
since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustin, St. Thomas Aquinas, these
guys all worried about how we can be free if god already knows in advance
everything we're going to do. Nowadays, we know that the world operates
according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the
behavior of every object in the world. These laws, because they are so trustworthy,
they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself.
We're just physical systems too, right? We're just complex arrangements
of carbon molecules. We're mostly water.
And our behavior isn't going to be an exception to these basic physical
laws. So it starts to look like whether it's god setting things up in advance,
and knowing everything you're going to do, or whether it's these basic
physical laws governing everything, there's not a lot of room left for
freedom.
So you might try to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will, and say, oh well, it's just an historical anecdote, it's sophomoric, it's a question with no answer, just forget about it. But the question keeps staring you in the face. Think about individuality for example. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired and respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back. And we don't really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade.
Think about how it happens.
There's some electrical
activity in your brain, your neurons fire, they send a signal down into
your nervous
system, it passes along down into your muscle fibers, they twitch,
you might reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your
part, but every part of that process
is actually governed by physical laws, chemical laws, electrical laws,
and so on.
So now it starts to look
like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of
human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic
particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think
we're special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that
now comes under threat. That's really challenged by this picture.
So you might be saying,
well, wait a minute. What about quantum
mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it's
not really like that. It's really a probabilistic theory. There's room.
It's loose. It's not deterministic. And that's going to enable us to understand
free will. But if you look at the detail, it's not really going to help
because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and
their behavior is apparently a bit random, they sort of swerve, their behavior
is absurd
in the sense that its unpredictable, and we can't understand it based on
anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue according
to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I
mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random
swerving in a chaotic
system? That starts to seem like it's worse. I'd rather be a gear
in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving.
So we can't just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails. Not just bodies, but persons. That means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality.
[...]
(Guy with a bullhorn is driving through the city streets yelling)
 |
You can't fight city hall.
Death and taxes. Don't talk about politics or religion. This is all the
equivalent of enemy propaganda rolling across the picket line. Lay down
GI, lay down GI. We saw it all through the 20th century. And now in the
21st century, it's time to stand up and realize that we should not allow
ourselves to be crammed into this rat maze.
We should not submit to dehumanization. I don't know about you, but I'm
concerned about what's happening in this world. I'm concerned with the
structure. I'm concerned with the systems of control, those that control
my life and those that seek to control it even more. I want freedom. That's
what I want. And that's what you should want. It's up to each and every
one of us to turn loose and show them the greed, the hatred, the envy,
and yes, the insecurities, because that's the central mode of control.
Make us feel pathetic, small, so we'll willingly give up our sovereignty,
our liberty, our destiny. We have got to realize that we're being conditioned
on a mass scale. Start
challenging this corporate slave state. The 21st century is going to
be a new century. Not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and
issues of no significance, of classism, of sadism, and all the rest of
the modes of control. It's going to be the age of human kind standing up
for something pure and something right. What a bunch of garbage: liberal,
democrats, conservative, republican, it's all there to control us, it's
two sides of the same coin. Two management teams bidding for control, the
CEO job of Slavery, Incorporated! The truth
is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of lies. I'm
sick of it! And I'm not going to take a bite of it. Do you got me? Our
existence is not futile. We're going to win this thing. Humankind is too,
good. We're not a bunch of underachievers. We're going to stand up, and
we're going to be human beings. We're going to get fired up about the real
things, the things that matter, creativity and the dynamic human spirit
that refuses to submit. Well that's it. That's all I got to say.
[...]
(Old man sitting at a table.)
The quest is to be liberated from the negative, which is really our own will to nothingness. And once having said yes to the instant, the affirmation is contagious. It bursts into a chain of affirmations that knows no limit. To say yes to one instant is to say yes to all of existence.
[...]
(Indian Krishnamurti type fellow)
The main character is
what I call the mind, its mastery, it's capacity to represent. So obviously,
attempts have been made to contain those experiences of jumping off the edge
of the limit, where the mind is vulnerable. But I think we are in a very
significant moment
in history. Those moments of what I call liminal, limit, frontier, x-zone
experiences are actually now becoming the norm. These multiplicities and
distinctions and differences, that have given great difficulty to the old
mind, are actually slowly entering into their very essence. Tasting and
feeling their uniqueness, one might make a breakthrough to that common
something that holds them together. And so the main character is to this
new mind greater greater mind, a mind that yet is to be. And obviously,
when we enter into that mode, you can see a radical subjectivity,
a radical attunement to individuality, to uniqueness, to that which the
mind opens itself to a vast objectivity. So the story is the story of the
cosmos now. The moment is not just a passing empty nothing. And yet, this
is the way in which these secret passages happen. Yes, it's empty with
such fullness. The great moment, the great life of the universe, is pulsating
in it, and each one, each object, each place, each act leaves a mark. And
that story is singular. But in fact, it's story after story.
[...]
(Two women are having lunch)
Time
just dissolves.
It's like these particles are swirling away. Either I'm living fast, or
time is, but never both simultaneously.
It's such a strange paradox. I mean, while technically I'm closer to the end of my life than I've ever been, I actually feel more than ever that I have all the time in the world. When I was younger, there was a desperation, a desire for certainty, like there was an end to the path and I had to get there.
I know what you mean, because I can remember thinking, oh, someday, like in my mid-thirties maybe, everything's going to just somehow gel and settle, just end. It was like there was this plateau and it was waiting for me, and I was climbing up it and when I got to the top, all growth and change would stop. Even exhilaration. That hasn't happened like that, thank goodness. I think that what we don't take into account when we're young is our endless curiosity. That's what's so great about being human.
Yeah. Do you know that thing Benedict Anderson says about identity?
No.
Well, he's talking about
like say a baby picture. So you pick up this picture, this two-dimensional
image, and you say, "that's me." Well, to connect this baby and this weird
little image with yourself living and breathing in the present, you have
to make up a story. Like this was me when I was a year old, and then later
I had long hair, and then we moved to Riverdale, and now, here I am. So
it takes a story that's actually a fiction to make you and the baby in
the picture identical, to create your identity.
And the funny thing is our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. We've already become completely different people several times over. And yet, we always remain quintessentially ourselves.
[...]
(There's a serious in a studio talking into a microphone. The words "NOISE AND SILENCE" appear on the screen)
Our critique began as
all critiques begin. With doubt. Doubt became our narrative. Ours was a
quest for a new story, our own. And we grasped toward this new history
driven by the suspicion that ordinary language
couldn't tell it. Our past appeared frozen in the distance and our every
gesture and accent signified the negation of the old world and the reach
for a new one. The way we lived created a new situation, one of exuberance
and friendship, that of a subversive micro-society, in the heart of a society
which ignored it. Art was not the goal but the occasion and the method
for locating our specific rhythm and buried possibilities of our time.
And discovering that true communication was what it was about, or at least
the quest for such a communication, the adventure of finding it and losing
it, we the unappeased, the unaccepting, continued looking, filling in the
silences with our own wishes, fears and fantasies. Driven forward by the
fact that no matter how empty the world seemed, no matter how degraded
and used up the world appeared to us, we knew that anything was still possible,
and given the right circumstances, a new world was just as likely as an
old one.
("TO BEGIN AGAIN FROM THE BEGINNING" appears on the screen.)
[...]
(A girl and a boy are sitting
in a library)
What are you writing?
A novel.
What's the story?
There's no story. It's just people, gestures, moments, bits of rapture, fleeting emotions. In short, the greatest story ever told.
Are you in the story?
I don't think so. But then, I'm kind of reading it and then writing it.
[...]
(Main character is changing the channels on TV)
For I do not await the
future anticipating salvation, absolution, not even enlightenment through process.
I subscribe to the premise that this flawed perfection is sufficient and
complete in every single ineffable moment.
The venerable tradition
of sorcerers, shamans
and other visionaries who have developed and perfected the art of dream
travel, the so-called lucid dream
state where by consciously controlling your dreams, you're able to discover
things beyond your capacity to apprehend in your waking state.
A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage from which to view this experience. And where most consider their individual relationship to the universe, I contemplate relationships of my various selves to one another.
While most people with mobility problems are having trouble just getting around, at age 92 Joy Cullison's out seeing the world.
[...]
(Main character sees a friend sitting in a chair.)
Hi, how's it going?
You know, they say that
dreams are real only as long as they last, but couldn't you say the same
thing about life? See, there's a lot of us that are out there mapping the
mind-body relationships of dreams, we're called "_____ nauts." We're the
explorers of the dream world. Really, it's just about the two opposing
states of consciousness which don't really oppose at all. See, in the waking
world, the neural system inhibits the activation of the vividness of memories.
And this makes evolutionary sense. You'd be maladapted for the perceptual
image of a predator if you mistook it for the memory of one, and vice-versa.
If the memory of a predator conjured up a perceptual image, we would be
running off to hide every time we had a scary thought. So you have these serotonic
neurons that inhibit hallucinations and they themselves are inhibited during
REM sleep. See, this allows dreams to appear real, while preventing competition
from other perceptual processes. This is why dreams are mistaken for reality.
To the functional system of neural activity that creates our world, there
is no difference between dreaming a perception
and action, and actually the waking perception and action.
[...]
(Main character is walking along the railroad tracks, beside a train. A guy jumps out of the train with a "Free Radio" t-shirt on)
Hey. You a dreamer?
Yeah.
I haven't seen too many
around lately. Things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming
is dead, that no one does it anymore. But it's not dead, it's just been
forgotten. Removed from our language.
Nobody teaches it so no one knows it exists. The dreamer has been banished
to obscurity. Well, I'm trying to change all that now, and I hope you are
too. By dreaming every day. Dreaming with our hands and dreaming with our
minds. Our planet is facing the greatest problems it's ever faced, so whatever
you do, don't be bored. This is absolutely the most exciting time
we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting.
[...]
(Main character is walking with a thin looking boy, who gradually turns into a spaceman)
A thousand years is but
an instant. There is nothing new, nothing different. Same pattern over
and over. The same clouds, same music, the same as I felt an hour or an
eternity ago. There´s nothing here for me now, nothing at all.
Now I remember, this happened to me before, this is why I left. You
have begun to find your answers. Although it will seem difficult the rewards
will be great. Exercise your human mind as fully as possible knowing
it is only an exercise. Build beautiful artifacts, solve problems, explore
the secrets of the physical universe, savor the input from all the senses,
feel the joy and sorrow, the laughter, the empathy, compassion, and tuck
the emotional memory
in your travel bag. I remember where I came from, and how I became
human, and why I hung around - and now my final departure schedule. This
way out. Escaping velocity. Not just eternity, but infinity.
[...]
(Main is character coming out of a subway and bumps into a girl.)
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
Hey, could we do that
again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant, you know.
I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennaes
bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really
human required of us. Stop, go, walk here, drive there, all action basically
for survival, all communications simply to keep this ant colony buzzing
along in an efficient polite manner. Here's your change. Paper or plastic?
Credit or debit? Want ketchup
with that? I don't want a straw, I want real human moments.
I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up.
I don't want to be an ant, you know.
Yeah, I know. I don't
want to be an ant either. Ha ha. Thanks for kind of jostling me there.
I've been kind of on zombie auto-pilot lately, I don't feel like an ant
in my head, but I guess I probably look like one. It's like D.H.
Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road, and instead of
just passing and glancing away, they decide to accept what he calls the
confrontation between their souls. It's like freeing the reckless
gods within us all.
Well, then, it's like we have met.
(They shake hands)
[...]
Philip
K. Dickquantum
mechanicslighting
beyond your controlshaman
- lucid dreamingSeance_
MP3
by I Am Spoonbender off of _Sender/Receiver on Gold Standard (1998)604 track _Acid For Nothing_ MP3 (192k) by 1200 Mics off of _Acid For Nothing/Running Out Of Time (Remix)_ split 12" by 1200 Mics & Melicia on Tipworld #032 (2003)dream'"; "seems like everyone's sleepwalking through their waking state or wakewalking through their dreams". by Dire Straits (1985)
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