Log24

Sympathy for Baird Bryant

“Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game”

– The Rolling Stones

“‘Don’t you want to
hear him call your name
when you’re standing
at the pearly gates?’
I told the Preacher ‘Yes, I do,
but I hope he don’t call today.’”

— Kenny Chesney, song at the CMA Awards on Wednesday, November 12, quoted here at 9:00 AM on Thursday, Novermber 13

Related material:

LA Times obituary for the experienced bohemian writer and filmmaker Baird Bryant, who died at 80 on Thursday, November 13. Bryant filmed parts of “Easy Rider” in 1968 and of the Altamont concert in 1969. He was apparently a member of the Harvard College Class of 1950.

A more complete account of Bryant’s life

Thirty references to the Devil in a book by Bryant

Solace With Interruptions

(Log24 entries for November 12, 13, and 14 — the day before Bryant’s death, the day of his death, and the day after)

Quantum of Solace

Lottery Numbers
for November 11, 2008:

PA midday 007, evening 628
NY midday 153, evening 069

Experienced readers of this journal will have little difficulty interpreting these results, except for 153. For that enigmatic number, see Object Lesson.

Instance

Log24, Feb. 25, 2004:

From a review by Adam White Scoville of Iain Pears’s novel titled An Instance of the Fingerpost:

“Perhaps we are meant to see the story as a cubist retelling of the crucifixion, as Pilate, Barabbas, Caiaphas, and Mary Magdalene might have told it. If so, it is sublimely done so that the realization gradually and unexpectedly dawns upon the reader. The title, taken from Sir Francis Bacon, suggests that at certain times, ‘understanding stands suspended’ and in that moment of clarity (somewhat like Wordsworth’s ’spots of time,’ I think), the answer will become apparent as if a fingerpost were pointing at the way.”

Another instance:

The film “Barabbas” (1962) shown on Turner Classic Movies at 8 PM Friday, Nov. 10.

Compare and contrast–

• Barabbas emerging from prison as if from Plato’s cave, and Barabbas’s vision of Christ in blinding sunlight: “Flung into the sunlight, he stands blinking at a young man in white robes; is it merely the unaccustomed light that dazzles his eyes, or does he really see a radiance streaming from the young man’s face?” –TIME Magazine, 1962
• 1 Peter 2 on Christ as the “living stone”
• The cover of the novel Stone 588 shown in Friday’s 11:20 PM entry

The film is based on the novel by Par Lagerkvist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Lagerkvist novel may be of more enduring interest than Stone 588, but, as Friday’s lottery numbers indicate, even lesser stories have their place.

State of Grace
On this date in 1929,
Grace Kelly was born.

“…his eyes ranged the Consul’s books disposed quite neatly… on high shelves around the walls: Dogme et Ritual de la Haute Magie, Serpent and Siva Worship in Central America, there were two long shelves of this, together with the rusty leather bindings and frayed edges of the numerous cabbalistic and alchemical books, though some of them looked fairly new, like the Goetia of the Lemegaton of Solomon the King, probably they were treasures, but the rest were a heterogeneous collection….”

— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, Chapter VI

“… when Saul does reach for a slim leather-bound volume Eliza cannot help but feel that something momentous is about to happen.  There is care in the way he carries the book on the short journey from its shelf, as if it were constructed not of leather and parchment but of flesh and blood….
    “Otzar Eden HaGanuz,” Saul says.  “The Hidden Eden.  In this book, Abulafia describes the process of permutation…. Once you have mastered it, you will have mastered words, and once you have mastered words, you will be ready to receive shefa.”

— Bee Season: A Novel

“In the Inner Game, we call the Game Dhum Welur, the Mind of God.”

— The Gameplayers of Zan, a novel featuring games based on cellular automata

“Regarding cellular automata, I’m trying to think in what SF books I’ve seen them mentioned. Off the top of my head, only three come to mind:

The Gameplayers of Zan M.A. Foster
Permutation City Greg Egan
Glory Season David Brin”

— Jonathan L. Cunningham, Usenet

    “If all that ‘matters’ are fundamentally mathematical relationships, then there ceases to be any important difference between the actual and the possible. (Even if you aren’t a mathematical Platonist, you can always find some collection of particles of dust to fit any required pattern. In Permutation City this is called the ‘logic of the dust’ theory.)….
    … Paul Durham is convinced by the ‘logic of the dust’ theory mentioned above, and plans to run, just for a few minutes, a complex cellular automaton (Permutation City) started in a ‘Garden of Eden’ configuration — one which isn’t reachable from any other, and which therefore must have been the starting point of a simulation….  I didn’t understand the need for this elaborate set-up, but I guess it makes for a better story than ‘well, all possible worlds exist, and I’m going to tell you about one of them.’”

— Danny Yee, review of Permutation City

“Y’know, I never imagined the competition version involved so many tricky permutations.”

— David Brin, Glory Season, 1994 Spectra paperback, p. 408

Figure 2 “… matter is consciousness expressed in the intermixing of force and form, but so heavily structured and constrained by form that its behaviour becomes describable using the regular and simple laws of  physics. This is shown in Figure 2.     The glyph in Figure 2 is the basis for a kabbalistic diagram called the Etz Chaiim, or Tree of Life. The first principle of being or consciousness is called Keter, which means Crown. The raw energy of consciousness is called Chokhmah or Wisdom, and the capacity to give form to the energy of consciousness is called Binah, which is sometimes translated as Understanding, and sometimes as Intelligence. The outcome of the interaction of force and form, the physical world, is called Malkhut or Kingdom.  This is shown… in Figure 3.”

Figure 3 “This quaternary is a Kabbalistic representation of God-the-Knowable, in the sense that it the most abstract representation of God we are capable of comprehending….     God-the-Knowable has four aspects, two male and two female: Keter and Chokhmah are both represented as male, and Binah and Malkhut are represented as female. One of the titles of Chokhmah is Abba, which means Father, and one of the titles of Binah is Imma, which means Mother, so you can think of Chokhmah as God-the-Father, and Binah as God-the-Mother. Malkhut is the daughter, the female spirit of God-as-Matter, and it would not be wildly wrong to think of her as Mother Earth. And what of God-the-Son? Is there also a God-the-Son in Kabbalah? There is….” — A Depth of Beginning: Notes on Kabbalah by Colin Low (pdf)

See also
Cognitive Blending and the Two Cultures,
Mathematics and Narrative,
Deep Game,
and the previous entry.

Dark Zen

The above link is in memory of
Iris Chang,
who ended her life at 36
on Nov. 9, 2004.

A central concept of Zen
is satori, or “awakening.”
For a rude awakening, see
Satori at Pearl Harbor.

The Silver Table

“And suddenly all was changed.  I saw a great assembly of gigantic forms all motionless, all in deepest silence, standing forever about a little silver table and looking upon it.  And on the table there were little figures like chessmen who went to and fro doing this and that.  And I knew that each chessman was the idolum or puppet representative of some one of the great presences that stood by.  And the acts and motions of each chessman were a moving portrait, a mimicry or pantomine, which delineated the inmost nature of his giant master.  And these chessmen are men and women as they appear to themselves and to one another in this world.  And the silver table is Time.  And those who stand and watch are the immortal souls of those same men and women.  Then vertigo and terror seized me and, clutching at my Teacher, I said, ‘Is that the truth?….’ ”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, final chapter

Follow-up to the previous four entries:

St. Art Carney, whom we may imagine to be a passenger on the heavenly bus in The Great Divorce, died on Sunday, Nov. 9, 2003.

The entry for that date (Weyl’s birthday) asks for the order of the automorphism group of a 4×4 array.  For a generalization to an 8×8 array — i.e., a chessboard – see

Geometry of the I Ching.

Audrey Meadows, said to have been the youngest daughter of her family, was born in Wuchang, China. 

“Tui means to ‘give joy.’  Tui leads the common folk and with joy they forget their toil and even their fear of death. She is sometimes also called a sorceress because of her association with the gathering yin energy of approaching winter.  She is a symbol of the West and autumn, the place and time of death.”

– Paraphrase of Book III, Commentaries of Wilhelm/Baynes.