AtDTDA 32: Fantasia on a Fantasia of Thomas Tallis Pt. 3

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

In case you haven't noticed, I'm searching for a unified field theory [from here 
on out: UFT which will lead to a degenerate limerick somewhere down the line 
I'll betcha] for OBA..

The link for all this is heresy. Consider Thomas Tallis and William Byrd.

http://www.stainer.co.uk/byrd.html

Byrd and Tallis---both born Catholic--were in charge of music 
publishing in England during years of social/religious upheaval. 
The history books tell us that freedom from religious 
prosecution was a major force in the development of the 
United States.  Though this tale is now relegated to the status
of Pynchonian trainspotting, the events surround the publication 
and subsequent public burning of William Pynchon's "The 
Meritorious Price of Our Redemption" figures heavily in all of 
our august author's [hereafter "OAA" which probablly is an 
encrypted kabbalistic pun] writing's. And our history of religious 
freedom in the U.S.A. as well.

Charles Hollander notes the connections between Dante and 
Pynchon, but I think Dante's presence is more like elaboration 
or decoration---let's allow that OBA has poetical tendencies, 
nicht whar?---Rilke also figures heavily, Joyce figures Heavily, 
T.S. Eliot's influence in "The Crying of Lot 49" is the most obvious 
of all. But these literary discursions are not the point.

It's his greatest grandfather's heresy---the heresy of a man, 
like Byrd, like Tallis who knows how to get along in the real 
world, much more Taoist than Calvinist. And that path, the elect 
will tell ya, leads directly to that most trancendant of evils, the 
invisible and very great pan-shamanic empire. Witchcraft, 
Shamanism, "New Age Thinking", Ascended Masters, The 
Golden Dawn, developing interest in Taoism and Buddhism---
all these concepts are trotted out, paraded before us as if in 
a masque, in Against the Day. There is something in heresy 
itself that drives the motor of all of Pynchon's writings, nowhere 
moreso than in Against the Day.

Once publick discussion of religious rights veers off towards 
that traverse direction, it often can lead to war. War really---as 
Tallis pointed out---is fuming and fighting over nothing. People 
are hypnotized by words like "Patriot" and "Hero", "Heretic and 
"Terrorist".

The perception of the intended victims as 'the other', or 'preterite' 
aids and abets this damn near pavlovian manuvering of people's 
will as they go off to some weird land, kill a bunch of strangers, 
steal their stuff only to give it to their warlords and then say they 
did it all in the name of God. Tallis, Byrd and Pynchin saw through 
that ruse. The composers just settled into comfy old church modes 
and collected their remittances. Billy boy musta've been a self 
described high roller, the boys in Boston weren't gonna listen to that 
kind of talk, no siree. . . .

During Vietnam, and the Gulf Wars, I saw some of the most 
transparent manipulation of public sentiment, I'm sure the 
same chains were being pulled during "The Golden Age".
The events that add up to the transition from the age of Elizabeth 
to the Jacobian era figure so heavily in Pynchon's writing because of 
that personal link to Great [to the power of ten] Grandfather William.

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