TRTR Wreckingnitions Crew comes back

[Michael Bailey]

Mark Kohut wrote:
> C'mon everyone...have you reread this section?
>
> speculations:     There are no bad Annunciations....!
> yeah, getting The Word, Pentecostal tongues is so
> wonderful, that content trumps all style........
>

just to clarify, the annunciation is when the angel Gabriel tells Mary
she will conceive and have a child, right?;

pentecost is more like 50 days after Easter the Holy Spirit came upon
(a child of God, he was walking along the road...)...err, came upon
the disciples and apostles and various co-religionists, appearing in
tongues of flame around their heads, and making them able to speak
tidings of joy in all languages, although to some of the bystanders
not hip to the haps it seemed they were drunk

and I suppose there is a sort of similitude to be remarked upon
between the angel Gabriel telling Mary she will conceive, and the Holy
Spirit bringing the first public group manifestation of "a new
religion, that'll bring you to your knees"
 (Black Velvet, if you please... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS870zCCAwM )
sort of a parallel motion: heavenly messenger appearing first to
individual about a child she will bear, and then heavenly comforter
appearing to a group bringing news of the new spiritual message they
will carry

anyway, the Annunciation is one of those Catholic Kodak moments that
gets depicted a lot, and even as a Protestant I had at least heard of
it...but it's pretty much, to wax poetic, a "big hairy deal" ---

and there is in TR a mingling of alchemy and Christianity, a strong
deracination of normative sublunary consciousness and a planting of
seed-bubbles of magic, "mystic, wonderful" within this new headspace -
"a rebirth of wonder"
so that the name Basil Valentine points to this most excellent
Christian alchemist

and the fact that Wyatt is trying to forge an Annunciation - but using
the most devout replication of the consciousness that brought the
originals he's trying to earn a similar price to - well, that could
produce meditations about the irony implicit in his project and so
forth

especially since his separation from Esther is a thing that can be
considered in the light of, compared with Joseph's respectful
non-intercourse with Mary during the time of the Annunciation (when he
heard of her pregnancy, and knowing he knew her not (in the Biblical
sense) "he was minded to put her away privily", the King James phrase
that used to make me snicker thinking of something like Slothrop's
trip...)

well, anyway, the tongues of flame probably should be visualized about
the heads of the people in the scenes where they are drinking in bars
or at parties, a-and the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel appearing to
the young BVM is more like, well, umm, in TR here subverted or
"deliriated" to that angel that rilke was talking about and ol' Esme,
the poor addicted stomachless desperate one -- that is to say, I'd
compare her invoking Rilke's dubiousness about the angel clutching him
to angel heart (wasn't that a Mickey Rourke movie) to the sort of
distance from miracles that so-called "modern man" feels as versus the
pure kindly words of Gabriel to the pure BVM

That would make a pretty good theme topic, eh wot?