GR translation: even this far out of it

Monte Davis montedavis49 at gmail.com
Thu Aug 27 07:59:58 CDT 2015


In the 1960s and 1970s "out of it" came to mean disconnected, unaware, not
part of the scene -- the "it" being a generic, undefined referent for "the
world shared by everyone else." Coupled with the Rilkean "though
Earthliness forget you," it's another way of telling us about Slothrop's
shrinking temporal bandwidth and increasing distance from -- or dissolution
into -- the world of rocket plots, history, Firm and Counterforce.

On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 3:15 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> V622.14-26   Through the flowing water, the holes of the old Hohner
> Slothrop found are warped one by one, squares being bent like notes, a
> visual blues being played by the clear stream. There are harpmen and
> dulcimer players in all the rivers, wherever water moves. Like that Rilke
> prophesied,
>
>               And though Earthliness forget you,
>               To the stilled Earth say: I flow.
>               To the rushing water speak: I am.
>
>        It is still possible, even this far out of it, to find and make
> audible the spirits of lost harpmen. Whacking the water out of his
> harmonica, reeds singing against his leg, picking up the single blues at
> bar 1 of this morning’s segment, Slothrop, just suckin’ on his harp, is
> closer to being a spiritual medium than he’s been yet, and he doesn’t even
> know it.
>
> What exactly does "even this far out of it" mean here?
>
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