Roland, the wind. 2nd try

[Monte Davis]

JT> the  science approach which in this case is just a long shot directed
toward “actionable intelligence"

Meditating on "long shot" a little...

Wartime brings with it (1) a lot of money sloshing around, and (2) a lot of
intense, life-or-death, win-or-lose anxiety. So some of that money goes to
ideas and projects that would never get a hearing -- or funding -- in
peacetime. Those ideas and projects range from high-risk / high-return long
shots (A-bomb, or rushing the V-2 from R&D to production)... through realms
of lesser sanity and higher risk... to frankly crazed or outright swindles,
like some of the big-data and AI ventures to pinpoint terrorists that
Homeland Security put money into in the 2000s. Cf. also some of the psychic
research (precognition, clairvoyance, mind control etc) that cropped up in
both the USSR and US during the Cold War.

I think that in creating the White Visitation (first coming into view at
the seance) and Blicero, Pynchon had in mind both that psychic research --
perhaps the CIA's LSD experiments, too -- and the record of some Nazi
leaders' interest in occultism, the hollow earth, etc. He would return to
this murky zone in M&D, and with Tesla and other weird-science and
weird-math figures in Against the Day. So talking about "the science
approach" in his books takes in a very broad spectrum.

I connect that with the McHale-Duifhuyzen questioning of what Slothrop's
starred map actually means... and the questions that opens up about how
scientific Pointsman's and his unseen superiors' view -- and use -- of
Slothrop actually is. Maybe as well as reading Them as cool, far-seeing
puppet masters, we should read them as desperately clutching at straws for
*anything* to do about those goddamn rockets. Remember: we know with
hindsight that the V-weapons (and the Germans' jet fighters, appearing at
the same time) were never numerous enough, technically mature enough, or
effective enough to turn the tide or even low it much -- but that was far
from clear in late 1944. Maybe German super-science *was* about to snatch
victory from defeat. There was panic in the air. And that applied to people
with doctorates, talking about Zipf's Law and Poisson distributions and
conditioned reflexes, just as much as to the man and woman in the street.

On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 9:15 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> I’m going to re-post my last message, trying for greater clarity and ease
> of reading.
>
>
> “Once transected into the realm of Dominus Blicero, Roland found that all
> the signs had turned against him. . . . Lights he had studied         so
> well as one of you, position and movement, now gathered there at the
> opposite end, all in dance . . . irrelevant dance. None of Blicero’s
> traditional progress, no something new . . . alien. . . . Roland too became
> conscious of the wind, as his mortality had never allowed him. Discovered
> it so . . . so joyful, that the arrow must veer into it. The wind had been
> blowing all year long, year after year, but Roland had felt only the
> secular wind . . . he means, only his personal wind. Yet . . . Selena, the
> wind, the wind’s everywhere. . . .”
>
>
> There is an opposition here between the words “transect”,  “position",
> “studied", “movement” on one side  and the words “dance", “wind", “veer",
> “joyful" on the other.  The first group of words have to do with the plan
> that Feldspath is party to, and the second are the record of his actual
> experience. It is  also worth noting that the medium( Eventyr/fairytale)
> is  first narrating in 3rd person and then speaking directly for Felspath .
> The passage is a partial microcosm of our discussions on the flexibility of
> P’s narrative structure. It also implies the difference between plans for a
> kind of experiment  and the veering into direct experience that results.
> That difference brings my thoughts back to Mark’s notes on control of the
> uncontrollable.
>
> Direct experience, especially when it is free from constraint( Feldspath
> is free from the mortal coil) is incommunicable in it’s saturation, all the
> senses are involved along with a more subtle and intuitive consciousness
> comparable to the sensitive flame. Experence of this kind is  better
> conveyed through poetry than prose but is always beyond language.This
> language gap  exists within the  gap between the 2 approaches to getting
> information. One is the  science approach which in this case is just a long
> shot directed toward “actionable intelligence"  and the second is  the
> shamanic or paranormal means of knowledge which originated in a different
> setting and is largely discredited for many.
>
>
>   The whole idea with science is to isolate and control the phenomena
> under question to yield reliable and repeatable information, but whole
> organisms get hard to manage in this way because of the variables in a
> complex system.  In this passage Feldspath has been somehow directed to cut
> into the “realm of Dominus Blicero”. Transect is a very linear abstract
> concept, a left brain approach to knowing. Realm is metaphoric, complex, a
> combination of imagined and real structure. Despite some shared preparation
> between Roland and those directing this inquiry,” Lights he had studied so
> well as one of you, position and movement,…” he finds "the signs had turned
> against him, lights are gathered in irrelevant dance, none of Blicero’s
> progress, no something new… alien.”
>
> "the signs had turned against him” is a pretty inscrutable phrase that
> might fit a parlor room  seance, but it comes before a shift toward the
> second group of words - dance , wind, joyful, veer into, - words that
> culminate in first person language- Selena, the wind, the wind’s
> everywhere. This language seems to me interesting in that it is kind of
> like someone on psychedelics trying to describe his/her experience.
>  Roland has been directed toward Blicero by a left brain manipulation, a
> desire to add to a usable dossier, but he is in an immersive complex right
> brain  out of the body experience unfiltered by expectations.
>
>   It is a bit startling that GR's first mention of Bicero, the villain and
> hungry witch,  is associated with wind, spirit, joy, at least for Felspath.
> Regardless Feldspath is overwhelmed with a direct experience that doesn’t
> fit the plan. Does this discord/cotrast srike other readers?
>
> Further thoughts on any of this ?
>
> To me this discrepancy makes more sense of Felspath’s next thoughts on
> internal pre-planned control systems which are also presented in a first
> person mode.
>
> The whole passage seems a demonstration of the subtlety and layering
> possible in imaginative prose when it interacts with realism and history. -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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