The Image Makers

essay

“…And Bob Dylan blowing in the wind
How many roads must a man walk down
How many Neal Cassady’s on lost railroad tracks
How many replicas of Woody Guthrie with cracked guitar
How many photocopies of long-haired Joan
How many Ginsberg facsimiles and carbon-copy Keseys
wandering the streets of America
in old tennis shoes and backpacks
or driving beat-up buses
with destination-signs reading FURTHER…”
~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from Americus: Book I (New Directions, 2004)

”Their minds are filled with big ideas, images and distorted facts…
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth”
~ Bob Dylan, from “Idiot Wind”

(ancient Chinese pictograph, “Center” — center of the 4 quarters/directions, or arrow in center of target. ~calligraphy by the author)


Not just because of AI or cell-phone photos of sunsets instead of simply experiencing actual sunsets, the facsimile machine, the copiers, the shadow players, the image makers have been at it for at least two-thousand-plus years . . . “in His image.”

But what’s at risk nowadays with the exacerbation of digital technology is the loss of any sense of authenticity and original-ness. If the image makers have their way, everybody will become a caricature, a driver’s license hologram photo, a branded projection of self but not actual self or soul.

The etymology of “image” is “copy, imitate,” with one definition, “the public’s opinion or concept of something.” Image is not a clear thing rather based on an abstraction or a mental projection either coming towards you or from your own headspace. Image is like seeing a reflection of your face in a pond on a windy day. As with Narcissus, who stared at his own reflection too long – hence “narcissist” – before taking his own life, masses of people have become entranced with their self-image aka selfie, along with other images pumped thru the 24-7 industrial-techno-screen-complex.

“Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, observed Narcissus' callous disregard for those who loved him. To exact justice, she led him to a pool where he saw his own reflection. Unaware that it was merely an image, Narcissus fell deeply in love with it. Upon realizing the truth, he was consumed by despair, understanding that his love would never be reciprocated. This realization led him to take his own life, and legend has it that from the place of his death sprang the narcissus flower, a symbol of his self-obsession.”

There’s a religious connection to all this. Genesis 1:26-27 states that: “So God created human beings in His own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (New Living Translation)

First off, the presumption that God is a He, thus the biblical “image” was male dominated from the get-go. Secondly, what “image”? Has anyone ever been told what the specific “image” is? Has anyone ever seen THE “image”?!

And yet lands and peoples have been slaughtered, colonized, and dominated because of this “image” that no one has ever seen. It’s all based on a delusion.

And yet, Adamah or Adam, the supposed first male human image for the Abrahamic religions, means “Red Clay/Earth.” Add to that, John Trudell said “We Are shapes of the Earth.” Umpteen shapes and images of Earth to relate with and choose from yet somehow masses of people have chosen a “God image” that is “no image”— rather left up to the egoic image-I-nation.

clowns and crowns
While torrential rains recently battered the east coast, all the CNN headlines gushed over the virus coronation aka corona-nation aka 500+ years of colonizers on behalf of the Euro crown’s newest nominee, potential Queen Kamala, whose last name will not be spoken here because that happens to also be my last name which translates as "protector of land." I take my name-job seriously; does she? When it comes to US-funded Israel bombing “crops,” no!

This past Sunday “…some 100 Israeli warplanes attacked southern Lebanon causing serious damage to property, crops and infrastructure, especially electricity and water systems, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency…Israel is raining bombs on civilian areas in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, in the middle of the night.”

A large chunk of the so-called making history appeal is that she is a woman of color. In the land of images, the sudden ascension of two images that have been historically repressed by the very same “system of domination” (a phrase from Steven Newcomb) gives goosebumps of excitement to those who value the thrill of image over actual substance.

Kamala’s overnight initial success – I’ve heard it referred to as a coup – is a product of branding. No surprise there as Obama won Advertising Age magazine's 2008 "Marketer of the Year", but what's more surprising is how many people buy it. Ok, that's no surprise either as gobs of Americans like to watch cars go ridiculously fast in circles, actually ovals—it's called NASCAR. To each his/her/their own. I guess if it was NAZCAR there'd be some sort of Jesus Of Nazareth Christian Nation thing going on yet that makes no sense because he rode a donkey, but I digress.

Popularity is a fickle beast or mistress, depending on your stereotypical preference. There are tons of Swifties, which, by the way, reminds that popularity is not a determiner of actual talent (though imho she has some) and not a determiner of intelligence—for poster boy popularity example, Hitler. No, no, of course am not comparing Swift to Hitler, just trying to make a point about how masses of people go along with stuff. Mattias Desmet is good at explaining what's called "mass formation" and the Asch conformity experiments revealed that some people yield to pressure to conform, even if what's being said or done is bogus or false. On my reading list is: “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45 is a 1955 nonfiction book written by Milton Mayer, published by the University of Chicago Press. It describes the thought process of ordinary citizens during Nazi Germany.”

As I saw headline glimpses of the DNC corona-nation, i thought: the VP with her smile so big Louis Armstrong would blush, is complicit ... the deaths of 40,000-plus Palestinians... the whole Con-vention shebang is like a circus with pedophiliac clowns, but bring the adult-kids anyway, they'll be infotained, and every vote counts . . . like dust in a hurricane.

Speaking of strong winds, Nature has it built-in not to be TOO popular. In other words, masses of people do not flock to look at a tree in one place because there are trees all over the place. Nature is decentralized. Nature is everywhere.

People do flock to see a Redwood (they’re huge!) and most of them have been chopped down by the consciousness of the corona-nation colonizers. Masses of people will travel umpteen miles to see a Redwood yet won't get to personally know on a first name basis, hugs and all, the trees in their yard. Go figure, but I figure it's because the colonizer mentality is ever on the move because the “image” over there is more enticing than the actuality right here.

And the colonizer mentality is ever on the move thanks to street signs sporting "No Stopping or Standing Any Time," plus drive-thru this and one-click that, colonizer mentality ever on the move, step waaaaaay back there’s no genocide, slave labor or pollution of Earth, Air and Waters to see. More people know about Swift than the global corporate-government attempts to destroy Indigenous sacred sites for mining for so-called renewable energies which are like, as I’ve heard the Dalai Lama say, burning the wooden furniture to warm up the house. Definitely not a long-term solution.

campaign tinsel town trail
A New York Post headline read: "These are the Dems who deserve an Oscar for the fake, all-an-act convention: The Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week was one heck of a production. Less like a normal political convention and more like a glitzy Hollywood one."

From my book photo albums of the heart-mind (2017):
“The dust jacket flap notes to Gore Vidal’s Hollywood: A Novel of America in the 1920s allude to the significance of the inception of slick propaganda and its use on the geo-political stage: “Hollywood, America’s other capital, is perfecting the art of image making...” …first John Wayne film The Big Trail in 1930, propagandizing manifest destiny with the career of the Duke and Co.wboys vs. Indians false narratives…”

More on film image making from “100 years ago, the first White House film screening sparked nationwide protests”:
”For on February 18 1915 … Woodrow Wilson, showcased what was then a revolutionary form of entertainment: the feature film. Wilson, his daughter Margaret and select guests gathered in the East Room to view director DW Griffith’s just completed masterpiece, The Birth of a Nation.

“… the response in the black community to the overtly-racist The Birth of a Nation was overwhelmingly negative. The controversy came to a head in Boston, where a largely-forgotten Civil Rights activist led mass protests in an effort to ban the film.

“The president had agreed to host a movie night as a favor to the writer Thomas Dixon, an old college buddy, a fellow Southerner – and an unapologetic racist. Dixon’s bestselling novel The Clansman was the basis for filmmaker DW Griffith’s three-hour dramatization of the Civil War and Reconstruction, which depicted Ku Klux Klan members as heroes and martyrs.”

Film images are so persuasive that when there’s severe weather, people will say, “It’s surreal. It’s was like a movie.” D.C.-Hollywood’s images are so persuasive, masses of people think they’re real.

feed your visions
Kaballah’s Tree of Life is one of my essential guiding images or living-interactive-symbols with physical and metaphysical experiential layers. Nature has umpteen images and symbols one can adopt and apply though the most powerful are the ones directly received from spirit-beings (for example, in a dream), or via a human-being guided to do so. The trendiness of applying animal totems found online or “My meditation told me I’m a Cherokee princess” typically rings hollow and cheapens an otherwise deep and hard-earned process.

Symbols can help with accessing other levels of consciousness. A few examples: Eastern traditions have “yantras.” A good introduction to the topic is Man and His Symbols (gender inclusivity was lacking in the 1960s) by Carl Jung and associates of Jung. Another is The Sacred Symbols of Mu (1933) by James Churchward. And you can find a simple yet very helpful reference list of symbols in Happy Buddha’s Holistic Counseling Manual.

People imagine “God” but it’s a tenuous abstraction, a “disembodied God,” there’s nothing to it. And that indicates that masses of people are walking around with a concept of, an “image” of “God” that has no actual substance. To each his/his/their own, but at least some of the time I want a “God” I can sink all my five senses into, plus one who speaks to my sixth sense. And my seventh sense . . . humor . . . which is something sorely lacking with religions in general and with the “image” of “God.” Yet I have proof that “God” has a sense of humor . . . because I have one, and I was made in Their image.

The image makers project their images. It’s good to know what they’re up to, just don’t stare too long.

Since the word “God” tends to bring “no image” to mind and alludes to religions, many people, including myself, prefer the word “Spirit.” Spirits can take on physical forms. In the early or later times of the day, sometimes i can see a multitude of thin rays sparkling and emanating from the sun; that energy helps grow our foods and is literally inside us as well.

Spirit is energy made of some substance, just not the solid physical substances we are used to dealing with in our daily lives. Such uncanny energy has the ability to keep a mountain in place or tilt the head of a dragonfly so he looked right at me as I stood by the edge of a lake. And while those can be helpful or poetic images, they are not the actual experiences of relating.

(Tibetan sand mandala)