Dead Man, some random thoughts

I am finally getting around to posting some thoughts on Dead Man. This semester I am also taking the William Blake course with Dr. Lansverk, and I believe that course alone helps to understand this film a tad more than the average audience member.
I would like to start by saying that the lack of visual colour in the film detracts from the original vision of William Blake. One need only study a few of Blake’s plates, and you can easily see the important role that colour plays in his works. The opening plate of the Book of Thel, for example, has an image of Thel dressed in green. The colour green here represents BVM, and is critical in understanding the story that follows. This is but one, of many examples of this.
As this is a discussion of Jamrosh’s work, let’s focus on that. He’s drawing heavily from Blake’s works, and as such three incredibly obvious Blakean characters appear in the story. William Blake is the obvious first, followed by Thel, and the unnamed Palambron. Palambron appears in the form of the blackened face messenger that talks to Blake before his arrival in Machine. If the reader of Blake turns to America: A Prophecy, you can see where Jamrosch received his visual depiction of this character.
Thel provides the important first glimpse of the link to Blake’s world. To Blake the dichotomy of Innocence/Experience is all important. We see this with Thel. She used to be a whore, and now seems to achieved a new found type of innocence. It is a state that follows experience. To William Blake proper, this term is found in his usage of the term Jersualem.
To explain Blake in terms of the this blog entry is simply not possible. It’s taken me a full semester to get to this level of comprehension. However, turning to just one aspect of Blake, this idea of innocence/experience, we can see the process of initation-seperation-return at work. Jersulam is the return to innocence, with experience being the separation aspect. We know that Thel has returned to this innocence by the white of her roses.
The story of this William Blake follows the same path, as he arrives in Machine innocent, is initiated into experience through violence, and returns to a state of innocence with the blood of the innocent fawn. It is only after the blood of the fawn that he realizes he has written poetry. “I’m William Blake, do you know my poetry?”
Jamrosch gets one more point right in this movie. Blake’s conflict with the clergy. The priest must be evil, and must be eliminated. This is due to the fact that Blake believes that hierarchical external religions are evil because they destroy the inner Poetic Genius of the artist. To Blake, Christ was an artist, the first in the line of the divine poets to follow. Wallace Stevens plays with this same idea in “The Idea of Order at Key West.” Externally ordered universes try to kill the soul of the individual. For more information, please read Northrop Frye’s Fearful Symmetry

Deep Focus in Jazz

We recently had the idea presented to us, that jazz is a sort of flyting. I avidly disagree with this idea, and consider jazz to provide us with more a musical conversatation between the various players. An argument implies a sort of organized chaos, It is a hardly something that would be considered music to one’s ears. A quick listen to the works of artists like Coltrane, Davis, and Ornette pull one into this realization. Trey Anastasio, the jazz guitarist and former front man for the band Phish outlined this critical idea of both jazz and jam music in lecture he delivered to a music class at University of Vermont some years ago.
If we follow Trey’s ideas and the patterns we see emerge in the jazz we listen to, we could hardly miss the interrelated aspect of the different instruments. As the instruments unfold the given piece, specific instruments come out as leaders and pull the others with them. There very existence and ability to lead comes from the foundation built up the cohesiveness of the background. Without an organized background, a jazz piece, like a conversation collapses. The background suddenly becomes critical. This is Deep Focus in music. It marks a critical moment in American thought.

Exam 2 Notes:

See Alison’s, Emily’s, Patricia’s, and Debbie’s Blog sites for class notes from the last exam to this one.

1. According to Wallace Steven’s a change of style is a change of subject.
2. What is below myth on our pyramid. A: music.
3. In the movie Dead Man who is no man, and what is the meaning of his name?
A: Xechebe → he who talks loud says nothing
4. Which poem of Wallace Steven’s is reminesent of Dead Man:
A: Prologue of What is Possible.
5. Northrop Frye is upset with words that begin with what prefix?
A: De, as in deconstruction. It is the opposite of creation
6. In the movie Dead Man, William Blake takes the blood of _______ and put it in his wound?
A: Blood of a faun
7. What would Dr. Sexson like us to have to done to ourselves before we graduate
A: Physical mutilation. -→ Body remembers too
8. What three phrases we used to analyze Dead Man:
A. 1) Poetry is the Subject of Poem
2) Poetry is a destructive force
3) All things are related.
9. In Invisible Man there is an exchange of insults. What is it referred to as:
A: the dozens
10. In Ellison’s world what inspires democracy?
A: imagination
11. What are the names of the two sheriffs that Bill Blake kills in Dead Man?
A; Lee and Marvin
12. What are the three things that Ike McCasism leaves behind to go hunt the bear?
A: Watch, Rifle, Compass
13. The two forms of imagination at work in Wallace Stevens:
A: creative and decreative
14. The speech concerning the killing of Tod Clifton in Invisible Man resembles which speech? A: Judges and Julius Caesar
15. Who said trust the tale and not the teller?
A: DH Lawrence
16. Intentional Fallacy is what the author intended it to me
17. The character of Rhinehart represents: A. Trickster
18. What starts the Race Riots in IM?
A: Eulogy of Tod Clifton
19. What jazz song open’s Invisible Man?
A: Louis Armstong’s “Black and Blue”
20. What unnamed poem is read in Faulker’s “Bear”
A: John Keats “Ode to A Grecian Urn.”
21. Who did Santa Claus rape?
A; Sybil
22. Who is Sybil? A; The Oracle who uses her voice to draw the hero into the underworld
23. Invisible Man is the response to which serial novelist? A:Horatio Alger
24. Hindu phrases for creation and decreation:
A: Tot tuam asi and Netti-netti
25. Question about dream novel and Invisible Man
26. Define the term parataxis:
A: the linking together of terms in a sentences utilizing and
27. What is Cole Wilson’s title.
A: the Demon Master of Initiation
28. What does synaesthesi mean?
A: the mixing of the senses.