We have entered an age of undifferentiated living—the machine is inseparable from the mode of living and life has become an extension of our technological selves. The other half is speaking for us and we are more and more interwoven with the tools of our trade. This is not a particularly new phenomenon but one which has been recently thrown into stark relief. In fact it goes all the way back to the most primitive examples and the birth of the other half. The stone spear or club is perhaps the first example. Neolithic man took to the savannah swinging his club and forgot the feel of death. Previously the gathering of meat was the task of the hands and thus an extension of the body—the blood flowed down through long strangulation, a neck was snapped and the meat torn out bloody raw—now it has become a separate act an act of the mind rather than the body—an act removed from death, an act of shaping tools grinding them down on stones until their points will pierce the tough hides of the savannah animals. The blood is mediated by a conscious process rather than the pure violence of absolute necessity. A business is born: the hunter with the better tools gets the best meat. Of course, these were primitive communistic societies on the whole and the meat was shared but there now existed a certain strata of mind workers who build the tools and shape the general direction of the tribe. Tools are the trade that separates us from the animals—the work of the mind workers becomes the beacon for humanity. Perhaps the first words spoken were related to the production of tools and the gathering of food. Who knows? Perhaps the other half began speaking back at the fateful point where man becomes separate from his environment. Cut forward: all of life is mediated through the use of tools. Just can't get by without it. Think of your day so far—what tips have you used to get where you are? This is not bad development in itself—in fact, it is quite useful—just where would we be if it wasn’t for the mind workers? Still squabbling in the savannah raw meat dribbling from our primeval chins. The real rub here is simply the fact that the process of the natural world is alienated from the body and mediated through the mental process. Once again, not a bad development—keep that danger zone at a long arm’s length! Yes, this has all been quite beneficial to the human as a species when you take a broad general view of things, you see the mind workers get things done and they advance the species in great leaps and bounds separating us from the animal world and steaming ahead full speed towards the atom bomb and complete annihilation. Man is nothing but a thinking animal. The shadow of the process, however, is the fact that the mediation of actions through mental processes is and always is an act of language. You just can’t build a tool without it. The stone axe, the spear, the first arrowhead—these were all tools of language taking over the societal mechanism. The first grunt towards wholesale massacre on that fateful savannah is the first grunt of language foisting itself on the people and really taking hold. Once again, this is not in itself a negative—where would we be today if it weren’t for that little linguistic quirk of our species? No, language is as necessary for the human existence as the four chambered heart. But what we must realise is that language is itself a tool—it didn’t spring up from nothing but was specifically designed for a specific purpose and put in the hands of the hunters and gatherers to do with what they will. Just who spoke that first word? Who had the guts and follow through to really make themselves understood? The first word propagated itself like a virus—once understood it took to the air and repeated itself catching like the Spanish flu and becoming the word of the season. Yes, the word is a tool like any other, and just like any other tool it involves a special kind of mediation between our bodies and the mental world. The word mediates every action and every action is word associated. Just try to perform a task without thinking about the word that associated with that task—you simply cannot do it. Yes boys, the word has taken hold and there is no escaping it. What’s all this jive about mediated action anyway? Where is this going? Well, you see the mediation of action is the space where the other half takes hold. What is the other half I hear you ask? Well, to put it country simple, the other half is the voice that speaks back. A little experiment: walk into a room, take a look around, ask yourself a question—where am I? What am I doing? Why did I come in here? You will notice that the answer is there in a clear and definite voice. No, I’m not talking about a schizophrenic reverie or some throe of psychosis (although that may be entirely possible), I am talking the voice that speaks back—a (usually) silent word but a word nonetheless—kitchen, looking for food, I am hungry. Now take any other situation and you will see that the same applies. You assess a situation and it comes back to you in words—paper, tree, computer, typewriter—there is no escaping it. The other half is there to speak and kid you’re going to listen. Now that we have established the presence of the voice we come to the real question—whose voice is this? Certainly not your own. Why ask the question if you knew the answer? Of course, on some level we all really do know the answer but that is another matter. What I’m talking about here is where that voice actually comes from. Most likely some form of subconscious feedback reverberating in known words to satisfy your needs. Got a question? Well, what you don’t know that you know has got the answer. This is all well and good but it still leaves us dark on the question of just whose that voice is. Who gave your subconscious access to the word hoard? What is the voice of your subconscious and where did it come from? What language mediates it and where did it learn? On the African savannah in primordial times the answer was clear and simple—a supernatural force gave the gift of language and the veil of darkness was lifted. In modern times we can do away with all this guff and make a clean start of things. The word was there before you were and will be there long after you’ve gone. The other half will still be there when you’re cold and silent rotting in your grave. The other half sits outside of the body and is pure mental mediation. It is the result of the word and it springs up of its own accord. Sure it is informed by elements such as the subconscious and the elements in ourselves of which we are not aware, but at its base it is a function of the very word which it speaks. Nowhere is this more evident than in the written word. Read a word any word and you will hear it said to you by the other half. CAT there it is now—you read a series of symbols quite meaningless in themselves and the other half formulates a position on the matter. Now, if the other half were not there to speak then the symbol series would, of course, be quite incomprehensible to most human individuals. We require the other half to make sense out of things. Just like in any mediation system. We require both a spear and the knowledge to use it in order to take down the woolly mammoth and it is in this knowledge that the other half speaks. The written word is pure mediation. Read a page and you will hear the other half speaking strong a long string of words put together in shining formations that light up pictures inside your eyes. And here we come to the meat of the matter--CAT FELINE TABBY TOM—all words for the same thing, no? Well, the other half has other ideas—kid, you see it in all the shades of the rainbow. Words have a certain power over what we see and perceive and this power lies in the process of mediation itself. The idea and image is mediated through the other half to produce definite effects. Like I said, the word is just another tool—a stone axe or club to kill yourself with. And I ask again--just who is speaking? Look at a writer sitting down at the typewriter hammering away pouring out that new novel that will make him famous and the talk in all the fashionable salons. He agonises eagerly over each and every word picking just the right one. Just who is speaking? Should he choose CAT FELINE TABBY or TOM? The other half has him good. Now look at a camera snap any picture will do. You will notice that the image before you gives rise to a definite impression of something that has been here before. That picture of a nude model lounging on your dresser panties down around her ankles well there she was sitting in a studio somewhere dirty dark and grimy a lecherous old photographer stealing her image for a few dollars a crude cigar hanging from a thick bottom lip. She was certainly there. That much is for certain. But what if I was to tell you that she was never there!? Impossible you say! I have the receipts! Well, the image produces a memory effect which is in itself a pure act of mediation and this act can be manipulated just like any other mediation effect. I take a tape recording of the presidential address and I overlay it with the sounds of a vicious war faraway sounds of gunfire shrapnel blasts and medical evacuations howling through the air—we now have a complete recording of a rousing wartime speech given in the company of troops to get those boys up and over the line. I take newsreel footage of some horrible disaster—the sinking of cruise liner say—and I intersperse it with the news anchor reading out the soccer scores—we’ve made a regular sport of it! People jumping ship:: “2 points before half-time”:: the captain stoic on the bow of the sinking vessel:: “a penalty was incurred and El Morocco the Greek was sent off to the box for the rest of the game.” Return to our writer: he selects tabby for his particular feline connotating the rambunctious street cats of his youth mottled and pawing at an old fish’s skeleton atop a dustbin. The script has been altered!! The new scientific vocabulary is definite to a fault and tabby is just the word to describe these little critters in the journals and periodicals of the veterinary arts. He should have made do with tom which now means a female cat of mixed breeding. The words can be changed at whim. They don’t really mean anything. It’s all a case of smoke and mirrors. That stone axe makes a mighty fine flintstone you know, not an instrument of death at all. And so I ask again--just who is speaking? It is entirely possible that the word and the other half originated as some sort of viral blight on our species making its mark through symbiosis and grafting on to the intelligence centres of our ancestors. Mr William Burroughs has explored this topic at length and I will not go into it much further. A virus functioning is this way would be virtually undetectable to our modern science and would be adept at passing itself on in the most subtle manner reproducing ad infinitum to the end of the species. What this would mean is that the other half is simply a viral outcrop springing up from the language disease to which we are all subject and that, like any virus, its main mission in life is to reproduce and spread itself still further. The other half speaks to you so that you will pass it on. How do we pass it on? Well, there are many methods. Simple language transmission is perhaps the most prevalent with language routines grafting on and subtly shifting the intelligence centres of the target. Any public reading will demonstrate this. The words are read out and infect the listeners who are spurred into action to pass the information on still further. Of course, there are always rejections—a message simply does not get through—but this is not what it appears to be on the surface. No, what appears to be a rejection is simply a mutated viral contamination. The union man stands up on his soapbox and rages on about the plight of the proletariat but there are still some meatheads in the crowd who think they would do better with the night watchman in charge. The message did indeed get through, but the language stimulated to intelligence centres in such a way as to produce a mutated effect. This is simple economics for the language virus—the more mutations and viral strains out there in the world, the better chance of being picked up and carried on. Primarily, however, the virus likes to make conditions conducive to its own reception—the centres are stimulated to provide fertile ground for the reproduction of viral information patterns. The war on drugs is necessary because addicts are dangerous and cannot be trusted. Is there any truth to this statement? Well, it doesn’t rightly matter because the people believe it and are ripe for new viral information along these lines to take hold. New laws proposed for the immediate incarceration of all addicts subject to forcible lobotomy—why not? Truth is a matter of viral conditioning. Truth can only be expressed in terms of language and, well, the other half has got that in the bag. Let us return to the typewriter. The words are there in the writer’s head raring and ready to go—the trick is to put them down on paper. But when they do they go out—they become something outside of the writer and outside of his control. They take on a new life and loom ominous on the horizon. Take any ordinary holiday snap and here it is divorced from the reality of the situation. You were there—you took the photo didn’t you? But now when you look back it is a dim memory of something that might have been. The colours have faded the tone is not right and there is a blight in the film grain that gives the sun a sallow complexion. Over time your memory wears thin and all that’s left are the recordings. You’ll swear that that’s just exactly how it was—yes the sun was shining sallow that day and Rio De Janeiro is one hell of a washed out city. The image can be manipulated any which way and buddy that’s all it takes. Powers are at work right now working on these operations to startling effect. Watch the six o’clock news—who knows where those images came from—who knows what their viral origins are. All we know is the certain and measurable effect it has on the populace. The means are within our hands now—the other half has set up the tools for its own destruction. We have the typewriter the tape recorder the portable camera and the methods for filming just about anything we choose—in many cases one simple device can achieve all of these effects and we are able to carry it about with us in our pockets like it was nothing more than a mouldy old toothbrush. We also have the means of manipulating these recordings to precise and definite effects (once again, look to your portable devices). Caveat: we are not alone in this battle. Take a look around you—what do you see? I’m willing to bet at least one commercial in oblique or overt form is within easy reach. Think your image has been manipulated buddy. Drink Coke. Notes from the war room: the other half can be separated from the individual through technological means—the more high speed and incomprehensible the technology the better. Type out your thoughts on an old fashioned mechanical typewriter—don’t think just type—now before you read back and hear that other voice reading the lines, put the whole thing through a blender. Cut it up into a million pieces and stitch it back together. Take the words as they come and see what they really have to say. Take a photograph and slice it down the middle, insert it side by side with another bifurcated photograph—you now have a composite image that is neither here nor there. An interesting juxtaposition may emerge—a unique blending of image qualities that sparks something off inside you that is not mediated by the other half. After all what is left to say when the results are random? What is there to speak back to? Intersperse tape recordings, play back film in slow motion on rewind—no other half is going to tell you these are your actual memories of actual events—not even the most sophisticated virus can go that far. The trick is recognising when the other half is speaking and taking steps to put that hairy beast at arm’s length. Poetry of the word and image unmediated by viral mutation. This is not an easy trick, but one which can be mastered with some practice like a Zen archer hitting his target in the dark. You will see all things fall into place. Drink Coke? No thank you. I’ve got other ideas. Lachlan J McDougall is an Australian Word Technician working in cut-up and experimental literature. They are interested in smashing the Control Machine in all its guises and have chosen the written word and symbol as their weapon. Their books I was out.. the mice were in... and Blue Flute: Stories and Artwork can be purchased on Amazon.com.
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