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Profane Exegesis: Reality and Simulacrum.

I managed to get along to the Cameo the other day to see A Scanner

Darkly, an animation film, based on the novel by Philip K Dick.

Always satisfying to see Dick coming into his own over the years, Ifound it mind-blowing in itself to be sitting there watching it at this

particular point in time and space, my mind kept wandering making the

usual free-associative connections. But the gist of the story is the main

character Bob Archer is under surveillance by a cop who also happens

to be himself. Dick and his playing around with simultaneously

Gnostic and deeply psychological themes.

I think most of the audience and his readers see his ideas as little

more than the imaginative fantasies of an imaginatively gifted writer.

But for some, myself included, Dick has come closer to blowing apart

or unravelling some of the truth behind appearances. That the world is

not at all what it pretends to be, True, he seems to have altered his

viewpoint every other day, but the probing was done.

I felt this long before the movie The Matrix ever made its

appearance, but it was a year or two before it did that I was sitting in an

upmarket bar by Bristo Street for a last drink with an esoterically

inclined friend and UFO buff before he went off to Vancouver, that Id

brought the conversation around to the subject of how our notions of

reality, our most basic assumptions are, if you like, under an onslaught

from the entertainment industry as well as in the arts and literature; that

movies like 12.01, re-made later as Groundhog Day - with great comic

actor Bill Murray, are touching on aspects of the deepest metaphysics,

our most cherished presuppositions of the basis of time, space and

causality, and I expected to see an increase in such themes. (Even if

Murray does use the situation the time anomaly to cheat his way

into the heart mind of the woman he loves).

Questions of identity, the nature of the self, the apparent solidity of

the world and ourselves as we experienced and believed them to be.

The whole phenomenal universe. It was all coming under the

microscope, often in very brilliantly inventive and entertaining fashion,

but far removed from a meaningless diversion.

In its way, The Matrix came to personify this for me. I found

12.01 as profound in its own way with its theme of a time looprepeating itself, a staple in many dramas since. Id come to see history,

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individually and collectively, as being only a sequence of events and

lives being repeated over and over again in different forms.

The Matrix, appearing shortly after our conversation, had its

moments of epiphany for me, notably in one lower-key scene, when

our heroes, Neo, Morbius, and the rest, are being pursued by agentsand a cat walks past Keanu Reaves as Neo, just as hes about to follow

the them up the flight of stairs, then another cat crosses his path in

exactly the same manner, which catches his attention. This alerts the

others who describe this as a glitch in the Matrix; a fabricated reality.

The basis of the film.

I had long known this to be true. It had been taking form over the

years through a sequence of unlikely associations and startling

synchronicities. Some of them Id have to be blind not to pick up on.

Apropos of this, its worth recounting if briefly how I came to meet V.

and how these associations come to shape themselves. I state it in the

present tense as its still an ongoing sequence, a semi-mystifying

phenomenon, though to all intents and purposes V. fell swiftly out of

my life for the time being, having shown no inclination to keep in

touch in any way. But this was just his reserved style.

The person who had introduced me to him was no more or less

important. This was at the Traverse Theatre where Uri Geller was

doing his thing. I would describe myself as being less of a sceptic than

V. As for R who introduced us, her whole orientation seemed to

revolve around people rather than ideas. Gifted with the ability to

compartmentalise disparate and conflicting ideas a in workable form of

dissociation par excellence, challenging or unusual ideas were shifted

to the back of her awareness in a kind of haze of irrelevance compared

to the 'real world' of people. And I think she felt she was doing us both

a good turn, and could congratulate herself on any psychological

chemical reaction that might take place, any new perspectives we

might stimulate in one another. Undoubtedly esoterically inclined,

with a deep interest in the teachings of Rudolph Steiner, his overt

interest was in UFOs. This was the basis of our common interest after

all, the reason she had felt we should be introduced to one another.