Letters from Quotidia Fractal 2

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia Fractal 2.

As I was thinking about a song to start this Letter, a phrase came into my head- the sewers under Babylon. Babylon endures as an image, a metaphor, and a destination for some. In Jewish history it was the place of dolorous exile for maybe seventy years, it was also the place where Daniel entered the lion’s den and, with his companions, survived the encounter. The tower of Babel where humanity lost its unitary, unifying language is located here in Genesis, the first book of the Bible and Babylon figures, too, in the Book of Revelation, the final book of the Christian Bible where it is portrayed as a harlot and a great city that represents the values of this world in opposition to the plan God has for his creation and creatures.

When I was in my late teens, living in a bedsit in Belfast, I often sat on the bed, the only chair too rickety to be a reliable support and the purchase of another being a luxury too far for this impecunious student. I would strum my guitar and try to fabricate songs, and this memory provided the starting point of the song, sitting on the edge of the bed in a wayside inn. I never know where such a start will take me- certainly not to the rivers of Babylon which figures in Psalm 137 which according to the site godbless.ing speaks to themes of displacement, identity, and the human spirit’s resilience in the face of despair.  Popular culture appropriated the rivers of Babylon in Boney M’s massive euro-disco hit of 1978. As for me, I didn’t end up by the rivers of Babylon where we sat and wept/ when we remembered Zion, no, instead, I ended up in the sewers under Babylon- so here it is. [insert song]

When I was in my mid-20s, I picked up a book by Robert Pirsig with the intriguing title Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I was also reading the Tao Te Ching  to gain a deeper understanding of Eastern philosophy. At this time too, I was made aware of my lack of know-how when it came to basic home maintenance when I proved less than stellar at fixing up any of the many things that broke down around the rental property we lived in, particularly as we had a toddler and a preschooler who were masquerading as a demolition crew. And when the car or lawn-mower made funny noises, I was reduced to scratching my chin- much as a chimp might, contemplating the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So, I had to remedy the omission. I bought a repair manual for the car and a Readers Digest home maintenance book and set about learning how to do stuff- all the while reading Pirsig’s fascinating novel. I wasn’t alone, millions of copies were sold, and it was much discussed and written about by highbrows everywhere. Now, in a satisfying narrative I would be able to report that I became a champ in the field-champ not chimp!- fixing this and that for all and sundry. But that would be a fictional narrative bordering on fantasy. I did become less cack-handed at maintenance but even now, in my mid-seventies, after decades of trying to repair things, my wife smiles indulgently when I propose tackling a job of any complexity above the level of replacing a light-bulb or fixing a blown fuse.

Machines, eh! We have a love/hate relationship- I love them, but they seem to hate me! Ted Gioia, an American internet commentator, finds an interesting nexus between Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and A.I. He refers to the concept in Greek thought of arete. He writes, back in 1952 Kitto anticipated Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—and provided the missing piece to Pirsig’s worldview—when he wrote: If arête refers to a person it will connote excellence in the ways in which a [person] can be excellent—morally, intellectually, physically, practically. Thus, the hero of the Odyssey-see my last post for a ballad about this legendary figure- is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a ready speaker, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send; and he can both build and sail a boat, drive a furrow as straight as anyone, and be moved to tears by a song. He is in fact an excellent all-rounder; he has surpassing arête. Pirsig understood…that we made a Faustian bargain when we put rationality ahead of the Good, and data ahead of human excellence. He grasped that science should be subservient to human needs, not the other way around. And the price we’re paying now is much higher than it was back then.

Now ain’t that the truth. The elites in the military, high tech, and government think they can control the A.I. tiger they are riding. But we know very well that these ersatz emperors have no clothes, and we fear the tiger will devour more than those who deserve to be eaten. My next song, a blast from the past, The Answer, addresses the questions raised about the fallacy of reliance on data. I wrote it in 1979; in the same era, I was reading Pirsig’s book. I updated it in 2016 when I found very little that needed to be altered: just one phrase; I swapped, we’re in the 20^th century to we’re in the 21^st century. In 1979 I watched a BBC documentary where scientists in the German Democratic Republic, now thankfully consigned to the garbage heap of history, were conducting experiments on rats to find a cure for homosexuality. This is the song I wrote in response. [insert song]

The choice humanity faces now is very like that faced by Greek hero Heracles. At a crossroads, Arete appeared to Heracles as a young maiden and offered him glory and a life of struggle against evil; her counterpart Kakia offered him wealth and pleasure. Heracles chose to follow the path of Arete. I have, to date, failed to spot any modern Heracles among the elites mentioned before but quite a bit of evidence that Kakia’s offer of wealth and pleasure has been taken up wholesale by these “paragons” which my final song, Kakia’s Offer, articulates: [insert song]

Fractals remain fascinating to explore as this post has demonstrated: examine one aspect and see it replicated in a different time or dimension. For my next glance at things fractal, I hope to discover territory less doleful, and it is within the laws of probability- that is, not zero- that I will open up a land of skipping optimism and joyful laughter for us all; maybe located near the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Ah well, we shall see, eh?

Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.