{"id":475,"date":"2007-12-11T10:51:49","date_gmt":"2007-12-11T18:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/11\/kyoto-breakdancers-jack-and-the-aktuals-hylozoic-outtake\/"},"modified":"2009-04-17T08:15:13","modified_gmt":"2009-04-17T16:15:13","slug":"kyoto-breakdancers-jack-and-the-aktuals-hylozoic-outtake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/11\/kyoto-breakdancers-jack-and-the-aktuals-hylozoic-outtake\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyoto Hiphop Dancers, “Jack and the Aktuals,” HYLOZOIC Outtakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

I came across some video I shot in Kyoto, Japan, October, 2007, of kids freestyle hiphop dancing to boom boxes on a plaza outside the gym at Kyoto University on a Sunday afternoon. You can see Thuy Nguyen there near the end, dancing.<\/p>\n

I finished my story about infinity, \u201cJack and the Aktuals, or, Physical Applications of Transfinite Set Theory.\u201d\u009d I managed to work in a cameo role for a cuttlefish:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A cluster of alef-null easy chairs sat jigsawed around the fireplace, fitting in via odd warps in perspective. But all were occupied, and by a single rude guest, a cuttlefish who was letting his tentacles loll onto each and every one of the chairs as he scribbled inkily in an alef-one-paged notebook.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust move each of your limbs three chairs to the right,\u201d\u009d Stanley told the cuttlefish.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d\u009d snapped the selfish cephalopod. \u201cToo much work.\u201d\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too cold this week to paint outside, so now I\u2019m back to working on Hylozoic<\/em>. It was good for me to take this break and write a story about higher infinities, as I\u2019d kind of like to have infinity in volume 3 of the trilogy (should I get that far).<\/p>\n

By way of getting up momentum to dive into writing Chapter 7, I\u2019m revising some of the earlier chapters. Yesterday I found a nice passage that doesn\u2019t fit into the flow anymore, so I\u2019ll just post it here.<\/p>\n

Note that this passage addresses a problem with panpsychism, which is the question of how the minds of the components of something mesh with the mind of the whole thing.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Recalling his contact with his cells and atoms this afternoon, Jayjay focused down into himself again. He felt impelled to pick out one particular cell, and one particular atom within that cell. The cell was inside his heart, thump thump; and the atom was a cozy carbon inside the heart-cell\u2019s genetic code.<\/p>\n

How did all the silps fit together? Empowered by his contact with Gaia\u2014and coached by the pitchfork\u2014Jayjay had a sudden scientific insight. Objects were more than the sum of their parts<\/em>. Each object\u2019s contents were wrapped in a knotty net of dark-energy string. An object was more than an inventory, it was an overarching gestalt. <\/p>\n

Jayjay\u2019s self, his soul, his I\u2014it was a woven bag: his. The carbon atom was a bag too, and his heart, and the human race, and Gaia, and the Milky Way galaxy\u2014each was a dark-energy string bag of knotty info. And that explained why an object\u2019s silp was more than just a squabbling congress of member silps.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Pleased by Jayjay\u2019s pitchfork-promoted discovery, Gaia flashed an oblique reference to a children\u2019s book, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies<\/a><\/em>, in which Mr. McGregor put Flopsy\u2019s six baby bunnies into a cloth sack, Flopsy and her friend Thomasina Tittlemouse chew open a corner of the sack and replace the bunnies with three rotten vegetable marrows, an old blacking-brush and two decayed turnips\u2014fooling Mr. McGregor. Moral: in either case, the sack is the same.<\/p>\n

Jayjay was a sack and so was Gaia. The sacks were woven from dark-energy string, each sack a single loop. Jayjay\u2019s loop had a gazillion turnings and Gaia\u2019s had\u2014maybe the same number, or maybe more. Jayjay lost track of Gaia as he focused on tracing the pattern of his own soul\u2019s string.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

In order to get Thuy really hitting on all cylinders again, I need to have a notion of what her new metanovel is about. I was, for lack of a better idea, titling Thuy\u2019s new metanovel, Vib<\/em>. As in:<\/p>\n

\u201cVib<\/em>,\u201d\u009d said Thuy, telling him the name for the first time. \u201cAs in vibby.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cPure genius,\u201d\u009d said Jayjay.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s vib?\u201d\u009d said Jil irritably. <\/p>\n

\u201cA vib is like a kick,\u201d\u009d said Jayjay. \u201cA vibe, but faster.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cA vib is when your mind spreads out, and the world is thinking you,\u201d\u009d said Thuy. \u201cInstead of writing Vib<\/em>, I want Vib <\/em>to write me.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy best murals are vibs,\u201d\u009d said Kittie. \u201cThey paint me.\u201d\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that\u2019s hip and snappy, but I don\u2019t think it captures a reasonable notion of where Thuy is actually at. She\u2019s not an addict anymore, she\u2019s trying to write her second metanovel, and to make her marriage work. She\u2019s really interested in the way everything is alive. I think I’ll be calling her new metanovel Hive Mind<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This fits, as having everything alive makes for a hive mind. The \u201cuniversal mind<\/a>\u201d\u009d that arises from the cosmos can be regarded as a hive mind. And telepathy makes humanity more like a hive. And being in a pair with a spouse puts you into a small hive mind. The street notion of hive minds as dull pits hive minds against natural gnarl (although in fact ant hive minds are indeed very gnarly, and humanity\u2019s hive mind is in fact gnarlier than any individual human.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came across some video I shot in Kyoto, Japan, October, 2007, of kids freestyle hiphop dancing to boom boxes on a plaza outside the gym at Kyoto University on a Sunday afternoon. You can see Thuy Nguyen there near the end, dancing. I finished my story about infinity, \u201cJack and the Aktuals, or, Physical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":545,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions\/545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}