"Everyone spends his life honoring the god in whose Chorus he danced before birth." Morton Smith danced with the Philosophers. The Myth of Christianity had worn itself out and He and Oscar Wilde were going to give it a glorious rebirth in a New Recension - only they were packaging it as the Ur-Myth itself, and not just another version. Christ was Gay and the Times were Gay and most everyone else was stubborn or plain Stupid. But what Barber wanted Lucky to see was that Smith's Secret Gospel of Mark was not a Fraud. It was a Hoax. The difference is in Motive. Smith was not attempting to Defraud for Monetary or any other kind of Gain. Smith was out to embarrass the Academic Elite and show them for the Idiots he believed them to be. He was out to "Show Them" not to Fleece them. He never made a dime off his Bogey - his two books were Academic & sold very few copies. It was only about who was the Smartest. He who was denied Tenure (there had been unseemly rumors about his sexual predation of young male students) and yet had been able to create a gospel Truer than the Trues? Or the Idiots who had fired him and yet gleefully fell for his bogey and joined in its elevation to the Near Canonical. Because it damn near is. Canonical. The last Surprise is that the majority of the experts in Biblical Studies, Manuscript Studies, Paleography, and History still believe the Secret Gospel of Mark is Authentic. It's just too good. It just fills too many unanswered questions about Canonical Mark. It's brilliant. And like the constantly recurring myths of Apokatastasis, it just keeps coming back. Myths like that are Rorschachs - they allow us to see the things we want to, and need to, but dare not. Because they just seem like Heresy.
That's the Captain. He's out West instructing the students and heirs of Frank Lloyd Wright on how to live on the land by harnessing its various energy fields rather than piping Ergs from the GrüppenGrid. He's Kenny's own Personal Jesus. And Jesus Christ is the Great Rorschach Himself - Anthropos - Every Age has to "Quest" for its own Recension of the Historical Christ until it finds itself Reflected in that Upgunned Image of Jesus. The Nazis were right about that. If you're trying to sell the Eradication of the Jews to the man-in-the-street you have to sketch it in terms of "Redemptive Antisemitism." You need an Aryan Jesus with cold Blue Eyes & this time the Miracle won't be Loaves & Fishes but Zyklon-B & Barbed Wire. Morton Smith started his Bogey in 1958 - the Age of Elvis & Kerouac & Anomie. It was the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius and everything was going to change. We live in Mythopoeic Times and those belong to the Artists who help create them. Morty was doin' his share.
Morton Smith created his "Secret" Jesus in his own Image: Master Magician, Lord of Misdirection. He invited all the "experts" to list their problems with the Gospel and then Published them Himself, literally hiding behind the Questions of Authenticity. He got handwriting Pros - who knew nothing about Clement or Mark or Neaskinos Boys - to Sphragis the Paleography first.
Click the Peacock 13 times & be ready for betrayal.
This made it difficult for the Text Etics to question "Content" whose "Form" had already been confirmed. Academics, he knew, were easier to fool once they had a "horse in the race." Piltdown Man put England in the Anthropology Game - Because they Wanted to Believe.
Fakes work best when the "Victims" are afraid to find out the Truth. Smith roped them in, got them "invested" thru their "expertise," and then Owned Them. He also played the Bogey for Time. He had supposedly "found" the Manuscript in 1958 but he waited until 1973 to Publish his finding - exactly at the start of the Gay-Rights Movement. Morton Smith had found the right formula for such a Hoax: "Fakes are easier to handle because they appear as sympathetic observers willing to answer Today's Questions." A good fake is not about "Then" but "Now." The Modern Bogey "already knows the questions that people are demanding to have answered." We live in another Age of Veils; our world is Wobbling between Hiding and Revelation. Old Truths decay as surely as the Pole Stars and the Monkey's Mind desperately seeks somewhere to stand where the ground underneath is not churning and turning into Quicksand. It grasps Any Hand offered in Rescue. In a Review of Peter Jeffery's Book: The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled: Imagined Rituals of Sex, Death, and Madness in a Biblical Forgery, Robert Price writes: "Well, one must congratulate Morton Smith on attaining his goal, at least in large measure. He did manage to become one of the New Testament writers, albeit like one born out of season. For from now on, his Secret Mark will ever hold a place on the margin of the canon, a tenuous member of Eusebius' 4th scripture category: heretical forgeries wrongly accepted as apostolic by some." Barber Perfect sent Lucky after Morton Smith. He threw Secret Mark at Lucky as if it were not only a bone, but a bone with meat still clinging. The "Family" Bidnez has always been "Relics" - Kenny La Roche's first Spike had been a small Vial of the True Blood brought North to France after the fiasco of the 4th Crusade. Barber says that he, himself, has placed over 300 "True" Skulls of St. Ursula's 11,000 Virgins in Cathedrals, Churches, Monasteries, Convents, & Chapels all over Europa. And not only that, but did I know that it is reliably estimated that between 40-60% of everything you find in Art Galleries and Museums are Bogeys. Forgeries. Frauds. Hoaxes. The "Spirits," it turns out, are incredibly easy to Falsify. Kenny walks right up to people and says: Ne fronti credi. And they answer: How much is it worth?
"Back out of all this now too much for us ..." Bobby Frost said that in a poem he wrote about Childhood, and innocence, and "a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town." So it was about Childhood's Loss and the Loss of Childhood. It's a poem about Things that Never Were and how Important those things are. Kenny's Mission: Heiligmichael Erzengel - St. Michael and the Old Dragon - was finished about two years after it was conceived. And it was conceived as a Rescue Mission - a way of ReUsing our old Spike Gabriel which the DNR Fish Cops made us take down from its Perch on the East Porch of our Cathedral Our Lady of the Ligne.
Click 4 and study the Game. Pick up the Correspondences.
So it was also a Resurrection. A Restoration if you will allow. An act of Artistic Apokatastasis. Something fallen had been set right. And there's a lesson in that. St. Michael the Archangel is Babylonian in Form, Hebrew in Conception, and Christian in Action. He has been transformed, if not exactly transmuted. The Healer Gnostic Heirophant whose Earliest Mask was that of the Earth Serpent or Dragon, had been reimagined into the Warrior Prince who would be claimed by every Fascist, Jew-Killing, Matamoros Muthafuka, from Charlemagne to Heinrich Himmler. His Lance is still Missing, but 7 Places claim they have it.
That's Barber's Ferrari - his British Wheels. Roll Over it and dig the Turbo Charger. The man is such a Pig. Can you imagine? He drives around London in a Fuck You Car with a personalized registration plate which says: Pussy. What he's cooking up with the tall, luscious Sinomé Maruvan is anybody's guess but I can't believe it bodes well for either his "Brother" Pooler Jones or his protégé Lucky who has taken to calling himself: Fortunato Langostino. Symbols are Objects without Statement. They operate Sans Parole. Most of them. But they can be manipulated and in scientific terms, they can be "falsified." The Process which makes them Authentic. If not True.
Barber Perfect painted this. It's a very good copy of Nicolas Poussin's masterpiece: A Dance to the Music of Time. When he was done with the copy he gave it to Lucky who now has it framed and hanging in the Cabin. Barber copied it as a Psychological Exercise - he was creating a Bogey "Sketch" of this painting and he needed to get inside Poussin's Head as the old Frog Master composed his version of this ancient Myth. The Old Dude with Wings is Time and he's Playing the Music which guides the Dance. The 4 Central figures are the Allegory of Life's "Round" - aka: the Human Condition. That's Poverty in the Back, on the Right is Labor. The Bitch in the foreground is Wealth, and the beautiful chick on the left, the only one looking at the Viewer, that's Luxury, or better: Pleasure. 2 Putti Play in Innocence. A Janus Herm is shown with both heads Garlanded.
In the Sky which Overlooks the Scene and thus Preordains it we see Apollo in his Solar Chariot, led by Aurora and the Hours, travelling across the sky. Apollo, who is the Sun, holds the Round of the Zodiac to signify Both his Control over those Powers and his Submission to Destiny and Fate which the Zodiac, like the Wheel of Fortune, Signifies. Roll over the pic to the right and see the extended scene: The Winged Figure who is driving the Chariot is the "Morning Star," whom we call Lucifer, the Light-Bringer, the one who leads the Light up out of Darkness. The Unwinged Putto under the Herm is blowing bubbles. Vanitas. Vanity. That which disappears in an instant. The other of the Putti stares into the Hour-glass which moves Time from Qualia to Quanta and measures the vanishing sands of our life. But now go back to the Old Dude plucking on the Lyre and giving the Music of Time its Measurement and Beat - That's Chronus, Saturn, Kali, Time. The one who eats his children and then himself - like the Uroborus - thus giving birth to the entire cycle again. Time is usually pictured with a Scythe not a Lyre. In Poussin's Imagination Time is not so much the Reaper but as the Interpreter of the Harmony of the Spheres; it is thru Time that Man gets to Hear the Dance and March to its rhythms. Time is thus presented as a Bearer of Truth. Like that fucking Grecian Urn that Keats comes upon in a Museum. Time as Truth and not as Victor. How Apokatastatic. Lucifer, god's first Son, driving the Chariot of Time across the Precession of the Equinoxes until Kingdom Come. That day when Michael and the Old Dragon lock each other in the Dance. There's the Danse Macabre, Skipping is saying to himself. There's the Danse Macabre.
This is the only known sketch Poussin did of the painting before he started painting. It's Pen and Wash and is small: about 15 by 20 centimeters. Lucky studied it in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. It shows a big change in Mood between this and the Painting and only small changes in detail. The Putti have moved. The Herm has no Garlands. The Cosmos in the Sky is Too Big and overbearing. Barber Perfect is just finishing a "soon to be uncovered" 2nd Sketch which is very much like this one except in 2 Details: the Herm is shown Ithyphallic - that is, it has a Dick, a Cock - just one, shared by the 2 heads of Janus. The other detail is the grabber. It's the one which Barber wants to start an argument with. In the finished painting, the rear figure of Poverty is Male, while the other 3 dancers are Female. In Barber's Recension, that figure will be Female like the others. So the question posed is this:
Why did Nicolas Poussin change his mind about the Gender of Poverty? And why did the Janus Herm lose its Dick - it's Spear of Destiny? That's the question which the Bogey poses within the Internal Logic of Poussin's Painting: A Dance to the Music of Time. When the new Sketch is Unveiled it will ask why Poussin changed the Gender of his Foundation Figure in the Allegory. Poverty leads to Labor which leads to Wealth which leads to Pleasure which leads to Ruin and the Cycle begins again. But why did Poussin suddenly change Poverty from Male to Female? What was his agenda? There are no answers to this. Yet. It's the Argument that will be important.
Click 12 and the Mystery of the Uroborus will lift a little Veil and show you where your mommy came from.
But the other Question the Bogey asks - this one outside the Internal Logic of the Painting - is why does Barber Perfect want to start an argument between the Etics in 2010 about Gender Politics in the 1600s? Why does he want us to believe that Poussin took the Dick off the Herm and gave it to the figure of Poverty? There's no big money in it. The Sketch will be found within an existing collection so Barber doesn't get to sell it. He only gets to give it birth. Why do monkeys go into Arts which don't yield them money or pussy?
That's a mindful to end this Mission on. Skippy took the pictures of the Spike which are on this page in early November, right after Beau died and he buried him in the cold rain in a pod which has become a garden. He was just beginning to create this Chapter on the Website, about a half-million words ago. Barber Perfect had only recently plugged him into Morton Smith and the Secret Gospel of Mark and except for the link with Oscar Wilde, Skippy had no clear idea of what the story about how myths and gospels are forged had to do with St. Michael and the Old Dragon. Barber was playing with Lucky, sure, but he was Instructing him also. And that School has been going on Since Lucky's 19th Birthday in La Rochelle, France when the lovely Jayne Hill introduced them in Jojo the Pimps bar Le Caveau where Donitz's Kreigsmarines sang U-Boot Waffen ditties and demanded to fuck french girls because they were the Victors. And they had it owed to them. That was 1963 and Barber Perfect is still perfecting his innocence. Later, in 1965 in Barcelona, on Lucky's 21st Birthday, he was making love to Jayne Hill and afterwards she told him what he already had suspected, that neither her meeting with Lucky on his 19th, nor the meeting later with Kenny La Roche at Jojo's was an accident. She had come to get Skippy that Day and then lead him to meet the Family at the Pimp's Bar. They were all there: Pooler Jones, Barber Perfect, Jayne Hill, and Kenny La Roche. Jojo was there too, and his 3 sons whom he called: Shithead, Shithead's Brother, and Shithead's Other Brother in the descending order of their ages. That was when Skippy became Lucky. Everyone got drunk and later Kenny took Lucky back to Kamp in his Jette Black Citroen DS-19 and told him: It's about Barbed Wire. For weeks after Skippy thought maybe the whole thing had been a dream. And he knew how the Bishop of Avranches must have felt.
This the End of the St. Michael the Archangel and the Old Dragon Mission. Use your Browser to go Back or Click on This to go to Kenny's Home Page.