Bob on the New “Information Artists”

Posted on What’s Zappa Facebook group:

Frank Zappa: That’s a big problem – where people don’t know how to be intelligent. One of the reasons that they don’t know is because it’s never been fashionable to be intelligent, especially in the United States. This country has an anti-intellectual history that goes back to the first bundling board. You know, thinking is bad for you. AS a matter of fact, you can trace it back to the beginning of Christian doctrine. The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the idea that intellectualism is the work of the Devil. Remember the apple on the tree? O.K., it was the Tree of Knowledge. “You eat this apple, you’re going to be as smart as God. We can’t have that”. Let’s get one thing straight. Besides the Universe being just a matter of rates, and I don’t want to get back into that, but the behaviour of molecules is a matter of rates. And molecules, translated into the real world where we can deal with it on a regular basis, move into the realm of chemistry, and so it is with intelligence. I think it has a lot to do with chemical processes that take place in your brain. I think you can make people artificially stupid. Quaaludes is a good example. It’s a chemical way of producing stupid behavior, and conversely, there must be a way chemically to make people perform better. I don’t know what it is. But if there are chemical substances which people will willingly ingest to produce stupid behaviour, one day somebody will come up with something that will make it possible for you to think better. I’m not talking about LSD, but some other way that’ll just allow you to improve your processing capabilities. Just like when we were talking about the difference between the original Apple computer, where you have to wait ten minutes for the thing to go clonk, clonk and see a few words on the screen, and stuff that is available on the marketplace now that is a thousand times faster. It’s doing the same job. It’s just doing it in a more efficient way. So, when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, if you go for all these fairy tales, that “evil” woman convinced the man to eat the apple, but the apple came from the Tree of Knowledge. And the punishment that was then handed down, the woman gets to bleed and the guy’s got to go to work, is the result of a man desiring, because his woman suggested that it would be a good idea, that he get all the knowledge that was supposedly the property and domain of God. So, that right away sets up Christianity as an anti-intellectual religion. You never want to be that smart. If you’re a woman, it’s going to be running down your leg, and if you’re a guy, you’re going to be in the salt mines for the rest of your life. So, just be a dumb fuck and you’ll all go to heaven. That’s the subtext of Christianity.
(Taken From: Frank Zappa 1988 Interview by Bob Marshall)

This is Bob’s response to the post:

My policy is to generally not express my likes or dislikes. They seem to be based on personal experience – subjective experience.
So, participants on bobonzappa.com are never going to get much of an opinion based on my “taste” about your tastes.
I’ll listen to your likes and preferences to be polite – they can be “interesting” for me, but it’s not the realm of thought that fascinates me.
This is why I enjoy Zappa’s commentary. He’s trying to base it on new perspectives and new knowledge – not necessarily his – that prompts him to think out loud.
So, I regard Zappa as an “information artist” rather than a traditional creator in a specialized field.
Now, as I became familiar with other “information artists” (recognizers of odd patterns) in the late Sixties – William Irwin Thompson, Marshall McLuhan, Mae Brussell, Lyndon LaRouche, Dr. Peter Beter, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Garrett Deane, David Worcester, and Arthur Kroker – I noticed that Zappa seemed to echo their detachment about mundane concerns, and his personally-expressed patterns in different media were similar to the aforementioned thinkers.
And as the next 20 years unfolded, Zappa seemed to stay relevant to what the nine people I listed above expanded upon.
And subsequently he moved to the center of my Tiny Note Chart (1995) as shown in its subtitle: “Xenochronous Bob’s Tiny Note = The Grand Wazoo’s Decad-Dance”:

There was a common “context” for these ten “perceivers” as demonstrated in my Chart. Over the last 10 years, this “context” became increasingly obvious to millions of people around the world.
Frank was the “musical” (superseding verbal and written communications) satellite conductor for 25 years – a Rumpelstiltskin for the Android Meme (1960-90) and the Solar Government.
[[ We no longer live in a visual world. Quantum mechanics began to call it the world of “resonance” in 1927. Physicists, then and since, do not under­stand either the peculiar properties of visual space, or tactile space, or kinetic, proprioceptive, or cosmic space. All of these spaces enter into the most ordi­nary compositions that we still call “pictorial”. Our studies here have taught us that the TV child has lost the habit of visual convergence and has become monocular, or Cyclopean in his adjustment to the outer world. Cyclopean vision is that of the hunter. The hunter has no point of view, no goals, no per­spective. These changes are the result of electric technologies and are causing the collapse of all ex­isting bureaucracies with their visually pro­grammed structures. ]] – Marshall McLuhan, LETTERS OF MARSHALL McLUHAN, 1987, p.388 (Sept.25, 1969)

[[ Frank Zappa – “I think that everything happens continuously: we think about time in a linear way because we’re conditioned to do it. This is because the human idea of things is that they have a beginning and an end. I don’t think this is necessarily true. I think of time as a constant, a constant sphere in which everything is happening all the time: it always has and always will.”
So this cup of coffee…
FZ: “… it was always full and empty. Everything is always.”
Why does this empty cup make sense to me?
FZ: “I don’t know.”
See what I mean tho?
FZ: “Is it a Zen question?”
As I say, “I’ve already done that, my cup doesn’t seem full anymore.”
FZ: “Well, that’s because it’s not full in this particular version.”
Our perceptions?
FZ: “We are dealing with time in an almost practical way. We designed our own universe and our lifestyle that is governed by time divided in this way, we progress from one touch to the other, day after day, and you learn to meet your deadlines in this way. It only works for human convenience. This, to me, is not a good explanation of how things really work. This is just the version of human perception on how it works. It seems equally feasible to me that everything happens constantly and whether you believe your coffee cup is full or not is irrelevant. You cannot define something precisely until you understand ‘when’ it is.”
When in terms of time.
FZ: “Yeah, when it’s a thing. Without the perfect understanding of when you have nothing to face, see? Because you analyzed that coffee cup a little earlier, and it’s full. In a few minutes you will drink it and it will no longer exist. The state of the cup is determined by the moment you feel it.”
Which means the future has already happened.
FZ: “Yes. The reason I strongly believe in this is because it can explain why people can have premonitions, because instead of looking ahead they just look around. You don’t have to look ahead to see the future. You can look down over there.”
What limits our perceptions of other things or of other times or of the future?
FZ: “I think you choose your limits for your personal comfort. There are some people who wish they had limits and they’ll make up all the boxes they want. Like the men who invented armor. They wanted to protect themselves from the slings and arrows of fate. People do the same thing psychologically: they build their own armor and choose their existence. Whether they do it consciously or because of a government or an education system, it doesn’t matter: someone is helping shape this imaginary box you live in, but it doesn’t have to be there.”
So what are the limits to our being able to understand the purpose of each of our lives?
FZ: “Why do you have to? The important thing is to face when, when it will open a lot of shit for you.”
The idea of time being a Moebius vortex…
FZ: “No, the shape of the universe is a Moebius vortex, I think. Time is a constant sphere. Now imagine a Moebius vortex inside a constant sphere and you have my cosmology. But the ‘when’ is very important.” – Best of GUITAR PLAYER Magazine, 1994 ]]
And then Frank stopped speaking… but later he had more to say.