NOTE:Timing based on Payday archives.
Jan.24/2015 1177119-8-1 June/66 with John (editor at POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY) at Tony’s:
(Part 18 at 17:44 and Part 19 at 2:41 [finished playing])
McLuhan mimics “equitone” in “The Wasteland”
17:54
McLuhan mimics Joyce (“kenner… that’s the he and she of it” in “Finnegans Wake”)
18:57
the effect on the class war and brogues (why Blacks are musical)
19:08
the effect of recorded poetry on people/readers (the effect of Garrett)
20:05
the artist “explores” his environment (the average person wraps the environment around him) 20:33
poet as “delinquent”/”sleuth” like Bogart or Bond
20:57
McLuhan recalls the “Jack Benny” show (on radio it was hi-fi while on TV Benny slowed down [“no hurry”])
21:09
“actuality/reality broadcasts” (at the end of WW2) by Norman Corwin vs. “Container Corp.” packaging
21:44
McLuhan says Alex Comfort (a poet) was involved in the Pre-War project called “Mass Observation”
22:40
Tony mentions the Orson Welles’ “Mars Broadcast” as very “ridiculous” today
23:22
Tony comments on Glenn Gould (McLuhan says Gould is “still a very academic performer”)
23:45
the effect of radio/sound movies on “the photographic pitch”
24:24
McLuhan mentions the human’s natural synesthesia
24:59
Tony just bought a Color TV (refers to the “clearer, more normal” celebrities on the Johnny Carson show when on Color TV)
25:11
McLuhan predicts Color TV “will change everything”
26:18
McLuhan puts down the phrase “information theory” (“it’s not a very useful phrase because it misleads people”) (“they mean ‘structure’ for ‘information'”)
26:28
Tony mentions “something McLuhan did at Channel 13”
27:09
why kids buy cartoons and not picture books (clear, distinct, precise scientific statement/fact excludes, cartoons include and allow “for anybody to get into the act” )
28:13
the periphery of the eye sees black & white and movement, the center of the eye (the cones) see color (involving)
28:44
McLuhan again predicts Color TV “will completely change the programming of TV”
29:02
McLuhan says “Johnny Cage”
29:27
a policeman via Tony told McLuhan about yelling “help” (too involving [cool] “for people already involved far too much” via TV) (a pun in non-verbal form)
29:32
“we supply ‘color'”
30:30
“north wind vs the sun” joke
33:39
“message in the bottle” (involving like “the overheard”)
34:33
“red herring” pun 34:46
noisy commercials are too hot
35:33
the new trend towards wanting to be a hermit (Trappist monks)
35:50
planning for the June 27th lecture at MOMA (the effect of sound on pictures)
36:44
the big bell (“for whom the belles toil”) is communal and participatory
37:25
the high-pitched, little chapel bell is specialized (the single message beamed at a particular sector ) 37:44
The Russian filmmakers were obsolesced by the Talkies
38:08
McLuhan’s “Photography: Brothel without Walls” chapter (McLuhan forgets the Movie chapter subtitle) inspired by Rene Clair
40:01
photo and movie “penetrate the world of flesh” (like a brothel)
40:57
hi-fi photography is getting more tactile and textural/surfaces (like flesh) like stones via hi-fi (no privacy possible anywhere like the telephone)
41:21
McLuhan says he never opens a book once it’s published
42:07
McLuhan says his statements (“experimental”) are intended to be very controversial (Menippean)
43:02
McLuhan refuses flattery from John even though McLuhan doesn’t do photography
43:36
McLuhan says Canada has only the Mounted Policemen, “Norrie” Frye (“the archetypal expert”), and the DEW-Line
43:48
Norman McLaren (Expo’67 mentioned)
44:02
the TV generation often use a public forum for private expression (“public news as private message”) (like the English in the “TIMES” until recently)
44:32
McLuhan turns down offer because he has too many books to finish
46:36
“world as studio and/or campus for dialogue via the tape recorder”
47:00
“human interest” means “involvement” (fill-in) (not in a news story)
47:26
Abstract Art means “leaving a lot of things out so one can get in the picture”
48:12
Tony points out McLuhan’s obscene-like gestures (“using all one’s senses at once” at 48:39)
48:16
slow, non-visual kids (as in “backward territories like France and Italy” [“gesticulate wildly”]) should use trampolines to improve their reading skills (isolating one sense)
48:45
“feedback (looping back) is a form of profound involvement”
49:11
Tony suggests making a mistake in their next commercial to involve the audience
49:43
any correct flowing performance is purely “mechanical” compared to a mistake
49:57
a small child will hear the icebox door closing and opening as the dominant sound in his/her environment (not traffic, not voices)
50:06
modern Greek movies like “Electra” and “Medea” are done out-of-doors (evoking tragic emotions) and make sense once one is outside an enclosed theatrical space like our Westerns (“private emotions become environmental [role-like emotion] via unenclosed space which shapes emotion”)
50:47
legitimate theaters cannot go near “that dimension of legitimate tragic emotion” like the Western can (Greek movies are similar because they have no sets except the rocks and the ground)
51:56
the photographic image is changed when one gets away from enclosed spaces
52:33
the science of linguistics (to arrest certain rhythms and patterns for study – study not semantic meaning but gestures and rhythms of language) came out of the tape recorder (now possible to know how children learn the “mother tongue” in a few years)
52:54
Tony complains that linguistics doesn’t use the tape recorder creatively outside the classroom
54:31
McLuhan recommends the Opies’ children’s lore book (the same jokes, games, and gags are everywhere)
54:55
no mistakes made in slang (except by anthropologists)
56:12
you can put the old furniture into the new (“that’s the rearview mirror”) but not the new into the old
57:02
the boundaries between the written (sight) and the oral (sound) are beginning to disappear (the boundaries between the public and the private [the inviolate] are also disappearing via photography)
57:42
our lives are more and more synaesthetic
58:51
Part 19 at 2:41
McLuhan says he increasingly relies on the kids for his jokes
3:32
McLuhan tells the difference between “huh uh” (always making discoveries) and “uh uh uh…” (hesitating… as does Mayor Lindsay)
3:48
the difference between “that’s interesting” (John) and “low whistling” (McLuhan says it’s better than verbalizing)
5:04
McLuhan makes an endearing laugh
6:21
McLuhan mentions a new pop song called “It’s All About Marvin” (Alan Sherman?) and predicts it will be a hit
6:25
somebody mentions a new Canadian NFB film, “NEVER TO RETURN”
6:50
the community/tolling bell (low gong, inclusive) vs. alarm bell (“Beat it!”, not inclusive)/classroom bell (“Get up!”, high pitch)
7:03
Allan Loye of McGraw-Hill at yesterday’s conference explained how typewriters helped the poorer students (who use all their senses and learn French easily while the better students are specialist in their sensory life [eye-biased] and can’t learn French)
7:41
McLuhan’s French friend says, “There are no words in French, there are only rhythms” (English people can’t hear French)
9:01
linguists say that all languages are rhythms and not words
9:13
McLuhan says he can only make out a little bit of French (he never studied languages) but he can do dialects
9:18
TV generation loves to put on/mimic dialects
10:19
TV is an “empathic medium”
10:28
Jan.24/2015 1177119-10-1 June/66 with John (editor at POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY) and others at Tony’s:
(Part 19 at 10:38)
radio/movie soundtrack has been absurdly retained by TV (McLuhan suggests electronic music as soundtrack for TV)
10:38
musical counterpoint is “making”
12:35
“medium is the message” explained as the old medium is an art form/content of the new medium 12:57
“medium is the massage” explained as an infallible teaching machine and as a process (not the content)
13:15
Plato wrote down the “oral” Socrates
14:04
printing did nothing but medieval literature for 200 years
14:14
the safety car is the end of the car (“rocking the bandwagon”)
14:20
McLuhan predicts 3-dimensional transportation (vertical)
15:12
discomfort of traveling to and from the airport
15:52
“an environment is a process that just twists the guts of people” (which is its “message”)
16:15
the students today have no identity but they can see other people much more clearly (folk musics are rearview mirror)
16:27
people are making a “body image” daily and it’s environmental/invisible
17:19
McLuhan complains about the air-conditioning everywhere that aggravates his allergies and affects his voice
18:12
McLuhan just “samples” in his studies to create contours and structures but he doesn’t fill them in
18:43
McLuhan says he has made a video but hasn’t seen himself on multiple-screen (cites the Hercules quotation)
19:10
TV should be multiple-screen (no story line as in the movie)
19:48
“TV is being held to the one screen by movie form, rearview mirror”
20:08
McLuhan says he’s been thinking about the effect of the computer on the museum
20:38
McLuhan complains about Gerald Stearn’s new “Hot and Cool” book
21:15
somebody tells McLuhan to visit THE VILLAGE VOICE office and upset them because their journalist wrote an article about McLuhan on a NYU panel
21:41
the computer as a “source of discovery” (“banging various things against each other”) rather than a mere storage system like a museum
23:38
the pun and a slip of the tongue
24:12
TV as a liturgical means is more involving than the distracting church (replaced by the “visual” church?)
24:40
somebody brings up Judson Church and its artists’ rituals (not Rev. William Glenesk)
25:46
McLuhan cites Canada as having the advantage of backward countries
26:12
McLuhan says one can’t have the legal system on TV (McLuhan gives a wise warning)
26:56
McLuhan mentions Groucho Marx
29:08
McLuhan talks about Harley Parker’s new book on museums (see ART IN AMERICA, March/April’66, “The Electronic Museum”)
29:13
