ADVENT AWAKENING = 151
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Ross' copy of the 1963 Ace paperback, pp.28 - 29
01-11-11
"Father! Help the men who live at your machines!"
"I cannot help them," said the brain of Metropolis. "Nobody can help them. They are where they must be. They are what they must be. They are not fitted for anything more or anything different."
"I do not know for what they are fitted," said Freder, expressionlessly: his head fell upon his breast as though almost severed from his neck. "I only know what I saw - and that it was dreadful to look upon… I went through the machine rooms - they were like temples. All the great gods were living in white temples. I saw Baal and Moloch, Huitzilopochtli and Durgha; some frightfully companionable, some terribly solitary. I saw Juggernaut's divine car and the Towers of Silence, Mahomet's curved sword and the crosses of Golgotha. And all machines, machines, which confined to their pedestals, like deities to their temple thrones, from the resting places which bore them, lived their god-like lives: Eyeless but seeing all, earless but hearing all, without speech, yet in themselves, a proclaiming mouth - not man, not woman, and yet engendering, receptive, and productive - lifeless yet shaking the air of their temples with the never expiring breath of their vitality. And near the god-machines, the slaves of the god-machines: the men who were as though crushed between machine companionability and machine solitude...
And the machine, having neither head nor brain, with the tension of its watchfulness, sucks and sucks out the brain from the paralysed skull of its watchman, and does not stay, and sucks, and does not stay until a being is hanging to the sucked-out skull, no longer a man and not yet a machine, pumped dry, hollowed out, used up. And the machine which has sucked out and gulped down the spinal marrow and brain of the man and has wiped out the hollows in his skull with the soft, long tongue of its soft, long hissing, the maching gleams in its silver-velvet radiance, anointed with oil, beautiful, infallible - Baal and Moloch, Huitzilopochtli and Durgha…"
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Ross' copy of the 1973 Film Script, p. 32
01-01-11The pater noster machine is seen from below. Most of the lights in the room have gone out and clouds of steam swirl across a white luminous expanse. Suddenly, in the center, a vast grotesque face appears out of the steam; the aperture with revolving cranks becomes a gaping mouth with a row of teeth at the bottom and a flight of steps leading up to it. Freder leans forward, staring in horror at this vision as he shouts:
MOLOCH!
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Ross In Chicago Autumn Quarter 1977
10-10-10Ross arrived at the University Of Chicago in mid-September 1977.
His theme song: New Kid In Town by The Eagles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u7J60I_wro
He established a presence in the Research Archives
of the Oriental Institute.
On Ross' desk: Erik Iversen's Canon And Proportions In Egyptian Art and ancient Egyptian paper doll action figures, models for his planned animated film.
He audited Professor Helene J. Kantor's Art Of The Ancient Near East. He learned about the Gebel el-Arak Knife handle and the Narmer Palette. He quoted the Propyläen Kunstgeschichte and the Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte. He even offered to excavate Chogha Mish in Iran. Ms. Kantor gently explained that only Ph.D Candidates were eligible.
Breaks were at "The Club," the C-Shop in the Reynolds Club. The jukebox played the "Don't Be Cruel" / "Hound Dog" 45rpm single by the recently deceased Elvis Presley.
Ross rented a room near the Joseph Regenstein Library in the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house, 5625 S. University Ave. On Saturday night oceans of beer flooded the main stairs leaving a sticky and smelly residue to greet Sunday morning visitors.
"A strict vegetarian," Ross shared my meal plan at Woodward Court. Ross waited in the dining room with Sylvia Plath expert Joe from St Louis, Political Science grad student Takahachi and sometimes our Near Eastern Languages colleagues Liz (University Of Colorado), Rita (Bryn Mawr) and Carolyn (Assyrian Studies). I showed my paid ID and went through the main cafeteria line. Ross took my empty plate to the Seconds steam table. The arrangement worked well until he tried it without me.
Contests of discipline and self-control were common. After Ross fasted for a number of days, his prize was a meal at Lucita's Mexican Restaurant on 57th Street.
Ross kept his sense of humor despite the cold, depressing, overpoweringly negative aspects of Chicago academia. He spoke of Madame Blop-um-Blavatsky and Sahidic Blop-um-bloptic. In the afterglow of THE ROSS STORY published earlier that year, he jokingly portrayed me as "Mr Coffee" (I switched to tea) and as an overly studious "Nazi guy." He wrote, "That Nazi guy don't look too happy" on the door of my apartment mailbox.
Still the University Of Chicago was not the ideal environment for Ross. Uptightness was everywhere. Even the most minor utterance ignited a rapid-fire severely judged intelligence competition. Laser-sharp "Eye Beams" constantly scrutinized one's achievements, credentials and publications. 6.3" of snow in November and 19.2" in December 1977 may have discouraged Ross. He was not in Chicago Winter Quarter 1978. He wrote and called for five years but
I never saw him again.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
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