Dialogue 39 — Transcript

[00:01] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[00:02] Bob Dobbs: this is Ewen Cameron and Bob once again.

[00:04] Bob Dobbs: This is session number 39,

[00:06] Bob Dobbs: and we're looking at page 174 in the 175 of my pamphlet,

[00:15] Bob Dobbs: and

[00:17] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to do an opening detour and go back up to

[00:21] Bob Dobbs: 150s,

[00:22] Bob Dobbs: 140s to show my transition.

[00:26] Bob Dobbs: So

[00:27] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan ends with...

[00:30] Bob Dobbs: basically for people the satellite,

[00:32] Bob Dobbs: the effects of the satellite.

[00:34] Bob Dobbs: He then,

[00:35] Bob Dobbs: in the final years,

[00:36] Bob Dobbs: starts talking about computers.

[00:38] Bob Dobbs: He has a tetrad on the computers.

[00:43] Bob Dobbs: He sees,

[00:45] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[00:45] Bob Dobbs: he's not bad in what he sees coming.

[00:49] Bob Dobbs: But I took it as the computer.

[00:52] Bob Dobbs: He once said there was television,

[00:54] Bob Dobbs: then computer,

[00:55] Bob Dobbs: then satellite.

[00:56] Bob Dobbs: So I took the computer.

[00:58] Bob Dobbs: as a stage before the satellite.

[01:01] Bob Dobbs: So

[01:02] Bob Dobbs: I said my innovation was that the effect of the satellite,

[01:07] Bob Dobbs: of the Percent of the March,

[01:08] Bob Dobbs: was to create a hologram.

[01:10] Bob Dobbs: People lived in the hologram,

[01:13] Bob Dobbs: which McLuhan referred to by saying,

[01:14] Bob Dobbs: the word makes the market,

[01:16] Bob Dobbs: and largely the word came out of the American presidency.

[01:21] Bob Dobbs: This would be in the 70s,

[01:22] Bob Dobbs: 80s,

[01:22] Bob Dobbs: and 90s.

[01:23] Bob Dobbs: So,

[01:25] Bob Dobbs: Then I said this hologram,

[01:27] Bob Dobbs: as it got digitized,

[01:29] Bob Dobbs: which means compressed and miniaturized,

[01:32] Bob Dobbs: the hologram would shrink.

[01:34] Bob Dobbs: So I took the idea that the hologram goes through a holeopathic process,

[01:41] Bob Dobbs: which is a word McLuhan used in mid-50s in one of his Renaissance reviews.

[01:46] Bob Dobbs: He talked about Hollywood using holeopathic means,

[01:51] Bob Dobbs: a pretty obscure statement.

[01:56] Bob Dobbs: So I'm seeing the hologram that was the effect of the satellite getting tinier and tinier as we get into the increasing power of the digital Android Meme.

[02:07] Bob Dobbs: So that's the holeopathic effect on the hologram.

[02:13] Bob Dobbs: So

[02:14] Bob Dobbs: I put together hologram and homeopathy to make holeopathic,

[02:23] Bob Dobbs: which is actually,

[02:24] Bob Dobbs: I came up with that.

[02:26] Bob Dobbs: In the early

[02:27] Bob Dobbs: 90s, I think,

[02:30] Bob Dobbs: when Carol and I were in New York and we were trying to come up with a name for our new company,

[02:35] Bob Dobbs: our medicine company,

[02:39] Bob Dobbs: which would perhaps be based on this device that we had.

[02:42] Bob Dobbs: So I came up with holeopathic phatic.

[02:45] Bob Dobbs: So I had holeopathic in my mind and applied it in the mid-90s to my chart and the Android Meme.

[02:56] Bob Dobbs: So

[02:57] Bob Dobbs: I want to just show...

[02:58] Cameron McEwen: Don't you have an essay or something with the word holeopathic in the title?

[03:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[03:05] Bob Dobbs: I think it's my essay on McLuhan that I did for Lance Strate.

[03:10] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan and holeopathic quadrophrenia?

[03:13] Bob Dobbs: Is that what it is?

[03:15] Bob Dobbs: Let's see.

[03:17] Bob Dobbs: I'll go over there and check it out here.

[03:23] Cameron McEwen: I'm thinking of...

[03:25] Cameron McEwen: You wrote something that kind of bounces around between different places,

[03:32] Cameron McEwen: different times,

[03:34] Cameron McEwen: different personalities,

[03:37] Cameron McEwen: has a lot to do with

[03:39] Cameron McEwen: Dartmouth.

[03:41] Cameron McEwen: That's my diaries.

[03:44] Bob Dobbs: Those are my diaries.

[03:47] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[03:47] Bob Dobbs: but no,

[03:47] Bob Dobbs: at that time,

[03:49] Bob Dobbs: I put together the diaries in the

[03:51] Bob Dobbs: 90s.

[03:53] Bob Dobbs: I largely...

[03:55] Bob Dobbs: would go back into these events and remember i had a pretty good memory about what was said um i didn't have i wasn't writing diaries in the

[04:04] Bob Dobbs: 60s 70s 80s you know i didn't think myself was that significant but uh is that when i came up with this uh a chart i said ah now i'm significant because you know at the beginning of the last book of finning its wake which

[04:23] Bob Dobbs: is around page

[04:24] Bob Dobbs: 595 or something,

[04:26] Bob Dobbs: 593.

[04:28] Bob Dobbs: It begins with lo,

[04:30] Bob Dobbs: like someone holding up in medieval terms,

[04:33] Bob Dobbs: lo,

[04:33] Bob Dobbs: a magic wand,

[04:35] Bob Dobbs: and behold the chart.

[04:37] Bob Dobbs: Joyce begins with the announcement of a Chardin the last book,

[04:42] Bob Dobbs: which becomes the first book in Cycling Back.

[04:45] Bob Dobbs: So anyways,

[04:46] Bob Dobbs: I always think of that,

[04:47] Bob Dobbs: that Joyce had a Chardin his mind.

[04:49] Bob Dobbs: It was significant to come up with a chart.

[04:51] Bob Dobbs: So in the same time,

[04:53] Bob Dobbs: The mid-90s,

[04:54] Bob Dobbs: I wrote McLuhan and Holeopathic Quadrophrenia.

[04:58] Bob Dobbs: And that was,

[05:00] Bob Dobbs: well,

[05:00] Bob Dobbs: actually I wrote it in 98,

[05:02] Bob Dobbs: 99,

[05:03] Bob Dobbs: because we did the talk at Fordham,

[05:05] Bob Dobbs: the McLuhan Symposium,

[05:08] Bob Dobbs: done by Lance Strate.

[05:10] Bob Dobbs: And then we had to take what we said and put it into an essay.

[05:14] Bob Dobbs: So I made that.

[05:15] Bob Dobbs: That was where I used the word holeopathic,

[05:17] Bob Dobbs: which I had started to use in my Chardin 95.

[05:21] Bob Dobbs: So I applied the chart terms to my essay on McLuhan a few years later,

[05:27] Bob Dobbs: four years later.

[05:28] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[05:29] Bob Dobbs: so

[05:31] Bob Dobbs: I have to go back to find the point I want to make.

[05:38] Bob Dobbs: So,

[05:40] Bob Dobbs: let's see.

[05:46] Bob Dobbs: On page 146.

[05:50] Bob Dobbs: Let's see if that's 146.

[05:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[05:53] Bob Dobbs: 146.

[05:57] Bob Dobbs: I say the global membrane,

[05:59] Bob Dobbs: in brackets,

[06:00] Bob Dobbs: Android Meme phase 1,

[06:02] Bob Dobbs: C above,

[06:03] Bob Dobbs: was the actual hidden ground of the 1960 to 90 period,

[06:07] Bob Dobbs: not the global theater.

[06:09] Bob Dobbs: And it wasn't noticed until the Internet or information superhighway was dumped into the brain pan of the super angelic consumer after 1995.

[06:18] Bob Dobbs: Are you there with me?

[06:22] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to find it.

[06:24] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[06:24] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[06:24] Bob Dobbs: you're a bit off.

[06:26] Bob Dobbs: It might be 173 for you,

[06:28] Bob Dobbs: or 145 for you.

[06:36] Bob Dobbs: You'll see the phrase milleniary phatic,

[06:41] Bob Dobbs: a rare McLuhan term that might stand out as you scan up and down.

[06:49] Bob Dobbs: So the blue part,

[06:51] Bob Dobbs: it's a gray part,

[06:53] Bob Dobbs: gray type of thing.

[06:54] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[06:54] Cameron McEwen: it's gray.

[06:54] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[06:55] Cameron McEwen: Okay.

[06:56] Cameron McEwen: The global membrane?

[06:58] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[06:58] Cameron McEwen: Is that what we're looking for?

[07:00] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[07:01] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[07:01] Bob Dobbs: you can just search it,

[07:02] Bob Dobbs: I guess.

[07:03] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[07:04] Cameron McEwen: no,

[07:04] Cameron McEwen: but I've got the global membrane,

[07:06] Cameron McEwen: Android Meme phase one.

[07:08] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[07:09] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[07:10] Cameron McEwen: okay.

[07:10] Cameron McEwen: So that's on page 146 for me.

[07:13] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[07:14] Bob Dobbs: Was the actual hidden ground of the 60s,

[07:15] Bob Dobbs: 90s period,

[07:16] Bob Dobbs: not the global theater?

[07:18] Bob Dobbs: And it wasn't noticed until the Internet,

[07:19] Bob Dobbs: information superhighway was the first term in the early

[07:22] Bob Dobbs: 90s, was dumped into the brain pan of the superangelic.

[07:26] Bob Dobbs: consumer after 1995,

[07:29] Bob Dobbs: which is for most people when the internet came into their lives due to Netscape and Mosaic before that.

[07:37] Bob Dobbs: I think those,

[07:38] Bob Dobbs: 93 was Mosaic and then Netscape provided anti-environment for most people in 95,

[07:47] Bob Dobbs: 96.

[07:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[07:48] Bob Dobbs: So then I just say McLuhan used the word brain pan in the

[07:52] Bob Dobbs: 60s.

[07:53] Bob Dobbs: So,

[07:54] Bob Dobbs: the concept of the super angel is probably the most important contribution by McLuhan to the internet and worldwide web era.

[08:00] Bob Dobbs: The background to the concept,

[08:01] Bob Dobbs: percept.

[08:03] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan had met Wyndham Lewis in 1943 in the Detroit area,

[08:05] Bob Dobbs: and they spent much of their subsequent conversations discussing the concept of the superhuman.

[08:10] Bob Dobbs: These discussions are presented in Lewis'

[08:11] Bob Dobbs: novel Self-Condemned,

[08:12] Bob Dobbs: 1954,

[08:14] Bob Dobbs: wherein one of the discussants is based on McLuhan,

[08:17] Bob Dobbs: in brackets,

[08:17] Bob Dobbs: Professor Ian McKenzie.

[08:19] Bob Dobbs: I knew an Ian McKenzie in Halifax.

[08:23] Bob Dobbs: Guy had the same name.

[08:26] Bob Dobbs: Lewis published two more novels in 1995,

[08:28] Bob Dobbs: Monstre Gai and Malign Fiesta,

[08:30] Bob Dobbs: parts two and three of his trilogy,

[08:31] Bob Dobbs: The Human Age,

[08:32] Bob Dobbs: begun in 1928,

[08:34] Bob Dobbs: wherein he explored Hollywood as anti-environment of discarnate angelic humans,

[08:38] Bob Dobbs: which caused the original astral angels to invade and take over the city of angels.

[08:43] Bob Dobbs: See third program in The Human Age,

[08:45] Bob Dobbs: Explorations Magazine,

[08:46] Bob Dobbs: number eight,

[08:47] Bob Dobbs: part two.

[08:48] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[08:48] Bob Dobbs: that's a pretty good obscure McLuhan reference,

[08:51] Bob Dobbs: him talking about...

[08:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[08:53] Bob Dobbs: And that is in part two of Verbi-Voco-Visual

[08:57] Bob Dobbs: Visual Explorations.

[08:59] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[08:59] Bob Dobbs: he got 24 segments that are

[09:02] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan by himself.

[09:04] Bob Dobbs: And then he has a few essays including himself.

[09:06] Bob Dobbs: And that's part two is where he had third program in the human age,

[09:12] Bob Dobbs: which is an important thing to see.

[09:16] Bob Dobbs: And he says in that essay that Lewis was the first to use media en bloc.

[09:22] Bob Dobbs: E-N-B-L-O-C.

[09:24] Bob Dobbs: And most people thought he would be saying

[09:29] Bob Dobbs: Joyce did that.

[09:30] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[09:30] Bob Dobbs: he did emphasize Joyce in the 60s and not Lewis anymore.

[09:35] Bob Dobbs: So that was the 50s.

[09:37] Bob Dobbs: Maybe Lewis was a 50s kind of character.

[09:40] Bob Dobbs: 60s was more

[09:42] Bob Dobbs: Varronian.

[09:44] Bob Dobbs: Lewis in the

[09:45] Bob Dobbs: 50s is Menippean.

[09:47] Bob Dobbs: And using Don Theall terms,

[09:49] Bob Dobbs: Joyce was Varronian.

[09:51] Bob Dobbs: Which is a more joyful Menippean satire deal comes up with.

[09:57] Bob Dobbs: Not so...

[09:59] Bob Dobbs: Whatever you think of the negative vibe around Lewis and his,

[10:04] Bob Dobbs: what do you call it,

[10:05] Bob Dobbs: curmudgeon kind of personality.

[10:08] Bob Dobbs: And there's a biography of him which goes through his life day by day.

[10:11] Bob Dobbs: And it's incredible the shit he got himself into all the time.

[10:17] Bob Dobbs: You know about that?

[10:18] Bob Dobbs: Have you seen anything on him?

[10:19] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[10:20] Cameron McEwen: no,

[10:21] Cameron McEwen: I'm laughing at your description.

[10:23] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[10:26] Cameron McEwen: Lewis was famous for

[10:28] Cameron McEwen: basically pissing on everybody that tried to befriend them or help them.

[10:36] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[10:36] Bob Dobbs: It's one after another.

[10:38] Bob Dobbs: It's quite a ramp.

[10:40] Bob Dobbs: I think,

[10:41] Bob Dobbs: did I bring this up on his deathbed?

[10:44] Bob Dobbs: His last words were in response to a nurse saying,

[10:48] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[10:48] Bob Dobbs: have you gone to the bathroom or whatever they say?

[10:51] Bob Dobbs: And he says,

[10:52] Bob Dobbs: mind your own business.

[10:55] Bob Dobbs: And dies.

[10:58] Cameron McEwen: curmudgeon to the end so okay so i'm saying see the angelic go ahead but that's an interesting thing for lewis to say Wright mean uh and if somebody on their deathbed uh says the essence of

[11:16] Cameron McEwen: their life um then uh lewis can be seen as saying uh don't live uh the life that somebody has

[11:27] Bob Dobbs: pumped into you right but that somebody has pumped around you mind your own business that's right it's a very good statement you know super the services of individualism yeah the services so

[11:43] Cameron McEwen: but you know Bob it might be good to not go too fast here yeah for example you started off by contrasting the global membrane with a global theater.

[11:55] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[11:57] Cameron McEwen: How do you see those as different?

[12:00] Bob Dobbs: The global theater has the proscenium arch,

[12:02] Bob Dobbs: as McLuhan defined it.

[12:04] Bob Dobbs: It has a bit of a visual space frame,

[12:06] Bob Dobbs: like a theater.

[12:08] Bob Dobbs: And the membrane is a resonating node.

[12:10] Bob Dobbs: And we're all dancing in the same spot,

[12:12] Bob Dobbs: and you can't see or hear that spot.

[12:18] Cameron McEwen: It's not a framework.

[12:19] Cameron McEwen: The global theater is like...

[12:26] Cameron McEwen: Artificial scenery in front of the global membrane.

[12:30] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[12:31] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[12:32] Bob Dobbs: And the digitization,

[12:34] Bob Dobbs: the shrinking of the props until you get pure information that everybody's processing,

[12:40] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[12:40] Bob Dobbs: by the 80s,

[12:42] Bob Dobbs: it's truly just anti-environment.

[12:44] Bob Dobbs: That's the global membrane and no more theater.

[12:47] Bob Dobbs: Though,

[12:48] Bob Dobbs: no medium...

[12:49] Bob Dobbs: Look at how...

[12:51] Bob Dobbs: I just want to say this.

[12:53] Bob Dobbs: No effect disappears.

[12:54] Bob Dobbs: So the global theater is...

[12:56] Bob Dobbs: still as an effect happening by culture lag in different parts of the world.

[13:02] Bob Dobbs: You see what I'm saying?

[13:02] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[13:03] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[13:04] Cameron McEwen: absolutely.

[13:05] Cameron McEwen: And so right now we've reached the point where in Hollywood,

[13:15] Cameron McEwen: not only is there no scenery anymore,

[13:17] Cameron McEwen: there's no actors.

[13:18] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[13:20] Cameron McEwen: Everything is just digital representation.

[13:25] Cameron McEwen: basically of the same.

[13:28] Cameron McEwen: So there's no difference between any of the movies on

[13:32] Cameron McEwen: Netflix or

[13:34] Cameron McEwen: Prime or any of these services.

[13:37] Cameron McEwen: It's just the same portrayed by digital actors in front of digital scenery.

[13:45] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[13:45] Bob Dobbs: and they keep announcing further development of that.

[13:51] Bob Dobbs: I saw something.

[13:52] Bob Dobbs: The other day,

[13:52] Bob Dobbs: I don't know,

[13:53] Bob Dobbs: your brain makes the movie or something,

[13:56] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[13:56] Bob Dobbs: They put a chip in you and it's gotten even more extreme in terms of the nothingness that's involved.

[14:05] Bob Dobbs: Or the CGI,

[14:06] Bob Dobbs: or whatever you call it,

[14:07] Bob Dobbs: past CGI.

[14:09] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[14:09] Bob Dobbs: it's a,

[14:11] Bob Dobbs: what do you call that?

[14:11] Bob Dobbs: It's,

[14:12] Bob Dobbs: what do you call an afterimage or something worse than an afterimage?

[14:19] Bob Dobbs: It's a ghost.

[14:23] Cameron McEwen: Mirage,

[14:24] Cameron McEwen: maybe.

[14:24] Cameron McEwen: Mirage,

[14:24] Bob Dobbs: that was the word,

[14:25] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[14:25] Bob Dobbs: mirage.

[14:27] Bob Dobbs: So this is where...

[14:30] Cameron McEwen: But that means you were talking about the time lag for something to sort of make itself obvious.

[14:40] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[14:40] Cameron McEwen: you're talking about something that you say happened in,

[14:45] Cameron McEwen: let's say,

[14:45] Cameron McEwen: the

[14:46] Cameron McEwen: 1980s or something.

[14:49] Cameron McEwen: And so here we are almost

[14:51] Cameron McEwen: 40 years later.

[14:52] Cameron McEwen: And what happened then is now appearing.

[14:59] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[15:00] Bob Dobbs: figure.

[15:04] Bob Dobbs: He uses the word global membrane in his review of Burroughs in December 64,

[15:10] Bob Dobbs: and I heard a recent interview with Bruce Powe because his latest book is called The Global Membrane,

[15:15] Bob Dobbs: and I didn't know if he knew it.

[15:17] Bob Dobbs: I mentioned it in my little review of his book,

[15:19] Bob Dobbs: but he said in the interview that global membrane came from,

[15:24] Bob Dobbs: and he correctly quotes the 64 review of Burroughs,

[15:27] Bob Dobbs: and he says,

[15:28] Bob Dobbs: I don't think

[15:29] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan ever used the word again.

[15:32] Bob Dobbs: Now in my mind there might have been one more time but I can't think of it.

[15:35] Bob Dobbs: He might be right.

[15:37] Bob Dobbs: Did you recall the word being used more than once?

[15:41] Cameron McEwen: No but

[15:43] Cameron McEwen: I'll look it up in the background mode here.

[15:45] Bob Dobbs: Okay so the global membrane is the fact in the

[15:53] Bob Dobbs: 60s in the increasing whatever that world is.

[15:58] Bob Dobbs: technologically that we're all inside of.

[16:01] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan saw that.

[16:03] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[16:04] Bob Dobbs: if I'm describing this resonant node as the Internet of the

[16:08] Bob Dobbs: 90s, he saw that in the 50s and

[16:11] Bob Dobbs: 60s.

[16:12] Bob Dobbs: He saw that the television put everybody in his resonant node,

[16:16] Bob Dobbs: but then it gets freed up and more pseudo-mobility to,

[16:25] Bob Dobbs: they call it escape velocity,

[16:27] Bob Dobbs: to escape.

[16:27] Bob Dobbs: escape the resonant node virtually through increasing digital rocket ships,

[16:33] Bob Dobbs: or what did he call it?

[16:36] Bob Dobbs: Edible spaceships.

[16:38] Bob Dobbs: You know that phrase in understanding media?

[16:41] Bob Dobbs: Edible spaceships,

[16:43] Bob Dobbs: which would perhaps be pills or drugs.

[16:46] Bob Dobbs: So people could spiral out of the resonant node starting in the

[16:52] Bob Dobbs: 60s through drugs or digital technologies.

[16:57] Bob Dobbs: the web

[17:00] Bob Dobbs: 1.0 and 2.0,

[17:01] Bob Dobbs: then social media.

[17:03] Bob Dobbs: So

[17:05] Bob Dobbs: I'm saying you've got to go past the global theater to get into the implications of what McLuhan was seeing.

[17:16] Bob Dobbs: And you can say,

[17:18] Bob Dobbs: yes,

[17:18] Bob Dobbs: he saw the global membrane and maybe even the Android Meme.

[17:21] Bob Dobbs: So I'm going to try to show that,

[17:23] Bob Dobbs: that he even anticipated the Android Meme.

[17:27] Bob Dobbs: So

[17:28] Bob Dobbs: I'm quoting this on page 146.

[17:35] Bob Dobbs: And then the concept of the super angel was probably the most important contribution by McLuhan to the Internet and World Wide Web era.

[17:45] Bob Dobbs: So we were super angels in the global membrane.

[17:49] Bob Dobbs: Then it became figure in the

[17:51] Bob Dobbs: 90s. The background...

[17:53] Cameron McEwen: Let me just interrupt.

[17:56] Cameron McEwen: and read a couple sentences here.

[17:59] Cameron McEwen: Electric technology favors not the fragmentary but the integral,

[18:03] Cameron McEwen: not the mechanical but the organic.

[18:06] Cameron McEwen: It has not occurred to us that electricity is,

[18:09] Cameron McEwen: in effect,

[18:10] Cameron McEwen: an extension of the nervous system as a kind of global membrane.

[18:15] Cameron McEwen: That's from the introduction to bias of communication.

[18:19] Bob Dobbs: In 64?

[18:22] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[18:23] Cameron McEwen: same years.

[18:26] Cameron McEwen: That was common for McLuhan,

[18:27] Cameron McEwen: too.

[18:28] Cameron McEwen: When he got an idea,

[18:29] Cameron McEwen: he would repeat it in different writings at the same time.

[18:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[18:34] Bob Dobbs: for about six months,

[18:35] Bob Dobbs: you'd get the same stuff,

[18:36] Bob Dobbs: different articles and that.

[18:38] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[18:38] Bob Dobbs: that's great.

[18:38] Bob Dobbs: So you found that case,

[18:41] Bob Dobbs: and it's probably the earliest,

[18:43] Bob Dobbs: right?

[18:43] Bob Dobbs: Probably doesn't happen before then,

[18:46] Bob Dobbs: but he may have used it in the 70s.

[18:48] Bob Dobbs: That's what I was wondering.

[18:49] Bob Dobbs: Are you able to scan your whole archive?

[18:52] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[18:54] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[18:54] Cameron McEwen: But

[18:56] Cameron McEwen: I don't see anything.

[18:58] Cameron McEwen: I see only those two from 1964 for Global Membrane.

[19:04] Bob Dobbs: That's amazing.

[19:04] Bob Dobbs: I forgot about that or didn't notice it.

[19:06] Bob Dobbs: It's in his four.

[19:08] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[19:08] Cameron McEwen: you sort of knew about it because you mentioned that in regard to Powell.

[19:13] Cameron McEwen: No,

[19:14] Cameron McEwen: no.

[19:15] Bob Dobbs: I know about Nation Magazine,

[19:17] Bob Dobbs: December 64.

[19:17] Bob Dobbs: I have no idea,

[19:20] Bob Dobbs: memory of it being in the introduction of the Bias of Communication,

[19:23] Bob Dobbs: which was...

[19:24] Bob Dobbs: reprinted in 64 and McLuhan did the forward to it,

[19:27] Bob Dobbs: right?

[19:27] Bob Dobbs: That's what you're quoting.

[19:29] Bob Dobbs: I haven't read that in a long time but

[19:33] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know global membrane was in that.

[19:36] Cameron McEwen: You said before that you thought there was another mention of the global membrane aside from Burroughs.

[19:45] Bob Dobbs: And I'm thinking of later,

[19:48] Bob Dobbs: not the same year.

[19:52] Cameron McEwen: You were half right.

[19:53] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[19:53] Bob Dobbs: it was Wright.

[19:54] Bob Dobbs: There was another one.

[19:56] Bob Dobbs: It was right next door.

[19:59] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[19:59] Bob Dobbs: Do you have an idea what he wrote,

[20:02] Bob Dobbs: the forward?

[20:04] Cameron McEwen: When he wrote it?

[20:05] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[20:06] Bob Dobbs: in 64 for the Innis reprint.

[20:08] Cameron McEwen: No,

[20:09] Cameron McEwen: but oftentimes when McLuhan was asked to Wright forward or an introduction,

[20:17] Cameron McEwen: he would go into his notes and see what he already had from the past.

[20:24] Cameron McEwen: So you never know.

[20:26] Cameron McEwen: if people think that you can date...

[20:28] Cameron McEwen: stuff in McLuhan from the day that's published,

[20:31] Cameron McEwen: they're mistaken.

[20:33] Cameron McEwen: It doesn't work like that.

[20:35] Cameron McEwen: Many,

[20:35] Cameron McEwen: many of his writings are sort of compendia of stuff that he had written,

[20:42] Cameron McEwen: had dictated,

[20:44] Cameron McEwen: and then just sort of slammed together when something was needed.

[20:50] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[20:50] Bob Dobbs: and he would artfully add a new wrinkle

[20:57] Bob Dobbs: for only that article.

[20:58] Bob Dobbs: And in the next article,

[21:00] Bob Dobbs: you might find another.

[21:01] Bob Dobbs: There'd be the general repeat of his themes,

[21:03] Bob Dobbs: but then there'd be some little twist or wrinkle or nuance,

[21:07] Bob Dobbs: and they would be only in that article.

[21:09] Bob Dobbs: You'd never see him say that thing again.

[21:12] Bob Dobbs: And there'd be another wrinkle in the next article from different.

[21:15] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[21:16] Cameron McEwen: and that's more or less what he called thinking.

[21:19] Cameron McEwen: So this process of writing that we're talking about is analogous.

[21:27] Cameron McEwen: to

[21:27] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan fondness for talking because in both cases you're basically saying stuff that everybody already knows but something can click in the process of doing it.

[21:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[21:43] Cameron McEwen: And so

[21:44] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan wrote as a kind of conversation with himself.

[21:48] Bob Dobbs: Yeah did you say painting?

[21:50] Bob Dobbs: I thought you said he was painting.

[21:54] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what you said then.

[21:56] Cameron McEwen: Thinking.

[21:57] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[21:58] Bob Dobbs: thinking.

[21:58] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[21:59] Bob Dobbs: right.

[21:59] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[22:00] Bob Dobbs: It was his thinking.

[22:01] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[22:03] Cameron McEwen: It was his process.

[22:04] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[22:06] Bob Dobbs: Maybe he was the first thinking out loud guy.

[22:13] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[22:13] Bob Dobbs: he said,

[22:14] Bob Dobbs: I don't know what I think until I say it.

[22:16] Bob Dobbs: And nobody really read that before,

[22:18] Bob Dobbs: I don't think.

[22:19] Bob Dobbs: But in an information interviewing world.

[22:24] Bob Dobbs: radio and TV conversational thing going on,

[22:28] Bob Dobbs: his thinking was the appropriate style for that period,

[22:32] Bob Dobbs: the appropriate art for that medium,

[22:35] Bob Dobbs: for that era.

[22:37] Cameron McEwen: And now again,

[22:39] Cameron McEwen: it's appearing to everybody as something obvious that was going on with him,

[22:48] Cameron McEwen: this is

[22:49] Cameron McEwen: 60 years ago.

[22:53] Cameron McEwen: And that is that everybody's locked in a bubble,

[22:59] Cameron McEwen: and these bubbles are sort of bouncing off each other,

[23:04] Cameron McEwen: but there's no communication going on.

[23:07] Cameron McEwen: And one of the problems that McLuhan had was that people often got the sense that he wasn't talking to them,

[23:17] Cameron McEwen: he was talking to himself.

[23:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[23:21] Cameron McEwen: I saw that.

[23:21] Cameron McEwen: So then people would get their back up and would react against that,

[23:28] Cameron McEwen: and they wouldn't be able to hear what was actually going on with him.

[23:34] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[23:36] Bob Dobbs: There was probably never a man who said the same thing so many times in the world of ideas.

[23:43] Bob Dobbs: I once,

[23:43] Bob Dobbs: in 1974,

[23:45] Bob Dobbs: dropped into his office in July.

[23:48] Bob Dobbs: And he was lecturing

[23:51] Bob Dobbs: Barry Nevitt.

[23:53] Bob Dobbs: They were working on a shortened version of Take Today.

[23:56] Bob Dobbs: And I was down there listening to them for about 20 minutes.

[23:59] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan was saying the same stuff he said 30 years before,

[24:03] Bob Dobbs: or,

[24:03] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[24:04] Bob Dobbs: 15 years before.

[24:05] Bob Dobbs: He was defining visual space and acoustic space for the

[24:08] Bob Dobbs: 10th millionth time to Barry Nevitt,

[24:13] Bob Dobbs: who,

[24:13] Bob Dobbs: of course,

[24:13] Bob Dobbs: had heard it 100,000 times.

[24:16] Bob Dobbs: It's like McLuhan,

[24:18] Bob Dobbs: it was his vision,

[24:20] Bob Dobbs: what he was seeing,

[24:20] Bob Dobbs: what he was trying to describe was so tasty to him,

[24:24] Bob Dobbs: it wasn't a problem to keep eating it again by talking it,

[24:29] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[24:29] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[24:30] Cameron McEwen: But it wasn't only a question of being tasty,

[24:34] Cameron McEwen: although I agree with you on that.

[24:36] Cameron McEwen: I think it's a nice phrase.

[24:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[24:38] Cameron McEwen: But it was also,

[24:39] Cameron McEwen: he was hammering away at something that was there.

[24:45] Cameron McEwen: And he couldn't find it.

[24:46] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[24:47] Bob Dobbs: It was hard to find.

[24:49] Bob Dobbs: Very hard to find.

[24:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[24:50] Cameron McEwen: of course.

[24:50] Cameron McEwen: I'm not saying it's easy.

[24:52] Cameron McEwen: I'm not saying that anybody has found it yet.

[24:56] Cameron McEwen: But

[24:58] Cameron McEwen: I'm saying that that was,

[25:02] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[25:02] Cameron McEwen: you see these cartoons of

[25:04] Cameron McEwen: Einstein with a million formulas on the blackboard.

[25:11] Cameron McEwen: So,

[25:12] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[25:12] Cameron McEwen: that was what McLuhan was doing.

[25:14] Cameron McEwen: He had...

[25:17] Cameron McEwen: Two or three sort of master problems,

[25:20] Cameron McEwen: and he was hammering away at them,

[25:22] Cameron McEwen: trying to figure out how to get them to go into an equation.

[25:27] Bob Dobbs: Into the le mot juste.

[25:30] Bob Dobbs: He was looking for the le mot juste.

[25:33] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[25:34] Bob Dobbs: Marge Stewart.

[25:35] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[25:37] Bob Dobbs: The right word.

[25:39] Bob Dobbs: I prompted to say that people would get...

[25:44] Bob Dobbs: stimulated by this process,

[25:46] Bob Dobbs: this hammering,

[25:47] Bob Dobbs: and they would get ideas from it,

[25:50] Bob Dobbs: and they thought they understood him.

[25:52] Bob Dobbs: And they'd walk away with their subjective grabbing of what they thought he was doing.

[26:00] Bob Dobbs: And so he was the great communicator,

[26:02] Bob Dobbs: or he was the non-great communicator.

[26:05] Bob Dobbs: But some people would be puzzled,

[26:07] Bob Dobbs: but it was amazing how much that process of drilling and repetition Thank you.

[26:13] Bob Dobbs: inspired people.

[26:14] Bob Dobbs: What he said probably was so broad that people fell into it,

[26:17] Bob Dobbs: fell into the rabbit hole of the idea,

[26:21] Bob Dobbs: and then found ways to get their way out of it,

[26:24] Bob Dobbs: and that was new thinking for them.

[26:28] Bob Dobbs: You get me?

[26:30] Cameron McEwen: I guess so.

[26:32] Bob Dobbs: They fall into the hole.

[26:34] Cameron McEwen: I react.

[26:35] Cameron McEwen: Sorry?

[26:35] Bob Dobbs: They fall into the hole of his vision.

[26:37] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[26:37] Bob Dobbs: they can't see the level he's seeing it.

[26:40] Bob Dobbs: They don't think that big.

[26:41] Cameron McEwen: No,

[26:41] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.

[26:43] Cameron McEwen: But I just,

[26:44] Cameron McEwen: I react against the idea that there were too many people that this applied to.

[26:52] Cameron McEwen: Probably in the whole world,

[26:54] Cameron McEwen: there were 20 people who were inspired by McLuhan in the sense you're talking about.

[27:02] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[27:02] Cameron McEwen: no,

[27:02] Cameron McEwen: I don't mean that.

[27:04] Bob Dobbs: Don't mean in a deep way.

[27:05] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[27:06] Cameron McEwen: people would say...

[27:09] Cameron McEwen: It wasn't so deep.

[27:10] Cameron McEwen: It wasn't so deep.

[27:11] Cameron McEwen: Those

[27:11] Cameron McEwen: 20 people didn't understand what he was talking about.

[27:15] Bob Dobbs: I know,

[27:15] Bob Dobbs: but I'm saying...

[27:19] Bob Dobbs: But I say the others in the audience,

[27:21] Bob Dobbs: whether in the seminars,

[27:23] Bob Dobbs: were intrigued by what he thought,

[27:25] Bob Dobbs: and they were stimulated and got images from it.

[27:30] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[27:30] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[27:31] Cameron McEwen: but that was like them eating cereal in the morning or something.

[27:37] Bob Dobbs: No,

[27:37] Bob Dobbs: they thought that was intellectual life.

[27:39] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[27:40] Bob Dobbs: they'd walk out of the seminar quite satisfied.

[27:42] Bob Dobbs: They had a good meal.

[27:44] Bob Dobbs: And what a guy,

[27:45] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[27:45] Bob Dobbs: he really got me thinking things I hadn't thought.

[27:47] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[27:48] Cameron McEwen: Not that they would be able to do anything with it.

[27:51] Cameron McEwen: But there were people all over campus doing the same thing with some guy that was talking about the poetry of whoever.

[28:01] Cameron McEwen: And another guy was talking about the evolution of life.

[28:05] Cameron McEwen: Another guy was talking about...

[28:07] Cameron McEwen: new discoveries in chemistry or something.

[28:11] Cameron McEwen: So that's,

[28:12] Cameron McEwen: you know...

[28:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[28:13] Bob Dobbs: but he was different,

[28:15] Bob Dobbs: because he talked about people's present,

[28:18] Bob Dobbs: not a subject,

[28:21] Bob Dobbs: not chemistry.

[28:22] Bob Dobbs: He was...

[28:23] Cameron McEwen: But you see,

[28:23] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[28:26] Cameron McEwen: I don't think for

[28:29] Cameron McEwen: 99% of people that were listening to McLuhan...

[28:35] Cameron McEwen: I think that they didn't understand anything about present,

[28:38] Cameron McEwen: past,

[28:39] Cameron McEwen: future.

[28:41] Cameron McEwen: I think they just...

[28:43] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[28:43] Bob Dobbs: so they treated him as just another professor.

[28:45] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[28:46] Bob Dobbs: they didn't understand it.

[28:47] Bob Dobbs: I think so.

[28:47] Bob Dobbs: They didn't understand the uniqueness of him.

[28:50] Bob Dobbs: But there were a few people who were stimulated in that sense and weren't profound.

[28:57] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[28:57] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.

[28:58] Cameron McEwen: I agree with that.

[28:59] Cameron McEwen: But it's just a relative handful.

[29:06] Cameron McEwen: The only thing that would have been real communication by

[29:11] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan would have been to hand on his problems,

[29:17] Cameron McEwen: to hand on the idea that not only is there something there to be learned,

[29:25] Cameron McEwen: but we can learn it.

[29:27] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[29:28] Cameron McEwen: And

[29:29] Cameron McEwen: I don't see,

[29:30] Cameron McEwen: I see myself doing that.

[29:32] Cameron McEwen: I see you doing that in some senses,

[29:36] Cameron McEwen: but I don't see the quote-unquote McLuhan scholars of all of the different stripes.

[29:44] Cameron McEwen: I don't see them doing that.

[29:46] Bob Dobbs: No,

[29:46] Bob Dobbs: I agree.

[29:48] Bob Dobbs: But now,

[29:50] Bob Dobbs: can you name five or ten people who you felt might have gotten it,

[29:54] Bob Dobbs: or we never knew them,

[29:56] Bob Dobbs: we never heard from them?

[29:59] Cameron McEwen: In terms of McLuhan?

[30:01] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[30:02] Bob Dobbs: Who are the people,

[30:02] Bob Dobbs: the 20 people that got it,

[30:04] Bob Dobbs: so to speak?

[30:06] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[30:06] Cameron McEwen: but I'm thinking,

[30:08] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[30:09] Cameron McEwen: I'm not saying that they actually got it.

[30:12] Cameron McEwen: I say that they were inspired,

[30:14] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[30:15] Cameron McEwen: people like Thompson,

[30:16] Cameron McEwen: let's say.

[30:17] Cameron McEwen: that were inspired to go on to stuff that is interesting,

[30:27] Cameron McEwen: but they were not necessarily inspired in the way that

[30:33] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was trying to sort of hand over this problem we were just discussing,

[30:43] Cameron McEwen: this hammering away stuff.

[30:44] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[30:46] Cameron McEwen: You mean by

[30:47] Bob Dobbs: William Irwin Thompson?

[30:48] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[30:50] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[30:51] Cameron McEwen: And what's the name of the guy who was at University of New Brunswick?

[30:56] Cameron McEwen: Maybe he's still there.

[30:57] Cameron McEwen: The guy that does McLuhan and Pound.

[31:00] Cameron McEwen: And then there's the guy in

[31:04] Cameron McEwen: Toronto or Windsor or London who does

[31:09] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan and sort of esoteric stuff.

[31:12] Bob Dobbs: Leon Josette?

[31:14] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[31:14] Cameron McEwen: exactly.

[31:15] Bob Dobbs: Who's the guy in New Brunswick?

[31:16] Bob Dobbs: Who do you think you have in New Brunswick?

[31:18] Cameron McEwen: The Greek guy,

[31:18] Cameron McEwen: the Greek guy,

[31:19] Cameron McEwen: Tyrannopoulos or something.

[31:22] Bob Dobbs: I don't know about that.

[31:25] Bob Dobbs: Then again,

[31:25] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[31:28] Bob Dobbs: I think I know his mentor,

[31:30] Bob Dobbs: but I don't have his name right now.

[31:32] Bob Dobbs: I remember he would be a younger guy,

[31:35] Bob Dobbs: this

[31:36] Bob Dobbs: Andrew McLuhan name.

[31:38] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[31:38] Bob Dobbs: I think I know who you mean.

[31:41] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[31:41] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[31:42] Cameron McEwen: So all of these people took...

[31:44] Cameron McEwen: They took interesting aspects of

[31:48] Cameron McEwen: McEwen. They took things that he had turned up through his mental activity and that were fertile.

[31:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[31:59] Cameron McEwen: And they took them,

[32:01] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[32:01] Cameron McEwen: a lot further than he did.

[32:04] Cameron McEwen: But did they understand the sort of the essence of the problem that he was trying to get at?

[32:12] Cameron McEwen: I don't think so.

[32:12] Cameron McEwen: I think uh

[32:14] Cameron McEwen: But Ennis,

[32:19] Cameron McEwen: before he died,

[32:20] Cameron McEwen: Ennis starting in maybe 1947 or something like this,

[32:24] Cameron McEwen: he understood.

[32:26] Cameron McEwen: Innis and McLuhan had very good dialogue,

[32:29] Cameron McEwen: I believe.

[32:31] Bob Dobbs: Did you ever hear my interview with Leon Josette?

[32:36] Cameron McEwen: No.

[32:37] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[32:37] Bob Dobbs: you've got to hear that.

[32:39] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[32:39] Cameron McEwen: no,

[32:40] Cameron McEwen: I'd be interested in that.

[32:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[32:42] Bob Dobbs: you go to dobstown.com,

[32:45] Bob Dobbs: small page,

[32:46] Bob Dobbs: and in the middle it says wiretaps,

[32:48] Bob Dobbs: the middle column.

[32:50] Bob Dobbs: And there's a whole list,

[32:51] Bob Dobbs: a vertical list of names.

[32:52] Bob Dobbs: So just Crowley down until you get to Leon Josette.

[32:55] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[32:56] Bob Dobbs: he was a student of McLuhan in 62 and that,

[32:59] Bob Dobbs: right when McLuhan sort of started to get noticed.

[33:03] Bob Dobbs: And he,

[33:05] Bob Dobbs: so Leon and his friends in the class,

[33:08] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was normal for them.

[33:10] Bob Dobbs: They were shocked to see that the world thought it was significant what he was saying.

[33:15] Bob Dobbs: And then he started to get into the media.

[33:16] Bob Dobbs: He said it was quite weird for them because they didn't see McLuhan on that level.

[33:22] Bob Dobbs: Maybe because they were too young and they weren't getting it.

[33:24] Bob Dobbs: But anyways,

[33:26] Bob Dobbs: in the interview,

[33:28] Bob Dobbs: at some point near the end,

[33:29] Bob Dobbs: I say what I think McLuhan meant.

[33:33] Bob Dobbs: Okay?

[33:34] Bob Dobbs: I couldn't say what it was,

[33:35] Bob Dobbs: but I thought I was defining some basic McLuhan.

[33:38] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[33:38] Bob Dobbs: where'd you get that idea?

[33:42] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[33:43] Bob Dobbs: that's McLuhan.

[33:44] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[33:44] Bob Dobbs: I've never heard of that.

[33:45] Bob Dobbs: That's ridiculous.

[33:47] Bob Dobbs: You're crazy.

[33:48] Bob Dobbs: So that's a holy cow.

[33:52] Bob Dobbs: But he did it.

[33:53] Cameron McEwen: Let me make sure I understand what you were saying in terms of the reference.

[33:57] Cameron McEwen: You said,

[33:58] Cameron McEwen: did you say Bobstown.net?

[34:00] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[34:00] Bob Dobbs: no,

[34:01] Bob Dobbs: Dobbs.

[34:01] Bob Dobbs: Dobbs.

[34:02] Bob Dobbs: Dobbs.

[34:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[34:04] Cameron McEwen: Dobbstown.com.

[34:07] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[34:07] Cameron McEwen: .com,

[34:07] Cameron McEwen: okay.

[34:08] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[34:09] Cameron McEwen: I've never been there,

[34:10] Cameron McEwen: so I'll have to take a look.

[34:11] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[34:11] Cameron McEwen: And then you said the interview is under wiretap,

[34:14] Cameron McEwen: is that right?

[34:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[34:15] Bob Dobbs: there's a middle column.

[34:16] Bob Dobbs: There's my stuff on the left and right,

[34:18] Bob Dobbs: different aspects,

[34:19] Bob Dobbs: and then there's a,

[34:20] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[34:21] Bob Dobbs: down a bit near the top,

[34:23] Bob Dobbs: it says wiretaps.

[34:24] Bob Dobbs: You can look at it right now if you're on there,

[34:26] Bob Dobbs: and you'll see a row,

[34:28] Bob Dobbs: a vertical row of many names,

[34:30] Bob Dobbs: and those are all my interviews with very interesting people.

[34:39] Bob Dobbs: So,

[34:39] Bob Dobbs: but Tourette's an example of someone who gets...

[34:43] Bob Dobbs: who gets McLuhan issue or something and is not repeating McLuhan.

[34:48] Bob Dobbs: He's applying it to his own studies of Pound and the esoteric occult stuff that he was interested in.

[34:55] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[34:55] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[34:56] Cameron McEwen: exactly.

[34:57] Cameron McEwen: Exactly.

[34:57] Cameron McEwen: So you have a kind of a panorama is opened,

[35:05] Cameron McEwen: and

[35:06] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan was mostly interested just in opening it,

[35:10] Cameron McEwen: takes a quick sniff.

[35:12] Cameron McEwen: and decides that that's not going to lead him where he wants to go.

[35:17] Cameron McEwen: But somebody else looks at this panorama and they say,

[35:20] Cameron McEwen: holy smokes,

[35:20] Cameron McEwen: there's a whole continent there to be explored.

[35:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[35:25] Bob Dobbs: It's funny,

[35:26] Bob Dobbs: you bring up this Greek name.

[35:28] Bob Dobbs: I know who you mean,

[35:29] Bob Dobbs: but I discovered him.

[35:34] Bob Dobbs: Is he actually given credit in Leon's books?

[35:38] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[35:38] Cameron McEwen: sure.

[35:39] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[35:39] Bob Dobbs: that's where I've seen it.

[35:40] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[35:41] Bob Dobbs: But I know his mentor,

[35:43] Bob Dobbs: who is really good on pound,

[35:46] Bob Dobbs: and an older guy,

[35:48] Bob Dobbs: I guess his professor.

[35:52] Bob Dobbs: But I had noticed this Greek name associated with him or Josette,

[35:56] Bob Dobbs: both of them.

[35:58] Bob Dobbs: And that's the first time anybody ever brought him up.

[36:02] Bob Dobbs: You brought him up,

[36:02] Bob Dobbs: but I kind of knew.

[36:03] Bob Dobbs: When you said New Brunswick,

[36:05] Bob Dobbs: I was thinking of that guy,

[36:06] Bob Dobbs: but I didn't have his name.

[36:07] Bob Dobbs: Then you said it,

[36:08] Bob Dobbs: and I said,

[36:08] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[36:08] Bob Dobbs: that's the guy.

[36:10] Bob Dobbs: So,

[36:10] Bob Dobbs: very good there.

[36:12] Bob Dobbs: You're into the nooks and crannies of Gerd Stern.

[36:16] Bob Dobbs: We've taken you,

[36:17] Bob Dobbs: you've come into certain hidden crevices of my reality,

[36:21] Bob Dobbs: my landscape.

[36:23] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[36:24] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[36:25] Bob Dobbs: there's,

[36:26] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[36:27] Bob Dobbs: so these discussions,

[36:29] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[36:29] Bob Dobbs: we're talking about the super angel.

[36:31] Bob Dobbs: The background to the concept percept,

[36:34] Bob Dobbs: the background to the super angel concept slash percept.

[36:38] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan had met Wyndham Lewis in 1943 in the Detroit area,

[36:42] Bob Dobbs: and they spent much of their subsequent conversations discussing the concept of the superhuman.

[36:47] Bob Dobbs: That's the term in the novel,

[36:49] Bob Dobbs: Self-Condemned,

[36:51] Bob Dobbs: which is based on Lewis's encounter with McLuhan.

[36:57] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan being the character of Professor Ian McKenzie,

[37:00] Bob Dobbs: and I have here,

[37:00] Bob Dobbs: go to page 312 if you're listening,

[37:03] Bob Dobbs: if you have the book,

[37:05] Bob Dobbs: Self-Condemned.

[37:08] Bob Dobbs: Mackenzie's introduced on page 312.

[37:11] Bob Dobbs: So then I say we did the astral angels.

[37:19] Bob Dobbs: So then

[37:20] Bob Dobbs: I say conversationally just as the angels were outraged that humans developed language,

[37:25] Bob Dobbs: this is a replay of that occasion with a later kind of language movies.

[37:29] Bob Dobbs: That irritated the angels,

[37:31] Bob Dobbs: the same conflict.

[37:33] Bob Dobbs: Then back to my more formal prose,

[37:35] Bob Dobbs: from superhuman to super angel.

[37:38] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan pointed out in the 70s that an angel could be anywhere,

[37:40] Bob Dobbs: but only there,

[37:42] Bob Dobbs: before moving on to another there,

[37:44] Bob Dobbs: in a sequential manner.

[37:46] Bob Dobbs: Eventually,

[37:46] Bob Dobbs: the angel would or could experience everywhere.

[37:50] Bob Dobbs: However,

[37:51] Bob Dobbs: the human engaging in electronic services of the global membrane,

[37:54] Bob Dobbs: what McLuhan termed the discarnate condition,

[37:56] Bob Dobbs: could be everywhere simultaneously and immediately,

[37:59] Bob Dobbs: no tactility involved.

[38:02] Bob Dobbs: Imagine that you were broadcasting on the radio to a half million people.

[38:05] Bob Dobbs: Each one of those private listener anti-environment would have a piece of you in them via the radio.

[38:12] Bob Dobbs: And each one of the half million listeners would have a piece occupying your studio.

[38:18] Bob Dobbs: They would be passively present anti-environment.

[38:21] Bob Dobbs: Then,

[38:21] Bob Dobbs: once telephones for live call-ins were added,

[38:24] Bob Dobbs: everybody could potentially be actively in every other listener's home.

[38:28] Bob Dobbs: The condition presented on every page of Finnegans Wake.

[38:32] Bob Dobbs: Here calls everywhere.

[38:34] Bob Dobbs: James Joyce,

[38:35] Bob Dobbs: Fitting His Wake,

[38:36] Bob Dobbs: page 108.

[38:38] Bob Dobbs: No angel could do this,

[38:39] Bob Dobbs: but the human cum superangel did.

[38:44] Bob Dobbs: This capacity would result in a completely different consequence from that of the old superhuman.

[38:49] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan had upgraded Lewis's insights.

[38:53] Bob Dobbs: And then,

[38:55] Bob Dobbs: well,

[38:55] Bob Dobbs: I'll just say,

[38:56] Bob Dobbs: then my conversational blue-tinted print says,

[39:02] Bob Dobbs: I go,

[39:02] Bob Dobbs: the...

[39:03] Bob Dobbs: The superhuman is the conceptual content of self-condemned.

[39:06] Bob Dobbs: The guest professor,

[39:07] Bob Dobbs: Rene Harding,

[39:08] Bob Dobbs: who's based on Wyndham Lewis,

[39:09] Bob Dobbs: is interacting at the university with Professor Ian McKenzie,

[39:12] Bob Dobbs: who's based on Marshall McLuhan.

[39:14] Bob Dobbs: They're discussing Nietzsche Superman or superhuman.

[39:16] Bob Dobbs: They're arguing over the supergnosticism of the 20s and 30s symbolized by people like Nietzsche and Adolf Hitler.

[39:22] Bob Dobbs: That's the superhuman.

[39:23] Bob Dobbs: But Lewis discovered the angelic competitors of the superhuman.

[39:27] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan later refined what it meant,

[39:30] Bob Dobbs: as explained above.

[39:32] Bob Dobbs: Once in the Internet World Wide Web surrounds,

[39:35] Bob Dobbs: once in the Internet World Wide Web surrounds,

[39:36] Bob Dobbs: the super angel became her own intelligence agency.

[39:40] Bob Dobbs: This is precisely the meaning of the vague phrase,

[39:43] Bob Dobbs: the Posthuman.

[39:44] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan got there first in his nomenclature.

[39:48] Bob Dobbs: And I say,

[39:49] Bob Dobbs: it's not Posthuman,

[39:50] Bob Dobbs: it's a super angelic happening.

[39:52] Bob Dobbs: But all this background...

[39:54] Cameron McEwen: Maybe you should say something about sort of what you think is going on here and why you thought it was necessary to come back here from where

[40:09] Cameron McEwen: we were on 174,

[40:10] Cameron McEwen: 175.

[40:12] Bob Dobbs: Because

[40:13] Bob Dobbs: I want to show the Posthuman,

[40:16] Bob Dobbs: but saying McLuhan...

[40:18] Bob Dobbs: implied,

[40:19] Bob Dobbs: intuited,

[40:20] Bob Dobbs: actually maybe meant it.

[40:23] Bob Dobbs: I'm coming up to the verbal module and the theme of meme,

[40:28] Bob Dobbs: which was not coined until 1976 by Richard Dawkins in the Selfish Gene book he did.

[40:36] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan on to the meme.

[40:38] Bob Dobbs: So

[40:39] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.

[40:39] Bob Dobbs: I may not have to do much of this.

[40:41] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to jump forward to where I'm going in the verbal module.

[40:44] Bob Dobbs: But I'm just doing this because we haven't done much.

[40:48] Bob Dobbs: content,

[40:48] Bob Dobbs: and I think this is the,

[40:50] Bob Dobbs: of the article,

[40:51] Bob Dobbs: of the book pamphlet,

[40:53] Bob Dobbs: this is a key point,

[40:54] Bob Dobbs: the super angelic,

[40:56] Bob Dobbs: you know what I mean?

[40:57] Bob Dobbs: And that the extended human is a greater extension than the angelic.

[41:06] Bob Dobbs: See,

[41:08] Bob Dobbs: to say we're angels is not the point.

[41:10] Cameron McEwen: I can relate to that,

[41:11] Cameron McEwen: but how is this different?

[41:16] Cameron McEwen: from or going beyond or contrasted to the Android Meme.

[41:21] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[41:22] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[41:22] Bob Dobbs: I think I'm going to try to get there.

[41:25] Bob Dobbs: I'm trusting.

[41:25] Bob Dobbs: I haven't read this in a long time,

[41:27] Bob Dobbs: but I think

[41:28] Bob Dobbs: I go step by step.

[41:29] Bob Dobbs: So let's see if I can back that statement up.

[41:33] Bob Dobbs: So

[41:33] Bob Dobbs: I go,

[41:34] Bob Dobbs: but all this background exegesis is the preparation for the far more difficult and strange situation of the tech body.

[41:40] Bob Dobbs: So I'm getting to the tech body,

[41:41] Bob Dobbs: but now I've got to go into the Android Meme first before we get to the tech body.

[41:46] Bob Dobbs: So I'm going from the super angelic and the global membrane to the Android Meme.

[41:51] Bob Dobbs: So these are Posthuman stages.

[41:55] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[41:55] Bob Dobbs: he never got to spell it out.

[41:57] Cameron McEwen: So is the super angelic before,

[42:05] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[42:05] Cameron McEwen: I hate this linearity.

[42:06] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[42:06] Cameron McEwen: I know.

[42:09] Cameron McEwen: For you,

[42:10] Cameron McEwen: the super angelic is before the Android Meme?

[42:16] Bob Dobbs: No,

[42:17] Bob Dobbs: it is the Android Meme,

[42:20] Bob Dobbs: but you've got to go through the popularizing of Angel that McLuhan did and people thought,

[42:27] Bob Dobbs: and they didn't know he was talking about the super angel.

[42:30] Bob Dobbs: You'd have to read

[42:31] Bob Dobbs: Take Today or something to see this distinction.

[42:34] Bob Dobbs: And so I'm trying to change people's perception because visual space is angelic.

[42:42] Bob Dobbs: He even spells that out.

[42:44] Bob Dobbs: in

[42:47] Bob Dobbs: Powers' book,

[42:48] Bob Dobbs: The Global Village.

[42:50] Bob Dobbs: I don't know how much Powers got it from McLuhan,

[42:53] Bob Dobbs: but it said there the difference between the angelic and the robotic.

[42:57] Bob Dobbs: I don't even know if

[42:59] Bob Dobbs: Powers gets to the super angelic the way I'm defining it,

[43:02] Bob Dobbs: but it's a way of describing the global membrane.

[43:06] Bob Dobbs: We're all in a place that has incredible dimensions,

[43:13] Bob Dobbs: not visual space dimensions.

[43:16] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[43:16] Cameron McEwen: I think that's right.

[43:18] Cameron McEwen: So that problematizes use of the word in.

[43:24] Bob Dobbs: Which word?

[43:25] Cameron McEwen: You can't say we're in.

[43:27] Cameron McEwen: Oh,

[43:27] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[43:27] Bob Dobbs: right.

[43:27] Bob Dobbs: No,

[43:28] Bob Dobbs: I agree.

[43:28] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[43:29] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[43:30] Cameron McEwen: So maybe we're in the usual place of I got to use words to talk to you.

[43:37] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[43:38] Bob Dobbs: That's my best alibi.

[43:40] Bob Dobbs: I use it all the time.

[43:43] Bob Dobbs: But the thing is,

[43:44] Bob Dobbs: I am going rearview mirror trying to explain the cul-de-sac.

[43:48] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[43:49] Bob Dobbs: so what the hell.

[43:50] Bob Dobbs: Apparently people get something out of it.

[43:53] Bob Dobbs: So I'm just trying to be,

[43:54] Bob Dobbs: I'm just trying to contribute to the community,

[43:56] Bob Dobbs: okay?

[43:57] Bob Dobbs: Be useful.

[43:59] Bob Dobbs: Remember,

[43:59] Bob Dobbs: a clue once said that Moses,

[44:02] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[44:02] Bob Dobbs: looked around.

[44:04] Bob Dobbs: Was it Moses?

[44:05] Bob Dobbs: Pretty sure it was Moses.

[44:07] Bob Dobbs: He had the dilemma of making himself useful to the Pharaoh.

[44:10] Bob Dobbs: I like that.

[44:13] Bob Dobbs: Because,

[44:14] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[44:15] Bob Dobbs: after World War II,

[44:16] Bob Dobbs: when would that be?

[44:18] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[44:18] Bob Dobbs: in 39,

[44:19] Bob Dobbs: 40,

[44:19] Bob Dobbs: when he graduated,

[44:20] Bob Dobbs: got his Ph.D.,

[44:22] Bob Dobbs: he then had to make himself useful,

[44:24] Bob Dobbs: right?

[44:25] Bob Dobbs: He had to find a role.

[44:27] Bob Dobbs: So

[44:27] Bob Dobbs: I thought that was funny.

[44:29] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[44:29] Bob Dobbs: you're up against the Pharaoh.

[44:31] Bob Dobbs: And in the Burroughs article,

[44:33] Bob Dobbs: he talks about the pharaonic.

[44:35] Bob Dobbs: Egyptian nature of the 20th century.

[44:37] Bob Dobbs: It's been retrieved by the electronic.

[44:40] Bob Dobbs: So

[44:41] Bob Dobbs: I'm not going far from that.

[44:43] Cameron McEwen: He was very much influenced by Joyce in that.

[44:47] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[44:47] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[44:48] Cameron McEwen: He was conscious of

[44:50] Cameron McEwen: Joyce continually bringing up Egypt and the Neurotica and all this stuff in the Pentagon's way.

[44:56] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[44:58] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[44:59] Bob Dobbs: and I have a quote here.

[45:01] Bob Dobbs: This is by Kroker.

[45:06] Bob Dobbs: This is his quote from a 2012 book,

[45:10] Bob Dobbs: Body Drift,

[45:12] Bob Dobbs: and I'm thinking of my five bodies,

[45:14] Bob Dobbs: so

[45:15] Bob Dobbs: I welcome that.

[45:16] Bob Dobbs: that title and then it's a commentary on i guess feminist post-modernist butler hailes and harroway so look what he says he says before we look at what he says here just uh remember what i said earlier about uh you reading uh tons and tons of stuff uh

[45:36] Cameron McEwen: but not reading uh the uh the gold that's out there i know you don't think about your poker but uh

[45:47] Bob Dobbs: I differ on the Kroker.

[45:49] Bob Dobbs: No,

[45:49] Bob Dobbs: no,

[45:49] Cameron McEwen: I'm not trying to put Kroker down.

[45:51] Cameron McEwen: I'm trying to say that you were saying that you don't spend time on all of these characters that you're reading,

[45:59] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake and all this sort of stuff.

[46:02] Cameron McEwen: And I'm saying,

[46:03] Cameron McEwen: well,

[46:03] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[46:04] Cameron McEwen: it does seem that you're reading these people.

[46:07] Bob Dobbs: No,

[46:07] Bob Dobbs: I'm reading Kroker,

[46:08] Bob Dobbs: and I put Kroker on my chart.

[46:10] Bob Dobbs: Kroker is great.

[46:11] Bob Dobbs: He's not in the class of the Kirk often.

[46:14] Bob Dobbs: and Logan and Kuznets and these people?

[46:16] Cameron McEwen: No,

[46:16] Cameron McEwen: no,

[46:17] Cameron McEwen: not even close.

[46:18] Cameron McEwen: Not even close.

[46:18] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[46:19] Bob Dobbs: So this is a good quote.

[46:21] Cameron McEwen: He's one of these guys that we could have,

[46:24] Cameron McEwen: when we were identifying

[46:27] Cameron McEwen: Thompson and Josette,

[46:29] Cameron McEwen: the guy in New Brunswick,

[46:31] Cameron McEwen: Kroker belongs with them.

[46:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[46:34] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan opened up his world and then basically had to explore the,

[46:44] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[46:44] Cameron McEwen: the fragments were left.

[46:46] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[46:47] Bob Dobbs: So look at this quote.

[46:49] Bob Dobbs: I think it continues.

[46:51] Bob Dobbs: It starts off circuited by all the flows of power.

[46:54] Bob Dobbs: Then it goes down,

[46:56] Bob Dobbs: nothing,

[46:57] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[46:57] Bob Dobbs: and I have the body drift.

[47:00] Bob Dobbs: I think,

[47:02] Bob Dobbs: why wouldn't I have a source if it was different after the quote I'm going to read?

[47:07] Bob Dobbs: But I'm assuming it comes from the same book.

[47:09] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[47:11] Bob Dobbs: Kroker says,

[47:12] Bob Dobbs: describing...

[47:13] Bob Dobbs: the body.

[47:15] Bob Dobbs: Here's the body.

[47:16] Bob Dobbs: It's circuited by all the flows of power,

[47:18] Bob Dobbs: patterned by code works,

[47:20] Bob Dobbs: shaped by norms of cultural intelligibility,

[47:23] Bob Dobbs: an object of viral invasion,

[47:25] Bob Dobbs: with its subjectivity increasingly taking the form of possessed individualism.

[47:30] Bob Dobbs: All that is the opening clause describing the body.

[47:35] Bob Dobbs: And with that in mind,

[47:36] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[47:36] Bob Dobbs: the body can acquire such a powerful epistemological presence as a universal sign.

[47:41] Bob Dobbs: Because the bodies that we are,

[47:43] Bob Dobbs: who would like to become,

[47:44] Bob Dobbs: are themselves increasingly dispersed,

[47:46] Bob Dobbs: intermediated,

[47:47] Bob Dobbs: unfinished,

[47:48] Bob Dobbs: spliced,

[47:49] Bob Dobbs: and straining.

[47:51] Bob Dobbs: Then he says,

[47:54] Bob Dobbs: it's going down to 149.

[47:56] Bob Dobbs: Nothing is as a matter of...

[47:58] Cameron McEwen: Let me just interject that what

[48:04] Cameron McEwen: Kroker is saying there is more or less what McLuhan says when he's...

[48:10] Cameron McEwen: when he talks about the end of private identity.

[48:13] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[48:14] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[48:15] Bob Dobbs: But it's also physical.

[48:17] Bob Dobbs: As you'll see the next sentence,

[48:21] Bob Dobbs: nothing is as imaginary as the material body.

[48:25] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[48:26] Bob Dobbs: That's more than your literate private identity.

[48:32] Bob Dobbs: That's more physical.

[48:33] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[48:37] Cameron McEwen: okay.

[48:39] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[48:39] Cameron McEwen: I think that...

[48:40] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan certainly wasn't,

[48:42] Cameron McEwen: in my reading,

[48:43] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan wasn't limiting his thoughts about private identity to some sort of literary signature or style or something.

[48:56] Cameron McEwen: I think he was thinking of the functioning human being with his job.

[49:05] Cameron McEwen: You know,

[49:05] Cameron McEwen: he talks about

[49:06] Cameron McEwen: I'm a dentist.

[49:08] Cameron McEwen: I'm 43 and all this stuff.

[49:10] Cameron McEwen: It's funny.

[49:12] Cameron McEwen: So,

[49:13] Cameron McEwen: you know,

[49:13] Cameron McEwen: that's not forgetting the material.

[49:17] Bob Dobbs: I agree with you,

[49:18] Bob Dobbs: and that's why I pick up.

[49:20] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan didn't write it out like this.

[49:22] Bob Dobbs: This gets into people's images.

[49:25] Cameron McEwen: All he did was take a smell and say,

[49:28] Cameron McEwen: well,

[49:29] Cameron McEwen: that's not where I need to go.

[49:31] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[49:31] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[49:32] Bob Dobbs: Kroker.

[49:33] Bob Dobbs: is describing the devastating disappearance of people's private identity in terms that are shocking.

[49:40] Bob Dobbs: They're not going to think of it as their material body.

[49:43] Bob Dobbs: But McLuhan meant that,

[49:44] Bob Dobbs: and Kroker is spelling it out.

[49:47] Bob Dobbs: So that's why he's valuable.

[49:50] Bob Dobbs: Correct.

[49:50] Bob Dobbs: So he says nothing.

[49:54] Cameron McEwen: The single most interesting thing about McLuhan is that he saw what

[50:01] Cameron McEwen: Kroker was talking about here,

[50:04] Cameron McEwen: but thought it was entirely possible to be

[50:07] Cameron McEwen: Catholic at the same time.

[50:10] Cameron McEwen: Or you could put it,

[50:11] Cameron McEwen: he saw what Kroker was talking about here and saw it as entirely possible to be the father of six kids.

[50:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[50:20] Cameron McEwen: So it's...

[50:22] Cameron McEwen: That probably,

[50:24] Bob Dobbs: Kroker never got past that confusion or problem for him.

[50:28] Bob Dobbs: Same as Neal.

[50:30] Bob Dobbs: They thought McLuhan was schizoid.

[50:33] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[50:34] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[50:34] Cameron McEwen: So they,

[50:37] Cameron McEwen: just as we've been talking earlier in our conversation,

[50:42] Cameron McEwen: a panorama gets opened and Kroker goes out and explores it.

[50:48] Cameron McEwen: And his ex-

[50:49] Cameron McEwen: Explorations very interesting,

[50:52] Cameron McEwen: very well said,

[50:54] Cameron McEwen: but that's not the nub of things.

[50:59] Cameron McEwen: This is a little bit like what we were talking about before with,

[51:08] Cameron McEwen: God,

[51:08] Cameron McEwen: I want to say Baudelaire,

[51:09] Cameron McEwen: but it's not Baudelaire.

[51:10] Cameron McEwen: Who is he?

[51:11] Cameron McEwen: Baudrillard.

[51:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[51:15] Cameron McEwen: What Kroker is trying to do is he's...

[51:18] Cameron McEwen: trying to come to terms with the cul-de-sac and so he is describing sometimes in minute detail the lacerations

[51:35] Cameron McEwen: the opacities the felt discouragement he's describing all these sorts of things

[51:48] Cameron McEwen: in an attempt to get away from them or to get out of them or to find a way out of the cul-de-sac.

[51:55] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[51:56] Cameron McEwen: I'm not so sure that he did find a way.

[52:00] Bob Dobbs: No,

[52:00] Bob Dobbs: I understand.

[52:01] Cameron McEwen: But that doesn't make it uninteresting.

[52:05] Cameron McEwen: It just puts it in a certain place in comparison to McLuhan.

[52:11] Cameron McEwen: That's all it does.

[52:12] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[52:13] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[52:13] Bob Dobbs: so let me give you this elaborate...

[52:16] Bob Dobbs: post imaginary body he says um yeah nothing is as i just moved it nothing is as imaginary as a material body so he then describes the body circulating fluid borderless

[52:33] Bob Dobbs: with no certain boundaries or predetermined history the body has no meaning today other than its intermediations there's no meaning today other than its intermediations

[52:44] Bob Dobbs: No autobiography that does not possess its own hauntology.

[52:48] Bob Dobbs: I think hauntology is a word from Jacques Derrida.

[52:51] Bob Dobbs: And certainly no drift that does not leave a trace of its presence.

[52:56] Bob Dobbs: There definitely are codes of gender that can be transgressed only at the price of punishment,

[53:02] Bob Dobbs: but there are always gender drifters who remix,

[53:05] Bob Dobbs: recombine,

[53:06] Bob Dobbs: and re-splice the codes of gender performance.

[53:09] Bob Dobbs: There certainly is a disciplinary regime of sexuality.

[53:12] Bob Dobbs: But there are also sex code drifters who make of their own sexual assignment an opportunity to transgress the codes,

[53:20] Bob Dobbs: to refuse the normative,

[53:21] Bob Dobbs: to overcome the predetermined.

[53:23] Bob Dobbs: Against class inequities Bernard into disciplined,

[53:27] Bob Dobbs: laboring bodies,

[53:29] Bob Dobbs: there are class drifters who make of their own protesting,

[53:32] Bob Dobbs: rebelling,

[53:32] Bob Dobbs: insurgent bodies a marker of the struggle for freedom.

[53:36] Bob Dobbs: While the age of specialization resulted in a definitive separation of the senses,

[53:41] Bob Dobbs: Body drift begins with a grand unification of the human sensorium.

[53:45] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[53:46] Bob Dobbs: that's quite a mouthful,

[53:47] Bob Dobbs: and he's scanning,

[53:49] Bob Dobbs: as a sociologist,

[53:50] Bob Dobbs: across the society and picking up symptoms that are very prominent today.

[53:56] Bob Dobbs: This was written in,

[53:58] Bob Dobbs: well,

[53:58] Bob Dobbs: he could have,

[53:59] Bob Dobbs: he Wright partly this kind of stuff in the

[54:02] Bob Dobbs: 90s, but this is a later replay,

[54:05] Bob Dobbs: 2012.

[54:07] Bob Dobbs: But we've got these people running around,

[54:08] Bob Dobbs: they're major figures today.

[54:10] Bob Dobbs: These sex code drifters,

[54:13] Bob Dobbs: what else do you call them?

[54:14] Bob Dobbs: Gender drifters.

[54:16] Bob Dobbs: That's a good phrase,

[54:18] Bob Dobbs: gender drifters.

[54:20] Bob Dobbs: So I find it a kind of great sociological poetry,

[54:25] Bob Dobbs: what he does.

[54:27] Bob Dobbs: That's,

[54:27] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[54:28] Bob Dobbs: when I'm reading junk.

[54:29] Bob Dobbs: Sorry.

[54:30] Bob Dobbs: Occasionally I slip into it.

[54:34] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[54:36] Bob Dobbs: a woman I knew in Toronto,

[54:37] Bob Dobbs: she read...

[54:39] Bob Dobbs: my book,

[54:39] Bob Dobbs: Phatic communion,

[54:40] Bob Dobbs: and the McLuhan quotes,

[54:41] Bob Dobbs: he says,

[54:41] Bob Dobbs: it's amazing how clear he is,

[54:45] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[54:45] Bob Dobbs: and I was laying out the quotes in a good order so you could learn from them or get McLuhan,

[54:51] Bob Dobbs: but it's a good observation.

[54:53] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was not your wordy Norman Mailer or Thomas Pynchon with flowery Baroque spirals all over the place.

[54:59] Bob Dobbs: He just stated simply,

[55:01] Bob Dobbs: like clear glass of water,

[55:04] Bob Dobbs: what the ground was or what we were experiencing.

[55:07] Bob Dobbs: And this person,

[55:09] Bob Dobbs: Notice that said he's she thought she wouldn't understand that but then she read it was wow.

[55:13] Bob Dobbs: He's so clear

[55:15] Bob Dobbs: Kroker probably is not clear for that person,

[55:18] Bob Dobbs: if you ever read this.

[55:19] Bob Dobbs: You know?

[55:21] Bob Dobbs: Too many words.

[55:21] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[55:22] Cameron McEwen: I think that's right.

[55:23] Cameron McEwen: But

[55:25] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan usually wasn't writing because he was attempting to be clear.

[55:34] Bob Dobbs: No.

[55:36] Cameron McEwen: He was writing to try to get...

[55:43] Cameron McEwen: somewhere that he didn't know.

[55:46] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[55:46] Cameron McEwen: He just sensed was out there.

[55:49] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[55:49] Bob Dobbs: And that woman's response is what I was saying earlier,

[55:54] Bob Dobbs: totally not getting McLuhan the way McLuhan was or what he was dealing with,

[55:59] Bob Dobbs: but thinking he was,

[56:01] Bob Dobbs: it was clearing things up for her.

[56:03] Bob Dobbs: There's the,

[56:03] Bob Dobbs: there's the paradox.

[56:06] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[56:06] Cameron McEwen: but there's also the point that by putting McLuhan in order,

[56:13] Cameron McEwen: what you did in that book was a way of showing that there was a kind of order there that McLuhan himself wasn't paying much attention to,

[56:29] Cameron McEwen: but somebody like you could find it and stick it in a book.

[56:37] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[56:39] Bob Dobbs: But that required years of getting to know his stuff.

[56:42] Bob Dobbs: And realizing in stages that I didn't get them,

[56:46] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[56:47] Bob Dobbs: kept correcting my perception of them.

[56:50] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[56:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[56:51] Cameron McEwen: I'm interested in that process,

[56:53] Cameron McEwen: Claude.

[56:54] Cameron McEwen: You've mentioned a couple times of,

[56:58] Cameron McEwen: I think you said once that in the

[57:01] Cameron McEwen: 70s, you came to understand that you had understood McLuhan in a more or less Gutenbergian way.

[57:10] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[57:11] Cameron McEwen: And you had to break with that.

[57:14] Cameron McEwen: And the whole idea of people thinking against themselves is something that's very important for anybody that wants to understand McLuhan,

[57:26] Cameron McEwen: for sure.

[57:27] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[57:27] Bob Dobbs: It helped moving to Toronto and hanging out with McLuhan.

[57:31] Bob Dobbs: That really helped to realize that it was way different from what I thought the books were telling me,

[57:37] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[57:39] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[57:39] Bob Dobbs: then,

[57:39] Bob Dobbs: later...

[57:40] Bob Dobbs: I then could go back to books and see the McLuhan that I had discovered in person.

[57:44] Bob Dobbs: But I wanted to say,

[57:46] Bob Dobbs: I can go back and remember reading Understanding Media in the Malinowski,

[57:50] Bob Dobbs: and it's so blurred in my memory that I was hallucinating on the book.

[57:57] Bob Dobbs: I was projecting wildly what I thought I wanted or what I thought should be or some ridiculous user's content.

[58:05] Bob Dobbs: I had no clue what he was talking about,

[58:07] Bob Dobbs: but I thought.

[58:08] Bob Dobbs: I was learning something and then getting it.

[58:11] Bob Dobbs: And I would try to explain to people,

[58:12] Bob Dobbs: and they wouldn't know what the hell it's about.

[58:14] Bob Dobbs: And I didn't know what I was talking about.

[58:17] Bob Dobbs: But I thought I did.

[58:20] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[58:20] Cameron McEwen: But you're talking there for every man.

[58:23] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[58:24] Cameron McEwen: That's true of me.

[58:26] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[58:27] Cameron McEwen: When I first encountered McLuhan in the

[58:30] Cameron McEwen: 60s, you know,

[58:33] Cameron McEwen: I got all of his books were then available.

[58:39] Cameron McEwen: I read them and thought that I understood most of it.

[58:45] Cameron McEwen: And

[58:46] Cameron McEwen: I didn't understand anything,

[58:51] Cameron McEwen: basically.

[58:51] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[58:51] Bob Dobbs: And what was I going to say?

[58:56] Bob Dobbs: I would keep going back and looking at the books.

[59:00] Bob Dobbs: Since I was traveling a lot,

[59:02] Bob Dobbs: we moved a lot.

[59:04] Bob Dobbs: I didn't have much of a library to take with me,

[59:05] Bob Dobbs: but I had some basic McLuhan books that came with me all the time.

[59:09] Bob Dobbs: And I'd go back and look at a book,

[59:10] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[59:11] Bob Dobbs: after not looking at it for,

[59:12] Bob Dobbs: like,

[59:12] Bob Dobbs: Culture Is Our Business,

[59:13] Bob Dobbs: for having looked at it for two years,

[59:14] Bob Dobbs: and I'd start looking at it,

[59:15] Bob Dobbs: and I'd say,

[59:15] Bob Dobbs: holy shit,

[59:16] Bob Dobbs: I don't recognize any of this stuff.

[59:18] Bob Dobbs: This is all incredible.

[59:19] Bob Dobbs: This is amazing.

[59:20] Bob Dobbs: Look what's Innis book,

[59:21] Bob Dobbs: you know?

[59:22] Bob Dobbs: And I'd keep re-delighting myself with discovery,

[59:26] Bob Dobbs: and I didn't bother buying other books.

[59:28] Bob Dobbs: I could just work with the McLuhan,

[59:30] Bob Dobbs: jump from book to book,

[59:31] Bob Dobbs: and it'd always be new.

[59:33] Bob Dobbs: So,

[59:35] Bob Dobbs: I didn't understand why other people didn't get that.

[59:38] Bob Dobbs: Most people read a little,

[59:40] Bob Dobbs: thought they got it,

[59:41] Bob Dobbs: moved on,

[59:42] Bob Dobbs: and then they create the lousy world we have today.

[59:44] Bob Dobbs: Because they didn't read it enough,

[59:47] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.

[59:49] Cameron McEwen: But what you're saying,

[59:52] Cameron McEwen: I think,

[59:53] Cameron McEwen: is that the key to McLuhan are certain problems that can be thought about.

[1:00:03] Cameron McEwen: forever.

[1:00:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:00:04] Cameron McEwen: And there isn't any getting to the bottom of them.

[1:00:09] Cameron McEwen: They're limitless in their implication.

[1:00:14] Cameron McEwen: And what

[1:00:15] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan would have us do is understand something about the nature of those problems and the confidence it takes to engage them.

[1:00:29] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:00:31] Bob Dobbs: well said.

[1:00:33] Bob Dobbs: I was thinking,

[1:00:37] Bob Dobbs: because

[1:00:38] Bob Dobbs: I studied the occult also in the 50s and 60s,

[1:00:44] Bob Dobbs: I didn't know it,

[1:00:46] Bob Dobbs: but that was what McLuhan was working with.

[1:00:49] Bob Dobbs: And I used to think that McLuhan was explaining the occult,

[1:00:53] Bob Dobbs: but he didn't know it,

[1:00:54] Bob Dobbs: because I didn't know his background yet.

[1:00:57] Bob Dobbs: I hadn't read Interior landscape,

[1:00:59] Bob Dobbs: I don't think.

[1:01:00] Bob Dobbs: And so...

[1:01:02] Bob Dobbs: I thought I was making the...

[1:01:04] Bob Dobbs: Wow,

[1:01:05] Bob Dobbs: this gives me words to clarify what the occult was talking about.

[1:01:11] Bob Dobbs: Because the occult I studied talked about the stages of apprehension and the seven levels of development of the senses and then beyond the senses.

[1:01:20] Bob Dobbs: So what his discovery was to find out when I got to interior landscape,

[1:01:24] Bob Dobbs: wow,

[1:01:25] Bob Dobbs: he's talking about the occult stuff.

[1:01:27] Bob Dobbs: And then I found out from Theall that that's what they did.

[1:01:34] Bob Dobbs: It's a marvel getting to understand someone who is pretty profound,

[1:01:40] Bob Dobbs: so there's a lot to understand about the person.

[1:01:44] Bob Dobbs: It's going to take a while,

[1:01:45] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:01:45] Bob Dobbs: or to find out what he's dealing with.

[1:01:47] Bob Dobbs: So he was a good guy to study,

[1:01:52] Bob Dobbs: I found.

[1:01:54] Bob Dobbs: He had lots to find.

[1:01:55] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:01:55] Cameron McEwen: of course,

[1:01:56] Cameron McEwen: I agree completely.

[1:01:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:01:58] Cameron McEwen: You're still doing it.

[1:01:59] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:02:00] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:02:02] Bob Dobbs: And you know,

[1:02:02] Bob Dobbs: when I'm reading Finnegans Wake,

[1:02:03] Bob Dobbs: I'm reading McLuhan,

[1:02:05] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:02:05] Bob Dobbs: or vice versa.

[1:02:07] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:02:09] Bob Dobbs: I used to drive the Finnegans Wake people in New York,

[1:02:12] Bob Dobbs: in the Finnegans Wake Society,

[1:02:14] Bob Dobbs: crazy.

[1:02:14] Bob Dobbs: I kept mentioning McLuhan on this and that.

[1:02:17] Bob Dobbs: They didn't,

[1:02:17] Bob Dobbs: who the hell,

[1:02:18] Bob Dobbs: will you shut up?

[1:02:19] Bob Dobbs: I don't want to hear about this McLuhan guy.

[1:02:21] Bob Dobbs: We're doing James Joyce.

[1:02:24] Bob Dobbs: It was funny.

[1:02:25] Cameron McEwen: That's the story of your life.

[1:02:27] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:02:28] Bob Dobbs: I went on the radio,

[1:02:29] Bob Dobbs: outraged Toronto people.

[1:02:30] Bob Dobbs: Why are you mentioning this guy?

[1:02:35] Cameron McEwen: Just while it's on my mind here,

[1:02:38] Cameron McEwen: how many copies of Finnegans Wake did McLuhan work with?

[1:02:44] Bob Dobbs: He had four.

[1:02:47] Bob Dobbs: I copied three of them,

[1:02:49] Bob Dobbs: and then there was a small old paperback,

[1:02:53] Bob Dobbs: and there wasn't much in it.

[1:02:55] Bob Dobbs: Not much annotations.

[1:02:57] Bob Dobbs: So basically it's three.

[1:03:00] Bob Dobbs: But there was four.

[1:03:01] Cameron McEwen: And you have those?

[1:03:03] Bob Dobbs: Yes.

[1:03:05] Bob Dobbs: Nelson,

[1:03:05] Bob Dobbs: one weekend,

[1:03:07] Bob Dobbs: this really pissed off Eric,

[1:03:09] Bob Dobbs: because he was helping her,

[1:03:11] Bob Dobbs: and I was in the background helping Nelson,

[1:03:13] Bob Dobbs: and Mary was around,

[1:03:15] Bob Dobbs: and she knew what we were doing for her mother,

[1:03:17] Bob Dobbs: who was trying to get.

[1:03:20] Bob Dobbs: the McLuhan program at the U of T removed from the U of T.

[1:03:24] Bob Dobbs: She didn't like what Derek was doing with it.

[1:03:25] Bob Dobbs: And Derek had not hired Eric or used Eric in any way.

[1:03:29] Bob Dobbs: She didn't like that.

[1:03:31] Bob Dobbs: But Eric wasn't around so much,

[1:03:33] Bob Dobbs: so

[1:03:33] Bob Dobbs: Nelson did all the work and lobbying.

[1:03:36] Bob Dobbs: So one weekend,

[1:03:39] Bob Dobbs: he was at her home and he saw the three Finnegans Wake,

[1:03:43] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:03:43] Bob Dobbs: piled up.

[1:03:44] Bob Dobbs: And he,

[1:03:46] Bob Dobbs: I think...

[1:03:47] Bob Dobbs: He asked,

[1:03:47] Bob Dobbs: could I borrow these?

[1:03:48] Bob Dobbs: And she said,

[1:03:49] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:03:49] Bob Dobbs: take them for the weekend.

[1:03:51] Bob Dobbs: I don't think she said,

[1:03:52] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:03:52] Bob Dobbs: you would look at this.

[1:03:53] Bob Dobbs: You should look at these.

[1:03:54] Bob Dobbs: I think he noticed them.

[1:03:56] Bob Dobbs: So this Friday afternoon,

[1:03:58] Bob Dobbs: and I'm home,

[1:03:59] Bob Dobbs: I get a knock on the door,

[1:04:00] Bob Dobbs: and there's Nelson with these three books,

[1:04:03] Bob Dobbs: three piled up big books.

[1:04:05] Bob Dobbs: And he says,

[1:04:07] Bob Dobbs: here,

[1:04:07] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[1:04:08] Bob Dobbs: Xerox them,

[1:04:09] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:04:10] Bob Dobbs: I need them Monday morning.

[1:04:12] Bob Dobbs: So I said,

[1:04:13] Bob Dobbs: okay.

[1:04:13] Bob Dobbs: And then I started to look and begin to intuit what the hell I was holding.

[1:04:17] Bob Dobbs: It's like someone handed me a billion dollars worth of gold,

[1:04:20] Bob Dobbs: for fuck's sake.

[1:04:21] Bob Dobbs: I said,

[1:04:21] Bob Dobbs: holy cow.

[1:04:22] Bob Dobbs: So I immediately,

[1:04:23] Bob Dobbs: Nelson took off.

[1:04:24] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:04:25] Bob Dobbs: he had a family.

[1:04:25] Bob Dobbs: He had to get home.

[1:04:26] Bob Dobbs: So I went around the corner to the Xerox guy,

[1:04:30] Bob Dobbs: who I'd done a lot of Xeroxing.

[1:04:31] Bob Dobbs: And I said,

[1:04:32] Bob Dobbs: I'm going to be here all weekend.

[1:04:33] Bob Dobbs: Can you help me?

[1:04:34] Bob Dobbs: And he said,

[1:04:34] Bob Dobbs: sure.

[1:04:35] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:04:36] Bob Dobbs: I Xeroxed it all for three days,

[1:04:39] Bob Dobbs: Friday night,

[1:04:40] Bob Dobbs: Saturday,

[1:04:40] Bob Dobbs: and Sunday,

[1:04:41] Bob Dobbs: all day Sunday,

[1:04:42] Bob Dobbs: and maybe even a bit on Monday.

[1:04:44] Bob Dobbs: So it was incredible doing that.

[1:04:46] Cameron McEwen: And you have all those copies,

[1:04:49] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:04:49] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:04:49] Bob Dobbs: all those pages.

[1:04:50] Bob Dobbs: And I had to make extra copies for Nelson.

[1:04:53] Bob Dobbs: He also had the bias of communication and the skeleton key.

[1:05:04] Bob Dobbs: And he said,

[1:05:05] Bob Dobbs: here,

[1:05:06] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[1:05:06] Bob Dobbs: you take the skeleton key.

[1:05:07] Bob Dobbs: I'll take the bias of communication.

[1:05:09] Bob Dobbs: But I Xeroxed the bias of communication and the annotations and gave it back to Nelson.

[1:05:15] Bob Dobbs: And when we found out years later that Eric was outraged,

[1:05:20] Bob Dobbs: he found out somehow that weekend that books weren't there.

[1:05:23] Bob Dobbs: Where are they?

[1:05:23] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:05:24] Bob Dobbs: I lent them to Nelson.

[1:05:25] Bob Dobbs: He was outraged about that.

[1:05:27] Bob Dobbs: But he didn't have a case.

[1:05:29] Bob Dobbs: He liked to say later we stole them or something stupid.

[1:05:33] Bob Dobbs: He didn't have a case,

[1:05:34] Bob Dobbs: no.

[1:05:35] Bob Dobbs: Nelson had done a lot for Mrs.

[1:05:36] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan,

[1:05:37] Bob Dobbs: and that was her award or payment for it,

[1:05:40] Bob Dobbs: you know what I mean,

[1:05:41] Bob Dobbs: or appreciation.

[1:05:42] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:05:43] Bob Dobbs: I lucked out by being part of it.

[1:05:46] Cameron McEwen: So

[1:05:48] Cameron McEwen: I thought earlier you said that he had just been lent the books.

[1:05:53] Cameron McEwen: He was actually given the books?

[1:05:56] Bob Dobbs: As far as I understand,

[1:05:57] Bob Dobbs: he could keep the bias of communication,

[1:06:00] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:06:01] Bob Dobbs: I could keep the skeleton key.

[1:06:06] Cameron McEwen: What about the copies of The Wake?

[1:06:09] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:06:09] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:06:10] Bob Dobbs: we had to return those books on Monday.

[1:06:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:06:14] Cameron McEwen: that's what I thought.

[1:06:15] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:06:15] Cameron McEwen: but I think Nelson got the...

[1:06:18] Cameron McEwen: Return them to Corinne.

[1:06:19] Bob Dobbs: Yes,

[1:06:19] Bob Dobbs: Nelson came by Monday noon hour or something.

[1:06:22] Bob Dobbs: I gave them to him.

[1:06:24] Bob Dobbs: I really thanked him for it.

[1:06:26] Bob Dobbs: And then he came back later,

[1:06:28] Bob Dobbs: and I gave him copies of stuff for him.

[1:06:31] Bob Dobbs: Because I had to make him some copies.

[1:06:33] Bob Dobbs: He wasn't that interested in the Finley's Wake.

[1:06:34] Bob Dobbs: He didn't want all that.

[1:06:36] Bob Dobbs: But I had to give him a copy of Skeleton Key.

[1:06:39] Bob Dobbs: And,

[1:06:39] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:06:39] Bob Dobbs: right now,

[1:06:42] Bob Dobbs: I think I have Skeleton Key upstairs in the safe.

[1:06:46] Bob Dobbs: The book,

[1:06:47] Bob Dobbs: pretty sure.

[1:06:48] Bob Dobbs: But I haven't looked at it in a long time.

[1:06:50] Bob Dobbs: But

[1:06:51] Bob Dobbs: I have a Xerox of the biosecommunication,

[1:06:53] Bob Dobbs: and I gave it back to Nelson.

[1:06:54] Bob Dobbs: I assume he still has it.

[1:06:57] Bob Dobbs: And I know that Eric would have been outraged.

[1:07:00] Bob Dobbs: When he discovered that they didn't have the bias communication anymore,

[1:07:04] Bob Dobbs: I don't know if he discussed it with his mother,

[1:07:06] Bob Dobbs: but he later told people that we stole stuff,

[1:07:09] Bob Dobbs: and that wasn't true.

[1:07:11] Bob Dobbs: So if he wants to make a case out of it,

[1:07:14] Bob Dobbs: or anybody else in the family,

[1:07:16] Bob Dobbs: I don't think they're going to get very far with it.

[1:07:19] Bob Dobbs: I probably would give,

[1:07:20] Bob Dobbs: if they made a big problem out of it,

[1:07:22] Bob Dobbs: I'd give them back the skeleton key,

[1:07:23] Bob Dobbs: because I've got the Xerox,

[1:07:25] Bob Dobbs: and it's kind of minor.

[1:07:27] Bob Dobbs: The Xeroxing of the Finnegans Wake with all that annotation is what's important.

[1:07:33] Bob Dobbs: And I've got a

[1:07:34] Bob Dobbs: Xerox of the Bias and Communication annotation,

[1:07:36] Bob Dobbs: so I don't need the books.

[1:07:39] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:07:39] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:07:41] Cameron McEwen: And the book is obsolete.

[1:07:42] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:07:43] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:07:44] Bob Dobbs: completely.

[1:07:45] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:07:46] Cameron McEwen: So I'm thinking with the different versions.

[1:07:55] Cameron McEwen: or different books of annotations,

[1:08:00] Cameron McEwen: those thought together amount to

[1:08:07] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan commentary on the wake,

[1:08:09] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:08:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:08:10] Bob Dobbs: they are the commentary.

[1:08:12] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:08:13] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:08:13] Cameron McEwen: So shouldn't those comments be transcribed and aggregated?

[1:08:22] Bob Dobbs: I think it's happening.

[1:08:24] Bob Dobbs: I understand that

[1:08:26] Bob Dobbs: Logan has students,

[1:08:28] Bob Dobbs: and they go into the

[1:08:30] Bob Dobbs: Fisher Rare Book Library,

[1:08:33] Bob Dobbs: and they're copying down,

[1:08:35] Bob Dobbs: annotating or whatever,

[1:08:36] Bob Dobbs: all the annotations of all the books going through the library.

[1:08:41] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:08:41] Bob Dobbs: Phineas Wake is in there.

[1:08:43] Bob Dobbs: They can get access to those books and copy them out.

[1:08:49] Cameron McEwen: And all of the...

[1:08:52] Cameron McEwen: copies of the three copies of Finnegans Wake are there?

[1:08:56] Bob Dobbs: They should be because we didn't keep them.

[1:09:00] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:09:00] Bob Dobbs: Eric may have them.

[1:09:02] Bob Dobbs: Now,

[1:09:03] Bob Dobbs: what happened when Eric moved out of Toronto to

[1:09:06] Bob Dobbs: Bloomfield, you know,

[1:09:08] Bob Dobbs: Leopold Bloom of Ulysses.

[1:09:09] Bob Dobbs: I think it was called Bloomfield,

[1:09:11] Bob Dobbs: out near Trenton.

[1:09:14] Bob Dobbs: His house caught on fire.

[1:09:16] Cameron McEwen: Correct.

[1:09:17] Bob Dobbs: And he lost stuff that burnt.

[1:09:19] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:09:19] Bob Dobbs: So I don't know.

[1:09:21] Bob Dobbs: You'd heard of that,

[1:09:21] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:09:22] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:09:24] Bob Dobbs: so I don't know what he lost.

[1:09:25] Cameron McEwen: In the middle of the 90s,

[1:09:25] Cameron McEwen: yeah.

[1:09:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:09:28] Bob Dobbs: so I don't know,

[1:09:29] Bob Dobbs: maybe the Finney's Wake.

[1:09:32] Bob Dobbs: I saw them,

[1:09:34] Bob Dobbs: I saw one or something.

[1:09:35] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:09:35] Bob Dobbs: I went to the,

[1:09:38] Bob Dobbs: what is it,

[1:09:38] Bob Dobbs: the Ford book,

[1:09:39] Bob Dobbs: and then the special part is called the

[1:09:42] Bob Dobbs: Tom... Fisher.

[1:09:44] Bob Dobbs: The Fisher Rare Book Library or something.

[1:09:46] Bob Dobbs: I went in there and looked at the McLuhan inventory.

[1:09:49] Bob Dobbs: In Xerox,

[1:09:50] Bob Dobbs: a couple things,

[1:09:51] Bob Dobbs: but

[1:09:52] Bob Dobbs: I noticed Spinning's Wake was in there.

[1:09:55] Bob Dobbs: At least one copy.

[1:09:57] Bob Dobbs: Don't know if I saw more than one.

[1:10:00] Bob Dobbs: Not much sticks in my head about it,

[1:10:02] Bob Dobbs: so it couldn't have been a problem.

[1:10:04] Bob Dobbs: If I had noticed there was only one,

[1:10:06] Bob Dobbs: and where were the other two,

[1:10:07] Bob Dobbs: I would have remembered that.

[1:10:09] Bob Dobbs: But I have no memory,

[1:10:10] Bob Dobbs: so I think it was okay.

[1:10:11] Bob Dobbs: They had the three.

[1:10:12] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:10:13] Bob Dobbs: it would just flow over my memory.

[1:10:15] Bob Dobbs: It wouldn't be a big issue to remember.

[1:10:16] Bob Dobbs: It wouldn't be a mistake,

[1:10:17] Bob Dobbs: so to speak.

[1:10:18] Bob Dobbs: So because I don't have any aggravated thought about it,

[1:10:22] Bob Dobbs: I think they had all three.

[1:10:25] Bob Dobbs: So I think that's...

[1:10:27] Bob Dobbs: I think that's great what Logan's doing,

[1:10:32] Cameron McEwen: if he's doing it,

[1:10:32] Cameron McEwen: is going through.

[1:10:33] Cameron McEwen: If he's doing it and if they are doing it competently,

[1:10:37] Cameron McEwen: then that would be great.

[1:10:46] Cameron McEwen: I think that the extent of

[1:10:48] Cameron McEwen: McLuhan comments on the wake,

[1:10:51] Cameron McEwen: taking over the three volumes,

[1:10:54] Cameron McEwen: would be quite surprising to people.

[1:10:56] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:10:57] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:10:57] Bob Dobbs: what I noticed in Skeleton Key,

[1:11:01] Bob Dobbs: which was sparsely annotated compared to the Finnegans Wake volumes,

[1:11:06] Bob Dobbs: is that he has a note at the beginning.

[1:11:09] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[1:11:11] Bob Dobbs: Campbell misses the role of the prankquean,

[1:11:15] Bob Dobbs: which was,

[1:11:16] Bob Dobbs: for McLuhan,

[1:11:16] Bob Dobbs: the phonetic alphabet,

[1:11:18] Bob Dobbs: and,

[1:11:18] Bob Dobbs: of course,

[1:11:18] Bob Dobbs: the effects of the alphabet.

[1:11:20] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:11:20] Bob Dobbs: Campbell and them didn't get that.

[1:11:23] Bob Dobbs: And that's the main statement at the beginning of the book.

[1:11:26] Bob Dobbs: That's like his summation.

[1:11:28] Bob Dobbs: He misses the role of the prankquean,

[1:11:30] Bob Dobbs: which is a very good thing to know that McLuhan thought that about the prankquean because,

[1:11:36] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:11:36] Bob Dobbs: it's an important story in Finnegans Wake and a mystery for a lot of people.

[1:11:41] Bob Dobbs: And to find the sentence where he defines what he thinks it means is a great find.

[1:11:46] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:11:50] Bob Dobbs: I told...

[1:11:52] Bob Dobbs: I met Carolyn 79.

[1:11:55] Bob Dobbs: There was a conference at the University of Toronto.

[1:11:58] Bob Dobbs: Bucky Fuller was invited,

[1:11:59] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was invited,

[1:12:01] Bob Dobbs: Campbell and a lot of people.

[1:12:03] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:12:06] Bob Dobbs: I tried to talk to Campbell about

[1:12:09] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan. I didn't know about Skelton Key and McLuhan copy yet.

[1:12:16] Bob Dobbs: And he was very irritated.

[1:12:17] Bob Dobbs: He wouldn't talk about McLuhan.

[1:12:21] Bob Dobbs: So it didn't go anywhere.

[1:12:22] Bob Dobbs: He definitely didn't want to talk about it.

[1:12:24] Bob Dobbs: Years later,

[1:12:26] Bob Dobbs: maybe in the skeleton key was a letter by

[1:12:32] Bob Dobbs: Eric to Campbell or Campbell to Eric.

[1:12:36] Bob Dobbs: I can't remember right now.

[1:12:37] Bob Dobbs: I think I have it.

[1:12:39] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:12:40] Cameron McEwen: I've seen that actually.

[1:12:41] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:12:42] Bob Dobbs: where Eric was trying to open a dialogue with Campbell,

[1:12:47] Bob Dobbs: basically infiltrate him.

[1:12:48] Bob Dobbs: And then.

[1:12:49] Bob Dobbs: propagate him and get him to wake up.

[1:12:51] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:12:51] Bob Dobbs: it was the McLuhan agenda.

[1:12:53] Bob Dobbs: But it was an opener,

[1:12:55] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:12:57] Bob Dobbs: I don't think Campbell responded to it.

[1:13:03] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:13:04] Cameron McEwen: I vaguely remember that.

[1:13:06] Cameron McEwen: It seemed to me that it was sort of overly praising

[1:13:14] Cameron McEwen: Campbell. Yeah,

[1:13:15] Bob Dobbs: it was.

[1:13:16] Cameron McEwen: That's the remote memory I have of it.

[1:13:18] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:13:19] Bob Dobbs: and it wasn't sincere.

[1:13:22] Bob Dobbs: It was an attempt to infiltrate,

[1:13:24] Bob Dobbs: I call it,

[1:13:24] Bob Dobbs: infiltrate the guy,

[1:13:26] Bob Dobbs: then tell him stuff that he would be surprised at.

[1:13:30] Bob Dobbs: And then that was shown,

[1:13:32] Bob Dobbs: okay,

[1:13:33] Bob Dobbs: that's 1979.

[1:13:34] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:13:35] Bob Dobbs: 11 years later,

[1:13:36] Bob Dobbs: 1990 or so,

[1:13:38] Bob Dobbs: I'm getting the text where he says,

[1:13:41] Bob Dobbs: way back in the 60s probably,

[1:13:43] Bob Dobbs: that Campbell missed the prankquean.

[1:13:46] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:13:47] Bob Dobbs: I'm sure Eric...

[1:13:48] Bob Dobbs: saw that,

[1:13:49] Bob Dobbs: knew that.

[1:13:51] Bob Dobbs: And so what happened,

[1:13:52] Bob Dobbs: Campbell becomes what people wanted McLuhan to become.

[1:13:56] Bob Dobbs: A talking head with a big series and,

[1:13:59] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:14:00] Bob Dobbs: great stuff for people that think they're learning something.

[1:14:04] Bob Dobbs: And he became a bigger hit than McLuhan with that Bill Moyer series in the late 80s.

[1:14:10] Cameron McEwen: Everything he ever wanted to know about everything.

[1:14:20] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:14:20] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:14:22] Bob Dobbs: I met the guy here,

[1:14:24] Bob Dobbs: friend of Mary McLuhan,

[1:14:26] Bob Dobbs: David Greenberg,

[1:14:27] Bob Dobbs: who in the late 70s proposed to do that,

[1:14:30] Bob Dobbs: to make a TV series with McLuhan.

[1:14:33] Bob Dobbs: Because he could do it.

[1:14:34] Bob Dobbs: He was in L.A.

[1:14:35] Bob Dobbs: He was a rich kid.

[1:14:36] Bob Dobbs: He knew all the artists and scene makers,

[1:14:39] Bob Dobbs: and he had access to the TV thing.

[1:14:40] Bob Dobbs: He said it would be no problem for him to do Kenneth Clark's Civilization.

[1:14:47] Bob Dobbs: What's that guy,

[1:14:47] Bob Dobbs: Bronowski The Ascent of Man,

[1:14:49] Bob Dobbs: those kind of series in the

[1:14:50] Bob Dobbs: 70s? They would do a 10-thing series with McLuhan.

[1:14:56] Bob Dobbs: talking it.

[1:14:57] Bob Dobbs: And McLuhan was getting ready to go to L.A.

[1:15:00] Bob Dobbs: to do it,

[1:15:00] Bob Dobbs: and he had a stroke.

[1:15:02] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:15:04] Bob Dobbs: David, who I met in 2008 when I came here to Maui,

[1:15:08] Bob Dobbs: because Mary said,

[1:15:09] Bob Dobbs: look him up.

[1:15:10] Bob Dobbs: He lives in Maui,

[1:15:11] Bob Dobbs: and he's got stuff to tell you.

[1:15:14] Bob Dobbs: So he's the guy,

[1:15:15] Bob Dobbs: the missing guy at the end of the McLuhan biography that

[1:15:19] Bob Dobbs: Marchand and John Gordon didn't know about.

[1:15:21] Bob Dobbs: Because he is,

[1:15:22] Bob Dobbs: he's going to do McLuhan.

[1:15:24] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan getting ready.

[1:15:26] Bob Dobbs: to move to LA to do it.

[1:15:28] Bob Dobbs: And then in September 26,

[1:15:30] Bob Dobbs: he collapses.

[1:15:31] Bob Dobbs: And that's the end.

[1:15:32] Bob Dobbs: And when I met Greenberg later,

[1:15:35] Bob Dobbs: he said he was in Brazil at that time.

[1:15:39] Bob Dobbs: It took him about six months to find out that McLuhan wasn't available anymore.

[1:15:48] Bob Dobbs: He was out of touch for that period.

[1:15:50] Bob Dobbs: So that was a shocker.

[1:15:51] Bob Dobbs: I think he read about it in the paper or something.

[1:15:55] Bob Dobbs: Because it took many months before the McLuhan family even revealed what was going on with McLuhan.

[1:16:00] Bob Dobbs: We were all told to don't say a word to anybody,

[1:16:03] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[1:16:06] Bob Dobbs: There's a,

[1:16:07] Bob Dobbs: I have a letter by Logan written on the day McLuhan died.

[1:16:14] Bob Dobbs: So that's December 31st,

[1:16:15] Bob Dobbs: 1980.

[1:16:17] Bob Dobbs: And Logan's writing to somebody who's inquiring about McLuhan and,

[1:16:20] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:16:21] Bob Dobbs: when can we see him,

[1:16:22] Bob Dobbs: what's going to happen?

[1:16:22] Bob Dobbs: And Logan's saying...

[1:16:24] Bob Dobbs: He's great.

[1:16:24] Bob Dobbs: He'll be probably back in public functioning in a few months or two.

[1:16:32] Bob Dobbs: Incredibly optimistic or lying.

[1:16:36] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.

[1:16:37] Bob Dobbs: I don't know.

[1:16:38] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was functioning,

[1:16:39] Bob Dobbs: you know.

[1:16:40] Bob Dobbs: He could have functioned like that,

[1:16:41] Bob Dobbs: it seemed.

[1:16:44] Bob Dobbs: But you wouldn't get that from Logan's letter.

[1:16:47] Bob Dobbs: And then McLuhan died,

[1:16:48] Bob Dobbs: I noted,

[1:16:49] Bob Dobbs: later that day at nighttime.

[1:16:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:16:55] Bob Dobbs: So there was a lot of obfuscation about what was really happening to McLuhan and by the family,

[1:17:04] Bob Dobbs: which they had the right to do that.

[1:17:06] Bob Dobbs: They don't want people,

[1:17:08] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:17:08] Bob Dobbs: nosing around.

[1:17:12] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:17:13] Cameron McEwen: I mean,

[1:17:13] Cameron McEwen: at that time,

[1:17:15] Cameron McEwen: people were talking about shutting down the Coach House,

[1:17:19] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:17:19] Bob Dobbs: It had been shut down.

[1:17:20] Bob Dobbs: It was shut down in June.

[1:17:25] Cameron McEwen: Of 80?

[1:17:26] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:17:27] Bob Dobbs: That was the end.

[1:17:29] Bob Dobbs: I have the letters by Marge Stewart about the chaos that the center had gone through because of Kenner Austin.

[1:17:40] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:17:41] Bob Dobbs: Mark complains about Eric and someone else there that they weren't fucking dealing with the problem.

[1:17:47] Bob Dobbs: See,

[1:17:48] Bob Dobbs: Marshall took her down to the Coach House like about April.

[1:17:53] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:17:54] Bob Dobbs: it's written up in Shaun book,

[1:17:56] Bob Dobbs: because she might have sent some of her notes to him.

[1:18:02] Bob Dobbs: And they're looking at the mess,

[1:18:04] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan in real shock,

[1:18:06] Bob Dobbs: and she's in shock,

[1:18:07] Bob Dobbs: and McLuhan starts crying.

[1:18:09] Bob Dobbs: And so she made a diary of dealing with this problem for the next six weeks.

[1:18:14] Bob Dobbs: So I have her inventory of what she did the next day,

[1:18:17] Bob Dobbs: who she wrote to,

[1:18:19] Bob Dobbs: who she got in touch with.

[1:18:20] Bob Dobbs: I mean,

[1:18:21] Bob Dobbs: she wanted to fix it up.

[1:18:22] Bob Dobbs: And she could hardly walk with her broken hips,

[1:18:25] Bob Dobbs: so it was a pretty futile thing.

[1:18:27] Bob Dobbs: And then it closed down in June.

[1:18:30] Bob Dobbs: That was the end,

[1:18:31] Bob Dobbs: the end of June.

[1:18:32] Bob Dobbs: And then it was a closed center for until early

[1:18:37] Bob Dobbs: 81.

[1:18:40] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan dies six months later.

[1:18:46] Bob Dobbs: I don't think anything was going on through most of 81,

[1:18:49] Bob Dobbs: but by the fall of 81,

[1:18:52] Bob Dobbs: We were meeting somewheres,

[1:18:54] Bob Dobbs: like Derek and Logan and Eric would find some place and try to keep the McLuhan Monday Night Things going.

[1:19:00] Bob Dobbs: And there was a big conference of the

[1:19:04] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan guys,

[1:19:05] Bob Dobbs: like Zingrone from York and from Ryerson and from other people.

[1:19:10] Bob Dobbs: Everybody was there.

[1:19:10] Bob Dobbs: Even William Irwin Thompson was there.

[1:19:12] Bob Dobbs: He happened to be in town.

[1:19:14] Bob Dobbs: And me and my friend Ian Arlett were there,

[1:19:17] Bob Dobbs: and everybody was jockeying and trying to figure out...

[1:19:20] Bob Dobbs: who was going to take over the mantle and how to do it.

[1:19:24] Bob Dobbs: So everybody,

[1:19:25] Bob Dobbs: like a typical academic scene,

[1:19:27] Bob Dobbs: everybody's all friendly and say,

[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:19:30] Bob Dobbs: we'll do this and that,

[1:19:31] Bob Dobbs: and I'll cooperate.

[1:19:32] Bob Dobbs: Nothing happened,

[1:19:33] Bob Dobbs: completely nothing.

[1:19:36] Bob Dobbs: Nobody did anything.

[1:19:37] Bob Dobbs: Nobody wanted to do anything except Derek.

[1:19:40] Bob Dobbs: So in 82,

[1:19:41] Bob Dobbs: because that was the fall of 81,

[1:19:44] Bob Dobbs: and then by 82,

[1:19:45] Bob Dobbs: Derek started to continue.

[1:19:49] Bob Dobbs: the seminars by himself.

[1:19:52] Bob Dobbs: And me,

[1:19:53] Bob Dobbs: I hadn't met Nelson yet,

[1:19:55] Bob Dobbs: me and a couple other obscure people were the only ones going to it.

[1:19:58] Bob Dobbs: And I have the notes that Derek would write up the topic.

[1:20:01] Bob Dobbs: He'd bring in guests.

[1:20:03] Bob Dobbs: And I have the notes from that 82 period.

[1:20:06] Bob Dobbs: And then in the spring of 83 or early February,

[1:20:10] Bob Dobbs: March 83,

[1:20:12] Bob Dobbs: David Olson was made the,

[1:20:15] Bob Dobbs: they finally got the coach's back open.

[1:20:18] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:20:19] Bob Dobbs: David Olsen was made the director and Derek was the assistant director.

[1:20:23] Bob Dobbs: So by May

[1:20:24] Bob Dobbs: 83, Nelson and I and Barry are doing the McLuhan fanfares.

[1:20:29] Bob Dobbs: But

[1:20:30] Bob Dobbs: Zingrone wasn't there.

[1:20:31] Bob Dobbs: The Ryerson guys weren't there.

[1:20:34] Bob Dobbs: Eric wasn't there.

[1:20:35] Bob Dobbs: Nobody was doing it.

[1:20:36] Bob Dobbs: We were doing it.

[1:20:37] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:20:38] Bob Dobbs: the people.

[1:20:40] Bob Dobbs: The leftover Pezzes were doing it.

[1:20:44] Bob Dobbs: Plus Derek,

[1:20:44] Bob Dobbs: who was a professor in the French department.

[1:20:49] Bob Dobbs: It got more formal and Olson through 83 brought people in and I've got copies of the reports that Olson did for each meeting and

[1:21:02] Bob Dobbs: I hung out.

[1:21:03] Bob Dobbs: So then we asked,

[1:21:05] Bob Dobbs: me and Nelson and Barry asked Derek if we could do the McLuhan thing starting in the middle of May.

[1:21:10] Bob Dobbs: I just met

[1:21:11] Bob Dobbs: Nelson in April.

[1:21:13] Bob Dobbs: George Thompson introduced me to him at a McLuhan thing.

[1:21:16] Bob Dobbs: If you look at my pictures,

[1:21:19] Bob Dobbs: I have on my

[1:21:20] Bob Dobbs: Ina Bob at the bottom,

[1:21:21] Bob Dobbs: 40 years in the wilderness.

[1:21:24] Bob Dobbs: And you can go through,

[1:21:24] Bob Dobbs: I have pictures from 1969-70 all the way through to 2013.

[1:21:30] Bob Dobbs: But if you go to 1984,

[1:21:33] Bob Dobbs: it's all linear,

[1:21:34] Bob Dobbs: you can see pictures of a conference in about April or the end of March in the Coach House in

[1:21:42] Bob Dobbs: 84. And you'll recognize a lot of the faces there.

[1:21:47] Bob Dobbs: So I have pictures of that in my own photobiography.

[1:21:53] Bob Dobbs: So meanwhile,

[1:21:55] Bob Dobbs: we get into 84,

[1:21:57] Bob Dobbs: we're doing it with Barry,

[1:21:59] Bob Dobbs: and then Nelson,

[1:22:01] Bob Dobbs: he joins the Herbert W.

[1:22:02] Bob Dobbs: Armstrong religious cult.

[1:22:07] Bob Dobbs: Garner Ted Armstrong used to be on the radio and his father ran it.

[1:22:10] Bob Dobbs: Who was that?

[1:22:11] Bob Dobbs: Nelson.

[1:22:13] Bob Dobbs: He was Jewish and he converted to Catholicism.

[1:22:15] Bob Dobbs: under McLuhan influence in the late

[1:22:19] Bob Dobbs: 70s, and then he had another identity crisis in the early

[1:22:24] Bob Dobbs: 80s, and after McLuhan died,

[1:22:26] Bob Dobbs: and so he went into Herbert Armstrong,

[1:22:28] Bob Dobbs: and those guys say the Vatican is part of the beast.

[1:22:33] Bob Dobbs: So when he saw Derek on TV,

[1:22:37] Bob Dobbs: when the Pope,

[1:22:38] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:22:38] Bob Dobbs: the traveling Pope,

[1:22:40] Bob Dobbs: John Paul I,

[1:22:43] Bob Dobbs: when he came to...

[1:22:44] Bob Dobbs: Or,

[1:22:45] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:22:45] Bob Dobbs: the second,

[1:22:45] Bob Dobbs: I guess,

[1:22:46] Bob Dobbs: yeah.

[1:22:47] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:22:47] Bob Dobbs: the guy who traveled for years,

[1:22:49] Bob Dobbs: got it out there.

[1:22:52] Bob Dobbs: He came to Toronto in,

[1:22:54] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:22:54] Bob Dobbs: March or April 84,

[1:22:56] Bob Dobbs: and Nelson saw him on TV.

[1:22:58] Bob Dobbs: Derek was the guy explaining the Pope to the CBC crew,

[1:23:03] Bob Dobbs: and

[1:23:04] Bob Dobbs: Nelson was shocked that Derek was working for the Antichrist,

[1:23:07] Bob Dobbs: so he refused to do the fucking seminar anymore.

[1:23:11] Bob Dobbs: He wouldn't go to the Coach House.

[1:23:13] Bob Dobbs: He dumped it all.

[1:23:15] Bob Dobbs: And so that's right when me and Bob Marshall were starting to get on the radio,

[1:23:20] Bob Dobbs: just after that.

[1:23:22] Bob Dobbs: And so I got involved with CKLN.

[1:23:24] Bob Dobbs: And then I brought Nelson back on,

[1:23:26] Bob Dobbs: and he was part of our radio stuff.

[1:23:29] Bob Dobbs: And I don't know if you heard them.

[1:23:31] Bob Dobbs: I could send you a link to us doing McLuhan on CKLN in

[1:23:35] Bob Dobbs: November 84.

[1:23:41] Bob Dobbs: We did an hour.

[1:23:41] Bob Dobbs: We played our recordings and stuff.

[1:23:44] Bob Dobbs: So we did a lot of McLuhan on CKLN.

[1:23:49] Bob Dobbs: You know what I mean?

[1:23:49] Bob Dobbs: And that was when nobody gave a damn.

[1:23:51] Cameron McEwen: I've heard that.

[1:23:52] Cameron McEwen: I've heard that joke.

[1:23:54] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:23:55] Bob Dobbs: And let's see.

[1:23:59] Bob Dobbs: And then we got involved with Mary and

[1:24:02] Bob Dobbs: Mrs. McLuhan,

[1:24:02] Bob Dobbs: and it expanded.

[1:24:05] Cameron McEwen: But Mary,

[1:24:06] Cameron McEwen: was Mary in Toronto?

[1:24:07] Cameron McEwen: I don't know.

[1:24:07] Bob Dobbs: No.

[1:24:08] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:24:08] Bob Dobbs: she'd been living in California since 65,

[1:24:11] Bob Dobbs: 66.

[1:24:12] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:24:14] Cameron McEwen: So how did you get involved with her?

[1:24:17] Cameron McEwen: Well,

[1:24:18] Bob Dobbs: she would come back.

[1:24:19] Bob Dobbs: And once we were involved with Mrs.

[1:24:22] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan in the late 80s,

[1:24:23] Bob Dobbs: Mary would come back,

[1:24:24] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:24:25] Bob Dobbs: once or twice a year.

[1:24:26] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:24:27] Bob Dobbs: I had met Mary in 76,

[1:24:28] Bob Dobbs: so she knew me.

[1:24:30] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:24:30] Bob Dobbs: 77,

[1:24:31] Bob Dobbs: fall of 77 in California.

[1:24:33] Bob Dobbs: She knew me,

[1:24:34] Bob Dobbs: but I don't know what she knew of Nelson,

[1:24:36] Bob Dobbs: but she heard about Nelson.

[1:24:37] Bob Dobbs: from her mother.

[1:24:38] Bob Dobbs: So about 89,

[1:24:40] Bob Dobbs: 90,

[1:24:41] Bob Dobbs: she came back.

[1:24:42] Bob Dobbs: And one day Nelson told me,

[1:24:44] Bob Dobbs: because I just lived up the street from Wychwood Park,

[1:24:47] Bob Dobbs: told me to come down to the house because he was there.

[1:24:49] Bob Dobbs: He wanted me to meet somebody.

[1:24:51] Bob Dobbs: So

[1:24:52] Bob Dobbs: I went down there and there was Mary.

[1:24:54] Bob Dobbs: And then I reminded Mary,

[1:24:55] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:24:56] Bob Dobbs: that who I was.

[1:24:57] Bob Dobbs: And then she said,

[1:24:58] Bob Dobbs: oh,

[1:24:58] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:24:58] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:24:59] Bob Dobbs: I remember you,

[1:24:59] Bob Dobbs: blah,

[1:25:00] Bob Dobbs: So that started our thing.

[1:25:02] Bob Dobbs: And we kind of started a center,

[1:25:05] Bob Dobbs: a consulting thing.

[1:25:07] Bob Dobbs: And

[1:25:08] Bob Dobbs: Mary was giving out awards.

[1:25:10] Bob Dobbs: She had the Teacher's Award thing she was doing,

[1:25:12] Bob Dobbs: been doing since the early 80s.

[1:25:14] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:25:14] Bob Dobbs: yeah,

[1:25:14] Cameron McEwen: the Marshall McLuhan Foundation.

[1:25:16] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:25:17] Bob Dobbs: and we helped her with every new time she had to do something.

[1:25:22] Bob Dobbs: We'd give her ideas.

[1:25:23] Bob Dobbs: One time she called us up and said she was just with the Grateful Dead,

[1:25:27] Bob Dobbs: and it was coming up to New Year's Eve,

[1:25:29] Bob Dobbs: and they wanted to have some McLuhan stuff.

[1:25:31] Bob Dobbs: I think that was the

[1:25:33] Bob Dobbs: 89 going into 90,

[1:25:34] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:25:34] Bob Dobbs: a new decade.

[1:25:35] Bob Dobbs: And so we quickly got a calva together from our archives,

[1:25:40] Bob Dobbs: some video of McLuhan.

[1:25:41] Bob Dobbs: It's actually the one from 74 down in Florida where...

[1:25:46] Bob Dobbs: He's saying rock means the end of literacy,

[1:25:49] Bob Dobbs: the death of literacy.

[1:25:51] Bob Dobbs: You know that speech?

[1:25:54] Cameron McEwen: I think a lecture at Florida State or something.

[1:25:57] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:25:57] Bob Dobbs: and his hair is blowing in the wind.

[1:25:59] Bob Dobbs: It's like oddly sticking up.

[1:26:01] Bob Dobbs: And so we took that part.

[1:26:07] Bob Dobbs: Rock kills literacy.

[1:26:09] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:26:09] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:26:10] Bob Dobbs: within a week we heard back from the Grateful Dead.

[1:26:12] Bob Dobbs: They loved it and they thought it was a really great quote.

[1:26:14] Bob Dobbs: They loved playing it at their concert.

[1:26:18] Bob Dobbs: So typical Explorations of McLuhan and avoiding the cul-de-sac.

[1:26:25] Bob Dobbs: So that's what would happen.

[1:26:27] Bob Dobbs: Mary knew everybody.

[1:26:28] Bob Dobbs: George Lucas,

[1:26:31] Bob Dobbs: Jerry Brown.

[1:26:32] Bob Dobbs: We met a lot of people.

[1:26:34] Bob Dobbs: We went to the Oscars in 92 with Mary.

[1:26:37] Bob Dobbs: And I met a lot of people there,

[1:26:38] Bob Dobbs: and that went on until 1993.

[1:26:46] Bob Dobbs: Then I went to New York,

[1:26:48] Bob Dobbs: and then Nelson got busy doing something else,

[1:26:50] Bob Dobbs: so Mary wasn't around from 1995 to 2000.

[1:26:54] Bob Dobbs: Then she came back,

[1:26:55] Bob Dobbs: and then Nelson hooked up with her,

[1:26:58] Bob Dobbs: and then I did.

[1:26:59] Bob Dobbs: And then that's when I personally,

[1:27:02] Bob Dobbs: since I was living in the States,

[1:27:04] Bob Dobbs: started talking to her on the phone regularly.

[1:27:07] Bob Dobbs: And had more of a separate involvement with her that didn't include Nelson.

[1:27:12] Bob Dobbs: Nelson would be involved with her,

[1:27:14] Bob Dobbs: whatever they did,

[1:27:15] Bob Dobbs: separately from me.

[1:27:17] Bob Dobbs: So eventually

[1:27:19] Bob Dobbs: Nelson got fed up with Mary or something,

[1:27:22] Bob Dobbs: and he dropped her,

[1:27:23] Bob Dobbs: and then it was just me and Mary left.

[1:27:26] Bob Dobbs: And Mary was trying to get a McLuhan chair at Harvard or

[1:27:31] Bob Dobbs: Stanford, so I was involved in talking to people.

[1:27:35] Bob Dobbs: about her efforts to get them to take McLuhan seriously and give and put a chair in and she never as far as I know she never got it done never happened she would have the keys of that is money yeah

[1:27:52] Cameron McEwen: for enough money yeah and she didn't have that anybody anybody would be happy to have the chair if it had the right amount of money right but they seem to be

[1:28:02] Bob Dobbs: interested in having the name McLuhan because,

[1:28:04] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:28:05] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan was coming back into favor.

[1:28:07] Bob Dobbs: And it looked like a lot of people wanted to help her,

[1:28:12] Bob Dobbs: professors and that,

[1:28:13] Bob Dobbs: and get it done.

[1:28:14] Bob Dobbs: But nobody,

[1:28:16] Bob Dobbs: maybe because the Acadia University were all falling apart anyways,

[1:28:19] Bob Dobbs: nobody really was doing anything anymore.

[1:28:21] Bob Dobbs: So it didn't work.

[1:28:26] Bob Dobbs: So that's,

[1:28:27] Bob Dobbs: why am I telling you that?

[1:28:29] Bob Dobbs: Finnegans Wake.

[1:28:30] Bob Dobbs: We're talking about Finnegans Wake,

[1:28:32] Bob Dobbs: copies of Finnegans Wake.

[1:28:33] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:28:34] Cameron McEwen: And that's a good place for me to tell you that

[1:28:39] Cameron McEwen: I'm looking at the holdings now at the Fisher Library,

[1:28:44] Cameron McEwen: and they have two copies there,

[1:28:46] Cameron McEwen: not three.

[1:28:48] Cameron McEwen: But they do have the

[1:28:53] Cameron McEwen: Scribbledehobble,

[1:28:54] Cameron McEwen: which is sort of the first version of

[1:28:58] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake.

[1:28:59] Cameron McEwen: And they also have a first draft version of Finnegans Wake.

[1:29:05] Cameron McEwen: And all of these,

[1:29:06] Cameron McEwen: the first draft version is heavily annotated,

[1:29:09] Cameron McEwen: like the two copies of

[1:29:11] Cameron McEwen: Finnegans Wake that they have.

[1:29:13] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:29:13] Bob Dobbs: they say they're heavily,

[1:29:14] Bob Dobbs: you don't see the annotations,

[1:29:15] Bob Dobbs: they say they're heavily annotated,

[1:29:17] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:29:18] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:29:18] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:29:20] Bob Dobbs: I imagine,

[1:29:21] Bob Dobbs: I think one of them had a lot of Eric stuff in it.

[1:29:26] Bob Dobbs: Maybe Eric kept that.

[1:29:28] Cameron McEwen: That would be a problem.

[1:29:29] Cameron McEwen: problem,

[1:29:29] Cameron McEwen: right?

[1:29:30] Cameron McEwen: Trying to sift out

[1:29:31] Cameron McEwen: Marshall and Eric.

[1:29:32] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:29:33] Bob Dobbs: you can tell the different writing styles.

[1:29:35] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:29:35] Cameron McEwen: they have a different style,

[1:29:37] Cameron McEwen: that's for sure.

[1:29:39] Bob Dobbs: And Eric copied a lot of Marshall.

[1:29:41] Bob Dobbs: He basically was using Marshall's pattern for studying it.

[1:29:46] Bob Dobbs: But he would find interesting things,

[1:29:48] Bob Dobbs: and Marshall occasionally would compliment what Eric found that he didn't know about.

[1:29:54] Bob Dobbs: But Don Theall,

[1:29:56] Bob Dobbs: when he read Eric's PhD,

[1:29:59] Bob Dobbs: He says,

[1:30:00] Bob Dobbs: I recognize a lot of that stuff from the card box.

[1:30:06] Bob Dobbs: What would it be?

[1:30:07] Bob Dobbs: Dorothy Candies or something?

[1:30:08] Bob Dobbs: McLuhan had a lot of cards,

[1:30:11] Bob Dobbs: index cards in some kind of...

[1:30:13] Cameron McEwen: Laura's Secret.

[1:30:14] Cameron McEwen: Laura's Secret.

[1:30:15] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:30:16] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:30:16] Bob Dobbs: Laura Secord thing,

[1:30:18] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:30:18] Bob Dobbs: Laura Secord?

[1:30:19] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:30:21] Bob Dobbs: And he,

[1:30:21] Bob Dobbs: Don,

[1:30:22] Bob Dobbs: and Marshall made those cards.

[1:30:24] Bob Dobbs: And so Don recognized that Eric got a lot of his stuff from those cards because Don remembered them writing it out.

[1:30:33] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:30:36] Bob Dobbs: He can recognize it in the PhD.

[1:30:40] Cameron McEwen: Do you know where those cards are?

[1:30:42] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:30:44] Bob Dobbs: I don't even think I ever saw them.

[1:30:47] Bob Dobbs: They weren't in the parts that I organized.

[1:30:50] Cameron McEwen: But that would be an important part of a McLuhan commentary on the wake.

[1:30:59] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:31:00] Bob Dobbs: So,

[1:31:00] Bob Dobbs: you know,

[1:31:01] Bob Dobbs: have you ever seen Andrew's series of him going through and annotating

[1:31:10] Bob Dobbs: Eric's library?

[1:31:11] Bob Dobbs: Have you seen that series that Andrew has up?

[1:31:16] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:31:17] Cameron McEwen: I've only watched a couple of them.

[1:31:19] Bob Dobbs: Right,

[1:31:19] Bob Dobbs: but you get to see the library,

[1:31:21] Bob Dobbs: and that's Eric's library plus a lot of the McLuhan library that he had,

[1:31:26] Bob Dobbs: that he kept.

[1:31:27] Cameron McEwen: Right.

[1:31:27] Bob Dobbs: Yeah.

[1:31:28] Bob Dobbs: So you get to see what it is.

[1:31:31] Bob Dobbs: If you keep looking,

[1:31:32] Bob Dobbs: Andrew shows you different parts of it,

[1:31:35] Bob Dobbs: so you get to get a whiff.

[1:31:39] Cameron McEwen: Another example,

[1:31:40] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[1:31:41] Cameron McEwen: you've got time to do everything except my blog.

[1:31:45] Bob Dobbs: That's right.

[1:31:47] Bob Dobbs: I know all what you think.

[1:31:49] Bob Dobbs: I talk to you every two weeks.

[1:31:51] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:31:51] Bob Dobbs: I know what you think.

[1:31:52] Cameron McEwen: Yeah.

[1:31:54] Bob Dobbs: No,

[1:31:54] Bob Dobbs: but I do want to read more detail.

[1:31:57] Bob Dobbs: So I'll get to it.

[1:31:59] Bob Dobbs: As somebody used to say to me,

[1:32:01] Bob Dobbs: when I get five minutes,

[1:32:02] Bob Dobbs: Bob,

[1:32:04] Bob Dobbs: in an English accent,

[1:32:05] Bob Dobbs: when I get five minutes.

[1:32:08] Bob Dobbs: So.

[1:32:10] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:32:11] Bob Dobbs: but I have a lot of time to do a lot of things.

[1:32:13] Bob Dobbs: You know,

[1:32:13] Bob Dobbs: I only sleep three and a half hours,

[1:32:14] Bob Dobbs: so I can do a lot of stuff.

[1:32:17] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:32:18] Cameron McEwen: good,

[1:32:18] Cameron McEwen: good.

[1:32:19] Cameron McEwen: Bob,

[1:32:20] Cameron McEwen: we're at

[1:32:21] Cameron McEwen: 7.30.

[1:32:24] Bob Dobbs: Okay, we got to end.

[1:32:25] Cameron McEwen: I think we should be,

[1:32:26] Cameron McEwen: yeah,

[1:32:26] Cameron McEwen: we should be thinking about wrapping it up.

[1:32:28] Cameron McEwen: Do we want to identify just where we are?

[1:32:34] Bob Dobbs: I think I'll make a statement.

[1:32:36] Cameron McEwen: Okay,

[1:32:37] Cameron McEwen: fire away.

[1:32:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:32:38] Bob Dobbs: the...

[1:32:39] Bob Dobbs: We read the quote from Kroker,

[1:32:42] Bob Dobbs: and my commentary on that,

[1:32:44] Bob Dobbs: my conversational commentary in the blue script says,

[1:32:48] Bob Dobbs: we don't have five senses anymore,

[1:32:50] Bob Dobbs: we have 14 or 28.

[1:32:52] Bob Dobbs: Consider every little app and device you put into your armamentarium,

[1:32:57] Bob Dobbs: your reservoir of ammunition is a collection of new senses,

[1:33:00] Bob Dobbs: because there are all kinds of bodies.

[1:33:03] Bob Dobbs: Arthur Kroker just talks about plural bodies.

[1:33:06] Bob Dobbs: He doesn't get into the five types that I came up with.

[1:33:09] Bob Dobbs: I put it in order.

[1:33:10] Bob Dobbs: When he's talking about the body,

[1:33:11] Bob Dobbs: the body has no meaning today.

[1:33:13] Bob Dobbs: He's writing about the chemical body,

[1:33:15] Bob Dobbs: but you could project that he's describing the tech body.

[1:33:18] Bob Dobbs: Then I say,

[1:33:19] Bob Dobbs: hauntology,

[1:33:20] Bob Dobbs: in quotes,

[1:33:21] Bob Dobbs: a concept invented by Jacques Derrida,

[1:33:23] Bob Dobbs: explores the afterimage.

[1:33:25] Bob Dobbs: My defining of the Android Meme as an afterimage is supported by Kroker quotation.

[1:33:30] Bob Dobbs: The second phase of the Android Meme breaks up the mythic stages.

[1:33:34] Bob Dobbs: it actually,

[1:33:35] Bob Dobbs: mythic stages and quotes,

[1:33:36] Bob Dobbs: it actually becomes more and more shrunken,

[1:33:39] Bob Dobbs: holeopathic,

[1:33:40] Bob Dobbs: cliche probes,

[1:33:41] Bob Dobbs: or memes.

[1:33:43] Bob Dobbs: So let me just go back up here.

[1:33:46] Bob Dobbs: Before the Kroker quote,

[1:33:49] Bob Dobbs: I say,

[1:33:54] Bob Dobbs: no,

[1:33:54] Bob Dobbs: I don't.

[1:33:55] Bob Dobbs: So after that,

[1:33:56] Bob Dobbs: I get into the holeopathic.

[1:33:57] Bob Dobbs: So that's where I wanted to get.

[1:33:58] Bob Dobbs: So I'm going to pick up next time.

[1:34:01] Bob Dobbs: and continue the Explorations of the holeopathic into the meme via the verbal module.

[1:34:08] Bob Dobbs: Okay?

[1:34:10] Cameron McEwen: The comments that you're making here after the Kroker quote are,

[1:34:21] Cameron McEwen: how can I say,

[1:34:26] Cameron McEwen: they're worthy of a lot of Explorations.

[1:34:29] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:34:30] Cameron McEwen: So we'll get into that the next time.

[1:34:33] Cameron McEwen: We'll get into what's behind,

[1:34:39] Cameron McEwen: what's implicated by all this stuff here.

[1:34:42] Bob Dobbs: Yep.

[1:34:43] Bob Dobbs: That's what we've got to do.

[1:34:44] Cameron McEwen: Good.

[1:34:45] Cameron McEwen: I'll look forward.

[1:34:45] Cameron McEwen: I'll look forward to that,

[1:34:47] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[1:34:47] Bob Dobbs: Okay.

[1:34:48] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:34:48] Bob Dobbs: great talking to you once again,

[1:34:49] Bob Dobbs: Ewen Cameron,

[1:34:50] Bob Dobbs: and have a good two weeks.

[1:34:51] Bob Dobbs: Same here,

[1:34:51] Cameron McEwen: Bob.

[1:34:53] Cameron McEwen: Good.

[1:34:53] Cameron McEwen: Look forward.

[1:34:54] Bob Dobbs: Oh,

[1:34:54] Bob Dobbs: by the way,

[1:34:55] Bob Dobbs: how is your leg?

[1:34:57] Bob Dobbs: Everything growing properly?

[1:35:00] Cameron McEwen: Yeah,

[1:35:00] Cameron McEwen: everything's coming together.

[1:35:01] Cameron McEwen: I'm walking like two,

[1:35:04] Cameron McEwen: three miles every day.

[1:35:06] Cameron McEwen: Wow.

[1:35:07] Cameron McEwen: It's coming along.

[1:35:08] Bob Dobbs: That's good.

[1:35:09] Cameron McEwen: I'm hoping to begin jogging at some point.

[1:35:12] Bob Dobbs: Did you do that?

[1:35:13] Cameron McEwen: I can't jog yet.

[1:35:14] Bob Dobbs: But you couldn't jog before,

[1:35:16] Bob Dobbs: right?

[1:35:18] Cameron McEwen: No,

[1:35:18] Cameron McEwen: no,

[1:35:19] Bob Dobbs: definitely not.

[1:35:20] Bob Dobbs: That would be like going back

[1:35:22] Bob Dobbs: 10, 15 years to when you used to jog?

[1:35:24] Bob Dobbs: Well,

[1:35:25] Cameron McEwen: not that long,

[1:35:25] Cameron McEwen: but at least it would be going back

[1:35:28] Cameron McEwen: 5 to 10 years.

[1:35:30] Cameron McEwen: That's right.

[1:35:30] Bob Dobbs: Right.

[1:35:31] Bob Dobbs: Wow.

[1:35:31] Bob Dobbs: That would be incredible to get back to jogging.

[1:35:34] Bob Dobbs: Okay,

[1:35:34] Bob Dobbs: man.

[1:35:35] Bob Dobbs: Talk to you soon.

[1:35:37] Cameron McEwen: Ciao,

[1:35:37] Bob Dobbs: ciao,

[1:35:38] Bob Dobbs: bye.

[1:35:38] Bob Dobbs: Yeah,

[1:35:39] Cameron McEwen: bye.

[1:35:39] Cameron McEwen: Bye.