Laughing Lemur Collaborations

Posted 4:10 PM by Steve
Okay, some thoughts on what I saw, what I did and where I see it going. Serious spoilage. And it’s bloody long. I’m sorry. I just hope some of it can be of any slight use. Feel free to ditch it all, I just want to make the bowl bigger, but by doing that for myself, I may well shrink it for everyone else.

First off, I’m not sure how well I’ve taken the bits and knitted them together, so if anyone wants to retcon anything I’ve done, or if I pulled a character wrong, let me know and I’ll change it. I think I strayed from the brief a bit with Uncle Jon. The basque/spanish bit I ran through babelfish as my spanish is non-existent. It should translate to "Where's the damn decoder. We can send the signal, it will print the bomb at that end, but we need the damn decoder." I didn’t want to put it in English because Tom can’t understand it, but I put it in because I wanted to tease in an idea I’d had. However, it can be erased if people so desire.

Here’s the idea... Basques could use this to “teleport” a bomb to destination using Claire and Tom.
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/tech/article.jsp?id=99993238&sub=Gadgets%20and%20Inventions

Anyone wants to back edit the story, let me know, I don’t mind, as long as I understand why.

Okay, here’s where I went.

I gave Claire green eyes because, well, it kind of went like this. Amy mentioned Picasso and Berlin. So we’re headed to Berlin, and I’m thinking Picasso. Web search for Picasso paintings in Berlin gives me the Berggruen Collection, the exhibition Picasso and his Time at the museum Sammlung Berggruen. Which is in a park by schloss Charlottenberg, a palace, with park and museum complexes. Very west of central Berlin, map here.

Searching for a picture that would be in there, to fix a meeting point, gave me Nature morte devant une fenêtre à Saint-Raphaël.

Why did I pick that? Well, it’s a split between realism and cubism, and also, I ran a web search on San Raphael, and discovered a lot of goodies. If you’ll indulge me? First up I’ll take the still life part. It’s just too good, isn’t it, a still life motif? All the character sketches we’ve got, from Amy, and also Matt’s part, show characters going nowhere, just being played out by time. Next up is Saint-Raphael. This leads all over the place, so bear with me. After that, I’ll hit the cubism, and the realism.

Saint Raphael:-

From http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/S/SaintR1ap.asp

(saN-räfäel´) , town (1990 pop. 26,799), Var dept., SE France, on the French Riviera . It is an elegant resort and a small commercial port as well as an important naval air base and the site of a naval school.
From http://www.saint-raphael.com/webanglais/decouvrir/histoire/histoire.htm

The famous composer Charles Gounod is said to have composed "Romeo and Juliette" at his house the "Oustalet doù Capelan" (Priest's House) in 1865. This has interesting resonance, if anyone wants to pick up on it.

Also, Bonaparte arrived triumphantly at the port of Saint-Raphaël on October 9, 1799 after his victorious Egyptian campaign. Fifteen years later, the fallen emperor left for exile in Elba from the very same port. Now, that got me thinking, especially along with the fact that there’s a Church of the Templar Knights in Saint Raphael. Digging on that aspect, because I’m not as hot on the Templars as maybe some of you are, I got to this.

Napoleon and the Knights Templar:-

From http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/~muehleb9/knightstm5.html

Under Napoleon the Templar myth returned to its native soil, where it put down new roots. The origins of the revival of the myth are not at all clear, and are connected with the obscure status of Freemasonry under the Napoleonic regime. The government encouraged Masonry with the idea of using it for political purposes, though little came of this. Probably the revival of chivalrous Masonic orders was encouraged because they were likely to attract aristocrats whose spare-time pursuits could thus be easily placed under surveillance by Napoleonic agents. The litterateur Charles Nodier said of the Freemasonry of the period that in spite of their numbers the Masons were no danger to the regime, because the movement was negative, powerless, and frivolous. Nodier had a Masonic past, and his judgement was not unbiased, but he was right in thinking Freemasonry to have become politically harmless. The Utopian, revolutionary Masonry of de Bonneville and the Bavarian Illuminati was finished."

From http://www.lundyisleofavalon.co.uk/templars/tempic04.htm

"In 1796 Napoleon was one of three revolutionary 'Directors' heading the government. Another 'Director' was Abbe Sieyes, who knew of certain genealogical researches that had been undertaken by one Abbe Pichon. Pichon had access to the royal archives captured by the revolutionary government, where some important genealogies had been hidden away, and he discovered that a direct descent from Dagobert II had been maintained up to then." "...Abbe Seiyes urged Napoleon to marry Josephine Beauhamais because she was a Merovingian descendant, and to adopt her two children by a previous marriage who were of this anciently royal stock." In 1798 "on the way to Egypt, Bonaparte detoured to capture Malta and the treasure held by the Knights of Malta." - Michael Bradley, Holy Grail Across the Atlantic

"It was fortunate for the French that there was little fight left in the Knights of St. John...the last Grand Master, the apathetic von Hompesch, made only a show of resistance before accepting Bonaparte's terms...For the cost of three men killed, the French secured an invaluable naval base and a great deal of treasure..." "Over the five days following the island's capture, Bonaparte tore apart and refashioned every aspect of Maltese life. The Order of St. John was abolished and its members departed, apart from a handful who were persuaded to join the Army of Egypt...The treasures of the Order, amassed over 500 years, were promptly sequestered... and seven million francs' worth was diverted to the military chest." - David G. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon

So, Napoleon reinstates the Masonic stuff, picks up a haul of gold, and the first place he docks in France on his return from that campaign? San Raphael. So I figure, if anyone wants to weave it in, there’s room for a masonic element of some sort, maybe the Factor? The only link I could find to Basque and the Masons was this...

Basques and Knights Templar:-

From http://www.wildernesstravel.com/itins/bilbaoba.html

9-10 Catalan Pyrenees / Sierra del Cadí Our hikes take us to a quintessential Pyrenean village that was once a hidden settlement of the medieval Knights Templar and into the oak forests of the Sierra del Cadí.

Okay, so what has this to do with green eyes? Well, Raphael, the archangel...there’s symbolism there...

Raphael:-

From http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:waF2H2IDGOoC:www.prcorghq.com/angels.html+archangel+Raphael+mythology&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8

RAPHAEL is the planetary ruler of Mercury. He was known to the ancient Greeks as Hermes, to the Romans as Mercuri who was the messenger of the Gods, to the Celts as Ogma, to the Egyptians and Thoth (pronounced Tehuti) and to the Northern Europeans as Odin or Woden.

Okay, so I figure, there’s a bit of imagery to allude to? Here we have Claire, who has all this communication going on, and then there’s Raphael, also known as Mercury. And from the same link, there’s this:-

Raphael should be invoked in rituals involving healing, communications, travel, young people, education, business contracts, commercial selling, writing and self~expression. As Hermes is also the god of thieves his aid can be requested to help find stolen goods or lost property. On his highest level Raphael represents the spiritual guide or mentor who helps the person who is just beginning his/her journey on the occult path.

It just fits too well. Now, if anyone wants to play an angle, especially with Matt’s line about Tom being on the side of angels because he’s being tortured by devils, there’s an idea that Claire and Tom could be each other’s saviour...which can be tied back into the music for Romeo and Juliet being composed at good old Saint-Raphael? Anyway, the idea for saviours comes from...

http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:sw2NgrxHJ8cC:www.bootlegbooks.com/Reference/PhraseAndFable/data/1039.html+archangel+Raphael+mythology&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8

Raphael, according to Longfellow, is the angel of the Sun, who brings to man the “gift of faith.”

“I am the angel of the Sun,
Whose flaming wheels began to run
When God Almighty's breath
Said to the darkness and the night,
`Let there be light,' and there was light,-
I bring the gift of faith.”
Golden Legend: The Miracle Play. iii.

Now, I don’t quite follow this next link, but someone might see something useful in it, given all of the above...I won’t quote the lot, it’s wordy, but the title is enough of a hint as to what it’s about, and gives a hint of Claire’s role as unwitting participant?

From http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/FLM/SH/MDL/GAL/GalDisChapts/galdis.chapter5#280

The Archangel Raphael as Archetype for the Psychological Function of Neutral or Undifferentiated Feeling

What? Oh, the green eyes?

From http://4sywr.tripod.com/erosask.htm

Green : The archangel Raphael's color. He's the archangel of healing, joy, miracles and love. Green is the spirit of the heart, a very harmonious color that expresses devotion and compassion. Note that one of the strangers wears this particular color.

I don’t know which stranger that is, being referred there. Also, green = luck, and Morrison’s Doom Patrol had a Why Green? riff, along with the R.E.M. album green, which has a few tracks that can play here, Stand and world leader pretend are but two. And writing in green ink is said to be a sign of madness.

Few last bits on Raphael, if anyone wants them...

From http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Labyrinth/2626/hierarchy2.html

The Archangel - Raphael, is known as "the shining one that heals". He is the Ruler of the second heaven, Chief of the Virtues, Guardian of the "Tree of life" and one of the seven angels of the throne. He is usually shown with a smile, a pleasant, happy angel, offically a Virtue angel, Raphael had six wings like the Seraph, but also belonged to the Cherubim, the Dominions and the Powers. Raphael is credited with giving the mysterious "Book of the Angel Raziel" to Noah, a book said to posess the knowledge needed to build the Ark. Strangely he is also the guide of Sheol, or the womb of the underworld. As a demon of earth he can manifest in a monstrous beast-form.

Now, Picasso...

Well, Amy mentioned Guernica, and you know where that led me, and then it led me back again...to cubism...

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/cubism.html
The key concept of Cubism is that the essence of objects can only be captured by showing it from multiple points of view simultaneously

This sort of played with the ideas Tyler and Matt had in the blog, so I thought it fitted in well, the idea of facets, and minor players and so on. I also tried to give the hunter a cubist sort of outlook, building on what Matt and Chip did with him.

Now, also, From http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/c/cubism.html

In Cubism the subject matter is broken up, analyzed, and reassembled in an abstracted form. Picasso and Braque initiated the movement when they followed the advice of Paul Cézanne, who in 1904 said artists should treat nature "in terms of the cylinder, the sphere and the cone."
There were three phases in the development of Cubism: Facet Cubism, Analytic Cubism, and Synthetic Cubism.

Abstract made me think of Amy giving Claire daydreaming tendencies. Then there was also the three aspects of cubism, which gives a trinity. Where I was looking there was that the hunter was the facet, Claire the abstract and Tom the synthetic, although you also have Claires body as the facet, her mind the abstract and her neuro-tech (which I’ll explain later) as the synthetic. It’s also possible to place Tom as the facet with Uncle as the synthetic, around Claire as the abstract.

Cubism was also a revolution in art, and we’ve got revolution here with the Basque’s and this tech as well.

Now, back to the pick of the painting, given it is a cubist/realist marriage? Well, it’s a duality, and so you can do what you like with dualities. Claire’s bio versus her nano, Claire and Tom, all the sides essentially oppose/marry, it all works.

Ack. What did I just forget. Oh yeah. Boris. I didn’t know what to do with Boris, I couldn’t work out if he was a seperate side, or he was part of the Factor. I wondered about placing him with the masons, but he seems too much of a loner for that. I figure he’s Russian, and so the 1812 overture was too much of an opportunity to pass up, especially as I had Napoleon on my mind anyway, and then there’s the cannon and the patriotism/nationalism...

Oh, the Manics album, Know Your Enemy? I’m a fan, but also, there’s the title, and there’s a track on it, My Guernica. It was going to be If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next, because that’s about the spanish civil war, but with the one I went for, I got two allusions in.

God, sorry, I’m waffling on, and some of this is probably obvious. I haven’t written written for a while, and certainly not to this depth, so I just feel all self congratulatory. I’ll stop soon.

The Tech:- As per the rules, I went for the plausible, if extrapolatory.

Oh, by the way, given Tom’s a croat, there’s Tesla, he was too, and also I know I chucked in a couple of Craotian words, I’m not sure they work, but here’s the site for ref... http://www.ielanguages.com/croatian.html

So, Croats and science. Yeah, I mentioned Tesla, but there was also two others who took the nobel, Leopold Ruzicka Croatian, perfume, well perfume is simplistic, ( http://www.nobel.se/chemistry/laureates/1939/ruzicka-bio.html ) and Vladimir Prelog
( http://www.nobel.se/chemistry/laureates/1975/press.html ), stereochemistry, which I kind of figure to be the cubism of chemistry.

Well, that led me to thinking...smell and electricity. Which led me to the idea that nano submersibles could stimulate memory through the sense of smell. Aside: Uncle Jon could be creating Claire’s daydreams, if so desired.

For the tech, how it could work, how it could be powered, and so on, see:-

Nanotechnologists have bolted tiny metal propellers onto biomolecular motors.

Mini microscope views brain in action

Spider silk delivers finest optical fibres

really small powering batteries
using the human gut to power

Single atom storage

silence machine to allow better access to sounds one wants to hear.

mechanical to electric energy

100% efficient energy transferrance.

Heat into electricity.

So, where do I see it going? I don’t rightly know. I’ve given Boris a previous encounter with Kirsten, although for what reason I’m not sure, I had it in mind as just a way of picking Claire up, but more can be made of it. At the back of my head I see sex between Kirsten and Boris at their meeting, if people want to use that? There’s also the possibility that Uncle Jon has a GPS system within Claire and Kirsten, although that can be disregarded for Kirsten if you want to assume he’s just going on normal intelligence there. I swiped that from the previous version, as Amy gave her okay, and figure he’s got one in Claire, given all the shit I just put in there on his behalf. What the Interpreter that isn’t an interpreter actually is, I’m not sure. I was leaning towards it being the decoder the Basques need to use that industrial electronic gadget printer, or the printer itself, supplied by Uncle Jon in case of emergency. I don’t know what games Jon is playing here, but I’ve tried to set him up as per brief.

I have to admit, I’m not up to speed on Basque separatists, beyond the obvious. So I’m not sure what they’d want in Berlin. Also, not sure who’s meeting Claire at the painting, or when. It could be Tom, it could be the Basque, it could be Boris herding. It could be who you like.

I’m sorry I didn’t play with the extra characters, Matt. I got so sucked into what I was doing, I forgot. What was with the lemon?

Anyway, sorry for waffling, thanks for listening, and giving me the chance to stretch some legs. I think I broke one, but even so...

Oh, yeah, Prague, I kept it.