Here’s the text of the talk I gave on self-ownership at the PPE conference last March. It’s not a defense of self-ownership in the sense of a positive argument for the thesis; instead, it’s a reply to the most common objections to self-ownership that I’ve encountered:
Getting Self-Ownership in View
[cross-posted at POT]
[T]here were double meanings in
the Necronomicon of the mad Arab
Abdul Alhazred which the initiated
might read as they chose ….
Sometimes two terms can be the same in reference but different in sense, like “the morning star” and “the evening star,” or “Mark Twain” and “Samuel Clemens,” or … “John Galt” and “Cthulhu.”
Yes, think about it. Galt and Cthulhu – or Galthulhu, if you will – are both hidden, mysterious figures who act in secret, biding their time until they can reclaim the world for themselves and their kind.
Galthulhu’s hiding place is described, in the Dark Gospel of Rand, as a “radiant island in the Western Ocean” that he discovered while “fighting the worst storm ever wreaked upon the world”:
He saw it in the depth, where it had sunk to escape the reach of men. He saw the towers of Atlantis shining on the bottom of the ocean. It was a sight of such kind that when one had seen it, one could no longer wish to look at the rest of the earth. John Galt sank his ship and went down with his entire crew.
But Galthulhu did not die, since, as per the Dark Gospel of Lovecraft –
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die
– or, as the Dark Gospel of Rand reports the creature’s own words: “Of course I am all right, Professor. I had to be. A is A.” Instead, Galthulhu waits in expectant dormancy in its sunken city, as the Dark Gospel of Lovecraft explains:
In the elder time chosen men had talked with the entombed Old Ones in dreams, but then something had happened. The great stone city R’lyeh, with its monoliths and sepulchres, had sunk beneath the waves; and the deep waters, full of the one primal mystery through which not even thought can pass, had cut off the spectral intercourse. But memory never died, and high-priests said that the city would rise again when the stars were right. … Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more, for the Vigilant sailed over the spot after the April storm; but his ministers on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places.
And in what sort of buildings do Galthulhu and his acolytes live? According to Lovecraft, in “greenish stone blocks” with “crazily elusive angles of carven rock” whose geometry is “abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours.”
Similarly, Galthulhu’s forerunner, according to Rand, designs buildings that “looked like a lot of boxes piled together without rhyme or reason,” such as “a rising mass of rock crystal” with a “severe, mathematical order holding together a free, fantastic growth; straight lines and clean angles, space slashed with a knife … an incredible variety of shapes,” like “a symphony played by an inexhaustible imagination, and one could still hear the laughter of the force that had been let loose on them, as if that force had run, unrestrained, challenging itself to be spent, but had never reached its end.”
And the preferred colour of Galthulhu’s structures? – “shining metal” with an “odd tinge” of “greenish-blue.”
As the hour of Galthulhu’s resurrection approaches, the creature’s ability to influence human thoughts returns, and the “monstrous menace” begins, in Lovecraft’s terms, “its siege of mankind’s soul,” by “sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration” – i.e., it begins, as Rand describes, “draining the brains of the world.”
“That cult would never die till the stars came right again,” Lovecraft explains, “and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth.” What Lovecraft describes as future, Rand describes as past: “We are going back to the world,” she has Galthulhu say, as the creature “raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign of the dollar.”
In the meantime, the creature’s name has become part of a popular chant expressing the despair of the damned, whether as “Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!” or as “Who is John Galt?”
What does Galthulhu offer to its followers? Freedom and egoistic indulgence, according to Rand:
Such was the service we had given you and were glad and willing to give. What did we ask in return? Nothing but freedom. …
It’s selfish, heartless, ruthless! It’s the most vicious speech ever made! It … it will make people demand to be happy!
Or in Lovecraft’s words:
The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return.
And then there will be only the ocean and the sky and the figure of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
This painting of a Young Shepherdess by Bouguereau, part of the collection of the San Diego Museum of Art, was one of my mother’s favourites, and we always made sure to seek it out whenever we were visiting the museum.
The long-awaited (to put it mildly) 300+ page fifth volume of Rothbard’s history of the American founding, addressing the crucial period of the Constitutional Convention (which, you will not be surprised to learn, Rothbard views as something less than a heroic miracle of liberty) is finally available, both in print and as a free download.
I just back from seeing Joker. Liked it a lot.
MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW:
a) I noticed a Batman reference, specifically a 1966 Batman tv reference, that I haven’t seen anyone else comment on: namely, when we first meet Bruce Wayne, he slides down a pole.
b) I’ve read several reports saying that Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke is the only story from the comics that they drew significantly from. Not so: the whole talk show appearance scene, including kissing the fake Dr. Ruth, is directly inspired by a scene in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (even if the resulting body count is a bit lower).
And now we come to the grand finale, with fireworks bursting in all directions, the –
FINAL HALLOWE’EN COUNTDOWN: #1
327-328. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart, “Phantom of the Opera” and “Music of the Night” (1986):
Is Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel Phantom of the Opera a work of science-fiction? I say yes, for the same reason Batman is: all those gadgets and mechanical contrivances. And so these songs from the musical version count, sez I, as sci-fi songs.
(Two Phantom-related memories: listening to a Phantom “cassette tape”* on my “Walkman”* as I rode up and down the elevators of the insanely surreal Marriott Marquis atrium at the Eastern APA in Atlanta in 1991; and taking my mother to see the live show at the Kennedy Center in 1993 when I was running the IHS graduate summer program.)
[* Look it up, kids.]
Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, the original performers:
Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum, from the 2004 movie (which I saw at the [late lamented] Harvard Square Theatre while in Boston for another Eastern APA [for the very first Molinari Society session, in fact] in 2004):
329. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Glenn Slater, “The Beauty Underneath” (2010):
From the flawed but underrated Phantom sequel, Love Never Dies (which I saw in Atlanta two years ago). There are three quite different versions of this song; I have trouble deciding which I like best:
From the 2010 London production:
From the 2012 Australian production:
From the 2017-2018 North American tour:
But the two Webber works are not the only musicals to be based on Leroux’s novel. Twelve years earlier, there was the crazy movie The Phantom of the Paradise; here are a couple of songs from that:
330. Paul Williams, “The Hell of It” (1974):
331. Paul Williams (composer); Jessica Harper (singer), “Old Souls” (1974):
Of course the amazing-voiced Jessica Harper would go on to star in the 1981 Rocky Horror sequel Shock Treatment, taking over the role of Janet from Susan Sarandon in the 1975 adaptation of the 1973 stage musical. And that makes an adequate segue to Rocky Horror itself, a vaguely Frankenstein-based musical which of course opens with the ultimate science-fiction song – a song that was always going to be one of the songs featured in the grand finale of this SciFi SongFest. Namely this one:
332. Richard O’Brien, “Science Fiction Double Feature” (1973):
In the original stage production, the song was sung by Patricia Quinn (who also played Magenta – though she sounds more like Columbia here):
In the movie, it was sung by O’Brien, the composer (who also played Riff Raff), though it’s still Quinn’s lips we see:
On an amazing Hallowe’en 2011, singer Amanda Palmer performed the song on the Craig Ferguson show, with help from Stephin Merritt and Moby – and slightly more minimalist help from Palmer’s husband, fantasy writer Neil Gaiman. Yes, this gloriously exists!
And that in turn offers segues in two different directions – one to this incredible song of android love from Palmer when she was part of the Dresden Dolls:
333. Dresden Dolls, “Coin Operated Boy” (2003):
– and hence to this similarly-themed song (actually written by Johnny S. Black in 1915):
334. Mills Brothers, “Paper Doll” (1943):
– and onward to this updated version (which quotes the original in the background, starting around 1:30):
335. Red Clay Ramblers, “The Corrugated Lady” (1978):
– and the other segue is back to the Craig Ferguson show, where on that very same Hallowe’en 2011 night, Ferguson himself performed another song from Rocky Horror:
336. Richard O’Brien, “Over at the Frankenstein Place” (1973):
First the film version:
And then Ferguson’s version:
Following the Rocky Horror strand forward leads to this song:
337. Richard O’Brien, “Time Warp” (1973):
(And don’t Columbia, and her relationship with Frank-N-Furter, prefigure Harley Quinn, and her relationship with Mr. J?)
(As for those subtitles: traduttore, traditore, indeed.)
– which leads in turn to this Doctor Who oriented cover from the Hillywood Sisters (filled with visual references to the Tennant era). I think Elliott Crossley deserves more prominent billing than he gets here for his spot-on Tennant voice dubbing. (Incidentally: the timing of “the blackness would hit me” is, um, surely not accidental – right? Cheeky.)
Following the Rocky Horror strand forward for one more song takes us to …
338. Richard O’Brien (composer); Tim Curry (performer), “Sweet Transvestite” (1973):
(And the subtitles are not getting any more accurate.)
Alternatively, following the Doctor Who and Craig Ferguson threads back, we find them converging on …
339. Craig Ferguson, “Doctor Who Cold Open” (2010):
So, back in 1963 the Doctor Who theme was composed by Ron Grainer and then vastly improved by Delia Derbyshire:
But it never had lyrics until, nearly 50 years later, Ferguson gave us these:
Trivia note: in his youth Craig Ferguson was in a band with Peter Capaldi, who would later play the Doctor from 2013 to 2017.
Continuing to follow the Doctor Who strand leads to another song that has received a Doctor Who parody:
340. Victoria Wood, “The Ballad of Barry and Freda (Let’s Do It)” (1986):
And here’s the Doctor Who themed version, a send-off from the stars of Doctor Who to showrunners Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner – parts of which you’ll get only if you’ve read Davies’ Writer’s Tale:
But we’ve begun to depart from the authentically Hallowe’eny, so let’s follow the Doctor Who strand back in a twisty direction – to this song from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas:
341. Danny Elfman, “This is Halloween” (1993):
No Doctor Who connection yet; but then Marilyn Manson recorded a cover version – and someone made a Doctor Who themed video (from the Matt Smith era) for that – and the result is the ultimate sci-fi Hallowe’en song (as opposed to the ultimate sci-fi song simpliciter, which was #332 above), and a fitting culmination for our SongFest: