jürgen fauth’s muckworld

In February of 2005, I was in the Guatemalan jungle, on top of what archaeologists have designated Temple IV in the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Tikal, standing next to the chamber where the priest-king used to gobble magic mushrooms. Sound Tribe Sector 9 was playing on the iPod.

You’ve seen the view from Temple IV before: it’s the jungle hideout where the rebels regroup for their attack on the Death Star in Star Wars. Tikal was a city designed specifically to align with the Maya’s advanced astronomical knowledge. Rumor has it Sector 9 arrange their setlists according to the Mayan calendar. At the base of the pyramid, our guide Daniello was waiting with far-out theories about the end of the Long Count on December 21, 2012.

Back in New York (a city specifically designed to allow immigrants to make it to work on time), I played around with a bizarre screenplay called Twenty-Twelve for a couple of weeks. Then there was news of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, and I read Daniel Pinchbeck’s follow-up to Breaking Open the Head, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, a daring work that combines personal history with way-out ideas about the nature of time, the emergent noosphere, crop circles, the theories of Rudolf Steiner and Jose Arguelles, and the end of the Mayan Long Count. I shelved Twenty-Twelve.

Tonight I saw Apocalypto, and I’m absolutely dying to tell you what I thought–but Disney embargoed all reviews until the December 8 release, and you know how it is: when the Mouse asks, you don’t refuse–and you definitely wouldn’t want to get Mr. Gibson angry. The most I dare say is this: Apocalypto has nothing to do whatsoever with anything that interested me about Mayan culture in the first place, and Marcy might be wrong about Babel. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll bite my tongue for a week and leave you with some photos from Tikal and a video of Sector 9 playing Tokyo:

I’d love to know what Daniello has to say about Apocalypto.

Apocalypto. Mel Gibson, 2006. (No rating yet.)

• Apocalypto Official Site
• Trailer
• Wikipedia
• Rotten Tomatoes

[tags]sound tribe sector 9, film, mel gibson, maya, mayan calendar, time, guatemala, tikal, youtube, flickr, daniel pinchbeck, tikal, apocalypto, 2012, babel, star wars, quetzalcoatl, noosphere, rudolf steiner, jose arguelles, tokyo, crop cirlces, temple of the jaguar, temple IV, daniello, disney, mickey mouse, embargo, paramount building[/tags]

In the onrush of the ever-churning hype machine, never-ending blogs, and the constant RSS-fuelled river of news, it’s hard to hold on to two or three related thoughts for much longer than it takes to hit post. To counteract the continuing blurbification of the culture at large and my head in particular, here are a few items that deserve a little more than whatever has become of Warhol’s 15 minutes.

Must-See Movies, Out Now

• Shortbus. Finally, in what has been a lackluster year at best, there are some serious contenders for film of the year. John Cameron Mitchell’s paean to post-9/11 New York is still very much in the running. Detractors like to point out the ramshackle filmmaking, but I think it adds to the film’s enormous charm. If the characters can be generous enough to share their lovers freely, shouldn’t we forgive when Mitchell crosses the line once or twice?
• The Queen. A more perfect piece of filmmaking than Shortbus, and only slightly less daring. It’s only a matter of time before I go see my girlfriend Lilibet again.

Must-See Movies, Coming Soon

• Pan’s Labyrinth. Guillermo del Toro’s masterful fairy tale won’t be out until after Christmas, but this is one film you should feel free to get excited about early.
• The Host. Ditto for Bong Joon-ho’s riveting marriage of monster movie and art house film. Scheduled for release in January, and I’ll be first in line to see it again.
• Woman on the Beach. No distributor, no release date, but I keep thinking about the sly wit and seemingly accidental elegance of this movie.
• Volver. Almodovar’s latest opens Friday, and I’ll leave the superlatives to Marcy.
• INLAND EMPIRE. My ankle’s not swollen any more, but Lynch still has a hold on my imagination. He’s releasing the film himself so perhaps an uncut version will arrive sometime soon.

Books
Been reading top-secret drafts of friends’ novels and J. Robert Lennon’s wildly amusing Happyland as serialized in Harper’s. I’m also halfway through Klaus Kinski’s amazing autobiography, Ich Brauche Liebe. (Of course it’s outrageous. More on this soon.) I keep encountering variations of ideas Daniel Pinchbeck presents in 2012, many of which I first heard about from Danielo at Tikal . Here’s a video of Daniel with Douglas Rushkoff. Like the snake that bites its own tail, this gets us right back to accelerating culture, Shortbus, and the permeability of a shrinking world.

Finally, a week after the paperback release, no round-up can be complete with another plug for Marcy’s stellar debut Twins. If you missed her reading at In the Flesh, I’ve got the video.

[tags]roundup, shortbus, film, coming soon, books, tikal, twins, 2012, pinchbeck, bong joon-ho, pedro almodovar, david lynch, stephen frears, john cameron mitchell, guillermo del toro, klaus kinski, j robert lennon[/tags]

After Breaking Open the Head, Daniel Pinchbeck is now gearing up to become the Leary/McKenna of the Oughts. Contemporary shamanism, I suppose, is the word. He takes his trip pretty far out in the new book: the regular iboga/ayahuasca explorations are back, told with blunt first-person honesty, and solid scholarly work that touches on anybody who’s even remotely relevant, from obvious ones like Castaneda and Fritjof Capra to more obscure figures such as Rudolf Steiner. There are chapters on quantum mechanics that shouldn’t thrill no one any longer, there are UFOs, Stonehendge, Hopi prophecies, and of course–much to my chagrain*–the Mayan calendar. The general theory here is that the end of the Long Count on December 21, 2012 will usher in some sort of revolution of global consciousness, activation of the noosphere, what have you. I was particularly taken with his treatise on crop circles, on which I’ll soon post more. Interesting for a mind-bending ride, expert synthesis of hermetic traditions, and very revealing personal stories from Burning Man, Amazon villages, and the depths of DPT trips. Recommended, even just for the jolt of Pinchbeck’s courage to go very far out there.

* Ever since Tikal, I’ve been wanting to do something with the end of the Long Count. He got there first, next is Mel Gibson….

A couple of links.