Written and Edited by CYPRESS BUTANE
I chose the name ‘The Haunted Typewriter’ to encapsulate a number of meanings. First to say that as writers, when we sit down in front of our keyboard, there is a spirit at our shoulders, that of the whole history of literature and art that has come before. Whether it is there to spook us, intimidating us out of daring to attempt what we might attempt, or whether it might aid us as a steadying hand of fellowship, it also courses through us. There is no way to separate ourselves from it. And also, I think as a cyberpunk author, there is a hint of the ghost in the machine metaphor. That of the hardware and software mixture, where consciousness comes from a complexity and emergence. And the ghost is perhaps a poltergeist who shocks our fingers into action and energy. And finally, there is the curse of the mechanization of the human spirit, the player piano syndrome. Whereby machines may learn to do the things human beings hold as foundational to the meaning of their lives. IF artificial intelligence can write stories just as well, or better than any of us can… Well, do a predictive text with as the beginning of the sentence, and you let me know how it turns out. I’ll be here trying to make my life artful and mean something positive, to me.
This blog will explore issues of literary theory and writing, the mind of the writer, techne and spirit, and cyberpunk philosophy and art.
WEELKLY DISPATCHES
This video uses songs and films that I don’t own the copyright to. All rights remain with the creators and distributors of these songs and films. I am using them in a spirit of fair use. The following songs are used in this video: Richard Cheese – Down With the Sickness (Disturbed Cover) (Dawn of the Dead 2004 Soundtrack) Eels – Lone Wolf Donovan – Season of the Witch Cake – Sheep Go to Heaven The following films footage is used in this video: Dawn of the Dead (2004) Dawn of the Dead (1978) The Perfect Home – 50 years at Lincoln Center – NYCBallet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGj7w…
Timothy Leary – From Hippies to Cyberpunk – By Cypress Butane
This Video is an Accompaniment to my Article ‘TIMOTHY LEARY & THE CODE OF THE ‘NEW BREED’ FROM HIPPIES TO CYBERPUNK: IF – WHITE RABBIT THEN – CHESHIRE GRIN’ – view the article at my blog https://thehauntedtypewriter.com/2022… and other content of mine at http://www.cyberpunks.com/author/cypressbutane/
‘Get Your Revolution At a Lower Price’ Discussing Despots and Dinner Dates with the Family. Reading a longer early chapter from my novel in progress ‘The Skein’, the first in a proposed series of cyberpunk novels titled ‘The Kybernetes Cycle’.
Unofficial Fan Made Music Video for the song WAGE WARS GET RICH DIE HANDSOME by the band THE MOUNTAIN GOATS from the Upcoming Album BLEED OUT Compiled of film clips, sources listed below. I do not own the rights to any of these films of the song and this material is used in a spirit of fair use. All rights are with the creators and distributors of the original material. This video is edited by Cypress Butane of http://www.thehauntedtypewriter.com The films featured include: A Clockwork Orange (1971) A Scanner Darkly (2006) Aliens (1986) Arrival (2016) Deadpool (2016) Fight Club (1999) Full Metal Jacket (1987) Mad Max Fury Road (2015) Mission Impossible III (2006) Rogue One (2016) Romeo + Juliet (1996) Sin City (2005) SLC Punk! (1998) Stranger Things S03E8 (2019) Terminator 2 (1991) The Amazing Spiderman 2 (2014) The Matrix (1999) The Matrix Reloaded (2003) The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
Inaugural Episode / Filmwatch: ‘Hot Fuzz’ (2007)
According to some philosophers, we live in the age of Post-Modernism, the era after meaning, after the center has collapsed and all interpretation and authority is up for grabs for whoever shouts loudest or can claim the territority for themselves in their own distinct ways. Long ago, the Church was the center of the universe and the source of everyman’s ‘Meta-Narrative’– the story of all truth in the universe, eminating from the top on down. Now, we are left to tell our own stories, as well we can. “Everything is strategic and adventurous, for these reasons, there is nowhere to begin.’ I am starting weekly Neo-Pagan Techno-Shaman Cyberpunk Dispatches with Tarot Card pulls, Art-Maps, and Arch-Themes for the Week behind and ahead.
Tarot Card Of The Week – Eight of Swords Film of the Week – The Kovak Box (2006) Discussing – Science, Experiment, Art, Teleology, Cosmology, Narcissistic Meta-Fiction, Choices of Will and Conscious Apprehension, Art and Unconscious Exploration, Time Wasted Being Happy, Capitalism and Mortality, Scientology, Games (Which Need Rules), & Vampires
EPISODE #3 – MAD ELEGIES /// Discussing the film ‘The Night Stalker’ (1972) / Tarot Card 6 of Pentacles / Vampire: The Masquerade / RPG Mechanics as Post-Modern Catechisms and Field Guides to Alernative Soteriology / ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ / Cultural Acceleration and Undead Breath Control
EPISODE #4 – SUDDEN DEATH IN CAROLINA /// Discussing the film ‘Melancholia’ (2011) / Tarot Card Queen of Swords / Giant Wave Art Installation in South Korea / “Stay Hydrated” / God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night / ( Rainer Maria Rilke Poem ) / Francis Bacon and the origins of Western Science Philosophies / “If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain” / Abrahamic Religions / Pieter Bruegel the Elder / Weltlandschaft – aka ‘World Landscape’ / Depression and Social Expectations / The Right Stuff (1983) / The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) / Thelma & Louise (1991) Public Media Art #1 “WAVE” Full ver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZxKd… Smart Project (Summer Media Art) | Seoul https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ4eW… Video that helped me choose the poem, which I mentioned, about Rilke in terms of religious devotion. Good talk. Rilke and Rumi: Poets of Longing – February 7, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKqtw…
Returning with a new dispatch, hoping to get back into doing this weekly. Took some time off after getting overwhelmed with the schedule I set out to meet and then the killing of George Floyd sparking major protests across the U.S., which I tried to lend some support to. I also got a new computer that should make video rendering MUCH faster and hopefully I can get back on a weekly schedule of releasing a podcast, this time talking more about my own writing projects more and less about pop culture or whatever. In this episode I discuss a bit the outline of the novel series I’m working on ‘The Kybernetes Cycle: “Quo Vadis, Sailor?””. I talk some about the first novel in the cycle which I am currently at work on, which is titled ‘THE SKEIN’ and involves my main character’s Adolai Shungyosai’s invention of his proprietary brain-computer-interface technology. My writing aims to explore the cataclysms of TECHNOLOGY and SPIRITUALITY. Just last week I got some important insight into Shungyosai’s character while reading a biography of Martin Luther (Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death – by Richard Marius) and I talk about that, and then read the passage I wrote which will likely end up being the last scene, a kind of epilogue, at the end of the first novel, before he heads out to California to found his big tech company and his Virtual Reality Cult.
Discussing character development, thoughts behind writing my main character in my novel-in-progress ‘the Skein’. My main character Shungyosai is a computer programmer developing the world’s first fully immersive virtual reality (Matrix Style).
Latest episode before I took a break for almost a year. Contains updates on my cyberpunk novel in progress, ‘The Skein’. I aim to get back to releasing videos soon. Sometime in May of 2021. And will do them once a month to make it more feasible to keep up with output.
LITERARY TOPIC EPISODES
DISCUSSED: JORGE LUIS BORGES / MILAN KUNDERA / JAMES JOYCE / BAUDRILLARD / PLATO
The Haunted Typewriter 