kodwo-eshun-more-brilliant-than-the-sun-adventures-in-sonic-fiction

03[054]03[055]The Logic of catastropheIn Wars of Armageddon, the world is annihilated before your very earsin a logic that J. G. Ballard elaborates: 'The catastrophe represents aconstructive and positive act of the imagination, an attempt to confronta patently meaningless universe by challenging it at its own game, anattempt to dismantle the formal structure of time and space which theuniverse wraps around us.'To be funkadelicized is not to retreat back into the mind but toexternalize the mind's fears, expand them until the listener swimsthrough a universe brimming over with cosmic slop, vaginal discharge.The formal structure of time collapses into swill. Space loses itsdignity, falls kneedeep into the shit of the world. Funkadelia intensifiesthe osmosis of funk, amplifies its imperceptible aroma. Osmium,Parliament's Funkadelic's '70 debut, is named for the heaViest, mostpungent metal on Earth. Rock plus aroma converge in what the RZA termsheavy mental music. Because humans have no noselids, they'redefenceless from rhinal attack. Formless and pointless, funkadeliatherefore invades through the nostrils and seeps through the nerves,setting inhalation at war with the body. You breathe in the putrefactionof the universe. 'We can't clean up shit or get shit right until werecognize we got maggots in our brain, that any situation we make will berotten because the attitude we're using is already poisoned.' Funkadelicshares the fall and makes a friend of fear: 'We took the blame for shit. Slywould see it slightly. Yes , Mr Stewart had the fear and could accept theugliness, and his shit was so profound that you always thought he wastalking about you.'Thought is bio-Iogical or does not existRene Menilchaosmic KemistryFunkadelia opens a biologic of thought, a physiology of perception.Mind, soul, universe: the old, old worlds of Trad sensory deprivation aresuddenly materialized, gratuitously oralized. Concepts are fondled andlicked, sucked and played with. In '70'S What Is Soul, the FunkadelicAlien arrives on Earth: 'Behold, I Am Funkadelic, I Am Not of yourWorld/ But fear me not, I will do you no harm/ Loan me your funky mind,So I can play with it.' Like Galactus the planet-swallowing god of theMarvel universe, the Funkulator lives by cosmophagy, the philosophicalrite that Susan Sontag explains as 'the eating of the world.' The noseknows that the mind is food for the maggots. Mommy What 's AFunkadelic? opens with Clinton drawling demonically ' If you will suck mysoul I will lick your funky emotion,' while Maggot Brain circles aroundthe cosmic bummer: 'I have tasted the Maggots in the Mind of theUniverse.' Here a universe is small enough to roll on the tongue:metaphysics desublimates, swaps shapes with a mouth as wide as thecosmos which spits out the soul in an endless well of phlegm.United Mutations of RmericaFunkadelic enlists you on the side of your darkest fears by tapping intothe toxic drives of technology. Maggot Brain 'could scare you to death.'The inside sleeve artwork of '72 'S America Eats Its Young shows theStatue of Liberty with bloodstained fangs snacking on babies. In Eulogyand Light, time slips backwards into what Clinton will later term abackwashpsychosis, a terroride into the Altered States and UnitedMutations of America.CyborganographicsPedro Bell's gatefold sleeve art for the '73-'76 albums Cosmic Slop,Standing on the Verge of Getting It On, Let's Take It to the Stage, Talesof Kidd Funkadelic and Hardcore jollies visualizes funkadelia as anorganographic Sonic Fiction. Funkadelia becomes an appallingcyborganographics. At the other extreme from Kraftwerk's seamlessmenschmachine, the funk cyborg spills its guts in a diabolical chaos ofpustulating 'nastyness'. From '73 'S Cosmic Slop onwards, each Funkadelicscartoon - a cartoon that leaves scars, in Bell 's definition - revealsepisodes from a prolonged EcoRape of Mother Earth, with her maggothair, slitted eyes, pointed incisors. Felt-tipped intestines emerge fromthe giant Mother figure, entrails escaping from the bodily incorporationthat the digital materialist Nick Land terms the human security system.Digestive tracts, creeping umbelli forms, organs without bodies moreslimeware than wetware slither through space, squishing over magazinecollages. Alimentary canals merge with maggots to becomeunidentifiable dripping matter oozing globules of goo. Aliens rivetedtogether from steel plates with jigsaw-puzzle shaped outlines whereorgans should be slide altimeters from cold to hot. Funkadelia is totaldis-organization, the disconcerting slurpy slew of cyborgans gone awol