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#Post#: 246--------------------------------------------------
MARK OF THE MOLE (Project of the Week for 23rd of January)
By: moleshow Date: January 23, 2017, 9:04 am
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you know the deal.
also, i guess i should probably explain that as of today, any
Project of the Week threads will be closed after that week has
passed. feel free to open up new threads to discuss a project
that is currently no longer "featured" at any time, though.
#Post#: 247--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (23rd of January): MARK OF THE MOLE
By: moleshow Date: January 27, 2017, 12:21 am
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so what do i have to say about Mark of the Mole? countless
things. why was it chosen? because it is relevant.
the primary aspect of this album that works really well for me
is that while it does not observe and comment on one specific
event, it observes and describes events and feelings that repeat
countless times. the Moles and the Chubs have a dynamic that is
not difficult to relate to, whether you feel like you work down
below or take advantage of opportunity above or both.
the mentality of the Chubs and how they view the Moles is what
strikes me as most relevant. the Moles suffer due to a disaster,
and the Chubs see this terrible misfortune as an opportunity.
why not exploit an entire race of people? 100,000 refugees. but
their mentality is that the Moles will never wise up to their
exploitation. the Chubs see the Moles as being too religious,
too devoted, too unaware of luxury to know that they are being
treated unfairly. inevitably, the Chubs grow terribly, terribly
anxious. paranoid. they fear that in such large numbers, a
Mohelmot revolt is inevitable. they spread Ugly Rumors about the
Moles, because they long for a justification for their fear,
even when they are to blame. of course, when the Scientist, an
outlier Chub who resembles neither a Mole nor a Chub solves this
with the best of intentions, she simply brings the problems to a
head.
the Chubs cease to have a use for the Moles. so now they've got
all these angry Moles who just want to be left alone and for the
Chubs to stop being terrible, and the Chubs are absolutely full
of fear and hatred for these people. they tell the Moles that
they want nothing from them other than for them to die out. why?
because the Chubs can no longer use them. they saw and see the
Moles as objects to do work. but the Moles are an emotional,
spiritual people. and they are now filled with hatred, a
powerful, POWERFUL emotion. they offer no pity, no tenderness to
their oppressors. they warn of the utility in motivating action
that their hatred contains. their hatred has life. Moles are not
a people that hate easily, but hate when they must. the Chubs
are unable to shed themselves of the mentality that The Other is
different and therefore dangerous if they are not being
exploited. the Moles hold no such belief. they are open to life
as it passes through them, and they generally stay hopeful about
their circumstances. they do not assume, but they learn.
their unity and dedication is what makes them a danger to the
Chubs.
and so a war arises. of course, nothing is achieved. the Chubs
were consistently unwilling to think of the consequences of
using an entire race, simply because they could use the cheap
labor. so they must be at war, and the conflict, as far as we
know, achieves nothing but places seeds of hatred and fear that
grow only more difficult to remove.
while this technically extends to The Big Bubble, it is shown
that the oppressors only continue to try and silence the Moles,
down to outlawing their language. but that only makes the
language a tool of revolt. silly Chubs!
i'm really into how Moles describe hatred, though.
[quote]Hatred has hunger and hatred has eyes,
Hatred has purpose and hatred has size,
Hatred has honor but hatred hates lies![/quote]
[quote]Hatred has dignity, hatred is clear,
Hatred has courage and hatred is dear,
Hatred has virtue and hatred is here![/quote]
it is living, and it knows of the injustices that our
hole-workers faced. i love the Moles so much.
#Post#: 248--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (23rd of January): MARK OF THE MOLE
By: CheerfulHypocrite Date: January 28, 2017, 8:12 pm
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Beneath Edge Hill, near Overbury Street, in Liverpool there is
an extensive network of tunnels constructed by Joseph
Williamson. ‘The Mole of Edge Hill’. Little is known of
Williamson’s early life. Perhaps born in Warrington in 1769;
moving to Liverpool about 1780 to seek his fortunewith the
tobacco firm of Richard Tate. Rising to become a successful
businessman and married Elizabeth Tate in 1802. Around 1805 he
built a number of properties in Mason Street.
The gardens and orchards behind them were supported by brick
arches on the sandstone outcrop above Smithdown Lane. He then
began extending these arches underground almost continuously
until his death in 1840. The favoured explanation is
philanthropy. Struck by unemployment, poverty and the returning
Napoleonic Wars soldiers, he improved their situation by
providing with paid employment. A competing explanation is that
Williamson, a deeply religious man, was involved in an extremist
religious sect. Sectarian cults were common in Liverpool at the
time. According to this, the labyrinth was delved as a place in
which he and his fellow believers could escape Armageddon.
It may be quite simply that following the death of his wife,
obsessive devotion to tunnelling provided solace.
The Mole of Edge Hill had something in common with the Mohelmot:
deep dark, friendly holes.
[center]
HTML https://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/102057918.jpg[/center]
The Mole of Edge Hill, like the Mohelmot, created something
incredibly beautiful, incredibly complex and incredibly
mysterious.
[center]
HTML http://www.the-line-up.com/app/uploads/2015/12/WilliamsonTunnels_featured.jpg[/center]
Something that you can only look into from the outside with a
sense of wonder. Not because tunnels are incomprehensible, but
because these particular tunnels are enigmatic.
[center][img]
HTML https://dobraszczyk.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/img_7612.jpg?w=700&h=466[/img][/center]
The Mark of the Mole opens by blundering into a radio broadcast.
A weather warning about a storm brewing. A storm within the land
or the tunnels of the Mohelmot. It really is not clear. The
Mohelmot are cryptic, cloaked subterranean figures. The radio
broadcast we blunder into give snippets of song
[center][quote]
People should be left alone
Unless they have a happy home.
[/quote][/center]
Which end quickly, as though Mohelmot Culture is not given to
effulgence of joy. Instead they prefer the practical. The dour
and the reliably regular.
[quote]
...to partly cloudy. The central part of the country, especially
the Pit area, currently has clear skies but that condition could
soon change due to an unusual influx of unseasonably cool winds
sweeping down into the infamous Pit heat. Meanwhile here on the
west coast the weather has continued much as it has for the last
week.
[/quote]
Yet, endlessly, the presence of emotion and feelings between
Mohelmot, surface from the tunnels within the body of each
Mohelmot. In surfacing, they become a kind of song.
[center]
[quote]
When it was back when
We would not pretend
We were only friends.
[/quote][/center]
But always the Mohelmot return to the practicalities of the Pit.
[quote]
We interrupt our regular program for this special
announcement...
Our telometer is reporting that a large storm has developed in
the vicinity of the Pit area.
Any travellers who might be headed towards that distant region
are encouraged to delay further plans until this storm has
passed.
[/quote]
Quite clearly, the narration follows the style of the 1956 film
The Mole People which outlines a subterranean culture of
Sumerian albinos that keep mutant humanoid mole men as their
slaves to harvest mushrooms. Perhaps it was foreshadowing of
later works. Perhaps, merely fortuitous. The Residents' Mohelmot
go further than the Mole of Mason Street or the Mole People of
Virgil W. Vogel. These are an entire culture whose sole passions
are seriousness, darkness and working. These are a people who
would be deemed abject by any culture that values leisure in any
form. The Mohelmot are unperturbed by their lack of joy: they
have the rapture of working which amounts to the touch of the
divine.
[quote]
God of the nightfall,
God of the shade,
God of the deep it's you whose made
All of the evening,
all of the night,
All of the motion without light.
God of the darkness,
God of the soul,
God of the deep dark friendly hole;
God of the unseen, cloudy and dim;
God of the hiding hear this hymn:
Won't you keep us working - working, working, working;
Won't you keep us working - working down below.
[/quote]
Their work is devotion and there by the grace of their deity of
darkness. To work is to be in a state of ecstatic grace. Which
is not, in a religious sense, a trivial state of being. It is
the expression of the immanent deity. Mohelmot society is
bounded by stone. Disaster comes in the form of a Flood. Which
hints at the other elements - Fire and Air. The Voices in the
Air and the Fire of Cry for the Fire of the much later Kula
Bocca.
In Mark of the Mole both the Mohelmot and the Chubs are
anonymous. This is a tale with the sweep of history. It is not
personal or intimate but imbued with an infusion of personal
emotions. The Mohelmot are not simply getting up and leaving the
Land of the Pit. They are expelled by Water. Then seared by the
heat of the desert - although an Observer, notes they travel by
night. They are exiled and refugee, not simply migrants. When
they travel to the sea bounded lands of the Chubs they are
seeking sanctuary - asylum. The Chubs taking them in because of
their devotional labours is nothing short of deception and
horrifying exploitation.
There are parallels to the Biblical Exodus of the Jews from
Egypt; or, to Mexican Migrant workers; or, to the Dustbowl of
the 1930s; or to the refugee and migrant crises since 2000; or,
even, the colonisation of California after the Westward treks of
the Great Expansion. Everything about the Mohelmot is about the
systematic loss of culture. The darkness of Mohelmot theology is
nowhere as powerful as the metaphoric darkness engendered by the
Chubs. The Chubs simply consume everything: material goods,
people, culture even the light. The darkness of the Chubs is the
same darkness that consumes civilisations.
The Chubs, after their happiness in welcoming the Working
Mohelmot, become fearful of the sheer numbers and the
possibilities that not all of them will work and then...
...The Scientist Builds A Machine...
[center][quote]A machine.
A great machine.
I see it now.
Creatures!
Seek your dignity!
Scrap metal and I shall fight, and you shall be the winner!
[/quote][/center]
The Scientist makes a strange and alien sort of sense. Where the
Mohelmot had laboured devotionally and that was synonymous with
the presence of the God Of Darkness, the labour of the Mohelmot
for the Chubs was profane. The Scientist was, in a very
practical way, releasing them from the profane work that
elevated the Chubs to a life of luxury and ease. The Scientist
is neither Chub nor Mohelmot but some kind of Outsider. Like the
Observer, the Tired Old Man in the desert as the Mohelmot
escaped catastrophe. Not seeking the cheap labour of the Chubs
or the devotional labours of the Mohelmot, the Scientist creates
a machine driven by the notions of democracy and freedom. This
is a machine that, like the Railways that cut through Edge Hill
and the Mole's Tunnels, changed the world for everybody.
The Chubs have a machine that does not need welfare or, indeed,
any kind of humane interactions. The weird and terrifying
Mohelmot can go away now. The Chubs, never having had their
endless desires frustrated, find that the Mohelmot are not
simply going to pander to the desire...
[center][quote]All we really want is for you to puke and
die![/quote][/center]
Instead the Mohelmot express the darkest desire possible in Chub
Society: hatred. Not simply a hatred that lashes out but a
living, seething, growing, changing hatred. A hatred that is
made clearer in Don't Tread On Me - a title that alludes to the
Gadsden Flag. It is not a hatred that can be extinguished by any
simplistic war. Which, when the inevitable War comes, is the
inevitable outcome.
In the same way that the Railways transformed the world of The
Mole of Edge Hill and his contemporaries, the Scientist's
Machine transformed the world for the Chub and Mohelmot. The
community of Chub was founded in the 1880s when the Texas and
Pacific Railway was extended to Midlands County in Texas. Like
most communities in America at that time it was a company town.
The Railroad transformed the place. Yet, it remained a bleak
location with little to recommend it. The labour that built it
simply moved on - westwards. Leaving behind only the machine.
Which is akin to the EM-U equipment that made the Mark of the
Mole possible; and, the personal computer that, increasingly,
made the Residents capable of being ever more anonymous. Mark of
The Mole was a unique intersection of a lot of history. Not
simply a simplistic tale of Worker and Employer conflict but a
horrifying vision of what would happen after the 1980s.
The Mark Of The Mole is not simply a story about a single group
or community migrating; it is a narrative that takes the
Listener into a flashing spark of history. A darkness which the
Mohelmot crave for its comforting contact with the God Of
Darkness whose multiple names both provide a rhythm to working
but also an intimacy that the Chubs never achieve with their
deity - whatever it be. The Machine and the Scientist are not
simply plot devices for a War. If they were, the resolution
could follow on along the broad plot of War with the Newts by
Karel Čapek: a war for supremacy. What follows is a War
that resolves nothing.
When The Mark Of The Mole fades into history and The Big Bubble
Mohelmot becomes forbidden then Zinkenite becomes the brand name
of the Hole Working Culture. The Mark Of The Mole is a last
sketch of a vanishing culture. As with Eskimo the Residents are
showing the consequence of the consumption of culture itself. At
the time, in the 1980s, the synthesised, industrial sound was
slightly alien. Now it is a commonplace.
Zinkenite is a steel-gray metallic sulfosalt mineral composed of
lead antimony sulphide
Pb[sub]9[/sub]Sb[sub]22[/sub]S[sub]42[/sub]. Zinkenite occurs in
the ground. It is a shiny stone. A spiky stone. A stone that
would not suffer the idiocies of the Chub.
[center]
HTML https://e-rocks.com/sites/erocks/files/item-images/1537/2015-04-15/Zinkenite-LGM122228-02.jpg[/center]
The Chub, on the other hand, is ripe for consumption.
[center]
HTML http://thegentlemanangler.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/chub-1.jpg[/center]
#Post#: 379--------------------------------------------------
Re: PROJECT OF THE WEEK (23rd of January): MARK OF THE MOLE
By: moleshow Date: April 20, 2017, 12:24 pm
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NEW TALK v
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