by Neil Vodavzny

So, speaking to this sage oriental herbalist (rosemary and thyme too), I-ching happens when you’re doing something else. There’s nothing you can ever do. The spirit road is natural energy, the sun coursing round the sky. It’s a well-known fact that Nietzsche said God is dead, but is it just a case of mistaken identity?

Science which exists in the spatial universe can’t observe something which is happening somewhere else. I’ching is energy but it’s also time (change); time can’t be observed if it’s simply change. All science can do is measure the change, it can’t observe time.

If time is not observable, intangible, it’s then a type of spirit. The old way of thinking about a moral order is found in the aforementioned Paradise Lost. The entire moral foundation of the epic is in the image of Eve plucking an apple from the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden with old Adam. Milton then rationalises the arrival of Christ on Earth to atone for sin, and the entire cosmos of heaven, hell, space and chaos is an imaginative construction. The spatial universe is a consequence of the temporal, moral image and action of Adam and Eve.

When Nietzsche said God is dead, he may have meant something along those lines; the old order of belief is dead, welcome to the new order of the conquest of space. In any case, it doesn’t alter the fact that I-ching is very much alive, and must have influenced Nietzsche’s concept beyond good and evil. The joy of dancing and relating in a purely physical way to the universe occurs in Also Sprach Zarathustra, so the primordial strength of a spirit road is very clear in Nietzsche.

There is a dark force to this gay abandon which can appear extremely Dionysic, bloody abandonment to lusts and desires. Nietzsche was the great classicist, so in fact it seems possible to reconcile this with a classical religio-culture.

The modern world may be obsessed with energy, but without spiritual energy all you’re left with is a material order with no raison-d’etre beyond futile existence and capital. India, for example, may be a relatively poorer rival to China, but its spiritual and self-reliant zest and colour are undiminished.  A new European order is only as good as its spiritual energy, so this has to include a fair degree of anarchy, more or less equivalent to an absence of government, since this is a type of natural order. Science may not be aware of the existence of this order; although in fact it is aware of the ecological order which is in dire peril.

One way to approach a new European order is through image: image is what we see, which means to say folk, race, appearance..and not what we’re told – ideology or text or cyber-code. Science is obviously what we’re told and, as previously noted, DNA-code doesn’t have the spontaneous, temporal aspect of fractals and just “what we are”.

Science is what we’re told, but since I-ching and time are not observable, the spiritual energy they contain is probably lost. The spirit road that Europe has to find. Spiritual energy is the one indispensable thing to any endeavour, so the road has to be anti-science, anti-capital and pro-folk, pro self-reliance. Obviously, there will be science and money floating around, but the tyranny of capital and science has to end in order for a spiritual sense of folk self-reliance to exist.

These are pre-ambles, so the real question is what form does such an order take, politically, religiously..? This is such a tricky question to struggle with, I took time out to watch a DVD of The Graduate and, oddly enough, came to think such an iconic American film of the flower-power era has something to say to Europe.

We have Nichols directing (a Russian Jew) with a Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack what you might assume is a very American film? It was actually much better than I remembered, particularly the Chaplinesque sight-gags – too numerous to mention all – and priapic. There’s the ludicrous choreography of the hotel sign-in scene, which Hoffman recollects Nichols instructing him to act “as if buying a prophylactic from a woman”; Mrs Robinson’s balletic “You are trying to seduce me” scene; the one where Elaine goes off with a Wasp and Ben is left with “do not tease” at the monkey-house ... etc.

There’s an underlying histrionic tension running through. Elaine storms to Ben’s room at Berkeley, and when he attempts to set her right on the rape allegation, screams like a caged animal, yet a minute later is seen sipping water demurely. Further on, her virginal status is eroded by the Wasp’s advances, and Ben bays across a classroom “It wasn’t in his car, was it?” The Graduate is rightly praised for its great style and evocation of 60s generational schism, but viewed from afar I sense undercurrents. Hoffman’s performance is affecting in an odd way; for starters, the original intent was to have a “prototypical blond Californian” (quote by screenplay co-adapter Buck Henry from the book).

There is something slightly mad bubbling under the surface: Ben’s crazed driving on the night out; Elaine’s bewildered “I don’t know what’s happening” when she accepts she “might” marry him; the penultimate scene with Ben silhouetted above the Church of Plastics’ nave, baying “Elaine” like a haunted ghoul.

Hoffman behaves like a sort of forlorn faun, and the otherworldly quality is accentuated in the ludicrous scuba-diving scene – flippers or hooves? Ben is completely persuaded that he wants Elaine and as she says, “drag her off”, away from convention to some wild domain. The soundtrack is actually as much English folk as American (Scarborough Fair) … going to Berkeley.

The last scene has them escaping on a bus triumphantly but with the same enigmatic expressions. How can you escape the domain of capital and conformity? It is similar to the ending of Ghost World, so, I was wondering what the film is really about, viewed from afar? To be honest, it would be pretty blank were it not for the morbid hysteria that urges the story along. Sometimes it’s in the soundtrack: as Ben’s car chugs to a standstill three blocks short of the Church, the Mrs Robinson theme grinds to a stop, and there is complete silence (apart from the hum of traffic) until he runs up to the Church, and five dolorous guitar chords sound like something form Debussy’s L’apres Midi d’un Faun or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (2 minutes in). Along with Ghost World, the film asks questions but delivers no answers; they are in our subconscious … instincts, sex, violence, myths.

I’m reading this into it because the film (like Webb’s book) has an empty circularity. At the end they have escaped this repetition, but are still heading nowhere in particular. Perhaps the hysteria is all there is left? Reading the film as myth, Ben is a satyr, his Spyder a red arrow of lust cutting through the anonymous neon-scape; Elaine a sacrificial virginal maiden of cascading brunette tresses, the scene in the nightclub with the stripper draped atop her is a Bacchanalian rite, symbolic of blood, sex and violence.

The myth is what drives the film, like Godard’s Le Mepris. That may not be what was intended, but that is the point of enigma: our subconscious can make something of these symbols and signs. This reading goes counter to the usual Christian one of “Hello Mrs Robinson”. It could be noted, though, at the climax Elaine is extracted from the Christian Church and in the process the cross desecrated.

What I’m saying is we are persuaded we are seeing a certain type of film ... Jewish, Christian or whatever.  Where you have this priapic spirit of anarchic energy, European classicism is just as valid an interpretation. So, where does that get us? Anarchy is a creative energy, a seed for growing culture. It contains sex and violence, extremes of feeling. We may also note film is a collaborative medium: I’ve an aversion to emotionally manipulative, often Jewish directors (Spielberg), whereas The Graduate has hilarity, tempo, unbearable tension, empathy in spades.

Many good things come from collaboration, almost a type of tension of opposites. In European culture there is Strauss/Hoffmanstahl (Elektra etc). The very foundations of Europe are Mycenaean/Minoan, we cannot escape them. Europe is a racially diverse continent, and this has to be a type of strength. Race is spirit, but common to races are non-cultural signs which give Europe its classical dimension.