Esoteric Noclip
Upon This Rock
Every map in Garry’s Mod is constructed via subdividing a fully enclosed 3D space into polygonal sectors organized by a binary choice tree. The limitations and nature of this require that the map be both static and enclosed - each map essentially being a large-scale diorama floating in an endless nothing, with the player’s ability to effect its fundamental components completely removed. Anything which can move is put into a category beyond the map, even if it’s built into the viewed geometry, a category of being known as an entity - an object with closer species-relation to the player than to the environment. Source Engine offers a sort of limited space in this way, a feeling of No Exit when inhabiting it, one inhabiting its levels feels as though trapped in an empty city with nothing but a handful of second empire furniture and whoever else wound up imprisoned with them. Each map is a limbo, floating, with the players exiting and entering by methods beyond the confines of the map itself. Players enter from without for as long as they choose to imprison themselves within a given map, and as they came in, exit into the without. Each map is a piece of stone that can only be understood by taking a position beyond, appraising it as a stone, as an object, mute and inferior.
This is not new to Source - the version of the BSP tree that’s used in Source dates back to Quake and the theoretical concept goes back even farther, with its DNA appearing in Doom - Source merely provides the most instructive use-case for this method of constructing environments. Servers become communities in ways few other things do, with all interactions beginning with the same, mutual choice, to entrap into this rock oneself with the other client. DNSL like few others takes this to its fullest conclusion - the Gmod WonderWorld provides an instructive look at the principles which govern his gameshow. Players are strung along series of baroque games that pit themselves against each other, ensnared in impossible tasks. The map itself turns from a private club to a labyrinthine prison, a Constantine’s Manor of social games that perpetuate themselves within the microcosmic world of the server. Each client becomes a player in this special kind of belonging, a belonging mutually to a twisted sort of diorama they partake in. It’s telling of course, that the Stanley Parable started as a sourcemod - the engine so suited for this sort of enclosed funhouse, where the ink spilled by the narrator form the continuous torments of the protagonist as they search in vain for something beyond.
This is explored additionally in Nabakov’s Invitation to a Beheading. The protagonist finds himself in an absurd sort of prison, constructed out of the fabric of the world determined to affix him, to antagonize and entangle him. His lifetime of imperceptibility is put on trial as his family, work, and citizenship all work in concert to attempt to finally pin him down into staticity. The environment is like a BSP tree continually recompiling around the protagonist - vines forming prisons and gaolers to twist like creeping vines about his body - Constantine’s Manor in reverse. It’s only via a subversion, where the language which is continually forming this environment is identified that the protagonist is able to move out, noclip through a seam and walk into freedom. Murakami’s novels are obsessed with this process, almost all of them following this general format. The world begins and then reveals its true intentions, beginning to enclose around the protagonist - the BSP tree begins to work and create a prison of the protagonist's life and language, requiring a journey through the so-called backrooms to achieve freedom, some metaphysical puzzle that must be solved across dream-locations and characters native to this liminal realm, which allow the protagonist to transcend the prison as it attempts to ensnare them forever.
What’s interesting in all of this is the formation of the environment as a textual entity. The BSP tree lays bare the environmental construction in a way few other things do, with the world laid out in a very blunt algorithm of generation. The quest of the protagonist in these BSP novels is to work against this - the binary tree is constructing an enclosed space, its shape and order formed by the ink which the protagonist had spilled across the world and given as fuel to this wicked demiurge. The demiurge isn’t defeated exactly, but transcended - a journey into the backrooms in order to escape the enclosing prison. Binary trees create concrete boxes, as the protagonist forces a line of flight to noclip into safety. A more modern engine’s version of this can be seen in Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy, where the level is constructed as a prison, but out of the “meshes floating in void” environments now most common. The world is made out of scrap, static and duplicable assets piled up in a great mountain which the protagonist must force themselves up and through - with great difficulty - in order to transcend into the beyond. This goal, beyond the BSP tree and beyond the mountain - the void, is the ultimate transcendence, the ultimate freedom. The world encloses itself around the self, as the self works against it and into the backrooms, seeking the true freedom beyond samsara.
The Secret Teachings
It’s been remarked countless times how influenced by the vertical relationship movements such as Qanon or Russiagate are. Produced from above, a paranoid world is brought upon the viewer like a net, ensnaring them, with each spasm within only driving one into deeper bondage against it. This linguistic net becomes the prison of the viewer, their mind slowly overtaken by a grey goo of memes related to the ensnaring ideology put upon them. They’re driven to action in support of furthering this, eventually overtaken such that their whole being is caught up in the furtherance of their imprisonment. Glued to whichever channel gives them the information needed, they become dependent on higher powers, taking in and then spreading it out horizontally - producing as priests, as they worship as supplicants. The final result is a species of human overtaken by contagious mental parasites, their eyes occluded and interior-languages dominated by third parties.
There’s a fantasy-realm that’s being glanced at here - that which drives Qanon supporters to speak of “spiritual warfare”. The world is experienced as a faithful helpless in a realm of gods. Trump is not only as a god to the worshippers, but is above them, in a realm so removed as to be inhuman - as though there were some realm of the spirit where Trump and Pelosi battled things out, which the believers can only influence indirectly through engaging with the fantasy - that dark scrying mirror of their meme-magic. For the Qanon supporter, politics is a shared dream realm. A noumenal realm above the grounded world, where all things take place, and the truth of the world can be accessed. The theatre of reality, through which all that really matters can be understood.
The construction of these dreams is not new. Dale Gribble often remarks on these fantastical conspiracies, taking influence from earlier texts contemporary to King of the Hill’s airing, topics once of concern such as aliens or black helicopters. It’s through Dale however, that a new dimension of these visions takes hold. The believer in Qanon is trapped, viewing the dream-realm of Trump and Pelosi as a captive scrying a great and terrible higher realm. This dream-realm is experienced the same as the dreams of a common person - uncontrolled outbursts, which overpower and dominate like the clap of “I AM” in the thunder. Their fantasy realm is opened to them and they’re held prisoner to the doorway, perpetually stuck in a bad acid trip - gazing into the dream realm of deep politics and unable to control even their perception, merely caught in the feverish logic that has been thrust upon them. This is the basis of political thinking, which underlies all the hysterias and neuroses of believers in the news - a perpetual bad trip, experienced by one not knowing even how to breath or walk within the dreamrealm, stuck instead in a confusing, abusive relationship with forces above and beyond them. In contrast to this, Dale seizes power - conspiracies to him are an ever-shifting lore, the fabric of which he works with as is needed. Dale uncovered what’s found at the bottom of the iceberg meme - where the grassy knoll turns to more esoteric topics which require a state of mind that goes far beyond the literal and grounded to comprehend. In other words, Dale’s relationship to the shared dreams of politics goes from captive to lucid, through the same doorway as those entranced by wicked superiors, but moving, head high and embodied, rather than trapped in infantile agony.
Yahoos & Triangles
House like those in Rainey Street are alchemically desolate. The living space transitions in a neighborhood like Rainey Street from an economic extension of the family unit as a net-positive to the extension of the family unit as a net-negative. The vegetable gardens and livestock of the family are replaced with the consumptive organ that is the suburban home, its composition entirely based in alienated products of industry. The homeowner’s task becomes not the production of their house and through that house, their crafts and calories, but the management of a lifestyle constructed out of alienated production which descends upon them from above. It’s important that Hank is so based in propane - a product of both natural gas and petroleum refining, and that his life revolves are the intensified maintenance of this lifestyle. His impossible house shifts to his desires as he functions like a god of the modern american imagination, channeling the fantasy of petroleum suburbia as its genius. Hank Hill is the priest of the necropolis that is the petroleum landscape - as can be seen in the first and last frames of King of the Hill, where the camera pans between Hank and all of Arlen. Dale’s counterweight to Hank is in this fact - while Hank is the god of the petronecropolis, Dale is the Luciferian figure, acting as constant adversary and line of flight from Hank. It’s through Dale’s paranoia and quests for esoteric power, that Hank’s reign is constantly challenged - a continual struggle, around which the realm of Arlen flows.
The Gribble Fantasy is the basis for realms such as the Backrooms - those places of magical potential found only by going through the petronecropolis to find the light, like Dante tunneling to the bottom of Hell to find the beginning of Purgatory. To enter into the Backrooms is to enter into the possibilities presented by such technologies as narcotics or video games or conspiracy theories - a realm of magical potential through the way of Gribble, Luciferian adversary to bring fire and illumination to the dead realm of leaden propane by recombining it as a path of escape. Dale’s geography speaks to this - tunnels under the alley, the ‘Underwater White House’, liberty caps in the forest, the desert for aliens, etc.
The Gribble Fantasy wages war against the Petronecropolis by the complimentary reconstruction of the world through constant action. It’s here where the heart of magic - to use the tools of the human soul, ie, language, to restructure the world, comes into play. Through Hank, the world is constructed via the language of infinite synthesis created by hydrocarbons. Propane as a perfect product of this system, the rest of the petronecropolis follows suit. As is discussed in Gravity’s Rainbow, the true horror of petroleum is organic chemistry, where an infinity of polymers can be created by recombinations of a few basic organic molecules, whose recombinability is granted by industrial refining techniques. Propane emerges just as gasoline or naphtha does, from the fractional distillation of ancient corpses, and through it, the world is made. Hank’s language, the language of propane, is this language of corpses (black, alchemical lead) being endlessly recombined from dead matter into dead matter transformed. We find this logic reach its apex in the language of Bitcoin, where dead matter creates something totally self-referential. Bitcoin is a language which only exists for-itself. There is both no referred-to object (as in the language of spoken words), as there is no referencing-object (as in the language of regular currency). Bitcoin instead becomes a language where 1=1, it simply is for itself - a living ouroboros which generates in reference to itself solely. The language of hydrocarbons have achieved apotheosis here - it becomes a language that is that it is. This is the godhood of petroleum Hank is working to achieve and acquires a minor sort of godhood in order to do so. By constructing the petronecropolis, Hank hopes to create a world such as that of Bitcoin - a landscape of hydrocarbon 1=1, where all simply is within the language of hydrocarbons.
Dale’s paranoia is the line of flight from this, as it constantly refers the petronecropolis to things beyond itself. It constructs a language of backrooms, an infinite fantasy realm which works as third, fourth, infinite parties referencing, connecting and building realms superior to the enclosed world of the petronecropolis. This linguistic work is the Gribble Fantasy, where magic dominates by referencing that which is constantly aspiring to totality. Hank’s Arlen is constantly undermined in this way - through the backrooms constructed by Dale’s fantasy, the totality of petroleum Hank works towards is thwarted eternally.
To write eternally from the language given, as Dale does through his paranoiac channeling and recreation of the stable kingdom of Hank, is the primary text given in Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE. The protagonist sets off on an endless quest of her own creation, moving through the world by recreating the world. She take sinto her hands the language of the world given to her - her memories, her employment, her status, her history - and rewrites it through magic, which Lynch demonstrates through her usage of the meta-language of film. Each character is a fantasy of the protagonist, each scene a new dream in which to write upon the fabric of the world. The protagonist holds the camera and through them, she creates the world towards her own end. This as a quest towards higher power is the essence of the mystery quest.
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It’s through the quest that the world is written. Hank and Dale are engaged against each other by a perpetual rewriting against each other - as Hank writes, Dale seizes and rewrites. Hank and Dale are locked like this, the dual imagination of the world, the architect of the world against its perpetual rewriting - the solid and the flowing.
This dynamic is not however, to say that all worlds begin and end with such a tension, but that all worlds begin and end with ink - the work of the magician being to write the world. Lord of the Rings is often credited with creating the fantasy genre, as it’s one of the first that fully explores the artmaking potential of constructing a world by the tracing of the pen. The ring is the world itself, a long line drawn through a dark void, illuminating with its golden glow all the things about it. What glows is a tree, the primordial structure of ink which founds the entire work. Each race is divided by their tongue, their lore, their position the aborescent generations of lineage and reproduction which inscribes their being. Words for Tolkein act as a sort of noumenal soul, embedded in the world, from which all else is mere incident. We can see this twice, in the comparison between the wizards, whose magic is a magic of language, mastery of knowing the depths of all trees of names and histories, and Tom Bombadil, the eternal sage who sees the world grow forth from the word. Bombadil interrupts Frodo early on in order to give this metaphysical account, of the primordial naming of things and of the lore flowing down through great crystals of naming. Tolkein’s world, built as it is on language, specifically a system of noumenal naming at the core of all things, is demonstrated here more than it is elsewhere - it’s for this reason that Bombadil is both unaffected and uncaring towards the one ring. Bombadil alone recognizes what the ring is, a pen, a camera, a glass window through which the names are revealed to the reader. Its power of invisibility doesn’t work on him for this reason - while any protagonist can become imperceptible, ie, become invisible as the story takes place through them (thus excluding them, in the same way that one can never truly appraise oneself), the author never can, as without Bombadil’s role as author-function behind the world, nothing would be at all.
That the foundation of the world should be linguistic is an idea known unconsciously in modern social science - the concept of “information” as a general purpose unit of existence - all things reduced to ink. This is the law of fiction, which is able to reduce all things to a universal ink by virtue of The Text. The text is a wholly encapsulated world, where all things are unified in a single medium - the strokes of ink across paper, the television show’s video files, etc. This universal medium of ink however, is nothing within the text itself, as the universal ink can only be known from without, as to be within the ink is to be apart of it - and therefore not capable of a remove. This is the only distinction we can draw between ink (the fundamental unit of information) in a fictional world and ink in our own world - a fictional world grants us perfect remove by being constructed as a text beyond us, while in the world, we are within the text in which we are attempting to both read and write. We face the problem Soros identifies in his writings on Reflexivity - where market participants are never capable of achieving an objective remove, as their reaction and action within the market is part of the movement that makes up the very chaos they’re attempting to predict.
It’s from this problem, that the model of Dale emerges. The backrooms emerge from his pen, as he writes from within his world. The figure of Dale is Luciferian not only for his undermining of the demiurge Hank, but for his recognition that Hank is not omnipotent as he claims, for the mere reason that Hank is confined within the boundaries of his own writing. Dale speaks from the same place Hank does, the recognition that the dreamer can both read and write the dream at the same time. This two-party model is oversimplified but makes an important case study of the dynamics of counter-writing. The worlds of Hank and Dale are built from a mutual competition, of Dale’s continuous counter-writing against the world Hank attempts to construct from whole cloth. The unity of this is found in the dreamworld imagined by the Backrooms - the world of magic where multiple writers compete towards one end. At the same time as Hank is constructing the material which Dale writes against, Dale is writing freedom away from Hank. Their mutual entangling of ink is the origin of the backrooms, where the dream-like walk into freedom meets the petronecropolis from which the dreamer is attempting to be free from. This is both the falsehood and truth of the concept of freedom - one can never write themselves beyond the ink given to them, yet one can always write with the ink they’re given. As much as Dale is forever undermining what Hank attempts to construct, it’s only by the raw material spit out by Hank that any of Dale’s writing can come into being at all.
What then is there do? Schipper writes of the need for the stage in the spiritual journey for metaphors to vanish - gods, images, myths, to be completely disregarded when they outlive their usefulness. The symbols are only as good as ink is needed and there’s a point that’s reached where the usage of ink at all becomes fruitless. While Dale provides the model here, Dale is never able to move into the next phase of synthesis. The flowing of ink only has purpose insofar as some disharmony is present. It’s this to move without moving that makes the essence of advanced action. The flowing of ink only matters insofar as that flow can create the path towards unity. It’s towards this unity that from within the text, as much as can be found to a “center” as could ever be found. Bombadil speaks from this center, where the patterns of ink dispersion from which the text grows is comprehended - it’s this fundamental pattern through which a unity of text is known.
In life, the only unity that can be found as in the praxis of Bombadil is not to be positioned at the center of the ink’s dispersal, but to write oneself into such a pattern. This is what’s meant by the cultivation of unity in instructions to practitioners, and why that cultivation of unity has the intermediary step of annihilating metaphor. Those myths, structures only matter insofar as they are methods of writing all things into place for the unity to be created - to Bombadil, the names of the trees only matters insofar as he can be at the center of the function of naming, the function of creating. It’s this unity from which the beginning sparks outwards. The center of the world is that contemplated by Bombadil, a world like Tolkein’s forged on names and genealogies, the center being the fact of naming itself - this unified flow of ink undergirding the creation of it all.
That the directed flowing of ink is the ultimate act behind the magician’s journey, is contemplated by the Merry Pranksters. Time and again, in their wonderland built of plastic and audiovisual wiring setups, they bring it all together - these tools of technical creation become the language of their ink. They speak as they develop their powers, of everyone’s “movie” - the ultimate sum of their writing-forward into the horizon, their self as an infinite filmic dream being perpetually written. Each act, each performance, each contribution to the developing chaos of their integrated energies, sums into a single work, a single camera pointing forward into a dark horizon, filming “Their Movie” as it goes along. The self becomes a pen, their journey, the journey through ink.
The film INLAND EMPIRE takes this concept to its fullest. The film is introduced by a radio play, and the viewer, the writing-camera, creating the movie of the self forward into time. We see firsthand the construction of the backrooms, that Luciferian action undertaken by Dale. All memories, selves, strands and stories are taken as raw material and written with for their ink - the inkflow pushed forward from the camera-pen of the magician. Her writing moves forward as a journey, elevating and resolving all things to that final unity. “Sweet” the final word in wholeness, as all things celebrate in oneness in the final moments of the film.
We can take additional notes from Bache - time and again he remarks of his usage of LSD as being a kind of conduit. His horrifying trips and the resolving of tensions experienced in them, is his own channeling of some kind of karmic debt, his experiences as a whole, the resolving of flows that had been moving through him with pain and blockage all his life. His final trips result in a state he identifies with satori, and each subsequent trip after this yields nothing - all passages are cleared and all writing is complete. The wholeness is achieved and to further consume LSD nets nothing but a useless retread of an act of writing which has served its purpose of cultivating unity. There is no purpose to return - Evola remarks of this as well, when speaking concretely of the mystic journey, that there comes a point where all books and metaphors must be torn up and discarded. Metaphors will eventually resolve as all things now flow perfectly. This final end of writing leads to the noclip at the conclusion of Invitation to a Beheading - all things resolved, unified, all flows without obstruction. The dao flows freely, nothing and everything harmonious as unity.
Bibliography
BSP technical details for Dummies, Planet Quake
No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre
Gmod WonderWorld, DNSL
GAMESHOW, DNSL
Thief Gold, Looking Glass Studios
The Stanley Parable, Galactic Cafe
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