The base illustration in this collage comes from the
Hypnerotomachia of Poliphilo, a Renaissance text with many such images of temples and pyramids of absurd heights, shapes, and sizes. Likewise, the idea of a Ka Transmitter is equally absurd — a Ka Transmitter, as Ferris imagines it, being a kind of miles-tall tower capable of broadcasting his thoughts to the stars using vintage cutting-edge 1930s technology. But don’t all men and women incline to the stars at night, on their deathbeds? Don’t we all incline to the fantasy of outliving our weak chemical minds of meat & gristle and our apeshit-stuttering bodies & somehow lofting into space, surviving as beings of pure thought in the stars? No? Well, then give Ferris this fantasy at least. And you have to admit, while you’re fantasizing, that the New Mexican landscape would look a lot more epic if it were covered in lots of miles-high Ka Transmitters!The
Hypnerotomachia of Poliphilo was innovative in its use of combining ancient and modern motifs in its illustrations — and so, it’s maybe fitting that I’ve collaged some AT&T schematics and a radio’s vacuum tube onto the illustration to suggest some strange neo-1930s science by which a man might broadcast his thoughts to the stars. Imagine that his thoughts are broadcast on a radio signal, heterodyned with that signal in the same way that illustrations from the
Hypnerotomachia have ancient and modern motifs combined together. I call this heterodyning kind of combining “hypnotrophing” in Chapter 9. As for the use of the word “Ka”, it comes from Egyptian mythology; the Egyptians believed every person had a “Ka” or a double, and so they would make offerings in their funerary rites for a deceased person’s Ka as well. Chapter 9 has a funerary tone, so it’s only appropriate.Damn, but what is this? Deathbeds? Funerary rites? Apeshit-stuttering bodies? Weren’t there supposed to be more burritos and cowboys saying “Thanks, kemosabe” in
The Western?
