The Fex & Coo effect seems to be spreading!

Thanks for this photo goes to blog member Suzan Wilson

When I sent Paco that email about my experience at Tully's and what I called the first line of a story prompted by the fragments of the different contextual reality I saw there, I ended it with "to be continued...or not." I had no expectation of how Paco would respond, and no investment in my near joke of that first line. But Paco responded with a full-on continuation (which is available in Episode One). I was struck by the memory of an old newspaper article I wrote about in the Dream Network Journal telling of two women painters who exchanged their canvases as a prompt to what next to paint, round and round that way. No talk, no discussion, just painting in response to painting. I always liked that idea. And here Paco and I seemed on the verge of doing it, not with painting, but with words of story. So I eagerly took up the idea of continuing the story.

I am not a plotter. Never have been. I've never outlined anything I've published. I've never "planned." What happens is that my intention falls out of sight, out of focus, out of mind. It does not disappear. It becomes something of an egg that becomes the object of brooding as a chicken broods on her eggs. My earliest memory as a child of two or so, was dropping eggs out of my parents car window onto the sidewalk while they were in the market. When my parents came out and saw what I had done, they laughed. That became the theme of my childhood and my love of eggs. So, I let my intention to carry on the story that Paco had continued drop into the brooding place—a place I still have no direct knowledge of. But I trust what comes from that place. I trust the process.

After a time, I feel an urge, a spark, a bit of desire.

So, I open up a new Word file and stare at the blank screen. I wait. I know to wait. Waiting in this way when I am about to write something has become a ritual. To wait for something to come. Sometimes, it's a word, sometimes a sound, sometimes a melody, sometimes a full expression, sometimes a visual image. There is no predicting. But whatever occurs, it is the spark that sets me going. What happens then is something akin to a flood of words. Sometimes it is hard to keep up with the flow. I experience this as the opening of the eggs brooded upon outside my awareness; by what? An inner chicken?

The image that came to me was the image of Sal sitting on Owl Man's coat coupled with the word "intimacy." This hint formed itself into the line: “Since you have sat on my coat, we have achieved a certain level of intimacy." This "forming" is both a mix of what comes and what I make of it. For me writing in this way is what is meant by poesis: to bring something into being that has not existed before. With that line as an opening, everything next followed almost without effort. The difficult part is keeping up with the flow of words that "presented" themselves to me as I try to make the actual lines. This is why I sometimes refer to my sense of "me" in these infusions as a scribe. I do not feel I can rightly claim authorship. It is always an us.
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PSYCHOACTIVE

Dictionaries will tell us that “psychoactive” refers to the effects on the mind of drugs. The effects typically mentioned are changes in the nervous system which alter perception, mood, consciousness, cognition or behavior. The drugs indicated are psychoactive drugs, psychopharmaceutical drugs, and psychotropic drugs. The word came into use in the 1940s and has reached its maximal use in the latest analysis (Google, 2019).

I use the word differently. By psychoactive I mean the unexpected, autonomous activation of the other at odd angles to one’s conscious intentions. The activation may manifest in dreams, visions, synchronicities, strange and inchoate body sensations, visual or auditory perceptions, feelings and thoughts.

My use of other here is meant in place of the general use of the word unconscious. The word other carries a sense of phenomenological animation. I further characterize it as the presentational psyche because these experiences are “presented” to ego consciousness. I have further characterized this as involving the invitational psyche because these experiences have a sense of inviting the participation of the conscious ego in further acts of imagination and creativity.

Read John’s and Rosaline’s comments with these ideas in mind.

You may find my essay, “Appassionato for the Imagination,” to be useful. See Russell A, Lockhart. Appassionato for the Imagination. In Murry Stein and Thomas Arzt (Eds.) Jung’s Red Book for Our Time: Searching for the Soul under Postmodern Conditions, Asheville: Chiron Publications, 2017.

To make sure you see comments which will be a crucial part of interacting on this site, please click on "Entries Feed" and "Comments Feed" under Meta and subscribe. This will insure that you get notice of comments.

Shortly, I will be populating the Resources page. I'll post a note when this is ready.

Posting of episodes of Fex & Coo is now planned for Fridays. Episode 2 will be available later today.

Soon, I will be posting what I mean by "psychoactive."

~ral

 

As we gear up the Fex & Coo website, Paco and I have decided not to charge for Fex & Coo. What we are most caring about is the potential for an interactive and deliberative community sparked by Fex & Coo. Keeping in mind that the the word “community” means “to gift (munis) together (com),” we feel it is more in the spirit of such gifting together for us to gift Fex & Coo to subscribers. Fex, of course, would call this a totally bird-brain idea, but we think Owl Man and Heron Man would raise a glass in toast. Enjoy this gift and please contribute your own reactions and content when you are moved to do so.

Enjoy!

Russ and Paco

From Randy

A random (?) coincidence of probably minor importance: I went to the dentist today (first time at this particular dentist) and the person who took my photographs and X-rays was named Heather. This evening I read Fex and Coo Episode 1 and noted a character named Heather. I don't know any other Heathers. (Heather at the dentist did not look anything like Fex's girlfriend Heather.)

Looking forward to more episodes.

Randy

Hi Randy,

Thanks for this telling of your experience at the dentist. Yes, of course, one can explain away such an experience as a coincidence, but this not dissolve the feeling of “significance.” What this significance is exactly does not come easily. The reason is that one is still trying to explain it. The root meaning of explain is to “ flatten out,” The sense is to take the wrinkles out. This is exactly opposite of what psyche wants from such experiences. That want or desire is what I call the fictive purpose or potential of such experiences, as well as dreams, etc. The explanations lead no where but to drop them. Following this fictive hint leads somewhere. Where that is is unknown, uncertain, but following that path will lead somewhere of value. Fex & Coo is psychoactive and this is what you experienced when you encountered Heather.

Some comments on Fex & Coo from subscribers:

John Woodcock
Perhaps a breadcrumb or two that may be of interest to readers, as the plot “thickens”. Pay attention to verb tenses like this one: “I’ve never met Fex before in my life. At least not before later today.” Let it gently twist your mind in preparation for what is to come. You will need a gently twisted mind…

Tanya Hurst
(softly) No, John…not to be figured out, but figured in… You can’t see Fex and Coo by looking in the usual way. The time is neither early nor late, Fex and Coo have always (and never) been there. Hurry over to Tully’s before you miss them. Those two are up to something…subversively legit. Sorry I missed you this morning. I’ll be heading over after work this evening for a cinnamon latte, hoping to get a another glimpse of the Owl Man. Page 8.

John Woodcock
HI Tanya, your response is very interesting to me. Thank you. So, you seem, as the reader, not to have your mind gently twisted. This is because you know what is coming in advance (as in your quote). This is a perspective available to us, as readers for sure (we can read ahead). However you must agree I think that the other characters in the story do get their minds twisted a bit by what is happening. So maybe that will happen to the reader who enters the text, becomes a character too, as it were. But what does it mean for any one character to make that extraordinary mind-bending statement, “I’ve never met Fex before in my life. At least not before later today.” This statement shows that there is two characters, Owl Man and Heron Man, who hold BOTH perspectives, participating character and writer, simultaneously and know that they do. They both “see ahead into the future” and take part in the now. Imagine someone in real life making a statement like that.: "I’ve never met Fex before in my life. At least not before later today.” What style of consciousness would that be? It's a dual consciousness. This to me is what makes this novel, novel!

Of course many books have narrators who tell us ahead of time what is going to happen to this or that character, even if that character is the "I" of the narrator (think of Amercing Beauty where the narrator is dead). That is not happening here in this book however. It's much weirder.... hence the breadcrumbs.

 

Paco and I have decided to serialize Fex & Coo out of an abundance of caution. Fex & Coo is not finished and neither of us can say how we would know such a thing. There is in addition, our second narrative effort, The Deathling Crown Lottery which found its origin in a dream. More about that later. For now, we puzzle whether Deathling is a separate novel, or whether it is bound hand and foot to Fex & Co and merely needs a path of continuity. So, instead of waiting until all this is finished and bound, we decided we wanted to share what we have been doing these past 11 years. That, and we find ourselves eager for your participation. We find the writing during these years to be psychoactive. We hope you do too. We welcome your contributions, whatever form they might take.

The noun “novel” refers in its most general sense to a fictional narrative of extended length. The adjective “novel” refers to something that is new in an unusual or interesting way. Both the noun and adjective have the same Latin parent novus, meaning “new,” and the same Indo-European root, newo-, meaning “new” and “now.” So, what we have in Fex & Coo is a “new new.” Such an idea is certainly worthy of an extended disputation by Owl Man and Heron Man over a leisurely jigger (or more) of Macallans. Until such is forthcoming, I will simply stay with the claim that Fex & Coo is a new new, leaving room, of course, for the unknown unknown, as well as the post post. For now, nuff said.