Asks Naomi Fry (at The New Yorker). Subheadline: "The singer died in 1971. A new documentary series posits that he faked his death to escape the burden of fame, and is living in hiding."
That prompted me to ask Grok, "What was that movie in the 1980s about a rock star who faked his death so he could live life as an unknown? Maybe something like 'Eddie and the Cruisers.'"
The answer made me laugh: "You're likely thinking of Eddie and the Cruisers, a 1983 film that fits your description perfectly...."
Yes, Grok doesn't know what I'm thinking. I'm enjoying its circumspection. I'm likely thinking of "Eddie and the Cruisers" when I suggest that the movie I'm thinking of is maybe something like "Eddie and the Cruisers." So meticulous. That's what I want from my A.I.
Later in that artificially intelligent conversation, I wrote: "I'm seeing a New Yorker article, 'Why Do We Want to Believe That Jim Morrison Is Still Alive?' That strikes me as the better path for reflection. Not: Is he alive. But: Why do we want to believe that this particular dead person is alive? What if some other famous person really did withdraw from celebrity life and live on as — to coin a phrase — a complete unknown? They'd be looking on as people imagined Elvis or Jim still walking the earth and thinking: What about me? If I were writing a screenplay about this character, which dead celebrity could I choose to portray as the central character who had made himself too unknown and now struggles to return to the world as a somebody but realizes that no one will really care because it's not as though Elvis or Jim returned into the light."
Meanwhile, Jim was brought back to life in a movie, "The Doors" (1991). And now, we see that Val Kilmer — the actor who played him — died yesterday.
That's how I prompted Grok just now. I was inspired by something Kakistocracy wrote in the comments in last night's café:
It’s weird to think that Musk will end up having paid far less for the United States Government than he did for Twitter.* To be fair -- what he paid for twitter was kinda the down payment for the presidency. It was a package deal. He needed both.
Here are the quotes Grok fished up for me:
• "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." This quote from George Orwell's "1984" emphasizes how control over information (history) leads to control over future outcomes.
• "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws." Attributed to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, this quote suggests that control over a nation's monetary system equates to control over its governance. • "He who controls the media, controls the mind." This is a variation on a quote by Jim Morrison, highlighting how control over information dissemination (media) can shape public perception and behavior. • "Control the money, you control countries. Control the food, you control the world." A quote often attributed to Henry Kissinger illustrates the power of controlling essential resources like finance and food to influence global or national control.
I'd like to have those 4 over to dinner at the same time. We could talk about controlling things. Who would control the conversation, hmmm? I say Orwell.
Anyway, Grok and I — at my prompting — proceeded to talk about the ancient Archimedes quote "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." (It's different from those other 4 quotes, but not completely different.) And then I fed Kakistocracy's quote to Grok thusly:
Me: "That's the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. I'm researching the origin of the phrase 'canyons of your mind.' What do you think is the first appearance of that phrase?"
Now, I believe the answer to my question is "Elusive Butterfly," which was a hit in 1965 by the man who wrote the song, Bob Lind. It's rolling through the canyons of my mind this morning a propos of Florence Henderson saying that 1960s NY Mayor John Lindsay gave her the crabs. "Gentle on My Mind" was written by John Hartford in 1967.
This idea of the brain as a landscape — it's such a standard hippie trope — is it there in "Gentle on My Mind"? Yes. This singer sings of traveling alone but seeing his girlfriend "walkin' on the backroads/By the rivers flowing gentle on my mind." The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band is mocking "canyons of your mind" in 1968, but Bob Lind was serious in 1965: "You might have heard my footsteps/Echo softly in the distance through the canyons of your mind."
Also mocking the phrase was Frank Zappa in "We're Turning Again" (at 3:25):
"We can turn it around/We can do it again/We can go back in time/Through the canyons of your mind On the Eve of Destruction/We can act like we are something really special/We'll just jump in the bathtub/With that other guy Jim/And make him be more careful/We can visit Big Mama/And whap her on the back/When she eats her sandwich/We can take care of Janis..."
That's got to be much later than 1965, because Jim Morrison died in the bathtub in 1971. Yes, it's the opening track on the 1985 album "Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention." "Mothers of Prevention" referred, of course, to The Parents Music Resource Center — you know, that Tipper Gore warning-label business, against which Zappa testified before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, saying, among other things: "A couple of blowjobs here and there and — bingo! — you get a hearing."
Who knew then that in the next decade — the next canyon of the nation's mind — Tipper's husband would be Vice President, and everyone would be talking about blowjobs?
Stray fact encountered chasing the bright elusive butterfly of canyons of your mind: A movie inspired John Hartford to write "Gentle on My Mind": It was, oddly enough, "Dr. Zhivago."
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine
Blowing through the canyons of my miiiiiiiind.
That came quite late in the development of hippie tropes — in 1972. How lame, but there were takers for that kind of lameness that year. The original artists were the very douche-y Seals & Croft. And that song has been covered by many artists over the years, including by Jason Mraz (who seems perfectly Seals & Croft-y) and Type O Negative (which is odd). Also odd: I once saw Type O Negative in concert! I must say that of all the bands I saw in my days of chauffeuring teenagers to concerts, there was only one band that I couldn't find it in myself to appreciate, and that was Type O Negative. So hail, Type O Negative! And listen to the Type O Negative "Summer Breeze," here. If you need to air out your mind canyons after that, here's that nice young man Jason Mraz.
Mraz lives a health-conscious lifestyle and has said that he eats mostly raw vegan foods. His vegan diet has also influenced his music. He owns a five-and-a-half acre avocado farm in Bonsall, California. He is an investor at Café Gratitude, a vegan restaurant in Los Angeles.... His hobbies include surfing, yoga and photography.
IN THE COMMENTS: Ignorance is Bliss said:
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine
Blowing through the canyons of my miiiiiiiind.
Maybe it was unreachable because that is not how it goes!
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine
Blowing through the jasmine in my mind
Roughcoat:
Oh crap, I can't believe I got it wrong--"canyons" instead of "jasmine."
The 70s was a confusing time for me. Still is, obviously.
"We'll begin ... studies to make sure that we are keeping people sensitized," says Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius. "What may seem quite shocking at the beginning, people get used to quite quickly." So if people build up a tolerance for the repulsive, the FDA will amp the dial up to grotesque....
The old warnings — informing buyers that cigarettes cause cancer, and so forth — conveyed information. The new labels are designed to provoke a reaction in that lizard part of your brain that thoughts never reach. A warning on a ladder that reads, "Caution: Improper use could lead to serious injury from falling" conveys information. A graphic photo of a compound tibia fracture conveys only sentiment.
Only sentiment... I disagree. Vividly pictured information is still information, even if it offends your taste. Years ago, if I remember correctly, the radical feminist Catharine MacKinnon argued that free speech rights shouldn't cover pornography, because it didn't convey any ideas. It was a sensation... designed to provoke a reaction in that lizard part of your brain that thoughts never reach. Those are Hinkle's words, not MacKinnon's. I don't think she said "lizard part of your brain"... though she might well have said "lizard part."
But, of course, the government doesn't need free speech protection to say what it wants to say to us. It's the government. The question is only whether it can require a private business to carry its message (or its delivery of sensation straight to that lizard part of your brain that thoughts never reach). The messages that already appear on cigarette packs give you the short answer: It can. The better question is: Do we want our government reaching past our intellect, into our deepest instincts, injecting its vision of how we ought to behave?
Well, of course, government actors are always trying to manipulate us on an emotional level in the hope that we'll vote for them or tolerate a war or a tax and so forth. I think the key is to become conscious and critical of those manipulations (and every day, I work at that, in public writing, to model and encourage awareness and resistance). Perhaps an even better question than whether we want the government to manipulate us emotionally is: Do we want the government to manipulate us emotionally with respect to the decisions we make about what to do with our bodies?
Phrased at that level of generality, the photos of cancerous lungs on cigarette packs (trying to get us not to smoke) are like the photos of aborted fetuses (trying to get us not to have abortions). Except we haven't seen the government go graphic with an anti-abortion message, and it's not as easy to think of a commercial product to stick the message on. Something for women. Tampons?
Hinkle's mind drifts to food:
[I]t's reasonable to ask when the federal government will start showing us disgusting pictures on packages of food, in which Washington also takes a keen interest. Indeed, someone asked Sibelius that very question during a press conference about the cigarette labels. Her response was evasive. Food labels are voluntary, she said. And tobacco is unique because smoking is "the No. 1 cause of preventable death."
It won't be No. 1 forever. Obesity is gaining ground fast. Sibelius says smoking imposes "$200 billion a year in health costs." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity costs the U.S. about $150 billion....
Two days after Washington unveiled its new warning labels for cigarette packages, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study reporting that our food choices influence our weight more than exercise does. And potato chips pack on the pounds faster than any other food, including candy and desserts.
Hence the question about a corpse on a can of Pringles.
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