I am thrilled CHU is work on a roject that connects with the ORIENT. Like the 'MONKEY: Journey to the West' MONKEY TRAIN that chu helped to decorate with Gorillaz' artist and friend Jamie Hewlett.
Chu is turning slightly chunese, temorarily, with his CHU CUBE launch in conjunction with a UK collective of artists coming together to celebrate the Chinee new year 2010 (The year of the IRON TIGER)
Jamies Hewlett more or less animated the Beijing Olympic Games by translating the great Chinese Classic of literature MONKEY: Journey to the WEST. I blogged extensively on MONKEY back in June 2007 when they had their Gorillaz' London theatre launch and before I had any idea Jamie would go on to animate the OLYMPIC GAMES in 08. A great shock when I saw the brilliant introduction on the TV screen in July 2008.
CHU takes on many possible meanings in Chinese, meaning that I have been studying for around six years, due in most part to my interest in the poet Ezra Pound and in particular his interest in the Chinese written character as medium for poetry.
I see a synchronicity in the fact that this TIGER BEER infused CHINESE NEW YEAR show throughout England, has been indexed and formulated around the ancient Oriental system of the five phases, five steps, or five the elements, a clever idea, and one I hope will continue after the New Year and play into the presentation of all five events when all the multimedia is collected and re-presented.
I already incorporated a similar system of elements, somewhat into my TURNTABLE METHOD where a new system enables DJ's to conduct textual mixing. Some of this system is described in the following excerpt from wikiedia describing the FIVE ELEMENTAL PHASES in the Chinese model, please visit these links to see my own further correspondences.
"Each direction is often identified with a color, and (at least in China) with a mythological creature of that color. Geographical or ethnic terms may contain the name of the color instead of the name of the corresponding direction.[4][5] These traditions were also carried west by the westward migration of the Turkic peoples.
East: Green (青 "qīng" corresponds to green); Spring; Wood
- Qingdao (Tsingtao) "Green Island": a city on the east coast of China
- Red River (Asia): south of China
- Red Sea: south of Turkey
- White Sheep Turkmen
- Ak Deniz "White Sea" in Turkish indicates the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean Sea, or the Mediterranean Sea
- Belarus (literally "White Russia"), according to one of the theories is the name given to the Western Rus by the Mongols
- Heilongjiang "Black Dragon River" province in Northeast China, also the Amur River
- Black Sea: north of Turkey
- Kara-Khitan Khanate
- Mount Huang "Yellow Mountain" in central China
- Golden Horde: "Central Army" of the Mongols" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_direction#Far_East
Between my own study of Chinese Ideogram, Oriental poetry, history, I-Ching and Magick I have come to appreciate these systems more each day I look deeper into them and incorporate them, tables of correspondences help me to build my ideas Ideas and tabulate them.
Maybe the synchronicity of the CHINESE NEW YEAR falling a holoiday some westerners still celebrate as 'Valentine's day', can give us understanding of the mathematical wonder and wisdom inherent in dates, times and synchronicity.
--Steve Fly
"The opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Beijing began on 8/8/08 at 8 seconds and 8 minutes past 8 pm (local time).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_in_Chinese_culture
"The value of eight could also be linked with buddhism and the meaning of Lotus flower (eight petals)."
"Losar (Tibetan: ལོ་གསར་; Wylie: lo-gsar; Chinese: 洛薩, Chinese: 洛萨) is the Tibetan word for "new year." Lo holds the semantic field "year, age"; sar holds the semantic field "new, fresh". Losar is the most important holiday in Tibet.[1]
Each year is associated with an animal and an element, similar to the Chinese zodiac. Animals have the following order:
-
Hare Dragon Snake Horse Sheep Ape Bird Dog Pig Mouse Bull Tiger
Elements have the following order:
-
Fire Earth Iron Water Wood
Each element is associated with two consecutive years, first in its male aspect, then in its female aspect. For example, a male Earth-Dragon year is followed by a female Earth-Snake year, then by a male Iron-Horse year. The sex may be omitted, as it can be inferred from the animal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_calendar
HALF A HUNDRED CHINESE IDEOGRAMS FOR CHU. BY FLY. (edited 2008 & 2010)
"It is not our job to say what our precursors ought to have done, but we can try to find out why they did it. –Ezra Pound, Typescript for a preliminary survey. (1951)
“EZRA POUND’S CHINESE FRIENDS, edited and annotated by Zhaoming Qian" rekindled my interest in the IDEOGRAMIC METHOD, a method originally introduced to me by Dr. Robert Anton Wilson during his on-line 8 week class entitled: The Ideogramic Method.(2004)
Some may win a Nobel prize for translation and copying, others might end up confined to a detension centre. Does translation equal treason? Instant poetry? Magick?
Qian’s book consists of letters between EZ and some of his Chinese friends, Qian also includes the APPENDIX 'Typescript for a preliminary survey. (1951).' This introduction, overview, explication and detailed essay of correspondances, concerns the Chinese Written characters almost entirely. Some good writing about pictures, and often instant POETRY by translation.
I started the on-line class with Dr. Wilson in 2004 while still living in New Orleans, Louisiana, and soon noticed that my good friend CHU (CHU 51) was already a part of the class, synchronistically, to me, because of all the various CHU’ ideograms to be found within Pound’s poem “The Cantos”.
That book was a corner stone of the TTOTT course work and assignments at the Maybelogic Academy. Many different references to CHU can be found in Pound's CANTOS (CH’U, CHOU, CHO, CHUNG, CHUE, CHIANG, CHÜ, etc.)
Four years later, published in the Appendix of Zhoaming's book (2008), are a comprehensive study of the CH’ ideograms and correspondingly CHU ideograms from the Chinese written language. A huge help and fascinating system of translation.
The feeling of synchronicity whenever I encountered CHU in Pound's Cantos spooked me out since starting to read Pound's Epic, I confess, but now with this helpful translation of CH' ideograms by Ezra Pound himself, I can better extract sufficient information to begin to UNIFY the ancient Chinese written language with some of the newer western traditions. And what better place to start than with CHU 51.
With a basis rooted in the historical transfer of the Ernest Fenollosa Dossier' called 'The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry' from his widow: Mary McNeil Fenollosa, to Ezra Pound, and William Butler Yeats, Pound's room mate in London, and so to the rest of the world by artistic osmosis into the 20th and 21st centuries, modernism, post-modernism, etc.
I hold a special focus on CHU's stereoscopic anaglyphic GRAFFITI, as one way of describing what and how my friend CHU communicates, paying particular attention to sign, symbol, word, picture, idea, gramar, logic and rhetoric. Themes often overlooked in Graffiti culture, that I feel help to distinguish the social uses of language from the political abuses and unfair corporate bias.
I will be modifying the ideograms and updating them as I perfect my own understandings and calligraphic writing skills.
ITALICS and BOLD are added to the following quote for extra accent!
(Excerpt from APPENDIX Ezra Pound's Typescript for "Preliminary Survey" (1951)
Starting in the midst of the CH sounds we find
CHAO out of 20 we have six knives (let us say bright knife blades) 2 claws and one lance. Chao, omen (dots seperated by something listed as legs rad/ not under pa); summon (cutting voice)
ideogram chao or hua, search, paddle, to oar, beckon (hand plus knife-blade voice) bright (sun blade); dawn (whence ch'ao court, a.m attendance at court etc.)
enlighten, etc. fiery gla[n]ce, summons.
claws: bamboo claw, a skimmer or ladle.
basket for catching fish (to claw fish, seems unlikely, and the sign is more probably allied to cho or chao to cover).
first, begin[n]ing, Chu (or chao) clear, bright.
announcer, edict
hasten to visit, pierce
We have clear indication of the root meaning to cut, and slight possibility of combination with AO (to examine later) in CH'AO
eleven rather uninteresting ideograms, 4 containing shao (few) and three nest. Nest with knife, attack; idem with strength, toil at, fag; quarrel; ridicule (court voice); seize, take ladle out (vide chao, ladle) fray, slight epidemic, ch'ao or chao paper money." --(Page 208-209)
"CHO 17 uniformally expressing the idea: to lay hold of with the ictogram whowing what does or is done to, no connection with CH verbs be at, or cut [ ]
CHOU
The great dynastic name, given as verb: provide, extend, make a circuit, adjective: enough, close secret; bend, revolution, circumference. Certainly associated with the idea of motion.
19 ideograms in a multilated copy of Tsang picture as with grass indication: wrinkles mostly what lies close together, and in some cases what revolves. On the whole it seems to belong to our CH locative. Various CH’OU can be associated with the CH cut idea without great strain, and by ref/ to the pictograms. The first CH’O to stab, is a clear case.
CHU, to go out of
THE GREAT GENERATIVE, root of a tree lying
above ground, BAMBOO (the radical)
A half hundred ideograms in the CHU list, a rule, a lord, to halt to go out of, several of them clearly indication: origin, others baffling till we come to the clue in the 14th. “root of a tree lying above ground,” that picture unites the heteroclite for the eye. The bamboo radical indicates a particular result or root, something from which a thing goes, or on which it stays, a SOURCE. This CHU is definitely of the locative verb.
As with WEI, leather, we have apparently heteroclite meanings.
We have also in our own language traces of similar not-ambiguities. To hide, conceal, to give hiding. The leather curtain, the lash, the thong that binds, the showing a whip to a dog to produce respect or fear. So with the 32nd CHU, beat down, build erect, flap, the picture is dulcimer (bamboo radical) over a tree. The ambiguity of up, down, flap, and all equal to verb “y to bamboo,” i.e to do what the bamboo does or is under for. The “dulcimer” includes “work” and sign (i shd/ say for motion) that has no defined meaning as a seperate ideogram. 41. punish, eradicate
CHU 2
We root in the ground to root up, and we are said to be rooted when we stop and stand firm.
The CHU list is too long to reproduce here, but the earnest readers can enjoy himself with it if he be so minded.
In tracing our CH conjugation we may even end with the idea that to “be at” or move, and to CUT have something in common. We “cut along.” We depart, part and split. The ax makes a clean cut and seperates. An active and an intransitive CH are not inconceivable.
CHÜ, with the umlaut is not going to fit very neatly into scheme so far outlined. We find however a carpenter’s square, utensil, arrange. If CHÜ (umlaut) enters our scheme at all it must be pre-it must have to do with preparation. Someone else must determine whether the cauldron preceded the altar. In the boiled sacrifice thay are the same. An element which Tsang gives as meaning: great, huge, combines with arrow sign to make the carpenter’s square. A saw is found lower in the list, also some saw tooth mountains. The saw may be ONOMATOPOEIC.
I leave CHÜ with judgement suspended.
CHÜ However does seem, in 24 ideograms fairly consistent in indication either preparation or unpreparedness, the preparation distinguished in the pictograms to show whether the preparation is in the cook house or the field, or by the pestle, for unprepared perhaps i shd/ write irresolute, hesitant (feet rad/). Both CHÜ and CH’Ü umlaut seem heteroclite, all one can observe is that if the groups seem without nexus, the individual words also seem without very comprehensible centre to their divergent meaning ascribed to them singly. Whether one shd/ postulate various lost terminal consonants, and leakages of meaning from other groups i do not know i see nothing here help to help define the CH verb.
CHUAN however seems fairly consistently to include the idea of turn, indicated definitely in 5 out of 13 ideograms, and for the most part directly relatable to either the CH of motion or of cutting.
Most of the 13 CH’UAN are clearly “connect” with pictogram of what (string, stream, beam) with a couple of violent exceptions, possibly emphasized chu’an, chu(boat) ang.
CHÜAN and CH’ÜANG [umlaut], the first fairly heteroclite, the second definitely indicating curvature which is also indicated in the pictograms, two of 12 CHÜAN and 6 of 11 CHÜAN (small circle, wriggle of snake)
CHUANG, CH’UANG, idea of weight, strength, bed is frequent.
CHUE, CHUEH, CHUEH (umlaut) CH’UEH (umlaut), this suffix EH is the latin ex, horn projection, husk
The chue is ambiguous in sound, but the pictogram contains “out of.”
CHÜEN and CHÜEN connect with the CHÜAN and CH’ÜAN.
CHUI
CHUI tempts to several false analogies: how do we connect sew, beat, hammer and awl?
I think the clue is in the simple radical for short tailed bird. The bird has a sharp beak and pecks, some hammers look not unlike certain birds. The thread and four stitches is the pictorial explanation of what happens with that particular piercing. Clay walls are hammered together but i do not think this is the primary association between the divergent senses of the sound chui.
CHUI belongs in the leather and root class. The verbal sense carries over quite clearly into at least three ch’ui: to beat, and two kinds of mallet, differentiated in ideogram.
The CHUN and CH’UN groups (lips and spring) are independent and extraneous from our locative or cut conjugations but CHÜN umlaut has clear indication of place above, latin super or altus, as with the water ad/ seep sea, italian mare alto. The third chun, even, equal must be taken as “level up to” and chun water level or plumb-line is wd/ say its relation. The verbal sense of the 15th chun can only be traced thru its noun, hornless deer (bind, seize, collect). But superior, ruler, high (with mountain rad/) etc. belong, i shd/ say without question to our verb CH.
CH’UN (umlaut) might be scattered were it not for the graphic signs. Grain heaped in an enclosure; the chief place above the sheep; the dress on the noble; granary, flock, and skirt for a lady.
CHUNG we have already located as the perpendicular axis potently locative, the weight that draws to the center, with ch’ung.
The single CH’OU is an eloquent picture of grind with the teeth (teeth and foot), and augur to bore a hole.
Let us now return to our omitted CH forms
CHE' circumflex, 19 ideograms
1. wise (hand, ax, mouth) clear cut, know intuitively cutting clean into.
the sense of cut (CH) is clear in a number of cases, in others the ictogram indicates the primitive associations with cutting (five axes, a knife). The wagon rad/ is given two sounds che' and CHÜ umlaut, and the ideograms with two signs assigned them always raise doubts. –Ezra Pound, APPENDIX (1951), EZRA POUND’S CHINESE FRIENDS, ZHOAMING QIAN 2008. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. (Pages 213-215)
I will add ten wiki links I feel are helpful to any on-going study to build bridges between the Orient and Occident, somewhat independently, and by way of poetry, painting and Magick.
"The umlaut is a diacritic consisting of a pair of dots or lines placed over a letter. A very similar diacritic is the diaeresis or trema. When the vowel is an i, the diacritic replaces the tittle. The two diacritics are very similar in appearance, and the distinction between them is not always made. “Umlaut” is a German word roughly meaning “changed sound” or “altered sound”–wiki/umlaut.
The Chinese written character as a medium for poetry
By Ernest Francisco Fenollosa, Ezra Pound
The classic Noh theatre of Japan
By Ernest Francisco Fenollosa, Ezra Pound
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