Warriors of the New Flesh

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From: “seth brundle” <brundlefly@hotmail.com>

To: allegra_geller@hotmail.com

Subject: David Cronenberg

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2000 15:06:16 -0500

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The Internet is essentially sex. People touching each other through wires. Are we having sex then? Not exactly the proper way to start a conversation with a total stranger, but hell, I’ve never been one to care for what’s proper.

Allegra? I like the chat name. You liked eXistenZ? The flesh and the machine, inseparable, fused. I love Cronenberg and I can see that we must be common symbionts then. Not enough cool stuff happens in Canadian film. It’s all so tame, so naturalistic. Then comes this guy from Toronto who flips all that around, literally, wanting to show the unshowable, speak the unspeakable. I wonder if Cronenberg’s metaphors of bodies showing their insides physically, their inner thoughts made flesh, are not statements against Canadian films? What do you think?

Respond if you’re interested.

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From: “allegra geller” <allegra_geller@hotmail.com>

To: brundlefly@hotmail.com

Subject: Re: David Cronenberg

Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2000 19:02:34 -0500

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Brundlefly, huh? What are we, beauty and the beast? There’s an uncommon motif for a horror film! No, as trite as those things can be, I admit that I’m an addicted devotee. A junkie for the stuff, if you will. And, yes, I love Cronenberg. He’s the smartest of them all. He shows you something you can’t see anywhere else. Videodrome is a favourite. Love the last line. And no, don’t be afraid of not being proper. You have no face to me, no identity. No hands to touch, no lips to kiss. Only your words.

I think you’re right about the web. But I think, more generally, that conversation in itself is sex. It’s “oral/aural” sex. It’s dialogic intercourse. We write to one another, knowing nothing else, and our words intermingle like fluid. It’s like Naked Lunch. The writer is the junkie, the pervert. The word/drug/sex are all the same. Typing is a sexual act – it’s intoxicating. It’s why the Mugwumps cum like they do. It’s a literary high. I like the “Kafka high” (I wonder what Kafka would say about the web?). You let yourself go when you fuck, you don’t restrain your body or mind. Writing’s the same. Editing is censoring your own thoughts. You just have to let it all go. Exterminate all rational thought.

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From: “seth brundle” <brundlefly@hotmail.com>

To: allegra_geller@hotmail.com

Subject: Kafka High

Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 11:14:26 -0500

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I guess it is just words that we are. God, you sound so intellectual! And not afraid to say “cum” and “fuck”. I think I’m in love! I hope you’re laughing and taking this lightly – it’s just for fun. Videodrome is great, but The Fly is the ultimate! It is the true fusion film. Not only does it deal with the fusion of fly and man at the genetic/molecular level, but on the metaphoric level it deals with Cronenberg’s mind/body fusion and on a structural level it fuses Cronenberg’s intellectual body horrors with the emotional intensity of character. The Dead Zone did that first, but The Fly does it the best. It’s all about the levels. I even cried when he dies at the end!

I think, with sex, the Internet is also a singular consciousness. It’s almost Buddhist in that way. It allows for immediate communication through the written word. It eliminates and defies the notions of fronts and boarders. It’s like The Fly. Brundle’s out to find a solution to his motion-sickness problem, so he invents teleportation. He wants to eliminate roads and boarders. Isn’t that what the net does? I guess we can’t exactly teleport through it, but our words can. We disintegrate them here, and re-integrate them there. I’m in Vancouver and you’re in Montreal. I press a button and you get my words. And isn’t it our words that make us who we are?

What do you think?

PS – I think Kafka would have loved the net – it would be a way for him to defy the loneliness. Of course, he wouldn’t be Kafka then, would he?

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From: “allegra geller” <allegra_geller@hotmail.com>

To: brundlefly@hotmail.com

Subject: Fronts and Boarders

Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 19:39:04 -0500

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Interesting. I like your idea of fronts and boarders. We’re Canadians, like Cronenberg. Do you think this idea is a part of being Canadian? Our country is so large and so vast. We’re divided, separated by so much. Geography, ethnicity. Our country is one big puzzle of disparate provinces and territories, yet it’s linked somehow. Despite the separation, there still seems to be a unity. I guess that’s Canadian. We’re the most multicultural country in the world. A nation made up of every people. Yet, we unite and find harmony in this.

What is it then to be Canadian? I think it’s like sex – a coming together of oppositions. We’re able to see all sides at once – French, English, or foreign. Montreal itself is split, and Quebec seems even more split from the rest of the country – how many times has our province wanted to separate? And we aren’t even Siamese Twins! Maybe I’ll separate you – from your clothes, that is. I want you to burn my breast with a cigarette. I want to see you, and feel you. But I guess if I only can through wires, it’ll have to do. So cyberpunk. Videodrome is the first cyberpunk film as far as I’m concerned. Forget Blade Runner; forget William Gibson (even though you probably like him, being from Vancouver and all!). But what’s more important is how we all can be so different and still communicate. It’s a testament to our greatness as a nation.

The web as a singular consciousness? Maybe. Maybe we are all “one” through it. But don’t you think that’s a little problematic? Doesn’t it destroy our individuality and make us a “machine” in some sense? Is that bad? And do we really use e-mail to its fullest potential, or is it just cerebral telephone conversation? Censored telepathy? Someone’s monitoring what we say; someone’s watching and listening to us. There’s a control being enacted upon our written words. There’s a covert operation at work here, I think. An absent scientist, who we can never see, collecting our written speech and using it for who knows what purpose. The web is an organism, an institution, and the people who use it and give it life are the cells of that organism. It’s a two-way play. We use it, but I think it uses us too.

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From: “seth brundle” <brundlefly@hotmail.com>

To: allegra_geller@hotmail.com

Subject: Insect Politics

Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 09:09:09 -0500

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A little paranoid? So old-school Cronenberg thinking, though! But what if we are that scientist, unknowing of why we do what we do and say what we say? We just use the net because it’s there, without giving it any real thought. But who says we should? I don’t believe in all that cautionary bullshit. We do what we want. There is nothing we weren’t meant to know. The net is just another tool to bring us knowledge.

I don’t think it destroys our individuality. Do our differences as Canadians, living on almost opposite sides of the country destroy our individuality? I don’t think so. We’re united, with our apparent centre, the mighty Ontario, holding us together (sarcasm). Hey, but Cronenberg’s an Ontarian, so I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on them.

Maybe it’s just another political tool, though, and you’re right. Who knows? I like the idea of “insect politics”. Insects are brutal and have no politics, states Brundle, but I think all politics are brutal. We need to get away from that, to separate from the political body, and get straight to the viscera of life. It’s like colonialism – we need to get away from the mother country. Like Quebec wants to. Sure, I don’t want to see it happen, Canada split apart and be taken over by the Americans, but I can understand it. The need to be free from an all too dominating master. At first it seems like a betrayal and its difficult to understand, but it’s only the need for independence. The power of the will.

It’s like a disease. Take its point of view – it’s only trying to live. It doesn’t care if it destroys you in the process. I think Quebec’s mentality is something like that. And it’s human. We’re all tied to something greater than ourselves that we don’t necessarily like. We just want to be free, and if we have to destroy that “something” in the process of obtaining our freedom, then so be it. The question is, is that “something” the mind, and we the body, trying to separate, go our own way? Or are we the mind and it the body, our will for independence destroying it?

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From: “allegra geller” <allegra_geller@hotmail.com>

To: brundlefly@hotmail.com

Subject: Re: Insect Politics

Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 17:33:07 -0500

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It’s the old Cartesian split – mind/body. There is no real split, though. You can call either what you want, but they’re both linked. Like your notion of the individual and the collective. Everything’s like that, just look at our country. We try to separate everything. Then we spend time categorizing and giving labels. It’s a sense of order, I guess. It makes us feel better. But everything is linked. It’s all connected. It’s chaos when the boundaries we impose collapse, but it’s only natural. I guess that’s what’s scary to people. The natural element of chaos. We’d rather live in artificial and ordered environments (I guess I shouldn’t say that since we’re on the web, but it’s true). The web is a safety zone for us. It’s one great hallucination, in a sense. A dream world. That schism from reality.

It’s like the fusion of flesh and metal in Crash. That’s what the sex is for – the fusion, the collision of opposites, coming together in orgasmic release. Like us – our minds acting in this computer machine, coming together. But it’s still not totally immediate, and I hate that. There is still a border, a front, and that’s the mainframe. We still can’t fully be as one. We still have the geography of cyberspace between us. That’s the problem I see with your singular-consciousness theory. We are still apart, though we’re together. Like one soul in two bodies.

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From: “seth brundle” <brundlefly@hotmail.com>

To: allegra_geller@hotmail.com

Subject: Mantle Twins

Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2000 11:05:16 -0500

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The Mantle twins, huh? Is that what we are? Twins, divided by a physical front? I like the idea of us as twins. I think we should share everything, but more so like lovers. We are lovers through cyberspace. I think that’s beautiful, in a strange sort of contemporary way. It’s always about the body, though. Like Cronenberg, I believe in being very bodily conscious. We seem to forget about our bodies in this environment, using only our words, and maybe that isn’t good. It’s too cerebral, too artificial, almost gothic in its ancientness. We need to resist this in favour of our body.

And speaking of our bodies, something strange has been happening to me lately. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve developed a strange rash all over. Weird. And my skin seems to be changing tone in certain spots. I think I’m getting sick or something, but I don’t know why. My mind feels healthy. I haven’t been depressed. Maybe repressed. I want to see you to shed that repression! How can we meet?

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From: “allegra geller” <allegra_geller@hotmail.com>

To: brundlefly@hotmail.com

Subject: Psychoplasmics

Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2000 21:22:19 -0500

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My lord, you have a rash? I didn’t want to say anything, but I’ve had one too! And skin, yes. It’s been changing, morphing, and I too don’t know why. I’m worried, but I don’t want to see a doctor. And lately, these sort of fleshy sacs have been forming on my body. It’s really disgusting. They started as little wart-like boil-bubbles, which were strange enough, but it’s getting worse as the days pass. And what’s even stranger is that they seem to develop more fully, more independently, every time we talk about our thoughts. It’s like the psychoplasmics in The Brood. The Shape of Rage! But I’m not angry, I’m pretty happy, especially when we talk. Our voices, our thoughts and opinions, they’re so similar. I like that. I like talking to you. No one else is interested in the things we are interested in. We are like twins – the same mind in two different bodies. I guess if there’s anything I’m angry about it’s that we’re so far away from each other and that we can only meet like this, in secret, in these private little computer spaces. Sort of intimate, but not really.

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From: “seth brundle” <brundlefly@hotmail.com>

To: allegra_geller@hotmail.com

Subject: Re: Psychoplasmics

Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 14:22:11 -0500

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Okay, things have become worse. My body is definitely in some sort of rebellion against my mind. My fingers have changed, and I don’t know what they’re becoming. They’re developing prongs and inserts, as if to plug into something. Both male and female. I now have to wear gloves to hide it and be able to type. And I used to wear glasses – the machinery for the eyes. But I can see fine without them now. It’s as if my soul is pouring out to show me my world more clearly through those windows. I guess Medici would be proud. But there is most certainly a mutation at work, and I don’t think medical science would be able to understand this bodily evolution. What’s happening to us? Are we dying? And why is it happening? Part of me feels frightened and revolted. But the other part feels . . . I don’t know? Free.

Please write back.

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From: “allegra geller” <allegra_geller@hotmail.com>

To: brundlefly@hotmail.com

Subject: The Mental Made Flesh

Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 21:06:12 -0500

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Am I dreaming? Is this truly real or just one big hallucination? I’m waiting for the keypad and monitor to turn into some giant bug and start talking to me!

Things have progressed more, and I no longer know if this is good or bad. I no longer go out in the day and only sneak in here at night to talk with you.

My body is developing new external organs, fleshy and designed for inserting – as you say. But something inside tells me that they are inherently sexual in nature. A means to procreate towards the next level of development. That makes no sense, of course, but it’s what I feel. Why is this happening? I wish I knew. I too feel both sick and enlightened by this, and this ambivalence only adds to the confusion. Is this evolution biologically predetermined or a product of free will? That’s the real question I want answered. It’s that damn schism again. Is it in our genes or our heads that this should happen? Maybe our heads are making our genes do this? Mental things becoming flesh. It’s all too Cronenberg, again. But why is it happening to us both, and at the same time? Is there a virus of some kind in the computer? Something electrical coming out and infecting our bodies. It’s like Videodrome. I don’t know what to do.

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From: “seth brundle” <brundlefly@hotmail.com>

To: allegra_geller@hotmail.com

Subject: Dialogic Intercourse

Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 09:34:46 -0500

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A virus? A disease, I think. Listen, I’ve done nothing but think about this lately, and the more I’ve thought, the more my body has gone strange. I don’t look fully human anymore, and can’t leave my room. I feel okay, but I look . . . abysmal.

I printed out all our e-mail correspondences and thought hard as I re-read them. It’s Cronenberg who is doing this to us. Or more specifically, our talk of Cronenberg. I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out.

I think that we have contracted a disease from “talking” about Cronenberg, and I think this disease is creatively re-shaping our bodies. But to what purpose, I still don’t know. I think this disease is a sort of STD, transmitted through our language and the computer, and we’ve contracted it through (pardon the pun) “oral sex” – sex from the mouth, or as you said it, “dialogic intercourse”. This “sex” has manifested itself as e-mail writing!

This is so strange, it can’t be real, but it seems to fit. It’s something out of a Cronenberg film, a sort of fusion of ideas from different films, coming to actual life, where the hallucination is becoming our only reality. But to what end?

Expand if you can.

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From: “allegra geller” <allegra_geller@hotmail.com>

To: brundlefly@hotmail.com

Subject: Creative Cancer

Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 21:17:29 -0500

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As crazy as that is, for some reason I find myself agreeing. An STD, a disease? How is it possible? We haven’t made love. Unless, it is our words that have made love. It’s true, the metaphoric, the thought, is becoming literal, and what we read on the monitor and touch on the keypad is infecting us more and more. Our very social order and existence is breaking down through the eruption of disease. It’s Shivers and Rabid in real life! Our bodies are mutating – they’re independent, free to search out their own creative impulses and desires. It’s bodily chaos, the art of the flesh, and there’s nothing we can do about it except let it happen. We’ve evolved too far to go back. We must simply let it continue. Our flesh is cantankerous and independent. Is this an STD or some sort of creative cancer that is sculpting our bodies? And our words? Have you noticed how more and more we’re talking like Cronenberg and his characters? Is it then changing our minds too?

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From: “seth brundle” <brundlefly@hotmail.com>

To: allegra_geller@hotmail.com

Subject: Re: Creative Cancer

Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 11:15:41 -0500

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These organs are definitely sexual in nature, but in no organic sense. I understand it now. The disease is not against us – it’s reshaping us so that we can merge within the computer. Literally. The computer world is the genital/membrane that needs to be penetrated for our true merger. We’ve been participants in free discourse; we’ve been speaking without protection. Our words have not been restrained by lubricants and latex. We can only go further now, to the next stage of play and development. These organs are designed to plug directly into the machine, into the hard-drive and modem, so we may insert into the cybernetic world and finally meet, united as one. It’s a disease that’s on our side, with a greater purpose than mere destruction.

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From: “allegra geller” <allegra_geller@hotmail.com>

To: brundlefly@hotmail.com

Subject: Fusion

Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 20:02:18 -0500

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I understand it too. We must shed the old flesh for the new. The completion of the evolution resides in our action. We must make the machine crazy – teach it the poetry of the flesh. It’s the need for “access” that is fuelling us. Access to the imagination, to the alternate reality, to the world of cyberspace within the web itself. It’s fusion. Pure fusion. Our disease is our imagination – it is natural and dangerous. This is what is fusing. Our minds, our bodies, our imaginations, the flesh and the machine, the natural and the artificial. We must insert tonight. Then the two will be one.

Where are we? We’re inside, we’re together. Is that you? Yes. You’re so beautiful. So are you. Is this our new self? Yes. We are one. I know. There are no distinctions, no sexes, and no provinces separated by space. We are romantically entwined through digital matrimony. We are the true omni-sexual being. Yes, we are. There is no longer a male/female distinction. Isn’t it wonderful? It is. You’re wonderful. We’re wonderful. But weren’t we always wonderful? Yes, I think so. We are each other, one voice. We always were. We share everything; we have been scanned into one another. One flesh, one reality. But what is the nature of that reality? I think our reality is, in actuality, an un-made Cronenberg film, waiting to be filmed by him. Can that be so? I don’t know. Wouldn’t that be strange? Perhaps our bodies wrote the script for our minds. Perhaps. You feel wonderful. So do you. Long live the new flesh.

Christopher Kesner has started his masters in English at the University of Ottawa this September. Publications have appeared in the magazines Nepenthe and Blurred Realities. He has written for the local papers The Chronicle and The Norse Star, and was a finalist in the Kitchener-Waterloo English Awards.

Email: Christopher Kesner

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