The twilight language explores hidden meanings and synchromystic connections via onomatology (study of names) and toponymy (study of place names). This blog further investigates "name games" and "number coincidences" found in news and history. Examinations are also found in my book The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004).
"Synchromysticism: The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance." ~ Jake Kotze, The Brave New World Order, August 18, 2006.
Jim Brandon is the author of 1978's Weird America and 1983's The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit. Both of these books have had a long-lasting effect on the thinking of Forteans and synchromystics, first in articles and books, and now in blogs, podcasts, and digital visual works.
The Fayette Factor, as I have characterized it, was first documented by researcher and writer William Grimstad back in 1977. Grimstad wrote about it in an article entitled "Fateful Fayette," Fortean Times, No. 25, Spring 1978, and in his two books shown here - Weird America and The Rebirth of Pan - credited as being authored by "Jim Brandon," who we know as Bill Grimstad.
In 2018, Jim Brandon/William Grimstad resurfaced with the reissuing of a revised edition of his audio book from 1974-1975, Sirius Rising, which he gave a new subtitle, Mr. Downard and the Synchromystical Boson.
Before Brandon became well-known in Fortean circles for his classic books, he had created and shared with associates his now-long-unavailable and difficult-to-obtain tape of his interviews with James Shelby Downard (March 13, 1913 – March 16, 1998). Yes, it was a reel-to-reel tape.
Griffin gives a good overview of the entire contents of Siruis Rising tape, and there is no reason for me to repeat his words here. Griffin takes the reader along on the ride, and reminds us that Grimstad reinforces the definitions we are growing aware of ~ "Synchromysticism is the old study of 'name games' and 'Forteana,'" plus "All coincidences may have meaningful relationships."
Grimstad rightfully deserves to be one of the co-honorees for Top Synchromystics of 2018.
Following in the past tradition of receiving a small token acknowledging his award, Bill will be sent a cup with Lafayette and Washington on it.
Alex Fulton
Alex Fulton is the creator of Cryptokubrology on Twitter and the co-mastermind (in association with Robert Shawn Montgomery) behind various cryptokubrology contributions on YouTube and Facebook. (See their site here.)
During the fall of 2018, Alex Fulton began noting the Cryptokubrology hits were coming fast and furious.
Fulton further implied the cause behind this. The date 11/7/2018 "marked the beginning of the 237th month since Stanley Kubrick's death."
It's Oscar season, so perhaps it is time to talk of movies and violence again?
Events do not let us think otherwise. In the end, it is about Falling Down's "I'm going home," and The Wizard of Oz's "There's no place like home," isn't it? And the notion "to protect and serve" what is one's view of "home." It all stems from your homeland, your hometown, your 'hood, your building, your house, your automobile, or even your parking space.
Chapel Hill comes to mind. And L.A. too.
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On February 10, 2015, at 5:15 p.m., Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were killed in their home in Finley Forest Condominiums on Summerwalk Circle in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States.
The victims.
Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, a former car parts salesman, allegedly shot dead the three Muslim university students at point blank range, in their heads, before turning himself into police. Hicks had moved to Chapel Hill in 2005 from Bethalto, Illinois. His motive, allegedly, was not because he is anti-Muslim, but because he was angry because of an ongoing parking space dispute. However, additional information from his first wife notes that Hicks was obsessed with watching "incessantly" the 1993 film Falling Down starring Michael Douglas, about a divorced lawyer who loses his job and embarks on a shooting rampage across Los Angeles.
We've heard of this before.
Before George Hennard crashed his truck into Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, on October 16, 1991 and sprayed it with gunfire, he had watched a documentary video at home about a similar mass murderer, James Huberty, who killed 21 people at a California McDonald's on July 18, 1984. ~ Loren Coleman, The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2003).
CNN religion editor Daniel Burke interprets Hicks' response to conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama's religion as "It's OK if we have a Muslim president." Source 1, 2, 3.
(In American English, especially as viewed as slang, the word "hick" is a derogatory term for an unsophisticated provincial person, usually said to be Caucasian, Midwestern- or Southern-raised, racist, and anti-semitic.)
Looking to analyze films like Falling Down, it opens up an entire area of film study.
Doing this, a reviewer once observed that filmmaker and professor Thom Andersen
...pushes the issue of de-humanization, of symbolic genocide, further. A venture such as the Michael Douglas-fronted Falling Down presents the case of a white-collar, WASP-y male who, abiding no more of an interminable traffic jam, deserts his car and, trekking across Los Angeles, essentially loses his mind, though not his sense of entitlement. ~ Peter Moysaenko ~ 12.7.2009
Synchromystics, Forteans, and twilight language translators watch motion pictures on a different level than most moviegoers. They observe everything. Not just the plot. They look beyond the obvious. They experience the settings, the scene, and the sequences with new eyes. So too, it appears, do architectural students, film buffs, and cityscape fans. A deep, powerful, rarely seen documentary looking at film, analyzes movies on this level.
I've made it no secret for years that the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and films have a special meaning to me and others.
The Ennis House and Vincent Price appeared in House onHaunted Hill.
Michael Douglas' 1989 yakuza movie Black Rain also used the Ennis House. Source.
The Snowden House was built by Lloyd Wright, eldest son of Frank Lloyd Wright. The house was used as a shooting location to depict the home of Ava Gardner in Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator.
Director Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) - at 169 minutes -is a genius synchrocinematic visual essay. If you have not viewed and digested it, you should. Here's a sample and some thoughts:
Los Angeles, Thom Andersen’s hometown, has figured, it seems, for most of its existence, as a misunderstood mutant, a territory without definitive identity, despite now serving as residence to nearly four million people. A McDonald’s restaurant in the City of Industry remains forever closed to the public, but functions exclusively as a set for commercials. The Bradbury Building has been cast as a Mandalay locale or as the headquarters of an East Coast newspaper. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House has provided context for such varying visions as that of Blade Runner, The House on Haunted Hill (a cheesy Vincent Price joint), and a Ricky Martin music video. Hollywood refuses to take Los Angeles for what it is, Andersen insists, if the professionals that make up the movie machine have any clue about its essence to begin with. Hollywood denigrates what should represent the pride of Los Angeles’s eclectic architectural scene, casting its Modernist and International style homes as dens of iniquity, the mansions of gangsters and drug lords, rather than centers for evolved living....
We are bidden to watch not as Hollywood expects us to, but with voluntary attention, getting past the expertly dressed leads and zeroing in on the more elemental concern of setting. After all, there’s no story in a vacuum, and as the trumpeted notion of country, the notion of property over country, reminds daily, a life’s nothing without a home. ~ Peter Moysaenko ~ December 7, 2009.
As Andersen notes in his documentary, and I have too, the films containing FLW-trained architect John Lautner's homes are frequent targets of attention too.
The clean bold lines of John Lautner’s famous houses are hard to resist for moviemakers. The most famous houses are the Elrod House, which was Willard Whyte’s crib in Diamonds are Forever, the Chemosphere used in Body Double, the Goldstein House featured in The Big Lebowski, and the Schaffer House, which offers a luxurious repose for A Single Man. Source.
Personally, I taught a weekly 3 hour long documentary film course, for 23 semesters, from 1983 to 2003, at the University of Southern Maine. Sorry to know Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) appeared after my course ended. I would have loved to screen it for my students.
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Movies in order of appearance in Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself(2003).
(I wish someone would do I similar list, from his documentary, of the names of all the architects and the buildings mentioned in his film.)
The Crimson Kimono (1959) Pushover (1954) He Walked by Night (1948) Nocturne (1946) Pushover (1954) The Strip (1951) Out of Bounds (1986) Hickey and Boggs (1972) The Glimmer Man (1996) They Live (1988) Out of Bounds (1986) The Thirteenth Floor (1999) Blade (1998) The New Centurions (1972) Brother (2001) 52 Pick-Up (1986) Blade (1998) The Million Dollar Hotel (2001) Night on Earth (1991) Safe (1995) The Thirteenth Floor (1999) The Glimmer Man (1996) Boyz N the Hood (1991) The Takeover (1994)
2001 filming Swordfish East of Eden (1955) Rebel Without a Cause (1955) The Music Box (1932) Mr. Blanding Builds His Dreamhouse (1942?) Zabriskie Point (1970) The French Connection (1971) To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) The French Connection (1971) L.A. Bounty (1989) Rising Sun (1993) Hollywood Calvalcade (1932) A Muddy Romance (1913) Putting Pants on Philip (1928) What Price Hollywood? (1932) This Gun for Hire (?) The Blue Dahlia (1946) Detour (1945) Safe (1995) The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990) Escape from L.A. (1996) To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) Alien from L.A. L.A. Confidential L.A. Wars L.A. Bounty L.A. Vice L.A. Crackdown Fashionably L.A. L.A. Crackdown II L.A. Story Out of Bounds (1986) Hollywood Boulevard (1976) Hollywood Confidential Volcano
The City as Background A Star Is Born Nobody Lives Forever The Damned Don’t Cry What! No Beer? (1933) Three Smart Girls (1936) Dragon Seed (1944) Babbitt (1934) The Public Enemy (1931) The Street With No Name (1948) China Girl (1943) The White Cliffs of Dover (1944) D.O.A. (1950) Indestructible Man Marlowe (1969) Blade Runner (1982) Murder in the First (1995) Wolf (1994) The Replacement Killers (1998) The Karate Kid III Black Rain Female (1933) House on Haunted Hill (1958) Vuelve (1999) music video Blade Runner (1982) A Passion to Kill (1994) The Thirteenth Floor (1999) Timestalkers Black Rain (1989) Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf House on Haunted Hill The Terminal Man Blade Runner Timestalkers Bugsy (1991) Nick of Time (1995) To Live and Die in L.A.(1985) Bugsy (1991) Mike’s Murder (1984) The Way We Were (1973) Under the Rainbow (1981) Species (1995) Blade Runner Union Station The Replacements Killers The Morning After (1986) The Net (1995) The Morning After (1986) The Outside Man (1973) The Rookie (1990) Why Do Fools Fall in Love? Miracle Mile Panic in the City (1968) The Big Sleep (1946) Rebel Without a Cause (1955) The Net Night of the Comet Dead Connection The Glimmer Man The Adventures of Ford Fairlane Heartbreakers (1984) To Live and Die in L.A. Dead Homiez (1997) To Live and Die in L.A. City of Industry The Learning Curve (2001) Nocturne (1946) Deep Cover (1992) The Limey (1999) Heat (1995) Marlowe (1969) Cobra (1986) Kalifornia Cobra (1986) Death Wish 4: The Crackdown Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) To Live and Die in L.A. Jackie Brown Heat (1995) Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) To Live and Die in L.A. The Damned Don’t Cry The Night Holds Terror (1955) The Replacement Killers L.A. Confidential (1997) Why Do Fools Fall in Love? (1998) The Marrying Man (1991) The First Power (1990) Why Do Fools Fall in Love? Twilight (1998) The Big Lebowski (1998) Body Double (1984) Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) Die Hard (1988) Rising Sun (1993) Impulse L.A. Bounty Valley Girl The Terminator Hollywood Boulevard Repo Man Predator 2 Nick of Time Anywhere But Here City of Industry Breathless (1983) Clueless (1995) Hickey and Boggs Two Minute Warning (1976) Invisible Invaders (1959) Hollywood Confidential (1997) Demolition Man Escape from L.A. The Great Los Angeles Earthquake Earthquake (1974) The Great Los Angeles Earthquake (1990) The War of the Worlds (1953)
Earthquake (1974) Airport (1970) Escape from L.A. (1996) Volcano (1997) Independence Day (1996) Armageddon (1998) The War of the Worlds (1953) Earthquake
The City as Character
Double Indemnity (1944) L.A. Confidential Death Wish II Mildred Pierce (1945) The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) Shadow in the Sky Till the End of Time (1946) Act of Violence (1949) The Next Voice You Hear (1950) Shadow in the Sky (1951) The Next Voice You Hear Rebel Without a Cause (1955) The Big Sleep (1946) The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947) He Walked By Night (1948) Kiss Me Deadly (1955) The State of Things Targets Little Caesar (1930) Hollywood Canteen (1944) Kiss Me Deadly (1955) The Exiles (1958) Flareup (1969) Messiah of Evil (1973) Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) Bachelor in Paradise (1961) The Disorderly Orderly (1964)
Messiah of Evil (1973) Armored Car Robbery The Atomic City (1952) Johnny Eager Suspense Xanadu (1980) Zabriskie Point (1970) Into the Night (1985) Farewell, My Lovely (1975) Bunker Hill The Glenn Miller Story Kiss Me Deadly Criss Cross (1949) Shockproof (1949) The Unfaithful (1947) Indestructible Man Kiss Me Deadly The Exiles Omega Man (1971) Night of the Comet (1984) Virtuosity (1995) The Outside Man (1973) 110/220 (1994) Out of Bounds (1986) 110/220 (1994) Out of Bounds (1986) Sudden Impact (1983) The Birds (1963) Vertigo (1958) Saboteur Psycho (1960) Annie Hall (1977) Venice/Venice (1992) The Loved One (1965) Point Blank (1967) The Trip (1967) Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) Tarzan and Jane Regained… Sort of (1963) L.A. Plays Itself (1972) The Outside Man (1973) Zabriskie Point (1970) Model Shop (1969) Flareup (1969) The Exiles (1958)
The City as Subject
Chinatown (1974) There Goes My Baby (1990) Chinatown (1974) Cutter’s Way (1981) Chinatown (1974) Freeway (1996) The Outside Man (1973) Midnight Madness (1980) Breathless (1983) Sunset Blvd. Falling Down (1993) Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) Bachelor in Paradise (1961) The War of the Worlds (1953) Sins of the Night Heartbreakers (1984) Repo Man (1984) American Me (1992) Blade Runner (1982) L.A. Confidential (1997) Dragnet (1954 movie) Dragnet (tv series) Dragnet (1954 movie) Dragnet (tv series) Unlawful Entry (1992) Terminator 2: Judgment Day The Player (1992) The Choirboys (1977) The Black Marble (1980) The Glitter Dome (1984) The New Centurions The Black Marble The Blue Knight (1975) Predator 2 (1990) The Terminator (1984) Cobra Tango & Cash Lethal Weapon (1987) Internal Affairs Heat (1995) Strange Days (1995) Unlawful Entry Falling Down Nails The Glimmer Man (1996) Short Cuts (1993) The Long Goodbye (1973) L.A. Story (1991) A Woman Under the Influence (1974) Love Streams (1984) Hanging Up (2001) Grand Canyon El Norte (1983) The Exiles Bush Mama (1975) Bless Their Little Hearts (1983) Bush Mama (1975) Killer of Sheep (1977) Bless Their Little Hearts (1983)
If you are a Fortean or want to be one, take delight today in the first beginnings of a uniquely intellectual American and global movement.
We measure a celebration, beginning anywhere. This one seems as good as any other.
The Fortean Society was founded on January 26, 1931: 1-26-1931 - 1-26-2013 = 82 years.
Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 – May 3, 1932)
Fort's four published nonfiction books are: The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932).
But my liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidence?
~ Charles Fort, the first modern synchromystic
The Fortean Society was started in the United States in 1931 during a meeting held in the New York flat of Charles Hoy Fort in order to promote the ideas of American writer Charles Fort. The Fortean Society was primarily based in New York City. Its first president was Theodore Dreiser, an old friend of Charles Fort, who had helped to get his work published. Founding members of The Fortean Society included Booth Tarkington, Ben Hecht, Alexander Woollcott (and many of NYC's literati such as Dorothy Parker), and Baltimore writer H. L. Mencken. Other members included Vincent Gaddis, Ivan T. Sanderson, A. Merritt, Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller. The first 6 issues of the Fortean Society's newsletter Doubt were each edited by a different member, starting with Theodore Dreiser. Tiffany Thayer thereafter took over editorship of subsequent issues. Source.
Thayer contacted American author Charles Fort in 1924, and Thayer moved to New York City in 1926.
Thayer founded the Fortean Society (FS), but placed as its first president Theodore Dreiser, an old friend of Fort who had helped to get Fort's books published. Fort's involvement was minor. The first six issues of the FS's newsletter were each edited by a different member, starting with Dreiser. After those first six, Thayer took over editorship of all issues.
The mission of the FS, as noted by Thayer, was:
(1) To perpetuate the name of Charles Fort;
(2) To promote the reading of Charles Fort's books;
(3) To preserve Fort's notes and papers;
(4) To continue the work of gathering Fortean data; and
(5) To encourage dissent.
The FS regularly met at the Yorkville restaurant, the Brauhaus.
Here is what Fort wrote, famously, about his involvement in the FS: "I had nothing to do with this plan. I wouldn't join it, any more than I'd be an Elk." ~ Charles Fort to Theodore Dreiser, correspondence, November 19, 1930, as per Damon Knight's Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970; page 181).
The first members of the Fortean Society were the thoughtful, radical writers, actors, screenwriters, actors and thinkers of the early 1930s, before the darkness of Nazism and the Depression engulfed their lives. But even that would not stop the addition of important members; for example, Bucky Fuller was a founding member, who was made a life member after the publication of his Nine Chains to the Moon in 1938.
That the FS survived World War II spoke to an underlying appeal of the Fortean skepticism that it reinforced.
See below some images of the early founders.
Dorothy Parker
The founding members of Algonquin Round Table: (l-r) Art Samuels, Charlie MacArthur, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott.
Alex Woollcott, Heywood Bron, Frankn Asams, John Peter Tooley, Robert Benchley, George Kaufmann, Mark Connely, Robert Sherwood, Harold Ross and Dorothy Parker.
Theodore Dreiser
Booth Tarkington
Ben Hecht
H. L. Mencken
Vincent Gaddis
Ivan T. Sanderson
Abraham Merritt
Frank Lloyd Wright
FLW
FLW
FLW
FLW
Frank Lloyd Wright
Youthful Bucky Fuller
R. Buckminster Fuller
The Fortean Society ended in 1959, with the death of Tiffany Thayer. The legacy of the organization has mostly lived on in the lives of Forteans, like myself (the first Vietnam-era CO to base my alternative service on being a Fortean, with letters of support from Ivan T. Sanderson and Bucky Fuller directly addressed to my draft board). The experience of being a Fortean can be a very personal one. There are today hundreds of nonfiction authors and science fiction writers worldwide who call themselves Forteans.
Books like mine, dedicated to Charles Fort and Fortean thought,
populate the globe in 2013.
Various organizational incarnations of the FS have resurfaced, thanks to John A. Keel and Keel blog chronicler Doug Skinner, and in Edinburgh, Gordon Rutter. Publications, like the International Fortean Organization's INFO Journal of the Washington D. C. area and Fortean Times of London, England, follow in the direct footsteps of Doubt. Online Fortean news sites, the wave of the future, include the early weblocations The Anomalist, The Daily Grail, and The Fortean Times. There is a Fortean Wiki too. Even mildly skeptical but clear-headed locations, such as WhoForted and IDoubtIt, honor Fort in their content.
One measures a circle, beginning anywhere. ~ Charles Fort
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