Suicide.  Murder.  Intrigue.

These were the three narratives of Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan battling for public attention when I first began looking into this story in early-2008.  On a surface level, each reflects the proponent’s previously held notions about how society works, the degree to which the individual is empowered, and what constitutes order.  One can also superficially note that in many instances these narratives do not address each other, or even the same issues.  The most widely known suicide narratives, advanced by the likes of Kate Coe and Nancy Jo Sales, focused on the troubled, hugely flawed duo haunted by imaginary demons, hubris, and third-rate talent.  Alex Constantine’s murder hypothesis centered on how Blake’s connection to real-world money played a role in their lives.  Yet, it does not comment on possible mental state of the decedents.  Likewise, Coe and Sales offered speculation with respect to mental state, but quite openly dismissed the potential veracity of Jeremy and Theresa’s accounts, which sometimes detailed conflicts with people who can hold a grudge.  The intrigue story, which would dovetail into Theremy, took into account the facts of the case, yet, like Constantine, tended to give short shrift to the couple’s mental health.  Moreover, it dismissed Constantine’s connections in deference to its own, which centered on the activities of online parties and their attempts to spin the meaning of the tragic events occurring 10 July and 17 July 2007.

On a deeper level, each of these narratives address the same issue, although from different perspectives, knowledge backgrounds, and ideologies.  The conflict resulted in what Dr. Victor Turner (Anthropology, The University of Chicago) called ‘social drama,” or as Dr. Fred Fogo (Communications, Westminster College) put it, “a transcultural phenomenon by which cultures reveal their fundamental tensions, their meaning systems, and their relations to power.”

The story of Blake and Duncan reminds us of the old fable about the blindfolded wise men and the elephant.  Because each of these narratives looked at disparate aspects, and had different objectives, they predictably came into conflict with each other.  Yet, taken as a whole, there is something that unifies them.  Each directly addressed the relevance, accuracy, and dangers of so-called “conspiracy theory.” 

Each advocates a position on how conspiracy, as a concept, explains power.  The suicide narrative argues that not only does conspiracism fail to address any aspect of power, and consequently of reality, but that it also is a force destructive to the individual and to social order.  Ron Rosenbaum, in a 31 August 2007 post titled “Theresa Duncan, Jeremy Blake: What Hath Blogmania Wrought?” even went so far as to say:

They were strangled, driven mad by their own google abetted conspiracy madness. (all links are equal). And now their legacy is even more conspiracy theory about conspiracy theory.*

The murder scenario expresses the overall idea that it would be dangerously naive to believe that power protects, or maintains itself through passive means alone.  As American and British citizens we have spent a good deal of our tax moneys paying for personnel to train for and execute conspiracies in what we are told are hostile countries.  Assassinations were not an uncommon means for quelling opposition, especially if the putative enemy were treading close to sacred grounds.  And, as Constantine noted, the connections between the power that directs those forces, can very well be closer to us than we imagine.

The intrigue scenario, initiated in large part by dreamsend’s initial hypothesis (that Wit of the Staircase served as a portal to a very clever alternate reality game) and the reaction to it, averred that the true conspiracy is deeper than most can believe.  Moreover, such games aimed to disrupt the kind of conspiracy ruminations carried out by Blake, Duncan, the patrons of the Rigorous Intuition forums and others.  The type of “cognitive infiltration” proposed by Profs. Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermule would most likely be an ineffective means by which to “cure” (their word) ‘conspiracy theory.”  But a variation of their proposal, aggressive attempts to harass and frustrate conspiracy research, could very well work. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, each of these narratives has strengths.  But they also have glaring weaknesses.  The suicide story really dismisses Blake and Duncan’s true gifts and achievements, and instead gives us a stereotypical, almost urban legend understanding of suicidal ideation, not to mention an ill-informed, hackneyed notion of conspiracy research and inquiry. Moreover, it often carried with it a sometimes hidden, sometimes flagrant ideological bias that was (one could argue unfairly) hostile to Blake and Duncan.  The murder scenario offered no evidence to show that a crime--other than suicide--had taken place with respect to either Theresa or Jeremy.**  Not only did the intrigue scenario fail to reveal an ARG in WotS, but subsequent attempts to show government-sponsored online interference led to an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion among peers. 

Of course, the most glaring weakness among these narratives is that they’re inaccurate at critical points.  True, Duncan and Blake most likely took their own lives.  But it’s highly doubtful that they did it because they saw themselves as losers, or because they were deluded by insane beliefs, or because they suddenly realized their lives were a sham.  More likely causes would include the pressures they faced (real, imaginary and exaggerated), their frustrations, their sense of powerlessness, the psychological pain they endured, and the other sundry mundane vanilla reasons manifest in run-of-the-mill suicidal ideation.  Nothing at all really establishes murder to be the cause of death, and all evidence that we can see points elsewhere.***  Likewise, we can easily prove that Blake and Duncan really existed, and that they produced the works attributed to them. We can also demonstrate orthodoxies followed by a witch hunt mentality in the examination of their deaths. 

That each of these narratives contain grave inaccuracies shouldn’t come as a big surprise.  After all, proponents of each more often than not attempted to shout each other down, rather than listen and compare notes.  More important, some (not all) didn’t seem to realize that there were more than three wise men examining this particular elephant.  Family and close friends had profound insight regarding the histories, personalities and complexities that were Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan.  These voices were never silent, exactly, but often lost in the din.  These insights provide a context that depicts Blake and Duncan as something other than pixels on a screen, or a concept to fight over, or an ideological perspective to target and destroy.  At the same time, one can imagine that those closest to the couple might be somewhat befuddled by the scope and intensity of popular interest in their loved ones, the pair that “launched a thousand blogs” (or, in the case of The X-Spot, seemingly a thousand blog posts). 

One can argue that the general interest in Blake and Duncan arose because of the issues surrounding contested cultural meaning, an area that Theresa and Jeremy actively and wittingly engaged in.  And social drama theory offers us some help in understanding the divisions within society that spark contested meaning in terms of how we form our understandings and assess their veracity.  

The ‘breech’ stage, the point by which we notice something is wrong, really began when New York newspapers reported on the recovery of Blake’s body, with other papers in New York and Los Angeles picking up the story shortly after.  There was the open wonder about why a couple with so much to live for would take their lives.  Moreover, media-assisted biases about how "crazy" people are supposed to look and behave, conflicted with the less-spoken bias that such insanity doesn’t strike the attractive--a term that would apply to Blake and Duncan both individually, and collectively. 

The ‘crisis’ stage, where the story gets disseminated to a wider public, began with the first few posts on Rigorous Intuition, the interviews lined up by Coe, John Connolly, Laurie Jo Winer, dreamsend, and others.  It culminated on the web in discussion forums, and in such podcasts as SMiles Lewis’ Blue Rose Report, the publication of Sales’ “The Golden Suicides” the launching of Theresa Duncan Central, the Law & Order episode titled “Boogeyman,” and so forth.  It’s here where we clearly see the perceptual schism between what constitutes truth, and what constitutes a valid method for seeking it. 

Redress, or how we reacted to the news, varied here depending on (1) how we got the news, and (2) the tools available to us.  For the general public, especially those who learned about Blake and Duncan through the most accessible suicide narratives, redress took on the form of the couple’s condemnation, if there was indeed reaction at all.  For conspiracy researchers, redress meant digging deeper into not only the story itself, but the history of that story.  For many, it also meant undergoing the tumultuous disquiet of the Theremy phenomenon, and in many cases becoming disaffected and leaving the conspiracy cyberscene altogether.  The families attended memorial services.  Duncan’s estate has kept Wit of the Staircase up and running, where it attracts between 200-250 visitors per day.  Blake Robin (aka Baron von Luxury), a close friend of the couple, dedicated a website to Theresa, Sometime during March of this year, her mother, Dr. Mary Duncan, followed suit with her own Tumblr blog in order to counteract much of the early distortions and sensationalistic declarations attributed to her daughter.  In the page’s header, she writes:

On the night of July 10, 2007 I received the call that all parents dread...my daughter Theresa Duncan had died in new York, 600 miles away, and thousands of doubts, what-ifs and feelings of loss grief and guilt away.  She was 40 years old..

Over the next few weeks the story of a person that I did not recognize began to emerge in the press and blogs and the narrative of her life was largely forged by people who did not know her or who made their name with a sensationalist story with little regard for the truth or the consequences to Theresa’s family and friends, with devastating effect.

Five years after her death I will tell the story of Theresa as I knew her.  An incredibly intelligent, witty, talented, determined and complex person larger than life, flawed as we all are, with unlimited courage and moxie who enriched the lives of many with her humour, intellectual insight and generous spirit.

It’s possible that further redress came in the form of readers and friends who saw Wit of the Staircase as either a form of political activism, or art, or both.  If Blake and Duncan, per the credo of The Lunar Society, endeavored to foster change by “stimulating ideas, broadening debate and catalysing action,” or in other words by sowing the seeds of their idealism, then we can say that their efforts took root at least somewhere, as Baron von Luxury’s song and video “The Lovely Theresa.”  would illustrate.  Then too, a novel such as The Last Statue could also fall into this groove, with it’s allusions to the 1960s, cultural warfare (via the Hollywood film industry), Scientology (through Four-Pi, the offshoot of its offshoot), paranoia, Thomas Pynchon, Giordano Bruno, and so on.  It’s (third-person plural) authors say that they conceived of the novel as art, not as an ARG.  Following that idea, one could see it as a homage to Duncan’s methodology, and an of her idealism, If the point of viral art is to spread the influence of specific memes, then maybe Duncan’s work, and for that matter Blake’s, on Wit of the Staircase seems to have enjoyed a bit of modest success. 

As far reintegration, the last act of social drama, we have what seems typical in cases like this.  The most prevalent understanding of Blake and Duncan will most likely come from “Boogeyman,” Sales, Winer, Cole et al;  i.e., the story of shared madness.  For the most part, the issue of murder and conspiracy is off the table.  For those who suffered through Theremy, redress came in the form of more serious distrust.  For the survivors, reintegration takes the form of celebrating the lives and works of Theresa and Jeremy, and in defending their legacy.

Of course, anyone connected to this story will tell you that it’s highly unusual in a number of respects.  So it should come as little surprise that there’s a twist of social drama that might force us to adapt Dr. Turner’s original model for this case.  As of now, I have nothing better to call this additional stage other than ‘re-reintegration.’

Coe’s conclusion that “Many read Duncan’s words online, and most thought she was glamorous, brilliant, brave, bold, erudite. She was all those things--but those attributes didn’t win in the end,” contains more than a hint of irony.  I won’t say that Coe is wrong, here.  But I would see this sentiment as somewhat premature. 

I didn’t post this series back in 2008, because I thought tensions were too raw.  Last fall, I thought that enough time had passed by for things to have mellowed out.  Of course, I was wrong.  The interest in not just Theremy and its aftermath but in Blake and Duncan, albeit latent, remained very much intact, ready to express itself at the drop of a post.  I doubt very seriously if all has been said about these two, on the Internet or in other media.  Consequently, the work they left behind will continue to stoke debate, and possibly inspire, for some time to come.  While Coe would have already designated the lives of Blake and Duncan for the loss column, it would appear that the couple still has a few at bats left.

There are other ironies afoot, here.  In the aforementioned post titled “Young, Sexy and Dead,” Duncan wrote:

The Times of London gives a superficial examination of the culture's fascination with young, good looking talents who died prematurely. To me the trend is troublingly exploitive--sacrifice technology disguised as art.

According to the article, a crop of new films is set to widen an already disturbing trend of discounting and using young people and artists. These films are thanato-porn for the aging and the existentially evasive. ****

Wouldn’t you know, Sales optioned “The Golden Suicides” in 2009. So, such notables as Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho), Gus van Sant (My Own Private Idaho) and Gaspar Noe (I Stand Alone) are now making a movie that would cast Blake and Duncan as the very thanto-porn stars Theresa railed against in life, in effect giving weight to her observations. 

And the irony doesn’t end there.  Like Alice Underground, The Golden Suicides seems to be in, if not turnaround hell, development limbo.  K5 Film, a German production company based in Munich, is listed as one of several involved with the project.  The German government does not consider Scientology a religion, but rather a “commercial enterprise with a history of taking advantage of vulnerable individuals and an extreme dislike of any criticism.”***** Earlier, I posed the hypothetical question of whether or not a film explicitly critical of Scientology could ever be made in Hollywood.  If it can't, then making it outside of Hollywood might be the answer.  As Ellis mentioned in a previously cited interview, he re-wrote the story because he found Sales’ initial version, a narrative in part researched by a long-term contract employee of the Church, to be inaccurate.  One could guess that a more honest version could be at least mildly critical of Scientology, thus necessitating production in a nation where the Church cannot counter with labor strife.  Of course, finding distribution, especially in the English-speaking world where Scientology has considerably more clout, could prove to be more of a challenge.  One has to wonder if this has discouraged potential investors, who might only envision it having a run on the European continent, a few independent art houses in the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand and Australia, and hardly anywhere else. 

Perhaps, at around this point, one can imagine Duncan and Blake laughing their wings off.  After all, they didn’t seem too keen about thanto-porn to begin with.  Most likely, they would have loathed being a part of it.

One thing the movie demonstrates is something that seems ironic, but isn’t.  According to early reports on the Ellis script, Jeremy is the film's main protagonist.  In fact, the character of Theresa Duncan will apparently make her entrance sometime during the third reel.  Many netizens have wondered why discussion of Blake and Duncan tends to center around the latter.  Granted, here and other places on the ‘Net, we seem to talk more about such things as WotS and Chop Suey than we do Glitterbest and Sodium Fox. 

I mentioned this earlier in the series, but while discussion of Theresa rules cyberspace, discussion of Jeremy dominates traditional mainstream media.   This was true in life.  It was even more true in death, as Blake’s artworks continued to garner attention.  These later articles tended to mention Duncan in passing if at all.*******  So one might find it tempting to see the cyberattention on Duncan as a type of balance between two partners, each of whom inhabited the realm of the other, but became more of a force on their home turf.  Because she was a fellow blogger, whose interests included popular culture and conspiracy, perhaps those of us doing similar work, in a similar medium can more readily identify with her. 

After all, I can write a conspiracy blog post just fine.  I can even write a movie script.  Conversely, I can’t draw a straight line using a ruler.  Blake could probably draw straight lines freehanded while asleep in the middle of a  blinding snowstorm. .

Currently, Duncan lies at Mount Loretto Cemetery, Lapeer, MI; Blake at Garden of Remembrance Memorial Park; Clarksburg, MD.  So it would seem that these two; a couple so close that like Romeo and Juliet, or Bonnie and Clyde, it’s hard to think of one without thinking of the other; a duo who not only collaborated on shared artistic visions, but who felt perfectly comfortable answering each others’ phone messages and e-mails; that a couple so intimately linked together in consciousness, will spend eternity separated by 546 miles. 

Of course, in cosmic terms, that’s not so far.

_________________
*Rosenbaum himself explored the possibility of suicide/murder in a 3 August 2007 post titled “Did I Hear Jeremy Blake’s Last Words?” Somewhat apologetically, he chided himself and others for contributing to the conspiracy speculation in “Theresa Duncan, Jeremy Blake.” 

**Someone commenting on a previous post also noted errors in the connections made by Constantine.  For example, he stated that Catherine Seipp was married to a man named Dennis Seipp.  According to most sources, however, her husband’s name was Jerry Lazar.

***Then too, one would have to question the effectiveness of such a tactic in stopping conspiracy investigations.  When conspiracy researcher Jim Keith died in September 1999, under comparatively bizarre circumstances, his colleagues not only expressed their doubts as to the cause of his demise, but, for a time, looked more earnestly into his research, which included, among other things, the investigation into the possible assassination of journalist J. Danny Casolaro, and the story that led to his death. 

(Keith died from complications that arose during knee surgery.  Casolaro, in his capacity as a reporter, investigated what originally started out to be the simple theft of a law enforcement software application:  The Prosecutor’s Management Information System, or PROMIS for short.  But the theft turned out to have ties to many other criminal activities involving multinational corporations, government and quasi-government organizations.  Hence, it’s known in parapolitical circles as the Octopus Conspiracy.)

****Thanatos personified death in ancient Greek mythology.

*****From a 2007 paper written by Steffi Menzenbach and Désirée Hippe for the Scientific Services staff of the German Legislature titled “Rechtliche Fragen zu Religions- und Weltanschauungsgemeinschaften [Legal Questions about Religious and Confessional Organizations.]  The authors wrote this during a time when some legislators were attempting to ban Scientology altogether.  

******Wit of the Staircase’s Sitemeter showed a spike of over 800 visitors on what would have been Blake’s forty-first birthday (4 October 2012).  Three weeks later, on Duncan’s forty-sixth birthday (26 October 2012), visits topped out in the neighborhood of 240--in other words, a normal day’s worth of traffic for the site.  At the time,  I wondered if some hard copy source made mention of Blake’s birthday, while no comparable source mentioned Duncan’s, hence the disparity in birthday traffic. 

‘You know, Ombindi’s eyes rolled the other way, looking up at a mirror-image of Enzian that only he can see, ‘there’s. . . well, something you ordinarily wouldn’t think of as erotic--but it’s really the most erotic thing there is.’
–Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

Allusion 7: Suicide

The above cited passage comes from a conversation between Joseph Ombindi and Oberst Enzian, two of the expatriated Hereros living in a postwar Germany.  The erotic act they discuss here is suicide.

Ombindi represents a group called The Empty Ones, who want to thwart the seemingly endless exploitation by colonial masters by completing the genocide they began under Von Trotha.  The Hereros believe this will get them even with the European overlords because after the death of the last Herero, there will be no one left to lord over.

This and many other allusions to suicide found in Gravity’s Rainbow, have nonsensical aspects--for starters, the thought that one can wreak revenge on an enemy through total self-elimination; let’s face it, after you’re gone there’s always someone else to oppress.  Pynchon depicts suicide as escape from preterition.  Gottfried understands the honor of being chosen as the 00000's sacrificial lamb, for example. And the surviving Hereos feel passed over.  Ombindi’s desire for self-genecide consequently makes him, and the other Empty Ones, part of something larger, part of belonging to some great action to frustrate evil.

The case of the Herero at least touches upon something discernable as suicidal ideation.  If you can recall (and you’re quite forgiven if you can’t) I began this series with a discussion of suicidal ideation, using an example from my own life in conjunction with psychological studies on self-murder.  In cases where someone alleges suicide, it's important to look at ideation:  patterns of thought and expression indicating the victim’s feelings of frustration and powerlessness, coupled with an indication that he or she might find relief in the notion of controlling death.  In many cases, just the fantasy was comforting.  But as my acquaintance, J., could tell you, were he around to tell anyone anything, the fantasy can grow stale. 

Quite unlike J., Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake did not escalate the fantasy into action in an obvious way.  Neither had, as far as I know, a prior history of suicide attempts, or were so much as caught red-handed acting out a suicidal fantasy.  Duncan’s death seemed especially shocking, with some friends doubting very seriously that she could do such a thing.  After all, they reasoned, she was a fighter.  In a 25 July 2007 post on Rigorous Intuition titled “Imitation of Life,” Wells mentioned that Duncan had no known history of pill-popping, and several other vague or seemingly odd items that cast suspicion on the suicide story.

Perhaps this, along with the paucity of publicly available information, and the timing (before Duncan could post “The Devil and Dick Cheney”) is what led to speculation on other possible causes of death, including murder and conspiracy.  Authorities said little in Blake’s case, and much less with respect to Duncan’s.  While it’s possible that the scene of each had evidence of foul play, there’s no indication that it did in the open sources that we can find.  Perhaps more telling is the response of the two families most directly involved.  One would figure that if there had been any evidence of homicide, even if not reported in the press, then the couple’s families would have pursued that possibility--one would expect aggressively.  True, one can more easily concoct a murder scenario for Blake,*   Yet, nothing at all indicates this.

According to the best source I have at this time, Duncan died from acute diphenhydramine poisoning.  If true, she died of cardiovascular collapse within two to eighteen hours after ingestion.  More important, since there is no evidence of murder, there are two plausible scenarios left:  accidental death and suicide.  And for Duncan, one can clearly discern suicidal ideation, albeit in hindsight.

In the aforementioned February 2006 interview appearing in LAist, Adrienne Crew asked Duncan if she, the native mid-westerner via the East Coast, preferred the threat of earthquakes to that of hurricanes and long winters.  Theresa replied: “Like Nietzsche's quip about suicide, the thought of a massive earthquake has gotten me through many a long night.”

Sure, Duncan made the statement tongue-in-cheek.  Yet, suicidal ideation often finds expression in jokes and pranks.  Looking at Wit of the Staircase, we can see not only fascination with suicide and early death, but her identification with the deceased.  The examples are too numerous to list here, but some of these would include “The Snake Goddess of Detroit,” (24 September 2005) a post about the death of Sleeping Bear’s daughter, a woman literally too beautiful to live in peace; “Young, Sexy and Dead,” in which she griped about the Hollywood exploitation, sensationalism and overall superficial examinations of “young, good looking talents who died prematurely,” (27 August 2005) apparently feeling that they were missing the point; and “Night Falls Fast: Ten Books by Authors Who Offed Themselves,” (23 July 2005). In “Pink, Unthinking, True,” (1 June 2007), she posted a poem by Dr. Sarah Hannah, who had taken her life in May that year.  Constantine wrote that Blake and Hannah had a relationship at one time.  I’m not sure that’s true.  If it were, it would merely represent one more point of identification.  After all, she and Duncan were both creative, brilliant, assertive, passionate, and forty years old at the time of their deaths.   

“The Glass Coffin,” (9 November 2005) focused on the harassment of actress Jean Seberg (left).  Seberg committed suicide in 1979.  Those close to her reported that her mental health became precarious after a period of FBI harassment due to her support of the Black Panthers during the 1960s.  The initial harassment triggered a cascade of personal mishaps, starting with a miscarriage.  Years later, declassified documents confirmed the Bureau’s targeting of her for harassment by actively spreading a (false) rumor that she had become pregnant by one of her black militant suitors, a serious accusation in a Hollywood where appearances are everything. 

According to their associate, Christine Nichols, Blake and Duncan privately complained of Scientology harassment in 2004, a year before Theresa posted "The Glass Coffin."  One could easily draw parallels between Seberg and Theresa, as both complained of hounding by shadowy forces. Unlike Seberg, however, neither Duncan nor Blake's estate could provide smoking gun evidence of that harassment. 

In addition to the numerous references to others who were young, sexy, tortured and dead, one could imagine that the pressures they faced could have left Duncan with a sense of powerlessness.  She had come no closer to getting Alice Underground in production than on the day of its option.  She couldn’t will it into existence.  One can sense a certain frustration with cultural gatekeepers, who--let’s face it--most often gravitate toward the shallow and flee in droves from the profound.   It would also seem that Duncan staked quite a bit on achieving success in the world of arts.  But as she aged, she might have feared that patron muses might have seen her as a less attractve investment--after all, they’re really looking for talent that can relate to a considerably younger demographic.  Then too, there’s the question of what one can do to earn a living, once the dream has, in all practicality, passed one by--especially if she has no college degree.

In short, one could speculate that Duncan felt powerless to ply her talents and skills to an endeavor that would support her and where her abilities would be of use.  If so, then the prospect of getting involved with the George Pelecanos/Cary Woods project Nick’s Trip might have been the last straw.  Maybe the producer and Pelecanos would change their minds.  Maybe the studio would insist on another director instead of Blake.  Maybe it would face the same turnaround hell as Alice Underground.  In any case, Blake and Duncan had to rely on numerous others to give them approval.  Thus, the more people involved with the movie, the less control they could exert.  Worse, they had already been down the road with this particular story.  Their former friend, Bradford Schlei, recommended Jeremy to direct the movie when he helmed the project.  At the time, Blake, Duncan, Schlei, and his girlfriend Katherine O’Brien were friends.  But that friendship soured fairly quickly, thus hindering them from bringing the script to the screen. 

Speaking of Katherine O’Brien, her written statement to their mutual landlady, Sabrina Schiller, in support of the eviction proceedings against Blake and Duncan, contains the following passage:

Theresa was acting very strangely. . . . She was displaying jerking body movements; her face and hands were twitching. She continued to accuse me of being a Scientologist and part of a Scientology conspiracy to defame her.…… At times I would hear her cackling and hooting from the alley.

O’Brien’s declaration, if accurate, offers a chilling depiction of ataxia, a sign of cerebral dysfunction brought about by a thiamine deficiency.  It’s characterized by involuntary muscular movements in various parts of the body:  legs, face, hands, voice, and so forth.  One often finds it in those suffering from extremely acute alcohol poisoning, or severe chronic alcoholism.  Seeing that Duncan often wrote about alcohol consumption on Wit of the Staircase, one might imagine that the stresses that she and Blake had undergone during their final years in California, and their last few months in New York, might have induced them to self-medicate to a larger extent than those around them realized.  Then too, the pathology of alcohol abuse would also include impaired judgment and depression, something that would help explain suicide.

At the same time, a number of other things can cause ataxia.  Cranial trauma might.  So could viral infections, pesticide ingestion multiple sclerosis, and various medications.  Extremely high dosages of diphenhydramine, the main ingredient of Tylenol PM and other over-the-counter drugs, will also trigger ataxia. 

We assume Duncan made no previous suicide attempts, because no such attempts were reported or documented.  Perhaps it would be inaccurate to call them attempts.  Like my acquaintance, J., whose suicidal fantasies escalated into buying bullets, then a gun, looking at them on the table, and then one day loading the bullet into the gun, and then putting the gun to his head--mind you, with no intent of doing himself in at that particular moment--Duncan might have played the suicide game for quite awhile in secret.  As dreamsend rightly pointed out, diphenhydramine isn’t the most reliable way to commit suicide.  Yet, it’s a possible means to do so, especially when combined with alcohol.   One could suspect that Duncan tried this method at other times when ataxia became noticeable.  The point wouldn’t really have been to kill herself, but rather to give her the feeling that she could end the relentless anxiety and stress of her life if she so wished.  After all, J. didn’t want to die.   He wanted control.  He wanted relief. 

I would assume that Duncan’s family, along with the authorities directly involved in her case, have an adequate explanation of death that is far more reliable than I, or for that matter anyone else can speculate on, given the little bit that we can (or arguably should) know about this case.  But from the best available evidence, a murder conspiracy seems highly unlikely.  If forced to determine a cause of death, my first guess would be that Duncan started off with a drink or two, perhaps at the rectory, perhaps at the restaurant where she and Blake ate their last meal together.  She fretted about Nick’s Trip.  Would it suffer the same fate as Alice Underground?  Would it prompt more active surveillance and harassment by the Church of Scientology?  In the uncertainty and anxiety, she played the suicide game, which this time included a note.  Of course, one has to escalate the action for the game to have the same effect.  At a certain point, it’s quite possible that Duncan began to push the envelope past the point of no return, and submitted to whatever consequences befell her.

In other words, it seems to me that Duncan’s death was somewhere along the continuum of suicide and accident.  My guess would be closer to the former.  And that’s all it is.  A guess.

Unlike Duncan, suicidal ideation is very easy to discern in Blake.  In fact, concerned friends formed a suicide watch after Theresa’s death.  Many of the pressures Duncan faced in life, he faced as well:  the fear of being blacklisted away from his dreams of directing or collaborating with her on projects, the fear that he was aging past the point where Hollywood gatekeepers would find him relevant; the fear of surveillance and harassment by anyone from the Church of Scientology to the foster father of his ex-girlfriend, Anna Gaskell.  But Blake had a stressor that Duncan did not: namely, the suicide of the person closest to him, in a relationship that seemed, according to friends interviewed by reporters afterward, abnormally close.

Blake’s mother, Anne Scwartz Delibert, put it more succinctly than anyone could, when she told reporters, “Jeremy didn’t die from love, but of pain, and an inability to find a way out of it.”:

Anyone who has endured the death of a sweetheart, or even a cherished ex, can tell you it hurts.  It hurts real bad.  Frankly, I cannot fathom how widows and widowers make it through the worst of the pain.  While time might mellow the pain after years, it won’t go away completely.  The only thing you can do is live with it.

But here, there’s the added pain in that the death was a “probable suicide.”** Blake’s mom once characterized Jeremy as Theresa’s caregiver.  If he were the nurturing sort, Blake might have felt undeserved guilt at somehow failing her, which isn’t an uncommon feeling experienced by families in the wake of suicide.  Then too, people can harbor serious anger for loved ones who offed themselves.  They sometimes see it as a betrayal, or and abandonment.  Add the pain of simply being without her.  Add to this the fact that he could never get her back.  Add in the realization that all the grand plans they made–from future artistic collaboration to their dreamed-of lawsuit against the Church of Scientology–were now in tatters.  Throw in his empathy with everything she suffered through, and what you have in toto is a pain that, as far as he could see, would never end and never abate.  I don’t think it’s the case where he wanted to die.  He wanted relief. 

Some friends expressed disbelief that Blake would choose to end his life by walking into the ocean.  To them, it seemed cliche.  Well, cliche or not it does have its advantages as a means of suicide.  The air temperature on Rockaway Beach the night of 17 July 2007 was seventy-eight degrees Fahrenheit.  The water was considerably colder.  Without the insulating effect of clothing, the water would have cooled his body enough for hypothermia to set in.  He would have lost consciousness, and then afterward drowned none the wiser. 

The nature of the press and Internet buzz revolving around the lives and deaths of Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan lay partly in how they died, and whether they caused their deaths as opposed to someone else.  Okay, so they were both interested in conspiracy research.  And when people die young, and presumably with few facts available, and they had a web presence that included paranoia, one could, or perhaps even should, expect others to raise questions about the generally believed facts, suppositions and assertions.  But here, as far as we can see, there’s little to speculate about, and what there is seems to confirm the very sketchy story spun out by local papers in New York and LA.  

What’s really at issue, however, isn’t really how they died.  For many the public fascination with Blake and Duncan had little to do with what they did or produced in life.  The social drama here concerns what possible meanings might lay hidden in their demise.

 _________________
*A fiction writer, for example, could write a scenario in which someone kidnaps Blake, takes his clothes and ID, puts them on a passable double who walks into the ocean, and comes back ashore some distance away from where he entered.  Meanwhile, the victim can be dumped overboard in deep water with the realization that hypothermia will cause him to lose consciousness before making it back to shore.

**Police had yet to determine Duncan’s cause of death at the time of Blake’s passing.

Edited for accuracy and clarification 7/3/13.

The depiction of Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan given by the likes of Kate Coe, Laurie Winer, Nancy Jo Sales, or for that matter the producers of Law & Order presumes an organic, jointly shared pathology between the two, a folie à deux.  True, we don’t really associate happy, well-adjusted couples with double suicides.  And many of their actions seem strange, perhaps psychotically paranoid.  In this vein, we hear stories about how their private conspiracy rants came across to friends as so much quixotic tilting.  And it’s quite possible that the couple exaggerated some of the events occurring in their lives to make a case for what turned out to be very strong beliefs. Most important, even those who dismiss the double-suicide explanation as unlikely (e.g. Alex Constantine, or early on Jeff Wells and Ron Rosenberg) would have to concede that the couple died in a state of severe emotional distress.

Yet, when you look more deeply into the circumstances that Blake and Duncan said they encountered, and weigh them against the statements of others who made nearly identical claims, and have court-quality evidence to prove them beyond a reasonable doubt standard, then what emerges isn’t the idea of an insular couple feeding off of each other’s madness so much as it is the portrait of a couple reacting to pressure.  Some of these pressures might have been imaginary, exacerbated by Blake and Duncan’s innate creativity.  Some of them could be exaggerations, gross distortions or mistaken perceptions.  Yet, some of these pressures could very likely be real, while others are quite obvious.

One could expect that the couple faced many of the mundane pressures that affect us all.  Everyone has bills to pay, conflicts within relationships, worries about the future, and so forth.  Add to that the pressures inherent with embarking on occupations that are highly competitive, and to a large extent dependent not on effort or merit, but rather on the perception and arbitrary acceptance of others for success.  The economic model of the entertainment industry in general, and the movie industry specifically, illustrates this--very few movies are greenlighted, fewer are actually made, and only a handful of those make it into theaters.  But some, including celebrities, have hinted at something else going on in Tinseltown, something darker, something that’s scary for them to mention by name.  They seem to indicate that something is putting an extraordinary pressure on talent in front of and behind the camera, something that often results in abreactions (or in the vernacular, meltdowns).  As Dave Chapelle explained in an Actor’s Studio interview with James Lipton on 10 November 2008:

[Addressing an audience of aspiring actors] Like you guys are students now, so you’re idealists.  But you don’t know about what art and corporate interests meet, yet.  Just prepare to have your heart broken....

Martin Lawrence was a guy who showed everybody you could make it from DC to Hollywood....When we did Blue Streak,  we were promoting it, Martin had a stroke.  He almost died.  And then after that, I saw him, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, Martin, are you okay?’  And he said, ‘I got the best sleep I ever got in my life.’  That’s how tough he is.

So let me ask you this: what is happening in Hollywood that a guy that tough will be on the street waving a gun , screaming, ‘they are trying to kill me’?  What’s going on?  Why is Dave Chapelle going to Africa?  Why does Mariah Carey make $100 million deal, and take her clothes off on TRL.  A weak person cannot get to sit here and talk to you.  Ain’t no weak people talking to you.  So what is happening in Hollywood?  Nobody knows.  The worst thing to call somebody is ‘crazy.’ It’s dismissive.  ‘I don’t understand this person, so they’re crazy.’  That’s bullshit.  These people are not crazy.  They’re strong people.  Maybe the environment is a little sick.

As Chapelle suggested, it might make sense to look for pathology not only in Blake and Duncan, but also the industry they attempted to become a part of.  We hear about the likes of Lindsay Lohan everyday, because the gossip press covers them with considerable vigor.  We can only imagine how often this sort of thing happens to people out of the limelight: the aspirants, the writers and other behind-the-scenes people. 

Anyone who has served any time in the entertainment business can face a number of unique pressures that don’t apply completely or at all to other endeavors.  As strange as it sounds, Duncan and Blake were most likely aware that in Hollywood they faced the additional pressure of age discrimination.  Because of the nearly myopic focus on the youth market, it’s exceedingly rare for a screenwriter to sell their first work at the age of thirty-five years or older.*  Likewise, rookie directors tend to be younger as well.  And, as conventional wisdom would indicate, onscreen talent tends to have a particularly short shelf life. 

The Church of Scientology has denied putting any pressure on Blake and Duncan.  But since the organization (1) has a very long proven history of harassing perceived enemies--they even gave it a name (the ‘fair-game policy’), (2) the couple had a documented relationship to one of its most prominent members, and (3) one of its employees (John Connolly) played a substantial role in crafting the most visible narrative about them, we cannot have complete faith in that assertion.  It’s quite possible that the Church did in fact put some pressure on Blake and Duncan, although how much would be a matter of speculation.  I say this because the actions Blake and Duncan described, as implausible as they might seem for someone who never experienced them, were fairly tame compared to such documented cases as Paulette Cooper’s.  In other words, people have offered solid evidence to support the notion that the Church engaged in similar action against its critics.  And their stories have found corroboration from former members responsible for initiating the ill treatment.  More important, Blake and Duncan’s behaviors exemplify the specific reactions that the ‘fair game’ policy was designed to induce.  These tactics included  “pushing [the target’s] buttons,” or in other words deliberately stoking their emotions.  They also included the goading of targets into discrediting themselves.  Bizarre, but real occurrences related with high emotion often impresses the listener as wild-eyed lunacy.

Cooper’s case illustrates how pressure such as that exerted by the CoS could lead to a target’s downward spiral.  A new friend turned out to be a Scientologist who spied against her.  Her framing on federal criminal charges, and other undoubtedly wild-sounding stories that would later prove true, alienated many of her older friends, isolating her from the support she really needed during that time, and frustrating her efforts to get effective help.   In her words, the whole experience left her angry and depressed,

One could speculate that Blake and Duncan were spooked by a number of odd occurrences, which not only included what they described as surveillance, but also other things, among them a dead cat left in front of their home.** They also suspected that animosity from the Church resulted in the permanent shelving of Alice Underground, and subsequently any other efforts they might engage in.  They were in an unenviable position of not knowing friend from foe, or when or where the next provocation would occur.  And in such a situation, their fear of Scientology could have generalized.  At that point, the couple might have assessed their lives for other potential threats that might have been related to the original source, making them hyper-vigilant to trouble from anyone, from anywhere.  Dr. Reza Aslan’s appearance in their lives, at that particular moment, could have seemed to them a threat stemming from Blake’s past connection to Iowa:  namely his ex-girlfriend, Anna Gaskell.  Aslan could have appeared particularly intimidating to them if he actually mentioned Duncan’s FBI file, even if it was within an innocent context.  In addition to Blake’s previous courtship of a woman whose father they regarded as having Mafia ties, Duncan’s political activism could have made them both a target as well.

The pressures Blake and Duncan faced in Los Angeles could have led the couple into a state of never knowing (or never sure of) which way was up.  There could have been a lot of confusion, again stoked by fecund imaginations.  Yet, the couple’s actions aren’t so much consistent with two people who happened to lose their minds at the same time, or who wallowed in self-pity, but rather two people who genuinely felt as though they were under the gun for many reasons.

Moving to New York, and making friends with Fr. Frank Morales, would seem to have provided the couple with a change of venue and a sympathetic ear.  But, as noted earlier, they both suspected a continued surveillance against them, as witnessed by Fr. Morales. 

Worse, Morales himself became another source of stress, according to his then-girlfriend, artist Melinda Hunt.   Contrary to what Nancy Jo Sales wrote in her Vanity Fair piece, Hunt said that on the night of Duncan’s death, she and Morales were about to go out for dinner.  By the time she arrived at the church to pick him up, she saw the rectory surrounded by emergency vehicles and personnel.  Hunt contended that the story given by Sales in “The Golden Suicides.” pretty much lied about how Morales came to find out about Duncan’s death, and exaggerated the priest’s closeness with the couple in order to portray him as an heroic figure.   But Hunt’s contention that the couple had recently begun avoiding him would indicate that they saw him too as a potential threat.

Sales countered that Hunt was not present at the rectory on the night of Duncan’s passing, and made other “bizarre fabrications.”  Father Morales backed his ex-wife’s version of events in an e-mail to The Society of Mutual Autopsy (SoMA) website.  Regardless of whoever’s version is more accurate in this she-said-they-said argument, the bickering between Hunt, Sales and Morales hints at the possibility that things between these three were contentious before the couple’s deaths.  It’s possible Blake and Duncan just wanted to distance themselves from Morales for reasons that were more personal than political: at a moment of high stress in their own lives, perhaps they wanted to stay clear of this situation.  Then too, one might guess that, given the priest’s own political and parapolitical beliefs, the couple might have felt themselves pushed into someone else’s conspiracy agenda,: specifically, the 9/11 Truth movement that Fr. Morales actively supported.

I have no opinion about the gossip and counter-gossip surrounding Fr. Morales’ love life; which side is telling the truth and which is lying is more their concern than ours.  Given Blake and Duncan’s sensitivity to possible conspiracies against them, the legal complications of Morales’ actual wife, and the possible effect her credit problems might have had on the clergyman,  one wonders if Jeremy and Theresa considered the good padre  a possible plant, an agent provocateur guided by the NYPD to derail the 9/11 Truth Movement into irrelevancy, with help from agents representing Lyndon LaRouche.  Perhaps Blake and Duncan speculated that his ex-wife compromised him, forcing his cooperation in exchange for leniency--for her, or perhaps even himself.***

Again, I have no reason to think this is the case.  Whether it is or not isn’t the point.  Before he ever met Blake and Duncan, others accused Fr. Morales of subverting the Truther Movement, and of being guided by LaRouche.  The point here is whether or not the couple had become aware of these accusations, and gave them even momentary consideration.  If they did, it would make sense for them to maintain a respectful distance, while they sorted out whether or not Fr. Morales was truly on their side.  Even if they didn’t, then the fervor and contention within the 9/11 movement might have made Fr. Morales an additional stressor for a couple who already had more pressure than they could handle.


______________________
*In 2011, I was asked to join in a class action age discrimination suit filed against Hollywood studios by a law firm representing screenwriters thirty-five and older.  Had I opted to participate in the suit, my take in the eventual settlement would have been about $400 and change.

**A number of Scientology critics have alleged that the Church left dead animals and pets in front of their home in order to intimidate them.  You don’t have to look too far to find examples.  Many Blake and Duncan detractors tend to ignore these claims.  Some have instead accused the couple of killing the animal themselves and blaming its death on Scientology agents.

***Although many sources cite convicted con artist Antoinette Millard as Fr. Morales former wife, an anonymous source has informed me that she was not the Reverend's wife, but rather a woman whose alias, Lisa Walker, was the same as Mrs. Morales.  

Here, it would appear that Ford and others (including me) have been incorrect about the identity of Morales actual wife at the time of Blake and Duncan's demise.  It would seem that the rumor of a false connection might have circulated before 7/10/07, so one could still wonder if Duncan and Blake might have gotten wind of it, and regarded the inaccurate datum as true.  

...and is far as I'm concerned we're still watching the sixties unfold culturally.

--Theresa Duncan, interview with Adrienne Crew, LAist (6 February 2006)

Allusion 6: The “We Conspiracy” vs. the “They Conspiracy”

In one passage toward the end of Gravity’s Rainbow, Roger Mexico, the statistician tracking protagonist Philip Slothrup for the White Visitation, gets fed up with the conspiracy against the American Lieutenant, and the man behind it:  namely, Dr. Pointsman.   Mexico catches Pointsman in a meeting with other Intel brass, and disrupts the proceedings by leaping onto the conference table, cussing out Pointsman in front of his peers, and pissing on everything and everybody within reach. 

Mexico somehow manages to elude security, and after wondering around aimlessly for a few hours winds up at the house of his friend,  fellow White Visitation conspirator Pirate Prentice.  To Mexico’s surprise, Prentice is not alone.  Pirate explains to Roger that they have formed a counter-conspiracy against the White Visitation, and presumably other evil Intel operations, which they dub the “They Conspiracy.”  Prentice then urges his friend to join them in the counter-, or “We Conspiracy.”

Back in the day, Mae Brussell believed that the purpose of conspiracy research, or “conspiracy theory,” was to inform political activism.  Otherwise, it simply becomes a form of prurient entertainment, or what she called, “a peep show.”  Yet, the idea of using conspiracism itself as a means of activism is somewhat novel.  Wit of the Staircase drew upon many different aspects of popular discourse, including “conspiracy theory.”  And one could argue, after reading it cover-to-cover, that Theresa Duncan,  examined each of these topics, if not always consciously, with an ideological consistency that ultimately constituted a form of political activism.

Framing this blog were frequent mentions of her and Jeremy Blake’s membership in the Los Angeles Chapter of the Lunar Society.  Kate Coe doubted that it was little more than a fantasy, dubbing it “probably non-existed.”  True, there’s no real evidence that Blake and Duncan were ever involved with this, or any other quasi-secret society.  But by dismissing the very real existence of the Lunar Society, Coe and others might have missed the point of its appearance on WotS.  The society’s stated mission consists of “[influencing] change through stimulating ideas, broadening debate and catalysing action,” and is almost identical to that of the nineteenth century organization that originally bore the name. 

Translation: it’s a “We Conspiracy.”

As I’ve noted before, it’s possible that Blake and Duncan could have sent in an application form along with the twenty-five quid processing fee.  It’s even possible they could have been accepted.  It’s equally plausible that the Lunar Society rejected their application, or that they never applied at all.  Yet, whether they were official members or not wouldn’t really matter.  Simply by declaring membership in the organization, the two would also have to have endorsed the Lunar Society’s stated mission. 

As far as catalyzing action, one’s hard pressed to find an example of that in the lives of Blake and Duncan, unless we’re prepared to think the unthinkable.  So let’s hold off on that for now. 

For now, let’s look at WotS, Blake’s artwork, Duncan’s video games, and the couple’s collaborations in light of the other two points of that mission statement.  Duncan had a knack for encouraging debate, and during her online life took considerable scorn for it.  Likewise, the reason why so many hard copy sources wrote, and continue to write about Blake is because his work inspired critique, and subsequently debate.  According to Coe, WotS didn’t have so much readers as it did fans.  Blake too had his fans.  This would indicate that their ideas about storytelling, and about painting, both of which fully utilized the possibilities afforded by the latest technology to stretch beyond the media’s traditional limitations, were not only innovative (at least for their day), but also sufficiently stimulating for a dedicated audience.  More important, it seems clear that Duncan and Blake deliberately and persistently attempted to think “outside-the-box” in order to draw attention to their works, and thus precipitate dialogue about its context and meaning.

Assuming that Blake and Duncan had no contact with the Lunar Society, their work is nevertheless consistent with its stated agenda.  That’s why it doesn’t really matter whether they officially belonged to it or not.   Even if they were the only two members in a self-declared separatist non-dues-paying faction of the LA. Chapter, then Duncan is still giving the reader substantial reason to think that she and Blake are engaged in their own “We Conspiracy,” one that others could join online if they wanted by complementing, or dialoguing with their work in their own forums.

On 28 March 2007, Duncan gave an example of broadening debate in a post titled, “Baby Boomer to Wit: Fuck You.”  Here, she quoted an e-mail from a Baby Boomer reader, who accused her of hypocrisy.  This reader, whom Duncan referred to as “a smart lady,” “Blank Blank,” or “BB” (an acronym she also used to reference “baby boomers”), wondered how Duncan could constantly condemn those of the Swinging Sixties generation, yet at the same time regard their cultural artifacts with high reverence:

Your posts about how the boomers should all die right now to make way for the younger folks really perplex me. They should have the Who's ‘My Generation’ playing in the background--oh, wait, that's a Boomer anthem. The ‘you old people must die’ rant is so classically adolescent that every time you bring it up, it makes me question my otherwise state of fandom. I think to myself, ‘Why am I reading this punk?’ and then I think to myself, ‘Hold on a minute. If I recall correctly, the Wit, pigtails notwithstanding, is pushing 40 herself...’  Also, if I recall correctly, the Wit is a Freudian ... so I wonder ... do you hate mommy and daddy? Is that what this is all about?

What do you propose, exactly? Soilent Green? Have you got a black pill you're selling?

And then you'll turn around and get all wet in the panties about Yoko freaking Ono.

Duncan’s response acknowledged her loyalty not only to Baby Boomer culture, but more importantly her loyalty to Baby Boomer idealism, which flourished during the 1960s.  The problem with that generation, as she saw it, didn’t lay in their beliefs, ideas or the historical efforts that effectively and permanently changed society, but rather the relevance and efficacy of their methods in the present day.  In other words, she chided that generation for resting on its laurels, when in fact its work had not yet finished.  Worse still, because of their large surviving numbers, along with their political and intellectual stagnation, she feared that their cultural dominance hampered future generations from completing the social change that the Baby Boomers could no longer accomplish, due to either enfeebledness, complacency or both:

Basically, I agree that most of what I enjoy in culture is the product of the Baby Boomer era, and that many of the freedoms I thought I was going to be able to take for granted are the result of fights that this generation undertook.

The problem, as I see it, is not the Baby Boomers themselves, but the media's continuing focus on them despite their near total irrelevance as a bloc that is going to move the culture forward even one inch more than they already have....

The problem that I have as a person born immediately after this generation, is that there are 20 million Gen Xers and something like 50 million BBs. It's money and demographics that are muffling people like me and taking up all the space as much as the BBs wide middle aged asses.....

I also think that the BBs strategies for cultural upheaval and protest were studied closely by Strangeloves like Kissinger and Rumsfeld and their Black Pill think tanks. We have to fight the same motherfuckers that you guys did, but if we use the known strategies that worked back when, we are dead.

The battles of the nineteen sixties are not yet remotely won, and it's the BBs patting themselves on the back like they were that is deadly......for me and you.

It’s clear here that Duncan saw political struggle in terms of cultural warfare.  The countercultural/anti-war movement that ardently, and at great risk, took action against “the system” in its youth had degenerated into “The Me Generation” of young adulthood.* At the same time, Duncan argued, its immensity stifled the ability of succeeding generations to use new tactics to finish the movement their parents began.   She likewise conceded that if her own generation became similarly ineffective, then it would be up to future generations to shove their elders aside, snatch the torch, and run with it:

Younger people were indeed born to kick my pigtailed ass, and if our terminally ailing democratic culture is swept along on their own sexy, slender thighed demands for freedom and money and sex and art and music that are all their own, then whoopeee!

One can easily argue the merits of Duncan’s assertions. Although demonstrations and protests might have provided cheap and effective public relations in the less oligopolistic media structure of the 1960s, one can hardly say that they are just as effective now, especially since authorities can herd such activities off thirteen miles away in “Free Speech Zones,” where for a few square feet the US Constitution actually applies, albeit far from the eyes of a camera.  Yet, many activists still engage in this tactic because, well, its what they’ve always done.  And the very powers they protest have had four decades in which to find this and other strategies aiming at nullifying such efforts.

As for Wit of the Staircase, the specific form of activism one can discern is alluded to in such posts as “The Minds that Shaped Los Angeles, Vol 2,” and “‘L’ Is for Loser," where she references philosopher Jean Baudrillard.  His work centered on semiotics, the study of signs, symbols and meanings.  As I stated earlier in this series, Duncan’s knowledge of Baudrillard’s philosophy indicated her awareness of how one can interpret, and thus change, the networks of meaning that constitute popular consciousness by changing the nature of a signifier’s relationship to others, or perhaps by adding new signifiers.  

In cultural warfare, the ability to determine meaning becomes paramount.  In ways somewhat similar to Neural Linguistic Programming, we live in a mediasphere (in substantial part, Hollywood-driven) that re-organizes and subsequently depicts reality in such ways that our political and personal choices are limited and quite predictable.  This happened neither suddenly, nor by accident.  While one can read about the origins and growth of the public relations industry in many sources, the point is that both government and industry have become more dependent upon spin.** 

Spin often relies upon language, or more accurately linguistic nuance, the reshaping of phrases and common words in order to minimize or maximize their impact.  For instance, the words ‘politically’ and ‘correct (or incorrect)’ have long been used together in official American discourse.  During the eighteenth and nineteenth century the phrase ‘political correctness’ would apply to something that was simply accurate in a political sense: e.g., Lansing is the capitol city of Michigan.  Other nations (e.g. the USSR) used the term to denote adherence to official party lines.  Leftists of the 1960s and 1970s used the term as a self-criticism, a means of preventing orthodoxy, or dogma amongst themselves.***  But the term’s current usage really originates in the 1990s, specifically in the 1990 book Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus by Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative political commentator working with The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, and a former policy advisor of President Ronald Reagan. 

The term, as used by D’Souza to denote what he perceived as leftist hypersensitivity to racism and sexism, gained currency with other right-wing pundits, commentators and think tanks.  And one can see the usage of the term to negate, or dismiss inclusiveness to various outgroups or minorities in nullification of previous understandings forged in 1960s political activism.   The effect of such a term would be to reclaim the right of those with political, economic or cultural authority to define otherness, reducing people to (most often) their most demeaning stereotypes, thus arguing their unsuitability in more influential spheres of public life. 

Of course, such terms as ‘political correctness’ would only be a start.  We’ve since become acquainted with such pejorative terms as ‘the race card’ and ‘feminazi’ which can effectively stifle any discussion of racial and gender prejudice before it starts.  And one could argue that popular culture itself has become more martial, with an increasing belief that “the enemy” is always evil, always deceptive, always violent, always unreasonable, always psychopathic, often Islamic, and always deserving of his or her ultimate fate, which is usually pretty gory.

Then again, if one is paranoid (in the good, slap-on-the-back-welcome-to-the-club sense), he or she could also see the propagation of manipulative language and themes as a form of “They Conspiracy.” For a person like Duncan, who herself had a history of traditional political activism, but who also had a knack for language and storytelling in non-traditional ways utilizing the latest media technology, sowing the memes countering or subverting elitist spin might have constituted a fitting “We Conspiracy,” especially if her readers were sharp enough to pick up on what she did and run with it on their own.****  And unlike her previous experiences, nobody could sensor Wit of the Staircase by putting it in turnaround hell, as was the fate of Alice Underground, or by simply declining patronage.  With WotS, Duncan could express herself with complete autonomy, free of cultural and intellectual gatekeepers.

If the progress made during the 1960s was largely cultural, and a countermovement came about through verbal and iconic language planted by some hacks working for such right-wing think tanks as the Heritage Foundation and the AEI, then she, or for that matter any one of us, could use the bully pulpits of cyberspace to plant our own semiological seeds, help them take root, and cross our fingers that they grow.


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*While some attributed this ideological shift simply to growing up and losing youthful idealism, many cultural historians point to the number of economic, personal, political and physical pressures that induced the Baby Boomer generation to withdraw from direct, active struggle.  A 2002 documentary titled The Century of the Self offers an excellent and brief historical analysis of this trend.

**I highly recommend Dr. Stuart Ewen’s (Media Studies, Hunter College) insightful PR! A Social History of Spin, which included an interview with Edward Bernays, regarded by many as the Father of PR.  You can read more about Bernays in this earlier post on The X Spot. 

***One example given by noted rock critic and Redstockings co-founder Ellen Willis: “in the early '80s, when feminists used the term ‘political correctness,’ it was used to refer sarcastically to the anti-pornography movement's efforts to define a 'feminist sexuality.”

****An anonymous researcher–whom I’d be happy to give full credit to for this and other information–alerted me to this article published in Wayne State University’s student newspaper on 2 February 1987.  It reports that Duncan, as Chair of the WSU Young Socialists club, worked with local activist and politician Jerry White to call attention, both on-campus and off, to the Iran-Contra scandal, and some of the potentially unexamined consequences of it. 

Figure 1.  WSU article.

Warning: Spoiler Alert.

I’m gonna make it to heaven.
Light up the sky like a flame.
Fame!

I’m gonna live forever.
Baby remember my name. 

–Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford, “Fame” (from the movie Fame)

All that attention they gave you.  It’s called lovebombing.  It happens in all cults.            

–Dee, The Golden Ganesh

Allusion 5:Election vs. Preterition
One theme of Gravity’s Rainbow, reiterated time and again, revolves around who is special or important, and who isn’t.  In some respects this taps into the Calvinistic bent towards Election, the belief that God only chose a few for salvation, and condemned the rest to hell. Yet, it’s hard to tell who’s who in this novel, allegorically speaking. 

For example, the novel features a group of German soldiers, the Schwartzkommando, expatriated Hereros who once lived in the Sudwest colony (present-day Namibia).  The real-life history of the Hereros includes their near genocide at the hands of their supposed German protectors in 1905.* While one can look at the Schwartzkommando as survivors of this holocaust, maybe chosen by fate for some greater purpose, there is a feeling among some of them that they were “passed over;” or in other words damned to have survived, only to produce more victims for German colonialism.  In fact, one of them, Joseph Ombindi, feels they ought to complete the genocide themselves not necessarily through suicide but by actively aborting any future generations.

Another example: Gottfried, an effeminate German soldier bullied by his comrades, is chosen by his CO, Capt. Weissmann, first as a sex slave, and later as the sacrificial lamb enclosed and launched in a special rocket, number 00000.  Almost needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), if a guy were actually inserted into a rocket, managed to survive the explosions required to set the damn thing off, not to mention the g-forces upon launch, or the hypothermia while in flight, then he’s still pretty much toast once the missile makes impact upon land.  In other words, here, and in the case of Ombindi, we see a link between being chosen, being the special one, and death; specifically suicide.

There are other items that signify damnation in Gravity’s Rainbow that are unambiguous–for instance, there’s a brief history of one of Lt. Slothrup’s ancestors, a pig farmer, who had an especially good rapport with his animals, despite the fact that they were destined for slaughter--a pretty obvious metaphor for damnation.  Yet, we’re often left to wonder sometimes who really is the chosen one, and if being one of the few’s all it’s cracked up to be.

You don’t have to delve very deeply into Wit of the Staircase to see a lot of celebrity names, or the mention of iconic figures.  Some, like Kate Moss and Sofia Coppola, seem to crop up again and again.  In many  respects, this is to be expected.  After all, WotS openly delved into popular culture as one of its main themes.  Yet at the same time, celebrities represent a type of elect.  Many wish to be a star.  Some will even spend (or waste, if you prefer) considerable money, brains and time to become one.  Yet, few are chosen for the role.  And the thing is, like the Calvinistic Doctrine of the Elect, the will of the gods hath no why.  Success, especially in older electronic media (e.g., movies, television), relies heavily on the acceptance by cultural gatekeepers--the producer or director who casts you for the breakout role; the studio that buys your script and then greenlights its production; the record label that inks you to a deal; the gallery that decides to showcase your visual art; the publisher who prints your novel, and so on.  What this pre-audience decides to take under its wing isn’t necessarily the best or the brightest or the most innovative.  Rather, the elect largely consists of the most easily marketable.  And marketability itself can be assessed in many different ways:  from focus groups to the whim of a single executive.  Then too, when referring to someone like Coppola, we could also see election in terms of bloodline, the convenience of being the scion of the elect.

What drives the wannabe is the belief that achievement will result not only in adulation and material wealth, but also a certain type of immortality.  William Shakespeare (whoever he was) died almost four hundred years ago.  Yet, his work remains current, adapting to new historical eras, media and technologies.  We evoke his name daily, and just about every person who speaks English–and a lot of folks who don’t–still know who he is.  He’s not forgotten, nor will he be any time soon.

On the other hand, many of us would be hard pressed to name a single one of our ancestors who existed during Shakespeare’s time.  We all have them.  Yet, they are simply gone and forgotten to the point where their own families never knew they existed as autonomous individuals.

Okay, never mind that there are plenty of former mega-celebs who are as obscure as your Jacobean relatives.** The lure of immortality, the escape from preterition, is arguably a key reason why fame seekers seek fame.

And its on this level that I find Wit of the Staircase’s focus on the cultural icon interesting.  After all, this is a milieu to which both Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan aspired. 

An anonymous researcher floated to me the idea that The Church of Scientology might have, at one time, attempted to recruit Blake and Duncan.  Moreover, the “choosing” of Blake by one of its members, rock star Beck Hansen, represented a step in this direction.  While highly speculative, I agreed that this made sense.  After all, Scientology is in the practice of scoping out Hollywood’s up-and-comers, and enticing them to join their religion.  Consequently, if the wannabe achieves their goals, in front of or behind the cameras, Scientology claims credit for their success--or more accurately, they get the star to make that claim for them.  Blake and Duncan had already received considerable press before arriving at Venice Beach, so they might have seemed like attractive recruits--in more ways than one. 

Then too, there’s the practice of “lovebombing,” which entails making the potential recruit feel that he or she is special.  It also includes impressing upon the recruit the idea that their cult, and their cult alone, recognizes that specialness.   Here, we have a couple who have put in a lot of time and effort in order to utilize their talents--his visionary, hers literary--to make a (hopefully positive) impact in Hollywood, and thus on humanity.  The fact that a celebrity initiates what seems to be a genuine friendship could very well have given them the impression that they were one of the chosen few who truly belonged in this world of fame and glamour.  If that weren’t enough, Duncan greatly admired the 1960s Warhol Factory, its history and its participants.  Beck happened to be the son of one of the Factory’s core people, specifically Bibbe Hansen.  One could imagine that in addition to becoming close to one star, and his celebrity wife, the prospect of making another connection to a scene that she idolized would have been particularly enticing to Duncan, and therefore Blake.  There’s not another cult in this world who could possibly lovebomb like that.

Sacrifice is usually a prerequisite for fame.  In addition to working on one’s craft, or in Hollywood one’s physical appearance, the wannabe might feel compelled to forge alliances that he or she would otherwise feel are distasteful, or in some cases downright abusive.  Current celebs often use the phrase “sell my soul to the devil” when discussing the mechanism of fame with interviewers.  While one cannot say that the Church of Scientology and Beelzebub are one and the same, we can nevertheless see the attraction that some aspirants might have for it, given its purported power in the movie industry.

The phrase “selling one’s soul” is, of course, a metaphor for sacrificing something extremely precious.  It’s in this vein that many talk about the infamous Hollywood casting couch.  While it would seem to be something on the level of a cliche, or perhaps an urban legend, such contemporary celebs as Susan Sarandon, Thandie Newton, Helen Mirren, Charlize Theron and Gwyneth Paltrow have all complained about how, early in their careers, someone pressured them to sell, if not their souls, their bodies for a chance at stardom. 

During the winter of 2011-2012, the press reported on a number of allegations that the casting couch not only applied to men and women, but to children as well.  In a November 2011 interview, former child star Corey Feldman told ABC that his fame came directly from the casting couch.  Furthermore, Feldman blamed the pedophilic casting couch for the pathology that ultimately claimed the life of his friend, Corey Haim.  A few months later, Todd Bridges claimed likewise in his 2012 autobiography Killing Willis:  From Diff'rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted, and gave some indication that his friend and co-star, Dana Plato, also underwent the same ordeal.*** Bridges’ and Feldman’s allegations seemed to find affirmation in the high-profile December 2011 arrest of Martin Weiss, an agent/manager specializing in child actors.  As reported in the Los Angeles Times, this occurred in the context of other arrests, dating back to 2004, for abusive casting couch behavior.  In wake of this news, another former child star Paul Petersen (The Donna Reed Show), the current head of A Minor Consideration, an advocacy group for child actors, strongly suspected that the abuse extended into child pornography.

Given Duncan’s references to Project MONARCH in Wit of the Staircase, the idea of sexual exploitation of the children and adolescents takes on a new significance in light of what appears to be a hidden part of fame.  One could consequently read into these references a concern about her and Blake’s own integrity and innocence.   After all, she made a name for herself by writing content catering to girls, from video games to Alice Underground.  If she herself faced pressure to submit to the sordid, but apparently traditional, initiation of the casting couch, we could see her interest in MONARCH perhaps not only as a declaration of a fact--for it would appear that she truly believed such a program existed--but also as a metaphor for her experience in California.  

As mentioned in the previous post, someone also called my attention to the post dated 1 May 2006, which quoted sixteenth-century writer Philip Stubbs:

I have heard it credibly reported (and that viva voce) by men of great gravity and reputation that of forty, threescore, or a hundred maids going to the wood overnight, there have scarcely the third part of them returned home again undefiled.

This represented speculation, by the informant, on the context of statements Duncan allegedly made to Katherine O’Brien on 9 May 2006.  As O’Brien stated in a formal complaint against the couple, Duncan knocked on the door to her place one night, saying, “Jeremy and I have started a club where we’ve found a bunch of old men and we’re letting them fuck us in the ass, and we wanted to know if you wanted to be a part of it.”  While some might have interpreted this statement to be conspiracy conjecture on Duncan’s part, a reference to some secret society initiation, it’s possible that the statement, if accurately accounted by O’Brien, might actually refer to some pressures she and Jeremy were facing that had nothing to do with arcana, or the CIA, but with Tinseltown itself.

________________________
*The demogracide, orchestrated by Lt. General Lothar von Trotha of the German Imperial Army, and by colonial Gov. Heinrich Goering, father of Herman Goering, resulted in the deaths of up to 100,000 Hereros and 10,000 Namas. 

**If you don’t believe me, Google the names Olive Thomas, Annette Kellerman, or Florence Lawrence.  All three of these women were at one time as famous, or arguably more famous, than most contemporary celebrities.

***Bridges specifically said that Plato introduced him to heterosexual relations when he was twelve, and she was fourteen, making it clear that she had engaged in such activity before.

Edited 8/1/13

Allusion 3: Profundity vs. Absurdity.
Absurdity, with respect to existentialist philosophy, denotes the condition brought about by the conflict between human need, and the indifference of the cosmos.   Part of this human need pertains to seeing meaning where there is in fact only chaos or pure randomness.  While the existentialist might be the first to say, “Shit happens,” someone critical of that perspective would feel that everything has a deeper meaning.

One of the themes we come across in Gravity’s Rainbow is the notion that everything does in fact have a deeper meaning.  In a postmodern sense, maybe its because we imbue meaning onto everything–after all, there’s no master narrative in postmodernism that would construct reality on an external basis.  In terms of the plot we have ample reason to know that what Slothrop suspects is a conspiracy against him is far greater than even he can imagine.  Yet, in a subtle way, we see repeated instances of what we might consider divine justice.  For example, in one scene, Slothrop escapes a raid by donning the uniform of his nemesis, Maj. Marvy, a racist American Army officer who for unknown reasons has chased Slothrop since the second book of the novel.  More divine justice:  because the Major no longer has his uniform, he has to wear Slothrop’s getup, which at this time is a giant pig suit.  The MPs take Marvy into custody believing he’s Slothrop, put him under anesthesia, and castrate him.

To put it bluntly, Thomas Pynchon is mocking the absurdity of absurdity here.

On Wit of the Staircase, you can find two links in the sidebar titled “Esoteric” and “Religion.”  In these two tags, you can get a sense that Duncan argued against randomness, or in philosophical terms offered a rebuttal of absurdity.  After all, she isn’t critiquing religion, nor is she discussing it in abstract clinical terms, like an anthropologist would do.  Instead, there are hints of passion, in defense of religion, spirituality, or the thought that there is an intelligence to creation.  For example, in a cut-and-paste post put up on 18 June 2007, she quoted literary theorist Stanley Fish as saying:

This does not mean either that the case for God and religion has been confirmed or that the case against God and religion has been discredited. (Despite what some commentators assumed, I am not taking a position on the issues raised by the three books; readers of this and the previous column have learned nothing about my own religious views, or even if I have any.) My point is only that some of the arguments against faith and religion –– the arguments Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens most rely on –– are just not good arguments.

Earlier in this post, she quoted Hebrews, Chapter 11, verse 1:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Perhaps more poignant, or chilling depending on how you look at it, is what Duncan posted approximately twenty-four hours before her death.  In “ Wit and the Warrior Heart: What Tarot Card Are You?” we learn that at some reading Duncan has pulled the Emperor Card. 

In the near future, you need to be willing and able to defend those you love. This may be the time for you to step up and be the authority figure to those around you.  It is time for you to be independent, to become your own person.  You may need to look at your relationship with your father, or your relationships as a father.

Not only do Tarot cards play a large role in the imagery of Gravity’s Rainbow, but in this case, knowing what is to transpire over the next twelve hours of Duncan’s life, we can see this as having a clear and profound meaning for her.  Hours after that post she and Blake would be meeting with author George Pelecanos and producer Cary Woods in order to discuss Jeremy’s helming of a film based on the former's novel, Nick’s Trip.  One could reasonably think that the tarot card post might have had something to do with the role that she intended to play that night. 

Allusion 4.  Hebophilia

While the theme of middle-aged men sexually preying on pubescent and post-pubescent girls comes through clearly in Vladmir Nabakov’s Lolita, the issue also constitutes a sub-theme of Gravity’s Rainbow.  In one pivotal scene, protagonist Slothrop has sex with Bianca, the twelve year-old daughter of his current paramour, a Weimar era pornstar who only hours earlier had engaged the child in an S&M show that sent a literal boatload of people into orgasmic ecstacy.

As noted numerous times in this series, Wit of the Staircase is also rife with allusions to hebophillia, often in conjunction with the putative Project MONARCH.  While to some extent one can see her concern about this issue as a response to what she suspected about Blake’s ex-girlfriend, Anna Gaskell, the recurrence of this theme led some to speculate whether or not Duncan herself suffered from sexual abuse.  One informant called my attention to a post dated 1 May 2006, another cut-and-paste job quoting sixteenth-century writer Philip Stubbs:

Against May, Whitsunday, or other time, all the young men and maids, old men and wives, run gadding overnight to the woods, groves, hills, and mountains, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes; and in the morning they return, bring with them birhc and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withal. And no marvel; for there is a great lord present amongst them, as superintendent and lord over their pastimes and sports, namely Satan, Prince of Hell....I have heard it credibly reported (and that viva voce) by men of great gravity and reputation that of forty, threescore, or a hundred maids going to the wood overnight, there have scarcely the third part of them returned home again undefiled.

The informant also pointed to the repeated reference to the Steely Dan song “Rose Darling,” which contains the following lyrics.

Rose darling come to me
Snake Mary's gone to bed
All our steaming sounds of love
Cannot disturb her in her night

Or raise her sleeping head
All I ask of you
Is make my wildest dreams come true
No one sees and no one knows

Because we know, from a later verse in the song, that Snake Mary lives in Detroit, we might infer a link between Snake Mary and Theresa’s mother, Dr. Mary Duncan, who lives in the general area of Detroit.  The lyrics here depict sexual activity during which Snake Mary sleeps through, and thus has no knowledge of.  Conceivably, the last time Theresa and her mother lived under the same roof was in her high school or early college years.

This doesn’t make a particularly compelling case that Duncan herself was abused during this time.  But it is consistent with a persistent theme of the blog, that culminates in “The Trouble with Anna Gaskell.”  While one can discern a second, more overtly political message in this allusion, part of the intrigue that resulted from WotS came from repeated references to the putative project MONARCH, which, as mentioned numerous times by now, served as a recurring theme.