Hieronymus Moondog Interview

Interview with Charles Webb, founder of Cinemorphics.

Have you ever used Cinemorphics yourself?

Do you mean have I ever created another persona for myself and used it in “real” life?

Yeah…that’s the question.

Couple of times, yes. The most recent instance of this involves a fictitious character named Hieronymus P. Moondog that I created and used in various pieces several years ago. On many occasions my friends have referred to me as Moondog, and in the past few months, I have "made appearances" as Moondog on the internet.

How so?

Several blogs and websites…created and written as Moondog. Also, I have gotten ordained as Moondog and plan to get an advanced degree as Moondog.

Ordained?

Yeah...as a Dudeist priest...


Buddhist priest?

Dudeist...Dudeist priest...the Dude, man...look it up...

Er...so your fictitious character has taken over and is on the loose…

I guess you could put it that way…what a trip!.

Do you think a fictitious character like Moondog can effectively operate in the real world?

I don't see why not. You are as fictitious as Moondog...how are you doing in the real world?

Uhhh...let's see (checks notes)...are you Moondog all the time now?

Don't want to answer that one, huh?...OK…I move in and out of character. I write as Moondog, and occasionally am in character as Moondog when I leave the house.

Is there a special Moondog costume?

Moondog and I dress pretty much alike.

Have other people done this…sounds kind of strange.

Yeah…lots. Check out the Cinemorphics blog. Some people even get apartments, I.D., bank accounts, and so on as their “fictitious” alter ego.

Didn’t Carlos Castaneda use this as one of his techniques?

Lots of people have done similar things for a wide variety of reasons…

But I thought that Castaneda…

No more talk of Castaneda. Why don’t you ask me about Andy Warhol?

What about Andy Warhol?

He did this in reverse…

What do you mean?

He found actors who looked like him, made them up, rehearsed them, them sent them out on the college circuit in the 60s. Of course, with him, you could never tell whether he was real or fake even if you knew it was the “real” Andy standing there.

You’re making my head spin.

Good. How do you know that you are the real you and not some made up you that turned out this way by chance and can be re-worked? Who is the real you…really?

Can we get back to the interview?

This is the interview.

Uhhh…let me look at my questions. Aren’t there legal implications?

Coward. (long pause) OK…It’s a boring question, but I’ll answer it. (another long pause) No…not if you aren’t trying to con somebody out of money. I mean…its common in a way. Many writers use pseudonyms and even do interviews and book signings in character. Same with musicians, actors…con men, of course.

Where can we find the writings of H.P. Moondog on the net?

Search “Satori Tango” and “Pin Dudeism”.

Strange titles. Can you tell us something about them?

Just do the search and read for yourself.

I didn’t mean to offend you.

No offense taken.

Are you Moondog now…or Webb?

I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Any advice if someone wanted to play around with this?

Read the blog and the sourcebook…”Who’s Asking?”(below) After you’ve done that, get back in touch.

Thank you Mr. Webb.

Rev. Moondog to you…

Thank you Rev. Moondog. Could I ask you just one more thing?

Sure.

How did you come up with the name Hieronymus P. Moondog?

I'll leave that a mystery for now...

Alchemical Conjuration Training

I have been asked on numerous occasions if Cinemorphics is a magical system. One of the early names I considered using for the approach and techniques for looking at and handling reality that became Cinemorphics was Alchemical Conjuration Training (Technique, Technology), so I guess I was looking at what I was putting together as a magical system all along. As these ideas developed, in my mind, what evolved was more of a pop therapy model (sometimes compared to NLP) or a role playing reality manipulation “game” like Second Life…only occurring in “ordinary” reality rather than cyberspace. But the magical system take on Cinemorphics …from the POV of Chaos Magic especially… seems as appropriate as these.

What Cinemorphics technology DOES when someone re-writes, re-acts, re-directs, re-produces one’s persona…when someone realizes the fictitious and malleable nature of the “self”…creates and thoroughly inhabits a new “self” and all that goes with it…including a new belief system…IS…at the same time…call forth a new reality…a new world…in which to live. It has long been realized…in the case, say, of manifesting one’s desires…that whatever new is manifested into one’s reality changes the entirety of that reality. For example, addicts who quit realize this…along with their families…and the “new world” of the person minus the alcohol or drugs is oftentimes not what the ex-addict’s loved ones expected or wanted. One change is accompanied by many others. So Cinemorphics…Alchemical Conjuration Training (the “real” A.C.T. as in Method acting) can “bend” reality to the will of the practitioner by evoking a new fictitious character (entity?) which the practitioner then inhabits (or is possessed by?). I have also used shape shifting and other metaphors for this process of transformation in the basic writings about Cinemorphics.


PHILOSOPHER'S STONE/HOODOO HEALING STICK

As is pointed out in these writings, though, this is not the whole story. Effectively exchanging one fiction for another is not what Cinemorphics…or Alchemical Conjuration Training…is, finally, all about. If one realizes that one’s persona, and indeed one’s entire worldview, is a fiction, an illusion…fun to play with maybe, but still an illusion…then one can…maybe…realize who (what?) one really is. In this sense, this “system” is like Taoist alchemy…The Secret of the Golden Flower…which was why I originally thought of using alchemy as part of the name to begin with. (more to follow)


TAO

Who's Asking? A Cinemorphics™ Sourcebook

WHO'S ASKING? A Cinemorphics™ Sourcebook is now available online HERE.
If you are not familiar with Cinemorphics, I recommend checking out the "Doing Cinemorphics" post, below, before going to the Sourcebook...more entertaining that way...

The Miracle of Self-Creation

Here's a excerpt from an article by Charles Eisenstein, which may be found HERE, that points intriguingly to the implications of using the techniques of Cinemorphics...

" It is not that we humans are automatons, bereft of choice or free will. It is that we make the real choice long, long before we appear to. We choose indirectly, through who we create ourselves as. We create ourselves as someone who will, or will not, start yelling in a given situation. We create ourselves as someone who will, or will not, smoke cigarettes. We create ourselves as someone who will or will not respond to a given situation in a given way. Therefore, if you want to change the way you think, speak, and act, you can only do so by recreating your self. You cannot enforce behavioral changes through will, nor through the program of threat and incentive that we mistake for will."

Check it out. Also, check out his entire website HERE.

DOING CINEMORPHICS

Go to the Archives of this blog and click on October 2005. Scroll all the way down to the first post, dated Saturday, October 15, 2005 and work backwards through the FAQ, observations, exercises and notes to the present. Skip around...pick and choose...go out and try it...

At first, doing Cinemorphics is a lot like learning to ride a bicycle...a matter of balance, habit and confidence. Once you get the hang of it the world's a different place...

(Photo at right is of ALFRED JARRY (1873-1907), fanatical cyclist, playwright, poet, artist and freelance scoundrel, whose work prefigured theater of the absurd, Dada, Surrealism, Futurism and Pop Art. Among his other diverse accomplishments, Jarry was also Pablo Picasso's weapon supplier and the father of 'PATAPHYSICS.)

STORY FIELDS

The STORY FIELD concept is very useful in thinking about the Cinemorphic manipulation of one's "reality"...the telling and re-telling of personal history...the creation of Tales of Power... An excerpt from a discussion of story fields is included below. This discussion itself as well as a very effective treatment of related ideas may be found HERE.



The Power of Story - The Story Paradigm

In the field of co-intelligence, stories are more than dramas people tell or read. Story, as a pattern, is a powerful way of organizing and sharing individual experience and exploring and co-creating shared realites. It forms one of the underlying structures of reality, comprehensible and responsive to those who possess what we call narrative intelligence. Our psyches and cultures are filled with narrative fields of influence, or story fields, which shape the awareness and behavior of the individuals and collectives associated with them.

Story-reality is the reality that we see when we recognize that every person, every being, every thing has a story and contains stories -- and, in fact, is a story -- and that all of these stories interconnect, that we are, in fact, surrounded by stories, embedded in stories and made of stories. When poet Murial Rukeyser tells us "the universe is made of stories, not atoms," she's describing story-reality. Ultimately, story-reality includes any and all actual events and realities, but experienced as stories, not as the more usual patterns -- objects-and-actions; matter, energy, space, time; patterns of probability; etc. Story-reality is made up of lived stories.

Lived stories are those real-life, actual stories that are happening in the real world all around us all the time. The actual unfolding events relating to any one actual entity or subject comprise that entity's or subject's lived story. Everything that exists has, embodies and participates in many lived stories. The way to co-intelligently engage in story-reality is to become sensitive to lived stories... to learn about the lived stories of people, places, things... to share our own lived stories... to discover how all these stories intersect, who or what is in the foreground and background of each other's lived stories. Ultimately, this provides the guidance we need to find our own most meaningful place in the universal story.

While analysis is good for control and prediction, story-sensibility is good for understanding meaning and role.

Narrative intelligence is the ability (or tendency) to perceive, know, think, feel, explain one's experience and influence reality through the use of stories and narrative forms.

Story fields are fields of influence or patterns of dynamic potential that permeate psycho-social space and influence the lives of those connected to them. They are made up of many mutually-reinforcing stories (myths, news, soap operas, lives, memories) and story-like phenomena (roles, metaphors, archetypes, images). A story field paints a particular picture of how life is or should be, and shapes the life within its range into its image.

The American Way of Life is a powerful story field, which includes everything from principles like freedom and the pursuit of happiness, to stories of cowboys and rags-to-riches heroes, to metaphors like the melting pot and the safety net, to images like the Statue of Liberty and the flag. It is communicated by movies, men in business suits, advertisements, college catalogues, and mall displays -- among many, many other things. It takes immense effort to resist or change it. Anyone or anything which doesn't live within this story-sea and move with its currents doesn't seem quite American.

Psychological, organizational or social transformation is usually preceded or accompanied by a change in the story field governing that system. It is therefore usually non-productive to try to change forms and habits without changing the story fields that hold them in place. Once the story field is changed, subsidiary patterns tend to realign rapidly. (This process is part of what has been called a paradigm shift.)

CINEMORPHICS BRIEFLY RE-STATED

Your self, persona, ego…"who you are'…however named, is a construct that is formed by the interaction of genetics, imprinting, conditioning and learning. "You" have little input into this process until after "you" have been thoroughly shaped by your parents, peers, culture, etc.

Now consider that this "you" that "you" now "are", however, is similar to a fictitious character that may appear in a novel, play or movie and may be re-written, re-produced and re-performed as is the case in those media, using the techniques of those media.



Your framework for doing this may be aesthetic (make yourself into a work of art), as play (the "infinite game"), as counselling (I effectively wrote alcohol, cocaine and cigarettes out of my script), or as magick (use your imagination).

Cinemorphics transforms and adapts the motion picture and theatrical techniques of character development, scripting, method acting, fundraising, criticism, wardrobe, make-up, special effects, editing, promotion, marketing, etc. into a model, symbol and skill set, and mythology - a complete system - that is very powerful and effective when applied to personal reality shifting.



This blog suggests…instigates…tempts…points…
It is partly practical…partly theoretical…partly whimsical…

Ready to go into take a meeting…make a pitch…go into production…

Click HERE to contact us about Cinemorphic workshops and sessions.