Dune (incomplete writeup, likely to stay that way) - For you Ash.

My memory of myself does not go in detail of all past except as muted images if I try and recall, but strangely I seem to carry in me the seed of that experience as an unstated lesson. Like looking at myself and making a new inference of sometime in past that has been changing to reach this point in time to touch me. I hence span many years when I look back, while I live here. Here, now, is in question because I am never devoid of the summary. 

Creativity is a way of connecting unrelated memories to form a coherent context. Since what we write carries the signature of our personality, even a description of a personal experience becomes creative to others. What is painfully obvious to me is creative to others. Hence originality is not something that has been experience for the first time in history, but a first common popular expression or directness of experience before all expression before the author till that point. Call me a pessmist but there is neither creativity nor originality in operation, just a incessent quest to fill the memory and then vomit it out as expression in tune with our own weirdness of existence at the point of vomit. 

This is with all due respect to great authors and brilliant writers who have achieved fortune, glory, release and sex by providing the end result of all creativity: entertainment.

So when I bask in the glory of my creativity, its just that I cant recall my memory in exact detail and consider it a trivial matter that I am hiding the source of this memory from the reader while I present it with casual and assumed assurance and confidence.

This notion has never allowed me to take credit of anything I write well and ignore any praise given as meaningless. But has not hampered my ability to appreciate written work of others - for that seems like appreciating the person himself - something which is a very natural and deep need ingrained in me for whatever reasons. 

It is also my signature, I am incomplete without the other, yet the other is non-existent outside me. Mutual respect is quite possible, however, and sometimes that is all that one can afford.

Of course all praise with inherent cynicism makes me live in the moment of contact with awkwardness, so then, grace and timing are the things to acquire in reality and hence are to me more valuable than creativity in all its obviousness. 

I respect actors and actresses for the same reason, for they express no creativity but own all creativity and it takes a tremendous personal control to do this and yet look graceful.

We experience the same emotions in different settings, and the settings have to get progressively weird or darker or stranger to evoke the same emotion twice. This is why the creative world constantly finds cliches, what is in vogue today is quickly relegated to a cliché tomorrow. 

But the source, method and reason for all experience remains the same. And assumes the dimension of real only when it touches the shore where you are standing.

Dune is then a clever adaptation of history, it explores mysticism and cynicism of this mysticism by projecting the cultural history and philosophy of the world by pushing cliches to what perhaps then seemed to be their logical conclusion through the eyes of evolution in an alien setting to create a creative story. Since perhaps it was the precursor of the cult of modern scfi sagas it still stuck to human's as the lonely inheritors of the universe minus the weird muted aliens occupying the same space - something which happened later in the scifi world.

Yes its in parts sloppy and muddles clarity and directness to create an allure for the readers to fill in and expand on authors own cliches - but it delivers the motif of all creativity: entertainment, not imaginary originality.

This starts my review of dune. Dune is the hope for change, which is odd, because change is minus hope. But perhaps hope is natural now to the established culture of the world. So we reject change as it is happening and begin hoping for it. It has in it the seed of desire for fertility. 

Fertility that can spawn among other things creativity to keep us perpetually in a state of pleasure, hence without pain. Which is also odd because there is no creativity or expression in pleasure and pain is what drives the pens across the globe.

So perhaps, mankind can consider itself liberated when it needs no literature or entertainment for people to go about living. That while it sounds like a page out of the horror stories, might actually be quite exhilirating like a scientist discovering in a laboratory devoid of cliched connotations of his dry life outside it. And then its like the notion of limit tending to infinity, something racing very fast to catch up something that does not exist in reality, and all we are left with is a race. 

One does not question it, need not question it and some might not even consider that there is a question worth asking about it. And some who ask questions fall out of it and are caught in the middle of nowhere, like that delicate moment when a deer is caught in a head light on a highway, only snapping out of the light with wits can save that life then.

Paul Atreides then is the symbol of hope for change we are told. One who delivers it is the messiah and one who can deliver it has to always move into an alien setting, where the commonplace can ignore his awkwardness and glorify his deftness and his stories, his signature for he comes from the changed land to begin with. Of course, all you need is the ability to grab the attention first. And Paul does it.

Paul is terrified with the consequences of his power, not for the power itself, but for the uniqueness of it attributed in him, the source of all cult for those who are not individuals but followers. The consequences are always in token of blood, eventually. 

Yet, the fertility in nature, perhaps more aptly expressed in women, the "Bene Gesserit", knows that the war is the only source of natures purpose of creativity and expression. Blood spilled is blood created. Of course in the next cycle where everything now becomes a legend for casual recollection in bed time stories.

Paul is terrified and wants alternatives. Preservation of blood to the same effect. He wants to break the tradition to achieve this. But to break the tradition and survive the act is to propogate a legend. And a legend always has in it a seed of blood, destruction. Nature hence will have its way one way or the other! If only all seeds of legends could be prevented from germination, man could become god, but that is impossible for if there is to be a god it cant be apart from nature!

Catch the source of all creativity, which is philosophy, history, mysticism, religion and ones own living - and let the hatchet flow, touch the fortune it brings and the glory it attributes, be lost if you can, for if you are not lost, you are forever left in the emptiness of an imaginary cell. Tormenting yourself and the only thing that can save you then is the knowledge that you are unique and everything you experience is unique for it ingrains in it the way you and only you can experience it irrespective of historical similarities, a bridge that can gulf the gap between two islands. Yet it can keep you moving, for then your experience and its expression like your creativity can never be devoid of meaning. It is you always.

Paul has a struggle of identification. For he has in him the co-joining of many purposes, each with a distinct identity, each asking the pledge of his blood for the measure of power it has given him to be what he has become. Dominant identities in Paul are that of Atreides, Bene Gesserit the Fremen, the spice, the legend of Kwisatz Haderach, the skills taught by friends, the images of blood and its relatives, two planets, stark in their comparison, his alienness as he steps into his manhood, his notion of love from the "other", his self seen flowing along with the order of things, the possibilities he becomes through the possibilities he could be, the authority of the emperor and even the Harknonnen that he chooses to destory as a choice of his alligence.

His own desire for Chani compromised with his struggle for his purpose caught in interrelationships and co-mingling of powers, physical political, mystical across his known universe. Yet this is a weakness to both Chani and Paul. Weakness because they perfer naming the relationship as the world would deem fit for legality, and strength because the relationship can endure even the lack of it. Can it, well lets give it to a novel that it can?