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Lost — Prognosis: The Empire Never Ended
Posted by J. Wood, February 23rd, 2008
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Filed under: Contributors.
What if God was a zebra? That's what the protagonist of Philip K. Dick's Valis thinks it is. He has his reasons: The benign power that invades the world is some rational intervention upon an irrational world, and that power allows the protagonist to see it:
Normally it remained camouflaged. Normally when it appeared no one could distinguish it from ground — set to ground, as Fat correctly expressed it. He had a name for it.
Zebra. Because it blended. The name for this is mimesis. Another name is mimicry. Certain insects do this; they mimic other things: sometimes other insects-poisonous ones-or twigs and the like. Certain biologists and naturalists have speculated that higher forms of mimicry might exist, since lower forms — which is to say, forms which fool those intended to be fooled but not us — have been found all over the world. (Valis, 69)
This is one of three texts that are sitting underneath the fourth episode of the fourth season, "Eggtown," itself supposedly a Depression-era euphemism for a town that doesn't offer a salesperson any good sales (nothing but eggs, which spoil quickly). Locke delivers Ben's copy of Philip K. Dick's Valis to Ben with breakfast, Sawyer is spotted reading Adolfo Bioy Casares' phantastic novella The Invention of Morel (which Jorge Luis Borges described as having a perfect plot), and there is a return to the philosopher John Locke's Second Treatise of Government.
The obvious text to start with — and the one with possibly the richest cache of data to mine and gets the most attention here — is Valis, the first book in a trilogy Dick wrote in the 1970's. "Valis" stands for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, and it comes from a film in the book. The novel itself is a strange hybrid fiction that does double-duty as fiction and biography, voicing of PKD's own ideas and experiences thorugh the mouth a literary mirror twin he constructs for the purpose. But a little background: Most people know PKD even if they don't think they do. If you've seen the films Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, or Minority Report, you've seen adaptations of his work. (PKD only lived to see the production of Blade Runner; he died from a stroke before the film hit the theaters in 1982.) If you've seen The Matrix, any of its sequels, or any Matrix-like films (precursors like 12 Monkeys — and La Jetée before that, or Donnie Darko, or Abre los Ojos), you've seen a story that's either in the writer's debt or is taking part in the same conversations.
Dick had interests in the fields of philosophy, science fiction, psychology, pharmaceutics, theology, and mysticism, which he worked into his recurrent themes of paranoia, conspiracies, psyches splitting into component parts, and the persistent questioning of the nature of reality. To those who study the intersections of those subjects, PKD is a kind of mad saint. One thing that sets his work apart from something like Los. Bros. Wachowski, though, is how consistent the questioning of reality is in his works. Consider The Matrix: Neo is shown the actual Chicago, "Welcome to the desert of the real" and all that, and goes off with Morpheus to download jujitsu into his noggin. The problem is that Neo doesn't question if the world Morpheus shows him is yet another illusion (after all, if there's one...). PKD's narratives, if not his characters, are not as naïve. Once they come to some breakthrough in their understanding of reality, that understanding is the next thing to get interrogated and questioned. It's a skeptical move made consistently throughout the first volume of Valis, and is something we're getting increasingly used to in Lost.
For a good introduction to the impulse behind Valis, the artist R. Crumb has a short comic called "The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick" in the 17th issue of Weirdo (1986). It depicts some of the events that lead up to Dick's writing the book. Crumb's economic use of text/image conveys what follows better than I can in words alone, and can be read online. But I'll try, and I'll weave in Dick's biography with what he does with Valis; it's a famous tale among PKD fans.
Much of the material from Valis comes from PKD's experiences between 1974-76. Dick was never fully certain whether he was undergoing some transcendent experience or going mad, or whether there was a difference. The fact that Dick tweaked his brain to the edge with amphetamines didn't help matters, and he was quite aware that he was not in a good position to judge whether what he was going through was paranoid hallucination or actual experience. But the information he amassed about cosmology and cosmogony during that period shaped the rest of his life and work, and he presents that information through the cipher of of his protagonist, Horselover Fat. It's never quite clear which details are PKD's shot trough HLF, and which are elaborations as a way of working out what he experienced. What's more, a science fiction writer named Phil appears in his own book and is the narrator who talks with HLF. Phil is eventually confronted about how he and HLF are the same person: Philip > philo: Greek for love; Philip > hippos: Greek for horse; Dick > means fat in German. Philip becomes a contraction for the Greek terms, yielding horselover, and Fat is just a play on Dick's last name. Dick effectively creates his own mirror twin and as the two interact in the novel. One could go through PKD's "exegesis" to piece apart the biography from the fiction. The exegesis are notes he took about his ideas, but there's some 8,000 pages of them, some are absurd and show an unbalanced mind, some are incredibly insightful, but who's to say how much of that is biography and how much is fiction... HLF has a similar exegesis.
In 1974 PKD had an impacted wisdom tooth removed, and was administered sodium pentothal for the procedure (the truth drug, also used as an anesthetic). He wasn't given anything for the post-op pain, and after some mind-numbing suffering, he called the pharmacy for some painkillers. When the delivery woman arrived at his home with the painkillers, he opened the door and was struck; she wore a gold vesica piscis pendant, a Jesus fish, and the light bounced off it in a strange pink hue and struck him in the head (more on this symbol in a moment; it's hardly just a fish). He was transfixed, and then his world started to fall apart; the scene outside his door disappeared, and instead looking out on a southern California town, he was looking out at the early Christian world, when Christians were still persecuted; people spoke Greek and they wore the piscis as a secret symbol to each other. It's all a bit like Desmond's flashes. Horselover Fat goes through the same experience in Valis, and starts hearing language in koine Greek; HLF did not know Greek, but the words he transcribes turn out to be accurate Greek phrases.
Dick/Fat explained this wasn't a hallucination; he called it a kind of anamnesis, the loss of forgetfulness, and he experienced it time and again in the following year. (Speaking of loss of forgetfulness, this is essentially what Faraday was working on when he was trying to recall which playing cards Charlotte laid out.) PKD felt his mind had been invaded by some greater intelligence, and he was remembering through this intelligence experiences he shared with that intelligence, but didn't know about. Over the next two years while this intelligence remained, PKD got his life together like never before. He came to understand that this other intelligence was an early Christian, from 2,000 years before. But this other person — he called him Thomas (twin) — had been also other people. Furthermore, these past times weren't really past; they were occurring right then and there:
"Thomas," Fat told me, "is smarter than I am, and he knows more than I do. Of the two of us Thomas is the master personality." He considered that good; woe unto someone who has an evil or stupid other-personality in his head!
I said, "You mean once you were Thomas. You're a reincarnation of him and you remembered him and his--"
"No, he's living now. Living in ancient Rome now. And he is not me. Reincarnation has nothing to do with it."
"But your body," I said.
Fat stared at me, nodding. "Right. It means my body is either in two space-time continua simultaneously, or else my body is nowhere at all." (109)
Sound familiar? In entry #35 of his own exegesis, HLF parses the Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal, when Gurnemanz explains to Parsifal that in the forest maze, time turns into space. Read on for a familiar theme and name:
(The whole landscape becomes indistinct. A forest ebbs out and a wall of rough rock ebbs in, through which can be seen a gateway. The two men pass through the gateway. What happened to the forest? The two men did not really move; they did not really go anywhere, and yet they are not now where they originally were. Here time turns into space. Wagner began Parsifal in 1845. He died in 1873, long before Hermann Minkowski postulated four-dimensional space-time (1908). The source-basis for Parsifal consisted of Celtic legends, and Wagner's research into Buddhism for his never-written opera about the Buddha to be called "The Victors" (Die Sieger). Where did Richard Wagner get the notion that time could turn into space?)
And if time can turn into space, can space turn into time? (40-41)
PKD/HLF came to believe that Thomas was also Elijah, John the Baptist, Dionysos, the Buddha, and many others, all at once. They were, according the HLF, homoplasmates — living human embodiments of the Logos, the Logos being not simply the word of God through Christ, but living information, which was also a secret to transcend time. HLF called the Logos plasmate, and believed this secret was a technology for eternal life that the early Christians understood, as well as the Rosicrucian Order, the Renaissance alchemists, Apollonius of Tyana, Elijah, Dionysos, the Dogon of western Sudan, the Gnostics as recorded in the Nag Hammadi library, and others. The fish symbol, as well as being a representation of the age of Pisces, was a geometrical symbol of two circles with the same radius that each have their centers intersecting with the other circle's circumference. The center of that intersection is the fish symbol. Take just that central intersection image and twist it, and you get the double helix of DNA.
While spending time in a mental institution, HLF tells his doctor that the Logos, or plasmate, was living information that once in a person, would travel up the optic nerve and then over to the pineal gland — which some identify as the proverbial third eye. The Romans, HLF explains, hunted down all the people who were homoplasmates, because they were intent on freeing humanity from the grip of the empire. But the plasmate went dormant within the gnostic texts of the Nag Hammadi library. When the texts were discovered in 1945, the plasmate was set free. (It may be worth paying attention to what kind of conversations Hurley ends up having in his flashes at the mental institution.)
(Quick word on the pineal gland: This may be one of the more enigmatic parts of the brain. It helps regulate sleep and dreams, and according to psychiatrist Dr. Richard Strassman, it may also produce the chemical dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, a naturally-occurring chemical found both in the human body and some plants that causes consciousness to fully transcend known reality, like in dreams. Dr. Strassman conducted the first clinical research on DMT, which he published in his 2001 book DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Odd how this seems to rhyme with Horselover Fat's description of plasmate, or living information.)
So how did Horselover Fat (or Philip K. Dick) become a homoplasmate channel, a conduit for living information? HLF's friend Kevin suggests it was the intense pain he experienced with the wisdom tooth that brought it on. Many cultures use intense pain as a way to ritually transcend the human dimension and access whatever it is that is beyond our normal experience. Kevin talks about the Australian Aborigines accessing the Dream Time, which is another way of saying they access living information, or the Logos. 
If you saw A Man Called Horse, you saw the Sioux Sun Dance ritual, a particularly grueling version of a ritual common to many of the U.S. Plains Indians. In this version, a man has his chest pierced by bones attached to ropes, which are in turn attached to a pole. The man is in effect nearly suspended by the bones through his flesh. The ritual consists of dancing and prayer to the Great Spirit, and at a designated time, the man has to run backwards until the bones tear through his flesh. The ritual can take days, and it puts the person into a transcendent state in which he can commune with the Great Spirit. Such rituals go back thousands of years, and are common around the world. Kevin believes that the combination of the intense pain HLF experiences and the vision of the vesica piscis put HLF past this world into some larger communication, which HLF understands as the plasmate, or Logos.
For Horselover Fat, the gnostic texts are the hook, particularly Valentinus, an early Gnostic Christian theologian from Rome who lived in the second century CE. Valentinus had a monistic rather than dualistic world view, and after his death much of his work was wiped out by the church. But one of the Valentinian texts, The Gospel of Truth, was discovered in the Nag Hammadi library. The gnostic texts describe a variety of transcendent beings who, much like in Hinduism, seem to symbolically represent aspects of human psyche, emotions, and consciousness. The Gospel of Truth is a creation myth describing how the fall of Sophia (wisdom) gave rise to evil and error. When wisdom falls/fails, ignorance reigns; ignorance is fertile ground for fear, and fear and anguish grew into a fog that blinds people and leads to error.
HLF explains to his doctor that the creator of this world isn't the entity whom we consider to be God — that's an error. The creator of this world was a demiurge that was created when Sophia fell; it's name is Yaldabaoth, and it is deranged. Yaldabaoth is blind, HLF explains, and believes it is the only deity. Because it is deranged, the world it created — our world — is full of error and misinformation; the result is that the divine within all people is trapped in materiality. This trap of materiality is what HLF calls the black iron prison, and is what the Roman empire maintained; HLF further realizes that the prison is all around us, and that the empire never ended. Yaldabaoth, the manifestation of error, either doesn't realize it has trapped the divine in people within materiality or may have malevolent intentions, so the greater demiurge — what HLF calls Zebra — sent down Jesus to "enlighten" people, thereby freeing them. This angers error (presumably Yaldabaoth — the Valentinus text doesn't give the name, just calls it error), who then has Jesus nailed to a tree. Horselover Fat believes the secret knowledge possessed by the Gnostics, the alchemists, the Greek mystics and pre-Socratics, etc. was just that living information, or plasmate, and accessing that technology would lift the veil of error, dismantle the black iron prison, and result in eternal life. His evidence is the presence of the intelligence that invaded his mind, an intelligence that accessed the plasmate to become homoplasmate and eternal.
By the way, Yaldabaoth is depicted as having a serpent body and a monstrous, lion-like head; considering that Yaldabaoth is said to have introduced a kind of fog of fear that leads to error, and that it's depicted as serpent-like, Yaldabaoth may have an echo in our smoke monster. That's not to say the smoke monster is Yaldabaoth, just that there are some interesting rhymes. 
Valis is dense and rewarding, but isn't necessarily easy. This entire discussion could but shouldn't revolve just around Valis, so a couple points of closure: In entry #32 of his exegesis, HLF notes that what we experience as the world is the unfolding of a narrative about a woman who died long ago. He's talking about Sophia, the gnostic personification of wisdom, which is part of the divine syzygy comprised of wisdom and logos, Sophia and Christ. That's a great word, syzygy, and in this case it means she was part of a set of divine twins who together made a transcendent unified whole, rather like yin and yang. If I understand this correctly (and I'm leaving a lot out), the Sophia briefly left the logos and the divine syzygy and fell to our world. That's when things went a bit haywire; when she crashed into the material world, the result was the birth of Yaldabaoth and all that other stuff mentioned above. So syzygy is a kind of twin, but it also has another meaning; in astronomical terms, it's the alignment of three celestial bodies found in the same gravitation plane in a straight line. The sun, moon and earth would constitute the three bodies, and a eclipse would be a celestial syzygy. Coincidentally, on February 20th, the night before "Eggtown" aired, a total lunar eclipse — a syzygy — was visible in the Americas and parts of Europe and Africa.
Lastly, there is a section of Valis that takes on a very Lost-like mirror twin structure, when HLF sees a kind of psychedelic sci-fi film called Valis that depicts nearly everything he has experienced since the toothache, from the strange light that kicked off the invasion of the greater intelligence to the fish symbol and many parts between. The Vast Active Living Intelligence System of the film is controlled by a satellite that is never directly shown in the film, but upon further viewings, pops up in a calendar picture, in elements of montages, as a toy, in a flash cut, and elsewhere. Kevin tells HLF that they all have to see the film again because "ninety percent of the details are designed to go by you the first time-actually only go by your conscious mind; they register in your unconscious. I'd like to study the film frame by frame," (146). That could be the narrative model of Lost itself, which requires a similar kind of active scrutiny. Like Locke says to Ben when he gives him the copy of Valis, "You might catch something you missed the second time around" (like the name of HLF/PKD's group, the Siddhartha Society).
Valis wasn't the only book in "Eggtown"; in an HD moment, Sawyer is reading something while Hurley puts on Olivia Newton John's "Xanadu." The shot is just the blurred image of the top of the book (most likely sharper in high def), and the book is the Argentinian writer Adolfo Bioy Casares' The Invention of Morel (1940). This slim psychological novella is told from the point of view of an escaped fugitive who finds his way out to what he believes is a deserted island. After some time, though, he discovers he's not alone on the island, but what he believes are a group of well-off vacationers (he calls them intruders) turn out to be something quite different. The narrative is conveyed in an impressionistic fashion, not unlike Marlow in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and it deals with some themes in common with both Valis and Lost; deceptions, immortality, messing with time and space, and meta-narrative questioning of narrative authority, all with a near magical-realist sci-fi aspect underpinning the narrative machinery. (The book was also the inspiration for Alain Reanais' 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad.)
Casares often worked with Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote the prologue for the book. They would have made a great writing team for Lost; they sometimes ghost-wrote for each other, and even collaborated on projects they ascribed to non-existent authors, or talked about non-existent authors as if they were just unknown, and then created some work by that author to prove his existence. These diversions were in their way alternate reality games, where they wove apocryphal texts of their own invention into some larger canon of their own construction. For all we know, Borges may have had a hand in writing The Invention of Morel; he states outright in the prologue that he discussed the details of the plot in depth the Casares. The footnotes that accompany the text provide a meta-commentary that question the fugitive's facts and assumptions, and it's not clear if those are by Casares or not.
The unnamed fugitive protagonist first carefully watches the vacationers he discovers from afar, and finds himself entranced by a woman, Faustine, who frequents a beach. He eventually discovers their hotel, but it takes him some time before he can bring himself to make any contact. As the fugitive continues his explorations, he overhears discussion of some disease on the island, and wonders why he's the only one who notices there are now two suns in the sky. How the fugitive sees the intruders isn't a far cry from how Horselover Fat perceives his flashes of the ancient world superimposed over California; they're ghostly images, like a secondary cell of film superimposed over a primary cell of film. The fugitive, unwilling to really approach anyone else on the island, is faced with the "nightmare of thinking" that the intruders, the ghostly images, the multiple suns, and the rest is a trap to capture him and send him back to prison. Of course he's operating with limited information, living in a fog of fear and error.
One of the intruders, Dr. Morel, has invented something that he wants to introduce to the others. It's a device similar to a film camera, but rather than just capturing a two-dimensional image, it can capture and replay a scene in its entirety, complete with texture and depth. "Imagine a stage on which our life during these seven days is acted out, complete in every detail. We are the actors. All our actions have been recorded," (66). Morel's idea is to record a scene of life that one would hope to live again in full, and with his machine, a person could relive that moment again and again, in perpetuity. Morel himself wants to relive a certain set of days with the vacationers/intruders and recorded them.
To say more would give up too much of the plot, so no more should be said at this point. But for those who are interested, a key scene occurs in the engine room that powers Morel's invention. Much like how the DHARMA Initiative chose the Lost island for its anomalous electromagnetic properties, Morel chose his island because of certain tidal currents that can be used to generate enough power for his invention. When the fugitive finds the engine room, he also learns something about mistaking illusion for reality (a very gnostic idea and Lost-like theme).
The fugitive and Horselover Fat aren't the only ones working through a fog of fear and error. Locke has seen better days. He earned what might be called political capital when he became the de facto leader of the Lostaways on the beach in the third season, but he uses his authority to frighten a faction of the group into following him to Otherville, and then admits to Kate that he's not running a dictatorship, but neither is it a democracy. What's interesting here is the premise of the split: Locke convinced some of the people that the unknown quantity just off their shores (the freighter folk) were a danger to be avoided at all costs. Jack and the rest chose to engage that threat and understand it, while Locke used it to sow fear and establish greater authority.
In his Second Treatise of Government, the philosopher John Locke discusses his version of the social contract, in which people give up some of their natural rights in exchange for protection, property, and protection of property. Locke's ideas were a strong influence on Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, but Locke was not as averse to a monarchy as Jefferson; if the community determined a king best served their common social goals, then a monarchy was as preferable as a democracy; it's not a democracy, it's not a dictatorship, and the people remain the ultimate sovereign. When the leadership no longer reflects the will of the people, they've shifted out of the social contract and back to the state of nature, and the people have the right to rebel. A key point of the Lockean social contract is that punishments should fit the crime; if a leader's punishment exceeds the crime, that leader is abusing authority and shifting pack to a state of nature. Is shoving a live grenade in Miles' big mouth an appropriate punishment for his violation of Island Locke's law? And if not, are we seeing Locke sow the seeds of his own overthrow? He may have spent all the political capital he had.
Last thing: Recently Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof cleared up some questions about what they can do post-strike, and what that break provided them. They noted that had there not been a strike, they would have been working on the finale now, but now have an opportunity to react and adjust to audience response. That's great; the narrative remains a two-way street, and we can be sure that many of the theories floating around out there right now will be either confirmed or quickly quashed. Take Naomi's bracelet: They acknowledged that the bracelets only looked similar, but meant nothing more. Sayid's scene on the golf course did not take place after the Elsa scenes: "If we're going to jump time, we're not going to jump narrative order within the time jumps, too." So that clears that up. They stated they are PRO-spacetime-bending, but ANTI-paradox. I hope to come back to that, because it was a major point of David Lewis's possible worlds theory. Maybe one of the most interesting things Cuselof said, though, is that the future chronologies are in relationship with each other, but they're leaving it to the audience to create that larger chronology and identify those relationships. So keep your eyes peeled, kids: Jack said in court that only eight survived the crash; is Abaddon looking for the other 30-some survivors? What empires in Lost never ended?
(And with the Sayid confirmation, you know the writers are checking out what the audience has to say; we're not just passive data, we're participants.)
Books mentioned in this post
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VALIS
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The Invention of Morel
Adolfo Bioy Casares -
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Heart of Darkness/The Congo Diary (Penguin Classics)
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A fish with a pinkish hue, huh? Where have we seen that?
hint: it only took the bears two hours
Morning all,
How psyched was I when I saw a book by one of my favorite authors pulled off the bookshelf by Locke? I could barley wait for today's blog, knowing it would be PKD-centric.
I just finished reading a collection of short stories by Philip earlier this week, "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon." The book opens with an introduction by the author titled "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later by Philip K. Dick"
This introduction is the story of PKD's discovery of a true world under the haze of the one we see (the story of the girl with the Jesus fish) Philip relays many connections he has found throughout his life and own writings that bring him back to this alternate reality. He relates personal stories and quotes ancient philosophers. In essence, it is a short story version of this theme from "Valis."
It is quite a good short, and upon reading I told my Lost friends they should pick it up. And now it comes full circle with this episode. Creepy cool!
Thank you again J. for this fantastic blog.
Mine eyes dazzle.
Reflecting on this episode, this blog and the PKD comic, I am reminded of several other works I haven't seen mentioned. The fiction of George MacDonald (Phantastes, Lilith) is a precursor to C.S. Lewis's Narnia, passing through portals to another unimaginable world where things aren't as they seem. In Ted Dekker's Circle trillogy, there is a lot of mind-switching across time and space with the ideas of alternate realities/universes (the main character, THOMAS, hits his head and when he wakes up he's in a colored forest in another spacetime, which he finds out is the future after a deadly virus and a nuclear holocaust have wiped out most of the world's population).
So now I guess we've got to assume Claire dies, most likely not one of the O6 and not in the coffin. But if she still gets in a helicopter as in Des's vision.... It seemed everyone knew Kate but maybe no one (general public) really knew she had a child? And why doesn't Jack want to see the child? More questions, few answers.
These blog entries are facinating. I do wonder a bit how many of these books are a specific influence on the narrative as opposed to little nods from well read show writers. For instance, the idea of what is the best philosophy to use in dealing with the island changes a great deal from character to character and is a recurring theme. The fact that multiple characters have been named for philosphers highlights the interest that the writers have shown in the subject. I'm not sure however if a specific book or two is influencing the story, or the producers are more interested in the general concept of philosophy.
One other thought: While Claire being dead is the most likely scenario, the emphasis that the psychic placed on her specifically raising Aaron does suggest they may have been separated during the process leading to the Oceanic 6 leaving the island. It could be part of why they are suppose to come back to the island, to reunite them.
I honestly just recently came into a cache of PKD work, and just happened to be listening to the audiobook of Valis for the past week. I had no idea it was going to be the book of the week on Lost. My wife just shook her head when she saw that, because I've been yammering on about Valis for days. I've been reading it as well, and should have said (like I did with "Morel") that I left some things out in what I talked about; I didn't want to completely ruin the plot. So things like PKD meeting HLF, that gets resolved in the book, but saying how would also give a bit away.
I just opened up "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" and saw the word "flapple." Flapple. That's a great word.
Leah:
Perhaps Jack doesn't want to see the child because he reminds Jack of the island, of what happened there, and of those who weren't rescued.
Thomas, in a recent interview, or maybe it was the podcast, this question about how important the books are came up. The one thing they've said is that these are all books that have influenced them as writers, and they're not required reading for understanding the show, but they are a layer to it all.
Also, there's 30-some writers, each with their own influences, all of them working in teams on specific episodes. They have certain themes and points they need to get across in each episode. How they get those themes across can emerge in a number of ways. Maybe they just develop something internally, like with the numbers. But sometimes a writer may say "Hey, this theme we're working with -- it's similar to this part of Valis/Catch-22/Lord of the Flies/Heart of Darkness/Fantastic Four/etc.," and they can then use that.
It's actually a kind of point of interest amongst stuffy literary scholar-types, references. T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" was early on criticized for being just a collection of references, and James Joyce got similar treatment. It's something I'm working with a bit in my PhD work, and I think the distinction is the difference between referencing and sampling, like in hip hop. Take any horn sample from any Public Enemy record in the 80's/early 90's. That's all the JB's, James Brown's band. They used Brown for a specific social and political reason (Chuck D.'s talked about this before). When you listen to the content of the song and then pair that up with the background to the sample, the track takes on a much richer meaning, and the sample takes on more dimensions than a reference.
I tend to think that's what we're seeing here -- and not just in Lost, but in some other narrative work as well. The writers have a certain point they want to convey, and at times they can sample a text as a compact and efficient way of getting that point conveyed. I think that was done especially well in the scene where Sawyer kills Cooper in the Black Rock; that scene plays out in a very compact way the philosopher John Locke's notions on slavery and war.
I think not all the texts are meant to mean something; we got more of that last year than ever before, and that came about when just about every book on any shelf was being dissected in the Lostiverse. Cuse and Lindelof have talked about adjusting to audience response, and that seems to be one way they do it; I wouldn't read a whole lot into Xanadu, unless maybe Hurley finds roller skates later on. But I cut my teeth on the Irish writers: James Joyce, Sam Beckett, Jonathan Swift, Seamus Heaney, and G.B. Shaw; I've published on them, I wrote my master's thesis on them, I've delivered papers at conferences on their work. They're overflowing with references/samples, some useful and some not. After a decade of working with those guys, you learn how to discern most easter eggs from the shiny rocks. I'm not convinced by every book I see on the show, but some grunt work will often turn up some great connections that have support, or confirm a suspicion that something was just wallpaper. I think my job here is to try to discuss some of the real connections in service of both the books themselves as well as Lost.
By the way, I gave the wrong link to the Cuse and Lindelof article in the post; this is the correct one (and I'll try to get the main link fixed). [Editor's note: The link has now been corrected within the body of the post.]
I found “Valis” to be quite a departure from Dick’s earlier potboilers, however imaginative and entertaining books like “Ubik” and “The Man in the High Castle” may have been. With the possible exception of “Radio Free Albemuth,” “Valis” was altogether more lucid, more personal and more convincing. As to it only taking the bears two hours, that's a good one. I wonder if the writers intended it.
When I first saw "Flashes Before Your Eyes" I didn't think of PKD. Instead, I thought of P.D. Ouspensky's little novel "The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin" because it closely tracks with Desmond's ill-fated romance with Penny, Desmond's regret over his failures, and his conviction/delusion that if he can just have another chance to go back, that he'll finally "get it right" this time. Though PKD's work may bear on many things in LOST, I still can't quite think of Desmond's story in terms of anything that PKD wrote.
Following up on the Fantastic Four references discussion last week (loved the bulletproof vest/invisible shield) and the focus on Aaron this week reminded me that Reed and Sue Richards had a powerful blond son Franklin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Richards). Perhaps Aaron's appearnace this week following last week's FF introduction is a sign of Aaron's future significance.
Speaking of twins, Kate makes two deals:,one off the island,and one on. The deal she makes on the island is seemingly of her own free will, the deal she makes off the island, she is forced to make. But notice, her lawyer appears as if he is trying to stop her from a commitment to the terms of not leaving the state, while Sawyer supports her efforts in conning John, and does not resist her will to do so. The two deals that Kate makes mirror one another, both in the circumstances that bring them about, and the way her "advocates" react to her intent. The question is, which is the "Eggtown" deal? Do both of the deals "spoil quickly"? Given Kate's penchant for not being able to stay in one place for very long, I wouldn't wager that she does not "have to go back"... to the island, where her will is more free, her paradise, or Xanadu, if you will.
Sorry for the konstant Kubrick konnections but Wagner's forest maze reminds me of the maze in "The Shining" with its play on Jack's time/space reality. A lesser film "Event Horizon" was kind of like "The Shining+2001" but it very much reminded me of the one acid trip PK Dick took according to his biography "I'm Not Here" - I think that's the title, it's up in my attic - where he went to Hell. And with the illusion is reality motif I think Locke can now qualify for Knight of the Sorrowful Figure status i.e. Don Quixote what with his making a mess of things according to his own personal credo.
J -- you are doing terrific work here and I really appreciate how quickly you can turn this level of analysis around. Keep up the good work and I hope Powell's is paying you for this service!
The mention of Olivia Newton-John may be an indirect nod to yet another scientist. ONJ is the granddaughter of physicist and Nobel Prize-winner Max Born, who was friends with Minkowski.
What about the fact that Kate is raising Aaron, in spite of the Australian psychic's warning that no one else should raise the child? This seems pretty ominous to me.
J, you make a very valid and correct point on how different themes can and are incorporated into a show like Lost, and a book oriented site like this is the correct forum for discussing it. I read "The Third Policeman" after it was referenced as an influence for the show. I do think we should be careful not to let would be easter eggs become more of a focus than the actual story.
I don't understand why everyone assumes it's Claire's baby in the "Eggtown"? It could very well be Sawyer's named in the memory of the island and Claire. There is nothing waiting for her in the real world. Maybe knowing she's pregnant, is the driving force for her to get out of the island, even though she doesn't want to addmit that to Sawyer. Knowing it's Sawyer's would explain why Jack does not want to be anywhere near that baby...
More apologies: The Dick bio is "I'm Alive and You Are Dead". Must've had Dylan on my mind. It's apropos that (doubting) Thomas questions the literary allusions and I even question my own citings at times but that's all I can offer. The wonderful theories on this blog are helpful but in the end are no more relevant than my feeble attempts at understanding this dense program. I never bought into the non-freckles or Ben's blue eyes turned brown theories but I'm glad they were discussed. PK Dick like Jim Thompson has been a Hollywood go-to source esp. posthumously so it's little wonder the "Lost" makers gave him props. He deserves it.
Excellent analysis, as always, J.
A thought about Kate and Aaron: I was fairly sure the child would be Aaron as the episode wore on; confirmation of this was chilling. I believe Claire is alive and trapped on the Island; if Kate were "filling in" for a deceased Claire, I have a feeling Jack wouldn't react so viscerally to Aaron's presence. Something about the transaction -- part of the deal to get off the Island -- was incredibly sinister.
As a PKD fan, I was thankful for the shout-out to Valis. (Though I'm still waiting for Robert Anton Wilson's works to pop up because that would be a natch, too.) Reading J's post reinforces an idea I've had that the PTB on Lost are attempting to throw in as many references as possible because in addition to paying homage, they're trying to create coincidences and weird synchronicities, and a meta-narrative that can be viewed from different levels. Some of the references may be germane to the story, some may not, though they do resonate.
P.S. Rytis, at times the writers have deliberately shielded a character's identity in order not to spoil the story too earlier (I'm thinking Kelvin "Joe" Inman); if Kate's child is not Claire's Aaron, there is no plausible reason they would throw that nugget of information to the audience - it would be out of keeping with the story's mode of revealing key pieces of information.
Great blog, I enjoy reading it every week. One request:
Could someone on the site make a printer friendly option for these posts?
J. Wood's blogs are always great. Are there any other Lost blogs (preferably that don't have spoilers or even hint at spoilers - jeeze I hate that) that y'all read regularly?
To chime in on the Aaron thing... it's kinda random but if Aaron's appearance is significant (blonde hair, blue eyes), it could be some sort of allusion to Nietzsche's "blonde beast." I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about but Nietzsche is also famous for "God is dead," which most people erroneously interpret and think that Nietzsche was an atheist, which he most certainly was not. Anyways, it might be foreshadowing but I also might be reaching too much. Thanks in advance for your thoughts on other Lost blogs/websites.
AndrewJ: I chuckled at the Franklin comment. One of my first comic books when I was a kid back in the 70's was a Fantastic Four that was all about Franklin and some skrulls. I held on to that like it was a rare coin. Franklin is a reality warper, and can do things similar to what Ben claims his box can do. But all of the kids on the island so far have been unique so far; I don't know what abilities Aaron may have, but we know Walt had something that seemed like a reality-warping quality (summoning the bird and the polar bear, astrally transporting himself). Walt would also make a nice mirror twin figure to Franklin. Where it skids is that neither Aaron nor Walt "belong" to the Freighter Four, so maybe this only works in theory, but not in the narrative.
But there's another instance of twinning, it seems. Future California seems to be playing a similar role as the island in the present time -- this place the characters are trying to escape from or are otherwise stuck at. Miles tells Kate she should stay on the island, and in the future she has to stay in the state. Jack works so hard to get off the island it runs him into the ground, and in the future his efforts to get out of California and back to the island are ruining him. It might be something to watch.
23skidoo: I know the writers have cited RAW as an influence. Even if they don't find a place for Cosmic Trigger, I think the syncronicities and number play almost speak for themselves. (Have you read his take on Santa Claus as a bear god?) ...I hope there's a dolphin named Howard.
Reading this blog has changed my LOST experience.
One comment on why Jack doesn't want to see Aaron -- doesn't anyone remember that Claire and Jack are half brother and sister? Still doesn't entirely explain why he wouldn't want to see Aaron, but alas, a point I thought should be made.
Blog on!
Love your blogs as always (although this one made it felt like my brain just did 200 sit-ups!).
Not sure I agree re Xanadu reference -- "I wouldn't read a whole lot into Xanadu, unless maybe Hurley finds roller skates later on" -- seems a rather random choice for a movie nod so I'm inclined to think there might be a little more to it. If nothing else, a refence to Coleridge's "Kubla Khan":
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
One more question:
Have you noticed that recent epi's are opening with close-ups of not an open eye (as in past epi's) but that of closed eyes -- 2 wks ago - Sayid, last wk - Locke.
I think some of our Losties have lost sight of their destiny. What are your thoughts on this?
I'm thankful for this blog because it brings out all of the literary references that go right past me (i was an engineering major and haven't read most of the stuff cited here as seen on the show). I thought it was interesting that several of the writers share the college experience with J, and I think that's why he can pull so much out of each show: he's kind of on the same wavelength with the writers, at least some of them. I also think that for people who have made a career of literature study, these references and parallels to literature would just naturally occur during the creative process of writing and mapping out the show. Once you read something it becomes a part of you, and you see the world through it, so it would make sense that since the people who are writing the show have read and studied all these works, the show can resonate so heavily with others who have read the same things. I think it's very cool. It's like people are talking to each other through the show, and people like me need a translator. But I'm also reading new things because of it.
As far as Aaron goes, him being the same Claire's Aaron is the only logical conclusion for me. The sinisterness about it is something to be watching for; I can't imagine Claire willingly separating from Aaron, unless she thought he would have a better life off the island, but there is the psychic who warned her against letting anyone else raise him. I did think about Jack being the half-uncle, but wouldn't that make him want to see Aaron more? There's obviously pieces missing to this puzzle, so we'll have to keep watching.
Truly enjoy this blog. Thank you so much. Re: Santa Claus as a bear god, this reminds me of Terry Pratchett's Hogfather (a movie version came out in late 2007 which is pretty good). If I'm not mistaken, TP's DiscWorld was referenced in season 2 (3?). Again, TP plays with time and space and human desires.
Sosolost, I thought the same thing about Xanadu... I assumed it was referencing Coleridge. "A sunless sea" could that have something to do with an island where the light doesn't scatter as it should?
Asilgrass, interesting point re "sunless sea" and the light not scattering. I also thought "a stately pleasure dome" might reference the domed city seen long ago in Walt's comic book (same comic book that had the polar bear in it).
Perhaps Claire is being held captive on the freighter since Desmond did see her and Aaron get onto the helicopter.
My quick thought on Kate, Claire and Aaron: Kate is listening to Patsy Cline's "She's Got You" in the scene when she and Claire are in the house. I may be reading too much into that, but for me, it means he's Claire's Aaron.
Oh, Jeffrey---if Locke is Quixote, is Hurley Sancho?
I've been wondering about something Jack said in his testimony - and hoping some of the brilliant minds here can help shed some light. He claims that Oceanic 815 crash landed in the South Pacific -- yet the Freighter 4 episode's news coverage found Ocean 815 at the bottom of the Sunda Trench, in the Indian Ocean.
How to reconcile this? If the public was told in 2004 that the plane and all survivors had sunk in one location, how did 8 -- whittled to 6 -- turn up in another?
Chinadoll --- Si.
About Claire's psychic...at first he warns her that she must raise the baby herself, but then (per Lostpedia) "he changes his stance on her needing to raise the baby after 4 months, and ultimately convinces Claire to get on Flight 815, to give up her child for adoption to a couple in Los Angeles, who he says are 'good people'. He gives Claire $6,000 and buys her a plane ticket."
Items of interest in the psychic's flip-flop include 1) the 4 months of time that elapsed - we know time on the island differs from off-island time, 2) the 'good people' Claire should give her baby to are located in Los Angeles -in the flash-forwards Kate is in Cali (and so is Jack - maybe they'll be 'the couple'?), and 3) the sum of $6,000 - coincidence or O6 reference?
...however, the same psychic told Eko that he was a fraud.
Why does Jack NOT want to see Aaron in the future? Maybe he simply feels responsible for Claire's fate. Afterall, Jack chose to make the call to the Freighties which seems like their key to getting off the island. In which case, Jack's call ultimately set off the chain of events that led to Kate raising Aaron.
Hi everybody,
here are some observations:
- grown-up Aaron has been confirmed as Claire's baby by Evangeline Lilly herself, during an ABC.com video interview;
- Bali, where the (fake) Oceanic 815 was found, is on the conventional border between the Indian and the Pacific Ocean: referring to the island as being in the South Pacific, Jack may have meant a place *just on this side* of that border;
- my take on the official version by the O6 is the following one:
- eight survived to the crash
- Wonder Woman Kate managed to save only five of them, two died
- Jack and Kate loved each other and conceived Aaron: by way of DNA, this is also maintainable, given the fact that Jack and Claire have a father in common.
- back off-island, they left each other and the baby stayed with Kate.
Still celebrating the appearance of The Invention of Morel!
F.
Chinadoll, that's a good observation with Patsy Cline. Even if it's not the case, it's there for a reason, either as a hint to what you're claiming or a red herring.
Sosolost, the closed eyes are starting to become a pattern. On this second half of the narrative arc, quite a bit of what we saw in the first three seasons is now being countered, either visually, narratively, or character-wise. It's like the last three seasons are becoming a mirror twin of the first three seasons.
Courtney, what we don't know is if the wreck at the bottom of the Sunda Trench is the actual Oceanic 815 that we know. Remember what Lapidus said when he called Oceanic -- that's not the pilot, Seth Norris.
Faramir, if we have confirmation that Future Kate's Aaron is Island Claire's Aaron (the same kid), how does that Aaron become Kate and Jack's baby? Wasn't Australian Thomas Claire's baby daddy? (Good grief, that read soap opera-ish...)
Xanadu was a section from Coleridge's Kubla Khan poem, which he wrote out of a dream (perhaps opium-inspired; he started taking laudanum the year before he wrote it). Xanadu was Kubla Khan's summer home, and Coleridge's poem is a kind of imagined eastern utopian city based on this (or based on Marco Polo and Rashid al-Din's descriptions). You could make the jump from the utopia the DHARMA Initiative was working on to Xanadu, but personally I'd want some more evidence first. A line like the sunless sea is suggestive, but its actually referring to a lake in a cave. There is quite a bit of opposition set up in the poem, both figuratively and structurally.
One interesting connection (at least to me) goes by way of Casares over to Jorge Luis Borges. Casares and Borges were very close, and they influenced each other. Borges wrote an essay called "Coleridge's Dream" Borges talks about how the idea of Xanadu keeps emerging first in the dreams of different people across a vast expanse of years, and those people act on that imagined place (build it, describe it, write a poem about it, etc.). In another essay called "A New Refutation of Time," Borges develops an analogous point using Berkeley and Leibniz -- that time doesn't really exist in a series of events like we experience it. The archetype of Xanadu impels itself across time into the dreams of various individuals, and for Borges, time as we know it is a failed concept anyway. It's as if he's suggesting these archetypes have agency, exist outside of time (because time doesn't really exist), and shape us/our world through their own agency.
But these are just thematic connections. Xanadu was also the name of a futuristic foam house in the Wisconsin Dells that looked like a giant-sized real life Flintstone's home. I saw it in the 1970's, but I think it's since been torn down.
This may have just been my own perception, but during last week's flash forwards it seemed to me that Kate was trying to keep the fact that she had a son at all on the down-low. Her mom knew, her lawyer knew, but I got the feeling the reason she didn't want him involved in the trial and maybe the reason she didn't want to show him to her mother was because she didn't want people (general public/paparazzi) to find out she has a child. For what reason, I don't know.
I finally had time to see the episode again, and I believe Kate is pregnant, or thinks she is, despite what she says to Sawyer. Watch her face during that conversation. Lots of pain there.
Kate is between the devil and the deep blue sea, and she spends the whole episode gathering information to help her make a decision about what to do.
On the one hand, if she gets off the island with Jack, she loses Sawyer, and if she then turns out to be pregnant with Sawyer’s baby, she loses Jack. Moreover, she faces serious criminal charges back home.
On the other hand, if she stays on the island with Sawyer, she loses Jack, she’ll be with someone who doesn’t want a child, and she may die at 7 ½ months. In LA she might end up in prison, but at least she’d be alive. (Sort of. Life in prison is surely a form of death.)
The Patsy Cline song is about losing a lover to another woman (as to Jack, Kate may be thinking Juliet). In any case, the song is about loss – and Kate is facing a lot of loss.
The egg symbolism, the conversation with Claire about motherhood, with Sawyer about pregnancy, the chicken-or-the-egg circular argument going on in Kate’s head – to me, they all point to Kate being preggers and having to make a life or death decision.
How does this relate to Aaron? I dunno. Probably they’re separate issues. Maybe once Kate is back in LA, she finds out she isn’t pregnant, or she miscarries or terminates the pregnancy. Interesting, though, to see her morph into a Mama Bear, loving and fiercely protective of Aaron. He seems to be her reason for living, her mission, almost.
Thanks for the response, J. I'm honored !
I can't shake this issue though - if the public is led to believe that 815 crashed to the bottom of the sea in the Sunda Trench (although we, and Frank Lapidus think this is a set up), why do they also buy the story that the same plane crash landed in the South Pacific from Jack?
My question comes largely out of the Damon/Carlton interview with Doc Jensen. They, coyly as always, mentioned that by the end of the season there will be two public versions of the crash, perhaps in the context of the time/space bending, and we won't know which to believe.
Just more to wrap our brains around, I suppose.
J - Thank you again for writing this and making my Thursday nights for last 1 year. Could you kindly tell how you've found the audiobook for Valis? I've tried to find it everywhere I could think of; but no luck.
Thanx thanx --and thanx!
@ Asilgrass:
I agree a sunless sea is definitely referencing something. Perhaps a Journey to the Center of the Earth kind of thing.
I interpreted it that Kate wanted people to know she was a mother, but she didn't want them to see Aaron, because he would look too old for the timing of the crash.
When Kate returns home to reunite with Aaron, did you notice that the house she entered was located in a tropical environment. The landscaping, blue sky, the types of tropical plants surrounding the house, and the windy conditions, all resemble a location on an island or in the tropics. This did not look like California at all. Trust me, I live in California.
Hmmmm, very interesting...
Has anyone else considered that the reason Kate is so certain she isn't pregnant is because she can't be pregnant? Perhaps after her pregnancy scare when she was married she did something permanent. Just a thought.
J I'm counting the minutes till this week's commentary comes out!
I know when is it going to appear? I keep checking. J where are you?
Great blog, J. I haven't read a lot of the science fiction books referred to on the show, so it's nice to get summaries of them. I do have a background in literature, so I do see a lot of the narrative techniques that are used in the storytelling.
Vince - Almost every scene is shot in Hawaii, so don't read too much into that. Even scenes set in Portland, Oregon and Nigeria were filmed in Hawaii.
Vince,
All of Lost is shot on location in Hawaii, even the parts where it is supposed to look like Germany. I don't think this has any special significance other than logistic/budgetary.
Asilgrass,
I got the impression that Kate knew that she wasn't pregnant in the way that women around the world traditionally learn they aren't pregnant each month. It would also explain why she wasn't "in the mood" to sleep with Sawyer.
I'm extremely visually impaired and would love to buy Living Lost as an audiobook :)
Yes, if you watch the repeat 'pop-up/enhanced' episodes, they sometimes reveal where the locations were shot. Berlin, the golf course on the Seychelles, and the scenes with Kate in Los Angeles were all shot in Hawaii.
The tale that Jack told about the crash, and a comment Kate's lawyer made about how Kate and the other survivors almost starved on a deserted island, make me wonder if the O6 were taken to another island, one in the South Pacific that was visible to the world, and left there to be found. Maybe Jack's tale also includes an "explanation" of how they escaped the fake, planted plane.
April, I thought the same thing too (why else would she turn down sex with Sawyer), but then I kept thinking on it and wondered if she might have done something more permanent.
Bridgett, I thought that too. Obviously they're saying they were somewhere other than where they were because that island clearly is populated with fruit trees, fish and wild boar. So many questions!
Hey all --
The post for The Constant has been submitted. I had to visit the doc this week, had to fast twice, and had before-break details to cover with the UVA Writing Center. Thought I could hack it all at once, and was wrong.
That said, the post for The Constant received some extra-close attention. I bounced it off some people and heard good things, so here's hoping.
ok just thought of Hieronymus Bosch
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bosch/delight/delighto.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/GardenED.jpg
thank u for the article
very interesting
Finally, finally, finally. Someone knows the answers to Lost. I urge you to update this now that the season is over, and that we have these new promos showing new footage.
Please!
I will be at Comic Con sporting my "Fish Can't Carry Guns" shirts with my friends now. Thank you so much.
Also: In the DVD Commentary, this is said:
* On the Season 4 DVD, during the season finale of Season 4 with the commentary on, Lindelof and Cuse are discussing where Lapidus and Charlotte are during a part of the episode. Lindelof says that Lapidus is off the Island, then seems to slip up, and says that Charlotte is in the year 1114, followed by a "Wait! What?!" It seems to support that she was a native of some sort.
Tell us about 1114!!
Mr. Wood. Please tell me you are writing a book when the series is over. Lost could probably be considered my religion. I was just mentioning to my friends how there was practically no discussion about VALIS and Lost on the internet. And many google searches yielded me nothing. Until I searched for "The empire never ended" and Lost. I came to your article and I must say I am extremely pleased to have read it. Not only have you made the difficult book of VALIS more digestible but your article has helped me to solidify my Lost Theory.
Please let me know what you think of the following, also I would really like you to do an updated article on VALIS now that the season is over. It is very clear to me that this is the direction they may be heading in for the end of the show, especially considering the commentary I mention from the season 4 DVD.
Here is a guide to my Grand Lost Theory using this article and this article alone:
Jacob = Yaldabaoth, the imperfect creator, demigod, creator of the material world.
Zebra = The outside forces, currently only represented in LOST by Abaddon and possibly Mrs. Hawkings.
VALIS = The island, or the object that the island formed around after crashing to earth. The object was used by the outside forces that employ Abaddon to free humans from the material world. By using its information projecting power it is able to use selected people as a vessel to portray Jesus and the other saviors of the world, and in turn the savior taught its closest followers the secrets of immortality.
Jacob/Yaldabaoth is not pleased with VALIS and at some point gains control of the island and VALIS. He recruits his merry warband (the hostiles) from god knows what century and teaches them the secrets of immortality. They are tasked with the simple job of protecting the island/valis from intruders, but specifically from the outside force that wishes to free the human race.
Jacob is able to use VALIS to use others as vessels, including everyone on the plane. He is able to throw jack in there to fuck everything up, and to bring Locke to the island to be Ben's replacement.
And that's where we stand right now. A struggle between good and bad, light and dark. However the hostiles are not the 'Good Guys' as Ben would say. They protect the God that holds them down. However it could easily be reversed and they are actually the good guys but it deep down it seems to me that Jacob has to be the bad guy.
Also the Season 4 commentary drops a big VALIS bomb:
[spoiler]From Lostpedia:
On the Season 4 DVD, during the season finale of Season 4 with the commentary on, Lindelof and Cuse are discussing where Lapidus and Charlotte are during a part of the episode. Lindelof says that Lapidus is off the Island, then seems to slip up, and says that Charlotte is in the year 1114, followed by a "Wait! What?!" It seems to support that she was a native of some sort.
Let me know what you think, and let me know if you are going to write another book when it's over, it would likely become my bible.
Please note that the Quote about Charlotte was taken out of context and that it likely does not add weight to the Lost=Valis argument. However I do feel that there is still a strong case to be made for Valis.
Speaking of Yaldabaoth and his 'fog of fear which leads to error' doesn't that sound like Ben's experience with the Smoke Monster?