CYCLE FOUR: COMPARING HEATHEN AND SUPERHEATHEN

1. But if gridiron, baseball, and basketball are quintessentially American sports, and thus aligned, in Superheathen fashion, against or behind the rugby/football distinctions of British sport (not to mention cricket, if we substitute this bat-wielding game for Rugby League in the interests of a more comprehensive achievement of heathenistic parallels to the above, with Rugby Union arguably paralleling gridiron, cricket paralleling baseball, and Association Football paralleling basketball), then the idea of two types of keyboards, viz. grand and upright pianos, over one type of guitar in the British context should lend itself to the converse notion, where the pyramidal triangle is concerned, of one type of keyboard over two types of guitar or, at any rate, over instruments that are more likely to correspond to heat and blood, ears and heart, than to light.

2. Comparing this instrumental alternative to the inverted triangle, I would strongly argue in favour of synthesizers for the light-like parallel, corresponding to gridiron in sport, and of brass and guitar synthesizers and/or hand percussion for the other parallels, those affiliated with baseball and basketball respectively.

3. Certainly the synthesizer is a quintessentially American instrument, used in a variety of musical contexts, and I believe that it offers a light-like musical role that tends to dominate both brass and hand percussion, the one category arguably closer, in its fiery heat, to the ears and/or the sun and the other category arguably closer, in its bloody fire, to the heart and/or Venus, neither of which would be incompatible with the hegemony of the eyes and/or stellar plane within the Superheathen context of the pyramidal triangle of American so-called civilization - in reality, a civilization that is dominated, in 'once-born' sensual fashion, by the metachemical power of barbarity.

4. Be that as it may, it is difficult to avoid equating the synthesizer with Modern Jazz, brass with the Blues or, at any rate, Jazz Blues, and hand percussion with Rhythm 'n' Blues and/or Soul, the American equivalents, by and large, to British pop (of the dance and vocal categories) and Soft Rock, and I would argue for an instrumental parallel between upright pianos and synthesizers, grand or, more probably, electric pianos (burning cross parallels?) and brass, and semi-electric guitars and hand percussion and/or guitar synthesizers, bearing in mind the sports categories that induced us to pair rugby with gridiron, cricket with baseball, and football with basketball, even though no exact parallel exists, nor could ever be expected to exist, between the inverted triangle of Heathen phenomenality and the pyramidal triangle of Superheathen noumenality, the latter of which is less watery and feminine, overall, than fiery and diabolic in relation to a metachemical, rather than a chemical, hegemony.

5. Even in terms of food the parallels would have to be loose, insofar as fries, burgers, and cola correspond to space and time rather than to volume and mass, and are thus anything but exactly equivalent to what would, I guess, be a fish & chips plus orangeade-type parallel, with chips corresponding to fries, fish to burgers, and orangeade to cola.

6. Be that as it may, there are different methodologies of cooking food that we can conceive of in relation to each of the triangles in question, and I would have no hesitation in ascribing to the Heathen one, chiefly characteristic of Britain, distinctions between boiling with the saucepan-lid off, frying in a frying pan, and roasting in the oven, this latter, availing of cooking oils, a watery kind of masculine parallel compared to the watery femininity of what may be called free boiling and the fiery subfemininity or, rather, pseudo-subfemininity of frying with the aid of a frying pan.

7. But if roasting, boiling, and frying correspond to the inverted triangle of British Heathenism, then it seems to me that the pyramidal triangle of American Superheathenism is more open to deep frying in the case of the superfeminine parallel at its apex, to flame grilling in the case of the submasculine parallel, and to microwave roasting in the case of the subfeminine parallel, both of which would stand on opposite points of the base of the triangle in question, so that we move from a hegemonic deep frying to an associative microwave roasting via a subordinate flame grilling, the latter the submasculine equivalent, in analogical terms, of frying-pan frying, while deep frying would be the superfeminine equivalent of free boiling, and microwave roasting the subfeminine equivalent of oven roasting, the type of cooking that corresponds to the base of the inverted triangle and suffers, in typically British fashion, two types of femininity to exist above it ... in the guise of free boiling and frying-pan frying.

8. One thing is certain: the phenomenal modes of cooking utilize a conventional oven, whether directly, as in the case of roasting, or indirectly, via saucepan and frying pan, whereas the noumenal modes of cooking get behind the use of a conventional oven in relation, principally, to frying and/or grilling racks and to that most unconventional of ovens called a microwave. There are, in effect, two external methodologies and one internal one ... where deep frying and flame grilling vis-à-vis microwave roasting are concerned, as between eyes and ears (sensual) vis-à-vis heart (sensible), or stellar and solar (sensual) vis-à-vis Venusian (sensible), whilst in the phenomenal context below this there are likewise two external methodologies and one internal or, more correctly, externalized internal one ... where frying-pan frying and free boiling vis-à-vis oven roasting are concerned, as between fiery tongue and watery tongue (sensual) vis-à-vis vegetative phallus (sensual), or moon and tides (sensual) vis-à-vis what is earthly (sensual).