Scanned

There is, one might say, an instructional video on the true nature of the universe: a film made purportedly by a madman, but a madman driven insane by the fundamental truth of what he knew. His name is Chester Linch, and the construct of "David Lynch," the renowned filmmaker, is an homage to the man whose work most people will never see. In the film "Scanned," (released 1973), for example, Carter shows us the dichotomy of the world's makers in the forms of two nameless horrors. The creature on the left is the older of the two, the maker of the metaphysical forms of the universe. It is, of course, imperceptible, but to mortal eyes it appears as a gray-blue member of an alien race, the First Race, taller and lankier than a human being and grotesquely proportioned; the alien body has been taken over by the metaphysical creator and turned inside out, to reveal its distance from physicality. Even as the creature's organs pump a slick blue oil through its exposed veins and arteries, it survives, chained up like a great star on a hulk of a contraption of steel. The contraption was crafted in all likelihood by the metaphysical creator's younger companion, the physical creator. It is as we see him, a mechanical man, a traded collection of rusty parts that mimic or predate our own flesh and blood. Set atop this wide array of pistons and gears and motors is a horribly wide and cartoonish human skull. The physical creator has a sense of humor that its companion does not, and partakes in human endeavors to show this. It will periodically take a drag from a cigarette to relate to its creations' creation. They are shown in wordless dialog, presumably giving the secrets of the universe to whomever can decipher their silence. Human beings, asleep in the room with the creatures, start to crust over with a sparkling coral like substance until they are cocooned in a shimmering shroud of extraterrestrial life. And then the horror of the great blue void appears, a thunderous voice amidst a swirling visual cacophony of white lightning: and it tells us, in no uncertain terms, that our brains are like metaphysical lint traps, holding back the worst of the universe from our consciousness and allowing us to toil like ants on some penitentiary world, like Earth. "There is no escape except deeper into thought," the voice warns us, and most likely, it is correct.