Post #4028217
2026-07-23 05:44 UTC
I close by attempting to bridge what I'm talking about with this Jack Lewis business with another of my intellectual concerns, the frightening quality which André Gregory brings to My Dinner with André.
One of the recollections which Gregory recounts to Wally Shawn, in his strange herky-jerky manner laced with inaccuracies, deals with a Scottish fellow, Robert Ogilvie Crombie or "ROC" (q.v. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ogilvie_Crombie) whom Gregory describes as "the best mathematician in Scotland" which seems false. Crombie wrote a book about having elaborate and highly detailed experiences of interacting with fauns and with the Great God Pan, and that feels very wrong.
(cont'd)
Replies (1)
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@mxchara@seattle.pink 2026-07-23 05:48
Pan is really quite terrifying and all the imagery of fauns and satyrs and ægipans and Maenads frolicking in the woods together is like the foam on the seashore of a very treacherous sea, or like the carnival atmosphere which exists on the fringes of Walpurgisnacht in Madoka Magica. They're a liminal thing and a warning—shattering and mind-melting energies are just ahead. Yet Crombie apparently describes having these full-sensorium interactions with these beings in a way that sounds both far too linear and too safe and tame, as if Crombie were merely stepping into a children's fairy-book. That's quite worrying, and it's worrying that André Gregory is into it. (cont'd)