Rupert Murdoch's Pi in the Sky (part 3): the Met net widens

Bulletin: former News of the World managing editor Stuart Kuttner arrested.

Along with the net like, anti-matter machine drawing on the cover of my TWBF booklet, there is another image that features prominently in that publication – just before the foreword.

It is a relatively “crudely” constructed continuum, “tunnel” or vector image, composed of a series of variously shaded circles. (Readers of this series of articles will be mindful not only of my employment of the circle-based pi theorem as a referent here, but also my comparison of Rupert MurdochRupert Murdoch’s journalistic legacy to a pattern of cycles.)

On top of the tunnel image – the circularity of which, incidentally, is offset by a rectangular image at its centre – I have imposed the words to my poem “Think”, which reads as follows:

How do you measure thought?

Let me think.

Can you truly outline it on paper,

As a writer does, with ink?

Do we really communicate it in the spoken word?

PlatoPlato might say that idea is absurd.

We measure thought in deeds of thoughtfulness.

A true thought may be more

But it is certainly no less.

The circular graphic illustration in this piece may be considered cartographic, in so far as it is intended to provide a simple mapping of the movement or transformation of ideas from thought to text – a theme taken up in the poem.

The image is intended to visually represent the materialization or incarnation of thought into word and action: a process of materialization that I would suggest is being pursued by the inventors of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The LHC is essentially the world's largest anti-matter machine.

At the time I created this illustration I was just beginning to experiment with what I might call glossolalic graphic images – images combining writing and drawing or painting in a manner broadly comparable to the art of the recently deceased American artist Cy TwomblyCy Twombly.

I’ve only learned of Twombly since his death on July 5th, so I do not mean to suggest that his work has inspired my own visual arts ambitions in a significant way.

However, since learning of Twombly’s artistic focus on and employment of written images, I am now more inclined to give his work precedence over another American’s – that of Jackson PollockJackson Pollock – on whom I once thought I might model my visual art aspirations, to some degree.

In any event, my visual art output has been so limited to-date, that I am more inclined to think of Pollock, Twombly or any other artists (I am also partial to the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali, the Haitian-Puerto Rican descended neo-expressionist Jean-Michel BasquiatJean-Michel Basquiat and his Barbadian counterparts Ras Ishi Butcher and Ras Akyem-I-Ramsey) as “antecedents”, rather than influences.

Actually, I think I am probably closer still, in creative and broader intellectual disposition, to the Italian polymath Leonardo Da Vinci and his ancient Egyptian antecedent Imohtep. I certainly feel something of an affinity with these ancient thinkers and took the first opportunity I had, some years ago, to visit both Italy and Egypt on spiritual pilgrimages (see photos).

And this explains my focus here on the moral-mathematical possibilities of the pi theorem as a tool of analysis for the morass in which Rupert Murdoch, his son James, former NoW CEO Rebeka Brooks and others tainted or otherwise touched by the phone hacking scandal now find themselves.

It explains my interest not only in mathematical constants – like the pi theorem – but also, and more fundamentally, it explains my concern with moral constants: my concern that Murdoch is reaping what he has sown, as indeed will we all.

It explains, furthermore, my appreciation of the fact that while Rupert Murdoch as Chairman and CEO of News Corporation must bear some responsibility for the actions of those who hacked Millie Dowler’s and others’ phones, there are lessons to be learnt from the hacking scandal by everyone.

I was therefore very pleased to hear the announcement by Lord Justice (Sir Brian) Leveson some days ago of the holistic approach he will be taking to get to the bottom of this scandal.

Advising media personnel against any temptation to “close ranks” to give the impression that phone hacking and related journalistic criminality or impropriety is restricted to a small section of the press or broadcast media, Lord Justice Leveson said "I would encourage all to take a wider picture of the public good, and help me grapple with the length, width and depth of the problem as it exists."

And may I just say here, that given the improbability of Lord Justice Leveson being among the few hundred persons who have been following my metaphysical reporting on this media “fire storm”, his use of a decidedly mathematical, geometrical descriptive construction in reference to the hacking scandal (“the length, width and depth of the problem as it exists”) is probably best described as providential.

But then all the reports I have done on this scandal so far have had an air of the providential about them.

And maybe this is the key lesson that the Murdoch family, Rebekah BrooksRebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson, the London Metropolitan police, Prime Minister David Cameron and others burnt or being threatened by the media hacking conflagration stand to learn now: the lesson of the light that shines in and on all; the provision that is a gift which originates well beyond what the most lavishly materially resourced of us can afford.

The Mephistophelean media man Murdoch declared his recent appearance before the Parliamentary select committee the most humbling event of his life. Maybe that statement will with time be shown to be a premature, papier mache, hollow pronouncement.

Maybe Murdoch’s and others’ hot flushed, newsroom rushed humiliation has only just begun. Maybe the days ahead conceal a level of humiliation we all need to know: a level of ambition atomization that will do us all good (or God).

The arrest of former NoW Managing Editor Stuart Kuttner today by appointment (should that read divine appointment?), signals the extensive reach of The Metropolitan Police’s Operation Weeting, which is sounding the criminal depths of the phone hacking scandal.

Lord Justice Leveson, I, and other writers, I expect, will be doing our best to ensure that the geographical length and width of culpability around this scandal are similarly explored.

News International’s possible criminal or culpable mischief in the Americas is already being looked into. Those who have read my “Oracle Octopus for Barbados” and other stories critical of Barbados’ media published here will have some idea how much I am looking forward to an exploration of possible media mischief in that nation.

To be continued