Like the Asteroidea that circle in the sea,
So the heavenly wanderers that our bourn oversee,
So are the beasts and birds, and so are we.
The starts that glide their course by night
Make fated paths within our sight,
So do the asteroids on deep
Plot careful courses while we sleep,
Turn on turn, insensibly,
Like the turning of the wheel,
That great wheel of the galaxy
That by each movement, will reveal
The spiral and the five-armed star
Marking out a destiny;
Whether in depths of sky or sea,
Or bound by land like mortals are,
Whether peace or frightful war,
Whether death or ecstasy.
That man, four-limbed, one-headed, is
Like the bright comet of the astral fish,
Shown by five points of errant fire;
And tugged by currents and lazy drifts,
Knows not the end of any wish,
Nor yet the author of desire.
Sunday 21 December 2014
Saturday 6 December 2014
Metropolis 7
Now if only could see the script for this Movie. The dialogue is incredible, completely authentic, for the director (or so he claims) has the power of the Cosmic Recorder of all speech and thought. His claim seems genuine. The actor is given his lines to remember on a daily basis, at least that's the theory.
But this is no clear-cut memorable movie talk, carefully revised and faux-authentic, this is real speech, based on an original improvisatory and never-to-be-repeated performance. The actors have to get used to acting real talk as if they were lines from a movie, real speech with all its umms and ahs interruptions trailings-off and vagaries.
"What was I gonna say? Can you oh never mind..."
"Huh?... Whut?"
"Nuthin'".
I watched and listened once to a group of five kids speaking. If this scene had been represented in a film they would all have more or less taken turns to speak, and delivered their lines more or less clearly, all to the coherence of the plot. In fact, in real life, all of the kids spoke at exactly the same time, continually interrupting one another, all the time competing to chime in the loudest or wittiest, spilling out half-lines and half-words and sounds that were not words and never meant to be words, but merely sounds of assent or doubt, amusement or derision- All of it banal, meaningless, blabbing out stock phrases from TV, incomprehensible private jokes and words. Now it certainly would take an especially skilled kind of actor to recreate this (extremely common) kind of speech, which is really completely fluid, flexible, and insubstantial.
But this is no clear-cut memorable movie talk, carefully revised and faux-authentic, this is real speech, based on an original improvisatory and never-to-be-repeated performance. The actors have to get used to acting real talk as if they were lines from a movie, real speech with all its umms and ahs interruptions trailings-off and vagaries.
"What was I gonna say? Can you oh never mind..."
"Huh?... Whut?"
"Nuthin'".
I watched and listened once to a group of five kids speaking. If this scene had been represented in a film they would all have more or less taken turns to speak, and delivered their lines more or less clearly, all to the coherence of the plot. In fact, in real life, all of the kids spoke at exactly the same time, continually interrupting one another, all the time competing to chime in the loudest or wittiest, spilling out half-lines and half-words and sounds that were not words and never meant to be words, but merely sounds of assent or doubt, amusement or derision- All of it banal, meaningless, blabbing out stock phrases from TV, incomprehensible private jokes and words. Now it certainly would take an especially skilled kind of actor to recreate this (extremely common) kind of speech, which is really completely fluid, flexible, and insubstantial.
Saturday 22 November 2014
He lent us his spectacles and we looked at Europe
He lent us his spectacles and we looked at Europe, and we were saddened and shocked and
angered all at once. But some small, hard part of us, some interior iron, was glad. And
eventually we were able to persuade our heart, to wake it to the gladness of the great work
to come, the great uncompleted work, the fostering and waking and tending of the seeds of the
previous great works, the great works of Athens, the great works of Florence, the great works
of Paris. And we were able to perceive in that flourishing and in that work of destruction
after all a wild joy, and a stern one, a double-helix twined upon itself, composed of contradictory
impulses, spinning like a top, full of dynamism and orgasmic potential.
His gaze is the gaze of the bourgeois divested of illusion. Thus it is both noble and frightening, like the gaze of a fallen Zeus, divested of his splendour and somehow cynical. It is the gaze of Moses who has after all seen that there is nothing upon the mountain-top, and that the stones he holds in his hand are mere dross matter, come to tell us all, that he is after all still a prophet, and that there is after all still a Promised Land.
We have given authoritarianism a chance, a million chances. We have tried the pyramid power structure, for thousands of years. It's given us pyramids of skulls, rivers of blood, obscenities of piled-up cash, rubble of broken lives. It's time for God's sake to dismantle it, somehow, by all means and any, to dismantle it, even if we have to become angels, even if it's impossible, even if it's the last thing we do.
It's time to laugh at it and mock it, to fight it tooth and nail, to take up arms against it, to banish it, to undermine it, to fanatically attack its weakest points. It is ridiculous, therefore laugh. The more it demands to be taken seriously, laugh at it the more. The more it surrounds itself with mysticism and shadow, shine a bright light on it the more. To its pomposity and seriousness and ritual, laugh like you would at a clown, for it is clownish. Exalt small brave acts of disobedience and cynicism, exalt small honesties, exalt what is heartfelt, exalt what is whole-hearted.
It is the Zigurrat of Ur, the pyramid of phraoah, the ridiculous and ungainly, the skyscrapers of Manhattan, the monuments of Moloch, the tombs of the City of London, the military barracks, the sacred leader principle, the holy pyramid, the priest in his inner sanctum, the lofty priest caste, the banker caste, the proud stockbroker caste in his inner sanctum office, the celebrity-god, emblem and unwitting symbol of the hierarchy, symbolic sacrifice-victim of the priesthood. It is the missile, the phallus, the indestructible granite tomb, the needle of Cleopatra, the prick of profit, the cold hardness of cash, the glorious bank vault.
It transumted, and became a friendly face, a falsely smiling face, and expressed itself with borrowed Venusian luxury, and false frontages of glossy pastel colours and perfect teeth. It transmuted, and clothed itself with mixtures of subcultures and glamour. It transmuted again, and became a jester with a mask of rebellion. It traded in these images as in all else, it traded in souls, it traded in hopes, its wares were like so many glittering and deceiving jewels in an endless fair, a fair that never let you sleep or left you in peace, a fair that was insistent and multifarious, and that colonised all your space, and lied to you, and maniuplated you in a sweet voice, and endlessly transmuted like a demon-nymph that could not be held.
"I will this" it said "and I will traffic in everything, and all things shall be laid out upon my stall, and I will be the merchant-god, and turn all men to the shades of Mercury, with deceit, with conjuring, and with commerce. I will be the mask of mammon, the false face of the zigurrat-pyramid, the mountain of skulls. Behind me will be open sores and wounds, ugly corruption, sickening violence, which I will surreptiously traffic in as spectacle. Behind me the vacuous tomb-memorials, the marble pillars, the sparse bank vaults. Behind me every desire and impulse cheapened and parasited, every ugliness made concrete and sprawling and vast. I am advertisement, I am a perpetually grinning mask".
Tuesday 18 November 2014
The Phantom of No Sleep
What is this bare horror that comes around like clockwork, and yet unexpectedly? Unexpectedly because I did not prepare, somehow I thought this time would be an exception, and I didn't foresee it. And yet it came, the bare horror. It came at night, as it usually comes, at retiring-time. That is when the monster makes itself known, when it's time to sleep. This horror, this monster, is felt and experienced as a void, a frightening space, a lack. This absence is almost felt like a presence, something which has intruded into the room, but also, somehow, something which has always been present, and was merely covered, as with a flimsy bit of cloth, which time itself naturally dislodged in the course of day-to-day events, revealing it suddenly and starkly.
It is cyclical. This horror, this monster, this ghost, this phantom, is frightening and yet not ugly, not ghastly, not exactly ugly. She isn't an ungainly black dog. She's a sweet void, a smiling ghost, a mocking phantom, a terrible demon. She comes unbidden at night and enwraps me in arms which are no arms, and kisses me with horrible air kisses, that miss their target. She is the woman that does not come, whose presence is felt as an absence. And the tiniest bit of anguish I can wrench from within allows nothing to show on the surface.
How does she affect me, the woman that is not there, who doesn't visit? Simply, I find myself unable to sleep. The night bothers me, the night itself, not the darkness, but something about the night irritates me like an itch, its void, its silence. Perhaps its emptiness.
What do I need then? And what will stop this influence from flowing in, from ebbing in like a murky tide? I need incident perhaps, to be kept busy. Glad voices and cheerful faces around me. And sincere faces, soulful faces, voices capable of feeling and expression and truth. All that can put the phantasm to flight, she becomes jealous, restive, and finally she dwindles to nothing. It is the emptiness that makes her strong, and the silence that embodies her. That emboldens her to give me that embrace which is no embrace.
I go to bed. I turn on my pillow. My pillow suddenly seems hideous and unbecoming. I know quite clearly that I shall not sleep, I have known it for hours. But whether it is a decision that proceeds from me, or some response to external stimuli, or some physiological consequence of having ingested something or other, I do not know. Perhaps it is worry, worry over work left undone. But I thought I had reached an age when I had conquered that, and I think I have, largely. I am not prone to stress, and it is not stress that keeps me awake. It is the persistent and worrying feeling that I haven't lived. It is the subjective feeling that haunts me, that something has been left undone, and with that feeling comes doubt, plaguing doubt, and on its wings, multiple and multiplying thoughts. And she is there, the phantom of No Sleep, she is there again as usual.
She never leaves me alone for long. I thought I was rid of her, having suffered from her presence in the summer, and struggled through many nights of suffering and wakefulness. But we're a month into autumn now and she has come again, inevitably, though I didn't foresee it somehow. Somehow I never do. For a few nights, she is there, sitting on the bed, standing in the corner, silent witness to my tumultuous thoughts. What is she? She is a lack felt as an object, she is an absence felt as a presence. She is the space where the phenomena ought to be, the banal phenomena that makes life liveable. How I loathe my own susceptibility to such weakness, to so many clichés, how disgusted I am by the banality of my dreams. Can it be that I, I, who have conquered life, who has figured it out, who was so independent and so haughty, and with every good reason, can it be that I have fallen into the contemptible weakness of solitude, an affliction I cannot afford to suffer from?
And I turn upon myself, as upon a stranger, and see this contemptible weakness declare itself insistently. Just like a common mortal, I am afflicted after all, with petty, mean wants, that I can't quite forgive myself for entertaining, as though I had found myself to be infested with lice, or nits in the hair, after all susceptible to the common ailments of the common herd, and what's more, I was so prideful and stuffed-up and conceited that I haven't taken the time to build up a resistance to these common ailments, which some superstition tells me could have been accomplished by a letting go of ego and a common humility, but instead, I immured myself behind walls, walls of selfishness, and deceived myself into thinking I was free and independent. What a thought: I shut myself off behind walls, mocking the crowd, and afterwards suffered for it when the crowds finally departed, leaving in their wake a vast silence.
This silence! What is in it?
Wednesday 5 November 2014
Metropolis 6
Of course the logistics of such a project are absolutely mind-boggling, and perhaps the Movie will never be one-tenth of the way completed. The Director, in his pitch to the studios, failed to account for the problem that the Movie is in effect Neverending and infinitely extendable in any random direction. The studio bosses refused to countenance the lunacy of the idea, a movie version of all human life, especially since the project seemed to cancel out the idea of finished product. The Movie's central idea was that it was a thing to be *made*, accomplished, enacted, and not necessarily a thing to be watched.
So this is what constitutes our wish-city, our Metropolis. But it is only one incarnation. The movie intruding, and becoming sharp and anxious. No doubt the movie will require numberless departments and subdivisions, to handle the re-enactments of certain periods of history. The director was at the moment madly keen on the re-enactment of the late 20th century. Here he was, sweating and cursing, always in a rush to finish the scene, morbidly anxious to get it exactly right, now and again leaping up and glowing with such transcendent, cherubic joy that the actors could not help bit pause and watch, moved and still, thinking the whole enterprise suddenly worthwhile. They admired the director, who formerly had been a lowly director of skateboarding videos. Lacking backing from the studios, he had decided to fund the immense project himself. This to some seemed like a heroic decision. Others asserted that the director was absolutely far-gone in derangement.
So this is what constitutes our wish-city, our Metropolis. But it is only one incarnation. The movie intruding, and becoming sharp and anxious. No doubt the movie will require numberless departments and subdivisions, to handle the re-enactments of certain periods of history. The director was at the moment madly keen on the re-enactment of the late 20th century. Here he was, sweating and cursing, always in a rush to finish the scene, morbidly anxious to get it exactly right, now and again leaping up and glowing with such transcendent, cherubic joy that the actors could not help bit pause and watch, moved and still, thinking the whole enterprise suddenly worthwhile. They admired the director, who formerly had been a lowly director of skateboarding videos. Lacking backing from the studios, he had decided to fund the immense project himself. This to some seemed like a heroic decision. Others asserted that the director was absolutely far-gone in derangement.
Wednesday 8 October 2014
Metropolis 5
For this is the most ambitious film project ever contemplated: Nothing less than The Neverending Movie. The Movie starts at the very inception of mankind, indeed at the very first word uttered. From then on it attempts to show every event, large and small, that ever happened in the history of the world. We want not just the affairs of princes, kings, and heads of state, but the middling forgettable conversations and non-sequiturs, quips and meaningless puns from long-forgotten years of dull centuries.
The film is to be triumphant and arrogant in its tediousness, a remake of the Life of Man, all-reconstructed, in blazing technicolour. What Christ said upon the cross, the oaths of Caesar, pillaging Vandals and Vikings not faceless but as clear as soap opera characters, Joan of Arc, Luther nailing his theses to the church-door, Columbus embarked upon the shore. Lincoln and Kennedy assassinated, man on moon, screaming births and long drawn-out deaths.
Imagine a secret recorder of all action and all speech and thought worldwide. Imagine it recording humanity for an eternity. Imagine then the movie reconstruction!
Endless and endlessly involved, with billions of characters, subdivided into numberless screens, each life startlingly played out, authentically set-dressed and scripted, but with an extra Hollywood gloss.
It is instructive to watch actors who are reading not scripted lines but real dialogue... Look at a made-for-TV biopic or true crime story. The actors are always more glamorous and sharply-defined than real people. They always bring immediacy, largeness, precision. All the qualities lacking from real life, with its downbeat vagueness and lack of certainty.
The film is to be triumphant and arrogant in its tediousness, a remake of the Life of Man, all-reconstructed, in blazing technicolour. What Christ said upon the cross, the oaths of Caesar, pillaging Vandals and Vikings not faceless but as clear as soap opera characters, Joan of Arc, Luther nailing his theses to the church-door, Columbus embarked upon the shore. Lincoln and Kennedy assassinated, man on moon, screaming births and long drawn-out deaths.
Imagine a secret recorder of all action and all speech and thought worldwide. Imagine it recording humanity for an eternity. Imagine then the movie reconstruction!
Endless and endlessly involved, with billions of characters, subdivided into numberless screens, each life startlingly played out, authentically set-dressed and scripted, but with an extra Hollywood gloss.
It is instructive to watch actors who are reading not scripted lines but real dialogue... Look at a made-for-TV biopic or true crime story. The actors are always more glamorous and sharply-defined than real people. They always bring immediacy, largeness, precision. All the qualities lacking from real life, with its downbeat vagueness and lack of certainty.
Saturday 4 October 2014
Metropolis 4 (The Director)
Now the director reveals himself. He looms suddenly from a sidestreet, producer, director, conductor of a mad symphony. Conductor of cacophonies! He's a fat grizelled American, and you know how Americans like to yell. This kid has taken upon himself a most ambitious plan, for what he has touted to the studio as The Neverending Movie.
He has long brown tresses, skateshoes, shorts, a Slayer T-shirt, sunglasses tinged with red. His forte hitherto has been shooting skate videos for Thrasher. He'd been hoping to branch out into extreme sports. He wouldn't look out of place in the mosh pit, plunging feebly, rolls of fat shaking, dropping curses.
Maybe he's running out of time or over-budget, it seems that way. He's continually stressed and excitable, yelling at everyone in sight, in fury and love,- "No no you're not doin it fuckin right, we gotta get this straight goddammit!"- His passion, his temper, his sweats and flip-outs, always seem to threaten to culminate in an inferno, a spontaneous combustion burning out from the inside. He sweats himself inside out in an orgy of violent creation.
And you can bet he believes in this movie like it was a sacred mission handed to him by God, with such religious fervour that he may at its completion drop dead from sheer exhaustion, from universes of expended energy.
He has long brown tresses, skateshoes, shorts, a Slayer T-shirt, sunglasses tinged with red. His forte hitherto has been shooting skate videos for Thrasher. He'd been hoping to branch out into extreme sports. He wouldn't look out of place in the mosh pit, plunging feebly, rolls of fat shaking, dropping curses.
Maybe he's running out of time or over-budget, it seems that way. He's continually stressed and excitable, yelling at everyone in sight, in fury and love,- "No no you're not doin it fuckin right, we gotta get this straight goddammit!"- His passion, his temper, his sweats and flip-outs, always seem to threaten to culminate in an inferno, a spontaneous combustion burning out from the inside. He sweats himself inside out in an orgy of violent creation.
And you can bet he believes in this movie like it was a sacred mission handed to him by God, with such religious fervour that he may at its completion drop dead from sheer exhaustion, from universes of expended energy.
Tuesday 9 September 2014
Metropolis 3
As if my soul were a film projector, casting forward into the dark places of the city a sinister shadowplay, son et lumiere. Revealing the denizens of the city as ugly and bestial, embodying archetypes, personal and painful to me, un-called for notions becoming colours and objects, expressed in an unexpected alphabet, writ large on walls. I can see most often the incarnations of sexual desire, who are flighty and independent, like cats, and as yielding and proud. What the butler never dared to hope that he would see, is revealed to me in flashes. Sex as power, as dark as lipstick, joy inverted. All in the liquid movie-city, full of bestial agitation and incredible variety, engulfing a continent!
Ghosts made concrete, phantoms encased in flesh. 3-D, fully rounded, super-animated, as though formed from perfect clay, and appearing everywhere in clustered beautiful and frightening shapes and deep tinges of sudden colour.
Ghosts, too, imbued with independent thought, random, vast, tending always toward action. For your dream-phantoms therefore is growth and with it despair and joy. Your hopes become traitors, your ambitions full of pride, your scarcest wishes in combat with one another. How shocking to see fantasies spilled out before you, like babies mewling for milk. And it goes without saying that your hopes must also know a kind of death.
Ghosts made concrete, phantoms encased in flesh. 3-D, fully rounded, super-animated, as though formed from perfect clay, and appearing everywhere in clustered beautiful and frightening shapes and deep tinges of sudden colour.
Ghosts, too, imbued with independent thought, random, vast, tending always toward action. For your dream-phantoms therefore is growth and with it despair and joy. Your hopes become traitors, your ambitions full of pride, your scarcest wishes in combat with one another. How shocking to see fantasies spilled out before you, like babies mewling for milk. And it goes without saying that your hopes must also know a kind of death.
Saturday 26 July 2014
Metropolis 2
This movie is currently in production. The streets of this Metropolis are the eternal film lot, and you know how things are transformed by having a Hollywood camera pointed at them. That shout of "Action!" begins the ritual; harsh, serious and solemn, one eye always on the clock, the director, a perfectionist, always clenching his fist in anxiousness. Even for the free-form movie, the city as stage, the street as theatre, mysterious director calling the shots (or not)- Who in the crowd is the director, can he be lost among the extras? Is this a movie set? I never heard the click of the clapperboard!
So if your mind gives birth to girls they wander across the screen, appearing significantly on set. The kind of midnight girls that you have fallen in love with too often, in sidestreets, on busses, unsmiling like Animas or secret ideals. The electric Americans who embody the future, and who glide, cool, dark, encapsulating sex and magic, in and out of shot... A goth girl goes by, her eyes electric blue, her nose studded with a diamond...
I want to seize her and bit her lip... It is as though my thoughts have reared themselves up in architecture, and have created cloudy, blooming forms that throng and sprout from the earth, crystal towers and gothic spires, glittering an icy, sharp and triumphant forms, as dark as sex.
This is the Babylon-Jerusalem, where the blood of the citizens is liquid gold, riches pour like vomit from their mouths. My dark scriptures have been printed on crisp white paper, and are being passed among the students. To think that the noble priests are suffering on the corner, and the starving cardinals are moaning, transfixed, trying to summon down God to redeem the earth.
So if your mind gives birth to girls they wander across the screen, appearing significantly on set. The kind of midnight girls that you have fallen in love with too often, in sidestreets, on busses, unsmiling like Animas or secret ideals. The electric Americans who embody the future, and who glide, cool, dark, encapsulating sex and magic, in and out of shot... A goth girl goes by, her eyes electric blue, her nose studded with a diamond...
I want to seize her and bit her lip... It is as though my thoughts have reared themselves up in architecture, and have created cloudy, blooming forms that throng and sprout from the earth, crystal towers and gothic spires, glittering an icy, sharp and triumphant forms, as dark as sex.
This is the Babylon-Jerusalem, where the blood of the citizens is liquid gold, riches pour like vomit from their mouths. My dark scriptures have been printed on crisp white paper, and are being passed among the students. To think that the noble priests are suffering on the corner, and the starving cardinals are moaning, transfixed, trying to summon down God to redeem the earth.
Saturday 21 June 2014
Metropolis 1
Imagine a Metropolis...
A capital of all the dead empires, an inexhaustible city, a movie set which is hyper-real and indestructible. A new Babylon perhaps, greater than New York London Paris Rome, an accumulated Mexico City, breeding place of huge rumbling discontents, acres of scrap and sex, delighting in a continuing rebellion, an affirmative refusal!
Vast dark city that, like a videogame, can be moved into in theoretical space, except endlessly, so that you move like a blip on a screen within no confines. The virtual metropolis, a game of wish, so that by traversing dream-alleys you could encounter manifestations of other selves, frightening incarnations of buried desire, gangs of sex-workers doomed and jubilant.
Your wishes come true. Sour, ugly, disappointing, biologically blooming around you like a filthy chaos of spreading crystal.
This is our labyrinth and our dream-city, to which we must surrender our hearts. Have you ever felt the truth that there is an anti-Jerusalem and a newer Babylon, where you will be expurgated and purged?
Would you step into the depths of a city where all the secret thoughts of your heart were instantly, ominously made flesh? Would you watch the secret movie of your desires, mixed and mingled with angst and trepidation? Your dreams imploded and reversed, set in negative form, your wishes imparted with a breath of life, free to move and feel pain.
Your breath, outflowing, is the guarantee. Forming the particles and atoms of the sharply-embodied citizens of the Metropolis. Identical with the old mystery religions.
Friday 13 June 2014
The Pearly King 5
"The Fisher's son, Edmund, an intelligent and classy boy, had grown up to have an elegant and gainful interest in the past, and after the death of his parents had inherited all their various effects, including miscellaneous papers, among which the above narrative was found.
Edmund was tall, neat, ash-blond, respectable. For him the story seemed to be of great importance, and being interested in the profits to be had from the antiques market he speculated about its potential value. He decided to preserve his copy of "the Pearly King", the only one in existence. He had had it framed and insured, and exhibited it periodically in local museums.
Far in the future, the air and weather had got to the manuscript. Leaves had fallen and drooped off, the thing was torn and creased almost beyond recognition. As if it had lain about on tatty floors for decades, or been kicked endlessly up and down a flight of stairs. Like a dessicated corpse, like a withered leaf. Finally, all that was left in its sturdy frame was one page, on which thin, ancient type could still be made out. The page torn at the edges, impossibly creased and fragile, as thought it could, at a touch, crumble to dust.
Local paper sent to photograph Edmund. With the one remaining page set behind him in its frame. Now priceless. A great art treasure. Relic of a bygone time. His face beaming, red-cheeked. Surrounded by memorabilia and museum-pieces".
And, in this way, the story ended.
Edmund was tall, neat, ash-blond, respectable. For him the story seemed to be of great importance, and being interested in the profits to be had from the antiques market he speculated about its potential value. He decided to preserve his copy of "the Pearly King", the only one in existence. He had had it framed and insured, and exhibited it periodically in local museums.
Far in the future, the air and weather had got to the manuscript. Leaves had fallen and drooped off, the thing was torn and creased almost beyond recognition. As if it had lain about on tatty floors for decades, or been kicked endlessly up and down a flight of stairs. Like a dessicated corpse, like a withered leaf. Finally, all that was left in its sturdy frame was one page, on which thin, ancient type could still be made out. The page torn at the edges, impossibly creased and fragile, as thought it could, at a touch, crumble to dust.
Local paper sent to photograph Edmund. With the one remaining page set behind him in its frame. Now priceless. A great art treasure. Relic of a bygone time. His face beaming, red-cheeked. Surrounded by memorabilia and museum-pieces".
And, in this way, the story ended.
Saturday 7 June 2014
The Pearly King 4
Now all this is rather over the top, thought I to myself as I roamed along, reading, and no doubt this friend of mine, the author, had indulged a mite too heavily in the aforementioned substances.
But this friend of mine, this friend of a friend, this fictional narrator, a mythical figure of old wars (all confused now in my mind) had survived it seems, grown old, and committed his reminiscences to paper.
My friend had put it in fictional form, one of his mordant and peculiar stories, nearly printed out and circulated among friends. Concerning the Vision of the Pearly King, his or another man's experience. Whoever had seen the Pearly King (and of this there is no doubt) had been impressed down to his core, awed, stilted, blasted by the power of the sight.
I read on... The story, written out once more in the final text, neat and masterly, was presented by the author as a wedding gift to his great friends, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher. A bourgeois and complacent couple, soft and self-indulgent, in their thirties. Picture his idle hands around her slim waist, her graceful smile and soft eye, his head drooping. Like middleclass semi-bohemians, they got married.
On I plod, engrossed in the narrative, taking the odd swig from my flask. But for some reason when I saw that name, "Fisher", the milky tea chocked and glugged in my throat. Out it came in a spasming spray, from mouth and nostrils, onto the street. I coughed violently for a moment, my eyes streaming.
A pause to recover myself. A wee rest against a convenient garden wall. Drying the page of tea-spray and spit. "Fisher? What of it?... not to worry... no connection... Fisher, a commonly occurring name, little, middling, of no great import- Almost anonymous!"
Thus reassured, I commenced my stroll, my lungs feeling normal. And with a shrug, found my place in the script, shunted forward, knocking back another draught of tea. And now I was nearing the end. A sort of a postscript, further continuing the fate of the story.
But this friend of mine, this friend of a friend, this fictional narrator, a mythical figure of old wars (all confused now in my mind) had survived it seems, grown old, and committed his reminiscences to paper.
My friend had put it in fictional form, one of his mordant and peculiar stories, nearly printed out and circulated among friends. Concerning the Vision of the Pearly King, his or another man's experience. Whoever had seen the Pearly King (and of this there is no doubt) had been impressed down to his core, awed, stilted, blasted by the power of the sight.
I read on... The story, written out once more in the final text, neat and masterly, was presented by the author as a wedding gift to his great friends, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher. A bourgeois and complacent couple, soft and self-indulgent, in their thirties. Picture his idle hands around her slim waist, her graceful smile and soft eye, his head drooping. Like middleclass semi-bohemians, they got married.
On I plod, engrossed in the narrative, taking the odd swig from my flask. But for some reason when I saw that name, "Fisher", the milky tea chocked and glugged in my throat. Out it came in a spasming spray, from mouth and nostrils, onto the street. I coughed violently for a moment, my eyes streaming.
A pause to recover myself. A wee rest against a convenient garden wall. Drying the page of tea-spray and spit. "Fisher? What of it?... not to worry... no connection... Fisher, a commonly occurring name, little, middling, of no great import- Almost anonymous!"
Thus reassured, I commenced my stroll, my lungs feeling normal. And with a shrug, found my place in the script, shunted forward, knocking back another draught of tea. And now I was nearing the end. A sort of a postscript, further continuing the fate of the story.
Saturday 10 May 2014
The Pearly King 3
"Perhaps he was dangerous, aggressive, but he was certainly not capable of murder, no, he'd rant and rave, perhaps, but could probably be cooled off with the offer of a drink. That was the beauty of him.
I think I'd seen a glimpse of him before, the shadow or the hint of him, in the dank, rain-wet main street, or up a side-alley, lingering near the entrance to the flea-market, glowering at passers-by. He was exactly the kind of old fool who'd take to haranguing the public in semi-coherent rants, exhorting them to love Jesus, buy some product, or merely exorcising his own demons at them.
His grey hair, his mouth loose and watery, either pursed in rage or formed into an unstable smile, begging or selling, cursing or blessing, rage or sadness in his eyes.
He'd at times be accompanied by a mystery female, equally amorphous and wearied, as full of grimness and ambiguity, bleary-eyed and grey-haired in like measure... Till they seemed to be one! Twins merged into one disreputable hobo, one performing saint, descended solidly from aeons of magicians and tramps, shamans and fools!
The tramp does tricks! And has potions for sale, and smiles to his own secrets. A bum to perform benign hexes, a gypsy bedecked in mirrors, singing the ancient songs that the soothsayers sang, handing out significant scraps of paper, scrawled with the secrets of the earth. A harmless eccentric, the authorities say!
He'd fit in at the fair, being the carnival king, the sideshow attraction. His face lit by lurid carousel lights, his sayings submerged under the klaxons and pop songs. Handing out incomprehensible leaflets, promising heaven on Earth in new and incorruptible forms. His eyes, full of a secret omniscience, in his dark face. He's the keeper of the freakshow, silent parter of the curtain in the chamber of horrors, he opens his shirt to reveal the Book of Revelation, tattooed earnestly in severe scarlet.
He walks moaning on overcast days, carrying a placard that insists upon the destruction of the world. He'll put on a sandwich board, pin scripture to his arms and hat, if it means redemption, or even to announce a new sale of dark merchandise. You've seen street performers, preachers, soapbox politicians? He seemed to be all of them in one! Morris dancers, tied with hankies, clicking sticks? Mystery dervishes that appear in streets, dragon-dancers that leap around in heavy costume?
The one-man-band, shiny reflective surfaces pinned to every inch, blazing colours, face coarse and restless, banging drum, clashing cymbal, blowing horn? Or, at last, the Pearly King, emblazoned in a thousand shiny buttons, casting refractions and shadows everywhere, from his shoes to his cap, his fat belly, his mouth shouting, raucous and heartfelt, an outmoded tune!?"
I think I'd seen a glimpse of him before, the shadow or the hint of him, in the dank, rain-wet main street, or up a side-alley, lingering near the entrance to the flea-market, glowering at passers-by. He was exactly the kind of old fool who'd take to haranguing the public in semi-coherent rants, exhorting them to love Jesus, buy some product, or merely exorcising his own demons at them.
His grey hair, his mouth loose and watery, either pursed in rage or formed into an unstable smile, begging or selling, cursing or blessing, rage or sadness in his eyes.
He'd at times be accompanied by a mystery female, equally amorphous and wearied, as full of grimness and ambiguity, bleary-eyed and grey-haired in like measure... Till they seemed to be one! Twins merged into one disreputable hobo, one performing saint, descended solidly from aeons of magicians and tramps, shamans and fools!
The tramp does tricks! And has potions for sale, and smiles to his own secrets. A bum to perform benign hexes, a gypsy bedecked in mirrors, singing the ancient songs that the soothsayers sang, handing out significant scraps of paper, scrawled with the secrets of the earth. A harmless eccentric, the authorities say!
He'd fit in at the fair, being the carnival king, the sideshow attraction. His face lit by lurid carousel lights, his sayings submerged under the klaxons and pop songs. Handing out incomprehensible leaflets, promising heaven on Earth in new and incorruptible forms. His eyes, full of a secret omniscience, in his dark face. He's the keeper of the freakshow, silent parter of the curtain in the chamber of horrors, he opens his shirt to reveal the Book of Revelation, tattooed earnestly in severe scarlet.
He walks moaning on overcast days, carrying a placard that insists upon the destruction of the world. He'll put on a sandwich board, pin scripture to his arms and hat, if it means redemption, or even to announce a new sale of dark merchandise. You've seen street performers, preachers, soapbox politicians? He seemed to be all of them in one! Morris dancers, tied with hankies, clicking sticks? Mystery dervishes that appear in streets, dragon-dancers that leap around in heavy costume?
The one-man-band, shiny reflective surfaces pinned to every inch, blazing colours, face coarse and restless, banging drum, clashing cymbal, blowing horn? Or, at last, the Pearly King, emblazoned in a thousand shiny buttons, casting refractions and shadows everywhere, from his shoes to his cap, his fat belly, his mouth shouting, raucous and heartfelt, an outmoded tune!?"
Tuesday 6 May 2014
The Pearly King 2
Well, thought as I read this, all that is very non-specific. All that about "mystery"! What exactly is the nature of this place that he refers to as a flea-market? Why should he be checked at the door? Is the interior utterly dark, or does it flash with blinding colours, and resound with a babel of tongues? Does it contain angel dust, whizz bang, flash gordon, arcade machines, wizards with sparkling incantations? But these are only my associations...
And now the narrative is getting to the point! "... but this afternoon was to be special. It was to be my first encounter with the Pearly King".
"He stood in the depth of the room, partially obscured by shadow, illuminated now and again by a flashing light, his outline confused by the gesticulating arms and bobbing heads of the crowds that filled the fleamarket.
And yet he seemed solid, ominous, and meaningful, standing apart from the crowd, smiling softly and ambiguously, and looking, or so it seemed, in my direction... Why he struck me so profoundly I can't guess. The place was full of odd characters, weird hangers-on, misfits who would arrive suddenly for a few days, and then disappear.
It was only that there was something about him that was inexplicably bizarre, perhaps a taint of madness, of grizzled eccentricity, but all under the cloak of an almost beatific calmness, as embodied in his ambiguous smile.
And now the narrative is getting to the point! "... but this afternoon was to be special. It was to be my first encounter with the Pearly King".
"He stood in the depth of the room, partially obscured by shadow, illuminated now and again by a flashing light, his outline confused by the gesticulating arms and bobbing heads of the crowds that filled the fleamarket.
And yet he seemed solid, ominous, and meaningful, standing apart from the crowd, smiling softly and ambiguously, and looking, or so it seemed, in my direction... Why he struck me so profoundly I can't guess. The place was full of odd characters, weird hangers-on, misfits who would arrive suddenly for a few days, and then disappear.
It was only that there was something about him that was inexplicably bizarre, perhaps a taint of madness, of grizzled eccentricity, but all under the cloak of an almost beatific calmness, as embodied in his ambiguous smile.
Monday 5 May 2014
The Pearly King 1
Heading into the centre of town where the main shopping area is, ambling along distractedly.
I have in my hand a flask of tea from which I am taking the occasional swig. I also have with me a short story written by a friend of mine. This friend of mine plays the guitar, and writes, now and then, the odd humorous anecdote-filled story. This one had been neatly printed-out and paper-clipped together. Its title was "The Pearly King".
Onwards I wander beside the busy road, engrossed in the story, flicking over the page to read on. Sipping the lukewarm tea. I should mention also that this friend of mine was perhaps partial to the occasional abuse of a substance, of which substances derived from the hemp plant formed the major part.
Now it seems this friend of mine had embarked upon a fictional narrative, inasmuch as the narrator of the story was not himself... but only some unexplained "I".
The narrator explained how one afternoon, many years ago, he had chanced to roam idly, as I was now doing, toward the centre of town. This I assumed being my friend's fictional creation. But who was the narrator? To that I could only answer: A third party, not my friend, not the author, not necessarily a fiction, but someone more lucid, clearer, less humorous than my friend. He was the un-named "I" channelled through my friend!
The narrative explained how he had wandered around the town, through its commercial centre, from shop to shop, mingling with crowds on the plazas, having not much direction or object. Let's say the fellow was in his 20's, for so he appears to my mind's eye. It was the autumn of the year 1975:
"Being at a loose end, I wandered through the streets, window-shopping, my mind distracted. In those days I divided my time between my girlfriend's house and the occasional trip to the local fleamarket, where plentiful bargains could be picked up, and which had something of a reputation as a converging-point for local characters. The sights I had seen there! I'd come down the road from my girlfriend's flat, having kissed her goodbye in the evening, and seek out the back alley entrance to the fleamarket.
Always a party atmosphere in that chaotic, warehouse-sized room! Always a sense of mystery! There'd be no-one to check you at the door, a mere glance at the patrons who had spilled onto the pavement, something exchanged between the eyes, was all that was required to gain entry. Still, you felt always the vibrant exclusivity and mystery of the place, the atmosphere of solemn comradeship, brewing like a lull before a great storm, like a gasp for breath before a violent fit of laughter..."
I have in my hand a flask of tea from which I am taking the occasional swig. I also have with me a short story written by a friend of mine. This friend of mine plays the guitar, and writes, now and then, the odd humorous anecdote-filled story. This one had been neatly printed-out and paper-clipped together. Its title was "The Pearly King".
Onwards I wander beside the busy road, engrossed in the story, flicking over the page to read on. Sipping the lukewarm tea. I should mention also that this friend of mine was perhaps partial to the occasional abuse of a substance, of which substances derived from the hemp plant formed the major part.
Now it seems this friend of mine had embarked upon a fictional narrative, inasmuch as the narrator of the story was not himself... but only some unexplained "I".
The narrator explained how one afternoon, many years ago, he had chanced to roam idly, as I was now doing, toward the centre of town. This I assumed being my friend's fictional creation. But who was the narrator? To that I could only answer: A third party, not my friend, not the author, not necessarily a fiction, but someone more lucid, clearer, less humorous than my friend. He was the un-named "I" channelled through my friend!
The narrative explained how he had wandered around the town, through its commercial centre, from shop to shop, mingling with crowds on the plazas, having not much direction or object. Let's say the fellow was in his 20's, for so he appears to my mind's eye. It was the autumn of the year 1975:
"Being at a loose end, I wandered through the streets, window-shopping, my mind distracted. In those days I divided my time between my girlfriend's house and the occasional trip to the local fleamarket, where plentiful bargains could be picked up, and which had something of a reputation as a converging-point for local characters. The sights I had seen there! I'd come down the road from my girlfriend's flat, having kissed her goodbye in the evening, and seek out the back alley entrance to the fleamarket.
Always a party atmosphere in that chaotic, warehouse-sized room! Always a sense of mystery! There'd be no-one to check you at the door, a mere glance at the patrons who had spilled onto the pavement, something exchanged between the eyes, was all that was required to gain entry. Still, you felt always the vibrant exclusivity and mystery of the place, the atmosphere of solemn comradeship, brewing like a lull before a great storm, like a gasp for breath before a violent fit of laughter..."
Wednesday 30 April 2014
Soap Opera 2
Watching the examination closely is a local kid. Name of Joe. He regards the scene, detached and bored. Slightly intellectual, might be a misfit. He gazes with passive, dark eyes. Thin, gawky, a certain inscrutability and mawkish silence, but a silence which might precede a violent revelation. Something of the religious mystic about him. Eyes and hair dark, of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern parentage.
He lies on the cool boards, flat on his slim stomach, his shirt open, watching the medical examination with eyes wide with boredom. He hearkens to the words of Doctor Jeff, who throughout the examination throws back sweet, cloying words to Joe, delivered in puzzling couplets from the side of his mouth, like lying riddles. His mellifluous, gentle voice.
"You'll be a great man one day Joe. You're born to it. Did you ever dream of riches? Of millions? All that'll be yours one day, and more".
His voice drones on, weaving a spell on Joe, who seems to picture it all, like a pageant before his eyes.
"This is a country where men can strike gold, and be kings, but freer than kings ever were before. D'you want beauty Joe? D'you want sex? A luxury apartment Joe, a yacht, champagne in your veins. Think about it Joe. Your face on every front page, your name on every breath, your heart as full as a bank vault, your blood enriched, gold bullion like shingle on a beach. Joe, the world is in your heart and you can win it."...
Joe is awed, frightened, wondering.
.... Dr Jeff turns his face away from him and his monologue runs into a dry mumble. As though the river of his discourse had come suddenly to stony, barren ground.
"Next there'll be a dry run. Fortune, the old whore, abandoning men. Man made humble again. In the far future. All the gold eroded, all the young girls gone. Ice water in your veins, no boat at anchor. Your face on no front cover..."
Joe has become perplexed, and is straining to listen.
"The inside of a cell, the fall of an empire, the rise and fall, the final collapse! Where then your finery? O, the public are fickle swine. Whom they love today they revile tomorrow. They have executed lesser kings. The poisonous mob-baiters, that write newspapers, taunts, calls for resignation. Joe, my boy, there is no idol that cannot be torn down. Look at the faces of the fat cats when the cream disappears. Yes now son, all this is to come, the world in your heart that it will kill you to lose!"
Joe looks up to see Dr Jeff's face. Shadows in the eyes, unsmiling. The prophecy complete.
He lies on the cool boards, flat on his slim stomach, his shirt open, watching the medical examination with eyes wide with boredom. He hearkens to the words of Doctor Jeff, who throughout the examination throws back sweet, cloying words to Joe, delivered in puzzling couplets from the side of his mouth, like lying riddles. His mellifluous, gentle voice.
"You'll be a great man one day Joe. You're born to it. Did you ever dream of riches? Of millions? All that'll be yours one day, and more".
His voice drones on, weaving a spell on Joe, who seems to picture it all, like a pageant before his eyes.
"This is a country where men can strike gold, and be kings, but freer than kings ever were before. D'you want beauty Joe? D'you want sex? A luxury apartment Joe, a yacht, champagne in your veins. Think about it Joe. Your face on every front page, your name on every breath, your heart as full as a bank vault, your blood enriched, gold bullion like shingle on a beach. Joe, the world is in your heart and you can win it."...
Joe is awed, frightened, wondering.
.... Dr Jeff turns his face away from him and his monologue runs into a dry mumble. As though the river of his discourse had come suddenly to stony, barren ground.
"Next there'll be a dry run. Fortune, the old whore, abandoning men. Man made humble again. In the far future. All the gold eroded, all the young girls gone. Ice water in your veins, no boat at anchor. Your face on no front cover..."
Joe has become perplexed, and is straining to listen.
"The inside of a cell, the fall of an empire, the rise and fall, the final collapse! Where then your finery? O, the public are fickle swine. Whom they love today they revile tomorrow. They have executed lesser kings. The poisonous mob-baiters, that write newspapers, taunts, calls for resignation. Joe, my boy, there is no idol that cannot be torn down. Look at the faces of the fat cats when the cream disappears. Yes now son, all this is to come, the world in your heart that it will kill you to lose!"
Joe looks up to see Dr Jeff's face. Shadows in the eyes, unsmiling. The prophecy complete.
Tuesday 22 April 2014
Soap Opera 1
Golden endless sunshine of New South Wales. Suburban frivolity and a certain sexiness.
Here comes the hunk-hero, the main event, fresh from modelling agency into daytime TV. Surfer-type. Athletic, clean, not entirely empty-headed. Hair longish, blonde-streaked, dried and honeyed by a lifetime under sun. Teeth impossibly white and uniform, as though tipex'd. Could be a motor mechanic.
Up from the beach and into the local café, an airy wood-panelled building, old and honourable, where boards and salty apparatus are stacked and where hang the plaques of past Iron Men, their tough names scribed in gold.
His name is Doctor Jeff. He's there to appeal to the female contingent of the TV audience, sunplashed and bright of tooth, efficient but roguish, white coat and stethoscope.
Here for an examination. The girls who works serving drinks behind the counter succumbs to his bedside manner, quiet, courtly, wicked gleam in eye. She's a snub-nosed, sturdily built brunette, large-bosom'd, and she begins to unbutton her loose shirt.
She reclines easily, her body slightly tensed, along the length of the floor, while the doctor, grinning warmly, stoops over her.
Ah, a game of doctors and nurses. Doctor Jeff listens, slightly excited, to the thump of her heart. He sounds out her chest with discreet but precise taps between the rising swell of her breasts. Her mouth opens to receive his thermometer, which after a few minutes Dr. Jeff retrieves and examines closely, always maintaining his charming and comforting smile.
Here comes the hunk-hero, the main event, fresh from modelling agency into daytime TV. Surfer-type. Athletic, clean, not entirely empty-headed. Hair longish, blonde-streaked, dried and honeyed by a lifetime under sun. Teeth impossibly white and uniform, as though tipex'd. Could be a motor mechanic.
Up from the beach and into the local café, an airy wood-panelled building, old and honourable, where boards and salty apparatus are stacked and where hang the plaques of past Iron Men, their tough names scribed in gold.
His name is Doctor Jeff. He's there to appeal to the female contingent of the TV audience, sunplashed and bright of tooth, efficient but roguish, white coat and stethoscope.
Here for an examination. The girls who works serving drinks behind the counter succumbs to his bedside manner, quiet, courtly, wicked gleam in eye. She's a snub-nosed, sturdily built brunette, large-bosom'd, and she begins to unbutton her loose shirt.
She reclines easily, her body slightly tensed, along the length of the floor, while the doctor, grinning warmly, stoops over her.
Ah, a game of doctors and nurses. Doctor Jeff listens, slightly excited, to the thump of her heart. He sounds out her chest with discreet but precise taps between the rising swell of her breasts. Her mouth opens to receive his thermometer, which after a few minutes Dr. Jeff retrieves and examines closely, always maintaining his charming and comforting smile.
Wednesday 16 April 2014
Transmission 2
Transmission: Later in the evening, an odd variety package of unknown origin. Forgettable, quirky, from an obscure production company. Like fill-in shows they stick on when a programme has under-ran. Wanna see Hollywood's Greatest Stunts?
One individual is set to repeat his own record in bicycling across a high wire. This stunt has taken a special twist; he would bicycle along an electricity line. This is tricky- It entails carrying up the bike to the top of the pylon and balancing it effectively on the cable... crowds of spectators below. The pylon stands in open, scrubby countryside.
The performer after placing the bike-wheels firmly on the line hesitates for a good few minutes... now perhaps it would be easier with a unicycle?... a motorbike even!...
An amazingly precise equilibrium must be maintained if the rider is not to plummet to his death, the rate of speed must also be consistent if a smooth passage is to be gained. Tires should nicely absorb the lethal electrical voltage.
(Apparently the stunt was accomplished.... although trick photography may have been used).
One individual is set to repeat his own record in bicycling across a high wire. This stunt has taken a special twist; he would bicycle along an electricity line. This is tricky- It entails carrying up the bike to the top of the pylon and balancing it effectively on the cable... crowds of spectators below. The pylon stands in open, scrubby countryside.
The performer after placing the bike-wheels firmly on the line hesitates for a good few minutes... now perhaps it would be easier with a unicycle?... a motorbike even!...
An amazingly precise equilibrium must be maintained if the rider is not to plummet to his death, the rate of speed must also be consistent if a smooth passage is to be gained. Tires should nicely absorb the lethal electrical voltage.
(Apparently the stunt was accomplished.... although trick photography may have been used).
Wednesday 9 April 2014
Transmission 1
Transmission: A plush, artfully-made-up studio, foreground shows a comfy red sofa against a yellow backdrop. There sits the pop singer, slouched relaxedly forward, but as though ready to spring into action, her fountaining cascade of hair, her limbs bare.
Her mouth playfully loose, as though playing pierced tongue against palette. She conveys jumpiness, excitability, as though ready to jump up and wrestle someone.
Sitting next to her is a Dame or Duchess of somewhere or other.
We tune in half-way through the conversation, an informal dialogue or the pop singer is interviewing. Her interview skills are not well developed, lines of inquiry somewhat flat, and too ready to burst into coarse laughter.
This Dame what's-her-name sits fragile and dour, in fact she looks slightly frightened, a partial downturn of mouth, her old wrists resting limply on her knees. Now this one belongs to the upper echelons of society, she's perhaps a distant cousin of the Queen.
So aristocratic is she that she has seemed to transcend class and become frozen into absolute rigidity, like a pristine, priceless piece of crystal. As though even to speak would be partially to lower herself.
The pop singer, playful and provocative, and at the same time brash and loud-mouthed, irks the lady somewhat. After a few polite and well-delivered phrases, an outmoded witticism in the best possible taste, the pop singer interrupts: "Yer accent's very posh. D'you ever get embarrassed by it?"
At last a serious line of questioning.
Her mouth playfully loose, as though playing pierced tongue against palette. She conveys jumpiness, excitability, as though ready to jump up and wrestle someone.
Sitting next to her is a Dame or Duchess of somewhere or other.
We tune in half-way through the conversation, an informal dialogue or the pop singer is interviewing. Her interview skills are not well developed, lines of inquiry somewhat flat, and too ready to burst into coarse laughter.
This Dame what's-her-name sits fragile and dour, in fact she looks slightly frightened, a partial downturn of mouth, her old wrists resting limply on her knees. Now this one belongs to the upper echelons of society, she's perhaps a distant cousin of the Queen.
So aristocratic is she that she has seemed to transcend class and become frozen into absolute rigidity, like a pristine, priceless piece of crystal. As though even to speak would be partially to lower herself.
The pop singer, playful and provocative, and at the same time brash and loud-mouthed, irks the lady somewhat. After a few polite and well-delivered phrases, an outmoded witticism in the best possible taste, the pop singer interrupts: "Yer accent's very posh. D'you ever get embarrassed by it?"
At last a serious line of questioning.
Monday 31 March 2014
Whaleboat Road
On Whaleboat Road which is always busy with traffic I often go to meditate and figure stuff out.
The traffic starts very early in the morning and goes on all day, an unquenchable tide, and doesn't let up even late into the night.
Down on Whaleboat Road... in mid-afternoon... There I stand, in T-shirt, trainers, jeans. I have with me my ghetto-blaster, clutched by the handle. Looking sleepy at the grey road.
I loiter beside a big gaudily-coloured petrol station, whose canopy offers a sense of concealment. At one side is a bulky carwash, stationed beside which is a bank of buttons, and also a power point.
On the other side is a dull BnB with a gravelled drive.
I surreptitiously plug in the ghetto-blaster at the carwash power-point. On that bank of switches, of grim industrial plastic. Set it down, you can safely leave it plugged in for a while, the thing won't be conspicuous on that busy road if you want to run an errand or summat.
Take a selection say three or four CD's. Flip open the hatch and press it in. Glittering rainbow colours. Freebie CD's from fanzines are good, old unwanted CD's your friends don't want, ones with nice designs on, in glaring red or aqua-blue, gleaming and neat.
After your given, allotted time, or when fancy takes you, decide to go home. You're a busy man. With the grim, concentrated air of a council workman, taking no nonsense, unplug the ghetto blaster, and hoist it up by its matt black handle. Have a chat with a passing neighbour. Pass pleasantries, exchange banalities. Make sure the power-point is de-activated.
To get home, I go behind the petrol station to a rutted path and through a fence of trees to a disused railway line, which I pick my way along toward the house in which I live, which lies on a softly rising bank beside the rail-line. Waiting in the kitchen in the afternoon for my friend Mack to arrive.
He'd come in anxious in the yellowish, fading light, ready for an adventure of some kind. The notorious Mack, turning up unapologetically late, for an expedition to the town-centre, for a bus-trip into the wilderness. Might he bring his family? We'll all go on a trip! His hugely fat mother, her black hair and immense upper arms. His thin, smiling, authoritative father, in carpet slippers, with jug ears, from Derry. His amusing brother Terry, his pretty and convivial little sister. All come to see me.
At the carwash on Whaleboat Road, or waiting at home, what shall we listen to on this here cheap ghetto-blaster? Let's have some a that "alternative rock". No need to blare it too loud, inoffensive volume but of a decent loudness. Pop-punk is good for waiting... Of a Green Day type but not Green Day... Have you heard this band the Jimmies? From I believe the Pacific Northwest? Pennywise but avoid Fat Wreck... Mr. T Experience.... Squirtgun... Dreyfus!... the obscurer the better... such n such from blah blah Ohio... put out a cheap split CD... wholly typical.
The traffic starts very early in the morning and goes on all day, an unquenchable tide, and doesn't let up even late into the night.
Down on Whaleboat Road... in mid-afternoon... There I stand, in T-shirt, trainers, jeans. I have with me my ghetto-blaster, clutched by the handle. Looking sleepy at the grey road.
I loiter beside a big gaudily-coloured petrol station, whose canopy offers a sense of concealment. At one side is a bulky carwash, stationed beside which is a bank of buttons, and also a power point.
On the other side is a dull BnB with a gravelled drive.
I surreptitiously plug in the ghetto-blaster at the carwash power-point. On that bank of switches, of grim industrial plastic. Set it down, you can safely leave it plugged in for a while, the thing won't be conspicuous on that busy road if you want to run an errand or summat.
Take a selection say three or four CD's. Flip open the hatch and press it in. Glittering rainbow colours. Freebie CD's from fanzines are good, old unwanted CD's your friends don't want, ones with nice designs on, in glaring red or aqua-blue, gleaming and neat.
After your given, allotted time, or when fancy takes you, decide to go home. You're a busy man. With the grim, concentrated air of a council workman, taking no nonsense, unplug the ghetto blaster, and hoist it up by its matt black handle. Have a chat with a passing neighbour. Pass pleasantries, exchange banalities. Make sure the power-point is de-activated.
To get home, I go behind the petrol station to a rutted path and through a fence of trees to a disused railway line, which I pick my way along toward the house in which I live, which lies on a softly rising bank beside the rail-line. Waiting in the kitchen in the afternoon for my friend Mack to arrive.
He'd come in anxious in the yellowish, fading light, ready for an adventure of some kind. The notorious Mack, turning up unapologetically late, for an expedition to the town-centre, for a bus-trip into the wilderness. Might he bring his family? We'll all go on a trip! His hugely fat mother, her black hair and immense upper arms. His thin, smiling, authoritative father, in carpet slippers, with jug ears, from Derry. His amusing brother Terry, his pretty and convivial little sister. All come to see me.
At the carwash on Whaleboat Road, or waiting at home, what shall we listen to on this here cheap ghetto-blaster? Let's have some a that "alternative rock". No need to blare it too loud, inoffensive volume but of a decent loudness. Pop-punk is good for waiting... Of a Green Day type but not Green Day... Have you heard this band the Jimmies? From I believe the Pacific Northwest? Pennywise but avoid Fat Wreck... Mr. T Experience.... Squirtgun... Dreyfus!... the obscurer the better... such n such from blah blah Ohio... put out a cheap split CD... wholly typical.
Friday 21 March 2014
Alvin J. Crow 10 (Finale)
The legend of Alvin J. Crow came out in comicbook and movie form. You know, how the kid lured his fellow students into the museum by means of a spurious field-trip, how he detached himself from the group and hid behind a curtain, disguised as an exhibit, then dimmed the lights to create confusion and began picking off the students one by one, his special forte being decapitation. The movie version maybe went a little overboard with the special effects, but all in an attempt to emphasise Alvin's utter corruption, his inner depravity all let loose to transform his body into ashen, ancient white, and yet as raw as a fresh wound, evil personified. What movie audiences need is unique but blatant personifications of evil.
You should check out the comicbook version too: Centre-pages of issue #5 showed Alvin gloating over his harvested trophies. The little, blank-walled exhibition room, filled with pile upon pile of severed heads, most stacked neatly upright, but several tumbled loosely together, haphazardly thrown upon the heap. They filled the room to the depth of about a metre. The artist, faced with depicting a crowd of dead faces, has fallen back on his ruthless formula, and has inked with unusual deliberation and exactness, resulting in a mordant, even amusing illustration.
Pink faces, so neatly delineated in faultless black ink! Corn-yellow hair, still flowing and neat, on women's heads, a handsome young lad, with clear, regular features, hair an appealing chestnut-brown! Their eyes shut or rolled back in their sockets, their mouths gaping. No respect given to status, gender, or social class. The handsome kids, the respectable girls, uptown bankers and small time salesmen. All the heads flung in together. Victims of the infamous serial killer, Mr. Alvin J. Crow. Total head-count: 57. Dozens of other persons missing and suspected killed. Mr. Crow seemed to kill without discrimination, purpose, or reason.
Now as a kind of final stroke, or denouement, to our tale, wouldn't it be amusing if a head uppermost on the pile, say that of a small-scale coffee house owner, were all at once to flick open its eyes.
You know how the heads of guillotine-victims, when held up to the crowd, were reputed sometimes to roll their eyes, futilely, in stupefaction and bemusement? His expression can be like that.
His lips move, his vocal chords tense, he begins to form words. "They say it was the gas that did it... leaking fumes... chloroform, distilled in concentrate form... faulty piping, lethal... carbon monoxide... has killed us... ain't life a gas... (his eyelids drooping)... next time I'll count the heads..."
For Alvin, his lips softly moving, had begun to carefully count his trophies, his finger moving through the air.
End of movie. I've often lurched up from my cinema seat, puzzled and disappointed, and made my way too fast toward the exit, forgetting, already, the details of the plot.
You should check out the comicbook version too: Centre-pages of issue #5 showed Alvin gloating over his harvested trophies. The little, blank-walled exhibition room, filled with pile upon pile of severed heads, most stacked neatly upright, but several tumbled loosely together, haphazardly thrown upon the heap. They filled the room to the depth of about a metre. The artist, faced with depicting a crowd of dead faces, has fallen back on his ruthless formula, and has inked with unusual deliberation and exactness, resulting in a mordant, even amusing illustration.
Pink faces, so neatly delineated in faultless black ink! Corn-yellow hair, still flowing and neat, on women's heads, a handsome young lad, with clear, regular features, hair an appealing chestnut-brown! Their eyes shut or rolled back in their sockets, their mouths gaping. No respect given to status, gender, or social class. The handsome kids, the respectable girls, uptown bankers and small time salesmen. All the heads flung in together. Victims of the infamous serial killer, Mr. Alvin J. Crow. Total head-count: 57. Dozens of other persons missing and suspected killed. Mr. Crow seemed to kill without discrimination, purpose, or reason.
Now as a kind of final stroke, or denouement, to our tale, wouldn't it be amusing if a head uppermost on the pile, say that of a small-scale coffee house owner, were all at once to flick open its eyes.
You know how the heads of guillotine-victims, when held up to the crowd, were reputed sometimes to roll their eyes, futilely, in stupefaction and bemusement? His expression can be like that.
His lips move, his vocal chords tense, he begins to form words. "They say it was the gas that did it... leaking fumes... chloroform, distilled in concentrate form... faulty piping, lethal... carbon monoxide... has killed us... ain't life a gas... (his eyelids drooping)... next time I'll count the heads..."
For Alvin, his lips softly moving, had begun to carefully count his trophies, his finger moving through the air.
End of movie. I've often lurched up from my cinema seat, puzzled and disappointed, and made my way too fast toward the exit, forgetting, already, the details of the plot.
Sunday 16 March 2014
Alvin J. Crow 9
Now the two girls huddle whimpering in a corner, crying grotesquely, in a grand portrayal of deep fright. They're hunched together, crouching in a corner, a blank plaster wall behind them.
Alvin propels himself forward once more, stalking, Frankenstein-like, slowly down the corridor.
Their burbling lamentations, hair in their eyes, clutching one another, every now and then letting out, as if involuntarily, a curse or yelp.
Here comes Alvin J. Crow, into the light, and it's here that the special effects make-up department comes into play. For Alvin is fully zombified and ancient, the ghost of an evil, corrupted old man, his ashen face glossy with lurid, festering scars, hair drastically whitened, as if with grey ash or a mound of talc, teeth dramatically yellowed, reddishly gleaming contact lenses in.
The way he shunts forward, grinning, it's as though he were blind, his hands held level in front of him in classic Frankenstein strangling pose, shuffling toward the two girls. All in all, a brave B-movie cliché, something as blatant and crude as a hammer horror zombie.
And yet, his intelligence! That festers and sparks on his dead face, twisted on his grin into perverted delight! A supreme diabolic intelligence, infinitely more harmful than the stupidity of a brain-dead zombie.
His cackle is transcendent: A great piece of sound effects trickery. The harsh, piercing sound of an old and thoroughly corrupted spirit delighting, with full childlike joy, in bloodlust. Note to the sound effects department; standard diabolic laughter, but the more blatant and maniacal the better. Combine it with, say, a wild theremin, a hollow sounding dully intoned note of doom, some shivering and swooping violins in agitation. This ain't the time for subtlety.
Alvin propels himself forward once more, stalking, Frankenstein-like, slowly down the corridor.
Their burbling lamentations, hair in their eyes, clutching one another, every now and then letting out, as if involuntarily, a curse or yelp.
Here comes Alvin J. Crow, into the light, and it's here that the special effects make-up department comes into play. For Alvin is fully zombified and ancient, the ghost of an evil, corrupted old man, his ashen face glossy with lurid, festering scars, hair drastically whitened, as if with grey ash or a mound of talc, teeth dramatically yellowed, reddishly gleaming contact lenses in.
The way he shunts forward, grinning, it's as though he were blind, his hands held level in front of him in classic Frankenstein strangling pose, shuffling toward the two girls. All in all, a brave B-movie cliché, something as blatant and crude as a hammer horror zombie.
And yet, his intelligence! That festers and sparks on his dead face, twisted on his grin into perverted delight! A supreme diabolic intelligence, infinitely more harmful than the stupidity of a brain-dead zombie.
His cackle is transcendent: A great piece of sound effects trickery. The harsh, piercing sound of an old and thoroughly corrupted spirit delighting, with full childlike joy, in bloodlust. Note to the sound effects department; standard diabolic laughter, but the more blatant and maniacal the better. Combine it with, say, a wild theremin, a hollow sounding dully intoned note of doom, some shivering and swooping violins in agitation. This ain't the time for subtlety.
Sunday 2 March 2014
Alvin J. Crow 8
But Alvin loomed out of the shadow and at a rush had barged into the room. What happened next scared the girls more than they would have previously thought possible.
Alvin began to speak to them in words they couldn't understand. His mouth hung gaping, fishlike, and his eyes held a strangely intense light.
The sounds he made phased and rushed, liquid-like, into one another, harsh and otherworldly. Then they realised what was happening. He was speaking backwards. And as they watched, Alvin seemed to rush, or be pulled gradually backwards, with slinking and fluid motions, back through the doorway until he was obscured once again within the shadow.
It was as though the rewind button had been pressed on a video, while Alvin continued to burble forth the strangely shifting sounds, and moved twisting backwards into darkness.
The girls got the message. They clung to one another, now crying and howling openly and hysterically. Their hearts shook and juddered within them, they clawed at one another, weeping and gnashing. They wouldn't have been able to say why they found it so frightening. It meant to them inversion, everything turned upside down, everything negated, the epitome of evil and wrong. Like when you play your LP's backwards it is rumoured you can hear the very voice of the Devil.
Now Alvin as we knew all along was and is the killer. It was he who had dimmed the lights, who had engendered the confusion. He it was who had been concealed behind the curtain, he was the torturer of bodies, the waxwork figure, the main exhibit. There he is at Madame Tussaud's, his face fixed, glassily staring, surrounded by his butchery.
Alvin began to speak to them in words they couldn't understand. His mouth hung gaping, fishlike, and his eyes held a strangely intense light.
The sounds he made phased and rushed, liquid-like, into one another, harsh and otherworldly. Then they realised what was happening. He was speaking backwards. And as they watched, Alvin seemed to rush, or be pulled gradually backwards, with slinking and fluid motions, back through the doorway until he was obscured once again within the shadow.
It was as though the rewind button had been pressed on a video, while Alvin continued to burble forth the strangely shifting sounds, and moved twisting backwards into darkness.
The girls got the message. They clung to one another, now crying and howling openly and hysterically. Their hearts shook and juddered within them, they clawed at one another, weeping and gnashing. They wouldn't have been able to say why they found it so frightening. It meant to them inversion, everything turned upside down, everything negated, the epitome of evil and wrong. Like when you play your LP's backwards it is rumoured you can hear the very voice of the Devil.
Now Alvin as we knew all along was and is the killer. It was he who had dimmed the lights, who had engendered the confusion. He it was who had been concealed behind the curtain, he was the torturer of bodies, the waxwork figure, the main exhibit. There he is at Madame Tussaud's, his face fixed, glassily staring, surrounded by his butchery.
Saturday 15 February 2014
Valentine's Poem for M.D.
Who was that goddess of whom the Greeks treat,
Born from the foam and setting feet
On Cypriot sands?
Well, I know one as fair as she,
So while her temples are fallen to debris,
Yet still she stands.
She has surpassed the dreams of the Greeks,
And diminished Cytherea's fame,
And the ghost of Rubens has broken his brush,
And the shade of Titian has wept for shame,
That they lived and died without knowing her name.
I am no Paris, and have no gold,
Nor gifts to give;
I had his treasure, but have sold
All that was his:
For vanquished are the Gods of old,
Yet M.D. lives.
Born from the foam and setting feet
On Cypriot sands?
Well, I know one as fair as she,
So while her temples are fallen to debris,
Yet still she stands.
She has surpassed the dreams of the Greeks,
And diminished Cytherea's fame,
And the ghost of Rubens has broken his brush,
And the shade of Titian has wept for shame,
That they lived and died without knowing her name.
I am no Paris, and have no gold,
Nor gifts to give;
I had his treasure, but have sold
All that was his:
For vanquished are the Gods of old,
Yet M.D. lives.
Friday 31 January 2014
Alvin J. Crow 7
Now Alvin J. Crow could be a mischievous kid, but also an inscrutable and tempestuous one. A propensity to melancholy, spindly-legged, slightly geeky, a hater of jocks, strangely old world and gothic, an obsessive manner and an undertaker-pale visage. Might grow up to occupy some small, mean clerical position, a nervous, bitter ectomorph.
His folks, the Crows, were it seems of old puritan stock, and the J was for his grandfather Joshua. From his ancestors he'd inherited a certain melancholy and a mystical, musical appreciation of tragedy and early death. In any case, Alvin Crow just didn't quite fit in. He hailed from the fine old city of Boston, where his parents had run an unsuccessful old world theatre, and in this atmosphere of decay and nostalgia, of musty tomes and anonymous daguerreotypes, he'd grown up an only child.
I've already mentioned the curious lack of common sense exhibited by the victims in this kind of story. Tracey and Sarah having fully barricaded the door, found themselves in a blank, plaster-walled room, perhaps a store room. In its minimalism and austerity it had the feel of an exhibition-space, but only a few paintings or sculptures of decent size could comfortably fit inside it, and it was completely empty at the moment.
The girls carried out a hushed, anxious conference, and came to the conclusion that they couldn't stay there, that they must find a way out, and ultimately, that, after all, it was only Alvin, and wasn't Alvin harmless? Sure, he was a little weird, but they needed all the help they could get.
They cleared the doorway, and Sarah opened the door slowly, peering outside.
His folks, the Crows, were it seems of old puritan stock, and the J was for his grandfather Joshua. From his ancestors he'd inherited a certain melancholy and a mystical, musical appreciation of tragedy and early death. In any case, Alvin Crow just didn't quite fit in. He hailed from the fine old city of Boston, where his parents had run an unsuccessful old world theatre, and in this atmosphere of decay and nostalgia, of musty tomes and anonymous daguerreotypes, he'd grown up an only child.
I've already mentioned the curious lack of common sense exhibited by the victims in this kind of story. Tracey and Sarah having fully barricaded the door, found themselves in a blank, plaster-walled room, perhaps a store room. In its minimalism and austerity it had the feel of an exhibition-space, but only a few paintings or sculptures of decent size could comfortably fit inside it, and it was completely empty at the moment.
The girls carried out a hushed, anxious conference, and came to the conclusion that they couldn't stay there, that they must find a way out, and ultimately, that, after all, it was only Alvin, and wasn't Alvin harmless? Sure, he was a little weird, but they needed all the help they could get.
They cleared the doorway, and Sarah opened the door slowly, peering outside.
Friday 17 January 2014
Alvin J. Crow 6
What the girls don't like is that Alvin appears to be unworried by the whole ordeal. His head is lowered as he jogs swiftly behind them down the corridor, but his glinting eyes peer intently forward, and he seems to bear on his face a soft, self-indulgent smile.
Now Tracey and Sarah are already freaked out and Alvin's expression does nothing to revive their courage or confidence. Now you've all seen them teen slasher flicks, and you're familiar with this kind of girl, a bit preppy-ish, naive, propensity to scream at not much provocation, but with a strange lack of common sense; the type of girl who will go down to the basement. It helps if they're all-American, cheerleader-ish, cliquey, tasteless. You know the kinda thing.
The girls get to a door. They rush inside and immediately fling their weight against it, spluttering and anxious, barricading against Alvin. Dragging heavy pieces of furniture to jam under the handle. Alvin on the other side almost running into the door.
Alvin takes a few steps back and tries a forceful rush at the door, then a hefty kick, then with all his strength tries to shoulder his way through, battering aside the door. All his exertions were accompanied by inarticulate yelping shrieks through the door, though the girls kept their nerve and, pressing themselves against the handle, succeeded in keeping it secure.
Alvin tries another tack. Go for the sympathy vote. "Please, please let me in. It's only me, it's me Alvin". Exaggerated mock-frightened voice, pitiful tones. "You know me, it's only Alvin!". There he stood, pleading sorrowfully through the flimsy wooden door, trying not to break into a grin.
Now Tracey and Sarah are already freaked out and Alvin's expression does nothing to revive their courage or confidence. Now you've all seen them teen slasher flicks, and you're familiar with this kind of girl, a bit preppy-ish, naive, propensity to scream at not much provocation, but with a strange lack of common sense; the type of girl who will go down to the basement. It helps if they're all-American, cheerleader-ish, cliquey, tasteless. You know the kinda thing.
The girls get to a door. They rush inside and immediately fling their weight against it, spluttering and anxious, barricading against Alvin. Dragging heavy pieces of furniture to jam under the handle. Alvin on the other side almost running into the door.
Alvin takes a few steps back and tries a forceful rush at the door, then a hefty kick, then with all his strength tries to shoulder his way through, battering aside the door. All his exertions were accompanied by inarticulate yelping shrieks through the door, though the girls kept their nerve and, pressing themselves against the handle, succeeded in keeping it secure.
Alvin tries another tack. Go for the sympathy vote. "Please, please let me in. It's only me, it's me Alvin". Exaggerated mock-frightened voice, pitiful tones. "You know me, it's only Alvin!". There he stood, pleading sorrowfully through the flimsy wooden door, trying not to break into a grin.
Monday 6 January 2014
Alvin J.Crow 5
The majority of kids having got through the door, despite struggles and tussles, a doubt or suspicion begins to form.
Which one of them is it? Which one might be the killer or an accomplice of the killer? Accordingly, they slam the door in the face of one boy who lagged behind, leaving him to scratch feebly and beg for mercy at the door. A process of weeding out. The weakest sacrificed.
Shoulda shoved the kid out into the darkness of the wide gallery to meet the approaching killer, left behind in the panic. In their frenzy the kids begin to suspect one another.
Now just a handful of boys and girls rushing through the darkened museum-corridors. Another door is reached and the process is repeated. Those who cram inside first are quick in the frenzy of their fear to seal the door, leaving their slower classmates trapped among dark stretches of corridor. The girls are screaming lock the door lock the fucking door and who knows from the muffled shouts and protestations that boom from all directions in the darkness whether killers or friends are present? Perhaps everyone is a killer?
It seems along the way that others have fallen by the wayside, become separated from the group, some of the boys have apparently stumbled and fallen. One pair however has managed to stick together, girlfriends called Tracey and Sarah, who ran off utterly panicked but nevertheless kept close together, grasping at each other with sweaty hands, comforting each other with their howls of fear.
Now Tracey and Sarah put on a spurt of speed and accelerate into a white-walled stretch of corridor dankly lit by yellowish circular lights. Feeling themselves unencumbered by the rest of the group they cast fervid glances backwards. Their classmates it seems have fallen back, perhaps claimed by the killer. Then, loping awkwardly out of the darkness, they see Alvin, the least popular member of class, who runs stiffly but steadily behind them, keeping pace with their stumbling, frightened rush.
Which one of them is it? Which one might be the killer or an accomplice of the killer? Accordingly, they slam the door in the face of one boy who lagged behind, leaving him to scratch feebly and beg for mercy at the door. A process of weeding out. The weakest sacrificed.
Shoulda shoved the kid out into the darkness of the wide gallery to meet the approaching killer, left behind in the panic. In their frenzy the kids begin to suspect one another.
Now just a handful of boys and girls rushing through the darkened museum-corridors. Another door is reached and the process is repeated. Those who cram inside first are quick in the frenzy of their fear to seal the door, leaving their slower classmates trapped among dark stretches of corridor. The girls are screaming lock the door lock the fucking door and who knows from the muffled shouts and protestations that boom from all directions in the darkness whether killers or friends are present? Perhaps everyone is a killer?
It seems along the way that others have fallen by the wayside, become separated from the group, some of the boys have apparently stumbled and fallen. One pair however has managed to stick together, girlfriends called Tracey and Sarah, who ran off utterly panicked but nevertheless kept close together, grasping at each other with sweaty hands, comforting each other with their howls of fear.
Now Tracey and Sarah put on a spurt of speed and accelerate into a white-walled stretch of corridor dankly lit by yellowish circular lights. Feeling themselves unencumbered by the rest of the group they cast fervid glances backwards. Their classmates it seems have fallen back, perhaps claimed by the killer. Then, loping awkwardly out of the darkness, they see Alvin, the least popular member of class, who runs stiffly but steadily behind them, keeping pace with their stumbling, frightened rush.
Saturday 4 January 2014
Alvin J. Crow 4
But eventually their curiosity got the better of them, and, against the entreaties and warnings of the girls, a couple of the more humorous and adventurous guys decided to go bodily into the recess and begin an exploration. Dan, a jovial potbellied boy in a purple t-shirt, took off his jacket and laid it aside, and with the help of lean, sharp-faced Terry, was able to haul himself fully inside the alcove, immediately reaching down to help Terry clamber up.
That heavy pearl-coloured curtain of fine watered silk, fell across the gap once more and obscured the two guys.... The other students watched and listened intently.... Behind the curtain a few fumbles and giggles were heard, a bit of cursing, the striking of a match.
In the next instant, several things occurred.
First, the strong overhead gallery lights were all dramatically dimmed at once, and from behind the curtain a frenzied, nauseated scream of fear was wrenched up from someone's throat. For a few seconds more the quivering light of a match could be seen through the silk curtain.
Vain, struggling hands punched at the material, muffled anxieties burst forth, as though distorted into an alien tongue. As hands clawed at the curtain spastically, the other students watched transfixed. Someone inside was struggling to get out, to break free, and was wrestling with the silk curtain, as though it was made of lead. His voice muffled, suffocated by some heavy force.
And then, from below the bottom of the curtain came a sudden splattering of dark liquid, as though someone inside had simply emptied a bucket of blood down the pristine white plaster wall. It happened with shocking suddenness.
What happened next is rather shameful to relate. The remaining students took to their heels and fled. They bolted toward the door from which they had come. Without organisation, without dignity, as one man. Shrieks of hysteria and shouts of panic and confusion, loud frenzied curses, scrambling and scratching to haul the door open and press through.
That heavy pearl-coloured curtain of fine watered silk, fell across the gap once more and obscured the two guys.... The other students watched and listened intently.... Behind the curtain a few fumbles and giggles were heard, a bit of cursing, the striking of a match.
In the next instant, several things occurred.
First, the strong overhead gallery lights were all dramatically dimmed at once, and from behind the curtain a frenzied, nauseated scream of fear was wrenched up from someone's throat. For a few seconds more the quivering light of a match could be seen through the silk curtain.
Vain, struggling hands punched at the material, muffled anxieties burst forth, as though distorted into an alien tongue. As hands clawed at the curtain spastically, the other students watched transfixed. Someone inside was struggling to get out, to break free, and was wrestling with the silk curtain, as though it was made of lead. His voice muffled, suffocated by some heavy force.
And then, from below the bottom of the curtain came a sudden splattering of dark liquid, as though someone inside had simply emptied a bucket of blood down the pristine white plaster wall. It happened with shocking suddenness.
What happened next is rather shameful to relate. The remaining students took to their heels and fled. They bolted toward the door from which they had come. Without organisation, without dignity, as one man. Shrieks of hysteria and shouts of panic and confusion, loud frenzied curses, scrambling and scratching to haul the door open and press through.
Thursday 2 January 2014
Alvin J. Crow 3
Now all the kids are curious, especially the guys who are young and lairy and may have something to prove, and who think the whole thing comic. The girls think it creepy and are holding back a little, arms folded. But the guys, the older ones too, gawk and wonder at the curtain, tugging at it, full of a morbid desire to reveal its secrets, almost as though what might be concealed was something salacious, something stark, grim, sexual.
The mysteriousness, arcanity, strange frozen life of the museum exhibit.
Now they began to be determined to view what was inside this secret alcove. A plan was formulated. They approached the exhibit carefully and by hoisting one another up were able to lift the curtain almost fully aside. One of the older guys balanced precariously, supported by a younger kid, his arms holding the pearl curtain aloft while he peered curiously and anxiously inside the recess. Another boy, lean and hungry-eyed, managed to grip its outside ledge and, hauling himself up, looked boldly in.
All the kids could see now what the pearl-coloured curtain had concealed; apparently nothing. The recess went back far deeper than expected, so far in fact that its farthest wall could not be seen, and the interior lay swathed in thick, impenetrable shadow, a threatening void like the darkness that fills a drippy, narrow-walled cave.
Maybe, then, the exhibit lay in shadow, and needed to be illuminated or activated. Since it was hard to hell how for the recess went back, it could be possible that the artefacts or figurines rested against the far wall. To the kids who peered inside the alcove, trying to penetrate the gloom, the impression received was of air and space, so that they perhaps were looking into more of a full-sized room than a mere recess, which receded into the wall for several metres. The kids became convinced, conjecturing among themselves, that this unusual exhibition-space must contain something.
Yet, they had a natural trepidation, which was like the ancestral fear of early man peering into the deepest recesses of a newly-discovered cave, listening out for the bear's breath.
The mysteriousness, arcanity, strange frozen life of the museum exhibit.
Now they began to be determined to view what was inside this secret alcove. A plan was formulated. They approached the exhibit carefully and by hoisting one another up were able to lift the curtain almost fully aside. One of the older guys balanced precariously, supported by a younger kid, his arms holding the pearl curtain aloft while he peered curiously and anxiously inside the recess. Another boy, lean and hungry-eyed, managed to grip its outside ledge and, hauling himself up, looked boldly in.
All the kids could see now what the pearl-coloured curtain had concealed; apparently nothing. The recess went back far deeper than expected, so far in fact that its farthest wall could not be seen, and the interior lay swathed in thick, impenetrable shadow, a threatening void like the darkness that fills a drippy, narrow-walled cave.
Maybe, then, the exhibit lay in shadow, and needed to be illuminated or activated. Since it was hard to hell how for the recess went back, it could be possible that the artefacts or figurines rested against the far wall. To the kids who peered inside the alcove, trying to penetrate the gloom, the impression received was of air and space, so that they perhaps were looking into more of a full-sized room than a mere recess, which receded into the wall for several metres. The kids became convinced, conjecturing among themselves, that this unusual exhibition-space must contain something.
Yet, they had a natural trepidation, which was like the ancestral fear of early man peering into the deepest recesses of a newly-discovered cave, listening out for the bear's breath.
Alvin J. Crow 2
Now all the group has once again assembled together and pass curious and bright-eyed through a dark corridor into a high-ceilinged, austerely white art space. They wander dreaming over the creaking, varnished floorboards whispering humourously to one another. A certain ironic reverence for art.
Midway down the gallery-space they are confronted with the main exhibit; a heavy silken curtain draped high on the wall, presumably concealing something. By catching lightly at the bottom of this curtain and tugging it partially aside the kids could see that behind it there was a hollow or depression in the wall, a sort of alcove that receded far back into the wall, forming almost a sort of room of its own, although as the curtain not be parted completely it was impossible to see what, if anything, lay inside this dark alcove.
The curtain concealing it was of heavy white silk, hanging dully, grey shadows on pure-gleaming pearl. It looked genteel, decorous, sinister, one heavy wedge of silk which could apparently not be parted, and whose purpose it seemed was to act as a veil of something disgraceful. Emblazoned across the curtain were these mysterious words: CRUCIATUS CORPUM, done in a large, ornate, arcane script with twisting, fluid filials and loops, like the handwriting from some sixteenth century manuscript, full of flourish and menace. What then was concealed behind the curtain? Might it show an exhibit of waxwork figures, showing ancient torture methods? The Spanish Inquisition perhaps, the twisting of knots, grim flagellations and torsions, wracked bodies. Scenes from the Crusades. Instruments used to torment accused witches, cages and stocks. Sawney Bean has had his hands and feet hacked off, and is being prepared for the auto da fe... The exhibit could be from any one of several stages of history.
Midway down the gallery-space they are confronted with the main exhibit; a heavy silken curtain draped high on the wall, presumably concealing something. By catching lightly at the bottom of this curtain and tugging it partially aside the kids could see that behind it there was a hollow or depression in the wall, a sort of alcove that receded far back into the wall, forming almost a sort of room of its own, although as the curtain not be parted completely it was impossible to see what, if anything, lay inside this dark alcove.
The curtain concealing it was of heavy white silk, hanging dully, grey shadows on pure-gleaming pearl. It looked genteel, decorous, sinister, one heavy wedge of silk which could apparently not be parted, and whose purpose it seemed was to act as a veil of something disgraceful. Emblazoned across the curtain were these mysterious words: CRUCIATUS CORPUM, done in a large, ornate, arcane script with twisting, fluid filials and loops, like the handwriting from some sixteenth century manuscript, full of flourish and menace. What then was concealed behind the curtain? Might it show an exhibit of waxwork figures, showing ancient torture methods? The Spanish Inquisition perhaps, the twisting of knots, grim flagellations and torsions, wracked bodies. Scenes from the Crusades. Instruments used to torment accused witches, cages and stocks. Sawney Bean has had his hands and feet hacked off, and is being prepared for the auto da fe... The exhibit could be from any one of several stages of history.
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