walkingtalkingwriting

Threads and Traces (ak)

I think of networks of nerves and blood vessels, I think of love that touches and enables new organisation to take shape, I think of a sheep trapped in barbed wire; the paths that open out into the journey and those that apparently come to what we call a ‘dead’ end. A few weeks ago I could not help but notice the body of a black cat killed by the rushing of motorised traffic as I cycled out, vulnerable, myself, to the possibilities of the same fate. A mile or two of A road before I can dive off into the network of lanes that connect farms and hamlets, wriggling and clinging up hill and down dale; a maze to disorientate, to visit sleepy hollows, and present new and surprising vistas that I didn’t know existed. The black cat’s cadaver was in the middle of the carriageway, recognisably cat-like, but it wasn’t long before it was flattened, bones crushed, soft tissue squeezed out, perhaps nibbled by creatures that have a taste for that sort of carrion fast-food – crows and the like. Then a couple of weeks later it looked like a scrap of fur rug and by this time it had moved (been moved?) into the edge of the road, more or less right in my path and finally in the last week or two all that remains are three or four scuffs of black something-or-other across the white line; something that I no longer bother to avoid. A mere trace of something that had lived and breathed and been loved.

    Earlier this morning I read Paul Durcan’s The Road to Vétheuil 2009 (from Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have My Being)  and loved how it traces a path of love from walking ‘downhill to the village’ to the opening of the door and ‘we embraced and we burst out laughing.’ And the final six lines:

        ‘We stood face to face, talking nonsense,

        Not having seen one another for six months.

        Delighted to be doing that, and that only,

        And not being expected to do or say anything else

        But simply to be there and nowhere else

        Piping absolute, pure, spontaneous song.’

    Alain Badiou (In Praise of Love) writes (something else I read this morning): ‘ . . . between May ’68 and the Eighties . . . I developed the political conviction I have remained implacably loyal to and for which “communism” is one possible name. But I then equally structured my future life around processes of love that were by and large definitive. What came later, of the same order, was illuminated by that inspiration and its enduring nature . . . That was really the moment when, in between politics and love, my life found the musical chord that ensured its harmony.’

    The image of the project that we call life that is suggested by Badiou's words is that of a musical instrument (take your choice of instrument!). We are given the rough outline and we struggle daily and in our dreams at night to refine the trumpet or violin, to clarify what sort of instrument it is, learn to play it, engage with our resistances – when the teacher says sing, well, sing for God’s sake . . . but no, I can’t, I won’t, leave me alone, I’m in too much pain, I’m too distracted.

    And here is Tonto peering at the traces, the hoof print in the soft earth, the broken twig. He’ll know which we must go

 

Fighting for Intentions in Berlin (ak)

Or at least spying out the cracks that allow some sort of resistance. What is the nature of our intentions? Resistance? Yes, that must be high up on the list, but what form might this resistance take?

    Shivering on Dartmoor? Yes, tick that one.

    Advancing, not terribly bravely, into the strange world of life beyond 60? Yes, tick that one.

    What about that hooker, that our old friend booksmith talks about? Does he have s someone in mind? Is Michelle available? Is she cheap? The first and last prostitute I knowingly had anything to do with was one who shouted down to me from her first floor window in Berwick Street. It must have been 1970 or 71 because that was when I was working in Soho. There is no memory of how I responded. And for that matter, I can’t remember what her precise words were. ‘Do you want to come up?’ she might have said. And I might have responded, ‘no thank you, darling.’ Though it was probably without the darling. These days I seem to have started using ‘darling’ or ‘my dear’ to almost anyone I might have met once or twice. Perhaps all vaguely intimate contact is something to be treasured.

    Though working in Soho for what was probably a few months or at most a year must have meant that I encountered (in passing) any number of what have become better known as sex workers. What was my work? Just in case you were wondering. Overseas Telegrams. How quaint! The  technology of teleprinters and sticking strips of paper with their stream of words down on what I assume was an A5 sheet of paper has been completely superseded except for the nostalgia of wedding telegrams.

    Resistance must primarily have as its target the huge industrial force of commodification with its accompanying reduction of human value. I guess what it mostly amounts to is a tiny (but maybe not irrelevant) action of human solidarity. Like walking. Which is where this all started – something very simple: walking. Doing it and naming it. And even in the face of the divine comedy, talking and writing: endeavouring to nail the fragile sheet of paper, with the ink running, obscuring, losing the possibility of anybody actually reading it, in the howling wind and lashing rain of the night. ‘For f---ks sake, everything is fine; keep shopping’ is what they said when I protested.

    Can we put our little shoulders to the wheel of Debord’s détournement. Turning it round. But it’s hard not to feel trapped by the appearance of Beckett’s angel- tramps seemingly stuck in some sort of purgatory, sensing the ticking of the clock, the winding down of one’s life force, and standing back in amazement as the younger generations come forward to take their places in the world, full of creative pizzazz.

    It feels like a narrow passage that I have to force our way through . . . sounds rather like another session of rebirthing doesn’t it. Oh dear, do I have the energy?

    Yes, come on, get on with it. OK OK. What sort of soap opera is this? Is there anybody there?

 

Does she even notice that I’m making love to her? (ak)

Have we arrived? Are we here? The place we are meant to be? In the place to which some god or fate intended us to reach? An intention that was in place from the very dawn of eternity, not that eternity can have a dawn, or a sunset come to that. A sort of enlightenment without the fireworks? Surely fireworks were on the menu! A patch of boggy Dartmoor, a gentle rain, a mist, Schubert on the little wind-up radio and we have to squat because it is too wet to sit down. In the midst of a would-be heated male companionship but so exhausted that our chilly fingers can no longer grasp the weapons that now lie unused glistening in the tussocks. Clever weapons that I should have been trained in many decades ago when my mind was still supple enough, in the sunshine, not down here in the labyrinthine depths full of strange snortings, a dark world in which it’s certainly better not to trust any living thing. Or dead thing. Or even things that claim to be alive but actually exist in some dimension unknown to our current state of knowledge.

 

    Priest-king or war-lord? Excuse me, I just need to go to the lavatory. That’s better, now what was that you were saying? The thing with foreign names is that they are so mysteriously attractive. Take Smith as a for instance, take it in your left hand and then in your right take Dumézil. Chalk and cheese, I think you’ll agree. But we do have to move on, we can’t squat around here all day. Pinky Dave Cameron, of course, is a fully paid up lizard dressed up as a castrated war-lord. The fact of it is, is that somebody or other got the bags mixed up, the contents spilt all over the Piazza del Popolo during a benefit concert for that poor beggar Berlusconi. We did our best to pick up the pieces, but many were stolen or were washed into the sewers. And we’ve never been able to properly sort out the ones we were able to collect. There’s no time. I know it sounds like an excuse but . . . please be reasonable. Time is money. And you know how while I’m dreaming of what to have for supper some other guys are busy hoarding all the available cash. I must add that it is also in part a question of categories. It seems to me to be a good thing that we can begin to see the complexity of it all but it does make simple decision making almost impossible unless we shut our eyes and stab wildly with a pin. Can we really call that decision making?

 

    I’m not convinced that she realises I’m making love to her. Not like the old days when the heat was undeniable. Jenny Diski, who I believe to be a woman, (LRB 22 March 2012) quotes Roger Ebert: ‘One of the reasons that America inspires so many road movies that we have so many roads. One of the reasons we have so many buddy movies is that Hollywood doesn’t understand female characters (there are so many hookers in the movies because, as characters, they share the convenience of their real-life counterparts: they’re easy to find and easy to get rid of).’

 

    Of course we like to pretend that we have roads here in jolly old England but essentially we only have rather damp patches of Dartmoor on which to squat and shout at each other, occasionally managing to strike a blow that’s got enough umph behind it to cause a darkening of the flesh. Where are you Michelle? And is this Michelle playing the part of a hooker? In this Movie?

 

Was the word the beginning? (ak)

Lacan linked the "father" with the symbolic, with language. Here, the "father" might not be the father but some (any) mediating agent that is able to change the energetic lock of mother and child, enabling the further development of the symbolic function. So we can see the necessity of triangulation to shift the focus, to open up, and provide impetus to new themes and projects. Not that mother/child quite describes us, we are more like a pair of orphans long lost waifs in the wilderness. Lost in the wilderness requires us to find three landmarks – a triangulation to ascertain our position so that we might discover the onward stream.

    Keeping to the idea of three, having named Lacan as one of the three, two more events during the course of Wednesday of this week might serve to fill in the remaining two spaces. The second space could be filled by meeting a new pal during the courtse of cycling out through the maze of lanes outside of town. I was the guide, he the stranger. But he occupied a particular position as a researcher in robotics at a nearby university; an American: factors which offered another view, a perspective. Then later the  same day three of us met up to go to the movies. The film on this occasion was Patience (after Sebald), directed by Grant Gee with Sebald the absent hero and a cast of countless literary critics and others to guide us into new insights into the work of Sebald: in particular his book, The Rings of Saturn. It was beautiful slow moving meditation on that work which itself was a slow moving walk in which he followed chance encounters and psychoanalytic style free associations to build up chains of meaning to pursue his themes of European history and loss. Walking through East Anglia the associations erupted or percolated and created a moving if not terrifying opening to the glories and violence of patriarchy.

    And robotics, where does that come from? What are we, the patriarchy, trying to do, where are we going? But always bearing in mind the fact that we have probably never known where we are going. But nonetheless, we continue to set off hopefully and chock-full of delusions.

    We focus down until we can see a direction which interests us and then we can chase down the quarry, ignoring other siren calls.

    Lacan and Sebald, in their different ways, might challenge us to see bigger, different pictures, give us a foothold upon which we can begin to climb out of the deep betrayals of the patriarchy, the deep trenches of tradition and rules whilst goaded by the sharp sticks of editors, willing participants in the search for new songs.

    And another thought: I guess there were always two necessary wings of the Church. One formal, dressed up in glorious robes, rituals and tradition; the other, the mystics striding off into the wilderness to do what mystics must do and bring back the bacon of inner glory and news of the Other. God or viper.

There I wasn't . . . (ak)

There I wasn’t strolling along this delightful grassy track when an unwarranted viper spoke to me though perhaps the speaking part was merely my imagination. Over there, I can hear a laughing faun hidden behind that rock. And I can just make out a shrieking satyr wild dancing amidst the trees. Meanwhile there is this coil of serpent sunning herself but alerted by my thundering patriarchal footfalls. There was no claim to possess a licence, no enquiry as to the possible remuneration attaching to the position of editor-in-chief. Why on earth did I get off the train?

    Am I not supposed to know where I am going? Aunty Maggie bashed me around the head until I understood that business plans were all the rage. And if I was so pathetic that I had no idea where I was bound (hand and foot) then at least I should have the decency to pretend that I did. Rather like writing this piece – where on earth do I want it to go? Solipsistic hallucinations allowing!

    Triangulations, we must remember are dangerous structures when applied to us. All well and good when referring to lengths of wood or metal; Hey, that’s really strong. But mummy what is he doing here? Aren’t I good enough for you? Surely we don’t need anybody else? And don’t go away when I’m talking, or at least having a go at thinking, I like you to be around while I think. And then all these children start appearing, popping out from God knows where. Was it something that I did? I was absent, asleep somewhere on a grassy track, minding my own business, dreaming of being deeply implicated in some sort of pleasurable activity, the nature of which is very unclear to me. A sort of mist came down . . . you know, like the transfiguration – what is it that is hidden in that cloud?

    And then I wake up to discover an unlicensed editor in the nest.

    Welcome you little snake in the grass, it seems rather exciting to imagine you paying occasional visits. I better get the vacuum cleaner out, have a shower and comb my hair.

 

Disappointed Detectives and other Devils (ak)

You should have gone to Mexico to dance the dance of death with Bolano’s Savage Detectives . . .  have you seen that Dennis Potter’s wonderful The Singing Detective is currently being shown on BBC4. What was it, 1986? I caught the second episode on iplayer and found it just as wonderful when I saw it twenty five years ago. And how it makes our world of 2012 look so glossy and superficial though how long will it be before we are all in the same position of Greece nobody knows. If we do go down it will be like the proverbial house of cards because the world created by free-market capitalism has no substance – it is all based on a me-too wish to be super rich and care nothing for anybody else – well mostly anyway.

 

    So dance the dance from Mexico to some tiny village in Hungary/Ukraine, the only way in or out is via a dirt track and why not dance by Anish Kapoor’s Olympic sculpture known as the Orbit – I think it should be included in the itinerary that is a linking of psychologically significant spiritual destinations. Death dance has to be at the cutting edge of all human endeavour.

 

    And let’s not forget the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5 – or fifth (no, not filth) version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which will be available any time soon. Certainly in time for the Olympics. And an early Guardian article suggests that so many new diagnoses are available from it that it looks like all our petty problems and whinges will be covered by a named pathology ready to be packaged and dealt with by a triumphant pharmaceutical company already gearing up its production somewhere near you.

 

D H Lawrence's sour soul must be mumbling incoherently somewhere in (over?) Mexico, mixing it with local drug cartel bosses, political dignities and deities. Actually I have received no clear indication of the state of Lawrence’s soul but whenever I see a photo of him he looks to me such a miserable complainer. Why didn’t he pick up a pick axe and get down that mine. Better for all of us, I reckon.

 

    This transatlantic thread is so fine as to be invisible to the human eye but hopefully not to birds following their migratory routes – perhaps they will be able to use it to rest upon when the old body is getting a bit weary. And hopefully this stupendous engineering feat will prove to be David Cameron’s up to the minute take as a thoroughly exciting new embodiment of Alfred Watkins’ Ley lines.

 

    Let’s get there before the press arrives.