I have three books before me on my desk on this Sunday evening, the fifteenth of December.
Five years ago, before sweeping laws were put into effect to protect respect for the masses over respect for the individual, I received, on Tuesday the twenty fifth of November 2008, through the post, a second hand novel I had bought from an American seller via the World Wide Web three weeks earlier, “The Voyeur”, by Alain Robbe-Grillet. Grove Press, NY, New Everyman Edition 1989. Flipping through the pages, the first thing I read was a dedication in black Bic biro ink,
To: The little man who wasn’t there From: you figure it out. 12.25.89
The smell of 1989. I smell the smell of 1998. Christmas day scents and the smell of roast and candles and see the deep green holly rich orange berries design on wrapping paper that is torn from a paperback given by “un amigo invisible” somewhere in New York.
I have a news headline which I printed out from The London Sun the other day (I collect this kind of stuff, all sorts of odds and sods) which reads,
Local recycling plant ransacked and vandalised. Anti system terrorists....
Apparently, “increasingly desperate subversive attackers” had made off with various boxes of “materials prepared for recycling”. Now, in the name of the respectable and respected masses, resources are no longer burnt in public squares in rituals overseen by men in black uniforms or white robes or thousands dressed in suits and caps all the same grey, but “dissident materials” are recycled to produce clean energy to light the paths of respectfulness and the politically correct.
The smoke and ash and the reappearance of London smog do, however, make some, and I count myself among that number, wonder how clean, exactly, all this energy is.
I have, here on my desk, in front of me, three books considered by those in power to be worth no more than a calorific statistic from government heat generation figures, “The Voyeur”, of course, and also two others, a 1998 Thames and Hudson paperback compendium of the work of the English artist Francis Bacon (excellent quality reproductions) and a catalogue from the Bacon retrospective in The Tate, 11 September 2008 – 4 January 2009. They were rescued, along with piles of other essential reading (and seeing and hearing) matter, by agents under my highly indirect orders, and put into safe hands.
So close was that exhibition to the enactment of the Alliance of Civilisations’ new Laws of Respect, I often ask myself what has become of the paintings in that exhibition. I’d like to know in what dark vault or government employees’ or ministers’ back rooms all these paintings are locked away and hung in because, they might be seditious, but I am sure they are safely guarded. They are, after all is said and done, worth money, a lot of money, if only on the black market.
Francis Bacon, an invisible friend, beautiful, twisted and tortured, but beautiful, a voyeur to instants in time and I’m inside his mind inside the paintings under the glass (I know about the glass. I saw one or two of his works in real life when I was young and there I was wondering about and wandering about in the images) reflected and reflecting, and the paint is organic material fleshing out my Ray Harryhausen sword and shield wielding seed sown skeleton until my pen is mightier and I am complete! Whole!
Culture, these books can do that to you.
In warehouse K.U.T 25 there were no Alliance Constitutions, no Red Books, no Bibles or Korans to be saved. No need, that stuff is all government endorsed reading with instant subsidised distribution sales and downloading. That’s just common sense.
....the Islamic Higher Council hereby communicates that no girls will be allowed schooling from this time on....
Inside “The Voyeur”, pages 148/149, by way of a bookmark (I use it for that), is a receipt from J & R Music World, 23 Park Row NYC. NY. Dated 24.05.99, MON, for a CD collection,
BURROUGHS/BEST O. $62.99 ALL SALES FINAL: NO CASH REFUND
These are thoughts, scraps and coincidences for naked, empty days and nights and evenings like this. These books, these thoughts, could get me “recycled” but it’s worth the risk. So many things have gone these last twenty years, too many persons, all sales final. Too many important things, too many little things gone too, and there’s no refund. Where’s Virginia (Jone) Johnson and the Blue Roadsters’ version of Lou Reed’s “A Sheltered Life” disappeared to? Where’s it gone? Where’s the film, “Interview with Beauty”, the song was on the soundtrack, where’s it all gone? The song’s been vanished from the World Wide Web, there’s no result for a search for “Interview with Beauty”, it’s gone, gone, like so much else you supposed was there but can’t find anymore. I can’t even hum it anymore, it’s as if it never ever existed and a flake of organic material has been picked away from my flesh, and it itches, and my pen is slightly less mighty.
Someone’s sold out. Microsoft, perhaps?
Who keeps an eye on the voyeur? I do, your invisible friend. My invisible friend, the little man who isn’t exactly there. When the smog comes rolling over the towers it’s best to keep your eyes wide open. Someone said something twenty five years ago and they’re still saying it in 2013. It’s written. In black ink. Here,
you figure it out
On the twelfth floor of a tower block on The Cambridge Estate the neighbours and I hear the sound of the heavily booted feet of operatives from the T.B.A.P. (Tactical Bureau of Applied Politics) in the stairwells and hallways, then a short silence followed by a loud knocking and sounds of a short, but violent scuffle .
(P 149) The girl’s body was discovered the following morning at low tide.
Half past ten in the evening and I’m wandering about my twelfth floor flat shuffling papers and books and CDs about here and moving things into the sink there, and wiping the day’s stains from over there and I’ve finished with the internet and the screen’s blank and I’m talking to myself again and I’m shuffling my papers about. You figure it out.
....evening a large piece of M. Barceló’s “Ocean” fell onto a Delegate Representative of the Taliban Higher Council chairing a meeting of The Alliance of Civilisations in its Geneva headquarters. Said Representative suffered a heavy concussion and the dislocation, in his fall, of his right shoulder. His daughter, currently studying at a British Government funded Madrassa in Kingston upon Thames, is quoted as having called on the European Union to designate more funds for the conservation of religious properties since....
Since the smell of 1989. Christmas day and I sense the scents of all these vital scraps, thoughts, odds and sods and coincidences for naked, empty days and nights and evenings like this. My collections of materials, flesh out my Ray Harryhausen sword and shield wielding seed sown skeleton until the pen is mightier!
Concussion? Why couldn’t they all have just drowned? Drowned in an ocean of acrylic paint.
You figure it out!
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