Monday, February 23, 2009
The Trial and Last Judgment of John Winston Howard
The script as performed at the Melbourne Town Hall on August 5th 2007 can be found here.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The Trial & Last Judgment of John Winston Howard
Shall be enacted in the Melbourne Town Hall at 4pm on Sunday the 5th day of August 2007.
The soul of the said John Winston Howard now inhabiting Max Gillies, miserable sinner, being charged with: Gross Violations of Commandments 5 and 8 Inhumanity and Perfidy, Equivocation and Mendacity, Uriah Heapish Pious Fraud, Hornswaggling Hypocrisy, Tergiversating Duplicity, Tarradiddling Trickery, Humbug Guile and Sham, shall be brought before the Supreme Bean, Linda Briskman for trial.
A Multitude of 2000 souls ascends the Town Hall steps. Rolf Harris sings “A Stairway to Heaven” over P/A Cardboard clouds adorn the entrance to the foyer.
In the foyer Louis Armstrong sings “O When the Saints” Hip-hoppers rap for the assassination of JWH. Suppressed.
Saint Rod appears winged haloed (maybe a hubcap) radio-microphoned. Perhaps he sound checks his mic in latin: Unus. Duo. Tres. Pax vobiscum. G-L-O-R-I-A Vanitas, vanitas Venite adoremus. Habeas corpus. Hosannah in excelsis. Ad infinitum. Et cetera.
Perhaps he holds a Holy Rood on which is mounted the Rubbery Fowl of Justice.
He knocks on, unlocks & opens Heaven’s Door unto the auditorium. He ushers the Multitude to their seats. Advises of by-law prohibiting harping & busking generally. Perhaps he projects Michelangelo’s Last Judgment as a seating plan. Perhaps he separates sheep from goats. Directs sheep upstairs. Goats into the stalls. Confides that goats have more fun.. Avers that God is on her mysterious way…
The Multitude seats itself.
FX: Sheep, Goats, Gnashing, Wailing, “O When the Saints” played on the organ. The stage with add-on rostra thrusts into the space with swivel chairs, tables set for Counsels and Defendant, a witness box and dock embellished in a rococo manner, all with microphones. Above, perhaps suspended from the organ loft, a projection screen.
Saint Rod ushers in Counsel for the Defence (black-gowned, wigged, horned with flourishing tail), Counsel for the Prosecution in white and the Defendant perhaps shrouded in monk’s cow
Organ, all stops out, plays “Dies Irae” Enter to the organ loft Her Honour God, very big hair, swathed in pink, with mic. Organ plays 12 bars of the Alleluia Chorus. Stops abruptly.
Saint Rod: All rise!
The Defendant is called to the stand and reveals himself. Saint Rod reads the charges (see above). They are projected on the screen.
God asks the Defendant how he pleads. The defendant equivocates.
God calls the Blessed Julian Burnside to put the case for the Prosecution.
Prosecution delivers a summary statement of Howard’s sins (approx 10mins, to be written by JB, perhaps illuminated by projections)
Prosecution calls 1st witness the late Phillip Adams, atheist. St Rod produces him.
Further difficulties with swearing-in. Objections from God.
Prosecution leads Adams to establish Howard’s subversion of Faith Hope and Charity in the nation, his negation of Peace and Goodwill throughout the world. (approx 5mins)
Defence cross-examines (brief impro).
Prosecution calls the heavenly Melanie Brooys. St Rod obliges.
Defence questions the bona fides of a known purveyor of fiction. Over-ruled. God citing
the precedent of his own book.
Prosecution leads Brooys on Howard’s debasement of language and social and political institutions (approx 5mins)
Defence cross-examines in a low, insinuating, discreditable manner.
FX: Fortissimo diapason from organ.
God reproves the Defence. She calls for the accused to take the stand.
Howard is perhaps preoccupied with a mobile phone call. He moves to the box.
Howard: Er Mr Speaker er beg pardon humbly humbly, Prime Mover, your petitioner humbly prays er - that was Jeanette, by the by, she says she spoke to you this morning…
Howard delivers an Apologia Pro Sua Vita undermined by projected images (approx 10mins to be written by His Eminence Guy Rundle)
He is examined by Defence Counsel.
He is Cross-examined by the Prosecution
Howard stands down
Defence calls 2 witnesses: HM Queen and Bush. (Compromising testimonies- 3-5mins – also to be written by His Eminence if he so consent).
Cross examination follows, improvised cut and thrust, if the Prosecution is game.
The Heavenly Court becomes disorderly.
Interjections from the Multitude, led on by Righteous Demonstrators and Agents
Provocateurs: Warmongers! Fools! Knaves! Liars! Satan’s Spawn! etc
Struggles with the Bouncers of Paradise and St Rod brandishing the Rubbery Fowl of Justice.
God: Order! Order! Where’s Thor’s hammer when you need it? Play it again Samuel!
Thunderous torrents of organ
God: Now a bit of shoosh creatures or its outer darkness for the lot of you.
She sums up. Proposes to smite Howard and his cohorts.
She clicks her fingers and the first Chorus of Ian Dury & the Blockheads “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” plays ff. Multitude claps in time The Court boogies.
God adjourns Howard’s doom until election day.
Organ plays “Dies Irae”
The soul of the said John Winston Howard now inhabiting Max Gillies, miserable sinner, being charged with: Gross Violations of Commandments 5 and 8 Inhumanity and Perfidy, Equivocation and Mendacity, Uriah Heapish Pious Fraud, Hornswaggling Hypocrisy, Tergiversating Duplicity, Tarradiddling Trickery, Humbug Guile and Sham, shall be brought before the Supreme Bean, Linda Briskman for trial.
- The Blessed Julian Burnside to appear for the Prosecution
- The Late Phillip Adams as his first witness
- The Heavenly Melanie La Brooy as his second
- The sybilline Sue Ingleton as Devil’s Advocate
- HM Queen incarnate as jubilating Gerry Connolly as the first defence witness
- George W Bush, 2-dimensional with left foot operating mouth, as the second
- Saint Rod the Quantocrator officiating as the Tipstaff.
- SS Paul Keating and Android Blot in the choir and Alan Jones as Yappy the Parrot
- With assorted Video Recording Angels, Celestial Secret Policemen, Paradise Bouncers,
- Righteous Demonstrators (To Hell With Howard, Burn Johnnie Burn, Prince of Lies, etc)
- Agents Provocateurs and an Organist in attendance.
- Underpinned by Technical Angels viz:
- Holy Writ Management: Tim Robertson, Guy Rundle, Jonathon McNaughten, Graham Pitts
- Firmament Construction: Adrian Cherubin
- Opus Dei: Tim Robertson
- Supernatural Stage Management: Desiree Lane
- Vision: Image Control (Keith & Peter Webb)
- Vox (Radio mics) Cameron Parker (Inside Out Productions)
- Propaganda: Rob and Maggie Gerrand
- Props (halos, horns, clouds masks, placards etc): Trish Broom
- Heavenly Raiment: (tba)Rose Chong(?)
- Mammon/Lucre/Divine Afflatus: Max Dumais, John Timlin.
A Multitude of 2000 souls ascends the Town Hall steps. Rolf Harris sings “A Stairway to Heaven” over P/A Cardboard clouds adorn the entrance to the foyer.
In the foyer Louis Armstrong sings “O When the Saints” Hip-hoppers rap for the assassination of JWH. Suppressed.
Saint Rod appears winged haloed (maybe a hubcap) radio-microphoned. Perhaps he sound checks his mic in latin: Unus. Duo. Tres. Pax vobiscum. G-L-O-R-I-A Vanitas, vanitas Venite adoremus. Habeas corpus. Hosannah in excelsis. Ad infinitum. Et cetera.
Perhaps he holds a Holy Rood on which is mounted the Rubbery Fowl of Justice.
He knocks on, unlocks & opens Heaven’s Door unto the auditorium. He ushers the Multitude to their seats. Advises of by-law prohibiting harping & busking generally. Perhaps he projects Michelangelo’s Last Judgment as a seating plan. Perhaps he separates sheep from goats. Directs sheep upstairs. Goats into the stalls. Confides that goats have more fun.. Avers that God is on her mysterious way…
The Multitude seats itself.
FX: Sheep, Goats, Gnashing, Wailing, “O When the Saints” played on the organ. The stage with add-on rostra thrusts into the space with swivel chairs, tables set for Counsels and Defendant, a witness box and dock embellished in a rococo manner, all with microphones. Above, perhaps suspended from the organ loft, a projection screen.
Saint Rod ushers in Counsel for the Defence (black-gowned, wigged, horned with flourishing tail), Counsel for the Prosecution in white and the Defendant perhaps shrouded in monk’s cow
Organ, all stops out, plays “Dies Irae” Enter to the organ loft Her Honour God, very big hair, swathed in pink, with mic. Organ plays 12 bars of the Alleluia Chorus. Stops abruptly.
Saint Rod: All rise!
The Defendant is called to the stand and reveals himself. Saint Rod reads the charges (see above). They are projected on the screen.
God asks the Defendant how he pleads. The defendant equivocates.
God calls the Blessed Julian Burnside to put the case for the Prosecution.
Prosecution delivers a summary statement of Howard’s sins (approx 10mins, to be written by JB, perhaps illuminated by projections)
Prosecution calls 1st witness the late Phillip Adams, atheist. St Rod produces him.
Further difficulties with swearing-in. Objections from God.
Prosecution leads Adams to establish Howard’s subversion of Faith Hope and Charity in the nation, his negation of Peace and Goodwill throughout the world. (approx 5mins)
Defence cross-examines (brief impro).
Prosecution calls the heavenly Melanie Brooys. St Rod obliges.
Defence questions the bona fides of a known purveyor of fiction. Over-ruled. God citing
the precedent of his own book.
Prosecution leads Brooys on Howard’s debasement of language and social and political institutions (approx 5mins)
Defence cross-examines in a low, insinuating, discreditable manner.
FX: Fortissimo diapason from organ.
God reproves the Defence. She calls for the accused to take the stand.
Howard is perhaps preoccupied with a mobile phone call. He moves to the box.
Howard: Er Mr Speaker er beg pardon humbly humbly, Prime Mover, your petitioner humbly prays er - that was Jeanette, by the by, she says she spoke to you this morning…
Howard delivers an Apologia Pro Sua Vita undermined by projected images (approx 10mins to be written by His Eminence Guy Rundle)
He is examined by Defence Counsel.
He is Cross-examined by the Prosecution
Howard stands down
Defence calls 2 witnesses: HM Queen and Bush. (Compromising testimonies- 3-5mins – also to be written by His Eminence if he so consent).
Cross examination follows, improvised cut and thrust, if the Prosecution is game.
The Heavenly Court becomes disorderly.
Interjections from the Multitude, led on by Righteous Demonstrators and Agents
Provocateurs: Warmongers! Fools! Knaves! Liars! Satan’s Spawn! etc
Struggles with the Bouncers of Paradise and St Rod brandishing the Rubbery Fowl of Justice.
God: Order! Order! Where’s Thor’s hammer when you need it? Play it again Samuel!
Thunderous torrents of organ
God: Now a bit of shoosh creatures or its outer darkness for the lot of you.
She sums up. Proposes to smite Howard and his cohorts.
She clicks her fingers and the first Chorus of Ian Dury & the Blockheads “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” plays ff. Multitude claps in time The Court boogies.
God adjourns Howard’s doom until election day.
Organ plays “Dies Irae”
Saturday, August 05, 2006
matilda jalloul
Tim Baba rises in his trad glad rags - beige djiba and a toque too big for him.
He attempts to play the Mendelsohn wedding march on alto recorder to claim attention.
He announces:
Tim Baba veut dire quelques mots bien-choisis.
Salem les familles Robertson et Jalloul qui sont liees de cette heureuse journee a jamais
imshallah.
Salut Aziza, Bilgessum, Ahalem, Fatma Sofiem, Shokri, Slim, Mose, Anwar...
Et, surtout Aslemma M et Mme Anis et Mathilde Jalloul!
Monsieurs'dames - et les gosses et tous les voisins et tous les copains et bons compagnons je suis
ravi et tres honores d'etre ici a cette grande fete chez Jalloul a Ettabek.
Dans ce temps grave des assassins et massacre ici c'est un petit coin du bonheur.
Voila Mathilde, ma belle fille qui est venue a Carthage des Antipodes. Et qui est-ce qu'elle
a rencontre ici, cette reine de mon coeur? Voila: un beau prince qui s'appelle Anis.
C'est comme la vielle histoire de Dido et Aeneas a l'envers n;est-ce pas?. Mais nous esperons
que ca finisse dans les circonstances plus favorables. Que les dieux qui les opposent - la
bureaucratie idiote, la tyrannie des clercs soient vaincus; que notre Anis/Aeneas et
Mathilde/Dido feront un bon voyage a l'Australie et aussi des bons voyages de retour avec
une bonne equipe des beaux enfants, Imshallah.
Maintenant il faut qhe je lise les fax nuptials selon la tradition australienne ancienne -
(From Robin & Susan & Floss & Charmayne & Billie & Finn)
Et moimeme je souhaite qu'apres tout ce theatre passione d'amour et de fete que votre vie de
chaque jour ensemble soit plein d'amitie, de tolerance, de perseverance, de bonne fortune, et
sans cigaros.
Mahbrouk Imshallah dima ferhina!
He attempts to play the Mendelsohn wedding march on alto recorder to claim attention.
He announces:
Tim Baba veut dire quelques mots bien-choisis.
Salem les familles Robertson et Jalloul qui sont liees de cette heureuse journee a jamais
imshallah.
Salut Aziza, Bilgessum, Ahalem, Fatma Sofiem, Shokri, Slim, Mose, Anwar...
Et, surtout Aslemma M et Mme Anis et Mathilde Jalloul!
Monsieurs'dames - et les gosses et tous les voisins et tous les copains et bons compagnons je suis
ravi et tres honores d'etre ici a cette grande fete chez Jalloul a Ettabek.
Dans ce temps grave des assassins et massacre ici c'est un petit coin du bonheur.
Voila Mathilde, ma belle fille qui est venue a Carthage des Antipodes. Et qui est-ce qu'elle
a rencontre ici, cette reine de mon coeur? Voila: un beau prince qui s'appelle Anis.
C'est comme la vielle histoire de Dido et Aeneas a l'envers n;est-ce pas?. Mais nous esperons
que ca finisse dans les circonstances plus favorables. Que les dieux qui les opposent - la
bureaucratie idiote, la tyrannie des clercs soient vaincus; que notre Anis/Aeneas et
Mathilde/Dido feront un bon voyage a l'Australie et aussi des bons voyages de retour avec
une bonne equipe des beaux enfants, Imshallah.
Maintenant il faut qhe je lise les fax nuptials selon la tradition australienne ancienne -
(From Robin & Susan & Floss & Charmayne & Billie & Finn)
Et moimeme je souhaite qu'apres tout ce theatre passione d'amour et de fete que votre vie de
chaque jour ensemble soit plein d'amitie, de tolerance, de perseverance, de bonne fortune, et
sans cigaros.
Mahbrouk Imshallah dima ferhina!
Friday, June 23, 2006
GNOSTIC NONCE MESSE for Judas
GNOSIS NONCE MASS
for Judas
(cf www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/gospel_of_judas)
In front of a projection of a massive baroque altar 12 faithful worshippers enter in an orderly fashion to offer up their
High priests in business suits slaughter them & ritually sodomise eachother.
A glass harmonium plays Gnostic musak
A luminous cloud descends in red checkered trousers, laughing delirious divine laughter:
A ~ O, A ~ O, A ~ O, A ~ O, A ~ O!
Axaxaxaxaxax!
In saeculo saeculorumorumorumorum… stop it you’re killing me!
The altar orgy transforms into a pious offering of thanksgiving over loaves of bread.
Jesus emerges laughing from the cloud.
Thanksgivers (in Latin): Master, why are you laughing at our humblemumble of thanksgiving?
We have done what it is right to do
Jesus (in Latin): I do not laugh at you.
I laugh at your praise
I laugh at your god.
Thanksgivers (Latin) Master, are you not the son of our god?
Jesus (Latin): Fools, how do you know me?
You pray strange prayers to a stranger god.
I am the Sethian spark
Unbegotten son of the Celestial Mother
The self-generated One
The Jism at the Jump
cue Benny Goodman’s Jumping at the Savoy . The faithful jitterbug. Jesus ascends a little above them.
Judas in red fright wig approaches him.
Judas: I know who you are and where you come from.
Jesus: Judas the Judaean, our trusty treasurer – pray tell, who?
Judas: You are from the immortal realm of Barbelo. You are sent by one whose
name I am not
Jesus: Step away from the others.
Judas: I am not worthy…
Jesus: Judas, I shall tell you the mysteries of the Kingdom.
For you are the key.
The Barbelo Chorus (glass harmonium, bassoon, theremin & jews harp - for Judas)
Beyond Jahweh is Barbelo
Lift up your eyes
Behold a luminous cloud
Look at the light within it
And the stars surrounding it
And your star that leads the way
Beyond the shit and corruption
Creation of a malevolent demiurge
To the blessed realm
Barbelo! Barbelo! Barbelo!
Jesus: Judas I needs must sacrifice the man that clothes me.
So you must do what must be done.
Judas: Master I saw myself in a vision
Your 12 disciples were stoning me.
Jesus: You will become the 13th
Cursed by the generations
You will come to a field of blood
And you will rule over them.
Now do it quickly.
Judas: Let there be heaven though my place is in hell.
Jesus laughs the way he does. Judas kisses him on the mouth.
SWAT: Drop ‘em! Spread ‘em! Gay-assed muthafuckers!..etc
What are you doing here? You are a disciple of Jesus?
Judas: I am. This is he.
The SWAT team sound off 30 pieces of silver. They beat & hood Jesus then carry him off, cruciform.
Judas sings:
When I hang from a tree
No way up for me
I fall flyblown
In a potters field
Green guts spilled
In terracotta clay
On a summers day.
Enter a Realtor.
Realtor: This here’s one hell of a piece of real estate.
Sweetest home sweet home bloodmoney can buy
And the cheapest
The owner’s a potter he has to sell
His right hand lost its cunning
The left was cut off for theft
Akeldama, they call it means
Field of Blood
But you can change that –
Gehenna? Haked-damm?
Howzabout?
South face of the Hinnom
Position, position, position.
Judas swings on a rope next to the luminous trousered cloud.
Judas: I gave the money to the priests
They bought it
For a burial plot for strangers
I repent and confess my sins
In the presence of Christ.
Large projected superimposed images of the crux ansata, the ankh and a wandjina figure
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Soul Consciousness in Frankston
David Jones, daemon drummer believes on the soul. Gentle man, a meditator of 21 years or more, acolyte of Brahma Baba, the guru of the Brahma Kumaris. BK seems to be global corporate cosmic consciousness with a presence in 80 or so countries & they have an opulent retreat in Stotts Lane, south of Frankston. out Baxter way. One Sunday in February David was conducting a soul session for gentle men.
I got on the Mornington Freeway & the traffic was heavy, aggro, mean & edgy impatient of limits & sensitive souls slowing down to seek turnoffs to spiritual retreats & it flogged me south of Frankston with 1/2 an hour to spare.
To avoid human encounter, with 1/2 a mind to a comfortable infusion of caffeine I sought a way station like the the old Baxter Provender, a relais de camions imaginaire, in the vicinity. Bewildered by a 6-way roundabout, harried by roadrageous horns, I found a Hot Bread Shop just as the sign in the door was slid from OPEN to CLOSED by a round young virgin anxious to be out of there. Probably not a virgin. I dont know.
I needed to consult the Melways. I could make no sense of it. Went round the roundabout mistaking the way 3 times, till the 1/2 an hour well & truly killed, I came by the corrugations of Stott's Lane to the gateway of the Kumaris again. A suitable case for treatment.
The grounds are spacious, parklike, kempt & cyclonefenced. The retreat itself a plush motel, a solid breezeblock conference centre, 100 seeker capacity perhaps. A lobby with chunky handcarved wood & leather chairs, widewindowed, opening onto terrace, plashing water somewhere, leading to a 40 metre wooden bridge, cable stressed across an oddly water free gulley.
NO MORE THAN 10 PEOPLE ON THE BRIDGE AT ONCE
said a sign.
Reiner greets me in a german accent, bids me commit my details to a card & take off my shoes. He's my age, a sexagenarian. He reassures the next arrival, no, booking is not necessary & hands me a carton of plastic cups to insert in a water dispenser surrounded by 1/2 a dozen or so pairs of runners. Ambient music from a lowlit auditorium signifies the location of the 2 hour gentling towards eternity upcoming. 3 gents are sitting close in there, one at the light & sound controls. Chairs are new improved bauhaus with cushions, horseshoed around a mural of a sun over a sea, either rising or setting among lush cirrocumulus, apricock flushed with carmine, tigerish. A pride & joy. I take a seat down the front, overcoming an urgr to skulk, knowing that lurking up the back in such a place will not be allowed.
I'm having problems, impedence, resistance, what's the difference? to the vibe of this soulground. Negativity. My aura must be squidinky. The mural & the soundscape irk me. Kitsch! I cry inwardly. Schmaltz! I am a soul shrieking in german. This is not good. Shallow snobbery. Anodyne! I continue, anaesthetic! Stop this. Pull down thy vanity I say to myself.
I take off my spex, unburden my pockets: pen, Werthers Original Butterscotch, wallet. Lay them on the floor. Breathe. Let go.
DJ enters the space in white, barefoot, folded white scarf over right shoulder, smiling, crinkle eyes wireframed. Little bloke, light, easy, self-assured niceguy, gnomish in the best possible way & he says hello in a voice that beckons a response & finds one from us now 7 brothers. A pitch for intimacy, setting a frequency. We respond, mid-lifers & me the elder. 1/2 euro, 1/2 indo. Why have we come? Who are we? He wants to know & he rembers our names that now as I type I've forgotten. (When's now? It's always now.) All of us have tried to meditate our way into unto peace. The biggest of us, 6' 4" at least, for 1 year solid.
Rousseau: I venture to affirm that the state of reflection is contrary to nature & that the man who meditates is a depraved animal. (Origins of Inequality)
Mock on Rousseau.
The rest of us said we've started lots but cant stay regular. Desisters. I say I'd come to practise, to rehearse. DJ smiles through all our testimony. Affirms everything & led us into an observance of ourselves, our souls, our points of light. Asks us to see ourselves thus: peaceful souls within our husky cocooning bodies, full of light. Look at the beautiful painting, concentrate on just one part of it. The lights dim & the ambient hum is notched up & off we try to be.
I tried. I went for the whiter shader of pale disk in the middle of the mural. I deeply breathed, essaying accord with the sound so deeply phoneyphonic to me. 2 or 3 minutes was all that he asked. I cant keep from craning back to look out a window at a wee patch of real blue sky. Keep wanting DJ to make a Tibetan bowl hum like he did at the concert with bass, piano & singer the Sunday before.
And then I'm distracted by the thought of my wallet on the floor & have impure thoughts of a brother behind me. They pass but I dont get even semi-detached from the mortal coil.
This is not going to work. 3 latecomers arrive from Carlton. Orlando & brothers from the Phillipines. Small burnished middle-aged men. Sagacious faces, lambent brrown eyes. One without much english.
Interpretation is unselfconsciously supplied. In spanish the terms of reference shine brighter: punto de luz, alma, amor, cliche translated out.
DJ wants us to report on our experiences as light. Generally positive but vague, abstract. Tim? I claim to have got stuck on the old Pink Floyd riff:
Shine on you crazy diamond .
(laughter) Fine sez DJ but make that peaceful diamond.
I dont tell that I remained bobylogged, annoyed by the music, marred by the mural & that my attempt to image a star produced not inner peace but the roaring of burning hydrogen. Wise guy, huh? I didnt want to be. One of the Carlton crew wants to talk metaphysics - the soul, his/her relationship to the great father/friend. DJ supplies. I'm taken back to Huxley's anthology The Perennial Philosophy - atman/brahman, the dog barks, the caravan passes etc.
Next exercise is a 10 minutes meditatio. Eyes best kept open. The thought is simply:
I am a soul full of peace.
Punto de luz.
But this time our endeavours are accompanied by a soft insistent murmurous blond voice. It doesnt take me away. I consider an exit at 1/2 time which soon comes around with tea & cookies & nectarines & popping $5 stealthily in one of several wellwrought wooden boxes soliciting support. A walk to the middle of the wonderful long bridge & a pee, all in my purplestocking'd feet. Might as well see it through.
Second half is re-incarnation, subtle bodies, young souls & old souls, essences of long stories dealt with lightness, fluency & utter conviction:
"The father is an eternally disincarnated soul"
"There are very few angels. Yet"
"Finding inner peace promotes peace in the world"
Here's to it
The best is last: all rise, go to eachother & look at eachother's souls. Oh no. But yes, liberating to stare into the eyes of a stranger, barrier-breaking. In some encounters it's back to the no blinking duels in the playgrond. One unblinking Indian owl, other eyes all a-flutter, exposure, then we get the measure of it, gentle obeissances & salutes to bow out the engagements, break the linkage. Peering through the mask, or down wells, powerplays & flickering intimacy. I look down into David's eyes with what I fear might have been taken for a superior smile, a touch of the Aleister Crowleys, which was only the effect of trying to relax my jaw & he breaks off blinking. It's a privileged condition, calmly looking through eachother's windows to see who is in.
I saw no third eyes opening but Orlando said everything went blue for him. DJ said we had achieved a great bonding. Om Shanti.
I put my boots back on & left quickly but the one who had claimed to be an old hand was already driving away from the car park & gave a brotherly wave.
The road home seemed less furious. The image of a pint of Guinness came to me & I thought I could make it to the Mentone Hotel for the last set of Jazz on Sunday.
I got on the Mornington Freeway & the traffic was heavy, aggro, mean & edgy impatient of limits & sensitive souls slowing down to seek turnoffs to spiritual retreats & it flogged me south of Frankston with 1/2 an hour to spare.
To avoid human encounter, with 1/2 a mind to a comfortable infusion of caffeine I sought a way station like the the old Baxter Provender, a relais de camions imaginaire, in the vicinity. Bewildered by a 6-way roundabout, harried by roadrageous horns, I found a Hot Bread Shop just as the sign in the door was slid from OPEN to CLOSED by a round young virgin anxious to be out of there. Probably not a virgin. I dont know.
I needed to consult the Melways. I could make no sense of it. Went round the roundabout mistaking the way 3 times, till the 1/2 an hour well & truly killed, I came by the corrugations of Stott's Lane to the gateway of the Kumaris again. A suitable case for treatment.
The grounds are spacious, parklike, kempt & cyclonefenced. The retreat itself a plush motel, a solid breezeblock conference centre, 100 seeker capacity perhaps. A lobby with chunky handcarved wood & leather chairs, widewindowed, opening onto terrace, plashing water somewhere, leading to a 40 metre wooden bridge, cable stressed across an oddly water free gulley.
NO MORE THAN 10 PEOPLE ON THE BRIDGE AT ONCE
said a sign.
Reiner greets me in a german accent, bids me commit my details to a card & take off my shoes. He's my age, a sexagenarian. He reassures the next arrival, no, booking is not necessary & hands me a carton of plastic cups to insert in a water dispenser surrounded by 1/2 a dozen or so pairs of runners. Ambient music from a lowlit auditorium signifies the location of the 2 hour gentling towards eternity upcoming. 3 gents are sitting close in there, one at the light & sound controls. Chairs are new improved bauhaus with cushions, horseshoed around a mural of a sun over a sea, either rising or setting among lush cirrocumulus, apricock flushed with carmine, tigerish. A pride & joy. I take a seat down the front, overcoming an urgr to skulk, knowing that lurking up the back in such a place will not be allowed.
I'm having problems, impedence, resistance, what's the difference? to the vibe of this soulground. Negativity. My aura must be squidinky. The mural & the soundscape irk me. Kitsch! I cry inwardly. Schmaltz! I am a soul shrieking in german. This is not good. Shallow snobbery. Anodyne! I continue, anaesthetic! Stop this. Pull down thy vanity I say to myself.
I take off my spex, unburden my pockets: pen, Werthers Original Butterscotch, wallet. Lay them on the floor. Breathe. Let go.
DJ enters the space in white, barefoot, folded white scarf over right shoulder, smiling, crinkle eyes wireframed. Little bloke, light, easy, self-assured niceguy, gnomish in the best possible way & he says hello in a voice that beckons a response & finds one from us now 7 brothers. A pitch for intimacy, setting a frequency. We respond, mid-lifers & me the elder. 1/2 euro, 1/2 indo. Why have we come? Who are we? He wants to know & he rembers our names that now as I type I've forgotten. (When's now? It's always now.) All of us have tried to meditate our way into unto peace. The biggest of us, 6' 4" at least, for 1 year solid.
Rousseau: I venture to affirm that the state of reflection is contrary to nature & that the man who meditates is a depraved animal. (Origins of Inequality)
Mock on Rousseau.
The rest of us said we've started lots but cant stay regular. Desisters. I say I'd come to practise, to rehearse. DJ smiles through all our testimony. Affirms everything & led us into an observance of ourselves, our souls, our points of light. Asks us to see ourselves thus: peaceful souls within our husky cocooning bodies, full of light. Look at the beautiful painting, concentrate on just one part of it. The lights dim & the ambient hum is notched up & off we try to be.
I tried. I went for the whiter shader of pale disk in the middle of the mural. I deeply breathed, essaying accord with the sound so deeply phoneyphonic to me. 2 or 3 minutes was all that he asked. I cant keep from craning back to look out a window at a wee patch of real blue sky. Keep wanting DJ to make a Tibetan bowl hum like he did at the concert with bass, piano & singer the Sunday before.
And then I'm distracted by the thought of my wallet on the floor & have impure thoughts of a brother behind me. They pass but I dont get even semi-detached from the mortal coil.
This is not going to work. 3 latecomers arrive from Carlton. Orlando & brothers from the Phillipines. Small burnished middle-aged men. Sagacious faces, lambent brrown eyes. One without much english.
Interpretation is unselfconsciously supplied. In spanish the terms of reference shine brighter: punto de luz, alma, amor, cliche translated out.
DJ wants us to report on our experiences as light. Generally positive but vague, abstract. Tim? I claim to have got stuck on the old Pink Floyd riff:
Shine on you crazy diamond .
(laughter) Fine sez DJ but make that peaceful diamond.
I dont tell that I remained bobylogged, annoyed by the music, marred by the mural & that my attempt to image a star produced not inner peace but the roaring of burning hydrogen. Wise guy, huh? I didnt want to be. One of the Carlton crew wants to talk metaphysics - the soul, his/her relationship to the great father/friend. DJ supplies. I'm taken back to Huxley's anthology The Perennial Philosophy - atman/brahman, the dog barks, the caravan passes etc.
Next exercise is a 10 minutes meditatio. Eyes best kept open. The thought is simply:
I am a soul full of peace.
Punto de luz.
But this time our endeavours are accompanied by a soft insistent murmurous blond voice. It doesnt take me away. I consider an exit at 1/2 time which soon comes around with tea & cookies & nectarines & popping $5 stealthily in one of several wellwrought wooden boxes soliciting support. A walk to the middle of the wonderful long bridge & a pee, all in my purplestocking'd feet. Might as well see it through.
Second half is re-incarnation, subtle bodies, young souls & old souls, essences of long stories dealt with lightness, fluency & utter conviction:
"The father is an eternally disincarnated soul"
"There are very few angels. Yet"
"Finding inner peace promotes peace in the world"
Here's to it
The best is last: all rise, go to eachother & look at eachother's souls. Oh no. But yes, liberating to stare into the eyes of a stranger, barrier-breaking. In some encounters it's back to the no blinking duels in the playgrond. One unblinking Indian owl, other eyes all a-flutter, exposure, then we get the measure of it, gentle obeissances & salutes to bow out the engagements, break the linkage. Peering through the mask, or down wells, powerplays & flickering intimacy. I look down into David's eyes with what I fear might have been taken for a superior smile, a touch of the Aleister Crowleys, which was only the effect of trying to relax my jaw & he breaks off blinking. It's a privileged condition, calmly looking through eachother's windows to see who is in.
I saw no third eyes opening but Orlando said everything went blue for him. DJ said we had achieved a great bonding. Om Shanti.
I put my boots back on & left quickly but the one who had claimed to be an old hand was already driving away from the car park & gave a brotherly wave.
The road home seemed less furious. The image of a pint of Guinness came to me & I thought I could make it to the Mentone Hotel for the last set of Jazz on Sunday.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Mary Shelley and the Monsters
Mary Shelley and the Monsters a smoked opera for the quick & the dead about the Shelley/Byron menage.
Monday, November 07, 2005
ABC spiel for media alliance
For decades starving Aunty has been the policy of a liblab coalition against the ABC. Pollies in power are against feeding a creature with the capacity to bite them both on hand & bum. The ABC’s charter for fearless independence, in news & current affairs especially, underwrites the public transparency, accountability & dissent for which they prefer to pay in lip service.
A cut in funding for our national informer, educator & amuser of around 25% in real terms is part of the draining away of our Commonwealth into the private sector over the last 20 years enabled by both sides of parliament. The result is the gradual decay of both our intellectual/cultural & material/social infrastructures. Think of our universities & the neglect of scientific research. The policy includes giving a fox the charge of Aunty’s chickens, most brazenly in the case of the now privatised Senator Alston.
The ABC is accused of bias & elitism by members & clients of a power elite opposed to public broadcasting in principle as an offence against private enterprise & government by brute market force. For such righteous defenders of FoxNews & CNN the ABC is a vexatious tool of socialist propaganda. Given the vaccuum that was once the ALP, the inquisitorial skills of Kerry O’Brien are more likely to keep a bastard honest than Her Majesty’s loyal opposition. However this phenomenon is beyond the binary bullshit of left & right. Uncomfortable media quizzing is one of our endangered checks & balances against the insolence of power. Any incumbent would prefer to spin soundbites in the talkback world of democracy lite.
I have listened & watched & worked for the ABC for 50 years. I owe it. There is much to grumble about: that it always seems to be run by people with no experience in broadcasting, that it censors itself, that it seems to be under pressure to go commercial, to dumb itself down etc etc but from the Argonauts & cricket on the wireless, through developing Australian drama & comedy, 4 Corners, the Science Show, Triple J, Gardening Australia, Jazztrack…it has nurtured me, supported me, consoled me, a companion in isolation, rural & urban. It is a broad church, it contains & is larger than party politics. It has been a great distributor of cultural goods & services & must be adequately funded to continue & extend as such. I will bang on anything to prevent public broadcasting in Australia whimpering down the American track to impotence & irrelevance.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Consider Boris
Consider Boris, the actor 5 hours in the chair
Jack Pierce his creator
plucking his eyelids lashfree
days wrapped in cheesecloth
skull built up secured with metal clips
a silver rod through the neck
one highly flammable daemon at the casement
7 feet tall in his 21 pound wooden shoes
negotiating a bone china tea cup with difficulty
a ghastly grin wrinkling his lip
perusing additional dialogue:
“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?”
“You who raised me from unhallowed graves,
tortured the living animal to animate my lifeles clay
in your filthy workshop of creation”
“I have no name!
Botched from charnel, your improvised creation
carrion galvanised, hideous to behold
wlatsom as sea-changed flesh
You gave me no name Frankenstein
yours mine involute infinity sign
cut to our chase through snowblind wastes
eternally unkind.
Make me
mine own mate
I demand a creature of another sex
but as hideous as myself!”
Boris (to himself) I cant say this.
Mary: My brow is the creature’s brow
My eyelids his
My preface is by Percy
the creature strangles Victor’s little brother
William
my own sweet little William
I gave him your name
mea culpa mea culpa infanticida!
Mary: Dream my little baby came back to life
not dead only cold we rubbed it
before the fire it lived. (19/3/1815)
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
bohoclogue
BOHO
Up on Two Mile creek
a murder of crows rising from a mess of grapes
out of green alleys
in laconic arcs
criticast
the Boho cru in four fark antiphonals
to the stag of a king tree
grey box foe of ringbarking Footers
Thundercloudworks accumulate.
Skyhigh caucus of cockatoos
folds silent as napkins
on the Quarter Acre fig.
A country mile above Sugarloaf
the constant wedgetails revolve
in thermal gyres
sunstruck from granite Bohobodhisattvas
outcropping heads and shoulders
greened with lichen tatts.
Under white netting
rosellas
rip nectarine flesh
pits fall click.
on rock.
Sent to Black Inc Flinders Lane attention Les Murray Meter & Doler
of Best Australian Poetry 2005, Bush Imajism, post Jindiwhatmeworrybuck. Fly little birds.
short & sweet playcomp
A play, 10mins max, entries close 12/8 to Alex @ theartscentre. Best 10 get produced. The Tropfest of the Theatre blogatees. Shorttime. The Prize is the Glory. Dramaticules. Think minimal How short can you get? Shorter than Sam Beckett. His last, 86? written in hospital death bed, WhatWhere, about torture. Timely. This is a chance for “the executive, the chef, the student, the accountant, the Man Next Door. Anyone.” says Alex the brochure. A possible cast of characters right there.
Sweet? A criterion? Turn of phrase, no more.
Let me count the genres:
An Acronym Tragedy DIMA DFAT SUNC SIEV
A Satyr Play, or The Up Jig: Vanstone & Ruddock with dildos, Bush as a talking twat, Johnnie with his head in the iconic Globite school case
A Comical History to wit:
Histry Straya in 10mins for 3 performers.
hmmm
I shall keep myself posted.
Back in 10 mins
Thats better.
Histry Straya. Revisioned by Pauline & Les Fogittit.
When Cookie run up the flag, now that was somethin. One minute trackless waste, flyblown boongs run it up the pole Real Estate! Crown Land! Bang like that. Monarchism when you think about it got somethin to be said for it. Possession possession possession.
Monday, June 20, 2005
bloomsdiddy dum
The readership had practised. 3 Sunday afternoons. Plates were brought as you do to an Irish house, in this case Declan’s daughter’s flat. Phyllis a whopping carroty sausage roll and club sandwiches with the crusts off, Brian a family pie, bakery bought before the dawn. Nothing from me, the poormouth herald of the Wake but notions: let us pronounce the thunderwords, well
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonneronntuonnthunn
trovarrrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk, at least and let there be music, the Ballad of Finnegans Wake, which is how come Peter joined us on the second Sunday, bodhran at the ready to accompany me, had I been able to play the thing on the alto recorder. Utterly unable, I tee up a pipe practise with Peter at his place. He lends me his Soodlums penny whistle in C. He gives me a potted history and symbological explication of the bodhran and a mnemonic to remember its name, 2 cups of tea. He whacks on the Clancy Bros with Tommy Makem, reminisces of the heygomad, bushdancing days of the 80s. Pity its a bit early for a Bushmills.
Happily the Joycewords go play in the traffic in the back of my mind. For days Im in the frontal parlour obsessively tootling Tim Finnegans jig. Get it down. But in vain. On The Day a death in Peter’s family, he has to confront the real thing, no bodhran, no singer, no wry-necked pipe, no
Whack fol the darn-o
Dance to your partner
Whirl the floor
Your trotters shake!
Mortality. Smell of. Fuckit said the Unquenchable Spirit of Man in the shape of Marcus, lawyer, towsel-headed, out of the office for Bloomsday, Ill sing a verse and a chorus with you, sez he. And so we sit in the high & glassy interior of the Nicolas building to read Declan’s last minute redaction with a will. I am pleased to see the cold in Declan’s eye is healing nicely.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
The Big Day
Email from Declan on the Tuesday
Sorry for the latness of this message. On (Thursday) Bloomsday We are meeting at Collected Works for a reading there from 2.30 PM and afterwards a few readings through of the scripts at a room in the Writer’s Centre next door to Collected Works.
Declan works at the Postal exchange in Dandy. Night shift. So does Peter who plays the bodhran. The Post, subject to human agency and oddness of address, to a large degree eludes electronic scanning and remains in human hands, 1200 pairs. As his day job Declan has digested parts of Ulysses for the readings and typed them out in a variety of font and case. He hails from Sligo and has a wicked pack of Joyce anecdotes betraying a particular fondness for Frank Budgen & John Quinn, NY attorney and phynancial horse of the Modernists. The hail is hard to catch whenI first meet him at Khyats Hotel, Brighton, digesting a hamburger. Two pints of porter and all became plain. In 1989 it was himself that commenced the Melbourne Observance of Bloomsday abetted by John Flaus and a bunch of other joycephyliacs a year before they had it in Sydney, the copycats, though this global post modernist phenomenon sheets home to Dublin and the beginnings of the revival of the Irish economy in the exploitation of the things the Irish, producers of the lion’s share of English literature, are good at, things like cultural services, intellectual property & capital, processing information, managing knowledge, technoblarney, blablabla. Phillip Adams had requested no interview, publicising the Sydney comelatelies instead, thus setting a pattern of neglect and detraction. Rival players emerged in faction-loving Melbourne, academics, blue stockings particularly sticking in Declan’s craw, the butt of his mock and gave the enterprise the edge of grudge.
The day before The Big Day Declan sends a further email, in brogue:
A nap is indeed in the time frame. Thnak God ’tis the old age pension and not the blind pension yerself and John are getting or we’d be in all kinds of trouble that night!!!!
I like the blog ’tis good, only one little error, should be 7.30. Anyway not to worry we have good inquiries already, and yes to yes to a sound system too. Bejayus and begorrah the modern life is great….when one thinks of John Wayne in a Force 10 gale shouting from one end of a shop to t’other and guns firing all round at the same time and fires blazing, ’tis a wonder we won the war at all at all!!!
Judas took 30 pieces of silver and hanged himself in remorse: Pell took several hundred million and got a gong in addition. And Jaysus wept!!
Himself
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death
Horseman, pass by!
W B Yeats (1865 - 1939)
Beyond Ben Bulben
An Australian Yeats Society
Visit our website at www.benbulben.net
Yeats’ rep. in the antipodes with an accent I thought had left the stage some time before 1904. Over the top, up and at ‘em for the Finnaginbeginagin Memorial. My snobsheart murmurs ambivalently. My humble kidney (left) responds there are many chapels in the Cathedral of St Jim. So I light a green candle at the Altar of Absurdity & into my my manyzippered, neverflown frequentflyer valise I pack:
1 Ulysses
1 Finnegans Wake
1 Exagmination round our Factification for Incamination of his Work in Progress
1 Soodlums Irish penny whistle
and dressed in three shades of green catch the 1.09 from Mentone to the city.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
gothicka botanica Mary Shelley 2006
Mary Shelley Monstered in the Park, en plein air, son et lumiere, after dark.The Female Prometheus (no knickers)
Big Idea ie Greg Carroll using gear from Melbourne Shakespeare Co. in May post Games or during the Dread Games as cultural relief. Who’s paying what when how
Me to adapt. En blog. Some day soon, scanned & encrypted in editable form, right here blogateers. A visit to the Botanical wd be in order. Lakeside I wot
Musick? Violin, guitar, organ, koto, percussion. Mix with Neo Gothic, Siouxie & the Banshees? Bauhaus?
Characters on stilts, built up, Bread & Puppets, Peter Schuman style, like the Moon & Sir Timothy Shelley MP in 1975
Polidori’s Story: The Vampyre, Nosferatu/Byron connection
Villa Diodati phantasmagoria. Its animals: 8 dogs, 15 cats, 3 monkeys, an eagle, acrow & a falcon.
Mary losing her babies, guilt & horror. The buried child revived
New Induction. More eroticks. Ken Russell’s Gothic
Scene review:
ACT 1
1 Induction Break-in at the Museo becomes
Exterior. Break-out. (Percy Golem? Maria Vampyra? John Clare & the Ghouls?). Some monstrous thing(s) is loose and it surprises substance abusing neo-romantics in the Gardens.
2 The Godwin Exhibition.
Interior. Gothick Expressionismus structure, Tower, Grotto, Pavillion, Laboratory, Crypt cum Bathroom for the crazy old wanker
3 The Birth of Mary.
Interior/exterior Mary W. hanging from a birthing tree in a loooong white dress
4 The Boyhood of Shelley
Exterior. Entrance to a fairy grot. Corporal punishment. X Fade to interior chez Godwin & Girlhood of Mary.
5 Chez Godwin.
Interior.Percy pays a visit, falls in love. Lovers chased out on to the (Exterior) foggy streets of London.
6 Byron at Home
Interior. Pubic hair in the post. Claire calls. Time to leave England.
7 Graveyard at St Pancreas
Exterior. Mary W. rises & advises, placates Godwin. Lovers elope to France.
ACT2
1 Low Country Operetta
Exterior. Lord Byron sings of Ennui. Puts down fat ladies. Picks up Claire who sings of her love for the clubfooted one.
2 Travels with a Donkey
Exterior. Percy Mary & Claire buy a donkey from the transformative Trio.
3 Waterloo
Exterior. Byron looks up a fallen friend on the field.
4 O Come My Muse
Interior. Percy in the throes of composition. Mary interrupts.
5 Dream of an Imaginary Baby
Mime with pillow & blanket with Trio. Mary smothers Claire. Baby disappears.
6 Clubfoot to the Lake
Exterior. Mary & Shelley & Byron & Polidori prepare a picnic.
7 The Lake
Exterior. The quartet go sailing.
8 Mad Claire
Interior. Claire plays madly with a phallic doll to the distaste of Mary & Byron.
9 Polidori’s Story
Interior. Erotomanic Giorgio’s deal with the devil.
10 Interlude
Mary dreams of bones & a baby with the Trio.
11 The Musical Demise of Claire &
Polidori Interior. A dance of death.
12 Mary Writes
Interior. Mary starts Frankenstein, asserts feminist principles.
13 Percy Unbound
Exterior. Percy goes sailing against Byron’s advice & drowns.
14 The Heart
Exterior. On the beach Byron retrieves Shelley’s heart. The band plays the blues.
Monday, June 13, 2005
speck
As night follows day.
after the funeral the Wake. A speck of the Wake.
FW is the story of stories
a shot at writing down the Dreaming of Indo-European humankind. Very few of us read it like honest Roddy Doyle.
Is it a preposterous, impenetrable & immortal folly? An unscalable babel?
The ultimate pancollective unconscious kaka cake or oneiromastic encyclotron, if you will but you probably wont.
It is was & will be a Novel in the original sense of the word, a new thing
cobbled together over 16 years by a nearly blind man for an ideally insomniac readership, a readership required to speakeasy in tongues, panglossaliaquoiquoiquoiquoi!
A tale told of stem and stone… etc is told in the dubble en tongue. Speak it I pray you, drunkenly, as a Dublin lush and meaning unfolds like a family romance in the Freudian mode.
Hot Mama, ALP, Here Comes Everybody the fallen Dad, rival brothers, Shem & Sean, twin daughters & incestibilty between one & Dad . The tale is subject to archetypal shift in the Jungian mode. Joyce’s relationship with his daughter Lucia is part of the story since Ellman more so after Carol Loeb Schloss has the tongues wagging with her Dancing at the Wake.
The Greeks wrote tragedies about fuckedup families. Joyce wrote a comedy. EP called him Jim the joker. As the man so his works. Joyce words act up. In the beginning was the pun. A pun is word behaving badly, meaning both one thing and the other, an destabilised word doing a pirouette, performing, Peter is a rock. Anna is a river.
FW is wordplay on an epic scale. It begs wordplayers to fool about a text as non-linear as the Book of Kells and as sensicle as Jabberwocky
FW is a comedy and Joyce put himself in it. Scholars agree, the dodgy, artistic brother Shem is a satirical self portrait. FW p.169:
“Shem is as short for Seamus as Jem is joky for Jacob….
Monday, June 06, 2005
bloomsday
June 16 at 45 Downstairs: Joysprickin’ or Joysseance or Joking Jim & the Joyceboys with Phyllis & so forth.
Bar opens at 7.00.
At 7.30 Declan (Turn a Cold Eye) Foley calls Joyceonanists & Joyceanistas from the bar & for a bit of shush to read in. Introduces the readers: himself, Brian, Phyllis Marcus Luke John ( no Matthew) Tim & Peter on the bodhran.
& the legenda to wit:
Paddy Dignam’s funeral.
Tim intros and reads Shem the Penman.
Viceregal cavalcade.
Gerty (esp p477).
INTERVAL
Ballad of Finnegans Wake. Pipe & drum.
Mutt & Jute.
THUNDERWORD.
Peter Green’s Nora piece.
Catechism.
Molly in bed with Helen.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
bloomsday last
The first copy of Ulysses I opened had a brown paper wrapper over the green cover with the bow down the spine I knew nothing about, the property of my uncle, a seafaring man. I was a pre-ejacaculative adolescent in New Zealand, mid 20th century. I was looking for dirty bits and 4 letter words. My uncle had probably purchased it Sydney with the same intent. It was not well thumbed and dogeared like Ruby, the Indian Girl from the Olympia Press. For the syntactically incompetent Ruby was better value. Molly diddling through 3 prodigious sentences eluded me till Stephen Dedalus had replaced Holden Caulfield as my teenage rolemodel. What a callow young tosser the Artist turns out to be forging the uncreated conscience of his race in the smithy of his soul, clang clunk. As I reached the Age of Irony he diminished & I saw the guiltriddled faker, spellbound by his own genius, pissing away his talent gathered in like a prodigal by Leopold Bloom with whom my sympathies now alligned themselves. Once the faintly urinous tang of grilled mutton kidney pressed against my palate fine, I was Bloom. I found I could speak the language of cat. I was swept away by the sullied stream of blooming consciousness, to the stale flowerwater breath, to the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of Molly’s rump. What is all this but the magic of dirty words made flesh? Chrysostomatic Joyce made a Logophage out of me.
Years later I’m still gnawing at the entrails of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The enthusiast eats Joyce’s words (or those of Shakespeare, the Pentateuch or any true poet) then breathes them out aloud, effecting a communion, an act of transubstantiation. The secret is in the saying, the reader is a party to the poet’s creation, she comes to a carnal knowledge of the words through aural sex.
It was Siobhan McKenna who taught me that the Wake, delivered in a Dublin accent can warm cockles, in some parts even produce erections. James Joyce is a sex mechanic, his words are sex machines. He has the happy knack of putting the Eros in the Logos, the enlightening tendency to corrupt, a corrupter of words like Feste the clown in 12th Night. And in principle, corruption is generation.
Two of my children are named Finn and Anna Pome, a testament to an order of influence worth trying to explain. I didnt read them the Wake at bedtime. I never read them Dubliners at all. Mea culpa. In fact I havent partaken much of the corpus since the 70s and here I am stepping along Flinders Lane, Bloomsday last, to join in a Joycean cenacle at 45 downstairs. On the nonce. Itchy for a read. There are gatherings all over town: at the Celtic Club, lost in the Twilight of the Pokies. The State Library’s got medialinkage to Dublin, live from the House of The Dead on Ushers Island Dublin. Organised by the techno jesuit CEO. Properly global for Joyce Lives on the Net. No way to get my Shem the Penman on the menu there, unless by guerilla action but I am sober and Security would be tight. Molly Blooms in South Melbourne goes through the motions, Collected Works in the Nicholas building keeps the faith, Here Comes Everybody re- Joycing, but to this white walled subterranean gallery I have come on a wintry night. Things are clearly not in hand as I part with $10 at the door and get stuck into an iced cold can of Guinness. It appears that the man in charge, Declan “Cast a cold eye” Foley, convenor of the Beyond Ben Bulben Society and the present soiree, has fallen from the roof of his home and broken his neck. Gravity prevents any apt comparison to the fall that broke the skull of Tim Finnegan of the Ballad and the Wake. It means they are short of a reader. The offer of my services is accepted with alacrity and I, petty poormouth, ask for my $10 back. This tickles big John Flaus, basso, polymath and archivist who files it under Anecdote (active list). Dark, lustrous Helen who once played Mary Shelley, is here in green, out of an Edwardian poster for Pears soap, to give her Molly. Yes. I try and con my Joyce writ. I was wearing this same leather drizabone in a publicity photo with her long ago. One of three other Elder Readers kisses her hand with blushing fervour. Nelly cum Molly, the persona descends. With all my imagination I thee endow. I approach. Turns out she’s not doing Molly at all, she’s doing Gerty McDowell, the fireworks of Bloom’s coming. Yes, time for a Jamiesons, I shall wing it. Jah, oui, Joyceance be my friend!
The room was long, the house was thin. Lone males, three kinds of couple, some Dedali, mostly middle aged, post-Bloomfolk, eternal studes of Himself.
His speak was spoken trippingly in a velleity of dubble N accents. Paddy’s funeral in the morning catch as catch can, knowing chuckles among the nodding and the blank till memorably Bloom’s late afternoon Jouissance. Interval & Guinnessance. Then we staggered on into the night, my delivery becoming increasingly thick with phlegm and stumblejim. Elements in the scattered crowd drifted away on private streams of consciousness. The rest picked at the crazy sonic salad, peppered with epiphanies of sense, some good bits. A fair bit of lingua incognita burred in their ears till we all came yea-saying home with herself doing the Mollymonolorgasm. And waxed fat about doing it again next year. The Joyce jazz, the jism of the words.
The Wake I said.
Years later I’m still gnawing at the entrails of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The enthusiast eats Joyce’s words (or those of Shakespeare, the Pentateuch or any true poet) then breathes them out aloud, effecting a communion, an act of transubstantiation. The secret is in the saying, the reader is a party to the poet’s creation, she comes to a carnal knowledge of the words through aural sex.
It was Siobhan McKenna who taught me that the Wake, delivered in a Dublin accent can warm cockles, in some parts even produce erections. James Joyce is a sex mechanic, his words are sex machines. He has the happy knack of putting the Eros in the Logos, the enlightening tendency to corrupt, a corrupter of words like Feste the clown in 12th Night. And in principle, corruption is generation.
Two of my children are named Finn and Anna Pome, a testament to an order of influence worth trying to explain. I didnt read them the Wake at bedtime. I never read them Dubliners at all. Mea culpa. In fact I havent partaken much of the corpus since the 70s and here I am stepping along Flinders Lane, Bloomsday last, to join in a Joycean cenacle at 45 downstairs. On the nonce. Itchy for a read. There are gatherings all over town: at the Celtic Club, lost in the Twilight of the Pokies. The State Library’s got medialinkage to Dublin, live from the House of The Dead on Ushers Island Dublin. Organised by the techno jesuit CEO. Properly global for Joyce Lives on the Net. No way to get my Shem the Penman on the menu there, unless by guerilla action but I am sober and Security would be tight. Molly Blooms in South Melbourne goes through the motions, Collected Works in the Nicholas building keeps the faith, Here Comes Everybody re- Joycing, but to this white walled subterranean gallery I have come on a wintry night. Things are clearly not in hand as I part with $10 at the door and get stuck into an iced cold can of Guinness. It appears that the man in charge, Declan “Cast a cold eye” Foley, convenor of the Beyond Ben Bulben Society and the present soiree, has fallen from the roof of his home and broken his neck. Gravity prevents any apt comparison to the fall that broke the skull of Tim Finnegan of the Ballad and the Wake. It means they are short of a reader. The offer of my services is accepted with alacrity and I, petty poormouth, ask for my $10 back. This tickles big John Flaus, basso, polymath and archivist who files it under Anecdote (active list). Dark, lustrous Helen who once played Mary Shelley, is here in green, out of an Edwardian poster for Pears soap, to give her Molly. Yes. I try and con my Joyce writ. I was wearing this same leather drizabone in a publicity photo with her long ago. One of three other Elder Readers kisses her hand with blushing fervour. Nelly cum Molly, the persona descends. With all my imagination I thee endow. I approach. Turns out she’s not doing Molly at all, she’s doing Gerty McDowell, the fireworks of Bloom’s coming. Yes, time for a Jamiesons, I shall wing it. Jah, oui, Joyceance be my friend!
The room was long, the house was thin. Lone males, three kinds of couple, some Dedali, mostly middle aged, post-Bloomfolk, eternal studes of Himself.
His speak was spoken trippingly in a velleity of dubble N accents. Paddy’s funeral in the morning catch as catch can, knowing chuckles among the nodding and the blank till memorably Bloom’s late afternoon Jouissance. Interval & Guinnessance. Then we staggered on into the night, my delivery becoming increasingly thick with phlegm and stumblejim. Elements in the scattered crowd drifted away on private streams of consciousness. The rest picked at the crazy sonic salad, peppered with epiphanies of sense, some good bits. A fair bit of lingua incognita burred in their ears till we all came yea-saying home with herself doing the Mollymonolorgasm. And waxed fat about doing it again next year. The Joyce jazz, the jism of the words.
The Wake I said.
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