Who owns these scrawny little feet?

 Posted by at 9:58 am  Anti-Gravity Surgery  Comments Off
Sep 062013
 

 

 

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‘In or around’ writes Rebecca Solnit (LRB Diary 29 August 2013) ‘June 1995 human character changed again.’ Do you even remember the last century? Or do I? It seems rather dream-like to me. Something that the the old people used to talk about. It goes along with the trenches of the First World War or the blitz in the second. Although as I attempt to get a handle on 1995 I’m not sure whether 1995 does not seem further back in the mists of time than the First World War. But nonetheless Solnit goes on blithely as though it’s all crystal clear, no mysteries or legends, no monsters or uncannily beautiful women appearing as if from nowhere; it is merely the intrusion of ever faster techno-developmental planes of engagement that leave us breathlessly engaged with our devices. Are we different as she suggests? I am. I hardly recognise myself but that is more to do with nearly twenty years of deterioration – ageing and the usual sorts of crisis. As though there is a usual sort of crisis.

And I have downloaded Ted Hughes’ Crow on to my kindle. Examination at the Womb-door begins: ‘Who owns these scrawny little feet? Death./Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death./Who owns these still working lungs? Death.’ And so on in his pounding rhythm. I love it. Yeah, let’s put death on the agenda! William H Gass’s character in The Tunnel who is referred to as Mad Meg or Magus Tabor lectures his students on the fantasy of so much history and wants to impress them (it sounds like they come to be entertained – a must-see before you die) with the single fact that history is all about death. So Men beyond 50 (beyond hope, I suppose that might mean) or die-a-log are right on the button – the 60s generation finding themselves up against it: surely we were never going to die. With so much life, so much hope pumping through our bodies we were going to live forever. No? Well, if we have to get old and die we’ll do it better than any previous generation. Ha Ha Ha.

So we have to stick our over fed snouts into the swill of Hughes’ poetry, especially Crow. How did he get there? To that place where he could write this stuff. And I remain rather amazed that I heard about it and bought it. Where I saw a review or who told me about it I have no idea. Though I am grateful for the nudge.

Then I think of walking through rural France for three weeks in 1997 and noticing the crucifixes – many life size – outside of villages and hamlets. Puzzled by the repeated sight of this tortured-to-death man. And it’s not even that with a bit of work we can get grips, come to terms with death.

Although we are such cheats that we will always have a go at pretending that we’ve got that one sorted. Tick that one off Jimmy.

She glanced at her lovely echo

 Posted by at 3:50 pm  Echo Effects, IN Conversation, ON the STREET, Tonite at the Coliseum  Comments Off
Jun 112013
 
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You’ll remember me saying.

Well, perhaps I don’t, the other replies.

Two men in conversation: it is not difficult to find many explanations for the disconnect in what they are saying to each other – reinventing the tradition, as Walter Scott said reputedly, always comes easy:

- Walter Benjamin walking with Baudelaire in Paris and transcribing what he once said or wrote in long sections of  The Arcades Project

- Joyce and Beckett walking on I’Ile aux Cygnes, Paris at the Francis Kyle Gallery (London from July)

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- “Ulysses’ ship in the Grand Basin of the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris”, my friend DRK says, searching for the right words and failing to find them, as he says he commonly does.

It is not exactly unsafe here, but it is always possible to detect danger, and hunched forward around a small cafe the four of us are speaking quietly together and being careful with our words. For one thing it is quite possible the large monumental figure on the pedestal above us is listening. He appears to belong to the apparatus of state authority and in a state of excitement with his erection, and something on a stick is pointing down towards us: a microphone. Or perhaps it is a weapon, something electronic and threatening.

Anything is possible on this bright and beautiful day isn’t it? While  the tourists are happily milling through the city gardens, jumping for joy, great red spots are beginning to fall from the sky. Or blood is exploding from somewhere, a body perhaps, and it could very quickly become a crime scene. The police will be arriving from every direction in the next instant, and the whole place will be locked down.

Something else red and intense and also exploding is under the bridge by the river Seine below where the two writers Joyce and Becket, if the two small waling figures precisely unrecognisable at such a distance are them – (DRK ”She  glanced at her lovely echo. Joyce and Beckett walking on I’Ile aux Cygnes, Paris.”).

The chances are there could be several kinds of explanations for these explosion altogether. Go to Firenze to try to find out and whether such phenomena are also to be found in that city. Her lovely echo: under the Ponte Vecchio, once walking close by I remember noticing the dusty dried out grass thick with discarded hypodermic needles, and plastic bags, occasional used condoms, and piles of black plastic garbage bags were scattered close by on the flat ground between river wall and the flowing water. Another time, I watched a group of young men playing football on a cleared grassless area, and skillfully avoiding letting their ball go out of play on the river side. And along the arcades –  lungo i portici - there were to be found young men and women, some of them wild eyed and revolutionary, sat beneath the grafitti of political slogans.

And so on, reinventing the tradition. lungo i portici : I also understand that the Grillini are now already in total disarray.