"It’s not often that a collection of writing reaches as far and wide as Shane Anderson’s debut work, Études des Gottnarrenmaschinen.
Broken Dimanche Press is extremely excited to be publishing this bold
collection which includes three works that explore the boundaries of
fiction and poetry. Utilising a plethora of devices – erasures, pseudo
application forms, Oulipo constraints, and the limits of the paragraph –
this is indeed a virtuoso collection that takes on the problems of
(modern) travel, power relations, historical and mental representation.
Using humor as a tool to diffuse these heavy-handed themes, Études des Gottnarrenmaschinen takes
the musical analogy of the ‘étude’ seriously, considering these to be
studies, “lessons,” difficult, all aimed towards a future idea of what
fiction could be, pushing up against a static Aristotelian scheme.
In this collection
the reader moves from a Rome both ancient and modern to a reconfigured
world of global travel, and on to a unique, philosophical examination of
translation, rationalism and the possibility of the transcendent.
Instead of being envious of the video game as the site of literary
potential, Anderson has boldly taken on the form in the first piece of
this collection, “Failed Proposals,” and what we get as the result is
the closest one can come to having a Playstation story that Barthelme or
Perec would be happy to sit down and play.
The second work, an
extended version of “The Gospels of Movement,” which first appeared
online, in its depiction of St. Patrick as the Slack Dog Snake Driver
explores modern forms of travel and the potential for violence,
searching and debunking the myth of Ireland’s patron saint, but also in
an Andersonian way, reasserting it.
The final work in
this collection is the "Cartesian Diver," an extraordinary undertaking
that explodes the idea of what words can and cannot achieve in the world
of objects. This piece takes up Descartes and his Meditations on First
Philosophy and as French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux has recently
suggested, Cartesian rationalism is not as easy to do away with as
modern philosophers would have us believe and as such, Anderson takes
another, necessary stab at Descartes and leads us to surprising ground,
giving way, in the end, to the Cartesian Evil Deceiver: a blueprint for
what a speculative realist fiction could read like. In each of these
pieces form is used with special care, finding the best tool to explore
each of its powerful ideas."
"Berlin-based
Broken Dimanche Press has recently published Shane Anderson’s debut,
Études des Gottnarrenmaschinen, which is a beautiful book object, and described thusly:
It’s not often that a collection of writing reaches as far and wide as Shane Anderson’s debut work, Études des Gottnarrenmaschinen…[a]
bold collection which includes three works that explore the boundaries
of fiction and poetry. Utilizing a plethora of devices – erasures,
pseudo application forms, Oulipo constraints, and the limits of the
paragraph – this is indeed a virtuoso collection that takes on the
problems of (modern) travel, power relations, historical and mental
representation.
To help celebrate the publication, Anderson and I discussed the book and many other things related to it.
CH: Here’s
an opening question:
two opening questions, you can choose to answer either or neither or
both: (i) How could you write such a thing? (ii) How could such a thing
let you write it?
SA: Truth be told, I don’t know.
But,
if I try to explain it to myself, then there’s a pivotal moment in 2010
when I decided to stop being ruled by (widespread and essential) fear
and to embrace it instead. It meant not letting myself fill my time with
distractions to avoid the fear but to sit, for long hours, doing
nothing but being yellow bellied. This resulted in directly responding
to my surroundings (Rome, Ireland, my bed, etc.) in ways which I could
never have foretold and which I still have trouble intellectually
understanding but which I feel, affectively, and which I stand behind
completely.
This isn’t an answer, really, is it?
CH: Yes, I think it begins to open pathways to an
answer or answers. Could you say more about the relationship between
the creation of the book and your surroundings? I’m very interested in
this idea you’ve raised about affective space.
SA: I grew up in a tourist/casino town and have
always hated the idea of travelling but because of work and living
abroad for so long, travel is often a necessity. As such, I tend to
create tasks for myself in other cities, like searching for every
English bookstore in town or trying to find bars or cafes that remind me
of the ones in Berlin. At some point, I realized this was pathetic and
somehow in contradiction to what I always thought travel could be (which
would be akin to some sort of revolutionary act, i.e. of getting
away/outside from/of yourself and the way things are and actively
changing them, but then of course I always knew this is already tainted
by consumption (of goods and experiences) and there’s also a part of me
that agrees with Samuel Johnson in his Rambler 6) and so I would look
closer at that and try to sit for as long as bearable in front of the
Colosseum and observe the tourists taking pictures with the gladiators
wearing plastic or watch the tourists on Grafton Street throwing Euros
at the human sculptures. I wanted to take part in the fun but I knew I
had problems with it and I couldn’t really think of another way to
engage in my surroundings, so I started investigating certain historical
aspects, turned to books, which is a cop out, I know, another way to
distract myself from fear, and then when reading Celtic myths or talking
to the composer Luciano Chessa about the occult and Italian fascism,
suddenly, the spaces started to open for me and the fear disappeared.
The layers became present and it is these layers that endlessly
fascinate me. Then, thinking about them, I realized I wanted to capture
all of this, to somehow do a geological cross section and have the big
hunk of dirt there in all of its ugly beauty.
CH: “…talking to the composer Luciano Chessa about the occult and Italian fascism” seems too juicy to not ask you to elaborate!
SA: Luciano is a dear friend; a great composer,
musician, instrument builder, collaborator and musicologist. When I
learned he would be giving a concert in the late great Giacanto Scelsi’s
living room and would be performing his music and Scelsi’s amongst
others, I booked my tickets immediately. Scelsi, who pops up in the
Études (namely, in Failed Proposal 89), was very interested in the
occult (you should see some of the books on his shelf!) and someone
Luciano has studied in depth. In any case, we were discussing Evola,
whom Scelsi knew, and Luciano informed me that Mussolini had had some
contact with the UR Group and had ditched this pagan-leaning group for
the Church only when he realized that there would be no way to take over
Italy without the Church’s support. I was astonished. But I shouldn’t
have been, really, considering the fact that there had been ties between
the fascists and the Futurists and the Futurists and the occult
(Luciano’s
book
from UC Press addresses the latter half of these relationships,
mainly). I could be getting this all wrong, but nevertheless, we
decided, with the ghost of Scelsi following us, to visit the district
EUR (formerly, E42) and I was really spooked when I saw a tumbleweed in
front of the Palazzo della Cività Italiana and then saw a really banal
urban interaction between a mother and a child. Here was a very rigid
(and now practically empty) urban planning sector with very suspect
claims to rationalism, the symbol for ghost towns and a domestic scene
that was happening in thousands of other places in the world all piled
up on top of one another. This terrified me but at the same time made
all that dissolve. It’s hard to put it into words, but the idea of so
much happening in the same place is astonishing. Think about hospitals,
for instance. The whole life cycle is happening in the vicinity of just a
couple of hallways and the perception of this is so heightened, I
think, because of the institutional setting – just as a gallery or
museum heightens the experience of other objects under a different
category. Anyway, space is very, very weird when you think about it.
CH:
SA: Exactly.
CH: My silence isn’t silence. For some reason, as I
think about your last answer I cannot shake the image of Giorgio
Agamben in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film
The Gospel According to St. Matthew.
I picture his young face. I picture him traipsing across the same
landscape as you, dressed as the Apostle Philip. I picture you
squinting at the sun. I picture the handheld camera. I picture you
wearing sneakers. I imagine the imaginations he must have been
harboring as the camera rolled. I imagine the imaginations you must
have been harboring as your fingers punched the keyboard to bring
Études des Gottnarrenmaschinen
(Studies of Godfoolsmachines) to life in some other place. The
convergence of neo-realism, contemporary philosophy, and Jesus all in
one location. The convergence of fascism, the occult, and music all in
the same location. Makes me think of Foucault’s
heterotopia,
“The space in which we live, which draws us out of ourselves, in which
the erosion of our lives, our time and our history occurs, the space
that claws and gnaws at us, is also, in itself, a heterogeneous space.”
Would you say that the individual parts of
Études work toward a
convergence or a divergence of space, or rather: how would you
characterize the relationship of the different parts of
Études, or rather: can these parts make other machines or are these parts the parts of only the Godfools?
SA: Wonderful!
God I love that movie!
And it makes me sentimental, something I’m not, usually, but the first
time I saw it was the first time I met Ferlinghetti at the Castro
theater in San Francisco! Glorious! And the music! Bach! It’s just
perfect really.
I think there’s something to that Foucault quote that is very pertinent here. And have you read that n+1 article about the stupidity of computers? It seems relevant as well.
Personally, I tend to think of the pieces as exploring different
converging spaces (Rome/Las Vegas, Ireland/Mexico, and my bed/a utopian
bed) but that they are converging only through our interaction with
them. Also, I believe there is some relationship between the places in
all three studies but perhaps that isn’t very apparent.
I take the term étude (study) very seriously. These are not an
attempt to unify differences but rather to explore and push each of the
boundaries as far as I could. What can a form do? A paragraph? A
dialogue? Without words? And what about an engagement with Descartes or
an algorithm? And homophonic interpretation/play? If not anything else,
then each of these studies at the very least began with questions and
this is what unifies them; the desire to do more than they probably can.
I don’t believe there is any one machine but a number of machines and
that any one machine can be used for different purposes. I’m not sure
if we can think about a spoon as a machine, but let’s for the time
being. From one side it’s a cup, a bowl, a birdbath and from the other,
it’s a pointing stick or even a knife.
CH: Following Deleuze, we can most certainly talk
about a spoon as a machine. And your description is magnificently
interesting because you make it sound like a ’pataphysical machine, the
kind of machine I am most interested in exploring (of course, if you ask
Alfred Jarry, all machines are ’pataphysical).
Are you familiar with his book Exploits and Opinions of Dr Faustroll Pataphysician?
The experimental aspect of
Études seems explicit in your
questioning, “What can a form do? A paragraph? A dialogue? [etc.]” But
I’m curious to know if these questions preceded the process or if they
arose from the process (or perhaps, like a feedback loop, it was
reciprocal?)?
And furthermore, if the words form a machine, what other machines would you describe as connecting with
Études? You mention Descartes, obviously, and I would venture Chomsky and Jarry, perhaps certain Oulipo texts. Others?
SA: The experimental aspect, as you called it,
preceded these texts in that these are questions I have been interested
in for a number of years but which found their own specific
manifestations only once I had written something I either liked or
didn’t but in both cases I felt like it was something which I didn’t
know what to do with. For instance, I quite liked the
first algorithm text
I wrote using Descartes’ Meditations but I didn’t understand it. It
felt like there was more in this piece and this system than just the
single go. So, I then tried to provide a context for the piece, for my
own understanding, and then it slowly evolved into the dialogue with
Descartes that is in the book now.
And, to give a contrary example, I didn’t like the arch of the first three Gospels
(N.B. they have changed significantly from the form up at Abjective)
but I liked the writing and felt like there was something there. I
didn’t know what to do with them, but when I returned to Ireland in
2011, I realized that they wanted to talk about the limitations of the
paragraph (and even of the sentence)
as a means to talk about the limitations of movement (i.e. as something
which starts in one place (A) and ends in another (B)) and what
movement could mean.
I don’t know, I tend to work intuitively, trusting that my reading
will inform my writing and that a healthy dose of forgetting is clouding
over everything just enough to not induce panic and I guess I wanted to
try and get as deep into these texts as possible, to shed the fear of
seeming insane and make them be what they felt like they needed to be
and face the consequences later.
Those are all good text machines, you’ve mentioned. Favorites have
always been: Donald Barthelme, Flann O’Brien, Arno Schmidt (especially
Gelehrtenrepublik),
Heiner Müller, John Ashbery, Lyn Hejinian, Bernadette Mayer and a bunch
of other older stuff and theory that I’m too embarrassed to mention.
CH: Allow me to become metatextual for a moment. We
are striking through particular words and phrases in this conversation,
which mimics a device used in
Études, and harkens, at least
for me, back to Derrida’s discussion of Heidegger’s concept of “sous
rature,” which Spivak translates as “under erasure” in her Translator’s
Preface to Derrida’s
Of Grammatology. I’ve always disliked that translation because to me “under erasure” refers more accurately to something like Tom Phillips’s
A Humument or Ronald Johnson’s
Radi Os
or any number of other “erasure texts.” Instead, what Heidegger does
by crossing out Being in “The Question of Being” (which is, to some
extent, what Derrida takes him to task for not going far enough on) is
different in my mind from erasure, because of the trace, because of the
visible presence underneath the violent attempt to silence. As Spivak
puts it, “Since the word is inaccurate, it is crossed out. Since the
word is necessary, it remains legible.” Do these philosophical
conversations resonate with
Études, from your perspective? And further, how might you characterize the function of the strikethrough in the book?
SA: Awesome, Chris! Yes, that Spivak quote certainly
resonates but I would make the distinction between the two uses of
strike through in the studies. In ‘Failed Proposals’, the strike through
is in the reality of the fiction (an act of editorial megalomania!)
whereas in ‘Cartesian Diver’ it has a closer relation to the sketch you
just gave – and these are distinguished by the one being a single strike
through and the other being a double strike through. Of course, we
could explain the double strike through of ‘Cartesian Diver’ on a purely
pragmatic level; that is, we could take the Descartes text as a
checklist that was doubly accomplished and then ghosted of its meaning
(the embossing, which is supposed to give a text special meaning, looks
more like a pallid script, a text that has given too much blood at the
blood bank.
But, that would be a little too catty, right?).
I agree that the term ‘under erasure’ is less than ideal, and with
regards to ‘Cartesian Diver’, I would say the category erasure would be
as easy as talking about it on this pragmatic level but also perhaps
just as deflating.
I have issues with erasures although I find some of them successful.
We don’t need to go into it fully here but very briefly, I would say
that erasures tend to restrict themselves only to one or two planes of
interpretation (in the best cases, they can be emotional, but mostly
they’re merely intellectual games engaging with the source material and
the context they’re in in a very ‘smart’ way but which never let the
reader take the text much further (perhaps it’s a problem of TMI? A
baroque silencing?) – and in the worst of cases they feel like an
over-educated graduate student hopped up on too much caffeine and
Baudrillard for his/her own good) and they just don’t feel very rich to
me. They feel ‘smart’. And it’s like: Bravo! High-five! Phallic totem
destroyed! But then, suddenly, like in Terminator 2, the totem’s
molecules start to gather again and create a monster even more ugly and
more difficult to destruct [insert dramatic music here].
Anyway…
Recently, I translated an introduction to a book on Appropriation
Literature with the German poet Uljana Wolf and while I found some of
the examples fascinating, they very rarely ever became more than just
chin scratching material. For me, the engagement with Descartes was more
essential than that. It seems to me, that even if modern philosophy
likes to think it has gone well beyond Descartes (although Quentin
Meillassoux makes a strong argument that we shouldn’t abandon the
Cartesian project so rashly), we still tend to think, on a day to day
level, like Cartesians. I’m here and you’re there and I’m inside my head
and you’re not, etc. Thus, once I started the project (which actually
arose out of a dream I had about Descartes, and then in one of my
swimming mantras… long story) and once I got a better idea of what it
was that I was doing, it seemed somehow necessary to engage with
Descartes in this manner, to use some of the tactics of the past fifty
years (Oulipian constraints (the short story ‘Reflections Rendered’ uses
only the characters (i.e. letters) of the Cartesian Meditations’
sections that are doubly struck out), erasure and homophonic/algorithmic
writing) to demonstrate in some weird way that we’re still human and
that we still operate with the same naive belief systems but that
frustrating these systems is productive and vital. Hence, the Heiner
Müller epigraph from
Mauser. But, the goal was also to push it a step further and to begin to make new meanings.
Whether
this is successful or not is something which I question and which I
would say my newer work, in poetry, is moving towards. Not to say that
it’s a failure. Only that I’m excited by other questions at the moment.
This all sounds very programmatic and again I would like to emphasize
that this all came out intuitively and that I worked on these texts
with the Barthelme model of ‘being bored and just looking for a little
fun.’ In fact, each of these studies took place when I was taking a
break from a novel I have been shelving and unshelving for more than
three years. Maybe if I listened to Pascal’s advice on fear and boredom a
little more closely, these texts would have never been – but then
again, didn’t Pascal have to first write them and ignore his own advice? -
Interview by Christopher Higgs
Meditation 3 NO. 38
Shane Anderson
Eel, harpoon curries, antlered in darkness to in on foreskin ornately
flaking, foreskin tenderly peppered, against cap-a-pie mirrored swords
also, ornately left oh dear out, inkhorn fish left in, coat hangers
could coagulate fat could deflower inside warmth more flower; eels
antlered in darkness galore when ornately could coagulate fiddlesticks
in oily and deer lick could flower forever; this beyond caked ornately
flaking in tenderly stacking, antlered in sparkling so ornately or
harpoons if itching around also bladders more unless stewed eels
sharpen, eels ornately even between cap-a-pie sharpened, harpoons not in
below could mirror fat flake, blankets could but dusted blankets not
even though lightly, harpoon between the time to sleep, whichever even
apart from lightly could whet fat settling, even darkness caked from
ornately even in should even though, although, eels as though
accordions, eels have inordered once before bladders oily as eels
without finger keys or in; this, foreskin could but shoulder, even in
since encrusted ornately or shells even in as though barring harpoons
neither could mansion bladders not even before eels could mirror fat not
even from harpoons tenderly mansioning, eels ornately darkness egg-like
piebald eel chips, this addles eels soft, eels ornately or in darkened
flaking. Eels could save looking glass fat could traffic fat not even
like snipped within lightly then could crack fat flake, after harpoons
cap-a-pie, ornately even between even fuck darkness foggy in fat only if
if limbed inkhorn fish even in, eel every like harpoons tenderly
mansioned could mirror fat flake, each flake amidst darkness harpoons
drapes over—cap-a-pie even if flaking, even by, what harpoons tenderly
mansion—ornately, in as accordions inordered barring neither until
wherever erected, fat not could mansion congratulations like if whenever
manicured, bucks, toothed, accordion past man-keen to stingray lightly,
eels inordered in white in case to neither mutilate eels narrow
ornately coagulating folding: that antlered in mushy given ornately or
goodness in as nutting, nothing antlered in as at fat could while
spearing ornately neither deceiving eel organs by deer licks if
mutilated.
*
AND = EELS, var.
GOD = FLAKE, var.
THAT = ORNATELY
NATURAL = WHILE
DECEPTION = ORGANS
IN = HARPOON, var.
REFLECTION = SETTLE, var.
AM, var. = IN
I = TOO
WORKMAN = DEFLOWER
*
And,
in truth, it is not to be wondered at that God, at my creation,
implanted this idea in me, that it might serve, as it were, for the mark
of the workman impressed on his work; and it is not also necessary that
the mark should be something different from the work itself; but
considering only that God is my creator, it is highly probable that he
in some way fashioned me after his own image and likeness, and that I
perceive this likeness, in which is contained the idea of God, by the
same faculty by which I apprehend myself, in other words, when I make
myself the object of reflection, I not only find that I am an
incomplete, imperfect and dependent being, and one who unceasingly
aspires after something better and greater than he is; but, at the same
time, I am assured likewise that he upon whom I am dependent possesses
in himself all the goods after which I aspire and the ideas of which I
find in my mind, and that not merely indefinitely and potentially, but
infinitely and actually, and that he is thus God. And the whole force of
the argument of which I have here availed myself to establish the
existence of God, consists in this, that I perceive I could not possibly
be of such a nature as I am, and yet have in my mind the idea of a God,
if God did not in reality exist—this same God, I say, whose idea is in
my mind—that is, a being who possesses all those lofty perfections, of
which the mind may have some slight conception, without, however, being
able fully to comprehend them, and who is wholly superior to all defect
and has nothing that marks imperfection: whence it is sufficiently
manifest that he cannot be a deceiver, since it is a dictate of the
natural light that all fraud and deception spring from some defect.
—Shane Anderson, Rene Descartes
The Gospels of Movement
|
Shane Anderson
|
Sermon 1: Something
A slack dog snake driver scuttled up the hill. Admiring the tree
ripples, the blackberries, beloved, the nestles. Past the Mound of
Hostages, a tower, stairless, lay. Up there were wheel throwers, tarmac
hammerers, spud farmers, barn babies. They threw down triangle-faced
icons; shoe shrines. Spat prophesies, an eyeless woman, laughing.
Plighting the plights of the Snake Driver, she warned against a yellow
door; black; green; purple; blue. She promised sons; and that every one
would escape, finding stairs in mountains, lakes. In places named
after famous thieves or filled with greed, they would make names for
themselves, for their father. Though they would never return, others,
she threatened, would. Peregrinating here, looking for them, the sons,
they would bring greed with them, the greed for experiences. These, she
said, will willingly buy their faces, the sons' faces, storing them on
shelves and walls, sliding them between pages. Mixing up their names,
some will confess they didn't come here to learn, but to forget,
themselves, secretly, abroad. Yes, she said, their greed will lead
these to forget many things. That you drove your sons away and that
they never had anything but black disdain for their father. That you
were kidnapped, a slave, will ignite like colored gunpowder in their
brains, fading from their memory, quickly, losing shape. Commit
everything you ever wrote to flames, she exhorted, and they will never
know you are from foreign soil, peregrinating here like them, the
others, the greedy. Still, she consoled, you will always be known as
the Great Snake Driver, the heroic one who rid this hilly post-glacial
landscape, green and purple, of the snakes there never were.
Sermon 2: Nothing
Against the scenic routes, the Slack Dog Snake Driver decides. Sinking
in Travellers' traces intimated from a lack of foundation, the
antiquated caravan tracks are being repaved again; filled in; another
fugitive layer of asphalt, by marshy peat abiding. Driving, on the
tolled freeway, the Slack Dog Snake Driver reads. WELCOME TO STAB CITY, SLOW DOWN and BEWARE OF FALLING ROCKS;
lit up, blinking. The Slack Dog Snake Driver drives slow, slower.
Down goes his window; a rock falls, is thrown. Smarting, he pulls over.
A laughing hooded figure, shank bearing, scurries behind a building,
disappearing. Breathing in muggy lung knives, air thick with poverty
and violence, the Slack Dog Snake Driver feels his head. He ponders the
Pythian highway illuminations; bleeding, slightly. Already late, he
decides against punishing the lowly priest of mischief and drives
further, to the church behind the boortrees, a Travellers' first
communion. Inside, he finds tabernacle altar linen, paddle feet; rowel
spurred flying lecterns; stone lions, lit up, tomb leaping. Griffons
and musicians on consecrated bread knives; a tree spirit sugar sifter
wine skimmer; a unicorn crested candelabra. Sitting next to the Snake
Driver, a Driveway Paver fighting off a hangover in shirtsleeves
straightens the plastic of plastic wrapped lilies, then shakes the Snake
Driver's hand. Outside, the bells toll and the rain lashes, buckets.
The Travellers, gathered, still, listen to the cat and rat jammed organ,
the pipes that demand improvisation like their lives. In procession,
their sons and daughters toe toward the Blood and the Body, toward the
expectations of their mothers and fathers. That's my girl, says the
Driveway Paver, the one fiddling with her tiara, her hair. What does
she have in there, the Snake Driver asks, picturing an ice pick, an axe.
You'll see, you'll see, is his answer and then, this is going to be a
blast the Driveway Paver laughs, crinkling the plastic, throttling the
lilies. Receiving the Body, the Driveway Paver's daughter palms
something, connected by a wire to her tiara. The Slack Dog Snake Driver
fears. Salvation isn't far, is nearer. With the Blood in her mouth,
the Driveway Paver's daughter turns around, faces the Travellers, teeth
baring, fiendish, finger depressing button, flashing, HE IS IN ME,
neon, from her tiara. The Slack Dog Snake Driver claps, thunder.
Deluged by an explosion of laughter, the Driveway Paver sighs relief,
smelling of asphalt, whiskey.
Sermon 3: Everything
Ash walking stick turned tree, blossomed legends and history. One day,
the Slack Dog Snake Driver, old, will return there. To fashion a new
staff from its branches or to stumble on the one he knew, retrograde.
He will arrive to a crowd, huddled, waiting for the warmth of tale. In
the beginning, he will say, there were granite outcrops, dense bracken,
grazing regimes. Rudders carved with instructions. For boat building,
games. Maps navigating other worlds and serpent-infested seas could be
found in bogs with butter, stored, shorn wool pillows made for
sleepseeing, for the sacrificed, the dead. From one side of the country
to the other, swollen feet bore iron crosses, hairshirts, and seals;
until turnips tasted like tar, spuds molded, and others let us starve.
United by language and hatred, the others gauged our currency as
wheelbarrow full worthless and burned grain they couldn't eat. Aside
from dying, abroad bound boats and useless built roads were our answer.
One fishmonger turned hooker, turned icon, into song. Suddenly, sheep
outnumbered men. Afterwards, there were spatchcocks, bombs. Miniature
portraitists became crime scene reporters, family photographers in front
of ships. Probable prodigal sons measured marriage proposals in road
frontage, yarn-spinning another world in letters, possible at home.
Later, men without opinions gave theirs. Bronze monuments were molded,
erected, greened. Adorned with tigers and chevrons, women took control,
framed homes, shifting. People stopped uniting except for paper.
Dissatisfied with their lives, they climbed rivers. Shot laser bows and
arrows at one another, laughing. Shifting, they rode an eye, spit from
the top, snogging. They entered buildings, tubes and further tubes,
watched screens, slept or tried to; then they stood up on the other side
of the world only to come back, gone shorter and shorter, less and
less. They said that everything the world had to give could be found at
home for less. They fingered colored cubes according to algorithms,
herding, barbarian, electronics, hoarding. They discovered that man
sweat smelled like fish, woman sweat motor oil. Roads became cables,
libraries looked like gun towers. Rusty barges farmed worm infested
salmon, harvested mussels stuck with disease, then became apartment
buildings. Meanwhile, peaty water streamed from everything, which is to
say, the Slack Dog Snake Driver will say, everything everythinged,
everything bled together. All the while the Slack Dog Snake Driver will
stand, whittling a staff or praying for the ash to turn back. Those
gathered, uncomfortable, will mistake this tale for stand up. They will
laugh nervously, then fervently, and the Slack Dog Snake Driver, tired,
will lie down under the ash tree, blowing his nose like a trumpet then
sleeping
|
Multiple Places, 2013
They said: Hello, are you there? Hello? Are they on the line yet?
Boot clack reverberation in a stairwell.
They
said: Hello Bastian, hello Jean-Marie, how’s the weather in jolly ole?
Congratulations on the Pritler. Wonderful news. Tell me, what was
it for? The floating bank or those museums that are disappearing?
A ceiling to floor clogged rain gutter mark in an apartment shaped like an upside down Mayflower.
They
said: Most excellent. Call me sentimental, but I’ve always loved what
you did for us down in Houston, you know, the one without a façade?
Every time I’m there, I stop and admire, my oh my is that a fine
building – I just wish I could find it! Ha ha. But that’s another
story, am I right or am I right? What do you say gentlemen, shall we
get down to business?
Gnawed on gristle politely placed in a napkin.
They said: I’m having a little trouble understanding you. This PDF here says and I quote: Las
Vegas, Las Vegas, the hotel/casino projected by the award winning
Swiss architecture firm Sieg & de Gagnant, ventures to map out the
triumphs and treasures of the Brightest City on Earth from its
marshland beginnings to its current hydrochloridization of long-gone
epochs and foreign metropolises in a complex of buildings – duh duh duh, skipping ahead – weaving
new recreation history into a sinuous maze of sensations, Sieg &
de Gagnant will overturn/perfect the Brightest City on Earth as a
towering miniature of itself, converting all expectations into a
wide-eyed sense of wonder and wonderment. OK. Right. It’s just that, uh, how do I say this? Just, uh… What does that mean, exactly?
Eraser leftovers lined up like javelins.
They said: Gotcha. Ooooh, gotcha. Gotcha. Ooh, ho, ho.
Pitchforks
then boilers then lipstick. A cloud of fat loiters over the animal
rendering plant as the American flag whips in the wind.
They
said: Hot damn if I don’t – this is going to be big. Jumbo big.
Bigger than the, theeeeeee uh, shit, I don’t know, that uh, that
sailing opera house in Sydney? Or maybe even that that that that radio
tower in Paris? Don’t you think? I wager to say not even the
Brightest City on Earth has ever gone to such extremities. Can anybody
confirm this?
In
a circle, one child whispers to another who whispers to another who
whispers to another and so on. What starts as a giggle from an inside
joke is then flustered further and further until this now public secret
is mocked and ridiculed. Laughing and laughing, the children can’t
stop laughing at how muddled up everything’s become.
They
said: Every son of a bitch who prints knock off postcards, T-shirts,
tote-bags and whiskey flasks will be sueable and/or ownable by us.
We’ll be the Brightest City on Earth and the Brightest City on Earth
will be us, you understand? Looks like you’ll be buying that second
beach house after all, eh –-
Some
dissolvable pills become porous flamingos and dolphins. Others
elephants and chickens. Defective pills grow so large that children
are pushed out of bathtubs.
They
said: This is going to be big. Jumbo big. People will close their
eyes and ruminate and what will they see? You better believe it.
A
colonial tapestry rendering the New World with maps and landmarks and
people fills up the gallery’s wall, then walls, then weaves itself into
the floor, slowly seeping into the foundation.
They said: this is going to make us piles and piles of money – ha ha ha ha ha!
Las Vegas, 2020
Birthday parties. Wine tastings. Honeymoons of the planned and
unplanned varieties. The annual Regional Hotdog Eating Competition.
Truckloads of busloads of pit-stained wrinkled people lactating coupons,
complaint forms and bond money.
Camera change, zoom in.
Does it mean anything to you Swissies – laugh-track, some real – that
you’ve encroached upon the American Dream? Clap-track, more real.
Shattered glass syllables in words for emphasis, the prickling fingertip
sparkle of an arm that’s been slept on. Did you ever bother to think
about the hairless children whose last wishes had been to come to you?
Of the thousands and thousands who no longer have a
timesheet to
fudge
on? Loud hushed whisper, getting louder the more the voice is tempered.
Did you even consider the headaches and fender benders, the dinner
table desperation orbiting around the welfare office?
Does this mean anything to you? Go-get-em-Greg-track, hoo hoo hoo.
Little disc bouncing off the screen corners then back drifting
response. Dozing Video Switcher Technician scrambling to load image.
Of course of course it means it means something something to us to us Greg Greg. Telephone crackle thereto. Hallo? Hallo?
Doubly located and rectified by Senior Audio Technician.
I said, said Greg Mothes, unfazed, do you realize that the National
Bison Association no longer has a home for its yearly obstinacy? That
these zephyrs and buoyancy will no longer flow?
Sorry?
You better believe you’re sorry!
Delicate mixture of clap– and boo-track. The audience jigsawed by
both lights flashing alternately, the 9-volt battery taste before a
seizure.
I’m agreeing with you, Greg.
So you would agree that you’ve ruined Americans’ dreams?
One split screen filled with the faces of Sieg & de Gagnat, the
other dedicated to the abandoned Fat City hotel/casino. Scrolling
factoids underneath.
We must follow ours after too, or?
Boooo-track. Greg Mothes’ gracious arms calming the crowd that isn’t
up at arms. And what do you chocolatiers and cuckoo clockers dream?
Chuckle-track. Was that a French or German accent that Greg Mothes, the
Brightest City on Earth’s favorite daytime television host, was trying
on?
Brief telephone silence like dust settling on amplified houseplants.
Greg of spaces.
Of spay-ces? Little laugh and hands up.
Of over the desert and mountains spaces. Germanic structure and so,
most definitely, Bastian Sieg. Spaces hanging above the world like a
curtain. Cloud-floating, bobbing. Sieg’s name and abbreviated biography
ticking across the lower portion of the screen. All the way to the
Greatest Cavity in the Earth will it careen. Flewed. Like bloodhound
gums to the world. You say this, no?
No beginning, no end?
People say lots of things, said Greg Mothes, but what I want to know is, what is it going to look like?
The Greg Mothes tie straightening tick. A rapier – usually something pancreatic, palmy.
Far away it looks like glass, reflecting, like you can see through a
cloud. French inflection. Video Switcher Technician deductively
popping up Jean-Marie de Gagnant’s particulars. But closer from the
bottom you must picture the seabed. Sandy grey. Unknown. The sides
are something like too much soap in a sink. Billowing.
The Greg Mothes raised-eyebrow-chin-down-out-then-up protrude.
And where’s the valet?
The valet?
The entrance.
The monocoque structure has but one door, a closed oyster to be pried
open to be opened. It is very difficult to get inside, even when you
calibrate the structure’s position to your own position. Video clips of
thunderstorms at twilight. But inside, why you want to leave is the
forgotten. This is something inviting, like a warm hug or a sweater.
Everything you want is there. In places, a forest of marble pillars; in
others, wide open spaces like deserts. There’s a floor cool to the
touch, like a breeze on bare feet in the summer. Chandeliers jellyfish
in midair in rooms with beds that smell like peaches, not connected,
moving. You know? Spaces rising and flowing, filled with white and
gold, gilded?
Is this a hotel/casino we’re talking about here, or some kind of over-exposed zoo/brothel?
No, no, it is definitely a hotel/casino, a superb hotel/casino, with
one floor only, no hierarchy, you see, with a single lobed card table
stretching through the entire building, where every game ever made is
played. There are slot machines too, slot machines that make you feel
like you’re in the dark cinema when you lose, slot machines that put you
on the stage when you win. There are dark perimeters we want to make
where all dissatisfaction can fester. Our desire is to capture the
Brightest City on Earth’s black hole concept of recreation, to expand
upon its inexplicable capacity for joy.
Laugh– or aww– or jeer-?
And will you build this dream for other dreams to inhabit?
This is the impossible.
Definitely a jeer-track – or, wait Ms. Up-And-Coming Audio Technician, a gasp-?
Gasp-track.
We pick up the pencil and we put it on the paper and we don’t know where to start.
A little humbled now. Then what aaaaarrreee you going to do?
We bring another recreation idea to end, something that our sleepless nights fills.
Let me get this straight, you’re going to build another hotel/casino?
Speculation factoid explosion.
This is right Greg.
And what’s
THAT going to be like?
Telephone silence like the air pressure wheezing out of a thermos.
Video Switcher Technician gearing up segments of Greg Mothes and
sports stars visiting balding children with tubes in their arms.
It will have proportions, Greg, that were previously believed to be proportionless.
http://shane-anderson.blogspot.de/
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.