When the chief chef entered the lecture theatre, the audience took on a long hum of near-silence, rather than clatter and chatter. Many of us were new to the course, when its constituent courses had already reached at least the dessert stage. And I soon realised that matters were concerned with the main course or entrée, even though it was the fifth such lecture. What was more, it seemed to contain caveats as well as advice on recipes and ingredients and their preparation by cooking. And the whole course in hindsight I now saw was one about urine-based culinary methods. The fact that some cooks often laced their dishes with their own urine was the main topic. The secondary topic involved the notion that standard butchering of meat, after recent laws were changed, entailed that the cuts eventually used in cooking still contained the animals’ own urine. I was bewildered whether the lecturer was in favour of such practices because of the variety of tastes thus provided or whether he was issuing caveats against them. Strangely, it seemed a mixture of both acceptance and warning but what he did next seemed to me to be unhelpful to say the least. Many walked out, including me. I decided that the job of taste tester for which I was training was not for me.
Rather belatedly, I can confirm this is a fiction story. A story looking for a title.
***
We planned for the worst case scenario as the meeting minutes seemed to prove. The best case scenario was seemingly not even considered, but one wonders whether we should really have planned for the medium case scenario, thus giving the least risk of skewing our approach to such a dire threat. By using the worst case we sort of tempted the worst, I feared. A study of connections and coincidences that I had experienced through the filter of fiction literature, if not of philosophy, had amply proved to me that one needed to modulate or calibrate before the danger ate us! Enemies generally feared moderation more than anything else, and restraint was the biggest weapon we possessed in order to manage immediate or potential threats. But that did depend on what was already written in the stars, or written down ‘as above, so below’. And on whether the so-called enemy was in the tent with us, as it were, pissing out rather than into such a tent. Reading and then dissecting fiction seemed to push the envelope of that tent to allow more enemies inside, all with their gaping orifices disguised by the smoke and mirrors of untruth masquerading as truth. I said so much at the only COBRA meeting I can recall being held, but its official minutes have so far remained silent on my proposals. Whether to simply squash or possibly nuke the sombrero, I kept my increasingly sombre powder dry and forthwith pissed like a Mexican into a bucket elsewhere.
***
I needed to achieve compliance, so I have started writing fiction miniatures without titles, perhaps to be later-labelled, almost parthenogenetic in their creation, but their author ever remains myself, viz. works never intended to be Nemonymous. Suddenly, I was interrupted in my written-down thoughts by someone else’s thought and that spurred me into returning to the start of this miniature and adding a title upon which I could hang my by-line. But it was too late. A ghost had got there first but, like itself, its writing was invisible. A blind eye hidden by plain sight. But I could not erase my belief that the ghost’s title was to be there forever, whatever I did to airbrush it in order to add my own.
***
Good news for the future of literature — and for serious theatre, here within the genre of The Weird!
I was taken by my daughter yesterday afternoon to Colchester Mercury Theatre to see a live production of METAMORPHOSIS as based on Kafka’s work — turning out to have various nightmarish effects. Indeed, as a seasoned writer in this particular literary genre, I found its effects very disturbing and inspiring. Retrocausal inspiration for my Mansion Miniatures. Forward inspiration for itself and the untitled miniatures that amass in the future for which it is good news!
Why such good news for the future of literature as well as for itself as THIS? Well, it was a great theatrical experience beyond measure. But also because 90% of the huge auditorium was literally crammed with school parties studying this work for their national examinations and they fell silent at outset and stayed captivated and they gave the biggest roar at the end that I have ever heard in any theatre! More than once! It was a moving miniature house with ceiling-ghost, and a vertical ‘I’ among the giant shadows. A high suspicion of a roofless mansion and his Tardis of a salesman’s suitcase. And the white sheets that became him like a skein or skin.
The effects of this production ranged from the balletic and acrobatic to the darkest arts of shadow manipulation and pareidolia (I even spotted the sister’s violin among the giant shadows). Also, hypnotic moments of creative repetition, in the opening of doors, in prop and stage usage together with incantations such as “gnaw gnaw” and “beggars can’t be choosers”.
From my memory of this Kafka (my short review of it HERE in 2011), the themes are loyally adhered to, including its moments of Electral Love. I was particularly struck by the actor playing Gregor Samsa, his utter energy and wily contortions that uncannily resembled the movements of what he had turned into, whether when high upon the wall of his room with clicking probosces or hanging from the grimy ceiling, or covered in chairs, or in his ghost-like cocoon of sheets. Those who enjoy the fiction of M.R. James, Robert Aickman and Thomas Ligotti will be inspired by these images. The other actors in this ‘Frantic Assembly.’ were wonderful in support, especially in their lengthy cameos or verbal cadenzas. The music was appropriately relentless, too — think atonal like Schoenberg or think Nurse With Wound, think even a mutated form of Philip Glass.
This theatrical experience will long linger in your mind, even if some might wish it gone! But with its moments of catharsis, the future may be the better for it. With all case carrying and routine repetition and pointless targets purged? And its miniaturisation here and the now youthful-surrounded cocoon as a future for my ageing brain.
***
TO BE CONTINUED
No comments:
Post a Comment