Monday, 24 May 2010
The Fall Before the Miracle
I know what it is to feel the blood drain from one’s face. Today I felt real fear. A quiet moment at work had resulted in a few moments of online dalliance. I had decided to investigate my bolus of Internet links, checking they still functioned appropriately and led to no dead ends. Whilst performing this idle act of distraction I came across, unsurprisingly, the website of the Whitstable Biennale. At first I was very excited as the site had been renewed, reborn in it’s 2010 plummage. But then fear overcame me, an irrational primal fear. I feared firstly that I had been excised from the whole event, lanced, expunged. Then upon discovering that was not the case another fear quickly overtook me, fear of inadequacy, fear that my offerings would not stand up to scrutiny. Perhaps I should gave sone more, perhaps I could have done it better. I felt cold, dizzy, sick to my stomach as I abruptly turned off the computer and went in search of consolation. The reader might assume at this point that I am looking for reassurance, fishing for compliments but in point of fact all I am hoping to express is that utter terror of being found wanting. In my current reading “False Testimonies” Paul Becker presents a series of “Miracles” micro-stories in which things are brought back to life. In one tale (of the redemption of a tortured man) he uses a device of narrative reversal which brings the protagonist (and reader) from terror to a state of happiness. We first encounter the man shackled in a cell in agonising pain but soon his saviours enter, take him down and place him on a machine which relocates his shoulders and ankles. Then they remove his bruises and unbreak his limbs with magical batons. Finally he is driven back to his home where his family welcome his return. For a while this morning I too craved this miracle, to be returned to that toiletless café in London’s East End. But now I am in my cups and little matters so much as stroking Mr Pig and drinking a companionly cup of tea.
Buzzes
My new lodgings are much the nicest place I have lived for many years. However we do suffer somewhat from the noise of passing buses. There is some sort of acoustical concatenation at work here that serves to magnify the sound to a roar equivalent to a taxiing jumbo. Last night my companion and I watched A young John Lennon’s bus riding antics with amazement whilst enjoying a fully immersive surround sound experience provided by the number 47. Many of the films we have watched recently have been punctuated by compananion’s question “what did he say” leasing me to think that I must acquire a timetable as soon as possible. Thus armed I will be able to perfectly time the beginning of our viewing and factor in tea breaks at appropriate intervals. I am fiercely determined that this aphotic force will not impinge on our new lives.
Yesterday the flies returned. They seem to love the bedroom and whenever the window has been left open I invariably return to find as many as ten gambolling around the stars. It has been seasonably warm at last, my need for fresh air has outweighed my dislike for these meanest of creatures. This said they are small, reasonably inoffensive and soon slain.
Luncheon
My companion and I dined at The Museum Street Café a delightful little eaterie serving fine vegetarian fayre to the Guardian reading Buddhists of Ipswich. We have never been disappointed by the welcome or the lavish dishes served up by it proprietors Mark and Nell. We were especially looking forward to a bloodless meal as my companion has, of late, experienced a number of rather hematic dreams. The latest involved a colony of large blood sucking toads which sank their fangs into her décolletage. Perversely we opted for the richly Catholic mushroom and red wine cobbler and chatted to Mark about the reopening of the local cinema. He seemed in very good humour although he had apparently cut himself shaving and was sporting a small plaster on his neck.
Thursday
Today’s itinerary involves a trip to Southend via Chelmsford. My companion and I are picking up a table purchased on eBay and then going on to finally view the Tap gallery where we are both to have solo shows in the near future. Before we can do this we must divest my companion’s car of it’s current load; a Heal’s chest of drawers with considerably more wood in it than is healthy for sinew or back.
Later
I Alex Pearl hereby avow and attest that I shall never drive through the towns of Southend or Chelmsford again.
Wednesday
Apparently in his introduction to “Einstein’s Mistakes, The Human Failings of Genius” the author blames Einstein for Donald Crowhurst’s descent into madness. The blackness awaits us all, it needs only the slightest excuse. Our conveyance is swooping drunkenly around the roundabouts and sliproads that mark the beginning of the journey to London. It’s driver, a tall man with a long brown beard, bald head and beetling brows, says little but handles the coach with preternatural skill. For the first tome in weeks it is a most perfect warm spring morning the green is shining and I am texting sweet blandishments to my beloved. I am travelling on what is to be the last student trip of the year. It is likely that, upon our arrival the young scholars will soon melt into backstreets and we, the staff, will be left to our own devices.
Later the same day
I am constantly amazed at both the lack of urgency and lack of remorse displayed by young people today. Yet again we were forced to make the coaches wait for late students who, when they finally shambled up, did not even offer an apology. I firmly believe there is no excuse for such carelessness.
Apart from this, the day went tolerably well and whilst I did not manage to see a single exhibition on my itinerary, I did take in some interesting work at the Jerwood Space and Whitechapel Galleries. However, I can write no more. The driver in an effort to make up time has given his coach wings. Unfortunately we are flying much as one would expect a coach to fly.
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Where to begin? Last night my companion and I watched a strange film. “The Informant” had somehow passed me by when on general release but we liked the cover on the DVD and had seen good Steven Soderbergh films in the past. The film seemed listless and unbelievable at first, lacking in dramatic tension. We enjoyed Matt Damon’s endless internal ramblings (my companion especially failing to spot that they were a little unusual). As the awkward unhomely atmosphere continued however, the plot, the truth and Mr Damon’s character began to unravel. Nothing seemed to be true. Lie was piled upon lie. As I have mentioned before I am also reading the purported diaries of Abraham Lincoln (vampire slayer) a happy nonsense of a book although a little research has revealed a mote of truth in the characterisation of confederate troops as unearthly creatures. A contemporary account describes them as follows:
“Then arose that do-or-die expression, that maniacal maelstrom of sound; that penetrating, rasping, shrieking, blood-curdling noise that could be heard for miles and whose volume reached the heavens-such an expression as never yet came from the throats of sane men, but from men whom the seething blast of an imaginary hell would not check while the sound lasted.” -Colonel Keller Anderson of Kentucky’s Orphan Brigade.
Paul Becker’s thinly veiled “False Testimonies”, the persona of the Gimp, my own ‘live’ rocket launches, the cat called pig, this internal monologue, my ‘real’ life, where lies the truth? I know not.
