- This is the first paragraph of what will be my East of Eden, the thing I am most proud of, the thing that some lucky publisher will get and print within the year. Publish it for goodness’ sake.
The Sod
In a little din and a little light, it was a cellar, he danced awkwardly and she danced quite well, the two together making a pair of connected arms. They connected through the hands and through the clasping clasped fingers. Although he was uncomfortable with the action of moving himself to rhythms, the situation was, on the whole, agreeable to him. They moved back and forth and in some instances around with the room to the left or right, indeed backwards and forwards also featured, but for the most part they moved together and yes he was too conscious but he was functioning in the manner appropriate to the situation. Another hearty swell of foaming lager or a little whiskey may have seen him forget himself a little further, into a haze more of himself where the consideration of self falls away, but the momentary bravado that inspired his asking her vertical in the first place had confounded itself by now. To find another sip would mean parting at this point, and parting would sever the current reward from the initial deed, betraying the previous deed, done in itself out of a harsh rush of a muck water American dribble that he had only lashed down his neck to escape the sitting and the speaking.
August 31, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Fiction, Love, MY NOVEL, Romance, Waiting | Tags: MY NOVEL, Publish Cathal Wogan's novel please, The Sod | 1 Comment »
- Below is a link to something I very recently wrote for The Spanner e-zine, a funny internet magazine.
Priest admits to having loads of sex with children…
July 29, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Fiction, News Story, Religion, Sex, Social | Tags: child buggery, Cloyne Report 2011, Priest fucks child, the word "satire" has lost all meaning | Leave A Comment »
Hospital, June
An air conditioning grate
hums in the hanging ceiling,
the very same as the
sky above the arid space of a
desolate cube farm, vast
and squared, while the walls moan
anaemic green and sterile white.
High in the corner, a metallic black
bracket suspends a window to
Short Strand and Damascus,
bricks and bottles and bullets
to the tune of scratching white noise,
until those static screams swell
to the choral strophe of
a new Athenian tragedy.
Bolted solidly into the lime linoleum,
three rows of plastic blue seats
host two other than I.
An autumnal lady figure sits
in blossoming flowered blouse and
red cardigan, thick and woollen
despite the season’s graces,
sourly pursing her lips in an
affront to the young nurse working
the x-ray department desk.
Untied tennis shoes kick back and
forth rhythmically, not far
beneath a neck tilted up
towards scattered bricks and
shattered eyes in Surman and Tripoli.
As my name is called
the little girl’s gaze
does not waver, her
fair curls do not bob at all,
as she is trapped in the
moving image, an orphan
to an orphan.
June 23, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Death, Nations, News Story, Poetry, Poetry Month, Political, Social, Waiting, War | Tags: poems about hospitals, Poetry Month | 1 Comment »
- To be one third of the way through this self-inflicted Poetry Month is kind of a relief. Again, thank you for reading, and any criticism or comment is more than welcome.
The Ants, 2011
A long, dark crack squints at me
from between the concrete path and doorstep,
and as I scald them all before they can even drown,
those hardy little workers,
I briefly wonder if I am a murderer
or if I’m merely kettling.
June 10, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Death, Economic, Poetry, Poetry Month, Political, Social, The Human Condition | Tags: Ants in my pants, double penetration, Poems about Ants, poems about double penetration, Poetry Month | Leave A Comment »
A Large and Opulent House in Dublin 6
On the edge of a flock of penguins and doves,
he stands tout seul,
a black and white suited beanpole
creased at the top under tectonic
isolation, head and shoulders down,
eyes trying to engage with worn leather feet
that don’t blink or speak.
“This is Sam,” she says
with her mouth,
and they shake hands like tepid
old boys would, both adrift but reluctant,
looking at each other’s feet
for something in common.
Piano crushes four four, four four.
Their petals fall away
and gather somewhere else.
June 8, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Fashion, Love, Poetry, Poetry Month, Social, Waiting | Tags: poems about wearing a tux, Poetry Month, Trinity Ball | 2 Comments »
With whom do you believe your lot is cast?
From where does your strength come?
Putting what one holds upon a shelf,
subsequent disconnection of the self.
The fetish, value invested in the piece,
now experiences a value release,
it feels its own value decrease,
until the idea of priceless love is deceased
and a new dawn breaks over another land,
as you look down at your empty hand.
Does another’s palm open, as you hadn’t planned,
raising what’s yours, because he understands?
Can value be inherent, self-generating; or created,
by the beholder who loves it, or who rates it,
according to numbers or something related
to how the object sees his spirit inflated?
With whom do you believe your lot is cast?
Or are you, desperado, immune to a past,
the future hurtling towards you so fast
that all you can see is potential most vast?
From where does your strength come?
The object for which your feelings now numb?
Never forget what is valueless to some,
may be priceless to others after they’re done.
The potential for value within the object you hold,
remains there no matter how battered or old,
if you carelessly leave it to rain or to cold,
even when you discard it for shimmering gold.
June 7, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Economic, Poetry, Poetry Month, Social | Tags: poetry about fetishism, Poetry Month, really shit poems | Leave A Comment »
April
You will find him at the very end,
his feet buried deep in granite boots
bound to the earthen foundry,
rising through to silver head
bowed to the land around him.
Great oak arms with willow fingers
grip the shaft of a venerable old spade,
one shorn from tree and mine
before even he had breathed dew of morn’
or dust of dusk and closing time.
His Mjǫlnir turns the earth with
each thrust and heave. Thud.
Neither king nor god, he reaps the land,
and though he is bound, he is.
June 5, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Economic, Poetry, Poetry Month, Political, Social, The Human Condition | Tags: double penetration, Hipster chicks love poetry, Poems about April, poems about double penetration, Poetry Month | Leave A Comment »
“Em, could I, em, could I get a burrito please, with no sour cream?” I’m desperately nervous. This process seems so easy for the people ahead of me in the line, yet I’m stumbling over my words, flapping the menu card about in my hands like a lunatic. I want a burrito with chicken and mild tomato salsa, no sour cream. I think that’s all the options covered. For some reason though, I’m finding it very difficult to say.
“Sorry.” I’m very embarrassed but the lady behind the counter could hardly be any nicer. If we were not separated by wells of exotic Mexican flavours, I can only assume that she would have given me a hug.
“First time?” She smiles in the most comforting way. “It isn’t that hard. Listen, I’ll help you. Would you like pinto beans or black beans?”
“Em…” I hadn’t picked a bean when I previously scanned the menu.
“The pinto beans have a juicy texture and a smooth, smoky flavour. They’re really delicious. The black beans are a bit different. They’re more…”
I’m amazed at how nice the people at Boojum are. Five minutes ago I jumped off the Luas at Jervis wondering why the burrito had taken over Dublin city, why I was now going for one, and why I was so nervous. I was late to the burrito party, really late, and it was pretty uncool. Making my way around to Millenium Walkway, I feel like everybody knows that I’m here to lose my burrito virginity. Everybody is cool here; they’re all eating burritos. Right now, it doesn’t matter that I know about obscure hip hop from the early nineties, because I don’t know the difference between pinto beans and black beans.
“Pinto sounds good. Could I have some pinto beans please?” I am aware that I sound like a simpleton. I never ask for directions, I never read the instruction manual and I never ever let on that I don’t know what I’m doing. However, right now I am unable to bluff. I need to learn.
- Fig 25.1: Boojum, Millenium Walkway.
“Good stuff. See, it isn’t hard at all. Any meat?”
“Chicken please.” I had decided this earlier when I checked out the Boojum website. Their menu is online, along with lots of information about them and the food. When the burrito was invented in 2008, or whenever, the internet became its godfather. Burritos & Blues, Wexford Street, tweeted me only a few days ago to tell me that they’d be delighted if they could introduce me to Mexican food. Pablo Picanté, with a Baggot Street ‘casa’ and another on Clarendon Market, nearly got me with their website alone. All of these places have an internet presence, which is probably someway responsible for the burrito’s popularity with a middle-class ‘alt’ audience. Boojum won because one of my mates said that it was his favourite. I suppose nothing spreads popularity like some old-fashioned word of mouth.
Two more ladies help me in the process, each as lovely as the first. The food conveyor belt eventually leaves me with a chicken burrito with pinto beans, tomato salsa and grated cheese. No sour cream for me. With a bottle of soft drink, I get decent change from my tenner and, finally, it is dinner time.
Sitting outside on the terrace of Millenium Walkway, I marvel at the size of what I’m about to eat. This really is a meal. I would like a weighing-scales right now. It is a giant package of food, food that I can only assume is relatively good for you. This is not only cheaper than a Burger King meal; it won’t leave me contemplating an hour in the gym as penance. And then you eat.
My mind is blown. Where have you been, Mr Burrito? Or, where have I been? For a second I feel a mild regret that I waited so long, but it vanishes because now I know. I suddenly understand everything. It all makes so much sense. This is amazing. I can only imagine that this is how the quiet girl in class felt when, for the very first time, she got scaldy drunk and danced like her hair was on fire. There was no going back for her then.
All that flavour is perfect. The subtly smoky pinto beans compliment the grilled chicken; sautéed peppers and onions mesh with the tomato salsa and rice as the cheese melts into everything else. Everything here has a place, it all fits. Every single bite gives a little kick because each individual ingredient has a purpose. The chicken, for example, is seasoned and cooked in its own special way. So when you take a bite of your burrito, you experience that. Similarly, the tomato salsa, the mildest option according to the staff at Boojum, is not just level one salsa, sauce for beginners; it is a delight of flavour in its own right. So when it all comes together in this genius package, you get it all. Any single bite is guaranteed to be interesting, to give you something.
I force myself to finish it. I’m completely stuffed, which is quite a feat. Leaning back, I take a deep breath and treasure all the goodness in my belly. I feel cool now, in a very gluttonous way. Or less uncool.
“So?” My company for the evening, an experienced burrito man, looks for a reaction. He smiles. He knew all along. I stopped talking after my first bite and haven’t said anything since. Thanks, Boojum.
March 5, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Fashion, Food, Social, Zeitgeist | Tags: Boojum, Burritos, Coolness, Dublin Burritos, Food Review, Hipster food | Leave A Comment »
- I started writing this a while ago and then The Hipsters vanished, so I stopped.
The Hipster is much maligned, but who is he?
The Hipster is much maligned. He can feel it as he walks. He knows that at this stitch in time, his popular culture has turned on him. He is designated as socially redundant, almost evil, by an essentially similar other that is in the ascendency of print media for that demographic, The Aware. Acknowledgement of the excess of the popular alternative social direction now marks the cut where The Hipster is relegated to the position of laughing-stock and silent receptacle of the scoff, whereas The Aware – as a new social splinter category unto themselves – maintain a grasp upon self-deprecating irony that evades The Hipster. Alignment with that group, The Aware, has been en masse. The Hipster disappears to the shadows of the amusingly easy to castrate hate figure.
Via the emergent juxtaposition of The Aware and The Hipster, one might proffer the observance that popular alternative culture as we know it has encountered a juncture where it must split and divide. Rather than the continuous evolution through alternative cultural phases that has been the case over recent years, alternative or indie culture is now shedding itself.
Fig 20.1: What is a Hipster?
This leaves the Hipster, The Unaware, as a fold. He stands in drainpipes and leather, rolling his cigarette and listening to Galaxie 500 on comedy headphones. The self-designated counterpoint that now exists broadly is the anti-Hipster, the alternatively aware who has rejected the allegedly superficial foray deeper into alternative culture as too alternative for the sake of that movement. This anti-Hipster probably is coated in leather, atop drainpipes, rolling a tobacco tampon to smoke, creating a haze to enjoy his Galaxie 500 in. He vehemently rejects the allure of an indulgence that is merely a postmodern simulacra of cultural engagement. The Hipster existed, or does still exist, for the all elusive, a seemingly hollow alternative element that is now vilified as too much.
But this is self-regulation. There is no Aware or Unaware as separate social groups; The Hipster never existed as a person. The Hipster is a creation of those who wished to denigrate, yet was appropriated as a viable means of reaffirmation by the social group for which the jestingly derogatory term was originally coined. I am not a Hipster, but look at those stupid Hipsters, so shallow, in pursuit of credibility. What ho, credibility is thus attained, but not for The Hipster, for The Aware, which is every single self-consciously possible-Hipster. That is, every individual who could accuse themselves with genuine introspection of that undesirable status. That pursuit of the all elusive alternative is vindicated once more, as The Hipster is cast away, and everybody is clean.
January 17, 2011 | Categories: Cultural, Fashion, Observation, Social | Tags: double penetration, Fashion trends, hipster definitiion, Hipster extinction, Hipsters | Leave A Comment »
- This is the second part of the current series on irony and cultural consumption. There will be more installments.
Ironic Application Part 2: Contrivance, Fade Street and the Ironic Fetish
In the previous post of this series, I discussed the disavowal of a natural taste in the development of a more rounded or, dare I venture, complete personal opinion. While Frank Gelett Burgess may not have known art, he knew what he liked. Conversely, the great many appear to be more at odds with what they like and instead know art or, more appropriately considering wider trends of cultural consumption, they know ironic contrivance. The broad brushstrokes of these juxtaposed pictures of consumption does not give a particularly nuanced insight into the idea of ironic application, but perhaps TMWRNJ’s Ironic Review can lend a humourous hand to the dissection of ironic contrivance of consumption and the application of irony to the product. This is the Ironic Fetish.
Editor: The whole reason we called the magazine The Ironic Review is because it takes a sideways glance at society and no one really knows what we actually think.
Deputy Editor: Or what we think we think… Or what they think we think we think…
The Ironic Fetish has, quite noticeably over recent months, found itself expressed in the consumption of RTÉ’s Fade Street. A reality drama of some sort, inspired by and based upon MTV’s The Hills and The City among other such shows, Fade Street follows the lives of a group of Irish vicenarians in Dublin, charting their exploits as they negotiate ‘real life.’
I have never sat and watched Fade Street for any real period of time, nor do I ever intend to, and I will not criticise the program as such, at this point at least. However, I do find the show’s audience a curious phenomenon. Fade Street, by design devoid of any irony in the honest opinions of most, surely cannot inspire the intrigue of the educated and culturally aware middle-classes, can it? It seems that it can. The show has proved a ratings success and RTÉ, the state broadcaster, has approved and, to the best of my knowledge, basically completed a second series for broadcast in 2011.
Consumption, primarily, has been via the Ironic Fetish. Viewers who “take a sideways glance at society,” can watch Fade Street, ingesting it, and nobody can really know what they think, or what they think they think, or what somebody else thinks they think they think etc. Guffawing and scoffing, the educated youth of college years has swallowed Fade Street as an ironic taste, applying a sense of cultural anthropology to their endeavour. Unable to look away, inspired to gaze on at these despicably irresponsible, intellectually stunted and emotionally volatile characters, the Platonically enlightened viewer affords himself or herself an ironic critical distance. The enlightened viewer is seemingly not responsible for what they consume as part of an otherwise vulnerable collective, nor do they have need to destroy it or rail against it. However, the product, the show itself, being consumed in any fashion gives it a momentum as a product for consumption. While the contrivance may lie as part of the taste of the enlightened cultural consumer rather than what is consumed, the product is nonetheless validated as a capitalist endeavour, one that makes money from its existence. In the case of Fade Street, created by the state broadcaster, our Television License fees are pushed towards the validated product, with demand creating supply of similar products.*
The Ironic Fetish displaces intellectual value from the consumer to a product, while always maintaining itself as an active process from consumer to product. The active process of the Ironic Fetish elevates the consumer and affords him or her a status of high-consumer, cultural anthropologist, a position where there is an awareness of a personal critical distance. While a psychological fetish is invariably an involuntary process, and a Marxist fetish is clearly derived from the factors of production involved and market values, the Ironic Fetish stands as one that is voluntarily proffered by the consumer as a contrivance of the self and taste.
“I don’t know art, but I know what I like,” said one man to another.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to like anymore.”
* Were it not a project of RTÉ, our state funded state broadcaster, with “state funded” obviously meaning from direct tax reserves, Fade Street might not be the focus of this argument.
January 8, 2011 | Categories: Art, Cultural, Observation, Social, Zeitgeist | Tags: Fade Street, Fetishism, Ironic Review, Irony, RTE | 1 Comment »
- This is the beginning of a new series, my own perusal of contemporary taste.
Ironic Application Part 1: INTRODUCING QUOTES, TASTE & TMWRNJ
“I don’t know art, but I know what I like.”
- Gelett Burgess
The above line is, I assume, familiar to most to some degree. I came across it most recently while watching a Monty Python sketch featuring the Pope and the famed artist Michelangelo. After His Holiness reprimands the artist about the extent to which he pushes his artistic license in depicting Christ and the Last Supper, Michelangelo opines that the Holy See is an artistic fascist. The Pope, of course, responds with the wit and grace of a man of God. “Look. I’m the bloody Pope, I am. I may not know much about art, but I know what I like!”
After a little research, I found that the original quote is most often credited to the artist, poet, author and cultural critic Frank Gelett Burgess. It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that the line itself inspired the cogs of my mind to motion in any remarkable way, but it situated itself amongst thoughts that had been forming over a period of time.
To begin a lengthy personal discourse upon the question or problem of what art is, certainly is not my intention here. I do not know art, as it were. Perhaps I might be able to recognise or perceive art in some instances, if indeed art is at all, but the idea is inherently problematic. Instead, I find myself bound to discuss the assertion made by Burgess; that while he may not know art, he knows what he likes.
Crucial to what I am discussing is that Burgess does not disregard art. Rather, he affirms its existence. In saying that he finds it easier, as an essentially natural process, to discern what he likes, and situating that assertion upon the discussion of cultural and artistic connaissance, there is an implication that there is a denial of the natural by the typical artistic consumer. The artistic consumer seeks to discern what is art, through various avenues of oratory or varying degrees of intellectual discourse and, upon that discernment, can know what he or she, or a functioning social group, likes.
“I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.”
- Marcel Duchamp
A level of tempering or disavowal of one’s own natural taste as a function of the perceiving, subjective self is inherent to the development of a fuller taste. At one point on a spectrum, it may be the viewer of a pornographic text who then experiences a natural post-masturbation guilt linked to the problems of consumption of such material and their implications within the psyche of the viewer or a wider issue of society. At another it may be the grasping of irony and its layered application on a primary text of music, literature, film etc.
The Ironic Review, a comic segment on Richard Herring and Stewart Lee’s late nineties BBC show This Morning with Richard not Judy, or TMWRNJ as is lovingly known by many, muses upon the latter idea, considered ironic application. It is something comparable to the similarly satirically charged Sugar Ape magazine feature of Nathan Barley. The first installment that appeared on Lee and Herring’s first series is symptomatic of the whole. I implore you to watch it because it is very funny and pretty relevant to how this series of blog entries will go. Link below:
Watching that may prove enough work for now. Ideas of irony and its cultural application will be the basis of investigation for the next couple of posts.
December 31, 2010 | Categories: Art, Cultural, Observation, Polemic, Questions?, Social, Zeitgeist | Tags: Artistic expression, Ironic Review, Irony, Quotes, TMWRNJ | Leave A Comment »
- This is the first chapter of the Benway series as as it was printed in Icarus, a literary publication based in Trinity College, Dublin. It is basically a repost, but the changes justify the deed in my mind.
Frederick B. Benway and The Void
The dulcet tones of real class ring through the room. Crystal glasses, fine porcelain plates and sterling silver are the instruments clinking the dampened clinks of fine dining among those of who are entitled to dine finely. This is consumption and ritual. This is the luxurious evening meal.
A dining room is the setting. There are walls and a ceiling of some kind of impenetrable black. They are obscure and indefinite, perhaps not even tangible, but they exist as blackness. The only firm sight along the perimeter is a small brown door that is somehow fixed in the opaque abyss. It swings back and forth, never revealing anything but blackness, as food and drink arrives and the discarded remnants of that sustenance leave in the hands of the Waiters. Scattered around the room on a red plane of carpet are tables clothed in immaculate white silk. Around those tables, the People occupy soft candlelight that perpetually burns low but is never extinguished. The light goes no further than the area inhabited, not daring to touch the dark expanses of the Void.
Sitting on cushioned leather that, almost inevitably, is of an absolute black, the People eat and drink. They exist and consume.
The Women are ageless by their own design. They project maturity that is immeasurable by the quantitative scale of years, but can only be measured by the qualitative scale of pinched savoir-faire. Each sports their finest gown, all of which are structurally identical, and radiate different shades of red, red and red materials. Plunging necklines reveal enough to catch the eye, to publicly flirt with the idea of manifested sexuality through implicit rather than explicit communication. Their faces are a slop of red lipstick and black mascara on what may once have been blank, porcelain canvas. Assorted jewels dangle from their ears and around their necks, melting with the gravitational pull from below, as if longing desperately to get away from what they hang from. There is little behind cold eyes.
For each Woman there are several Men. The Men all wear the compulsory black tie dinning regalia of black dinner jackets, black trousers, black shoes, white shirts and black bow ties. They smile benignly at each other, sharing winks, nods and knowing looks. Wry torsion of the cheeks follows stray glances at forbidden fruit. Stains of red wine colour their lips and years of fine food have plumped their stomachs and faces slightly, enough to distinguish them as distinguished. Some chew the ends of smoking cigars, some intermittently slick back their hair in a conscious expression of nonchalance, some swirl glasses of wine or snifters of cognac to show that they have the Knowledge. They exude a sickly stench of class, societal decay and rotting flesh.
There is chat, small talk and the obligatory hollow laughter that such banal exchanges require. Smartly spoken parties negotiate their conveniently flexible valuations of and opinions on morality, sin, virtue, taste, sexuality, politics and dollars between mouthfuls of crimson nectar and golden brown. The oral defecation of slithering dames and dukes, whores and whores or, as they might prefer, ladies and gentlemen; it is insatiable. And while it never threatens to boil, the soundtrack of the scene simmers incessantly like a quietly furious beehive that is casually pondering an explosion amongst its collective.
On the plush carpets underfoot, carpets of the hottest rouge, the terrified feet of terrified men scamper to the tunes composed by the darting reptilian tongues of the commanding gentry. For fear of death by unemployment or fish knife, these tiny men, wearing nothing but black bow ties around their necks, conjure magnificent and exotic cuisine for the pleasure of those with the gold. These men, the Waiters, are homogeneous products.
The Waiters are altogether hairless and exquisitely tanned, like honey-stained mahogany that has aged beautifully. Their slim and supple limbs quietly glisten in the warm glow of the candles. Brilliant white eyes shine from the sunken recessions of their sharp faces, eyes only punctuated by grey irises and black pupils. Their cheekbones are distinctively pointed and their lips are thin and brown, forming the narrow slit that would be a mouth, if one could call it a mouth. Across their depilated heads and curving necks there is not a single wrinkle or furrow. Indeed, the only mark upon their respective persons is between their legs, lonely atop their thighs. The Waiters do not bear genitalia, only a clean, vertical scar that is common to each.
Were they not so short in stature, the Waiters would look unhealthily thin. Not much higher than the tables they tend to, they are perfectly proportioned to serve their function. On the balls of their bare feet, they move in fluid locomotion, back and forth between the animals they feed and the small brown door away in the blackness. They bob and weave efficiently around the People, the tables and chairs, fully aware that if they make a single mistake, if they so much as whisper, they will disappear from the room by one means or another. Following disappearances, another Waiter replaces the previous Waiter. This new Waiter will in turn hold the same fear of his own death by disappearance and, indeed, that time will come. This chain continues infinitely.
A small, round table is at the centre of the room this evening. Three Men sit around it. They swill claret and deliberate over cigars as wide as fists, seeming to hover in the very faint haze of their own very faint crapulence. Two of these Men are Characters. One of these Men is Frederick Balthazar Benway. He speaks.
“The worm.” Benway orders the worm. His accomplices nod to the attending Waiter in agreement. The Waiter ghosts away silently.
Benway’s voice is shapeless caramel. It has an ambiguous quality that is indefinable. It adapts to any situation without his conscious effort. No certain accent can be grasped from his lips, nor can any regular human tonal inflections be properly identified. Rather, it is as if his words are always presented for the interpretation of the audience, the abstruse nature of his elocution somehow encouraging whatever aural reception appropriate to his cause. His actual words mix formal speech with casual utterances as he draws from all sorts of lexica to create his own subtly distinct manner. His unique patois cannot be placed.
At this point in the scene, Benway continues to seduce the attention of his lapdog consorts with a tale of a past love.
“… I was on the way up at the time. It was back when I was selling dollars for doubloons, and rubles for pesos; I was cutting it out real fine, you know. But I knew this girl. Her name was Samantha, or Cassandra, or Jane, or something. I don’t remember now, it doesn’t really matter. It was peachy.
“She had a place I’d go to see her at and we had a time. We used to go to the theatre to watch movies, or we’d get dinner somewhere classy. Sometimes we’d just walk for hours without saying anything, just walking along in the rain or the sunshine, or under the stars. I don’t mind telling you this my friends, fine gentlemen that you are, that this girl was quite dear to me.”
Of course, as Benway makes this hollow gesture to tonight’s bright lights, they almost squirm with an orgasmic rush that starts in the depths of their loins. They refrain from nodding along to his story, just for a moment, just long enough to close their eyes and savour his latest words. For their friend Benway to verbally afford them such status, as his friends, is almost fantastic. To be let into his life like this is a sign that he really accepts them.
However, in contrast with what Benway may say, he does not have any friends. Benway has flocks of accomplices, herds of acquaintances and swarms of connections, but he considers none of these in terms of any kind of personal relationship. Every person is a means and Benway is the end. While each Man and Woman in the Void considers Benway a friend, envious of those he shares his evening with now, he does not reciprocate in kind.
“So Annie, or Martha, eventually she left her job. She had been an airhostess or a schoolteacher. I was making plenty of money so she decided to nail a coat hook into my forehead and call me a home. You know how it goes.”
For dramatic effect, the careful actor in Benway chuckles from his stomach and then lowers his head slightly. He softly traces the fingers of his right hand back and forth over his forehead, as if to massage the faded scar of a coat hook wound that never actually existed. He grimaces and shakes his head to snap himself out his carefully pensive moment of introspection, reverting to tenderly fondling the stem of the crystal chalice before him, as those listening silently will for him to continue. Measured pause complete, he continues in his rhythmically flowing oratory that, by this stage, has attracted considerable attention throughout the Void.
“Well, it goes down, you know. I began to notice that her golden locks were all bottle blonde, real dirty like. And her little dog, Pepe or Jose, I think, something anyway, he never shut up. That dog, it used to leave hair all over the back seat of my car. There was a time when she insisted it went everywhere we went. That rat dog really got on my wick, you know.
“She eventually pipes up with what had been on her mind. She says that all I cared about was making money, and that she didn’t care for my drinking either. I wasn’t looking after her properly she thought. Sure, I had to tell her that, only for the pleasures of a cool beer or a fine wine, I would have killed her and that rat dog already. I didn’t mean it. As I said before, this girl was quite dear to me, but these are the things you say in the heat of it all, you know. There was red mist between us.
“So she tells me to get out of her sight right there. Never let it be said that Frederick doesn’t know when to take a step back. You have to give a woman her space, you know. Sensitive creatures, precious. I said I was sorry, said I didn’t mean to be so short with her, and that I didn’t mean what I said. I told her that I’d be back the next day to patch things up with her. I’d get her a bunch of daisies, you know, and we could share a bottle of wine. Everything would be rosy.”
“So I thought about her all the next day. I strolled along the boardwalk picking my mind. In the late afternoon I picked up a bunch from Patty’s on my way to her house. Well, I never really thought that it was going to work out. I had this nagging feeling that we were star-crossed, you know. I’m not a superstitious type of guy but, I don’t know, I had a feeling. Maybe it was just a hunch, or maybe it was all the smoke.”
Benway cracks a sparkling yellow smile and shakes his head. He looks around, inviting The Void into his past.
“So I pulled onto the street where she lived and, sure as day, there were guys from the fire department spitting all over a real blaze. I mean, these flames were huge, and the water didn’t seem to be doing anything at all. It was terrible.
“But, you know, life goes on, doesn’t it? So I left the daisies with one of the firefighters, something for his wife, or something, I don’t know, and headed over to Phillie’s for a cup of coffee.”
The Void is rendered silent for a second. Uncomfortable smiles, all hoping to be the right reaction for Benway. Dinner is served.
December 14, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, Fiction, Frederick B Benway, Social, The Human Condition | Tags: Consumption, Frederick B Benway | Leave A Comment »
The Green Forest Blues series will have to wait for a while. This is about as close to fashion journalism as I’ll ever get.
Wearing a Scarf
I stood on the ramp outside the arts block in Trinity College, Dublin. A bloke approached me.
“Ah, a football scarf! That’s cool, working class chic.”
And so I was alerted to the fact that my scarf had been assimilated into some sort of alternative fashion culture. My Liverpool scarf was cool. The complete stranger who approached me and commented on my neck apparel was all smiles and, in my eyes, seemed to mean what he said in the nicest way. I couldn’t help but think that it was ridiculous.
“What do you mean, working class chic? What is that?”
I knew perfectly well what working class chic meant. Or rather, I knew that it was some sort of bullshit pretence exuded by a person via their clothes or a false accent or something. So no, I didn’t really know what working class chic was exactly, but I knew enough to get a bit hot under the scarf about it. So, when this person looked at me in some sort of blank amazement, I took the opportunity to go on.
“How shallow a perception is it to see a person wearing a football scarf and then think that it is just a lovely fashion statement? The working classes are ‘in’ now are they? Well that makes me sick. Of all of the things that can be taken from my choice of scarf, you seem to have drawn from the very top layer. What does my love of football and my choice to display that love through my scarf say about me, other than that I might want to put across a ‘cool’ working class vibe?
“In the first instance, I’ll tell you this, being working class is not cool. It’s a slog. It says something that the fashion of the working classes seems to strike you more than their plight. Where do people get off appropriating what they see as some sort of appealing kitsch value in the lower rungs of society and making it into ‘working class chic,’ a style for consumption?
“And, with that in mind, why are working class people seen so stereotypically? Is football just a game for the working classes, or is that only the working classes would invest themselves emotionally in such folly? And, from a middle class perch, it is all just football isn’t it? There’s no distinction made between teams, no? Considering the fact that you are so happy to cast aspersions of class and buy into some sort of stereotype that provides the raw material for this ‘working class chic’ look, why won’t you go any further with it? Maybe my Liverpool scarf says something truthful about my personality? The fact that I support Liverpool so outwardly probably means I venerate tradition, have a genuine working class background – even if I am standing at the entrance to Trinity College’s arts building right now – and that I don’t wish to be assimilated into poxy working class fucking chic?”
Panting, I stepped away and broke my engagement with the now dejected eyes of this stranger. I walked away defiantly with my chin up.
“Here, mate. Hold on a second.” I stopped and turned.
“Sorry. I, you know, didn’t mean to, well –“
“It’s alright, brother. I know. Don’t worry about it.”
With that, I took my leave of him. Or, I would have done, had any of this been true. Well, some of it is true. I’ll start again.
“Ah, a football scarf! That’s cool, working class chic.”
I was a little uncomfortable that my scarf actually meant anything other than that I was cold and supported Liverpool. All the same, the bloke who said it to me seemed very nice, genuine in what I could only assume was a compliment. He smiled and I smiled back, although a little uncomfortably.
“Cheers mate. Come on the ‘Pool, you know!”
That’s basically what happened. I wish I had of a) thought the other stuff at the time and b) been a big enough dickhead to say it.
Figure 13.1 : Robbie Fowler. God. This is related.
November 10, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, Economic, Fashion, Observation, Political, Social, Sport | Tags: Fashion, Football Scarves, Liverpool, Scarves, Working Class Chic | Leave A Comment »
This is the second part of the Green Forest Blues series of children’s stuff. That first sentence sounds quite presumptuous of a readership. Delicious. The first part can be found here: Green Forest Blues Part 1.
4
When winter had passed, spring greeted the animals. They were delighted that they did not have to fear the harsh winds and bitter coldness any longer. They woke up every morning to find the sun shining down from the blue sky and this made most of the animals very happy. However, some animals began to notice what owl had been worried about through the winter. They slowly began to realise that the rain had not come for months and that it was affecting their forest.
At first it was only the frogs that missed the rain. The stream that ran through the forest was their home and they depended upon it more than any of the other animals. As the animals drank from the stream they could see that the water levels were slowly going down. As the days passed the frogs had less and less water to live in. Usually the rain would keep the stream brimming with water but over the previous months the rain had disappeared.
“You shouldn’t drink so much water,” said a little frog to a huge deer one day. “The water is our home and you are drinking more and more of it every day. You take far more than you need. If you drank half of the water that you usually drink, we could live more happily and you would still get all of the water you need.”
“I might drink a lot of water,” replied the deer, “but all of the other animals drink from this stream too. You cannot just blame me little frog.”
“I don’t think that you would be very happy if I left the water and ate all of your grass,” snapped the frog. He was very angry that the deer did not care about the stream and was not taking responsibility for his actions.
“I certainly would not be happy,” answered the deer. “But at the moment there is not very much grass for any of us deer to eat. We don’t really know why but since the winter passed, the grass has not grown as it usually does. In fact the grass has barely grown at all, and where there is grass it is dry and brown.”
Fig 12.1: Unrelated. Basically.
Indeed, while the sun and the blue sky were a pleasant change from the winter weather, the spring had not been as happy as it usually was. Besides the stream and the grass, there were other problems. The flowers were not blooming as brightly as they had the previous spring and the new leaves on the trees were very sparse. The soil itself was turning to dust under the sun and it became so hard that even the moles found it difficult to dig through it. A feeling of unrest spread through the forest. The animals all blamed each other for the difficult conditions. Ed the weasel was the only animal who seemed happy as the conditions became worse and worse for the animals of the forest. He was happy because he knew that this was a perfect opportunity to blame everything on the badgers.
“It is clear what has been happening over the past few months,” he explained with a smile. “The forest has fallen into a terrible state. The water is draining away, the grass isn’t growing, the trees are still bare and the ground is turning to dust. This is all Barney’s fault. He and the other badgers were trusted with the responsibility of looking after the forest and look at what has happened.”
From his perch in the branches of the highest trees, Owl could see that this wasn’t really true. The badgers had been the animals that had looked after the forest for a long time, but it was not their fault that the rain hadn’t come. They couldn’t control the weather after all. And it was not their fault that some animals had taken far more from the stream than they needed to. And how were they supposed to make sure that the animals had shared the food available properly? It was impossible. Nevertheless, Ed was delighted to see that his words were finally being heard. Slowly but surely, some of the animals even began to believe that the poor condition of the forest might really have been the fault of Barney and the other badgers.
5
By the time spring turned into summer, the water had nearly dried up. The stream was now more like a little muddy trickle of water. The frogs were in a desperate situation as they could barely live without their beloved water. All of the animals were thirsty and there were disagreements about who should benefit from what was left of the water. These arguments were never solved properly and the bigger animals often took the water without asking anybody. The entire forest was dry and all of the animals could see that they were in serious trouble. Despite the troubles, Ed continued to use the drought to turn people against Barney.
“Look at Barney and the badgers,” he would shout. “We trusted them to take care of our forest but they have failed. We must not trust them any longer!”
Of course, Barney was terribly sad. He noticed the dirty looks that the other animals gave him and he knew that most of the animals believed Ed. It was not his fault that the rain had not come and there is no way that he could fix the problems of the forest.
“I don’t know what to do,” he told his children when they asked what was happening. “There are no answers and no solutions. I cannot control the rain and I cannot control what the other animals think.”
As the summer went on and the sun became hotter and hotter in the sky the animals began to lose their tempers. They all blamed Barney for letting the forest dry up. There was no water and there was no grass. There were no flowers and there were no leaves on the trees. There were no nuts or seeds or insects left. It was a desperate situation as the animals became thirstier and hungrier.
“Maybe we should make Barney leave,” whispered a mole to a mouse at the bottom of a tree one day. “Ed said that if Barney wasn’t here things might get better.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” replied the mouse quietly. “I’m so hungry and thirsty and Ed told me that if Barney wasn’t here the rain would come. But if Barney left then who would look after the forest?”
“Ed of course,” the mole said. “He can make sure that the forest goes back to the way it used to be. He has always said that he could do a better job than Barney.”
And that was how Barney eventually fell into the shadows. As the days went by, more and more animals ignored him. He basically disappeared. Sometimes Owl would see him around the edges of the forest in the shadows but he could not mix with the other animals anymore. They listened to Ed instead who said that even though times were difficult, the stream would return. The grass and the flowers and the trees would live and grow again as soon as the rain came he said.
The animals now trusted him and they believed that he could help the forest. All they asked was when the rain would come.
“Soon,” was the only answer Ed and the weasels ever gave to those who lived in the forest. All that the animals of the forest could do was wait and hope that they would soon live in a peaceful and happy forest again with plenty of food and water.
In the highest branches of the tress, Owl knew that Ed was enjoying his new power. Ed loved how the other animals listened to him and respected him. He could also see that it was now the weasels who were taking advantage of the last resources of the forest. They drank the very last of the water and hid the last of the food for themselves. Owl believed that sooner or later the rain would come, but he knew that Ed would have nothing to do with it.
November 4, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, Economic, Fiction, Political, Social | 2 Comments »
Sorry about the hiatus. I really didn’t enjoy October. The night drew in, the rain made me wet, my fingers began to feel a bit numb when I was out too long. There was a monochrome sky last Friday that made me freak out a little; it was like the world, or the part that I occupied, was within a giant grey warehouse and when I looked up all I could see was ceiling.
Anyway, this is the first of a three-part series, a chunk of children’s literature called Green Forest Blues. Enjoy.
Green Forest Blues
1
In a beautiful green forest far away, the soft fresh music of a stream was made even more perfect by the heavenly light of the radiant sun. A gentle breeze carried the sound of the stream through the branches and boughs of tress that had stood tall for a hundred years. There was a wonderful sense of life all through the forest and many of the animals who lived there could not remember ever being unhappy.
On a low branch of a great old oak tree sat a great old owl. He was a very big owl who rarely flew very far. He preferred to rest in the cool shade of the branches of the trees. When he was young, his feathers had been a dark brown colour, like the soil below, but by now they had faded to grey and white with age. Indeed, he was the oldest of all of the animals that now lived in the forest and they all respected his wisdom and knowledge. They called him Owl. Sometimes the young animals would listen to him speak for hours and hours as he told them stories about when he was young, stories about the forest that only he was old enough to remember.
On this fine day, Owl looked out at the animals that had gathered below him to listen to one of his wonderful stories. There were young rabbits and squirrels laughing with weasels and moles and among them sat badgers and mice who chatted with hedgehogs, deer and frogs while birds sang above them. There was a great sense of friendship between the different animals and in this beautiful weather nothing could have upset the feelings of happiness and unity within the group. Owl loved this feeling among the animals of the forest. However, it made him think of when he was just a young owl, when times were not so perfect.
“It is such a lovely day,” said Owl to the young animals, “and it fills me with joy to see so you all living together so peacefully. I am an old owl now, and I have seen many things. This wonderful moment reminds me of a time when things were not as they are now. When I was much younger there was a time when animals did not live together so happily. Perhaps if I tell you all about it, you will be thankful for what you have now.”
The young animals of the forest looked around at each other in disbelief. All that they had ever known was joy and peace. The thought of times when everything was not right made them very curious indeed. Owl’s stories were always interesting, but today’s story sounded like it could be one of his most interesting stories yet.
“Now, let me tell you of when I was very young,” continued Owl. “Everything was normal and there was peace between the animals. However, that peace slowly began to disappear and the forest became a terribly unhappy place…”
2
For many years, life in the forest had been good. The animals lived quite happily alongside each other. There was always enough food to go around, and the stream gave the animals all of the water that they needed. In fact, life was based around the stream. The stream not only provided the water that the animals needed, but it also supported the trees, the grass, the flowers and the shrubs. Everything in the forest depended upon the stream that wandered slowly between the trunks of the mighty old trees and the music of the forest was the sound of the cool clear water gently swishing along.
The badgers were seen as the leaders of the community. They had grown to become the most responsible of the animals in the forest. The other animals trusted them to look after the whole forest because they always knew what was going on. Their duties included looking after the stream and making sure that everybody benefited from the water that the stream brought. This was never a problem because the flow of the water was steady and everybody had enough. Obviously the bigger animals had to drink a little bit more, but the smaller animals didn’t need very much at all. There was a natural balance within the community of the forest.
This natural balance meant that Barney, the leader of the badgers, had quite an easy job to do. Barney had taken over from his father, Barty, when Barty became too old to look after the forest.
The only animals that had a problem with how the badgers looked after the forest were the weasels. The leader of the weasels was Ed. He said that the badgers were not the right group to lead the forest. He thought that he would be much better at looking after the forest than Barney would. Most of the other animals could see that Ed was just jealous of how respected Barney was but that didn’t stop him from telling everyone of just how terrible he thought Barney was. Fortunately for Barney, nobody paid much attention to Ed because the forest had always been a nice place to live while the badgers had been the leaders.
As a young bird, Owl thought it was very funny when Ed tried to tell the others that Barney and the badgers were not the right animals to look after the forest. He could see that Ed was clearly wrong. Everybody had enough food and water and, even though the weather was bad sometimes, the animals were generally at peace.
However, from his perch beside the stream Owl could see that some animals were a little bit more equal than others in the forest. The deer drank ten times more water than the rabbits and the hedgehogs, and in winter time the squirrels had more food than anybody else because they had been taking a little bit extra every day during the spring and summer and had kept it hidden away. Nobody paid very much attention to that kind of thing though, because all of the animals had at least enough food and water to live comfortably. Even at his young age though, Owl knew that eventually there would be hard times. He had an awful feeling that the water and the food would not last if some animals continued to take a little bit more than they needed.
3
One winter, the weather was worse than it had been for many years. It was bitterly cold and the wind tore through the trees making a terrible noise that sounded like the roar of a fearsome lion. The young animals were so scared that they had to stay in their shelters for nearly the whole winter. Sometimes the wind would calm down and the animals could cautiously go outside to drink from the stream or to see if their friends were okay. They would see branches from the trees that had fallen to the ground and the shrubs that had been ripped from the soil by the ferocious gales.
“This is a terrible sight,” said Barney the badger after looking upon the damage the weather was doing to the forest. “This situation is bad for us, but it must be awful for Owl and the other birds.”
He was right. It was even worse for Owl. His home was in the trees and many times he had to quickly fly from tree to tree to avoid falling branches. In fact, he was terrified of being completely blown away. During the times when the wind was calm he forgot about being scared and tried to sleep, but the cold meant that he constantly shivered and could never sleep for more than a few minutes at a time.
Despite the terrible wind and cold, the animals noticed that it didn’t rain very much. Of course, when they came out of their shelters they were delighted that they didn’t have to worry about rain. In their minds, they had enough problems with the tremendous winds and the awful cold. From the biggest deer to the smallest mice, all of the animals were thankful that they could deal with the winter weather without the fear of getting terribly wet.
They also had plenty of food left over from a beautiful summer and autumn. The deer and the rabbits munched on the grass that had grown thick and green before the winter, the badgers and moles managed to find enough insects to eat, and the squirrels had kept plenty of nuts and seeds hidden away for tough times. All of the animals ate well despite the harsh winter weather.
However, there was a problem that most of the animals did not think of. Owl could see that as the animals drank from the stream and ate the food that was left from spring, summer and autumn, they didn’t seem to know how important the winter rain was for them. They didn’t realise that all of their forest was dependent on water and that the more they ate and drank over the winter, the more trouble they would all be in sooner or later…
November 1, 2010 | Categories: Art, Cultural, Economic, Fiction, Nations, Observation, Political, Social, The Human Condition | Tags: Awful Allegory, Children's Story, Forest | 2 Comments »
Isaac.
Isaac awoke. He could feel the warmth of the sun on his face and his naked body. Tentatively opening his eyes, adjusting to the light, he looked into a huge blue sky. The heavens were almost clear, marked only by soft whispers of white cloud. Lifting his weighty head and glancing around at his present situation, he immediately became aware of the circumstances in which he existed. It had not been long since his knees had crumpled and everything had faded to black. When that original blow was inflicted, the blow that put him down, his last second of thought escaped him. His life did not flash before his eyes, nor did God speak in his heart. He reatreated to where the wild willow wands weep.
His extremities were stretched, bound to wood with knots of tattered old rope. The restrictions around his wrists and ankles tore at his flesh when he began to writhe and twist. Trapped, his heart burst into a manic frenzy as he gasped for breath. Sweat rained from him, and his head spun. He felt the heat that was beating down upon his body. Trying to manage his panic, he focused on his breathing. However, feeling his chest expand and contract, he noticed that more rope fastened his torso and waist. Beneath his arms, just across his breast, a thin, frayed rope kept his vertical aspirations grounded, while another cut just above his hip bone on either side. He could feel the splintered planks beneath him, underneath his back, the plinth that he was tied down to. Only the sheer exhaustion of bound captivity relaxed his breathing. Letting his head fall to his right, physically unable to struggle further, he could see his father.
“Please,” Isaac whispered, as if the weight of what was to come lay across his throat. “Please, you don’t have to.”
Isaac could only squint through the strength of the sun. Abraham stood tall, with his hands by his sides. Despite his old age, he still looked a strong, venerable unit, exuding a force of nobility from his soul. His broad shoulders appeared to be supporting the grey mane that crowned him as a king of men.
He stepped towards Isaac and engaged his gaze. Isaac’s eyes trembled, watering with the lubricant of his impending death. Abraham’s were almost inhuman, predator like, narrowed to horizontal slits, focused on his only son. They exuded blackness and black, love, hate, lightening and blood.
His father made one more slow, considered step forwards. In his right hand he squeezed the handle of a blade that Isaac had only then noticed, so consumed was he by his own fear. He knew he was not long for the world. Abraham’s pursed lips suddenly cracked open and he drew breath. He spoke with the deep voice that Isaac knew as his father’s and the universe moved.
“I am a knight of faith. I have to do this, Isaac.”
As he spoke these words, the sun exploded into the rest of the sky. A wave of brilliant white brightness showered everything that existed for a single moment. The sky then fell a deep red, coloured by black clouds immediately above the son and his father. A horrible, guttural noise came from the bowels of the scene, the low rumbling of the earth and the sky as they gradually grated against each other until the world halted. Then nothing. Isaac could hear himself breathe against his constraints. It seemed that the world had stopped for his father to kill him.
“I am a knight of faith. I have to do this, Isaac.”
Everything was frozen hot. The earth cracked. Steam bellowed out from the fissures and rose up in the air. Abraham moved through the mist, nearer to the son, until he stood directly above the fear. Isaac could now only see the darkness of hanging hair and beast against the ferocious crimson tide, and two eyes darker again focusing on him. The eyes came closer.
No. Don’t. I am a knight of faith. You don’t have to do it. Father. Don’t. I have to do this, Isaac. I have to do this. No. Yes. No, don’t. Help me. Please. Don’t do this. I love you. Don’t do this. Yes.
Isaac felt the piercing and he could not scream. He felt his body convulse and the wind escape him. He pathetically choked and gasped, barely testing his restrictions. The maniacal blackness of his father’s splattered eyes was the last thing he saw as his spirit descended to the devices of Hades. Scarlet skies fell from Isaac’s twitching neck as he left.
Blood continued to seep from the now lifeless body, soaking the earth beneath. Withdrawing the blade from the depths of his son’s throat, Abraham released a heaving sigh. He leaned his head backwards and threw his arms outwards. Dropping to his knees, love gushed from his mouth into heaven.
“I have done your bidding, Father. I love you.”
Gold and silver reigned from red and rested at Abraham’s blood soaked feet.
September 22, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, Fiction, Frederick B Benway, Observation, Political, Religion, Social | Tags: Abraham, Christianity, Money, Murder, The Binding of Isaac, Wealth | Leave A Comment »
- I’ve spent the last two weeks travelling through a few different countries. Berlin was one city I visited. For better or worse, it struck me that to best display my feelings about my time in the city, I would have to revisit Martha and Steve.
“Oh my God, did you see what is on this menu?” Steve looks down at the unintelligible syllables in sheer disbelief. On the page in front of him there are combinations of letters that he has never seen before, gibberish that he could never have previously imagined. There are even letters with pairs of dots above them. The English translation of each dish is underneath.
“I know, I know! It’s crazy.” Martha hasn’t yet looked at the menu. Her rubber neck is surveying the environment that surrounds her. Her face is wretchedly contorted in jubilant disbelief. She smiles like a little boy who has found himself in a giant warehouse full of ketchup, crayons and valuable paintings. To all intents and purposes, it is a restaurant. Martha’s roving gaze is disrupted as a waitress places a large beer in front of Steve and a small one in front of her.
“Thank you! No, I mean, danke!” The waitress, Emily according to the golden script of her nametag, is blessed with a shower of Steve’s finest saliva as the entire restaurant is blessed with Steve’s voice. His boisterous laugh, coming from deep in his chest, signals that he finds world languages incredibly amusing, and the idea that he should endeavour to use one all the more hilarious. Emily The Waitress does not seem to be able to grasp that Steve’s struggle to use a simple German word is highly entertaining. To Emily The Waitress, the incident is unfortunate at worst. At best, it is unremarkable. She just doesn’t get it.
“Bitte,” she says politely before engaging with those at the next table.
“Well, the German’s aren’t famous for their sense of humour, and now I know why!” Steve is hilarious. He has drawn upon a broad generalisation of a culture, consumed it, and then congratulated himself for that process by making an hilarious joke about it. He fails to see the sad irony that lies in his being the embodiment of a stereotypical world consumer, consuming a stereotype that he himself has decided to apply to a person.
Martha beckons Emily The Waitress once again.
“Okay, Steve.” Martha’s speech dribbles out of her maw. She glances between her husband, the menu and Emily The Waitress. “Steve, I will… Steeeeeeve. I, am, going, to, haaaaave. Em, your The Berlin Wall please. Yes, I think I’ll have some The Berlin Wall, with french fries. And some, no, yeah, that’s good for me. Dankey.” Martha closes her menu on the table and looks at Steve, imploring him to order. He responds with almost German efficiency, swinging his head between his wife and Emily The Waitress as if looking for approval of his decision.
“Yeah, you know what, I’ll have some Sachsenhausen, the large portion. And I’ll have some fries too… Wait, you know what, could I get a side of Holocaust Memorial maybe? Instead of the fries?” Emily The Waitress nods and smiles, signaling in the affirmative. “Thanks.” Martha nods and smiles like their host did previously, only with some kind of pride in achievement across her face, as if she made some sort of fantastic cultural leap by ordering a meal in English in Berlin, albeit from a waitress who speaks English. The girls in the book club will be delighted to hear how she ordered the entire meal in German, in the process saving Steve from his cultural ignorance.
“So,” starts Emily The Waitress in near perfect English, “one The Berlin Wall, with fries for you? One large Sachsenhausen with some Holocaust Memorial for you?” Steve smiles benignly.
“Sounds good. Your English is great. How did you pick that up?”
“Oh, thank you.” She smiles humbly. “I studied it in school and just kept using it. Most people here speak at least a little bit of English, maybe some other languages too.”
“Really. That is just, wow. Well, you’re very good for learning it.” Steve belittles her unintentionally, with a massive grin on his massive face. He pushes his glasses up his nose. Emily The Waitress exits stage left.
The players stop mid-chew and mid-chat. The lights all go out. That is, except for one. A single spotlight impales Emily The Waitress to one side of the action. She closes her eyes for a second. She contemplates her pending soliloquy, brushing back her beautiful blonde hair, tucking some strays behind the fashionably thick black glasses that let her big blue eyes see the world. Her voice is so small.
“This place is so sad. Please don’t do it. Why do you do it? Why do we do it? Do we have some duty to talk, as if it’s okay? If I acknowledge it and sell it, is that really dealing with some kind of identity crisis? Is that dealing with a mass of history?”
Emily The Waitress lifts her glasses and wipes tears from her eyes. She bows her little blonde head towards the floor. Light returns to the restaurant. A second waitress places plates in front of Martha and Steve who chuckle and chat quietly, a manner completely alien to them. All of the lights go out and there is silence.
Two spotlights now penetrate the black. One is trained upon Emily The Waitress, who stands knock-kneed with her head bowed, in the same position that the light had previously speared her. The second circular shaft of light illuminates Martha and Steve at their table.
“Please don’t,” Emily The Waitress pleads towards her guests. “I don’t want this. I feel ill. It hurts.” Emily drops to her knees. Her voice does not seem to reach Martha and Steve through the darkness. In her throat, her whimpering struggles against her desperate wailing, choking her voice.
“Enjoy your meal.”
Martha breaks off little chunks of wall with her fingers and stuffs them into her mouth. She moans in satisfaction, communicating the pleasure of her meal. She savours every morsel, tasting the cultural, social and political weight of what she is consuming. Similarly, Steve sucks on an old shoelace, nodding his head like a dashboard dog. He understands Sachsenhausen as Martha understands The Berlin Wall. Contemporary consumption seems to square it all historically for everyone involved in the transaction. Meanwhile, Emily The Waitress has crumpled to a horizontal position.
“We hope everything is okay for you,” she screams through tears. Her body flaps about on the ground like a helpless fish on cement, with arms writhing and legs kicking out. She wails in agony, as if her fingernails are slowly being torn from her extremities by a crazed torturer. Her hair is wild and covers some of her face.
“Can I get you anything else? Is it good? I am happy that the German people, all people in fact, can now move on from the history of these things and just eat them.”
Steve pours ketchup all over a stripped shirtsleeve.
Emily The Waitress curls into a fetal position. She ceases to move. The tears of the world are a constant quantity. Her heavy breathing and sobbing soaks the room.
Martha belches and laughs. Steve laughs too, having also finished his meal. He then belches even louder than his wife had done. Steve wins the belching contest. They both laugh. They both enjoyed their German cuisine. Their wonderful waitress stands up and takes a deep breath. Everything is illuminated once again.
“My friends, was everything good?”
“It was wonderful, Emily, dankey.” Martha grins.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it. Can I get you anything else? Or just the bill?”
“The bill would be great, please.” Steve hands his American Express card to Emily The Waitress. She smiles and limps away.
August 16, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, Fiction, Nations, Political, Social, Travel | Tags: Berlin, Berlin Tourism, History of Germany, Martha and Steve, The Berlin Wall, The Holocaust, The Holocaust Memorial, Waitressing | 1 Comment »
- As long as there is chocolate on the shelf, somebody is liable to eat it. As long as there is cash on the go, somebody is liable to take it.
Internationally, the emergence of the incredibly easy-to-use word, ’Bailout,’ now a term of everyday parlance among everyday people, has seen the common man become an economist of extreme convictions. On a national level, we have the delightfully chewable acronym, ‘NAMA.’ Couple that gem with general group terms like ‘the bankers’ and ‘the developers,’ there has been a lot for the coffee/smoke break economist to spit about over the last year or so. People who once talked about film and music that they scarcely understood now speak of financial policy.
With buzz words and hate figures holstered and ready for action in an instant, it is easy to forget the very systems we live within. For all that we’re discussing NAMA, bankers and governments, big, venerable old words like ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ are forgotten. Of course, within systems that are quite comfortable for and accommodating to those who might have influence in such discussions, it is hardly likely that the broad cultures of greed that are encouraged by spectacle orientated capitalism will be opened up to a public tribunal. While we are outraged at individuals and rightly demand the execution of their characters, Ivor Callely and ‘the bankers’ most recently, investigations of the systems that foster greed culture are not called for.
Figure 6.1: MIddle Class BASTARDS!
One thing that is not acknowledged out loud is that bank bailouts and NAMA are capitalist stopgaps. These measures, while seemingly necessary within the current climate, save certain failing elements of systems preferred by the dominant hierarchy, capitalist systems that allow the accumulation of massive wealth for that hierarchy. That capability for the accumulation of wealth (which generally requires the loss of wealth by another who may or may not be partaking in the fight that is greed culture) proportionately filters down through the class system with obvious (are they obvious? Do people still remember that Ireland has a working class?) disadvantages for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. To be blunt, very few commentators seem to admit that bailing out financial institutions and the creation of the National Assets Management Agency are socialist answers to unpleasant capitalist problems. Maybe that is because economic commentators are of the middle classes and generally favour capitalist systems that benefit their capability for the accumulation of wealth. Socialism is an opportunity cost for the dominant hierarchy. But, to be fair, imagine Barack “Jesus” Obama admitted such a thing publicly, that socialism, of all things, was an answer? Imagine he told the adoring American public that socialist solutions had to save their beloved capitalism?
“Darlin’, did President Obama just say the ‘S’ word?”
“No honey, em, he said, um… Social List. It’s a list of his friends.”
“I knew it. He ain’t no Commie! *Insert generic Deep South phrase here*”
The very capitalist systems that are so precious to so many are only actually beneficial to those in the ascendancy on the financial food chain and, being one and the same, those who influence the lower rungs of that chain. However, that system can only succeed, and by success I mean facilitating wider benefits for the world at large, if everyone participating is 100% morally sound. And nobody is, or not many are anyway. Rather, we’re greedy, or, in capitalist speak, financially ambitious.
The Banker, the guy who ripped off his customers, is a greedy man. Obviously, there’s no doubt about it. And it’s okay to call him greedy flat-out because he’s The Banker. He sneaks into your house at night to steal your hard-earned money and on the way out he rolls up all your socks inside out, and we all know that banker sounds like…
Figure 6.2: The Bankers have fallen flat on their arses! Ha!
But there are other greedy men who aren’t getting it in the neck, which is understandable, because some of them are the unwitting victims here. The average person, who ambitiously/greedily took out a mortgage on a house that he could only afford if everything went perfectly or better for him over the next twenty to twenty-five years, has now lost his house. Some may highlight stupidity as a potential quality of this synecdochical man but, it must be said, greed and stupidity are not mutually exclusive. So maybe he is greedy and stupid? And, shockingly, capitalist systems failed this man. But we’re all greedy, so is capitalism wrong?
And it is a bit close to the bone, isn’t it? Because there are plenty of us in this Joe the Plumber position, or with friends and family struggling with the same problems. It can’t even be said by those with power. If a politician hurts your feelings you won’t vote for them. Even If Mr. Obama says at some point that it was, perhaps, a little bit your fault, pointing down the lens of a camera towards an unsuspecting international audience, previous chants of “YES WE CAN,” would quickly mutate into the far less catchy and unfortunately long-winded, “We hate Obama, whatever happened to that other guy? He wasn’t that bad, was he? I had a job back then.”
So laissez-faire economic policies and free-to-exploit-others capitalism can’t work, not necessarily because it is systematically flawed, but because we are systematically flawed. Or, rather, capitalism is essentially flawed because those who partake in it are undoubtedly flawed. We all want to be in a better position than we are now. We all want a nicer car, a bigger house, luxury toilet roll or a Thai mail-order bride.
Figure 6.3: If it weren't for those bloody BANKERS, You could have had a Thai wife.
But of course, it is the fault of the bankers, isn’t it? And the government? Yes, it is their fault. If there was any justice, the bankers that have actively swindled honest people out of their money would all be put in prison to rot. They should, at the very least, apologise, shouldn’t they? And, one would think, the government should be taking some responsibility for poor economic controls and an inability to deal with crises. Why aren’t they saying sorry either? But, if we honestly expect this capitalist system to succeed, then we have to look at ourselves too as, after all, the collective controls the flow of cash in every transaction. But can capitalism succeed? No, but it could be a little more fair.
As long as the responsibility for our recent economic hardship is left in the lap of those bankers and developers, and while it remains the charge of that government to simply ‘fix’ economic problems, the average bloke won’t really have learned anything at all. It may be mostly their fault, but until we trade in our amateur economic analysis for some introspective honesty, the blame will always lie somewhere else and very little is likely to change.
July 25, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, Economic, Observation, Political, Social, Zeitgeist | Tags: Bailouts, Banks, Capitalism, Economic Responsibility, Government, NAMA, Recession in Ireland, Socialism | 1 Comment »
- The following appeared, printed, in a savagely circumcised form. I was never happy with it. The state of Irish cinema is disheartening. Having recently watched The Commitments, I felt the need to revisit the idea of an Irish cinema.
Addressing National Cinemas
To discuss any national cinema, one must first acknowledge that there is no such thing as national cinema. It is an elephant in the room that is film criticism. Indeed, enlightening exploration of ideas of national cinema demands a knowledge of the notion’s falsity. It is absolutely impossible to define. Nations themselves are purely based upon war provoking lines on a map, lines that divide the world into manageable sections for purposes that are mostly tax related. To take a film and put it firmly within those lines is an act of little to no merit. The practice of naming cinema as of a nation is obviously necessary in both common parlance and rigorous academic analysis though, as a descriptive tool and a means of identification. However, to grasp the picture, to settle the identification of a film as of a specific nation, or of the land or of the people is a teleological phenomenon to observe. This would be a matter of interpretation, thus leading to a consensus that Film A is of Country B and Film C is of Country D, seeing the films settle themselves as national cinema.
Looking at basic ontological criteria, if one is to look at what is a national cinema in that manner, there exist further hurdles in discussing a proposition of national cinema. On the most exasperating of levels, there are two kinds of cinema, neither of which are based on anything to do with a nation. Hollywood cinema is the first. By Hollywood cinema, I do not strictly mean that which comes from Hollywood. For all intents and purposes, Hollywood cinema includes all films that adhere to a reasonable degree to our usual expectations of what we are seeing within the temporal space; aspirational production values, psychological realism, specific character empathy and narrative fulfillment among other things.
These factors also define the other kind of cinema. That is, the other does not conform in one way or another to these conventions. There is alienation or questioning of some kind between the film and the audience. Over decades of film criticism, various names have been attributed to different types of films and different film movements but, to put them all in one basket, those films that have opposed Hollywood cinema are all part of the significant other. Across various countries and continents, even from within Hollywood, terms as loosely fitting as ART cinema, SECOND cinema, THIRD cinema, COUNTER-cinema and PORNOGRAPHY, to more specific descriptions of movements and styles such as the Nouvelle Vague, Neorealism, Film Noir and cinematic Expressionism are all terms of the other.
Even more practical issues complicate ideas of national cinema, especially outside of Hollywood. If one tries to narrow down national cinema to anything more specific than a seeming association with a particular country, factors such as financing, language, personnel, setting and subject matter often serve to muddy the water. Cinema, by nature (specifically as an interpreted, sensory medium) and construction, is always transnational. But the elephant remains.
Addressing Irish Cinema
For an example concerning ideas of Irish cinema, one only has to look back at the phenomenal achievement that is Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008). Look at the foundations. Hunger was funded and distributed by different groups from different European countries, the film is Irish and British in subject matter, it was directed by an Englishman (McQueen) and features mostly Irish talent (including the astonishing performance of Michael Fassbender as the enigmatic Bobby Sands) acting out a script penned by McQueen and Irish playwright Enda Walsh.
Despite the project’s transnational base, we claimed Hunger as our own, a masterpiece of Irish cinema. While we did not tag it as a nation, it is a collective interpretation. Crying out for something to hold on to and be proud of, green isle cinema enthusiasts took McQueen’s film to be Irish. There is nothing wrong with that of course. It is a testament to a fantastic picture. Crucially however, our need for Hunger was also a sign of just how poor Irish cinema, or cinema associated with Ireland, has been over the past number of years.
Our desire to see a succesful Irish cinema has seen many truly terrible productions in recent years. These pictures have, more often than not, tried to be distinctly Irish with a Hollywood shine at the same time. They are FIRST cinema. To say the least, the results have ranged from average to abominable. Fortunately, Irish cinema has flickered into life at different times with moments of the other kind of film. A frustratingly tiny minority of films have marked the rare highs of Irish cinema. There may be more but, to my admittedly fallible mind, I don’t think there are.
In 1967, Rocky Road to Dublin received a hostile reception at its press screening in Dublin and was quickly made inaccessible to the Irish public by their government. In 1968 it was acclaimed at Cannes and was notoriously well received by striking students and workers in Paris. Irish journalist Peter Lennon and French cinematographer Raoul Coutard’s collaboration could really have been something for Irish cinema were it seen.
Lennon’s intelligent and biting documentary depiction of a nation retarded by decades of Church and State oppression coupled with Coutard’s introduction of Alexandre Astruc’s camera stylo ideas to a new audience was something so stark for Irish audiences of the time. Or, at least, it would have been had the established hierarchy not stubbed it out like a cigarette that nobody had a chance to smoke. One can only wonder how Rocky Road to Dublin could have influenced Irish films over the following decades, or even 1970s Ireland itself. It certainly wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.
In more recent years, it took two Dublin heroin addicts mugging a boy with Down’s Syndrome to light up Irish cinema. Lenny Abrahamson and Mark O’Halloran’s Adam and Paul (2004) is a bleak and tragic story bringing the plight of those who were forgotten by Celtic Tiger Ireland to the screen, those who still desperately cling to the bottom rung of the social ladder. The film follows Adam and Paul’s attempts to get by and survive a single day including the painful aforementioned mugging. Inspired by Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Adam and Paul are writer O’Halloran’s Vladimir and Estragon, aimlessly surviving the plight of their own existences.
Figure 5.1: Gogo and Didi, Adam and Paul
Incomprehensibly lost, Adam and Paul brought the forgotten back to the minds of the growing ranks of the middle classes. The absence of those more comfortable from the picture implicates them in the demise of the unfortunate minority and their disappearance from the social radar in a manner that is often as amusing as it is brutal and unsentimental.
While lacking the same quality as Adam and Paul, Abrahamson and O’Halloran’s 2007 acclaimed collaboration Garage (2007) is also a progressive picture of the other, shunning the broad culture of Hollywood-ism or, the fetishisation of cash for want of a better phrase. The film goes someway to picking at the frailties of the community structures of rural Ireland while proving that Pat Short can, much to my own amazement, act in a genuine role. The problem is though, that if you look at Adam and Paul, Garage and Hunger in relation to Irish cinema as a whole, these three films are some of the only serious contributions Ireland has made to world cinema over the past decade. And I’m probably being generous with Garage.
Some will remember Colin Farrell. John Crowley’s Intermission (2003) and Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges (2008) have hardly lit up the world, or have they? More commercial enterprises, movies (Hollywood cinema), than noble, commercially viable cinema (the other), the two films are mildly amusing and full of Irish charm but further than that it is difficult to argue that the films hold much substance with regards to a progressive, dynamic Irish cinema.
Intermission, a star vehicle for Colin Farrell and Cillian Murphy, does little to dispel internationally recognised Irish stereotypes, in fact it merely updates old ones; likely lads and likely ladies, a few tough charmers, a nation of people who are brought together by a drink or two. It would be difficult to argue that In Bruges would have done as well at the box office if Farrell had not played his usual plucky but flawed rogue character. It isn’t Farrell’s fault that he plays to that loveable stereotype so well but it doesn’t make it right. In Bruges is perhaps the most internationally successful (profitable) Irish film of recent years not due to artistic merit but the exploitation of an international audience that indulges in cute stereotypes and wants to love the antics of an Irish misfit rogue (Farrell), a Brendan Behan character (Brendan Gleeson) and a mysterious European beauty (Clémence Poésy) in a picturesque European city (Bruges). Postcard cinema.
Some may focus on English man Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006). As far as beginning criticism, it is difficult to know where to start. It is an abomination of historical revisionism, apologetic and shameless, insulting and misguided, simultaneously. The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes which – to take a positive from the award – proves itself a reminder not to assume that festival awards and awful films are mutually exclusive. Romantic idealist Irish men and women fighting for their freedom in the face of the sadistic British soldiers, an altogether despicable and regressive interpretation of Irish history that has somehow become a flagship “Irish” film. The only positive, to really stretch, is the film’s inclusion of the socialist program of many of the Irish revolutionaries, but even that is overshadowed by the dehumanisation of the British, the glorification of murder for what is rather explicitly championed as a noble cause and the portrayal of anybody with money as an inherently evil person.
A multitude of poor comedies have also coloured what is known as Irish cinema. About Adam (2000), The Snapper (1993), The Van (1996), When Brendan Met Trudy (2001), Man About Dog (2004), and Goldfish Memory (2003) are all among the attempts at filmmaking that have ignored artistic merit in favour of a Hollywood narrative and feel with varying faux-working class interests, pandering Irish stereotypes that, one must admit, we as an Irish collective indulge in. The results are all too forgettable.
When you get past the music, Once (2007) is perhaps the only internationally renowned Irish film of recent years that we could and should be even remotely proud of. Capturing a changing city and the budding personal and musical relationship between a European immigrant and a downtrodden native, the film is undoubtedly cheesy in places but it doesn’t baulk at tougher questions such as the relative poverty of the characters, the challenges of living in a city and a world where you are essentially forgotten and things don’t work out as they do in Hollywood.
The success of Once could be a sign. With a meager budget of not much more than €100,000, Once succeeded beyond all expectations. Irish filmmakers can make feature films for that kind of budget as long as the creativity is there. They may not be able to make the glossy Hollywood films that some may want to but is that a bad thing?
An Irish film costing €10million must please every possible audience in Ireland and make a break through in mainstream international markets. Moderate success in Irish and European cinemas will see an Irish film costing €1million easily making healthy profits. A film costing €200,000 to make can break a profit in Irish cinemas alone and go on to relatively enormous profits if seen outside of Ireland.
The film that costs €200,000 will have an artist at the helm. It will be an act of love for the medium, love for what they are making, perhaps even being an act borne out of genius. The hope is that it would fund itself if managed properly. The film that costs €10million will not have an artist at the helm. €10million for a film in Ireland is an unbelievable amount of money and the project will merely be a product, a commercial enterprise headed by a team of accountants and made by an army of trained technicians rather than passionate cineastes. The history is there; it is called In Bruges.
If Irish cinema is to have a life it will not be as a cinema of commercial enterprises. Cinema, as a breathing art form, can never exist as a commercial enterprise. It can be a commercially viable art of course, but to think of it merely as an enterprise is the folly of those who do not care for the art. Success for Irish cinema should not be measured by profits but by substance. For some In Bruges is a success. For me, Adam and Paul is a success.
For those who do care about profits, think about this. We could double the amount of films we produce as a nation for half the cost. That is the bare truth. For every director or writer that is funded for a large project, four or five are rejected in their quest for a small budget for their work. Reverse that trend and the profits would come for those who care about profits. Crucially though, the cinema would come for those who care about cinema.
July 16, 2010 | Categories: Art, Cinema, Cultural, Manifesto, Nations, Observation, Polemic, Social | Tags: A Certain Tendency of the Irish Cinema, Hollywood, Irish Cinema | Leave A Comment »
- Cultural consumption, the commodification of the world, of experience, Spectacle.
Martha and Steve are a single entity. They met through mutual friends, or at work, or during college, or something. They are in their mid-fifties. Martha formerly worked in administration for the New Jersey school board but has been happily unemployed since Noah, the youngest of their three children, started high school back in Hoboken, New Jersey. Steve, a New Yorker by birth, is now semi-retired. Back in 2006 he took a very lucrative pension from the accounting firm he was a partner in as the company downsized. He is now a respected freelance accounting consultant, working at his own leisure, not really needing the money. With their children embarking on their own adult lives, Martha and Steve now spend a lot of their time travelling, using their free time to experience the world, taking in what the world can offer them.
“How about we share the crab claws to start, Martha?”
“Sure.” Martha scans the first page of the menu slowly and deliberately with her finger. “Crab claws sound good… And will we get some garlic bread? Or the mussels? Some garlic bread?”
“Well yeah, but is that too much? I’m thinking of…”
The waiter smiles politely. Several minutes ago these people had hailed him. They were ready to order or, at least, that was what they intimated to him through their animated signals in his direction. Apparently they were merely looking for his presence while they came to a decision. A drop of sweat trickles down his forehead, scaling his cheek and rushing down to the chaffing collar of his shirt. While his still musing charges are clad in khaki shorts, light t-shirts and sandals (the heaviest items of clothing they sport are matching fanny packs), he is standing before them, clad in black shirt, tie, trousers and shoes, wishing he were somewhere else entirely. Martha engages his absent gaze.
“Yeah, okay. So we’re going to share the crab claws and an order of garlic bread to start. And then –“
“Then I’m going to have the lamb shank,” interjects Steve, “with french fries I think, yeah french fries. And Martha, what do you…”
“I will have,” she slows again. “I think I’ll go with the traditional Italian homemade baked lasagne. And can I get a side salad with that?”
The waiter knows that this is not a question.
“Thank you, my friends. That’s great. That’ll be down shortly.” The waiter goes for a cigarette.
Slurping her glass of Guinness, Martha stops. While his wife chokes on her tipple, Steve immediately realises what has caught her attention and exerts his voice upon the quiet seaside town.
“Hey! Gerry! Sarah! Get over here guys, how are ya?”
Earlier in the day, Martha and Steve met Gerry and Sarah in one of the quaint little souvenir shops along the beach. Having disturbed the entire patio area of the restaurant, Martha and Steve beckon their friends over. Gerry and Sarah oblige with smiles, taking a passing waitress with them to service their needs. The waitress departs to retrieve a bottle of Prosecco, a pint of Guinness and eight packets of bacon fries.
Gerry and Sarah are in their early sixties. Gerry is a former building contractor from Newcastle, Northern England. He met Sarah, a former nurse, also from Newcastle, when he was hospitalised after an on-site accident involving his testicles and a cement mixer. They have been married for almost thirty years. Nearly ten years ago they retired to Godalming, a beautiful town in Surrey, in the South East of England. Gerry’s contracting business is now run by his only son, Dave, who qualified as a civil engineer before taking on the family enterprise. Like Martha and Steve, Gerry and Sarah now love to travel, enjoying their very comfortable financial situation.
These two couples have a lot in common. However, ahead of family, friends, business, music, sports and politics, their shared lust for worldly experience and their similar indulgence in cultural exploration are their primary focus. We rejoin the scene with Steve chewing a mix of his own words and lamb. As he gurgitates, he nods his giant spectacled face up and down, using his fork as a gavel, indicating that he is about to speak of something extraordinary, perhaps about to emphasise just how great it is to have visited numerous locations. It is grotesque.
“You really haven’t lived…” he pauses to swallow, thankfully. “You really haven’t lived until you’ve been to Sirmione and seen the sights; you absolutely have to go at some point. Martha took wonderful pictures of Lake Garda in the late evening, during the magical hours.”
“Gosh, yes!” Martha almost explodes with delight. “I’ll email them to you!” Steve had created an opportunity for them to show off just how culturally enlightened they are. Wonderful. Sarah glances towards Gerry and then forms a friendly, vampiric grin as she turns back towards Martha and Steve who are sitting across from them. Fondling the stem of her empty flute – that friendly waiter hasn’t returned with her second bottle of Prosecco yet – she takes up the challenge. Because it is a challenge. It is always a challenge with these people.
“Well, when we cycled around Lake Garda –“
“You cycled?” Steve sneaks a quick glance at Gerry’s venerable girth.
“A good few years ago, yeah, we did, when Gerry was a little fitter. Didn’t we, Gerry?” Gerry makes some kind of vague gesture corroborating Sarah’s words, and then goes back to munching bacon fries feverishly. “You really get a feel for the area,” Sarah goes on, “I mean, the culture, the people, the food, the wine, everything. I took one fantastic picture, I’ll have to email you this one. It’s of Gerry crushing grapes with his bare feet at a local vineyard with some children. We were immersed in the culture, really.”
Sarah throws her head back and has a little chuckle. The waiter pours a fresh glass of fizzy wine juice for her and leaves the bottle in the cooler on the table before laying a pint of creamy Guinness in front of her husband. Sarah watches the young man walk back towards the bar, her cheeks still taught in victory, her whispy blonde hair bobbing in the warm breeze.
Mopping up the last of his gravy with the last of his french fries, Steve decides that round two will begin straight away. He feels that his consumption of the world and its treasures needs more of a voice.
“Speaking of cultural immersion,” he starts, stepping up the action, “remember South Eastern Australia, honey?”
“Yes, yes, that was such an experience! Remember the two native boys?”
“Lord, the native boys! Now that was something so many people never get to do.”
Martha looks at Steve lovingly and then turns back to their well-traveled friends to tell of what will obviously be a brilliant memory of something brilliant.
“We’ve seen a lot in our time,” she begins with a humble sigh, “but our three months in Australia really opened our eyes to just how enchanting different parts of the world can be.”
Steve adjusts his shorts, ruffles his neat accountant hair with his fingers, and then takes on the story. Martha simply smiles like a stuffed animal. Gerry and Sarah both sit up to listen.
“Obviously we did all the cliché tourist stuff; Sydney and its Opera house, Uluru, or Ayers Rock as the Indians call it. We did it all, like real amateurs. But one day we really stepped out of the comfort zone of tourism. As we hiked through some of the outback, we came across these two little native boys playing with some kind of little rabbit or something. It doesn’t really matter what it was. Anyway, we knew straight away that this was so real, no travel agent could have brought us this moment.
“So without really hesitating, I took Martha’s hand in mine and, with my free hand, took out my pocket knife. I then kicked the nearest boy onto the ground, who could only have been ten or eleven, and jumped on him. That kick really must have knocked the wind out of him, boy oh boy, because he barely even struggled when I got down on top of him. With the blade at his throat, I shouted at the second kid and told him to take off his clothes. He clearly understood, although it never occurred to me what language Australian Indians really speak. It was probably because I would have killed his little buddy, you know, that’s probably why he was so compliant.”
Both Martha and Sarah shake their heads. Martha does so with delight, as if vividly recasting the memories in her mind, while Sarah is simply in sheer disbelief, trying to hide her jealousy. Their new friends had experienced something they hadn’t. They would have to make sure to go to Australia. Steve continues.
“But yeah, whimpering, with tears streaming down his face, the boy took off the rags that he was wearing. He was filthy really, hands and feet covered in dust –“
“And that’s when I grabbed him,” Martha jumps in vigorously, smiling from ear to ear, making the actions of grabbing a small child like a twig.
“You sure did, honey! So, from there it was just so fulfilling. I really fucked that first kid, real good, with the knife up to his throat, while his friend watched. He didn’t move or scream or nothing, the whole time. He was tight as a lock at first but, well, he loosened up. The second kid put up more of a struggle, and I kinda had to hit him a bit to calm him down. Martha really enjoyed it, didn’t you, honey? I mean, you really haven’t lived until you’ve raped native Australian youths.”
Gerry looks calmly out towards the evening sun with an incredulous smile on his face, silently communicating his kudos to the man opposite him. He hastily racks his brains, trying to think of what their travels had given them, something that could compete with raping two small aboriginal boys. All he could think of was when he and his wife fed a poor Thai man to his goat on their honeymoon. Martha chuckles, rubbing it in politely.
“Unfortunately it was all a bit spur of the moment, you know when culture just slaps you in the face like that. We only got a couple of pictures in the end, the first kid never got up so we took some of him. Pity the second boy ran away, he was such a sweet boy. And we brought home a real life didgeridoo too!”
“And,” laughs Gerry, “and people say that Australia is a cultural black hole? Well, not, ah, you know what I mean!”
Keeping up her happy façade, necking Prosecco like milk of magnesia, Sarah sighs with delight for their luck. She concedes.
“Oh my goodness, that is crazy! You have to email me those pictures! I would love to see them.”
Raising his pint of stout, Gerry salutes his friends.
“Steve, you truly are the king of kings! What do you say to a cheers for that? Everyone have a glass?”
The waiter passes by and jokingly congratulates his customers on whatever the occasion is. Sarah pinches his gooch lovingly, as only someone else’s mother can, while the rest raise their glasses.
“Sláinte,” says the waiter, complicit in their consumption, struggling with his own mauvais fois, hoping they tip well, wondering if his mates would think it was funny if he had the English woman. She looks really well for her age.
“Sláinte,” they chorus. They all rummage around for change for their host’s tip. The waiter accepts and walks over to another customer.
* * *
Back at Notre Dame, Carly sucks off a freshman business student, some guy two years her junior, a cousin of somebody on the football team. Noah, Carly’s youngest brother, rolls a fat one and lights up his first day at college with some friends. He looks at his phone. Jason, his older brother, the middle child, has sent him a text message to say his friend is getting his dick wet with some drunk senior at a frat party they’re at. He doesn’t know who she is yet he says, but that he can hear her slurping in the next room. Lol.
* * *
Dave drops his two kids, six and eight, back home. They’ve just finished after school football training. He kisses his wife and tells her that he’s off to the gym. He’ll be back at about 8pm. Ten minutes later he is on the phone to a Polish employee telling him that he doesn’t care how sick his wife is; if he doesn’t come to work tomorrow he shouldn’t bother coming in any other day either.
Five minutes after that he pulls into a neat suburban driveway like his own. The door opens before he gets there. He smiles at the girl and goes inside. She closes the door.
July 12, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, Fiction, Nations, Observation, Political, Social, Travel | Tags: Cultural Consumption, Holidays, Rape, Tourism, Travel | Leave A Comment »
Irony is dead. Apparently.
In the early hours of yesterday morning the shocking news of the death of Irony began to filter through to the waking world. Over the coming days, it is expected that she will be cremated at a small ceremony to be attended by close friends and family including her aging and ailing father, Wit, and her now senile mother, Knowledge. Early indications also suggest that her ashes will be scattered at the same beach where those of her late brother, Intelligence, were strewn lovingly just over a decade ago after his widely ignored suicide.
A clear picture has yet to be revealed of what actually happened but it was at around 6am that emergency services found Irony’s body. The unfortunate discovery was made after neighbours decided to alert police to a disturbance at her home. According to most media outlets covering the story, that disturbance came in the form of a piercing scream that was heard up to a mile around. This story has since been confirmed by a community spokesperson, the deceased’s neighbour, Ignorance.
“I was lying in bed when I heard the scream,” Ignorance told lolquietly. “I usually work around the clock so I really treasure the rare chances I get to catch some shut eye. Needless to say, I was furious when I was disturbed. I immediately rang Apathy, her neighbour on the other side. He said that he had heard it but was just planning on going back to sleep. It was when I called Intolerance, who lives just a few doors down, that we decided to make the complaint about the noise.”
Unofficial reports from sources close to the investigation have painted a stark and brutal picture of Irony’s death scene. After the promise of monetary reward and total anonymity, a police officer confidentially told us of how Irony was found lying face down, naked, in a pool of what he could only guess was a mixture of her own blood and faeces. Her posterior was hitched up slightly and, according to our inside source, had a huge pair of novelty sunglasses lodged firmly in her bloodied anal cavity with an even larger pair of headphones protruding from her mutilated vagina. Lol.
While nothing concrete has yet been revealed by police about their progress with the case, they have publicly stated that they are treating Irony’s death as extremely suspicious. This seemingly tragic incident is, unfortunately, an appropriately crimson final curtain for a woman who suffered a great deal through her life’s dénouement. Indeed, it is the death of her brother, Intelligence, which marks the point where she came to know real hardship.
Intelligence had been a well-respected member of society for a number of years and lived a pleasant life. He was seen by some as an ideal, an example for their children to try to follow. However, as time passed, Intelligence became difficult for those around him to engage with. While he professed that he had not changed, it was clear that the world around him had and, despite his best efforts, there was little he could do about it. He didn’t quite fit in with the conscienceless, postmodern evolutions of a wider society where it was becoming accepted to aspire towards different examples.
Figure 1.1 : Kids in Rawalpindi love guns. Ha!
His childhood and college nemesis, Stupidity, usurped the reverence that had once been his. Stupidity in his different guises became the ideal, as long as the individual was self-aware and exaggerated their love for him to disingenuously sardonic levels. Of course, it wouldn’t have been wise for Stupidity to retain his real name as it carried overtly unintelligent connotations. Instead he used different aliases including Kookiness, Quirkiness and, to really make Intelligence’s blood boil, Irony.
It quickly became evident to Intelligence that he had effectively been rendered defunct as an entity. Furthermore, for Stupidity to drag his sister into the mix was disgusting. Irony was used and abused to indulge in Stupidity. This realisation left Intelligence without hope. It led him to take his own life with the help of a shotgun. A short suicide note was found in his pocket:
“Not only have I been shunned by society, but I am now an actively ridiculed hate figure. I would justify my choice of death over life if I thought that anybody would care. Please stop hurting Irony. I’m sorry I won’t be there to protect her. It’s better to burn out than to fade away, smoke weed every day.”
He was right. When it was covered in the media it was obvious that the general public did not care about the death of Intelligence. If anything, it was old news. Society had rejected and killed Intelligence before the trivial footnote that was his physical death. He had faded away before he had burnt out. This just meant that he wouldn’t be coming back. Obviously, that suited the herd right down to the ground.
Irony had encountered different problems in postmodern society. As Intelligence was demonised and then slowly forgotten, she was made a mockery of by a world which had embraced the cult of Stupidity. As she walked by they would pinch her bottom or make terrible jokes at her expense. Needless to say, with Intelligence’s final expiration, this treatment went from bad to worse. Intelligence had always been integral to Irony but now, without him, she became a commodity for indiscriminate use.
Before long, bottom pinching and verbal abuse turned to brutal beatings and gang rape. Towards the end of her life she was essentially a scrap of a woman, helpless to the whims of Stupidity and his followers. When they wanted to use Irony to their benefit, no matter how questionable the instance, they did so without a care for her integrity and a bare disdain for the memory of Intelligence.
As early and crude as it may seem, it has been quietly suggested by some that Stupidity essentially raped Irony to death. Stupidity made Irony a useless piece of meat and the horror of her death scene looks, sadly, to have been a fitting end.
The murder investigation is beginning and police are appealing for information that may lead to a resolution. Stupidity has already been questioned over any possible links, but it would be remiss to place the blame with him just yet. Maybe another question needs to be asked though. Is there blood on the hands of wider society? Stupidity reigns but, as long as we are happy to actively or passively indulge in Stupidity in his many guises, we are fully complicit.
lolquietly
June 15, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, News Story, Observation, Questions?, Social | Tags: Culture, Death, Irony, News, Society | Leave A Comment »
