TRANSITION TO PHILOSOPHY VOLUME TWO

BY JOHANNES BERGFORS 

[soon to be made available as paperback and e-book from Chipmunka]

TELEPATHY HAS BEEN PROVEN

Once upon a time, an interlocutor, possibly meaning my old friend and bloodbrother the philosopher Dr. Calculator Ptom, picked up my hands while I was at the screen in a different part of the country and got me to type:

He found himself on a plane.

He found himself on a.

He found himself on.

He found himself.

He found.

P.

But what “P” means we do not know. Wittgenstein for example would say:

P = ~ ~ P.

I later heard it said that the wing-shaped calligramme is the only good bit in the whole of my oeuvre, and whilst I contest this, it might still be true, depending on your hermeneutic autonomy and subjective taste.

My point, which I left out so far, is that I would say that the wing-bit is still mine own, in the sense that if you hear voices they are your own thoughts, and if you write them down you needn’t become Anon, thankfully. I imagine Dr. Calculator Ptom feeling (if only a little bit) peeved off that the calligramme is mine, but being a Liberalist essentially, he would I am sure retain good humour about it.

Having convinced myself that I have scientific proof that telepathy is real, I wonder which of us out of Dr. Ptom and I it was going somewhere by plane, which sense of ‘plane’ it was, and how to factor it into a story. Already the wing-bit has been used in publications by John Tucker, so I am not too happy to be replicating and duplicating it under my new nom de plume for philosophy “Johannes Bergfors.” But still, if it hasn’t been made clear before that it was through the wing-bit that telepathy was proven, it needed saying.

Having done that I wonder how else I can be of service… I could falsify the Nirvana barcode and have; write a rudimentary mathematical proof about the genius of my brother’s sheet where pictures grew – and more. Maybe, now that I have finally done what he wanted me to do, Dr. Calculator Ptom could even help me from a great distance, via magic alphabet radio and the new, synchronised word? Already I have a long file above me as beneath me, performing one or two functions, but it might change. What I mean is I don’t need help… and if I do, it is more likely to come from within the house, where I live with my brother and my mother, who all seem to share what I call “co-imagination” and what James calls “sympathy.”

There is a piece of maths I am fond of, but recognise as not mine own, which I must not include. Whose it is I cannot say, and am not going to posit or delimit it, so know not why I mention it at all, other than that you see the Organisational Principle of my mind working over, see me, that is, working things out and trying to be fair… once I introduced Dr. Calculator Ptom to a woman as “a polymath” and he said immediately “John’s a polymath too,” so that is the extent of what the P in the calligramme may stand for, meaning it can also stand for anything beginning with P… peace would be a good one, having the peace of mind to write.

I deem it that we should have done P before, rather than leave it this late into a career where I am forever caught in a state of disrepair. It might not be too late to present a few clippings from the data-tree in the name of maths and science and don’t forget philosophy.

It’s interesting because sometimes a voice that comes from outside of your consciousness appears to come from within you, like a form of friendship, a bond renewed, bypassing the mind’s ear. You can also hear voices that seem to come from without that are actually your own thoughts. I have been a voice-hearing writer for many years, and hear that voices might be perceived as difference not illness in the future. Already they are “onjects,” quavers, syllabubbles, sonic machinations at the periphery of sound. For that is what it is to be a poet, to rename reality, to claim your pills are “poetry buttons” whose names should never appear in poems, to claim hospital is “Monopoly Jail.” You might even start inventing illnesses like I did with “Metal Brain Disease” which may have been something to do with knowing you have fried your brain on drugs but not noticing any changes… now to have this proof of telepathy is a wonderful thing because it disturbs the awful solipsism of voice-hearing. Living in the countryside with mental illness is really tough, and hearing voices all the while is too, so it is heart-warming to have the scientific evidence of telepathic union.

Meanwhile I take my father’s stance that writing of the living is rude so don’t wish to start telling adventure stories about Dr. Calculator Ptom and I but we did once board a train not knowing where it was headed. Now I hear from all the way down in London that “now it might be time to hear from all the way down in London that it’s good, that” meaning this passage, in this co-imaginative and proleptic way.

THE BLIT

1. Once, in detention at school, and aged only 15, I wrote an essay about a green parrot sent to space through the conch. The supervising teacher, an Irishman, read my colourful and imaginative essay and said “if you keep going like that you’ll go far,” but I haven’t kept up the nimble flight. I sometimes wonder what else the essay contained… maybe it contained further images like music from a black hole? To send a parrot to space through the conch was, I suspect, a narrative device, a launch into fantasy too, and one would be forgiven for thinking the situation of my being detained in detention at the moment of writing was the key point, for as Ted Hughes might say, a visionary can still be free in his cell… there is freedom born from accepting limitation even as I write this now and here and real and feeling. The parrot sent to space through the conch has, like many of my brightest moments, been turned into song.

2. If you think I’m a genius for all that I went through, my little brother James P D Tucker is a genius too – he designed the sheet where pictures grew. Admittedly the pictures seem to depict the lyric to one of my songs – but I concede it is not mine. I did not lay it down. I did not design it.

3. James designed the new da Vinci circle as follows:

@

<BEE> [long squiggle]

Infinity Symbol

The new da Vinci circle is a discrete system containing the international language alphabet in 4 Points of Difference. It not only suggests <BEE> might soon ensue from @ in the international language alphabet but by incorporating a long squiggle, hopefully and ideally escapes “every word in every order” as a new super-computer can by no doubt organise.

4. I think it a brilliant piece of work. James had also made a previous document, with some deliberately-imperfectly-quoted Badly Drawn Boy lyrics about the power of the sun rendered in an anti-clockwise spiral like a word-sunflower:

sunshine inside of you

old sun warm sun

spreads over you

soliel all over you.

He left the two documents meaning the <BEE> one and the flower one to rot on the upturned box we used as a table in the den in the barn. I think there was also a picture of the upturned box itself, with candles on, turned face down, on the reverse side of one of the two documents as if the whole thing were the new da Vinci circle, as if, that is, any part is a model of the whole.

5. You get that heat rises… so maybe with the upturned box with all its candles and wine bottle candle sticks drawn on the underside of one of the sheets, heat would start to rise through the paper.

6. I went down to the den in the barn and read them and at first couldn’t see the <BEE> one. We don’t know why this is but I saw a tabular arrangement of signs in boxes on the <BEE> sheet. It was like the Periodic Table except with the characters of the international language alphabet laid bare, a sign per box. One was [backward f, forward f, equals running through.]

7. Backward f, forward f, equals running through could stand for “fish.” But who augmented the present paper with that touch? It was the main man himself, my brother, upstairs, sneezing while plugged into the same synchronicity as me, the same new co-imagination, the same sympathy. As he sneezed I heard the word “fish.” Anyhow, you can trust me that the international language alphabet as I read it was beautiful, and yet it turned out just a layer of pentimento in the parsimonious palimpsest.

8. I was impressed, and left it alone. But going back down to the barn to reread James’s imaginary alphabet or whatever I thought it was found the <BEE> document as James initially drew it – and couldn’t find the tabular arrangement of signs in boxes anywhere.

9. Again I left it alone, and some time later when our dad had just passed I went down to the barn another time and found the Badly Drawn Boy sheet had by now grown pictures. They seem to represent the lyric to a song I wrote going

I’m the only one left,

left to shoot my own gun,

this is the dead land,

crack a smile and curse the sun.

It’s not possible to curse the sun. The sun is a nuclear furnace burning in ecstasy miles away.

10. The pictures never got as far as the chorus. The song was never intended as a literal curse either. The bit you would’ve thought was the curse bit, coming after “crack a smile and curse the sun,” was actually written before the verse. I wrote the chorus first that is, and then the verse, and was just trying to make it rhyme too. What may be true about the song is that it represents the sublimation of The Lords And The New Creatures into a singular, pronominal act of Romantic, first person lyricism or ‘I’.

11. There are also two blue ones… the ones depicting the song are petrol negative mud Cola brown but the blue ones are a fat, greedy, Tory pig on the left and a calm, placid face on the right. This made me wonder if I had written theory, for it to happen, for at the solar eclipse with Paul, after guzzling too much LSD the night before, and during the solar eclipse itself, I wrote in the road book “Every Atom Ate Our Eyes.” Not long after, writing about the face of stars in a poem called ‘An Inward Prayer,’ I wrote “Blessed is peace as blessed is ‘F**K!’” Still, this would take away from James’s genius. He seems to have harnessed Einstein’s cosmological constant ‘c’ as an author.

12. So anyhow, I g-a-v-e the document to James, who laid it down so must still own it. Truth be told we haven’t conversed over the matter much but I think if he was using ‘c’ as in Einstein’s value for light-speed as an author it is super-genius. Not only that but I would say as he would say that it was because he wrote “sunshine inside of you” that it worked. It was all about what’s inside.

13. Some of my songs were organised according to the new da Vinci circle for the songbook Soundcloud Rain. It’s why I am not free to redo them as something like The New Oedipus Wrecks Gig, because we deem they are already wheat. I might be wrong about the sheet, meanwhile, but at least I gave it a go, comprehending the surprise.

14. And that is what I made of it, regarding the narrative of how it all happened – but there is something else I realised since which I am not saying. And it worked because the sun is golden. And this has been a golden trance. A golden trance that is good to beholden. And now I should put it on my Blog with the science.

15. Truth be told, I don’t really know what happened with the sheet where pictures grew nor is it my business to say because it is my brother’s work. I shall just impart that with experiments in the international language alphabet I found a good womb for my writing for once… and b/t/w/ who wrote Simulations of God? If you look in, say, the volume Yes You May you find plenty of beautiful-minded ideas for inventions mine own, but the sheet was not mine, was my brother’s and is. I don’t mean to give things away and am being a bit bait so should keep shtum. The sheet is a piece of genius by my brother. It goes nicely with the maths of the new colour as a cellular mark which affected my forearm. They make a nice pair.

16. I can prove to you that this is James’s number or at least that it is not mine own. All you would need to do is look at the lyrics from Oedipus Wrecks, whose song it was that the pictures that grew seem to depict – for then you shall see it was not my game – that it was a case of the international language alphabet – the bee going to the flower too. You shall see that at that particular moment in time, way back when the song was written, my game was the face. I had led my friends to the face. All you would need to do to read them is look in the volume Yes You May… for I don’t wish to replicate them herein because of impropriety. I was a recalcitrant 15 year old renegade, reacting to the world, into bands like Nirvana and the Doors, mostly just trying to shock, rather than shock with truth. Maybe I should still present them though? The thing is, I believe that even if they were instructive in the coming into being of the sheet the final vote as to whether or not the Oedipus Wrecks lyrics are posited should go to my brother, and I believe he would say ‘no.’ He would say it jeopardises the sense of tidy and diligent scholarship that is developing.

17. I’ve asked my friendly A. I. co-pilot some strange questions recently: what would John Nash make of the face of stars? Of September 11th? Of the alignment? Can the maths of the new colour, even if it didn’t work, be instrumental in finding a cure for cancer? Well, to the latter it said the new colour is a metaphor for the cure; and more to the point I also asked it for an equation for the ratio between light speed falling and gravity pulling on the sheet where pictures grew. It didn’t come up with anything spectacular. Maybe the answer to what “c over G” really equals is “backward f, forward f, equals running through.”

18. So it is I think <BEE> could be a mode to drift off on; and the reason we knew Bigtime for sure. It is specious that we don’t know if <BEE> is real or not, because without it we wouldn’t be able to have such pow-wows of telepathic proportions, such connectivity, such synchronicity. Overall I would say James’s doodle of the bee and the flower – which go together – is something as good as the Fibonacci sequence, and should be treasured, even if it isn’t quite enough for a system to live by.

19. Although for multifarious reasons the book has been retracted from publication now, I heard that I would’ve had a Nobel Prize for Let The Jews Win, which was comprised of ‘Notebook’ and ‘Flagrant Rapscallion’ had it not been for the Acknowledgements page where I acknowledged the help of my brother and mum – because it then looked like I was being fraudulent. I would say it’s the other way round and in acknowledging help, for even top Professors get help, I was not being fraudulent. The reason it was like it was, with the first poem ‘Notebook’ belonging to me and the second spiritually belonging to Mr. James P D – even if the writing was mine own – was fairness. As I have said we divided things evenly and for parity using his <BEE>. Such activity may be instructive in international relations too. If different countries could be as close to each other as my brother and I can be at times, there would be no war. If language is a problem, then that is where <BEE> comes in handy, for representing only the next character along in the international language alphabet after @.

20. The game of rounders is a classic game because both the boys and the girls can get involved at the same time. I remember playing rounders at Harecroft Hall on smouldering evenings in the summer terms, with the girls as well as the boys, and feeling like I should make a diving catch, or anything to impress the girls. We would get our sleeves rolled up, as far as I can remember, but without changing into sporting gear, just normal school uniform.

21. The reason I cannot present this paper with a photograph of the sheet where pictures grew online is that the sheet is not mine, and also I have been advised to no longer posit my photo of it on the net. Instead, then, we might select a photo of a flower that is utterly devoid of inimical traits; for after all I believe my brother made the initial experiment for a lass called Flora. You might even argue that it was a post-poem.

22. Society bounds in circles round and round the sun, as said my father. He also said it was a prisoner planet, earth, and, almost like an ascetic, that the key to redemption was self-punishment. That may have meant work but also may have meant denying ourselves. They do say the key to growing up and growing well-adjusted too is the postponement of temporary pleasure for the sake of attaining long term goals. Whatever the case, in the middle of it all, there are pockets of sanity, as John Cleese said, and holes in the wall as Huxley said, and moments of genius stolen from Infinity too. My brother’s sheet is a piece of genius in among it all, is something remarkable that I think I should remark on, as I celebrate him and what he has achieved.

23. Now for the insect collection. Now for several weird species of insect crawling from severed telephone cable. For this I can copy and paste in some joke equations that only work for the arty farty…

24. I had a song when I was 15 about a little bet that the next guy after me to attain the face will still write the line I wrote about it at the time and think it his or maybe even her own:

________________________

25. I shouldn’t state my equation for dreaming about Flora whom it would seem was the mating queen from the green pages in the flesh, that I now renounce…

__________________________

26. Even though I am repeating myself, here as well is my equation for being the neo-Rimbaud whom it would seem deemed it love:

“Her breath a poisonous magic.”

27. I am not in the position to relate, say, an equation for water’s effect on water, but can repeat that H does not = 0 – 0 because I have a heart, and also that E minus MC squared = only relative zero too.

28. By now my equation for the alignment of the Plough and the oldest fell Black Combe is the way the qwerty keyboard ends on M:

QWERTYUIOP

ASDFGHJKL

ZXCVBNM

29. and my equation for hanging my coat on a primary school wall a long time ago in the capital as if to start again is:

+ x ½ = –

30. Here moreover, is my equation for the healing and fusing of the cassette tape with a pause in the song where cut and stuck together in the flimsy reel:

H = t times Pi.

31. Here is my equation for the Ratio between light speed (c) falling and Gravity (G) pulling on my brother James P D’s sheet where pictures grew:

c/ G does not equal G/ c.

32. But as stated, I would actually, in all academic seriousness, say though, that “c over G,” if it had to equal something, would equal “backward f, forward f, equals running through.” This can be accessed on the Pyramid walls, even in dreamwork.

33. Also of note, here is my equation for turning pain into pleasure:

Dog = Pi times MC squared.

34. Now I deem it we are back round to that false notion with which I started, a long time ago. So, here is my equation for the idea that if the Gravity between the earth and the moon is instant and therefore enough to break Lightspeed, a clock is still only as fast as a cheetah:

G = c times t

and if G = c times t, I have to express what t = and might be wrong in saying

t = c divided by G

and might be wrong in saying t = 0.

That is after all to employ my faulty mathematics to falsify it in numbers as well as words!

35. I might as well add that even as we speak I still deem the word “entropy” spelled backwards to somehow frame the first, unformulated spark of appetency in Nothingness preceding Creation. I would spell it with a dot between each letter and say

y. p. o. r. t. n. e. = 4

36. E = starbeams. Of all the joke equations it’s my favourite one because it might be true. A star is a sun is a nuclear furnace is a ray of light is energy beating down on a planet far away.

37. I imagine what it would be like

if a young boy wrote the line

“I have a scar+ that is green and blue,”

with a plus sign for the F,

and then counted up the numbers

from one to his own age, say, seven.

38. James and I once shared an ecstasy pill. I was in my gap year and went back to school to visit him and we shared the pill. He later came up with the phrase “half it and laugh it.” It reminds of the phrase “light it and write it,” also “burn and unlearn.” We were froward in those days but no longer. And by the way an E comedown has no value in maths. I’d just been proven prophetic, even a savant, by successfully predicting the Towers coming down to the day, and I think that was around the time James designed the new da Vinci circle. He even left crosses on the page to suggest where and when things would happen. I was the reader but not the writer in that one. The honour is all mine. To be that guy that read it during the process, that discovered the sheet, is indeed an honour.

39. I believe, looking back, that my dad knew in advance about the sheet, that we would find it, or I would, when he died. For example he came in once and said “don’t fill the drawer too full now John,” also “James is the kind of guy to leave a cup of tea to cool and be tipped out, like making an artistic statement.” He was onto it, and was right. It may not have been enough to get him into Heaven, for he still believed in Heaven, but it certainly meant a valid work of art.

40. I guess what I am trying to say is that if sadness is the musical key of intelligence, as James and I seem to agree upon, then <BEE> is the key of freedom. It shows us how the net might’ve been different. It even digitalises Blake. I like <BEE> and want to be in with it. I want myself to fly one day. I like working for the mating queen from the green pages in the flesh, and having honey in my herbal tea.

41. In the end, I hear voices saying “we too don’t know what to do with the sheet or if it is even your brother’s.” It shouldn’t depend on whether or not I posit my teenage rock band lyrics in the present file. But I don’t know if the pictures are burned by love; or if their substance is dead light particles. I know that a photon never ages but whether or not the pictures are dead light particles I am not sure of. In the end I am in the dark. In matters across the board I traditionally privilege uncertainty. I end on a note of radical incertitude. I believe the beauty of uncertainties is the only absolute. Mystery will remain a constant, as I said to the band at the alignment. The universe is a very mysterious place. What is indeterminacy in physics could be undecidability in art. There is indeterminacy at the core of all things. In the end to be waiting in the dark is not such a bad thing, is nourishing for the soul. It’s good to expand your threshold of Negative Capability in the Keatsian sense. I don’t even know if Lucy in the soul with demons happens to be an actual substance. I know I love my brother. I know that if it scars him we should agree to leave out Oedipus Wrecks. It may not be fair on Flora and may not be fair on me if we do include those lyrics and the end result is that they are pretty poor as to be expected from a young teenager.

42. My truth is that I am ill, very mentally ill, and shouldn’t elaborate on it more than that. To be a scientist would be nice, and what I find I am sometimes, but I also dabble with philosophy, maths, poetry and music. It is seen as an illness, the way I have 1000’s of files. I have 18 books in print at the moment and quite a few albums or long E. P’s online too, but apart from a run of poems in a reputable literary webzine, which I don’t even rate very highly, it’s all been amateur, DIY, never going through a proper or formal channel. I don’t really wish to be Anon in anything I do, and so, threatened with Anonymity every time I go to poetry, to science I turn, where you don’t generally hear of the work of Anon, Anon’s famous equations, Anon’s new theory. I think with a subject matter like mine, meaning the things I did with my life, on my CV, the subject matter is science, which might explain why my poetry is failing to take off.

43. When we did Soundcloud Rain, organising many of my songs according to the new da Vinci circle, in terms of making 4 albums, the implication was lost on me at the time: it was that there are more than 4 Points of Difference in the new da Vinci circle. This reminds me of the tabular arrangement of signs in boxes, which I already saw and in fact read before I could even see <BEE> on the same page. The pictures that grew collectively form the shape of a ‘J’ as if to quote the Dude from The Big Lebowski who keeps asking “can I do a j in here man?” It could also stand for John or James or both at once. Personally I am only just starting to see that Soundcloud Rain might be an alright book. At first I was just going to put some songs in, then decided on using James’s <BEE> as an organisational principle, then after that very few decisions were made by me if any. It all just happened by automated conveyor belt. There was a succubus who swooped down and got me to arrange things. They didn’t know I didn’t want to be Anon. Of course I don’t want to be Anon. Who would? Imagine I was your Boss and just never paid you because I didn’t know you didn’t want to be a slave. Of course I don’t want to be Anon. That’s my life in song writing that’s been tossed away by some woman swooping down. It’s causing a lot of problems and a lot of resentment and coming between my brother and I. It was never my idea to go Anon with it, and if I’d known that was how it was going to be read I wouldn’t have agreed to it. I take the attitude of John Stuart Mill who says a progressive country can quickly become backwards if there is a decrease in Individuality and think it particularly relevant in the case of my own life’s events that I am not forced into Anonymity. I believe like my father that a writer has a Right to a name otherwise an exclusion of the Individual Machine can close ranks against you. I believe going Anon or not should be up to the writer in question and I certainly give nobody any permission to use material I have written as Anon. It is against the law to make someone go Anon because there is something called The Right to Attribution so I expect my wishes to be upkept even when I am dead and gone.

44. How long, furthermore, did the pictures that grew on James’s sheet take to burn and rip to feeling? Was it instantaneous? Were they like a Strange Attractor in Chaos Theory born of spontaneous self-organisation? I think if I could only slow down I would become unplayable! ‘The Blit’ is James’s but let’s not forget I am the person, the human being that discovered the sheet and read it through its process of becoming what it is. I suppose it is impossible, an art unmade from the human. I suppose four light sabre strokes quoting the drum intro of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ by Nirvana in the middle of a teenage rock song might have come into play. I suppose after all this talk I still know so little about it and can’t find out any answers either.

45. Maybe someone like Dr. Calculator Ptom decided to throw a fire-ball at <BEE> and that is where we get the first picture, of someone throwing a fire ball to the left? Then we have someone pointing a gun towards a portal. Then a dead skull with a fireball above his head. Then a face with a big fat smile. I might repeat here the lyrics of my song:

I’m the only one left,

left to shoot my own gun,

this is the dead land,

crack a smile and curse the sun.

It has crossed my mind that the pictures needed to have been done by someone that knew the lyrics. James likes it best when I simply say “your doodles were so beautiful it reminded me of Flora and so I had a bad acid flashback on the page.” For all he designed the experiment for Flora, and didn’t have a precise plan as to how things would turn out, but as I say did even leave crosses to say when and where the pictures would grow. I think you’ll find that he who did them would’ve been given an awful fright to see them and that wasn’t me, it was James.

46. I started to tell you about the parrot sent to space through the conch… it reminds me now that sometime after my degree I organised the motley fridge magnet letters on the fridge into 4 jungle birds:

whitecrow

beckstub

chardud

stillwalker.

When I took a step back and admired my work it seemed beautiful but I was told I was mad, had lost my mind.

NOTES ON WORDS

6. It isn’t too hard to ideate a theory of meaning.

If I need a theory of meaning I could just reiterate a few salient points that have been knocking around my screen for a long time:

a) The pre-verbal, the thought-pattern, when translated via the mechanics of meaning, into words, represents dilution.

b) When you renounce the quest for meaning, you find it, fall back on meaning-by-proxy.

c) The meaning of something is inherent in its exact mode of expression.

d) Meaning is not a delusion unlike Time.

e) Meaning is an emotional import given mere exo-skeleton with words.

– These statements seem to state the obvious and are largely not original but that doesn’t mean they are not true. My next point is that:

f) Meaning is an effect of differences in sound combined with differences in idea.

g) If all these statements are simultaneously true, something “polysemic” has happened.

h) It may be that for something to attain meaning it must journey from Sheer Signification to (in)significance.

Note:

Point (f) that meaning is an effect of differences in sound combined with differences in idea seems to suggest that meaning is quite superfluous; but it has to go deeper than being a mere “effect,” has to correspond to something in the human surely. I’m not proposing a return to the conception of the linguistic sign as “transcendent referent” like pre-Derridean philosophy just think meaning should be more than an effect. Meaning is indeed the most meaningful thing, if you permit the neoplasm, the tautology. The word for meaning has a meaning too and it is meaning in and of itself. Meaning should be deeper than trickery, than post-modernism, than surface being depth andcetera.

10. There is no such thing as immutable truth.

My ex gf when I was at Warwick University said “there’s no such thing as immutable truth.” Yet reading Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, I discover him saying philosophers do believe in a kind of truth that is fixed and static, timeless and eternal. I think of the idea that my dad delimited to me when I was young:

“there’s no such thing as almost infinite.”

You could say it is timeless and eternal, that truth; but you could also say what my ex gf means is that the language used to say it is plastic and malleable. Still, I like to believe that beyond the language the meaning of the words is eternally true and immutably so.

It might even be seen as the moment I first showed a philosophical turn of mind. We were driving in the car, and I was in the back seat, and though I knew it was a mistake, said that something was “almost infinite.” My dad jumped on it and said “there’s no such thing as almost infinite.” I did know that and felt a fool for the clumsiness of my expression, for the people that were there must’ve got the impression that I didn’t know what my father said, whereas in reality I had spent long nights considering the edge of the universe and what lies beyond the edge. I misrepresented myself, in terms of self-promotion, and found a difference between identity and persona, what I think and the careless things I say, thought and expression in other words. The mistake I made I never wished to make again, which was selling myself short.

12. Science and art still differ on the matter of truth.

They have different sensibilities. In science truth is to be falsified through which nothing is 100%, only ever 99% at best. In poetry however there is truth-to-itself through which anything can be true if well-made enough. Poetic truth is like the truth of the individual, constituted of its own inner nature. This came up in my dissertation on the work of David Morley, years ago. I was instructed in that by Dr. Tony Sharpe of Lancaster University.

In my dissertation I argued that we come to a work of art presupposing many binary oppositions. These might include:

inside/ outside a convention;

science/ art;

High/ Low;

honesty/ craft;

narrative/ confessional;

and I argued that a great work might start to undo these binary oppositions. But still, where science and art differ is in the treatment of truth. A poem could say “Barnes has scored a chicken” and if the poem was well-made enough, it would be true for the duration of the poem. If a scientist said “Barnes has scored a chicken” it would only be a percentage of truth, never 100%.

26. The symbol [R] represents the stance, the large-R, Romantic stance that there is room for Creativity in the synapse gulf, that the creative spark is not all mappable/ predictable in advance.

My usual example of this is to connect the words “drip drown dream dragon drop” but never before have I expressed the truth that it is actually easy to conjure examples of word-combinations that nobody has before. The polkadot dancers left the door fleering in a leery way and to be quixotic hitched a ride on the cosmic wave south where a mouth lay in wait, open as a gate, until the hexagonal sun set, dreaming in ink.

When I say these words have never been organised before I must temper that by saying there are super-computers who can put every word, letter, sentence, book, paragraph in every order, like the machine in Gulliver’s Travels. But presumably that would run on indefinitely instead of providing a single sentence. Whatever the case, there is a debate in Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco as to whether or not the super-computer in question has ruined the heart-purifying permutation games of the Cabala or whether in fact computers can be spiritual – and the answer is it is subjective.

I think of exemplums like [R], like the number “!00%” - and like my old Nirvana barcode; like James’s notion that <BEE> might soon ensue from @ in the international language alphabet, even the plus sign for an ‘f’ in the line “I have a scar+ that is red and black,” - as somehow escaping the totalitarian machination, as somehow representing hope, but they may also be accounted for by the super-computer.

However this is a specious imputation. It is not that we are up against an Evil Empire and must usurp literature from the hands of said supercomputer. It is just a marvel of technology that everything we can think of is accounted for – everything that is, in my list, apart from the suit. The computer won’t have done the suit. It escapes. In fact you could say the supercomputer cannot compute the suit.

31. Love is grouped with language not God.

Teenage philosophers sometimes group God and love together in the cynical sense that (as they say) both are illusory. However, I think it more sophisticated to group love with language. As WH Auden said “love is a choice of words.” So this I would say is an essentially pragmatic option.

Wittgenstein said a lot of the problems of philosophy are created by misunderstanding the logic of language and hoped to elucidate these problems. A lot of problems in life not just philosophy - are also down to communication. So, believing, on top of this, that love is aligned with language not God, I hope to improve my language-use – to open communication – and I think this comes down to care. Taking care, engaging brain, needn’t make you a fastidious middle aged man, but a happier communicator. And after all lack of communication is saddening, isn’t it? Like when as a child Valentine’s Day passes you by without anyone telling you it is Valentine’s Day. It’s saddening and sadness is a terrible emotion whose waves seem to stretch before and after time. All told then to remedy sadness, communication should be focussed on.

34. There is more than one sense of the word “perception.”

The word “perception” has different meanings that are not utterly distinct but related. First and foremost is the Primary Meaning: the activity of the sensory organs in a neutral state. This is hearing, seeing, tasting, touching and smelling. The next is the Interpretative Meaning which is meant when someone says “my perception of events was such and such.” It is an analytic interpretation of what goes through the senses. The next is the Subjective Meaning which is akin to Belief and also Opinion. It is meant when someone says “in my perception, so and so.” As stated these senses of perception are not utterly distinct but related and it could be said one builds on another; even that taken as a process there is a procession from information to knowledge to wisdom. That procession from information to knowledge to wisdom could double as a process of abstraction, through which something concrete becomes something abstract. You could also say it templates over the paradigm of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Perception, in short is a catch-all, umbrella term that when opened up carries multifarious meanings that slightly differ in emphasis. At least, this is my perception of the word “perception.”

37. Some coinage seems universal and pre-existent.

Once upon a time, a while ago, I invented the word distractionary to contain such neologisms as comnambulism, meaning online sleepwalking, as funger meaning hunger for fun, as filence meaning delicate speech, as amazeballs to replace archaic ‘gay,’ as emocracy, meaning rule by emotion, as agovernment, meaning the opposite of government, as gravitolution and evity which might go without saying, as co-imagination, as in to be diagonalised by omnijective interface of random access co-imagination, which is not fun, and I thought isness was another one, as in music is penetration of isness, but it was already done in Joyce, whom it seems knew a lot of these, and I have just recollected another, not just “indwellable” meaning the opposite of indomitable, when it comes to cinema, but the word ‘entropy’ spelled backwards, as if to frame the first, unformulated spark of appetency in Nothingness, preceding Creation, yet again, even though the universe was born in silence not appetency as far as we know.

39. Some poetic effects have no name.

My undergraduate dissertation was an immanent, Kantian critique in mimicking the methodology of David Morley’s series of findings into itself, into the concept of art and science writing as a single discussion of perception. The micro-analysis focussed on the line “the heart trammelled and rammed on the anvil bleeds visions.” I worked out he was using the anti-dactylus, two soft, one hard; and not only that but the stressed syllables in that metrical pattern all rhymed on a short A. The effect is kinetic; and there is invective monotony written into the line’s musical configuration; but apart from that it is nameless, nameless in all the array of hyper-specialised tools of sustained critical micro-analysis. I found this surprising because the effect seemed form at its most mathematically precise but then again considering the line belongs to a bilingual, gypsy shaman narrator, we might not be surprised that the metre indicates something that is outside a tradition.

40. Time spent reading in hushed library corners pays off.

Professor Squillegybob says: “The Great Gatsby could be an infradiegetic heterotopia pertaining to panchronic, panoramic overview like a chronotope turned euchronia, unless this represents a word-world gone polysemic with the multifarious possibilities of hermeneutic autonomy through whom the esemplastic has fled away with the quadlibetical.” That’s not to be confused with my brother Dr. Bob who would say the above sentence is nonsense, just an attempt to bamboozle the reader with fastidious loquacity, with fanciful magniloquence, with profuse verbosity, and that it is better to keep things simple, to try and not use as many long words as possible. Indeed the more I know the meanings of words like “infradiegetic” the less I know the meanings of small, simple words like “in” and “of.” There was a chap at school said to be the cleverest of all of us and he said “sometimes I forget how to spell ‘is.’” It seemed like a highly intelligent thing to say considering we were less than ten. It is possible, meanwhile, to go through a course, doing more reading than they can even throw at you, absorb all the hyper-specialised terms and still forget how to spell “Winnie the Pooh.” Winnie the Pooh is said to be where the English store their best philosophy. We lack an immanent, Kantian tradition but have things like Winnie the Pooh instead. It wasn’t on my reading list when I was at University but my father did read it to my siblings and I as children.

41. Language contains fossils.

The word “went” is not past participle of the verb “to go” originally, but the verb “to wend.” It is thus a fossil; and language is full of them, fossils, coins, corruptions, dead metaphors the brain is built of, ossifications, word-shades, word-frequencies, ghost-vowels, consonantal masses. The English language is worth billions of pounds, the creative industries second only to the financial markets for bringing in wealth. This was one of the salient points of one undergraduate poem portfolio that took the form of defaced bank notes within its plot. I handed it in the Professor Paul Farley and he gave me a First for it, and it would’ve been even better had it contained something a government super-computer that can put every word in every order wouldn’t have thought of.

42. Language is a creature.

I read in The New Scientist that we developed language on the basis of meat; that we grew our brains by eating meat; that we then needed to spread information about farming, hunting, killing, cooking and eating meat – so developed language.

One of my Professors, Prof. John Schad of Lancaster University, says “language speaks Man.”

Another, Professor David Morley of Warwick University, says “language is a word-world where words are a species.”

My friend Paul the poet and I think that “language is the emotional condom of the world.”

Part of that is that the pre-verbal, the thought-pattern, when translated into words, via the mechanics of meaning, always represents a dilution.

50. Truth is aligned with psychic pleasure.

So far this seems to be about me trying to catch up with my circle of intellectual friends from London, who all started reading Philosophy at school the year I left town and went to another school. I am, that is, hot on the heels of the scholars, and would like to take things further. Maybe I would start learning about “Impartials” like undergraduates at Lancaster University? Maybe I would realise I need to read some indigenous philosophy if I am to deal with events in the mystical realm that happened in my own country? Maybe I am to recognise the Nirvana barcode is a fallacy and I am not to redo it? Maybe I should open up on why the word “philosophy” is built with the word “philos” meaning love? For after all isn’t love how we are programmed to function?

Well, Kant says love is Nature’s trick for ensuring reproduction, the colours of the flowers attracting the bees and so on. Auden says love is a choice of words. Love used to be aligned with madness, fever and intoxication, but became more pragmatic, more to do with language in the Modernist era. Martin Amis says love is Man’s highest emotion; but a female poetess I saw live took a much more biological view and said love is a kind of banana custard, presumably meaning semen. I suppose if it were “trust” or “respect” of wisdom rather than philos meaning love, it wouldn’t be as strong; and also that it remains love because very often it is passed down, inherited, and love is the function through which we have offspring after all. I suppose it is also love because philosophy treats a subject in as high a way as is possible. The verb with which the wisdom is treated is very often love.

My father, for example of wisdom itself, used to say love is the hope the heart literally needs in order for it to survive without which it can stop; and that was the lesson of his tale about some great grandparent on my Finnish side dying of a broken heart. I suppose if he just dictated the wisdom in that case it wouldn’t be as good as it is when you bind it to life. He never used to say the wisdom out-right just tell the story of a Finnish great grandparent who on seeing his daughters scattered and sent off to different homes after a Russian Invasion, died of a broken heart. “You can die of a broken heart,” he said. “The heart needs hope in order to survive,” he continued. Thus the wisdom is bound to life. The definition of what love is is embedded in and derived from the narrative that is being passed down. He also therefore passes down the wisdom of binding wisdom to life. I use this example of wisdom in a passage on love because it is wisdom about love.

My answer to the question is already given which is that philosophy is about treatment and treatment is about love but it’s also because it’s about being a good human, loving thy neighbour, making the world a better place, a subject conducted between individuals that love their work, and ideally, hopefully love each other as parents love their offspring to whom they impart their wisdom. Wisdom, in short, is something we pass down, and passing down is for families, and families are made of love.

There is also the idea that truth is co-aligned with psychic pleasure. That it is the fakes and frauds that lead to pain. Truth after all is what the philosopher may be after. He seeks to extirpate every trace of falsity from his myriad mind, and develop a stance.

PREFACE TO ‘NOTEBOOK’

This text is painstakingly transcribed from defaced bank notes. Some of the bank notes are damaged, illegible, others ‘missing.’ Efforts have been made to order the bank notes but were not always successful. No efforts were made to authorial-fingerprint the voice or psychoanalyse the handwriting. The text is not necessarily a critical indictment of embedded liberal capitalism of whom we are liberal, human subjects and where money, formerly neutral means of exchange, is becoming a flying, white, electrical spark passing through borders of osmotic porosity in the dark. Nor is the text necessarily about an imaginary designer drug called Strictly Free that does exactly what it says on the tin, is and makes you “strictly free” to consume. It is but an open-air piece, comprised of torn and bleeding snapshot-fragments that are given artificial insemination. Inherent in it is a notion that money is an Ode to Death, that a fiver is cheese and onion flavour, that work sets you free.

NOTEBOOK

Il faut que je m’en aille.

Sometimes you’ve just got to hit the road and.

Start learning the basics of a strange, unseen vernacular arrowed down from some lost, mad Godhead within. Pass the fallen road sign saying THINK! in the nettles and the mystery of the single shoe beside the road, in a fast Subaru Impreza with Paul and the gang, the Beatles’ back catalogue tumbling from the speaker, the open window a roaring lion, late birds singing in trees, birds that are intelligent, trees that are our friends, on a smouldering evening in Cambridgeshire, when nothing really matters.

The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob. L to the pregnant snorkel + Ossie the dog, he should be sleeping like a log, goes round and round chasing his own tail, only goes upstairs for a trail of Maltesers, nice, round and pale, we’re on the road to Heaven, happiness awaits us there, flutter in the sideways, flutter in the sideways, bring your brief fling with the politics of flight…

Seeing as we can travel backward in time, seeing as we have equalled the speed of light, I thought we could revisit some choice excerpts from my boyhood and beyond.

Teacher rite elephant nite

everything lite lesson love

learn tell everyone Esso orange.

2 MC = E = MC [someone] 1

In the picture of the airport

I can see… a runway,

a cloud, two planes,

a control tower

and the ire ii net.

In our new pogrom there is a Vetacore.

A bomp explodes.

I faded my work.

I have a scar+ that is red and black.

I found a piece of string with a stone on it. I put it round my neck. I saw that the stone could fit into the hole in the wall. It was full of dead skeletons.

He has spines all over him.

Colour circles red. How many circles?

Colour triangles blue. How many squares?

Colour oblongs orange. How many triangles?

Hot July brings cooling showers,

straw berries and gilly flowers.

When I see beer it reminds me of my dad when he is drunk and when I see a police man it reminds me of the time my dad lost his drivers license. When I see shoes it reminds me of my dad's smelly feet. My dad is the sort of person who tells you not to put your elbows on the table when he does it himself and my dad tells me not to ride my bike on the garden flowers when once he reversed the car on them. My dad helps me with my prep and most of the time I get it wrong. Sometimes my dad acts as he is three years old but he is really forty-one. When I say “I should play soccer for the England team” he just says “some chance.”

It was 6. 58 and 37 seconds so we all ran as fast as we could towards the sofa.

MY DOG HAS GOT NO BRAIN,

MY DOG IS A TOTAL PAIN,

HE'S GOT THREE EYES

AND A BIG FAT NOSE

AND GETS HIMSELF TANGLED

WITH THE GARDEN HOSE,

HE ONCE TOOK A PILL

THAT MADE HIM ILL

AND EVER SINCE THEN

HE'S BEEN STANDING VERY STILL.

Squawk squawk gaggle gaggle, bongles has still got the stones.

Sullen, silken sulks,

we drink the same rain,

spit is clean

and so is dirt.

Folder graffiti. Normal is boring. Do it later. God made speed to save us, God made hash to help us. The system works quite well. The grass is always long on the Other Side.

The fire-dance dwelled in electric drums

where ecstasy fell soft fathoms to clap

and bells let peace form in blue notes

and peered at deer in the wood and ate of it

and wet let excellence sound out its criticism

and dawn let sting its unsheathed sting

and chloroform in the heart let see

if only Game Over was seen in nights.

The

sun

hanged

himself

from

a

length

of

daisy

chain.

Clocktick clock being clocked off by clocktick.

Clocktick clock not being clocked off by Time.

The Universal Mind’s moon meat man might.

The Universal Mind’s moon meat man meant.

The Universal Mind’s moon meat man met.

Break, bird with the skin of snake.

God rushed into the cold cod quick.

Behold! An evil vision hath flashed before mine eyes!

Barnes has scored a chicken

and wingers are allowed bikes!

Maybe a tabular arrangement of signs in boxes, like The Periodic Table except a swear word in every box, to go at the end?

Even A Duck Gets Big Erections: my mnemonic for the strings of the electric guitar took the same amount of time to conjure as it takes to say, but my mother has changed it now.

Hey, my name is David Bonky,

I’m a knock-kneed hummingbird,

there’s a tear up my jacket.

Over and out, testing testing 123, welcome to my presence and its intensity...

I watch her walk along on the other side of the street.

She parades the black panther’s nonchalant strut.

She wears blue jeans and black leather boots.

She takes some chewing gum out of her bag.

She slides the stick of it out of the pack.

She puts the stick of it into her mouth.

She loves to chew and suck the taste.

She loves to chew and suck the taste.

She puts the packet back in her bag.

She swings the bag about a little bit.

She walks past a little pub long shut.

She might go check out a flower shop.

She loves to chew and to suck the taste.

She enjoys it, chewing and sucking the taste.

I read that Maya means “Goddess of Illusion” in Sanskrit, where Mara, by stunning contrast, is the Buddhist God of Temptation.

A glance

A blink

A fault in the stars

Her mascara slips into pools of black

A chance

A second

of Infinity

She flutters her eyelids

like spring’s first butterfly

The stars awake to notice love

she waits with open arms.

But all is well if I only think

& sigh of the dreams of dusk

Images before I sleep

Dancing, escaping memory

They seem to have no cares at all

They seem to know the name of love

They seem to be my sacred friends

Ancient messengers, waking at night

But I will forget them & never care

About what I saw in love & alive

What? Oh, I guess it’s love

Just us & love Forever...

Sometimes I wish to have no more than a line penned in the margins of a newspaper going:

The light of all that’s good is true

if believing is the dawn of dreams.

The ship is traditionally a male symbol in poetry. The sea is traditionally a she. It is traditionally men who go out on dark boats to explore the sea under the stars. The sea becomes a symbol of the unknown, or the unconscious, which the poet penetrates on epic voyages. Only when the ship is ripped is the sea a she and the water Nirvana-blue as solar spike.

Desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.

Desperate for sex with a dream full of ladies.

Soft

and

loose

like

yellow

pencils

scribbling

dreams

as

they

arrive.

Semen spills like silver water,

under the bridge with the angel’s daughter,

splashing with laughter in a moon-glow chamber.

Don’t escape at night

into a heightened dream

from a dull and longing sleep.

Her breath a poisonous magic.

Sometimes perhaps

down opening quiet

I am drawn down

long and alone and

my friend and my foe

recede into deep sleep

sudden and still

like a dawn behind

a screaming veil

where silence is born

and all that’s loose and tight

and all that’s light is light

like first morning

with no night

and wend my way

so slow to Freedom

and soft Infancy-lunacy

with harp-sure eyes

so I can live

the last poet’s

last poem.

There is joy in things

and smiles not grins like butter

but like butterflies.

My philosophy in a nutshell: sensus praecedit cogitationem. It could be the motto of the LSE’s Philosophy Dpt; but when you write it down, what happens?

Tonight it is your right to judge by heart alone.

When I first read the line “I look forward to the future with rapt uncertainty - and I can’t stand the suspense,” for some unknown reason it chimed like bells, reverberating up in the fells and struck a warm, psychic chord. I even conjured lines to rhyme with it before I knew what it meant like:

[John is dancing with aliens in collective ecstasy].

Last night it seemed we couldn't sleep but maybe I was dreaming. The world expands inside my hands it's getting heavy. Of all the treasures I could choose I can't seem to decide. Today the shade was washed away where I would hide. Dream with open eyes, come below and we can fantasise. Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come below and we can fantasise. Last night it seemed we nearly died but maybe I was dreaming. It made me feel sooooooooooooo alive and soooooooo in love. Dream with open eyes, come below and we can fantasise. Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come below and we can fantasise.

J: what colour is white?

P: smooth and tight!

J: what colour is blue?

P: be true you!

Waves

[squiggle]

crossed the FTSE

[squiggle]

and the Helter Skelter

[squiggle]

crashed in the electric-sea

[squiggle].

Blessed may be the end at last,

under the sea,

below the soul,

in the upside-down

Oceans above us

(all that Heaven sends is rain).

Words, words, words. What are words? These are words. Words in this epistemological system I would say are useful tools associated with the instinct to survive. Man is words and ‘man’ is a word and words draw bridges across metaphysics and words make connections between first and third persons. Words are also a great bandwagon of falsity we must presume is not false in order to make life easier. Words are, well, ONLY words.

“Mayfly,” I say the word

“mayfly” phonetically

sounding out its every

vowel sound alphabetically.

Also in Sixth Form, in my word-science notebook I wrote the word “entropy” backwards and tried to give it meaning:

y. p. o. r. t. n. e. = 4

Reading of ancient alchemists in The Lords And The New You Know Who by Jim Morrison I wrote a lovely line. “Waves make gentle love to the shore.” Reading of a schoolboy contemplating getting stoned on milk in Little Johnny’s Confession by Brian Patten I wrote another lovely line. “Homework tonight is to remember your dreams.”

One night we were having a Scrotbag Party in the caravan. That means drinking and smoking - and suddenly I got a preternatural sixth sense that the dog had run off and was trapped on the fence at the local farm barking. So we walked up through the fields, our tombstone-shadows looming tall beneath the moon in the church field; and we found the terrible goat which was tied up in the triangular patch of land past our field; and we noted how its eyes gleamed a baleful green colour when a lone car passed; and we made it past the terrible goat and to the farm where we indeed discovered Ossie the dog trapped on the fence, barking. I was wearing a fur coat and had a bottle opener in the pocket and used it to cut the dog free. Then we made it back to ours and told the dog he was a bad boy for running off and continued with our Scrotbag Party.

The symbol [R] could still represent the stance, the large-R Romantic stance that there is room for Creativity in the synapse gulf; that Creativity is not all mappable/ predictable in advance.

When you renounce the quest for meaning you find it, fall back on meaning-by-proxy.

All guns should be flown in a spaceship into the heart of the sun.

V to the knock-kneed hummingbird’s wings… plus, in Rimbaud’s colours of the vowels, E is white; but in my friend Agent G’s musical code, when you detune the guitar strings all the way down, the street-name for E becomes F sharp minor!

2

JOHN TUCKER

ENGLISH

E

ENGLISH

JOHN TUCKER

HARECROFT

1

Signed by everwell, she couldn’t hit it sideways, or maybe a soothsaying Spiderman with the hairgel of Dracula, Atlantis, Aquarius, the 60’s.

Where once I wandered far and wide 

on a field-file, a file-field, 

a fenceless farm without 

security alarm where all hearts bleed

and all arts breed, now Hell

is very quiet, unadvertised.

McBreastmilk, 

McBreastmilk, 

don’t feed your kids.

Gentle face erasing cream,

smear it in and let it sink

down through the pores of your skin

to erase your deepest down dirt.

O stars the government

that truly speaks for us!

Get an extra kid for free

when you spend 99p.

Freefall 0800 down

your own black hole pupils.

Maybelline you maybe only make-believe

you may be the true mating queen of the hive,

may mad vampires stalk you,

stalking walls walk through

your vagrant dreams.

I see state of head

is more than Head of State.

Monster Munch can

always gobble up your food.

Cancerel can always 

sweeten the stewed-

carfume coffee we sip in 

this liminal afterlounge.

It’s getting cramped

as a tin of beans in here.

In emergency please 

break glass and exit.

Credits at the end of innocence

are falling like numberless lists

of fallen autumn leaves.

Snatched handfuls of light

come to nothing in the dark room.

There must be a use for 

this dust amounting.

There’s nothing like digging 

a meaningless hole as if to cure the 

spiralling lethargy of Hell...

and when I went into the 

woods to bury my soul, 

all the trees knelt down.

O perpetual orgasm of the sun! 

Privation is the mother of imagery.

Prayers, ghosts and 

e-mails chatter on 

the ego-loss breeze.

The chitchat in the solipsistic

kitchen of fiction is 'phatic'.

My new, motley fridge magnet

letters contain no question 

mark in the pack but the first

qualification of Modernism

is inquiry and furthermore

wilful ignorance is a sin.

Meanwhile outside the 

fallen Autumn leaves 

are where bears have 

dipped their feet in pots of paint 

and danced across the threshold 

of the paving stones.

Water clears its throat from the tap.

Gunpowder was only invented

for fireworks and a firework

is a champion sperm nosing up

blind to explode bright and wonderful

deep-sea creatures in the Ancient Night.

The world is a cool, bejewell'd

marble snug in Holy Orbit

suckling on a mother sun.

Supposedly there is soon

to be New Atlantis on the moon.

The cure for cancer 

sustains your heart.

Robbed by a bastard vending machine,

somewhere a tramp drinks paint-stripper 

to cleanse the doors of perception,

a drunkard attacks a wall

on an otherwise empty street,

a policeman forces himself

to come with a gun.

Hey salesman 

slow down 

with that

fast-food. 

I don't mind

waiting here

for a year. 

Portability still seems the Apotheosis of Form: sometimes I can be walking along on a sunny day when I jump from the jungle to the Arctic to the Sahara. Mutation in consciousness itself, truth too simple to understand, these are gesture-without-motion-bones, like sadness gene and dreaming gland.

It's not impossible to write an anti-poem. Love is not a mechanistic set of rules. Love was once aligned with madness, fever and intoxication. Love became grouped with language not God. Love became a tough word-combination. Love has no ego as everyone knows, and so it goes and so it grows.

I for one think Lucy in the soul with demons may happen to be an actual substance. Travelling south, as I read Rimbaud, a rainbow smashed a railway train window. A baby cannot trip without memories... I remember “every atom ate our eyes.” Our eyes: they are ingrown in the ocean's bellyful of wine, down in the seabed-orchard. There is angelic music inborn in the inner ear; but those whom the Gods wish to drive mad are sent the end of ‘Bike’ in their heads and madness is not something to be Romanticised as a return to Purity.

Impunity seems more what the poet wants. He likes to float on the artifice of organic emotions through synthetic sounds, and is into exploring alternative histories suppressed by the overarching meta-narrative. For plastic surgery of the soul there are libraries. Poetry is the bike riding itself. Monopoly money will get us well, Monopoly money will get us bread, she picks the blue tac off the wall and says “my T-shirt is red”. I put my wounds up on bright flags; I take the angel up the arse. To plug my senses in the mains might engage [!00 %] of my brains.

It’s all about a permanent reactivation of the Glastonbury Festival spirit. John Tucker is taking acid again. Money shags in the dark. Thoughts of one’s greatness only diminish one’s greatness. Skunkfoot is putrid demons excreted through stone. Love an army of fire. Fire needs some incentive to rise up. Shall I touch my heart with a red Bic biro? When all the air in outer space is consumed… The bed in the wood, it was definitely a whore’s, with solar spike I can use the Force, with R2D2 I cleanse my doors, I’m just trying to win my Star Wars. I’m starting to think in five musical parts at once. The Anon Throwaway as a new form could become an alternative currency to rival with money for the role of the real.

Formal education is not for everyone. The yellow DogMuckels M atop the pole in the industrial park is the postmodern churchspire in the spiritual vacuum. Postmodernism is theme dissolved into message. Giant killers are frozen peas in the microwave. I look into the mirror though I shouldn’t pool my sources. I’m not going to die at the age of twenty seven, watch the dreamtapes on repeat from a golden seat in Heaven.

The heart beats to the rhythm of one. A fiver is surely cheese and onion flavour. Cataclysm is catalyst for the old cat that sat on the map of sound, just because the world is very round. If there were paper under my heart there would be writing on it and it would be art. I might ding it in compressed Space Age seconds.

[missing fragments]

If you falsify the Nirvana barcode it should have meaning. I can run you through a series of life events in terse precis that meant I arrived at such a culmination.

Well, at seven I helped invent the net: when the idea of the net needed storing in writing in the attic here to give it a chance to grow all the way round the world, I was the one to write it. By eight I was the witness from The Lords And The New You Know Who twice. By eleven who knew what was going on? By fifteen I attained the face of stars which may have been scripted in the Bible. By eighteen I forewarned of September 11th in 2000 and wrote the highest-marked English Literature A-level exam essay in the nation at 100%.

After school I recorded an album on binaural earphones, had an effervescent mobile reverberating the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through every technological inlet in the room before it rang, hosted the Plough alignment for a rhythm change in the White House, got a First despite the onset of mental illness, worked the numinous, purple-bleeding PC screen, built the Tower as an instrument of philosophy, conducted an experiment into a cassette tape with a pause where resealed in the reel, and discovered the sheet where pictures (seemingly depicting one of my own song lyrics) grew.

I went through all that without earning 1p. Then as a summary of all of that which I had done, I invented and falsified the Nirvana barcode and around about that time also attained visual radio, broadcasting dreams that swirl in digital, purple swathes about the head of the deranged seer...

So you see that it has been fast indeed! That Subaru Impreza! And Time does not pass but evaporate! And things live inside onions of themselves! And galloping water would be a cool thing to say!

I made the Nirvana barcode to be but the beat of ‘Scentless Apprentice’ by Nirvana tapped out in approximate barcode shape using the tool of the qwerty keyboard.

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Bring bring

bring bring

“Hello?”

Gold member, you're the one,

the one with the heart of gold

Vowels, pure vowels 

Immanuel Kant

will come to thee 

with immanence

You come home smacked up you come

d/ d/ d/ down

grooving up slowly

d/ d/ d/ down

grooving up slowly

d/ d/ d/ down

grooving up slowly

yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah

boom

boom

boom

boom

boom

how did we get down here from flat-top

wide tunnel cities self driving cars

bears in the moon and liquor and drugs

and whisky baaaaaaaaaaaars

boom shanka, you're the one,

the one with the sonic boom

knickers knickers faster than lightning

skin up fall out of bed

and did those feet

in ancient times

rain down, rain down,

come on raindown

and walk the sun

fatter, hippier, less well connected

always walk the hallways

down to create my own

and in the meantime

and in the meantime

I'll do the monkey bars with my legs

manic depression has enraptured my name

don't know what I want but I just want shame

don't know what I want but I just won't shave

rainy waif, rain always,

lay back and dream

on a rainy waif

now I know how Kurt Cobain sang

oh now I know how Kurt Cobain sang

no more laaaaaaaaaa la's

removal van canes will be turned into furniture

we're thinking of putting Tricky's name on the front sir

you never see me dead near an inch of closure

|| | |||| | || | |||| 909 and 693 are wings

“and a record made of sound

goes round and round, conveying

music to the speaker through the stylus,”

says the radio as I turn it on.

Well, although there is no

such thing as the Nirvana barcode

it opens up a discussion about

the Telepathic Walkie Talkie, how

if barcode is rain barcode is phone...

and at least I have

the grace to come

back and say that the

extinction of consciousness

has no monetary value.

It is past dawn

and I see that

that first mobile

phone has gone.

If it makes any difference to you,

my little bro is a genius too, who

designed the sheet

where pictures grew

and says <BEE>

might soon ensue

from @ in the international

language alphabet…

he did it for Flora,

subject of many a love poem of mine,

and it turns out he

had her, did her,

loved her, won her,

got her, in time past.

He’s a lucky guy for that,

but who kissed who

is playground stuff,

and jealousy is a wasted emotion,

and I am proud

to be my brother’s brother,

and my mother’s son.

I would never begrudge my brother something I would want for myself or my mother either.

FLAGRANT RAPSCALLION

I

Apple blossom cheek

breath of wine

plates or confetti

he sips on disturbed

Nile insect

spaghetti

II

While that may be the ABC of aesthetics,

what I’m getting at is that

if a flower-press ending on cannabis

could = a dialysis a love poem

only hoping to impress poor Flora = a motor.

III

If I could sip from your eyes I would

and taste your name. Eyes of

deep undersea green, we
would skinny dip and fish

in them, drag out numberplates,

mangled car doors, crumbs.

The pretext is yours

and it is also my mum’s.

IV

If this were a fairy story

there’d be no happy ending.

No sumptuous consummation

will wait for the poet

at the end of a plot.

I think of a chain of music from star to star,

but therein am starting

to quote my old self again.

V

I’ve already lost my father

who was an international art smuggler

nicknamed Blue or so he said -

though once upon a time

I thought art was recourse

to euphemism for pollen.

The people from the future,

they don’t want his business to end.

VI

It’s good when the daffs come out in spring,

like yellow trumpets, broadcasting

their excellent news.

Excellent News was the ideal

in my New Beat youth, b/t/w/.

I was nomadic in those days.

VII

Before the daffs come out,

we have snowdrops like

pure, white flames

in the heart for love.

The long, dark tunnel

of winter awaits us now.

VIII

I sip tea, I sip tea,

unsweetened it’s

enough for me.

I’ve got a lot of washing up to do.

I tried to meditate today.

Come.

It’s good to get the washing

up done, because it is good

to make a clean space

for yourself before

you write – mess leaks in

to the brain when

you are in a messy room.

Now it’s done I can make a sandwich -

cheese, ham, lettuce, on special brown bread…

it has no added sugar unlike white.

At the moment I am leaving

the washing up to dry, but

soon will put it all away.

Then I can say “hey,

I pulled my weight today.”

So that I do, and that’s true…

I do a little bit more at my screen,

getting pithy about Place and Nature

then go outside to collect wood.

Sometimes I look at Nature and see

invisible sheet music flowing right to left.

If you like I’ll mention some scattered perceptions of the Lakes.

The fell from town,

when you’re driving towards it,

seems a great, slumbering

diplodocus, come

to fat and die by

the Irish Sea; but

nearer the foot

you can see it is

more Buddha levitating.

And when you mention

the slow ascent

up flat, gradual paths

I think more of a bullet

to the top of a telegraph pole

or even the kettle, rising

to its silent scream,

its steam Ariel returning

on Caliban’s chain.

Floating in the quiet

of a weightless dawn,

the buzzard is the crux

of the flux of time,

and all of Creation

his dark machine.

There are benefits living here, like

once I encountered a rare, red kite,

which sat resting on a fence post, waiting

for me like a warning or a reward.

Sometimes Nature is custodial;

and at other times, frightening, otherworldly…

in me, Nature is a great art exhibition,

but it can also be an immunity to Reason.

Some think of the future a lot,

and how there should still be

a place for Nature in that future,

to go exploring just to look at trees,

which like crows, dogs and

horses are Man’s friends.

Nature is the true architecture of State, at least unto some, while others would take a less staid and Conservative attitude.

Here we find mood as bracken frond.

We find dry stone walls creeping

in to the writing even of city folk, visiting.

I think writing about the Lakes could be the refinement of a drug called “Strictly Free.” I think the Beautometer would be a good invention for fell walkers. I sometimes think of Heaven as a pile of statistics when I ascend the fell – that I will one day find out the exact number of steps I have taken up it and whether I held the record.

The powers that be could be clouds

rowing overhead on their sky blue roads.

And everything in Nature is only semi-state: even the fell is mutable on a long enough timeline.

Well, nothing has changed to the map

apart from the wind-farm beyond the lap

of the tide, revolving its Mercedez Benz arms

to make electricity for the farms -

and also the cafe down the beach -

since Norman Nicholson neglected to preach. -

Changes to the place have been the net,

global warming let’s not forget,

the advent of the mobile phone

and increased opportunities for vice in town.

But who needs vice when literature is intoxicant enough?

Here, we find the beck is a fountain pen.

I sometimes stand by the beck, listening in.

(Dr. Bob says only those with their feet firmly planted can fly.)

I would be wearing my wellies, listening

to its most mellifluous applause,

the way she falls two feet

into a sound as sweet

as a kettle drum’s

metal petals of

silver bliss that

blossom on a carnival’s street.

Literature from the city is of alienation,

literature of rootedness repetitive,

and the city is the intellectual breeding station,

but countrylife closer how we ought live.

I

The reason my new work is not Anon is that I believe a writer has a right to a name otherwise an Exclusion of the Individual Machine can close ranks against you.

The earliest-written English poems, however, are attributed to Anon, the earliest recorded line being:

“Well-wrought this wall: Weirds broke it.”

Weirds could be weather-systems.

Combining the fact that the earliest subject is ruin’d architecture and the fact that the earliest recipe known to man is for beer, as discovered by monks, could make a poem’s definition “a statue of alcohol.”

The A595 is the main road connecting

the nuclear sub factory in Barrow and

Sellafield up the coast. On Sunday

the posse of motorbikes comes

to this bucolic valley because the road

has something in the golden sector

to do with its bends, its elegant curvature.

I went walking up the rearside of the fell,

and some one or two hundred yards in,

up the path and away from the A595,

encountered a rare, red kite

with dawn-charred chest, resting

on the fence-post, waiting

for me like a warning or reward…

II

Here from this seat now

I look about the kitchen, painted

a plush, Mediterranean coral,

at the indomitable things on the walls,

the notice board of cork,

the dead telly wearing

mother’s funeral hat,

the calendar with local photos,

the chart depicting the plants of the

Meadows, the clock, my sister’s art…

It’s a country farmhouse kitchen

with an AGA, where most of the cooking

is home-made, not from packets.

We have no neighbourhood or amenities

and country life can be quite dull,

but recently I felt elated

for capturing a partial alignment

of the Plough and oldest fell

on my new Smartphone.

I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too,

NHS for Lucy in the Soul w/ Demons,

H20 for hypothalamus tattoo,

ESA for extra sensory allowance

but I for one still don’t really know

if Lucy even happens to be an actual substance.

III

It’s a myth that countryfolk are stupid

just because the rhythm of life is slower.

The region is an actual religion.

It’s why my dad didn’t take too kindly to racism.

I was amazed the kite didn’t fly away,

as I stood there gazing upon it.

It’s as close to a bird of prey

as I have ever got out in the wild.

Apparently, the Vikings named the hills and the Celts named the valleys… this should be easy to remember because you can picture a Viking being able to see the mountains from the sea as they travel across; and the Celts likewise lived in among the valleys so it would be natural they named them.

Obviate not titivate, sate

your quest for meat and fling

to your bright ring, your

peerless orbit, your wheel

of hunting, out-stretch

wings to be engorged on air’s

ranting, rock-strong

sockets braced against crushing,

uprushing rivers and sail.

Eventually, it did fly away,

but not until I made the decision

to continue my walk, to leave

the moment, the spot where I stood.

Seeing its wings unfold,

seeing it fly away, I took a left

up the rear side of the fell, following

the path beside the beck

and – still not knowing

what the bird was, only storing

an image of it in my brain -

reached the cairn at the top.

Down

down

down

down

down

deep

blue

below

“eh up,

mate,”

says my

mate

and is

it safe

to say

hello?

When I got down again,

and back to my home on

this side of the fell, I

looked the bird up in a book,

and found it was a red kite.

For some reason I thought

I had found the golden eagle…

there was a rumour that a pair of them

had moved into the area.

So I was actually disappointed

to find the bird was a rare, red kite,

which it certainly, judging

by the book of birds, was.

That afternoon, I got a phonecall

from my ex gf on my mobile.

I told her: “I’ve just seen a rare bird.”

I also told her I had given up cannabis;

asked her if she still smoked;

but what she said and what she was doing

when she said it, I shall not say.

Simon says the River Goyt

might become the Styx in Heaven.

I say the rhythm of the River Goyt

beats blood to my head like a cold muscle.

The word ‘goyt’ might actually be Celtic thought-patterns meeting Anglo-Saxon vowel-sounds.

Back then I liked music by people such as: Boards of Canada, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Autechre. I also still liked some guitar music by people like Hella and Shellac, and my favourite act of all were Radiohead, ever since they filled the hole left behind by Nirvana. All of it was better to listen to when high.

Dr. Robert says: “the brain actually releases cannabinoids naturally for moments of signification like reaching the top of a mountain. If you flood your brain with cannabinoids un-naturally, meaning and signification become aleatory, a mess. There is suddenly meaning at any point of intersection in the crazy palimpsest of memory.”

Kurt Cobain sings:

“my heart is broke,

but I have some glue,

help me inhale,

I’ll mend it with you,

we’ll float around,

hang out on clouds,

then we’ll come down,

have a hangover.”

I

Now we’re just enjoying the peace on a calm, autumnal Sunday. It’s a time for expanding your threshold of Negative Capability… I am also taking care of my mother, who injured her arm on holiday. It’s her birthday today, so I gave her a book, and like every other day made her a fire and made her a morning coffee.

We need to get some new Vape juice

because there is only one bottle left.

Tesco is going to be closed for a few weeks

after today so we should stock up.

Apparently they are going

to redo the fruit and veg section

so that the fruit and veg is stored

in a series of closed compartments.

Now for the E as I try and summon up a purpose for this. It is healing, of the self and the soul of the world. It is truce between old friends fallen out like fools. It is air for the tortured soul to breathe. It is an experiment into more advanced modes of being.

II

Sensation precedes thought in art,

chain is made from same as key,

waves make gentle

love to the shore,

homework tonight is

to remember your dreams,

and this we know,

there is no ‘we,’

I am the third person

immaculate, free…

you know the routine

by now, the score,

and more and many more,

but let’s not dwell

on school-made things

when outside birds

sing with their wings

and freedom flies

and freedom flows

and the music never stops.

MUM’S EQUILIBRIUM

So in among it all philosophy attains the condition of tea, air, hair, water, clothes, and kitchen roll. Mum comes in the kitchen, turns the lights out – says “just have daylight. Daylight’s good for the mind.” She’s full of magic sayings hidden in the treetops, full of eloquence married to axiomatic truth. Imagination is a muscle. Language is a creature. In politics there are no wrongs or rights. Giving is happiness. Actions have consequences. Just because someone is good to you doesn’t mean they are right for you. The brain only heals when it’s asleep and even nightmares are healing. Poetry is not the entrance and exit of life. Working in the soil is good for the soul.

It was my mother who made the flower-press ending on cannabis which = a dialysis. I wrote the love poem for Flora which = a motor – but the pretext therein is still “Mum’s Equilibrium” – for after all I don’t like chopping veg in the kitchen and working in the veg patch in the garden – and each time she comes in preparing food the dialysis elongates. A piece of coal would be a good addition, to analyse, deconstruct, take apart, apply cinematographic super-freeze to, to know inside out, to treat.

Mum says she hasn’t slept well for a week now, what with having to worry about cleaning the house, which is a massive job, to prepare for all her grand-children coming up. She sends a message to Hannah while I write, sends a photograph of some baby dresses she found… the text will no doubt penetrate the six inch gap between earth’s atmosphere and space, bounce off a satellite and come home, like an Informationist poem, pertaining to replace archaic “gay.”

Mum’s kept all of Hannah’s dresses from her childhood and is now surrendering them to Hannah’s baby. My mother is desperately trying to keep the house where the Plough alignment is viable in the Condition of Order. She says when she has finished moving things around and tidying away boxes the house will look a good house.

All of a sudden mum gets up and leaves the kitchen, goes upstairs to her bedroom – that anagram of boredom - and the sound of digitally remastered 1970’s rock music starts blaring out of her Smart-speaker like she is plunging into second youth, second rebellion, being a really renegade mum.

She is a good mum, open, permissive, liberal. She is not a hygiene Nazi, but has more hippy ideals. She says live and let live. Her maiden name “Bergfors” means “mountain waterfall” in Swedish, which is a tonal language, unlike English. It informs her poetry, free flowing, off the top of her head – she used to do the beck in the back by discretely writing off the top of her head; but more recently when I asked her what she’d do for an MA she said “Flora’s system.”

Mum is kind and very considerate… just the consideration she pays me is a lot but she grants it to each of her four children equally. She would let us wear what we wanted, where dad was more fastidious and stringent; she would buy us the CD’s we wanted; she wasn’t hard to get a Big Mac out of – so she was fun – a free-spirit as I say.

As I get stuck on what to say the music stops – the track is changing no doubt. A long guitar solo – fretboard masturbation – is interrupted. I never knew ‘Smoke On The Water’ by Deep Purple had such a good guitar solo, such virtuosity. It was the song my old guitar teacher would start with when we watched him play a set with his band.

INNOCENCE IS TREASURE

One day, John, James, Robert and Flo’ were lying on the grass. They were watching clouds pass by in the sky and pretending they were animals from the zoo, all sorts of creatures in the clouds.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” said John, “to be able to cling on to the vapour trail of that aeroplane all the way up there?”

“They might look down,” said James, “and see the patchwork quilt below.”

John was the eldest at 12, and James the next at 10, and Robert the next at 9, and Flo’ which was short for Florence was the youngest at 7.

They were born in a season each. John was Spring, James Autumn, Robert was winter, then Flo’ came along in summer. It was summer by now and the weather had been quite warm. The day was a sunny day, good for a game of football in the field near their house.

They lived at the foot of a fell, which is a northern word for hill. It was a big, ancient mound of land.

Their dad was away on business; he was an art dealer that was nicknamed “Blue.” He had to go to Europe where his company was based. Their mum was in the house doing something in the kitchen, possibly cleaning or baking.

There was a bee crossing the lawn where they lay, and it looked for a second like it could’ve gone on forever.

John suddenly said “shall we go ask mum if we can go on an adventure up the fell?”

James said “the day is a good one for an adventure.”

Robert always followed close behind, and said “I’m up for it;” and Flo’ was old enough now to get up the fell on her own; so they went in and asked if they could go on an adventure.

“First pack a picnic,” said mum. She got some biscuits and crisps and sausage rolls and ham sandwiches and a bottle of lemonade ready for them in a rucksack. John was the only one who had a Smartphone because he was old enough to. That way they could ring mum if they got in trouble.

“Are you going to take Ossie?” asked mum.

Ossie was the dog. He liked to run away a lot. If the back door was ever left open he would escape and go sniffing bitches at the local farm. It was embarrassing, whenever it dawned on someone that Ossie had run away, because it meant he was causing trouble at the local farm. It meant they would have to walk up to the farm and get him on a lead and bring him back.

Seeing all the animals at the farm could be frightening for a young child, especially the dogs they kept themselves. Cows were curious creatures and would crowd round with interest when you walked through a field of them, and their being so big it was almost scary, but you could shoo them away very easily, because they were not aggressive by nature.

The family let their fields out to a farmer who kept both cows and sheep on their land, a different farmer from the one where the dog ran off to.

“Yes,” said John. “We’ll take Ossie.”

So they put Ossie the dog on a lead and left the house.

They did not want to go the usual route, through two fields, up the lane, taking a right at the gate, across to the bank of the beck where often they sat and had their packed lunch, because they wanted to explore new territory so they took a left at the gate instead of taking a right. They had honestly never been this way before in all their lives. They walked on a well-beaten path trodden by sheep for a little while then James said to take a turn off the path and into the large fronds of bracken.

It was actually quite difficult to walk through the bracken, so long it was. John held the dog on a short lead. The dog was panting. After twenty minutes they stopped and contemplated going back, but decided against it.

So they walked through bracken that was taller than the tallest of them.

“Watch out for adders,” said John, as they walked, even though he nor any of them had ever seen an adder on the fell. John was the one with the biggest imagination. He liked on Sundays to draw cheques addressed to himself for millions, pen-knives with amazing and ludicrous tools, and maps of strange, far away places. He was into football, as they all were apart from Flo’ who mostly just wanted someone to play dolls with. Still, she had her brothers to follow about.

It was the summer holidays, so they weren’t at school and they were free from doing any schoolwork. If they had been able to see over the bracken they would’ve been able to see the Irish Sea some one mile or so away from the fell. The sea breeze blew up towards them from the West and was cooling them down, a welcome relief in all the summer heat.

They walked, grappling with bracken, slowly. Pushing on they found the bracken opened up to a beautiful spot with a new beck they had never seen before and a clearing beside a small waterfall. The waterfall came off the rock and into a small pool. Flo’ was the first to get her socks and shoes off and paddle in the pool while the boys were busy drinking cupped handfuls of water.

Then the boys took their socks and shoes off too and dangled their feet in the water from the bank. The water was cold but they waded out into it to cool down on such a hot day.

Ossie was allowed off his lead and to swim in the shallow pool. He could be a daft dog sometimes, who was not afraid of water but still afraid of going over a bridge.

As Robert approached the waterfall at the back of the pool, he noted there was a cave behind the waterfall. “Look, there’s a cave!” he said, and everyone else noted and agreed.

“We should check it out,” said John always playing the leader because he was the eldest.

You had to walk under the waterfall and get yourself a little bit wet to get through the water into the cave but it was a hot day so it didn’t matter. They left the picnic on the bank. Into the cave they all went and the dog shook and sent water spraying off him everywhere and their eyes adjusted to the half light and they looked about and guess what they found?

There was a fruit machine, quite rusted and old, parked just inside the entrance of the cave. It looked like it was physically embedded in the fell.

“Imagine if it worked!” said James. James was left handed and very skilful with his hands. He put his hands in his pockets now and found no money. It didn’t matter though because as John said

“there’s no where to plug it in, so we can’t test if it works or not.”

He himself had money, only a few coins, including a few pound coins, in his short pockets. He wore Bermuda shorts as did they all apart from Flo’ who wore a blue and white dress.

They could still hear the waterfall crashing down behind them. Their mum used to say “the sound of running water is very good for the soul,” and it was true, it was.

James now started to press buttons on the fruit machine. Nobody even knew how a fruit machine worked, what to do with one.

“What could that possibly be doing here?” asked little Flo’.

The mystery was a strange one.

“Maybe someone used to live here, a pauper,” said Robert.

James was still fiddling with buttons, trying to get the fruit machine to revolve to three yellow lemons meaning he had hit the jackpot.

They were still just inside the cave enough for there to be daylight leaking in from the outside world, but now John had got the torch on his Smartphone going, and was exploring the back of the cave. Guess what he found?

“There’s a portal at the back of this cave,” said John. It was like a trap door that was closed. James was still messing with the buttons on the fruit machine, and just like that it was as if he had hit the jackpot, for some combination of buttons he pressed suddenly lit up and the fruit machine made a musical sound and it turned on a light above the trap door and the trap door slowly opened at the back of the cave. There was a tunnel inside!

John shone his Smartphone torch into the tunnel and they could see at least a few feet in front of them.

“Should we go in?” asked Robert.

They did not know what to do, or what they would find down the tunnel.

“I dare you to go in there,” said James to John, and he did, which is why when he’s gone we will all look back on what is done as a Giant Day.

TELEPATHIC ELEPHANT

Once upon a time, I conducted an experiment into a cassette of Pearl Jam ‘VS’ which had a small pause where cut and resealed in the reel.

The tape came to me in a broken state, so I performed an operation on it, a delicate operation.

When I had sealed the reel, it left some one or two CM overlap of plastic which meant there was a pause in the song.

The ideal became to do away with the pause.

In those days I had what I thought was my only poem:

“Sullen, silken sulks,

we drink the same rain,

spit is clean

and so is dirt.”

I also kept a tough diary for a few weeks and aside from the physical object of the tape that’s all I had, or all I thought I had.

Experimentation began on the tape in earnest when I was in a band called Secret Chord H at Oundle School. I wrote a song called ‘Dream With Open Eyes’ which remains my finest song unto some. But there was also a B-side that was never recorded… I sat the year above in a circle and got them to chant to words

“another, another, another f***ing joint,

another, another, another f***ing joint,”

over and over, ad infinitum, as if rhythm, mantra, repetition, and double-entendre could “do away with the pause.”

Later, I also started to use the word “ette” spelled “e pi e” but said as if the pi sign were a double lower case t.

It took years before the pause was gone, the fusion successful.

When the fusion was successful, the volume of the rest of the tape seemed slightly dimmed – but there was no longer any pause in the opening number ‘Go’ where there was still some one or two CM overlap of tape reel.

That’s when I thought the object was an objet d’art, a Strange Attractor like in Chaos Theory, a dream-meet connector, an Utilitarian Martianist wedding ring.

It lived under my pillow for a while.

It gave me dreams of “The Ninero Ratio” which I tried to smuggle out of the unconscious, when my best work seemed lost on the shores of sleep.

Then one night as the night wind enwheeled through the dark garden trees, and an alchemical base metal feeling pervaded my soul, and I recalled the formula for mud from primary school -

water + soil = mud -

I was persuaded by voices, which by now in mental illness I heard, to sneak downstairs in the midnight and cook the tape in the dark blue AGA, top oven, hottest one.

While the tape was inside the oven, I said to myself I would write, but could only really conjure a quote from the father-poet Neil Curry.

“Nothing can be said for certain about poetry except Pound’s claim that the poet chooses where to end his lines, selecting a tiny pause instead of letting the type-writer run on.”

A nacreous, plastic stench filled the kitchen as I took the tape out of the oven.

In years to come I would photo the tape for the online world, as its final resting place, and give the physical object, which was by now a carcass of a metaphysical idea, to my gf.

Overall I am pleased with my process.

There are a number of other things that I had going for me at the same time that also might qualify as “halfware” such as the idea that a sensory overlay of my name was to be tattooed on Piper At The Gates of Dawn, such as a purple-bleeding screen, such as an effervescent mobile phone reverberating the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through every technological inlet in the room before it rang, such as the album we recorded on binaural earphones where I said I would “plug my senses in the mains,” and even the sheet where pictures grew could be portentous of the end of the chip… as I say all of this was going on more or less at the same time. I was saturated in creative things.

The eventual work of art I call ‘Telepathic Elephant’ is for Rachel, with whom I shared a taste in Pearl Jam music when I was young. Rachel was the nicest girl to talk to at school.

‘Telepathic Elephant’ wouldn’t have worked if it was a video. If I had cut an old-school video of, say, The Doors film, at the moment Patricia the witch dangles in her legs into the interview with Jim Morrison and says “what do you think of the dreadful reviews your new poetry book has received Mr. Morrison?” – and if I had resealed the reel, cutting out the bit where he responds “I guess they didn’t understand it,” - then that video would never “grow back.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Johannes Bergfors (which is the philosophy name of John F B Tucker) was born in London in 1982 to a Finnish mother and an English father. He got a First Class Honours degree in English, Creative Writing and Practice from Lancaster University in 2009. He now lives in Cumbria, at the foot of Black Combe, with his mother and brother.