A QUESTION FROM THE CROWD

“What we all want to know is how you managed to do the one with the Nirvana barcode even though you are mentally unwell.”

Well, it’s a long story, but Nirvana were my favourite band and ‘Scentless Apprentice’ is one of my favourite rhythms. I had made an undergraduate portfolio that took the form of defaced bank notes, and there was a ferment of music in my head by then – then I had a mathematical turn of mind and decided to make 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. It might have an application in preventing the economic crash.

But the Nirvana barcode actually dates back before then to a scene at Prep School. There was after exams what was advertised by the maths teacher as a government-set intelligence test at the computer for the winning of which there was a prize. I finished the task on the computer first and called out “done it!” but was ignored; and when ignored tapped in the rhythm of ‘Scentless Apprentice’ into the screen in the I. T. room where we all sat.

That was when the maths teacher ended the game, but there was still no prize awarded for a winner. The idea was nobody is any more intelligent than anyone else. The idea of it being a government set intelligence test was a hoax by the teacher, a brain-trick. Around the time I wrote a poem about the scene in the I. T. Room, really short, just going:

Sullen, silken sulks,

we drink the same rain,

spit is clean

and so is dirt.

It wasn’t until years later, until my dad had died and I had found the sheet where pictures grew that I designed the Nirvana barcode. When I showed my mum she said “there is no such thing as the Nirvana barcode – it’s a trick of grief.” She was right. When I wrote the line I extended it too:

|| | |||| | || | ||||                      909 & 693 are wings

This was because I also found out I was the witness from The Lords And The New Creatures and thought my line could template over The Lords And The New Creatures – be a decent smuggle. I really was the guy to bring it in, and come to think of it have had other mathemagical turns of mind as well. I attempted the maths of the new colour at seven, before we even knew the times tables. I wrote The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob. I spoke against September 11th to the day and with exactitude in 2000. I invented the number “!00%” as in “to plug my senses in the mains / might utilise !00% of my brains.” I explored the form of defaced bank notes in my poetry. There are probably other things too that represent a mathemagical turn of mind. I count things, objects in the room, make sets, lists, patterns.