Il Pessimisti

A sort of “moment” I had a few months back: I was listening to “Dear God” by XTC on my headphones. I’d heard the song many times before (and many times since then) but this time was entirely different. For the first couple of minutes it was like any other time—I hummed along, knowing the words by heart. But when I got to the instrumental bridge—a sing-songy little patch in the music-hall tradition, a tuba lurching through a mist of electronic strings—past, present, and future rubbed elbows with each other (the Beatles with synthesizers, essentially) and I was overcome with an intense feeling I couldn’t shake.
It was like a rock split cleanly in half, revealing its geological life-story, only what I saw in the song was a cross-section of the history of the English race, between Cromwell and Thatcher, condensed in a single moment, a single point. Balfour and Bertrand Russell, Admiral Nelson, the Battle of Waterloo, and Goodbye to All That, Keats’ name writ in water, Aldous Huxley and Oliver Twist, “Penny Lane” and Graham Greene, Churchill, the Ministry of Silly Walks, and housewives collecting old biscuit tins to fight against the Blitz—all this and a good deal more was compressed into a single moment, a single feeling that ran up my spine like lightning, gave me goosebumps.

The sense one gets of England from the history books (the American ones, at least) is of a calm, cool, rational, methodical people bent on “civilizing” the rest of the world, making it sensible for all time. They saved the world from Napoleon, from Hitler, out of duty, because it fell in their laps, with all the righteousness of someone taking their recycling out to the curb. The story about the apple falling on Newton’s head is patently apocryphal: he himself said that everything he accomplished he did by setting up a problem beforehand and thinking about it for a very long time—what we call “inspiration” is not one of the traditional English traits—or so I thought. In a moment that notion was out the window.

The song’s lyrics resemble nothing so much as one of Lord Russell’s polemics against religious doctrine and, filtered through the medium of the song, revealed something there I hadn’t noticed before: namely, passion. Russell’s arguments against religion tend to rest on logical grounds, a pacifist worldview with no small amount of that utilitarian calculus of “the greatest good for the greatest number of people”. (Oddly enough, these are much the same grounds many of C.S. Lewis’ arguments for Christianity rest on.) The XTC song seems to begin in much the same way, but takes a sudden turn at the bridge, and what had once seemed to be a logical attack against God is revealed to be something more substantial by far: a personal attack against God. Andy Partridge shrieks a litany of transgressions “God” has committed (or allowed to go unpunished) against his flock. “Even though I don’t believe in you,” the song seems to say, “I have a problem with you nonetheless. Why,” it asks, “do all our best efforts and intentions, our toil, lead to naught? To what end? You’re supposed to be all-knowing—why?” A righteous indignation comes across in the song that reveals as much about Jeremy Bentham, Bertrand Russell, and Britannia as it does about Andy Partridge’s beliefs. A desperate shout into the void—an utterance one rarely hears with an English accent—and a moving one at that. The song ended, and naturally I hit repeat. And naturally, I could not come close to recreating the feeling I’d just experienced…

378: Gothic rebels, led by Fritigern, rout Roman legions in the second Battle of Adrianople, killing the Emperor Valens in the process and hastening the decline of the Western Empire…

1916: Aleister Crowley engages in a public chess exhibition in London, playing over seventy games simultaneously while blindfolded. His opponents include amateur chess enthusiasts, dockworkers, bootblackers, William Butler Yeats, and, it is claimed, several gods from pagan mythology. Over the next seventy-two hours, his opponents gradually concede defeat, with the glaring exception of Isis who, it is said, he battles to an amicable draw…

1986: Peter Murphy stands before a baggage carousel at Heathrow, only now feeling the full effects of the barbiturates he had taken to calm his nerves on the fourteen-hour flight from Jakarta. His hips sway side to side, his feet shuffle back and forth as though he is dodging bricks being hurled at him at incredibly low speeds. John Lydon stands a few feet away with headphones on, listening to and practicing along with a Berlitz Japanese language cassette. He is brushing up, apparently, for a TV commercial he is filming in Kyoto later that month. “An advert for hemorrhoid cream,” he remarks smugly, “because I’m such a magnificent pain in the arse.”

This explanation seems pleasing enough to Peter, as a slight smile crosses his lips. He grows increasingly dizzy and leans up against a support beam to keep from falling, his eyes closed, his face raised to the sky. Konichiwa. Domo ari-gato. Peter has a strange feeling that the support he’s leaning against is not nearly as sturdy as it first appeared; he feels it undulating beneath him, neither solid nor liquid nor gas, and if he concentrates hard enough, he can feel something like a pulse in the support beam, a pulse strangely attuned to his own pulse, beating away, in stereo.

He turns to find the beam mystically transformed: what was once an austere concrete beam is now a portly, red-faced Scandinavian man about fifty years old or so, with glasses and a bushy mustache. The support beam mutters something profane under its breath, then turns and walks away. Peter is floored, and not in a figurative sense. He crosses his legs in the Lotus Sutra fashion, his palms pressed against the floor for balance. Moshi moshi. Hai. Hai. Domo ari-gato. At that moment he realizes that the floor, too is not as stable as he’d previously believed. He stares at the baggage carousel to find that it has stopped moving entirely, and that everything around it is now spinning, spinning furiously, hurtling through space at 456,000 miles an hour, 93 million miles from the sun.

Lydon suggests they split a cab, and Peter nods in agreement (or he simply nods—it isn’t clear). Then he suggests that, if Peter isn’t too busy, they might stop over at Lydon’s maternal grandmother’s house off King’s Road for tea. Peter’s limp body slumps into the back seat of the taxicab, swaying like a reed in the wind, completely at the mercy of physics—each movement of the cab creates an equal and opposite reaction in Peter. Lydon chats away—it is unclear whether he is talking to the cabdriver or to Peter, to both of them or neither.

“You know they weren’t here before,” he says. “The Asians—Pakis… Me nan hates em, but me, I think it’s bloody brilliant.” He makes a sweeping hand gesture at the neighborhood out the window. “Imagine—the Ayatollah right here in the heart of London—it’s fucking beautiful, man… That’s the most punk rock thing you can do these days, it’s the next logical step, it’s all we’ve got left. If you want to be a rebel nowadays, you’ve got to grow a beard and pray five times a day. It’s great—oim finkin o convertin meself,” he continues in that musical theater Cockney accent he slips into from time to time. “If Sid were alive today, he’d be hijacking planes, trading hostages for guns and such,” Lydon continues, his eyes now subtly moistened with tears. “It’d be great laughs it would… great, great laughs…”
Peter Murphy sits in a chair in the living room of John Lydon’s maternal grandmother, completely unconscious, a full cup of Earl Grey in front of him now cold, a volume of poetry on his lap opened to Coleridge’s “Kublai Khan” sits unread. “Your friend,” Lydon’s nan remarks, “he’s rather a quiet one, isn’t he?”

410: Led by Alaric I, Visigoth armies enter Rome through the Salarian Gate and sack the former capital of the Empire, plundering its riches, slaughtering its inhabitants, …

1440: Gilles de Rais, Marshal of France and former cohort of Joan of Arc, is executed for crimes that include the rape, torture, and murder of hundreds of young boys, sacrificed, it is claimed, to a mysterious demon called “Barron” in an attempt to recoup his squandered fortune. It is said that de Rais would decapitate the boys and place their heads on stakes lined up in rows, and that, upon determining which one was fairest, would masturbate in their faces, amongst other things…

1983: Peter Murphy is breakfasting alone al fresco on an exceedingly pleasant spring morning on the Prinsenstraat in Amsterdam. He is enjoying a repast of smoked fish, sour cream, potatoes, and strong, black coffee. The whirring and clacking of so many passing bicycles, combined with the smell of incense and animal droppings and that singular, peculiar northern light transport Peter to another place and time entirely. A tableau vivant of tulips, black cloaks, and moneylenders, of Rembrandt, Spinoza, and anatomy lessons passes before his mind’s eye. He reflects for a moment on that tragic, Portuguese Jew, the author of The Ethics. Such a work would be inconceivable to write in Sheffield, Glasgow, London—only in Amsterdam, he thinks, in the 17th century or today.

He spots a shaggy dog in the corner, flat on its back, rhythmically licking its bollocks, nibbling its bits, and he thinks to himself God is in everything and in everything, God. That dog, those bollocks, myself, this fork, David J, the sun and the moon and the statue of Nelson in Trafalgar Square, all are comprised of, and comprise, one uniform, unbroken whole. I am Spinoza, he thinks, and he was, is, and forever will be me. In God, eternally yours, Peter Murphy…

He leaves a tip and takes a stroll, puffing on a Galoises to assist in the digestion process. He passes by a familiar hash bar, familiar in that it was where, four years earlier, he’d spent an infuriating afternoon with Ian Curtis, the late Joy Division singer, both the first and the last time the two would ever meet.

From the outset, it had seemed that Ian was entirely unclear on the concept. That one could not only purchase cannabis, but smoke and enjoy it in plain view, unabashedly and without fear of retribution from the authorities, was completely foreign to him. He insisted on whispering once they entered the establishment, even going so far as to hold a folded, dog-eared copy of that days Temps du monde against his cheek when he spoke, as though some vengeful god might be reading his lips that very moment.

Ian kept asking Peter when ‘he’ would show up and Peter insisted he didn’t know who this ‘he’ was. Ian asked if there was to be some signal, some password or secret knock, and if there was could Peter perform it, because Ian wasn’t feeling so hot at the moment and feared he’d botch the whole transaction.

Peter had procured them a couple of joints and found Ian crouched on the ground, whispering something about meeting in the restroom in exactly one minute. Ian grabbed the joints and scurried towards the back, low to the ground like an ape. Peter, amused by all of this, played along, gamely pretending to keep watch, peeking around corners, looking under tables, even flipping over couch cushions. It was great fun.

Finally, Peter walked over to the bathroom, called out Ian’s name, and as he walked in, heard the sound of a toilet flushing. By the time Peter found him, Ian had flushed all of the drugs down the toilet. Contrite, he sobbed. “The secret knock,” he mumbled, “that wasn’t the secret knock.”
Peter Murphy rents a bicycle on Ferdinand Bolstraat and rides half an hour into the center of town. He rolls a joint and sits down on the edge of one of the canals, smoking and thinking of his dead friend. He senses an odd symmetry—not “fearful”, like Blake’s, but comforting—in the events of this day and all the others in his life. He reflects on the character of God—the God which is in everything and everything in it, of harmony and eternal return, that ubiquitous sphere whose circumference is infinite and whose center is everywhere: in the sun, in our bones, in Ian Curtis, and in the delicate tendrils of smoke circling in the air above one particular canal in old Amsterdam…

1610: Countess Elizabeth Bathory is placed under house arrest for charges including the torture and murder of hundreds of peasant girls in Royal Hungary (present-day Slovakia). Witnesses at her trial testified that she would burn, mutilate, and bite the flesh off her victims, and bathe in their virginal blood to retain her youth, spawning countless legends and earning her the nickname of “The Blood Countess”…

1875: Edward Alexander Crowley (later changed to Aleister) is born at 36 Clarendon Square in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England…

1981: Peter Murphy is taking in some of the sights in Rome the day before a show when he catches a whiff of something seductive, feels it brush past him, then dissipate into thin air. He quickly rifles through his coat to make sure he hasn’t been pick-pocketed, then makes his way through the crowd of tourists when he smells it again. This time he’s quick enough to match a form with the scent, and before he knows it, he’s in hot pursuit. She’s tall and slender, fashionable—though not pretentiously so—in pea-coat, scarf, tight jeans, and knee-high boots. Her jet black hair is spiky and fluffy at the same time, with not a small amount of hairspray holding it together—but this being 1981, that could hardly be perceived as a flaw, akin to complaining that your pet goldfish needs to live in a tank of water and can’t play fetch, etc. Something about her gait strikes Peter profoundly—she is walking briskly, yet confident, relaxed—a panther utterly at home in her own skin. He has trouble keeping up with her, and almost loses her twice—first around a corner near the Spanish Steps and later in a crowd surrounding the Trevi Fountain—but Peter is determined to have his prize.

He’s almost in step with her when she ducks into a store. Peter sits back in an alley and waits for her to emerge. Recently he’s been reading Graham Greene’s Our Man In Havana, so he takes to this kind of intrigue like a duck to water. Finally, he thinks, I feel like a character in a novel—a protagonist, at that. Every second is charged with a kind of drama. Exactly what sort of bird is she, he thinks. A femme fatale? An angel with a secret to hide? His mind races at the possibilities. By the time she exits the store, Peter is convinced he is on the trail of a woman who is equal parts Joan Jett, Catherine Deneuve, and the White Goddess of pagan mythology, that tri-form entity of birth, love, and death.

On the Via Perugino he follows her not even four feet behind. He catches that scent again, that admixture of nightshade and eternity and the adult bookstore in Brighton he used to sneak into as a lad. Her scarf trails behind her, flapping in the wind, so close he can almost grab it. He’s reminded for an instant of that tragic prima ballerina, Isadora Duncan, and how she was strangled to death when her exorbitantly long scarf was caught in the wheel-well of her automobile. Peter imagines a similar fate for this ingénue. I’ll grab you by the scarf and pull you in, he thinks. He’ll hold her close and whisper some devastating aphorism of Baudelaire or the Comte de Lautreamont, and she would belong to him body and soul.

He reaches out and grabs the end of the scarf, only it doesn’t stop her in her tracks, but merely slips off her neck entirely. She continues walking another dozen steps or so before she realizes her scarf is missing, then turns around to face Peter, confidently clutching the scarf, channeling Casanova, Don Giovanni, and a little Count Dracula for good measure. When it becomes apparent that this femme fatale is indeed bandmate Daniel Ash—who was on his way to pick up a tennis racket he’d had restrung the day before—Peter’s mind scrambles for an excuse. He mumbles something about needing to clarify that night’s set list. Ash replies that he’s “kind of busy at the moment” and that he’s “sure it can wait till soundcheck”. Peter agrees, and comments on what nice weather they’d been having…

“We affirm the future of cinema art by denying its present,” Dziga Vertov proclaims in his manifesto. “The ‘psychological’ prevents man from being as precise as a stopwatch; it interferes with his desire for kinship with the machine.” It is this “kinship” which Vertov places front and center in Man With A Movie Camera. It is in many respects a 68-minute visual/kinetic love poem to “the machine”, which, oddly enough, was not entirely uncommon in early Soviet cinema–see: the tractor/seduction sequence in Eisenstein’s The Old and the New (1929). But there is more going on here than simply a celebration of industry and the proletariat; it is also a profound meditation on time and space, document, testimony, transience, permanence, and loss. None of those things can be said to comprise the content of the film–rather, it is only in the form, through manipulation and technique of the filmmaking craft, that those issues even arise–which I feel may be what Vertov was talking about all along with his kino-eye: an eye that sees reality even more “real-ly” than we can.

While Eisenstein chose to view communism through the lens of history, tell its story as the story of its great figures, its massive battles, and dramatic struggles; in the hands of Vertov, however, communism comes across as something more or less innate, embodied in the everyman’s very being. All one has to do is step back to see that the modern Soviet metropolis is in fact one massive organism (or machine, as it were), with innumerable moving parts, every part essential to the whole, but none so important that it cannot be replaced. Vertov’s city, like any person, sleeps, wakes, works, plays, and rests over the course of a day. A kind of precursor to the modern computer, Vertov’s city chugs along, powered by a dizzying series of binary oppositions: aerial shots and close-ups, stills and sped-up film, microcosm and macrocosm, weddings, divorces, births and funerals–all are essential to the working of the whole, all equally sacred, equally mundane. A night out drinking with friends, a wake, a carriage ride, an ambulance ride all take on a homogenous character when an entire city is compressed into the space of a frame, an entire day condensed into just over an hour. As he’d initially set out to do, Vertov’s work disarms us–that is, it disabuses us of any preconceptions of narrative we’ve inherited from so-called “psychological literature”, from the past. His socialist lens–in which the individual is subordinated to the whole–wreaks havoc on how we perceive the scope and significance of individual events, people, etc.

But the film is not nearly so dogmatic as I’ve made it sound thus far. There is an amount of playfulness, warmth, and humanity that no amount of ideological superstructure can quite blot out. In one scene, Vertov shows an editor editing the film as we are watching it–echoing the proto-postmodern gamesmanship of Kierkegaard, Unamuno, et al. Vertov never lets us forget that what we’re watching has been manipulated, exposes the stage structure, so to speak. This is not an “objective” documentary, but kinopravda, a truth that has been played with, teased out of real life. In the track-and-field sequence of the film, a discus thrower spins in slow motion and the frame freezes in mid-throw, in virtually the exact same position as the Greek Discobulus. The difference, of course being that Discobulus is frozen in an idealized time which never was or will be; but with Vertov’s discus-thrower, we know that there is always a frame preceding this one, as well as a frame to come. Whether this is art imitating life imitating art, etc., I can’t say, but it is effective nonetheless.

In another sequence, a long aerial shot looks down on a crowded beach. The innumerable white naked bodies wriggling and scattering resemble nothing so much as maggots devouring some rotting slab of meat. But Vertov intercuts this with extreme close-ups of the body parts of individual beachgoers–a knee here, the curve of an elbow there, the back of a thigh, etc.–all artfully composed and arranged, glistening sun and sweat. This arrangement of shots, I feel, undermines, inverts the film’s socialist thesis. Its message is namely this: that humanity, no matter how gross and senseless its operations seem as a whole, are considerably less so when we take a closer look. These “maggots” are all beautiful in their own way, all have their own story to tell, no matter how grotesque they may seem taken en masse.

Perhaps it was images such as these that contributed to Vertov’s work being received by the government with something less than enthusiasm, but that’s not for me to say. What is painfully clear, however, is how Vertov’s kino-eye, which could indeed pierce through reality to see something much deeper, failed to see what was happening right under his nose. He achieved a “kinship with the machine” closer than he probably bargained for, as the massive beauracratization of the Party under Stalin rendered Vertov obsolete, a footnote, like so many manifesto writers, he wrote himself into history as he wrote himself out of existence. As all those who deny the present in the name of the future come to realize, the past is just around the corner. Few have realized this truth more painfully, more “real-ly” than Dziga Vertov.

1462: Prince Vlad III Dracul, also known as Vlad Tepes, (Rom.: “The Impaler”) routs the Ottoman Turks in the area south of the Danube between Serbia and the Black Sea in what is described as “an orgy of blood” leaving over 20,000 dead…

1956: Bela Lugosi dies.

1983:Peter Murphy awakens at approximately 11:17 AM in his agreeably firm queen size bed on the 19th floor of the Plaza Ataturk Regency, Istanbul. He would be lunching with Daniel, Roger, both Davids, and a reporter from a Tel Aviv musical variety programme before heading back to Athens. He climbs out of bed and throws on the kimono Bowie had given him as a gift on the set of The Hunger, which had come attached with a cryptic note:

Avoid the green ones. Charlene knows. Better than a pomegranate, even.
Salutations,
Bowie.

Peter knows nothing of any ‘green ones’, or any ‘Charlene’ for that matter. He gets the chance to ask him about it six years later, backstage at the NME awards, and Bowie looks at him as though he has no idea what he’s talking about. The more Peter tries to elaborate, the more distant Bowie becomes, finally fixing his gaze on a spot on the wall above and behind Peter’s right shoulder. Peter calls out his name several times, waves his hand in his face, snaps his fingers until Bowie suddenly becomes lucid once more. “I’m sorry, Peter,” he replies, “Did you say something?”

Back in the hotel room in Istanbul, Peter ties the kimono’s belt around his waist, pours himself some Turkish coffee from a polished silver urn and takes a bite of a croissant. Odd, he thinks, because if memory serves him correctly, the croissant was originally created centuries ago to commemorate a Turkish defeat in Hungary, which had prevented Islam from sweeping through Europe forever after (croissant= Fr. ‘crescent’= the universal symbol for Islam). A rather morbid delicacy to be partaking of in a Turkish establishment, maybe, but this is exactly the sort of thing whose significance is obscured through the mists of time, he thinks, like fashions and the meanings of words.

He turns on the television set, flipping through the channels objectively, as an archaeologist poring over ancient ruins—passing judgment on nothing, he simply takes note and moves on—when a revelation strikes him. He leaps up from the edge of the bed and runs to the closet. He opens the door and lets out a sigh of relief. There it is, nibbling on a handful of dried garbanzo beans: the Rhesus Macaque Peter had purchased at the marketplace the day prior—oh the things one finds in Istanbul!

His last attempt to conjure the homunculus of legend having been an utter disaster—a dreary weekend in Northampton with an older hippie couple when he was seventeen, which only succeeded in conjuring a rash over half of his body—Peter decides to get the next best thing. While the primate is not in fact a miniature supernatural man capable of granting wishes, it is fairly handy. He can climb into hard to reach spaces and pick up objects at will. The night before had been spent trying to train the monkey to perform various simple tasks: turning the lights off and on, fetching a bottle of sleeping pills from the medicine cabinet, turning down the bed, etc. At this, it could be said Peter is not entirely unsuccessful. The monkey proves itself acutely capable of stripping the bed completely, which it does several times. It manages to fling the bottle of pills roughly in the vicinity of Peter’s feet; this he considers a victory after dozens of attempts. But the monkey demonstrates an especial proclivity—and relish, it might be added—in turning the lights on and off, which it does repeatedly throughout the night, leading Peter to finally lock it in the closet.

After lunch and the interview, Peter packs his bags and rides in a taxicab to the airport, the monkey stashed away in a brown leather valise laid across his lap. Peter coos and scratches the top of the monkey’s head, whispering tender promises to it under his breath. “Now, now, Crowley, this hellish journey will be over soon. We’ll be home, you and I, together for all eternity”… Peter’s mind wanders. He imagines himself and the monkey, now outfitted in top hat and a smart vest with walking stick, strolling down High Streets from Dunkirk to Glasgow, perusing the shops and terrorizing children. He would train the monkey to drop a lump of coal in the cup of every beggar they passed, and play the concertina terribly on the steps of the church on Sundays as worshippers plugged their fingers in their ears. The two of them, thick as thieves, would be renowned for their general wickedness and carve out a spot in the local folklore, while having top-drawer good times, to boot…

As they pass through customs, Peter’s heart flutters with the rhythmic abandon of a Bedouin drum. The fierce-looking German shepherds standing between him and the gate are trained to sniff out hashish, opium and the like—as for live monkeys Peter has no idea. He prays silently to himself, to whichever God might be listening—the God of airports and monkeys and brown leather valises—prays for safe passage. For a split second he swears he sees the flaming visage of St. Elmo somewhere behind the baggage carousel —just as those intrepid Venetian sailors had on their way to Tyre, Acre, Jerusalem so long ago. Just then he hears a loud bark, as one of the dogs motions for his valise. He feels Crowley struggling inside the bag. He tries—oh how he tries—but the monkey slips out, lightning fast, and leaps atop the dogs back, howling and thumping it with its tiny fists. A violent cloud of tooth, tail, and fur rolls across the floor of the terminal, growling, barking, and screeching. Peter, now realizing these are probably the last moments he would ever spend with the monkey, cheers on with all his heart. The dogs, while obviously well trained, are no match for the monkey’s speed and agility. Then, just as soon as it had began, it’s over.

One of the gendarmes, a round pleasant-looking man with an amused smile on his face, pulls a handful of dates from his coat pocket and holds them out. The monkey immediately notices this, extricates itself from the scuffle with the dogs, and trots over to the man with the dates. Peter feels as if he’s been kicked in the stomach. He screams out to the monkey—“No! Run! Run while you still can! Don’t let them take you alive!” But he can only watch as the monkey follows the gendarme down a hallway, and voluntarily at that.

Peter Murphy is heartbroken. It’s not the same feeling as when one experiences the death of a loved one, when some substantial part of one’s life, one’s past, is suddenly rendered incorporeal. No—it is as though some meaningful part of his future has been taken from him, violently, carved away from his body like a pound of flesh, the pain of a child stillborn…

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