Nature's Own

I understood the whys for lightning coming. Well, most of them. From science books and from those How it All Happens shows on that thing my grandfather calls the idiot box. Called it. Whenever he used that term, it made me doubt the things it taught me, and so maybe I wasn't really too sure about lightning, not until I stood and watched it, outside. Not just measuring its closeness to the house by the brightness of the flash through drawn curtains, by the speed and loudness of the thunder that followed it around.

The thunder, I thought I understood that as well. When I was even younger, it was the sound of clouds exploding as the lightning split right through. A little older, and I just understood it as the sound of the lightning fizzing, crackling in the air.

But never as the sound of a thousand bulbs - a long string, a chain of them, like snow-white Christmas lights - all shattering in sequence. Not until I found myself between a tree's branches in the middle of a storm. I wasn't supposed to be there, I know. They're nature's own lightning rods. Another thing my grandfather said.

I had to climb those branches, though, as soon as the bulb-smashing sounds started. Because there was no rain. I hadn't heard of dry lightning then, and had known those flashes and those bangs only when accompanied by the kind of rainfall that leads to flooding if it carries on for long enough. The rare-times I watched those split-second glare parades with curtains open, I used to get distracted by the movement of the raindrops on the glass.

No glass outside, though, and no raindrops that day either, and so I slowly came to see the lightning for exactly what it was. And, because it started so high up with all the clouds, I felt I must get higher too. And the highest things around were trees. Oaks and sycamores and elms, and ash, I think. And a clump, a ragged little copse of silver birches, with bark that brought to mind dalmatian spots.

It was an oak I climbed. It was spring, and I remember acorns snapping off beneath my scared but hungry fingergrasps and rubber soles. Some of the branches further up were close to rotten, and gave off dry wheezes, short phlegmless coughs, as I used them as handholds then footholds to reach ever airier places. If I'd have been considering that, and paid attention to my grandfather's words, I'd have known that I was scaling nothing but a hefty chunk of kindling, but, as it was, I just sat there, three branches down from the top of that tall oak and let the lightning leave those temporary greenblack slashes down my vision. Let the shattering noise come at me and rattle hard against my jaw. Like the punches that Bruce Lee threw in kung-fu films, and I took in schoolyards during fights. Took from softer lads than me, it turned out.

None of them were outside, treeclimbing as something tripped the fuses and blew a thousand lightbulbs all at once. None of them were swaying in the canopy, closing their eyes and absorbing the storm as a series of inky blue sparks. None of them chased me up there. 

When the storm stopped, the air filled, faintly, with the memory of fire. I don't remember if my grandfather had said it would or not. It was quiet, and the wind was calmer. I kept my eyes closed until the patterns scratched across them faded. Trod tenderly on my way back down, going slowly; fearful, so I told myself, that I might fall if a branch were to break. 

was a writer

I was a writer, in another life. I was a juggler once. I tamed falcons, jumped bulls. I painted houses and built scaffolding and knocked on doors selling stationery. I stole condoms from pharmacies and got three black eyes in two separate boxing matches. I bungee-jumped, I free-climbed, I danced, naked, on ice, just praying I didn't fall through. I made black&white movies of men wearing zoot suits and black&white shoes. I sold them in Europe. I sold other things to the highest bidder in international waters. I gave all of my money away to snake charmers and artists who carved logs into toadstools with chainsaws. I went out looking for work. I was a writer, in another life. 

Nice weather

When the late summer comes around here, he thought, there is nothing else in the universe but the feel of the foam on the soles of your feet and the scent of the wine in the glass beside your food. There are no stars at night because all you see are the streetlights, the Milky Way shifted from sight in favour of the candlelit tables and striped awnings of restaurants and cafés and casinos and bars. The sky runs into the ocean and the ocean runs into here, horizon curling back on itself and settling around the city and the hills behind like a bubble blown by some drunk uncle, designed to make his nephews laugh. When the late summer comes around here, he thought, I want to be around here too. 

Welcome to the Supermarket of the ‘Real’

I came across this piece of news the other day. It is fascinating. Even the title contains myriad layers. ‘Tesco nears 'dream' of 3D ecommerce offering’, it reads. In brief, the article is about how ‘One software company, Keytree, has now built a virtual Tesco store… that can be navigated with an Xbox Kinect, allowing people, in theory, to shop in a store through their TV.’

Actually through their TV. Using their actual bodies to guide them through a 3D representation of the aisles. Actually picking objects off of shelves.

Magic, huh?

There was a time when technology such as this was the province of science fiction. And it was not a time too long ago or far, far away. References to it which appear in recent shows such as Futurama, set in the year 3000+, now, in light of developments like this, begin to seem, if not quaint, then certainly under-reaching in their speculative aims. The sort of thing that wowed audiences ten years ago in Minority Report is now pretty much here. Albeit not yet supplied in a package deal with a crisp, blue-tinged sheen, and one’s own personal Tom Cruise running about all over the place and emoting with actorly gusto.

Now, it is, apparently, the ‘dream’ of supermarkets to bring it to your living rooms. To bring their stores to your living room. And they’re ‘near’ it.

Watching the video at the bottom of the article, which showcases this technology (albeit not yet in its 3D, fully-interactive version), I couldn’t stop another image entering my mind. Yet another film reference, I’m afraid. Presented with the sleek, white, hi-definition simulation of a supermarket, I was reminded of the scene in The Matrix in which the character of Neo is presented with stacks upon stacks and rows upon rows of weaponry within the resistance’s own simulation of the eponymous simulated world. And, as a result, all I could think was: ‘Food. Lots of food.’   Of course, The Matrix is famously (or infamously, depending on who you talk to) based upon the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard, as found in his 1981 work, Simulacra and Simulation. [Without having a copy of this text immediately to hand, I have been forced to refer to the relevant Wikipedia article, which, whilst, somewhat ironically, lacking Baudrillard’s original text, does contain the gist of his argument.] It is probably advisable to check said Wikipedia entry in full to get a better idea of what’s going on, but the overarching point contained within it is this: ‘our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is of a simulation of reality. Moreover, these simulacra are not merely mediations of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they hide a reality, they simply hide that anything like reality is irrelevant to our current understanding of our lives.’

It’s pretty bleak reading/thinking matter, truth be told.

In fairness, though, I don’t think anyone would describe an out-in-the-world supermarket as a ‘profound reality’ to begin with, and so, in becoming a ‘reflection’ of it, this software started off at a disadvantage.

Moving it closer to Baudrillard’s ‘fourth stage’, which ‘is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. This is a regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a naïve sense, because the experiences of consumers' lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, "hyperreal" terms.’

Baudrillard does break these simulacra down into four stages, however, therefore avoiding damning all simulations as, well, terrifying demonstrations of everything civilization-wise going down the swanny. For instance, the Wiki entry points out that ‘The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct, that a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality" (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the sacramental order".’ Which sure sounds pretty good, and helpful. Pleasingly instructive, even. I’d like to think that the finest works of fiction fit into this category, though can’t say for certain whether ol’ Jean himself would have agreed.

Despite that slight uncertainty, I’m sure that this ‘3D supermarket’ idea doesn’t fit that particular bill.

Oddly, as a result of this, the ‘dream’ of a santitized 3D interactive supermarket might not be too hard to sell. Indeed, I guess part of the idea behind it is to provide the ‘experience’ of a supermarket without the fuss often inherent in visiting one. The oft-irksome business of other customers, all those unknown, or known-and-unliked, quantities jetting around the place with their overladen trolleys and their overactive kids. The grim phenomena of the queue. All the staff, young and old alike, who, if you watch them closely, appear secretly and permanently disgruntled that they’re not somewhere else, and seem unable to wait until self-service checkouts take over entirely.

Presumably, all of those factors will not be replicated in this software. Something that might well seem cause for jubilant celebration.

And yet, when I, and, I suspect, most people, think of trips to the supermarket, those factors are very much on my mind. If you end up visiting at peak times (which, round my way, seem to be nigh on perpetual) then there are usually even queues for the self-service machines. Frustrating, yes. But undeniably part of the experience of supermarket shopping. If they are removed from the view of the store presented by this software, then does this mean it is not a true simulation, and, if so, why bother? Why not simply make-do with online shopping as it is? With a series of lists and menus and thumbnail images, and a ‘basket’ that you don’t even have to pretend to carry around?

If you’re going to go to the trouble of wandering down supermarket aisles, whether they’re populated by other customers or not, why not simply go to a supermarket, and be done with it? There’ll be one near enough, so it probably won’t take too much more time than ‘walking’ through one on TV.

But then, it’s not even as if the software and the developers of that software themselves are really at fault. The idea as it stands in that video is not entirely theirs. As I mentioned, and as Baudrillard suggests, this whole ‘simulation’ business was going on well before I heard this particular piece of news. Even without all the versions of such technology presented previously in sci-fi works, the transposition of ‘simulacra’ onto the original versions of things has been going on for yonks. Aeons, even. It is nothing new.

More specific to the context of the device on which it is proposed that such software will be rolled out, computer-generated simulations of this kind are relatively old-hat. In fact, most games are simulations, of one kind or another. Even Pong is, albeit loosely, a simulation of table tennis. Then you have things that are more explicit about that being the case, such as RollerCoaster Tycoon, and subsequent, similar games. Yes, it’s approached from an omniscient, isometric viewpoint, but it still attempts to simulate what it might be like to run a theme park. Same for games such as Football Manager. Only, one would hope, with slightly fewer mascots about the place, terrifying guests.

Then, perhaps more worryingly (if, that is, you’re inclined to worry about such things), there are an increasing succession of games that seemingly aim to act as training simulations for armed service. Indeed, one that was first released a few years back, America’s Army, was based on the actual simulation used by the US Army at the time.

Then there are the range of games already in existence that make use of the recent development of motion-responsive technologies to allow the player to perform approximations of various activities – anything from tennis-playing, to bowling, to snowboarding, to sword-slashing is now within your grasp.

[There are plenty more examples besides, but I’ll stop there, before I suddenly realise I’m turning 86 instead of 26, and beginning to yell at all them whippersnappers to ‘Get off my lawn!’ Which might, were that to be the case, be a virtual lawn, instead of one of those pesky grass and mud ones, which need water and the attention of a dedicated lawnmower technician. But, again, this is straying somewhat.]

The difference is, they, by and large, accept the distinction of being fictive, of being ‘games’. No real money is (or, at least, should be) changing hands, expect in the initial purchasing of them.

What this 3D supermarket plan involves is, as far as I can gather, offering the customers what the video refers to as ‘the best of both’; i.e. the superimposition of an already simulated experience (that of online shopping), on top of the sanitised ‘simulation’ of physical in-store shopping, within a framework that might feasibly be found in a game. Only, they intend to supplant ‘lots of guns’ with ‘lots of food.’ And then to make ‘lots of money’ off of it. Actual money.

Put simply, this idea has a messy, tangled history. A list of progenitors that it might even be beyond the skill of the research team behind Who Do You Think You Are? to sort out correctly. As such, it may even class as a recycled simulation. 

This stage, clearly, raises numerous concerns.

One of which is, what will happen to the actual physical stores?

Are they simply doomed to become outmoded, relics of ‘reality,’ overlaid and overtaken by the ‘hyperreality’ offered up by software such as this? The article suggests that ‘Tesco [is] seeking to explore ways in which it can reach customers ‘wherever they are’’, and it clearly no longer sees its actual stores as the be all and end all of that process. It is not enough to have several stores – regular, ‘Extra’, and ‘Express’ – in close vicinity of most towns and cities. It must keep up with online-only competitors such Ocado, and, such being the rules of this particular game, continue to best those competitors on all fronts. If the majority of consumers soon carry out the majority of their shopping online, whether they use 3D walkthrough systems or not, then surely even the large supermarket stores will wind up closing down. 

Should this happen, or come close to happening, then how will it impact upon the workforce? Taking a hypothetical leap (something which, if we’re honest, rambling pseudo-philosophical essays like this are wont to do), will this mean the end to the quasi-tradition of summer holiday supermarket till-jockey work that has served many a young person (though not, I should perhaps point out, myself) well, in terms of furnishing them with relatively ‘easy’ money and valuable ‘retail experience’? What will it mean for those who work at supermarkets in such capacities either out of choice or simply because it was a job that they could get? Sure, there will still be warehousing work, but that experience is far less likely to lead to a more glamorous position in, say, fashion sales on the High Street.

Of course, taking a larger hypothetical leap, it could be reasoned that, if this technology is a success, more and more stores, of the supermarket and other varieties, may take it on. And so retail work as it is understood today may become, as they say, ‘a thing of the past’. Rendering any worries about not getting relevant experience moot.

There are further questions along that road, but I am in no way qualified/well-researched-in-current-employment-statistics enough to be asking them, let alone attempting to provide answers.

I will instead muse on what such a change might mean for the prominence of in-store bakers and butchers, and for speciality areas such as the deli counter. Again, I’m assuming that such areas will likely feature in the on-screen simulation (although, having checked the video again, it really does seem as though there are rows and rows of shelves and nothing resembling those counters…), but, even if they do, I doubt you will be met with a virtual baker, or butcher, or… deli counter…er. – Even with the best graphics currently available, the ‘uncanny valley’ effect might put people off their purchase. – There will, probably, be no sense given of the skill required to perform any of the tasks involved in readying all those different types of bread, different cuts of meat, different deli spreads. To say nothing of the work of the fishmonger.       

Not to come across all Jamie Oliver, but will this serve to sever people even further from the source of their food, from an awareness of where it comes from, and how it is all prepared for their consumption?

Will future generations learn about the professions of butchery and bakery and fishmongering? If they don’t, how will food that might come under the jurisdiction of those professions be prepared, packaged, sold?

Will it matter?

How many people, after all, pay close attention to the skills of such workers, or take time to consider and respect those skills, even now, when on in-store shopping trips? When was the last time they might honestly say that they did?

Baudrillard suggests (or, at least, the Wikipedia entry summarising his work does) that many other things were already in, or otherwise approaching, the fourth stage of simulation, even 30 years ago when the work was first published. If this is indeed taken to be the case, and most of the things that we’re familiar with are already more ‘simulacra’ than reality, and not many people have taken the time to kick up too much of a fuss about it, then will the difference be noted/lamented at all?

Moreover, given that actual weekly/twice-weekly/however-frequent shopping trips are usually shit, is there any point griping about this technology?

Perhaps not.

But, perhaps it’s worth asking why those shopping trips are frequently so dull that people might choose to pay a visit to the 3D ‘food’-lined walls of ‘Uncanny Valley’ instead? And, on top of that, if they’re so dull, then why the hell would anyone want to go to the lengths required to produce a simulation of the ‘experience’?

Would I, I find myself wondering, be less scathingly sceptical of this idea if actual supermarkets appealed to me more?

Then I wonder: If they appealed to me more, why would I need a simulation of them, to make sure I could reach it and the goods it holds ‘wherever I am’? Surely I’d be willing to travel to such a fantastical palace of foodstuffs and assorted homeware, cookware, clothing, chart CDs, DVDs, magazines, booze, and bathroom accessories.

Following query: If there is a worry that people might otherwise let themselves go hungry than visit actual supermarkets, in the absence of online alternatives, why not make the in-store experience better? Like, way better.

Certainly, even crappy supermarkets offer what the 3D simulation implies it can give you. Namely, ‘Food. Lots of food.’ It’s all there, laid out on the shelves, in the point-of-sale stacks, and in the fridges and freezers. There’s salad, and salad dressing. There’s fruit, and fruit juices. There’s meat, of at least three kinds. There’s fish, and fish sauce. There’s bread, and buns, and brownies. And little plastic things full of cold custard. And loads of cheese. Even the squeezy stuff. And cereal. And eggs. And pasta. And herbs. And potatoes, and onions, and garlic, and chili peppers, and even some green vegetables. Courgettes. Broccoli. Runner beans. Mushrooms. Pizzas, and bare pizza bases. Tomato sauces to slather on top.    

And yet, it’s all ‘Food’, with that capital F. It is, by and large, boxed-up and branded and obscured from view. It is all hidden, and replaced by photographs of possible contents, unless you buy it and take it home to unwrap. Or it’s shrinkwrapped in sellophane. Or, if it’s a piece of fruit or veg, it might be in a net, or even open to the elements. But it doesn’t smell like food. Natural stuff. Like the stuff that falls off a tree or is pulled fresh from the ground. At any rate, it doesn’t smell like you feel that kind of food should smell. Even the cooked produce, at the deli counter and the bakery doesn’t, unless you’re really close to it.  

It’s possible that this is intended. That it is contrived to be that way so as the scent of one area doesn’t cause people un-enamoured with said scent to boycott any areas nearby. And, if so, that is certainly one potential problem that a 3D simulation would sidestep entirely. With every product reduced to a replica of a cardboard box covering the actual/virtual contents, then people can select their purchases according to brand-fidelity and special offers alone, without becoming distracted by the promise of anything fresh, which might make them turn their nose up at the canned goods in front of them.

Yes, it does indeed seem to be a modern retailer’s ‘dream’. A marketing paradise. Logo after logo, and no interferences, no actual people to befuddle the issue. The video even promises that anything you point-and-pick off the shelves will be ‘ADDED TO REAL BASKET’ –

But that is where the truly problematic part of the idea lies.  

The ‘REAL’ that is mentioned here (and alluded to in the title of this piece) is not the Real as Lacan identified it – i.e. something unobscured/ungoverened by symbols and by simulacra. Rather, it is a conception of ‘reality’ that is a direct result of that process of obscuring. Because so much of the world that people know today is approached symbolically, and so much of our understanding of life is considered and expressed through symbolic terms (that is, through language, which gives names and ascribes meanings to things which otherwise simply are), the Lacanian Real holds, as philosophers such as Slavoj Žižek suggest, a kind of horror which comes from our no longer being conditioned to deal with such a world. Following this, other notions of reality have become accepted in its stead.

This takes us back to the ‘first stage’ of simulacra, as set down by Baudrillard. The primary copy, as it were. The initial symbolic framework, which enables humankind en masse to make better sense of things around them. However, the ‘REAL BASKET’ represents something different.

It is, to paraphrase Palahniuk, a copy of a copy. The basket referred to is the usual online shopping basket, which is to say that it is a screen that holds a list of chosen items, ready for purchase. It is not an actual physical basket, but it does mirror the intent of one. The same could be said of the products being purchased, though they will, it is to be hoped, turn up in their physical form at some point. The online shopping basket will do no such thing. Instead, calling it the ‘REAL BASKET’ suggests that, indeed, the online arena is intending to supplant and usurp the physical one.

This can therefore be seen as yet another step in the progression Baudrillard identifies, taking humanity further away from reality, and into a realm in which symbols, in being increasingly removed from their original purpose, in becoming symbolic only of other, preceding, symbols, cease to have any true meaning.     

This builds, however, upon the work of physical supermarkets themselves, which have, in their time, enacted a similar coup. They have copied and then supplanted other things.

But which other things? What were they attempting to make ‘bigger’ and ‘better’ in the first place?

I suppose their closest forerunners were the outdoor and indoor markets. You know, the ones that still linger on, in some towns, but seem to be getting smaller and held less frequently. Places that, ideally, should take advantage of the visual and olfactory lure of actual fresh produce, without having to overload them with symbols in order to sell. That should showcase that produce in all its glory, sans any advertisements save the bellow of the given stall’s proprietor, and make the customer want to buy it, safe in the knowledge that it will not only taste good, but will be good for them as well.

However, before I get too misty-eyed and chest-beating about all that, I need to make something clear. I’ve never really enjoyed those kinds of markets in this country either. Perhaps it’s because, by the time I was really aware of being out food shopping, supermarkets were already taking over, and a general defeatism had begun to set in. Clocking that they were fighting a losing battle, most markets, at least those near me, seemed to have all but given up fighting.

If it can be said that most of our instincts, food-wise, come from our childhood; and, consequently, that one of adult life’s chief pleasures comes from becoming reacquainted with sensations which remind us of that time, then, market-wise, I’m buggered. My most vivid childhood memories of such markets are of the scent of none-too-fresh fish, the disturbing (because I didn’t really know what it was or where it’d come from) sight of the meat on the butcher’s stalls, and stacks and stacks of lettuce and cabbage. And the overriding stench of food intended for dogs and other pets, leaking out of big plastic bags hung up in corner stalls that were still too close to the actual people food for comfort.

I hear my parents talk about markets they used to go to as children, and, in a lot of ways, they sound better. At least, I presume they must have been better, in order to provoke such warm nostalgia now. But I can’t say as I’ll feel that way about the markets of my youth. Except, perhaps, for the sweet stalls.

There are some markets I’ve encountered more recently, however, which suggest other, more welcoming options still exist.

Borough Market, in London, comes to mind. The first time I visited was on a quiet day. The morning’s activity was winding down, but a select few vendors were still hawking their wares. Most appealing, to me, of these was a stall selling a variety of curries. One large, simmering pot full of a green Thai effort, another full of Caribbean curry, and the third and final of something more Indian in flavour. And in scent. Spice mixes that permeated and swam throughout the high-roofed interior, the cavernous space resembling (and quite possibly being) a former warehouse or factory floor. Spices that drew me towards them, bade me try a sample of each curry before settling on the Thai.

The second time I visited, it was in full flow. All stalls open and packed. Variety being the order of the day. Everything from a stall selling nothing but roasted pig parts, to another that sold kangaroo, to yet another, or perhaps several, that specialised in a whole gamut of cheeses and chili sauces and jams and chutneys. All somehow arrayed in close-quarters, yet not so that it felt uncomfortably crowded.

And then, crossing the channel and the bulk of a whole ‘nother country, there’s Marseilles. There’s the thrill of being down near the Vieux Port at half ten in the morning, with the sun climbing white through the blue as you squint towards the horizon, out between the stony entrance to the harbour, looking for the place where the ocean gets stitched to the sky. There’s the rush of the fish market, not smelling like what you thought a fish market was meant to smell like at all. Smelling only of brine and the cool non-scent of ice. Fishblood being hosed clear of the pavement and back into the bay. People, locals, going there to buy fresh-caught fish, perhaps to cook bouillabaisse. Some of this fish might make its way to any one of the number of restaurants that line up along the seafront and on the streets behind, for them to try their own versions of that dish.

Further up the hill on which the city’s built, there is at least one other market, on a street set just off one of the main thoroughfares. Coriander is the first thing that rises in my recollections of that place. Bunches of it, piled high on the wooden counter of one stall, practically a shrubbery. So green it was as though somebody had ramped up the contrast.

Strangely, so fresh and vivid that it looked almost Photoshopped.  

And in Arles, where Van Gogh either went mad, or went to recuperate, or both, the market in the square, just coming into autumn, a long table, a doubled-up table, with so many different types of mushrooms laid out across it that I couldn’t keep count. At least, I can’t recall the number of them now.

Experiences that awakened in me the pleasure of being able to see, and smell, fresh, unpackaged food; experiences unreplicable on any simulation, 3D or otherwise.

Experiences, also, that were most likely heightened by the fact that I was just visiting those three places, that those markets were not my local food-buying haunts. There is the old notion that there are some places you might love upon holidaying there, but that you wouldn’t want to live in, out of fear, I suppose, that it would become ordinary, and therefore boring. A line from Lost in Translation comes to mind: ‘Let’s never come here again, because it would never be as much fun.’ Indeed, part of the reason the sensations I felt at these markets resonate so strongly comes from their status as, more or less, standalone events.

This needn’t remain the case, however. Certainly, I would welcome spending more time in environs such as that over drudging through cookie-cutter, constructed-to-a-formula supermarkets. What if there were several thriving markets of that kind around the same town, packed the same as supermarkets are now, and those markets were all, in some way, unique, all supplying the best and most interesting of certain kinds of locally-sourced produce?

What if the onus were placed not on simply exploiting every technological advancement made available, but on rediscovering the pleasure I referred to earlier, on rediscovering those reasons to return to a less-simulated reality? On observing the possibilities inherent in the actual, physical world around us, and making them more easily accessible, and, therefore, more openly-enticing.

What if people were given that reason to feel, if not good, then at least better about, and therefore closer to, the world and the towns/cities/communities around them?

Would they still think of shopping interactively through their 3D TVs as a good idea? Or would they realise that the ‘dreams’ of certain supermarkets might not actually be in-line with their own? 

Eulogy

The Internet has set a fire beneath my bookcase. The higher reaches of my room are stormclouding with smoke. Soon I will be forced into a crouch. And then into a prone position, pressed low against the carpet weave.

I could leave the room, of course, but I won’t.

I will stay here and keep writing.

I watch as each still-living book breathes in the smell of the unfortunates, the ones already afflicted with the flames. Breathes in the smell, the charry, soot-saturated ghosts of them. Catches the disease of their burning. Covers wrinkling, fuses timing down to the explosion. The pages all consumed at once, in no particular order; the list of their contents un-consulted by the blaze.

I have saved one.

Grabbed it just before the spark leapt free and hunted out the well-stacked memories of my dreams and my learning.

It is by Ray Bradbury.

I read it as the storm clouds darken, as the fire goes white and then whiter still with the heat. I am not rushing, but already I am halfway through.

I have read it before, but do not recall the feel of it being quite this way. It shocked before, certainly, but seemed somehow far-fetched. I think perhaps I did not want to face it. Now, it has a desperate urgent honesty about it. Not science fiction, but history almost.

This has already come to pass, I say out loud, and inhale smoke.

My words barely form a status update, barely constitute a tweet.

They are so insubstantial that I repeat them, repeat them, repeat them, all the while inhaling inhaling inhaling and coughing and coughing and coughing and It has already come to pass I call out with rusty undervalued vocal cords, and tears turn black upon my cheeks. I know because I raise my fingers to them, examine, through the haze, the tips.

Ink.

Weeping ink and breathing fire. I am become, already, a brace of mythic, fantastic things. Dragons and books. I am scared to reach up to my forehead lest I find a horn, scared to look down at my legs lest I discover them fused and sequined all across with scales and remnant sheen of ocean. Seaweed wrapped around me, crackling and jumping just like popcorn in the heat.

I read, I read.

I write.

I think.

I mourn.

I think.

I feel.

I feel

funny

faint

fey

foolhardy

forgettable

forgetful

fallible

flammable

false

forgetting everything

forgotten in and of myself

and now the clouds have sunk so low that I must crouch, even as I sense my hair catch aflame the same as paper. Even as it hurts, I find a balm, a panacea in that. To be like paper. To be capable of holding thoughts, of showing them, of yellowing and weakening with age and yet still retaining most of what I know or knew. Of coming from a seedling, and then being malleable enough to return at final page’s closing to compostable matter, fed back, with dignity, into the soil, to form a bed from which other seedlings might arise and other paper thereby be acquired, and acted on, and added to, and written on and read and read and read.

And on all fours now, I struggle to maintain focus, and my ink drops down and runs and swims around on top of that already printed, and I rapid-breathe the enormous hulk, the awesome mass of shadow that the books expel once they’re done burning. They fill my lungs and crowd and jostle in my blood, and they are, undoubtedly, a part of me, and becoming moreso by the moment.  

I read.

I lay down prone, the clothes upon my back incinerating.

I read.

I sweat ink as well as weeping it, and all of it is steam as soon as it hits surface, rising to meet the weighty pall halfway.

If this is how it has to be

I say out loud

inhale

If this

I say

inhale

I read

the punctuation catching fire first and then the keener more ambitious more inventive words and then the capitals the proper nouns the names for things the names that are important were important but become within this burning just one more place or one more person amongst a host and

none of them

are golden daffodils

the first poem

i can remember

knowing

wordsworth

bradbury

cormac

shakespeare

marlowe 

hank bukowski

conrad

ernest

dylan

kundera

m ondaatje

zuzak

pratchett

frank ohara

jack

jack

kerouac

beat poets

modernists

postmodernists

realists

fantasists

readers

writers

digitized

splitscreen

distraction

distancing

denial just

a little

of the possibility

that any of it

means anything at

all

its

just words

and madeupstories

and those stories are

not the real world

and they are not

the digital world

the better

everyonetogether

world

either

and so they dont

matter and can be

spared and let

them disappear

and scatter their ashes

far out at sea

where nobody

will bother to

visit and weep

for them mourn

for them

write and read aloud

or in their precious

head a eulogy

a little prayer

though not one particular

to any faith

only a clutch a

sacred fragile

gathering of words

to ask with

desperate urgent honesty

for somehow

grass to rise

above their resting

place and

somehow

for even one

just one more

seedling to discover

the bliss of

the daylight

and grow 

History is Other People

I was seventeen years away from being born when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. One of the most significant moments in human history – for a great many reasons – and I was not around to be one of the five hundred million people who watched the events unfold on their fuzzy black and white TVs. I was brought into the world having missed out on something truly (in the full sense of the world) incredible. Setting foot on another planet – even a satellite rock – had been a seemingly unachievable dream of the great scientific minds ever since such planets were identified as such. Hanging there like glowing fruits, positioned just out of reach of Tantalus.

I missed out on the moment when Tantalus finally broke his chains and took a deep bite into that fruit. A defiance of supposed physical boundaries.

And yet, I don’t think I ever gave enough thought to the event to feel resentful at that missing out. To feel jealous of the many who had witnessed it roughly at the same moment it occurred.

By the time I was of an age to properly be aware of such momentous happenings, they’d already slipped into the territory of, if not parody, then ubiquity and over-saturation. There were references to the moon landings in The Simpsons, other cartoons, countless films. For every sci-fi story written or filmed beforehand that treated the possibility of such an act with reverence, and even fear, many that came afterwards seemed almost laconic in their response. It became either very quickly passé, or very quickly suspicious. There were drama-mongering documentaries turning up more and more often in the schedules, harping on and on about how the moon landings were fake, cobbled together on some Hollywood backlot. Nothing other than the most-watched B-movie of all time.

Neil Armstrong’s achievements seemed, in more ways than one, to have been fictional. For a ten-year-old kid, it could be tough to say for certain whether he was a real man, or just an actor playing an astronaut.

***

I wasn’t much older than that when Lance Armstrong first won the Tour De France. I didn’t really watch any of that victory, besides the clips of him in action and standing on the podium in the yellow jersey, but I listened to enough of what was going on around me to know that what he’d achieved was kind of a big deal.

The older I got and the more I heard, the more outlandish his continuing success appeared. Here was a man who had survived what sounded like the worst kind of cancer a guy could get, and after all of that, begun to win what sounded like the single toughest event a person could put themselves through. I still didn’t watch much of the Tour whenever it was on TV – I was, at that time, much more into football and motorsports – but I knew enough about it to feel amazed by the magnitude of what Lance Armstrong was doing.

And then I started to hear different things. Worse things. Allegations not that he was on drugs, but that he must be on drugs. Because how else could he do that? Nobody else had managed it, or anything quite like it – except for, perhaps, the mythic and preternatural Belgian Eddy Merckx – and so it didn’t make sense that this American man could. Or, at least, that he could do it cleanly.

There were times when those yellow jersey pictures seemed as fake as some believed the moon landings to be.

Could it be – I must have wondered on more than a few occasions, prolific reader of spy novels and budding conspiracy theorist that I was – that both of these great American heroes were frauds?

***

I was disheartened when I heard that Orson Welles had been amongst the more famous doubters of Shakespeare’s authorship. Yes, that’s the right word. Disheartened.

At the time I heard that, I must only have been properly aware of his work in The Third Man (hadn’t even seen CitizenKane!), and yet that was enough, along with stories I had heard about his struggles with the Hollywood machine, about his plans for various projects that never quite got up and running (of which, his plan to adapt Heart of Darkness using a cutting technique that would allow the film to appear as though composed of seamless footage, is still perhaps the one that holds the most if only… appeal), to convince me of his supreme worth as an artist. I was very much intrigued and eager to see as much of his output as possible.

Knowing that these projects included several Shakespeare adaptations, for which he seemed to have quite a fervour, I was perplexed that he should be so dismissive of the idea that one man – or, more specifically, one man called William Shakespeare – could have been behind all the plays and poetry attributed to him.

Of course, now I’m of a less adolescent and easily-aggravated mind, I can safely accept that questioning the absolute facts of an issue does not necessarily imply disrespect for the players involved. Being aware of Welles’ doubts on the issue has not caused me to doubt him or his art, and I have been thrilled and challenged in equal measure by pretty much all examples of such that I’ve seen. Indeed, I can also accept that for someone so involved with the performance (and editing) of Shakespeare’s works to ask no questions at all would be foolhardy. For anyone who comes across them, perhaps.

But it is the manner in which such questions are asked which is of critical importance, along with the motivation for their asking. If there is a genuine reason to doubt, or if questions have been asked before and remain unsatisfactorily answered, then, by all means, it is fair game to ask those questions again. If the issues arouse intense curiosity, then it is certainly better to try and sate that curiosity than to carry around forever that irritating itch of unfulfilled wondering.

Yet, if the questions are being asked in a way that suggests a negative outcome is being sought after, in a way which suggests that all sides of the issue in question will not be given a fair hearing, and that defence of the currently accepted state of affairs is likely to be futile, then there is, I think, a problem. When the questions are asked by those who simply, even vehemently in some cases, do not want to believe.    

Indeed, what has irked me most about all the speculation regarding the authorship of Shakespeare’s works is, I think, the often unremarked-upon significance of many of the other possible candidates being, with the notable exception of the Marlowe theory, noblemen. To me, it sometimes seems to speak of a subtle but nonetheless unpleasant feeling in certain circles that such a low-born man as Shakespeare could be responsible for such great (in many cases) and incisive art. That, lacking in noble birth, or the facilities to experience Italian high-culture first-hand, he would have been somehow unable to fathom and note down those insights.

For that reason, I have long taken umbrage at any mention of the debate – taking particular care, most recently, to avoid Roland Emmerich’s film, Anonymous. As a result, however, I’m none-too-familiar with most of the evidence that has been presented on behalf of several parties (but have read Doctor Faustus well enough to be pretty sure it didn’t come from the same hand), and therefore am unqualified to make a definitive comment on the issue, one way or another. I cannot stay mad at Orson Welles, because I cannot say for certain that he was wrong.

***

It is worth noting, though, that he could never say for certain that he was right. And here is where all notions of any absolute historical truth in such matters get fuzzy.

You start wading into the morass of clinical fact versus personal, and public, perception.

I’ve heard, and read in articles, of a few people saying that the only person who can tell for certain whether Lance Armstrong took illegal drugs to improve his performances is Lance Armstrong. I guess, in some ways, the same could have been said about Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. And about William Shakespeare and all those plays.

Of course, whilst Neil Armstrong denied all claims of fakery – and, most likely, passed away being absolutely sure of where he’d left that footprint – and Lance Armstrong has always denied the accusations he’s been lobbied with, there have been, and always will remain, those who doubt their statements. Who will seek to press and press Lance Armstrong until he breaks and gives them the answer they want to hear.  

If they do succeed in getting that answer – whether it is actually true or not – then it is that answer which will shape how that particular Armstrong is remembered. Because ultimately, and perhaps inevitably, the truth will be decided and upheld by the majority.

As things stand, around five hundred million people saw Neil Armstrong step out upon the moon, and many more have seen that footage since; several million have witnessed Lance Armstrong racing to victory in seven consecutive Tours de France, and heard news (with a few of them actually seeing evidence) of him passing a large number of drug tests, both scheduled and unscheduled; countless schoolchildren, worldwide, have been subjected to the study of such plays as Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew, and been given no real cause to doubt that they were written by anyone other than the man who’s name appears on the spine of all their annotated editions. That isn’t the truth according to everyone, but it is the truth according to most.

If there is, in the future, some way of authenticating all of that beyond a shadow of a doubt, of proving those truths completely, then that will be a brilliant thing. It will, arguably, be more significant to humanity than even the idea of a man, any man, walking on the moon. This is because it will mean that billions of people have not been deceived by a small minority who couldn’t quite own up to not doing the things those billions believe they did.

And it is this kind of uncertainty – the possibility that such great achievements may not actually have been achieved, at least not in the way it was first claimed – that make clear why it is important for people to be as honest as they can be at any given moment, in both action and thought. Because what a given person’s contemporaries think they’ve done will define the way that they’re remembered.

Sure, honesty may, in some cases, leave a person looking far less successful, and far less important, than they’d perhaps hoped to be. Which explains, without exactly justifying, the impulse to exaggerate or just plain invent one’s achievements (and to cover over one's failings and misdemeanors). But maybe it’s better to be remembered for being – as close as other people can approximate it, anyway – the way you were, and not to have your legacy left resting on a lie.

After all, there is the notion that one’s only true hope for life beyond death, for immortality – of the kind Neil Armstrong will enjoy – comes from the memories one leaves behind in the living (and/or, these days, on the Internet, for the living to peruse at their leisure). If those memories are all a crock of shit, then a given person isn’t really being immortalized, so much as they’re being falsely mythologized. They’re being forgotten, and supplanted by something that never existed but which will, nonetheless, outlast their actual selves.  

This will happen anyway, to a point. No one person will recall a given event the exact same way that someone else does, and so no one person will perhaps ever be recalled as being quite the way they might have felt they were themselves. And, of course, there are those who choose to dedicate most of their time to fiction, to fakeries, even, and to obfuscating some of their true self in the name of generating ‘larger than life’ personas – artists and showmen, for instance, amongst whose number could be counted Orson Welles. But there is a difference between acknowledging one’s self-mythologizing in and as ‘art’, and between pretending at all times to be something one isn’t, without such acknowledgment. There is a difference also between the small, arguably unavoidable inaccuracies that might come about as a result of the quirks of individual memory, and the vast fabrications propagated for a person’s own (posthumous) betterment, which will, ironically, cancel out any real knowledge of who they were and what they actually achieved.

Differences that suggest the following conclusions:

If you want to be a film-maker, or a playwright, or a novelist, always be clear exactly when you are indulging in fiction, in art. And be clear as to what you have actually made/filmed/written yourself and what you haven’t.

If you want to be an astronaut, always be open about whereabouts and on which space station/satellite/planet you’ve landed. And be sure you’ve got a shedload* of reliable witnesses who can testify to this.

If you want to be a professional cyclist, make sure you’ll be able to win races without the need to take supplements/undergo treatments which breach established rules, and which you’ll have to deny later. 

Or, simply: If you want to leave a better legacy, don’t bullshit, just be better at whatever it is you want to do.

Because, even if you don’t quite manage it, then at least it’ll be easier for the ten-year-old kids of the future to know what, and who, to believe.

*Preferably a rather large shed. More of a warehouse, really. But a common or garden shed will do, in a pinch.

Welcome to Wednesdays

And the pebbles dance

dance as the little

lad kicks them

and the pigeons

dodge up and

take wing

and the overslept

shuttered-in shops

line the pavement

and the chorus line

traffic comes together

to sing

whilst the mothers

push prams across

askew puddle pavements

and jobseekers walk

by with their

eyes to the ground –

Welcome to Wednesdays

when you’d rather not

be here,

Welcome to Wednesdays

in your nearby hometown.