COME TOGETHER. CHAPTER 13 1: THE INTERPLAY OF OPPOSITES ( A METAPHYSICAL LOVE STORY)

COME TOGETHER

CHAPTER 13 1:

THE INTERPLAY OF OPPOSITES
( A METAPHYSICAL LOVE STORY)

( I am divided for loves sake. ) Aleister Crowley

The interior of a modern cafe. A pianist plays the first movement of the ‘Trois Sonneries de la Rose + Croix’ by Eric Satie – ‘Air de l’Order.’ A man and a woman sit at a small table, decorated with flowers.

Boy – “…..Duality……….the problem is duality!”

Girl – “ Really.”

Boy – “ Absolutely, you know that feeling, like…your seperate from everything…..woman… man alone in the universe….which in a way feels like the human condition……but in reality is just an illusion because – the truth is – there is a connection – between all living things – even to the stars in the heavens – almost imperceptible…but real none the less – a oneness – a wholeness – a unity – but to feel the connection, to actually feel the affinity, the….affinity of infinity is so hard…….so you must see, you and I have a rare and wonderful opportunity……together we can transcend the illusion, the illusion of duality, of seperatness….maybe not for long but for a moment….and yes of course I’m talking about the specific…but in that moment of transcendence the specific becomes the general…….the microcosm is the macrocosm…for you and me at least…and our little love story – our funny, baby step little romance – is the dance of the universe, the elegant cosmic dance in which the universe feels love and becomes – for a moment – self aware……and yes – there is a connection – a…..coming together – and a feeling…like……….coming home.”

Girl – “Wow.”

Boy – “Yes wow…..exactly wow…………”

…….I should probably explain, I’m back in Brighton for a few months…too many months already really….but still. I finished school in Paris last year and I’m in a restaurant with someone that I met a few days ago in a lovely little bookshop in the lanes and who is…I think, a friend. He’s young like me and I like him, we’ve had coffee a few times and as today is Valentines day, the day his families Oyster bar reopens for the year he has invited me for supper and – just for fun – I have coaxed him to pitching me some Valentines Woo, and now…….well, I’ve been in Paris for the last few years and I suppose men think I’m sort of pretty – in a peculiar sort of way – so I thought I’d heard most of the lines men use – but I have to say “transcending duality” is new to me and his whole approach is so playful – that the one thing I didn’t expect to happen when I asked him – that he would in fact seduce me – actually seems to be happening…..and…I have to say I’m starting to think an affair might be rather nice….until I persuade father to let me go back to Paris anyway. He’s quite nice looking and I suppose the most appealing thing is – I like the colour of his words – which is so rare these days. Perhaps the music is influencing me…..I know these pieces so well: The Sonneries – The great colour washes of the sombre footstep chord progressions; The blues and greens, the oranges and purples. The acute knife edged angles of the discordant
cut up melodies and then the lifting softening chords growing ever lighter, in dusky pinks and dusty greens until – at last – the childlike melody unravels like…..like the long imagined voice of Lillian Gish….unbroken blossoms floating on a gentle breeze……those words come at me now like a soft pink misty beam – a stream of lettered petals – that smell like…roses, and seem to be in tune with the music….as though his voice changes tone to harmonise with the piano – I’ve never seen that before – usually their words are dull sooty pastels, with the ‘words they actually mean words’ bigger than the others – hard and with sharp edges – but these are…..bright and round – the way I remember words were when I was a child – before the machines came and the internal filters began to refine and finally expurgate the unwanted noise and…….who knows how much else? Do I even know anymore? Still, I‘m not going to make this ‘too’ easy for him….”

Boy – “….Now, I know we haven’t known each other for long – but I do feel drawn to you – drawn in a way I can’t really explain, like theres some invisible force pulling us together – thats why I think this is possible….yes, we are different in a lot of ways but maybe that makes sense, maybe that’s the reason – because – this is magnetism – opposites attracting – and an electromagnetic pull is a powerful thing – a force of nature – resisting might be………….dangerous…….”

Girl – “…..Dangerous ?”

Boy – “Er…..a little bit dangerous……..?”

Girl – ” Oh, and you were doing so well.”

Boy – “ Arrrgh, I went too far – I’m an idiot….”

Girl – “ No, don’t say that, you just got a bit carried away, but that wasn’t really the problem…..your argument simply didn’t persuade….some women enjoy danger…in moderation at least……….and what would you think of me were I so softly swayed by a little danger…..you would think me a pushover….”

Boy – “ No, no not at all, I didn’t intend to insinu….”

Girl – “…And anyway I would rather like to think that my decision was the result of my own Free Will, rather than some irresistable unseen force. I was enjoying your whole “transcending duality” approach, but perhaps you should try and persuade me with something less esoteric, try a more conventional argument……offer me some sound advise, something that advances.”

Boy – “ I know little of conventional arguments….my somewhat ‘idiosyncratic’ education has encouraged me to…accentuate the unconventional. How should I persuade you? Please lady would you step out with me one evening as an act of…Kindness? Kindness is a noble virtue, but the war taught me that people often mistake kindness for weakness, they take advantage and call you an idiot behind your back, my Mother was almost ruined…’Soft touch’ – a term that can only have been coined by the cynical recipient of some unknown benevolence. I no longer know if there’s any advice that can still be given – in good conscience – that would
encourage you to amorous adventures, now that the world knows the horrors that men are capable of – none that could supplant the inherited wisdom of the age: ‘Be careful’…which hardly suits my purpose. I don’t doubt your fortitude – believe me – nobody could ever think you were a pushover, but strength is a double edged sword. ‘Be strong’ – seems like good advice, but how many people are wise enough to cultivate their strength without becoming hardened, without closing themselves off to beauty and hope, faith and love. The only conventional persuasion I can offer is: ‘Be courageous’, courage seems to me to be the best response to most situations, even a date with me – you say you like danger – I’ll promise you some…enough to prove your temerity.”

Girl – “ Should my courage overthrow my caution then?”

Boy – “ Temper the one with the other and let your feelings be your guide. Perhaps you just don’t trust yourself with me…..I could arrange a chaperone……..if you are afraid that you won’t be able to stop your self from doing something…rash.”

Girl – “ Ha ha, not afraid, but careful, I am after all a child of the times……”

Boy – “….Surely not, you seem so timeless.”

Girl – “…….and therefore in tune with the wisdom of the age – I am naturally cautious – However, reluctant as I am to bend to irresistable forces, I do seem to feel some…..vague and frankly inexplicable attraction to you, which I’m unwilling to ascribe to electromagnetism. So, as I’m not inclined to tempt fate, caution and courage urge me to accede that you might be right, perhaps we should walk out together one evening – maybe this is Kismet – lodestones are one thing, but I wouldn’t want to defy destiny…”

Boy – “ Really? OK great, lets think of something to do, but first you need another drink……and we should eat, I invited you to supper and all I’ve done is talk, well that’s your fault…you’re so hard to entice. Let me get you a menu. Do you want wine or is Champagne OK, obviously we’re having seafood? Er, I have some things to do at the bar, I’ll be a few minutes….have a look at the choices, there’s a limited menu so early in the Season, but what we have is fresh. I’ll be back in a minute…..Lets eat in the back.”

And instantly, as if by some unseen cue the music stops and my ardent companion wanders casually awayto the bar, so I start to look around the restaurant. ‘The Albion Rose’ is brightly lit and quite modern: The wide windows of the stone facade are bordered at the edges by a vertical assemblage of radially cut square glass panels, that dissect the street lights and turn the passers by into strangely anatomised angular abstract animations. Outside, secured above the entrance and spanning about half the length of a wide seating veranda is an elegantly arched wrought iron sign with sweeping cast iron tendrils – bursting with roses andleaves – growing through a variated wrought gridlike internal frame. More cast heraldic roses sit in small square panels at the straight top, where the sign meets the flat roof, which give the grid a ‘Mondrian’ quality. The tendrils encircle the word ‘ARRA’ written in languid cast iron Art Nouveau letters, with the first ‘R’ backwards so that the backs of the two ‘R’s are parallel and the word appears symetrical. I suppose ‘ARRA’ refers to the initials of the ‘Albion Rose’ somehow – forwards and backwards – presumably.

Barely visible from where I’m sitting and flanking the wide central entrance doors are two very large carved wooden Dolphins wearing Crowns – each is about six feet tall and bears a flag with the word ‘ARRA’, written in the same style as the sign – I have been told they were inspired by the ‘Dacre Beasts.’ Inside, the floor is covered in small square cream tiles with a wide black band skirting the walls.Those walls are made up of cream ceramic faced bricks. At the centre of both of the expansive side surfaces is a square tiled panel on which a large and elaborate ‘Coat of Arms’ is depicted within a blue edged eight pointed star: Two figures – a young Man and a Woman stand – artfully bedizened in garlands of Ivy leaves – on the backs of surging Dolphins. Between them they hold an Armorial Shield emblazoned in the Dexter and Sinister chiefs with two Charges of mirror-image Argent Seahorses on fields of Or, in the middle chief – an escallop on a Gules field – these are above the main Azure field of the Escutcheon which is divided by an Argent Chevron Ordinary at the Nomril Point flanked above by two full faced five petalled and barbed Gules Roses, with the Chevron above an antique wooden Globe at middle base. An Or Sun in Slendour shines from the Honour
Point. The shield is Helmed with a barred Argent Helmet torsed in Or and Azure with Argent mantling and Crested with the Crowned head and neck of a Swan. Behind the shield seeming almost to grow from the Helm is a stylised Oak Tree with Azure/Vert foliage so verdant that the image could almost be of a Fountain. The Dolphins ride the lowest branches/waves and hold in their mouths the Motto: “Love Above All”. Both the Woman and Man hold strange Geometric Shapes in their free hands which I cannot name but may be
something to do with Platos ‘Solids’.

Above all is an illuminated ceiling of opaque and slightly marbled radiating panels, possibly in the new ‘Bakerlite’ material, which spread from a central point above the circular island bar. The bar is made entirely of Glass bricks supporting a luminous cicular counter of thick greenish glass. Within the shining ring is a thick gleaming central column capped with a round shell-like fluted copper hood topped with what looks like the Golden architectural model of a very modern church or one of the new American ‘Skyscrapers’. Together, the column and roof seem to resemble those pictures you sometimes see of broadcasting radio towers. The length of the column is girdled by glass shelves piled high with glistening bottles and jars in every colour and between them – the loveliest seashells I have ever seen – In the place of honour, on the highest shelf, a small beautifully crafted bird with glittering silver plummage and a little golden beak perches on a glass box full of tiny brass wheels and cogs…obviously some kind of automaton….oh how I would love to turn the Lilliputian Golden key. Around the restaurant are several couples, all seated on elegant wooden chairs at very modern yellow pedestal tables, large enough for four. The elegantly dressed staff weave between several large butterfly palms as they hurry about with trays and glasses. The ‘Albion Rose’ is beautiful………

Suddenly there is colour, verdant shimmering glimmers of pale green and teal, gentle streaks of parched incandescent rain…..There must be music playing: Debussy – The Estampes 1: Pagodes. As I listen low 5ths fade as the five note theme begins …so many fives in the East…..falling and rising then descending again… decorative figures ripple across the five high black keys and then with the repeated pulsing chords there is growth. From the edges of my sight, delicate diaphanous fern fronds start to grow, their pinnae and bipinnae interlacing like soft sylvan zip fasteners, with each lush leaf growing inwards to a point at the center of my vision….the vacillating theme see-saws past again…then high triplets and higher demisemiquaver thin tin tones…In my mind I can hear the bell-like glockenspiel evoked….the metallic sound of the Gamelan….the fern leaves start to silver like winter windows and the formerly fertile feathery fronds – like the shining sterling plumes on the clockwork bird on the bar – harden into crisp bright branching dendritic crystals. Those oscillating high notes glistening like frost, fusing the icy branches together until the tree-like ice crystals suddenly spread and evanesce and I am staring at the quick-silver surface of a gold veined liquid looking-glass – translucid no more – peering at the image of myself looking back at me…”You look like your in a dream “ I say wordlessly……”I said you look dreamy” I say again and then suddenly the music stops and I see that across the table from me, a boy is sitting, staring intently and smiling at me.

Boy – “ Are you alright, you look like your in a dream.”

Girl – “ Yes, quite alright thank you. Sometimes the music……I’m OK now.”

Boy – “ Sorry about that, I can stay for a while now. New staff, the only disadvantage of taking such a longwinter break, that and the Spring clean….some years we’re lucky, if you ever need a job just say the word.”

Girl – “ I will, thank you…..actually I really might – I had been hoping to get back to Paris for the Spring – but Daddy is being difficult, so a summer job might just be perfect. I’ll be 18 in august so I could really just do as I pleased if I had some money of my own. You’re very kind, thank you.”

Boy – “ Oh, don’t thank me yet, don’t be fooled by tonight, during the summer we’re busy, very busy. If you work here you’ll earn your money………but lets talk about that later.”

Girl – “……..Tell me, why did you say your education was ‘idiosyncratic’ in such a pointed way?”

Boy – “ Ah, well, when Father…went away, Mother pulled me out of school and resolved to teach me at home, I was nine or ten I think. Mum had an old book ‘An Introduction to the Liberal Arts in ancient Greece’,which offered a potted history of the teaching techniques used in classical antiquity.”

Girl – “ Goodness that’s…..old school.”

Boy – “The oldest, I was taught in accordance with the curricullum of Hellenistic Greece, with some embellishments. There were seven subjects: ‘The Trivium’ consisted of: Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic whilst ‘The Quadrivium’ was made up of Music, Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy.”

Girl – “ Wow, that’s crazy……I‘m sorry…..but that is….crazy.”

Boy – “ Well, different anyway, there are large gaps in my Knowledge…my Geography is appalling andI’ve only really started taking an interest in the Modern Sciences in the last few years…but….I have a whole volume of ‘Encyclopedia’s downstairs now and – I think really – mother just wanted me with her……as far as I’m concerned, I had the perfect education, I was taught how to think…not what to think.”

Girl – “ I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude….you just surprised me. I’m sorry.”

Boy – “ Please don’t be, you didn’t offend me. I don’t tell people very often….I’m aware how strange this all sounds….you see my Parents were always sort of unusual, my whole family actually…….the ‘Ancestors’. My Great Grandparents were friends with an artistic group known as ‘The Ancients’ – they stayed with them occasionally on the way to London – there are some paintings in the back I can show you that were rescued from a fire. As a group they were heavily influenced by ‘William Blake’…Hence the name of the restaurant:
‘The Albion Rose’…from the Blake poem, although now most people think the name actually is ‘Arra.’Through the ‘Ancients’ my Great Grandparents became very interested and eventually immersed in ’Transcendentalism’……..

Girl – ” Aha !“

Boy – “ Haha, well sort of….I don’t know if they ever really thought about things in quite the same way as me….theres no dogma, but there definitely is a thread……have you ever heard of ‘Emerson’? Yes, well he toured England in about…1848 I think and my Great Grandparents met him and got quite involved in his work. He wrote an essay called ‘Nature’ which espouses – a love of Nature – much more than that I think…which I suppose is the starting point. I think the ethos…as explained to me anyway, is about: Artistic expression as a path….Nature as the source of true understanding. Also I think, about the possibility of a
direct relationship with the Divine…..a belief in individual responsibility, in as much as a….principled society should be made up of steadfast conscientious individuals…….a deep mistrust of politics and institutions……er, I’m not explaining this very well. I’ve never really tried to define these things before…..anyway the ‘philosophy’ was passed down through my Grandmother – who opened this restaurant – to my Mother. She persuaded my father to see the Light…….and feel the Heat, then taught me her own ‘idiosyncratic’ version of ‘Transcendentalism’, Rose tinted by a love of all things Greek……there was a lot of Socratic Method……”

Girl – “…..Goodness….well, I can save you some time – You know nothing.”

Boy – “ Ha, thats funny, maybe Modesty was one of Socrates less well known Virtues…….There was something we did do quite frequently, a rhetorical game – EKPHRASIS – Which is rather hard to explain actually…..I suppose the easy definition nowadays would be – to translate one form of art into another. Like a painting into a poem.”

Girl – “ Like a description?”

Boy – “ Not a description exactly – something deeper – Plato talks about the ‘Ideal Form’ – The
‘Quintessence’ – of things. Modern Ekphrasis is about expressing the ‘Ideal Form’ of what an artist was trying to convey………Felix Mendelssohns Overture to ‘ A Midsummer Nights Dream’ is an example that comes to mind, specifically………do you know the part that represents the ‘Dancing Fairies.”

Girl – “ I do, I love that piece…….but that doesn’t sound crazy at all…..that’s brilliant. Oh that’s amazing – You know I…….”

Boy – “…..Yes?”

Girl – “ No, thats alright, I was going to say something but…..maybe later.”

Boy – “ Of course. There were lots of highlights actually, like…..long hours sitting on the beach late into the night watching the constellations glide by whilst being told the Mythology of the Stars, practicing the flute to the rythyhm of the waves…….but all that seems like a long time ago…..lets eat, have you decided what you would like?”

Girl – “ What would you recommend?”

Boy – “ Well – as a particularly archaic and abstract example of Ekphrasis – I would suggest the Scallops….”

Girl – “Scallops…….why?”

Boy – “ Because the Scallop shell is traditionally associated with the birth of Venus – The Goddess of Love – which seems appropriate for Valentines Day……..also the shell is a symbol of the feminine principle in general, a symbolic representation of the Womb or…….Vulva……”

Girl – “……….Er…..and also of the higher aspirations….of good Saint James and Holy Pilgrimages.”

Boy – “ Hmmmm, perhaps, but surely every ideology just appropriates the iconography of the previous one….the scallop shell was a Pagan fertility symbol…….carried by travellers seeking a more – tangible Solace – a warmer welcome. I’m told that even now the Pilgrimage to ‘Santiago de Compostela’ is favoured by young couples hoping for a particular kind of……blessing. Oh, no…..have I blundered like a fool upon some secret aspiration that you had hoped the subtlety of your allusion would obscure? I‘d hardly dared to hope that so early in our relation………”

Girl – “Oh no, he’s started ‘pitching woo’ again…don’t mistake illusions for allusions Sir, you may come undone.”

Boy – “Thats good advice for all Pilgrims…….whether they anticipate a warm welcome or not. Forgive me Lady, I was raised to love beauty, and to express that love in language. The nearness of you has made me loquacious…….darn, if only there were a way to stop these chattering lips……”

Girl – “ Oh I‘ll stop those lips.”

They Kiss

Girl – “ Now back to supper I think.”

Boy – “ The Scallops are delicious I had some yesterday.”

Girl – “ Well – they sound very nice – yes please, I’ll have the Scallops.”

Boy – “ Good. Come through to the back…..I have a surprise for you……….”

© 2014 Kevin Barry Partridge.

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING – CHAPTER 12: MEMORIES

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING

CHAPTER 12

MEMORIES

 

(Love is Hot – Truth is Molten). Donovan

 The machine is broken. The component parts lay in pieces all around me – burnt out…unfixable – useless now. I won’t have two projectors for the exhibition, I’ll have to make do with one. The rest of the equipment’s already loaded on the truck – with the paintings….7.31pm…..I should just make a Start, the truck won’t be anywhere near as quick as the car, and if I arrive after 10pm she’ll probably be out….Brightons a late night town. I’m tempted to wait for a few minutes though, I’m sitting on the floor in the living
room and ‘The Way We Were’ has just started on TV…….”Memories like the corners of my mind – Misty watercolour Memories”……..come floating out of the speaker. Beautiful lyrics. But the picture of a high domed building brings back memories of my own and I decide I should be on my way and turn off the TV.

I did‘nt have to hire a van in the end: I finally got a message back to the phone call I made from the pub (by way of a three man relay – She makes few concessions to the modern World – not even her own phone) : “No problem”  – the beautiful hand written letter reads – “I don’t need the truck for at least a month, straight swap OK. Love ”. So the Mustang’s in the countryside – probably whizzing down tree lined lanes at the hands of a very old friend and I’m driving a 1944 Austin K4 truck with coach-built Horsebox – all the colours of conkers. I’ve crammed an old beat up Chesterfield and a big brass bed in the back and there’s a nice cast iron wood
burning stove built in – and plenty of wood. I’m hoping that once the exhibitions hung I can persuade the Princess to go on a cosy little adventure.

 Whoosh !

 Just before ten I’m back infront of the elegant white spire, climbing up the steps, arms full of bags. Walking back into the Pepper Pot I hear an extraordinary sound. Somewhere high in the tower a long sustained wavering note is being played on a violin, then a quivering dirty two note chord, then a higher tremulous rasping pitch – the sound something like La Monte Youngs drone music, abstruse and beguiling.But as I listen the sound changes to an impossibly fast, subtle repetative riff. I heard a piece by Terry Riley once that was similar – at a party – short repeated phrases that vary slightly over time, but that was layered – contrapuntal –  this is a single line: Like Faure’s ‘In Paradisum’ arpeggio played on a single instrument at great speed.

 I start up the stairs eager to find the source of the ethereal music. The second floor is filled with discarded boxes and bags from expensive stores chucked about – apparently theres been some shopping. The third: Unmade bed, plates, cups and glasses – half full of wine – strewn around. A nearly finished game of snakes and ladders is next to the bed and the smell of perculated coffee, grass, wine, Chanel No 5 and sex hangs in the air. I put the bags with her clothes from London down near the bed and grab an open bottle of white wine and a glass and continue upwards.

 As I ascend the last flight of ladder like steps and enter the Cupola the sound is tremendous, and a very beautiful sight welcomes me: The princess and the violin player from the ‘Hand in Hand’ are sitting cross-legged on the floor in matching white Kaftans with lavish gold embroidery – surrounded by thick creamy church candles –  staring up at a distorted super 8 film: ‘The color of Pomegranites’ being projected onto the inside of the small dome. The fluctuating drone is coming from a violin suspended by silk cords above a wind
up gramophone so that the records edge rubs the strings – the ostinato motifs self generating as the violin bounces around and different strings are ‘bowed’………like a sort of…random Hurdy-Gurdy. Over the top the violinist is playing shivery abstract notes and broken chords on another violin that dance around the eerily shifting phrases, with the Princess providing a vocal backing of sorts – not singing exactly – little vocal figures, like melodic sound effects: Ooh la’s and na na’s – Whoops, woo woo’s and bo bo’s. They are soft and gentle… the mellifluous mating calls of the chanteuse – Obscure Orisons of Glossolalia. Occasionally she stops singing and opens a little music box that plays a delicate tintinnabula ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow.’

W – “ Are you alright?”

M – “ Yes… you‘re safe – they won’t bother you again.”

W – “Thank you. What do you think – we’re making our own soundtrack.”

M – “Lovely.”

 The princess calls me over and I sit down next to her and she rests her head on my shoulder, then I pour some wine and take a much needed drink before filling the girls cups.

 Rummaging in my bag I pull out a long thin case containing a flute – quietly connecting the three pieces together before blowing a sparse simple melody in C, embellished with little trills and mordents, while the fiddle plays fermata. The sound full –  the Dome adding lush reverb – the timbres of the flute and violin perfect together. Pretty soon the violinist starts to play around the melody, flitting lightly at first…like a butterfly,  gradually progressing – as the film continues – to a teleporting acceso dragonfly buzzing from riff to riff –
leaping octaves at incredible speed. Soon the princess joins in with some Ooh la la’s and the three lines weave  like an acoustic braid until the violin finishes with long languid rolled chords, played pizzacato as the film ends. There is more wine and some chit chat with the kitty kats and arrangements are made for the live music at the private view of the exhibition. Around midnight the violinist beds down in the dome and I wander quietly down the steps with the princess.

W – “ Do you want some coffee?”

M – “Yes please.”

W – “So what happened…I was worried about you.”

M – “I went to the restaurant and talked to them…they’ve agreed to stay away from you, and I think they will. I don’t know how attached you are to your ex – or how attached they are to him for that matter – but you should do your best to stay as far away from ‘them’ as possible, they are…unpleasant people. So if you do want to get in touch with him…be careful.  ”

W – “Don’t worry, I will…that won’t be for a while though. How many of them were there?”

M – ”About 10, I only really spoke to the little guy you told me about, and his friend……the rest just watched. Some were missing I think – the other guy you mentioned wasn’t there, neither was your ex.”

W – “He wouldn’t be……he’s very sick – his sister refuses to tell me where he is. I didn’t think you’d get them to agree so easily.”

M – “I wouldn’t say easy exactly, but they agreed….and I believed them. Time will tell. Staying away for a few weeks certainly won’t do any harm.”

W – ”What did you think of them – Did you read up on scientology?”

M – “I’m not entirely sure they were Scientologists, they had a lot of chances to prove a connection…and they didn’t. But I skimmed some books, I was in the library for a day and a half. I had heard something about L Ron Hubbard before – I’d forgotton the name –  he was involved with somebody called Jack Parsons in the 40s – An occultist. They worked on some sex magic experiments together, until Hubbard stole all his money and he did a ‘Pierrot le Fou.’”

W – ”Oh I love that film………..oh no, no – you mean he……”

M – “Blew himself up…..That’s a little unfair – I don’t know if he actually strapped Dynamite to his head but the effect was the same. You know, these are strange stories about very strange people – are you sure you want to hear them? Things could get very……‘Bednobs and Broomsticks’ terribly quickly. Thanks.”

 I’m given a cup of hot brown perculated coffee and I lay down on the bed, with the Princess next to me. happy to be back in Brighton and away from those people.  

W – “ ‘Bednobs and Broomsticks’ doesn‘t sound so bad. Tell me while you drink your coffee, then I’ll help you unload the van.”

M – “Mmm, unfortunately this would be the John Frankenheimer version – Which is….complicated – Witches complicated? OK then, but don’t worry about the paintings I borrowed a truck, nobody’s getting into that in a hurry. So…..Jack Parsons. Have you ever heard of the ’Babalon working’?”

W – “No I dont think so.”

M – “Marvel Whiteside Parsons – ‘Jack’ – was a a rocket scientist – a specialist in Jet propulsion –  but he was also the head of ‘The Ordo Templi Orientis’ in California during the 1940s…..‘O.T.O.‘ was Originally a German fraternal order with Masonic ties and a somewhat…nebulous early history that eventually coalesced around the teachings of Aleister Crowley – Once he had postioned himself as the Outer head and rewritten most of the degree initiation rituals to conform with his own system: The tenets of ‘Thelema’. By the time Parsons met Hubbard in about 1945 he was moving away from regular science and getting deeper and deeper into the
occult. He had been made to feel…unwelcome by the Aeronautics industry because of his beliefs. They’d had a recent influx of Nazi’s hoovered up and sponged down by ‘Operation Paperclip’ – maybe they thought that a mix of practicing Thelemite Occultists and ex Nazi scientists was too strong a brew for the nascent space program and decided to just stick with the less troublesome fascists…..sort of makes me wonder what their definition of the ‘right’ stuff really is. The occultists slipped back in later anyway – in a more…tractable
form. If that all sounds like ancient history, you should remember –  the Secretary General of the United Nations – ‘Kurt Waldheim’ – was a high ranking Nazi Intelligence Officer…..two years ago a message from him was sent into space….on the ‘Golden Record’ that was placed on Voyager – A welcome to extraterrestrial life…some welcome – I mean what the fuck is going on – these aren’t the kind of people you want floating around in space. ”

Anyway, Parsons lover Sara – the sister of his wife – had left him for Hubbard, although actually they were all still in the same house together. So Parsons decided to invoke an ‘Elemental’ Lover: A manifestation of the Thelemic goddess ‘Babalon’ – using a form of magick based on the writings of John Dee and Edward Kelly: Enochian magick. This involved various rituals: Invoking spirits, masturbating whilst reciting incantations from magical tablets, that sort of thing. Hubbard was involved as an amanuensis to record the experiments. As a Scientist Parsons would have wanted to adhere to rigorous scientific method, as Dee had done before him.
He was a fascinating character – a successor to John Dee in many ways or even to Isaac Newton – I mean, to Isaac Newton – Alchemy was just another Science, one that he treated with as much respect  as Physics – and Parsons was a true Scientist, a rocket scientist no less: Variations on the solid fuels he invented got the Americans into space, briefly – and he believed that the processes of magick could be explained using quantum physics. Anyway, Parsons came to believe that his Enochian rituals had worked – that he had
succeeded in conjuring his ‘Elemental’ Lover: A woman called Majorie Cameron.”

W – “Fuck……I know her – I mean I don’t know her but I’ve seen her – she’s in a Kenneth Anger film:‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.’ She’s beautiful…but a bit intense. Sorry, keep going.”

M – ”Well, the experiments carried on – still being recorded by Hubbard: Parsons began a series of ‘Sex Magic’ rituals with Marjorie Cameron who he believed was a incarnation of an aspect of the Thelemic Triple Goddess: Marjorie was his ‘Scarlet Woman’. Parsons aim was to produce a ‘Magickal Child’……what Crowley might have described as a ‘Moonchild’, and the Elizabethans would probably have called a ‘Changeling.’ A  child that Parsons hoped would be the ‘Thelemic Messiah’ – someone who would herald in a
new ‘Dionysian’ age – Although the child wouldn’t actually be born to Marjorie but would arrive somewhere on Earth…..and there are some crazy possibilities: Bowie, Bolan, Iggy Pop…Marianne Faithful, Patti Smith were all born around the right time……and if the ‘Dionysian age’ thing sounds a little crazy – remember that the summer of Love was only 20 years or so later.”

W – “And Kenneth Anger played the little Indian Prince – the ‘Changeling’ in the film of ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’.”

M – “Really, that’s interesting – The deeper you go the more you find things make perfect sense. I’ve always thought that Shakespeare must have known Dee. People say that ‘Prospero’ in ‘The Tempest’ is Shakespeare, but theres a lot of John Dee in there, and a lot of Enochian Magick.”

W – ”This is fascinating.”

M – “Fascinating but problematic – Enochian Magick leaves the Magician vunerable in a lot of ways…..the practioner should always be very careful who they’re with, during the rituals…….John Dee was safe, he was the scribe, and anyway I think he chose wisely. Jack Parsons might not have.”

W – ”Hubbard?”

M – “Never trust a man who wants you to sign a Billion year contract !”

W – “Ha, thats good advice…..but then you always did have ‘commitment’ issues. What happened to Parsons… you said he blew himself up?”

M – “He went into business with Hubbard and Sara, they stole all his money…there were court cases…thingsgot ‘very’ unpleasant….but he didn’t get his money back. Hubbard married Sara and became a bigamist…Parsons married Marjorie and went back into Aeronautics, until he was labelled a communist by ‘The House of Un-American Activities Commitee.’From then on things get pretty murky. The late 40’s are very dark days…what should have been a period of happiness after the war was subverted by the ‘intelligence communities’….was there ever a more perfect misnomer? 1947 saw the formation of: The CIA, the National Security
Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Tavistock Institute (’46), the IMF, the WTO, the House of Un-American Activities Committee,  the State of Israel…….The modern era of UFO sightings began with Roswell and Kenneth Arnolds ‘Set Square’ shaped spaceship sighting – Two years after the Nazi’s arrived in America – imagine that. Crowley died, destitute, pennyless…and of course the cold war began. ‘Operation Mockingbird’ would slowly usher America through the ‘cold war’ with marshalled ‘apophenia’ the same way the CIA had
done to an all too willing and helpful John Nash………..they’d hit them with the ‘Red Menace’ – from above and below – The politics of fear, the threat of the other…..that robot bird‘s still squawking.  ’Operation Paperclip’ had recruited  Nazi scientists from the concentration camps who had specialized in torture and brainwashing – war criminals – and the CIA began a series of Mind Control experiments with ‘Project Chatter’ that would eventually lead to ‘Project MKUltra’ and Dr Ewen Camerons experiments in Psychological torture and ‘behaviour modification’ in 1952………the year Parsons died. No-one really knows if the explosion was suicide or an accident or murder……….Fuck…………..I don’t really want to talk about this right now. Lets talk again in the morning….I’ll tell you what I found out about Hubbard. You look beautiful by the way, I like that Kaftan. I am glad I’m here with you again.”

W -”So am I…….Lets unload the truck anyway, I want to see your Paintings.”

M – “OK, I brought you a big Winter coat, from home. ”

 We put on our warm coats, wander downstairs and out onto the street. Unloading the paintings, quietly chatting about them and how nice the truck is, and what the princess has been doing for the three days I was away: Shopping and learning to play the violin…….and the violinist, apparently. Drinking at night with some musicians in some of Brightons strange old pubs. Forty minutes or so later we are back upstairs where we make love until the early hours.

 When I finally wake up in the morning, dewy eyed and hazy headed, our little nest is flooded with light from those eleven large windows. Outside Brighton sounds boisterous and bustling……I – however – am somewhat less enthusiastic…I could happily stay under the covers all day – I can feel the princess beside me – hot and zoetic – easily enticing enough to encourage me to raise myself from my befuddled stupor, but before I can act on my resolve the covers are slowly pulled back for me, revealing a lovely coaxing face with a wet lip morning kiss, stirring in me some rather hopeful morning glory.

M – “Good morning.”
 
W – “Martians !”

M – “What? Where? Erh…what do you mean……?”

W – “The ‘Red Menace’….”from above and below“ – I couldn’t figure out out what you meant by “above”…Martians right…..All those crazy UFO films from the 50’s…you know like ‘Invasion of the………?”

M – “Oh don’t – Mm, and reds under the bed…..whats the time?”

W – “Later than you think……….just kidding – I don’t know – I don’t have a watch…I’ve made you some coffee….there’s no food here we’ll have to go out.

M – “ I brought enough for lunch, I meant to tell you…..smoked salmon and cream cheese – and some bagels from Brick Lane – there’s a bag hanging up downstairs. The ground floor was cooler. We’ll go out for dinner, anywhere you like…somewhere posh, you can bring your friend if you want to.”

W – “She’s gone already, she got up early…….I think we woke her up. I know just the place for dinner though…you know I went to school here don’t you…you know I went to Roedean.”

M – “Errr….no, I did not know that.”

W – “Theres a place I used to go…with the girls – not posh but quite nice – on the Seafront along the coast a bit….and we can both have shower, I must be a bit getting pongy by now.”

M – “I like the way you smell, but a shower would be nice.”

 She won’t tell me anything else, but I can tell she has some labyrinthine plans for the evening.  While I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to have a shower in a restaurant ( I have only just woken up) I’m treated to an impromptu fashion show. Beginning with the contents of the bags and boxes littering the second floor – an eclectic mix of Vintage: Leather trousers, beautifully patterned Chanel shirts, some 50’s summer dresses – and that nice White Persian Kaftan. Finishing with Yamamoto’s assymetrical ‘samurai’ trousers and
the elegant fitted Neru Jacket in gold and brown Brocade by Scott Crolla.

 Next there is a very quiet very intense lunch, with both of us greedily munching our way through the deli bagels. Furiously pilling mountains of cream cheese on folded stacks of salmon, precariously nestled on the doughy hoops and smiling occassionally when the brimful bagel hinges shut and the cream cheese spouts up through the hole, before starting again.

 We stay in bed most of the day playing old records on the gramophone – talking and fucking and drinking wine. Late in the afternoon the conversation turns back to the previous nights dicussion:

W – “So what were you going to tell me about L Ron Hubbard?”

M – “Oh, I’ve been trying to put Hubbard into some kind of context with the things I was talking about last night….His involvement with Parsons, Marjorie Cameron and the ‘Ordo Templi Orientis’ was exposed in an article by ‘The Sunday Times’ about ten years ago and he seems to have responded by claiming that he was acting as an undercover agent for Navy Intelligence…….which is entirely possible….but – you can probably tell – I don’t exactly see the ‘Intelligence communities’ as the good guys in all this, and what he actually did was really just a straight up con………I don‘t know, all these things are so complicated, and the actual facts are really hard to verify………I guess I was thinking that a lot of the events that happened just after the war seem interrelated somehow………even Parsons meeting Hubbard……..errr….”

W – “Tell me about the other man you mentioned…..the Doctor.”

M – “Doctor? Oh: Ewen Cameron was a psychiatrist employed by the CIA to conduct ‘behavior modification’ experiments on American civilians in the 1950’s as part of their ‘Project MKUltra’ mind control program. People with fairly mild complaints like anxiety and depression were referred to him and sent to the ‘Allen Memorial Institute.’ He used a technique called ‘Driving’: He would put people into a drug induced coma for weeks or even months and play them continuous tape loops of simple commands. He would also
give them large doses of LSD – and use electroshock therapy at massively high voltages without their consent. His ‘Patients’ ultimately would forget: Who they were, how to speak, whether they had any relatives…they‘d become incontinent……they were – empty husks – some never came out of their coma’s. You have to understand – he wasn’t some maverick operating outside the law – whilst he was conducting these experiments he was the Chairman of the World Psychiatric Association and President of the American and
Canadian Psychiatric Associations………….In theory these…empty people would be rehabilitated to become ‘normal’ citizens but the psychologists never learned how to speed up the relearning process so at best they just ended up with infants in adult bodies…sometimes not even that. Obviously people concluded that his experiments had failed……………but maybe they just didn’t understand what he was trying to achieve.

W – ”Which was?”

M – “Well, his ‘stated’ aim was to cure schizophrenia by erasing existing harmful memories then reprogramming the ‘psyche’……and thats where there are some fascinating parallels with Scientology, and even to groups like EST….The purpose of ‘auditing’ in Scientology is to erase ‘engrams’ – ‘destructive memories’ – stored in the ‘reactive’ or unconcscious mind – that are the root causes of physical illness. Scientology defines the mind as being in two seperate parts the ‘Analytical’ and the ‘Reactive’ mind. The
ultimate purpose is to eliminate the ‘reactive’ mind completely and become ‘Clear’ , and therefore healthy. The techniques used by EST: ‘Erhard Seminars Training’  might be different but the similarities are obvious, especially to what Cameron was doing – They were dismantling the socially constructed personality: And our personalities are surely products of our own histories, our experiences, our ‘memories’ – In other words: Regressing people back to an infantile state and beginning again. The processes vary slightly but the purpose seems to me to be the same: Put simply: Wipe the tape – Re-record – But doesn’t that sound like a perfect definition of brainwashing? And surely people don‘t work like that. That type of thinking is……….I don’t really even know what that type of thinking is…….mechanical? Cybernetic? I suppose I feel like Cameron might not  have been very concerned about the re-education part of the process.

W – “But maybe there was a reason why psychologists were so desperate to find ways to erase painful memories – How many men must have come back broken from the war…..if their memories of Death and Mutilation could just be ‘wiped’, those men probably wouldn’t complain.”

M -”You’re right of course, and if I’m honest I hadn’t thought of that. But surely that raises the question: Does the end justify the means? I feel for for those men…how does somebody go from from relentless killing to playing with his children in the park. But I’m looking for the causes, not the the effects: Why are Wars fought? For the benefit of the Money Men and the banks – Wars cost money, they require loans….with interest. Weapons are the ultimate disposable commodity – Single use and very expensive. The bitter seeds of the First World War were sown by another Fraternal Order with connections to the Masons – The Serbian ‘Black Hand.’ The story of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand reads like a grotesque tragic comedy – John Webster could hardly have done better: His security team left standing at a station while their charge was driven away without them. By the time he was shot the Archduke had already had a bomb bounce off his car and been forced to read a speech saturated in the blood of the victims of that bomb. Despite the attempted
assassination he remained completely unprotected in an open top car until his Chauffeur took a ‘wrong turn’ and returned him to virtually the same place as the earlier explosion, before stopping the car directly infront of another assassin: Gavrilo Princip, who also shot is wife Sophie. The Chauffeur – obviously –  was unharmed. That doesn’t sound like a series of mishaps to me, that sounds like a conspiracy…..and I think I know who I would blame….the people who had the most to gain from a war. During the Second World War the US Special Envoy to Europe was a man called Averell Harriman – he arranged all of the United States loans to the European al lies and Russia through the Lend-Lease program…..Britain will finish paying those loans back in about 2005. But Averells American bank: ‘Brown Brothers Harriman’ was ‘the’ Bank of choice for the early financiers of the Nazi Party and the German War machine. The banks assets were even siezed after the Americans ‘joined’ the war, under the ‘Trading with the Enemy Act’ but of course, those assets were later returned. And then of course there’s ‘The Bank of England’. When the Nazi’s marched into Czechoslovakia in 1939 the first thing they did was descend on the National bank and demand the Gold reserves: £5.6 Million. The bank explained that the reserves weren’t actually in Czechoslovakia but were held at the Bank of England.The Czech bank, under extreme duress, contacted the ‘Bank for International Settlements’ and the ‘BIS’ requested a transfer of the Czech funds from The Bank of England to Germany’s Reichsbank: The govenor of the ‘BOE’ Montagu Norman released the funds to the Nazi‘s the same day, despite official protests from France. Had he refused – and he could have – the Germans would almost certainly have been stopped in their tracks. The Nazi’s used those funds to re-arm themselves, when War was declared six months later, they were ready. So what of the men the – Plutocrats – that orchestrate these events, that make these decisions? I doubt that these ‘people’ these – Oligarchs – would think of themselves as being evil. I would imagine they consider themselves……‘Nietzschean’ somehow: Beyond good and evil – Superior to the uncomprehending ‘Sheepish’ masses. They‘d probably sum up their attitudes by saying something like……”This isn’t personal – this is just – business”………and the carnage they create as……….’Collateral damage’. They must be stopped – they aren’t the Shepherds they’re the Wolves – and as long as they’re making the decisions there’ll always be broken men coming back from wars, and the rest of us won’t be happy. This is a beautiful World…..people have a right to some happiness.”

W – “What about your friend Parsons? Wasn’t the motto of O.T.O.: ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’…..Isn’t that really just the same thing as: ‘This isn’t personal………’ or even just: ‘Fuck you, I’ll do as I like. Isn’t that just more – Ruthless Amoral Paternalism by the men in the white coats.”

M – ”In practice? Probably. In theory? In theory I think the real meaning of the Motto is that no ‘Free Man or Woman’ would submit to shackles….Mental or Phsysical. The phrase comes for Rabelais: ‘Gargantua and Pantegruel’ and the mythical ‘Abbey of Theleme’: The aspirations of the Abbey seem rather sanguine: The theory is that a free man, unfettered by strictures would be intrinsically noble and virtuous – because he would be in touch with his ‘True Will’ – which is a spark of the ‘Divine’…….sort of a Utopian – ‘Anarchy in the UK’ – with everybody innocently frolicking about. I must say, I feel a lot of empathy with that desire. The Abbeys position, I think, is that the taboo’s and restrictions heaped on men account for their lower natures….that forbidden fruit is irresistable, and always tastes the sweetest.  But you’re right…most men – given enough rope – Hang themselves. Crowley – I’m sure – was a Gentleman and a Scholar – and I think he probably knew what he was doing – but there’s always the suspicion that he went too far. I think Jack Parsons did. But the more I read about Scientology the more I started to think that Hubbards encounter with Jack Parsons had been pivotal.
Hubbard claimed to have learned the secrets of Scientology in a ‘near death’ experience on the operating table after he was badly injured during his service as a Naval Officer during WWII…..he was even described by somebody as a ‘broken man’. He says he died and went through an ornate doorway where he absorbed arcane cosmic knowledge – before coming back. Thats very similar to the Enochian Magickal technique of astrally travelling through the Aethyrs and returning with occult knowledge, like the secrets that John Dee claimed could be found in ‘The Book of Enoch’. And there are other things I think he learned whilst watching
Jack Parsons……….

W – “This is very interesting, but in many ways what you’re describing is just the archetypal journey of the wounded ‘Magician’ or ‘Shaman’ – pre-dating anything John Dee might have done, Have you ever thought about the relationship between Magick, Religion and Science?”

M – “Not much…….occassionally I guess, but not in any depth.”

W – “I have – a lot – I was thinking about the Original Man in the White coat – The Shaman. The initiation of the Shaman is frequently the result of a personal crisis or a prolonged period of illness: Of necessity – The Shaman must comprehend the causes of illness so that he can learn how to cure himself and in so doing become a healer. Sometimes the initiation is proceeded by a ‘near death’ experience: The Shaman enters the spiritual realms and brings back hidden Knowledge vital to the wellbeing of society or the ‘tribe’. Because the duty of the Shaman is to heal ! To heal the people in his care and to heal…Society. The Shaman believes that
the world is full of Spirits: The Spirits of Ancestors, of Gods, Demons and Animals…the Spirits of Nature – Some are Benevolent others are Malevolent and these Spirits have great infuence in peoples lives.  They can bring good fortune and joy, or illness and death. In order to understand their motivations and plans the Shaman must communicate with them by Divination: In Dreams, by Scrying, by interpreting Signs and Omens or through communion with Spirit Guides. Sometimes the Shaman travels to the realm of the Spirits on Vision Quests to aquire occult knowledge through Gnosis. To the Shaman diseases are caused by the possession of the victim by malevolent spirits, when he has identified the evil spirit he can cast out the disease and restore…balance – With herbs and Incantations and songs that the he has learned largely through personal experience from the spirits themselves, often at great personal risk. The Shaman is seen as a messenger between the realms of the Spirits and the people. Now compare Religion: The Priest believes in a God and a Devil…in  Angels and Demons: He believes that sometimes people are possessed by these demons and that these malevolent spirits can cause their victims to become ill and can act through them to subvert society. The Catholic church has six categories of possession – all quite distinct from mental illness – all due to varying degrees of actual possession by demons. The Priest believes that in order to ‘save’ these ‘victims’ the demons must be ‘exorcised’ – Bound by an Oath. Only the Priest can do this because his special knowledge allows him to identify the demon….and because his ‘Holy’ words – his Oaths – are imbued
with special power due to his training and his ‘official’ role as mediator between God and Mankind. Nowcompare Psychiatry: The Psychiatrist believes that the World is full of psychoses, and that sometimes people are possessed of these psychoses and driven insane – Often a Psychosis even consists of the person believing they are possessed by demons: Over a quarter of Schizophrenia cases believe their ‘alter’ is a Demon – But the Psychiatrist is able to Diagnose these psychoses – and once diagnosed believes that they can be treated and even – very rarely – cured. The Psychiatrist is able to do this because of their special training and because of their role as arbitrator between the realms of Science and men. These things have always happened in more or less the same way…..only the language changes: Five thousand years ago the Sumerians believed that diseases were caused by Demonic (Gidim) possession…their priests the ‘Ashipu’ conducted healing exorcisms. In Judaism the malevolent spirits are called ‘Dybbuks‘, in Rajastan the possessed are called Ghorala. Are any of these examples actually any different or just the language: Malevolent spirit, Demon, Psychosis, Engram –  hasn’t Hubbard just changed the terminology and thrown in some technology for a new generation, isn’t he just trying to heal his ‘Tribe’.”     

M – “Didn’t you just ask me to go and intervene with some people that you………..(laughs)…I’m only joking…….I know what you’re saying and you should be right…but that would make perfect sense to me, so I wouldn’t be concerned. I can’t say what happens during auditing sessions, I don’t know enough, but what Ewen Cameron was doing – what I think EST was doing – what I’m talking about is…more like……people being ‘exorcised’ from themselves…….”

W – “……I know what you mean, and maybe there ‘is‘ a reason……..but I don’t know what that reason is…… Eventually, I suppose what you have to ask yourself is – Who do you trust?”

M – “I trust me – I would never hurt you – and I trust you. I trust in the love that exists between a man and a woman.”

W -”And I trust you, thats why I asked you to help me. Come on though, thinking about these things for too long isn’t good – lets go and get some dinner – and enjoy ourselves. I want to drive past my old school on the way……I want to see the old ‘Alma Mater’…….”

 We put some clothes on…..“Not posh” must be an accurate discription – the princess doesn’t make much of an effort considering her recent shopping spree’s – Old jeans and a baggy jumper – of course she still looks lovely, but I expected more….elegance. On the way to the restaurant we drive past Roedean and she seems happy. I get to hear some stories about life at an all girls boarding school…A lot more fun than at an all boys boarding school, I expect.

 Dinner is fantastic: As promised the restaurant is nice – warm, welcoming – and overlooking the strange chalky rock-pool beach of Saltdean. We both have Lobster, and there is a sort of giddy excitement in the princess, something that I haven’t seen in her since her odd, nervous return. She orders a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and insists on paying, as a thank you for “her rescue.”

 After dinner there are a few hours before the evenings adventures can begin, (there are still too many people around, I’m told). So we walk down some steps towards the beach and wander along the ‘Undercliff Walk’: A gargantuan 1930’s Brutalist Fortress designed to stop the sea gnawing the milky  – flint splattered – chalk cliffs. This Battlement against the pounding of the waves is Magnificent – Massive – Monumental – with no concessions to refinement whatsoever and obviously built at a time when public projects were adequately funded – In places the walkways are as wide as a six lane Motorway. There is no ornamentation , just massive slabs of dove grey concrete shielded from the waters by a thick sea wall, and every few hundred feet a mysterious stainless steel door, barring the entrance to a tunnel that dissappears into the high white cliff-face. While we walk we finish off the Champagne, drinking straight from the bottle like a couple of high class Hobo’s. The conversation is light, we talk about films and fashion – the designers she likes and what the new decade is likely to bring. I listen intently…..I’ve seen her dressing up box. Then the conversation turns to what we should do about Halloween costumes. She tells me she has a collection of photographs of American kids in their goofy homemade costumes from the 1950’s – brought back from some creepy shop in New York – and how we should make our own, even if they look a bit crappy. I say she doesn’t have to worry – anything looks good on a beautiful woman – which is true. I try and convince her that she should go as the Heroine from a comic book I’ve been working on called: ‘Fugue’ – About an English socialite who was raised in Japan and
taught the secrets of Martial arts by a Zen gardener who still does his best to look after her now that She’s back in England – because – She is completely unaware of her alter Ego: An Samurai Sword weilding – avenging vigilante Superhero named – ‘Fugue’. I don‘t tell her that she already bears a uncanny resemblance to the character in my comic ……I’ll wait a while before explaining that – I really was quite distraught when she vanished before…..artists have odd ways of coping with things. After a few hours of wandering the evening has become fairly mild, not exactly an Indian summer but quite pleasant. Soon, we are back below the restaurant, but instead of climbing the stairs we walk through the underpass to the low wooden fence that surrounds our destination.

 Saltdean Lido is beautiful – A true classic…but unguarded at night and insanely easy to break into (they probably don’t think anyone would be crazy enough to go night swimming at the end of October). but I’m assured by the princess that she’s been skinny dipping in Hampstead ponds in the snow and that once in, the water will be “really quite nice”.  I do have some experience of night swimming. My first real job actually was as a ‘Lifeguard’: At Tooting Bec Lido. At night I’d climb back in with friends to swim and splash about in
the moonlight. Once we climbed in at the Weekend and there must have been a hundred people in there: Swimming, having Barbecues, playing music – at One O’clock in the morning – a rather lovely vision of how things could be……..but that was a balmy night at the height of summer. My only real contribution to what I’m beginning to think is a bit of half-baked scheme to basically just “have a shower” was to insist on bringing the Horsebox instead of walking – I had a feeling the stove might prove useful. The princess does seem excited though, and I’m starting to feel something that I’d almost fotgotton – the thrill of transgression

 Fortune favours the bold, so I give the princess a leg up and she clambers upwards, hands on a post and jumps over the fence. I follow as best I can and together we scramble over some grass, around the pool and into the  shelter of the 1930’s Deco building, unseen – we hope – by anybody on the clifftop road. Now I know why none of those elegant new clothes got an airing, I’ve scuffed my new  fancy pants on the fence. Fuck, she was right though…..I haven’t felt like this in years, pure excitement. We’ve allowed ourselves about half an hour to play, that way if party poopers see us from the cliff road, they’ll only have about fifteen minutes to get to a phone,(guessing that the cops would take another fifteen). We quickly strip and – holding hands – run at the freezing water, jumping straight in. The water is so cold that I think my lungs will explode as I gasp for breath – Head numb – my body trying to cope with the shock. There is a brief embrace and the princess is off seriously swimming the pool. I’m content to ease along with a lazy backstroke, allowing
me to look around as I glide. After about ten minutes I notice some people on the road above, standing, staring down at us and pointing, but as I look they begin to wave….no problems there so I wave back and calm down…the water actually does feel nice. After about twenty minutes I get out and a few minutes later the princess joins me…..we have our shivery showers, the cold water feeling slightly warm compared to the pool. We quickly dress and tip-toe back to the fence and – swiftly over – slip into the nearby Horsebox, firing up the pre-prepared stove. The beautiful woman is swaddled in blankets and I drive us back into Brighton, down Dukes Mound and along Madeira drive. Finally parking for the night near the Victorian Amusement Arcade, just infront of the Beach, before returning cold to the back…anxious for some heat.

M – “throw me a bLanket….I’m freezing.”

W – “Come under these with me, I’ll warm you up……….”

 Nestled on the couch, swathed in blankets the heat gradually returns to me as the wood-burning stove warms our little dark wood chamber. Half an hour later the blankets slip to our knees, and our cave like oaken den is nice and toasty. The Horse box is just fine, like a luxurious Elizabethan drawing room, all wood paneled splendor. After a few more minutes the princess is up – rummaging naked – Lit only by the flickering light of the stove, through the pile of old 78’s that came with the freshly installed brass horned gramophone. After a while she lazily cranks the handle and puts on Louis Armstrongs recording of ‘Memories of you.’

M – “Nice….this is perfect ! Thank you for dinner…and the swim. How are you feeling?”

W – “Happy…and Melancholy. Happy I’m here with you….but that story about Jack Parsons has made me glum, I’m sad that he died like that.”

M – “I know, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you all of that. The problem is, once I start reading about something I get sort of obsessed – a legacy of LSD – the relentless search for answers. He was an enigma though…He used to perform these crazily intense rituals to Pan then conduct his rocket experiments…….I think there’s something very appealing about a scientist who still believes in Magic.”

W – “ Mmm, I do too…..actually, I know a tale about Pan….Would you like to hear a bedtime story?”

M – “Yes, very much….something with a happy ending.”  

W – “OK then…..

 I squeeze a bit more wood into the stove and then we nestle back onto the Chesterfield, pulling the horse-
blankets up over ourselves, sliding around trying to get comfortable.

W – “Daphnis and Chloe were love struck foundlings on the island of Lesbos……One day a goat herder named Lamon found a young boy being nursed by one of his she goats. Next to him on the ground lay: A purple cloak, a dagger with an Ivory handle and a little golden brooch. Lamon realised the boy was of Noble birth and took him home to his wife. They named him Daphnis and raised him as their own child. Some years later a Shepherd named Dryas discovered a little baby girl in a grotto – guarded by nymphs – being suckled by a ewe. Near the child on the ground were: A golden threaded girdle, gilded sandles and golden anklets. Knowing
that she was of Noble blood the shepherd took the child home to his wife and they named her Chloe. Years later on a fateful night, the four adoptive parents shared a prophetic dream….Daphnis and Chloe had been brought before Cupid who had ordained that they become a goatherd and a Shepherdess, and that infact is  what happened. As the two children grew and played together they fell in love. Daphnis would play music for Chloe on his flute and she would sing to him. One day, after an accident, a cow handler named Dorcon pulled Chloe from a ditch, and  fell in love with her because of her great beauty. He lavished gifts upon her Father
and begged for her hand, but Dryas, knowing of his daughters noble birth, refused him. The desperate Dorcon dressed in a wolf skin to surprise Chloe and steal a kiss – but Daphnis, fearing that Chloe was being attacked,  sent his dogs to kill the wolf. Nearly dead, Dorcon was then set upon by Tyrian Pirates intent on kidnapping Chloe. The pirates were defeated and Chloe escaped but Dorcon was killed. Later more Pirates came to Lesbos for a Wine festival and tied their boats to the beach.  But Daphnis’ goats ate the mooring vines and the boats were lost. In anger, the men kidnapped Chloe and sailed away with her. Daphnis in great distress prayed to the Nymphs for her safe return and the Nymphs adjured the great God Pan to rescue her. Pan found Chloe in a far away bay, deep in conversation with the Pirates daughter, Ethel. Pan invoked his sacred Dolphins to crush the Pirates ships and in the ensuing chaos – Chloe was rescued. Returning to Lesbos Chloe was reunited with Daphnis and a great feast was held in honour of the Horned God and the Nymphs. But although still in love, Daphnis and Chloe were too young to fully understand the feelings they had for each other and so they sought the advise of the wise old Shepherd Philetas. He explained to them that they were ‘love-sick’ and, after careful consideration, advised them that ‘the only cure is Kissing’. But of course the more they kissed the more they fell in love. Eventually Daphnis was taught the ways of love and the foundlings were reunited with their noble parents, and allowed to marry. And – in the end – Daphnis and Chloe lived happily ever after.”

M – “Thanks mum, I liked that story……is there a moral?”

W – “Ooh, you want a moral…let me think……I’ll give you a moral……….”

 The princess gets up and pussyfoots over to the gramophone, and – after some more rummaging through the shellac – winds the crank and puts on Nat King Cole’s: Capitol 78 of: ‘Nature Boy.’

W -” Time for bed……………”

 She say’s.

END OF BOOK ONE.

© Kevin Barry Partridge 2014

 

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING – CHAPTER 11: THE CLASH.

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING

CHAPTER 11

THE CLASH

By Kevin Barry Partridge

METHODOLOGY OF CONTROL – ( Non Violent. )

THE GROUP

(”all tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”)  
Thomas Jefferson.

Flattery – You are a special person, superior to other people in some way.
Acceptance – We are special people too, join us.
Will to power – We have secret knowledge that could make you powerful and wealthy.
Betrayal – People that are not special can be taken advantage of. We can teach you to ‘Manipulate’ them.
Inculcation – We are not leading you through the maze…..We are planting hedges. (or more accurately – building walls).
Conform – Submit to prescribed ideology and promote ‘Groupthink.’
Fear – If you reveal the secrets of the group you will be hurt.
Bribery – Membership carries certain privileges, but you must turn a blind eye to members iniquities.( We aren’t like other people and shouldn’t be bound by the same rules. )
Promotion – Proven silence ( Trustworthyness )……………required to climb the ‘T-eetering’ human pyramid.
Implication – Participate in aforementioned iniquities ( INITIATION ). Known by some as ‘the point of no return.’
Blackmail / Protection – You have done wrong, stay silent or you will be exposed.
Greed – You are screwed so you might as well take advantage of the situation.
Truth – Our version of events is a fiction designed to further the aims of the group – Your happiness, needs and desires are irrelevant – You work only to further the aims of the group ( which you do not understand ).
You are no longer free.
Reality – You are a cog. The group acts as a bigger cog. The system is a machine. The machine is control.

( I’m not talking about a specific group here, The Freemasons, the CIA, The Mafia, The  Scientologists,  probably all use various combinations of these techniques)

INTRUSIVE TECHNIQUES ( Limited violence )

( “I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of Tyranny over the mind of Man.”)
Thomas Jefferson.

Dominate – Subjugate subject through mental tyranny: Overwhelm. Hypnotism and drugs are common aids, as are allusions to large unseen networks.
Break – Dismantle subject. Techniques employed include: Fear, drugs, regression, trauma, sexual and verbal abuse, sleep deprivation, threat of violence, compulsion triggers – Combination of these things.
Rebuild – Reconstruct subject to conform to prescribed Ideology. Inculcate.

( Many of these techniques are used in teenage male rites of passage ( Boys to Men). As employed by: Street gangs, the army,……..I haven’t included overtly violent techniques – obviously abuse is violent and is included – sadly – for completeness – as those strategies are represented so often in the mainstream media, (and are massively counterproductive.) As an example: American Foreign policy.)

BY THE GROUP

(”No one can serve two masters.”

Jesus Christ.)

Infiltrate – Place members of the group in administrative positions that control access to jobs and services.
Influence – Members in these positions should show preference to other members and only seek to promote them to top jobs.
Control – Members are only working to further the aims of the group, ( which they do not understand ), and will follow the instructions of their superiors in the hierarchy even if they conflict with their ‘official’ duties.

( I suppose obvious signs would be: If a large number of the Cabinet went to the same school, or if a disproportionate amount of Police Officers were Freemasons – the Secret Police?…. ’Operation Snow White‘ anyone? Operation Paperclip probably explains mor.)

DEBT

(“You are a den of vipers. I intend to wipe you out,…If people only understood the rank injustice of the money and banking system, there would be a revolution by morning.”
Andrew Jackson.)

(“I care not what puppet is placed upon  the Throne of England to rule the empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britains Money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.”)
Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild

(“I place economy among the first and most important virtues,and public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve ourindependence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”)
Thomas Jefferson.

Encourage debt – (Mr Micawber was a dickwad) – Offer easy money, with easy repayments.
Apply pressure – Withdraw access to funds needed for repayments (Constringe supply of money). Change
the terms of the repayments, take advantage of fabricated financial crises to recall loans prematurely.
Threaten – Seize assets or exert leverage.

(Interest payments on Britains National Debt stand at £42 Billion a year in 2014)

THE INDIVIDUAL ( I am a free man! )

All attempts to control the individual are futile and should be abandoned forthwith…….The Management.

( I was at a rather tender age when ‘The Prisoner’ was on TV.)

Above is a list written on various grassy verges between Brighton and London, (The Quotes were added later by me, the statistic much later) – the last one is just some light relief.  I need to comprehend the motivations and methods of the Princesses antagonists….as if thats difficult – Some men seek money and power and fear is their favorite weapon, meny men follow and help them, a few still believe in honour – Anyway,  in my experience a few preparartions are rarely a waste of time.

The British Library has furnished the information I need. I’ve skimmed some books about Scientology – some sympathetic, others scathing. I’m not making any judgements………I’ve got enough of my own ‘SpaceOpera’s happening…………I don’t want to criticise other peoples. Anyway I have a fairly clear Idea how I’m going to approach things. I’m really not looking forward to this – not because of the tedious inculcated groupthink or the inevitable clash – I’ve had some experience withstanding those things – that’s why she came
to me. I’m hesitant because of the way I’m going to have to start thinking. I’m an artist…..I think a certain way, the World is kind of….soft focus, no hard edges, that isn’t what I do. I admire the punk ethic – I’ve been doing it myself for years – but I’m more ‘Create’ than ‘Destroy’. Sometimes I write songs – Music is a good teacher of how to think, a creative structural approach…like art and science together…. all that Geometry – all that contrapuntal harmony…..interlacing like a ballet, like a stream flowing over pebbles. But conflict is a fight, and horribly undignified, a violent negative way of thinking that I want to spend as little time doing as possible.
People that enjoy arguing enjoy inflicting pain, thats the truth. I’m hoping I can get this done quickly, so I can get back to thinking about the exhibition. I’ll start politely and finish strong if I must – I’ll almost certainly have to – I have a pretty good idea of what I’m up against.

When I finished school a few years ago I worked in a few bars, so did some friends, and I’ve heard stories like the princesses more than once. Restaurants, bars – successful or not are always looking for money: To expand, to open new branches, to get through the month – and banks don’t like taking risks. At some point a charming new customer arrives makes friends with the staff and eventually gets to know the owners. The subject of expansion or whatever comes up and the charmer happens to know somebody with some money looking to make a modest return on loans, but only to people he knows…….very informal, flexible terms, no need to pay the money back straight away. The charmer might just be able to put in a good word, and – Loan secured, money spent said charmer comes back…..there’s a problem – the wealthy friend needs the money back straight away, But by then the moneys gone so people with shotguns turn up, and say they’ll take the restaurant instead, and of course by the time the gunmen move in, most of the useful improvements have already been made, suggested by the charmer and paid for by the loan.. The scam isn’t new or limited to restaurants………….bankers do the same, I think the ‘International Monetary Fund’ likes to do something similar with countries – sometimes the law is a shotgun – (you will be disappointed if you expect justice from the justice system, that doesn’t seem to be the point). In most cases the success or failure of the con hinges on the respectability of the frontman. The odd thing about these stories is that there’s often a hint of the occult being involved in some way……..of scheming weaving spiders and hapless naive flies caught in a web of deceipt.

I’m not sure that’s the case here – the princess doesn’t seem to have a very clear picture of the actual mechanism employed in what I presume was some sort of takeover  – but from what I have been told I wouldn’t be surprised. If anything the esoteric element seems much more pronounced here, and the new customers
sound far from charming…..but they do sound intriguing……could somebody really get themselves so inextricably caught in anothers web simply out of………curiosity? Why couldn’t he see through them, these people are always so fucking obvious. That isn’t really my concern – I’m not here to extricate my girlfriends ex from his predicament – But I do want to get a clear picture of the etiology of this mystery, so I know what to expect – and whether the task I’m being asked to perform is…..’just’ – I don’t know how far I’m going to have to go.

I have no intention of being her tin soldier – someone that gets wound up and pointed at people she’s taken a dislike to……..a woman has done that to me before – aimed me at a friend – Once is enough for that kind of easily manipulated, if well intentioned idiocy. But the princess seemed genuinely frightened and……….if I’m honest with myself…..I sort of love her.

Driving over the river again, my feelings could not be more different than before, Last time I was looking forward to a reunion, tonight I’m not looking forward to what will doubtless be trouble. I park up and walk the short distance to the address I’ve been given. The frontage is shabby, but there are some posh tables and chairs outside and a new effulgent sign above the large shopfront window…..somebody is planning to go upmarket. The door creaks open and I step through.

I’m in a sort of shebeen – a dive in North London – a scruffy little juke joint hiding in plain sight just off a main road. The decor is retro tatty, the furniture – as distressed as the former owner probably is by now. The customers – the few there are – are an eccentric bunch of misfits hanging round the bar  trying in vain to scrounge free drinks. The bar staffs attitude to them – confirmation that the new management are hell bent on upgrading the clientele. These customers might be useful though, I want to get their attention so I order
a glass of house white, another of red and a spare glass, Then mix them together, mumbling vagueries about Crowleyian Sex Magic and Alchemy. Two glasses of wine – £1.60 about right, I guess. As I get some money out I find I have some new friends anxious to make my aquaintance, I can afford a few drinks for some talkative companions with the right type of local knowledge………

An hour later (Having withdrawn to a safe distance from the bar) I’m satisfied, the Princess’ story is confirmed. The dive was opened a few years ago by a nice guy with some money and no business acumen. Not very busy but sort of ticking along with a local arty crowd. Gradually the place improved: Brand new  secondhand furniture, some paintings on the walls, even some antiques scattered about. The nice guy was doing well – he even had a rather attractive girlfriend – then about six months ago some new people started
coming in……. wealthy men who managed to inveigle themselves with the nice guy over copious late night drinks. Gradually the nice guys behaviour began to change from friendly to sullen to downright strange, then he just sort of vanished. Nobody seems to know if he‘s still involved or not, most of the staff are new…..and there’s a manager now. As for the wealthy new customers I’m not able to get much out of them, any attempt to procure any details is met with furtive looks and nervous silence. No worries I’ve got a good description from the Princess.

Pleading poverty gets me some privacy, so I wander about looking for somewhere to bide some time while I put some distance between myself and the soon to be ‘former’ customers. I tromp into a large back room that looks like an old stripped down factory – furnished with rickety mismatched french cafe furniture and a few elegantly bohemian customers. The clientele back here are noticably more affluent than at the bar. Bottles of wine instead of glasses and even some food, ordered from the beginnings of what might eventually be a well equipped kitchen. I can see the attraction of the place, the building has a certain ramshackle charm.

I’m going to stay back here for a while, let things brew up front, either something happens soon, or I’ll have to come back tomorrrow, which I don’t want to do. I’ll wait until my friends have dispersed a bit – for their sake as much as mine, after tonight they might not want to be associated with me – They probably want to carry on drinking in the dive – I don’t, London has plenty of beautiful bars.

I’m thinking about a particular detail of the story, as told by the princess and the good folk up front – Towards the end, before he disappeared the ex started to become obsessed with a set of number puzzles that he had scribbled on little bits of paper……..No-one got a good look at them, but they became increasingly important to him, and by the end were a continual compulsion. They might have been anything I suppose: Numeric riddles, Cabbalistic puzzles, references to passages in the Bible, no way of knowing probably, not without talking to him anyway, but I know they’re significant. In my experience the ‘Trigger’ that these ‘people’ use to push folk over the edge varies, but there are only so many of them and I’d like to narrow the suspects down.

When I eventually return to the front room I feel a little like the Naval officer in ‘The Lord of the Flies’ standing on the shore of a distant land, horrified by the pubescent societies descent into brutality. Two men are leaning over another taunting him, while he cries and whimpers in a corner, trapped between them. These two tyrants are of course the men I‘m here to talk to…..the guy on the floor I don’t know, but he definately isn’t the ex. There is no physical violence, not even the threat of any, as far as I can see. The men are simply
talking, shouting, screaming at their cowering victim – denouncing him – like a pair of deranged Mrs Danvers urging him to self harm and suicide. Sitting around them are various people, a very few look uncomfortable…the rest are laughing and chatting amongst themselves, pointing at the hapless wretch.

The two men are beginning to laugh, sensing that the end is near. The shorter of the two is doing most of the racking, the other repeating / reinforcing his words occasionally. Their vilification is accusational, their disdain – full of contemptuous reproach, the victim is his own worst enemy, they say, he only has his self to blame. Humiliation is piled on shame and guilt as their prey begins to shrink. I know what they are doing: They aren’t just trying to break him – they want to destroy him. They have plans….not for him, only for the
part they have a use for.

I’ve noticed the same dynamic before – a small bully backed up by a larger enforcer, These two have ratcheted up the level of intimidation by claiming an affiliation with a larger sinister sounding group. I don’t know if they are scientologists or not, they might just be a couple of phantom remoras, attaching themselves to a larger body for protection and effect. What I do know is that I’ve seen them happily trying to destroy somebody in a systematic even professional way, while others sit around laughing and watching. These people are the reason why so many of the communes failed, the strong tyrannise the weak and the rules of the group forbid intervention. In the communes I always assumed the tyrants were mostly just bullies blindly hitting out, but these guys look like they’ve been trained to break somebody down psychologically. I don’t know much about Scientology, but what I’ve read has confirmed that there is a ‘Fair Game’ policy: ie – Anyone that is considered a threat to the organization is fair game to attack in any way that will end the threat, up toand including murder – ‘auditing process R2-45’ involves shooting somebody with intent to kill using a Colt pistol. I wonder how easily the policy slips into – anyone who isn’t a scientologist is fair game to take advantage of, and how and by whom those decisions are made and overseen.

‘Fair Game’ – In context the term seems like deliberately obtuse paronomasia, (or a rare and wildly inappropriate example of irony from L Ron Hubbard). I‘ve known a few groups, none of them played fair with non-members (thats why ‘the group’s always lose), and the Scientologists are quite clear about their willingness to lie and cheat – the rules of ‘Fair Game’ virtually demand that they do. What I’d like to know is whether these guys actions have been sanctioned, if they’ve been trained in dismantling techniques for a specific purpose by the group and decided they might as well use their destructive skills to go into business for themselves or if they’re claiming alliances they don’t have. To find out I’m going to have to talk to them………and if I’ve got to get involved anyway, to protect the Princess, now’s as good a time as any……..

M – Leave him alone, he’s had enough.

MALe 2 – This Doesn’t concern you, get rid of him.”

MALe 3 – Fuck off, you don’t want to get involved in this.”

I walk over and step between the two men and their gudgeon so that my body creates a barrier, then I help him to his feet.

M – “Just walk away and don’t come back for a while, if they say anything to you – don’t answer. These people aren’t your friends. Find another place to drink.”

I get a sort of sobbed “thank you” as I circle round, keeping my body between him and his tormentors as their stumbling mumbling verbal punchbag staggers to the door. When I turn back the two men are looming at me, fury in their faces.

MALe 2 – ” Well you’re a real boy scout aren’t you…….you’re going to regret that, that was weeks of work. Now we’re going to have to begin again………..Who the fuck do you think you are….the Lone Ranger?”

M – “ Why, are you scared of silver bullets?”

MALe 2 – “You’re a day late, the full Moon was last night.”

M – “Oh, don’t get me started on the Moon, I’m a wealth of information.”

MALe 2 -“Are you really? Then do tell me something I don’t know.”

M – “ OK let me see…….the dark areas of the Moon are called the ‘Maria,’ from the latin word for sea.” You know….like the Nun!

MALe 2 -“Really, that’s very interesting, but I knew that.”

M – “Did you? Then you’ll also know what the light areas are called…….”

MALe 2 – “………..Yes, well………………..very good.”

M – “ Thank you. I’ve got a good teacher………..in matters concerning the Moon anyway. In most fields I like to think I’m…self taught.”

MALe 2 – “Really? An autodidact………how very funny…..and you’ve already managed to get yourself embroiled with us. How rash. Well well –  As you scared away the evenings entertainment and as the night is still young, as they say – I should probably warn you…you are about to find yourself…..out of your depth.”

M – “I doubt that – My first job was as a life-guard – I’m quite at home on the water.”

MALe 2 – “Then don’t say I didn’t warn you, you’ll only have yourself to blame. And so we begin……First, lets all try to calm down a bit. I’m so sorry about that distressing scene earlier, you were right of course – we were playing a bit rough. He knows we meant him no harm.”

M – “No, I’m pretty sure he thought you wanted to hurt him. ”

MALe 2 – “Yes well….lets agree to disagree about that – anyway you intervened, which is very commendable.  Come and have a glass of wine with us, we aren’t so bad when you get to know us, you might even get to like us. I don’t think I’ve seen you before……..how nice to meet somebody new – tell me – What brings you here?”
M – “I was told there were artists here….if I’d known they meant con-artists I’d have stayed away.”

MALe 2 – “Ha – Hilarious…….an amusing dabbler…and do you always stick up for people you don’t know?”

M – “Not always, but there are rules about kicking people when they’re down.”

MALe 2 – “Are there indeed, I didn’t get that memo. Well anyway, we weren’t kicking very hard, and he wasn’t all the way down, I think he’ll go a bit lower than that.”

M – “I hope not – but I suppose that’s up to him – I did tell him not to come back……..Listen, I don’t know what the story with that guy is…maybe you have good reason to dislike him, but enough is enough, you were destroying him and he was asking you to stop. Maybe you think that’s entertainment…..I don’t.”

MALe 2 – “I’d have said he was sort of…begging us to stop……….. But you’re completely correct of course…we went much too far…………You’re wrong though if you think he won’t come back. Of course we could leave him alone altogether – We could easily shift our attentions to you – if that’s what you would like…….”

M – “For him? No, as you said I don’t really know him…..and frankly, I don’t really care about him……..just enough to stop you annihilating him infront of me. But while we’re on the subject of interventions, I am here for a reason, I do care about somebody else……. A woman I think you know. You may have had some business dealings with her ex involving the ‘dive’. Whatever arrangements you made with him don’t concern me. But the lady has asked me to persuade you to stay away from her.”

MALe 2 – “ The ‘dive’ that’s very well put…..apt even, yes that was quite a dive. I‘m afraid I dont know anything about any business ‘dealings,’ and I would advise you to be more careful about saying things that you know nothing about. As for the young lady. We did visit her a few times, that’s true, but only because we were worried about her. She’s been through a lot in the last few months, what with her boyfriend having a nervous breakdown and losing his business. We were concerned she might have misunderstood the situation…….that she might have thought we were involved in some way. I assure you we were only trying to help her.”

M – “And the lady thanks you for your concerns…….but as you say the last few months have been rather hard on her. She doesnt want to dwell on the past and feels that your visits are bringing back painful memories, she’d be grateful if you would stop them, so she can get on with her life.”

MALe 2 – “I think we would need to hear that from her.”

M – “You are, I’m just relaying a message.”

MALe 2 – “Tell him again.”

MALe 3 – ”You aren’t listening, he told you, that isn’t good enough, we’ll have to check for ourselves.”

M – “ No, you aren’t listening, and I’m asking as nicely as I possibly can…………would you stay away from her…….please.”

MALe 3 – “Pleeeaase……….and what do you think you’ll do if we don’t.”

MALe 2 – “Now, now, don’t be so aggressive. As he says he’s being perfectly reasonable. I’m sure we can come to an arrangement with the…Gentleman………..So you would like us to leave her alone and focus our attentions on you instead…….is that your offer.”

M – “I’m not making an offer, but If you’re asking what my preference is……..I think I would like you both to just………….disappear.”

MALe 2 – “That outcome isn’t on the table, I’m afraid, so I’ll ask you again, would like us to switch our attentions from her to you? I would have no objections, you seem…very interesting. But you should think very carefully before you speak again.”

M – “Thats the second time you’ve said you’re afraid, and I’ve only just started…………are you really sure your cut out for this type of work? Do what you must, just leave her alone.”

MALe 2 – “Done and witnessed. You’ll be hearing from us……….”

M – “I’ll stock up on Beta blockers and bicycle clips.”

MALe 2 – “That’s very funny Mr…….?”

M – “I rather think you’ll have to find that out for yourself.”

MALe 2 – “Don’t worry we will.”

M – “I wasn’t worried. Listen, I’ve said what I came to say, I don’t want to get drawn into a long and…tedious war of words with you.”

MALe 2 – ”A war of words? Well, I certainly don’t blame you for that………….You wouldn’t last long. You may know some of the words but that doesn’t mean you speak the language……..believe me – I’m fluent……..So she just fluttered her pretty eyes at you and you came running up here to confront us, did you? Following your cock like a donkey with a dangling carrot, or should I say chasing her cunt like a donkey with a carrot – Eager to prove your courage, rescue the Damsel in Distress and claim your sweaty disgusting reward, if you haven’t already….and you came alone…….all alone – that tells me a lot – Risking ruin for your lady, how noble,
how stupid……well – ‘Fools rush in.’ I don’t suppose you even asked her any questions about what you would be getting yourself into…….then again you did spend a long time talking to the barflys, what did they tell you, I wonder. You might know something, you might just be trouble. We don’t like trouble, not for us anyway, You know who we represent, don’t you?”

M – “I think so – you represent – you two. I’ve heard that you claim allegiance with some group or other but I’m not convinced. To misquote Groucho Marx ‘Nobody would join a club that would have you as members.’ I think your a couple of weird little fish, lost in great big ocean, swimming next to vast shoal of herring, hoping you can hide, hoping they’ll keep you safe. But you haven’t understood the ‘Oddity effect’: The weird little fish always get picked off first. You should start to think of me as a hungry Dolphin…..or
perhaps you‘re a pair of puffer fish – trying to look bigger than you really are – well, you anyway, I mean you’re small…and you’re prickly…and you’re poisonous – and you weren’t sanctioned………”

MALe 2 – “What do you mean by that…….who are y…..I’ll warn you one last time, be very careful what you say, we don’t take kindly to being threatened……..you might find your words are prophetic – if you’re vain enough to think of yourself as a dolphin – prickly and poisonous sounds very dangerous…….”

M – “So does a Lyre bird. Do you know the lyre bird? The Mike Yarwood of the animal Kingdom…..the lyre bird is able to imitate virtually any sound, hungry predators, gunshots – a very useful skill for deterring danger – but the effectiveness of the deterrent is dependent on the bird remaining hidden. You aren’t hidden……I’ve looked you in the eyes, I know you and I am not impressed…Doubtless you’re hoping that your personal lack of menace is offset by the allegiances that you claim – that I’ll be scared of what’s hiding behind you….by what’s lurking in the shadows – Just as the liar bird hopes. But you’re wrong, you’re wrong if you think you can frighten me.

Theres another type of imitative behaviour used by animals – not auditory but visual – a phenomenon called ‘Batesian mimicry’, where harmless little animals imitate the characteristics of bigger harmful creatures to deter predators …….but again that really only works if the predator doesn’t get a good look, and I have……So tell whatever you’ve got hitching a free ride inside your head, however many of them there are – that if they wanted to make threats to me they should have chosen a bigger vessel, a more impressive vehicle – a volvo estate ……..not a Messerschmitt KR200 with a flame job.. Then I might have been slightly more nervous……..and they might have been slightly more comfortable, you do look like your getting a bit overcrowded in there. Now if we’re done I’ve got things to do.”

2- “Oh we’re very far from done.”

M -” You’re far from done……I’m not going to give you another moments thought. As far as I’m concerned this is over.”

2 – “That was quite a speech, but I think you were wrong to fire all your ammunition at once………..and I don’t think you’ve quite mastered the art of the insult yet…..You know you sound like a slightly mad David Attenborough when you talk, and so many mixed metaphors – but don’t worry we can help you improve on that, after we’ve……..a valiant effort anyway……………a marvellously deranged Swan Song. This is going to be fun, for us I mean – for you? Over rather quickly I think…..Now you spoke for a long time – will you give me the opportunity to respond?

M – ”No! I’ve wasted enough time with you.”

2 – “That’s a shame, I’m sorry you feel like that…….but I do think you should probably make some room for us in your diary anyway……..you know the problem with driving a white Mustang is that they’re so easy to track down….”

M – “But so hard to catch…………….Cheerio.”

I’m annoyed about the motor, somebody must have seen me arrive. Well, if they hadn’t seen me arrive they certainly would have watched me leave. I’m annoyed but not worried. I’ll be hiring a van to get back to Brighton anyway, the paintings are quite big. Let them look, I’ll park the Mustang somewhere underground,well away from the Squat. I’ll be away for a fortnight, hopefully they’ll have given up by the time I get back………..I think they’ll keep their promise to stay away from the Princess.

Right now I should think about something else – somehow I’ve got to get back to a positive way of thinking and stop myself re-enacting that verbal skirmish over and over again in my head. That was probably the Princesses mistake…….enjoying the tongued tussle too much, letting herself get drawn in and allowing them to get a foothold in her concioussness……..they probably let her see just enough of her ex-boyfriends torment to know what to expect, then let her imagination do the rest, fucking bastards.

But I’m annoyed with myself as well…..I probably could have handled things more efficiently, he was right about the marine metaphors……I’ve been researching dolphins and the history of mermaids for months for the exhibition, I suppose things aquatic were fresh in my mind……OK – things happened the way they happened, I was aggressive  because I have no interest in these people, I just want them to leave us alone and I thought I could put them off………..Fuck, I said too much……. I’ve probably just piqued their interest.

Well anyway, I have got things to do: I’m going to stay busy – I’ve got to make a mixtape for the performance, get various pieces of equipment together and organise the pictures I’m taking back to Brighton. The Princess has asked me to pick up some clothes for her – I have some places to go, not shops: An office and a private address – Yohji Yamamoto and somebody called Scott Crolla, then I’m going to Kensington market to get some things from Roc-a-Cha so the Princess doesn’t moan about my sartorial stylings again. Classic with a twist I’m aiming at, style not fashion – sub cultures are too hard to read now anyway – Punk and Disco were easy, even
if the clothes weren’t really to my taste – There are some nascent little cliques emerging pre post punk: Proto-Goths, new wave, skin-heads, new-romantics and rockabillies but for the most part they’ve yet to blossom into ‘scenes’ and anyway, I’m not a teenager anymore. Maybe I-D magazine and the Face can bring things into focus when they finally arrive.

I’m not going to drive back to Clapham yet, I’ll go to Greenwich and park up by the Observatory for a few hours. There’ll be no traffic at three in the morning so I’ll know if I’m being followed after that, I don’t really want them knowing where I am.

When I get to the Observatory I sit in the Mustang with the engine running for a while, but that conversation keeps rolling round my head……should I have said more or less, what I could have done differently. Eventually in exasperation I go for a little walk. There are lights in the Park, and somewhere a pair of Robins are singing. People say they sing at night because the lights confuse them….but maybe they just like to sing.Sitting on the grass looking down over the Naval college at the Thames and a brightly lit Island Gardens –
listening to the Robins elaborate evening serenade the conversation of earlier fades……An hour later the argument and that horrible high pitched squeaky voice has gone and there is peace again. Thank heaven for the Birds.

© 2014 Kevin Barry Partridge

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING – CHAPTER 10: HAND IN HAND

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING

CHAPTER 10

HAND IN HAND

By Kevin Barry Partridge

 

 As the Twin Stone Pylons appear in the distance my companion starts to stir. Chic as always, the gleaming beetlewing bag had disgorged evening gloves and a sheer black chiffon headscalf for travelling in. Now after an hours sleep the elegant ensemble is unravelling, one arm is still sheathed in the dark kidskin glove – the other bare pale flesh. Those arms weave now, as she lazily stretches herself awake. Interlacing like a pair of angular courting swans – necks entwining and elongating – One pale, one dark, Odette and Odile tilting for the upper hand in this Ladys Capricious nature.

W – “Whats the time?”

M – “Midnight !”

W – “Will you tell me where we’re going now.

M – “ To El Dorado princess…………”

W – “Interesting………………..Where am I staying in El Dorado, I won’t find a hotel this late.”

M – “I have a place for you to stay – high up – close to the Stars………..you’ll feel right at home, you’ll be on another hill. You’ve got enough food, you can decide whether to stay in the tower or find a hotel in a day or so, right now you should rest, you’ve had a hard few days…..No one will find you here.”

 On the way out of London we had stopped at the ‘Chelsea Bodega’, a little late night Italian deli tucked away in a back street of Earls Court. Chelsea is well respected and – for the purposes of commerce at least – the name is used far beyond any physical borders. Sitting on the back seat are two large brown paper bags with: Milk, Chocolate, Ground Coffee, Honey, 2 Baguettes, 1 Bloomer, Butter, Camembert, Brie, Vintage Cheddar, Stilton, Salami, Smoked Salmon, Olives, 3 packs of assorted Golden Wonder crisps, Grapes, Apples, 2 Kitchen rolls, 1 bottle St – Emilion, 1 bottle Chablis, 1 bottle of ‘Blue Nun’ (in honour of my mother) 1 bottle of cheap Fitou and 1 bottle of expensive Rose – with which to toast any surviving Alchemists in the area – all of which had come in at a rather expensive £17….. with the 10 gallons of petrol in the tank I’m in for £25 and we haven’t even reached Brighton yet……

W – “Tower…. that sounds exciting…am I staying in a castle then?”

M – ” An enchanted castle my lady, guarded by Knights that have been transformed into swans, you will be well protected .“    

 I drive further into Brighton than necessary, I’m working from memory and decide to follow the path I know best – parallel with the Royal Pavillion I turn left up a steep hill, driving past an odd round brutalist church then left again up into West Drive and around Queens Park. Finally parking at the end of Tower road in front of our destination.

 The Belvedere Tower – better known now as the Pepper Pot – is said to stand over a ancient well. Rising 60ft the tower is unique, even in Brighton, which is not short of unusual architecture.The Pepper Pot soars above Queens park Like a lonely landlocked lighthouse or a Cappadocian mountain spire – cave carved by a long forgotten tribe of cultured OCD Troglodytes. The princess looks impressed.

But when I open the door I worry that I may have made a mistake. I’m suddenly aware of what a strange enviroment the building presents. What I had thought of as perfect for my needs a few weeks earlier probably strikes a well brought up young lady from Primrose Hill as distinctly odd….macabre even. Certainly the building is elegant, but the ground floor is a shock, by any standards. Dimly lit, the deeply stained white walls encircle a collection of objects which make the space look a bit like a cramped 1930s
Hollywood torture chamber or a mad scientists laboratory: There are pendulums, pipes and chains hanging from the ceiling. Leather straps and huge springs dangling from a central column and vast coils of thick telephone wire leaning against the walls. There are perspex boxes with mysterious arcane electronics inside, large metal boards with dozens of large illuminating switches and enormous tubular frames with hundreds of light bulbs attached.  There are piled panels of wire grids and what look like electrified cages
stacked high around the walls. I’m half waiting for the princess to bolt – considering what shes been through – but to my surprise she looks fascinated and, before I can say anything by way of explanation, is starting up the steep narrow wooden stairs to the next level.  

 The second floor is slightly less ‘mad scientist’……. there are less chains, the walls aren’t quite as stained, but the neatly arranged objects probably seem just as ominous. On the floor are several open wooden boxes with menacing looking tools inside. There are boxes of electrical components: Porcelain connectors, rows of capacitors big as tin cans and stacked crates of strangely shaped steel integrants: Custom made chain links that look like pointy ninja snowflakes, neatly packed tubular Octahedrons and shiny stainless steel rods. The floor is strewn with speaker cones and metal plates and lengths of chain and heavy wire lay around connected to bits of archaic electrical equipment. From the ceiling hangs another far larger pendulum. Surely somewhere tucked away there must be some Tesla coils, waiting to buzz…………But the  heavy duty red rubber gloves scattered everywhere are probably the main culprit for the overall sinister effect. I get a very quick, nervous glance from my friend as she makes her way across the floor..
 
 As we walk up another flight of stairs there is a visible sigh of relief from her. The third floor is beautiful: Clean and surprisingly spacious, with 11 large rectangular windows and a 360 degree view of Brighton, spectacular even at 12.30am on a Friday night. There is a Futon and a Duvet, (some new kind of Japanese bedding), an elegant electric heater, a coffee perculator and some well-worn hardback books laying around…..all lit by three old Edison ‘Quad loop’ bulbs hanging from the ceiling.

W – “This is great…..how did you find this place?”

M – “I‘ve got an exhibition at ‘The James Rushton Gallery.’ I was looking for a place to store some paintings until then and he put me in touch with a guy. He doesn‘t really use the place anymore, except for storage, and there are still a few months left on the lease, so I paid him some money and…………..I was going to stay here during the exhibition. There is another floor: a small room capped with a dome, but I’ve only had a quick look.This is definately the floor to stay on, the rest get pretty cold in Winter. There are toilets downstairs and basins, but no baths or showers, you’ll have to make do.”

W – “I’ll be OK, I like to swim……I can use the showers at the pool. This is perfect, Thank you.

M – ”OK, well  If you need to get a message to me, leave a note or a call at this pub….heres the address and telephone number, and in an emergency get to The Western Pavillion you’ll find friendly people there,but be discreet, I’m not sure they’re actually supposed to be there. The address is on the paper  I don’t know how long I’ll be, that depends on your………..antagonists, a few days I expect. Certainly I’ll be back by Halloween. OK then, I’ll see you in a few days……here’s some money, you’ve got enough to eat and drink.”

W – “ Wait……………I still need a little sugar in my bowl…………………”

                                                                                          INTERLEWD

 Three days later – tired, hungry and thirsty I unlock the doors of the Mustang again, but only to grab a bomber jacket. Then the princess and I walk along Tower road together, climbing over the low fence into Queens park and walking down grass lined paths towards the lake, and the swans, and the entrance to the playground. Queens park is lovely at night, tranquil and filled with warm ambient light from the surrounding houses. The evening is cloudy and cool, the sky an undulating mottled sheet of dull white as we
walk around the lake. The Swans must be on the island somewhere, so we have a little play in the playground, a spun on the Witches Hat, a slid on the slide, and a swung on the swings, before walking down into Kemp Town.

The Hand in Hand is a tiny pub – probably the smallest in Brighton – but comfortable and welcoming, with simple food and good beer. Somehow tonight they’ve managed to squeeze a band in: ‘Les Quartet de Boto’ – Double bass, accordion, a violinist and a percussionist all wedged into a miniscule space at the front of the pub. As we arrive the musicians are still tuning up and chatting, a table’s free so the Princess sits down while I order some food and two pints of the local pale ale.

 When I get to the table with the beer the band are introducing the first piece: ‘Orange blossoms from Eden’, an old Armenian folk song. The bass begins – ‘Arco’ – The strings bowed, the sound deep and expressive until a long violin note hangs in the air – a passionate ‘birds eye’ – achingly beautiful, with deep vibrato. When the note fades the band join in – The music: a slow processional – the Weltmeister accordion pulsing lazy little ostinato riffs over chord progressions, the percussionist shaking bells and banging a large tambourine, the bass progressing from gentle plucking to Bartok pizzicato – with strings buzzing on the fingerboard. The
effect is lush and textural – not a wall of sound – an intricate verdant tapestry.

 As the song finishes I am called to the bar – the food is ready – waiting for me are two large round plates, each with a dozen raw oysters arranged around the rim, like little salty zodiacs, surrounding a piece of crusty bread with some butter. I have a present for the princess in my pocket – a pearl – I always carry one, not sure why – I bought a small bag of them in Hatton Garden years ago, I suppose carrying one gives them a purpose. Both plates hold a dozen, as ordered – but I notice one holds a bakers dozen – I put the pearl in
one of the 13 oysters and carry the ice cold plates back to the table, to a smiling hungry lady.

  The band are playing:  George Gershwins – ‘Love walked in’ segued into ‘cheek to cheek’ by Irving Berlin, the accordionist comping lines over long chords then broken chords on top of staccato swells, his head cocked, with gaze fixed somewhere on the ceiling. The violin nuanced and lyrical then high and playful.

The oysters are good, fresh from the boats. Sympathetic magic – oysters – they taste nourishing, but also of sex……..there can be no doubt of their aphrodisiac properties…. there is a reason why they come with ‘unions.’ There is a little cry of delight as the princess finds the pearl and I am rewarded with a long – wet and warm – salty kiss.

  A vocalist is sitting in with the band now – after a lovely intro of bells and violin – the singer, a stunning frenchchanteuse with flowers in her hair sings ‘la vie en rose’ – with little rising glissandos from the violin – her voice fragile as fine porcelain, full of delicate ethemeral grace notes, until the coda, when the violins last altissimo note shimmers in the air with ritardando vibrato. Next: Cole Porters ‘Night and Day’…..in English this time, performed with a kind of gospel call and response arrangement – full of fortepiano drama, ravishing. The band are taking a break.

Quiet conversations start around the room…….more jazz – with bass’s and tenors and altos – people taking turns to solo and comp, the overall sound is surprisingly even….like a Jackson Pollack splash, the voices distinct but so finely balanced that no one conversation is discernable above the rest. The sound is surprisingly pleasant.

W – “You put the pearl in my oyster didn’t you…….Thank you.”

M – “ You’re welcome.”

W – “ You know oysters are Moon worshippers, they only open completely when she’s full….according to Leonardo Da Vinci anyway. They gaze at her so that when they close their shells they know how to make their own little moons, that only shine for them.

M – “ I hope yours shines for you lady.”

W – “ ……..Actually oysters are even more amazing: They do open and close in time with the moon. But if they are placed in dark tanks and transported a thousand miles they resynchronise with the lunar cycle where they are……..how can they know….in the dark? You know the Moon is full tonight…………………..Will you stay with me again, in my magic tower……. I have a pearl for yo……….”

 The opening guajeo of ‘ A Night in Tunisia’ wails from the violin and a wild, accelerando version of Dizzys classic begins: The head played on unrestrained accompanied violin with each musician then taking solos, the bassist lovingly caressing the neck…fingering the strings, bending notes, playing portamento. The percussionist: shaking seed pods, pitch bending on the tambourine, at one point playing wild breaks on a single bottle top with a bottle opener, the accordion gliding through little abstract arpeggios over
increasingly dissonant panting chords and the cadence of the violin cadenza like a great screaming orgasm as the band join in for a rippling crescendo that comes in waves as the ‘Hand in Hand’ erupts with tumultuous applause.

 As the distinctive twelve D notes of Camille Saint-Saens ‘Danse Macabre’ are plucked on the violin there are cheers and whoops and cries of ‘Mr Bone-Jangles’ from the tightly packed excited audience, but the band stop playing and seemingly the whole audience turns to look at some narrow stairs at the back of the pub as a thumping clattering sound emanates from an unseen landing above. Gradually a strange figure rattles down the stairs and is carried in by a beaming young girl in a red wooly jumper and jeans, to claps and whistles. In her hand – what looks like an ancient heavy broomstick with a dark carved wooden skull on top and 5 rusty curved iron ribs stuck through the thick straight branch that are bestrewn with wired on bottle-tops, bells, brass rings and bits of coloured ribbon.

 The room becomes hushed as the strange object is passed hand to hand over our heads, with great solemnity and ceremony. Finally the percussionist thumps the bejangling bone shaker on the ground three times and the band strikes up again, those twelve Ds a discordant vagarious wail from the accordion that introduces a raucous version of ‘Danse Macabre’: The violin – all shredded passion –
The accordionist playing frantic staccato changes, fingers stabbing wildly at what I think for a moment isn’t an accordion at all but his own bleached bone rib-cage, and the percussive skeleton providing a thumping, clanging beat.

Next the band play a Tarantella, a type of music that supposedly dates back to ancient Greece and the ‘Bacchanalia’s.’ The Taranella was suppressed but later re-emergered as a ‘dancing cure’ for the bite of the Wolf spider. This version is by Pablo de Sarasate and opens with a long languid violin introduction before the rest of the band join in on a fast 6/8 piece that is full of melodrama and sounds – a bit like chase music from a silent film…….I can easily imagine Charlie Chaplin – in a fix – running around, evading fumbling
buffoon baddies. But the sound is magnificent,  – rooted in the tradition – hypnotic. The violinist is a virtuoso, she sways uncontrollably, then lunges forward fiercely, in attack position, her lovely little screwed up Edith Piaf face nested in a mass of dark curly hair, her intense gaze searching the room, her concentration absolute. Is she still here ? Does the room disappear as she is transported to another time, another place? I’d love to know………The accordionist is vamping ferociously. There is another legend about the Tarantella – more sympathetic magic – just as the spider bitten dancers are said to cure themselves by sweating out the poison, so the biter, theTarantula spider is said to be powerless to resist the music. The Tarantulas themselves are compelled to dance – a frenzied leggy stomp. The accordionist should wear furry gloves, to complete the effect, as his dancing fingers mimic the frantic arachnid jig.

The percussionist  leaves the small ‘stage’ and is replaced with a cello player. After some tuning anArgentine Tango begins, a song by Astor Piazzolla ‘Libertango’………………..frankly I am unable to find words to describe such swaggering Genius…….The song and the musicians are perfect. There is no room to dance in the pub but beneath our small table I manage a foot Tango with the Princess, with fierce Parada’s, Sacarda’s and Gancho’s and some steps that haven’t been named yet…………..and are better performed out of sight…with bare feet.

 The music finishes with a lovely version of ‘Softly as in a morning Sunrise.’ Everyone is happy and satisfied,there is a kind of light in the pub – a contented glow. Nice to find something that feels so authentic these days. Subcultural capital doesn’t buy much credibility in the ‘Hand in Hand’ the people here seem to be out of time somehow – and therefore timeless – unconcerned by the whims of fashion and pop-culture. We thank the musicians and I look for a phone while the princess talks to the violinist. The blower is at the foot of the
stairs, beneath a large blackboard on which is written ‘LARKS PURR.’  As I dial and wait for an answer I look up at the landing, the red jumpered ‘boneshaker’ girl from earlier is sitting on the top step laughing and playing ‘cats cradle’ with what must be her identical twin sister.

Back in Kemp town the clouds of earlier have cleared, the night is windy and cold. I give my companion my jacket to wear and we start back towards the tower. The Stars are shining and the Moon is full.

M – “You were right – The oysters will be busy tommorow.”

W – “Yes……I know a lot about the moon actually. Like the reason we always see the same face is that the rotation and the orbit are exactly the same length…..29 and a half days……………….And the moon is exactly 400 times smaller than the sun, and exactly 400 times closer to Earth, thats why eclipses are so spectacular, the occultation is so precise……………..at Totality.

M – “ Occultation…………You know a lot.”

W – “ I went to school.”

M – ” Thats a lot of coincidences….Maybe ‘Star Wars’ was right.”

W – “ I don‘t know, I haven’t seen ‘Star Wars’.”

 I don’t explain, if she was interested she’d probably ask and if she isn’t she probably wouldn’t listen. The last few days have taught me that not talking is fine sometimes, nice actually. So we walk back quietly, thinking about the night and the moon and the music. For some reason I start to think about an old Persianlegend I was told as a boy – about a day when the moon would split in two – but the details are too hazy to remember properly. Then, strangely, I find myself thinking of the film ‘Metropolis’ and the woman
Maria…………

M – “What do you think the World would be like, if there was no Moon?”

W -”I don‘t know….the nights would be darker and longer……..but probably more spectacular – more stars. There would still be tides I expect, but they’d be smaller…and solar…….Venus would have a much stronger influence I suppose. Women would still…..you know, but I guess the cycle might be different. I think that would be sad though, I like the Moon. Why ?”

M -” Just something I was thinking about, an old legend.”  

 When we climb back into the park we stop and feed the Swans. They take the remnants of the pub bread directly from our hands – the serrated beaks gently rasping our fingers – then they dip the bread in the water before throwing their heads back and swallowing. When the bread is finished we climb back up the small green hill to the Pepper Pot making various arrangements for my return journey.

©    Kevin Barry Partridge  2014

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING: CHAPTER 9 – THE LONELIEST MONK.

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING

CHAPTER 9: THE LONELIEST MONK

By Kevin Barry Partridge

(Playing on the 8 – Track: Misterioso )

White wings glide over thin track bible black tarmac – hung by fairy lights from a gloaming star pricked sky. Myriad moth made constellations twinkle through the great blue/black velvet canopy as night deepens. The hard dark glistening band beneath those wings spans a spangled star danced strand – bright Thames shimmering in the early evening lights – all a whirl with spinning cross screen star filters. ‘The trembling lady’ has always been my favorite London bridge. Oh my, how She must have loved him. Troops break step here………out of respect for Victorias long lost.

The lights of the Albert bridge prance over the windscreen converging in the middle then rushing to the edges like gossiping wallflowers at a prom. Beneath the pale Lee Lacocca  hood an engine purrs as I  accelerate right – onto the Kings Road.

A few minutes later I’m sitting in the window of the Chelsea Drug Store – Listening to Bowie: Heroes – food ordered, sipping beer and watching the wang parade –  the Chelsea cruise – unfolding on the street outside – from right to left. Halloween in a few days but the air is still clear and crisp, maybe some of the convertables will show tonight.

Driving past now is an Orange and Black Mercury Cougar, beautiful muscular car, a night prowler. Next a Ford Thunderbird 1955 – 4.8 litre V-8 engine, 0 – 60 in under 10 a true classic. Not so cool next – some kind of screaming souped up Marina with a Rover grille in a yet to be named colour hisses by followed by a customised beetle, not bad, not good either, best to leave ‘em alone. Another classic next a 1956 Buick road master – yellow and white, nice ride.

As the music changes to Iggy Pop: Lust for life – my food arrives in an over anticipated anti-climax, I miss the purple catsuits. Normally I’d wait, but she’ll be late – shes always late – and I’m hungry, I don’t even know why I’ve come really, curiosity I suppose, her note was enigmatic to say the least.

Looking back now at the Cruise and a Citroen SM floats past –  a gleaming streamlined spaceship…..beautiful. I had a blow out in a Citroen DS once at 70 mph, I didn’t even notice, the car just lifted the wheel off the ground and carried on on three wheels until I noticed the steering felt a bit heavy – hydropneumatic self-levelling magic.

Tonights looking good, maybe the police are relaxing a bit, I doubt the residents will be though. The drug stores closing down in a few weeks – too many complaints probably – be a shame for the cruise to go as well.The drugstore soundtrack changes again – Lou Reed: Walk on the wild side – and with the song the atmosphere changes as well…everyone seems to relax a little.

Outside there are some whoops and cheers – A golden open-top Auburn speedster powers past, a Doc Savage of a car, I doubt there’ll be better tonight. From the sublime to the……a red Ford escort MK2 with Starsky and Hutch stripe limps past – classy, then an Escort van with some sort of airbrushed baby dolled Vampira reclining on a cloud of purple mist followed by a mauve MK1 that looks like a flying blancmange – Steve McQueen beware. Not exactly a convoy more like a clusterfuck of cars…I suppose they thought they’d better stick together.

The food was good, when the waitress comes I order coffee and an Amaretti biscuit. One cup and I’m gone, I won’t wait all night for her, not again. Over the speakers now Marvin Gaye, title track from: Whats going on…one of the greatest albums of all time, a life saver. The room is starting to sway.

In the street more cheers – a plum 1938 Talbot-Lago T150C SS – expensive, rare – 4 Litres, straight six, a work of art with suicide doors…and then – with a roar – the teardrop explodes out of sight making way for a couple of mini Coopers – blue and red, great little cars 90mph from a tiny engine, and a fun drive. Next a white droop snoot, high fin Plymouth Superbird, and a 1967 Aston Martin DBS V8 – things a hotting up.

I order more coffee and another biscuit, what the fuck, there are worse ways to spend an evening – I’m on schedule. The music has changed again… Stevie Wonder now: I wish – from songs in the Key of life, another classic. The pavements are filling up with people: punks and hipsters rubbing shoulders, more men than women, but I’m only looking at the ladies – The women are beautiful on the Kings road….fuck, everywhere I’ve been the women are beautiful, but they dress better here. As I sip my coffee and unwrap the biscuit I look around the room…….Chelsea, how I love thee in your Biba and bangles, in your Westwood and McLaren. Between here and the Arts Club I spend a fair amount of time this side of the river. Things are going well, maybe one day….a studio in Chelsea.

On the street people are cheering again, a nice little group coming: A white Hudson Terraplane with white-walls, a silver Kharmann Ghia….sweet, but no punch and a 1937 supercharged Cord 812, elegance on wheels followed by…………a jet black Buick Riviera – sleek I guess but sort of…..’agency’.

I’m beginning to think she won’t come…if I’m honest I don’t really care, I’ve never seen the cruise so good and a no-show might be for the best. Getting over the last time took years….all I could do was work: paint, write, make music…..I didn’t sleep with another woman for a year, I was like a fucking monk. I order more coffee, more almond discs…..I’m staying up anyway…I’ve got work to do. The sound of Al Green wafts through the room: Lets stay together. The women are starting to dance around the room.

Another little convoy of jacked up escorts slithers past outside and a shabby old Jaguar MK1: Every wing – every door a different colour with vast patches of filler interspersed – like camoflage – nice actually, defiant somehow……..a survivor.

On the table infront of me is an empty white coffee cup and three Amaretti wrappers….I take the wrappers and carefully flatten them out, then I roll them them into tubes about an inch wide, stand them up and pull out my Zippo – and, with a click – light the tops of the tiny tapering tissue towers.

For a little while the drugstore is all quite serenity. As I start to watch the little paper pillars flare wildly, burning like roman candles, but my peaceful reverie is shattered when a waiter drops a full tray nearby, and glass and china smash and cutleries clash on the hard floor, causing cheers and claps throughout the room. When I refocus on the levitations the music changes to Donna Summer: I feel love – as a figure emerges from behind the trails of faint smoke created by the now rising paper rockets.

M – “Well, you still know how to make an entrance anyway, did you pay him to drop the tray or just kick him in the shins ?”

Standing infront of me is a woman I thought I would never see again, that I had begun to believe I had never even known, just dreamt of a few times. She looks like a star of silent films – all 1920s glamour – somewhere between Louise Brooks and Anna May Wong – distant and aloof, but also vunerable, even fragile, as though she might faint at any moment…..Like a femme fatale in pink flannel pyjamas, but shes a tiger posing as a kitten, As usual she looks sort of bored, as though her current apparently life threatening
predicament is just oh so tedious  She wears only a gold and brown sequined dress with an all over art deco pattern and a string of small pearls tied in a knot, they’re probably real, poor little rich girl slumming in Chelsea. In her hand is a little beaded deco clutch, which shines iridescent like the shell of some giant tropical beetle. For a woman on the lamb she travels light. I’m gonna play this real cool.

M – “You want a drink?”

She nods and sits, I call the waitress over and order two brandies. Around the bar people are dancing, swaying in time to the music. When the waitress brings our drinks she looks like shes skating, gliding on a cushion of sound.

M – “I was surprised to get your note, and a little intrigued, how much can you tell me. What kind of trouble are you in?”

Stonewalled…….nothing – she just stares at me…impassive – like the Sphinx – silent, emotionless. She even looks like the Sphinx…. With a face this ancient I should say dry-stonewalled….Cyclopean even. Silent she stays for what seems like minutes, and then suddenly words come, like spring rain……torrential.

The story that unfolds is fragmented, non-sequential….a boyfriend, a restaurant, some kind of cult, threats, mind-control, his money taken – the boyfriend then destroyed, ruined and now their attention turned on her…the little princess who lives on the hill, running now, living day to day, hotel by hotel. She repeats several words many times ‘ruin’ and ‘impinge’ and ‘handled’ and then utters a word I’ve never heard before…..Scientology…..For the briefest moment the room is silent – the people motionless, still as statues – until the opening chords of the Clashes: London calling – distort around the room, breaking the soundless spell.

As she talks she looks down at her drink,rubbing the rim of the glass with her thumb, as though there is some stubborn stain on the lip Only occasionally do those dark eyes look at me –  searchingly – trying to guage my reaction. When she stops talking she sort of deflates a little. Over the speakers now the Sex Pistols: Anarchy in the UK. The dancing has stopped, replaced with a kind of nervous tension.

W – “What do you think?”

M – “I think you’ve got other friends.”

W – “I came too you.”

M – “You came late, I’m on my third cup of coffee.”

W – “You like coffee…..no…you like those almond biscuits. you should cut out the coffee and just get the amarettos, maybe you’d get some rest, you look terrible.”

M – “Thanks, I was up all night working on a picture. I’m busy right now, I’ve got an exhibition…..I don’t have time to get involved in one of your psychodramas, I’m still getting over the last one.”

W – “I need you.”

M – “And I needed you back then….more than I can tell you. But you left anyway, no explanation, you just disappeared one day. I spent weeks trying to find you, because I needed you then. You didn’t seem to care. So what about what I need?”

W – “You need a stylist…..what the fuck are you wearing.”

And there she is – The High Priestess of Tongue Kung Fu – with a rhetorical kick to the head. Queen Bee Bruce Lee – the pouting Shaolin. Fuck I’m going to regret this.

An hour later I’m driving south down empty roads, the verbal ninja asleep next to me – the fastback roaring in the wilderness like a lonely wounded beast.

© 2014   Kevin Barry Partridge.

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING: CHAPTER 8 – FREE ASSOCIATION

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING

CHAPTER 8

FREE ASSOCIATION

By Kevin Barry Partridge.

( Quick cut montage – film/video clips – fast editing – soundtrack – Elvis: If I can dream.)

1:      When I was a boy – a manchild – at Bonneville school, I used to climb into the girls playground and
play kiss chase.

2: BUT – Class War Clarendon Clowns………though – played…….PAPER CHASE ?
2.1: Eton by the shadow………long ago……were…so,
2.2: Paper tigers……poor boy relic – trophy hunters……the –
2.3: Foot folded Origami army.

6: Flux films No 14 – © by Fluxus 1966 – One by Yoko Ono – also – ( A working class hero IS
something…),
7: Fahrenheit 451,
8: Not books………offset bi-fold broc-(w)hures (CC), Blah,Blah,Blah, (film clip – low contrast B/W….grey !),
9: The Ninth Gate…..spot the difference…..(HERE we ARE NOW…IMITATORS)……also…”They might be
midgets”,
10: Round, like a circle in a spiral………………….I’d rather write my own………………like a wheel within a wheel
…….and,

11: Lohengrin –
12: The warriors…..also…( REMEMBER THE PRINCESS WHO LIVES ON THE HILL )…..I am at the beach
unclefuckers (…………..THE PLACE WHERE THE SEA MEETS THE LAND – innamorati).
13: Un Homme et une Femme –
14: Dadadadadadadada, ride a WHITE…LIGHT, WHITE HEAT.
15: Vanishing Point……
16: Interstellar overdrive ( SUPERCELESTIAL CS).

Me – “I am the everyman – and you are woman eternal………….I LOVE YOU !.”

2014 © Kevin Barry Partridge.

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING – CHAPTER 7: Part 1 -THE ELECTRUM THREAD

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING

CHAPTER SEVEN; Part 1

THE ELECTRUM THREAD

By Kevin Barry Partridge

Above and surrounding us is a large golden dome, made up of perfectly shaped blocks of curved cut stone. The highest point is some 7 feet above my head, so I would estimate the diameter as being about 25 feet. The woman and myself are standing at the top of the narrow steps in the middle of the rounded ground within the ‘Vesica Piscis’ intersection of two broad brass circles embedded into the stone floor, each one touching the circumference of the dome. All around us are dozens of twisting tapering brass branches that meander upwards from the brass mandorla frame surrounding our feet. Each one of those wavering branches is individually anchored into the eyelike frame so that together their bases – tightly screwed in place – create the almond pattern, with some branches then reaching up to lightly touch a single point on the high domed ceiling, but with most furcating to create evocative nearly hidden shapes – The sharp points seeming to spread randomly over the suface of the dome, while the intertwining brass limbs make seeing any patterns extremely difficult. Most spread outwards towards the walls but several weave in over our heads so that the feeling is like being perched in a vast wavy Victorian surrealist birdcage or of nestling in the Crown of an elegant metallic tree.  Does Hephaestus still toil? Has he started working with Dali?

Where the boughs of brass are sparse the aureate ceiling is dappled with embedded brass studs of varying sizes that  gleam and glimmer in the pale light, and at the very Zenith of the dome is a little shining golden disk, inscribed with concentric circles.

The whitenoise of the waterfall had been audible all the way up the stairs, transfigured with soaring ghostly overtones, but now, within this sphere the sound has been magnified and refined so that the very dome seems to sing an airy ethereal song. The music like the voices of a distant supernal choir drifting hazily on the wind, or a wildly reverberating Aeolian harp gently vibrating on a breezy barmy day, infusing the space with a dreamlike  ‘Music of the Spheres.’

She -”How is this possible?”

Me  -”Eh, OK, er….maybe – helmholtz resonator from the fissure…superposition echoes from…eh……acoustic defraction grating by the steps, some of the Mayan temples at Chichen Itza have…erm….maybe something outside – pipes, strings….er….Oh: Rhetorical question. OK“

She -”What are we supposed to do…is this a puzzle? Clearly they’re constellations, so this must be some kind of stylised Planetarium. But they can’t all be here…There are 88 named constelations in the sky so lets say half that in the Northern Hemisphere and maybe half that again here, but even Ptolemy listed 48…is this earlier than  the Almagest – some of the constellations might be represented by a few defining stars but…… then theres the studs of course. Lets assume the ecliptic is on the horizontal plane, where are the signs…. seeing past these branches is impossible. Alright the highest point should be Polaris, I need to find the Spoon…..you and your nursery rhymes….I need to find the Plough. The stars will tell me what the North Star is….this might be an older sky: Thuban might be the pole. Can you see the Great Bear..,,about half way up? Tell me if you find anything…..Orions belt maybe…..what kind of crazy person would build this……….  eh….OK find the edge of the milky way………er……..No wait….wait, I’m a fool….No precession – not Polaris or Thuban….. Above us must be the ecliptic pole…,which is…….protected in the coils of Draco……Ha…and Draco faces Hercules….and theres Ursa Minor….you can stop worrying I’ve got this now …..I know where I am………er….. so on the other side is the Swan – which glides on the Milky Way – and opposite that the plough ..er…..if this is a puzzle I need clues……clues………er……..would you mind counting how many steps there are?”

Me  -”I already know: 72………maybe 73……finger abacus……famous flaneur remember.”

She -”Good, well done….. and 72 years is one degree of precession…….so…is that even a factor…..something perhaps…Antway, I can still use the plough to find Leo………and then…..”

Now is the first time I’ve seen this woman really enthusiastic about something, and I have to say….. Recherche: La femme. As she arches and sways to see beyond the winding golden boughs her movements transform into an elegant tree-top ballet as long lithe limbs gracefully dance around the little eyelike floor of our mystifying arboreal home. As I sit watching the Terpsichorean tree Tai Chi unfold I am truly happy for a moment….dark clouds may be forming beyond this dome but in here the sky is clear. Soon I am joined – sitting at the top of the stone stairs by the beautiful lady.

She – “Well I know roughly where things are, there are some peculiarities: Taurus is pretty vague, a few boughs but mainly studs…..which is odd, the others are all branches and sprigs. Ophiuchus is nearly missing completely, no surprise there… but I don’t see how any of that really helps us unless we know what to do.”

Me  -”I’m sorry, Astronomy isn’t really my strong point, my wanderings haven’t taken me that far yet. Theres always the tunnel of love – back in the cave.”

She -”Let me just sit and look for a while, maybe I’ll think of something. I’m sure there must be a door somewhere. Talk to me…I can look and talk at the same time.”

Me  -”You looked like you were enjoying yourself.”

She -“Well, I do love a good puzzle, and this is pretty amazing, but I thought there’d be a clue somewhere, something to get us started.”

Me -”Maybe something will come up. How did you know about this sword being hidden underground and the name?”

She -”I’d been staying at the Inn for a while, talking to the customers. There’s a lot of folklore about the place. The stories were always very vague and mysterious. Things about the tavern being built on the foundations of an old monastery and being haunted. Then there were a lot of tales of strange cults using the grounds  for rituals and sacrifices – scary stuff – stretching back for decades apparently. Something about the site being very powerful. The sword was mentioned as being connected somehow, an ancient mystical artifact – that was lost – but possibly hidden somewhere in a subterranean part of the grounds. People seemed to think I might know something about a way through the vaults, the questions were beginning to get pretty insistent. I was starting to get quite spooked actually, especially by Halloween, and then you turned up, like a breath of fresh air.”

Me -”Wow…sounds like you’ve been spun some yarns…How tedious were the tall tale tellers and how long did they talk?”

She – “Oh, they were alright – for a while…..but then they did sort of go-on an on…I stopped listening after a bit, I kind of switched off.”

Me – “And did you hear that darkest of the black magicians incantations…”This is’nt personal, this is only …business.”

She -”Oh fuck yeah, alot……..how do you know?

Me  -”Because whatever they do next is always personal….and usually painful. I think maybe – you’ve been talking to ‘The Firm’.”

She -”Oh, I don’t like the sound of that…. The firm?”

Me  -”If I was was feeling generous I’d say Occult Gangsters……but I’m not feeling generous, so I’ll just say ……..krafty crooks.”

She -”They were just people…..strange scary people…….I really don’t want to get involved in anything……. complicated.”

Me  -”No one ever does…..but If you’ve got something they want – and I have a feeling that perhaps you do – you’re already involved, so…I’m sorry but I think this might get a little complicated.”

She -”Why?”

Because something’s wrong, something has been troubling me about the sword. Ostensibly this weapon has something to do with a dragon, inscribed scales, the fuller on the blade seems to show a tongue of Flame, the name that was told to you. So why the obscure but obvious allusions to Osiris? A missing Phallus. The symbolism of the sheath: A ‘blade’ that is swallowed by a fish – When a sheaf of wheat would have been as appropriate – something doesn’t add up, I feel like I’m being lead by the nose, somewhere I don’t want to go. A sword has been put in my hand, and I’d rather have a pen. Even the name ‘Pindar’ is just ‘too’ enigmatic – Pindar was a poet, not a warrior. So why name a sword Pindar, why not Thuban, Thuban would at least be appropriate. The jigsaw pieces make no sense, they are ‘so’ tantalising – but they all seem to come from different puzzles.”

She -” You understand whats happening here don’t you…..Chinese whispers………..from a game that was started thousands of years ago.“

Me -”Hmmm, I like that….I like the way you think – but the timeline might be slightly more complicated. How do you think this game started?.“

She -”You tell me.”

Me  -“With a love song ! Always with a love song. But if the game goes on long enough and you let two meny people play the song starts to sound like a scream. Like looking in a cracked mirror for too long…Which I think is where the world outside this star dappled dome is at…so I don’t want to make a mistake – When I walked into the Tavern the World was transforming, a pivotal moment had arrived and the need for transfiguration had become obvious, to everybody. Whatever‘s coming, whatever is waiting for us beyond this dome is going to be about change. The time has come and the alternative is too bleak – for everyone. Everybody’s failed us, politicians, police, the justice system, even entertainers – anybody with even the smallest amount – has abused their power…..the hidden hand has become a grasping iron fist………..”

She -”I know. can you believe 85 people have as a much as the poorest three and a half billion.”

Me  -”More, much more probably…….and the war in Afganistan has cost Britain £40 billion…to achieve what… the production of Heroin at full capacity………..”Mission Accomplished“ said the Prime Monster……..Opium for the masses.”

She -“Yes, things are pretty bad out there……..How much did the banks get bailed out by…..in the last few years………..£450 billion? And everyday thousands eat from food banks…..and people are put on trial for taking out of date food from skips…. you’re right – something has to change.”

Me  -”But the changes can’t come through violence because – every action is symbolic, significant….magical even… Cause and special effects – so you and I have to start making the right choices now.  Maybe the ‘weapon’ of a Dragon would be a sword, but a  Poet would choose something more creative, a way of life, not a means to death. I think I understand the reference, the meaning of the name. Pindars was the last house left standing after Alexanders destruction of Thebes – Saved as thanks for a complimentary verse about an ancestor. And therein hangs ‘a’ meaning at least – All the swords of Thebes failed to stop Alexander the Great, only the pen quelled his fury. This is the land of Shakespeare, Keats and Shelley, of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. If a change is got to come lets show the World how to have a proper Revolution –  one with some Art and some Literature, one born of reason and passion, but one without violence. Then lets dance in the streets. ”Sous les pave, la piste de danse…….Beneath the cobblestones, the dancefloor. This sword is just a deadly Chinese whisper – a McGuffin – as Hitch-’cock’ would say – something that was conviently placed in our paths to lead us astray, something I was meant to kill you with. You and I are going to have to learn to trust ourselves and listen to our hearts. The institutions established to protect us have been hijacked by corporations and banks…The sad remnants of the secret societies have been corrupted, they’ve become about the preservation of privilage, and worse…much worse – there are so meny levels of control. Do you know about ‘The Stanford prison experiment’: A psychological study – funded by the military of course – those …analysts of systems – In which a test group of students  were split into prisoners and guards in a realistic replica of a prison. The test had to be stopped after a few days because the student guards become horribly brutal and used psychological torture and threats of violence to recruit a number of the prisoners to act as their informants and enforcers until the co-opted prisoners became as bad as the guards…a little power is a dangerous thing. The whole ‘My dinner with Andre’ scenario.  What did Boss Tweed say in ‘Gangs of New York’: You can always “pay one half of the poor to kill the other half” or at least fuck them over a bit…….look at the middle east……look at the  riots….Plain belly Sneetches – Cowboys and Big endians – The fami……..

She -”Divide and con……..thats a pretty bleak view . And which are you, a prisoner or a guard?”

Me  -”This isn’t a prison….this is Paradise, you and I are still in the garden….Sous les paves……….

I hope …arrrr……..I was an Optimist for so long, I still am really……not always easy for me, I have……trust issues. But now – for a while at least – I must be a realist as well. These are difficult times but there is an ‘Electrum Thread’ of Wisdom that is incorruptable, an inner voice. And my voice is telling me this sword is dangerous. To take this blade, a magical object from this place could be disasterous. This Draconian puzzle has been veiled with references to Osiris and by extension Orion. ’The Hunter‘ is said to have a sword between his legs, but the Orion Nebula is a Stellar nursery – there are over 700 stars awaiting birth, and with them planets and systems and…..life. Osiris’ phallus was lost but Isis didn’t replace his penis with a sword, lets choose a better symbol to represent the process of creation. Lets leave the weapon here – put some sex back in the Heavens and restore Orion to his naked wanded splendor. I think Isis would approve.“

She -”I think you’re partly right, and I understand what you mean about ‘cause and effect’, but I think you’re over-reacting…..a Stellar event could be hidden in the story of Osiris, there are remnants of some unknown cataclysmic event in the Great Nebula, blue echoes of what could have been an ancient supernova, there may have been a half remembered star there once – long ago and from those stellar ashes… Firebirds….. But then don’t you see the sword could be the perfect symbol, creation from destruction, rebirth from the stardust, and there is a connection – In The Great Pyramid – the shafts: One points to Alnitak: ‘the string of pearls’ on Orions Belt and another to Thuban, the old pole star.”

Me  -“Creation from destruction….Well thats all very punk rock but – the Sword should stay here in the underworld, ‘Vlad……….the Impaler’ should be guarded by Dragons…….luckily I know where to find some. Lets walk back onto the Earth in Peace.”

She -“This ‘is‘ the land of Shakespeare, but also of Arthur…and Merlin, a man who understood Dragons. What if the thing thats waiting for us outside is violence, isn’t that the lesson here – that change is violent?”

Me  -”They are mirrors, these……malefictions, moving Obsidian looking glasses – eh…..CGI Joes and violence is their stock in trade. They want you armed, they’re hoping you will be, haven’t you ever watched predator. I think we’re going to have to reinterpret the legends – turn Sword into wordS and Stone into toneS – Opera singers break glass as well you know…if you step onto the street with a sword now, you get shot. Believe me I know – I nearly got taken down by a team of police marksmen because I had a flute. Lets change the shadow boxing to mirror dancing……These are different times requiring different solutions.”

She -”Give me the sword, the responsibility will be mine.”

Me  -” You’re kidding right? Doesn’t this strike you as being a bit…Freudian? You’ve been sitting at a bar for days listening to ad-men weave you a web about strange cults and a fabulous mystical object, but don’t believe the advertising campaign……………we aren’t talking about ‘torches of freedom’ here, although – just like those simulacra of liberty theres no up-side to a sword,a little glamour maybe……..OK you’ll look cool, but these phoney phallic symbols dont represent life they represent death…unless you’re planning to take up some form of extreme carpentery, in which case I approve, of course. But trust me you shouldn’t play with fire, not even a fullered ‘Tongue of Flame’.”

She -”You trust me I know what I’m doing, and ‘enough’ with the fucking penis envy.”

Me -”But if I give you the sword you’ll be armed and I won’t be, how can that be good?”

She -”Well, you seem like you’re – kind of – in touch with your feminine side, give me the weapon and you’ll really know what being a woman feels like, the subtle threat of violence, hanging in the air like………“

Me  -”The sword of Damocles?”

She -“Oh very good. You know if this was a film: A screenplay – this would be the end of Act 1 – When the protagonists flaw is exposed…..You don’t have ‘trust issues’….You don’t trust anybody do you. Not a single fucking person. You know that the Hero is supposed to overcome his flaws don’t you, in order to prevail…’so trust me’ – Give me the sword.”

Me -”Fuck…………actually I have faith in a lot of people, millions infact…but, using your analogy – I’m going to maintain the dramatic tension for a little while longer – to allow me some time for an anguished internal struggle…when a door opens – if a door opens – ask me again. Remember I offered you the sword once already, but things have changed now – Extending your metaphor, but hopefully not your conceit…’I’ve got a bad feeling about this……..’”

She -”You realize we’re having an arguement in some kind of crazy….giant Stellar time-slice Plasma ball –  birdcage don’t you.”

Me  -”Which presumably explains why the atmoshere is so highly charged……..I didn’t want to have this conversation here….but I think you and I have had the same conversation before, with a very similar MacGuffin….lets not make the same mistake again.”

She -”Bullseye.”

Me  -”Finally – you agree with something I’ve said………..”

She -”No……Bullseye……..The Eye of the Bull: Aldebaran – the red giant – The fiery Eye of Taurus. Over there do you see, above where the brass circle in the floor touches the wall…..the stud is red not gold…..I think I know  what I’m doing, I think I understand this riddle. How much do you know about………

©     Kevin Barry Partridge    2014

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING – CHAPTER SIX: ASCENSION

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING

CHAPTER SIX

ASCENSION

By Kevin Barry Partridge

 As I come to the almond vessel I sheath my sword. The Scabbard is fur lined, the velveteen pelage annointed beneath a thin layer of wood covered in thick tawny leather. Inlaid into the surface is a delicate fish scale pattern of fine silver. One side of the throat has a long slit allowing the widest curve of the Naue blade to access the rounded iris leaf sheath, the sword then secured with a long leather thong, over the ricasso. The mouth, edges, locket, chape and drag are of sculpted cast bronze and a silver tassel,resembling a tail, hangs from the argent tip. Below the gaping mouth is an Egyptian ‘Eye of Horus’ made of gold. When sheathed the blade appears to have been completely swallowed by a fish.

Nearby stands a single megalithic obelisk about 5 feet tall, as I draw near I notice that something is inscribed on the flattened top: Three spirals radiating from a central point – a Triskelion, the detail coated over with the film of time and barely visible. Remembering that this symbol was used at the Neolithic tomb of Newgrange to highlight acoustically resonant locations I undo my belt and wrap the strap around the pommel of the sword then firmly strike the stalagmite. A bell like chime rings out, rich in overtones: A rock gong ! “A LITHOPHONE” I shout, my voice suddenly sonorous and musical. With some excitement, I untie the boat and pull the floating vessel the short distance back to my friend, the whitenoise of the waterfall growing steadily louder.

Me  -” The stalagmites are lithophones, this is starting to make sense. Our picture:The tree – the rainbows could be standing waves. If the stagmites have been tuned this cavern was probably used for magical rites, ceremonies involving ritual chanting. At Newgrange there are various symbols carved into the walls, triskeles, circles, zigzags. What was found is that if a person stood near certain symbols on the Winter solstice and chanted, the rising Sun would illuminate incense clouds or dust that passed through the sound waves of the voice , making the cycles and nodes visible. At Newgrange there are twelve chevroned zigzags that perfectly align with the standing waves of someone singing at the entrance. Our ancestors would have associated this caduceus pattern with the deepest mysteries, with the Suns rays entering the womb of the Earth, the union of the land and the sky. But then…on our tree the waves should have equal cycle lengths.“

She -”Look again, there are layers of meaning in the mural, subtle nuances – whispered secrets. Varying but harmonious dimensions and relationships. The picture is expressing several truths at once. Maybe a single note: A fundamental frequency and the partials. A quantized wavelength. I hadn’t seen………so much, then I heard that sound….that vibraphone / hang(drum) sound, and suddenly I could see…..the details…………growing, unfolding infront of my eyes.

And careful study of the nebulous painting does reveal hitherto unseen depths.The misty golden tree is faint but fairly well defined, almost the same colour as the stone, with edges glowing in spattered dusty teal. The branches radiate symetrically from around the centre of the crown, forming a complex mottled pattern very similar to sound vibrations on a Chladni plate, with resonant points highlighted by blurring gold and silver apples. The dewy double helix is pale and hazy, like watercolour on fine blotting paper, the colours bleeding into each other and seeping deep into the rockface at the amaranthine outlines. Spoking from the
center of each circular cycle are faint feathery pappus’ making the spectrum daubed orbs look like bubbling psychedelic blowballs. Like Ernst Haeckels sublime drawings of radiolaria or spectral cymatic vibrations. Overlaid and stretching to the borders of the cavern are the nearly invisible sharp pale lines and dots of intricate three dimensional geometric diagrams: stellated octahedrons, dodecahedrons, icosahedrons, star tetrahedrons and within them hexagons, pentagrams ,triangles, squares and circles. Sometimes the design seems Sumerian or Assyrian, the caduceus made up of shimmering diamonds with exquisite flowering angles, then Kabbalistic – with pulsing Sephirot blooms that unfold like hypercubes. Everytime I look at the ever evolving image I find more detail,there are tiny stars splashed into the green bands of the rainbows and spraying out from those verdant ribbons to speckle the cave walls like blown Dandelion seeds. And nestled within the sinuous wavering iris’ another double helix illustrated in flecked innuendo with sprinkled pinpoint equalised nodes. A geometric Jacobs ladder growing in Orphic abodes, assurgent from where Mnemosyne – the river of memory flows, rising up through a spindle of mysterious Hermetic codes.

Me  -”If I had my phone I could find the primary resonance of the cave, in Archaeoacoustics the frequency is frequently about 108 hz which is…an A. Psychoacoustics is so significant, you know Rosslyn chapel has Cymatic patterns carved into the stonework, even Stonehenge has acoustic qualities: The concave Sarsens reflect high frequencies back into the circle while lower tones pass through, so the drummed rythyms don’t become too confused. The Preseli Bluestones are lithophones. Ritual chanting would have been performed to invoke a trance state – a feeling of Supernatural awe – and perhaps even elavate brainwaves from Beta to
Gamma. Somehow the ancients produced low sub-base infrasound frequencies, in the ELF range, somewhere near the Shumann resonance, so that you feel the sound in your bones,  maybe there were bass drums……..unless……….”

There is a hand on my shoulder, gently holding me back, and a look that says we should leave. “I need to see whats up there” she says, pointing to the top of the ladder.

Me  -“Oh, Er…..OK, theres probably no danger but maybe I should go up ahead of you just incase. And I will – in a moment – but first I must hear music in this place, I wrote some songs a few years ago, one of the verses seems appropriate” – (singing)

”Greenleaf Mandrake quiverglint,
Ghostbreath invocation striking flint,
Firespat chariot – Ziggurat,
Spinning playground witches hat,
Electromagnetic cryptic word,
Mystic miracle waveride bird,
Kebar shooting star,
Wheel within a wheel,
Rainbow bridge reveal.”

The sound echoes through the cavern – deep, melodic and sonorous, some of the distant monolithes seem to join in,   harmonising – resonating at sympathetic frequencies – like a choir. There would be so much to explore here….. but I take my friends hand and help her into the boat, then securing the ‘Dragons Tail’ on my back,  climb into the Oak Mandorla and row us the short distance to the foot of the ladder and, having tied the vessel, start the ascent…sure that my companion is safe behind me.

As I climb I feel another wave of the potent hallucinogen upon me, stronger than before, invigorating and very visual this time. Slighty disconcerting while climbing a ladder which has now started to sprout Ivy leaves….could the drug have been Amanita Muscaria: The fly agaric? I must focus, find sure footing at every rung, grip hard and proceed step by step. But as I rise I begin to experience another curious sensation, every six or seven rungs a feeling of weightlessness comes over me, whenever I am level with the nodes on the hidden caduceus infact.  The further I climb the stronger the effect becomes, until I am quite overwhelmed, quite sure that if I let go of the dense Ivy trellis I will continue to ascend, raised up by some esoteric anabatic force. Near the high rift I decide to rest for a moment, there are Ivy berries growing here, their umbrels reminiscent of the geometry on the walls………they are so beautiful, like tiny frozen fireworks, with purple orbs about to explode. As I look I see that I am level with a node. Am I already floating, if I let go will I just drift upwards through the sky? I am about to take the plunge when I notice something high above me, the Ivy has been replaced by mistletoe, the white waxy berries shining like little argent stars, globed seed beads, bright moon pearls which draw me ever upwards, further through the walls of rock and stone, until at last I find that I am standing at the base of a spiral stone staircase which rises before me. Soon the girl is standing by my side on a reassuringly solid amber flagstone floor, brightly illuminated by wall mounted electric lights.

She -”Did you feel that, that feeling like…floating, coming up the ladder.“

Me  -”Did you feel that as well, I thought I was hallucinating, I nearly let go, I was sure I could fly. If that was real then I was right earlier – standing waves…acoustic levitation. These stairs must act like a transducer, focusing the noise of the waterfall downwards, with the soundwaves reflected back up by the stream. Do you have anything in your pockets, something light and large…I might have something, lets have a look…I‘ve got an acorn, something bigger would probably be better but this might work.”

Taking the nut from my trouser pocket, the full cupule still on a small piece of branch with a single creased zig zag leaf attached, I lean over the gaping rift which is near me in the exposed stone floor and – steadying myself on the ladders protruding high arched frame which is anchored in the rock – drop the little tree seed. through the craggy, almond shaped hole. About two thirds of the way down the acorn stops in mid air and hovering – starts to spin like a ‘whirlybird’ Samaras revolving weightless in the air.

Me -“ The anti-gravity man’………are you ready for the next part of the puzzle, the stairs should be easier than the ladder, but perhaps you should go first this time, incase I decide to test my wings.”

Smiling, my beautiful companion hesitantly starts up the solid stone steps of the enclosed helicoidal shaft, gently draging the fingertips of one hand over the sandstone surface of the outer wall, reaching up with the other to cup the gold stone spine and tilting her lovely head inwards. Her languidly angular pose like a slow motion dervish caught in a lazy vortex. A serene sufi whirling through a nonchalant tornado, searching for barreling bluebirds. A twitcher in a twister. I follow a little way back, almost managing to resist the
temptation of staring at her swaying derriere.

She -”Do you think we’re still underground?”

Me  -”I don‘t know, maybe, nothing would surpise me. You might come out on top of the Monument…in London.”

She – “You know – the Monument is a Zenith telescope, with a sweet little observatory underneath. And designed to point at a very particular constellation….Draco.”

Me  – “Now you see thats odd, to design a memorial to the Great fire of London which specifically looks at Draco, the fire-breather – that seems strange to me, although theres probably a better story than pudding lane hidden in that enigma. I like Dragons but they’re all over the city, at bounderies, junctions, tube stations – on top of churches, I mean a Dragon is a very peculiar thing to put on top of a church, like a witch on a Christmas tree….ooh, actually that sounds quite good. Obviously they’re an emblem, but I have to admit I
don’t really understand the City of Londons obsession with them.”

She – “Thuban…….Thuban was the North star when Stonehenge was built, when the Pyramids and the Ziggurats were erected, when Heroes walked the Earth. Thuban is………………….The phallus of the Dragon – Alpha Draconis. The name actually means ‘life of Heaven’.. How much do you know about psychogeography?”

Me  -” A fair amount, I’m a notorious Flaneur………I wander around taking photographs, I like to land somewhere and just……..explore – go with the flow. Do you mean psychogeography or metrology?“

She -”Both I suppose…..wow.”

Our conversation is put on hold, my friend has arrived at the top of the stairs, I can see her bowing as she enters a large chamber, soon I am with her, and both of us are speechless.

©2014 Kevin Barry Partridge

THE CURE IS KISSING – CHAPTER FIVE : THE TREE IN THE CRYSTAL CAVERN

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING

CHAPTER FIVE

THE TREE IN THE CRYSTAL CAVERN

By Kevin Barry Partridge

She – “Where are we, I don’t know this place…..what is happening.”

Me  – “ We’re deep underground, in the catacombs, I’ve been drugged……I’m tripping…….and I think somebody wants you dead!”

She – “Me. Why not you?”

Me  – “Because they gave me the sword, tied your hands together, dressed you up like a super freak and hoped the drug would do the rest. Although……don’t touch the horns…….on the mask, they might be poisoned ”

She – “No-one gave you that sword, thats Pindar thats what I was telling you about – ‘the phallus of the dragon’  you must have found that yourself, that swords been lost down here for a long time.”

Me  – “Pindar: I thought you meant the underground base…..in London, I thought you were warning me. I‘m not sure how I got the sword. I remember waking up down here in the dark, with this at my waist. Then there was light and you…..I thought you were the Minotaur….you were running at me screaming. I’m assuming we’re beneath the vaults somewhere, am I right?…….You said “down here,” are we beneath the vaults?”

She – “I don’t know ! I don’t know where we are, I meant underground, we could be anywhere. We’ve  been drugged then! I’m not hallucinating, but I don’t know how I got here. What have they given you, LSD, DMT?”

Me  – “Maybe…..a little…..but this was physical, DMT shuts the muscles down, I thought I tasted liberty caps upstairs, but there was something else, something like……..ink in water, if they’d only used mushrooms I’d just have given you a big hug and laughed a lot – even with the mask. I felt like I was….. flying, Deadly nightshade was used in Witches flying potions, and might just turn mushrooms dark. There might have been some ayahuasca in there as well. The drugs still on me, I can feel the waves – if I drift…..talk to me… bring me back….. ”

She – “Why didn’t you attack – you were running at me waving a sword, screaming about Moloch”

Me  – “I had a vision…a momentary flash: You were like a great black billowing smokecloud bull, charging me. Then just for a moment, the whole vision changed. There was a woman riding a Lion holding an Amethyst out towards me, the crystal was so bright, so vivid that I became completely focused on that radiant point in space, the passage, the woman, everything else dissappeared – then the vision changed back and the thread from your jumper was where the amethyst had been, I knew that there was no danger, I knew that you were wearing the mask.”

She – “Amethyst is protection from intoxication, quartz stained with the violet tears of Dionysis. This is getting……Sybylline. I need a drink, lets get out of here.”

Me  – “I heard running water ,I think theres an underground stream, or a river nearby, we’ll rest for a while and have a drink. Getting back up might be easier said than done.”

I walk over to where I had dropped the sword, just before my leap. As I pick the curious object up I get my first good look:The leaf shaped blade is wide and symmetrically curved, like a Greek Xiphos: about 70cm long, and heavy. The bright steel inscribed with an intricate dragon scale pattern. The hilt is of Ivory, the grip covered in Katana, with a large ivory pommel surrounding a gold and silver disk.

Me – “If you’d feel more comfortable you can hold onto this, until the drugs wear off.”

She -”Thank you, no.”

The path behind us is blocked, as we start back along the passage I see that the pale blue-white light  permeating and illuminating these subterranean tunnels comes from the crystals growing, glowing in the rock. Whether the phospherescence is generated by some form of piezoelectricity or triboluminescence I cannot say but the light pulses almost imperceptibly at about the same rate as a human heartbeat, so I believe the phenomenon is natural. The wide arched ceiling is encrusted with clusters of these crystals and they shine like shimmering spectral cyan fire. The walls are rough hewn with a single long shallow stone sarcophagus, a delicately walled bier, running the length of the passage and jutting low from both sides. Arranged along the craggy catalfaque are magnificently decorated skeletons. The bleached and ashen bones of an archaic line of Kings and Queens…….surrounded by unlit votive candles.

I have seen the uncanny astronaut ‘reliquary of Mary Magdalene’ in the basilica crypt of St Maximinin la Sainte Baume in France, the beaded and carved kapalas of Tibet and the lurid reliquaries of Spain – these are as opulent as anything created by the hand of man. Sumptuous gilded Icons – (un)born of the obsessions of devoted unknown votaries lovingly playing dress up with the venerated bones of forefathers, of  Mamas and Papas. Unforgotton ancestors wearing bespoke robes of gold and silver, turquoise and teal, richly embroidered with couched arabesques and floral patterns. The Baroque gowns fastened with lavish gold frogging and hung with voluminous metallic braids. Azure silk stand collars and gauntlet cuffs are adorned with gold embroidered beaded oak leafs. The garments leave the ribcages exposed, the heart shaped aperture encompassed by spoking satin stitch halcyon rays. Ribs and feet are sheathed in fine white needle lace and bleached bare bone hands wear fine white net gloves overgrown wth exuburant,  ostentatious rings. Some of the skulls are shrouded in pure white Chantilly lace, with rose patterns outlined in delicate cordonnet, the rest are bejeweled in gemstones, studded with jewels. Bright sapphires shine in filigree fittings where eyes should be. Amethyst and emerald beards and hair spangle these head boned domes and the ribs are diamond starred. On several – one rib is bare, delicately inscribed with the outline of a branch, bestrewn with tiny leaves. At the center of each bony birdcage is a golden brooch: Some like a heart  –  bedecked and bejeweled with rubies, others formed like diamond stars or Heliodor cruxes. And everywhere pearls, of every size and shape: Pearls sewn onto fabric, encircling gems, on rings, wedged between the very bones. In my psychedelic state everything radiates vibrating living light.

“I think the stream is through here” I say, leading my companion down one of the branching narrow side tunnels into…..”

The large limestone cavern is natural, the man made catacombs obviously cleaved from the rock outward from this cave. The walls are starred with the same lambent quartz, clustering in new and evocative constellations.I see a Asrai and a lamb, a Griffin and a Ziz, the…….

She – “water………. I don’t know what they gave us but I‘m so thirsty.”

My companion rushes down meandering stone steps cut over millennia by a subterranean stream, gradually narrowing – cutting deeper into the cavern floor. To my left the river is replenished by a small waterfall, flowing from a fissure in the rock. Away to the right the water dissappears beneath an asymmetrical carved limestone voussure into a dusky twilight tunnel. Tied beneath the entrance is an elegant nutbrown wooden skiff. Before me the cavern opens into a wide and narrow shimmering grotto that resembles the inside of a vast rock lined – crystal studded geode……or a Gothic Gaudiesque underground platform, with wavering walls that whirl with reflected rippling swirls from gently gyraling water: The freshwater ‘Strand’ perhaps (sous les paves, le plage).  Behind me three branching paths lead back to the catacombs through cleft fractures in the stone. The ceiling is white as rock salt, the contoured walls aureate deepening to dull tangerine near the base: Mostly smooth, the peripheral surfaces more like sponge. From those dewy corners stalagmites grow, stalagtites trickle, the cumulate edges vertically ridged in deep chiaroscuro – gilled like giant hyperboloid Chanterelle columns or hourglass pillars of bundled banyan roots. The deepest shadows seem to hide blooms of Medusa jellyfish hanging in the air, with entwined tentacles paralysed in stone, their petrifying powers somehow unleashed upon themselves. Here and there a solitary tower rises like a lonely Geo Giacometti waiting for a train, or apostolistic Gaudi spires lingering in the subterrane, the Sagrada unfamiliar, the windswept beeswax saints, prophesying marian apparitions, the immaculate virgin enciente, amongst apple core aerial roots, in a bristling fur lined womb, sandcastle sentinels softly cloistered in urchin spined tombs, in curvilinear mineral basilicas, in craggy chapel caves, obelisk angels abiding ‘neath whitewater seabreak saltwaves………

She – “Your drifting. Come and drink some water…..talk to me.”

Me  – “Yes, I was drifting…….. having little epiphanies…….hierophanies …seeing monolithic figures everywhere, there are faces in the rocks.”

She – ” Thats paranoia.“

Me  – “No……..Pareidolia, or…an imagination at play……….or shamanism.”

I walk over to the waters edge sit down and hand cup a mouthful of the cool clear water……delicious.

Me  – “Uh…. I’d forgotton…….

She – ” I know.“    Opposite us, on the other side of the water painted onto the surface of the rock is the pale image of a large inverted tree – the mural grown faint with time. The leafy round blue-green Crown bountiful with gold and silver fruits hanging down towards the surface of the water, the trunk soaring upwards to a breach in the snowy stone canopy. Entwining and encircling the trunk are twin meandering rainbows that undulate downwards growing in width and circumference in an expanding double helix, so that the wan image resembles an upside down caduceus with trunk instead of rod and winding sine wave iris’ instead of snakes, the largest spectrum ‘cycle’ surrounding the Crown like a brightly coloured aura. Near the rippling surface of the stream on either side of the tree are pictures of the Sun and Moon. Emerging from the water, leading up through the fractal fruit laden branches, along the trunk and cut into the walls is a ladder, which leads through the high rift to a bright unseen space.

She – “ A way up.”

Me  – “And the boat…. a way through.”

She – “Or back to the catacombs and maybe a way out. Then theres the mystery door………only two of the tunnels go back to the passages – I counted, the other must go somewhere else. Which way do you want to go?”

The discussion that follows is fairly long and quite convoluted, the imagined relative dangers of four unknown paths, the possible ease of backtracking should anything go wrong, the indefinable benefits of guessed at destinations. And as the conversation progresses the realization slowly dawns that my personal preference would be for exploration, to stay within these subterranean realms, and go deeper, further in – to   examine the underworld and unlock whatever mysteries lay hidden in the depths. What just as clear however is that this woman is anxious to find a way out, that either something in or about the caves is making her nervous,  or that she is concerned about the safety of something still above ground. I have no desire to prolong her discomfort, there are questions to be asked, but only at the proper time.

She – “We both know we’re going up the tree.”

Me  -”OK……..yes, of course.”

She – “Why do you think the picture is upside down?”

Me  – ”I don’t know…….maybe the underworld is a reflection of the upper world. Then of course theres the stream, the reflection is right side up… I first saw the tree in the water, growing from where I was sitting, my hands cupped the drink straight from the trunk – the steps meander lead me to the perfect place. The double helix’s could be extended spirals cut and rotated at the widest point, left and right. Clockwise and counter clockwise spirals are frequently found together in nature: Sunflower heads, pine cones, daisies, but they’re uneven……the amount of right and left spirals is always uneven…… consecutive fibornacci numbers 8/13 or 21/34 but of course theres only one of each here, and the spiral – the actual logarithmic spiral could be the same both ways….the golden section?….Phi……..yes, look at the ratio, between the length of the Helix cycles 1 to 1.618 the Golden ratio, a ladder within a ladder? You know the Gnostics believed………….Did you hear that?  Maybe music……. 13-8-5-3-2-1 yes that works…….a chord… a progression? Or ascending pitch in sine waves, higher frequencies have narrower oscillations. And then the whole picture, you probably know more about the Caduceus than I do, but the caduceus started with ribbons, white ribbons. Huh, not upside down at all. A maypole – The phallus………..look, a great phallus – entering the surface of the Earth, and the symbolism – energy…..or  two meandering paths, converging, diverging, then touching again faster and faster, two journeys – linked, destined to meet again and again – on a voyage to……………..”

She -” Yes…….Your right……..they could be fruiting roots, the branches might be above us, through the opening……….Tell me about Phi.”

Me  – “Phi – The divine proportion –  is an aesthetically pleasing ratio that, some say, is a regulating growth principle found in Nature, a sort of inherent logarithm…….the equation of a self-similar geometric progression –  and that is used by artists as a kind of……..axiom of beauty. Euclid was the first person known to have written about Phi, although the Pyramid builders seem to have understood the principle earlier. The architect of the Parthenon certainly did………..the Mystery schools have very obviously known about the Golden Mean since…..well, thats complicated. You understand the Fibonacci numbers, actually the sequence was probably discovered much earlier in India, but the numbers are: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…… ad infinitum – to generate a number you add the preceding two – but if you divide a number by the previous number you get an approximation of Phi……  and by the 13th step – the answer will always be Phi – to at least four decimal places – 1.6180 the Golden ratio. A proportion ratio which may well be Universal 1 : 1.618 and which is present in the arrangement of my face, the length of the bones in your hand, in those spiralling seed heads, in sea shells, the works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Le Corbusier, Satie and Debussy. In the smallest radiolaria and the spiral arms of Galaxies, although in those natural spirals the pitch isn’t constant, the logarithms vary….. nature thrives on diversity, Phi is………an idealised form”

As I am talking a strange vision unfolds in the water before my eyes. a cerulean lotus has slowly emerged from the water and hovers now, glistening and dripping, a few inches above the glassy star dancing surface. The closed powdery petals of the flower starting to unfurl in a circular sequential unveiling that reveals a tiny androgynous figure standing amongst the stamen, smiling at me, and cupped within those tiny hands a little golden key …….then suddenly – with speech –  the spell is over.

She – “ Your transfixed, you look like you’re wandering again. You should talk to me.”

Me  – ”Arh……….should I? OK then – Tell me about your friends…..how you have access to private rooms……..tell me about …….what you want me to see – in the vault. Tell me about what you left behind…and cannot leave.”

She – “Your angry, you asked me to bring you back if you started drifting.”

Me  – “I know, I’m not angry – I’m tired, I’ve been doing this a long time, I was waiting for a better moment, but I need some honesty………….listen, I realise this is complicated, and that maybe you’re as confused as I am. We’ve known each other longer than a few hours, I feel that, but I don’t know how………so if you understand whats happening I need you to tell me.”

She – “I’ll tell you all I know, but first we have to get back up – into the world, theres no telling what secret savagery prowls these caves, we’ve stayed too long.”

Me – “There’s no danger here, there are Dragons perhaps – deeper………..and older – more dignified bones. But your safe. Drink , eat if theres food, but don’t take anything from the dead, let them keep their jewels, they are Beast gifts – nobody starved for those bones to have their finery. I’ll keep the sword because that came to me…naturally, anything else, anything that was already down here should stay……….and if I start to drift, let me. I might learn something…………I’ll get the boat, lets start climbing.”

© 2014 Kevin Barry Partridge

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING – CHAPTER FOUR – ALBIONS AMETHYST HOUR – A FAIRYTALE

THE ONLY CURE IS KISSING

CHAPTER FOUR – ALBIONS AMETHYST HOUR

By Kevin Barry Partridge

I delve deep into those sage and somber eyes, and find some tension that I didn’t sense before.

Me – “Personally I’d be happy to just drive away from here, but if there’s some reason you want – or need to go back in you should tell mell me.”

She – “I can’t…….I thought I’d be able to but……..theres something in there that is very dear to me. Something I can’t leave behind.”.

Maybe I should walk away, but as I search her face I see a glimmer of hope and ……….expectation, as though I should understand what shes asking of me. Is there something I’ve forgotton? I do feel a flicker of recognition, the vaguest sense that I’ve known this woman somewhere before.

Me – “And when you have this…….thing, you want to leave?”

She – “Yes !”

Me – “……………….Then lets go and get what you can’t do without………. I need to get some things”

Her face shows only relief, no sign of any secret advantage. I take hold of her hand and gently stroke her palm with my thumb. Then together we walk around the building to the car. On the driveway there are lots of children, no longer in costume and flashing around on small silver scooters – the handlebars adorned with the wickerwork heads of deer and foxes, bulls and birds. I take a heavy coat and a bag from the car and lock the doors. “Theres another way in” she says, and together we walk through a nearby, nearly hidden door, along a dark narrow passage back into our linked and unknown fate.

The hall has been emptied except for a group of about a dozen figures, hunched and hooded in red robes at the furthest end. Clouds of Frankincense hang like portentous specters in air scented with the silver tears of the Boswellia tree. Lillian Gish has been replaced by the figures of Caractacus Pott and Truly Scrumptious popping/locking their zeotropic dance to ‘Doll on a music box’ from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.The music is: Swans – The seer. The floor has been completely covered in crisp dry autumn leaves and large leafless branches have been hung everywhere so that the entire space resembles a woodland grove. The barmaid is stll around so I suggest another drink, before the task of………….recovery? The lady still likes mulled wine and I order a Cappuccino………. theres still a chance that I‘ll be driving.

She – “Who do you think they are?”

Me – “I don’t know………..confused systems analysts?”

She sips her wine and wrinkles her nose “too tart” she says. The barmaid is out of sight making coffee, so I reach across the bar and grab a jar of honey from a shelf. Inside my teddybear coat is treasure, a ravishing Victorian Absinthe spoon with a tree cut blade, wrapped in a gold silk handkerchief. “This is clean” I assure her, placing the tip in the pot and spinning the spoon until – above her cup the honey drips slowly into the hot wine, the fruit of the vine. then I lower the blade into the chalice and stir in the remaining nectar. When most of the sweet syrup has deliquiesced I withdraw the silver scoop. “May I?” she asks and taking the handle procedes to lick the blade clean, before handing the glistening artifact back to me – “Thanks, I love honey, nice spoon.”

Me – ’“ Yeah, great right, I’m going to have a drink later, theres a place I like up near…… well you’ll see when I get there, Thanks.”

My coffee has arrived I take a drink of the hot strong tawny liquid, as I swallow I sense some unexpected flavours: nutmeg, cinnamon and beneath them the dull familiar taste of musty vegetation.

Me – “Oh………..you know just when I was getting used to the other guests – they all disappear.”

She – “ Yes,I’m not sure I’m going to miss them. A sinister bunch. Do you like horror stories?”

Me – “Not really, but I’ve been interested in the similarity with fairy tales. I was thinking earlier that ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is a perfect myth. The thing is though that folk tales are sometimes assigned classifications: On the Aarne – Thompson system – so ‘Snow white’ and ‘Beauty’ have more or less the same codification – AT 425 or 26 or something, which is: The search for a lost spouse – But then maybe so does ‘the mummy’ or some versions of ‘Dracula’ or even ‘King Kong‘………..I might be stretching a bit with Kong thats probably Damsel in distress, but the only thing that might surprise those early storytellers is that the monsters are getting billing. I’m always amazed at how dusky the ‘famous’ fairy tales are.”

She – “Sleeping Beauty?”

Me – “well, in Sleeping Beauty after the story of the Prince and the awakening – and even that has a nebulous source, theres another part of the story where the evil Queen mother, an Ogre, wants to eat the Princess’ children, and has to be thwarted by a cook substituting animals in sauce, before the Ogress is eaten in her own pit of snakes. But the allusions are fascinating, in the Brothers Grimm version, which splits the tale, twelve fairies are invited to the christening, representing the solar year and the wicked fairy, as the thirteenth guest would have represented the older lunar year. I mean to our ancestors the phases of the moon must have been the the obvious way to measure the year, and women must have seemed to have had an almost mystical connection to time and the changing of the seasons. Back to your astrological allergeries.”

She – “And back to Paternalism and the subleties of ideology change. Do you know?”

Me – “Know what?”

She – “About the thirteenth sign of the Zodiac: Ophiuchus – The Snake Bearer.”

Me – “No, tell me.”

She – “The sun travels through thirteen signs on the ecliptic, ‘Ophiuchus’ is between Scorpio and Sagittarius, opposite Orion in the Sky. In her hands she holds the Serpent, which passes through her legs”

Me – “The Hermaphrodite – Is Ophiuchus a woman then ?

She – ”I think so, but no the sign is said to be the Egyptian: Imhotep.”

Me – “ Mummy……..you know Enki……v……

The candles are starting to pulse, efferent emanations ebb and flow, needle radiations recede and grow, every flame becomes a shining welcoming Yoni, then a blinking golden eye – radiating peacock feather halos. The room is breathing. On the giant leadlight screen the flaming face of OZ is mouthing inaudible incantations. From outside comes a distant roar of thunder and a flash of lightning, then bursts of strobbing light that seep through the windows and make the hall vibrate, and all the time clap after clap of thunder like distant mocking applause, a storm is coming – The huddled hooded horde are running towards me, howling.

She – ”Pindar is in the ground, subterranean! Do you remember?”

Me – “What do I expect?“

She – ”In the vault? I don’t know, every time is different, I’m sorry.“

Me – ”Don’t worry. They…can’t…..hurt …..me! On every level …I am…………….protected”.

Vibrating………vibrating……………..vibrating.

Diamond deep, only quartz grows here in Albions amethyst hour. Quartz and consternation and Cryptocrystalline constellations that yield no light in these aphotic depths – Cthulus ink is spent. Dammershlafs Nights-hades drawn – Belladonna black. Cimmerian Velvet paths, lined they are, with silent dissolution, with dust, and dry dead bones. There is quiescence here………….. silence and death, darkness and the end of woe in these unfathomable tombs of burnished jet. Soundless, carefree armistace – tranquillity without regret. How long the deep descent, immeasurable in years, timeless through the veils of tears. Beyond the boatman past Styx and bones and tortoiseshell sepulchers, through crypts of crumbling stone to……..nothingness……………. the abyss. Yet even here – thought remains ‘cogito ergo sum’ and in my veins: Rhythmic oscillations flow – A pulse – A heartbeat gently grows! I am alive, but where? The beat goes on but theres no other sound, save …………..breath, but no light, no scent here……….. sent here, sent here! Why? These calignous realms of shadow yeald no light, to navigate these umbras zones I must have sight.I invoke geometric cymatic vibrations, spectrum saturated octaves of sound, algorithmic rippling wavelengths, poetic incantations that shake soot to the ground. I use electromagnetic cadence ‘Every man and every woman is a star’, While ‘they shall have stars at elbow and foot’ sparks a glimmering gleam in my heart. Then flowing chakra pathways place bright stars on my shoulders and feet – that beam, and from each freckley point in the asterism – incandescent light now streams. From each pulsing fiery lantern – lustrous circles grow, flowering concentric coronas – all aglow, difussing milky aureoles form luminous halos, blossoming opal auroras shimmer and flow. The mustering undulations surge, clustering ripples osculate and converge, they cockle and rimple tessalate and merge, living Eschers interlock then diverge. This place is full of doves! They dissipate and gather, mingle and meld, then fly beyond my vision, the nascent sparks of light dispelled. Twilights languid afterglow grows dim, but evanescent gloaming seeds a glowing quim, the agate vesica pisces splits the darkling night, parting sarcous curtains reveal dim dilating light, from peripheral perception come blurring doves in flight, within the sanguine yoni the bright white birds unite, as they colliding – come together the glowering sky ignites. A million fiery stars radiate from the singularity,and gradually as dawning comes – I see with perfect clarity. I‘m in a carved rock passage at my belt there hangs a sword, the walls are lined with skeletons garbed in jewels and silver, the roof is made of fretted fire beneath my feet a chessboard, paths enexplored branch from each side – somewhere I hear a river. At passage end is full moon rise betwixt twin mountain peaks, o’erarching both – blue bodied Nuit in star filled union seeks, then lunar womb gives birth a man his arms in cruciform, the waning moon a crescent forms of upstretched shining horn. Cradled in celestial arc starfire brightly burns, which jets twin streams of fiery rock, into his outstreched arms and rooted there, these orbs of flame form fiery molten eyes, the mountains quake, root rocks break, a monumental Bull does rise.Man and star, moon and mountain merge and shake free, Gargantuan the great beast is and terrible to see, a vacillating vaporous rorschach, a shapeshifting smoky Marduk, from metamorphing miasmic magma, to an amorphous ashcloud St Luke, from smoldering hoofstamp auroch to obsidian smokecloud stampede, from avalanche rocks to storm clad ox, the urus bears down on me. And headlong down the passage comes, spitting flames, talking tongues, the Great Beast bearing gotterdammerung.I take the sword – the flaming sword and and start along the way, and running now I quicken pace to hunt my fearsome prey, “MOLOCH YOU FIEND I COME FOR YOU – EVERY CHILD SHALL BE AVENGED AND EVERY GRIEVING PARENT WILL THIS DAY TASTE REVENGE.” So headlong down the hall I surge at the effluvial smogging brute, but the Behemoths bulk cracks the ground and hinders my pursuit. And fall away vast pieces do ‘til stepping stones I’m forced to tread, the juggernaut still charging me lowers that demon head, and the hellions horn and Dragon breath fill my heart with dread, until I see that tangled on the monsters breast is a bright red hanging thread. Now as I approach I with reproach look in those Bo – Opis eyes, but as I stare no Devil there I find to my surprise, the forceful tread – dread Hathors head has all been a disguise, and seeing me the ‘Queen of night’s mask begins to rise. Our pace too quick – no time to halt, no sWORD I’ll use – but WORDs I’ll choose to precipitate my leap. “THERE ARE FORESTS AT THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, CRYSTAL TREES OF UNIMAGINABLE HEIGHT, EACH BOWING TO A POINT OF UNIMAGINABLE LIGHT, SORROUNDED, THEY ARE, BY A LAKE OF FIRE, THE LIGHT OF WHICH PULSES THROUGH EACH GOLDEN SPIRE”…………….. and as I talk the Minoan vault I make, and passing through the cresent horns, the mask I take, and the woman wake.

Beside me on the ground is an elaborate Minotaur mask, and infront of me sitting, looking dazed – the woman I have come to think of as a friend, her arms tied behind her back, “You are safe, stay with me, I’ll find the way to the surface” I say, untying her hands.

©2013 Kevin Barry Partridge.