Absurd Shards #13 - The Psychogeographic Theory of Straight Line Walking (part 3)

The countryside:

Following the limited success of the primary field test, the secondary test was undertaken in a rural location where it was predicted the psychological strictures placed on physicality might be more effectively shaken loose. I had it in mind to repeat the straight line experiment over an unobstructed plot of land to ease myself gradually into the bath of deorientation.

The walk progressed well at first, given the open field location, I was able to get to the point where I could almost visualise the imprints of my own feet before me, scouring a ruler-straight line across the perpendicular terrain. I noticed at once the relative agility with which my mind managed to recalibrate itself in accordance with the prescribed direction; a collision between rigidity and the freedom of expansive space. My delineation of this linear path stood as a steady and measured rejection of the hundreds of alternative routes across the landscape that were available.

As I neared the edge of the field I encountered boggy ground and relished the sense of necessary avoidance having already been subjugated to the will of the walk. Bordering the field was some thick bracken leading into a dense patch of woodland and, with not inconsiderable effort, I was able to scramble over, incurring only minor scrapes to hands and forearms. Entering the woodland I found myself slackening the taut rope of the walk, as per the conditions of the experiment, around trees that obscured my course. At one point I became quite entwined in a thick cluster of branches and overgrowth which took several minutes to break free from. A narrow but deep stream was crossed with less difficulty save for soaking myself up to the thighs.

Despite, or perhaps because of, these physical inconveniences I found myself beginning to be quite exultant with the prospects for this psychogeographic method, my conviction in its potential renewed after the frustrating shortcomings of the urban foray. If I am only able to master the temperament and mental balance I will be soon able to develop the technique into more unorthodox situations.

Absurd Shards #12 - The Reverse Shopping Experience

With Tesco’s staggering decrepitude making the headlines recently, I have been reminded of my own experience working in a supermarket as a teenager.  There was one task in particular that seldom came my way but in spite, or perhaps because of that, I often found myself pining for the opportunity.

The task involved walking around the supermarket with a trolley that had been left by the customer and returning the items to their rightful places on the shelves.  This might initially sound mundane but the therapeutic qualities are not to be underestimated.

The supermarket shopping experience is such a fundamental, ritualistic part of our lives; a survey recently put the average amount of time that an adult in the UK spends in a supermarket at 5.5 full days per year.  With consumer buying habits used to extrapolate accurate conceptions of the individual shopper, I often felt like I was taking part in some kind of autopsy on the absent person’s life.

Why did they favour the value range for certain products but choose to upscale on others?  What was the allure and resonance of a particular brand that inspired them to buy into its charms?  What were the luxury impulse purchases and what were the staple goods flung without thinking into the trolley?

I would also ponder the possible circumstances that had led to this person mysteriously abandoning their shopping trip.  Had unfortunate or pressing news compelled them to flee, was it some kind of bizarre pastime being indulged by someone going through the motions of shopping but with no intention or even means of paying, simply lured there subconsciously like Romero’s zombies in ‘Dawn of the Dead’?

Perhaps the whole post-modern supermarket experience had finally triggered dormant fault lines in the person’s psyche, the synthetic banality of it all dredging forth latent horrors that had forced them to take flight.

Whatever the reason, I would urge everyone to indulge in this meditative and oddly soothing pastime, the browsing of almost limitless commercial incentives, and bask in the strange hinterland between assigning choice and making a purchase, where perceived value and personal buying power oscillate wildly, before abandoning the goods and leaving with nothing. 

This form of anti-shopping could have valuable curative agencies for those who find themselves pushed and pulled almost against their control by the tides of commercial imperatives, and allow the reclamation of some notional sense of personal free will.  

Absurd Shards #11 - The 2053 US Presidential Campaign

The 2053 US Presidential campaign is one that offers a unique and unparalleled opportunity for real change in our great country.  Never before has the time been more pertinent and right to elect a president that reflects the diversity, personality and spirit that so indomitably characterises the American people today.

Over the last half-century, America’s liberty torch has remained firmly aloft, a beacon of hope and idealism shining the way for democratic representation across all peoples.  There was Mr B. Obama, the first black president, followed by Mrs H. Clinton, the first female president.  Then came Mrs M. Obama, the first black female president, succeeded after a highly emotive campaign by Mr P. Bush, the first (openly) homosexual president in American history.  Mr A. Clinton became the first transgender president, although he was forced to resign after only two years, to be replaced by Mrs J. Obama, the first president to have a Muslim spouse.

But now, the time has come to take a bold new step forward in the name of promoting diversity and progressive values.  Only by electing Trump Mk.2, the first artificially intelligent president, representing the burgeoning cyborg community in our society, can we begin to really instill long-lasting change for our nation. 

A cyborg president will be uniquely placed to tackle the scourge of race relations, widening inequality and unemployment, increasing environmental devastation, as well as tackle head-on the big business sector that continues to hold undue and unaccountable influence over Capitol Hill.  Only by tearing down this long-standing barrier to equal opportunity can America resume the drive towards our Manifest Destiny and, in the eyes of the world, reclaim our hallowed position as the greatest nation on earth.  

Absurd Shards #10 - The Psychogeographic Theory of Straight Line Walking (part 2)

Log 8: The Urban Centre

Like Descartes meditating on the nature of consciousness in his Dutch oven, I intend to arrive at a place of profound certainty through observance of methodical skepticism.  By placing each instinctive and impulsive instructional thought process under the scrutiny of doubt, by annexing them to a place where they can be controlled and manipulated, I believe I will, with intense effort and concentration, be able to yield to the mechanical whims of the physical and eschew the constraints of consciousness that shape our behaviour.

The first experiment site was to be the urban centre, a bustling pedestrian zone on a Thursday afternoon, roughly 3.45pm.  This posed significant practical problems and gave rise to issues regarding the constructs of social etiquette and behavioural norms.

I began my walk with few problems, finding the way free of obstacles, e.g. street furniture, walls, roadways.  I encountered difficulty with a bench occupied by two old women but I was swiftly able to mount said obstacle with only mild opprobrium and continue unhindered.

One of the major psychological inhibitors to master is that of adjusting speed according to the dynamics of the situation.  The natural impulse to which we are conditioned is to monitor speed to adhere to pedestrian traffic, altering direction if necessary.

The first significant impediment arose when I encountered a collective of young males (approx. 6-7, white, late-teens) who were enjoying some kind of assembly with cigarettes outside a branch of McDonalds (as per the prescribed codes of their demographic).  They responded unfavourably to the persistency of my course and this manifested itself in violent affray.  Abrasions to my face and torso were sustained (full details in Appendix B.1).

Unfortunate though this incident was, it was nothing if not to be expected given the territory in which the experiment was being performed, and has given me cause to consider that until I begin to master the discipline, subsequent experiments should take place in a wholly more amenable landscape.  

It has done little to deter my motivation for this discipline.  If anything, it has calcified in me the surety that, if only I persist with the method, I will begin to succumb to the faculties of the body over the mind and learn to command them at my own will.

Absurd Shards #9 - The Psychogeographic Theory of Straight Line Walking

Log 7: 

I have completed my preliminary investigations and begun researching a variety of locations in which to proceed with active field studies of my theory.  To provide an abstract or summary, I have decided to explore the psychogeographic technique of straight line walking, one that to my mind at least has been ill-served by past practitioners.

It isn't so much the lack of scientific inquiry inherent in Guy Debord and the Situationists’ inebriated drifting across Paris with only a map of say, Vienna to guide them, but more the Marxist discipline of dismantling the urban ‘spectacle’ that I seek to avoid.  I seek to become immersed at an almost machine level with the landscape, using the act itself to unlock hidden philosophical algorithms of my core being.

It is my contention that this has only really been explored effectively in the experimental art scene, with Richard Long and his repetitive traversing of the landscape; demarcating some kind of trace thereby subtly altering the space itself, almost representing an apparition of the physical act.

Here then, are the explicit conditions to which my experiments must adhere:

Condition 1:

At the experiment site I must pick a direction using a random method over which I cannot exert any undue preference or yield to personal bias.

Condition 2:

I must proceed to walk in a linear direction, my focus being centred on an invisible line of travel ahead of me.

Condition 3:

Crucial to the success of the experiment is that I do not deviate or adjust my trajectory in any way.  This will demand a strict level of meditation that with sufficient mental training should yield dividends.

Condition 4:

Where there are physical impediments to the straight line I must follow the parameters of the obstacle with the utmost fixity until I am able to rejoin the line unobstructed once again.  (This is only to be applied where there is such structural rigidity as to render continuation of the walk physically impossible, all other features must be traversed in adherence to the straight line; this applies to roadways, reasonably-sized bodies of water, private property, sites of dereliction, countryside, and so on.)

Condition 5:

After the predetermined time allocation for the walk has expired I will compile my notes of the experiment, from which analysis, comparative study and philosophizing can then proceed.

Now that the handful of basic and simple conditions have been established, I am able to proceed at once with the first of my chosen experiment sites (see Appendix A.4)...  

To be continued.

Absurd Shards #8 - Planet of the Landlords

As I knelt, sinking down with the concrete of dismay and despair setting around my lower limbs, the once proud resplendent dome looked like a forgotten ornament amidst an overgrown garden of high rises.

I called to mind the time, many years previously, when I had been going through the stealthy skirmish of flat-hunting in London. My search for affordable accommodation had taken me hithering and thithering across the city, meeting with dilettante landlords who addressed me with gurning apologies that “you’re too late, it’s just been let” or “someone just out-bid you”.

As I walked home from work each day I passed by flanks and rows of high rises being hoisted up at the structural armpits by cranes; the billboards promising ‘luxury apartments’ in fonts that screamed elegance and exclusivity. Woe is me, I was wont to think, apartments everywhere and yet not one within budgetary reach.

Then one evening, I passed by a Big Yellow Self-Storage depot. Taking the semantics literally, I entered and asked to be shown the full suite of facilities, mortuary tray compartments in which to recline for indefinite periods. I decided there and then that this was the best way for me to continue living in the city on my limited budget.

From that day on I went into a prolonged hibernation inside one of these units, in a sense cryogenically frozen inside a capsule of my own resourceful personal financing.

Something must have gone awry though, for I awoke sometime earlier than planned. I was left to stagger hazily into a daylight that frittered in fragmented beams through the ranks of neatly aligned high rises that stood in perfect formation as though part of some vast rally for an architectural dictator that had yet to appear.

Ambling along the Southbank, I pivoted north across Millennium Bridge and took in the phalanx of towering structures that assumed the dubious form of their allotted moniker – the Cucumber, the Desk Tidy, the Dehumidifier.

As I drew nearer I could make out the familiar bulb of St. Paul’s now fighting for breathing space around the legs of these taller adults; now a meagre Duomo intimidated by its many tall campaniles.

With mounting incredulity I could discern a hoarding wrapped around the cathedral base that pronounced ‘Fine living in reverent tranquility – Inquire today!’

“You finally did it!” I bawled in disgust, pounding my fists against the pavement. “You fools! Damn you all to hell...!!”

Absurd Shards #7 - The Trapeze Artists

Too big a fall, it is said, is how all careers on the trapeze are destined to end. Composure and self-confidence that has been sustained over so long, albeit with instances of wavering here and there, must eventually fray and culminate in failure.

It is cognisance of this that coaxes them into routines of ever more elaborate daring and precision, driving them to succeed where their peers would buckle and fall back on older and more assured displays. It is often an unedifying scramble for the rope ladders to the highest platforms from which they can maximise their exposure before an audience that is fickle and all-too-easily distracted by alternative amusements.

The hubris of the trapeze artist is what piques our interest and enflames our dismay; the agility and poise of these people who deem themselves worthy of the platforms and structures across which they swing and sway like a Newton's cradle.

In the trapeze artist we see the illusion of flight, there is promise in their reckless leaps and posturing in the air, and we take heart from this, even though we know that after the soaring apex point has been reached they must always complete the swing to a frustratingly fixed point. Try as they might, through all kinds of trickery, charisma and guile, they will still swing between intractable points that we are all complicit in believing can be transcended.

As a masquerade to alleviate this fundamental disappointment that permeates through the whole act many artists have resorted to the safety of shadows, or to clever manipulations of light and colour. For a time these can prove effective, though ultimately we see them for what they are and scorn them for their acts of duplicity and cunning.

Instead we insist on ever brighter lights so that we can see the very pearls of sweat and the look of adrenalised assurance as they continue their routines. Now increasingly blinded by the forensic glare, the artists, who had always struggled to see the audience clearly from their lofty heights, can only make out a spurious collective and the scent of mounting disapproval in their efforts.

But we still admire the show for its predictability, we secretly envy of them their heights, their ego and daring; together we will them ever higher, filling them with our hopeless dreams of unrestrained flight, because at the same time we long to see then fall..,

Absurd Shards #6 - Droning on

No one was able to identify the precise point at which they began to take flight from the promontory of ordered discipline to be caught in the crosswind that would render them dangerously hostile to those they were designed to serve.

On the domestic front, the drones had proven themselves to be indispensible servants of the air, operating in strict alignment with programmed protocol to the extent that the urban populace seldom gazed skyward without a smattering of such automatons gliding across their line of sight couriering some package or other.

The big online retailer had a vast convocation at their disposal, such that record waiting times for purchases made were mere champagne bottles being smashed time and again on the hull of irreversible progress.

But a corruption was afoot, whether attributable to man-made malice or the result of a data glitch that was spread like a contagion from one unit to the other without detection. Reports began to surface of bizarre accidents occurring between purchaser and courier on point of delivery, yet hard evidence was initially allusive. All and any trace was smothered by the tenacious censoring arm of the retailer, employing crack units of data programmers under the auspices of business infringement rules that no one save perhaps the retailers seemed capable of understanding.

Malfunctions though were doomed to spread with perspicacity to the point at which the aberrations couldn’t be contained any longer. Reports proliferated of courier drones specifically targeting civilians with load ejections – household goods, electronic devices, heavy literature, and so on. Whilst initially sporadic, they quickly spread to the point at which the attacks appeared, to the distressed observer, to be almost orchestrated by the drones under an organic telepathy to rival that of a cloud of starlings.

The online retailer, who everyone believed would control the situation with rapidity as reports of serious injuries and near fatalities escalated, were exposed as woefully lacking in any emergency planning procedures. It was left to the government to send in the military drones to disable their courier cousins. The CEO of said retailer, when tracked down for a response, issued a statement saying simply “oh bollocks”, and a mass distribution of compensatory gift cards were issued post haste.

Absurd Shards #5 - The twinning of Kalachi and Leicester

It was announced the other day that Kalachi and Leicester are to be twinned after a protracted period of courting from representatives of both towns.

Kalachi, a remote village in northern Kazakhstan, can be reached by traversing a barren steppe and is 300 miles away from the capital Astana.  Since 2013, a mysterious ailment has struck the village, a ‘sleeping sickness’ which has incurred over 150 reported cases of people literally falling asleep or at times succumbing to comatose states lasting several days.

Similarly in Leicester over recent months, the townspeople have intermittently fallen victim to states of severe mental fatigue and delusions.  They have excavated a long-dead monarch, lain him in state and paraded his casket through the streets in a fit of bizarre obeisance before consigning his earthly remains to rest again.

By succumbing to, and venerating, a figure beyond salient comprehension, they seek the museumification of the present.  By establishing possession over this symbol of the past they forge psychological connections with a history that can only ever elude them and render more tangible the notion that collective society, and their individual lives in tandem, are in some meaningful way progressing along a navigable meridian of national heritage.

When the present reaches a critical mass of disassociation and malaise, it is very common for people to swoon into a reverie of retrospective obsession, abandoning the perceived illusion of the quotidian for distracting hallucinations of the past.

In Kalachi, many have blamed the sickness on mystical forces, others as a strange symptom of mass hysteria.  Others point to carbon monoxide poisoning, or radiation from a disused Soviet-era uranium mine for more rational explanations.  In Leicester, ingrained deference and age-old memories echo through the city, refusing to be silent; who knows whether or not they will continue to emanate from beneath the concrete of a long-stay car park.  

Absurd Shards #4 - Nigel Farage's tortured dream

It has been a spring of discontent as more of my loyal kinsmen succumb to scrutiny at the scalpels of the vile media.  My power has never been as solidified as it is now, my profile never higher, and yet paradoxically I have never felt so ill at ease.  Already within the party there are veiled references, jokes tinged with just a shade too much sarcasm, and those sideways glances over the rims of pint glasses that are meant to go unnoticed yet are anything but.  (Or maybe they aren’t meant to go unnoticed...)  I have fought long and hard but still I know my kingdom of UKIP may soon be about to crumble back into obscurity after being hoisted up and teased by the mainstream.

I am running away, I’ve had to flee my family, I am being pursued by a disgraceful carnival of delinquents.  I am the wily yet quickly tiring fox being run to ground by a pack of hounds dressed as flamboyant homosexuals, breastfeeding mothers and migrant workers.  No matter how hard I run, still they remain in pursuit, tooting their horns, waving their placards, shouting their obscene slogans.  Where are my cohorts, I begin to ask myself?  Why have they deserted me in my time of desperate need?  Where is Paul Nuttall?!  Where is Godfrey Bloom?!  Where are the others that I cannot for the life of me remember the names of, just a menagerie of braying and burping manikins with purple-and-yellow rosettes for faces.  (Maybe none of them ever existed in the first place.)

At last, when I feel like the lactic liquor will intoxicate me at last, I spy a generic gastropub The King’s Horse and stagger up to the front door.  Inside, the aroma of stale beer and hot food is so revitalising that I am able to compose myself rather quickly, straighten my dishevelled tweed jacket, fix a pneumatic smile and approach the bar.  Already the sounds of the braying masses begin to fade under the sounds of a fruit machine and general banter.

“A pint!  A pint!  My kingdom for a pint!” I declare.

“Sorry Nige”, says the barkeep, “just called last orders.  Licensing laws and all that, bloody red tape from Brussels.”

“Damn and blast!”, I profane, storming towards the exit and into the beer garden, where smokers suck in their cheeks and wedge empty crisp packets into the cracks of wooden tables.  I am at my wits end, the sound of the revelling scum is mounting, and I stagger into the car park gazing frantically around for any sign of a reprieve.

Suddenly, a man in period costume approaches me from a nearby car.  At first I think he is taking the opportunity to grab a selfie and I get ready to politely decline, but then I see the gleaming dagger held in his firm grip.  He reaches me and announces that he is a member of the Romanian Shakespeare Theatre Company, before puncturing my guts with the blade.  And so I sink to my knees, the hard concrete of the pub car park greeting me like a warm bed of endless sleep.

And then I wake up....

(Author note:  This was inspired in part by the strange and fascinating parallel between Shakespeare's 'Richard III' and President Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln was a huge admirer of the Bard's work, and was compared to his eponymous anti-hero during his administration.  The bittersweet irony is exemplified by the fact that Lincoln was assassinated in a theatre by John Wilkes Booth - a Shakespearean actor.)

Absurd Shards #3 - Voice Message to the Ministry

Transcript of a 1987 answering machine message recorded for the press secretary’s office of the Ministry of Undercover Child Abuse – Sexual (MUCAS). 

(For the purposes of confidentiality all names have been concealed.)

“Oh, hi [BLANK], it’s [BLANK].  I know it’s Friday afternoon and you’ve already left the office but I just thought I’d leave this anyway as a heads-up for Monday morning.  Obviously you’ll have heard the reports going round about [BLANK] being up to his usual dalliances – well, he’s getting a bit over-excited frankly and we need to rail him in a bit, get him to lie low and inconspicuous for a while... I know that’ll be nigh-on impossible for such a fat fuck [LAUGHTER], but er anyway, we need to have the conversation.

The PM isn’t best pleased about it, let’s put it that way.  There’s concern that if the Ministry’s work were to go public it might be quite embarrassing for all concerned, what with Joe Taxpayer scrutinising everything.  Not to mention landing an avalanche of shite on your desk! [LAUGHTER]

Oh, and to make matters worse, we’ve got a handful of nutters bigging up all that Ninth Circle stuff again, banging on about how the [BLANK] and Prince [BLANK] are tied up with some missing First Nation children over in Canada.  Goes back to the ‘60s apparently which is frankly before my time and I don’t want to know about it.  But the nutters claim they have a witness who says he saw them with the disappeared children, and word is the Palace are keen to smother this whole wretched thing like a toad on a fly.  I’m sure we can find something to discredit the witness at the very least...

Anyway, as to fatty [BLANK], [BLANK], [BLANK], [BLANK], oh, and most likely [BLANK] as well I’d have thought – we need to call a crisis meeting at the Ministry office and smooth a few things over.

Okay, well that’s all for now then, hope you had a nice weekend.  Hope [BLANK]’s birthday party went well, and [BLANK]’s horse contest was a success.  Bye for now, bye, bye....”

Absurd Shards #2 - Grant Green Michael Shapps

But I’m stinking rich... he reminded himself as he shaved in front of the en suite bathroom mirror, the soft whirring of the shaver buffering against the weight of silence that otherwise threatened to bear down. Outside, and even inside on the roaring TV breakfast news, he was the headline – ‘Grant Shapps’ double life’, ‘Tory Chairman lies about second job’...

The full extent of his doppelganger Michael Green had been exposed at last, and while he had known the inevitability of this, the hopeless frustration of it all was beginning to approach a critical mass at which point he would have to sink back into a cocoon of shadows and re-emerge anew. Just look at the despicable duplicity below me in the news, he vented to himself; the paedophilic sex gang of MPs, the police chiefs who covered it all up. His only offence was to get fucking rich, anyone would think that was a shameful sin in this rotten county these days.

He couldn’t help but chortle at the serendipity of it all though, his double exposed on the same day as Tony Blair’s doppelganger announced his stepping down from the role of Middle East peace envoy; all the while the real Blair remained, a horrifying grinch withered with disease, stalking the long-forgotten annexes and passageways of the Palace of Westminster.

For Shapps though, his deception was rooted in more than just a sense of tortured morality, his was a continuous carousel of personalities, a pack of greyhounds chasing the rabbit of truth round and round the racetrack that had become his life. Tonight, he decided, Ant would pay a visit, who would expunge the day’s squirming excuse-making with a reckless cocktail of whores, champagne and coke. For after all, he was stinking rich, and everyone knows that a boy’s best friend is his money...

Absurd Shards #1 - Jeremy Clarkson's face

A general election nears and already the hottest and most urgent issues of the day are ramping up the settings on the public imagination exercise machine. The precise specifications of the Miliband family kitchen; the forelorn dead-eyed gaze of Clegg; and the scope and format of the TV debates, about which an inquiry chaired by Margaret Hodge has been established and squadrons of campaigners from all parties have been dispatched to go from door-to-door accumulating signatures for petitions to the broadcasters.

But it is at the Court of Clarkson to which politics and other matters must concede legitimacy and influence. This feudal lord rules over his serfs with a mostly benign but nonetheless autocratic grip. His court is bawdy and lewd, crude stereotyping and crass generalisations are made in gruff and assertive voices; women with heaving chests scurry around loading banquet tables with the finest meats and cheeses that his subjects can muster; his jesting minstrels James May and Richard Hammond are in constant attendance, the latter providing bountiful amusement with his rodent impressions (which multitudes travel from every corner of the land to observe).

But despite Clarkson’s many allies in the highest of places, the court is not without strife, for he has strained his relations with the broadcasting church to its final breaking point, with him threatening to abolish the state institution, thereby freeing him to produce another grossly expensive and intellectually insulting factual car show. Such an architect is he of the serfs’ hearts and minds who willingly submit to him, that the political class will cleave to his every whim. Which is why, regardless of whatever else might happen between now and the May election, one of the key battlegrounds to be bitterly contested will be in the very folds and crevices of Jeremy Clarkson’s haggard yet smirking face.