When the outworld comes knocking at the gates of the modern city…

When the outworld comes knocking at the gates of the modern city…

1.

From The Word of the Money God: a Prophesy

by Taylor, High Priest of the Order of the Modern Machine

1 Corinthians 13 New International Version (NIV) with an unmistakably Orwellian twist (Keep the Aspidistra Flying…reader’s voice)

13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have money, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have money, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have money, I gain nothing.

Money is patient, money is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Money does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Money never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.  When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and money. But the greatest of these is money.

Believers, you will be modern citizen-workers in thought, word and deed. Any who fail to modernize will be supported for a time by the priests of the Money God; but those who cannot transform their lives in accordance with his Word, in accordance with modern science, the eternal laws of capitalist exchange, the modern system, the modern logic, the modern mode of management will be branded unbelievers and banished to the hinterlands, to live out their lives as pariahs, untouchables, invisibles who walk like ghosts outside the walls of the modern city.

They will be known as creatures of the outworld, and they will creep through the forests of folklore. They will become the wicked night-crawlers that keep children awake at night. Mothers will warn their children:

‘Be good modern children now, or the outworld creatures will come for you while you sleep and drag you down into the deepest, darkest depths of the hinterland lagoon.

This is the word of the Money God.

2.

2 Photographers report on the current refugee crisis on the Greek island of Lesbos [September 2016]

Le Monde Jeudi 1er Septembre 2016

<< Quand on voit des enfants noyés qui ont le même âge que ceux qu’on va  border dans leur lit le soir même, c’est difficile de garder son sang-froid. >>

When you see drowned children who are the same age as the ones who try to climb into your bed the same night, it’s hard to keep a sense of proportion.

Il a vu de petites ONG venir sur place davantage pour se faire de la publicité que pour aider les gens. <<Tout est toujours une question d’argent. Il y a des gens qui souffrent, et d’autres qui font du business>>

He has seen NGOs come in for the publicity rather than to help other people. ‘It’s always a question of money. There are those who suffer, and those who do business…

[Aris Messinis, photographe en chef au bureau d’Athenes de l’Agence France-Presse (AFP)]

<< Avec mes images, je veux montrer que tout le monde peut devenir un réfugié un jour. Vous êtes dans un beau salon entouré d’objets que vous aimez, et un an plus tard vous êtes sur les routes a fuir avec votre famille >>

With my images, I want to show that anybody can one day become a refugee. You are in your nice living room surrounded by the things you love, and one year later, you’re on the road, fleeing with your family.’

[Yannis Behrakis, photographe en chef au bureau de Reuters]

The Door in the Wall

He’d found, not a neglected family wine-cellar, but a hidden, secret library…

Poking around in the basement he’d found with Roy beneath the ruins, scrambling over shifting, crunching heaps of nameless bits -  sheets, shards and lumps of ancient stuff - unreliably led by the hectic, twitching light of a candle, that threw ghost-train spasms of light and manic hunchbacked shadows along the blackened brickwork of the archways, he found himself suddenly at the end of a long, narrow section, where he scraped to a halt and stood to attention, non-plussed, all quizzical before a tall wooden door in the wall.

Moving the candle closer, he soon located the mottled silver doorknob. He gripped it firmly, and tried to twist it. Stiff and stubborn with age, it resisted. But turning the knob, pushing against the door with his whole body-weight, and with a final, determined thrust of his substantial shoulder, there was a mighty, splintering crack, and the door gave way.

Inside, by the light of the flickering candle, he saw what appeared to be the wine-cellar of a well-to-do household. Certainly, there were the usual rows and rows of neat, wooden shelves, but on the shelves, in place of the anticipated ranks of ancient bottles, the disciplined parade of cobwebby colonels in vintage regalia, there were untidy rows of faded green and brown leather-bound books; rows and rows and rows of dusty books! He’d found, not a neglected family wine-cellar, but a hidden, secret library.

The Cellar Door

‘Hey, come and have a look at this,’ Roy said, poking around a particular spot with his stick.

One spring afternoon, Roy and O went out scavenging together in the hinterland, far out of sight of the city walls. It wasn’t for food on this occasion, though they were hungry (they were always hungry in those days). They were on the look-out for bits and pieces of old machinery they could re-assemble and re-activate. Something wondrously new from the old, worn-out things nobody seems to want anymore, Roy always said.

More by luck than judgment, they found themselves at the site of an old bombed-out building they’d been meaning to explore for some time. They were busy rooting around in the rubble, when:

‘Hey, come and have a look at this,’ Roy said, poking around a particular spot with his stick.

Half-hidden under scattered red heaps of broken bricks, white and grey folds of powdered masonry, and wild, green knots of weeds, was what looked like the metal cover of an old wartime air-raid shelter.

On hands and knees, like eager young terriers in search of a long-buried bone, they scraped away what they could of the layers of neglect, decay and destruction. Then, they gripped the thick, twisted loop of iron they'd uncovered (and took to be the handle), and pulled.

How they struggled. Backs aching, faces red and silver with sweat, they strained, they tugged and tugged together. And finally, suddenly, it pulled away in a crashing shower of roots and rubble, thumped to the ground, and they collapsed in a heap, barely escaping the snap of the trap.

O had that dream again last night: the one with the two children...

A black crow on a winter branch secretly folds one broken wing behind. Her beak shines hard, sharp and crooked for the kill. She has one cold, black eye wide-open, alert, unblinking; deep and sure as death.

O had that dream again last night. The one with the two children. And their eyes, their eyes huge and black, black and huge, twisting, turning, weaving their ancient spell, drawing him in, to drop wildly down, down, down, spiraling down. And always the pressure of the drums pounding in his temples, and he didn’t know which way was up. Their eyes, their eyes that mesmerise, that beckon - calling, calling, calling - from the darkness, from the outworld, from the hinterland, far, far away, over the city walls, far, far beyond his neat square room, and this tiny, white screen.

Look. There. They're there now. Two little, stone-age savages with screwed-up dirty faces. A girl and a boy, big sister and her little brother. She holds his hand tightly, and he fidgets, twists and turns to escape her grasp. And their wiry bodies are ever-mobile, as they watch and wait, impatiently shifting from foot to foot. Twigs and branches whip and snap and crackle, under small bare feet.

They’re dressed today in pale grey animal tatters. They never seem to get any older. They're always the same, always watching, waiting, and their eyes always calling, calling, calling: ‘Come hither, come hither, come hither, and join the dance…’

The girl leans in. See the unscrubbed face of a wild woodland creature, screwing up her eyes, furrowing her brow, twitching her stubby button nose, scowling and sniffing; momentarily overcome by curiosity, it seems, momentarily losing her native caution, as if, for a moment, she can see him sitting there and wonders what he is. As if for a moment she could press her soft, warm cheek against his. Her black eyes grow wider and rounder as she leans in. He sees her lower lip is painted black and swells into a petulant pout. The air becomes suddenly chill. He feels a wisp of the wind of their world. The white frame clicks and clears a little, widens, and he glimpses their woodland home.

It must be autumn there now. Leaves lie russet on the ground in long, slender barrows by the brook - winking in the breeze, red, yellow, orange, brown - and here and there the forest floor is flattened cold and grey by the clockwork footfall of the hunting bands that crossed and recrossed in Indian style not half a day ago.

Now the girl is distracted by something in the trees. She turns, and crouching low, she grips her brother’s tiny, grubby hand more tightly, and they slip away in a rustle of leaves.

O was a child of six when he first saw them. It was night time, and they were clanking down a metal fire-escape, then hurtling headlong in a whip and a flap of heels and cloaks down the cobbles of Gasworks Brew. He thought they must be child-workers from the mill, fleeing their filthy metal masters, overseers of the clanging machines. He saw them run in terror from the Time and Motions, from the Clackers. Saw them clunking in clogs, in tattered shawl and poor coat. Little angels with dirty faces. Saw them as they scurried frantically along the canal path, under the bridge, along the lane to the cinder path. Watched them disappear somewhere up ahead.

He can’t see them now. But he knows one is the girl – she’s the taller of the two, and she’s on the left-hand side of the pair – and one is the boy – he’s the smaller one on the right. She's his sister, and she lowers a warm, protective wing across his shoulder, in a motherly gesture. And they are walking away. He hears the boy’s voice sometimes. It’s not a small child’s voice; it’s the voice of an old man, trying to remember.

It’s so very long ago, you see. All I know is: she holds my hand so very, very tight and she never lets me go. And I look up to her. Niamh, my sister, so determined, so very brave. She's much bigger, much stronger than me. And I know she's so much better than me, in so many ways. And we march out into the night, up the cinder path, along the lane, and out into the open fields.

O watches two children walk away: a girl and a boy. Black night holds its breath, and they get further and further off, become indistinct. Like two sooty smudges in the grate, fragile strangers, as – puff – they are caught in the draught. They swirl and turn and – pop - they disappear up the chimney. Gone, the broken, black umbrellas, one large and one small. Gone, in tatters, into the night, and out of sight.

A black crow on a winter branch secretly folds one broken wing behind. Her beak shines hard, sharp and crooked for the kill. She has one cold, black eye wide-open, alert, unblinking; deep and sure as death.

But whatever lies behind the door...

But whatever lies behind the door, there is nothing much to do.

He’s had a long, exhausting day, wading thigh-deep through the hard, yellow grasses of the out-world; beneath a raw, white sun, he's been scavenging with Roy for bits of old machinery among the stony ruins of long-forgotten settlements. He starts to nod, and his chin finally drops onto his chest; and it’s remarked by two wise, old heads, Theodor and Benn, tribal elders gathered beneath the stars, across the sacred circle round the fire: that he has gone.

He has gone. And he finds himself back in the same old place; and he feels the same, eerie stillness, the same dumb pressure on his temples. He swings his head around, desperately seeking something familiar, something he knows: a rock, a bush, a river, a familiar sky even, a familiar sun. He finds none. There is nothing. He stands alone on alien ground. He’s like one who has fallen from the sky, breathless, abandoned, exposed on a dry, stony hillside; one whose limbs have been brutally broken, one who cries to the distant, foreign moons and stars, ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’ No answer comes. He hears only the dry wind over desert lands.

There’s nothing to be done, so he sets off walking. Not heaving heavy boots through thick, coarse grasslands with a trusted companion: this time he’s limping alone over hard, endless grey limestone, a screaming, sideways wind beginning to batter the side of his face; across a desolate landscape, emptied of any living things, save for – scattered here and there – the odd crippled tree, sheltering amongst dry, broken stones in a deep, rocky scar.

He halts. Something is suddenly familiar about these particular gnarled and twisted limbs that reach out in desperate need from the gully nearest to hand. He remembers the day they painted trees. Ged’s tree grew strong, straight and tall in a meadow; it was sturdy, full and round, glittering green in a clear blue sky, animated by cheery, fluttering, twittering birds; his stood all alone, tense, breathless, frail and leafless, exposed and close to death on barren, purple steppes. He hadn’t been a happy child.

And as he remembers, he thinks he hears Jacques' chanson - you know the one, David:

But whatever lies behind the door, there is nothing much to do.

He thinks he knows what’s behind the door. He had heard the inhuman shriek behind the door as a child, as he trembled on the bend at the top of the stairs; and one by one his mother and father had gone to answer a knock at the door. 

And what was behind the door was the one thing they couldn’t protect him from.

But at least now, he didn’t care – or, at least, he cared less. For in front of that door, there was Tina.

Yes. At least, there was someone. At least there was something. Even if it was only his humdrum life with Tina, and the mortgage, and the kids (whose names he couldn’t remember) and the drab routines of the education factory, the reliable, reassuring tick-tock of the modern human machinery. The career plan, the property ladder, Christmas and the holidays. The whole package (from cradle to grave). It was the conventional family story, the Wonderful Life they saw from the living room sofa (two more payments and it was theirs) every evening in the building society ads. The ones that made Tina purr so contentedly.

God is dead, said Nietzsche, and the moderns buried him, out there in the desert. Don’t go looking for him, though: he isn’t there. 

Of course, the furniture of Jesus’s world was very plain and rustic: a lake, a few fishing boats pulled onto the sand, some nets and baskets, a dusty town square and a water-hole with a surly lip; a random huddle of square, white-painted, mud houses, a cave or two in the surrounding hills, a bigger hill with some crosses, some noisy, clanking Roman soldiers - all metal with a flash of red - some holy-men in rough, colourless robes, sundry poor villagers; and a temple.

It occurs to O that with a few minor alterations, it was a place where you could arrive with some old gunslinger chums and save a whole village of poor peasants from the tyranny of an evil bandit.

Of course, to operate like Jesus - or Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, for that matter - is not easy in a large Brutalist building of stone, steel and glass, in a room arranged into rows and rows of desks, and children in uniforms, and adults in matching suits and ties, and the endless modern corridors.

There’s the rub, as they say. How do you live a life of love and kindness, of untamed wildness, a life worth living; in a world of corridors and timetables?

There is only art. Only words. There is no escape. Like the Prisoner ('Be seeing you' in neat blazer, slacks and sailing shoes, or 'wait and hope' in billowing, rakish sleeves), the Outlaw needs to go beyond the walls to find out for sure. But he is afraid of what he might find. That there is nothing.

He needs to go out into the desert lands to search for meaning; to search for God. He knew it couldn’t be this! But he feared there was nothing else.

So, does he wait and hope to meet a nice girl, who works in sales in the modern city, who will make him happy?

Or does he walk into the desert to find Tina's rebel twin in a broken Mad Max out-world? The stunningly wild and beautiful, dangerous and damned vampire queen. They call her Tiaa - there is always an alternative.

He remembers from his literary youth the choice offered in The Cocktail Party. Which was it to be: the solitary saint or the routine married couple?

Seems he must go out alone, go into the desert and risk all. Risk his life, risk death to find out.

Don't fall in love with a vampire killer

The vampire killer: she wants quick, slick, simple answers; simple solutions to complex problems. 

And your black plastic, synthetic vampire queen. She won’t waste her time on you. She don’t care for you. She won’t give you the time of day. No time to think, to wonder, to create; to make something new from the old, worn-out things, or fashion something beautiful, wild and impractical like poetry or art or the songs you sing with your stupid, pointless guitar. She wants quick, slick, simple answers; simple solutions to complex problems. 

She wants a quick, slick, emotionless transaction; she means business; she wants speedy, efficient solutions she can use; to move forward, to get what she wants.

She measures you with a glance. She knows all she needs in a second. She looks you up and down, scans you with her laser-eye, and passes by. She’s a monster. She’s a machine. Unblinking, she makes her mind up, and moves on.

You are left naked, brutalized, barely breathing; all washed up and shivering in the shallows.

She doesn’t want you. She throws her head back and laughs. She’s an animal. She doesn’t want you; she doesn’t want you. You’re too old and slow, too inefficient.

Too many rough edges on him, impossible to smooth him out. So don’t waste your precious time; don’t waste your energy on repairs. Unwrap a fresh one. Fuck him good, fuck him up; and move on.

The killers have the best view because they have the best seats......

In the massive, polyphonic grandeur of the inhuman, electronic leadership chorus, we hear the voice of God from the tower of central surveillance... 

The killers have the best view because they have the best seats. And their views are the best views, the ruling views, the authority, the law. They watch; they rule; from high above the modern city.

They have the seats with the clearest view, and their gaze is extended by the science of the technocrats, the expert killers, and by the electric eye of central surveillance. We never see them, but we know they see us; they see everything.

Whilst we never ever see them, we do hear them. Or rather we hear them in our own voices, somehow writ-large, hugely amplified; inhumanly distorted and reassuringly crystal clear – a voice massively unfolded, differentiated, exploded into a million, multi-faceted shards of vibrant colour; and simultaneously amalgamated, enfolded, wrapped under enormous pressure, and seamlessly pleated into the common voice, the common sense. 

In the massive, polyphonic grandeur of the inhuman, electronic leadership chorus, we hear the voice of God from the tower of central surveillance. And each hears his own voice, his own thoughts; like the whole of the inside of his head is torn out and flashed onto the big screen; his conscience, his own personal Jesus, is thrown out there, naked for all to see. 

Everything that was inside is suddenly outside.

We will peel them with our metal knives: life in the modern city

And we will have machines for assessment, machines for learning, on top of our machines for living, here in our modern city.

He feels sick, his head is swimming, and just now he thinks he saw his heart try to punch itself out of his chest. The reason: yesterday, he nearly turned and walked – willingly - back into one of the central towers of the modern city, that five years ago nearly killed him.

He sees them every day; every day he walks around inside the walls –  nervous, taut and twitchy as a hunter, light-footing in the forest – but never ever does he stray close to the central tower, never ever step within the immediate range of the electric eye of central surveillance. He sees the management killers pass by. They come in a range of models: there is the default older male in black suit, automatic step and steely hair; eyeless in cool shades, like a glitch in the Matrix; and then there are the younger females, who sometimes pass for real humans; attractive young women, smart and sexy in crisp white shirts and tailored trousers; dark-haired blondes with tailored voices, who bling to designer time and smile before they kill. He wonders do they see him now, as he lounges all casual in soft shoes, stares absently into the near distance, tries a little too hard perhaps to remain below their radar. 

He sometimes stands toe to toe with them in the glass tower elevators; and he wonders if they can smell the outworld huddled masses on his shabby jacket and jeans. With any luck, as he operates beneath their radar, he also operates beneath their contempt; his outworld real, outlaw human odour no more discomforting, no more a threat than the trace of any outworld crawling creature. Given half a chance, of course, they would stub him to a pulpy stripe beneath a blind, efficient leather sole.

Careless of others – and that's killer competitors as much as contemptible real humans -  their very existence in the modern city crushes all hopes and dreams; all tenderness, anything gentle and kind vanishes with one click of a designer heel.

Meeting between a management killer and a real outlaw human. 

She hears the wind blow over dry leaves. You hear the scream of brakes, as the train pulls into Auschwitz.

He remembers the day the walls of the modern city closed around him. It was something like this. One minute he was strolling carelessly in bright sunshine; the next, a huge, black shadow fell across the ground and he was plunged into blackest night, as if a high cavern roof had suddenly snapped shut; trapping him and everyone else inside.

And we have all been stumbling around in the dark ever since; the book of the past has closed on us forever. Everything has changed. I don’t know north from south, east from west; I can’t tell which way is up.

The Money-God didn’t make himself known everywhere to everyone immediately. It was at work that O noticed the first subtle changes. He couldn’t remember his head of department, for example, ever being referred to as a ‘manager’ before; and he’d never even heard of a ‘line-manager’. For goodness sake, it made him think of steam-trains, shovels and oily rags. Metal things - cogs and wheels - and steam under pressure.

And lines, lines, lines. Straight-lines: Adorno's shortest distance between two people, as if they were points.  And soon, it was boxes, boxes, boxes. Boxes piled on top of other boxes. Hand in hand with Taylor and Ford, and Bauhaus, Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation, Marseilles.

And we will have machines for assessment, machines for learning, on top of our machines for living, here in our modern city.

He remembers reading how during the modern revolutions a man could be locked inside a small metal cage, with no room to stand up, no room to sit down or stretch; he had to crouch, permanently cramped within his backbreaking prison.

At lunchtime, news of the changes ran like wildfire through the office, as everyone struggled to make sense of a brave new world that had such people in it. He heard someone say, ‘It’s like I left home this morning, and now I’m back, someone has re-decorated the whole house.

Outlaw Humans

He was one who was gifted, extraordinary, exceptional; one who would one day ...

And as the outlaw human walks tall through the endless corridors of the modern city, blessed by God and very much himself (finally…), he becomes suddenly aware that he will be discovered by the management killers, by the arm of the law of conformity, by the arm of the law of mediocrity, and charged with being too wise, too satisfied, too much at peace; too much himself. And condemned to death.

Yes, he was one of those whom Nietzsche called 'atavars': one who stood head and shoulders above the rest, because he wasn’t in any way like the rest. He embodied the spirit of a former age: he walked tall as a titan among mortal men. 

A lone lighthouse in a storm-tormented sea, he stood firm where time and tide beat always against him.

A lonely ghost, doomed to drag his ancient chains screaming through the metal corridors of the modern city.

He was one who was gifted, extraordinary, exceptional; one who would one day either achieve greatness, or go mad and die alone.

Die alone. The words sound like a drowned bell. Maybe he will die alone: unshaven, unapplauded, and unmourned (and who can bear to be forgotten). Like a faded star, all forlorn in a broken bed-sit. Absently fingering old photographs. Half-buried in yellow newspapers. Feebly stumbling in tattered trousers, filthy vest and knitted skull-cap […]

People like us...

O was a complicated, contradictory old wolf of the steppes. He had the twitchy nerves of a fledgling sparrow and the thumping heart of a galloping lion. He was the black-hearted anarchist intellectual by night, who by day taught polite English composition to the parish grammar school girls. He was the peerless, gigantic cloud-strider, and the regular clerk with the blinking eyes, nervous stutter, and smart, sensible shoes.

Everyday he stood with his back to the walls of the modern city, and looked out across the endless purple steppes, whilst his heart beat out of his chest, and his blood yearned for the yellow painted desert and the other world out there beyond the shimmering horizon.

Before his life had even begun, he had already squandered his youthful health and energy, his hopes and dreams. His wonderful God-given talent, his whole fucking life! (sometimes he just couldn't help himself, he got so resentful and angry.) On the stunted, parasitic folk who sheltered helpless in the huddle of huts that grew fungus-like beneath the walls of the modern city. 

Even then, he knew. He knew.

To live inside the city, he must put out his eyes, rip out his heart, and learn how to kill.

To live outside the city, he must open his eyes, follow his heart, and learn how to love.

...........................................................................

One Friday afternoon at St. Peter's, when he was maybe nine or ten, his little class were asked to write a poem about a colour. His colour was dark blue. He wanted black, but he'd noticed his friend Ged at the next table was writing that one, so very reasonably he went for something close. But not the same.

See Ged now. Head down, arm arched into a familiar head support for his creative energy. Security, protection for his intellectual property.

Remember the day they had painted trees. Ged’s tree grew strong, straight and tall in a meadow in Merrie Englande. It was sturdy, full and round, glittering green in a clear blue sky, animated by cheery, twittering birds. His stood all alone, frail and leafless on the barren, purple steppes. Crooked and broken, against a brooding, malevolent sky. He wasn’t a happy child.

And when he showed Mum his poem in the local library magazine, she was so, so angry. They stood together in the kitchen. She waved the rolled up magazine too close to his face. ‘You didn’t write this! You must have copied it! Wait 'til I tell your dad!’ 

He stood there speechless, helpless, small and alone. 

Why was she so cross with him? He'd expected her to be happy. He thought she'd be so proud. 

He has never, ever forgiven her. 

People like us.