"The Phantom
of Liberty," originally appeared in "The Insurrectionists
Shadow," issue #1, Adelaide, Australia, 1979.
The Phantom of Liberty
Dedicated to Luis Bunuel
The phantom of liberty,
ready to pounce, in the backwashes of our darker hearts. The silence
deftly tonguing our sleep, where all grief is useful only to the
swamp's hysterical air. The evidence of seasons - where will we
be this winter? Where is the sunlight impossible to perceive because
of the blinding quality of the shadow? Seeking sings of mysterious
areas of darkness, I find an exact image of myself carved out of
the sandstone of another's heart.
One day I said to a
friend (Anthony Redmond) "Everything is everything else"
- the next day I read:
"And
in phenomenal existence there is nothing that is independent of
everything else. Given that there is Continuity, everything is a
degree or aspect of whatever else is." - Charles Fort
The phenomenon of liberty,
and the science of passion - or science taken to its passionate
extremes. Although we see, all too clearly, that it can only be
cowardice to discard what has been learnt through materialist investigation
of the outer and inner realities, still science is obviously inadequate
in its present (understood) state. Inadequate in its refusal to
approach anything that is really important to us subjectively. And
so we will extend and extrapolate as each day, or night, seems to
tell us of something that stammers its way into consciousness, haunting
us towards freedom:
"The
world has long had a dream of something and must only possess the
consciousness of it in order to possess it actually." - Karl
Marx
Less light! Less light!
Darkness is my only solace, the one thought pervading days spent
in the midst of an all-encompassing 'miserabilism'. Darkness is
to paint upon, and recently I noticed quite suddenly the coherence
of the titles of my past few paintings: "No More Days', 'No
More Nights', 'The Blood-stained Clock Heard as Terrible Footsteps
- a Nightmare', 'To the Darker Regions of Your Heart' and 'Crepescule
for Love'.
Opening at some page
of some book I read Fernand Pessoa's poem, 'It Begins to Be' (going
to be dawn), in particular the lines:
"In
vain the day is dawning
to one who can't sleep, never
Was made to get things straight
Here inside the heart;
Who while he lives is denying
And, when he loves, does not have."
"It
was precisely this dwelling's state of absolute transparency that
obliged me to keep my eyes closed all day and in the least glimmer
of nocturnal light, so that the predatory outside should not catch
sight of me." - Jacques Lacomblez
But what is forced
upon us by despair, rage, insanity (call it what you will) soon
becomes a preference, when we find ourselves perceiving and more
importantly, translating those message, those nightmares, into something
that will withstand the brightest midday sun. I prefer to read,
for example:
"I
myself shall continue living in my glass house where you can always
see who comes to call; where everything hanging on the ceiling and
on the walls stays there as if by magic, where I sleep nights in
a glass bed, under glass sheets, where who I am will sooner or later
appear etched by a diamond." - Andre Breton
A new universe begs
to be created out of the objects remaining when the birds have fled
from these tarnished regions. Their movement is parabolic in accordance
with the focal points of our eyes, as we see their departure through
a mist-enveloped sand-dune. New universes appear before us, new
stars scarlet with love, new nights clouded with daylight all in
a green, perhaps, that we have never before perceived. The green
of cathedrals on fire, a scarlet green and the tell-tale expression
on a passer-by's face of a shallow surface of grief under which,
if he cared to look, was an unfathomable depth of impossibilities
struggling for release…
It was 'only' a phantom
of liberty stopping us in our tracks for an instant, during which,
by glancing in the right direction, we would see a long narrow shaft.
And at the other end of this shaft - another pair of eyes mirroring
the fear bound to be in ours.
The ghost of chance
approaches every time I think of the number three or seven or fourteen
or more often sixty-five and twenty-seven, for the stories are told
by these numbers for me. Together, they make me think of the fact
that nothing must be where or what it is. And this is even apparent
to academic scientists, but as a matter of probability (that all-explaining
loophole when nothing else works), that is, that any object will
probably remain as it is unless acted upon by something else, that
will probably remain as it is etc. But that there is no law which
states that a thing will not disappear or transmute itself into
anything else. They choose to approximately ignore it. We search
for the conditions that render these transformations possible and
find that we reach the realm of desire, where the ghost of chance
insists upon being real.
At times it is preferable
for all objects to be round; other times, angles are everything
and arcs neither here nor there; and yet other times there is absolutely
no differentiation between the two for we have come to a place where
the eye is either invisible or twisted into the shape of a camel
with neither one nor two humps…..
The point is that things
happen, things that we expect least and often simply forget to notice.
Whether they are 'mere' products of an imagination (that by its
very nature, can only be psychotic, in a loose sense), or 'actual'
transformations on external reality according to our unconscious
desires is largely irrelevant, subjectively, to the immediate sense
of exaltation that is experienced upon their occurrence. But the
two alternatives meet at the point of 'poetic evidence', whose continual
insistence on the 'marvelously possible' provides us with more to
go on from both sides. Firstly, the exaltation itself is real; imagine
my surprise when the following occurred the night after writing
(above) of a "green, perhaps that we have never before perceived.
The green of cathedrals on fire, a scarlet green…"
I was drawing with
blue ink, while in a withdrawn, even hypnoid state, when upon the
page there appeared a woman with one left arm and three right arms
in various positions (as in early anatomical diagrams). The execution
of her form was partly automatic and then partly determined. I then
began to add to the drawing with fumage but the page caught alight
and I was bitterly disappointed to see the woman swallowed by the
flames. However, all was dramatically changed as I saw that the
flame turned green whenever it touched the ink - a beautiful green
I have ever perceived, especially as it fell into the redness of
the lower part of the flame - a scarlet green…(1)
Experiences such as
this cannot be denied their immense value except by a total disbelief
in their existence altogether. Whether we start psychoanalytically
to examine why I would draw a woman with three right arms and then
'accidentally' burn her although the drawing was already dear to
me, or how this then put me into a state where, through forgetting
a past experience I was able to 'console' myself for the loss by
manufacturing a coincidence; hours (and then a week) after writing
of the occurrence, it actually took place, we meet something quite
remarkable and unique, but by no means rare in that, as I said above,
things happen and constantly.
The example demonstrates
a state, which I am prepared to generalize upon, in which we become
more susceptible to the ghost of chance - a state of removal 'by
any means necessary' from the 'normal' thoughts that accompany our
'normal' actions in external reality. It is, in fact, this very
state that Freud describes whilst discussing the question of clairvoyance.
(2)
"This
in turn seems to call for the conclusion that thought transference
exists. In that case the purpose of the fortune-teller's astrological
work was to divert her own intra-psychic forces, and to occupy them
innocuously. This made it possible for her to become a genuine "medium".
The study of wit has acquainted us with similar devices for facilitating
the automatic unfolding of psychic processes."
In the first Surrealist
Manifesto (1924) there appeared a description of the methods of
automatic writing entitled: 'Secrets of the Magic Surrealist Art',
which does indeed strike one with a 'magical' quality akin to the
processes undertaken by the occultist (but for very different purposes,
as will be discussed later). For example, to avoid hesitation, "place
a letter, any letter, l for example, always the letter l, and restore
the arbitrary flux by making that letter the initial of the word
to follow."
Or, again, in 'Nadja'
Breton describes the writings of Robert Desnos during the period
of Sleeping Fits.
"Those
who have not seen his pencil set on paper - without the slightest
hesitation and with astonishing speed - those amazing poetic equations,
and have not ascertained, as I have, that they could not have been
prepared a long time before, even if they are capable of appreciating
their technical perfection and of judging their wonderful loftiness,
cannot conceive of everything involved in their creation at the
time, of the absolutely oracular value they assumed. Someone who
was present at those innumerable sessions would have to take the
trouble to recount them dispassionately, to describe them precisely,
to situate them in their true atmosphere. A discussion of this point
is actually called for." (Stress mine - H.B.)
Automatism - 'magic'
and 'oracular'; however, unlike the occultist, the surrealist refused
to fall into the mystical trap of a blind equation of psychical
and external realities. Rather, the contradiction between the two
is keenly felt, and whilst struggling to overcome this disparity
once and for all (on a social level), the mechanisms of automatism
are used to scrupulously examine the inner workings of the individual.
The points that are
particularly relevant here are firstly, the 'innocuous' activities
and their corresponding abstraction from the normal run of thoughts,
that are necessary for the 'inexplicable' to happen, and secondly,
the constant intervention of wish-fulfillment in these occurrences.
(Freud believed that the fortune-teller voiced the unconscious wishes
of the subject) And this is precisely where poetic evidence holds
its own - when external reality acts in accordance with one's own
wishes. The childish wish for omnipotence lends us to believe that
these things are possible, but at the same time, we are forced to
admit objectively (even) that wishes do tend to come true, or at
the very least be perceived and expressed by others.
It would be foolish,
however, to understate the open hostility shown to these manifestations
of omnipotence by the forces that maintain reality as it is. "delusions
of grandeur' are enough alone to commit one to the local asylum.
And although these delusions are totally admissible to those who
proclaim themselves and their colleagues truly grand, for most of
us, the smallest suspicion of something inside of us that we feel
no-one else possesses is met with the hammer and chisel of condescension
and professional cynicism.
It is easy for a psychiatrist
to speak of paranoia to those who, through poverty are forced into
lawlessness where paranoia is more or less equivalent with a practical
evasion of authority, (Anyone practicing lawlessness, which must
be an enormous percentage of the population, knows that paranoia
is the surest way to avoid apprehension e.g. Assuming that a Holden
Kingswood is a cop's car until proven otherwise, letting on to nothing
to anyone who has not displayed similar leanings to oneself, both
of which rapidly develop into an uncanny ability to sniff instantly
the presence of a cop or lackey, a sometimes automatic urge to use
a false name etc.) as easy as it is for the politician to speak
of individual freedom and satisfaction, needing only to remember
his own powers and the leisure gained from them. It goes without
saying, that we cannot allow their imbecilic use of this terminology
to tarnish it for us….
Freud once wrote, perhaps
without realizing the full implications, "The more a man checks
his aggressive tendencies toward others, the more tyrannical, that
is, aggressive, he becomes in his ego-ideal… the more intense
become the aggressive tendencies of his ego-ideal against his ego."
And conversely, an act of aggression tends to relieve us, for some
time, from the self-destructive forces of anxiety. It is simple,
"If you don't fight, you lose" not only on a social level,
but individually as well. When Charles Mingus was interned in Bellevue
Mental Hospital (they only let him in because they figured he must
be mad to plead with the guard for six hours to let him in there!
- within 24 hours he wanted out.), he narrowly escaped a lobotomy
to 'cure' his paranoia. "All blacks are paranoid", said
the wise psychiatrist, as if they have no reason to be! Sure, chop
out his brain, that'll cure anything (except perhaps Harlem)…
We would hardly expect
a psychiatrist to recommend, in accordance with the anxiety/aggression
hypothesis above, that the paranoiac go out an beat up his landlord,
or a priest or a cop. Why not - it works! In fact, I can think of
little that is more pleasurable than a swift conversion of anxiety
into its dialectical opposite - aggression. And the pleasure, as
all pleasures do, becomes addictive. Which leads us back to the
statement above that the conditions what are forced upon us through
the psychological effects of oppression, become the place where
we prefer to stay, because it is precisely there, in the midst of
neurosis that the Marvelous begins to be felt - that the 'impossible
has a habit of happening' (Steel Pulse).
But aggression is expressible
in ways other than physical violence. The point-blank destructiveness
of painting (e.g. "The Savage Heart' - Ronald Vandelaar, "Subterranean
Heart-attack' - Anthony Redmond, or my own "pure Malice - Magenta
of the Dreamworld), poetry (eg. Franklin Rosemont's 'The Morning
of a Machine-Gun'), music and its irresistible fire of revolt (e.g.
'The Haitian Fight Song' - Charlie Mingus or 'Fanfare for the Warriors'
- Art Ensemble of Chicago), this destructiveness that exists simultaneously
with the creation of new worlds that we scarce dare imagine. And
here again, we are arrested by the had economic facts of the existence
dealt out to us. For example, to do a fair-sized painting, (oil
on canvas) the materials cost approximately $50 - a week of unemployment
benefits or about ¼ the 'average' weekly wage, not to mention
that some may need to be drunk to paint, or prefer to do several
paintings a week etc. The only alternative (here and now) is obvious
- the sabotage of profits by means that refuse to allow painting
to remain a preoccupation of the rich.
But any form of the
individual pursuit of pleasure can be equally put to the test against
the restrictions of income, spare time, space, location, family
situation, or even knowledge of their existence. And then, we can
only rate the pleasure of creative activity as secondary to the
pleasure of a life ruled entirely by passion, the pleasures of love,
without which life closely approximates nothing - and further a
love that refuses to be enchained by a stinking morality designed
to be compatible with a stinking economic system - 'a love supreme'
(as John Coltrane describes it). Every last second of wage-slavery
is the enemy of such a love, and such a love can only have as one
of its highest priorities the destruction of that economic system…
The beehives may be
discontented with their sticky lot and for once, they may daintily
lift up their skirts and make a run for it - followed by swarms
of angry bees shouting "We want the queen!" In consequence
the clouds may drip blood onto the backs of grazing horses and snicker
among themselves in some unexplored ravine. The question arises
as to who will be the first to churn the landscape in their wake
as one would a partly-developed colour print. A tree disappears
from in front of a distraught landscape-painter. He throws down
his brush in frustration and the, taking command of all his disruptive
sentiments (for one has to be serene whilst painting, doesn't one),
he holds back his tears and begins to paint sky where the tree once
was. Alas! A zebra has taken its place and, laughing like an inebriated
hyena shouts "Serves you right" and trots away after the
beehives.
Let us invent new universes
before they invent us. "Good-bye Gravity" (Ian Jones),
"Space is the place" (Sun Ra), "Existence is elsewhere"
(Andre Breton).
I myself continue to
both hope for and fear the onset of night where, it seems, all is
frenetically created out of darkness and nightmare - the creation,
that is, of lands where freedom haunts. The more we feel its tremors,
the more we want it totally, desperately, 'by any means necessary'
- an Atlantic dream down-under, solidifying our hearts into the
crimson ice of revolt.
Notes:
1. The plot thickens…A
week later (in another city even) I sat in front of an open fire
with a friend. He suddenly exclaimed that he had something to show
me at which I said 'and I to show you', thinking immediately of
the flame. He brought out a tin of gold dust (used, I believe, in
printing) and threw some into the flames in order to produce - a
green flame. I barely had the capacity to relate to him just how
remarkable were his actions in the light of my own preoccupations.
2. It is perhaps dangerous
to deal with this section of Freud's work alone, as it is bound
to further the fuel for some who consider his writings as fantastic,
unrealistic or unbelievable in any case. However, the risk is worth
taking (as indeed, all risks are) for the sake of others who see
Freud as over-scientific, unimaginative or reductive. Freud approached
the question with all the skepticism of a materialist, qualifying
that "It is certainly right in what concerns telepathy, …
to adhere obstinately to a skeptical position and only to yield
grudgingly to the force of evidence." Indeed, certain 'evidence',
attesting to the reality of thought transference (not easily assimilated
into the theory of psychoanalysis), came Freud's way with such force
as to prompt him to write: "If one regards oneself a skeptic,
it is as well from time to time to be skeptical about one's skepticism.
Perhaps I too have that secret leaning toward the miraculous which
meets occult phenomena halfway." And it is as well to say here
that for science to be all it can be, it must not only explain everything
possible within its own bounds, but must be prepared to state fearlessly
that which is unknown to it, and better still, to form some hypothesis
of the mechanisms of these darker regions.
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