What do I want? ……What do I want, really, really, want? ………. This must be one of the hardest questions one can ask themselves. If the question was less vague and more qualified where the various answers stood out before you and you were left with a reasonable choice then the question wouldn’t be so difficult. But we can all answer, to a certain degree, the questions with multiple choice answers.
When I was drunk, and I mean drunk all of the time, the answer to this question was quite easy: I wanted to be sober and with better sleep so as I could make the most of each day. I followed that with another answer: to be able to read and write more. I am now sober and have plenty of the day and am reading more and writing (not very well, I admit) more. Yet the question still nags at me. If I was writing better, even getting some recognition from it, would that answer the question? Possibly yes, but like the promised land, one doesn’t know until one gets there.
So, I’m stuck. What do I want?
Do I want to be happy? To be rich? To have lots of friends? To be free of pain, threats, anguish and anxiety? Do I want to be successful – whatever success is defined by?
Everyone wants the above. So that can’t be the answer to the question.
Maybe I should look at other people and ask the question of them, in my mind. I could use the people I met while I was in detox. Some people had families: I could imagine their answer to the question would be to get better and to be back with their family. What does this answer entail? It says that being in a loving family is what that person wants. So, as long as it doesn’t affect their being in a loving family, they could have any position in society and it wouldn’t be a priority. Eg: “Okay, I’m unemployed but I still have what I want because I have a loving partner and children.” Another person, who also has a loving wife, I met, was there for his bi-polar moods which he got because he took a substance to help him stop smoking. Clearly he wanted to stop smoking to such a degree that he risked his own life towards that aim. Now, he still has a loving wife but now he has an additional problem to add to his smoking. Other people had problems, not addiction problems, that wouldn’t go away (depression, bi-polar, traumatic events in their life) that they wanted to at least learn how to live with so they can have a certain “wellness” in their life. But, with this example we have someone who, like me before, wanted a particular issue dealt with which would still leave the question, What do I want? untouched.
So, what do I want?
At the moment I come to the conclusion that I must just keep on doing what I’m doing, like having regular hours, being active, reading and writing more, staying in touch with the few people I do have. Maybe it will come to me, maybe I have already answered the question.
A walk, a bridge over a motorway, jammed with cars, people hanging out of their window haranguing each other under the merciless sun. The explorer walks into a wooded area, another bridge over empty wasteland. Halfway across this bridge is a modern steel building adorned with a huge, garish Union Jack. A small outer building (more a wooded shed) is to the right of the larger building as the explorer sees it from the bridge. Two monks appear in rough brown robes walking towards the explorer calling out, “Do you like it?”, over and over again. The explorer gets nervous and retreats the way he came.
Another day with the explorer and he’s back on the third bridge, the two monks appear again, this time silent. A youth passes the explorer and steps off the bridge meeting the first monk who’s advancing towards him. The second monk is nowhere to be seen. The explorer hesitantly follows the monk and the youth some way behind. There is a missing step, or maybe its a hole, at the end of this bridge as though its a test of commitment and bravery.
The explorer is brave, he steps off the last bridge and hurries towards the youth and the monk. He is greeted but the explorer only recognises this through his mind alone. They walk and there is a large space that they either walk into or it opens up before their eyes, no one can be sure. They are on a platform, below them and growing beyond them is a vast circular expanse outlined with large desktops. The explorer can see people at the desks, not well defined but with loud colours not one the same. It looks like the colourful people are working on something but its hard to see what exactly. Nothing is well defined apart from the colours. There seems a shadow of objects on the desks, machine or other cannot be told. Suddenly out of the silence comes a heavy beat and a deep base noise. The beat is regular and it penetrates the explorer’s chest, the youth seems to be dancing.
A large carousel slides silently into view. The remaining monk motions us to the platform so we can take a seat. The youth jumps on, the explorer hesitates then with a nod, climbs into the chariot. It is noticeable that the beat and base slow and it is also noticeable that its origin is not electronic, maybe its a primal beat? The carousel swings smoothly around. We watch the people below moving but what for the explorer cannot tell. Eventually the carousel parks up against another platform equidistant from the departure platform. The explorer and the youth disembark and the music stops.
Two looks one thought: Is this some kind of game? The explorer and the youth do not even realise that they can communicate without talking, just a look will do. Before either of them could answer another vast expanse develops before them, very bright but not white. Slowly a wooden building appears as though it was walking, two monks, a man and a woman, naked, come out of the door beckoning towards the explorer and the youth. In a not before heard voice they say, “Do you like it?” over and over again until a plaque just above the door of the wooden building becomes legible, it says, Know Thyself and onward into infinity the letters reach.
The explorer and the youth walk into the building.
Okay so this won the Booker prize and has a multitude of positive reviews, but I couldn’t finish it. Briefly, its the story of a spirit-child who is born for a short while in the real world but who’s command is to return to the spirit world when still a child. The child disobeys and wishes to stay in the real world (I’m reminded of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire and Far Away, So Close, as a conceit only). The spirit world try to take him back to their world. But do I care? No because what plot there is it is slow in coming to and is drowned out by the extensive ‘magic-realism’, or the fevered hallucinations that have way too much prominence in the book. I get that the magic-realism is to be taken allegorically and symbolically of the beginnings of an African state after decolonization and that there may be something universally profound in the story, but I feel that it is two hundred pages too long and would have benefited by being more concise with more emphasis put on the plot. I’m sure many of you will disagree with me. Please use the comment section with your thoughts.
After missing a year, the Manchester International Festival is back. Their main exhibition is a collection of poetry mingling with the visual arts, curated by poet, Lemn Sissay and art ‘guru’ Hans Ulrich Obrist. The conceit of mixing words with material art has a long tradition in contemporary Western art and not always successfully. My nature is to begin skeptically and to suppress any preconceptions I may have, not an easy task. Here, though, I was looking forward to this and not just because it felt like we are emerging from the shadows after a torrid eighteen months, I had faith that the solitude we all endured (not necessarily a negative) enabled artists and poets to cut out the noise that usually surrounds them and think more clearly. It’s not an unalloyed success but there is much to admire. Bellow are four exhibits I enjoyed.
The French-Caribbean artist, Julien Creuzet has made a poignant and profound video that utilises imagery, sound and words to great effect. It is narrated, or rather, sung by a disembodied head(s) that floats dreamlike on the screen like a Greek chorus telling the story of fire, of fog and the spirit of the diaspora. It’s a pertinent theme now.
Julien Creuzet, Ogun, Ogoun
The flower paintings of Precious Okoyomon, bright and with vibrant colours, really grab your attention, as though three-dimensional. The life-like flower heads are comic and sad equally, foreboding in one painting and shocked in another as though someone has creeped up behind them and pinched their bottoms, if they had one. No need for words here as they easily build a narrative just by look alone.
Precious Okoyomon, Zoomorphic angelic beings singing in midnight sugar storms
Though born in Nigeria and resident in London, Ihenua Ellams’ pen picture and written poem next to it smells to me of a very Manchester scene. With the rain, the squashed, depressed heads buried in the pavement either side of a twisting road, the high-rises behind and a bus floating in the air above. You could mistake it for Oxford Road. The poem next to the drawing could be a tale of any city-scape but lines like “The rain clouds will gather” and “Such beautiful sorrow”, speak of the northern Rainy City it’s inhabitants have grown to love/hate.
Ihenua Ellams, Fuck/Concrete
Vivienne Griffin’s digital/graphic film is a dystopian affair fronted by what the video gamer will know as a ‘first person shooter’: a hand pointing a machine gun. We are in a human unoccupied environment populated with large three dimensional words and objects, like candles. Sometimes the scene is devoid of anything as the gunner moves through the landscape, firing balls from the gun with a bad aim. Occasionally a ball hits an object but too far away to effect anything. The machine gun moves closer and a game (of sorts) commences as the shots begin to knock the object over. The whole thing is frustrating and seemingly pointless which may actually be the point, given the piece’s title. A fake environment for a fake culture? I haven’t a clue.
Vivienne Griffin, The Fake Haven
I may be a jaded, cynical atheist but I do believe that ‘spirit’ is something akin to self-consciousness, not a ghost in the sky or some unknowable entity directing our lives. If so, then there may be hope for us yet, though I doubt it.
A man sits alone in the sand making a crevice with his arse that perfectly fitted the dimensions of his arse. Everything seems comfortable, the weather warm the sea calm and even his mind had serenity, a serenity caused by being alone, alone on a desert island.
This isolation could not last for much longer, a wave came like a sperm and deposited a bottle with paper in it. With finger and fore-finger he teased some paper from the bottle and read this:
“It came to me the other day as I was sitting listlessly frightened on my chair: what a waste yet again. It’s disconcerting, I’m thinking, existence feels impossible to me, absurd and at the same time natural. What else can I compare it to? What would non-existence be like? This way of thinking leads to death, I didn’t tell myself, instead I thought, romantically: existence = absurdity, therefore death = non-existence.
The only problem, I decided, was that nothing ever stays the same for me. I wasn’t happy with my equation and my face tingled with a new thought, what if death was absurd too? Soon I couldn’t stop the thoughts: Does anything ever exist? Does my life have to be absurd? Why does nothing ever stay the same? Does any of this matter if you wish to live a rational life?
Doubt convulsed all over me, I sat and swung my arms just so I knew they were there, but I couldn’t escape them even if I wanted to. I close my eyes and the image of me running away from my arms swam before me, the panic spreading over my face as I realised my arms were helping me to run. I open my eyes and feel my body before me. I wonder just where my body is, I can see it, feel it even, but where is it? I can never see myself properly.
I got out of my chair and walk over to the mirror, except I move as though in a dream. I stand and look at my reflection, it seemed three dimensional but it is still only an image. My mind raced, where am I? it asked. I wish I was someone else but the horror was that I would still have the same problem. I cannot locate myself and even though I am everything real and nothing unreal, I still don’t know who I am.
Am I just depressed?”
*
The man moved in the sand destroying the crevice and creating a jagged swish of lumpy sand where his arse was planted. “What is this shit?”, he said aloud being more than used to talking alone, to himself and his enormous beard. Wait, there’s more, he harrumphed.
“There are too many questions. It fatigues me and for the moment I can only sit and stare. How wonderful!
But nothing stays the same. I think again and I think about my inability to do anything. I am nothing! I feel the irony, I can’t think of nothing for long even though I am nothing. Everyday the prospect of doing things of going out into the world fills me with dread. When I awake in the morning , when I slowly awake in the afternoon, getting out of bed is so hard. I am comfortable in my bed, it is the one place where doing nothing is acceptable (no sex for me), my bed is shaped around me. Yet, I tell myself, I must do something.
My life, in retrospect is so compartmentalised. Year in year out I never stick to any plan of action, except that I will do nothing. I try to fill the void with attempts of doing. Maybe, I tell myself, I could join this or go there, even take up a hobby so I could meet other people. Then my mind turns to nothing and it’s all lost, again.
Ach! Idealistic bullshit, I lie to myself. I get a headache just thinking about it all.”
*
What a sad sounding fucker, the man chuckles to himself. Why does he feel alone when he’s surrounded by life and culture, streets and sounds? If only he knew. Then the man paused, thinking, will my latest catch be dry cured by now? He asked himself. He turned over the crumpled page and carried on reading.
“I was kicking through the dust and debris of my squalid bedsit and came across a blue journal. I dimly remember that one time I tried to write poetry. I felt sick on opening the pages.
Sitting around the house all day can be very very boring I didn’t mean to but I’ve become very very lazy.
I should get that old job back again I should try it would be good for me to work and move good for my health and well-being Get MOTIVATED!!!
What the fuck? This is shit, really embarrassing. How old was I when I did that? Trying to push it from my mind, it was only two years ago.
I fling the journal across the room, sit staring into space, arms dangling by my side. I try to think of nothing but all I can think about are the soul destroying jobs I’ve had in the past serving annoying people, people who look like ghouls scrambling and grabbing at stuff they don’t really need. And for what? So management and shareholders can make more money that they know not what to do with. Self-respect is synonymous with poverty. This is what nothing comes to.”
*
The man’s laughter slowly fades into the empty sea before him. ‘This kid’s really ill, he needs help,’ he says to himself. Getting up from the hot sand he retreats to his small shelter made from drift wood and other materials he scrambled from the island he was on. The fish he had caught were almost dry cured over the low fire he had made. Sitting down on a log he munched on a fish while turning the last page.
“Another day, same chair, same arms dangling. I see in the corner the blue journal I threw the other day and then just beside it I notice a bicycle, dusty and with flat tires hidden with an old sheet half covering it. I find a tire pump in a draw and pump up the tires, easily the most active I’ve been in ages. The sun shines outside, it’s summer.
I think of going for a ride. It’s a heavy thought as I go through all of the shit that might happen. Fuck it, I think I’m going to open the door.
Gently turning the handle the door slowly opens, the bike that was balanced on my arse slips to the floor with a louder noise than I expected. I flinch, swear and pick the bike up. There is no one in the hall so my embarrassment I hold alone. I awkwardly wheel the bike out while closing the door. I have my keys, I think, I think.
Suddenly a door two doors from mine opens with a flourish and a girl breezes out turning towards me. My heart races and sweat was forming on my forehead, I didn’t know where to look. She walks to me, I start to panic thinking what will I say if she talks to me? But she starts to veer to my left heading for the corridor that leads to the washing room. I take a deep breath, she smiles at me as she passes and my front bike wheel seems to have a life of it’s own as it volts forward and embeds itself between the girl’s moving legs, trapped.
I fluster, apologising, sorry, so sorry I’m saying but she just laughs with a light sweet laugh saying it’s ok, not to worry, as she carries on towards the washing room.
I, ashen faced, turn back into my room, throwing the bike to the floor and collapse into my chair, arms dangling. It starts to rain outside.”
*
The man on the island finishes the last of his fish and slowly rolls the paper back into it’s bottle. He gets up with thought in his face debating whether to try that fishing spot again, the sun was setting and there could be some lazy fish for the taking. Dropping the bottle into the sand by his nearly dead fire, enough embers left to rekindle it later, he walks off towards the blue ocean.
Kevin Nebula 