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Dead Air Diaries
Preamble and 1st Chapter
By RAM
Click here if you'd like to exchange critiques
Spirals, there is something about spirals.
“On the first day of Christmas my true love said to me...”
Pre[(il)lusion/amble]
There is some old saying about ‘idle hands’ and doing the Devils work, or some
such thing. The assumption then is that ‘idle words’ spoken must be those of the
Devil also. If no more a way than an un-reasoned babble in nothing but a
distracting noise. A siren song designed to send us off course. Inane babble
buried has become a constant background noise, that soothes the beast inside.
While at the same time quelling any chance of losing oneself in divine silence.
We maybe able to take strong thread and sew ones mouth shut. However no thread,
no matter how strong, can silence the noise inside our minds. And even harder
still to silence is that of the will, that propels us forward.
We all live with noise everyday, especially in the urban landscape there is no
escape from the incessant racket. The by product and many times the sole reason
of technology is the making of more noise. There is a fight going on against
silence, as it is seen as an ally to loneliness, and an enemy of society.
Radio transmissions penetrate through the ear-drum, deep into the mind, and
pricks at the will. Whether floated on an ether ocean, or pumped down fibrous
cables, the constant drone of adverts spliced into every pause of the broadcast
have but one aim. To stir the will so that it may never be silent, and thus only
find rest in death.
The words appeared on the screen as Roy spoke into his hand unit. The phone
recorded his voice, translate it into text, then sent both a textual and vocal
digitised file to his computer at home. The translated text would be flashing up
on his screen at this very moment. It wasn’t the best technology that was on
offer, but it suited his needs more than adequately. He paused and looked up for
a minute, taking stock of his surroundings and so grounding himself for a
minute. Soaking in the atmosphere of the sun splashed graveyard that he’d
casually wondered into he carried on with his monologe. “I live that I may walk
among the dead.” A self indulgent dramatic pause and a glance around. The row
upon row of standing stones bore out the silence of their long gone and decayed
owners. He spoke again, “Stone faces bear down from the marble and granite
forest of remembrance.” Interference rattled him as the the deep grunt of a
diesel engine tore through his train of thought. Glancing casually upwards he
saw two grounds keepers busing themselves in the early morning light. One, his
large frame crammed into the tight space of a small excavator, scooping the
earth out of a new grave. The other man stood by, propped up by his shovel,
guiding the movements of the mechanical hand as it delved deep into the pocket
of earth it had created. The two men remain focused on their work as Roy passed
by mumbling into his hand unit, “I’m fucking invisible.” He glanced across at
the two men, neither raised his eyes from the hole they had just dug. One of the
men pulled out a tape measure, stretched it the length of the hole. Not one pair
of down cast eyes from the many stone angels flickered at the spectacle being
performed before them, despite Roy willing them all to break their fixed stare
with the ground. “Note to myself,” he continued.
Note: 1-10-273/7974
To: MYSELF
When I die I want a animatronic gravestone. I can’t choose between whether to go
for the subtle stone angel like these here in the graveyard, which would simply
glance up at a passer-by, and wink while giving a knowing smile. Or I could go
for the more over-the-top, out-of-place, in-your-face version. ‘Beavis and
Butthead’ sat on their couch, The remote control in Butthead’s hand, which is
pointing out towards an imaginary T.V. screen seemingly positioned on the path
where people would walk passed. So as people walked by and set off the sensors,
the voices of ‘Beavis and Butthead’ would scream out across the graveyard and
the person passing by would turn and look, and see, the remote control pointing
right at them. Then they’d hear Butthead say to Beavis, “This dude suck’s! Let’s
turn off...” You here chanting from Beavis.
“Off... Off... Off...”
“... Let’s go outside and break stuff,” Butthead continues. To which Beavis is
then heard to reply.
“Yeah! Break stuff! Let’s break that dude.”
“No Beavis you bung-hole, we can’t break the dude, the dude ain’t real ass-wipe!
The dude’s inside the T.V.”
“Let’s break the T.V.” Beavis has the final words, as all they then hear is a
click, and nothing then but silence. Just the sound of the graveyard amplified
through the speakers in the grave stone, bass speakers behind huge towering
slabs of black granite, tweeter’s up in all the trees, playing the graveyard
back to itself in full on ‘Para-Digital’ ‘Multi-Dimensional Micro-Acoustic’s’ or
whatever’s the best sound system out at the time. Playing a perpetual
reverberation back to themselves. I’ll have to think about that some more.
“Back to diary,” He looked about himself, twisted his head and clicked a
vertabre in his neck. Re-familiarising himself with his surroundings, he carried
on walking.
Why he wondered did the stone angels never look up to the heavens, why must they
spend all their time staring at the ground like naughty children. Or was Hell
more appealling viewing than Heaven? What was it that they had done that was so
wrong that their shame forced them to never look up and see what was around them
he wondered. Whispering into the microphone Roy continued, “Look at me you
bastards, I may not be famous, I may not be anybody in particular, but I have
substance... Flesh and bone if nothing else. No, fuck you, all that matters to
me is that I have a mind, that I can process a thought. Really at the end of the
day it doesn’t count whether you can see me or not, whether I just float past
you as little more than an ethereal presence. I’m here, I know that and that is
all. If you refuse to acknowledge my existence... Well bollox to you... It’s
your loss. Anyway when anyone does happen to give me a momentary glance they
don’t even see me, they just see what surrounds me. They see only the surface
from which the light reflects, and they can see no deeper than that.“ In the
distance the railway barriers lifted, he’d not even notice them drop. The world
started its engines and roared off in all directions. Roy put his out dated
gadget away and carried on walking, trying to catch-up with himself and everyone
else on this busy morning.
“Non omnis moriar.”
Chapter 0.5 – Here & Now... Begin & End...
... Alpha & Omega, Yin & Yang, X & Y, can be categorised as partnerships. There
are some who would argue that they are just parts of a bigger whole, different
sides of the same coin sort of thing. A statement like that is inevitably wide
open to examination, and is therefore bound to be discredited one day. That is
the disappointment of Reductionism.
Chapter 1 – C.P.U on the other-side
Roy carelessly tossed the apple core in the bin next to his computer.
Constructed in a moment of shear boredom the bin was an amalgam of newspaper
strips and PVA glue. Stuck to the outside covered in multiple layers of yacht
varnish was the headline ‘APOCALYPSE CITY’ purposely placed among many other
carefully chosen dystopian hack comments about the state of the world.
“Personal file,” beep, “diary,” beep, “open,” beep, “new page,” beep, “October
first.” A carefully considered pause for inspiration, in a moment of cybernetic
connection Roy could feel his heart synchronise its rhythmic beat with the
cursor flashing in the top left of the screen. Nothing happened, his muggled
mind strained to fill a blank screen, while drive heads hovered and discs span
in vacuous anticipation.
He had a thought and pondered why was it that words of wisdom came all too
easily while he wondered the world, during the day while dealing with the
mundane tasks of just striving to live? This was meant to be a seminal moment,
he'd decided before the last of his anarchic life force was finally drained out
of him by day to day living, he'd sit down to put thought provoking pixelated
characters down on harsh white screen.
Still in the process of trying to boot-up his brain, that had spent a long
period in downtime, he wound his jaw into a tight knot. He soon realise that
clenching his teeth and the resulting increase in pressure on his jaw, did
little to stop the hoped for ideas from remaining suspended in their somantic
state through this moment of time. The only way to elevate such pressure on and
in his head, and by way of reducing the risk of potential stress fractures, was
to wedge open the mouth with a decent joint. Definitely this was the right time,
not that there was ever a wrong time, for a drawn out drag on an illegal but
morally defensible herbal relaxant. Rolled and inserted in the time it takes to
consider the meaning of life, the universe and everything, that being within the
equally shallow context of skinning-up the joint. Coming to the usual conclusion
at such times, that all answers may not be contained within, yet once the
process was under way the end became clear and he no longer cared for answers
just the potential of the quest.
Mind now set adrift on a tranquil floodland the task ahead now floated
effortlessly alongside, just within his outstretched grasp. Tap, tap, click,
tap, characters started to appear on the screen in front, tap, click, tap, Time
was. Time was becoming increasingly irrelevant; in fact Roy hated the whole
concept of time. He knew that it didn’t even really exist, time was no more than
a way of measuring the length of transition between one moment and another. A
system of measurement not a system of belief. Belief in time as something
substantial, something important, just as something, as opposed to the actuality
of it being a tool of human invention, annoyed him. Roy only owned one clock,
and even that he purposely set wrong. The clock was set to approximately the
time he thought it was in accordance with whatever programme had just started on
TV, using the TV guide as a time check. Even this felt wrong and somehow
conformist, so he’d often close his eyes and set the clock to an unseen
approximation of what the time might be. This was his concession to the world
out there, the one invaded by and constructed around the nanosecond. Hours
passed in minutes, minutes stretched out for hours and days blurred into distant
memories when in a satisfyingly statuesque state of mind. Hot rocks had replaced
his marbles long ago. Tiny holes peppered the fabric of time, the escaping flow
could not be stopped, a simple logistical problem of too many holes not enough
fingers.
Now fully submissive to this passive state and able to ignore the inner turmoil
going on inside of the plastic and metal casing, he teased the one hundred and
one erect nipples he felt before him. Like a blind man who has wisdom at his
fingertips, Roy became at one with his instrument, manipulating the input so
that he could attain a life affirming output. Composed in the knowledge that he
would be putting his life in the hands of others. He preferred the use of direct
contact with the computer keyboard, as he never truly trusted the speech
recognition software that everyone seemed to be using in these strange days. He
felt he had to extract the essence of himself from the oral world of language he
inhabited. Having found no suitable means of expression across the soundscape of
that world, he and only he alone knew it was left up to him and him alone, to
define his own words in an encyclopaedic dictionary of his life. And so as the
cloud of Paradise laden smoke lost itself in the darkness of Roy’s lungs, he
began to let his new found land escape into the world of others.
October 1st
I’ve tried meditating on a number of occasions, but I can’t clear my mind for
more than a few seconds. I don’t exist without thinking, I think all the time. I
don’t mean in the cogito sense, as its commonly understood. What I think about
are things, abstractions, not of this moment, in this reality anyway. There are
those who’d argue that there is only this moment, that beyond this moment there
is nothingness. Reality is just a simulation, never real just a reproduction of
a fleeting moment lost in sensorial history.
I think about the Universe and how its constructed in all its facets. I model it
in my mind, spinning its 3-D vector image around in a virtual space I’ve created
inside my head. My doughnut theory of the Universe is not complete just yet, it
has a few holes in it. (Sorry! After fighting with my consciousness the pun was
intended.)
I’m drifting from my focal point in this dialogue, notably the work of the
philosopher Baudrillard and the eastern faith of Buddhism, in relation to the
transparency and ever changing fluidity of identity as a philosophy for social
change, through anarchy. Baudrillard, Buddha and Big Brother, a thoughtful
consideration of our cultural, spiritual and socio-political selves. A prelude
to an opus.
Full ashtray, dry mouth and thoughts connected with his inordinate hunger were
momentarily side tracked by a juggling jester, the sight of which threw him off
the long-winded path he’d set out on. He picked himself up dust himself off and
look back from whence he came. Blocking his way in front of him as usual stood
the lighthouse. At times circling high above, vultures swooped down, skirting
the circumference of the tower they sort out a fresh corpse. Of no significance
to the scavengers the long dead white tower, disused and cut-off, it laid
silently at a tangent to the horizon blocking all view of the path ahead.
Scorching rays from the Red Sun accelerated the ageing of the beaten and cracked
whitewash. A chromed brass bell swung from a rotten wooden bracket next to the
iron-clad door, tolling a generic knell for all his woes. The Sun’s reflection
glared deep into the back of his eyes blinding him, but he fought it with
persistence of vision. The Sun’s radiation beat down on him, leaving him deaf in
a desert of silent running sand.
Now for the first time ever he did not face a purely blank battlement, staring
into the immovable impermeable expanse before him focus fell onto what appeared
to be a delicate scarlet thread which appeared to have caught itself on the
walls rough surface. Reaching out and taking hold of the soft silk thread it
started to unravel and grow, coiling about his hand, creeping its way up his
arm, endeavouring to wrap itself around his thorn whipped heart, eating away at
his un-leaven flesh. Pulling away from the anchorage point of the epiphyte which
had entwined all around the bastion wall, in the death throws of his epiphany,
the thread snapped. There it lay motionless in his hand, in truth it was nothing
more than a broken thread disintegrating before him. Reduced to a line of fine
power a dying wind glanced against the surface of his palm taking the remnants
of the thread with it. The fine red mist finally settled at his feet, White
light, white noise, white out. Soft voice, soft whisper. “What is never lost,
can never be found…” Back from his brief black out he swayed slightly but stood
his ground, no longer needing the tower walls for support. He’d returned to the
silence, but now a soft warm silence.
He immediately turned and made his escape from the silent tower that had grown
up around him while he’d been distracted. Leaving before the flood waters came
rushing in again and exiled him back on the never ending island. Being entombed
in the torturous tower where even angels fear to tread, no one would have heard
him screaming from the dark drenched interior. So with this in mind he took his
only chance at freedom, willing to face without fear the mythical beasts beyond
in this new found realm. Where sky, sea, river and land all meet in celebration
of Natures glory he squinted at the infinitely curving horizon laid out in front
of him. Confidently striding out along the tree lined boulevard, a warming light
played between the branches and the leaves. Dappled patterns of light and shade
carpeted the broad avenue as it stretched out before him. With the remaining
entrails of the thread by now visibly interwoven with half the naked flesh on
his body, he knew without reservation that he'd carry the deep-rooted marks
forever, this was to be his penance. In places he noticed that the thread rose
elegantly to the surface, before sinking back deep inside him. Surface evidence
of the parasitic thread worming through his flesh made the desire not to pick at
it way beyond all forms of temptation he’d previously denied himself. “Some
day…”
Thus in a short-lived twinkling epiphany he knew this was to become his
confessional obsession, eternally picking at emancipation, Roy knew he must
write. He must write and do nothing else, words must be carved in ethereal stone
before time came flooding in and washed them away. This was his moment and only
destiny stood in his way. As after God the only culprit that he could accuse of
deception was himself, he knew that and he was ready to face whatever and
whoever he put in his own way. So he thought with all his might, the result
flowing forth from the wounded Manipura deep within his solar plexus. The
resultant energies enflaming a chemical reaction of his gastric juices, a manly
belch grounded the would be ephemeron. Now looking at as opposed to through the
display unit in front of him, words had etched themselves onto the glowing
surface strung together in sentence chains, joined in narrative by metaphorical
combination locks. Words that he was reading where not unfamiliar to him, in a
definate case of de ja vu he knew that he seen these words put together in this
order somewhere before. Here on this screen, at a time just like now.
"In the beginning Godhead created the heaven and the plan..." The re-creation of
a Utopian paradise halted by the white noise roar of a de-tuned car radio.
Michael gripped the steering wheel holding his right arm with the rigidity of an
iron bar. His left hand fumbled around in the dark, attempting to search out the
next radio station along the airwaves. Screams, squeals, roars and howls,
interspersed with Telex chatter.
"... Direct and exclusive from Metatron, our word is our promise. Now available
in handy throw away byte size chunks!" Silence.
A seemingly prolonged pause in a radio broadcast, breathe in a stagnant lung
full, no soft warm breeze on an oppressive summer night like this one. An
audible silence hung heavy on the ears of those who dares to listen, each in
their own way unwittingly forced to define the 'Mad March' road kill that lay
before them. Unable to distinguish the fine outgrowths massed together in matted
carnage on the poor unfortunates ravaged surface. Ghoulish curiosity swept away
by an unconsciously anticipated dread, lead to a collective state of unrest. No
longer sitting comfortably waiting for the story to begin, the period of dead
air had given them all time to think.
“Whoa, I think I'm gonna be sick,” Roy spoke the words out loud for the captive
audience of one. Days of wine and roaches had taken their toll, numb now
becoming a common place emotional placebo in uninvited preferences to those of
active and creative thought processes. Clearing his head while reviewing the
short dopey ramblings he'd so far managed, Roy decide that the warm security of
dreamtime was calling up to him. Another day’s dying embers sank into alcohol
fuelled submission, for the danger of head meeting keyboard became all too
tempting. Goodbye harsh squealing reality, hello the metaphor driven haven of
R.E.M.'s recharging chemicals. “File,” beep, “save,” beep, “file,” beep,
“close,” beep, “shutdown.” The machine buzzed and clicked as in its death throws
it put in a request for a stay of execution, while it was still pleading for
mercy Roy made his decision final and threw the switch. A sharp silence entered
the room, he left unnoticed.
