by Alex Kovacs
– Inventing his own onomatopoeic words, he began to create an entire dictionary of them. Coming upon the realisation that words were always an abstract entity, separate from the things that they represented, he first of all learnt of the many different words for “woof” in a number of European languages, discovering that it could be translated as “au” (Portuguese), “jaff” (Bulgarian), “ghav” (Greek), and “haf” (Czech). So he took to inventing his own terms for describing the sound of a door opening, of wind passing through trees, of footsteps pattering against a floor. In the end he abandoned the dictionary, as there were too many sounds to contemplate and eventually the experience had become maddening.
– In 1978 he purchased a double-decker bus that was no longer in service. That summer it became his home as he followed roads running parallel to the north-east coast of Scotland. A part of him had firmly intended to travel all the way to Hong Kong the following year, but he never found the confidence to leave the country.
– He attempted some primitive experiments in composing his own electronic music. Bleeps, crackles, and blips echoed against the walls of his living room, occasionally reaching the ears of his neighbours, who generally felt quietly threatened and alarmed. All in all, he could see that this project had not been any sort of success.
– He wrote the first draft of a realist play that was to be performed on board a submarine at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, but finally he felt that given his lack of first-hand experience of the subject, he was incapable of achieving any kind of authenticity.
– In 1983 he spent hundreds of hours inscribing Socialist slogans across the walls of public toilet cubicles all over the city. Disappointed at the lack of societal change that his actions seemed to be causing, he gave up despondently and returned to other concerns.
Brief Communications with the Populace
(1970–1980)
Every last morning during the 1970s, after eating his breakfast, but before performing his ablutions, Maximilian would sit himself down in his armchair, where he would spend approximately half an hour writing postcards, to thousands of people across the city whom he had never met.
Whilst composing his messages, he would never have any particular person in mind, but, rather, would focus on a different area of the city every month, tailoring his communications to his ideas about each place, forming a secret dialogue with London based upon words overheard in pubs, contemporary films set in the relevant locations, and articles read in local newspapers. Carefully attending to the nuances of a given neighbourhood, Maximilian would meditate upon the attitudes that had seemed most prevalent on the appropriate streets when last he’d passed through them, as though he were in fact addressing these mindsets themselves, made flesh. Names and numbers were practically an afterthought, only added once it was time for the postcards to be sent.
No two of his messages were ever the same. His mind would range across a vast array of subjects and ideas, jumping with ease from one region of thought to another, condensing years of musings into short paragraphs, sometimes single sentences, in the hope that some of them might provoke further thoughts within the minds of others, perhaps even the occasional moment of joy. Each postcard was written out twice, so that he always had a duplicate in his files. These were placed inside one of hundreds of large linen albums arranged in orderly rows along the floor opposite his bed. He also kept a ledger in which he would carefully copy down the date, the area to which he intended to send a given card, and then, in shorthand, a few indications of the general subject matter employed in his missive, so that he was sure to never repeat himself. After a few years of practice, he became proficient enough to be able to finish five cards within the space of three minutes.
Each postcard took the standard size: a rectangle measuring about 150mm x 100mm. For the most part, in terms of the “fronts” of the cards, he favoured those with photographs over reproductions of artworks in other media, believing that this was not the ideal way in which to make one’s first acquaintance with a drawing or a painting. In his opinion, already striking photographs became even more so in this form, and would be all the more likely to lead his recipients to take notice of them and then read what was written on their backs with attention. Inevitably, he reused certain images many times over, as the postcard manufacturers of the time couldn’t keep up with Maximilian’s appetite for their product; even so, he tried to vary his images as much as was possible, a policy that resulted in his sending many postcards he wouldn’t otherwise have employed: cards that might, he worried, court too quick a dismissal, thanks to their obvious ugliness or banality.
Maximilian’s messages touched on almost every topic he had ever thought or imagined, at times veering towards the very edges of rationality in an effort to instigate any sort of sincere response. Each of his cards began with the words, “We don’t know each other,” in order to clarify the social terms of the communication. After this preliminary, Maximilian often liked to assail his readers with questions, forcing them to confront themselves, the world, their situation. Quotations also featured regularly, and on some mornings he would launch into his task with arms laden with esoteric literature, which Maximilian would proceed to open at random, choosing sentences that happened to appeal to him at the moment of composition. On other occasions he would record whatever thoughts came to him while considering the image on the front of his current postcard; on others still, he would indulge in fragments of narrative, descriptive paragraphs, tiny dialogues, impromptu aphorisms.
Inspiration rarely failed him, as there were always more subjects to discuss, other ways of defining, exclaiming, elucidating. On the rare occasions he was feeling a bit lazy, he would rewrite old messages, changing the wording of a previous postcard ever so slightly to create a message that, strictly speaking, could still be considered unique. A single thought might be repeated in thousands of different ways before Maximilian finally exhausted whatever interest it had originally held.
From the very beginning, he made the firm decision not to send any of his postcards until the ’70s had come to their conclusion. He wanted to see how it would feel to repeat an activity for the duration of a decade—not a day more or less. The exercise, he thought, would serve as a method for gauging the meaning of mortality, at least as it related to him: it would force him to pay continuous attention to the fact of time’s passing. He also hoped that the practice of writing would focus his attentions usefully each morning, exercising his mental energies in a way that he would be able to apply elsewhere.
All of the postcards would be sent out on the same day, in early January, 1980. This singularity would unify all of the recipients, even if they were unlikely to be aware of this fact. Maximilian’s intention was that his cards would send out a series of subliminal psychic waves, spreading silently through the metropolis, reaching out to gently usher the populace in the direction of his cherished concepts of “freedom” and “imagination” by, paradoxically, employing a sort of mass hypnosis to bring the citizens of London under his beneficent sway. In this case, Maximilian accepted in advance that his ambition was destined to fail, but did not let this interfere with carrying out his plan.
Gradually he came to find himself compromising his living space merely in order to continue with the project. In the end the postcards took over three rooms in the bungalow, stacked in hundreds of gigantic towers that were at risk of toppling to the ground should the slightest motion ever occur in their vicinity. He could not help but remonstrate with himself from time to time for taking on this particular scheme.
So many times over the decade he imagined how it would feel once he had sent all of the postcards. They would reach households in every last corner of the city, at every social stratum, speaking to every kind of personality and temperament, in every possible situation. They would reach people who were waking up to difficult circumstances, whilst others would be merrily celebrating their birthdays. One sort of person might be delighted by his or her message, while o
thers might conceivably feel disgust. Maximilian felt certain that many, perhaps most of the cards would simply be thrown away with a grunt, never to be seen or thought of again. But, then, inevitably, some of the recipients would be interested in what he’d had to say, and he wondered how many of these there would be, persons who felt that they had gained something from the experience.
In sending them at the turning of a decade, Maximilian’s intent, as much as to edify or confuse, was to have the cards serve as a form of greeting, marking the onset of a new and significant, if arbitrarily delineated, period of time, with an act of friendship and community. Somehow, he persisted in believing that a few of the recipients would manage to recognise what he had done and see it as a statement, a declaration of the importance of the imagination, a condemnation of cynicism and alienation. At the same time, considered as a series of individual communications, it was such a small gesture, only a very minor occasion in most people’s lives, if they noticed it at all. It would be a fleeting moment of confusion or pleasure, almost certainly destined to be forgotten long before the new decade reached its conclusion.
When 1980 finally arrived, a date Maximilian had wondered if he would live to see, he found himself feeling more than a little daunted by the logistics of sending all of the cards. He spent many months preparing the day of their release, planning every last detail, tracing lines across a succession of maps, working out an extremely precise route, taking careful note of the traffic patterns in certain places at certain times of day, and any other potential hazards that he might encounter. Batches of the cards would be deposited in thousands of different postboxes around the city. He was worried that if he didn’t distribute them equally between the different postal regions, the postal service was likely to become suspicious or angry, thanks to the sudden and enormous influx of work, and even refuse to carry the cards to their destinations. Eventually Maximilian even decided to memorize the names of every street that he would follow during the day, in the order he would take them, so that he might lessen the possibility of getting lost or falling behind schedule.
When the time came, his journey commenced at 11 P.M. on Wednesday, the 2nd of January, 1980. Working his way through the night, he had already deposited batches of postcards into 482 different postboxes before the first post was collected in the morning at 6 A.M. Driving through the abandoned streets, Maximilian encountered a strange nocturnal realm that felt as if it were almost his own creation. Surely, he thought, no one could ever have seen London in quite the same way before. He could not help but think of all of the slumbering figures lying everywhere around him, hidden behind heavy walls and locked doors, oblivious to his presence, even though in many cases they would soon come to be the beneficiaries of his present frenzy of activity.
The subsequent hours were immensely difficult. In all of his years of working diligently at obscure schemes, Maximilian had never before experienced such tiredness. It was a day of relentless hard work. As he travelled from one postbox to another and then another and another and another, he was reminded of the long-forgotten monotony of his first and last proper job. Once more he found himself gazing into the abyss of identical actions, the infinite series of repetitions that eventually led to an inevitable emptiness and conformity, until the possibility of anything actually changing seemed so remote and obscure as to be a laughable prospect, one perhaps even worthy of contempt.
Moving from one district to another all day long, Maximilian found himself increasingly at a loss for places in which to park his car; more often than not he would simply leave it running in the middle of the road whilst he rushed to the pavement, stuffing his postcards through the mail slots as rapidly as possible, hoping that no one would notice, before hurrying back to his car and progressing, sometimes only a few hundred metres, towards his next destination.
It proved to be exceptionally difficult for him to keep up his concentration. At one point in the late afternoon, he was attempting to find his way from Shepherd’s Bush to Putney; after taking a wrong turn, he realized with some desperation that he had no idea where he was. Maximilian was astounded that, despite his intimate knowledge of the city, he was still susceptible to such mishaps. He lost nearly an hour, navigating through unknown streets, so consumed with nervous agitation that he began to make further wrong turnings, after which he became genuinely worried that he would never again find himself back in his own familiar city. Finally he discovered a route back to Notting Hill, and he compensated for his wasted time by stuffing the last postboxes he visited with a greater number of his postcards than planned.
When at last he went home, he had left batches of postcards in 1,958 different postboxes, inciting the anger of 631 motorists and three policemen, not to mention postal workers, who of course noticed what he had done, in time, and reported it to the tabloids, where it ran as a minor story, being described for the most part within the length of a single paragraph.
Maximilian felt exhausted, spent. He suspected he would be incapable of strenuous activity for some days to come. Retreating back to the bungalow, he sank into his armchair, where he listened to melancholy records for the rest of the evening. Drifting towards sleep, he reviewed all that he had accomplished that day, the endless succession of streets observed at numerous points of time, seen in a great many different gradations of light, until night had finally descended once more. Although he was excited by the idea of people waking up to discover his messages, his sense of loss was considerable. He was still not altogether sure how he would fill the gap left in his life by abandoning his postcard work. From now on his mornings would surely feel bereft of activity. The time he had invested in the project could not now be recovered, despite the extensive records Maximilian had kept. He had never really considered how painful this particular evening might feel.
Watching the records revolve upon his turntable, he weighed up his achievement. He had managed to communicate with many thousands of strangers, a feat that few could claim. Now, too, he felt that he really did know more about what it would mean for him to die. However, in the end, perhaps there was nothing much to it. Perhaps it was foolish to attempt any grandiose justification of his actions. He shouldn’t forget, he admonished himself, that the whole exercise had been based upon the whim of a single distant afternoon. A part of him believed that he had only behaved like this for his own perverse amusement in order to make himself smile for a moment or so once he had finally reached old age. Wasn’t that all it came down to, really? An ephemeral act which would probably never be appreciated or even noticed by anyone, almost certainly resulting in no sort of reaction, no reply, and consequently being entirely futile. Yes, at the decisive moment, when he should have felt pleased with himself, Maximilian could only feel a sense of disappointment. He was convinced that the entire scheme had only been a way of wasting a little time each morning for many years. Perhaps it had only been an act that was tantamount to yawning.
Things He Made no Record of
(1971–1973)
(His sudden longings for days walking up and down hills, his various encounters with the aroma of frying onions, the tiny buttons which so frequently fell from his coat, unknown species of crustaceans discovered when strolling through the stalls of Billingsgate Fish Market, the tendency of his pocket radio to miraculously discover mysterious broadcasts from distant countries, the many sublime uses of vinegar, the ways in which plastic globes are touched and surveyed by children, his desire for the eradication of all worthless municipal bylaws, the cheerfulness of colour-coding systems, expeditions undertaken on foot for several miles solely in order to view particular plaques, imagined arguments between ornithologists, beautiful stratagems and schemings and manipulations, an old man in a pale green suit shuffling in the street, voluminous supplementary appendages contributing nothing to that which they supplement, peeling wallpaper with exquisite floral designs, the precise recollections of dentists, the wetness lingering underneath the tongues of pumas, an umbrella unfolded and scatter
ing rain, intimations of the daydreams that might be encountered at high altitudes, cloudy thumbprints left on a windowpane, certain pairs of brightly coloured spectacle frames noticed on the noses of young women, the lack of profound historical events associated with zebra crossings, the pleasing aspects of T-shirts decorated with horizontal stripes, consolatory contradictions, appreciation of kite flying and its various practitioners, an encounter with a blind accordion player inside a pub bearing the odour of moths and old teeth and which resulted in a misunderstanding about the rightful ownership of a tumbler of rum, noting a moderate decline in the already miserly percentage of men who wear hats, considerations of almost any manufactured commodity as a microcosm of a given nation, the places in which shadows fall gravidly upon wooden shutters, silver encrustations formed in white laboratories, navigations of the city undertaken with a brass compass, vestiges of fallen epochs lying resident in steam-rooms, quiet urinations in the vicinity of public monuments, the process of the enculturation of ornamental glass objects, the ranking of publications in order of smallest total circulation, thoughts concerning the precise number of brands of breadsticks available to the restaurants of the West End, the magisterial air of eminent librarians, the density and quality of pillows, the inevitable problems that arise from refusing to sing, a yellow starfish placed on an oak dresser, nocturnal divagations and peregrinations, street corners and their atmosphere upon one’s first standing at them, congregations of secret parliaments, arrangements of converging lattices, crowdings of barely perceptible memories, the vastness of oblivion represented by a valley of stones, the stench of steam and clean white linen, a cat with milky green eyes following him dutifully through a neighbourhood and staring at him imploringly with a look so inquisitive it could almost have passed for speech.)