by Alex Kovacs
A campfire blazing on a hill in Scotland. Branches crackling and snapping apart. Flames wavering and smoking, licking against the sky. Indistinct words sung over the patter of a soft-strummed guitar. Finger cymbals, hand clapping, rough rhythms beat out upon a tambourine. Muffled voices. A burst of whistling. Pockets of laughter.
Las Vegas casinos. Jangling coins and the electric chime of the slot machines. Trumpets blaring from elaborate stage shows. Peacock feathers and sparkling bikinis. Blunt, commanding voices of gamblers huddled around gigantic tables covered in green baize. Crowds wandering in swathes, murmuring as they move through the giant neon-bright hallways.
Conversations overheard at café tables in Paris. Elegant men wearing black waistcoats and bowties, immaculate white shirts. Arms aloft bearing drinks on circular metal trays. Light curling against buildings, shining across rooftops, detectable in the movement and levity of the voices. Clattering of coffee cups and spoons. Cats tiptoeing around table legs, nuzzling against feet with soft purrings.
Street interviews conducted with pedestrians. The original questions erased or replaced with other questions. Disjointed statements, new thoughts and images. Suspended voices. References to events that have not yet taken place, ideas that no one has thought. Words without images, words refusing to describe.
Clicks and crackles. Whining of seagulls. Grinding of engines and machinery. Shoes clacking across pavements. Winds shrieking across a field. A room of wooden rattles. A room of wineglass rims ringing from the rub of wet fingers. Balloons filling up with air. Children playing in a garden in summer. A harmonium on a pebble beach. A patter of whispers.
A Speech Delivered to a Small Audience Gathered Inside an Abandoned Ballroom
(1979)
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to an occasion that will no doubt cause you some dismay.
I don’t believe in speeches. In fact I don’t really believe in speaking at all. It’s not as if there aren’t many other methods of communication available. Frankly, I think that there are better ways of making a point than by delivering orations. I frequently go decades at a time without speaking, and it’s never done me any real harm. People dedicate so much of their time to speaking, losing hour after hour of their lives talking about entirely insignificant subjects whose mention makes no difference to their—or anyone else’s—lives. What an absurd waste of time it all is.
There is no good reason for me to deliver this speech. No one asked me to speak this evening and I have no particular subject in mind. It might be added that this is the only speech I have ever given. Perhaps it will be the only speech I give in my life. Thus, it might well be a good idea to listen most intently to every word I say. There probably won’t be another opportunity to absorb these riches.
Preparing a lecture is a tedious venture. One has to read books that are of no interest, compile pages of notes, prepare one’s material, condense it, pick out the important elements, place them in the best order, make difficult concepts digestible to your audience. Each stage in the process is laborious. As such, I have skipped these preparatory steps. With regard to the way my words may or may not effect you, I may be said to occupy a position of total disinterest.
If you stay here to listen, there will be no relief. Boredom will contaminate every last particle in circulation in this space. The air will become clammy to the point of being unbearable. You will shift about in your seats uncomfortably, discovering aches of which you were not previously aware. Syllables will drawl from my mouth continuously until it will seem I could not possibly persist. But, nevertheless, I will persist. Your attention will wander, you will think of other things; indeed, you will desperately, gratefully, seize upon anything else that might distract you. And still I will drone on.
Whatever positive qualities my words might have, I assure you these couldn’t possibly add up to much of substance. Of the already small number of individuals present to listen to me tonight, perhaps only five or six will manage to follow my thoughts through to the end. Of those, perhaps only two or three will be able to remember what I have said in a week’s time, whilst no one at all will act upon what I have said, as indeed they would not act upon what anyone else might say, if they were to stand here, and deliver a speech, as I am doing, to an audience of this size, of this kind.
I know very well the pall of tedium that can linger in a room in which a speech is being given. The speaker on top of a platform or dais, speaking and gesturing, sometimes with great animation, whilst his audience is seated below, distracted, thinking, indeed, of anything other than the matter at hand, whatever that is, anything that might bring with it the hope of some sort of pleasure or significance. Surely every public speech should be delivered in consideration of this fact. This one certainly is.
Movements of interminable grind. The extraordinary profusion of characterless, flavourless topics. The repetition of actions inimical to thought. Blank, inert, vacant persons and occasions and places. The forces that reduce the things of the world to empty vessels lacking in all sensuous qualities. These are the things that this lecture will, for your benefit, embody. For as long as you choose to remain here listening to me, this is the place that we will inhabit together. If I were you I would definitely leave now.
Yes, I urge you to stop listening to this speech. Make haste. Perhaps a number of you, dear listeners, might approach me, bind my hands with rope behind my back, stuff a handkerchief in my mouth, tie me to a chair and then proceed to make me listen to whatever you deem it necessary to say to me in reproach. Perhaps, after this, you might destroy the room. If you were to do this, you would then be behaving as active individuals, rather than the passive spectators you have become by dint of sitting and putting up with the things I am in the process of saying to you. You are anonymous to me, you men and women seated before me, persons with whom I will probably never speak in an informal way, whose faces I will glance at for barely an instant before moving onwards, to another room in another building inhabited by another collection of undistinguished faces.
Rather than listen to me, you might rise up from your seat and walk out of the door. You could walk for three miles without stopping to rest. There need not be any specific destination. Perhaps it is enough to go walking. You might even find yourself making friends with a cat. Perhaps it would be better to choose a direction leading to a place with which you are unfamiliar. To see new streets and buildings. Or, at least, places that you have never stopped to examine with any real care. I urge you to find something, anything preferable to this speech, something that will be truly engaging and nourishing.
It could well be that on the other side of the city, another lecture is taking place. A man, of a similar age to myself, might be on a platform, before a canvas screen, on which he is projecting a series of slides. He may be pointing towards various shapes and colours on the screen with his wooden cane, pointing to signs that he believes will inform and entertain his audience. The things that he is saying, the facts that he is busy relating, the choice of descriptions he has made, the quality of his chosen slides—these things make him stand out as an individual, make him worthy of attention, make him almost glamorous, by contrast. His powers of communication are doubtless far superior to my own. It might be worth your while to locate the room in which he is speaking. You would certainly be better off doing that than staying here, where you are simply going to hear more of the same. If you’ve enjoyed yourself so far, I suppose, then keep listening, because you will not find what follows to be a disappointment. I may even choose to repeat everything that I have already said.
You could continue listening to me in order to find out what happens, to see how this will progress, before it peters out, or stops abruptly, or extends—it’s possible—to marathon proportions. No one will know until that point has been reached. You could stay for that reason—to engage in an act of spectatorship, of voyeurism, simply following a series of events from beginning to end. That, at any rate, is the task that lie
s ahead of you. But I would like to give you another warning, if such is your intention: nothing of interest is going to occur here. Nothing will change. There will be no movement or progression. Where we are is where we shall wind up.
You may well feel disappointed. Somehow you expected this speech to contain more. It sounded so interesting at the outset: you expected that perhaps you might walk home in a state of exaltation, refreshed and invigorated by the words that you heard this evening. Spurred on by the excitement of new ideas, branches of knowledge that you had never before encountered. You hoped that you would walk home with gleaming eyes, thirsting for the company of other people with whom you could share word of this experience. But instead you have found yourself here, still here, only here, listening to me talking about nothing much of consequence, and doubtless you are already thoroughly disheartened by the experience.
Why give a speech of this sort? I don’t really have any clear idea. And, perhaps, hidden within my casual attitude is the answer to your question. I am giving this speech precisely because there is no reason to do so. I am saying these things because they are irrational, because they will only lead to an emptiness of all purpose, all significance. Nothing will be achieved. Barely anything will even be spoken of. And it is that, I think, that I most believe in. In doing things that barely qualify as having been done; in saying things that hardly qualify as having been said. No, that isn’t true. I am not concerned with belief, this evening. There is nothing to believe in here.
Indifference like this can’t be taught, can’t be effectively communicated in a speech. One has to grasp it instinctively, or, better, inhabit the state naturally, as a matter of course. No conceptual apparatus is required. All that you need to know on the subject could be learnt in less than a second. There is no point in thinking through the issues I’ve raised—if I’ve raised any—with what might be laughably referred to as “depth.” Anyone attempting to formulate a concrete understanding of the views and ideas under discussion here is going to fail. All of us are going to fail anyway, in so many ways, and that is all we have to look forward to. But that isn’t my point—if I have a point. Which I probably don’t.
There is no end to boredom. Think how remarkable this is. It contains infinite possibility. One can be bored for a very great length of time; in fact, it is possible to be bored from the moment you are born until the moment that you die. It has no boundaries. It has no centre and no edge. Potentially it can inhabit anything and anyone at all, as we can inhabit it. Entire cities, entire countries, even entire continents can seem boring, at times, to certain bored or boring people.
One could argue (and I shall) that I could talk about any subject in this manner and it would still wind up being boring, purposeless, lacking in meaning. Of course, we recognise that all human affairs can seem meaningless if one considers the size of the universe, the age of rock formations, of oceans and trees. In comparison with these elements of nature, human beings live for but a tiny length of time. Consequently, our concerns are empty of any real and lasting significance. It does not matter what one chooses to deliver a speech about. Before the reality of the cosmos, your lecture is no more significant than the tiny dot upon which we live.
I could not possibly know how it feels to be an individual listening to this lecture. If it is a lecture. There is a definitive, probably unbridgeable gap that lies between lecturer and lectured. I can only project myself into your place; it is a fond, romantic sort of gesture, and so falls outside of my purview. I can only guess, therefore, at the tedium you are now experiencing, the sense of waste and futility. The outrage and disgust, perhaps, that must be fomenting within the juices of your gurgling stomachs. I expect that you have never felt repulsion to this degree towards what ought to have been a light entertainment.
And so, finally, one arrives at no conclusions. After considering nothing much, one is only left with nothing much. One doesn’t really discover anything along the way. There is no adventure. It is a case of one foot following another, in order that a journey take place, but ours is a journey without purpose, and therefore, no rewards will be obtained, no insights enjoyed.
No help is coming. You are on your own. No one else can rise up from your chair, no one else can shout insults and slam the door behind you; no one else can storm out of the room in your own particular manner, with your own indelible personal signature. No. The responsibility is yours alone. And how many other times should you have made your presence known? When else should you have risen up against the oppression of politeness? Look around you. Is it not a sort of synchronized narcolepsy that forces individuals to endure such terrible forms of theatre? Surely you should have declared your feelings before, made your opposition known. As they say, it’s never too late. Until, of course, it is.
I’m sure it would have been better if I’d never said a thing. I should not have got up on this stage. I should not have started to speak. All of this could have been avoided. There would have been no endurance test, you would not have had to experience this or any of its consequences. That would have been best, I’m sure. At least, then, something worthwhile might have taken my place. Some small joy, at least, to make the day. But, alas.
Of course this lecture need never end. There could be further instalments. You could all return evening after evening to check in on the progress of my thoughts about nothing whatsoever. I could stay on this stage until my throat was so dry that I could no longer speak, or until it became impossible for me to stay awake. All the while I would still be here, talking and talking, with no hope of an end in sight. The subject would remain the same, the tone would remain the same, even the order of the words in certain key sentences. I don’t believe in speeches.
The Rebuilding of Ickenham
(1980–1986)
Throughout its long history, Ickenham has always been condemned to official neglect. For centuries it was a tiny village where very little of consequence occurred. Swallowed up by the north-west suburbs of London during the course of the twentieth century, Ickenham became a commuter base after the opening of the Metropolitan Railway in 1905. Gradually it turned from a grey, overlooked village to a grey, overlooked part of the city. Maximilian, intrigued by this historylessness, undertook a review of the possible transformations that could be visited upon such a locality.
Over the years Maximilian had developed a fascination for the fringes, the forgotten margins, places whose appearance remained perpetually unknown, where anonymous figures shifted from one point in space to another with little of significance resulting from such movements. Places like Ickenham are, paradoxically, capable of obtaining a strange allure when they are visited from afar and infrequently. In such conditions, for brief periods of time, such destinations can seem to have the air and character of foreign countries, feeling entirely removed from the main thoroughfares and arteries of the greater city to which they nominally belong. Maximilian would spend days on end drifting amongst gigantic industrial buildings, empty expanses of school playing fields, relentless rows of houses. There was, he thought, a strange sense of calm there.
Whilst he enjoyed these places in their current form, Maximilian could not but dream of tinkering. He loved best those scenarios in which these margins would ascend to a sudden international prominence as a consequence of elaborate permutations in culture and architecture. Ickenham became the nexus to which these fascinations always led. One day, in the throes of the boredom he did not like to believe he still experienced, Maximilian took to imagining Ickenham as a genuine arena of possibilities, a dream space behind whose windows and in whose cabinets who knew what fictions, as yet indefinite, were lurking? Easy to lose sight, Maximilian felt, of the fact that the miraculous could emerge from here as well as from anywhere else.
He began to walk down every street in the neighbourhood, taking photographs of every surface. Stepping through the doors of local businesses, he made preliminary enquiries regarding a range of goods and services before disappearing without mak
ing a purchase. Consulting the telephone directory, he rang hundreds of private residences, succeeding on a few occasions in engaging individuals in conversations about a number of subjects, ranging from the state of the weather to the eternal problem of infidelity. All of these actions were attempts to grasp the psychic co-ordinates of Ickenham, to gain some knowledge of the area’s habits and preferences, its rhythms and forms.
Head bowed over a pint of ale in the Coach and Horses, he would eavesdrop on conversations, making himself as inconspicuous as he could, whilst he heard of petty rivalries and a variety of schemes that were all probably destined to end in failure. Never lingering long enough for his features to leave any sort of lasting impression behind, he nevertheless became constantly frightened that he might one day be recognized by Ickenham’s residents. As a consequence he employed his usual tactics of camouflage and disguise, walking the streets only late at night, or during the hours of the afternoon when the area was largely deserted. It was only occasionally that someone mistook him for a potential thief.
Delving into books of history, he discovered that Ickenham was first mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it was referred to as “Ticheham.” It had grown up as a settlement in the environs of the great estate of “Swakeleys,” a property originally named after one Robert de Swalclyve, who was recorded as owning property in the area in 1326. The estate was to have many owners over the years, but the most famous was Sir Robert Vyner, a banker and goldsmith, friend to both Samuel Pepys and Charles II, who became the Lord Mayor of London in 1674. When Pepys visited Vyner in September 1665 he recorded that: “He [Vyner] showed me a black boy that he had had that had died of a consumption, and being dead, he caused him to be dried in an oven and lies there entire in a box.” Maximilian was periodically haunted by this statement for some months after discovering it.