There is something else going on in Moses Tabick’s imagination, and I guess he would not be pleased if we knew about it. At the same time as he knows he has been chosen by God to be the Messiah, he is also imagining it as a film. That, as he is striding down Kingsland, there is a crew filming it all. Stanley Kubrick is somewhere on the top of a building directing the various cameramen where they should be getting the best shots from. He is Alex in A Clockwork Orange. Unstoppable. The people are parting as he makes his way down through Stoke Newington and then Dalston. From nowhere, people are joining him, but not just Jewish people, people of all colours, creeds and faiths.
Or maybe it is not Stanley Kubrick, maybe it’s Francis Ford Coppola, because in some way it is like Apocalypse Now and—But Moses gets these thoughts under control and remembers he is the Messiah and this is all real, and he can feel the Luger wrapped up in his tallit.
Moses Tabick and Henry Pedders are yet to meet, but will do so in the next few hours. There is another young man in this story, who you might have forgotten about, although he will not be meeting Moses or Henry in the next few hours. He is Chodak. He has begun his descent from the monastery high up in the Himalayas, and although he is not armed with a Luger he does have a sword, a razor-sharp sword. It is hidden from view under his saffron robes. It is a sword you can imagine being used to decapitate someone with one graceful stroke, like in a more graphic kung fu film.
The next chapter but one might contain his story. And maybe by the end of this book Moses, Henry and Chodak will have met up in the last Jellied Eel and Pie shop left in the East End of London.
13:01
Killer Queen is putting the guest-list together.
13:03
Alan Moore has an idea for a concept album, but has not yet told Jimmy and Bill about it. It is about a dystopian world, and is set on an island off the coast of Scotland where the last 23 surviving human beings on Earth live. There are twenty males and only three females.
13:07
For some reason, GoogleEarth has not picked up on the tanks rolling across the tundra. If it doesn’t pick up on them soon, it will be too late.
Putin sits watching his roses, takes another sip from his mug of tea, and smiles. We have never seen Putin smile in public. What Russian man with any self-respect would ever smile in public?
Jura
2 May 1984
Dear Diary,
I am going to get on my Brough and head for the bar and drink until I cannot stand up.
Fuck the lot of them.
Yours,
Roberta
Postscript: I’ve decided not to send any more chapters of this book to Dog Ledger until it is all done.
5: THE GREAT TUMBLE FROM THE SKY
13:11 Monday 24 April 2023
Yoko Ono – the old one – is again sitting on her balcony staring out at New York. She has just had lunch. That said, she eats very little these days, and what she does eat is usually some sort of seaweed, high in vitamin Z.
She is not thinking about the yellow book she threw over the balcony yesterday, or if she has it in her to do one last major exhibition. What she is thinking about is nothing. It is what she likes doing best.
It is then she notices a tightrope walker walking between the Al-Qaeda Towers.* Yes, the Twin Towers were rebuilt, all part of the ‘World Peace Now’ deal the Five sorted out in 2020, after the United Nations was retired. The last to agree on the new naming was Islamic State, but even they knew it made sense. Once horrors of the past can be just another ride in a theme park, they can no longer hurt us. Once Harry Patch died, the trenches were as ancient history as the English Civil War.
Yoko Ono is transfixed by what she is watching. There has been nothing about this on iJaz, on Twitter, on FaceLife, nothing anywhere. But here it is, happening not more than a kilometre from her apartment. Is this a re-enactment of Philippe Petit’s same walk back in 1974, when Petit brought New York to a standstill? For those readers who are way too young or not arsed about such things, Philippe Petit was a French high-wire artist who, without seeking permission from anyone, took it upon himself to sling a wire between the Twin Towers and walk it.
Back in ’74 Yoko Ono may have had a major problem with this. Philippe Petit was calling himself an artist. But the population at large did not have a problem with it; in fact, they loved what he was doing and he was celebrated as one of the greatest living artists. Picasso had died the previous year and now the New York Times was writing about Philippe Petit as his rightful heir.
It is like Fluxus never happened. Yoko is getting angry again.
Then, from nowhere, as if the cavalry were coming over the hill, comes a helicopter trailing a banner with her phrase ‘ABOVE US ONLY SKY’. This makes Yoko feel better.
Seconds later the helicopter is flying above the Al-Qaeda Towers. The downdraught of those blades can wreak havoc with the most carefully pegged lines of laundry. Our would-be Philippe Petit does not stand a chance. Yoko Ono is soon watching him tumble through the sky like he is in slow motion. The only emotion Ms Ono can feel is one of jealousy. Why is that not her tumbling through the sky?
‘Don’t look down, never look down.’
And why does Yoko Ono assume it is a ‘he’ and not a ‘she’ that is tumbling? Is this just another case of ‘Everyday Sexism’ on her part?
13:13
M’Lady GaGa misses the whole ‘tumble from the sky’ piece. She is in the lift going up to the penthouse suite of Ono Towers. She is now knocking on the door of the apartment that says YES. She is let in by the butler – a female one.
‘Ms Ono is expecting you.’
M’Lady strides past and heads through to the balcony.
‘Hey, Yokes, how ya been? Seen any great art lately?’
‘Unless we don’t count the sight of you, I have not seen any great art in the last 23 minutes.’
Note, dear reader, she is completely ignoring what she has just witnessed in the past two minutes, when already the Twittersphere is ablaze with it, and Will Gompertz is, as I type, rewriting his piece for the evening edition of Art Now@iJaz, where he will consign The Three Posters to the trash can of art history and make a claim for The Great Tumble from the Sky as the finest work of art of the twenty-first century so far.
‘So what did you see 23 minutes ago that was so good?’
‘Your new video for your new track, where you are the Siren on the rock. And the ship of fools goes smashing into the rocks. It was after watching that I knew I had to get hold of you. I knew then you must be one of the other Three Sirens who are being called to find the One.’
‘Yeah, and do you know who the other one is?’
‘No.’
‘Michelle!’
‘Michelle?’
‘Obama, of course. Didn’t you see that old has-been Damien Hirst has been doing a sculpture of her as the Little Mermaid, but in gold or something? Anyway, I got on to Michelle straight away and she will be on Skype3D in five seconds.’
And in five seconds Michelle Obama, to all intents and purposes, is with them in the room. The wonders of Skype3D have yet to be embraced by some of the more Luddite members of the community, who are still trying to get their heads around 3D printing. Did these people never watch Star Trek?
‘So look, Miche, or should we call you Elle? I take it you know Yokes.’
‘Yeah, we met at The Beatles@Shea Stadium 3D reunion show, backstage. But tell me, Yoko, did you really fuck the 3D version of the twenty-four-year-old John Lennon in his dressing room?’
‘Of course, wouldn’t you? And I filmed it. I was planning on it being the centrepiece of my farewell show at MoMA.’
‘Anyway,’ interjects M’Lady, ‘as far as I am concerned The Beatles never existed and, as it happens, I am considering starting up a conspiracy theory to prove The Beatles never existed and popular music went straight from Elvis to me. So no Zephyr, Dylan, Madonna, and certainly no American Medical Association. Just Elvis, then forty years of on
e-hit failures, and then me.’
‘How does that work?’ ask Yoko and Michelle simultaneously.
‘It’s a new thing GoogleByte are about to launch. If you get a billion people to sign up to a conspiracy theory, it automatically becomes true. Everything on the internet is corrected, and from then on no one can prove otherwise. That’s unless some other conspiracy theory comes along that can get a billion people to sign up to it to prove otherwise. It is what democracy was all about, but they never got it sorted. The 23rd Amendment or something.
‘You must have known something about this, Miche? You were the fuckin’ president when all this was being sorted.’
‘Nuff of the cussing, GaGa! We are all sisters but—’
‘Okay, sorry.’
Yoko Ono, being the most senior of The Three Sirens, takes charge. Even if M’Lady GaGa is the pushiest – and Michelle Obama was the last and only female President of the USA, thus technically the one who has commanded the most amount of worldly power – it is Yoko Ono who is going to be the boss bitch.
Okay, okay, I know. But just remember this is a feminist tract and probably the greatest work of feminist literature you have read since the film rights to How to Chuck Your Boyfriend by Jane Eyre were sold for $100,000,000.
‘So this is how I see it. From now on we are The Weyward Sisters – forget all that sexy mermaid stuff. We are the three real heroes of Macbeth, but for modern times. We know the Baby is going to be born, and my guess is that will be sometime just short of nine months from now. Where the Baby is going to be born is anyone’s guess, but we will get that figured out. The stable thing has been done, so probably a women’s prison, seeing as we don’t have refugee camps any more. Probably London, because that is still, sadly, the cultural capital of the world.
‘Are we all agreed?’
‘Yeah, cool, Yokes, but don’t you think we should make a promo clip together before we cut off our fishy tails. I mean, Miche is looking hotter now than Beyon-Say ever did.’
‘Who’s Beyon-Say?’ quips Michelle.
‘My point exactly,’ retorts GaGa.
‘Now, us single ladies, put your hands up,’ demands Yoko.
And from somewhere we can hear the soundtrack to this book from a passing car stereo. It goes something like this:
I got gloss on my lips, a man on my hips
Hold’n’ me tighter than my Deréon jeans …
Women’s Revolutionary Law
From the First Declaration as proclaimed by the Zapatista Army of Liberation from the Lacandon Jungle on 1 January 1994:
1: Women, regardless of their race, creed, colour or political affiliation, have the right to participate in the revolutionary struggle in any way that their desire and capacity determine
2: Women have the right to work and receive a fair salary
3: Women have the right to decide the number of children they have and care for
4: Women have the right to participate in the matters of the community and hold office if they are free and democratically elected
5: Women and their children have the right to Primary Attention in their health and nutrition
6: Women have the right to an education
7: Women have the right to choose their partner and are not obliged to enter into marriage
8: Women have the right to be free of violence from both relatives and strangers
13:17
Subcomandante Marcos is sitting in his villa up in the mountains of Chiapas watching the rolling news on iJaz. It has been some years since he smoked his last pipe and led any sort of march with his sisters and brothers in the Zapatistas.
There is nothing left to liberate.
And as Subcomandante Marcos is watching the world’s greatest living artist tumble to her certain death between the Al-Qaeda Towers, he feels that niggling sense of jealousy that he has never been able to get over. Not only did he never actually get to have his revolution, before the need for revolution was made surplus to requirements, he never got to be the star on several million T-shirts for several generations of teenagers, like that faker Che Guevara.
Like so many other trades before it, being a Revolutionary, along with being a milkman, had become redundant. Pints on the doorstep and manning the barricades were things now only found on the History Channel.
Subcomandante Marcos is watching the tumbling artist on repeat. Over and over again. But never at the point of impact. Never at her Ground Zero. Never the splat. Just the tumble. The beautiful tumble with the blue sky in the background, the one fluffy cloud and the helicopter trailing its ‘ABOVE US ONLY SKY’ banner.
In a previous chapter, we had a character who was probably transgender and we portrayed her/him in a somewhat negative light. We wouldn’t want you to think this was some sort of prejudice on our part. We were just reporting the facts. But for the sake of balance … most revolutionary movements in the past have been quite macho, their leaders always portrayed as thrusting heterosexual male heroes. Subcomandante Marcos may not have reached the dizzy heights of Brother Guevara before him, but he was still all ‘thrusting heterosexual male’: the horse, the pipe, the bullet-belts, the poetry, the AK-47 are all tried and tested phallic symbols. Who could question any of it, what red-blooded woman would not willingly …?
The truth is more complex. But we must first quote from part of the statement given by Subcomandante Marcos himself:
To the lesbian, gay, transsexual and bisexual community: we are grateful that you have allowed us the opportunity to say our word on this, the twenty-first march of Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual and Bisexual Pride, which has convened some of the best of sexual diversity in Mexico.
May all of you accept the greetings of the Zapatistas on this day of struggle for the dignity of, and respect for, difference.
For a very long time, homosexuals, lesbians, transsexuals and bisexuals have had to live and die concealing their difference, suffering in silence persecution, contempt, humiliation, extortion, blackmail, insults, violence and assassination.
The different had to bear having their humanness reduced for the simple fact of not being in accord with a non-existent sexual norm. This norm has been converted into a banner for intolerance and segregation.
Victims at every social level, objects of jokes, gossip, insults and death, those different in their sexual preferences remained quiet in the face of one of the oldest injustices in history.
No more.
Our best wishes for your organised existence.
Our support for your struggle and your demands.
We Zapatistas, men, women and other, but still Zapatistas, greet lesbian, gay, transsexual and bisexual dignity.
Long life to your fighting spirit and a different tomorrow, one that is more just and human for all those who are different.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Subcomandante Marcos, 21 July 1999
The complex truth is that Subcomandante Marcos was never quite sure about his own sexuality. And the more unsure he was, the more macho he wanted to present himself to the world. In retirement, he had come to accept the complications of his own sexuality. But on this Spring day, when all of creation was bursting forth and he was watching the Unknown Artist tumble to her certain death over and over again, Subcomandante Marcos knew he had been called.
Beside him in his armchair was a book. It had arrived in the second post. It was a yellow book with a grapefruit sliced in half on the cover. In the segments of the halved grapefruit, he could see a five-pointed star. The symbol of his revolutionary party. Even before opening the book he knew there would be a message contained in it for him.
He flicked through the pages – not much caught his attention – but then near the back of the book was a page with Mayan hieroglyphic script. If this was not meant for him, it was meant for no one.
Now, Subcomandante Marcos is of Spanish descent and not Native American, but his whole purpose in life has been the cause of the pre-Colombian p
eople. He has not only taken it upon himself to be able to speak their language, he has gone some way to learning the hieroglyphics used before the conquistadors arrived. Even if no one other than academics could read it, he could.
And he read:
The revolution is not over
It has only just begun
Put on your balaclava
Put on your cap
Put on your bullet-belts
Load your AK-47
Fill your pipe
Get on your horse
And ride, baby, ride
Subcomandante Marcos had never trusted the internet. And he knew his phone lines were tapped. He used runners.
All across Latin America, from the Tex-Mex border to the southern tip of Chile, there were young wo/men and not so young wo/men waiting to hear the call. To blow that bugle. To bang those drums.
Now was not the time for Subcomandante Marcos to come out about his complex sexuality, now was the time to make the revolution happen, even if the rest of the world did not give a shit about revolutions unless they were on the History Channel between programmes about milkmen and the English Civil War.
The world was interested in only one thing – SHOPPING.
But not for long.
13:27
Killer Queen is having problems with getting the sound system sorted for the gig that night in the Maelstrom. She has no idea it is that complex a situation. It is going to need more than a couple of WEM columns, and then how are they going to get the back line out there?
Mister Fox says he can sort it out (remember him? He is the manager of Tangerine NiteMare, as well as the possible father of the One). He knows this lad in Dalston called ‘Drums of Death’. Drums of Death are massive across the Post-Digital Underground and have been having hits with everyone from Azealia ‘I guess that cunt gettin’ eaten’ Vaults to Wolf Coat Macklemore, but the thing is, underneath all the scary make-up, Drums of Death is, in reality, Colin from Oban, and even though Drums of Death are all about the underground, Colin is still a homeboy back in Oban. And Oban is not more than ten miles as the gannet flies from the Maelstrom, just on the Scottish mainland. If anyone knows about getting the right sound system out to the Maelstrom, it will be Drums of Death, aka Colin from Oban.
2023: a trilogy (Justified Ancients of Mu Mu) Page 16