This Is Memorial Device

by David Keenan

  So we began training together and the two of us put together this class – we called it Autonomic Dreaming.

  The heart is tried every night, Lucas said, that’s how he would introduce each workshop – it was mind-blowing, it was insane – he would read all this stuff from his notebook. It is taken from the body and it is weighed, he would say, it is stalked like a lion, it is examined for vulnerabilities, we track it, we put it through its paces. The heart is also a hotel, he would say. More particularly, it is luggage, baggage. Recurrent dreams of hotels, more especially of left luggage, of checking out and of leaving all of your effects behind, that is the heart speaking. I was like that, shit, if you say so, okay.

  We came up with breathing exercises – visualisations. We travelled along the secret byways – that’s what he called them, the white and red veins running up the spine, he said – and we spun off into realms of fantastic creatures – great buildings, wildlife, feral activity – all this shit. I realised that the organs were literally dreaming the world. Seriously, I came to this conclusion. At the same time, Lucas’s martial arts skills blossomed. He would flip partners into the air with his big hands like tennis rackets, send them cartwheeling across the room. I felt like I had a future champion on my hands.

  Inevitably, we began to socialise. I drove out to Airdrie to see him and visited him at his mother’s house, where he lived in a caravan in the driveway. He was always a record collector and always had music on the go – weird music, way-out music – and I remember one night when I was sitting in the caravan and he was playing a record – this is before Memorial Device, I don’t know if he was making any music himself at this point – but he went out to the kitchen to get us some drinks and I overheard a conversation between him and his mother. It broke my heart. Seriously it fucked me up, man. It looks like you have a friend there, Lucas, I heard her say. Then there was silence for a while and I heard him ask her – have I ever had a friend before? A male friend, she said, I don’t believe you have, no, unless you count school friends, but really, they’re so unfussy they’re barely friends at all. Seriously, I felt so much responsibility at that point I almost upped and fled.

  I only found out about the whole memory thing gradually. Of course I suspected something was up but I guess I just thought he was some kind of savant – is that bad, man? What I mean is I didn’t question it, man, I just accepted it, you know what I mean, this otherworldly aspect, this flimsy quality, if you like – which I don’t mean negatively – just that he didn’t seem as bolstered by personality as most people. He was the most endearing combination of, like, startling intellect married to this weird childlike quality – his great hands and his massive feet married to this very peaceful, angelic demeanour. I heard it got worse, man – that he became more isolated, more dislocated – but back then he just seemed touched, as the Irish would say.

  Everywhere there were synchronicities – that’s another thing about being with Lucas, he just sort of set them off, like his very presence would trip all of the world’s presets. As soon as you mentioned someone’s name they would appear. Like for instance, man, I was telling Lucas about an old girlfriend of mine, Vanity – she became famous later in her life and died in a car crash in San Francisco or something like that – but the thing is, man, I hadn’t seen her for years and I told Lucas this story about our first date, how I had been at a concert in Glasgow and was cutting through the kitchens in the back – I was looking for a fire exit where I could smoke a sly joint – and there she was doing the dishes and she saw me and presumed I was in one of the bands that were playing. Were you just on stage, man? she asked me. Yeah, man, I said. Which group were you in, man, she said, the one with the hats? Yeah, man, I said, the one with the hats. I felt immediately emboldened. We should go out sometime, I said. Yeah, man, she said and she wrote down her phone number on a piece of paper before I was chased out the kitchen by her boss. It was that easy. But of course from then on I was caught up in a web of lies and the relationship went nowhere, man, especially when it became apparent that I was a member of no band and had no talent whatsoever as well as no friends and no prospects, ha ha, if you know what I’m saying. Which wasn’t so bad really, man, as she was the worst kisser of all time, seriously – she was all teeth – there was no soft to her whatsoever. And her taste in music was awful. Shocking, man. She came back to my pad and wasn’t even able to choose an LP to play – she said she had never heard of any of them, if you can believe that. That was pathetic, man. Seriously. We had sex a few times – oh it was awkward, really bad – her mouth shut tight, breathing heavy through her nose the whole time – seriously – which was off-putting. You’re having sex, I thought, not giving birth. I can’t really remember how it came up – maybe there was some overenthusiastic chick hyperventilating in one of the classes and I said to Lucas that it reminded me of sex with Vanity – but sure enough, less than a week later, Vanity shows up for one of the classes. I hear her outside talking to Lucas and I recognise her voice immediately, I hear that phrase, man, that is a total deal-breaker, she says. Who else talks like that in Glasgow, know what I’m saying? She walks in and it’s like she’s a ghost, a sexy ghost taunting me. She’s looking great, man, I’ll give her that, she has grown into her body, she was like a stick insect when I dated her, seriously, all angles and degrees but here she is now, in tight jogging pants and a leotard, looking like Olivia Newton-John sent down from heaven. I went in brazen, man. Wow, I said. Heaven must be missing an angel. Hell is certainly asking questions, she said, looking me up and down. She had a mouth on her too by the way.

  We took the class. By this point we had a method of teaching that combined guided meditations, bodywork and a short knowledge lecture. The classes would focus on certain organs as the locus of certain images or words or states of mind. On this particular night it was the pancreas – which of course is associated with the goat as well as amusement parks, destruction of household goods, hallucination, nothingness and certain vegetables, as well as total bodily paralysis.

  Under my tutelage Lucas had come up with this motion – that’s what he called it, it wasn’t quite a dance – this motion that he thought mimicked the movement of speech associated with the pancreas, a turning round and a lifting of one foot after the other, a sliding forwards – it’s a helter-skelter, he said, that’s how we work on the pancreas. We had a full class that night – older women, a few recovering drug addicts and alcoholics, a guy called Akbar that I would occasionally play chess with in a flat on Alexandra Parade – and to be honest, man, I was secretly pleased to see that despite Vanity’s blossoming she was as graceless as ever. She flopped around like a baby elephant though maybe that’s just my genitals talking, know what I’m saying.

  I could see that Lucas was watching her closely. He would move around the room, correcting people’s routines. I had taught him well. But when he came to Vanity he took both her hands in his and he kissed one of them. Man, it was remarkable. This is like Shakespeare, I said to myself. Phew. Everyone else was caught up in their own motions but I saw it clearly, man, saw the look on Vanity’s face, how taken aback she was, how bowled over, and then Lucas reached down and lifting one foot after the other he put her bare feet on top of his and held her around the waist. Seriously. Her feet looked tiny on top of these huge plates of meat – I remember her chipped nail varnish and her bunions – and then he began to lift his feet, slowly, one after the other, guiding her around the room, as if she was a puppet in his command, honestly, man, and I saw her lean back, I saw her body respond – seriously, who knows what was going on inside – and he led her in this slow looping movement – it’s like DNA, I said to myself – her head lying back over her shoulders, her hair hanging down – and she closed her eyes, man, he had her completely in his power – completely in his power – and I watched as he licked his finger and ran it down the length of her exposed neck. Seriously. He might as well have slit her throat.

  Then McManus joined the group – Adam M
cManus. I should have seen it coming, man, in retrospect. He had all the hallmarks of the kung fu guru – know what I mean – shaved head, toned body, teetotaller, vegan, so completely balanced, man, and nice to everyone, that you just knew there was a seething well of resentment and hatred and madness that was ready to spill over at any moment. He got big into Lucas’s thing about the organs, man. He would come to the martial arts classes and he had this whole thing where he claimed he was ex-SAS or Special Services or something like that. I’ve heard it all before, man, every bouncer in Glasgow, every security guard claims Special Ops duty. But then he said he had been active in Northern Ireland as an agent provocateur. He let it slip to Lucas, man, who wrote it down and told me. There was no point in telling Lucas anything that you wanted to keep secret – you had to presume that he would immediately go and tell someone else. He had nothing to keep secrets in.

  He told Lucas about an IRA bank heist that had gone wrong. They had set up it up in painstaking detail. They had mapped the bank – the positions of the cashiers, the exits, the alarm system – the whole deal, man. McManus had been chosen to lead it. When you go in – he was told – you turn to the left, where the main security guard is seated. He holds all of the master keys and can let you into the vault. Everything was set. McManus kicked the door in and swung to the left, screaming, Don’t fucking move! There was nothing there but a blank wall. Seriously, man, that’s what he said. Someone came up behind him and hit him over the head. When he woke he was tied to a table in the outbuildings of a farm in South Armagh. It gets heavier, man. There were three guys with balaclavas dressed completely in black standing round him. He recognised their voices, he said. He was pretty sure they were the same three guys he had gone into the bank with. You fuckers, he said – at least that’s what he claimed he said, who knows, man. You stitched me up, he said. And he began calling them snitches and grass bags and scabs, apparently, or so he says. Then one of the men took out a hacksaw and ran it, really gently, between his legs. Seriously, man. Who’s talking now? the guy said to him.

  Then the leader – the taller of the three – stepped forward. We’re not here to represent sides, he said. We have evolved beyond this petty partisan mindset but we are here to settle disputes, something along those lines. Then he brought something up, man – something that he could have never possibly known about McManus’s past – something that had never been resolved. You’ve sinned, he said, matter-of-factly, just like that. Then he took a raw vegetable from his pocket and started munching on it, seriously, that’s what he says. McManus started crying, man, he lost it, basically. Then the main guy takes his balaclava off. He looks like an older McManus. I came back for you, he says.

  He wakes up again, man. This time he’s driving a car on the way to the ferry in Belfast – seriously – who knows how he got there. He reaches into his pocket and there’s a one-way ticket to Troon. Never thought I would be glad to see that, he says. He drives from Troon to Glasgow. He arrives late at night. He’s driving without purpose, man, who knows where he might end up. He pulls up at the gates to Kelvingrove Park at the top of Kelvingrove Street. There’s no one else around. He gets out of the car and starts running into the dark, just running, man. He gets to the fountain – which back then was going 24 hours a day, it has been fucked for years – and without a thought he launches himself into the water.

  At first he survives by stealing vegetables from outside fruit and veg shops and sleeping at the top of the park. Then he starts hearing this voice, this voice from beyond. It’s his future self, he claims. Seriously. That’s what he says. It’s an attempt to turn his life around. He cleans up his act, changes his name. He was a vagabond, he said, but there was something in the blood that was speaking to him. You believe that?

  In Lucas he found the perfect combination of living guru and willing student. I’m telling you, man. Vanity became involved – it became this threesome – this secret kung fu cell. They were into body workings – extreme diets, fasting. I would take them through the moves at my martial arts class and it was like they were humouring me – like they were already beyond it or were on some fast track to complete body gnosis. But when Lucas and I hung out together it was like nothing had changed – we were still best buddies, man. We would go to concerts – we even took a weekend to Leeds together to attend a martial arts conference where Lucas and I demonstrated our organ-linked combat stances, and while some people labelled us as fantasists there was a strong reception for what we were doing. We stayed in an old hotel that was like a stately home with its own grounds in the university area. At night we sat on the balcony and drank beer and Lucas read me some poems he had written, which were more like ultra-condensed diary entries, like ‘Waking/light from the window/a confluence of birds/with/names’ and ‘Your name/is/Lucas/you/fool’ or ‘Planets above the/horizon/each one of which/stars too/the same’. Are you sleeping with Vanity, man? I asked him. He read me another poem which basically said, ‘Yes/who/yes’. This is bullshit, man, I thought to myself, I’m being taken over by a cult and my best friend is sleeping with my ex-girlfriend and talking like a Chinese hermit.

  One day Lucas plays me this tape – I want you to listen to this, he says – I’m keen to get your opinion on it. We’re at the studio – working late – fitting a new central heating system. Lucas puts the cassette in the player and takes out his notebook. Okay, he says. He presses play and this sound comes out – this low-level drone but with a pulse somewhere in the depths, know what I mean, this distant orchestral sound that had been smudged somehow, sunk, perhaps, know what I’m saying, like a shipwreck rocking back and forth on the bottom of the ocean. We kept working away – neither of us said a word. Then Lucas obviously forgot what he was playing, man, and eventually he turned and said to me, do you hear that? What is that sound? I decided to wind him up. It’s the sound of a graveyard at the bottom of the sea, I told him. I’ve been there, Lucas said in a panic, and his eyes looked like they would pop out of his head. Seriously. He was taking a total frenzy. I recognise it, he said. I’ve been there. What’s it like, man? I ask him. Oh, he says, and he shakes his head. Oh. He’s like that, it’s like being stranded, he said. Marooned, he said. It could be an island, he said, it could be a sunken ship. Or wait, yes, it’s a graveyard, yes, he said, I can see it now, all these ships swaying in the tide, tiny fish swimming through them, angel fish, he said, silver streaks of light. When did you hear it before? I asked him. When I was sleeping, he said. Or when I was silent – at night, alone – or when I had an operation, maybe, I think so, I remember floating down through the waves as I went under and finding the ships, these great ships, like ghosts, all scuppered but lit up, illuminated in the dark.

  I couldn’t keep it going, man. Lucas was becoming agitated. I confessed to him. That’s your recording, man, I said. You put it on. Look in your notebook, I said, find out what it’s about. Yes, he said. I remember. The ships, he said. The sunken ships. I put a contact mic on my forehead, he explained to me. Seriously. Right on the ajna chakra, he said. And I recorded it while I slept. I wanted to play it for you. The nightly descent, he said. It’s right there. I was like that, man oh man.

  We continued working while the tape ran in the background. Everything sinks, I remember thinking to myself, fuck me, everything sinks.

  McManus, Vanity and Lucas began teaching a class together on Saturday afternoons – I let them do it against my better judgement but it proved a success – and soon they moved it to three times a week. It was more like interpretive dance, know what I mean, modern dance like Merce Cunningham or something like that but with kung fu moves in there and with it keyed to the music of the organs, you know, which by this time they were all recording with contact mics and choreographing movements to it and all that. They had great results, man – old spinsters dancing for the first time, newly flexible rheumatics, even drug addicts and alcoholics kicking it in favour of this new way of relating to their own bodies. I never attended a class myself. I was too pr
oud, in a way, but sometimes I would walk past and stick my head around the door and it was like they were floating in there, man, seriously, it was like an aquarium in there and they were all these weightless blooms of colour floating this way and that.

  Then one day I got a call from Vanity. Someone was looking for McManus – someone from his past life. They’re after him, she told me. If anyone turns up looking for him tell them he has left and you have no idea where he is. I was furious, man. Just totally fucked off. What are you doing covering for McManus, man? I asked her. We’re trying to do our best here in the East End and you’re telling me that thugs are going to come in and turn over the whole place looking for this prick? Listen, she said. It’s not McManus’s fault. He was kidnapped and he still gets flashbacks and nightmares all the time because of it. That’s what she said, man. He was doing his duty, that’s what she said. I lost the head at that. Just fucking lost it. His duty, man? His fucking duty, man? Explain to me in what way a human being’s duty involves spying for the state, man. You know what I mean? She said she didn’t want to hear it and she hung up the phone. I called Lucas. He told me the same thing – in so many words – but it was as if he was reading it from a piece of paper with no real idea of its import or even its meaning. Okay, I said to myself, I’m caught up in a web of madness here, man – I need to protect myself.