Within a short while Babel had appeared in a documentary on life modeling and the late night chat show After Meditation.
Babel’s manner is quiet and unassuming but he has something to say. The truly unique aspect of Mr. Babel lies in his unclassifiability. He is not a politician, nor an artist. He is if anything a teacher who seeks to educate and instruct. He is what might be described as an Urban Messiah.
Oscar Babel will be speaking at The Duchamp Prize for the Most Controversial Artist of the Year in ten days’ time at the Kensington Hilton.
___________________________________________
The Background *************
Mr. Babel is a very shy man who needs his privacy as he is not used to socializing, having just returned from the Modylmyr Ashram in Kerala, India where he read widely and meditated for up to fourteen hours a day.
He studied Sanskrit at Oxford University. He took a first and briefly considered a career as an academic before realizing his calling lay elsewhere. He saw academia as an embroidered dead-end. Running circles around others no longer held any interest and conventional methods of teaching left him cold. The world beckoned and he travelled widely in Tibet and India. For a time he came under the influence of a guru in the Caucasus – Seer Nayar. Then he lived amongst the Aborigines and acquired psychic abilities. For example he could predict with uncanny precision when a coffee machine would break down.
A Note on BabelSoap
Mr. Babel became obsessed with volcanic earth, which he travelled the world to acquire, developing different kinds of volcanic soap from it, for medicinal purposes. Babel’s soap, when applied to people’s skin, could in some cases cure them of racism. Though his theories have not been backed up by scientific evidence many people have testified to the effectiveness of the treatments. One woman in Gran Canaria even claimed that the application of the soap had healed a 14 year old rift with her mother, which had started when the two had argued about the best way of removing facial hair.
** WAKE UP CALL
by Oscar Babel **
---forthcoming title by Babel to be extracted soon on this website, concerning the real self and how to find it, and the possibility of freedom from the chains of consumerism and desire. In order to change your life, you have to want to change your life.
“Most people are asleep; I think I can wake them up if I shout loudly enough.”
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14
Bloch had been lying for days in his bed, not getting up, dried out. He looked like a man who had been granted a vision of hell and as he lay in his somnolent state, disconnected thoughts moved through his brain like a drunken dancer.
Several physicians, including his general practitioner, said he was suffering from nervous exhaustion and needed to have a period of complete rest, even suggesting he be admitted to a private clinic; but Bloch had refused point blank. So here he stayed, with Webster looking after him, whom Bloch had invited to move in. In the end his GP had declared himself satisfied with this arrangement, and concluded that Bloch didn’t pose a threat either to himself or others and wasn’t showing suicidal tendencies.
Webster had been evicted from his flat so Bloch’s offer was timely, even though moving in meant adopting the role of nurse. Webster had been refusing to pay his rent to protest the fact that his landlord still hadn’t had his boiler repaired. It all came to a head when the landlord called in one morning with the eviction notice in one hand and in the other a letter from Middle Maintenance Services confirming a new boiler would be delivered the day after Webster was to be thrown out. Mr. Conk had said evenly, ‘If only you hadn’t resorted to such an unfortunate line of action, you could be bathing with your rubber ducks next week.’
Webster, besides keeping the flat clean, shopping and cooking, also picked books up from the library and drugs from the chemist: valium, painkillers, vitamins, and rehydration treatments.
One doctor had tried to persuade Bloch to go to the countryside but the prospect made him even more agitated. So he just languished in bed, reading when he felt up to it, mainly books on Eastern mysticism, and in particular Tantra. But because he was spending so much time in bed, all sorts of unforeseen ailments descended on him: Bed sores appeared on his feet, he became chronically constipated, and he started to get stomach cramps. He ate irregularly, and invariably never managed to finish a meal. He resorted periodically to valium, which did nothing to stop his mind’s feverish activity, while making his body feel heavy and sluggish (and so even more at odds with his mind’s perpetual motion.)
*
Webster was in the kitchen, watching the washing machine as it advanced toward its rinse cycle. As it ground on, to Bloch the sound it made came across as oddly distorted, battering him into submission. Unbeknown to him, sheets of note paper, full of ideas and plans, were being destroyed mercilessly in the machine’s steel barrel.
‘Webster!’ Bloch yelled from the bedroom.
Webster groaned. Though Bloch’s flat was comfortable, though the sofa bed was preferable to the mattress in his van, his host was impossible, to put it mildly. He couldn’t always be at his beck and call. He would have to say something, and now was as good a time as any. Not that there was a good time with Bloch.
He waddled into the bedroom. Slumped on the bed, Bloch was clutching an ancient, retrograde cassette player and microphone, with which he’d been recording his thoughts, since he was too tired to write them down anymore.
‘Do you play chess?’ he asked.
‘Actually Bloch, I need to talk to you about something.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well...the thing is...I don’t think I can go on looking after you like this.’
‘Why not? Aren’t I paying you enough?’
‘No, you’re very generous. It’s not that; it’s just I don’t think I’m really the right person for this kind of thing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not a trained nurse or anything. You want soup, and when I make it it’s either too hot or too cold; you want fresh bedsheets and then I have to use that bloody machine all the time just to keep the supply of clean linen running smoothly. It’s exhausting. And I mean to say, don’t you think you should be under medical supervision so that doctors can monitor you? I mean a private hospital would be nice.’
‘Webster, don’t pester me. I’m not a virus that I should be monitored.’
‘But you need taking care of! And I’m not the right person for it. I have to think about my business schemes.’
‘Isn’t that a rather grand term for flogging bits of china?’
‘If I spend all day here,’ said Webster, ignoring him, ‘looking after you I can’t order things, buy things. My stall needs me.’
‘But you can use the phone. I’m not stopping you.’
‘I know, but it’s not enough.’
‘It’s not as if you don’t have any free time. You can go out.’
‘Yes, but sometimes I need to be out all day, and that doesn’t seem to be very convenient for you. I need to do the rounds, meet people, catch the auctions at Christie’s, go to Bermondsey market, Camden Passage, Covent Garden. Buying and selling, I can’t afford to be out of the game. I can’t stay in all day taking care of you. I have to go down to the V and A, Basildon. I need to – ’
‘If it wasn’t for me you’d have no home! Is this the thanks I get? I take you in, I’m paying you good money, you’re sleeping in a luxury flat. You can eat cheese cake when you want to, coffee cake when you need to.’
‘Please, Bloch, don’t be angry.’
‘You short-sighted bumpkin! You’re a buffoon, a penny farthing with one wheel missing, a clown with a green nose. I can get along without you. Go on, leave then, get back to your precious pottery, if you’ve got your heart set on it. You’d better get your things together.’
‘What? But where will I stay? Where will I sleep?’
‘Well,
you should have thought of that, shouldn’t you?’
Webster’s state of habitual sluggishness and slurred perceptions were whipped up and shaken. Like someone driving down a motorway, excited to think he will soon be home, only to find he has failed to take the correct turn-off and is hopelessly off course, he was stopped short. Had he been going the wrong way all these years? Thinking he was headed for home when in fact he’d been going further and further astray? What was life? And why didn’t it come with a set of instructions? Panicking now, paralyzed by these unfamiliar thoughts, he wrenched his mind back into a practical mode, reviewing all the things he had to do: I’ve got to pay the parking fine; I’ve got to ask for a free picnic hamper from the bank for messing up my card, pay the phone bill, buy new foot soles and long johns, cash the check from Antiquarius, get coconut soap and razors from Sally at Portobello, go down to Basildon and barter like a maniac for those Chinese lanterns, get my ears syringed, and find somewhere to live.
Feeling calmer he said,‘I forgot to tell you, Barny Crane rang while you were sleeping.’
‘That parasite – what did he want?’
‘He wanted to know if he could drop by.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I said it probably wasn’t a good idea.’
‘He just wants me to write more crap. Enough! No more banality! No more mediocrity!’
Webster shuffled about from foot to foot; the conversation was becoming unbearable, as it had so often been during the last four days. He wanted to be conciliatory, to please Bloch; even to impress him, but he didn’t know how to; didn’t know if it was actually possible.
‘Listen, Bloch, I’ll stay; I take it all back. I’m happy to look after you; you need taking care of; after all, you’re poorly.’
Bloch gripped the blankets tightly with both hands and pulled them over his face, and let them fall. Webster stared at this lumpen form, this woolen sculpture. Nothing was said. Was this retreat into the bed meant to communicate Bloch’s acquiescence, or his desire for Webster to leave? He had grown used during the last few days to trying to decode Bloch and his silences, to interpreting his signals; perhaps hiding himself under the blankets was to be his latest gesture of opacity. Bloch began speaking from under the covers in a muffled voice.
‘It’s no use.
‘I can see that. It’s no good.
‘You should go...because...I have to think things through. I have to be dedicated, solemn, like a priest. So no room for small talk; I have to have peace. I can’t wrestle with another ego, be reasonable, compromise, negotiate.
‘I need to be alone for this housebound odyssey. To go into the forest. It’s true I’ve turned into a monster. You should be spared the monstrosities. And you have things you have to do.’
‘But if I go who’s going to look after you? Will you ask the doctor if you can have a nurse?’
‘I’d love to have a nurse, but she might not love to have me.’
Webster nodded sadly, as if Bloch was able to see him through the blankets. Then he shuffled off out of the room, mumbling, ‘I know what you mean.’
Bloch re-emerged, fluffed his pillows and sat up. He flicked the RECORD button on his cassette player and began speaking into the microphone. At first Webster ignored the sound of his voice, but then, as he caught some of the words, his attention was seized and he tiptoed closer to the bedroom. It was striking how Bloch could plough on, regardless of the upheavals of the last few moments.
‘I have said before that Natalie allowed me to perceive the wonder of being alive more than anyone I’ve ever known. Now – the landscape of her body – I concede it was an especially flawless body which, even after I’d first made its acquaintance, climbed aboard it, been tossed on its stormy seas, been shipwrecked because of it, been rescued by it; even after I’d been led gently onto its desert island, stayed there for days during which time lost all meaning, tasted its mangoes and papayas and basked in its sunsets: even after all that it still made my jaw drop. Perhaps that’s why we grew apart because I never actually achieved any degree of naturalness with this woman who nightly shared my bed. Do I make myself clear? The theory I have put forth is that when I was with her I was aware of her every stirring, the marvelous mechanisms of her flesh, aware of each mole, scar, vein. Now, here we go: If everyone applied that awareness to their every act, prayer, gift, etc; if they could transpose the sensibilities that come to them in lovemaking onto the daily commerce of this dreary planet, would not the world be a happier, more creative place? An erotic relationship with the world. But the world does not offer that which another presence, and only that, can give. Not possible! I hear you cry, it would prove too exhausting, and besides, not everybody’s lover is as exciting as Natalie was, or can breed as much love, lust, and the capacity to jettison sperm as she did; nor do they have that landscape body she did. Another gigantic flaw: I daresay too many people see sex not as a path to the divine, but as a fuck.
‘And yet...it has something I keep going back to. The whole of creation as a gargantuan lover’s body. Bring the sensitivity to your lover that comes in good lovemaking to bear on humankind and see what happens. If we all did this, all did this, imagine! Unity as achieved in coupling, barriers breaking; what if they broke in every situation? Between all people. No, it can’t be. And we remain fatally apart from one another, not linked by a molten, cosmic conduit. Only in sex can we create the illusion that we are infinite and boundless. My little theory: just another tattered footnote in the book of idealism.’
He paused, cleared his throat, and had a rest. Meanwhile, Webster cast his mind back to his last sexual encounter, which had been a fairly disastrous affair with a nanny some eight years ago. He had last slept with a woman in a different decade of his life. Desperate situations required desperate remedies. He would get his hair cut and buy a new jacket. He’d spend a hundred – no – fifty – no – twenty pounds. Or less if he could find something nice at Bermondsey Market.
‘But in the golden age,’ Bloch resumed, ‘with Natalie, you should have seen me. She was Shakti; I tried to be Shiva, destroyer and creator, dancing in the circle of flames. Oh, can I help it if, in my limited way, I see the time we had as a time of unity? When I lost myself in her arms I experienced at least a semblance of that ego-transcending consciousness that Eastern mysticism is always banging on about. Getting beyond yourself, seeing the interpenetration of you and it – the world. Atman as Samsara. Or maybe Atman as Brahman. That kind of thing. Yes Tantra thank you – you have given me a framework within which to place Natalie and that time together before the whale. Yab Yum. She and I swapped stories and whiskeys; we drank our way into the hidden arteries of each other’s hearts, and when the hangovers lifted we made all forests and woods our own.
‘Foolish, foolish, to do this to myself when I’m an invalid hack writer who churned out books as a chicken churns out eggs. Is the chicken proud of the eggs as they plop? Slimey shell. Was I proud of the pages that rolled through my typewriter? This is what I should have been saying all those years; this is the voice I should have been using, but why has it come to me now? Why now when it’s too late? Perhaps Oscar has done me a favor by helping me discover these melodies and we are both adrift now; he is poised for fame and I am poised for death.
‘Here I’m left alone with the bare bones of life. The life that lies beyond the network of distraction, reaching total boredom, total vacuum; the route I take is humble, lined neither with gold nor opium. It culminates in the same cul-de-sac as does the Buddhist’s in the monastery. But he is at ease with his vacuum. He rejoices in his meditative stillness, whilst I flow with dark rivers.’
He flicked the PAUSE button impatiently.
Webster stood there, as confused and disturbed as he had ever been. The feelings and words seemed so new and strange. Was Bloch insane?
Webster had glimpsed a whole other parallel world which rendered his own small and empty. He wondered at the pain Bloch had endured, tried to fathom hi
s suffering. But his mind was not big enough.
He decided to sleep in his van, which was big enough.
15
The evening after Webster moved out Oscar came home to find that the walls of the hallway had been stripped, and the carpets removed, revealing floorboards with gaping holes in them, leading to a subterranean world of cobwebs; that the power points had been pulled away and sad little cables now dangled from the walls in their places. Half a dozen workmen in filthy overalls were smoking roll-ups and discussing what was next on the agenda: the general consensus seemed to be that they were long overdue for a tea break. Some of the men’s trousers were so loose that they revealed the spaces between their buttocks, crammed with debris.
He walked on, in search of his landlord. He knocked on the door of his maisonette, which was ajar, waited, knocked again and walked in cautiously.
Act II of Tristan and Isolde was playing on Grindel’s old record player.
He was surprised to find that the living room had been carefully tidied, cleaned and dusted. He also noticed that the heating was off and the windows were open – a welcome development since it had been rather difficult to breathe during his last visit. He turned his attention to a bookcase and read some obscure titles: The Beauty of Overcoats; 101 Recipes with Crab; Business as Salvation; Big Business. He picked the last one out and flicked through it, after finding a chair.
After a minute he closed the book, as he found it utterly incomprehensible, and took a moment to listen to the music, instead of blanking it out as he normally did. As he sat listening, he reached an alcove of peace, a still point. Then somewhere deep inside him there was a subtle shift, something resolved into an unexpected and yet familiar pattern and at the same time he felt a numbness spreading slowly along the axis of his body.
The Fabrications Page 19