The Fabrications

by Baret Magarian

  Archbishop of the Diocese of Westminster

  (A letter submitted to The Daily Telegraph and turned down for publication)

  12 August 200 -

  Sir,

  The projection of Oscar Babel onto Westminster Cathedral made for an extremely beautiful visual effect. I was there. To imply parallels with dictators, as the Cathedral’s Archbishop has done, is surely farfetched. Babel is just someone who likes to irritate the establishment – and why not? It’s healthy in a democracy. He’s a lot more vital than those whose job descriptions require them to be, including the Duchamp Prize nominees.

  Stephanie Duncan

  *

  (A letter submitted to The Guardian and turned down for publication)

  12 August 200 -

  Dear Sir,

  Oscar Babel reminds me of that anonymous figure in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights with the flower stuck up his backside. Just substitute “flower” with “himself ” and you will get an even clearer idea of my view of this excuse for a human being.

  Rada Bhat

  *

  Now everything got scrambled together; time was stripped of its continuity. There were no longer beginnings, middles or ends in Oscar’s life; just isolated frantic episodes, giving way to long stretches of toil, contemplation or boredom.

  The cathedral coup and the subsequent controversy made Oscar more appealing to editors and this fact was not lost on Ryan Rees. He had decided, since Oscar was extremely photogenic, even when his face was caught on badly scanned, shaky newspaper images (or indeed grossly enlarged), and since Rees wished to protect Oscar from difficult questions, that film was by far the most appropriate medium with which to forge Oscar’s “innovative” lectures. His plan was to have him filmed giving talks on life which would be referred to as the “Imagures,” (an amalgam of ‘lecture’ and ‘image’). He wanted to use the same man who had shot the footage used in the projection, a director whose studios were down at York Way in King’s Cross. The films would be shot on a super 16-millimeter camera, in tandem with a Nagra, a portable sound deck the size of a small case. Then Rees planned to invite selective writers to view the screenings in private at the Grosvenor Hotel, laying on champagne and delicacies, unveiling a new communicative medium, whose author only existed in a celluloid form. He fell in love with the idea, as he usually did with his ideas.

  So from now on, on and off during the next fortnight, by day Oscar listened to Bloch’s recordings, mined them, edited them, selected usable material. He had to work very hard, writing his speeches and learning them off by heart and regurgitating Bloch’s views on art, solitude, love, the nature of human relationships. He acted as a kind of editor. He tidied up, expanded, structured. The more outlandish sections of the huge transcript were left out. Deep in the currents of Oscar’s mind was a sense that at least this masquerade allowed Bloch to reach an audience he would otherwise be denied. But at the same time Oscar knew he wasn’t giving Bloch any credit, and was altering the nature of Bloch’s idiosyncratic thoughts. His subsequent guilt triggered a series of uneasy and unsuccessful attempts to contact Bloch by phone. But Bloch wasn’t answering calls...

  After these films had been edited and the sound mixed in post-production, a video projector and screen were installed in Oscar’s suite, the curtains drawn, the champagne poured, the hors d’oevres passed around, and the digital voice recorders switched on. The projector beamed out the crisp, high-quality image onto the wall; the film cut energetically, jumping from extreme close-ups of parts of Oscar’s face to burned-out overexposed long shots of him, to his face filling the frame then dissolving into distorted silhouettes of his face speaking against changing backdrops: of brick walls, detonating hydrogen bombs, crimson sunsets, weddings, naked mud-wrestling, and anything else which could be construed as portentous or symbolic. These backing images had been slowed down so much that they moved at imperceptible, soporific rates. Throughout, Oscar’s voice flowed uninterrupted for the duration of the eight-minute films. He spoke and the journalists listened, their faces redolent of inquiry, amusement, boredom, and indifference; their bodies lulled by alcohol; their stomachs silenced by cucumber-and-salmon sandwiches. They were being let into another world – that was the promise which accompanied the imagures – like explorers entering neglected caves full of hidden treasures. On film Oscar was calm; he acquired a kind of presence and power which he lacked in real life. The camera liked him. His voice exuded god-like serenity and patience, the patience of one who might watch a snail for hours and find its slow movements compelling; the patience of one who might rejoice in a traffic jam, a delay on the underground, a stalled elevator, finding in that stasis a chance to escape the earthbound. This effect had been achieved by careful mixing in the audio studio, use of reverberation and delay, ‘gating’ the top end and boosting the bass frequencies, creating a spacious, alpine resonance. Some – those men and women who all their lives had treasured hard facts, had seen the world only in terms of data tossed their way, the insignia of reality stamped on their minds as literal, unquestionable – now began to question those instincts that said all was as it should be, that all was ordered and rational. Tiny cracks appeared in the fabrics of their minds, then widened. Others rejected what he said outright and made a note to ridicule him when it came to writing their copy, certain he was a fraud. Some had an experience vaguely analogous to psychoanalysis as puzzles about issues in their own lives were resolved or slotted into wider contexts as they listened to Bloch’s re-dressed words. And so the imagures ran in hushed, mythic, manufactured circumstances, their author never present.

  When Oscar wasn’t working on his speeches or filming, he went for walks in Hyde Park and tried to sunbathe, though he could never remain still long enough to get a tan; drank excessively in pubs donning dark glasses, approached every now and then by strangers who recognized him; listened to Wagner in the dark; read about Tantra, prompted by Bloch’s references to it, and grew entranced by its visual art which he studied in monographs; sat in the hotel’s Turkish hot rooms and Russian steam rooms, where heat paralyzed action, running his fingers through his dark, damp hair, taking with them the sweat which had accumulated on his brow; waded slowly in the plunge pool, feeling distinctly nervous about exposing his genitals in front of fat businessmen who waded with him (at such moments he couldn’t believe he had once life-modeled); savored the momentary loss of self as the cold water he doused his head in caused his brain’s neurons to fire and spark, but then – as the effect wore off, as he dried himself, as he rode in the elevator back to his room, and went for walks, fed the ducks in Hyde Park – versions, fragments, whole chunks of Bloch’s recordings went spinning around and around his head, unceasing echoes from another life, another mind spliced into his own.

  He tried to call him but Bloch wasn’t taking calls...

  *

  From The Times and The Guardian online

  15 August 200 -

  Hats off Gentlemen, a genius!

  Quentin Verrico-Smith

  Question: What do the London Underground, the Duchamp Prize Banquet, Westminster Cathedral, and a version of video art that goes by the awkward sounding name of “imagure” have in common?

  Answer: OSCAR BABEL. His name adorned the first, his words sabotaged the second, his face defiled the third. I’m not so sure which constituent parts of Mr. Babel go up to make the fourth but more about that later.

  Babel’s website tells us he is a scholar of Sanskrit, has studied meditation in India and Tibet, and is the personification of brilliance. As such the website promises something like the arrival of a new messiah who can set people free, wake them up, etc, etc. We’ve heard it all before of course: Gurdjieff, Khrisnamurti, Rajneesh all tried to wake people up, to see reality clearly, to espouse consciousness-expanding philosophies. Some espoused consciousness-expanding drugs as well. It’s too early to say whether Babel will have any impact on Lon- don society beyond being a source of rather tired controversy. What I can s
ay, having been one of the privileged viewers of the “imagures,” is that Mr. Babel is, in my view, almost certainly a genius. During the screening of the first imagure at the Chelsea Hotel Babel currently resides in, I sensed something I have rarely felt in my life. That I was present at a historic occasion. What is remarkable about these imagures is that Babel has utilized a fledging form – the short, eventless film – for the development of philosophical ideas. Detractors have said: Why doesn’t Oscar Babel appear in person? Why doesn’t he appear live, not hiding behind a camera? Is he an orator who refuses to speak in person because he doesn’t want to be saddled with awkward questions? It’s a fair point. But my understanding of the imagures is different. Firstly, they are brilliantly in keeping with the Zeitgeist: They utilize image knowingly, playing with the medium. Secondly, the fact that Babel isn’t willing to appear in person just goes to show how he is happy to let his audience take from the imagures what they will. On film he isn’t subject to the whims, prejudices and preferences of one audience’s questions and agendas over another. He can just say what he has to say. Clearly it is a philosophy of a non-confrontational stamp, hardly surprising for someone trained in the East where passivity and placidity are more highly valued than they are in our more belligerent, adversarial society where winning is everything and truth can often go by the wayside. And the image part of the imagures has thrown up some beguiling sights: a burned-out overexposed Oscar, his lips in extreme close-up, a pair of rhapsodic eyes, and the face hovering and fluctuating in silhouette, while a mellifluous voice intones on the soundtrack. It was all very effective and topically packaged. As an appetizer there now follows a snippet of Babel’s cogitations:

  “Society asks individuals to surrender their color and richness as soon as they enter into their livelihoods. What began as infinite possibility is reduced to predictability. As children we are free to express our eccentricities and dreams but as we grow we are forced into narrower paths and avenues. And our behavior is judged in terms of consistency, conformism, and material success. To be sure these are valid criteria but they are only one set of criteria.

  “The lucky ones find a niche that allows them the freedom which others enjoy only in private moments – away from the boredom of the factory floor, the antiseptic office. Others enter into a double life, wearing masks for their employers, and taking them off at night. Sometimes the charade is played out harmoniously, but often the strain is too great.”

  I will admit the remarks are hardly original but that’s not the point. The point is that they demand to be listened to, in a highly unusual context. I am the cynic par excellence, but I venture to say that when Mr. Babel makes his first public appearance demand for seats will be high.

  Oscar Babel and Accidental Resonance

  Mark Maynard

  A week ago nobody had ever really heard of Oscar Babel. They say a week in politics is a long time. In the skewed, surreal world of celebrity, perhaps it’s even longer. These days fame can be manufactured out of nothing, in the manner in which a magician merrily pulls rabbits out of a hat. The case of Oscar Babel raises some interesting issues. When a young, attractive man walks onto a stage in London and rubbishes those who are present we love it because it has a hint of the prodigal son, the ingrate and the rebel. It’s so unruly – I wish I could have done that, we think. But the sad thing is we elevate such an act to a level it scarcely deserves, scraping the barrel, masticating and chewing and sucking. And so a non-event gets surrounded with talk, hype, conjectures, theorizing, social commentary. The same goes for the siege of Westminster Cathedral. Oscar Babel isn’t really anything – he’s not a singer, a writer, an athlete, an actor. He claims to be a self-styled guru – but of what exactly does his teaching consist, to what philosophy does he owe allegiance, what is his solution to the world’s ills?

  Oscar Babel is now well placed to contract what I shall call ARS – Accidental Resonance Syndrome. My suspicion is that he is a complete nonentity, a blank canvas others can scribble and paint on, adding great splurges of graffiti, crayon doodles, speculative whirls of color. Every now and then an innocuous though attractive individual comes along who for some reason people seem to take an interest in, once the initial shove has been given by the media and its lackeys. And this individual, by courting an insipid kind of controversy and by having just enough in the way of non-conformist credentials to stand out, is given a vastly disproportionate amount of attention which he simply isn’t interesting enough to merit. And here I am adding to the fuss, just another cook spoiling the broth. Which leads me to the next point. There’s a new socio-political problem creeping up on us these days. It is becoming impossible to comment on something, let alone criticize it without somehow lending it a greater, more bloated importance. So if I want to say something about Oscar Babel I had better shut my mouth.

  In the age of cyberspace we now have more access than ever in history to knowledge, art, thought. But instead of learning from the masters of the past – the true spiritual leaders, Jesus, the Buddha – we turn to derivative, bogus, muddled, simple-minded thinkers. I am sure Oscar Babel will be a success because he is all of these things. Babel’s recent lectures – the “imagures,” so called because they are relayed entirely on film – are about as absurd and vacuous as they sound. (Transcripts of these exist on the Internet should you wish to be cured of insomnia.)

  Are we more likely to turn to false prophets today? I think so. It’s because we’ve forgotten the value of having to work at something, to let insights come over time like a carefully nurtured seed which eventually grows. Real thinkers, on the other hand, require hard work. But we’re not prepared to put in the graft. We want it all and we want it now, at the click of a mouse. And in the final count we haven’t the time or the inclination to distinguish between the real and the fake.

  mark.maynard@guardian.co.uk

  19

  The fire was still raging.

  Others had replaced those who had walked away, drawn by the fate of Alastair Layor’s house.

  A gas pipe announced its destruction as a new line of angry flame was born. Dissonant, harsh sounds filled the air and reached into the heavens, there mercifully dissipated in the nothingness of blackbruised night. The new flames merged with the old and together they tightened their grip on what remained of the house.

  She was still holding him, her cheek against his, and it was mysteriously consoling. He recognized her as the woman he’d snatched away from the car on Regent Street and he was not sure (he was wondering about this only on some buried level) if it was this or the fire which allowed for the ease of their union.

  Neither of them uttered a word.

  She, too, recognized him. There was something deeply right about holding him. When she had walked up to him – minutes earlier – she couldn’t believe it was him, since she had the chance to thank him now, but how could she say anything after realizing the house in flames was his? She knew it was his because when she turned to the other faces none were grief-stricken. His face bound him to the house; the other faces were bound to the spectacle.

  Watching the fire, he was not really aware of the sounds of scrambled activity around him, of the jagged movement of firemen and people. He had to resist the impulse to jump into the flames, not in order to end his life but just to do something, to counter the awful passivity of watching.

  Flames jumped and raced and fluctuated in the cavities of the shattered windows, the smoke blew angrily, black and dirty white; the guttural, tormented sounds of destruction were already familiar.She wanted to drag him away and take him somewhere else, anywhere else so long as it was far away from there.

  But she knew he would never go. So she waited there with him. Waited while he was crucified. The strange thing was, she felt his pain, experienced it as if it were hers.

  One of the firemen was visible inside, a shadowy figure in oilskins, indistinct through the chiaroscuro patterns flickering around him. He directed the hose into the flames and they
were momentarily quashed, only to rise and grow strong again immediately. Just then there was a loud explosion. The fire had found another gas pipe and a long, spray-like flame rocketed along the side of the house. This undid the firemen’s work and the last few minutes in a flash of time.

  In the confusion few people noticed the arrival of another fire engine until the frenetic, jumbled activity alerted them. Hoses were wheeled out, ladders climbed, more foam and water jetted into the house. One of the firemen just managed to elude tendril-like flames stretching out toward him as he scrambled down the ladder, taking two steps at a time, very nearly losing his footing.

  By now there were faint bars of purple in the sky, intimations of a dawn still some way off. Their beauty was the more poignant for appearing on the fringes of the inferno and the promise of dawn they carried made Layor even more of a hostage to pain. With the idea of dawn came the suggestion that this was all a nightmare, or would be perceived as such when it finally arrived. But he knew daylight could not re-write the history of the last, calamitous half hour.

  New parts of the house were being ravaged and explosive cracks and thuds sounded, and it seemed as though the fire was beginning all over again, recreating itself like a mutation on the rampage, a disease immune to all the defenses humans try to mount against it. The air was full of the smell of burning; the street had turned into an open oven.

  In the inferno the firemen became murky, cloudy figures. Water burst on one side, flames and smoke rushed and clawed at the air on the other. Light and dark, water and flame merged into a continuous pulsation.

  Lilliana whispered into his ear, ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Her words had no effect.