‘Ask.’
‘What?’
‘You forgot the “ask.” I noticed your badge earlier.’
‘Yeah, “ask.” That’s right.’
‘My name’s – ’
‘I know who you are. And I’m onto you. I’d just like you to know that.’
‘You’re onto me?’
‘It took awhile for me to make the link. You’re the one all the papers have been writing all the horseshit about. Tell me something, Mr. Oscar Babel, how the hell does someone like you get through the night? Aren’t you sick of seeing yourself being discussed by the critics? Don’t you just feel your soul rotting each time another picture makes it into print, or when your mug goes up on a church?’
Though Oscar was distinctly unnerved by Lexicon’s attack, he instinctively sensed a way of annoying him.
‘You’d rather it was you on the facades of buildings; you’d rather be the one preaching, wouldn’t you, Mr. Lexicon?’
‘Don’t turn it around; you’re in no position to mind read. You’re no guru. You’re a marketing by-product.’
‘I think you’re jealous. Jealousy’s a terrible thing, Mr. Lexicon. It eats away at your insides.’
‘Spare me the homegrown wisdom, Babel. I’ve got an acid test for you. If you’ve travelled to Tibet and India, and studied Sanskrit, you should know all about Buddhism. And if there’s one thing you should know about Buddhism, it’s the contents of the Four Noble Truths. So – Mr. Prophet, Mr. Self-Styled Guru, remind me of them again.’
Oscar said nothing.
‘Talk to me, faggot.’
By this stage Lexicon was emitting a ferocious level of aggression – the goggles had been torn off and heroin eyes revealed. He moved closer to Oscar and started pushing against him. One of the bar staff noticed and decided to intervene.
‘Hey, Vernon, take it easy; don’t do this to me again.’
‘Piss off, I’m talking to my friend here. Wait your turn.’
‘Don’t speak to me like that Vernon. I’ve told you before – if you get abusive with the customers, I’ll turf you out.’
‘Fuck yourself.’
The bar man, whose exposed, tattooed arms were bulging with muscle, found it very easy to stare Lexicon in the eyes. He said in calm tones, ‘All right Vernon, you’ve insulted me now. It’s time to go.’
‘I insulted you earlier too; I want that to be taken into account as well Mr....’ He didn’t complete the sentence, let it hang in the air for a while, then rounded it off with one of his own vituperative coinages, ‘...beefy fatface.’
The other barman came over, in a show of solidarity. By now all of the dozen or so drinkers had turned from the stage to watch the conflict. The first barman, with a hefty fist, delivered an almighty blow to Lexicon’s stomach and he keeled over at once. Oscar stared in horror, revolted by this show of brutality. Someone in the audience whispered, ‘Is this one of the acts?’
‘Hey...that’s going too far...please stop,’ Oscar pleaded.
He was surprised when the barman snapped back, ‘It’s out of your hands, sir.’
Lexicon was writhing around like an agonized fetus.
‘Please...don’t hit him again. He really didn’t mean anything, I mean – ’
‘This isn’t your problem anymore. This man has insulted me. I have to teach him a lesson. You don’t understand, sir; this man is a disease; he poisons the air. In his presence things go bad; I’ve seen it happen time and again. Couples can be having a lovely time; he’ll get talking to them; within minutes the couple’s at each other’s throats; he’s managed to turn them against one another. He picks fights out of nothing; he lives to destroy. You can see it in the way he looks at you, the way he laughs. He’s like a human cancer.’ Then the barman’s manner relaxed slightly; something anecdotally friendly crept into his features, while Lexicon still thrashed about on the floor. ‘I’ve met a lot of people in my time,’ he went on affably, ‘in this line, working as a barman, you come across all types, the scum of humanity, all the tosspots and human vermin, all the squalid halfwits and wankers, and the drunks and sad arsed poets, and the pussy stalkers and petty criminals, I’ve seen them all, served them all, and refused to serve them all, but this man is the worst. He’s so far down the bottom of the barrel that he’s dripped like oil through the fucking wood. Enough is enough. He has to be taught a lesson.’
The barman’s pedagogic impulses kicked in by way of his boot, and Lexicon yelled in pain, scorching, blood-clotting pain. Oscar, desperate to make him stop, started muttering something about his influence and importance and how he could make life very difficult for the establishment if he wanted to. At this the barman stopped short and took note. From the floor the poet admitted defeat, his words enmeshed with flying globules of saliva.
‘All right – you – savages – you – goddamn philistines – I’m licked,’ he spluttered. ‘Mighty Caesar is fallen – you’ve – managed to bring down – the only good man – in the room. I, who have more creativity in my little finger than...oh...just...fuck it...’ After a period of stillness, during which he was gathering his energies, the poet got to his feet and, foolishly, tried throwing a punch at Oscar. Oscar easily eluded him and Lexicon thrashed about madly, blurting out shrieks and squeals of frustration while the barmen held him back. He was dragged off in a tight diagonal, his legs refusing to walk, his boots squeaking across the matted floor. As he was thrown out he screamed in a tremendous voice, a voice which would haunt Oscar during the coming weeks, a voice scarcely human, ‘IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME, BABEL! NOT YOU! IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME! YOU’RE FINISHED BABEL! YOU’RE FINISHED!!’ His final word lasted for the best part of five seconds, and seemed to reverberate around the walls afterwards.
After a few minutes whatever ambience the bar had was recovered and the acts staggered on. Oscar felt badly shaken. He had another drink – a double whiskey – and was offered a cigarette by the more placid of the barmen which he smoked in brooding calm, his face blank and inscrutable. One or two people looked over in his direction but, finding nothing to encourage an approach, turned away.
Eventually he finished his drink and left. He walked quickly, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his face turned down for fear of being recognized again, huddled into himself, as though he was trying to shrink, like a hedgehog curling into a ball. He felt a great desire to walk, to work out of his body and mind the agitation and confusion currently ruling them, to find some calm through the agency of aching legs and feet.
After nearly two hours of walking around he came to Sloane Square and sat down, a solitary figure in the middle of the square. Here and there buses were being boarded. Otherwise, there was little going on. He looked up into a sulfurous sky. This seemed to do him good, as the immersion in its emptiness freed his mind of the thoughts hounding him. But the moon was tired, a faded actress who gives the same performance night after night.
At last he began the walk back to the hotel. As he walked, more evenly and calmly than before, he peered up at the figures coming to meet him. Some were clutching each other happily, figures who seemed to have assumed an animalistic state of simplicity, mere strands of life, floating through his field of vision. Others were gripped by a nocturnal unease, anxious for the resumption of the sleep from which they had never truly awakened.
When at last he arrived at the glittering lobby of the hotel his mind was utterly drained of thought. He rode up to the tenth floor, unlocked his door, scrambled into bed, and fell asleep immediately.
21
Address: http://www.oscarbabel.com
19 August 200-
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THE OPINION PAGE
From what I gather I think Oscar Babel might be a good role model for young people. He doesn’t smoke or drink; he’s fit and he has very optimistic views on love. He could provide an interesting alternative to pop stars and politicians and thankfully lacks the former’s unintelligibility and the latter’s hypocrisy.
Mark Armistice,
New Mills, Derbyshire
Oscar Babel is such a moral coward that he will only air his views via film, not in the flesh. He is what our age deserves – a banal, mediocre cipher.
Name withheld
I admire Oscar Babel because of his normal, unsensational, honest, simple approach to life. My only criticism: he should say something about animal welfare.
Nicola Snodgrass,
Hampshire
If i had a kitten i will call it Oscar.
Hattie Turnbull, London, aged 7
e-mail: [email protected]
Recent Articles
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by Lucretia Juniper Peretz
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“They say he could levitate, but never after heavy meals...”
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page 2 of 2
So, in conclusion, what do we see when we see Oscar Babel? Is it not, as the French would say, tout le monde? In this frazzled world of ours; in this motor-neuron frenzy, this image-battery of inanition; this moisturizing, corporate, pummeling, thrashing octopus we are all being sucked up by, is he a speck of substance in the sea of alienation bequeathed by our forefathers (God and art and love are dead, long live TV and gherkins)? Here is the innocent as leader, matinee-idol as soothsayer, seer. Convergence of the meditative and public, confessional and devotional. Of course Mr. Babel is a shrewd, astute operator, NOT an ingenue at all; and his recondite, esoteric, abstruse brilliance is the flip side of street acumen. Of course there will always be intellectuals, but will they also be at the center of vibrant, vital debates? Or just scribbling their yellowing tomes in libraries like so many stiffs? Like the Marlovian overreacher, Babel dares to look at the stars, to be percussive in his loftiness. The swirling words of the Imagures, interested in assiduous transfiguration, the tendentious cause which is wrapped in the clingfilm of modern, slick video art – a good trick this, Oscar, to introduce your serious pearls with some sleight of hand sensationalism (beginning with the Duchamp Prize formula: A troublemaker gets media attention; on the back of that gets profound); you’re a sniper who shoots from the hills since you know you’ll be lost in the commodious fields. Do we not see Sisyphus fighting a losing battle? But is there not something heroic in the glorious attempt? Or Orpheus in the underworld – which is the overworld, our world populated with predatory, perfidious turpitude (soon to be turned into a motion picture). Oscar Babel, knowing that his own perceptions constitute the Alpha and Omega of experience. Marmoreal, mass-produced newspeak is our unfortunate birthright, so we must needs have, within the bounds of what is communicable (the world as the temporally ambiguous motorway, great rolling landscapes exploded for the sake of convenience), the simple, rustic warbling of the farmer, the authentic accents of the mystic, the child who is father to the man, and Babel, in his self-consciously imagistic cell (uloid), daring us to get the hell out of ours.
Lucretia Peretz lives in London and holds two PhDs, one in Media Studies and the other in Victorian women’s undergarments, from the University of Wisconsin. She is the author of Can We Have Knights as Well as Dragons in the Modern World? (Horton University Press). She does not like anchovies.
Opinion > HomePage > Imagures Transcripts > Public Appearances > Recent Articles > Photographs
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22
On 27 August, eight days later, Bloch was admitted to hospital.
Webster, who had been living in his van ever since he had moved out of Bloch’s flat, had decided to check up on him, since the phone was never answered whenever he rang.
He was let into the building by one of Bloch’s neighbors, climbed the stairs and hammered on Bloch’s front door.
Nothing.
He knocked once more and was on the point of giving up when some unidentifiable feeling told him to persist. Then he heard what sounded like gurgling sounds coming from within. He rushed downstairs and found the porter and explained the situation. Luckily, he had a spare set of keys. They clambered up and the porter was able to let them both in.
Inside it smelled as if someone had died.
And the flat looked like burglars had left moments before, having violently rifled through everything in a search for plunder. Clothes were everywhere; every receptacle’s contents had been upended and tossed across the floor. They looked in the kitchen, the study, the bedroom. They found Bloch lying in the empty bathtub, dressed in disgustingly dirty pyjamas which had glued themselves to his skin. He was emaciated, cracked: a shadow of a man. Since Webster had last seen him he had lost two-and-a-half stones. He had a week’s stubble and his eyes were sunken; they transmitted no light. His cheek bones jutted out, and his skin was discolored and dry. His voice was squeaky and feeble. When they took off his pyjama top and made him put on a fresh one, Webster could see the sharp outline of his ribs. He looked like some brittle, snappable bird.
Webster went for a glass of water. The kitchen, without his guiding hand, had gone to pot. The floor was scattered with broken bits of cork, bread, and tissue paper. In the sink piled-up plates were stuck together by decaying food. Strands of spaghetti clung to the wall, the color of mud. The washing machine was stuffed with scrawled and ripped sheets of paper. The wallpaper was peeling, the floor matting was peeling. Bloch was peeling.
From the bathtub Bloch wheezed pitifully, ‘I was oppressing mind...body...with fasting...to be bodiless. No more yes to dreary world...timeless reality...that’s what I want.’
Webster forced him to eat a slice of bread, whereupon Bloch threw up all over the bathroom tiles. He took some water afterwards and managed to keep it down.
During the previous week all he had eaten was a cup of brown rice. The bed was showered with brown rice. On opening the drawers of Bloch’s dresser to find clea
n clothes, they found brown rice.
He thought he was renouncing the world, but he was renouncing himself.
Webster said, ‘We have to get you to hospital. Can you walk?’
‘No – no doctors...fine. I just need...to lie down.’
‘You are lying down.’
‘No...in bed.’
With a superhuman effort he got up out of the bath, staggered to the bedroom and collapsed onto the bed.
‘Bloch, there’s no way you’re staying here. For God’s sake, you’re ill, very ill. I’m driving you to Charing Cross Hospital. That’s not far.’
‘No, no...not taking orders, you don’t understand...finally being set free. No more maya for me.’
‘No more what?’
‘Maya. Illusion. Now...I can soar.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re on about, but you’re coming with me.’ For perhaps the first time in his life Webster was authoritative, dominant. He instructed the porter to grab Bloch’s feet and he took his shoulders and together they carried him into the living room. Bloch was too weak to resist, but as they trudged along he croaked, ‘Hey, not an ox, where you taking? Steady, still got a bod....Wait, keys, get my keys, in bedroom. On table...get tape machine too...tapes.’ So they set him down on the sofa. Webster darted back to the bedroom, found the items, stuffed them in his pockets and took hold of Bloch once more.
Since he was so light it was easy to carry him down the three flights. They set him down inside the van, on Webster’s mattress, next to his boxes of Japanese Arita porcelain. Webster started the engine, thanked the porter profusely and drove off, soon hitting the van’s maximum speed of thirty-five miles an hour.
The Fabrications Page 31