Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Body Fractals

First Published on Opera, Sat 27th Mar, 2004

I've been having a bit of trouble with a fractal I posted in my last entry. The fractal had the title 'Can-o-Worms',and seemed to me an example of fine synchronicity. My novel, The Sex Life of Worms, has been very much inspired by fractals. In fact, I don't know if it's a cheesy thing to say in cyber-space, but I'm helplessly fascinated by fractals. And since the one I posted in my last entry, at least when viewed with my browser, appears to be on the blink, I thought I'd use it as an excuse to post loads of fractals with this entry.



I was reading an article in Strange Attractor, and the author mentioned fractals in connection with H. P. Lovecraft. I have long thought fractals to be somehow Lovecraftian, and was pleased that someone else thought so, too. But there is another writer/artist with whom I am coming to associate fractals, and who has also been an influence on, yes, my novel, The Sex Life of Worms. That artist is Masamune Shirow. Since I've been a little peripatetic in recent years my hobby of collecting comics got put on hold until lately when I started buying the Ghost in the Shell 2 series, by Shirow. Some of the artwork, I found in my comic-fetishist way, to be quite exquisite and even breath-taking. I noticed a preponderance of fractals and fractal-like designs, particularly in the climax to the series, which had a real Space Odyssey, science meets religion sort of feel to it. I'm not going to expound here on the significance of fractals. I think the context in which I am placing them is enough.



I'd like to talk a little, instead, about Shirow's work. First of all, although I read all eleven issues in the series quite keenly, I'm not sure I understood a word of it. The characters are given to spouting lines like, "I need time on the Decatoncale to take on some e-thugs...And I can't afford any competition for CPU cycles, so can we cut a deal?", to take some dialogue at random. This is a fairly light example. That's not the only thing that makes the story hard to follow. I was pleased to learn by reading the letters page that I was not the only fan who could not make head nor tail of the story. (Maybe it didn't help that I didn't read the issues in order). However, there is something intriguing about this. It creates an anxiety-ridden texture of futurity which threatens the reader with his or her own obsolescence. It also has the artistic properties mentioned by Momus in that interview, of delay and ostranenie. This kind of alien texture was something I was already working on in parallel with Worms. Another aspect that is parallel is the future fragmentation of identity into a network without a centre. In other words, in Shirow's work, some of the characters have a computer-like identity, which is piece-meal, subject to additions of software, links to other identities, and so on. This is an idea I am using in a biological - not technological - sense in Worms. This, in both Shirow's work and in Worms, leads to a diffusion of sex into obscure areas of the network, so that the sex act is no longer such a focus for sex. Well, I think this particular idea is much more explicit in Worms than in Ghost in the Shell, and perhaps partly my own interpretation in the latter case. But I do think - and I am fascinated by the fact that - Shirow seems to treat his main female character as a piece of fetishised hardware, like a motorcycle or a computer.




I am always fascinated when I find my own emerging ideas in another person's work. Maybe this is an example of convergent, or diffusing, identities. Maybe a fractal is a visual representation of synchronicity.

Another Can of Worms

First published on Opera, Thurs 25th Mar 2004

The title of this blog, to wit, The Directory of Lost Causes, is an allusion to part of a story by Jorge Luis Borges. Basically, there is a quote from the story - I believe it is 'The Sword and the Scar' - that runs, "For the gentleman only the lost cause should be attractive." It is a sentiment that struck a real chord with me, and also seemed to express why it is I am so in love with the works of another writer, Nagai Kafu.



Anyway, I have just written my daily quota for my novel The Sex Life of Worms, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, what a lost cause this novel is. So far I have written five hundred and fifty five pages, and a half, in long-hand, and the end seems as far off as ever. The novel is about a race of worm-like aliens, and purports actually to be a translation of a novel by one of these creatures, a particularly decadent worm by the name of Qsshflrrch. I got the idea for the story when my brother described to me the rather unusual sex life of actual earthworms. Earthworms are hermaphrodites, so their sex-life is decidedly strange from a human point of view. I decided this was a great foundation on which to build a very alien society and view of life. I really wanted to write from an alien point of view. I also wanted to construct a kind of elaborate joke which I would flog to death deliberately and gleefully, in keeping with the fact that the joke was to write the most depraved kind of alien pornography that I possibly could. On top of that, I wanted the novel to read like a bad translation, because it has been translated into English from a language several billion miles removed from it by a human translator sent over the edge of insanity by his extended period of study on the worm planet. As you can probably imagine from all this, the novel really is a lost cause. Why do I persist with it? I do not know.



In interesting contrast, perhaps, is the novel I have just finished and am now typing up, called, "Remember You're a One-Ball!!" which is - relatively - commercial, having a very tight plot and recognisable novelistic traits such as character development, human interest and so on. I did not set out to write such a snappy sort of thriller. It just happened. And I think that its commerciality - I think it is commercial, anyway - is something to do with the fact that it is very much concerned with themes of revenge against human society. Thus the appeal to human society.


Now I am planning my next novel, Domesday Afternoon, and, in writing the notes, I find myself strangely daunted. When I ask myself why the answer comes, because of the commerciality of "Remember You're a One-Ball!!" That novel has shaken me out of the habit of thinking of all of my works as lost causes and has made me start to think of them as works that must 'succeed'. And that has made it very difficult for me to start writing again. Clearly there is something to be said for lost causes.


Anyway, I shall leave you with an extract from The Sex Life of Worms, and if it seems unreadably bad, well, don't be surprised. I told you it was a lost cause:


At the side of the entrance, in a tangled coil, there squatted a nacre-smith, manipulating a live oyster-crab in sh-his tentacles, squeezing out the still liquid thread of nacre around a revolving mould. Shi-he was making an ornate scroll-holder, not dissimilar to those I had discovered in the Puzzle Garden. On the opposite side of the tunnel a scabrous-looking ichor-swab of dubious ability ground the axle of a kaleidophone, which set up a bubbling and wailing as of the cheap and distant festivities of a sad age devoid of self-knowledge. These two lame and harmless guardians on either side of the cavern mouth, each engaged in some colourful industry involving a revolutionary motion, were as if winding in the great twisting and turning of worm life, winding it in from every quarter of The Crevices, and the vast shanty-chaos of it all, and spinning that chaos into a musical thread of unity. If ever a denizen of The Crevices could feel a sense of belonging, then surely it was like this, on the threshold of The Sanctuary, between a nacre-smith and a kaleidophonic ichor swab.

Half regretful to pass through that swelling moment, I belly-sailed into the old, crater-dotted cavern with its lattice-booths of stalagmite and stalactite. It was my voluntary return as an anonymous guest. I wondered what my status was and how I would be received. Anyway, I wished to enjoy the dirty Crevice freedom of money, which comes with no recommendations or guarantees of the character and identity of the bearer, filthy money that is particular to no worm, but is secreted in the coelemic cavities of many and passed from tentacle to tentacle by unrecorded means. Money, I decided, was like sex in all ways except that the exchange it represented, dirtiest of all, was often consensual.


Just out of interest, I have just translated the above, using a real bad translator, Babel Fish, into German then back into English. And here is the result:


Shi shi-er formed a complex role owner, not differently to those, which I had discovered in the puzzle play garden. On the opposite side of the tunnel, which scabrous scabrous-Schauen of the doubtful ability ichor wipe, rubbed the wave kaleidophone, which set up a gushing and the Jammern starting from the inexpensive and distant festivenesses of a sad age, which is empty Self knowledge of. These two lamely and harmless guards on both sides of the cave opening, each engaged in somewhat multicolored industry, which includes a revolutionary movement with, were as if coil in large rotating and in the rotation continuous screw of the life and it inside from each quarter of the column and all wound the considerable sailor song chaos of it, and this chaos into a musical thread of the unit spinend.

Intersection

First Published on Opera, Wed 24th Mar 2004

Although I have done it many times before, I still feel a little uncomfortable putting my actual diary on the internet, with its description of actual events in my actual life, involving actual people. I wonder why that is? Anyway, there was a very particular reason I chose that diary entry to start my weblog with. Stated simply, the theme of a web of incident and social contact seemed to me very apt for a journal that is being written on the world wide web. The metaphor of the web can be taken in a number of different directions. For instance, it could be the network of neural pathways in my brain, which has created this unique identity. Those pathways, it seems to me, mirror or map the external web mentioned above, of social contact and incident.And on the web of incident, which includes everything, we often notice hanging little dew-drops of CO-incidence.


A weblog is in many ways like the neural pathway, or like the social-incidental web. It is a signpost pointing in many directions. It is a unique intersection. Just look at the links section of most sites. The whole web is made of links. Like this one, for instance. It is knotted with accumulations of name-dropping, allusion, obscure references , quirks, and so on and so forth. Just like a human personality. Where does it go? Well, all over the place and back again. In other words, nowhere in particular. It just says, like my bedroom says, with its posters, postcards, shelves of books, and so on, here's something interesting , have a look. And here's something else interesting. And something else. And this interesting thing links to this one, and this to this one, and this back to the first one.


I've been thinking along these lines because it seems to me that the networks of business and industry are likely to be destroyed by ecological disaster before very long. People often say about how they hate 'networking', and I used to be one of them, but now I am beginning to think that networking is vital. I'm not talking about ambitious networking particularly, but the networking of friendly interest. When the impersonal networks crumble, all we will have left will be the personal ones. They will be our 'safety net'.

My Corner of the Web

First published on Opera, Tues 23rd Mar 2004


Well, I am quite excited, but also quite nervous about this. How long will the excitement last, I wonder? I also keep a paper and pen diary, and every time I start a new diary, I want to write the kind of perfect prose entires in it that do not spoil the wonderful blank pages. It's impossible. I always spoil the blankness with my words. Diaries are embarrasing things, really. Nonetheless, I am going to attempt to use this as a diary and see what happens. I shall start by transcribing an entry from my real diary. The entry is that for the 23rd of February, 2004. Here goes:

It must be almost two months since I finished my last diary. That would have been around New Year. That period of hiatus in my diary writing has been perhaps one of the most eventful periods of my life, if only in terms of emotional and psychological event. I believe that Mad World topped the charts at Christmas, and did it, in fact, bring us into the New Year? If it did, it seems very appropriate. What could be more timely? The whole world seems to have gone mad. At the most personal level, too, I felt as if things had gone through a pivotal change from very early on in January. Stated briefly, there were two things which brought this about: One, my growing awareness of the ecological disaster that threatens to engulf us, and in particular reports to do with the collapse of the Gulf Stream and the predicted extinction of millions of species of animals. And two, L---'s advice to me in early January to make finishing my novel a priority over finding work, coupled with the prospect of earning money by writing an English textbook with Mr. T---.

These two factors working in concert have brought about a mood in me that I can only describe as extremely fey. I feel very much as if I'm living in the Bowie song Five Years. Everything has become unreal. Why should I look for a job when the future has been abolished, especially when there is the chance, the growing likelihood, even, that I can make my way through life as some sort of freelance writer?

And so, life recently has been very full of event, and really quite emotional, and I have been occupied with so many things that I have not recorded any of it in this diary. I fear that all I can manage now is the simplest of post facto accounts. What a strange, fragile web of emotion I now feel myself to be stuck upon! I might borrow Jim Morrisson's words and say, "THis must be the strangest life that I have ever known." And yet, this wondrous, vibrating web, strung with the dew of co-incidence, seems to be in danger of collapsing utterly, of being swept away by disaster, as if it really were of no more importance that a single spider's web.

I think it was the article in The Observer, which I found a link to in Momus' online journal, that reminded me of the crushing feelings of doom and despair I experienced earlier this year, and which put me in the mood at last to take up my diary again and wonder what the point of writing a diary is, or the point of anything at all. But let me see if I can trace some of the threads of the web now threatened with destruction and pointlessness.

There was L---'s advice and his suggestion that he'd be able to support me to some extent. Then there was my visit to Mr. T---, soon afterwards, at his home in S---, when we discussed his translation of Takekurabe, for which I have written the introduction, and when he proposed that we make some money by writing the English textbook together. I have been thinking about that intermittently ever since, though I have not started work on it, and I get that Pet Shop Boys song going round in my head - I've go the brains, you've got the brawn, let's make lots of money. There was J--- B--- taking me to the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank to see a string quartet, and the piece they played that gave me an idea for my story Zugzwang. It was on that occasion, as I looked around the bookshop there waiting for J---, that I discovered a pack, or a book, of postcards of the zoological artwork of Ernst Haeckel, and bought them on the spot, deciding later that they could be helpful for me as inspiration for my novel, The Sex Life of Worms. Consulting the pamphlet I picked up at the Royal Festival Hall, I find that to have been Monday the 2nd of February. Having written that, I now remember that on the weekend beginning, I believe, on Friday the 23rd of January, I visited P--- L--- in Wales, where we went to see a male voice choir, went along to a lock-in at a local pub with some of them afterwards, and the next day walked along rivers and waterfalls for about seven miles. On that occasion I was given some legal Mexican mushrooms by E---, which I consumed half-way through the concert, and which undoubtedly made the evening even more interesting. My interest in hallucinogens thus renewed, I began to experiment again. I wanted to use them in conjunction with the Ernst Haeckel postcards to get inspiration for my flagging novel, The Sex Life of Worms. That inspiration remains, as yet, larely elusive. But during one of my mushroom sessions, on Sunday the eighth of February, I ended up sending a number of lunatic e-mails to Momus, who I had been trying to pin down for an interview. At the time the experience was extremely disturbing for me, showing me just how I can lose my grip on reality, but, thankfully, it seems to have had a positive result in the end, as I am now in the middle of conduction that interview for Terror Tales website.

M--- M--- is going to, in fact, as I write, is in Japan on holiday. He came round here on Saturday the seventh for a briefing on the best things to see and do in Japan, and for linguistic pointers. Together we drank green tea and sake.

My Tartarus collection - Morbid Tales - was first reported delayed, but, on Thursday the nineteenth, I think, I received an e-mail (or was it before that?) saying that they are now ready to go ahead with it. But the line-up of stories was minus the best work, The Haunted Bicycle. I felt frustrated and disappointed. I complained of this to the man in the bookshop. Somehow the conversation turned to musical heroes. I mentioned that I was conducting an interview with one of mine. "Who?" "He's called Momus." "Momus?!" he returned in surprised recognition. Apparently, just days before, he had been talking about Momus to someone...

I had leant him - J--- in the bookshop - a copy of Strange Tales, containing my story Cousin X, to read. When, some days later, I popped in to talk to him again, he was busy in the backroom. I looked around the bookshop and saw a book entitled, In the Beginning was the Worm - I bought it is the hope it would give me inspiration foy my novel, The Sex Life of Worms.

On Friday I went to the launch of the new journal Strange Attractor. The editor, M--- P---, said that Momus had spent some time sleeping rough on the couch in the house of a friend of his. At the party I also spoke to E--- A---, proprietor of F--- C--- bookshop. He kindly offered to hold the launch party of Morbid Tales at F--- C---. I went back to Archway with M---- and A----, and we had a private William Blake party,
since A--- was unable to persuade us to shift our exhausted carcasses to the official William Blake party elsewhere in Highgate.

And so on.

And today I read Momus' journal and found there the link to the Observer article about the Pentagon's report outlining catastrophic climate changes expected to take place within twenty years.

Is this strange, intricate network really to be destroyed

The First Web.

I am merely reaching up in the dazzling darkness of void to tickle away a little cobweb of words here in this vast library.