ANY COLOUR YOU LIKE 3
THE THEATRE OF THE CRUEL AND GELBERS CONNECTION
‘…and the only sound that’s left, after the ambulances go, is Cinderella sweeping up…’
LATITUDE-49.2827 DEGREES NORTH
LONGITUDE-123.1207 DEGREES WEST
My goddaughter bought me a chess programme for Christmas, two years ago now…I am
neither technophobe nor technophile…my computer is a work station, a must for my work
now…a must now for all it seems…I wonder how my grandfather would have addressed this
faceless opponent…what rhetoric he would aim…what answers he would gain…for this
opponent would consider all, all from its memory banks…but the parameters would be set,
music, politics, cooking, social awareness, geography and industrial disease would not come
into play…unless programmed that way, not there quite yet…
A body without organs…
So I play the machine, with its Artificial Intelligence, and sometimes my pointed moves
prove a little to ‘incomputable’ for the machine…
I digress, whist working one day I received an email from a colleague, she had sent me a link
to a page…she had acquired an ebook, I may be interested... I was surprised…she knows my
affiliation with the realness of articles – the physicality…my mission to maintain the
language we have only democratically possessed for the last half a millennium, my
unwillingness to fully embrace the new language that has been thrust upon us…and which
only a few understand…
Knowing all this, for her to send me the link made me inquisitive, so I went to the virtual
page…it was there I became reacquainted with the angular boy…the author/producer of the
book which consisted of interspersed dialogue squares and apparently coded phrasing…I
sent him an email…he replied a few days later, apologising for the tardiness of his reply…
He told me of the book, the reasoning and context…territory, love, labours lost, life and
placement…cyclical nature and contrived ideals…and music and form…
Inspired by a girl from the north…which I hadn’t picked up on…and he recollected those
days long ago…the whole…the white shelved room, the game and conversation, the
music…the colour and form…a white cube and its contents…the thirty two square possible
openings…that more existed outside the box…like a dance…
The removal of the black square from the white shelf…the prism on the cover…the black
disc with its ‘prismed’ centre, its revolution…pointed….
A record of many things…things that had remained and inspired…the concept only
becoming apparent wholly a few years after the events…Mnemosyne and Simonides…
And then… in a heartbeat…
The ‘image by disaster’ becoming the rationale…all connected to that album- that archive…
A concept of modernity out of control…
The reality is where we are now…
Where he is now…
And where I am now…
This new language…hierarchical in the ‘new order’…
So very ‘us and them’…
As the ‘record’ spins then so do we…
We converse by post now…the archaic way, and this is how we play our game(s)…
A move is sent…some words are sent…and every now and again ‘graham bell’ connects us…
Albeit, in the new language…
My goddaughter’s mother and I grew up together, old and very close friends…she came with
me to my grandparents in summer vacations and such like a few times… into the wild west,
the new frontier’s-to us anyway…
And later, when we had grown, we revisited these frontiers- she more than me, although I
had my moments on these landscapes and on others…on different shores…
As children we were opened to the revolutionary past of my grandfather’s stories…
His past…his present…and his future…
As teenagers, that very modern and manufactured time, we were opened up to the
revolutions of the day…
Now our past…our present…our possible future(s)…
LATITUDE 48 degrees 51 MINUTES NORTH
LONGITUDE 2 degrees 21 MINUTES EAST
PARIS – resounded with people speaking to one another in unintelligible languages. A
similar case happened once during the construction of a certain tall building in
Babylon…there were reasons then and reasons now.
So wrote my grandfather in his journal of that time, he kept many journals throughout his
life and, as I grew up, he would read or let me read from them – there were no specific
dates, just days and thoughts and connections.
Connections – places, people, days, events…as a young man he fled his homeland, Russia, he
would never say why…for a while he settled in London,
There in the east end he met my grandmother…in this period he writes of ‘work and
unrest’…for all that he meets, he talks of Malatesta, Kropotkin, Rudolf Rocker and others…
Sacco and Vanzetti and the Sidney Street siege…
Then Paris and the café he opened with my grandmother…the family they started…and the
days, the people and the events, the connections…
America beckoned, as it did for many…and here they finally settled and raised their family,
two daughters of whom my mother was the youngest…I was raised in Canada but my
holidays were spent with my grandparents…
My grandfather taught me to play chess and speak Russian…between holidays we would
play by correspondence…postcards would arrive with annotation upon them, I learnt the
language of the game…there would also be words or phrases that connected the
‘move’…the image on the card and sometimes a song or musical phrase from my
grandmother…I have all these cards, they are in a box with a photograph…
‘Time it was, a stutter…time it was, it was…’
‘A time of innocence, a time of confidences…’
‘Long ago, it must be, long ago – I have a photograph…’
WAITING FOR ALIBIS
‘…I’m alright jack; keep your hands off my stack…’
LATITUDE 55 degrees 59 minutes North
LONGITUDE 03 degrees 10 minutes West
FREEDOM OF SPEECH – SPEECH OF FREEDOM
Random access memory…
1964 summer of freedom…
Mississippi burning…
Ask the Goodman family…
Ask Dave when he got the call from Lyndon.P …
It took white kids to die before the bill went through…
Archived…
Recorded…
Accessible…
Ask Claudette or Rosa…
Only a bus ride away…
My mother related these to me, my grandfather the same…
My grandmother played Bessie Smith…
And told of her demise near Highway 61…
Near the crossroads…where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil…
We are all in this together…
Burning down the house…
Information is knowledge…no…?
THE BLACK AND WHITE
On May 4, l970 members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State
University demonstrators…
Killing four and wounding nine…
The impact of the shootings was dramatic. The event triggered a nationwide student strike
that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to close. H. R. Haldeman, a top aide to
President Richard Nixon, suggests the shootings had a direct impact on national politics. In
The Ends of Power, Haldeman (1978) states that the shootings at Kent State began the slide
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
The 1, 2 beat slow or fast…the paradiddle…the Berlioz gallows walk…
1, 2 binary beat…that was then … tin soldiers, tin stars…
Manufactured icons in a manufactured society…manufactured culture; it takes seconds to
take a life…
Shoot them down and hang them high…
It takes only a little longer to build a ‘horse’…
It can be any colour you like as long as it’s black…
Slaves to the rhythms…1, 2 beat…paradiddle
Abstract
As painters we had no idea what to paint anymore…so we just painted for each other…the
purest of the pure…the chosen…
I had a dream…so did I… bang…
Pope urban II to Colin Powell…
Black gold…
My mule doesn’t like it…he thinks you may be laughing at him…
Frankly my dear I just don’t give a damn…
Bodies upon the Gears Speech…
Speaking on the steps of Sproul Hall, on December 2, 1964:
There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious…
Makes you so sick at heart…
That you can't take part…
You can't even passively take part…
And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers,
upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the
people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be
prevented from working at all!
Tin soldiers and paradiddle…
‘Better jump down a manhole, light yourself a candle…’
There is a testament to Mario Salvio…
A monument…about the size of a man hole cover…
In the square… where he spoke of open learning and access…
‘Don’t wear sandals …can’t afford the scandal…?’
And Jimi played ‘the star spangled banner’ "The Anacreontic Song"-… louder than bombs…
All this and more…I carried with me to this…
This, foreign shore…
And within the paradiddle 1, 2, beat of a pawn…I passed this on to the angular boy…
So he could see and hear…the levels of the ongoing game…
NOW THE CONNECTION
When Artauld hit the ‘living theatre’ in the ‘abstract’ that is America…
Ford had ‘blacked all up…’
Sloanism added the necessary-unnecessaries…
Greenberg and Motherwell had defined it so…
Cage had performed it so…
And Glass and Beckett were there…’Play’…
And Gelber had introduced the reality…
You are all connected…especially now…
Waiting had become ‘de rigueur’…
Andy’s chest was open-BANG-then closed…
The ‘abstracted middle white America’ looked for a rationale…
And found it in colour and degeneration…
‘White goods’ were a cure all…
What made today’s homes so appealing…
‘…running for shelters…’
‘…mothers little helpers…’
Waiting…
Whether in a lone swinging lightbulb toilet…
A theatre stage…
Or a doctors pad…
All were waiting…and still are…
Beckett hit that one…
And Mcluhan’s ‘Global Theatre’ had begun…
In a white room, stood floor to ceiling white shelves…cubits…archives-of a kind…
Here I taught what I had been taught…
To the small, angular, nine year old boy…
It was 1973…
I told him of all that had occurred-that I had known-from the time of his birth to that time…
And all I had known through my life…
Britain in the 70’s…following the ‘abstract’ in every way…
And whilst we played and talked, Stuart- whose archive we were in- removed ‘records’ from
the white shelved ‘cubits’ and opened up a myriad of doors…
Stuart ‘manned’ the embryonic ‘Virgin’ flagship store-the beginnings of Branson’s empire…
He received a copy of each new ‘album’ as part of his wage…
The archive grew daily…
As did the possibilities…
As did the discourse…
A few years later…a supposed ‘King Rocker’ proclaimed ‘Never trust a Hippy’…
That was lesson one…
The sixties bore many of societies new cash elite…
‘…Strange days indeed…’
The archetypal saying of many of that time had now become a cliché…
Recto verso
‘Beware the bread heads’
And a grocer’s daughter really took the milk away…or was it the piss…?
Economic trends…
Hard edged…
The fifty first state…
The new ‘abstract’…
The host cell parasite…
By the time ‘lesson one’ became apparent the angular boy had become an active agent on
this ‘world stage’, so he has told me since…
And much of those experiences shared in the white room have become predicate for him…
connections are important on these roads…
All have a worth…
Whether apparent or not…
When I finished my ‘training’ in Edinburgh I moved around the ‘sceptred isle’…
Teaching and learning…and waiting…’here’s where the story ends?’
LATITUDE-49.2827 DEGREES NORTH
LONGITUDE-123.1207 DEGREES WEST
‘…people I know, places I go make me feel tongue tied…’
The older I get…well, it is all pantomime in a way…
As with Camus’ doves, even the purest succumb…
Outsider’ one and all…
And, something is happening here but we don’t know what it is, do we…?
I digress, I recollect, I reminisce…
Like Seger’ adaption of Ecclesiastes…
Turn, turn and turn again…
Like a record…
Ah, the post…
Ha, now that I didn’t expect…angular, still pointed…
I must consider this now…