I
The Film
The Director took the ceiling off so that he could display the full range of his cinematic skills – or, what he pompously referred to as his ‘panoply of ploys’. Filmically formulaic, he attempted to add his own nuanced trickery to the work of his disparate heroes: Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein, Fritz Lang, Hayao Miyazaki, Francois Roland Truffaut and, of course Akira Kurosawa.
‘Minnow genius tick dick! ‘as ‘e never eard of da Celluloid Ceiling? Wha’ bout The Wachowskis, Alice Guy Blacke, Dorothy Arsner, Lois Weber and friggin’ Tressie Souders? Feckless Fecker!’ [2] [3]
‘The Orange Room’ was his best work. He toiled with technique, endlessly putting index fingers and thumbs together to visualise ‘the shot’; lying, kneeling, squatting, contorting in search of his own warped perfections. He was fading with his superimpositions.
It was viewing-time and all were tense. In his nervousness he began to dance and sing ‘Rush to see the rushes’ down his own Yellow Brick Road.[4]
‘Run the reel’.
The Rushes always snap, Celluloid squares split and shred Images dissolve with flickering light Acidic white.
Where grimaces and vitriolic screams should have been, a contented smile appeared. It was the white screen that he had been searching for. The journey from blank to blank. His fingers and thumbs relaxed. Happily, he would never work again.
Smoke began to fill the auditorium. The projector had caught fire. Only three charred scenes where rescued from the celluloid melt.
Zoom in, he sits on wicker chair there, head in head rocking. Zoom out, three paramedics, bags, stethoscopes and oxygen bottles. ECG. His rhythm had mist a beat and his cardie was tacky. Blood- stools hospital.
‘What an exotic room, Kevin!’
Angle-down long-view, red couch, foreshortened figure, bent towards the seat of another wicker seemingly OCD tapping a pre-symbolic psychotic morse.
Be jaysus he must be typing!
Fast forward fast forward focus filter change, cat fed books read.
[1] Osaic, M: ‘In sixteenth-century Italy the word stanza originally meant a room, station, or standing or stopping place, and stanza breaks in traditional poetry have since been a way of pausing before continuing; a way of drawing breath and digesting meaning. Stanzas are understood to be units of poetry rather than of prose, but it is generally acknowledged that they are, in approximate terms, the verse equivalent of the prose paragraph.’ [White].
[2] Tymol, E: ‘Feck’: a Scottish corruption of ‘Effect’. ‘Fecker’: One who has feck. ‘Feckless’: One who doesn’t. Not to be confused with the word ‘Fuck’ which has a dubious derivation.
[3] Shaw, J: Not if yer feckin’ Oirish!
[4] Shaw, J: ‘Tis (also a novel by Frank McCourt) is an effing film!
II
Colour Theory
It is a hallucinatory orange box that doesn’t even know what colour it is. There are Saharan blown sand Moroccan tinged hues that morph with light. The plaster below is the same colour. Decorator tried to control it, restrain it, sanitise its beauty. It was a character free to peel at random, casting textures naturally. A metaphor for other things.
Why didn’t yer take a short-cut and call it ‘The Not Feckin’ Orange Room’?
The left-hand mural seems to shudder with energy, almost straining towards the light switch (I must remember to clean that!). A cervical trompe l’oeil enhanced by Aztec carpets [5] and a Mayan mat pinned adjacently.
Your seven orgasms spiral on a plastered wall, One convulsive image encased by six, sexy, small Smear tests of primary colours, a squirt of shades, Cervical pulses rapidly extracted from nights before. Reed-like resolutions of another mural balance there, Between, twisted candlesticks ejaculate labial wax. [6]
Yer jus’ an owl perv who got crimson-red embarrassed wen ‘e learnt the truth – a gombeen ooze grey beard was tinted ginger. Dem der be huge hues!
The day after the night before, ‘Glo’ was energised and wanted to promote herself from felt-tipping A4 on the floor. Mural spaces were masking-taped and the ‘orange’ emptiness rapidly filled. Auto-pilot beautiful.
In pre-death days, we sat together on the couch by the window. It was from there that my eulogies were screamed. Above the mantel then was Cathy’s sponged art. It beckoned my psychotic lost retorts.
Pareidolia, my Sweetest Love, Apophenia, my Deluded Love. [7]
The painting had to go (gifted not destroyed). Couch relocated to my tap-tap-tap lap-top morsing space. I panned-up and focussed on her second mural. It wasn’t a sexual resolution. It was Cathy and Kevin, ‘Glo’ and ‘Mumble’, penguin bellies touching, equals, eye-to-eye. Happy Feet. [8]
‘Candle-lit images, a shifting C Major refrain, Please paint my hands and my sheets again My Sweetest Love.’ [9]
[5] Quintillian: ‘Textum tenue atque rasum.’
[6] McQuaid, K. Pareidolia, My Sweetest Love.
[7] Op. Cit.
[8] Singing out of key – nearly sectioned in Tesco’s
[9] McQuaid, K. ibid
III
Musical Interlude – More Sing Space.
I jus’ lucked at tings different bak den. Robbin’ was an eskape from de beatings with straps, spliced canes an’ de wudden tings dat stopt de beam from rockin’ in PE. De middle Klass kids wanted ‘orror bucks from Lewis’s an’ putters from Jack Sharp’s. Da crow Jesuits cudn’t give a flyin’ skirted fuck. I waz payed with moolah an air pistol an’ a guitar. I tuck it ‘ome an’ Paul (Big Mo’s boyfriend) taut me Status Quo. I waz shit cos I didn’t no I was left ‘anded.
The Ansel Adams print of a peak in Yosemite (pareidoliacally [10] revealing the face of G-d) leans against black paranoid garden furniture that has allergies to the open-air wet. To the right, Olivia’s guitar is shirking with embarrassment machine head lost.
Because I’m old, it’s Radio 4 now. That’s where I learnt about free guitar and ukulele tuition from Justin. [11]
Within a few days John Chell [12] and Dee where putting stuff into storage ahead of their move to Lancaster. He gifted me Liv’s knackered C Major refrains.
In front of machine head lost stands Epiphone left-handed Texan 1964 A narrow-necked pressie from Cathy G-d bless her departed cotton socks.
She was a rare thing fine as a bee’s wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child, she was runnin’ wild (she said)
So long as there’s no price on love I’ll stay
You wouldn’t want me any other way. [13]
By the penquins is a round-neck resonator, Next to the curtains, a ukulele and mandolin. Vault the aiseki and the peace plant, Discover the Irish Bazouki.
I luved dat singin’ on da red couch!
True you ride the finest horse I’ve ever seen
Standing 16 1″ or 2″ with eyes wild and green
And you ride the horse so well, hands light to the touch
I could never go with you no matter how I wanted to. [14]
Be jaysus I’ll be after a session now.
And so I cry sometimes
When I’m lying in bed just to get it all out
What’s in my head
And I, I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
What’s going on? [15]
[10] Shaw, J: Be jaysus dem neologisms dey’ll be ‘ard t’ resist!
[12] Shaw, J: A gud owl mucker soul!
[13] Thompson, R: Bees wing (1994).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HApy-Xoix-g&ab_channel=Cleapatr
[14] Moore, Christie: Ride On.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J-X0TBZ0sM&ab_channel=sofievm
[15] 4 Non-Blondes: What’s up!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J-X0TBZ0sM&ab_channel=sofievm
IV
The Bodhran
The top of the book-shelf reeks of avoidance. It’s not: Rose Quartz for the heart, Aiseki, appreciation stones. Suiseki, scholars’ rocks. The three pebbles in a puddle symbolising the island homes of the Immortals: Pengai, Fanzhangi and Yingzhou.
The Daoist monk Buddha-like figure ‘Holding up the Sky’ (or, in this case, the ceiling because the Director’s crew haven’t been back to fix it). Around his neck is a sunflower seed necklace that Cathy was taught to make by her Grandmother (the wicker is hers). Suspended from his raised arms are a chain and a ring that has lost its finger.
It’s the malicious Bastard Bodhran at the back!
Her 7 old bought me never played orange juice stained accidents. Later 3 deaths 10 days. Broken-heart attack crash. The cancer worked putrescent first effusion bloodied banshee wailing grief. Car suspended on barrier M62. Another father dead. Accidents.
It’s not a feckin’ black room! Yer a Poor Mouth so yer are – I taut with the Bodhran an’ all we’ed be ‘avin’ after the shenanagins.
Mood me up then, Jane Shaw.
Dingle me to the Blaskets then bounce me o’er the Burren, Ceiledh in Kinvara, wind rush cobwebs on the Cliffs of Moher, Hal’Penny Bridge skip to Temple Bar, douse me in Guinness. A pint in Ma Nellie’s would not go amiss – you can call me Colleen. Floozie in the jacuzzi, I’ll drop me drawers and moon at Sweet Molly Malone. [16]
Ta, Chuck! [17]
[16] Shaw, J: Da bless said whore wid da barra.
[17] ‘The English language has always been alive and kicking, and if it ever becomes drowsy, there will always be an Irish[wo]man….’ Carlos Fuente.
V
The Perspective Mantle [18]
The eye scatters in a Chinese scroll.
The chimney breast takes up two-thirds of the room and the mantle is off-set defensively a third to the right. It is a rampart to climb, not to view from afar. Flattened up-close and personal.
The painted fishbowl sits on the Aztec rug. The hearth holds a peace lily, three money plants and another that is making F signs in two different shades of green. The swords (Dao and Jian) stand sentinel.
The mantle hallelujahs the gods, goddesses (thank you Sun Bu Er), coral beads and Chuang Tzu (a chortling sprig of sage replacing his fishing rod).
Above, where Cathy’s Rorschach proddings used to be, is an intricately line-drawn Geisha.
VI
The Empty Frame
Above the couch are four frames. Two are by my room-renowned artist – jelly babies and flowers. Another is backless and glassless emptily supporting needle-points by Jane Shaw:
新年快乐…
Da Pool – Mo Salah, Mo Salah, Mo Salah / Runnin’ down da wing…..
A silver bull’s head from a water rabbit.
A yin-yang Taiji apple for the teacher.
The last is tilted to one side and promisingly empty.
[18] Elisha then picked up Elijah’s cloak that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan [II Kings ii.13].
