Cityscape: Copenhagen

1.
cobbled streets leading to a harbour of ancient ships. The sound of
English voices raised and echoing beneath a bridge crossing the canal.

2.
Kirkegaard's shoes. The heels heavily worn away. The sound of
footfalls thrown against the walls of terrace sailorís cottages to
become the explosions of fireworks towering above the harbour.

3.
Christiania. Quiet riverbanks. Wooden houses peak from between trees on the
opposite bank.

4.
In a warehouse a man builds a submarine and sails it in front of the
Royal theatre. Someone says that the same man plans to build a
rocket.

5.
In Andy's bar, the smell of cigarette smoke still lingers from a time
when sailors and 2nd world war soldiers would stumble up the stairs.
On the wall is a painting of a woman standing in the centre of
Copenhagen with her knickers down. A saxophone begins to play in the
other room.

Les Pensées

Artaud a self-styled intellectual was reading The Man Without Features but couldn't concentrate, the letters floating off the page. He put his book down and stared outside at nothing in particular.

The Shield of Achilles: Bucephalus

alexander remembered his father's words
spoken to him still being a child
my son, find yourself a kingdom equal to and worthy of yourself
for macedonia is too small for you
ever only since
could he remember the loss of home
for home was macedonia
how can a shelter offer comfort
when it cannot hold oneself
being not appropriate to one's needs
he took a last glance at his home
then saddled his horse
how can the soil of his land
ever satisfy a god
that is to rule a people
that is to govern the present
when home is a higher future
how can man carry glory
without knowing courage by heart
alexander rode to where the sun rises in the morning
for this is the path to heaven

Les Pensées

Artaud opened the envelope containing the results of his genealogical DNA test to trace his male lineage. No trace of his favorite author, a Portuguese who was raised in South-Africa and abandoned his studies of literature early on. No trace of his favorite philosopher of whom only a dozen of aphorisms were known beside his name. Disappointed, he questioned the value of knowledge.

In Search of Duende (2): Must We Burn?

Was there freedom in madness. I knew there was, I had believed there was, I had always been certain, but I suddenly doubted madness. I doubted not the existence, but the realm of madness. I realized that despite the popular usage of the term, which was vulgar, plain, I never felt aloof from it, not to say I was crazy, but I had always felt bored by normality, so I had without giving it much thought, assumed madness was normality, which was obviously not how most people meant it, when they said, you are crazy, or that's insane, and I didn't know what to reply, I just stared at them with a numb wit, scrambling to understand what they meant, losing my ground, what precisely of what I had just said did they think was insane? It was as if they believed there was a reality of concrete matter and a world of mental madness, which separated from the reality by a wide moat and an unbreachable wall. True, I couldn't tell anymore if I was on the inside or the outside, and if I was on the inside would I liberate myself by breaking out of this castle on the cliffs, and was madness in fact a prison, was I like De Sade locked up inside the Bastille, shouting at the masses, they are killing the prisoners, but then why had the defense walls been erected, in defense of what, as if madness was a prize, a tribute of war, the holy grail of sanity and the masses storming it on it outside, slowly losing their minds in the frenzy of blood hunger, smelling the power of madness, losing oneself, becoming god, or was I on the outside of the walls, and was madness the loss of perspective, without space, being able to follow the horizon in every direction and never approaching it, and was sanity the prison, like the asylum where De Sade found freedom, a safe harbor from the roaming infinity of madness. It was pitch dark. I couldn't tell if I had been dreaming or thoughtfully awake.

In Search of Duende (1): The Deep Song

They say the city never sleeps, but the street was quiet and dark. I held my breath and tried to hear the deep song of the city, could I hear the heartbeat of the soul, but I heard little, only the rustle of the wind in the gossip of the night. I felt disturbed, uneasy, annoyed perhaps, by this void, by the absence. I yearned for a jolt of madness, but just now when I was in search for it, the madness seemed to evaporate at every turn. A young girl in the corner possessed the inflamed, black eyes of a gypsy, her luscious stares tortured me, but when I approached her, her eyes turned flat and dull, and I lost my taste for her. The muscles of her olive colored calves contracted, I felt her gentle, pointy breasts screaming, I was haunted, but when I pulled her close to me, her body collapsed, her fatty arms released my captivation, her heavy torso disgusted me, and I lost my appetite. This madness, to possess, this physical need to enforce myself upon the helpless creature who had surrendered herself, this need to impose myself by force of will, it rose from within, it came out, and hang there in the air, motionless, pointless, aimless. Dawn rose. Normalcy rose. Bodies responding to their habitual, biological cycle woke up and filled the streets of day. I was engulfed by this tide, and I too disappeared into the day, sane, normal, all without madness. It was then, that I could hear the echo of the deep song.

"I will die
in the roses
they will kill me"

Les Pensées

Artaud crossed strange avenues, turned an unfamiliar corner, in a city strange to him. At an unknown bar, he ordered a coffee and a glass of water. Artaud's forehead was sweaty and his heart was racing. Was it the madness of the city or was it his own madness?

Les Pensées

He walked along the flottage du bois, the deck in between the four towers of the national library that looked like wood drifting down the river. All that is published in France was stored here. Artaud felt like Citizen Kane on his death bed and whispered 'rosebud'.

The Voyeuristic Lives of the Author

V sipped his beer, observing two friends dancing with a single girl. The girl rubbed her hips between the bodies of the young men, who had her locked in between them, one kissing her lips, the other's hands pulled her waist closely against his pelvis. A few minutes later they paid and left the bar. V waited a few moments and followed after them. When he stood outside, he was just in time to see them slip into the little park across the street. V followed at some distance.
V's latest novel had been a great success, reaching the top five of every bestselling list. His trademark was to invent perversions of ordinary characters by describing the most intricate, common details of their day to day lives. Often journalists and critics asked how he came up with his descriptions, how he was able to see the extraordinary in the ordinary and some politely suggested he was depicting none other than himself. But the truth was that V. was simply an average character with little fantasy or imagination, nor did he possess a lot of life experience. He was by account of everyone who knew him, a very stable and reasonable person who disliked extravagances. His only mischief was perhaps that he was extremely curious.
The phone rang. V answered, it was A. They met an hour later at the Auberge de la Butte. A felt exhilarated, she kept on talking without end, panting in between words. S called me yesterday. You know, I didn't want to see him anymore after we broke up last month. But we talked for an hour, just as friends, and I realized how much I enjoyed talking to him, so I felt there was no harm in meeting simply for dinner. So we ate at this small restaurant S knew and that serves foie-gras specialties. Before I knew it, it was midnight and we were the last and only guests still present. They didn't push us out of course, but you could tell from their impatience that we were obviously holding everyone from being able to go home. So we decided to leave and walked without a particular sense for direction until we suddenly stood in front of his apartment. S asked if I wanted another drink perhaps, and before I knew it, we were fucking like animals in the staircase. V had been listening quietly with full attention and expectation. He interrupted A with brief to the point questions. Were you still wearing your clothes or had he undressed you by then? Did you kneel down and suck him? Did he come? Did you use a condom? Did you say anything? did he call you names? A unraveled rapidly the thread of what had happened, answered V's questions diligently, as V ushered her into the detailed descriptions of each moment. V did not understand how any event could really have meaning, come to life, without the slow sequence of scenes following one another patiently in full detail. It were the details of the single word that brought the fucking in the staircase to its culmination, not the impatient pounding of two lonely people pressed against the wall. A however kept stumbling over her words and excitingly rushed on, while V interrupted her.

Cityscape: An African Kitchen Song

I found myself whipping a squashed avocado, mixing the paste with the diced tomato at the beat of the Senegalese song that echoed in the space at the back of a characterless apartment complex. The voice jittered around the inner court from low to high in an unintuitive timing, its irregular beat was fascinating to the rational mind. I estimated the woman of the voice which was high-pitched, to be in her early twenties. I imagined her wearing a boubou, like the Senegalese women in the street, with a Senegalese pattern in bright yellow, gray and black figures that repeated around her waist. Earlier, I had still gotten irritated by the loud speaker voice of a radio or television, being forced to overhear the reciting of Ramadan prayers being broadcasted. Maybe if the recital voice had been of a real human being in their kitchen, the singing recital of a praying man whose humming danced out of the window, I would have been joyfully trying to make out the inaudible words of the distant song. The Senegalese woman had to be cooking I think, as the kitchens were all in the back of the building. The apartments were stapled on top of one another like Lego blocks. While one person was beating his wife, two meters above him, only separated by a concrete slice of 20 centimeter, a man and a woman were fucking passionately, while to their right or left, a man bowed down on his knees with his hands on the rug for prayer, bend in the very same position as the woman being fucked five meters to his right, while coincidentally facing the same direction as the man beating his wife. I listened to the singing of the Senegalese voice again, which sounded unique and solely.