For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins
For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins For the happy man! - Collected writings DEPRESSION: Ed Atkins
A cave again, this time somewhere in the Arctic circle – or bored into the side of a ridge in the Himalayas. Or a mine in an abandoned colony on Neptune, a sign hangs above the entrance, proclaiming something in some unknown pictographic language. A pall of Neptunian dust. Inside this cave it’s unbelievably cold. And dark – the kind of darkness that threatens to gouge out your fucking eyes; the kind of darkness that submerges, strangles. There is a smell in here: something forsaken, aeons old, still clinging to the impervious walls. Walls like sheet-metal once used as a massive, geological griddle for the exclusive purpose of cooking buffalo, á la plancha. Or some sort of megafauna, awkwardly straddling those final, absurd dinosaurs, and the modest mammals concurrent with us. The smell of these things cooking against these walls, and over the course of a million years or so – the heat supplied by the weltering blood of the continent – suddenly soused by the instantaneous appearance of a massive ocean wrinkled with vents and infested with coelacanths. Then all of this ice (seen in bored time-lapse with sweeping soundtrack) [...]. Towards the back of the cave, the smell intensifies, then swerves into something faecal. (You can feel the darkness on your outstretched hands – the shitty stench under your fingernails; the cold, of course, is IN YOUR BONES.) (The acoustic is worth mentioning: reverberating footsteps describe something like a tunnel, the walls either side are surely close – just beyond your flailing fingertips – though the entrance behind you and the whatever before are both uncertain. The peculiarities of the echo in here. You blurt out a couple of incoherent yelps. Then a yell – threatening enough to shock you. Then a weirder noise – something unpredicted. As in, you didn’t know what you
were going to SAY until you said it. The name ‘Greg’. ETC. Each of these utterances echoes in such a way as to imply a third aspect – something between your voice and the cavernous echo. You describe it later as like double-tracking on your voice, like a chorus addressing the audience with dramatic irony (the audience skulking silently in the darkness, ahead or behind; probably behind) – relating a truth CONCERN- ING you but UNBEKNOWNST to you. This chorus gazes out through your functionless eyes, and even goes so far as to use your mouth to communicate – embedding their laws in that slight trough between voice and echo. This cave, you think, is a theatre. But I’m not an actor. At least, not in a traditional sense. I merely suspect I’m an actor. You whisper something, apparent- ly under your breath. Something some- thing something. You picture your breath before you, hanging like prop- er cloud in the air, perhaps drifting over the surface of an audience member silently pacing backwards, inches from your face, not breathing, not making a sound, just observing you – all-pupil, all-black eyeballs swivelling maniacally in their ample sockets. Only it’s too dark to make any of this out. Still, in absence of any confirmatory sensation, this is all certainly true. Finally, with a sharp inhalation, your loving hands find something; a surface, perhaps the back wall of the cave. Simultaneously, the acoustic changes to something more close – the deadened air of a summer path somewhere at around about sea-level. And underfoot it feels like moss. Or maybe industrial foam. The SURFACE beneath your hands is something else, something wetter. Wet moss, maybe. Or some of that slime that musters orange on the side of an autumn tree. Clammy. Like the way one might imagine the hands of the week-long dead.
- Page 75 and 76: I wanted to ask whether you thought
- Page 77 and 78: legibility. A primordial story of s
- Page 79 and 80: owner of the eyelash, your lover. B
- Page 81 and 82: The smell was certainly sexual, I t
- Page 83 and 84: discrete line to slight-inked line
- Page 85 and 86: oily substance not unlike jojoba, f
- Page 87 and 88: muscles) Averting our eyes from one
- Page 89 and 90: late to be a fucking lie told badly
- Page 91 and 92: fingernail, most likely. Fingers re
- Page 93 and 94: great prairies of skin are, in each
- Page 95 and 96: the same mistake again. The dead ey
- Page 97 and 98: -Resembling the lichen that seems t
- Page 100 and 101: A tumour (in English) 2011
- Page 102 and 103: punctuation and that peculiar synta
- Page 104 and 105: and waning produces a horrific pull
- Page 106 and 107: frozen, unknown. It’s not mine, t
- Page 108 and 109: pink, marbled-looking veneer inspir
- Page 110 and 111: notch at its highest point with a c
- Page 112 and 113: [...] If it’s like this in the mo
- Page 114 and 115: the crew: Fletcher, the navy techni
- Page 116 and 117: scenes remind us that this isn’t
- Page 118 and 119: Grotesque, just like this text here
- Page 120 and 121: The tumour, spanning many acres now
- Page 122 and 123: TEETH, and a battle is pitched betw
- Page 126 and 127: The underside of a banana slug. The
- Page 128 and 129: taxidermist, so as to preserve its
- Page 130 and 131: a golf ball. I fucking hate golf, y
- Page 132 and 133: As previously discussed elsewhere,
- Page 134 and 135: varieties: RODS AND CONES (rods of
- Page 136 and 137: Feel its tentacular motion inside y
- Page 138 and 139: droxyurea, Hydrea, Idarubicin, Idam
- Page 140 and 141: of blasé humanity writhing happily
- Page 143 and 144: Do it 2013
- Page 145: Graciousness - hospitality at all c
- Page 148 and 149: - My daughter says she loves to ice
- Page 150 and 151: Or remembering thinking: I used to
- Page 152 and 153: Or the admission that I bought a kn
- Page 154 and 155: Or the gap in the journal here. A f
- Page 156 and 157: Or someone once writing something a
- Page 158 and 159: Or that an index of absence is a so
- Page 160 and 161: Or something like that. Diminished
- Page 162 and 163: gler, to be precise - on to the arm
- Page 164 and 165: Or the too-late comprehension that
- Page 166 and 167: Or there’s THIS, off the TOP OF M
- Page 168 and 169: tralaminar nuclear group (baffled a
- Page 170 and 171: incerta (lopsided), PITUITARY GLAND
- Page 172 and 173: have - the other seemingly a king o
A cave again, this time somewhere in <strong>the</strong> Arctic circle – or<br />
bored into <strong>the</strong> side of a ridge in <strong>the</strong> Himalayas. Or a mine<br />
in an abandoned colony on Neptune, a sign hangs above <strong>the</strong><br />
entrance, proclaiming something in some unknown pictographic<br />
language. A pall of Neptunian dust. Inside this cave<br />
it’s unbelievably cold. And dark – <strong>the</strong> kind of darkness that<br />
threatens to gouge out your fucking eyes; <strong>the</strong> kind of darkness<br />
that submerges, strangles. There is a smell in here: something<br />
forsaken, aeons old, still clinging to <strong>the</strong> impervious walls.<br />
Walls like sheet-metal once used as a massive, geological griddle<br />
for <strong>the</strong> exclusive purpose of cooking buffalo, á la plancha.<br />
Or some sort of megafauna, awkwardly straddling those final,<br />
absurd dinosaurs, and <strong>the</strong><br />
modest mammals concurrent<br />
with us. The<br />
smell of <strong>the</strong>se things<br />
cooking against<br />
<strong>the</strong>se walls, and<br />
over <strong>the</strong> course<br />
of a million years<br />
or so – <strong>the</strong> heat<br />
supplied by <strong>the</strong><br />
weltering blood<br />
of <strong>the</strong> continent<br />
– suddenly soused by <strong>the</strong> instantaneous<br />
appearance<br />
of a massive ocean<br />
wrinkled with vents<br />
and infested with<br />
coelacanths. Then all of<br />
this ice (seen in bored<br />
time-lapse with sweeping soundtrack) [...]. Towards <strong>the</strong> back<br />
of <strong>the</strong> cave, <strong>the</strong> smell intensifies, <strong>the</strong>n swerves into something<br />
faecal. (You can feel <strong>the</strong> darkness on your outstretched hands<br />
– <strong>the</strong> shitty stench under your fingernails; <strong>the</strong> cold, of course,<br />
is IN YOUR BONES.) (The acoustic is worth mentioning:<br />
reverberating footsteps describe something like a tunnel, <strong>the</strong><br />
walls ei<strong>the</strong>r side are surely close – just beyond your flailing<br />
fingertips – though <strong>the</strong> entrance behind you and <strong>the</strong> whatever<br />
before are both uncertain. The peculiarities of <strong>the</strong> echo<br />
in here. You blurt out a couple of incoherent yelps. Then a<br />
yell – threatening enough to shock you. Then a weirder noise<br />
– something unpredicted. As in, you didn’t know what you