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 golf ball. I fucking hate golf, you say, and we share a smile. The camera plummets in, past the smile, down through the labyrinth and slows to a stop before the altered tumour – a false idol to that massive fleshy god, always-already rendered in the latest HD technology – an Nvidia graphics card with some unholy amount of memory; running on a quad, quadcore thing with TWO massive monitors – one for editing on (vivisection), the other for viewing the rendered footage (rendering is amazingly fast, of course). The rendering on the hair of the GOD: moving in treacly gusts, slow, as if held underwater, snagged in the hatch of the bathysphere by the sleeve of the bathrobe it went in wearing – wet-look, clumped together in attractive, sinuous ridges – the way you wish you could get it. Perfect drift – a lunar tide, sucking the hair eternally. Per- haps even a few fizzing bubbles added (an excess of demonstra- tional effect) to CONVINCE. On the surface, the lens of the camera BOBS, bisected, the upper half relatively clear (though flecked – again to convince – with droplets that act as prisms to the image), while the lower magnifies. Bifocals worn by someone clearly in need of something more variable, less harshly delineated. Certainly a relative of ours. Mitochondrial. And in the distance – seen in the upper, above-water half – a dramatic shoreline; the shoreline of a fictional island – a Skull Island – that forbodes, presents a front of jagged cliffs, screeching seabirds, a crest of jungle visible beyond all that; a cave, it’s mouth a retarded gape – swilling brine like mouthwash or drool over KEEN, sharded rocks. An ominous tone from the soundtrack, but you decide to strike out, front crawl,
towards what looks like CERTAIN DEATH. Fool! – You can barely swim! (The camera shoots upwards to take in the whole scene – your pathetic figure receding against a swollen, dark blue ground – then the island, whole, as we pass through a winding sheet of cumulus cloud: a vast, protruding geometry that is revealed, to the shrill strains of a few discordant string sections, to be a perfect metaphor for your tumour! A lay-estimate might put it at four or five miles across. Your SCULLING figure is now invisible and the scale of the shot starts to buckle under the considerable weight of the analogy – the sea resembling some sort of amniotic fluid – maybe, as movement is less apparent from this GOD’s eye vantage, agar jelly – a mongrel iris surrounding the tumour-island in the centre, protruding sore and alien and thrumming in the midst of such uni- formity – a shark’s fin in its emo- tional affect. This coming as some- thing a shock, though predicta- ble. Importantly, this predictability does not diminish the effect. We both cry. We hold one another. Later, I admit [...] the geology of the tumour confounds human physiology. As in, geology does not belong inside your black-red innards. A stone, only it looks man-made, like a musket ball or something. AS different to those stones that accrue as a result of stress or your diet of cigarettes, vodka. Though of course, it is precisely that – all of that, catalysed by this text. Gall stones, kidney stones, otoliths, teratoma, etc. It’s crucial we RECTIFY any confusion in this matter: the conjuration that this text performs – is performing right now – is reliant upon the context it finds itself in, within, inside your steaming guts.
- 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 124 and 125: A cave again, this time somewhere i
- Page 126 and 127: The underside of a banana slug. The
- Page 128 and 129: taxidermist, so as to preserve its
- 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
- Page 174 and 175: The brute indomitability of a list.
- Page 176 and 177: Or a massive tattoo of a shark bite
- Page 178 and 179: Or, to focus a little, the reptilia
towards what looks like CERTAIN DEATH. Fool! – You<br />
can barely swim! (The camera shoots upwards to take in <strong>the</strong><br />
whole scene – your pa<strong>the</strong>tic figure receding against a swollen,<br />
dark blue ground – <strong>the</strong>n <strong>the</strong> island, whole, as we pass through<br />
a winding sheet of cumulus cloud: a vast, protruding geometry<br />
that is revealed, to <strong>the</strong> shrill strains of a few discordant<br />
string sections, to be a perfect metaphor for your tumour!<br />
A lay-estimate might put it at four or five miles across. Your<br />
SCULLING figure is now invisible and <strong>the</strong> scale of <strong>the</strong> shot<br />
starts to buckle under <strong>the</strong> considerable weight of <strong>the</strong> analogy<br />
– <strong>the</strong> sea resembling some sort of amniotic fluid – maybe,<br />
as movement is less apparent from this GOD’s eye vantage,<br />
agar jelly – a mongrel<br />
iris surrounding <strong>the</strong><br />
tumour-island in <strong>the</strong><br />
centre, protruding<br />
sore and alien and<br />
thrumming in <strong>the</strong><br />
midst of such uni-<br />
formity – a shark’s<br />
fin in its emo-<br />
tional affect. This<br />
coming as some-<br />
thing a shock,<br />
though predicta-<br />
ble. Importantly,<br />
this predictability<br />
does not diminish<br />
<strong>the</strong> effect. We both<br />
cry. We hold one<br />
ano<strong>the</strong>r. Later, I admit<br />
[...] <strong>the</strong> geology of <strong>the</strong><br />
tumour confounds hu<strong>man</strong> physiology. As in, geology does<br />
not belong inside your black-red innards. A stone, only it<br />
looks <strong>man</strong>-made, like a musket ball or something. AS different<br />
to those stones that accrue as a result of stress or your<br />
diet of cigarettes, vodka. Though of course, it is precisely<br />
that – all of that, catalysed by this text. Gall stones, kidney<br />
stones, otoliths, teratoma, etc. It’s crucial we RECTIFY<br />
any confusion in this matter: <strong>the</strong> conjuration that this text<br />
performs – is performing right now – is reliant upon <strong>the</strong><br />
context it finds itself in, within, inside your steaming guts.
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