Memories.

I was going to discuss all this supernatural business with Oscar then I thought sod it. Why waste a profound intellectual topic on him. He would only sneer and make ribald comments.

And besides ghosts don’t exist. Not that I can prove it mind. That’s just my opinion. But I must admit it does seem strange that we spend our lives developing our wonderful complex selves just so the lights go out and we get plunged into darkness forever.  Or wander around in limbo like lost souls.

What we do get is a lot of memories. Maybe that’s what ghosts are. Our memories and other people’s memories of us. They don’t wear bedsheets and walk through walls but they know how to haunt.

I’ve been reading Marcel Proust. Don’t laugh. There’s not a lot to do here on Oscar’s place and I found a copy of ‘In Search of Lost Time’ in his library. Oscar has an eclectic connection of books. Everything from Goethe to Terry Southern, Dante to Bukowski (signed first editions).

There was a time when the supply of days seemed inexhaustible. Now I can count the time I have left  Ten years if I’m lucky. Decades pass like weeks. Memories. Pleasant ones, nasty ones, they never leave us alone do they? Some are in clear focus others get mixed up and embellished. Some are major events others are just occurrences. Too  many of the damn things. Listing them is pointless. Only one thing is certain….time passes.

Air raid wardens sipping tea in the kitchen (lino on the floor), watching black and white TV by a coal fire, smoking Woodbines behind the bike-shed, snogging in the cinema (trying to get a bra off), Butlins Skegness, Soho Square, sleeping on Brighton beach, hitch-hiking in France, Athens, the Plaka, Sultan Ahmet mosque…..first puff on a Jhelum,  Indian trains, Notting Hill Gate,  helping Syd Barrett cross the road, Indica, watching John Lennon climb that fateful ladder, eating  rice & beans in Speightstown, watching Fred Astaire dance….

Memories flit past, blurred, vivid, fragments of conversation, lines from songs… Some are more memorable than others and sometimes the old memory just needs a nudge and they come flooding back.   …..Just as, on a more mundane level, one remembers certain bowel movements and particular copulations. 

A word of caution when dealing with memories. Sometimes you can disturb a nest of bad ones. They come swarming out at you…guilt, shame, regrets…. and don’t get me started on remorse.

Best get back to reality. I am on a private island in BVI getting ready to go on a half-arsed treasure hunt and Lemmy just croaked.

Cremation part 4 or 3b. The Fighting Temeraire.

Before we get too far into Pt.3b it should be noted that the author had more than a little trouble with this part. It was supposed to flow smoothly on from part 3 but the narrator got in a muddle. Omniscience fatigue most likely. Tense changes, flashbacks etc. are never easy to write. Things got so bad he went back to part 3 and made some changes. Arthur’s mother’s ghost showing up was the main problem. She could easily send the narrative off on a wild uncontrollable tangent. So he shuttled her into the bathroom and instead of Arthur nodding off we now find him staring at Turner’s ‘Fighting Temeraire’ on the hotel wall. It’s a cheap reproduction, one of millions, but it’s something to focus on, and for Arthur it may contain the answer he is looking for. Or not. The author is now thinking the whole passage should be filed under SF Pt. 3c.
It had been quite a confusing day. It began with the cremation. Then the meeting with the estate agent. Then came the first train journey on the Brighton Line in twenty years followed by lunch with Simon in Sticky Fingers. Plenty of fodder for rumination there. But Arthur is starting to drift off. He has entered that nebulous state just before sleep comes. This is fertile ground for writers. Ideas seem to appear out of nowhere; whole paragraphs pop up fully formed. The trick is to write them down. Put it off and they vanish. So in theory Arthur should be nodding off except for the voices in the bathroom. One female, middle-class English; the other male, mid-Western American.
‘OK. One of my cats got in a fight with a coon.’ Says the sepulchral American voice.
‘Oh dear.’ Says the English voice. Arthur knows it well, ‘Nothing serious I hope.’
‘He’s got one eye out and an ear hanging off.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘I stitched him up. He’s a tough bastard. Should be OK. Shot the coon. Used the Colt. Wasn’t much left of him.’
The English voice is familiar of course. It’s Arthur’s dead mother. The American voice is familiar but hard to place. Arthur badly wants to go to sleep but he is intrigued. These are voices from beyond after all. Perhaps they know something.
‘Tell me Mr. Burroughs…’
‘Call me Bill.’
‘Regrets. Do you regret anything er, Bill?’
‘Everything.’
‘Anything in particular?’
‘Oh man. Well killing Joan of course. That was wrong. Taking another human life, even by accident, is wrong.’
‘But it freed you up to write. You’re on record as saying you wouldn’t have started writing if the William Tell incident hadn’t happened.’
‘It’s true. Writing became a compulsion because of that. A way of keeping my sanity.’
‘And of suppressing the guilt?’
‘That too. You’ve done your homework. I failed as a father too you know.’
‘So you’ve made a few mistakes?’
‘You could say that.’

‘Er, Bill, there’s no actual plotline in most of your work is there?’

‘Naked Lunch you mean? That’s true. There never was a storyline. It was just a bunch of stuff I wrote when I was out of my pod. I called them routines. Ginsberg put it all together. Made a book out of it.’

This is absurd, thinks Arthur. My mother’s ghost is in the bathroom interviewing William Burroughs! She knows nothing about writing. He’s dead too come to think of it. Who’s writing this stuff anyway? Now comes the sound of the toilet flushing. What are they doing in there? What does it all mean? Don’t expect an answer. The author doesn’t know either. Another reason to avoid using an intrusive narrator. Best to skip the whole episode and move to Pt. 4.

But the ghosts aren’t quite done yet.

‘Shouldn’t there be some kind of resolution?’ asks Arthur’\s mother’s ghost. ‘We can’t just leave Arthur hanging like that can we?’

‘Sure we can,’ says William Burrough’s ghost. ‘ Literature has changed a lot you know. You can do pretty well what you want. Look at my cut-ups for instance. They made no sense at all but people love that stuff. They supply their own meaning. Let Arthur’s mind wander wherever it wants to go. He’ll be fine.’

‘Well I suppose you’re right. I’m not a writer so who am I to say. But mothers can’t help worrying you know. Poor Arthur. He never was a normal child.’

Cremation pt 3. The Apparition.

He makes it safely back to his unexciting hotel room conveniently situated behind Victoria Station with its ‘large and comfortable centrally heated rooms that are stylishly decorated with contemporary furnishings accented with tasteful artwork and soft colour tones. All the new rooms have en-suite facilities and feature Electronic Key cards, Direct Dial Telephone, Hospitality Tray, Hairdryer, and colour TV with remote control. Comfortable bedding and double glazed windows set the stage for a wonderful nights (sic) sleep. Newly refurbished bathrooms include individually thermostatically controlled heated towel-racks and bidet, Rooms from 100 pounds per person per night.’ It has a picture of the Queen Mother above the reception desk. One of Princess Di on the staircase.

Arthur washes his feet in the bidet and switches on the colour TV. First the news to see who’s bombing who then a quick flip through the other channels. Bunch of tattooed people insulting each other in a house. That would be reality show I expect thinks Arthur. Girls shaking their tits at each other. Ditto. What is he hoping to find? David Frost? Parkinson? The Goon Show? No such luck.

But what’s this? Simon! Hosting some panel discussion it looks like with a lot of people Arthur doesn’t know. They are talking about censorship, the greatest literary dilemma of our age according to one of the assembled pundits.
“Well,” says Simon, “I wouldn’t go quite that far. But it’s a problem. On the one hand we want total free expression but it means we have to put up with Penthouse and the other stuff.”
“Oh,” says someone a bit too archly, “you don’t approve of Penthouse, Simon?”
But they can’t catch him. Simon, sensing a political correctness trap, says, “well let’s just say it doesn’t do much for me.”

Arthur’s mind wanders back to the conversation in the restaurant. It had not been just like old times. Not at all. If was as if they had both wanted to recapture some of those moments from places like Aldermaston, Eel Pie island, Paris, Athens, Kabul…but neither of them was prepared to fake it. They had both gone too far along their separate ways. And now this, watching Simon on TV.

“Well I don’t give a flying fuck!” says a woman on the panel who looks like an older version of some groovy chick Arthur had met somewhere. UFO? The Stones free concert in Hyde Park? Isle of Wight?
“Ah Caroline showing your sixties side again,” says Simon provocatively, “dates you a bit darling doesn’t it? You’ve been very quiet lately by the way. Not doing any TV?”
“It’s the silence of Duchamp.”
“Bollocks.” Says Simon. “What about you Martin? Anything in the pipeline we should know about?”

“Memoirsh,” says the one called Martin. He seems to have a stiff jaw,” and dentisht.” And so on. Simon is clearly in his element. It’s a performance he’s obviously given more than once before. Amazing really the way he seems to give all the panelists a few moments in the sun whilst remaining the center of attention himself. And he does it in such a good-natured way. There is no hint of any inner turmoil. Simon is a pro.

Bloody TV, thinks Arthur. It will rot your brain. The funeral had been the main reason for coming back to England. Well that was out of the way. So now what? He’d had a few ideas before. A trip to Littlehampton perhaps to see if he can relive some childhood memories, maybe visit his old school. Sod it.

Arthur’s eyes start to close. Just before he falls asleep he thinks he sees a figure moving around the room followed by noises from the bathroom. Can’t be a chambermaid can it? No it’s his mother’s ghost again. Come to do a bit of tidying up. Soon she’ll be tucking him in.
“Well Arthur," says the apparition, "you must admit that Mr. Wyman was very nice,”
“What?”
“Fancy him paying the bill like that. What a nice man.”

Fucking typical thinks Arthur. Forty years ago she was calling the Stones a bunch of longhaired savages. Now they’ve got classy restaurants and knighthoods she thinks they’re alright. This is the woman who wouldn’t let her son have a banjo! Who used to cram him into a Sea Cadets uniform! Is there no escape? Face it Arthur, you’re still as confused as you ever were.

Now she’s talking to someone in there! Must be another ghost. Arthur doesn’t believe in ghosts. Thai people do. Maybe living in Thailand for 20 years has addled his brain.