HEAT Series 1

Even if the Neolithics weren’t the first to inter their dead in a flexed, fetal position – in a posture, that is, of incipient rebirth – they were the first to do so on a regular, collective, institutionalised basis. ‘Planted’, these germinal corpses, these embryos wrapped in all the regalia of an on-going existence, might well have been expected to ‘sprout’ at the appropriate moment: ‘spring’ into an afterlife of their own.

I picture Berger writing this at his home in Quincy in the Haute-Savoie region of France in 1998. My picture has him holding his head in his hands. Why did it occur to him, the notion of writing this letter in this way? What does he mean by this ‘deep past’ offering ‘meagre’ yet ‘massive’ support of resistance? He’s flirting freely here – even for him –with the mushy vagueness. And: what’s the secret of the stones?

“if only the smell, the clashing trains
would leave, but trade’s robust
and kisses sweet where love swans
past fresh walls, beneath new pines”

Feathering a white thread
Through phantasmal waters
Your boat leaves me small
In dawn’s first light.

The lady standing next to us said we had ‘missed the excitement’. A young man had jumped down the Blowhole itself, just after it had blown up its spume, and emerged seemingly unscathed in the ocean below. And now he was encouraging his girlfriend to jump down to him from the cliff.

If architecture and urban planning are like languages which communicate belonging, then the parafunctional emerges when the languages multiply into a cacophony or are exhausted by their disconnection from lived experience. Parafunctional spaces are neither meaningful nor meaningless, we pass by, merely indifferent to, or ignorant of, the precise measure of their possibility.

HEAT is a controlled intensity. Noise is our enemy, and rubbish, and imposture. We stand for a simple integrity. And for writing which is committed, passionate, innovative and adventurous.

I had qualms also as to whether to write about the indignities of Robert’s failing body and mind when he had always been so fastidious about his presentation to the world. But then I thought, ‘This is life – it’s tough.’ Robert had no such qualms when writing poems about his parents, and, to me, they’re his most emotional and moving works.

It’s as though / she is being sucked out of existence sideways through a porthole / and we’ve got hold of her feet. / She’s very calm. / If you live long enough it isn’t death you fear / but what life can still do.

A game of cricket on the English grass, in / the slow-motion blast / of the sun and / amid the slow hand-claps — / the bats’ /
are similar but even slower strokes.

Lamps through the quiet house; outside, there’s rain. / Open windows; verandah; TV moon / next door, amongst dark fronds; the typewriter / sounds of wetness; and bougainvillea / entwining each carved white pole with a vine / cruel as wire.

I find your grave / is small, child-like; / you’ve always seemed / claustrophobic, / but this — too sad / as final ground; / such narrowness / un-American.

Prior to literacy, before self-consciousness and repression sets in at age five or so, I’m a thrilled witness to my kids’ entry into language as they get on a roll and talk like Ania…a kind of pure state marked by repetition, stutters and sudden flows.

If we think about it, we see that in asking the question What is Man? we want to ask: What can Man become? Which means: Can he master his own destiny, can he make himself, can he give form to his own life? Let us say then that man is a process, and precisely, the process of his own acts.

remember those post-binge / mid-seventies Glebe mornings— / lantana & sandstone, bits / of Harbour out the window / & the light, intense & blue?

The phantom image of ‘home’, of a strangely adjacent England disappears altogether. Another territory arises, a different territory is formed. The map of the Atlas opens up now. The real map obliterates the imaginary map, the phantom map, the severed leg still hurts…oh…oh…oh…