HEAT Series 2

We know nothing whatever about how Macbeth was first performed. Not a shred of evidence survives. It is one of the great Shakespearean mysteries.

But consider the following. Macbeth was Shakespeare’s first and only Scottish play, filled with material guaranteed to interest his new Scottish king, from witchcraft to regicide to James’s descent from Banquo.

the goldfish pepsi / bumps into / her double in the / mirror glass of the tank / would she try to eat herself / for breakfast we could / play her the tape of dorian / gray

Last year I found myself at Lingnan University in Hong Kong to speak at a conference on action cinema. What better place to reflect on the work of cinematic editing in all its forms, from the blazing guns and flying fists of blockbuster movies to the stridently flickering visual assaults of the avant-garde?

We’ve turned it into emotion – / red pickle like the night’s heat, ice creams so / smooth they enforce silence, orange- / flavoured kisses, conversations directed by rum.

Anemograms from years you can hardly remember / handed round at an evening garden party. / Empty envelopes the colour of envy, / sparkling wine and cautious laughter.

The pitter-patter of falling water echoed in my ears, as though I could hear the squelching of soap on women’s skin. Supple flesh, water, the sweet scent of soap. When could I go swimming again? I didn’t know. I had no way of guessing, understanding, exploring, or predicting my fate. My mind swam with question marks, the answer to all of these questions the three words ‘I don’t know.’

The eyes are faulty interpreters. They pretend to know / The language but do not listen to accents / And are too confident for their own good.

Cameron called speed the laureate’s drug. I think Alan liked the connotation and he would not stop anyone from calling him The Laureate when he was running around bent and on speed. He even started promoting himself as The Laureate. Only when he was on speed though. When he was sober he was ironic and very modest.

Above all other obstacles, it was fear that had held me back in surfing and later, kept me out of the water. Fear of failure, fear of being an imposter, fear of being out of control. All these fears coalesced in the tell-tale corrugations of a big set looming out the back, that unstoppable phalanx of pure, liquid energy from which there was no escape.

All human beings, Hazlitt argued, have the capacity to both reason and imagine, and these abilities should not be regarded as separate. Nor should one be favoured over the other. They are complementary; the passions must bow to the moderating influence of reason, just as reason must not overlook the truth that is revealed by the passions.

Later, at a reception given by the Goethe Institute I was finally introduced to Sebald and was somewhat taken aback by the warmth, the quiet laughter behind the spectacles, the ingenuous manner. ‘Call me Max,’ he suggested, when I struggled with his initials, and I believe that was when I gathered the courage to make a small medical diagnosis of the narrator in The Rings of Saturn, whom I recognised immediately as one suffering from a slipped spinal disc…

Da Ponte, dear friend and collaborator, finder of words for me, this is the letter I shall never write and have always been addressing to you, my side of a conversation that has been in progress since we first began, always faintly to be heard under the music I found to fit your words, or rather, in the gap, which is not always silence, where words and music fail, and must always fail, to connnect; in our case an attempt to move between Italy and our more sober North as if there were no Alps to cross. 

I was re-reading Calvino. That is a pleasure of mine, re-reading. I like the surprising newness in familiarity. And very early on I came upon something that astonished me: the description of a railway station café and all its vapours, the smokiness, the befogged glass, the cloud of steam from the coffee machine; the regulars looking sideways at newcomers, the customers at the bar, the haloed lights, the odour of train that lingers after the trains have left.

Dodo / Okay, so we’re famous for all the wrong reasons, / Our ancestors shed their energy expense & settled / On Mauritius – selection did the rest & our wings / Pared back. Portuguese found us, forest dwelling.

When the pub became overcrowded with tossers from North Sydney, we’d head over to Spanky’s with a case of beer and settle in for the rest of the night. He had a huge plasma TV and a lethal sound system. He’d pass around joints like he was dealing out poker cards, even when we couldn’t afford to buy anything. He’d let us use his computer to surf porn sites and to download acid jazz. 

I haven’t really seen it, Caravaggio’s / Death of…but the saint holds his neck / with his right hand, his forehead / with the left / and it really is the dumbfoundedness of mourning.