RAT The Last Word on the Second Coming

[nick <nick@nickspix.com>]

At 11:01 PM 6/14/99 -0400, Jeffrey Jones wrote:

>And would be captious of me to suggest that the best way to defend the
>thinking of M. Artaud might be to quote him as little as possible? I am
>obviously allergic to the man, (he has apparently never even heard of me)
>but my last words on this particular subject are "The prosecution rests..."
>
>

It's somehow comforting to know that even though the prosecution team has
so little faith in the validity of Antonin's babble, most still develop
allergies to it.

I read Artaud as more trapped-beast actor than writer.  And I read his
writings as the sub rosa initiations for a craft closer to magic than
theater. I don't understand why anyone would "read" Artaud.  But to
practice the craft that he drooled out in his fevered thought is another
matter.  

 "To make metaphysics out of a spoken language is to make the language
express what it does not ordinarily express: to make use of it in a new,
exceptional, and unaccustomed fashion; to reveal its possibilities for
producing physical shock; to divide and distribute it actively in space; to
deal with the intonations in an absolutely concrete manner, restoring their
power to shatter as well as really to manifest something; to turn against
language and its basely utilitarian, one could say alimentary, sources,
against its trapped-beast origins; and finally, to consider language as the
form of INCANTATION."

That great vacillator Hamlet says words, words, words.  But I like words
because I like the War Dance and because I know "fighting words" when I
hear them. I like words because I like the Rain Dance and because I have
come to know that reality is in complete sympathy with our rituals.  This
is not just a belief; it is a practice.

The written word is another animal, less language and more artifact.  But
the poem also seems an ancient ritual to me.  I imagine the first writing
instrument to be the spear tip.  The first poem, a map to the Great Hunt
carved into the ground.  And the word was always flesh, the great Migrating
Heard we followed deep into the unknown of our world, ourselves. 

Like Ahab, obsessed with his Moby Dictionary.  That great white whale is
the Page itself.  I always conflate the book with the movie, but no matter,
it all ends with an actor entangled with the beast.  Famous last words or
famous last actions, no matter, I always conflate the two.  Gregory Peck says,

"Thus, I give up the spear!"

In the medieval scriptorium the spoken word was not allowed.  Talk would
have been a distraction from the deed.  The parchment on which the
"scriptor" copied and illuminated was the most beautiful and suitable
material for writing or printing that has ever been used.  Parchment was
the prepared skin of such animals as cattle, sheep, goats, and occasionally
deer.  The young animal was preferred.  The skin of the kid, lamb, and calf
made the finest parchments and vellums. Used chiefly in creating elaborate
miniatures, the whitest and thinnest were named uterine vellum, made from
the skin of an aborted calf.

A manuscript of 200 leaves would take the skin of around 100 calves or
kids.  The Medieval Bible always had a metal clasp on the binding to stop
the parchment returning to the shape of the animal. Recently in Dublin with
Gaby and Josh, we visited the Book of Kells, the eighth century illuminated
manuscript.  Is "visit" the right word for this audience with the Word of
God.   And the Crucified One is sometimes called the Lamb of God.  Yeats'
incantation for the Second Coming of the Word.
 
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

I have a word tattooed on the inside of my lower lip.  So sometimes instead
speaking, I just roll the flesh down and expose what's inside.  

--nick