Well, it may interest the Council’s learned psychologist that in the new multimillion-dollar complex which the Cabaret Voltaire is building as its cabaret and club rooms there is to be a school playground with bell, bubblers and marbles ring. It is not being built for therapy. Of course, if the wretched Council psychologist is correct it may work as therapy when I get to play in it but our reasoning is that the school playground is the source of all cultural organisation. We have built it as a laboratory of social behaviour. There is a faction in the Cabaret Voltaire which believes that the school playground should not be left behind when we become adults, that adults should have sessions once a month on a school playground. Arthur Wellesley said that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. However, we at the Cabaret Voltaire are trying to eliminate organised sport and substitute instead the informal games of the playground. Until we get back to the playground and its lore we will never understand the problem of doctor’s waiting rooms.
Statistically speaking, the first visit to a doctor is usually from an injury sustained in the playground. We need then to study the playground to understand what it is that forms the expectations of the doctor’s waiting room in the mind of the child and the impact of the reality of the doctor’s waiting room and the disparity with what is in the child’s mind, which as we have argued is the cause of blighted anticipation. This nation has a blighted expectation – we expect so little. Consequently we get so much pre-digested mediated experience. It comes from the replacing of the free play of the school playground with ‘activities’ and organised sports. The school playground has its own creative explosive energy which has to be preserved from organised activity. We have to find again the frenzy of the playground, that burning involvement in play where there is no past and no future (Rough and Tumble Play was identified by Blurton Jones [1967] in his pioneer study in which he made special reference to play-hunting and play-fighting in children).
I first ate bhuja while working as a lieutenant-farrier in the Indian army. I remember Noel Coward asking me once about Southerby? Or Sedgewick? Or was it Sime? Noel said, ‘Have you had any word of that bloke in the Third, For apart from his mess bills exceeding his pay, He took to pig-sticking in quite the wrong way.’ I was very happy in the officers’ mess. We were a family of brother officers. It was the centre of regimental life. In there at seven-thirty of an evening in our regimentals: stiff shirt, skintight trousers, skintight jacket. A glass of sherry or a chota peg. Then ‘first toast’ – something salty on toast – then fish, then a joint and then pudding and then a savoury. And the port, Madeira and marsala. And the pipe band parading around the table. I now believe that it was the bhuja that I had while a young lieutenant-farrier in charge of the mules in the Third which has endowed me with the capacity to maintain my creative frenzy.
We have to bring back the playground frenzy assisted by bhuja and the brotherhood of the officers’ mess to somehow get this nation going again. That is why the tremendous marketing success of bhuja is gladdening news. We may be finding our way back to that frenzied fiery creative state. This will mean an end to afternoon naps which are ruining this nation. We must learn that afternoon sleep is bad. Remember this about the after noon sleep: you go to sleep a wilting rose but you awaken as a cactus.
How to Make Toast.
‘I thought you liked toast,’ she
exclaimed, with an injured air,
observing that he did not touch it.
‘Sometimes,’ said Conradin.
When I come to think about it, not much has been written about the art of making toast. Yet according to a Cabaret Voltaire survey it is eaten 7.7 times a week by healthy people and 76.3 times a week by the unhealthy.
Toast is the elemental meal. The making of toast is our first cooking experience and returns us to racial and phylogenic connections. The smell of toasting takes us back to the fire in the cave, the lair, old bones, fur, to the bakehouse, the wheatfield, the granary, to husking and winnowing. I grow faint with atavistic memories. That is why the smell of burning toast causes unconscious panic in us. It is the smell of the world on fire. Many of our problems as a nation and with interest rates come from a loss of elemental symbols of which toast is the first and most basic. Toast isn’t made properly anymore, it isn’t made with respect.
I like to remember also that the making of toast and toasting as a form of speech-making are associated. Toasting began with the serving of a piece of toast in a goblet with mead or other alcoholic drinks. When the ‘toast’ was proposed the goblet had to be drained and the toast swallowed. Probably helped keep them sober. The Cabaret Voltaire keeps up this practice but it doesn’t keep anyone sober. We are reminded too of the sacrament of the Christian church. The first snack. In the great bard’s work The Merry Wives of Windsor you will recall Falstaff saying, ‘Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in’t.’ In a recent discussion of Toast in Shakespeare that the Cabaret Voltaire organised together with the Confraternita Amanti del Pane I argued that toast was very much on Shakespeare’s mind when he was working on this scene because a few lines further on Falstaff says, ‘I’ll have my brains ta’en out, and buttered …’ All Thinkers know the feeling that the mind has turned into toast. I suspect that Shakespeare was eating his morning toast or his late-night savoury toast with his port while working on this scene. Our Eskimo friend, Nuuk, wishes to point out that Falstaff drinks the sack to warm himself, saying, ‘My belly’s as cold as if I had swallowed snowballs …’ Thank you, Nuuk.
The art of toasting someone’s honour is, I’ve noticed, a neglected form. A point: people no longer stand up when drinking the toast. They don’t clink glasses. The sound of good glass touching good glass while drinking wine completes the gratification of the four senses: fine wine pleases the eye, the nose and the taste, and the sound of good glass touching pleases the ear. I raised the decline in toasting standards and the loss of elemental symbolism and historical connection at the Council inquiry into my chairpersonship. I made a long submission about toasting and speech-making which went on over three days. My position briefly is this: it relates to the science of Life! If we can’t get a simple ceremony like toasting right, what can we get right? This culture is doomed if we allow these things to slip away.
At the Cabaret Voltaire each member has a metre-long brass toasting fork with his or her name engraved on it and on cold winter nights we make bombay toast, mull wine, and discuss the science of Life, now and then proposing a toast as the spirit moves, telling of the time when there was an outback out back, discoursing on mules we have known. Nuuk knows nothing of toasting but he does know about the ‘icing’ on the cake. Nuuk is learning tax law at the Cabaret Voltaire.
I am reminded of that famous short story by Saki, written in 1911, called ‘Sredni Vashtar’ and the immortal lines:
‘I thought you liked toast,’ she exclaimed, with an injured air, observing that he did not touch it.
‘Sometimes,’ said Conradin.
That sums up what we all feel, I suspect. A slice of buttered toast is the point before the sandwich. The sandwich is half a dinner. ‘Something on toast’ is where the hors d’oeuvre becomes the snack. The toasted sandwich is where the sandwich is on its way to being the pie.
I would argue that ‘Sredni Vashtar’ is the greatest toast story of the English language. Ten-year-old Conradin was looked after by his guardian in a relationship of mutual dislike. Conradin hated her with a ‘desperate sincerity’. He played in a dull cheerless garden overlooked by many windows. Conradin found refuge in the tool shed. A Houdan hen was kept there and, unbeknown to his guardian, Conradin also kept a polecat ferret in the tool shed. He befriended these two animals. But it was the lithe ferret in the tool shed which was his secret and fearful joy, to be kept ‘scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman’. He gave the beast a wonderful name, Sredni Vashtar, and it grew into a god and a religion. The Woman suspected that Conradin was getting too much pleasure from his tool shed and t
he hen so she sold the hen. Conradin then approached the hidden ferret and asked it to ‘do one thing for him’. Finding that despite getting rid of the hen the boy still spent his time in the tool shed, the Woman made another raid and found the ferret. Conradin watched from his window and while the Woman was in the tool shed getting rid of the ferret, Conradin chanted a curse. Finally, the long, lithe ferret came out of the tool shed with dark, wet blood stains around its jaws. It made its way into the bushes. The Woman did not appear.
Conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and proceeded to toast himself a piece of bread. And during the toasting of it and the buttering of it with much butter and slow enjoyment of eating it, Conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick spasms beyond the dining-room door. The loud foolish screaming of the maid … scuttering footsteps … hurried embassies for outside help, and then, after a lull, the scared sobbings … ‘Whoever will break it to the poor child?’ And while they debated the matter among themselves, Conradin made himself another piece of toast.
You can see why it’s a favourite at the Cabaret Voltaire. You must understand, it is not that we desire the fate of death for the Woman although she was beastly to the boy’s ferret – the point of the story is that the boy did not admit his passion for toast to the guardian. That would have placed him in her power. Hence his statement, ‘Sometimes’. It is an Edwardian story from a more harmonious time, when values were in place, the sunset of history. Freudian matters did not concern the Edwardians.
On the question of toasting, I have another tip taught to me by R.M. Williams when he and I were muleteers before the outback disappeared one morning. It’s called the bush toasting device. You need two pieces of wire. The old bush ways will come back. Take a piece of fencing wire about two metres long, bend it in half and twist it together to form a single handle. Spread its two ends and bend the ends into hooks. Take another piece of wire about seventy-five centimetres long and bend it into a loop and then bend the loop over to form a bread slice holder, like a toast rack. Now hook its ends to the handle hooks, close the hooks, and you have a bread holder which allows you, while toasting on a campfire, to flip the slice over when one side is toasted. Not many people can make toast on a campfire.
I was at the annual gathering of ex-muleteers last week where we were doing tricks with fencing wire and got to talking to a party of visiting politicians. After showing them how to make a bush toasting device, I talked about the Cabaret Voltaire’s Traditional Toasting and Campfire Sunday National Project, which they promised to look into and seemed engrossed by, before seeing someone on the other side of the room with whom they had to speak urgently. The plan is this: to revive the art of toasting on an open fire and recapture our elemental connections to the fire, the cave, the lair, the fur, old bones – once a year we will introduce children to the campfire, the barbecue, using real eucalyptus wood instead of charcoal, and using green forked sticks to cook with. Nuuk is a master of the blubbercue, something else again. I will be master of fires and officiate at the ceremony, for which I will write a proclamation. The Cabaret Voltaire will train those children who wish to know how to light fires. It could become a holy day.
Until this country gets the green forked stick back in its hand it will continue towards cultural decay and the loss of centre to its existence. I do not joke. The loss of the campfire and the green forked stick tradition is a cultural diminishment of the most devastating kind. So the city will be smoky for a day or so – but what a fine smell to give the city! And we could burn the fallen leaves, bark, sticks and twigs of the trees which people have planted throughout the city. The important thing is that it would allow children to make toast over an open flame, a noble art which is almost lost, a coupling with the past when we were all hunters and gatherers together around the campfire. Before it’s too late we must try harder with our lives and busy ourselves with proper attention to the details of our existence.
The Cabaret Voltaire Annual Report (Established Zurich, 1916: Moruya, New South Wales, Australia, 1990)
Chairperson’s Introductory Remarks to Annual Report
The Cabaret Voltaire (which houses the Museo del Pane and the musical instruments of Les Six) is a gathering place and refuge for political and artistic movements of the early twentieth century. During this past year, The Theatre Libre, the Imaginary Museum, The Theatre of Panic, some retired Candle Dancers, and some old members of the Grand Magic Circus of Barcelona have joined us. The Bauhaus Muleteers are a sub-branch of the Vortexists, who are affiliated to the Dadaists and Fauvists and the Anarcho-Syndicalists but have nothing to do with the Vorticists. Everyone will recall that our member, Vanco Palmer, once said that a modern suburb is like a mule, without pride of ancestry or hope of posterity. It is often said that the Cabaret Voltaire has pride of ancestry but no hope of posterity. Be that as it may, the Cabaret Voltaire says what has to be said. The Cabaret Voltaire and the Museo del Pane are committed to the bitter bread of truth. This country will not accept that the only way forward out of our self-credibility difficulties is to return to the fundamental bitter truths which are contained in our various manifestos. I am writing the chairperson’s report from the House of Desks, which is an annex of the Cabaret Voltaire, while my office is being defurbished. Many writers and scholars who have no fixed abode or institutional support work at the House of Desks on hourly rates. We are a merry band. We write away and make copious notes and footnotes and compile bibliographies and source notes and manifestos to the cries of, ‘Who’s got the sticky tape?!… Who’s got the scissors?!… Who’s got the Perkin’s Paste?!’
The Year’s Activities
1. The Campaign Against Photography – ‘From today photography is dead’.
We hear from Rome that at last the Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property has agreed to our submission to halt all photography. The realisation that everyone born since 1888 and their house, wedding, christening, holidays, family members and pets have been photographed and that every monument and natural feature of any significance in every country has been photographed a thousand times, and that twenty million restaurant table photographs have now been registered and that storing and filing and indexing of all the photographs of all the people of the world is now beyond any possible system, and given that photographs cannot be stored on computer and given that the committee set up to look at all the photographs which exist in the world has collapsed under the strain, UNESCO has decided to stop all family snapshot taking and tourist photography from the year 2010. In accordance with our submissions they have decided that two hundred people in each country will be selected and their photographs kept and one in 100,000 photographs will be randomly selected for preservation. At least the Cabaret Voltaire achieved that much. The rest of the photographs in the world are to be burned. The Cabaret Voltaire has volunteered its services for the burning.
2. Eluding the Past.
The Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, in line with our submission, has set the proportions of past, present and future at 10:80:10 until the year 2010 and from then on the past will be phased out.
3. Meal Reform.
As a way back to fundamentals and to escape the three-meal day, most schools in most of the states and sixty-nine per cent of all families have now abandoned break fast and lunch and have introduced eleven meal breaks during the day. As part of meal reform we are opposing the introduction of filtered water and so-called ‘pure’ drinking water. The Cabaret Voltaire feels that it is important that the species pollutes at an even rate and that we pollute in step with the world otherwise those drinking pure water will become weakened and exposed, unable to tolerate the ever harsher world. We must pollute in step with our times.
4. The Playground Reconstruction.
In the last six months over 500,000 people have come to play in the Cabaret Voltaire’s reconstruction of a school playground and much frenzy has
been generated and expended in frantic play to the wellbeing of the community. Visitors are invited to fight behind the toilet block and to pull each other’s hair. The Cabaret restaurant serves play lunch at eleven a.m. to visitors.
5. Sales of Bush Toasting Device Made from Fencing Wire.
Nil
6. Waiting.
We have sold a million copies of our cassette For Cars Caught in Traffic, which teaches the value of waiting with special references to the joy of waiting for the light to change, and which helps people understand that moving slowly through the heavy traffic of a big city is the same as medieval folk meandering through the Black Forest on a mule.
7. The Ceremonial Harpoon.
The maintenance branch report that the Eskimo Nuuk’s harpoon is still stuck in the festival hall organ and cannot be removed. Our accounts section advise that this item be written off.
8. The Five-Hundred-Year-Old Fur Coat.
Nuuk’s fur coat which was digested by the goat. The executive committee of the Cabaret Voltaire agree that the coat smells different now. The digestive tract of a goat changes the smell of even a five-hundred-year-old coat. Having recovered the coat from the goat after the digestive process and then reconstituted and reconstructed the coat, it and Nuuk were flown to Baffin Island where it was reinvested as the sacred coat of that com munity. It should go on record that I, as chairperson, still believe that it would lose nothing by being washed occasionally with a mild soap.
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