Loose Living

by Frank Moorhouse

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Our HERO recovers after his

  Monumental

  BREAKDOWN and sees LIFE

  more clearly but not

  more SURELY

  MY LACANIAN analyst said that I was simply suffering the Crisis of Western Man combined with the Crisis of the White Privileged Male together with Post-Colonial Guilt and a touch of Post-Modern Confusion.

  Much to her surprise, the De-centring of the Author had not affected me at all.

  She feels I am handling International Fame very well and that loose living was the appropriate strategy.

  She wouldn’t agree that I was just ‘ineffably sad’.

  To nurse my breakdown, I went into deep contemplation in the wilds of the Jura mountains, on the border of France and Switzerland, where the anarchist movement began which, it was suggested, could be the source of my inner chaos.

  There, I was able to lie in my sleeping bag at night under the stars, well away from the fast lane, away from the night life of the capitals of Europe, and where, deep in the bosom of nature, I could watch the silent slipstreams of the airline traffic of the whole world pass overhead.

  The long white lines of the aircraft created an illustration which showed me that I was at the very crossroads of the world, maybe the crossroads of life.

  Or at least at the crossroads of the world’s airlines. Up above me passed Boris Yeltsin, there went Yasser Arafat, Gough and Margaret Whitlam, there went Lady Di, Olympic champions.

  All passing overhead as I lay in my camp in the Jura mountains.

  I felt I was being personally intersected, the silent slip streams mapping my place in the universe.

  As something of a bushman, I know that every country has its secret insect, unspoken of to foreigners.

  France, as well as having the moustiques, with which we are all familiar, has the mooches, taons and aoutats, cousins of the moustiques. I’ve had scandalous trouble at family reunions back home with cousins. As with Mozart, I can never remember what the Bible says about cousins.

  At least they don’t have the African worm which breeds in the human eye and grows to ninety centimetres, which I had to deal with on my great treks there.

  Up in the pine forests, I fell in with some mountain folk and drank the strange wines of the Jura with these hoary men armed with shotguns, bandoliers of cartridges slung across their chests.

  As we sat around the camp fire, they spoke that special wisdom of the folk of the Jura. The direct earthy sense of their observations and the smell of burning pine wood cleared both my intelligence and my respiratory system, taking my mind back to the deepest origins of existence.

  Up there in the mountains they taught me another form of analysis which predates Lacan by centuries—the Forest Catechism of the Six Questions.

  ‘By your answers you shall be known,’ the elder said.

  I admit that I shivered at his words but sat, humble and poised, awaiting the Questions.

  The first question was: You are on a path in the forest—how do you portray this path and where do you locate this path?

  I closed my eyes. They sat in silence around the fire. I heard the crackling of the burning wood.

  I replied that I saw the path as being through the Jura pine forests, I saw the time as now, but I saw the forest spreading for thousands of square miles in its original primeval state, alive with all its animals and birds, at the very centre of ancient Europe.

  I said that I saw my comrades back then as being of the same stock as those reclined around me now.

  At the mention of ‘my comrades’ they smiled and looked at each other. One stood and poked the fire. Another chuckled and drank from the wineskin, which he then passed to me.

  The elder spoke again: ‘The path divides three ways. Which fork do you take?’

  I pondered this and replied, ‘I choose the path least travelled.’

  He said, ‘That is the path straight ahead. Most people turn to the left or to the right.’

  The third question was: You come to the place of thorns. What do you do?

  I replied that I pushed on through the thorns. I said that in my country we have a saying, ‘He loves dancing well, he who dances among the thorns’.

  They all nodded at this.

  The elder then asked: ‘You come to a large épicéa log across your path, and then?’

  I thought for a moment and said that I would surely look over at the other side of this log before jumping or climbing over it. One did not move blindly in any forest.

  I said merrily that I would apply a ‘logistical’ solution to the Question of the Log. Or perhaps use ‘logarithms’.

  They stared at me blankly.

  They did not understand these puns. I took the opportunity to teach them both the use of logarithms and the military science of logistics.

  Upon hearing my explanations, they laughed heartily. They all slapped their calloused hands on their leather trousers in appreciation of my wit and learning.

  The fifth question was: You come across a bear?

  The mountain men looked at me closely as I prepared to answer. I said that from my experience in northern Canada I knew the nature of bears and the terror of bears. I had found that it was pointless to run from a bear and pointless also to climb a tree. The bear could outrun a human and could either shake you from the tree, climb into the tree or pull down the tree.

  There were knowing grunts from the Jura mountain men.

  I said that in the past I had found that throwing my rucksack to the bear was the best defence. The bear would tear the rucksack apart and devour all that looked like food.

  Because of this, I always carried heavy-duty tranquillisers and strong sleeping tablets when in bear country, both for myself and for the bear.

  As the bear devoured the contents of the rucksack, it inevitably first drank the Cognac and swallowed the drugs.

  The bear’s actions would quickly slow and it would then fall into a deep sleep, leaving you free to make your way well out of the bear’s olfactory range and to safety.

  They applauded this heartily and took it as an appropriate time to open the cask of Cognac and to pass it around, drinking from the bunghole and using their fore arms to cradle the cask.

  They made their own rough humour about Cognac and the hug of the bear.

  The sixth question was: You come finally to a high stone wall and you hear a sound on the other side. What is it you do and what is the sound?

  I said the sound that I hear is the cry of the coyote. I climb to the top of the wall to scout out the sound and to find my bearings.

  There was interested muttering among them, and I noticed that they had slipped back into their local argot to discuss my answer to this question. One crossed himself. I sensed, though, that I had risen in their estimation but why I did not yet know.

  The elder said that my answers to the forest catechism were a description of my true and intrinsic self. The questions describe the journey of life. My answer to the first question revealed how I saw my life. I lived my life in the here-and-now. However, I had pictured a large wild forest where there was, in fact, now only a small forest, that is, I enhanced my world with my imagination, preferring the older, wilder nature to the civilised world. He suspected I belonged to another time.

  He said that I saw my comrades as comrades of the trail, their place to be taken, perhaps, by other comrades on other trails as I went on my journey.

  ‘My journey from bar to bar,’ I quipped.

  He said I must realise that I had also to dwell there in that wilder forest which I had created. That while using my imagination to free myself from the limitations of reality, I was, in turn, claimed by my invented world.

  It was a sobering thought. But not too sobering.

  On the matter of the path which forked in three ways, he said that this revealed the civic temperament and social volition of the traveller. The path straight ahead which I had chosen was the path least travelled, i
t was the path of the one who laughed with life.

  I said that in my country it was sometimes called ‘sitting on the fence’.

  The mountain folk guffawed at my colourful and poetic expression. ‘Our expression is ménager la chèvre et le chou—to live between the goat and the cabbage,’ one said.

  The elder gestured with impatience at our levity and we stopped. ‘True, there is a way of avoiding political passion which is cowardice,’ he said. ‘But there is another way which combines both bravery and compassion for the human condition.’ Surprisingly, he mentioned the Red Cross. But I recalled that the Red Cross had originated in this region and almost certainly he and his comrades would have shares in it.

  He went on to say that the question of the thorns showed how I dealt with the petty hindrances of life.

  He saw in my ‘dancing on the thorns’ answer a happy relationship to irritation and to pain. A willingness to incorporate the pain of living into a joke and a proverb. But, he said, I must take care that I was not taking the path of self-punishment.

  In a way I am glad that he didn’t go further with the whole question of pain, given the Companions of the Night with whom I sometimes carouse. They tend to be those who see some punishment, self or otherwise, as a source of fun.

  The question of the fallen log revealed how I handled the profound obstacles of life. He said that in my answer he saw that I exercised caution but again that I joked away the profundity of my problems. He said that it could be said that I laughed in the face of life.

  I could not tell if he approved of this laughing in the face of life.

  I thought not.

  ‘You must be able to make the world laugh along with you,’ he said, ‘for if you laugh and the world does not laugh with you, beware.’

  I felt a chill.

  ‘We come now to the matter of the bear.’ The other comrades of the camp fire laughed among themselves again. ‘This is the question of the carnal, of the way we live with, and accomplish and delight in, our lust.’

  At my obvious embarrassment, the others made jokes in their colourful argot.

  The elder said that my answer had been a befitting appreciation of the apprehensions and ordeals of the carnal. It was of interest that I had chosen to see the bear not as small, not as something to befriend, not as a fellow creature of the wilds, not as a dancing bear.

  True, my reaction had been to share the things of my haversack but with the intention of disarming the threat. It was a deliberate approach, showing guile, craft and the application of the prudence which came from experience. But his advice to me was that I must learn to partake of the cup of good spirits and to learn that it must be partaken with another. ‘Learn to embrace the bear but learn also that there is always the risk of the claws.’

  I blushed as my comrades guffawed.

  I had never been intimate with a bear.

  ‘Finally,’ he said, ‘we come to the wall of stone and the unknown sound. This is the wall which marks the boundary of life and death and the beginning of the unknown. You heard the cry of the coyote.’ He said that from what he knew of the mythology of the coyotes, they were animals which made great plans which came unstuck.

  I nodded. I had sometimes made great plans which came unstuck.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘everyone who makes great plans hears the coyote. It is the anxiety of failure, not failure itself, that you heard.’ He said that I climbed the wall to scout, which showed that I did not fear death, nor did I fear what I saw ahead.

  I said that in my will I ask that my tombstone bear the inscription, ‘Come, my friends, join me on this next adventure.’

  He nodded and perhaps smiled.

  The party fell quietly serious now as they all recalled their own answers when they had first been catechised with the forest questions.

  All saw their own lives passing before their eyes, the forking paths, the obstacles of thorns, the ways blocked by the log, the bear and its puzzling nature, the inevitable stone wall, the strange sound beyond the wall.

  They saw in the camp fire the nature of their own selves, their inadequacies, their fortitude, their strife and strivings. They looked, briefly, upon the countenance of death.

  They did this for about ten seconds and then were soon drinking, storytelling and singing again.

  When I awoke in the morning in the cool bright sun light of the Juras, my comrades had left and for a moment I believed that I had dreamed the forest catechism, but I saw that they had left behind the cask of Cognac.

  They had risen at daybreak and had gone their ways through the forest to their work of cheese-making, forestry, wine-making, the hunting of sanglier, the smoking of meats and the making of watches (that is, those with uncalloused hands).

  As I made the morning fire and coffee, I thought what nonsense the wise mountain men of the Jura talk with their babbling about forking paths and encounters with the bear.

  Back in civilisation I told my Lacanian analyst about my meeting with the mountain folk. I tried to joke it away, seeking from the analyst that rewarding laugh for which the ingratiating analysand hungrily looks with sad desperation.

  She did not laugh. She stared at me thoughtfully but said nothing.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Our HERO

  further considers the

  irritating practice of

  visual ARTISTS who

  use WORDS; he introduces

  the BAD Breakfast Theory

  of creativity

  I HAVE an ongoing aesthetic interest, as well as a vested interest, in the painting of words.

  Indeed, in art museums in many countries I have sometimes become involved in pushing and shoving matches, argy bargy, with other visitors to the museum because I insist on reading the pieces of newspaper which are sometimes used in collage work.

  Because collage work often employs newspaper scraps which are placed in the painting at an angle or upside down, the reading of the newspapers does involve me in gymnastics which have more than once attracted the worried attention of the gentle museum guards.

  I always carry a large Sherlock Holmes-style magnifying glass to art exhibitions on the advice of the late Dorothy Dundas.

  I read these newspaper components because I happen to believe that the artists ‘choose’ these newsprint pieces.

  These newspapers do not blow in the window. I am inclined to assume that the artists use that day’s newspaper because it was likely to be at hand (after checking that everyone in the family is finished with it, of course).

  I also assume that they read those newspapers over croissants and hot chocolate or whatever, that very morning of the making of the collage, and that their reading of the newspaper that morning, and their reaction to the news, together with the quarrels they may have had with whomever they slept the night, the success of the sleep and whatever else happened during the course of night, and the quality of the chocolate and the croissants, all this shaped what happened that day in the artwork.

  I also look for jam stains.

  It is the Bad Breakfast Theory of creativity. Most importantly, given that they used those newspapers directly in their work, I believe that the news affected them in their choice of the bits they cut up for the collage.

  To superficially illustrate my point: Braque did a joke painting on the death of Max Ernst which involved news paper material in collage. If you examine the newspaper material closely you find, upside down, and virtually obscured, the newspaper headline, in French, ‘What sort of Bird was Max Ernst?’

  Superimposed on the collage work was a painting of an imaginary bird. There was no clue to this in the title of the work or in the catalogue.

  I emphasise that this particular newsprint headline was very difficult to detect in the collage, but that I, being that sort of person, ‘discovered’ it by using my large magnifying glass to carefully read all the newspaper clipping in that collage despite the back-up of seventy-eight impatient viewers behind me.

  I cam
e across this particular painting in a small museum in provincial Switzerland and I pointed it out gleefully to the guards and other visitors (mainly Swiss military personnel on arts manoeuvres) but I was not particularly thanked for my pains.

  However, I rush to say that it is my belief, after many hours of reading the pieces of newspaper used in collages, that artists rarely intended the news stories to literally inform the painting. This Braque was an exception.

  The big shift among the artists today is that they want to ‘say’ things to us. Usually to teach us a lesson or to raise what they see as our anaemic consciousness about some issue they have taken up at breakfast that morning.

  Just in case, for example, we have never in our lives considered the case for or against consumerism, let alone entertaining the possibility that many of us intelligently enjoy consumerism.

  I guess these artists have never been Big Spenders.

  My hunch is that the use of words in visual art, as we understand it, began early this century with Braque and Picasso and that they did all that could be done with it by about 1920.

  I am excluding the use in medieval paintings of Latin religious inscriptions such as ‘Honk if you love Jesus’.

  Hence my sending of a footman to Beaulieu with an appeal to the Duc and his friends for a truckload of Picassos and Braques so that I could confirm my hypothesis.

  To be accurate, the paintings did not arrive on the back of a truck. They were individually wrapped in straw and each carried by two strong peasants across the fields surrounding the château to my spacious studio with its delightful skylight taking the south light, where I could study them in greater detail.

  As I pored over the paintings with my magnifying glass I was watched by my Lacanian analyst and the peasants. The peasants hung back respectfully at a distance, hats in hand, trousers tied at the knee, shuffling from leather-booted foot to foot, whispering and gesturing among themselves as they observed the evolving of my hypothesis, watching as I took special interest in some section of a painting, nudging each other when I smiled, when I grimaced.