by Rhys Hughes
That was Imperial Rome in its twilight decades when all sorts of odd cults flourished. Rome collapsed utterly shortly after and its eighth hill was sacked by Vandals. They came and shovelled its soil into big sacks and took them home and emptied them on their gardens, to grow twisted carrots for Vandal stews, and most people forgot that Rome had an eighth hill, if they knew in the first place. Keeping hills secret doesn’t keep them safe. Let that be a lesson. As for reticulated zogboos they can sometimes still be found splurming in mushubs.
In England in the Dark Ages I had a nice meeting with the Lady of Shallot. Her favourite hobby was pickling onions. Most people of those times relied on their kinfolk for help, but she preferred aid from her gherkinfolk. She made occasional trips to the decaying city of London to trade her jars of pickles in various street markets, voyaging thither on the back of a mule. In London itself she went on foot. Had she lived fifteen centuries later, she might have found the underground train network useful, but even in her day they were thinking about digging tunnels for carts to roll along below the streets. She had a particular interest in the plans for the piccalilli and chutney lines, but work never even began on them. Something to do with a Saxon invasion, I believe.
One of the merchants who bought her jars turned them into impossible instruments in the following manner: first he ate all the onions inside as greedily as possible, then he dangled the jars from his ceiling on lengths of unbreakable unicorn mucus, finally he stood on the shoulders of a tame goblin and used his stinking breath to blow over the tops of the now empty glass vessels. The Lady of Shallot delighted me by dancing to the melodies evoked. I will always have the fondest memories of her. Her excellence was only slightly marred by the odour of vinegar that arose from every inch of her lovely body. I danced with her. I wouldn’t dance again for a thousand years, when I went to a Parisian nightclub with a postmodernist. Clubs and clubbing... That reminds me...
Be honest with me dear reader: are my jokes very lame? Please bear in mind two things, namely (1) I come from the Stone Age, a time when there was no writing of any kind, not even warning letters from companies, let alone an extensive body of high literature, and (2) I have a very big club and I am standing behind you at this very instant.
Sure, you don’t believe my second claim, it’s an overworked trick, as far as you’re concerned, for a character in a tale to declare independence from the page, to rise out of the story and start to engage with a reader in this manner. But it’s not an overworked trick where I was born, on the contrary it’s fresh and vigorous and even futuristic. Underworked or even never worked! Because I originate in a time before fiction I can do stuff like that for real, it’s not just a conceit, I really am behind you. Turn around and you won’t see me because I’ll turn at the same speed and remain behind. I was champion turner in my youth. And a champion clubber, my club the nastiest one in my tribe.
Please be honest. Are my jokes very lame?
The Dark Ages were dark in Europe only. Further east there were plenty of regions where the arts and sciences had not fallen into neglect. But even more east than that lay realms where strange gods were worshipped and odd prayers were granted and where people fell down the stairs for weeks at a time because of the length of the staircases.
In one such land, somewhere between Tibet and Mongolia, the temples constantly hummed and chimed with impossible music performed by priests and llamas. What South American transport animals were doing in Asia and why they were playing music of any kind in temples, let alone impossible music, is not for me to say. But there they were anyway, woolly and quite silly, working with their hooves huge wooden pedals that filled enormous bellows with air that the priests siphoned off and directed in thin jets at aeolian harps mounted in courtyards. These aeolian harps were designed by ignorant geometers and all their angles were obtuse. The priests hoped that if enough impossible noise was made for long enough the gods would descend to complain about the din and hurried favours could be asked of them before they returned home.
But the gods – including Hopp, Grunnt, Drigg and Nigggl – listened not, because they were grooving to their own impossible music and unable to hear anything else above it. Rather bizarrely, the gods were hoping to attract human beings up to the Celestial Realm to complain about their din so that they (the gods) could ask hurried favours of the humans. When I learned this I couldn’t imagine what favours ordinary mortals might grant gods. What do gods really want from humankind? The answer is: bloody good cheesecakes, jam tarts and trifles.
I explored a bewildering variety of nations and cultures in my quest for the sounds of impossible instruments. I was tricked on several occasions. One swindler showed me a hollow cylindrical device in which was positioned a complicated arrangement of feathers and claws. He demanded ten groats to make it work. I refused payment and he grew angry, kicking the thing over and storming off. Then I realised that his ‘instrument’ was nothing more than a chicken in a barrel, and not even an impossible chicken or barrel! That was in the Middle Ages.
In Tudor Times a foxy looking jester showed me a machine he called a birdy lurgy. This also resembled a chicken but with a crank coming out of its back. When this crank was turned the yellow beak opened and coughed in an unpleasant manner. I declined to record this instrument and established my reasons for doing so by tersely accusing the jester of fraud. The irony was that this really was an impossible instrument but played badly. He was no virtuoso, that jester. My archive still lacks a definitive recording of the birdy lurgy. My mistake.
In the course of my research I circumnavigated the world, not once, twice or even thrice but a dozen times. One of the most memorable occasions was on a pirate ship with Luís Rodrigues, a troubadour from Lisbon who charmed his bloodthirsty masters with songs both possible and impossible. His big dream was to make a hybrid instrument, half possible, half impossible, and play hybrid music on it. He regarded this as an experiment that might have amazing or disastrous consequences for the universe. When I asked him what form such an instrument would take, he grew vague. He didn’t yet know and was waiting for inspiration.
Off the coast of West Africa, at 0ºN, 0ºE to be precise, while moored to the stripy Front Pole, one of the lost poles of planet Earth, Luís was inspired at last. His scheme was to uproot the pole by tying many hydrogen balloons to it. The pole would slowly float into the sky and when it was high enough, the sun would mistake it for a conductor’s baton and assume the role of a soloist in an orchestra. The sun would feel obliged to play something. Because there is no sound in space, the resulting music would be impossible, but because the sun is a real object it would be possible also. Presto, a hybrid style!
“I don’t think the sun will like being fooled!” I warned.
“It won’t notice,” he replied.
“How can you be so confident?” I pressed.
“The sun isn’t the greatest intellect I’ve had dealings with. Have I ever told you about the time it almost set in the sea? One day the horizon gave birth to a baby and the fact there were now two horizons confused the sun. The mother lay on the edge of the world as always, the baby had to be closer to the shore because it was smaller. Guess what? The sun nearly set behind the little one by mistake!”
“It must be really stupid to make an error like that!”
“Well the sun’s certainly not the brightest star in the galaxy,” said Luís with a sunburned shrug.
The ascent of the Front Pole into the path of the sun created exactly the music Luís wanted. I recorded the entire melody and later edited out the possible parts on a mixing desk.
Meanwhile the pirates, including Henry Morgan and Blackbeard, dressed up as surfers and nudists and began to dance in the manner they imagined surfers and nudists might dance in, great galumphing leaps while clutching their hairstyles and genitals.
History is full of eccentrics. Oh yes!
Napoleon at fancy dress parties made no effort at all but came as himself in his greatcoat and huge bico
rne hat.
People said, “You haven’t come as anything!”
He replied, “Yes I have. I’ve come as a man from the future.”
“But you haven’t changed your clothes!”
“Mon Dieu! I have come as a man from the future who is attending a fancy dress party with a historical theme!”
Napoleon was ultimately a very lazy man.
He conquered Europe because he couldn’t be bothered not to.
An industrious person would have expended large amounts of energy trying not to invade and retreat from Russia. Napoleon never lifted a finger to avoid doing those things. He returned from Elba and kept causing trouble because it was too much effort to miss the chance of becoming one of the most famous (or infamous) figures in world history.
He kept putting off the task of not doing everything he ever did.
What a procrastinator!
In his spare time he dolorously played the zootalor, an oboe made from the nose of the finest wines in France. Good wines have good noses. The finest wine had the best nose until Napoleon cut it off with his sword and drilled holes in the side and wrote tunes for it, tunes that age well in the best cellars but will never be best sellers.
He could have avoided all that trouble and just played the guitar or accordion, but he was simply too lazy!
In Ireland during the Easter Rising of 1916 I was in Cork and I had the good fortune to record the impossible tunes of the local leprechauns. The little people of that region were very good to me and even introduced me to the last surviving gherkinfolk family. The gherkinfolk are a subset of leprechaun and aren’t just a strained pun earlier in this story. The Lady of Shallot really did rely on aid from the gherkinfolk she had hired from that part of Ireland. So there!
I met the French writer Georges Perec under the Eiffel Tower in the 1970s and he took me to a nightclub that specialised in music of the impossible kind. Once inside we danced for decades, relaxing both his metafictional aches and my own prehistoric stiffness with our gyrations. But I was here on business, not pleasure, and I finally had to remain still and focus on recording the sounds that rumbled the air of the dancefloor. The music was repetitive but no less impossible for that. I was satisfied and rejoined Georges Perec. He was still dancing but another clubber was trying to give him some drugs. I gather they were pills that formed an important part of the dance scene and could make users feel empathy towards other dancers. But Georges Perec had decided to do everything without the letter ‘e’ and so he turned down the offer.
Not all my investigations took place on planet Earth. One cool morning I was fishing in a stream somewhere in Slovakia with a net when a powerful figure erupted out of the water and started dragging me along behind it. One end of my net had snagged on its horns, the other had wrapped around my legs. I was helpless!
I shouted out for the creature to stop but it was oblivious or maybe scornful of my sufferings. I recognised it as the minotaur and realised I had accidentally netted it while it was bathing. When the minotaur begins running like this, he frequently runs around half the world, and so I was concerned for the integrity of my skin. I imagined I would be scraped to death in his mythic wake.
But I am a resourceful chap and I am considered the finest bearer of the name Og in my entire tribe. So I resolved to rescue myself by my own wits. I had a flint knife in my belt but could not reach far enough to cut the net, so I sawed at the young saplings and creepers I passed and after an amount of inept fumbling I managed to create a sledge on the hoof, as it were, which I inserted under me piece by piece until I was no longer a helpless victim but the heroic driver of a ferocious man-bull. And thus I elicited gasps of appreciation from all we passed, even from the sort of females who would normally wrinkle their noses up at my odour. Shallowness thy name is bystander damsel!
One female was sufficiently impressed to blow some notes at me on her fanniphone. That was sweet.
The minotaur did indeed run around half the world before falling exhausted into the dream walled labyrinth of slumber and so I arrived on a world not Earth, for Happenstance had recently collided and fused itself to our own blue globe, like two chocolates left forgotten in an overcoat pocket on a hot summer day, and where the Pacific Ocean once was now rose the graceful but absurd curve of another planet.
There were many impossible instruments on Happenstance. In fact all the musical instruments deemed ‘normal’ there would be labelled impossible on Earth, and conversely the instruments they could scarcely believe in included such examples as the bassoon, trombone and piccolo. Thus I had a very productive sojourn on that adjacent sphere and almost half my archive consists of Happenstance tunes.
The minotaur collapsed somewhere in the Land of Djinns, where I was treated to a virtuoso performance on the joonupper, and from this realm I proceeded across the border to the Land of Tonicks, where I heard for the first time the contrasting melody of the lemunlowah. Both the Djinns and Tonicks accorded me massive respect, almost as much respect as the rulers of all the other lands I visited.
I took a big circular tour that encompassed Microgigans, the Valley of Tall Midgets, Lipsaria, then across the Steep Steppe and the Mindyore Steppe to Starving and Famished, lands that resemble more extreme versions of Hungary, before entering in strict order Rholl, Krokh, Sockh, Blokh and Tackel. Then I proceeded gradually back through India, Persia and Turkey to Nut Roast and Woollyland.
As can be seen, the collision of Happenstance and Earth jumbled up a few of the old realms with some of the new. Continents rippled high during the bash and landed not quite right. In Woollyland I met the Woollymonster himself while he was still engaged in his ceaseless struggle with the Moo Moo. But he broke off his battle long enough to demonstrate the strains of the kylylusta, a middle aged instrument that made a disreputable honk and ejected streams of dribble. While he played, the Moo Moo danced and I grew afraid, for I wondered if they were close to forming an alliance. Beings of that kind working together would place severe strain on universal good taste. I ran away very quickly.
I am still something of a minor celebrity on Happenstance, no mean feat on a world where ‘minor’ is accorded a higher status than ‘major’. Not every individual I met there was courteous, and not every regime appreciated my quest, but generally I was permitted to make recordings without threats or fines. To my archive I added the sounds of the xhoghal, the yaramong, the visbuts and lardestalk, the minget, barozonk and fuggerjub, the sacatoogg, the dhrongh and figfigfig, the nund and jagg, a bass version of the simkl and a lateral version of the fhonka, the multifoiled chappy (strummed and plucked by the Chap of Chops in person), the poofanda, miggg and lililipi, the agw, bix and qua, the dotwha (sucked and plumbed by Big Ear Emir), the inner piano eye of the Inner Piano Eye Man, the Mhojho Rising and the Moo Moo Lowing, the MUCHTULOUDOPHONE, the warm snow cymbals, hot ice bongos, fretless medium extremities and finally the old jazz chinolin (scraped and bowed by the Griffin Stepalli) of Jowls.
On my way back from Happenstance I paused in the border region between the two individual worlds. In the Cheese and Biscuits Empire I met Derrick the Haton while he was oiling a cracker. He was still searching unsuccessfully for his one true love, Diana the Rig. He couldn’t see very far because his hat had a large floppy brim that obscured his vision but if he took it off he would lose all rights to his name. He declared that the best impossible music in the state was made by the Similes Twins, a brother and sister who were joined by their comparisons.
“Is that painful?” I wondered.
“As like as not,” he answered.
I wandered the cities of Brie, Tuck and Spread but couldn’t find the Similes Twins anywhere. Eventually I approached a man and woman who I had noticed walking down a street arm in arm, closer than siblings or lovers would normally walk. I followed them until I was sure I had found those I sought. Then I took a detour and appeared in front of them, coming in the opposite direction, and I said:
“I believe you to be the Similes Twin
s!”
Together they rolled their eyes and replied, “No twins can be Similes Twins. They can only be like Similes Twins. We are the Metaphor Twins. You need to understand the difference.”
“You don’t look like Metaphor Twins!” I protested.
They rolled their eyes again. “We can’t look like Metaphor Twins, we can only look like Similes Twins, which explains your confusion. However, we really are Metaphor Twins.”
“Among other things?” I suggested.
“Of course. Among all other things!” they said.
The conversation continued in this manner for a long time. I didn’t get any impossible music out of them, well maybe just a few notes but they sounded like something else, anything else, and the paperwork would be too messy if I included them in my archive so I didn’t. I got back in my time machine instead and voyaged forward until I spied on the temporal horizon the music institute I worked for.
The institute was the largest building in the vast city that dominated the plain it stood on, a plain that in my day was fertile with mammoth manure and silkily soft with crouching sabre toothed tigers. The name of the city was Eclipseville and it had formed from the merging of two other cities by the names of Moonville and Sunsetville. It was pleasant enough. I entered the institute and made my presence known. I announced myself haughtily and declared my mission accomplished.
The strange man who first approached me with the time machine hurried to greet me. His attitude was friendly but not quite so grateful as I had imagined it would be. He showed me to a small room at the top of the tall building and instructed me to begin writing my reviews. I demanded yoghurt before setting a single word down on paper and he looked uncomfortable at this. They were out of mammoth milk, he informed me, but would restock as soon as possible. I had no choice but to be satisfied with this answer and return the time machine to him.
