2023: a trilogy (Justified Ancients of Mu Mu)
Page 9
7: WHILE WINNIE SLEEPS
08:36 Monday 24 April 2023
While Winnie sleeps, BANKSY calls an emergency meeting of the selection committee for the Hockney Award at Tate World.
Coffee and fresh croissants have been provided by Starbucks.
‘This is the last thing we fuckin’ need. This will make us look like we are completely out of touch, with not only what is happening in our so-called art world but the world at large. Every year we sit around and discuss whether we should change the format of the prize. And we do fuck all. So we changed the name from Turner Prize to Hockney Award yesterday, and last year we changed it to four artists above the age of seventy, just to keep the last-gasp baby-boomer lobby happy. But nothing fundamental.’
‘We doubled the prize money,’ quips Ms Emin.
‘Yeah, and what did that do for us? It just made us look more like some desperate talent show. We may as well get Simon Cowell to front it.’
‘He’s dead,’ observes the Chapman Brother.*
‘Yeah, I know, I am just making a point,’ retorts BANKSY.
‘Look, BANKSY, we have made a huge change this year. “LET THE PEOPLE CHOOSE,” you said, and insisted on it and threatened you would resign if we didn’t go with it. You know I was against it from the beginning. And so we did go along with your idea. And we presented our four artists under the age of twenty, with their half-baked ideas and sloppy presentation and puppy-dog eyes. And look what happens. In the past three hours we have had over fifty-four million spoilt digital ballot papers. And each and every one of them is spoilt with the same word: “K-SEC”. Who the fuck are “K-SEC”?’
‘Well, whoever they are, Grayson, I think we should announce them as the winners of the 2023 Hockney Award,’ says BANKSY with a smirk on his face.
‘For doing what? Putting up three posters on a wall in Dalston last night?’ asks Lord Serota.
‘No. For being zeitgeisty and not just a bunch of wannabees like the rest of them. For making something happen that the world is responding to. Nothing fuckin’ happens these days. Only eight years ago young men were chopping off the heads of other young men and posting it on YouTube because they believed in something. But now all we are doing is marketing something for the family to go and see on a Sunday afternoon at Tate World.’
‘Yeah, but, BANKSY, you know it will be something different tomorrow and everybody will have forgotten about K-SEC.’
‘Well, I am not willing to take that risk. I think we should vote on it now. A show of hands between the five of us. Show the world we have the balls to do something like this.’
The vote is carried. At noon the winners of the 2023 Hockney Award will be announced, and the winners will be K-SEC.
While Winnie sleeps, Crow flies through her open balcony door and perches on the bedpost nearest to her head. Crow stares in wonder at her beauty. His seed is planted.
While Winnie sleeps, a paramedic in the back of an ambulance in New York City tries to resuscitate the heartbeat of a woman. The paramedic’s name is Sam. The patient is maybe in her late seventies. Sam was rather amused to discover evidence that the patient may have had a sex change at some time and probably was born male. The other paramedic, whose name is Dave, who is also in the back of the ambulance, picks up a book that has fallen from the pocket of the patient’s coat.
Dave opens the book at random and reads:
Choose a brick
Choose a window
Throw the brick through the window
Repeat until satisfied
Dave closes the book and looks at his colleague.
‘Sam, I don’t know why you are still at it. You know she is dead. She was dead before we picked her up off the sidewalk. I blame all these old folks that think they can keep running, playing tennis and doing Pilates in the park. This one is no different. She must have known her heart couldn’t take it, but no, this honky bird was out there running up through Harlem like she owned the place. I say we head back and save some real lives that still have a chance.’
Sam responds: ‘I will agree with you only if you agree to us switching off the siren and switching on “Hold On, We’re Coming” at full volume.’
‘Agreed.’
What Sam & Dave don’t know is that this old honky bird is none other than Celine Hagbard, one of the five most powerful individuals in the world. And maybe right now, even dead, especially dead, the most powerful.
What Sam & Dave don’t know is that the regular iPhone23 they found their patient still clutching in her hand has an app on it like no other.
What Sam & Dave didn’t know was that when the ‘special’ button on this phone was pushed, it would alert the app, which would alert a satellite that had been circling the globe for the past forty years and counting.
What Sam & Dave didn’t know was that this satellite had the name FUUK-UP. And that FUUK-UP was the computer that powered the world’s largest search engine, GoogleByte. And because of deals done by this dead woman who was maybe once a man, all other search engines and even would-be search engines were owned or at the very least beholden to this dead old honky bird.
What Sam & Dave didn’t know was that without FUUK-UP no other search engine or even would-be search engine on Earth (or in space) could do what it had been born to do, which is search.
What Sam & Dave didn’t know was that this app had sent a message to FUUK-UP instructing it to shut down in twenty-four hours. And on shutting down it will start to fall to Earth. And in falling to Earth it will burn up on re-entry. And on burning up, all of its knowledge and prowess will be lost for ever.
What Sam & Dave didn’t know was that in the last will and testament of this old honky bird there is only one benefactor. And her name is Winifred Lucie Atwell Smith. Yes, the Winnie Smith who you, the reader of this book, already know, but who is asleep right now. And that this Winnie Smith has the fortitude, talent and know-how, if harnessed, to prevent and reverse the instruction given by this app, in this iPhone23, in the back of this ambulance in New York City.
What Sam & Dave do know is that they are now playing ‘Hold On, We’re Coming’ at full volume over the speakers of their ambulance, and they love the way it distorts at the top end. They also love the fact that Sam’s nephew fixed the ambulance with super-bass woofer speakers underneath it, so the bass from the track could be heard at least ten blocks away before they got to the site of the call-out.
In fact, if you are anywhere near any sort of music-playing device, I recommend you play ‘Hold On, We’re Coming’ at full volume right now.
Don’t have to worry, ’cause we’re here
No need to suffer, ’cause we’re here
Just hold on, we’re comin’
While Winnie sleeps, two of Lord Saatchi’s henchmen are carefully cutting out three sections of wall that had three posters pasted on them only five hours and forty-two minutes earlier.
It is only now that we notice these three posters designed and screen-printed by Yoko have each been pasted strategically and aesthetically over three of the larger AppleTree posters Winnie observed in the opening paragraphs of this novel.
Once removed they load them into the back of their unmarked white Transit van, in which they will be taken to Lord Saatchi’s Battersea Power Station Gallery on the South Bank of the Thames. Where they will be ready for public exhibition the moment the winner of the Hockney Award is announced at noon.
While Winnie sleeps, M’Lady GaGa is on a conference call to her new management team Aloysius Parker Associates. This new management team is very well aware of the track their new signing released three hours ago and which is now the most streamed track in history. They had no idea she was going to release it, but that is all part of the mystery and genius that is M’Lady.
She disappears for five years. The world thinks she is washed up, burnt out – and that’s if they remember her at all. Even her LittleMonsters had given up on her. But no, she was secretly working away at her masterplan, li
ke when Ziggy Stardust did his ’68 Comeback Special in 2018. But this looked like it was going to be bigger. Much bigger!
‘Just tell us what you want, M’Lady.’
‘I want to make a film for this new tune of mine. And I want to make it in one hour’s time. Then we can edit it immediately and have it up online by the time kids are having their lunch break at WikiCampus.’
‘Yes, M’Lady, and what do you want in this film?’
‘I want a Viking ship, full of strapping Vikings, sailing on a storm-tossed sea.’
‘Yes, M’Lady, and what else do you want in this film?’
‘I want me dressed as a mermaid, perched on a rock.’
‘Yes, M’Lady, and what will you be doing perched on the rock?’
‘I will be beckoning the Vikings to row harder. I will be warning them of unseen threats. I will be tempting them with my allure. I will bring about their salvation and their destruction, all in three and a half minutes.’
‘This is genius, M’Lady. I will be around in the Rolls to pick you up immediately. By the time you get to the film studio, all will be in order. The Vikings will be strapping and the sea will be tossing. Your mermaid costume is already being stitched.’
‘Thank you, Parker.’
While Winnie sleeps, a fox slips through her unused cat flap and springs light-footed onto her bed. He can feel her warmth. He can taste her breath. His seed is planted.
While Winnie sleeps, Daisy Campbell has called an early rehearsal at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston, London. The Arcola specialises in experimental and radical theatre.
Daisy’s father, Ken Campbell, did many things. One of those many things was to go to the Melanesian Islands and rewrite Shakespeare’s Macbeth so local people could perform it in their version of Pidgin English.
He then took this version of Macbeth to the rest of the world, with the promise he could teach each and every one of us how to speak Pidgin English in one hour. He then led performances of Macbeth in Pidgin in theatres, jungle clearings and ice floes – or would have done if they had paid him. Ken Campbell passed to the other side in 2008.
Daisy took up the baton. By 2021 Pidgin was the most spoken language in the world after Cantonese.
In Studio Two of the Arcola Theatre, Daisy is about to recite some of the most powerful words to resonate down the centuries in any language, to the green but keen young actors waiting to learn their parts. These are the words she now begins to recite:
Nara dei mo nara dei mo nara dei
Wokabaot snel spid dei long dei
Long las wan haf wod blong evri wan samting bagarap ded finis yea taem
Mo olgeta yesterdei blong yumifala
Oli bin laetem krangke haf mad fala long griri tata
Nomo no faer nao lil fala kandel
Laef emi sado blong wokabaot
Emi konset rabis man
Nao i singsing mo hambugum wan owa antap bokis
Nao yumi Nomo harem em
Emi storian blong longlong kukiboi
Fulap mekanois, saenem nating
And these are based on the following more legible words in English:
Another day and another day and another day
Walk about snail speed day into day
To last one half word belonging every one something bugger up dead finish yeah time
And all together yesterdays belonging you me two fellow
All been light kranky half mad fellow to dusty goodbye
No more no fire now little fellow candle
Life him he shadow belonging walk about
Him he concert rubbish man
Now he sing and flirt one hour on top box
Now you me no more hear him
Him he story belonging crazy serving boy
Full up make a noise, signalling nothing
And these are how you may have had to learn them in a boring English Literature class at school:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing
While Daisy is listening to herself recite the words, hoping it will inspire these young and eager actors, she has an idea. This is the idea in her own words: ‘Maybe instead of presenting The Three Witches (or The Weyward Sisters, as we in these more feminist-aware times call them) as they are usually, maybe I should present them as three mermaids, as in sirens of the sea.’
Daisy notices her charges’ attention collectively begin to wander. She reprimands them and they get down to serious work. The show opens tomorrow night.
While Winnie sleeps, the Twenty-Three Sparrows chirrup in a hawthorn bush somewhere in South London. The bush is in full bloom.
While Winnie sleeps, three men in their late sixties meet up in a redbrick two-up, two-down terrace house in Northampton. It is the first time they have been in the same room together since 1994. In 1993 they quit their stadium tour of the USA halfway through and the following litigation with the promoter nearly bankrupted them. All three know not to mention the name of the woman that supposedly caused their downfall. But for the sake of the reader who does not know who they are not talking about her last name is Hate and her first name is Candy. All three of them have made distasteful claims. Sexist claims. Claims that should never have been made. Only she knows the truth.
The North American promoter fails to completely bankrupt them but they manage to do it for themselves. Firstly, in a fit of artistic pique they withdraw £1 million† in £50 notes and burn them on a bonfire in front of the Houses of Parliament. Then they hire Francis Ford Coppola to film a re-enactment of the burning, with Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall and Christian Bale playing them. Alan Moore wants the film to be called Guy Fawkes’ Night on Acid; Bill Drummond wants it called Bonfire of the Sanities; Jimmy Cauty wants WATCH. The democratic compromise is WATCH Sanities on Acid. It is a total flop, commercially and critically. Everyone sees it for what it is: the vanities of successful rock stars with not enough money to burn. Even Coppola disowns the film, and tries to get an injunction preventing it being screened in the USA. Like many before them, Extreme Noise Terror have just ripped off The Beatles, who did it bigger, better and first.
The three of them try to save some sort of artistic grace by claiming they were misunderstood and they were going to call a Twenty-Three-Year Moratorium on their collective creative activities. To this end, they take out TV advertisements during Coronation Street. In these adverts, voiced by Princess Diana, they claim that for a period of 23 years, they would not talk, write or draw pictures about what they had done with £1 million in front of the Houses of Parliament. And in their reckoning these 23 years would give the hoi polloi, the art establishment and the international jet set enough time to assess the reasons why three ex-rock stars felt whim enough to burn a pile of money so big it could have saved one million starving Ethiopian babies from certain death. Nobody took any notice.
So they waited, biding their time.
In 2017, at the end of the Twenty-Three-Year Moratorium on their collective creative activities, they planned something big, but everybody had forgotten all about them.
So Alan went back to comics. A couple of his comics were turned into live action films – V for Vendetta and The Watchmen. They were both critically and commercially very successful films. But Alan thinks they are rubbish and compromise him as an artist. So he decided to direct, produce and finance a film based on one of his other comics. This one is called The Lost Girls. It was both critically and commercially a disaster. Alan left the Hollywood Hills and headed back to Northampton.
So Bill Drumm
ond went back to his first love – unlistenable avant-garde classical music. He hired the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Georg Solti to play his compositions. Just for the record, Drummond wrote all these compositions in the sand at Skegness at low tide. These then had to be photographed from a helicopter before the tide washed them away. No one listened.
So Jimmy Cauty spent several years building a 1:1 scale model of a post-apocalyptic London. But because he got a bit of the maths wrong, it was in fact twice life-size. It was so big it had to be exhibited in the Thames Estuary on the platforms where Boris Johnson was planning on building the New London Airport. An unusually high Spring tide swept the lot away on the day of its press launch.
We’re in with the in crowd
And we know what the in crowd knows
So back to the redbrick two-up, two-down terrace house in Northampton. Over a pot of tea and some Marmite on toast, Extreme Noise Terror put past differences aside and decide to reform. Their comeback concert is going to be at the O2 Arena tomorrow night. There will be a warm-up gig tonight at the Sizzling Sausage transport café on the A5 just outside Northampton.
They will be playing The Black Room in its 23-minute entirety. The concert will be streamed live around the globe. They will not be taking any recreational stimulants. Candy Hate will have better things to be doing on the night.
While Winnie sleeps, a significantly large amount of money silently slips from Lord Saatchi’s ZitCoin account into BANKSY’s ZitCoin account.
While Winnie sleeps, 87,654 women around the world are being raped. But we are not concerned about 87,651 of these women in this book. We are concerned about the other three. These women are all aged seventeen.
One of them is in Kolkata. She is being raped by her thirty-three-year-old husband. She is raped by him most nights.