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THE COMING:The Primal Scream:
Blok strides across the earth in seven-league boots, his head above the clouds...
No, he crawls upon the earth, with the rest of us, postponing the day he's ploughed under.
What else can we expect?The Madman Cometh:
Avram Blok, ex mental patient and ex patriate, arrived at Heathrow Airport, London, after abandoning his Homeland and his home city, Jerusalem, on March --, 1983. Chance meetings led him to be offered a post as assistant to the editing tutor of an educational establishment named the London College of the Cinematographic Arts. Some time later the College became bankrupt and, in the twist and twirl of events, Blok eked out his life for a while in a cardboard box by the Charing Cross Embankment. But two years later he found himself hitchhiking upon the Scenic Highway 1 along the coast of California, where he was picked up, just above the Ragged Point, by a middle-aged all-American couple named Mr and Mrs Arnold Joy, who were motoring north from Los Angeles in a Chevrolet station wagon pulling a large white trailer laden with all their earthly goods and chattels, to re-settle in Carmel, a small town which had recently elected as its Mayor a film star specialising in manly individualism and the armed chastisement of wrongdoers.
‘ And where are you headed, young man?' asked Mrs Joy, after Blok and his rucksack had climbed in the back seat.
`Big Sur,' said Blok. `I am visiting a dying old man who was once a giant of the motion picture business. I had a friend who was going to drive me up there, but I lost him in Los Angeles.' `Everybody gets lost in Los Angeles,' said Mr Joy, whose face was made of home-made apple pie. `Pretty soon it'll all go under. It's all down in the Scriptures, boy. Voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake, and the seven angels will prepare to sound. There will be hail and fire mingled with blood, and the bottomless pit and the smoke of the furnace. But those men with the seal of God on their foreheads will be saved. Revelations, 8 and 9.'
`But they too, who have the seal, will be tormented,' Mrs joy reminded him. `They should be tormented five months.'
`But their torment will be as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man,' countered Mr Joy.
`That's why we're going to Carmel,' said Mrs joy. `It's far enough from the Fault.'
`You can walk the streets without getting killed,' said Mr Joy. `Air's pure. The people are friendly. People genuinely care about their mind and body. It's a good place to wait.'
`This old man you're visiting, is he a relative?' asked Mrs joy. `No,' said Blok. But he could not explain why he was undertaking the journey to the ailing Irving Klotskashes, king of the Fifties' shlock movies and alleged former Elder of Zion.
`The Day's coming soon,' said Mr joy, `you can bet your bottom dollar.'
The afternoon was beginning to fade and the mist beginning to roll down the hills towards the great Pacific breakers. Out to sea waves broke on protruding rocks upon which seals slapped their flippers and barked. Further out, the trace of a whale's nostril could perhaps be glimpsed, briefly, in the spray. Down the cliff, a community of failed businessmen, living in prefabricated huts on a ledge, awaited orders from the Sun God Ra. They were dressed in white robes, with silver dollars wrapped round their foreheads by means of orange headbands. Their eyes were closed as they deflected their gaze inwards, to their souls, each attempting to find the inherent nothingness that, it appeared, lay at their core. Mrs joy turned towards the back seat and extracted a paper bag of fruit from a wicker basket. She handed her husband a banana and Blok an apple, red and shiny. Sitting back, she peeled herself an orange.
`And where are you coming from, young man?'Where indeed. . . ?
`THE WEST!' Three years earlier, Asher Katzman taunted Blok, `What the fuck are you doing here? What sucks you to this territory? Is it the Fleshpots? The Good Life, Prosperity; Freedom? The tall towers of wealth, the gilded cage, creature comforts? The double duvet, fitted carpets, three-piece genuine leather, lamborghinis and latex, contact lenses, cosy body warmers, water purifiers, portable cappuccino machines, ionisers, personal computers, hip pocket calculators, answering machines, travel kettles, foldaway solariums, blood pressure monitors, golfball holders, pierre cardin gladstone bags, dental buffs, travel clock radios, teas-mades, filofaxes, personalised labels, spud-ulike and macdonald hamburgers, kentucky fried, szechuan cuisine, chicken bhoona, lasagne and linguine, storage organisers, videocassette recorders, designer shirt wallets, foldaway filing cabinets, social security, supplementary benefits, cold weather allowances, pierre cardin djellabahs, luggage wheels, hide-apocket moneybelts, early warning burglar alarms, pet grooming kits, sonic pest repellers, hosiery mates, DIY worksuits, beard trimmers, electric toothbrushes, personalised hydraulic drain cleaners, heraldic paperweights, car boot tidies, homes in the country, garden conservatories, automatic cat feeders, futons, omega watches, bacardi rum a la baba and the forty million thieves, I Gambled 13p and Won 56,783 Pounds In 5 Years, I Was a Two Hundred Pound Overdraft Weakling, I Was a Failure Until I Was My Own Van Gogh, the old masters, the new mistresses, better sight without glasses, needleless acupuncture, selfimprovement through self-hypnosis, self-knowledge, self-denial, self-acclamation, tune in and turn on, find yourself, lose yourself, find god, lose pounds around your midline with yoga, yoghourt and yodelling, keep your own live poultry in the inner city, think slim, think young, think rich, think powerful, megalomania made easy. Just relax, and let it all wash over you. Success or Death, the misery of ages. Is that what you came here for, Avram?'
Shucks man, naow ah doan't know . . .`Or is it the politics, Avram?' Asher continued. `The whiff of Parlielementary Freedom? Democrassy? Magna Carta? Futons never never shall be slaves? You wish to be one of them, ne c'est pas, mon ami ? A master of his own castle. The proud owner of a tattered but authentic birthright, waving in the winds of stormy seas? Tradition, Empire, Westminster Abbey, raven beefbeaters in the tower. Mouldering roots of a once great tree eaten away by dreck and mildew. Ah, the Royal Horse Turds, Ma'am! The unicorn up the lion's arse. The woolsack, the honours list and the old school tie. The Prince (no Paupers need apply). There'll Always be a Waiting List. Lord Blok, slavering for the day of his Residency, freeing him from the obligation to report every three months to the police station like a thief of bicycle spares. British Passport holders this way, kikes, wogs and coons over there. The master, not the slave. The high, not the low. The whitewashed, not the shvartze chayeh. Pardon me, but you hardly look the part, with that swarthy, downmarket keister. A Turkish Cypriot, at the very least. I see you sweltering vainly in the booths of Petty France, sent back to the genetic whirlpool. So what's wrong with going back where we came from? The sun! The shore! The tarry beach! Blue skies! What fuck do we give for Wars, Oppression, the unalterable cupidity of the Masses, General Underdevelopment of the Brain? What have you gained, what have you gained, miserable bugger, by your rush to Freedom? What's your excuse?' Anything for a life... The hell you say!
`Or is the Arts, Avram? Arse and Craft! Le Culture! The Opera, the Ballet! Ah, wasn't Pederasto profound? And Cuntomova, divine! Have you seen Gielgud in The Penetrated Arse of Capitalism at the Theatre Downstairs? The Dancing Ayatollahs at the Brixton Square House? The Sandinista Pipes and Drums Tour? The very latest scream of the culgarde! New Fascism at the Progressive Arts. Albanian Cubism at the Round House. Vertical Images at the Horizontal Gallery. Lucien Krafft-Ebbing shows selected pieces of his psyche in hologram lasers. A full retrospective of Schicklgruber's Paper Cut-out Animation (Weimar period) at the National Film Theatre. Is that what you flew over the oceans to swallow, Avram, tell the truth now! Vroom, vroom, vroom, over the Mediterranean Sea, the Italian Boot and Alsace Lorraine? The Merry Hives of Windsor in Uzbek at the Garrick? No Sex Please We're Castrated? `Masterful…' the Sunday Times. `I would have fallen off my seat had I not been nailed to it…' Marxism Today. Or is it the beat of new, vibrant sounds that you want to savour first ear? Dave Palooka and His Squeaking Fish, live at Crouch Hill Town Hall. Rock, Soul, Reggae, Rap, Ska, Skoo, Skum... Sarah Toad and Her Singing Tadpoles. Jabavula and the Shebeens. Repo Woman Slash Band. Heresy and Skull Funk. Or how about this: `no funk, no soul, no hip hop, just pure wank off guitar solos, none of your girly goth guff, bring your own crash helmet for the dance floor.' Yeah! Yeah! Is that your fucking bag?'You never can tell, as, on that dour English March day, Blok stepped off the M-m Airlines flight from the Holy Land on to the concrete of the United Kingdom, under the grey sky, the drizzle and nonchalant faces, the stretched corridors and walkways carrying him past the names of global flight destinations imprinted in inverse order on the walls: Zanzibar, Yokohama, Xanadu, Washington, Vladivostok, Uppsala, Tulsa, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, Potsdam, Oporto, Nice, Mexico City, Lichtenstein, Kinshasa, Johannesburg, Istanbul, Helsinki, Geneva, Fukuyama, Everglades, Djakarta, Celebes, Bokhara, Alahabad. Exotica that way, pushed up against the long, suffering Aliens' line, the heavy breathing of the Unwanted, the microscope scrutiny of outcaste documents: the Government of India requests, the United States requires, the Republic of Gabon pleads. Customs men and women, neat and scrubbed, in Ariel washes whiter than white uniforms, like sailors who have never seen the sea, hovering alert for illegal burnt offerings, declarable totem poles, unregistered dependants or diamonds stashed in coat linings, crushed into shirt pockets, bags of heroin and cocaine concealed up rectums, nostrils, vaginal cavities, colons.
`Have you been here before, Mister Blok?'
`In 1972. This is a new passport.'
`And how long do you intend to be in the United Kingdom?'
`Just a few weeks.'
`And what is the purpose of your journey?'
`Visiting friends.'A likely story. Grey X-ray eyes gaze under blonde eyebrows into his brown Semitic peepers. Madame Albion Sees All. Your secrets will be wormed out, sir, do not fear. Nothing is ever lost nowadays. Every shred of information, every hint and rumour can be retrieved and endlessly replicated, the dead shall walk, and talk, answering questions, helping us with our inquiries. But Blok merely returned The Gaze with the blankest stare he could manage. The X-ray eyes sheathed.
`Next!'
Out, carrying his single, unexamined suitcase, The Gaze aware it contained nothing but the merest shreds of evidence of a comprehensible past: faded underpants that might yet serve a short while, three shirts, two extra pairs of corduroy trousers, four of socks, one of sunglasses (!), a bar of soap, a comb, a small towel, a Clifford D. Simak novel, a copy of Newsweek magazine: `Is God An Alien?' An ancient guide to the United Kingdom: Time Out's Book of London, 1971. An equally decrepit and faded programme for the New Cinema Club, circa October 1972: Quiet Days in Clichy, I Am Curious Yellow, Eldridge Cleaver, The Grape Dealer's Daughter, Millhouse, The American Dreamer, Even Dwarfs Started Small, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief.
Wraithlike, he joins the flow of passengers and luggage parading past the eager eyes of persons of all races, colours, genders and creeds trusting to the resurrection of love. National Westminster Autobank. Bureau de Change. The Skyshop. The cabbage whiff of new worlds, guttural trundling of Cockney and West Indian porters. Security guards, alert for new and old crimes. The cluttered, confused commingling of Arrivals and Departures. Ah! Way Out, Taxis and the Underground...
Hatton Cross, Hounslow West, Hounslow Central, Hounslow East, Osterley, Boston Manor, Northfields, South Ealing, Acton Town, Hammersmith, Baron's Court... magic names foundering in the queasy air of the crowded, rattling carriage. Nevertheless, nevertheless... Thundering down the tunnel, merging with the crowd, following the exit signs past dimlit tiles, he flows up the long liftshaft of Russell Square Station, towards Bed & Breakfastland, out of the shadows, into the half light of yet another Blokkian dawn...1983!
A quiet year, for most, on the global scale. Only four major wars proceeding, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, Angola, Eritrea. Minor skirmishes continuing in El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala, South Africa, Lebanon. Polish demonstrators for Solidarity clashed with police enforcing Unity. In Paris students clashed with police, obeying a fading genetic heritage. In Beirut many people were killed by car bombs. The Soviet Union called for a nuclear-free Europe. The secret Diaries of Adolf Hitler were found in West Germany but soon after proved to be fake. In Ethiopia millions of people starved, in the eye of TV lenses. In Colombia a large town was destroyed in an earthquake. In Bangladesh 60,000 people were made homeless by floods. In the United Kingdom the extreme right-wing Government of Mrs Margaret Thatcher* was about to call a General election. Her principal opponent was the aged candidate of the Labour Party, who walked his dog in the mornings on Hampstead Heath and had been a youthful firebrand long ago. The outcome was not in serious doubt, only the scale of progressive defeat was in question. (And what else do you expect, Avram?) Meanwhile, the Russians continued to send cosmonauts into space, to orbit the earth, round and round_________________
and round, little slavic meatballs patrolling the exosphere to the sound of celestial balalaikas, while Blok slowly rose, in his crowded lift, hemmed in by his random segment of humanity, clanking past dark iron shaft ribs cleaned, in the dead of night, by council men in overalls and nosemasks, wielding air hoses and thick brushes and pans...
The solid masonry of the Big City, as Blok travels on the top deck of a red double-decker bus, occupying the front window seat, a joy only the exile Anglophile can realise fully, sailing above the mundane world. The crowd, appearing at first as an anonymous mass, undifferentiated bits crumbled off a soggy lump, as only slowly separate identities emerge, facial features flitting by below, the tops of heads, bald, thatched, fuzzy, the bright plumage of last year's fashions, aimless migrations, hum, babble and clip-clop of feet, the still grey sky, the monochrome buildings and bright shop windows, ebb and flow, time and tide, trickle and twitch, mutter and mull, mill and murmur, the silent shout, boy, ain't that city got rhythm, the old story, the gliding cliche. Blok dips and makes an effort to merge with it, to ride the gently bucking bronco. I am one of the pack. I am everybody. I am that mythical nothing. Who me? A component of the eternal flux of commerce. The buzz and fuzz of market forces. The wealth of nations. I am but a comma in the learned treatises of social theoreticians. I have no history and no past again and no future, but the rocking amniotic present. I shall not be born out of this womb. The incinerated child eventually shuns the fire. I am the stuff of nonsense, a mere ball offluffinthe upholstery of consumer man. Eventually I shall procure my own colour TV and video and three-piece suite and family car and mortgage and put out the cat promptly at twenty-three hundred hours, and read nothing but the popular tabloid press: BABY, 1 YEAR OLD, SNIFFS COCAINE. TALE OF THE JESUS EGG THAT WEPT. LOVE LIFE OF RUNAWAY BAZENJEE. MAN FROM ATLANTIS FOUND IN PUB BUST. SEX VICAR'S NIGHT OF SHAME. Yea. I shall belong to the senseless. I will merge. I shall conform! Lulled, he falls asleep on the bus, succumbing to:
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