00:00

live action

[Empty performance space with lectern in the centre-front, facing audience. At the back, a projection screen.]

Screen: A Hum for Alaric Sumner, a work in progress... now.

[Screen clears.]

Screen: Dear Alaric, We...

[One walks into the performance space and goes up to the lectern.]

[One stands still and looks hard at audience.]

[One removes its spectacles and holds them forward of its head and lower than its eyes. One puts on its spectacles.]

One: I am wearing someone else's glasses...

One: I am not much more reliable than any reader's interpretation, a collision of dedications, references and influences.

[One looks at its stopwatch. Holds its stopwatch to the live mike.]

One: What I might otherwise have done was qualified by our joint effort. I was increasingly aware of sending up self-pity. Horror and fascination. Arrogance, lack of sense of other, sense that one fucks the other rather than both fuck with each other.

recorded action

One: Dear Alaric

[Sound of ticking clock, rising in volume]

One: I thought of doing a sound piece for you, an utterance without words, a celebration or a keening.

One: You like my work of that sort.

One: That worries me.

One: I know it works!

[Ticking sound levels off, still way below volume of taped voice]

One: That is, I know, or think I know, it could go down well with an audience because of its peculiarity

One: and that's a reason not to do it - I know you understand

One: What would it be to you? You dead and me alive, and me doing a party piece? What good?

01:00

Screen: Raze the dead.

One: Wouldn't we get the point if it was two pages long? Instead of hundreds and / or endless.

One: Noisy pages. Unenchanted by them now

One: Wallowing your brain in the fragrant muds of a nice page of theory is worth 200 pages of dull poetry, at least? and what about the poetic theorists? No more nice poems!

One: The sense of comedy. Sarcastic comedy. Came over me. Strongly. Sexuality and writing, peculiar, finding out what was only then made conscious, or more conscious. Other voices

One: Better to do something relevant to this... change... your loss... my loss... mine so much less than yours...

One: to lose a friend, but not to lose one's self

One: one loses friends without a loss of all one's self

One: I'm here tonight... the script's half-rewritten, the tape's rough

One: to lose oneself is loss of everything

One: and I shall not lose myself just yet; and so I've something else for you

One: Here are some prime cuts to masticate while we chat. How often, did we, ever, share a meal? A few times, yes. On March 2^nd. The last, and one of few. Rarely. Such different needs.

02:00

Screen: Grave, but not too serious

One: talking through my voice. Return path.

One: We really do seem to have done something quite special. Interjected words launched into a loud version. Talked so quietly that only people standing very close could have heard. I was erasing myself. I was very pleased. One person had got what I was up to. Wow. Cor! Did I do that?

One: Yes, said the furry godfather.

One: I think this is very good.

One: It's a bit flowery; but there is no other way.

One: Another was impressed at the interweaving of our vocal lines.

One: Return path. I could get into being an amorphous amoeba of fecund obscenity.

One: I like it. Where does it go? Can it go? I will send it.

One: I am going to change a comma into a semi-colon; but I may be misreading.

One: Is that last sentence not delightfully overbalanced?

One: It's written and it's too long. So this is only part of it.

One: It may not work at any length

One: it may be lost already

One: a risk I'll take for you, a tiny risk in context

One: in your remembrance, in your recollection

One: just playing

One: it's odd; it's all so odd, I must play

One: taking you off my address list, unwillingly, with the sobriety of an undertaker

One: and building an archive

03:00

Screen: a male... I, male... oh, male... you, male

One: You haven't said everything you could say. These are intimate and private matters. If you said everything your message would be long.

One: Thanks for the care and concern and quite understandable assumptions. I know my history.

One: I referred to my private life, but gave no detail. That's my privacy. Comment about one's friends and lovers is interim and tentative. Connection fails.

One: Oh have you built your ship of death?

One: It seems to me, mime autoconverted from quoted printable to subject, that we need to know that we are rewriting and there are purposes agendas controls that we are seeking to impose on the material of memory.

One: It's not an archive in the real sense; but an archive just the same; archive; not, as I had thought, to do with things old, but with public office and thus official records; an arc is a luminous bridge formed between two carbon poles; an ark a chest containing important verbals; the hive is humming. Alaric Sumner, Archive. Some transformation.

04:00

05:00

Screen: (arc) hive

One: A phone call has stolen my time, a lack of information I had expected to have. I've had a cup of tea and listened to recordings of myself - decided that until I know more I shan't go ahead. I hope you haven't gone to a lot of trouble. I don't think it is useful for me to go on.

One: I know you are in part being careful with me; and rightly; but I am also aware that you probably mean it too.

One: I meant what I said. I wasn't aware of any distinction of being careful and of meaning.

One: It is not that I couldn't sound inkblots. I can't, any longer, see the sounds I should? want to? make in response. If I could find that, I would like to do it again though I feel no urgency about it. I do quite like my current sound piece, found from taking the voice out of a text and layering.

[Screen displays a graphic from Sumner's "Booking Curtains"]

One: I lump together all you potential breeders as if you were some amorphous amoeba of fecund obscenity. Image-making aspect of myself creates such horrid visions that sometimes don't get brought back down to reality but lurk insanely in my depths. Sorry. That's a quote from Nek›ia. I could get into being an amorphous amoeba of fecund obscenity. Return path. Invoked from network. Paul's insistently heterosexual work is alien. I lump all you potential breeders together as if you were some amorphous amoeba; sometimes don't get brought back down to reality but lurk in my quotation.

One: If a poem excites me, disturbs me, frightens me, I don't care if it's competently written. Question response to poetry as an evaluative response. Give me an incompetent poem that reconfigures my brain cells. I thought this was clear. I have no animation. A way of resisting. Assume it does you no harm. Self-interest as well as altruism, or tempered by altruism. Call it enthusiasm, if you will! One helps others whilst helping oneself.

One: But can you split them? This experience was thus. If the next experiences will not be the same, to what extent do the words, whatever they are, remain the same?

One: Derrida on iteration might come in here. In reverse? Words are only words interpreted by a consciousness, otherwise variations in chemical composition of paper. A poem read once can never be read again as if it had not been read. Where is a poem printed in a book? What stability does it have in relation to its readings?

One: Those who do not feel the control of the system are freer of it.

One: St Augustine at the front door, I believe.

One: There is a contradiction in my position. Not so much in yours.

One: You do well to differentiate between love and sex. One can lead to the other, but I know, now, where I put the emphasis. As someone I knew would say of sex: It's everything and it's nothing. It seemed revelatory when she said it. All the best.

06:00

Screen: ToMe

One: Does it exist other than in its readings? Return path experiences will not be the same. To what extent do the words, whatever they are, remain the same? Derrida on iteration might come in here. Words are words as they are interpreted. And therefore the experience of the words will be different from a reading in which there is no sense of recognition. What stability does it have?

One: Told Bob how good your book is and how well we interacted and that I hope you will get to the workshop both to try solos and to do multivoice.

One: I am exploring what might be sayable. Nothing is careless.

One: Tell me.

One: Insistently heterosexual work is alien.

One: Me too.

One: Impossible to identify where I am speaking. There are so many other voices. Don't think this is me. Speaking.

One: Even correspondence, without ever bothering or needing to how the other party would react if you made a pass, can be highly enjoyable, erotic in its way.

One: A little bit of joy.

One: One of my friends once drove to Rome for a party and I know that another flew to America on the off-chance of fucking with a woman he had never met, net-met; me, I have my Doris Day pictures, even if they are stuck together.

One: Don't be too nice to me. You might try and make me do something I am not. Expecting to do. That would be good. I don't want to stand up holding a page and find I can't utter. That might also be worth pursuing!

07:00

Screen: monument to cover the body

One: I know so little about heterosexuality. What could I have useful to say! Male female sexual relations. I don't give them much help!

One: I started off just saying text to myself. I tend to forget. Most of what is in there I shall keep to myself. I can read it slowly and remember them; but when I crank up the speed and perform it to an audience I am hardly conscious of the references, most of them to do with desire for one or other of two women, and performing the text without preconception. I was aware of sending up male self-pity. Don't feel the need to say this is not me. Return path.

One: I don't want either of us stranded. I won't give you non verbal texts except as a consenting artist. I'm not being nice to you at all. Showing respect and consideration perhaps. I think there are very few things you couldn't do.

One: We need to support and encourage.

One: It's a strange space to be. Odd layout, odd colours.

[Loud ticking of clock for a few seconds]

One: I know you are being careful with me, but I am also aware that you probably mean it... Very vulnerable still...

One: I am making a link to the unbelievable tombs.

One: Come again?

One: There may be something to be done. Thanks for all this effort.

One: They look useful and interesting to work on.

One: I'm going to waggle my hands. Flipping my hands and tilting my head slightly to indicate change of voice. You said I should. Then we could do it together.

08:00

Screen: Unbelievable

One: I seldom think about cunts or breasts or any aspect of women that is the material for sexual interest by het men / gay women. I kept being aware of its images / ideas / language. There is little about homosex, which is what I see in my stuff whenever I mention sexuality. With the choice of using the three words with the emphasis I do, they produce intensity of experience, in me, due to the breathing system working the way it does.

One: Pygmy arselicker, adolescent weirdo.

One: If you say so. I think I preferred it when you called yourself a pink thing, but I wouldn't want to cramp your style.

One: Oh, I see: you're processing my text. Carry on.

One: Question - How are you? Answer - merely suicidal, so not bad.

One: I don't know whether I am telling the truth that I feel suicidal. I think so.

One: I know this kind of space.

One: I've only been low in the last few days; there is much to look forward to.

One: As I said, I am looking forward to seeing you; so hang in there. I think I recently observed that you a treasure.

One: Thank you.

One: Watching myself at present. A muddled state. Mistrust my responses. No one likes my work (with a few exceptions). I must be doing something right.

One: In other words, few people like your work, a less dramatic but more precise way of saying it.

One: But as you know I am a Drama Queen.

One: I too have thought that unpopularity indicates aesthetic sense; it is a flawed argument.

One: Yes, but it gives some solace to the forlorn.

One: Your work makes people uncomfortable. You do it very well.

One: An uncomfortable seldom-read poet. Yes. That sounds about right.

One: Oh boo.

One: Who-I-am-what-I do. I like it, think there's a lot in it. Not sure if I can say why. Thought I could or might be able to; and then there came this sexuality thing, which titled what I thought it was. I mean tilted it. Which you didn't respond to?

09:00

One: From whom do you hide?

One: Given that there is no one walking in the garden - even a kitchen-garden - in the cool of the evening.

One: I find myself, full of your words, using your jokes and images.

One: It's your perception of yourself rather than anyone else's. Powerful enough. I speak from experience. You have survived and fortunately, though it won't seem fortunate, not unscathed.

One: Thus do we learn.

One: Just in time to bloody die!

One: So nothing ever gets finished. It just stops. So much for nature.

One: I am not well today. Can't make decisions. Can't get the train to Cornwall. In mentational paralysis. Unwell at the beginning of the week.

One: A plant that hasn't been watered.

One: Maybe you ought to drink alcohol and then stop again. My health improves when my drinking stops.

One: I recognise what you are experiencing. No panaceas. Been there.

One: Go to Cornwall, go to Cornwall. Very pleased when you said you were going. At least someone is going there.

One: Everything is going OK. It just doesn't mean anything when, in bright sunshine, the world is black sump oil.

[Rising sound of ticking clock, continuing for about 30 seconds until all recorded sound stops on a ragged click]