[>>> Recitation]

Whether or not it is an everyday observation, have you ever tried to do anything but decipher codes? You will perceive that here, where what is there, is in the making of the difference being made, but it is merely between the choice and the record, no more, no less.

Some time during my sojourn, I would regret it later but be obliged to play tribune to that part of human consciousness which is of its time [insert date] yet without a contemporary, which means to say for each of us it is in fashion. This thought occurred like a rapture pliant with foolscap devices, randomness, accounting, murmuring.

A sense of belonging concerns the definition of how desire takes place within a custom or saying, which at present is bearing a resemblance to literature. That is, to furnish knowledge going near, without or toward, relative to the images of the characters of the written word. In truth, not even the speech, and neither the thought!

But the written.

There was something more important I was going to say but I have now forgotten it, so it must have been a lie. And if it were not, then still I did translate a lost language communicated purely to me in its delivery.

It occurred then that I was of the realisation that the authors I had earlier dismissed had been requesting quotations and I had a fine of five shillings and threepence to pay to the librarian. Therefore, I could not obtain the requisite volumes to refer to and from which to quote.

It so happened that by talking of the auxiliary fusing of the readers, the authors, the characters etc., I posited an iridescence there that swirls around my cape and feathers.

I was not wasting so much of value, but by synchronising with that which you yield, the course of events was turning. It was not just authors that in this reading or composition, which is entitled “Recitation”, were discounted, but your very own life!

We can be but fools to acknowledge the true qualities of our lives, for however placed, they are replaced themselves by others’ lives!

If I had been a painter… And I may if it were not for the fundamentals of that art which are beyond reach (a studio has evaded me), but the question: “what medium?” means that to make a decisively painterly gesture, I would have to settle on particular kinds of paint, canvas, brushes, paper et cetera. This would entail gaining a true knowledge of merchandise after discussing it at some length with a merchant.

Sandwiched deliciously between the mocking howl of a skirmish on the outskirts where stood unlaced the factory’s bromide locutions and a menacing draught switching the domicile to beneath the crumbling spire known as an attractive foil of tresses, I was carved and moulded nonchalantly by unknown utensils and slipped into the marshes in charcoal and crayons.

I was looking at writing in mud, not an image like life, nor metaphorical or psychological dispositions or any enigmatic phantasies for fictional settings. I was also, seemingly that I had no desire to describe my thoughts, unconcerned about the intellectual dynamism of the times.

My sincerest wish was for the composition of a musical art to compose the words on this paper by rote, but that would have entailed musical notation, something for which I had neither the skill nor inclination.

I had another plurality: the people! Oh! I ran to their aid, falling perhaps, but nevertheless I had been informed that they were being “controlled” by television, the daily newspapers and the wireless. Nothing I could say would make governments anywhere stop some of the cruellest practices.

Lucidity was gained as protest against itself. The reader was to be whomever would, in the space of time in which the written word might be in print, drawn in to represent another interpretation. In other words, I was not planning writing for a circle of friends and acquaintances or seeking acknowledgment from those with the same fascinating ideas on the world and life as myself (neither was writing going against ideas anathema to our own, my friend).

Driving through this season, with an aesthetic keepsake, a gift of the siren, scaled body, nails, bindu, tattoo of antennae animated by the “toy” in dervish, and beyond a certain point, like a hiccup, if you like, the silent one was the reader who chanced upon this reading just as I was drawing forth from the paper, ink and type-writers, language forms within an environmental body independent of writer and reader, so both there did enter space causal, with a charge telegrammatic and compliant with poetical treason, in which each paragraph was the writer’s and the reader’s, and thereby obstructive of the procession of language, because they both belonged to the same environment in which they had their end.

Completion must be arrived at with the least knowledge, materials or dedication and the least realisation of a creative vision. This is due to the surroundings. It is most convenient to use pencil and jotter.

For an epic poem I would require a quill, ink and parchment.

The intercession of special instruments must be deliberately dispensed with. The environment is more than its artificer, even if the preferred course of action for those who have influence over events must in this instance go by unheeded.

So, as I was not seeking to gain trust in the poetical to entertain, enlighten, discuss, convey or otherwise reproduce characters or ideas about events real or fictional, nevertheless I did with untoward knowledge elementalise out of all these things to have them signal, shape, and modify the environment of the writing; yet even this went on without my knowledge.

Except that it was treason, even disregarding the great power of communication, instead of practicing a craft, I was it — yet the purpose remained unknown.

This was partially a replica made from twigs blackened and burned by topical qualities of wonder, repeated in the back-rooms of newspapers.

What I have written is the written word. The human mind, like language, is never static, and I am glad that with such speed I have created recognisable characters. The idea that language by rational thought (which is a sensual mood or mode that succumbs to measure and consider) can know and comprehend will always be a lie.

Language must be conveyed, but as a phenomenon of the infinite its action must cause effects, and affect its own environment.

(I argued about this in the hostelry for some hours of pleasure with an associate whom it must be said was haphazard with any proper uncomplimentary association — which only proves it.)

In as much as language constructed a writing reflective of the commonality of the mythical image of the authors or upon philosophical preoccupations or social inventions, it is but descriptive. Yet the environment cannot be described, only painted against its own backdrop.

The written language which deliberates some impulse inside the reader (and the writer is the first reader) mediates the motive towards and beyond reconciliation with a desire for the next moment — that is for the moment in which the following word appears to have taken on another meaning (much in the same way as a word repeated endlessly loses its meaning and gains its sound).

In the act of writing or rather compositing the words which comprise this “Recitation”, I renounce the role of author.

[text © A. A. Walker]

[originally broadcast on Fractal Meat on a Spongy Bone]