14/3 OLD FOX DREAMING PT1

PART ONE

GALLERY artefact #012

picture by Kristan Morrison - 2013 - Sydney

LIBRARY artefact #008

OLD FOX DREAMING

(This spoken word piece was written to be performed at the Sydney Opera House October 5th 2013 as part of a GRAPHIC event with Gerard Way and my first thought was to do something about the obscure Australian comic book superheroes of the 1950s and ‘60s. It struck me as fascinating that egalitarian Australia didn’t really go in much for the idea of heroes, let alone bighead poser ‘super’ ones. The same anti-heroic attitude is present in the newspapers and expressed attitudes of Rupert Murdoch, the press baron. Murdoch’s journalists perfected the trick of tearing down public figures and it occurred to me that perhaps, in another world, someone just like him might have encouraged them to do the same to all those forgotten Aussie superheroes, hence this story.

I wrote it in a rented house in Manley, suffering dreadfully from a powerful, snottering allergic reaction to the drifting spores of the wattle tree, so my memories of its difficult creation are not altogether fond.

Cellist Peter Hollo of the FourPlay String Quartet stepped in graciously at the last to provide musical accompaniment. We rehearsed the piece twice then just went for it. After the shouty, punky, barroom reading of The Con in Las Vegas the previous year, I managed to perform this one with a little more subtlety and nuance. The Opera House has the best acoustics I’ve ever known, and I like to believe my diction was about as good as it’s ever been.

The ‘Tony Abbot’ mentioned in the story was Australia’s Prime Minister at the time of writing. )

En route to the secret city, the Old Fox submitted his final bid for a controlling share in Logos International then eased back in his leather chair, like silt settling. For the last eighteen months, Logos International had been quietly snapping up the rights to every term and derivative in the English Dictionary and, naturally, the Old Fox wanted in on the action.  

Control the word, control the world.

Soon, only the wealthiest writers could afford to splash out on a pricey million-dollar vocabulary. The snooty titans of literature would bow down to economics and public demand, sticking to a lean, hard lexicon of fifteen hundred kick-ass power terms like 'Sexy'. 'Cool'.  'Murder'. 'Tits'. 'Me'. Etc.

Soon, all the show-offy unmarketable words would be gone, exit stage left like the Tamar wallaby and the Tasmanian tiger; victims of market forces, linguistic Darwinism, ruthless auto-correct software, the power of the press.

Every day, Logos International employees discreetly and delicately pruned numerous unprofitable words from the glossary; 'colloquial', 'efflorescence', 'mellifluous', 'scintillating', 'capitulate'. Polysyllabic jetsam, that no-one would ever need to use or choose to buy.

The Old Fox was nothing if not ruthlessly egalitarian after all.  Logos International's goal was to establish a global pidgin, a utilitarian Lingua Franca that could be bought and sold and understood by everyone - even some gifted parrots. Post-Logos International, every human experience would be best expressed as a punchy headline. Intense grief conveyed via t-shirt slogans. A heartbreaking love affair distilled to an elevator pitch for an ad campaign.

And if it couldn't be Tweeted, was it seriously worth saying in the first place?

All things being equal, let the whole world communicate on a level playing field!

For the 769th time that day, the Old Fox wholeheartedly agreed with himself, and the chopper came sulking in to land; folding its rotors in a huff, going quiet and still in a steaming, seductive science garden, improbably situated in the blistering red heart of the Northern Territory. A lost technoasis in the overlooked blood-coloured dirt beyond the Black Stone, Back O’ Bourke, in the hidden valley; a genetically engineered Doctor Seuss ecosystem. Nurtured by genius, art and technology, then abandoned to rot and rampage. Clipped lawns and eucalyptus groves, swollen into DayGlo wilderness sprawl where cybernetic flowers unrolled transparent foil petals of cellulose and carbon fiber in a psychedelic efflorescence of petrol rainbow lights.

Nearby, a bright green dingo, squatting on bony heels to twerk out a shit, shot him a half-apologetic glance that seemed to say, "Welcome home, boss!"

Quarter-light of dawn. Tired, weathered, made a gargoyle by that grim and unskilled sculptor Time, the Old Fox stomped across hot, soft airstrip tarmac, beneath the cool wingspan shade of Comets I and II. Superplanes left to rust in the fly-blown stupor of the day. Anti-gravity motors c-sectioned from their bellies and sold for scrap. Comet II once made 3 hours, Sydney to Bangkok, but only Jet Fury - the heroic super pilot who’d knocked the crates together in the first place - could ever make them sail like planes, hover like helicopters, and pose like super models. It seemed appropriate that Jet Fury, a modern Icarus, was the first of his kind to take a tumble.  It helped of course that Fury was secretly priapic socialite Randolph 'Randy' Gray, and his girlfriend a reporter on the Evening Star newspaper, one of the Old Fox's earliest acquisitions.  The headline betraying the airman's alter ego to the world had practically written itself -

"RANDY SECRET OF JET FURY!"

Chortling, the Old Fox twisted the atomic key in its lock, and with a brief splash of blinding light, an exchange of fused electrons, the massive bank-vault doors of the Voltara laboratory complex unsealed; more easily than usual, as if the hinges had been oiled. Sighing a museum breath of chill and papery dust, leaning on a staff, he lurched his way down twilit corridors, a shaved, corrupted Gandalf, as weathered and gouged as the sandstone outside, skin like arkose and conglomerate, formed in the Alice Springs Orogeny 450 billion years ago, when Australia broke off its torrid love affair with Antarctica.

Seems like only yesterday, he thought…