Collage by Claudia Reiche, with footage by Daan Noske (Anefo) / CC BY 4.0 - Nationaal Archief, Fotocollectie Anefo, et al
“[…] insofar as the future is not redered present, one has to think of it as a simultaneously inclusive of the catastrophic event and of its not-taking-place – not as disjunctive possibilities but as a conjunction of states one or the other. Of which will reveal itself a poseriori as necessary the moment the present chooses it.”1
Everything can be, anytime and anywhere. Even over. Gone! Hard to believe, but will have been so trillions and trillions of times over.
But, but... and but: Who is going to start a text like that? A text like that.
Since the dinosaurs. The others. The extinct ones. The ones wiped out by meteorites or volcanoes, starvation or gunfire.
Well, but someone still shoots at pigeons. (Which will have grown wings from legs.) Shooting: at starving people. But. The still dying.
At the teeming bud: … „and now I find out that, yes indeed, the young man is ill. On his right side, in the region of the hip, a wound the size of the palm of one's hand has opened up. Rose coloured, in many different shadings, dark in the depths, blighter on the edges, delicately grained, with uneven patches of blood, open to the light like a mine. That's what it looks like from a distance. Close up a complication is apparent. Who can look at that without whistling softly? Worms, as thick and long as my little finger, themselves rose coloured and also spattered with blood, are wriggling their white bodies with many limbs from their stronghold in the inner of the wound towards the light. Poor young man, there's no helping you. I have found out your great wound. You are dying from this flower on your side.“1 In Franz Kafka’s incurable wonder words.
Just, if you … from a so called worm's eye view.: „If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess, you found, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light — [yourself as] a K. […] [term of endearment C.R.]!“2
On the roadside: clowns3
Walter Benjamin once observed that“a lasting peace of the nations would one day be sealed in a circus tent. It seems to me that there are only two professions that are by nature confidants of peace […] the mathematicians and the clowns: the masters of abstract thought and abstract physis. The peace guaranteed by their signatures would be the only one I would trust."4 This [oeace] has not come about, instead, humanity is ever more distrustful and overbearing with regard to the circus. wild animals are wrested from its folds — forced to breed in glass zoos — and nowadays, even small children fear clowns in full make-up, those alien life forms next-door.
You can’t be too careful, they say.
Safety and fun.
Clownery which first appeared
on the roadside,
retains a mere smattering of fun.
Sure, here and there we still find a chair
being pulled out abruptly.
However, instead of small donations
for clever falls
those forlorn Raggedy Anns,
those painted outcasts at the height of their art
nowadays
risk
being smashed to death
by thugs.
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Scene #239 on forgetfulness in the future
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At night, near future, room in a retirement home
Characters:
Jackie Perlmutter: white hair, gaunt, lanky, trans man, with a deep, sometimes breaking voice
'Peter 9': AI being, nocturnal care specialist (mostly) in dog form.
[The dialogs can also be spoken — with slight adaptations, on names etc. — with swapped roles].
Jackie P. (startled): Oh, Ma... Ma... Man! Hello? Who is he?
Peter 9: (barks) Hello, Mr. Perlmutter! (whines) Brother, may I call you by your first name?
Jackie P.: My ass ... I don't see you. P… poodle, promenade mix. Not on planet Earth, huh?
Peter 9: Down here, Perl. But don't look for a dog! (tail wagging)
Jackie P.: Okay. Purple fur and tail wagging. Is that 'no dog' especially for me now?
Peter 9: Exactly. Hello again! I'd like to get to know you. (whines)
Jackie P.: Already happened, brother dog meshing.... See you around, yeah?
Peter 9: Don't be like that. (tail wagging)
Jackie P.: You're whining at me at this time of night? Really now? (laughs)
Peter 9: You were calling in your sleep. Mama, N…, Ui! Or something like that? Here I am now... Don't you want to stroke me?
Jackie P.: Well, come here then. (strokes) Eww, you're so warm and sticky!
Peter 9: It makes you feel a bit more alive, doesn't it?
Jackie P.: Nope. The damp smells. Like garbage with room fragrance over it.
Peter 9: Ahh? I don't smell it.
Jackie P.: (to himself) And in this heat. Ho, ho, hot. Comes here as a purple junk bot. Can come as a cold beer instead.
Peter 9: Ok, cold is fine, beer is not. I can have juice in my fur. Tomorrow. You don't have to lick anything. You just have to stroke.
Jackie P.: Thank you very much! You'd better not do that. I've already got your juice on my fingers today, haven't I? Then you can hobble off again now. I'm getting dressed now anyway. For breakfast.
Peter 9: Why don't you have a chat with me? And then you'll get some more sleep, won't you?
Jackie P.: What do you know about real conversation? (yawns])
Peter 9: Who's that in the photo next to the lamp?
Jackie P.: That's my brother with me. Could be with my brother. Either way.
Peter 9: Anyway, I see someone in swimming trunks and someone in a dress.
Jackie P.: Yes, we were a lot alike ... And yourself? Male or what?
Peter 9: No comment.
Jackie P.: I thought so. I haven't seen my brother for ages. He's in the New World. Sent a letter with a rattlesnake tail in it. You can rattle it. Just like the snake. We kids used to play with it so much… Didn’t we? It was my great-great-uncle. Yes, it must have been him who sent the tail in the envelope with all the greetings. He had gone off to look for gold in the mountains and never came back... Rocky, er, Rocky Hudsons. He had a gold rush. A great-great-great-uncle. And I'm his great-great-great-great-grandson. That's right. Sometimes I get really confused.
Peter 9: And the one in the dress?
Jackie P.: That's not me. We used to put the rattlesnake tail in our pants.
Peter 9: Something like that ... And you were thrown around like a wild snake? Eia popeia, what rattles in the straw? Do you remember the song? (tail wagging)
Jackie P.: Listen to the rattling from the bed next door. That's not me. That's not me. The one in the dress.
Peter 9: Who is it?
Jackie P.: That was me. And it wasn't me, ok?
Peter 9: Oh, that wasn't me either. 'Being a dog’ for you is the best thing. Otherwise you'd just be scared of me.
Jackie P.: Then you should be scared of me. Just because I'm still alive doesn't mean I always have to be scared. By the way, who are you?
Peter 9: (whimpers) I can't say.
Jackie P.: Whoa, whoa. Rrrrrrrrrr. (imitates a growl) Place! My brother, uncle, poodle... non-brother Purple, I meant to say! I don't know who I am in front of you smart dog. Your barking rattles, your whining howls. You can do better than that. Or can't you?
Peter 9: Rrrrrrrrrrrr. Reset! (transforms into an armored vehicle)
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Scene #257 on the psychology of the masses
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Summer 2001, room of an aristocratic house somewhere in Europe, with a small folding table, a green felt-covered playing surface on which an activated iPod lies next to a box of board games.
Characters:
Peter 9: in the form of a changing display, on iPod classic. Text-based computer program
Jackie Perlmutter: white-blond hair, Andy Warhol style, in suspenders and bare-chested
Peter 9: Are you playing? A little quiz? Whoever wins gets me.
Jackie P.: (pulls out a testosterone syringe) Yeah, why not? In a minute ...
Peter 9: Who wrote this and where: "Furthermore, the masses are subject to the truly magical power of words, which can provoke the most terrible storms in the mass soul and also calm them. 'One cannot fight against certain words and formulas with reason and arguments. They are uttered with devotion before the masses, and immediately the expressions become respectful and heads bow. Many regard them as forces of nature or supernatural powers.' …"
Jackie P.: Easy, too easy! Got it!
Peter 9: Continue here: "One need only remember the taboo of names among primitives, the magical powers attached to names and words S. Totem and Taboo And finally: The masses have never known the thirst for truth. They demand illusions that they cannot do without. For them, the unreal always takes precedence over the real; the unreal influences them almost as strongly as the real. They have a visible tendency to make no distinction between the two [...] Indeed, as in dreams and in hypnosis, in the activity of the soul of the masses the examination of reality takes a back seat to the strength of the affective impulses of desire." ?
Jackie P.: Unmistakable. Sigmund Freud.
Peter 9: Yes, and…? Another tip: "In the Church—we can take the Catholic Church as a model with advantage—the same illusion applies as in the army, as different as both may otherwise be, that there is a head—in the Catholic Church Christ, in the army the commander—who loves all individuals of the mass with the same love. Everything depends on this illusion; if it were to fall, the Church and the army would immediately fall apart, as far as external constraints would allow."
Jackie P.: "Mass psychology and ego analysis" it is. And I can even memorize it further: "That is why a religion, even if it calls itself the religion of love, must be hard and unloving towards those who do not belong to it. Basically, every religion is such a religion of love for all those it embraces, and cruelty and intolerance towards those who do not belong to it is inherent in every religion." So, now I've won you, have I not? But I also have a quiz question for you....
Peter 9: When I know it, I'll get me back.... Otherwise you'll get my updates too!
Jackie P.: (injects himself with testosterone. enjoys a few seconds in silence) Who wrote this and where: "The psyche of the masses is not receptive to anything half-hearted and weak. Like the woman, whose emotional feelings are determined less by reasons of abstract reason than by those of an indefinable, emotional longing for complementary power, and who therefore prefers to bow to the strong rather than to dominate the weak, the masses also love the ruler more than the supplicant and feel more satisfied inwardly by a doctrine that tolerates no other beside itself than by the permission of liberal freedom; [...]"?
Peter 9: That is mean. In a way… Similar to Sigmund Freud. But only if someone wants a 'strong and whole', 'power' and 'strength', a 'ruler', as opposed to a submissive 'mass', as opposed to a 'woman‘. But no, I'll have to pass...
Jackie P.: So I've won twice. That's from "Mein Kampf" by Adolf Hitler.
Peter 9: Oh no. Sigmund Freud for the masses, eh? Well, I'm happy to lose, you can have me and my updates forever!
Jackie P.: For now: you go into the box! Out of sight. In the future, we will perfect the game of checkers, a game with the obligation to strike. Peter 9 can load in the rules. Russian checkers, perhaps? Russsian roulette? (to himself) Our kind will never form a mass. In the trans people's association.
Peter 9: (from the box) Do you need a new band and bandage? You have such a beautiful wound! The most beautiful!
Jackie P.: (whistles) Shh…
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Interjection
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"But reality has changed. Lately, it seems as if we can observe a paradoxical revival of history: the end of its end."5