Imagine the Apocalypse is on the way. Not the amateur one from all those religious tracts. This is a genuinely possible and total destruction of society and all of the things. This Apocalypse would make the year 2000 indistinguishable from the year 1900. Like all good literature, the Millenium Apocalypse had been foreshadowed: on the 4
th Of January 1975, the date overflowed the 12-bit field used in the Decsystem 10 operating systems resulting in numerous problems and crashes. An alternative format was developed, but nobody really took that much notice.
For those who turn justice into wormwood And cast righteousness down to the earth.
Imagine having lived in a country for six months without being able to speak the language. Not only that, there is insufficient time to learn the language because you are the only one with the skills to do a thing. Everybody is kind - generous, even - but it is an isolating experience. There is very little conversation that you can take part in. The Internet is not as pervasive as it became in the 2000's. It could make you misanthropic. It could also bring you to rely on books. Reading. It could also persuade you the entire world is speaking in tongues and that the rare pieces you can understand are hugely valuable.
So that there will not be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations; that there will not be among you a root bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood.
You could end up reading a bible exegesis called
The Harlot By The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales Of The Bible by the 'amateur' Bible Scholar
Johnathan Kirsch. Not because of any particularly religious impulse but because it explains the Bible as literature. The misunderstanding that brings the book to you is that of a French Colleague thinking it is erotica with a biblical theme and that, for some perverse reason, you might like it. France has a long and respectable history of the anti-clerical. The Philosopher Denis Diderot (1713-1784) wrote nun infested pornographic tales while Georges Bataille (1897-1962) wrote pornography under the name
Lord Auch. The French have a reasonable, adult and civilised attitude to sex and religion.
But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, Sharp as a two-edged sword.
Just before Easter 1998, I was offered a job in an English Speaking Country doing the same sort of programming things. Writing the same, esoteric programming languages, but able to speak English. After a fashion. In the right light. In a country rapidly changing as the Apocalypse approached. Good Friday 1998 was the official start of
'peace' in Northern Ireland. The
Comhaontú Aoine an Chéasta or
Comhaontú Bhéal Feirste had just been signed and the Celtic Tiger (
An Tíogar Ceilteach) was tigering. The world was awash with actual optimism.
Be careful that no one falls short of the grace of God, so that no root of bitterness will spring up to cause trouble and defile many.
So it was, almost a year after last speaking to any of my family, living in a single room containing one bath, one single bed, one cooker and one storage heater and no room for anything else that I discovered that the Residents had released something new:
"Wormwood". To celebrate I went out and obtained a bottle of
Absinthe from a French colleague. Without knowing much about what
Wormwood was actually about, I celebrated by getting very drunk and seeing
la fée verte. From within a very intoxicated state, living just between Donnybrook (
Domhnach Broc) and Ranelagh (
Raghnallach) I conceived of the idea of not listening to
Wormwood until I had seen a live performance.
To make the entire proposition worthwhile I would need a copy of the CD. Which would be a problem. I made some brief enquiries of colleagues at work. In the process, I discovered that
Wormwood had a religious theme and would, therefore be censored. Despite
Comhaontú Aoine an Chéasta, the
Poblacht na hÉireann or
Saorstát Éireann or
Éire or whatever it was calling itself these days had not really left Medieval Europe. Despite being a country where, in Dublin (
Baile Atha Cliath) the ratio of women to men was six to one and the average number of mobile phones per woman was four giving an average number of mobile phones to male at roughly twenty eight to one and
Microsoft,
Google and
IBM were all building huge data centres, Ireland had not really left the Medieval Roman Church.
Divorce was illegal. Marriage was for life. Except where two people came to an
accommodation for the benefit of the children. A future history of Ireland will probably include a huge section on the number of bigamists and the size of their families. Being Gay never happened. Except in Cork (
Corcaigh) where it happened if you were a woman life guard at a public swimming baths. Despite which homophobia was not
always a massive problem. The name of the most prolific road traffic offender was a "Mister"
prawo jazdy - which turned out to be Polish for "drivers' Licence". You could go and see films in the afternoon and see a bunch of nuns watching
Spice World to ensure it was not too corrupting. The sight of veils and wimples in a cinema and the sound of loud
tut tutting while gently two pints of guinness is something to do. In
Baile Atha Cliath when bored.
I was still saving the world from the upcoming Apocalypse. The one made of digital madness. By the time the Tour had been announced I had visited the Residents Website and I had imported a copy of
Wormwood into Ireland. Thus causing an Irish Record Shop to become utter criminals for importing notionally banned material. This might well seem all very portentious but, bear in mind the context. In 1969, Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Being an Irish Citizen the
State concluded that it should honour him. Under cover of darkness, a Military Policeman was give some money and despatched to London, to
Foley's Bookshop to purchase copies of his works. This was necessary because he had been banned for the publication of
More Pricks Than Kicks in 1934. The basic premise of the Irish State being the preservation of the Medieval Papacy
virgo intacta.
Jérôme Lindon
Editions de Minuit, Paris
13.12.71 Paris
Dear Jérôme
[trns. from Beckett's letter in French]
For the English reader the title sends us back at once to the Biblical image "to kick against the pricks" (Acts of the Apostles, chapters 9 and 26, concerning Paul). In French: "regimber contre les aiguillons." In Italian: "ricalcitrare contro gli stimoli". Which gives stimoli and calci as elements of a literal translation. With loss of the assonance, and of the allusion too no doubt. At a pinch just plain Novelle.
All best
Sam
The Irish State has a long history of mistakes. Including the invention of English Literature. Which they then promptly and repeatedly banned.
The Committee on Evil Literature was created in 1922 and reported in 1926. The committee consisted of three laymen and two clergymen, one Roman Catholic and one Church of Ireland, they met at 24 Kildare Street, Dublin. Which was not that far from the shoe box I was living in. Dublin is not a huge City. But there I was with three copies of
Wormwood and so, promptly, compounded by crimes in the eyes of the Irish State by posting two away to other people in other countries. Thereby becoming a distributor of Obscene Material. Such are the extremes that working to prevent the Apocalypse drive you to. Had the Irish insisted on banning Irish Language Books they could, acording to
Brendan Behan had encouraged the
Plain People Of Ireland to learn their own language.
By New Year 1999 I was told that I would not be allowed to leave Ireland - and preferably not leave Dublin. The approaching Apocalypse needed to be prevented and we were the people to be doing it. And so, I needed to ask for a special dispensation, when the tour dates were announced. This I achieved by announcing that I had purchased tickets - I had not - for my Nephew, Niece and Myself - to attend at The Forum, London and that I had promised to take them to said venue. Without missing a beat, the Senior Manager of a mutinational company picked up the telephone and asked his secretary to obtain the crime statistics for Kentish Town. Where it to be a hotbed of anarchy I would not be permitted to leave the Irish State without being summarily dismissed. They were taking the Apocalypse seriously. While
Aoife struggled to talk to someone in London to determine if Kentish Town was Sodom and Gomorrah,
Lorcan began to chat about
Wormwood.
When I described the
Residents as being anonymous and their past work being a little unusual I was quickly cornered into admitting that I had not listened to
Wormwood at all and intended to only listen to it after seeing it performed. This was a surprise to
Lorcan who immediately enquired into the
Theory of Obscurity and so to the borrowing of the Compact Disc. Which means my boss heard
Wormwood as both his first exposure to the
Residents and as one of the Devout, an exposure to the untraditional, demythologising, exposition of the curious Biblical stories. It only dawned on me that
Lorcan liked the music - or perhaps I have called a memory into existence - because he constantly whistled the first notes of the
Burn Baby Burn vocal line for weeks.
Having determined that I was not going to be murdered, abducted or join
Fagin's Criminal Horde in some bizzare rerun of
Oliver Twist I was given permission to cross from Ireland - via
Dún Laoghaire in a vehicle I could pick up at the Dock. Which I would then be allowed to drive to London, Via Ynys Môn (
Angelsey) Liverpool and all points south to see the
Residents perform live. Thus, on the Friday before the 19th of July, 1999, with the Apocalypse approaching I set out to hear something I had never heard before but had owned for some months. I was handed a mobile telephone, so I could be contacted, and set off.
First task: dump the mobile phone in the Irish Sea. Second task check the route to the Forum. Third task: ponder what the track titles meant.
01. In The Beginning
02. Fire Fall
03. They Are The Meat
04. Melancholy Clumps
05. How to Get a Head
06. Cain and Abel
07. Mr. Misery
08. Tent Peg in the Temple
09. God's Magic Finger
10. Spilling the Seed
11. Dinah and the Unclean Skin
12. Bathsheba Bathes
13. Bridegroom of Blood
14. Hanging by His Hair
15. The Seven Ugly Cows
16. Burn Baby Burn (Rub Barb Bunny)
17. Kill Him
18. I Hate Heaven
19. Judas Saves
20. Revelation (Venial Rote)
Some seemed obvious. In reality, I would not be hearing any of them until after seeing them performed live. The Live performance would make them radically different. But to begin, before having heard anything, I was convinced everything would be some kind of
Gregorian Chant, possibly in Latin. Having read
Harlot At The Side Of The Road I was convinced that the stories were all some form of deviation from accepted, mainstream, American Christianity. Bizzarely, the copy of
Harlot At The Side Of The Road had been purchased from
Hodges and Figgis a marvellous bookseller of Dublin. Catering to both University College and Trinity College and to passing bibliophiles. But, I was convinced it would all be in some kind of
Gregorian Chant because that is what you think when, at seven am each morning you hear the sound of the Religious doing their religious thing.
I first tried to turn them into anagrams. Hoping that, by rearranging the building blocks - as anybody familiar with the
Theory Of Phonetic Organisation might think - but I simply got
Venial Rote for Revelation. It was not much It took a lot of effort to find other anagrams and, realistically, I did not get more than the
Venial Rote. But what I did get was to collect relatives en-route. Relatives who had now heard
Wormwood and were brimming with desire to make me hear it before the
Forum - which would negate all those months of not hearing it and confabulating an entire work within my mind.