Earthed
by Steve Kilbey



There's no money in poetry, but then again, there's no poetry in money.

• Robert Graves


Obviously this is not The Golden Age. The great seers and holy men who send us their prophesies from the middle ages and before have been grimly accurate, and their visions of hunger, killing machines and holocausts have not failed to materialise. But who could have foretold the tedium we would have to endure? Who pictured the numbing sterility left in the wake of barren progress as we all stooped to pay homage to Success At Any Cost and its attendant swarm of greedy ideologies? Somewhere along the way we lost touch with our own spirit as we scrambled for a share of transparent Glamour and nebulous Reward. Lost, the fragile connection that linked us, mere mortals, to the bottomless well of... ah, what should one call it... Inspiration? Magic? God? Drifting away, like Avalon, into the unreachable mists, all the reasons we possessed for remaining impervious to the squalor, the ugliness, the glaring injustices. We are all Jacob Marleys wearing the heavy chains of that loss, chains we forge every time we choose Money before Love, Power before Happiness, Facts before the Truth, Destruction before Creation. We've given the most precious things we had away: the things that nourished the various deities within us and stabilised those outside, call them The Muses or call it Creativity, call them Naiads and Dryads or call it Ecology, call them Miracles or call them Phenomena... we're blinded with syntax and symbols so it doesn't really matter... either you feel it or you don't.

The Moneymakers have gotten hold of our paintings, our music, our oceans, our rainforests, our parents, our children. And in return they give us... ENTERTAINMENT. We live in days when you have to always stop and ask, 'I wonder if it's real?' Yes, it's all superimposed, sampled or synthesised or recreated on an unfeeling contraption... but you never have to guess the Ulterior Motive, do you? Grey roads scar our Edens, the beautiful intelligent creatures which wandered the Earth and swam in its waters are fettered, clubbed and exterminated. Weaker or gentle peoples are conveniently deleted and replaced by stock exchanges and mortgages and space programs and prisons and great open sores that go deep into our mother planet until all her marrow is sucked out by her insane, cannibalistic offspring.

The Arts have been entrusted to the brokers, to the accountants, to the media... It's all gauged in Quantity instead of Quality or stuck in Mausoleum Museums to be doled out by condescending custodians. The Arts tell us something priceless about ourselves; Entertainment admits Nothing yet the price of that admission is so great.

Poetry, and all that falls under its ambiguous umbrella, is still relatively pure, still relatively untainted by the eddying currents of supply and demand, dollars, deutschmarks and big, big deals; in other words, it's safe because there's no money to be made out of it. The writer of today, like the writer of the past, is still armed only with his pen and paper to effect his art, to transfer and imprint his images and ideas into the minds of others, letting those ideas and images resonate as they will, through the readers nerves and pleasure response endings, or if you like, soul. A book contains no Aural Excitation, no Todd-AO widescreen cinemagraphic simulation. It hasn't been made with a Quantising Metre Machine or a sophisticated Harmoniser. There's no airbrushing or visual enhancement. No Distortion Pedals, Holograms, Special Effects, Negative Passive Research, Hi-Con Subliminal Hooks nor Probability Studies... it's only plain old words and, in a linear way, it's probably un-understandable... but there exists something that's better than mere understanding. It resides in the part of you which is not Earthed

The Singer and His Voice.

   There was once an incredibly handsome young man who was
persecuted by the ambition to sing like a bird.  His sheer
beauty sustained him through adequate performances and he
gradually attracted a devoted coterie of women who were
enamoured by his vague grey eyes and the curve of his jaw. 
His voice was bland and devoid of resonance, although he could
hit his notes without much trouble, but as for timbre or
vibrato he had none, and worse still, he could invest no
experience or weight behind the pallid interpretations he
offered his audience that crowded into the tiny nightclub
where he sand ( on Tuesday and Thursday nights).  So they
gazed at his lovely face and ignored his dull singing.
   After each show people crowded into his meagre dressing
room just wanting to look and be taken with his grace and
gentle demeanour.  Women flirted entranced while husbands
sulked in the doorway.  Bunches of exotic flowers arrived from
strangers and the manager of the club smelt money.
   None of this meant anything to the singer.  Convinced of
his own mediocrity, the praise and attention only served to
mildly irk him.  He felt talentless.  He attended singing
lessons in an apartment above the High Street where he and 
his teacher pointlessly went over the scales and exercise
intended to improve breathing and pitch.  But both secretly
knew that these methods would never enhance his rather
ordinary throat. 
   Finally, despite growing attendances and the adulation of
several of the city's richest and most desirable women he
packed a suitcase and slipped out of town unannounced.  On a
barge he drifted down a big brown river past fields of wheat
and gently modulating hills where a weak winter sun struggled
behind gathering clouds.
   The owner of the barge, who preferred the comp[any of man
to women, was fascinated with his passenger and spent much
time watching him and attempting to engage him in
conversation.  And once, late at night after several glasses
of wine, the singer offered to sing for him, to pass the time. 
The barge-owner, imagining some rich baritone or sweet tenor
emanating from his guest, agreed immediately and leaned back
in his chair and closed his eyes, but after two verses he fell
asleep and soon was snoring loudly.
   The next morning, still insulted, the singer disembarked at
a small town on a bend in the river and walked the quiet
streets looking for lodgings.
   For a while he stayed in a spare room out the back of a
bookshop, and - in return for his board - worked long dark
rainy afternoons, serving the occasional customer and reading
the books.
   At first he skimmed through poetry, short stories, or the
odd biography.  Sometimes he would just browse through
encyclopedias and atlases, beginning to acquire some new sense
of the world and its inhabitants.
   One day he found the old grammar of a 19th century magician
called Erskine, the pages still crisp and legible, each
illustrated with bizarre diagrams and symbols.  He pondered
much on a chapter which gave advice on how to summon up
and capture one's own little devil, some minor demon who might
be compelled to do one's bidding and that sort of thing.  so
he took the book to his room, and at midnight he picked it up
and ("as if by magic" he thought rather naively) it fell open
to the section to which he was particularly interested.

   The page was stained yellow by moonlight.

              PERTAINING TO THE INVOCATION OF ASTAROTH

          It must be a full moon.  inside a circle of black
          chalk set a goblet of red whine to which has been
          added a lizard's tear and the sweat of a hanged man,
          also the powdered root of a hawthorn.  Frankincense
          should be burned.   Half the mixture should be drunk          
          and the other half sprinkled liberally around the    
          room.  A pinch of turmeric and the crushed skull of  
          a still-born goat should be thrown on the flame.
          chant the demon's name starting in a whisper and     
          progressing to a scream.  Continue for 3 hours and   
          then cut the throats of the two black rats spilling  
          the blood inside the circle.  This should be         
          sufficient.

   As the morning star was rising, sure enough, in an armchair
in the window a figure began to fade up into existence: a
small, dark, wrinkled man sitting quite naked watching him. 
Eventually he broke the silence.  "Ah, it's a better voice
you'll be wanting now, is it?"  The voice was velvet.  It
carried a strange foreign accent.

  The singer blanched.
  "Er...I was hoping..."
  "Hoping, now, was you?"  The demon sniffed the pungent stale
air of the room and motioned to the mess on the floor.  
  "That's a funny sort of hope indeed, I'd say now"
  The singer shuddered.
  "Yes...well I hadn't really ex...", his voice trailed off in
disbelief.
  "Hadn't expected the spell to actually work now, hadn't you? 
Hell! I'd love a soul for every time I've heard that since the
beginning, yes the sad and wonderful beginning when the
gorgeous Lord Lucifer cast that bastard out of Hell and
upwards into the infernal ether."
   "Oh praise that vile and damned day", the demon went on. 
"And suck the corpses of the good and honest out of the dark
earth and into the terrifying sky, where they roam in horror,
castrated of their will and lovely evil."  The demon glared at
him with angry little eyes and licked its black lips.  The
singer shuddered again; he backed away slowly towards the
door.
   "Ssss...thought it was the other way round now, didn't you? 
Yes indeed, you did now, didn't you?" his eyes grew even
nastier.
   "You've disturbed me in the middle of some very delicious
and pleasurable business, and, fuck a dead angel boy, I'm
going to peel the skin off your flesh and lick you with my
pretty, black tongue."  Astaroth giggled a soft girlish giggle
and uncrossed and recrossed his hairy legs.
   The singer suddenly bolted for the door, but it was fast
and firmly jammed.
   "Leaving so soon now, are you?" the demon crooned, and
stretched out his wicked hands, and as if by a magnet, drew
the singer towards him and then brought him to his knees
without touching him, inches away from his face.
   "It's alright.  I'm not really going to hurt you."  The
demons breath stank. He stifled the reflex to vomit.
   "I'll teach you how to have a beautiful voice, you little
stupid.  Though there's no magic in it now, is there?  Yes a
beautiful voice like mine, indeed like my very own."
   The singer had to admit to himself that the demon did
actually have a wonderful and musical voice.  And then in the
form of a song with the most strange and exquisite melody,
Astaroth began.  The words were ancient, unfamiliar, yet
the singer understood them perfectly.
   "First you must smoke.  You must smoke tobacco, moss,
hashish, opium, the bones of women, anything, but you must
smoke.  This will give you Resonance."
   "Then you must fuck.  You must fuck night and day, and
imbibe all the salty and rancid liquids, and absorb the pus
from pimples, blisters and chancres, and breathe the steam
given off by bodies.  And this will give you Pitch."
   "And then you must drink.  You must drink beer and whisky
and absinthe and piss and blood and sea-water and the curdled
milk of foxes.  you must drink from filthy puddles and from
ostentatious cups.  you must drink turpentine and oil and the
stuff that oozes from the stem of a dead lilly.  and this will
give you Depth."
   "And then you must kill.  You must kill children and
enemies and beetles and deer.  You must kill whales and
ant-colonies and lovers and herd of horses. You must kill
cities and rivers and queen bees.  And this will give you
Timbre."
   "And then you must eat.  You must eat bread and iron and
jellies and birdshit and holy wafers and rye which is diseased
with ergot.  And you must eat pig and dove and pineapples and
the eyes of sharks and offal and the feet of dogs and the
breasts of monkeys.  You must eat lion's balls and the flowers
that grow around graves.  This will give you Range."
   "And then you must scream and you must gurgle and you must
cough until your throat bleeds raw.   And you must choke and
you must spit and you must shout the most disgusting curses
until you're hoarse and sore.  And you must shriek and simper
and grunt like a swine.  And this will give you Control." 
   "And then you must suffer.  You must suffer pain and much
more pain and loathing and ulcers and grief, heartbreaking
grief, and tumours and wounds and scalds and burns and warts
and cuts and bruises and festering sores that never heal, and
blows about the head and insulting remarks from the mob.  And
this will give you confidence."
   The demon finished his song abruptly and sat back in the
chair snorting out little puffs of smoke from his nostrils. 
And then he laughed and vanished. 
  The singer went forth into the world, and practised all his
lessons faithfully and to the letter.  And after many many
years he possessed a voice of silver; a haunting, warm, soft,
deep voice that hung suspended in the air and lingered in the
corners of rooms and wafted and sighed and floated like a
dream.
   He eventually booked himself a show at the old nightclub
and most of the old crowd turned up to see the return of their
prodigal singer.  And he came on stage and the deep melancholy
voice, husky and soothing drifted around the room as if an
enchantment was in the smoky air.
   But no one heard anything at all of this splendid and
magical singing.  His former sycophants groaned in horror at
the bloated repugnant wreck he had become, and they angrily
demanded their money back.
   Hounded out of the town by indignant city officials who
were outraged by his wretched appearance, he ended up in a
ditch three miles thence, and he lay in the warm night, still
singing.  And the beasties of the fields and forests crept
out from their lairs and hiding places gathered to bask in
this voice most wondrous, and would do him no harm.  But alas,
one day he was fatally mauled by a deaf bear.
    
                             Steve Kilbey.