What Was I Thinking? (28 December)

 

Torpedo the Ark: images from posts published on 

28 December (2013-2021)

 

Sometimes, it's interesting to look back and see what one was thinking on the same date in years gone by - and sometimes it's simply embarrassing ...

 

Our God is Woman: Our Mission is Protest! 

On this date in 2013, for example, I was keen to express my support for a twenty-year old philosophy student and Femen activist, Josephine Witt, who staged a one-woman protest at St. Peter's Cathedral in Cologne, briefly disrupting a televised Christmas mass by getting her tits out and declaring herself to be God, before half-a-dozen horrified clerics wearing an assortment of robes pulled her from the altar, bundled her out of the building, and handed her over to the secular forces of law and order. 

 

I'm not sure I would now be quite so sympathetic to such an action. 

 

 

In Praise of an Unnatural Death 

 

Skip forward three years and on this date in 2016 I was keen to challenge the judgement of God by refusing to accept what medical professionals describe as death by natural causes; i.e., the all-too-predictable kind of death that results from illness, old age, or an internal malfunction of the body and its organs. 

 

As a philosopher, I argued, one should always desire and seek out the opposite of this; i.e., the joy of an unnatural death, be it by accident, misadventure, homicide, suicide, or that mysterious non-category that is undetermined and which, for those enigmatic individuals who pride themselves on their ambiguity, must surely be the way to go.

 

I then confessed my own preference to be executed, like William Palmer, the notorious nineteenth-century murderer known as the Prince of Poisoners, who is said to have climbed the gallows and placed a foot tentatively on the trapdoor before enquiring of the hangman: Is it safe? 

 

I would like, in other words, to go to my death with the cool courage and stoicism of the dandy and a ready quip on my lips that might cause even my executioner to smile (and serve also to annoy the po-faced authorities who demand seriousness and expect contrition in such circumstances).

 

 

To See More Clearly Than Ever Before 

 

In December 2018, meanwhile, I was entering my Daphne Du Maurier phase - a phase that never really passed and became a long-lasting love for the author and her astonishing body of work. On the 28th of this month I wrote a series of notes on one of her near-perfect short stories - suggested to me by the poet Simon Solomon - 'The Blue Lenses' (1959).

 

The premise of the post and story was the same: what if everyone were to suddenly lose their human features and be seen with the head of the creature that best expresses their inhuman qualities; not so much their true nature, as what might be termed their molecular animality - would we still find this gently amusing? I suspect not: in all likelihood, initial astonishment would quickly give way to horror. 

 

However we choose to describe it, du Maurier's tale is not simply an imaginative fantasy and she, like D. H. Lawrence, is "another of the writers who leave us troubled and filled with admiration" precisely because she was able to tie her work to "real and unheard of becomings". Hers is a genuinely black art, as Deleuze and Guattari would say.   

 

Judenstern

 

Making particular reference to the case of Serge Gainsbourg, back on 28 December, 2019 I was concerned with the history of the badge that Jews were often obliged to wear for purposes of public identification (i.e., in order to clearly mark them as religious and ethnic outsiders). 

 

Although we tend to think of this practice in the context of Hitler's Germany, the Nazis were actually drawing upon an extensive (anti-Semitic) history when they revived the practice of forcing Jews to wear a distinctive sign upon their clothing, including, most famously, the yellow Star of David with the word Jude inscribed in letters meant to resemble Hebrew script.  

 

Gainsbourg was required to wear such as a young boy in wartime Paris; an experience he made bearable by pretending that it was a sherrif's badge, or a prize that he'd been awarded, and which he eventually wrote a song about: click here. 

 

 

Piquerism and Notes on Knife Play

 

On 28 December of the following year, 2020, I expressed my fascination with piquerism; i.e., the practice of penetrating the skin of another person with sharp objects, including pins, razors, and knives - something that I traced back to young childhood and the time I placed a drawing pin on a fat girl's chair in order to see if she would explode like a balloon with a loud bang.

 

Following this, I then explored episodes of knife play in the work of D. H. Lawrence, of which there are several, including the notorious scene in chapter XXIII of The Plumed Serpent (1926) in which Cipriano publicly executes a group of stripped and blindfolded prisoners with a bright, thin dagger, plunging the latter into their chests with swift, heavy stabs. 

 

I think even at the time I was uncomfortable with this and not able to dismiss it with the same ease as Kate Leslie who, if shocked and appalled at first by the killings, eventually concludes that her new husband's penchant for a little ritualised murder is fine if carried out in good conscience.

 

 

Jane Ciracylides: the Girl with Insect Eyes

 

If over the Xmas period in 2018 I was reading Daphne du Maurier, in 2021 I was enjoying the work of J. G. Ballard, including a short story entitled 'Prima Belladonna' which was included in the collection Vermilion Sands (1971) - a collection which celebrates the neglected virtues of the lurid and bizarre within a surreal sci-fi setting described by Ballard as the visionary present or inner space; the former referring to the future already contained within the present and the latter referring to the place where unconscious dreams, fears, and fantasies meet external reality. 

 

The alien female figure of Jane Ciracylides, with her rich patina-golden skin and insects for eyes, has continued to fascinate me to this day. Who knows, perhaps I'll get to play i-Go with her one day (even if she always cheats).  

 

In Memory of Imogen Hassall (the Countess of Cleavage)

Imogen Hassall (1942-1980) seen here as a sultry gypsy woman; 

a bikini-clad cave girl; and carrying on as Jenny Grubb   

 

I. 

 

Somewhat surprisingly for an actress who would become known in the 1960s and '70s for playing sexy, scantily clad characters in film and on TV - and who was referred to in the tabloid press as the Countess of Cleavage - the thing I admire most about Imogen Hassall is that although born in Woking, she had something a bit exotic about her - which probably explains why she was often cast as a foreign beauty in shows like The Saint and The Persuaders! [1].   

 

As much as her television work would make an interesting topic for discussion - as well as the above shows, she appeared also in episodes of The Avengers (1967), The Champions (1968), and Jason King (1972) [2] - it's three of her films, all released in 1970, that I wish to look at here ...

 

 

II. 

 

Let's start with an adaptation of a novella by D. H. Lawrence; The Virgin and the Gypsy (1970), dir. Christopher Miles and written by Alan Plater. 

Whilst Miss Hassall doesn't have a very large role in the film - and is credited simply as 'the Gypsy's Wife' - it's always nice to see her on screen, particularly when, as here, she's cheerfully perpetuating the racial and sexual stereotype of the dark-faced gipsy-woman, with a red shawl wrapped round her and swinging her flounced, voluminous skirt as she walks:

 

"She was handsome in a bold, dark, long-faced way, just a bit wolfish. She looked like one of the bold, loping Spanish gipsies" - and she spoke "with a certain foreign stiffness" [3].

The film remains fairly faithful to Lawrence's text; so much so, in fact, that Columbia Pictures, who were originally backing the movie, withdrew their support, leaving Miles and producer Kenneth Harper in something of a pickle (it took them two years to find alternative finance). 

 

It was well-received by film critics and cinema audience alike; indeed, it was even nominated for a Golden Globe and the stars of the film, Franco Nero (as the Gypsy) and Joanna Shimkus (as the Virgin) were praised for their performances. 

 

But when I watch it now, it's only to see Imogen reading palms with her cruel-seeming fingers; or nursing a baby with her lovely bare breast, its mole cinque-spotted; or telling Yvette to beware the voice of the water ... [4]

 

 

III.

I'd like next to offer a few brief remarks on the third in Hammer's prehistoric series - or cave girl flicks - When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) [5] ...

 

Written and directed by Val Guest, and co-starring Miss Hassal, as Ayak, alongside the American model and actress Victoria Vetri, as Sanna; both women demonstrating that it wasn't only Raquel Welch who knew how to rock a stone age bikini one million years BC (i.e., an age of unknown terrors, pagan worship and virgin sacrifice).

 

For those who like this kind of thing - and I'm one of them - this is the kind of thing we like. 

 

It's not Shakespeare, but it is a lot of fun and, interestingly, Val Guest's screenplay was based on a treatment by J. G. Ballard, who, in his 2008 autobiography, revealed that he too was a fan of Hammer films, which, he said, had "tremendous panache and visual attack, without a single wasted frame" [6]. 

 

And so, when contacted by the producer Aida Young - who informed him she was a great admirer of his work, particulary The Drowned World (1962) - Ballard was happy to meet up and share a few ideas; whether he suggested that Imogen's character - the jealous and scheming Ayak - should meet a diabolical end in a pit of quicksand, I don't know (but I doubt it). 

 

 

IV.

 

Finally, we come to the third film in our discussion; Carry On Loving (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1970) ...

 

This is probably nobody's favourite Carry On, but, actually, it's by no means the weakest in the long-running film series and has most of the familiar faces, as this trailer indicates: click here. 

 

However, it also has a couple of newcomers, one of whom is Imogen Hassall as prim and proper Jenny Grubb who transforms into something of a bombshell (much to the delight of the middle-aged Romeo looking for love played by Terry Scott). 

 

If, in a sense, she is simply filling in for Valerie Leon, Miss Hassall nevertheless puts in an excellent performance, as does Jackie Piper as her flatmate, Sally Martin - unknown star of stage, screen and television - appearing here in her second Carry On. 

 

As, by all accounts, Imogen was popular with both members of the cast and fans of the series, it's a surprise she didn't return in a later film. But there you go. Perhaps she didn't want to be typecast and had grown tired of always being the buxom brunette (she was clearly talented enough to play the more serious roles she craved).

 

Unfortunately, as her star began to wane and her personal life was increasingly marked by tragedy - including the death of a baby daughter four days after she was born in 1972 - Imogen did incline to sadness and was found dead at her Wimbledon home on the morning of November 16th, 1980: suicide by overdose.

 

She was, to paraphrase William Hazlitt, perhaps the most tender and most artless of all those young women who lit up the screens in the 1960s and '70s.  

     

Notes

 

[1] She played the Greek beauty (Sophia) in a 1964 episode of The Saint (for full details on IMDb, click here); and the Italian beauty (Maria) in the first episode of The Persuaders! in 1971 (for full details on IMDb, click here).

[2] See: The Avengers, 'Escape in Time' (S5/E3), in which she plays an Indian character named Anjali; The Champions, 'Reply Box No. 666' (S1/E3), in which she plays a character called Cleo; Jason King, 'The Stones of Venice' (S1/E20), in which she plays a character called Gina.   

[3] D. H. Lawrence, The Virgin and the Gipsy, in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Berhan Jones and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 21. 

      I have written about the racial and sexual stereotyping of Romani women - and the trope of the Hot Gypsy Girl - elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

 

[4] These scenes from Christopher Miles's movie can be viewed on the Facebook page 'In Loving Memory of Imogen Hassal': click here. 

[5] In the UK the film was released as When Dinosaurs Ruled the World, but seems now to be known by the US title, even on the BFI website. To watch the original trailer, click here. And to watch a rather charming short interview with Imogen Hassall discussing the film, click here.    

[6] See J. G. Ballard, Miracles of Life, (Fourth Estate, 2008). 

      Ballard was also impressed with the fact that directors of the Hammer movies were "surprisingly free to push their obsessions to the limit". 

Kiss Me Deadly: Thoughts Inspired by J. G. Ballard's 'Track 12'

Videodrome Lips Art Print designed by ep-pandality 

redbubble.com

 

 

Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth, for your love is deadlier than poison.

 

 

I. 

 

To press one's lips against those of another human being and then to insert your tongue into their mouth in an act of amorous exploration, has always seemed a rather queer thing to do. 

 

Of course, I'm no philematologist, and I don't know if kissing is an instinctual act of passion or an example of learned behaviour reinforced by poets and filmmakers. But I do think that Freud was right to identify it as a primary form of perversion [a].    

 

And I do think that D. H. Lawrence was right to describe the close-up kiss on screen in terms of obscenity (i.e., a loss of scenic distance) [b]. There's something profoundly unpleasant about an intimate and private act made visible and public - when it is literally in your face.

 

And the sound of smooching can also become disgusting and disorientating when it is recorded, amplified, or in some way mechanically processed - as we discover in J. G. Ballard's short story 'Track 12' [c]. The fact is, there are some sights that should always remain unseen and there are some sounds that should always remain unheard ...

 

 

II.     

 

Ballard's story rather reminds me of one of those written by Roald Dahl that originally formed the basis of the British TV series Tales of the Unexpected (ITV 1979-88); slightly sinister, darkly comic, and with an unexpected sting in the tail.

 

'Track 12' concerns a love triangle between a university professor, Sheringham, his wife, Susan, and her lover, Maxted. The latter, a former athlete, has been invited by Sheringham to his home on the pretext of discussing a potential business deal (although Maxted suspects he is about to be confronted over the affair).   

Throughout the evening, Sheringham insists on playing odd sound recordings of otherwise inaudible sounds amplified 100,000 times and challenging Maxted - fitted out with headphones that have made his ears feel bruised and numb - to guess what they are (one of them is the sound of a pin dropping). 

 

Maxted finds these games infantile and irritating; one man's obsession with microsonics is another man's boring waste of time:

 

"'Some of the records are interesting,' he admitted. 'They have a sort of crazy novelty value, like blown-up photographs of moths' faces and razor blades. Despite what you claim, though, I can't belive microsonics will ever become a scientific tool. It's just an elaborate laboratory toy.'" [91]  

 

Maxted - "a tall fleshy man with a coarse handsome face" [92] - also finds Sheringham a grotesque bore: 

 

"He surveyed Sheringham with as much detachment as he could muster, wondering whether this prim unattractive man, with his pedantry and in-bred academic humour, had any redeeming qualities whatever." [92]  

 

Sheringham insists on playing one last track. Maxted, however, is feeling cold and shivers as a low noise begins to crackle from multiple speakers placed around the patio. As he attempts to reach across the table to help himself to more whisky, he uncontrollably falls back into his chair:

 

"His stomach seemed to be full of mercury, ice-cold and enormously heavy. He pushed himself forward again, trying to reach the glass, and knocked it across the table. His brain began to fade, and he leaned his elbows helplessly on the lass edge of the table and felt his head fall onto his wrists." [93]  

 

This is never a good sign: in fact, it's often a sign one has - as in this case - been poisoned: "'Chromium cyanate. Inhibits the coenzyme system controlling the body's fluid balances, floods hydroxyl into the bloodstream. In brief, you drown'" [93], as Sheringham politely informs Maxted with a sympathetic smile. 

 

He then goes on to reveal his knowledge of the affair that's been going on behind his back and explains to Maxted how he's been secretly recording the illicit acts of intimacy with numerous hidden microphones. Meanwhile, track 12 continues to play:

 

"Being fed into the patio was a curiously muffled spongy noise, like elastic waves lapping in a latex sea. The rhythms were huge and ungainly, overlaid by the deep leaden wheezing of gigantic bellows. Barely audible at first, the sounds rose until they filled the patio and shut out the few traffic noises along the highway. 

      'Fantastic, isn't it?' Sheringham said. [...] 'These are 30-second repeats, 400 microsens, amplification one thousand. I admit I've edited the track a little, but it's still remarkable how repulsive a beautiful sound can become.'" [94]

 

Fearing that the drugged and dying Maxted will never guess what it is he's listening to, Sheringham gives him a clue: 

 

"'Last Saturday, just after midnight, you and Susan were lying back in this same chair. [...] The wind is your own breathing, fairly heavy at the time, if I remember; your interlocked pulses produced the thunder effect.'" [94]

 

But it's no good: Maxted is too far gone to answer. Watching as his rival "drifted in a wash of sound" [94], Sheringham pumps up the volume and bellows in his rival's ear: 

 

"'Maxted, can you hear the sea? Do you know where you're drowning?' [...] 

      'In a kiss!' Sheringham screamed. 'A kiss!'" [95]

  

 

Notes

 

[a] In his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1916-17), Freud reminds readers that the mouth is the entrance to the digestive tract and not a sex organ per se. Thus, even a kiss between the most respectable married couple who pride themselves on leading a normal love life might be described as a perverse act, since it consists in the bringing together of the oral erotogenic zones instead of the genitals.

 

[b] In his essay 'Pornography and Obscenity', Lawrence claims that "the most obscene painting on a Greek vase [...] is not as pornographical as the close-up kisses on the film". See Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 253. 

      See also Lawrence's poem 'When I went to the film', in The Complete Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 385, and Lawrence's 1928 painting Close-Up (Kiss), in D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, Introduction by Keith Sagar, (Chaucer Press, 2003), p. 58. Prints of this artwork are available to buy on pixels.com in a variety of formats: click here. 

 

[c] 'Track 12' first appeared in the April 1958 edition of the British science fiction magazine New Worlds (Vol. 24, No. 70). Readers can find it in several different collections of Ballard's short stories, including Passport to Eternity (1963), The Overloaded Man (1967), and The Venus Hunters (1986). It is also in The Complete Short Stories, Vol. I, (Fourth Estate, 2014), pp. 90-95, and it's this edition that page numbers given in the post refer to. 

      Interestingly, the story was adapted for screen by Harold Pinter and a short film (22 mins), directed by Joseph Losey, was made in 1967, featuring Stanley Baker (as Maxted), Dirk Bogarde (as Sheringham), and (an uncredited) Julie Christie (as Susan), whose puckered lips fill the screen at the film's deadly climax (a scene which, according to Mark Bould, had a profound influence on David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983)).  

     

 

Musical bonus: 'Kiss Me Deadly', written by Billy Idol and Tony James, from the album Generation X (Chrysalis, 1978): click here. Or, to see Generation X in action, click here. 

Manhole 69

 And above us all fluorescent tubes shall hang ...

  

I. 

 

'Manhole 69' is not, as far as I know, the name of gay sex club (though maybe it should be). 

 

It is, rather, the title of a short story by J. G. Ballard [a], concerning a medical experiment in which three volunteers have their brains tampered with so that they can exist without sleep and thus be able to live life 24/7, rather than spend a third of it as an invalid snoring their way through "'an eight-hour peepshow of infantile erotica'" [68], as the doctor in charge of the research puts it.

 

This same doctor - Dr. Neill - is convinced that his work marks a crucial evolutionary advance for man as a species [b]. As he tells his young colleague, John Morley:

 

"'None of you realize it yet, but this is as big an advance as the step the first ichthyoid took out of the protozoic sea 300 million years ago. At last we've freed the mind, raised it out of that archaic sump called sleep, its nightly retreat into the medulla. With virtually one cut of the scalpel, we've added twenty years to those men's lives.'" [67-68]

 

Unfortunately, total wakefulness soon proves to be a nightmare. Because sleep, of course, and the chance to dream, is more than "'an inconvenient symptom of cerebral anoxaemia" [69]. Nor is it merely a form of idleness - i.e., a vice or moral failing - as some neoliberals seem to believe; the sort of fanatics who pride themselves on being able to get by on as little as three or four hours sleep a night.

 

Sleep is vital to our health and wellbeing. For if nothing else, as Morley points out, sleep gives us the chance to switch off and escape: "'Maybe you need eight hours off a day just to get over the shock of being yourself'" [69] and to prevent you becoming like a waxwork dummy with open, unblinking eyes set in faces with "the empty, reflexless look of psychic zero" [87], which is what happens to Bobby Lang and his two fellow test subjects. 

 

As Morley concludes:

"'Continual consciousness is more than the brain can stand. Any signal repeated often enough eventually loses its meaning. Try saying the word 'sleep' fifty times. After a point the brain's self-awareness dulls. It's no longer able to grasp who or why it is, and it rides adrift. [...] 

      The central nervous system can't stand narcotomy.'" [87]

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, the negative consequences of sleep deprivation in the name of a life lived to the max have recently been explored by several cultural commentators and political theorists, including Byung-Chul Han in The Burnout Society (2015), a work I discussed on Torpedo the Ark a couple of months ago: click here. 

 

Readers might also be interested in 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (2014), a work in which Jonathan Crary also develops the argument that by expanding market values into every aspect of life and allowing consumer capitalism to operate around the clock, we have fatally submitted to a form of torture and compromised our own physical and mental wellbeing. 

 

As the author notes:

 

"Behind the vacuity of the catchphrase, 24/7 is a static redundancy that disavows its relation to the rhythmic and periodic textures of human life. It connotes an arbitrary, uninflected schema of a week, extracted from any unfolding of variegated or cumulative experience. [...] A 24/7 environment has the semblance of a social world, but it is actually a non-social model of machine performance and a suspension of living that does not disclose the human cost required to sustain its effectiveness. [...] An illuminated 24/7 world without shadows is the final capitalist mirage of post-history [...]" [c]  

 

Crary suggests that sleep - as a restorative withdrawl that is intrinsically incompatible with the 24/7 world of neoliberalism - might provide a possible form of resistance and a refusal of the fascist imperative to always be wide awake [d]. 

 

He writes:

 

"In its profound uselessness and intrinsic passivity, with the incalculable losses it causes in production time, circulation, and consumption, sleep will always collide with the demands of a 24/7 universe. The huge portion of our lives that we spend asleep, freed from a morass of simulated needs, subsists as one of the great human affronts to the voraciousness of contemporary capitalism. [...] Sleep poses the idea of a human need and interval of time that cannot be colonized and harnessed to a massive engine of profitability, and thus remains an incongruous anomaly and site of crisis in the global present [...] it frustrates and confounds any strategies to exploit or reshape it. The stunning, inconceivable reality is that nothing of value can be extracted from it." [e]. 

 

Concluding:

 

"Sleep is an irrational and intolerable affirmation that there might be limits to the compatibility of living beings with the allegedly irresistable forces of modernization." [f] 

 

In other words - and as Heidegger might say - Nur ein langes Nickerchen kann uns retten ...           

 

Notes

 

[a] 'Manhole 69' was originally published in the British science fiction magazine New Worlds in 1957. It was then included in the collection Chronopolis and Other Stories, (Putnam Publishing, 1971). Page numbers given in this post refer to the tale as it appears in The Complete Short Stories, Vol. I, (Fourth Estate, 2014), pp. 56-89. 

      The title, by the way, refers to a small narrow room or cubicle, without windows, and with just a solitary bright light shining from behind a steel grille in the ceiling; a place where it's always 3 a.m. After a while, it's easy to imagine the walls closing in ever closer. 

      Readers might also note that prisoners subjected to sleep deprivation - a form of torture endured by many victims of extrajudicial rendition - are often confined in rooms lit by high-intensity lamps and so cramped in size that they make it impossible even to lie down.   

 

[b] One of the three test subjects, Robert Lang, buys into this line of thinking, even though, as Morley points out, leaving the seas behind in order to become air-breathing creatures, isn't analogous with eliminating the need for sleep. Interestingly, Lang also subscribes to the view that sleep is a form of pseudo-death that keeps the human psyche orientated towards its own mortality. Eliminate sleep, therefore, "'and you also eliminate all the fear and defence mechanisms erected around it'" [78].  

      Cf. D. H. Lawrence writing in Fantasia of the Unconscious on the relationship between ourselves and the death-realm which is "active every moment of our lives", but particularly whilst we sleep and the individual consciousness is suspended and we lie "completely within the circuit of the earth's magnetism". It is this circuit, according to Lawrence, which removes the deadness (i.e. tiredness) of the body: "For each time we lie down to sleep we have within us a body of death which dies with the day that is spent. And this body of death is removed, or laid in line by the activities of the earth-circuit, the great active death circuit, while we sleep." 

      See Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 177.    

[c] Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, (Verso, 2014), pp. 8-9.

 

[d] Readers will doubtless recall that Deutschland Erwache! was one of the Nazi Party's most successful and oft-repeated slogans (taken from a poem by Dietrich Eckart entitled Sturmlied). Contrary to what many people believe, fascism compels to speech and constant activity; it never lets its citizens enjoy a silent night in which they might sleep in heavenly peace and dream their own sweet dreams.

 

[e] Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, p. 10-11. 

 

[f] Ibid., p. 13.   

Venus Smiles

Tabita Cargnel: Venus Smiles (2020) [a]

Photo © Dario Des Ciancolini from Vibes Art

 

 

'Venus Smiles' is another amusing short story by J. G. Ballard [b], at the centre of which is a sonic sculpture, commissioned by the tale's narrator - Hamilton - who sits on the Vermilion Sands Fine Arts Committee.

 

The artist responsible for the work, Lorraine Drexel, sounds like an interesting woman, going by Hamilton's description:

 

"This elegant and autocratic creature in a cartwheel hat, with her eyes like black orchids, was a sometime model and intimate of Giacometti and John Cage. Wearing a blue crêpe de Chine dress ornamented with lace serpents and other art nouveau emblems, she sat before us like some fugitive Salome from the world of Aubrey Beardsley. [...]

      She had lived in Vermilion Sands for only three months, arriving via Berlin, Calcutta and the Chicago New Arts Centre. Most of her sculpture to date had been scored for various Tantric and Hindu hymns, and I remembered her brief affair with a world-famous pop-singer, later killed in a car crash, who had been an enthusiastic devotee of the sitar. [...] She had shown us an album of her sculptures, interesting chromium constructions that compared favourably with the run of illustrations in the latest art magazines." [52]   

 

Unfortunately, the piece Miss Drexel produces for the central square of Vermilion Sands isn't quite what Hamilton and other committee members had hoped for; and it certainly isn't to the liking of the specially invited assembly of VIPs and members of the general public who witness its unveiling with a mixture of shock and anger. 

 

Even Hamilton's secretary, describes 'Sound and Quantum: Generative Synthesis 3' as "'nothing but a piece of old scrap iron'" [51] - one that makes an infernal racket as well as an ugly sight:

 

"With its pedestal the statue was twelve feet high. Three spindly metal legs, ornamented with spikes and crosspieces, reached up from the plinth to a triangular apex. Clamped on to this was a jagged structure that at first sight seemed to be an old Buick radiator grille. It had been bent into a rough U five feet across, and the two arms jutted out horizontally, a single row of sonic cores, each about a foot long, poking up like the teeth of an enormous comb. Welded on apparently at random all over the statue were twenty or thirty filigree vanes.

      That was all. The whole structure of scratched chromium had a blighted look like a derelict antenna." [53]   

 

Worse, once the acoustic drape is removed, the sculpture gave out an "intermittent high-pitched whine, a sitar-like caterwauling" [53]. After the furious crowd disperse and an insulted, but amused, Lorraine Drexel has skipped town, (keeping her $5000 fee), it's immediately agreed that the work should be removed. As no one else wants anything further to do with it, it is also decided that Hamilton should keep it:

 

"There was nowhere else to put the statue so I planted it out in the garden. Without the stone pedestal it was only six feet high. Shielded by the shrubbery, it had quietened down and now emitted a pleasant melodic harmony, its soft rondos warbling across the afternoon heat." [54]

 

Unfortunately, Hamilton's problems with the sculpture have only just begun ... A week or so later, Carol, Hamilton's secretary, notices that the thing is not only moving but changing shape. Further, it's rapidly expanding in size and beneath the surface rust Hamilton detects "a bright sappy glint" [56], as if the sculpture were alive, like some kind of strange tree coming into bud:

 

"Poking through the outer scale of chrome were a series of sharp little nipples. [...]

      Carefully I examined the rest of the statue. All over it new shoots of metal were coming through: arches, barbs, sharp double helixes, twisting the original statue into a thicker and more elaborate construction." [56] [c] 

Of course, Hamilton has the option to just chop this musical monster down. But he is curious to see how big it will grow. The answer is very big: and even after it eventually collapses under its own weight and "lay on its side in a huge angular spiral [...] like the skeleton of a futuristic whale" [58], its growth rate continued to accelerate. 

 

Thus, Hamilton is obliged to seek a solution in his tool shed: "Using the hacksaw, I cut off a two-foot limb and handed it to Dr. Blackett, an eccentric but amiable neighbour who sometimes dabbled in sculpture himself." [59]

 

The latter speculates (in a pseudo-scientific manner) about how the sculpture is managing to grow: "I imagine it's rapidly synthesizing an allotropic form of ferrous oxide. In other words, a purely physical rearrangement of the constituents of rust." [59] This might not be very plausible, but Hamilton's only other idea is that, before she left, Lorraine Drexel "had set some perverse jinx at work within the statue, a bizarre revenge on us all for deriding her handiwork" [58]. 

 

The good doctor is convinced that the process will soon reach a natural conclusion. However, the next morning Hamilton wakes up to find the thing breaking through his bedroom window and spreading across his garden: "It sounded as if a complete orchestra were performing some Mad Hatter's symphony out in the centre of the lawn." [60] 

 

At this point, Carol insists that Hamilton take up his hacksaw once more:

"The metal was soft and the blade sank through it quickly. I left the pieces I cut off in a heap to one side [...] Separated from the main body of the statue, the fragments were almost inactive [...] By two o'clock that afternoon I had cut back about half the statue and got it down to manageable proportions.

      'That should hold it,' I said to Carol. I walked round and lopped off a few of the noisier spars. 'Tomorrow I'll finish it off altogether.'" [60]

Unfortunately, that night, the monster plant-sculpture again bursts through Hamilton's bedroom window and a gigantic metal helix "hovered like a claw through the fractured pane" [61], its sonic core screaming down at him. The thing had grown back with a vengeance to twice its previous size:

"It lay all over the garden in a tangled mesh, like the skeleton of a crushed building. Already the advance tendrils had reached the bedroom windows, while others had climbed over the garage and were sprouting downwards through the roof, tearing away the galvanized metal sheets." [61]

Hamilton telephones his friend, Raymond Mayo, who comes over with an oxyacetylene torch and, after several hours of hard work, the thing is defeated; all that remains are heaps of scrap metal to be taken away by a local contractor to be melted down. That, though, isn't the end of the story ...

 

Firstly, Lorraine Drexel sues the Fine Arts Committe for destruction of her work and damage to her reputation. After ten months of legal wrangling, it's decided that Miss Drexel should be awarded $30,000. As if that wasn't bad enough, when leaving the newly built courthouse, a funny things happens: Hamilton realises the building is vibrating with a low rhythmic pulse.

 

It transpires that melted down parts from the sculpture had been used in the construction of the court and SQ:GS3 was now spreading and mutating like a virus all over Vermilion Sands . For as Hamilton realises, tiny fragments and molecular memory traces of the statue will be contained within "a dozen other buildings, in ships and planes and a million new automobiles" [65]. 

 

Soon, as Hamilton says, "'The whole world will be singing'" [65] and dancing to the strange abstracted sound of Lorraine Drexel's work ...      

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Inspired by the J. G. Ballard story we are to examine in this post, Venus Smiles is a sound sculpture by the German artist Tabita Cargnel. Consisting of resonating copper tubes suspended in a tensegrity type structure, it also functions as an instrument that can be played by one or more performers, whatever their musical background or competance. Tuned to the particular frequencies of the space in which it resides, Venus Smiles is designed to amplify acoustic properties, create novel interactions, and allow communication in a language beyond words. 

      For more information about her work, readers can visit Tabita Cargnel's website by clicking here. Alternatively, to see Venus Smiles being used as an instrument, visit her YouTube page by clicking here.

[b] See J. G. Ballard, The Complete Short Stories, (Fourth Estate, 2014), pp. 51-65. Page numbers given in the above text refer to this edition. 

      'Venus Smiles' was originally entitled 'Mobile' and first published in the June 1957 edition of Science Fantasy (Vol. 8, No. 23). Ballard renamed and rewrote the tale for his collection of short stories  Vermilion Sands (Berkley Books, 1971). 

[c] One is reminded of D. H. Lawrence's poem 'Bare Almond Trees'. But whereras Ballard describes a metal artwork in terms of a living tree, Lawrence describes living trees in winter as possessing black, rusted trunks and looking like "iron implements twisted hideous, out of the earth". 

      See The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 253. The poem can also be read online at allpoetry.com: click here.   

Jane Ciracylides: the Girl with Insect Eyes (Notes on 'Prima Belladonna' by J. G. Ballard)

Ilaria Novelli (aka Ila Pop): Jane Ciracylides (2020) 

Mixed media painting on cotton paper (23 x 31 cm)

 

 

I. 

 

'Prima Belladonna' (1956) was J. G. Ballard's first published short story [a].

 

It can be found in the 1971 collection Vermilion Sands, which, according to the author, celebrates the neglected virtues of the lurid and bizarre within a surreal sci-fi setting described by Ballard as the visionary present or inner space; the former referring to the future already contained within the present and the latter referring to the place where unconscious dreams, fears, and fantasies meet external reality.

 

The three male characters - Harry Miles, Tony Devine, and Steve Parker (the tale's narrator) - don't particularly interest; certainly not in the way that Jane Ciracylides - a singer who performs in a casino lounge at the Vermilion Sands resort - fascinates with her alien good looks:

 

"Whatever else they said about her, everyone had to agree she was a beautiful girl, even if her genetic background was a little mixed. The gossips at Vermilion Sands soon decided there was a good deal of mutant in her, because she had a rich patina-golden skin and what looked like insects for eyes [...]" [b] 

 

As Harry says, whilst he and his two friends voyeuristically perv on Jane as she parades around the apartment opposite "wearing almost nothing except a large metallic hat" [2] and revealing the "sinuous lines of her thighs and shoulders" [2], here is a goddess "'straight out of the primal apocalyptic sea'" [2]. 

 

Harry knows that in order to seduce such a woman, you need to approach her in a shy somewhat hesitating manner: "'Nothing urgent or grabbing.'" [2] This shows a lover's wisdom: for hesitation is the courage to go slowly; to resist the urge to violently seize hold of that which one desires.   

Not that Harry gets to put his hands on Jane. Rather, it's Parker to whom she seems attracted (even though, by his own confession, he is out of her league), after visiting his little shop of singing plants (choro-flora) the next morning and admiring his blooms: 

"She walked over to a bank of mixed ferns and stood looking at them. The ferns reached out towards her and trebled eagerly in their liquid fluted voices.

      'Aren't they sweet?' she said, stroking the fronds gently. 'They need so much affection.'" [5]

 

Reminiscing on their first meeting, Parker recalls: 

 

"Under the black beach robe her skin was a softer, more mellow gold, and it was her eyes that held me. I could see them under the wide-brimmed hat. Insect legs wavered delicately round two points of purple light." [5]

That's a rather disturbing description of Jane's eyes; not so much the two points of purple light at their centre, but the wavering insect legs that surround them. It reminds one of stories that appeared in the English press two or three years ago about a girl in India and a woman in Taiwan who had insects living in their eyes [c]. 

 

Uninterested in the plants Parker initially tries to sell her - a Sumatra Samphire and a Louisian Lute Lily - to make her new apartment feel less lonely, Jane slowly raised her hands in front of her breasts as if in prayer and moved towards the display counter on which stood a rare Khan-Arachnid orchid; "a difficult bloom, with a normal full range of twenty-four octaves" [3], which Parker regards as a fleur du mal.

"'How beautiful it is,' she said, gazing at the rich yellow and purple leaves hanging from the scarlet-ribbed vibrocalyx." [6] 

It's clear that Jane is something of a choro-floraphile - i.e., that her desire is more for the plants than the man. And equally clear is the effect this girl with the insect eyes has on the plants; as she admires the orchid its leaves stiffen and fill with colour:

"She stepped closer to the orchid and looked down into its malevolent head. The Arachnid quivered and the spines on its stem arched and flexed menacingly." [6]

 

And then to Parker's surprise - it sings to her:

 

"I had never heard the Arachnid sing before. I was lisening to it open-eared when I felt a glow of heat burn against my arm. I turned and saw the woman staring intently at the plant, her skin aflame, the insects in her eyes writhing insanely. The Arachnid stretched out towards her, calyx erect, leaves like blood-red sabres." [5] 

 

At the end of the performance, Jane gripped the edge of the vivarium in which the orchid grew and gathered herself: "Her skin dimmed and the insects in her eyes slowed to a delicate wavering." [6] 

 

She offers Parker a $1000 for the plant, which he declines. So she takes a lesser specimen of plant and, before leaving, invites him to come see her perform as a speciality singer at the Casino: "'You may find it interesting.'" [7]

 

Which, along with the entire audience, he does: "The next morning Vermilion Sands hummed. Jane created a sensation." [7] Harry and Tony are as smitten with her as the Arachnid, which Jane comes to visit every morning at the shop; "and her presence was more than the flower could bear [...] instead of running through its harmonic scales the orchid only screeched and whined" [9]. 

 

Jane seemed oblivious to the effect she was having. Finally, Parker tells her that she is causing the Arachnid great distress: "'Your voice may move men to strange and wonderful visions, but it throws that orchid into acute melancholia'" [10]. 

 

Actually, that's not quite the case; the orchid is suffering from a form of erotomania or what the French term amour fou. It both wanted to ravish and annihilate her at the same time. Parkin wonders what would happen were he to leave plant and woman alone together; would they try to sing each other to death? 

 

Eventually, despite all his misgivings about this strange (perhaps dangerous) golden-skinned woman who happily cheats at i-Go [d], Parker makes love to her: "'What's she like?' Tony asked eagerly. 'I mean, does she burn or just tingle?'" [12]

 

Their relationship seems to progress quite nicely:

 

"Sometimes in the late afternoons we'd drive out along the beach to the Scented Desert and sit alone by the pools [...] When the wind began to blow cool across the sand we'd slip down into the water [...]

      On other evenings we'd go down to one of the quiet bars at Lagoon West, and have supper out on the flats, and Jane would tease the waiters and sing honeybirds and angelcakes to the children who came in across the sands to watch her.

      [...] I never questioned myself too closely over my affair  with Jane Ciracylides. As I sat on the balcony with her looking out over the cool early evenings or felt her body glowing beside me in the darkness I allowed myself few anxieties." [12-13] 

 

But all good things must come to an end ... And one night, Parker discovers Jane in his flower store:

 

"The lights had been turned out, but a brilliant glow filled the shop, throwing a golden fire on to the tanks along the counters. Across the ceiling liquid colours danced in reflection. 

      The Arachnid had grown to three times its size. It towered nine feet high out of the shattered lid of the control tank, leaves tumid and uflamed, its calyx as large as a bucket, raging insanely.  

      Arched forwards into it, her head thrown back, was Jane." [14]     

 

 I'll leave it to readers - as Ballard does - to decide what exactly is going on here. But Parker seems to feel Jane is in danger; he runs over and tries to pull her clear. But she pushes his hand away ... 

Harry and Tony arrive on the scene and find their friend Steve sitting on the stairs at the entrance to his little shop of horrors. Although they attempt to enter, Parker holds them back and jams the door shut:

 

"I never saw Jane again. The three of us waited in my apartment. When the music died away we went down and found the shop in darkness. The Arachnid had shrunk to its normal size. 

      The next day it died." [14]

     

 

II. 

 

Of course, some might argue that the orchid was fortunate to meet its destruction in this manner; that the morbid horror of love always ends tragically in ruinous expenditure and that eroticism is a blissful betrayal of the will to self-preservation.

 

Perhaps Ballard's story should be read as an example of a symbiotic relationship in which two species and two strains of love collide, both spiraling together "into a helix of strangely suspended disintegration" and each competing "to exceed the other in mad vulnerability" [e].

 

Having said that, the book ends with Steve Parker warning any choro-florist who happens to own a Khan-Arachnid orchid, to watch out for a golden-skinned woman with insect eyes: "Perhaps she'll play i-Go with you, and I'm sorry to have to say it, but she'll always cheat." [15]

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The story first appeared in Science Fantasy, vol. 7, issue 20, (1956).

 

[b] J. G. Ballard, 'Prima Belladonna', in The Complete Short Stories, Vol. I, (Fourth Estate, 2014), p. 1. Future page references given in the text refer to this edition. I'll say more about this 'insects for eyes' remark shortly.  

 

[c] See the case reported in March 2018 of the Indian schoolgirl who, over a ten day period, had sixty dead ants removed from her eyes by a doctor at the local hospital, after complaining to her parents of pain and inflammation: click here. 

      And see the case from April 2019 involving a 28-year-old Taiwanese woman found by doctors to have four tiny sweat bees inside her eye; they were successfully removed (alive) by a doctor, who carefully pulled them out by the legs: click here.      

 

[d] i-Go is a fictional game described in 'Prima Belladonna' as "a sort of decelerated chess"; see The Complete Short Stories, Vol. I, p. 1.

 

[e] Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992), p. 189.  

 

 

Lord, Open Thou My Lips ...

Andreea Anghel: 

Le Noir's Jesus Wound as a Vagina (2017)

saatchiart.com

 

I. Lord Jesus Crucified, I adore the Sacred Wound in thy most holy side ...

 

It's always amusing - and important - to be reminded that Christianity is not only a form of moral fanaticism but sexual perversion; that Jesus was not only full of his own righteousness (to the extent that he believed himself the Son of God), but gloried in his own suffering as a form of passion, only finding his consummation when nailed naked to a cross wearing a crown of thorns. 

 

The faithful to this day still delight in masochism and martydom and have a fetishistic fascination with the Five Holy Wounds left upon the body of their Lord [1]. Such loving devotion to the physical signs of cruelty inflicted upon the body of Christ - or what we might term stigmatophilia - has recently attracted the attention of scholars working within the area of queer studies and it's to their research that I turn here ...         

 

 

II. Domine labia mea aperies ut cunnum meum laude ut cantem

 

For those historians and theologians who choose to examine the life of Jesus through a queer lens, the question of his gender identity - and its representation in medieval art - is of significant interest. 

 

They are particularly fascinated by the gash in his side which undeniably appears to resemble a vulva, thus implying that the resurrected Christ - risen in his wholeness - possessed both male and female sex organs. This intersex (and gender-fluid) Christ figure radically challenges the more conventional ideas of him as purely male and, indeed, as a divine embodiment of the masculine ideal.                

 

In other words, long before J. G. Ballard and David Cronenberg fantasised about the new flesh and the flowering of wounds into sex organs that promised the possibility of perverse new pleasures, medieval Christians were opening their prayer books and touching and kissing images of Christ's wounds, to which they assigned miraculous properties.

 

Obviously, this was performed as an act of religious veneration. But to deny the kinky aspect would be absurd; believers were surely aware, for example, of the linguistic associations in Latin between the word for wound and the word for womb (vulna / vulva) and dismbodied wound images were often explicitly - not just symbolically - connected with the female sex organ from which blood seeps and new life is born [2]. 

 

  

III. Ostentatio Vulnerum

 

I'd like to close this post with another astonishing artwork ... Believed to be by Giovanni Antonio Galli and painted c. 1630,  it is usually known in English as Christ Displaying His Wounds, but could just as fittingly be called I'll show you mine, if you show me yours.

 

I think most people would agree that it's an obscene and profoundly disturbing work; for the Christ figure appears to not only invite us to inspect his wound - which he draws open for this purpose - but to touch it and penetrate it, just as he challenged his apostle Thomas to do (John 20: 19-29). 

 

Again, one can't help thinking of Crash [3], in which that nightmare angel of the expressways Vaughan assumes the Christ role and flaunts his injuries and scars to his disciple Ballard whilst unfolding his perverse teachings centred on the mysterious eroticism of wounds. 

 

Indeed, I think that just as Vaughan imagined the whole world ending in one apocalyptic car crash, Christ secretly desired the flagellation and crucifixion of all mankind ... But that's a post for another day ...  

  

 

Source of image: 

Wikimedia Commons

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Jesus received numerous injuries in the course of his Passion, but medieval piety liked to particularly focus upon the five wounds associated directly with his crucifixion, i.e., the nail wounds on his hands and feet, as well as the wound made by the lance which pierced his side. Many prayers from this period, as well as later poems, paintings, and pieces of music inspired by the Sacred Wounds of Christ, have been preserved. The Rosary also helped to remind the faithful of Christ's suffering; for whilst the fifty small beads refer to Mary, the five large beads represent the Five Wounds of Christ. 

 

[2] Some medieval artists carried this idea to its logical end point and showed a human body - either that of a baby or a fully-grown adult - being birthed from the side wound and cleansed in the life-giving blood of Christ. This body is often said to symbolise the Church. 

 

[3] J. G. Ballard, Crash, (Jonathan Cape, 1973). 

 

 

To read a related post to this one on stigmatophilia and sexual healing, click here. 

 

 

The Scar is the Eye of the Violet: On Stigmatophilia and Sexual Healing

Illustration attributed to Jean Le Noir from 

The Prayer Book of Bonne de Luxembourg (c. 1345)

showing Christ's side wound in detail

 

 

I. Long Live the New Flesh

 

In his beautiful erotico-blasphemous short novel The Escaped Cock [a], D. H. Lawrence has an almost fetishistic interest in the wounds and scars left on the body of the man who died, following his crucifixion and resurrection [b]. 

 

The climax of the tale sees the man stripping naked before a priestess of Isis and submitting to her touch, in order that he may be healed and released from past pain and old suffering:

"'Let me annoint you!' the woman said to him softly, 'let me annoint the scars! Show me, and let me annoint them!'

      He forgot his nakedness in the re-evoked old pain. He sat on the edge of the couch, and she poured a little ointment into the palm of his hand. And as she chafed his hand, it all came back, the nails, the holes, the cruelty, the unjust cruelty against him who had offered only kindness. The agony of injustice and cruelty came over him again, as in his death-hour. But she chafed the palm, murmuring: 'What was torn becomes a new flesh, what was a wound is full of fresh life, the scar is the eye of the violet.'" [157]

 

This is an astonishing piece of writing - particularly the last line, which is one that David Cronenberg would have been proud of. 

 

Next, the woman of Isis chafes the man's feet with oil and tender healing, before directing him towards her goddess: "And as he stood there dazed and naked as an unborn thing" [158], the woman stooped in order to examine the scar "in the soft flesh of the socket of his side" [158]; a scar which resembled  "an eye sore with endless weeping" [158]. 

 

It was from this deep wound just above his hip, that the man who died had lost his life ...

 

"The woman, silent now, but quivering, laid oil in her hand and put her palm over over the wound in his right side. He winced, and the wound absorbed his life again [...] And in the dark, wild pain and panic of consciousness rang only one cry: Oh, how can she take this death out of me? [...]

      In silence she softly, rhythmically chafed the scar with oil [...] while the vitals of the man howled in panic. But as she gradually gathered power [...] gradually warmth began to take the place of cold terror, and he felt: I am going to be flushed warm again, I am going to be whole!" [158] 

 

Lawrence continues:

 

"Having chafed all his lower body with oil, his belly, his buttocks, even the slain penis and the sad stones, having worked with her slow intensity of a priestess, so that the sound of his wounds grew dimmer and dimmer, suddenly she put her breast against the wound in his left side, and her arms round him, folding over the wound in his right side, and she pressed him to her, in a power of living warmth [...] And the wailing died out altogether, and there was stillness and darkness in his soul, unbroken dark stilless, wholeness." [159] 

 

At the same time, the man who died experiences a new sun dawning within the perfect inner darkness of his body. Not only that, but he feels the blaze of his manhood rise up. So he unfastens the woman's linen tunic and slips the garment down, exposing her white-gold breasts. Pulling her to him "with a passion of tenderness and consuming desire" [160], they fuck - not once but twice.

 

"Afterwards, with a dim wonder, she touched the great scars in his side with her finger-tips, and said:

      'But they no longer hurt?'

      'They are suns!' he said. 'They shine from your touch. They are my atonement with you.'" [160] 

 

 

II. The World Was Beginning to Flower into Wounds 

 

Of course, Lawrence isn't the only author to explore the eroticism of wounds as sites of perverse bliss and to imagine what Foucault would later term a new economy of bodies and their pleasures ... 

 

In his novel Crash J. G. Ballard provides the following tender (but disquieting) scene between the narrator of the tale - also named Ballard - and a severely crippled young woman, Gabrielle, in the back of her small, specially adapted car: 

 

"As I explored her body, feeling my way among the braces and straps of her underwear, the unfamiliar planes of her hips and legs steered me into unique culs-de-sac, strange declensions of skin and musculature. Each of her deformities became a potent metaphor for the excitements of a new violence. Her body, with its angular contours, its unexpected junctions of mucous membrane and hairline, detrusor muscle and erectile tissue, was a ripening anthology of perverse possibilities. [...] Our sexual acts were exploratory ordeals." [c] 

 

Ballard continues, in the uniquely erotico-clinical language that characterises the novel and which, almost impossible to paraphrase, can only be quoted at length:

 

"In the inner surface of her thigh the straps formed marked depressions, troughs of reddened skin hollowed out in the forms of buckles and clasps. As I unshackled the left leg brace and ran my fingers along the deep buckle groove, the corrugated skin felt hot and tender, more exciting than the membrane of a vagina. This depraved orifice, the imagination of a sexual organ still in the embryonic stages of its evolution, reminded me of the small wounds on my own body [...] I felt this depression on her thigh, the groove worn below her breast under her right armpit by the spinal brace, the red marking on the inside of her right upper arm - these were the templates for new genital organs, the moulds of sexual possibilities yet to be created [...] As she sat passively in my arms [...] I realised this bored and crippled young woman found that the nominal junction points of the sexual act - breast and penis, anus and vulva, nipple and clitoris - failed to provide any excitement for us."

 

"Gabrielle placed a drop of spit on my right nipple and stroked it mechanically, keeping up the small pretence of this nominal sexual link. In return, I stroked her pubis, feeling for the inert nub of her clitoris. [...] Gabrielle's hand moved across my chest. Her fingers found the small scars below my left collar bone [...] As she began to explore this circular crevice with her lips I for the first time felt my penis thickening. She took it from my trousers, then began to explore the other wound-scars on my chest and abdomen, running the tip of her tongue into each one. In turn, one by one, she endorsed each of these signatures [...]  As she stroked my penis I moved my hand from her pubis to the scars on her thighs, feeling the tender causeways driven through her flesh by the handbrake of the car in which she had crashed. My right arm held her shoulders, feeling the impress of the contoured leather, the meeting points of hemispherical and rectilinear geometries. I explored the scars on her thighs and arms, feeling for the wound areas under her left breast, as she in turn explored mine, deciphering together these codes of a sexuality made possible by our two car-crashes.

      My first orgasm, within the deep wound on her thigh, jolted my semen along this channel, irrigating its corrugated ditch. Holding the semen in her hand, she wiped it against the silver controls of the clutch treadle. 

      My mouth was fastened on the scar below her left breast, exploring its sickle-shaped trough. Gabrielle turned in her seat, revolving her body around me, so that I could explore the wounds of her right hip. For the first time I felt no trace of pity for this crippled woman, but celebrated with her the excitements of these abstract vents let into her body by sections of her own automobile. 

      During the next few days my orgasms took place within the scars below her breast and within her left armpit, in the wounds on her neck and shoulder, in these sexual apertures formed by fragmenting windshield louvres and dashboard dials in a high-speed impact, marrying through my own penis the car in which I had crashed and the car in which Gabrielle had met her near-death."

 

Like the man who died and the priestess of Isis, it might be argued that Ballard and Gabrielle were implicated with each other in sacred mysteries - albeit within an age shaped by technology - though whether inseminating wounds with sperm might trigger the evolution of new sex organs, is, I suspect, rather fanciful ...  

   

 

Notes

 

[a] Lawrence's The Escaped Cock was originally published by the Black Sun Press (Paris, 1929). I am referring to the version of the tale published in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 123-163.    

[b] I'm aware that this same fetishistic adoration of holy wounds was a significant aspect of medieval Christian worship (as the illustration to this post shows) and I also know that this has since become of great interest to those wishing to queer the gospels and feminise the body of Christ. I will develop this theme at length in a post to be published shortly entitled Lord, Open Thou My Lips ...

 

[c] J. G. Ballard, Crash, (Jonathan Cape, 1973). Unfortunately, I can't give page references as don't have my copy of the novel to hand. I'm relying here on a pdf made available on booksvooks.com: click here. All the material quoted is found in chapter 19. 

 

For an earlier post on Ballard's novel Crash, please click here.