Son of Neptune
Simon Bearde, a steward on the SS Pandora, made a discovery just as his vessel had passed over the equator into the Southern Hemisphere. The crossing of the line celebrations had lasted two days. Though they were not as violent as they had once been on naval ships, they still had dangerous undertones. It was a kind of maritime Saturnalia where discipline was allowed to lapse as the officers looked on.
On an ocean liner like the Pandora, the ceremony was staged as entertainment and the crew found themselves mummers for the passengers, who needed to be relieved from the boredom that luxury afforded.
Being a griffin, as he had never before crossed the equator, Simon Bearde was taken below and blindfolded before being led back up by two shellbacks to face King Neptune, played by Dr. Gainsborough. His blindfold was removed and Simon could see the water dripping from the doctor's matted wig. He held a trident in one hand and at his side stood Davy Jones, who was Malcolm Curry, a fellow steward and shellback. Curry was a good choice for Davy Jones. He had a pallid complexion and jet black hair. His nickname was The Count. He tended to stand very still and stare, with eyes as dark as his hair—a kind of predatory inquisitiveness.
Curry had a side business which involved selling merchandise from the bond, once he got ashore in Liverpool—alcohol, tobacco, watches, perfume. He was so successful in this venture that he was able to pay a junior rating to do his job while on board.
These activities filled Martin Rice with scorn. Rice was yet another steward. There were a lot of them on the Pandora, whose purpose was to see to the needs of the passengers. He stood at Neptune's right, dressed as the beautiful Amphitrite. The care that he had taken with his costume and make-up hinted at another side to Rice, one which Simon had never imagined.
Both of them were an ongoing joke with the rest of the crew. Curry and Rice—who couldn't get along. It never tired.
When he had first started his job on the ship, he had been clearing some glasses from a table in the lounge, and felt someone's eyes on the back of his neck. He turned to see Curry gazing at him from across the room.
"What's your racket then?"
"What do you mean?"
"Everyone has a racket. What's yours?"
If he had a racket he would never divulge it to a stranger. That would be stupid.
They became friends but Simon never lost his wariness. He was alone on this boat, no matter how many people surrounded him.
Curry had the ability to seem to appear from nowhere, or to be omnipresent. Simon would find himself the object of that steady, searching and slightly tilted gaze.
"Are you coming down for a draw then Si? You soft twat."
They would go to an unoccupied cabin with a half dozen other crew members, each with a few cans of beer. Someone would throw a towel across the crack at the bottom of the door—an act that was more symbolic than effective. Then they would drink the beers and smoke huge spliffs. Soon the stench of marijuana would waft through the bowels of the ship. No one seemed to care. If the authorities were going to make a move on them, they would know, from a cryptic tapping of pipes. By the time the officers arrived they would be long gone. Just like a prison ship, Simon thought—never play cards with these people.
When he stood before King Neptune and his blindfold was removed, the Doctor asked him for his name, which was duly noted in a book by his assistant Davy Jones. Martin Rice stood by, looking lascivious.
"How old are you lad?"
At least his mouth wasn't daubed with shit every time he spoke, as it might once have been on a sailing ship. But he was required to kiss the baby.
The baby was the beer-swollen belly of the chippy, smeared with some unpleasant tasting lotion. A hand on the back of his head pushed him down. He was aware, behind him, of a select group of passengers sitting on deck chairs, drinking gin and tonics served to them by the Purser. Some of them found the proceedings quite amusing. Then he was suddenly flipped backwards into the swimming pool. When he surfaced spluttering, he was immediately ducked by two shellbacks and given the baptism of the line. Then he was hauled out and presented with a certificate splashed in brine, affirming his initiation as a shellback, listing his ship, the date and longitude of his crossing, and instructing all creatures of the deep to refrain from doing him harm. He stood by as the next candidate was led up from below.
The following night a storm raged. He was off duty and lay on his bed listening to the terrifying noises of the ship and watching his jacket that hung from a hook on the wall. There was nothing to do. He could not sleep. He could have sworn that his jacket had just made a full rotation on its peg as the bow smashed down violently, filling the ship with ominous metallic sounds. He had been through storms before and always doubted his survival. Borrowed time was being reclaimed, excruciatingly drawn out over hours until the inevitable breaking point would be reached. Until then, all he had was a morose resignation—nothing to do but wait. It was the same for the passengers, referred to by the crew as ‘bloods’, but worse for them perhaps, as they didn't have their sea legs. Before his shift had ended he had strode through the lounge, dirty mop in hand. The bloods went through stages of resignation. At first they had tried to resist the storm with drunkenness. Then had come the puking—hence the mop, and finally they had crumpled into silence, ashen-faced, huddled in their own vomit and no longer caring. It had happened quite quickly.
When he got off duty, he thought he would go up and get something to eat. A sudden plunge of the bow caused him to fall upstairs. It was a surprising reversal of gravity that gave him some pleasure, despite his fear.
There were only two other people in the galley. He helped himself to some sliced turkey and mashed potatoes and sat alone at the other end of the table.
"Hey matey. Pass the sauce."
He reached for the bottle in front of him but a sudden precipitous roll sent it careening into an open palm causing a gleeful chuckle.
Back in his cabin, Simon took off his white steward jacket, hung it up and reached for a book. He liked to read when his shift was over, usually popular science books and particularly those on biology. They satisfied his curiosity and inspired it simultaneously. He had no idea how he had ended up a steward. He had always assumed he would achieve more. There was a disconnection, a lack of conviction in cause and effect, or an odd mode of communication between the hemispheres of his brain. Still there was nothing wrong with stewards. Davy Jones didn't care who you were or what you did. It was all the same to him.
The rolling and pitching and the incessant noise prevented him from concentrating and he put down his book.
He wondered what the Old Man was doing now, the man who was responsible for the vessel and the people it contained, respected sometimes begrudgingly for the weight he bore, and often murmuringly criticized for his personal foibles. They say he was fond of a tipple. Was he cowering on his bed, watching his jacket, with the blue and gold epaulets?
That was when Simon Bearde began to make a discovery in his unusual, roundabout way.
The jacket on the hook, potentially turning a full circle, reminded him of a ship's propeller.
Thoughts came to him like strangers on the street, unknown quantities with mysterious provenance. He was unaware of the connections he made. It was as if someone else was thinking and putting the thoughts into his head. He had no clue what would come next. Every idea was a discovery. Other people might have thought these discoveries inane. That was the barrier of separation.
Simon lay on his bed wondering why propulsion often seemed to involve a turning motion—at least in machines. It might relate to a natural expediency like hexagonal cell structure. Then he imagined horses with engines and wheels. A wheel flipped ninety degrees became a propeller. This lumbering, metal whale which clanked and squealed around him was driven through the ocean by two of them, powered by steam turbines.
Bacterial species with prokaryotic flagella transport themselves with a rotary, proton-fuelled motor, which to all intents and purposes powers a propeller, turning in an anti-clockwise direction.
So who was mimicking who? The ship the bacteria, or the other way around? Perhaps there was no cross-talk, though he suspected that there was. Either way, he came to see that humanity with its motor driven vessels was playing the same game as the bacteria, and that cancers, sleeping sicknesses, hemorrhagic fevers, cholera, polio, tuberculosis and all other diseases were in fact treatments or medications whose aim was to stabilize, control and ultimately eliminate the parasite. They were administered from a level as far removed from humans, as humans were from bacteria, a distant level that occupied the same space. Life was parasitical in nature.
Simon found himself swinging his legs from the bed and reaching for his jacket with the noise of the storm in his ears.
What made him step out on to the deck when he knew it was expressly forbidden, he could not say. Once outside, he was unable to differentiate sea and sky. The only thing that existed was a malevolent force. He hadn't been on deck for more than two minutes, when a great wave crashed over the ship, picked him up and hurled him into the ocean. He didn't even see it. Moments later, the same wave, or perhaps another which followed it, plucked him from the sea and threw him back on to the deck where he had just been standing. No one witnessed it and people were skeptical when he told them later.
But at least he knew that he was lucky to have become a shellback the day before. Being a Son of Neptune had advantages.
© Tom Newton 2019
This story is from the collection Seven Cries of Delight, Recital Publishing 2019.
Seven Cries of Delight was the winner of the Dactyl Foundation Literary Award for 2019.
Simon Bearde, a steward on the SS Pandora, made a discovery just as his vessel had passed over the equator into the Southern Hemisphere. The crossing of the line celebrations had lasted two days. Though they were not as violent as they had once been on naval ships, they still had dangerous undertones. It was a kind of maritime Saturnalia where discipline was allowed to lapse as the officers looked on.
On an ocean liner like the Pandora, the ceremony was staged as entertainment and the crew found themselves mummers for the passengers, who needed to be relieved from the boredom that luxury afforded.
Being a griffin, as he had never before crossed the equator, Simon Bearde was taken below and blindfolded before being led back up by two shellbacks to face King Neptune, played by Dr. Gainsborough. His blindfold was removed and Simon could see the water dripping from the doctor's matted wig. He held a trident in one hand and at his side stood Davy Jones, who was Malcolm Curry, a fellow steward and shellback. Curry was a good choice for Davy Jones. He had a pallid complexion and jet black hair. His nickname was The Count. He tended to stand very still and stare, with eyes as dark as his hair—a kind of predatory inquisitiveness.
Curry had a side business which involved selling merchandise from the bond, once he got ashore in Liverpool—alcohol, tobacco, watches, perfume. He was so successful in this venture that he was able to pay a junior rating to do his job while on board.
These activities filled Martin Rice with scorn. Rice was yet another steward. There were a lot of them on the Pandora, whose purpose was to see to the needs of the passengers. He stood at Neptune's right, dressed as the beautiful Amphitrite. The care that he had taken with his costume and make-up hinted at another side to Rice, one which Simon had never imagined.
Both of them were an ongoing joke with the rest of the crew. Curry and Rice—who couldn't get along. It never tired.
When he had first started his job on the ship, he had been clearing some glasses from a table in the lounge, and felt someone's eyes on the back of his neck. He turned to see Curry gazing at him from across the room.
"What's your racket then?"
"What do you mean?"
"Everyone has a racket. What's yours?"
If he had a racket he would never divulge it to a stranger. That would be stupid.
They became friends but Simon never lost his wariness. He was alone on this boat, no matter how many people surrounded him.
Curry had the ability to seem to appear from nowhere, or to be omnipresent. Simon would find himself the object of that steady, searching and slightly tilted gaze.
"Are you coming down for a draw then Si? You soft twat."
They would go to an unoccupied cabin with a half dozen other crew members, each with a few cans of beer. Someone would throw a towel across the crack at the bottom of the door—an act that was more symbolic than effective. Then they would drink the beers and smoke huge spliffs. Soon the stench of marijuana would waft through the bowels of the ship. No one seemed to care. If the authorities were going to make a move on them, they would know, from a cryptic tapping of pipes. By the time the officers arrived they would be long gone. Just like a prison ship, Simon thought—never play cards with these people.
When he stood before King Neptune and his blindfold was removed, the Doctor asked him for his name, which was duly noted in a book by his assistant Davy Jones. Martin Rice stood by, looking lascivious.
"How old are you lad?"
At least his mouth wasn't daubed with shit every time he spoke, as it might once have been on a sailing ship. But he was required to kiss the baby.
The baby was the beer-swollen belly of the chippy, smeared with some unpleasant tasting lotion. A hand on the back of his head pushed him down. He was aware, behind him, of a select group of passengers sitting on deck chairs, drinking gin and tonics served to them by the Purser. Some of them found the proceedings quite amusing. Then he was suddenly flipped backwards into the swimming pool. When he surfaced spluttering, he was immediately ducked by two shellbacks and given the baptism of the line. Then he was hauled out and presented with a certificate splashed in brine, affirming his initiation as a shellback, listing his ship, the date and longitude of his crossing, and instructing all creatures of the deep to refrain from doing him harm. He stood by as the next candidate was led up from below.
The following night a storm raged. He was off duty and lay on his bed listening to the terrifying noises of the ship and watching his jacket that hung from a hook on the wall. There was nothing to do. He could not sleep. He could have sworn that his jacket had just made a full rotation on its peg as the bow smashed down violently, filling the ship with ominous metallic sounds. He had been through storms before and always doubted his survival. Borrowed time was being reclaimed, excruciatingly drawn out over hours until the inevitable breaking point would be reached. Until then, all he had was a morose resignation—nothing to do but wait. It was the same for the passengers, referred to by the crew as ‘bloods’, but worse for them perhaps, as they didn't have their sea legs. Before his shift had ended he had strode through the lounge, dirty mop in hand. The bloods went through stages of resignation. At first they had tried to resist the storm with drunkenness. Then had come the puking—hence the mop, and finally they had crumpled into silence, ashen-faced, huddled in their own vomit and no longer caring. It had happened quite quickly.
When he got off duty, he thought he would go up and get something to eat. A sudden plunge of the bow caused him to fall upstairs. It was a surprising reversal of gravity that gave him some pleasure, despite his fear.
There were only two other people in the galley. He helped himself to some sliced turkey and mashed potatoes and sat alone at the other end of the table.
"Hey matey. Pass the sauce."
He reached for the bottle in front of him but a sudden precipitous roll sent it careening into an open palm causing a gleeful chuckle.
Back in his cabin, Simon took off his white steward jacket, hung it up and reached for a book. He liked to read when his shift was over, usually popular science books and particularly those on biology. They satisfied his curiosity and inspired it simultaneously. He had no idea how he had ended up a steward. He had always assumed he would achieve more. There was a disconnection, a lack of conviction in cause and effect, or an odd mode of communication between the hemispheres of his brain. Still there was nothing wrong with stewards. Davy Jones didn't care who you were or what you did. It was all the same to him.
The rolling and pitching and the incessant noise prevented him from concentrating and he put down his book.
He wondered what the Old Man was doing now, the man who was responsible for the vessel and the people it contained, respected sometimes begrudgingly for the weight he bore, and often murmuringly criticized for his personal foibles. They say he was fond of a tipple. Was he cowering on his bed, watching his jacket, with the blue and gold epaulets?
That was when Simon Bearde began to make a discovery in his unusual, roundabout way.
The jacket on the hook, potentially turning a full circle, reminded him of a ship's propeller.
Thoughts came to him like strangers on the street, unknown quantities with mysterious provenance. He was unaware of the connections he made. It was as if someone else was thinking and putting the thoughts into his head. He had no clue what would come next. Every idea was a discovery. Other people might have thought these discoveries inane. That was the barrier of separation.
Simon lay on his bed wondering why propulsion often seemed to involve a turning motion—at least in machines. It might relate to a natural expediency like hexagonal cell structure. Then he imagined horses with engines and wheels. A wheel flipped ninety degrees became a propeller. This lumbering, metal whale which clanked and squealed around him was driven through the ocean by two of them, powered by steam turbines.
Bacterial species with prokaryotic flagella transport themselves with a rotary, proton-fuelled motor, which to all intents and purposes powers a propeller, turning in an anti-clockwise direction.
So who was mimicking who? The ship the bacteria, or the other way around? Perhaps there was no cross-talk, though he suspected that there was. Either way, he came to see that humanity with its motor driven vessels was playing the same game as the bacteria, and that cancers, sleeping sicknesses, hemorrhagic fevers, cholera, polio, tuberculosis and all other diseases were in fact treatments or medications whose aim was to stabilize, control and ultimately eliminate the parasite. They were administered from a level as far removed from humans, as humans were from bacteria, a distant level that occupied the same space. Life was parasitical in nature.
Simon found himself swinging his legs from the bed and reaching for his jacket with the noise of the storm in his ears.
What made him step out on to the deck when he knew it was expressly forbidden, he could not say. Once outside, he was unable to differentiate sea and sky. The only thing that existed was a malevolent force. He hadn't been on deck for more than two minutes, when a great wave crashed over the ship, picked him up and hurled him into the ocean. He didn't even see it. Moments later, the same wave, or perhaps another which followed it, plucked him from the sea and threw him back on to the deck where he had just been standing. No one witnessed it and people were skeptical when he told them later.
But at least he knew that he was lucky to have become a shellback the day before. Being a Son of Neptune had advantages.
© Tom Newton 2019
This story is from the collection Seven Cries of Delight, Recital Publishing 2019.
Seven Cries of Delight was the winner of the Dactyl Foundation Literary Award for 2019.
Narrated by Tom Newton.
Narrated by Tom Newton.
POST RECITAL
TALK
BR: A rite of passage, an ocean adventure… but something else. Every last thing is not explained. There are empty spaces between lines on the page, and silence between the spoken words. So naturally, I have a few questions about your story.
TN: I thought you might and of course that’s why we’re both here. Except we’re not here. We’re there.
BR: Right… So, the first two words of “Son of Neptune,” the protagonist’s name, Simon Bearde… I have a feeling there’s a story behind your choice of that name. Am I right?
TN: Well I’m not sure, because if there is a story behind it, which is possible, I don’t know it. I have a dog called Simon and I have a beard. And you have a beard too, actually.
BR: I do?
TN: Yeah. And that’s about the extent of it.
BR: Let’s get that old fiction vs. memoir question out of the way.
TN: Okay.
BR: I know you spent some time as a seafarer. Is this a true story?
TN: No. It’s not a true story, though of course I drew from my experiences. I did work on a boat, as you say but it wasn’t an ocean liner, it was a ferry. But still I drew from it—things that happened, the feel of it… you know, living on a boat, the people. In that case the line between reality and fiction, that I know is something you’re deeply interested in—almost to the point of obsession I should add…
BR: Obsessed, yes.
TN: … from what I’ve witnessed. It’s blurred. That line is blurred. And that’s how it should be. I should add, for the record, that anybody I mention in this story doesn’t exist and if they do… they’re not who I say they are.
BR: The internal jargon of different insular groups always fascinates me. Like these sailors, and, I’m sure, your work as a movie prop man. Reminds me of my grip and lighting days. “Hey hand me a C47, will ya?” A C47 was a clothespin.
TN: Yeah that’s interesting—a kind of arcane code for people in the know. So I assume we could talk about cheeseboros and 750 pigeons and butt plugs, right?
BR: Yeah.
TN: … A twenty-by, scrims, step-up blocks, apple boxes, colour corrected artwork…
BR: I know some of that stuff…
TN: But I think we should leave the grip and electric days behind, right?
BR: Yeah.
TN: If you do that I’ll leave the propping behind and we can talk about a boat, or at least a story about a boat which might be true and might not.
BR: Okay.
TN: Good.
BR: On our podcast, every story operates on two levels of reality…
TN: Only two?
BR: Yeah… as text and as performance. So… good job with the reading!
TN: Thanks.
BR: I like what you did with the voices of Curry and Rice. They sound like the Beatles. Is that Scouse, or in other words, a Liverpudlian accent?
TN: Yeah that’s what it’s meant to be. A big majority of the crew on the boat, on which I worked were from Liverpool and I always was drawn to them. Never went to Liverpool but always wanted to go there. A steward I knew called Steve—I’ll leave his last name out… it wasn’t Curry, just so you know. He invited me up to Liverpool. He lived in Toxteth, which was a pretty heavy area of Liverpool in those days, maybe still is. I was going to go up there and I called him up. And I guess his sister, or wife, or someone answered the phone and I said: “Hey, is Steve there? This is Tom.” And she just goes: “Ooh, fook off.” And hung up on me. So I never went to Liverpool but I was always drawn to it. And yeah… it does sound like The Beatles—a bit. That’s… you know, it’s my attempt at Liverpudlian.
BR: Sounded good to me.
TN: Well thank you.
BR: That whole riff on propellers is interesting. The pattern repeats on vastly different scales, from bacteria to ocean liners. Simon is experiencing a little revelatory awakening, getting a glimpse into the fractal or holographic nature of the universe.
TN: Well that’s a great point and I’m really glad you brought it up. Simon in this case is probably me and that’s because he’s playing this game which I like to play. A kind of intellectual game—taking an idea and mapping it on to another idea, and maybe adding a number of layers and then seeing what comes up. And in the story he sees his jacket spinning on the peg and that reminds him of a wheel, which reminds him of a propeller and he thinks of animals with wheels. And the only animal I can think of that has a wheel, or in this case propeller, is that prokaryotic flagella that I mentioned in the story, which has a… seems to have a tiny propeller that drives it around in its microscopic world.
BR: Yeah.
TN: And from there the idea comes out as humans being parasites. Humans… we think we’re the shit—you know… we think we know a lot, and we do but we’ve forgotten we’re animals, and we’ve forgotten our dependence on the World. We’ve taken from it but we haven’t given much back. We’ve given great ideas and beautiful art and things like fast food, iphones, Disney land. There all things that, whatever their merit or lack of, refer to us. We’ve become blinded by ourselves. Maybe it’s to do with language, which has affected our consciousness. Conscious of being conscious. And I’m conscious, as a human, of being a parasite. Now what other parasite is conscious of being a parasite? That in itself is a human way of thinking.
BR: In your stories, besides the surreal events -- like a wave that washes Simon overboard, then returns him to the deck…
TN: That wasn’t surreal. It was real, or so I was told.
BR: Really?
TN: Yeah.
BR: It’s common for you to go on these small but deep philosophical explorations. I think these are part of the reason your book was awarded the Dactyl Foundation Literary Award, and described with the phrase “thought art.” Do you agree?
TN: Receiving the Dactyl Award was a very great honour and completely unexpected. I’ve never received any awards, except perhaps… once, and that was an award for being a good looking baby back in the late ‘50s. So, “thought art.” I’d never conceived of such an idea and I’m honored that that term has been applied to my stories. So, do I agree? Hell yeah.
BR: On the day I’m asking these questions, it happens to be my son’s birthday.
TN: Yeah I know.
BR: He’s 41. And I notice in your book, Seven Cries of Delight, “Son of Neptune” is on page 41. I’d like to know how you planned that odd conjunction and exactly what it means.
TN: When I read your novel Ponckhockie Union it became apparent that you are intrigued with numbers. Connections between numbers—street addresses, dates—all very random. That seeming meaning in random things. So I thought I’d have a little fun with you and put it on page 41.
BR: Cool.
TN: Beyond that there’s no meaning at all. And of course that’s my thing.
BR: Is there anything you were hoping I’d ask that I didn’t ask? If so, just go ahead and answer the unasked question.
TN: That would be the crossing of the line celebration. You didn’t ask me about that. My grandmother told me about it when I was a young child. It fascinated me then and still does. It’s a strange mixture of Greco-Roman and maybe pre-renaissance seafaring mythology, perhaps to protect the sailors from the deep and its monsters. It used to be very wild and unruly, and quite violent. It’s been toned down now—sort of the equivalent of Times Square in New York in the past and the way it is now.
BR: Yeah.
TN: Merely just entertainment these days. It was also, as I said in the story, a kind of equivalent of a Saturnalia where the strict discipline of the ship was relaxed for a short period of time and the common sailors could have power, or at least the illusion of it, just for a short time. The other thing that interests me about it is that the whole celebration was about crossing the line, and the line being the equator, is really just an imaginary line.
BR: Yeah, yeah. Great. One final thing: this is the famous spring of 2020. How are you holding up under the dark cloud of a global pandemic?
TN: Aside from the suffering and death and the uncertain outcome for society, I’m really quite enjoying myself.
BR: Good.
TN: I lost my job through no fault of my own, and so without guilt I can just disappear into my own mind. And my mind, like everyone else’s, is an infinite place.
BR: Yeah.
TN: I’m just concerned about the veracity of the Flat Mind theory. If it’s true, I could go over the edge and then what?
BR: A rite of passage, an ocean adventure… but something else. Every last thing is not explained. There are empty spaces between lines on the page, and silence between the spoken words. So naturally, I have a few questions about your story.
TN: I thought you might and of course that’s why we’re both here. Except we’re not here. We’re there.
BR: Right… So, the first two words of “Son of Neptune,” the protagonist’s name, Simon Bearde… I have a feeling there’s a story behind your choice of that name. Am I right?
TN: Well I’m not sure, because if there is a story behind it, which is possible, I don’t know it. I have a dog called Simon and I have a beard. And you have a beard too, actually.
BR: I do?
TN: Yeah. And that’s about the extent of it.
BR: Let’s get that old fiction vs. memoir question out of the way.
TN: Okay.
BR: I know you spent some time as a seafarer. Is this a true story?
TN: No. It’s not a true story, though of course I drew from my experiences. I did work on a boat, as you say but it wasn’t an ocean liner, it was a ferry. But still I drew from it—things that happened, the feel of it… you know, living on a boat, the people. In that case the line between reality and fiction, that I know is something you’re deeply interested in—almost to the point of obsession I should add…
BR: Obsessed, yes.
TN: … from what I’ve witnessed. It’s blurred. That line is blurred. And that’s how it should be. I should add, for the record, that anybody I mention in this story doesn’t exist and if they do… they’re not who I say they are.
BR: The internal jargon of different insular groups always fascinates me. Like these sailors, and, I’m sure, your work as a movie prop man. Reminds me of my grip and lighting days. “Hey hand me a C47, will ya?” A C47 was a clothespin.
TN: Yeah that’s interesting—a kind of arcane code for people in the know. So I assume we could talk about cheeseboros and 750 pigeons and butt plugs, right?
BR: Yeah.
TN: … A twenty-by, scrims, step-up blocks, apple boxes, colour corrected artwork…
BR: I know some of that stuff…
TN: But I think we should leave the grip and electric days behind, right?
BR: Yeah.
TN: If you do that I’ll leave the propping behind and we can talk about a boat, or at least a story about a boat which might be true and might not.
BR: Okay.
TN: Good.
BR: On our podcast, every story operates on two levels of reality…
TN: Only two?
BR: Yeah… as text and as performance. So… good job with the reading!
TN: Thanks.
BR: I like what you did with the voices of Curry and Rice. They sound like the Beatles. Is that Scouse, or in other words, a Liverpudlian accent?
TN: Yeah that’s what it’s meant to be. A big majority of the crew on the boat, on which I worked were from Liverpool and I always was drawn to them. Never went to Liverpool but always wanted to go there. A steward I knew called Steve—I’ll leave his last name out… it wasn’t Curry, just so you know. He invited me up to Liverpool. He lived in Toxteth, which was a pretty heavy area of Liverpool in those days, maybe still is. I was going to go up there and I called him up. And I guess his sister, or wife, or someone answered the phone and I said: “Hey, is Steve there? This is Tom.” And she just goes: “Ooh, fook off.” And hung up on me. So I never went to Liverpool but I was always drawn to it. And yeah… it does sound like The Beatles—a bit. That’s… you know, it’s my attempt at Liverpudlian.
BR: Sounded good to me.
TN: Well thank you.
BR: That whole riff on propellers is interesting. The pattern repeats on vastly different scales, from bacteria to ocean liners. Simon is experiencing a little revelatory awakening, getting a glimpse into the fractal or holographic nature of the universe.
TN: Well that’s a great point and I’m really glad you brought it up. Simon in this case is probably me and that’s because he’s playing this game which I like to play. A kind of intellectual game—taking an idea and mapping it on to another idea, and maybe adding a number of layers and then seeing what comes up. And in the story he sees his jacket spinning on the peg and that reminds him of a wheel, which reminds him of a propeller and he thinks of animals with wheels. And the only animal I can think of that has a wheel, or in this case propeller, is that prokaryotic flagella that I mentioned in the story, which has a… seems to have a tiny propeller that drives it around in its microscopic world.
BR: Yeah.
TN: And from there the idea comes out as humans being parasites. Humans… we think we’re the shit—you know… we think we know a lot, and we do but we’ve forgotten we’re animals, and we’ve forgotten our dependence on the World. We’ve taken from it but we haven’t given much back. We’ve given great ideas and beautiful art and things like fast food, iphones, Disney land. There all things that, whatever their merit or lack of, refer to us. We’ve become blinded by ourselves. Maybe it’s to do with language, which has affected our consciousness. Conscious of being conscious. And I’m conscious, as a human, of being a parasite. Now what other parasite is conscious of being a parasite? That in itself is a human way of thinking.
BR: In your stories, besides the surreal events -- like a wave that washes Simon overboard, then returns him to the deck…
TN: That wasn’t surreal. It was real, or so I was told.
BR: Really?
TN: Yeah.
BR: It’s common for you to go on these small but deep philosophical explorations. I think these are part of the reason your book was awarded the Dactyl Foundation Literary Award, and described with the phrase “thought art.” Do you agree?
TN: Receiving the Dactyl Award was a very great honour and completely unexpected. I’ve never received any awards, except perhaps… once, and that was an award for being a good looking baby back in the late ‘50s. So, “thought art.” I’d never conceived of such an idea and I’m honored that that term has been applied to my stories. So, do I agree? Hell yeah.
BR: On the day I’m asking these questions, it happens to be my son’s birthday.
TN: Yeah I know.
BR: He’s 41. And I notice in your book, Seven Cries of Delight, “Son of Neptune” is on page 41. I’d like to know how you planned that odd conjunction and exactly what it means.
TN: When I read your novel Ponckhockie Union it became apparent that you are intrigued with numbers. Connections between numbers—street addresses, dates—all very random. That seeming meaning in random things. So I thought I’d have a little fun with you and put it on page 41.
BR: Cool.
TN: Beyond that there’s no meaning at all. And of course that’s my thing.
BR: Is there anything you were hoping I’d ask that I didn’t ask? If so, just go ahead and answer the unasked question.
TN: That would be the crossing of the line celebration. You didn’t ask me about that. My grandmother told me about it when I was a young child. It fascinated me then and still does. It’s a strange mixture of Greco-Roman and maybe pre-renaissance seafaring mythology, perhaps to protect the sailors from the deep and its monsters. It used to be very wild and unruly, and quite violent. It’s been toned down now—sort of the equivalent of Times Square in New York in the past and the way it is now.
BR: Yeah.
TN: Merely just entertainment these days. It was also, as I said in the story, a kind of equivalent of a Saturnalia where the strict discipline of the ship was relaxed for a short period of time and the common sailors could have power, or at least the illusion of it, just for a short time. The other thing that interests me about it is that the whole celebration was about crossing the line, and the line being the equator, is really just an imaginary line.
BR: Yeah, yeah. Great. One final thing: this is the famous spring of 2020. How are you holding up under the dark cloud of a global pandemic?
TN: Aside from the suffering and death and the uncertain outcome for society, I’m really quite enjoying myself.
BR: Good.
TN: I lost my job through no fault of my own, and so without guilt I can just disappear into my own mind. And my mind, like everyone else’s, is an infinite place.
BR: Yeah.
TN: I’m just concerned about the veracity of the Flat Mind theory. If it’s true, I could go over the edge and then what?
Music on this episode:
Afternoon Ragas by xj5000
Used by permission of the artist
