The Game of the Hours

December's game in the What Will Be almanac was the Game of the Hours:

The immediate purpose of this game is to provide evidence, drawn from living experiences, of the existence of a 'surrealist poetic time'. There is here a necessary prior consideration: to discover to what extent there is in each of us, and how intensely, an experience of time that overlaps with 'forced time' in all its possible manifestations. Testimony, modest but decisive, of an experience of 'emancipated time'. Naturally, what comes out of the answers will be a mystery that can transform the obviousness of the game into something new. Although this remains to be seen.

1. A clock face is found from which the hands are removed.
2. Each player designates a time associated with an event from his/her life that upholds the principle of the marvellous: revelation, passion, liberation, emancipation, encounter.
3. Each player selects a sentence that acts as an emblem of this lived experience and, upon the clock face chosen for the game, writes it against the corresponding time.

Our results, anti-clockwise from XII:

Lost in Stockholm by night among the hares and snow.
I may have been born at this time.
My neighbour sleepwalking around the garden at night.
Love at first sight during The Revenger's Tragedy.
1965 Quex Road.
Here comes the fox.
I dreamt a fortune teller, with two left hands, read my Tarot.
A symbol of a robot child is printed.
My eye operation.
A sparrow is un-shrouded, reborn through tissue and punctured plastic and flies away.
I first saw Wizard of Oz.
A fox placed its paw in my hand.
I touched a mushroom which then vanished at my nursery school.
Stockholm summer sunrise, wide awake in a room full of dreams
Men in skeleton suits, running through a graveyard.
I am awake and I am asleep.
I may have been born at this time.


Summary of our discussion of the results:

For us there was no getting away from the disjuncture between the clockface itself, which is the very embodiment of forced time – a "static universe", in Patrick's words – and the defiantly clockless time of poetry. Does anyone ever check their watch during an experience of the Marvellous? For the most part the positions we assigned on the clockface to the experiences we recalled were based on rough estimates and guesswork; the clock times were more or less arbitrary and extrinsic to the experiences. Even those temporal aspects that really did apply to some poetic experiences – most notably, whether the experience had occurred at nighttime or daytime – are not indicated on a clockface. We therefore found it very fitting that the clock's numerals were gradually becoming covered over by the poetic experiences as the game continued. The Marvellous obliterates the clock.

Kirsty, Merl, Patrick, Paul C

KOALA ORGANS

A found Koala, a child’s backpack. We each took turns sculpting inside the Koala an organ from play-doh. Then passed the Koala to the person next to us who would remove the organ and interpret it:

Patricks dissection…

Throat
Howling voice echoes through empty chambers. A sad song.

 Black tongue. Waving and whimpering its riddles to hungry ears.

Piece of flesh with blood vessel, crawling to find a place where it can hatch, grow and become part of.


Merls dissection…

Strictly speaking this is not an organ, but an intestinal parasite that lives in the gap between the two kidneys. It produces a hormone that stimulates feelings of fear, particularly while the Koala is asleep.

This obviously sexual organ has no reproductive function while attached to the Koala, and is an organ purely of pleasure. However, on the Koalas death, it detaches itself from the body and burrows into the soil, where it self- fertilizes in a fungal manner to produce an enormous mushroom that is very delicious to eat.

This is the sphincter through which passes the koalas desire. At midnight precisely, it contracts and spasms to expel a great spurt of longing, sometimes so intense as to cause real physical pain. It also makes an unpleasant swooshing-gurgling sound.


Kirstys dissection…

Sightless Organ. Person gazes into the eyeless socket. And imagines what the Koala sees. This organ is located behind the eyeless socket and travels/ends at the dead-end of the belly button/ the empty inside of the Koala. The connection of two sewn up holes. When gazed into it slyly absorbs the unseen sights of sightlessness. Back and forth, back and forth, un-digesting/un-absorbing, powered by the imagination of the gazer and the proportion of their desire, that is sight aimlessly passed from sewn up hole to sewn up hole. Back and forth back and forth. And so the sightless organ attached to the spinning organ is set into motion and begins to spin faster and faster producing manic heat which gives this soulless, sightless, Koala the appearance of being a living thing, the appearance of looking back from the sewn up socket. That misleading heat produced by the spinning and animated by the cyclic dead-end of sightlessness. And the gazer who has sent in all this squandered sight and imagination and desire grows more and more a believer that his/her sight has been returned! And so more and more sight is invested, devoted to this sightless Koala and so the spinning organ spins more and more profusely as the back and forth, back and forth of the sightlessness manifests and carves out from its innards and through its excitement an inverse heart. All red, empty and bowl-like.

 

Time-traveller’s potlatch

Novembers game in the What Will Be almanac

‘Each participant indicates the gift that he or she would present to various historic figures on the occasion of their meeting. Thus, each player in turn can nominate an historic figure and all of the players then write down their response. Once all of the responses are written down and the round completed, they are read aloud within the circle.’
Results of game:



Jules Verne


Patrick: Empty glass cabinet


Merl: The head of an octopus mounted on a stick of rock


Kirsty: I knock on Verne’s door, he doesn’t answer. So I ring the bell. He eventually answers. I give him…nothing.



Robert Louis Stevenson


Patrick: glass of ink standing on a silver tray.


Merl: A diaphanous veil of golden sand, draped across the breast of a small boy wearing a snorkel.


Kirsty: I sing him a song backwards. A love song. And leave mud from my shoes on his carpet.



Elvis


Patrick: Pair of golden underpants.


Merl: A huge bucket of offal, dusted with icing sugar.


Kirsty: Laughter running in circles producing a ring of smoke on the carpet.



Spartacus


Patrick: His own magpie parlour 


Merl: A litter of puppies


Kirsty: Leaves that have been sliced into minute fragments by the fingernails of a distracted person. 



Julius Caesar


Patrick: A blue sports car


Merl: A potted yucca plant inside a tar barrel at the bottom of the ocean


Kirsty: gasoline in the eyes and a box, gold gift-wrapped, to put the charred eye lashes in.



Betty Boop


Patrick: A book for her to write down her dreams in.


Merl: A big ripe smelly wheel of Brie.


Kirsty: An invitation and pre-paid flight to OUR real world. And the colours of this. 


Memory window game

Octobers game in the What Will Be almanac

1) Each player is given a sealed envelope containing a photographic image of the same window, taken from the outside of a building, without any indication of where it is (or was) situated. The envelope should only be opened at the commencement of the game, when the conditions are right, and the text written in one sitting; the photographic image ought not be used as something to be pondered over retrospectively, off and on, when the mood takes one. The important thing is to be in the right frame of mind and to ‘provoke’ inspiration actively by means of the image. 



2) Gazing at the image of the window, through an act of imagination, each player writes a detailed description of the room on the other side, in which are placed objects (whether inanimate or animate) drawn from her/his childhood memories, and any scenario, provoked by the memory of said objects, which might be taking place in that room. This should be an ‘objective’ description, a tableau rather than a narrative, and should be no more than a paragraph of approximately 500 words. 



3) When all of the players have completed their written descriptions of the imagined rooms, these are to be placed in common and compared for any similarities and differences. Thus, there will be a number of ‘rooms’ corresponding to the numbers of players, each room containing a number of objects from childhood memory.



4) Taking each of the rooms described by the other players in turn, each player carefully reads the description, scanning the contents, and selects one object (whether inanimate or animate) or detail from the room which most resonates with a childhood memory. 

5) After interrogating the object/detail for the resonances and ‘analogons’ that it provokes, each player writes a brief one- or two- sentence explanation as to what this means to her/him.

6) Once completed, the players get together to compare, room by room, which objects were selected and what memories were elicited by them.

Results:

Paul D’s room

Beyond the window and the drawn white curtain…a childs bedroom… a small 10 year old boy…single bed…desk…built-in wardrobe…The boy is laying in bed, his head raised on a pillow, and he’s looking at the wardrobe…All across the floor and emanating from beneath the wardrobe, is a slowly moving, coagulating puddle of thick yellow custard…sticking up out of the custard are rows and rows, perhaps 4 or 5 hundred, of tiny pins…they stay upright but move along slowly within the custard as it oozes across the carpet towards the boy…slowly the wardrobe doors open, they are white, and from the inside a thick reddish brown sausage, about 4foot long, begins the float out…it’s a foot thick, 6 feet above the ground…hanging there…waiting…



Elva’s room

in the room it is really quite dark. The only light is from the lamppost outside. A large square stool stands awkwardly in the middle of the room, near the door. The ugly old clock on the mantelpiece ticks loudly; just on the other side of the door the mahogany grandfather clock gongs even louder. A skipping rope runs taught from one side of the room to the other. Small figures are crouching earnestly in the shadows, holding pillows and other missiles. There are enclaves in the wall that are otherworldly; as if they are portals to another dimension, step in them and you’re gone. A locked cabinet with a name scratched proudly into it on the far end of the room, but you never go that far into the room, it’s unthinkable, as if a Djinn lived in it. The room is still, silent, dark; eager in anticipation, exciting, ominous, dangerous, and not-quite-there.




Patrick’s room
a high ceilinged room with two doors. On the far left side stands a tall wardrobe and somebody is sanding inside crying. On the opposite wall hangs a large oval mirror. The mirror is very dark and a message has been written across the mirrors surface, in an unrecognizable language. By the fireplace, a woman is sitting in an armchair and she is staring intently towards the direction of the wardrobe. Two objects rest on her lap, one in each hand. The right hand, a blade, in the left, a bell.

Kristy’s room

1) No person is in this room

2) A sparrow in a small box, wrapped in toilet roll, still breathing, in a drawer.

3) A butter knife

4) Terracotta faces of a god and goddess, on the wall. Their eyes are pupilless and their heads are filled with soil and overgrown with weeds.

5) A dark, black corner, looking into it and trying to make out rabbits in cages. But they never appear. 

6) A cat on the windowsill, always looking outside, part outside, its head cannot be seen as it reaches outside into whiteness and light.

7) Chucky the killer doll.

DIFFERENCE AND SIMILARITES
two bedrooms, a living and a day room.

People in the room:
Elva: unnamed children hidden in the dark.
Paul: himself as a child
Patrick: a woman
Kirsty: no-body

It was noticed that in Pauls, Patricks and Kirsty’s room there was a particular passivity, that something had happened/ was happening that we could not control. Pauls: the custard slowly approaching, the child unable to run away. Patrick’s victim in the wardrobe. Kristy’s dying bird and caged rabbits that cannot be conjured by sight. Elva's dream however had elements of control in its anticipation for whatever was coming/happening, confronting the darkness with booby traps etc.

Pins in Pauls, a blade in Patricks and a butter knife in Kristy’s room

(Elva's) writing on a cabinet and (Patrick’s) name on a mirror= intangible communication.

WHAT RESONATES WITH CHILDHOOD MEMORY?
Pauls room
Kirsty) resonates with being bed bound and being confronted with a point of emanation.
Elva) The custard. The film toys come alive or whatever it was called, there was a scene in which there was a big sea of some kind- foodstuff disguised to capture/kill the two protagonist toys. It was terrifying and horrible but I watched it over and over again.
Patrick) a hovering fat red tongue, pushing through white doors and wanting to shout.

Patricks room
Kirsty) waiting for something to reveals itself to sight. Deconcealment.
Paul) across the mirror, words from an unintelligible language. Like a voice crying out from the other side that can never be heard.
Elva) I had a floor to ceiling built in wardrobe in my bedroom. I cant recall if this is how I felt about them at the time but when I remember them I feel like I was never quite sure what was in them even though I must have looked in them regularly.

Elva’s room
Kirsty) the repetition of clocks creating a menacing consistency.
Paul) A locked cabinet with a name scratched on it- but you never go that far.
Patrick) the enclaves are for time travellers. Trapped forever in a parallel universe and only able to fleetingly visit our world like ghosts.

Kristy’s room
Paul) A God and a Goddess, their heads filled with dirt…as in a universe of ambivalent, pointless indifference, yet with the potential for individual growth and sustenance.

Elva) God/ess plant pots: This really reminds me of a story I wrote when I was an adult (24 years), it resonates so much I chose it anyway. It is called ‘Humhiminas Tuft’ and is about a girl called Humhina who grows a living boy/plant out of the ground who has hair, called Hessakints.
Patrick) a dead sparrow in white tissue reminds me of chocolate birds wrapped in coloured foil for Christmas treats.

CUT UP
…then it was decided that we should cut up our rooms and reconstruct! Here is the un-edited cut up…

Eager in anticipation, exciting, the fireplace a woman is sitting, a sparrow in a small box wrapped in towards the boy…custard as it oozes across the carpet. In the room it is really quite ground…hanging there…waiting onto it on the far end of the, the are enclaves in the into the room its unthinkable, outside into the whiteness and light about four feet long, begins to float out across the mirror surface in slowly the wardrobe doors open always looking outside, part outside its oval mirror. The mirror is very slowly moving co-agulating puddle. Dark. The only light is from, form one side of her lap, one in each hand. The the room is still, silent, dark a square stool stand awkwardly a tall wardrobe and somebody is other side of the door the its one it thick six foot above the near the door. The ugly single bed, desk built in of thick yellow custard sticking up, chucky the killer doll. Black corner looking into it, trying a thick reddish brown sausage, quite, there. Tiny pins they stay upright but move along slowly within the gold clock on the mantelpiece, ominous, dangerous and not mahogany grandfather clock gongs the lamppost outside. A large in the middle of the room your gone. A locked cabinet dark and the message has been written. Wall that are other worldly this head raised on a pillow and their heads filled with soil terracotta faces of a god and goddess dimension; step in them and never appear. A cat on the windowsill no persons in this room ticks loudly; just on the night, a blade. Opposite wall hangs a large doors on the far left side stands perhaps four or five hundred and overgrown with weeds. A dark head cannot be seen as it reaches intensely towards the direction of pillows and other missiles allow across the floor and emanating a high ceilinged room with two standing inside crying. On the beyond the window, and the they are white and from the inside the room to the other. Small room, but you never go that far a unrecognisable language by toilet roll, still breathing in a drawer as if a Djinn lived in it and he’s looking at the wardrobe from beneath the wardrobe is a to make out rabbits in cages but they bedroom. A small ten year old boy with a name scratched proudly in the shadows, holding in an armchair and she’s staring on the wall, their eyes are pupilless wardrobe…the boy is laying in bed out of the custard are rows and rows drawn white curtain, a child’s the wardrobe. Two objects rest on right hand, a blade, in the butter knife as if they are portals to another figures are crouching earnestly even louder. A skipping rope runs taught.

The restorer

Septembers game in the What Will Be almanac.

1. After putting their hand into the cloth sleeve covering the items, to make an inventory of the objects and structures they have felt; to describe their first impressions.
2. To combine the tactile percepts, and the associations and analogies they conjured up, into an imaginable whole.
3. To try to identify which of ten presented pictures was the bias for the artists tactile interpretation.


PD’s drawn response and KW’s written response to the insides of Patricks bag:

My finger brushed a cold eyelid. Layers of hair extending infinitely, being brushed and making waves. Organs emerge from this tangled mass; a creature coming up for air from the murky depths. To the surface. Body parts float. But the hair stops them from climbing out and putting themselves back together. Forever kicking and re-tangling.

And here is peeping Tom, whom Patrick had in mind whilst making the bag. From a selection of images:

    

The materialization of collective arbitrariness

Augusts game in the What Will Be almanac

1) Each participant receives a number of sealed envelopes, each envelope displaying a time on the outside and containing the name of a selected place in the city.
2) At the commencement, each player opens the first envelope and, on the way to the specified location, has to find an object to present as a gift to the player they meet upon arriving at the stipulated time. (The place and times are re-arranged so that all of the players meet one and other during the game.)
3) The two players at each meeting place exchange their objects.
4) Each player opens the next envelope and proceeds to the place named therein, finding an object on the way, and so on, until all of the other players have been encountered and their found objects received.
5) At the end of the day, each player has a number of objects from which she/he constructs an assemblage.
6) Each player writes an interpretation of the results of the game.

Here are our results…

Paul Cowdell:

Onward Go-Go Babies

 Onward go-go babies, marching off to war

Time is a ribbon of burning feathers and dead flowers for the war widows strapped to their widow's wheels. Buckle them down like ribbons on the big-screen ice, like the Marquis's beloved, strap them down and singe their fur.

Fighting down the walkway closed by flattened men with faces turned to toxic rain, walking with the bat pedestrians.

Do not leave the combustible child unattended.

 Paul Day:

"My cup runneth over with fish and chips"

Merl Fluin:

The Eye Of Whorus

Patrick Hourihan:

Denny Misquotes.

 "Come back! Come back!" he cried in Greek

Across the stormy water,

"And I'll forgive your Highland cheek,

My daughter, O my daughter!"

E. Nesbit (1901)

Elva Jozef:

Kirsty Woods:

Vector. Find fire & stone here.

Four Corpses

Elva, Kirsty, Patrick, Paul D,
13^th September

Fiddling Game

Elva had been fiddling with some pieces of card and produced what appeared to be symbols. So we each interpreted them. Then we took turns throwing them on the table and reading from them. The results are as follows…

Fiddlers Symbols

(Numbered from left to right, 1-9.)




1=a roof, without a house. Because they are not for houses but for sitting on; to view from almost a birds eye view. 


2= Sizing each other up. Or the skin before it is assaulted.


3= A bird sunbathing with sprawled out wings.


4= sleep.


5= cats touching noses. The moment they change their minds and realize they don’t like each other. Or when a cat just abruptly attacks you after being friendly (there is a behavioral term for this, I cant remember)


6= Neighbors spying on each other, or waving from their lawns, “Hey Hank, how are the kids?”/ or the same as saying “Hi! How are you?”


7= The little one runs away from the big ones, but they pull at its arms. AKA; wanting to be released.

8= Up? Down? Who gives a shit?


9= To spit on someone eloquently, with style. (This being the gesture you make with your tongue) 
                                 
-Kirsty Woods





Great pyramid rolls across the ocean to find a secret scroll within a small city that faced tall mountains and a pathway with many stairs leading to a giant monumental torch made of stone. 
                                                                                                                

-Patrick Hourihan

 

‘Eqyptian Camping’



A dry tent is good.

Though it curls

Double you.

A coil of rope battery

On my camping bed.

Next to the two main pyramids.

They opened up the ship.

And down from the ramp

Came the cones.
                       
-Paul Day



1. The Dollhouse

2. The cats whiskers

3. The lightning

4. The vortex

5. The camels hump

6. The Pyramids

7. The time machine.

8. The ladder

9. The ever-burning torch
                               
-Elva Jozef




Interpretations of scattered symbols:



The ecclesiast is behind the moose. The moose is beside the judge, who cant stop sneezing. Spiraling out to the west, the hills chase tensed arms. The finger points at the moose in defiance of the swiftly approaching eyebrows. Stop! Don't go south. You’ll meet your death.
(EJ)


Beyond the fence a majority will exert pressure on individuals. 



rest up and bid your time,


eventually a loose coil will leave and in its shadow will live anger…
(PD)


The ship with white sails glides into the purple room. Because the bird gliding overhead is landing near a string web.
A rolling coffin opens and the voice of death calls out like a wax cylinder screaming across the distant ocean. 

(PH)


Self-sacrifice

body as shield

rush to cover the eyes and ears but they accidently suffocate. Hysterical aftermath. being looked at by two rotating eyes, entering the shielded ones soul, like light through the inevitable gaps between fingers.

because the eyes rotate like a drill and churn holes; that is how fingers are made. By the creepy man in the bushes looking at animals in the zoo.

That is what it is to be a tiger behind glass.
                                              

(KW)