#effluent lagoon

Extracted from Transcript C

Right, let's have a go of this one.

(Inhales from e-cigarette, coughs)  

God help, that is harsh.

(Coughs, spits, laughs)

What the hell was that again? Lychee and Raspberry, for god's sake.

(Blows nose, clears throat)

Think I'll go back to the bloody Zestappeal. Anyway, where was I? Christ knows. Oh yeah, so car parks, right? Twice in my life I've been sat on the ground at the edge of a hospital car park, totally brainshot and unable to move. Once was when my brother died, back in 1987, in the old East Glam Hospital, and I was fifteen. Twice was a little while ago at the new Royal Glam Hospital when those birds scared me and all the cars were dead. And what these two car parks taught me was this, right?

When everything's gone wrong and fuck all makes sense, if your brain is smart and knows what's good for it, what it'll do is try to ignore everything. It'll try to get you back to your distractions ASAP, whatever they are. It'll say, hey so life's got no inherent meaning but you invest it with your own meaning and basically just seize the day, have fun and be kind. (Laughs)  Oh, and it'll also do that if it's a particularly thick brain. (Coughs) Yeah...and...then it'll get all obsessive over some hobby or other. According to the tastes it was brought up to enjoy, you know.  Like golf, or fucking, or politics. Maybe faith, religious faith, that's an old favourite, right? (Sniggers)

But my brain, for some reason, this is what I learned in those car parks, doesn't do that. Distractions don't work, they don't distract. Stupid thin things they all seem, stale, flat, and useless. And everything is just a distraction really, every possible thing, love and pleasure, all just a distraction from this truth I'm drowning in right now. My brain, in those car parks, just goes numb and I start to see things in the landscape beyond the perimeter fence and I just don't know where or what I am. 

Actually, I remember this Jehovah's Witness who came round the house one day, a few years ago now, and she was on the doorstep, you know, and I can rarely resist shooting the shit with them when they knock.  I think they see me as a challenge.  I usually talk about the Book of Job. Because that doesn't exactly show the non-existent bastard in the best light, does it?  

I mean...(Laughs) it's all about God gambling with the Devil over the soul of the best man on earth, right?  They have a bet and the stakes are this poor fella's eternal soul.  Which is fucked up for a start, right?  Because if He's God, and God is Love, then why did the bugger take the bet?  Not very loving, that, is it?  Kind of suggests the whole thing is just a game to Him, right?

Anyway, the Devil says, look here now, Jehovah, show me the best and most righteous man on that beloved planet of yours, and I bet I can get to him so bad that he ends up cursing you, his Lord God.  

And what does our loving shepherd tell the Devil?  Does He tell him, mate, fuck off, you're being a dick...(Coughs) and anyway, I've got a duty of care here, so no way, no bet, no deal. Back to the infernal realm with you, old son.

No, he says game on.  

Knowing full well the kind of shit He's letting Job in for, right, all the delicious death and disease and disaster the Devil has in store.  

Game on.

And this is just to win a bet, mind.

(Yawns)

The funniest bit is the ending though.  When God's righteous man, reduced by now to a toothless, hairless, multi-bereaved tramp with these pulsating buboes all over his body, sitting in the ditch where his home used to be, when poor old Job finally dares to raise the slightest, most timid, respectful little question to some sympathetic friends as to what the point is of all this devastation, down comes God Himself.  There He is, right next to them, in the form of  a whirlwind.  He's come to talk to the bloke who's wondering why his life has so spectacularly fallen apart. And what does He do?  

(Laughs)

What He does is He gives Job the most almighty bollocking for even thinking such a thing. And I mean like a really enormous bollocking. A god-sized bollocking. Makes it clear to Job in no uncertain terms that he doesn't even get to ask that question. That what's it all about, eh? that everyone asks at some point in their lives, usually when the shit's hit the fan.  Don't even dare to wonder what it's all about, says God, only I know that, you're so tiny and bloody mortal, I can crush mountains, so I guess you'd better just STFU.

It's true, check it out yourself, Book of Job, in between Esther and Psalms.

And to back it up, He goes on and on, for two whole pages right, about what a massive big God He is, how incredibly powerful and mighty, how He made everything, and how He holds up the sky and moves the stars and fills every fathom of every ocean (Bellows) so how could you possibly expect to know what my plan is, puny mortal!

And He's a real sort of alpha male arsehole about it too, at one point boasting about His big dangerous monster pets, Leviathan and Behemoth, and talking about how He hooks them through the lips and drags them around on chains. Now that sounds all too bloody familiar, dunnit? Like, 24-year-old Lee from Clydach swaggering around with his pitbulls, Tyson and Facefucker. The god version of that syndrome, right?

And all the time this Jehovah thug is all up in poor old Job's pustulent, ruined, human face, giving it all the sarcastic questions routine, I wonder if you could drag sea monsters around on chains? I wonder if you could hold up a mountain, eh? EH?

So that's essentially God's answer to Job, his answer to the question of why a loving God allows suffering in the world.  And the answer is because shut the fuck up, that's why.  

Hallelujah!

(Coughs, inhales more nicotine vapour)

And I mean, yeah, God does magic back Job's stuff in the end, his house and all his sheep and that, and he does clear up his boils for him and gives him new kids to replace the dead ones, after the Devil gives up the bet, but still...think of the psychic trauma, the PTSD for poor bloody Job. Because there's no mention of God giving him a merciful mind wipe, like Men in Black, so he can forget the whole twisted fucking nightmare.  No, the poor sod has to spend the rest of his life all freaked out, walking on eggshells, never able to relax into it all, even at his kitchen table with his new daughters around him, because he's always totally and horrifically aware that any time it can all be shat on and pissed over, for no reason at all.

Anyway, so I'd spin this out for them on the doorstep, the Jehovah's Nusiances, and they'd smile pityingly at how a lost soul can read the True Word of God and still go astray.  

(Laughs)

Or maybe they thought I was the devil, trying to send them astray.  

I've got one about the Tower of Babel too...but...maybe another time...(Indistinguishable) All working together...(Inaudible)...must be the only time in the whole of human history, international co-operation (Indecipherable)...too many ruined buildings in this story without that one on top (Laughs, slurps).

Sorry, just eating...daring to eat...a peach.

(Slurps) Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

No, but the point I was trying to make was this, right? This Jehovah's Witness, she said to me that what will happen is this.  When the Day comes, there'll be a final battle between Jehovah and Satan.  After a load of terrible armageddon and apocalypse stuff, God will win and  everyone who is still alive on the planet will be sorted by the Angels into two groups, the Saved and the Damned.  The Damned go straight to Hell, of course, to be punished and tortured for all eternity.  And the Saved? They get to stay on the Earth and live forever, at their physical peak, on a planet transformed so it's like the Garden of Eden again.

The way this woman described it...She said that if you were one of the Saved, you could live forever and, you know, inherit the earth.  Do all the things you always wanted to do.  Like me, she said, I love to knit and what I'd really love to do is start off with fleece straight from the sheep, and then go all the way through preparing it and washing it and dyeing it and carding it and finally knitting clothes with it. To me, that would be heaven.  To you, something different, but whatever it is there would be time for.  Words to that effect. Nice little lady in her 70s, very slight, delicate features, pale skin, quite ordinary looking, and yet that little bone china head of hers was the container of such a tiny, cosy eternity, she and her saved friends and a neverending supply of sheep.  

(Coughs)  

It seems so obviously bloody silly but, you know, it kept this little old lady trudging up the steep steps of every house on our side of the street in the pissing grey drizzle.  An insane act, surely?  But it's working for her you know?  It goes to show how far you can go if you really invest in some crock of shit or other.  Don't forget, it's all about distraction.  Your brain knows the truth, deep down.  It knows there's no reason for any of this, no reason and no purpose. It knows there's no God, there's no Devil and there's fuck all when you die. Even that little Jehovah lady, even her brain knew it deep down. But, unlike me, she'd invested in some crock of shit or other, and that kept her happily distracted. As far as she was concerned, she wasn't just spouting nonsense at indifferent strangers in a cold wet cul de sac in a slowly dying post-industrial zone among the impoverished uplands of northern Europe.  No, she was on a very special mission (Giggles)...from God...it's quite sweet really.

(Giggles, coughs).

And despite my best efforts as devil's advocate, she stuck with it.  Although she never did call back, which isn't like them, is it?  Once they've got their hooks in, they keep coming back, don't they?  Not this one, though.  

I wonder why she didn't call back.    

(Laughs, coughs)

by Daniel Brogan

Joanna Milkweed, sculptor, producer, co-creator of Dan the Can Man, died last year at the age of 104 at her home near Wenvoe, surrounded to the end by a faint air of mystery.

The Effluent Lagoon’s principal librarity scooter Kulvinder Virdee presents a reader’s guide to lesser known writers from the past.  

This week:

The small but perfectly formed world of D.K. Mould

Hi there, I’m Kulvinder and I’m just fine.

Every day this week I’ll be looking at a different aspect of the work of the novelist and short story writer D.K. Mould. The writer died in 2012 and was working on what would have been his third novel.  

Today, to start us off, I’m going to do a mini-intro to Mould, hopefully giving you a quick sketch of this singular and demanding story-teller’s career.  

We’ll have a brief look at the unfinished novel, Fellas Fellas, before heading further back to check out his earlier works as the week progresses.  

By the author’s own account, work on his third novel had been almost continuous for 20 years.  Shortly before his death Mould estimated that he was “roughly a third of the way through Fellas”.  

Most would see that as a long time to work on a single novel.  For Mould, it was par for the course.  

Despite publishing his first short stories as early as 1953 (in the magazine Branding’s) his debut collection didn’t appear until January 1973.  

Publishers were more than willing but the author insisted that ‘publication of any of my stories is NOT among the options I will consider until such a time as I am completely satisfied that I can do no more to improve or at least alleviate the worst inanities and untruths they still contain.’  

This ruthless and ascetic approach to his art goes some way to explaining why a writing career spanning 60 years, during which the unmarried, financially secure and supremely self-disciplined Mould rose every day at six, walked his dog, ate breakfast then sat down to write by eight, gave birth to such a small - though perfectly formed - oeuvre.

And significantly all the books Mould did finally consent to be published (one short story collection and two complete novels) were each of around 70,000 words, roughly the length of a Young Adult novel.  As critic G.K. Lensherr puts it in his critical, frankly bad-tempered study of Mould:

“When a great author spends 60 years in pursuit of his Muse, writing hundreds of thousands of words that will never be read because they were cut out and thrown away, how do his admirers feel when realising there will be no more refreshment from this beloved spring?  

When the artist finally dies in the doomed attempt to catch up with his stern, exacting Muse, when he drops the golden bowl he has been carrying since his youth, and when we his disciples, when we peer inside to make the final account, can we prevent the suspicion forming that the deal made between D.K. Mould and his Muse was most emphatically in Her favour rather than his?”

Around 200,000 words of published fiction, with a further 25,000 comprising the unfinished third novel on which Mould was working when he died – writers have been remembered through the ages on the basis of less substantial canons, of course.  

But in many of these cases the writer has an excuse of some kind: poverty, mental illness, physical weakness, substance misuse, early death.

Others might declare themselves disillusioned with all things artistic, reject their vocation, become the artistic equivalent of conscientious objectors, repair to the wilderness, often reverting in time to the first class of excuse - poverty, mental and physical illness, substance misuse, early death.

Consider two who died relatively young, Kafka at 40, for example, or Lovecraft at 46, both of whom left behind well in excess of Mould’s almost 300,000 words, though by no means all the stories that contained these words were published during their authors’ lifetimes.

Neither was fully recognised in his lifetime, and their stories were barely read by anyone, including some of their classics.

What makes Derek Kenneth Mould unusual, perhaps even unique, is that he lived a healthy and productive life, writing constantly, recognised as a great author unceasingly from the publication of his first stories in 1953 to his death in 2012, expending almost endless care in producing works that aspired to the perfection of pure perception, endlessly writing, rewriting, cutting and shaping, until dying suddenly in his sleep at the age of 96, leaving behind the full product of his decades of devotion to the art of writing, a small but infinitely polished diamond with one of its facets forever uncut.

We know of no unpublished writing by Mould, other than the uncompleted final novel provisionally entitled Fellas, Fellas. 

So here we have a small, but exquisite, body of work.  The question of where to start with D.K. Mould would seem irrelevant.  There’s so little of it, start with the first one he did, read through to the last one, you could do the lot in a day and a half, right?  

Wrong, apparently.  

According to Mould himself (in conversation with Melvyn Bragg):

“Don’t read them in the order in which I wrote them for god’s sake.  That’s the way to ruin them.  Better a reader read only one of them than do that.  I mean, the Dane said life can only be lived forward but understood backward.  Same with my stuff.  Read them in reverse order of when I wrote them, from the most recent back to the first one. That’s when you’ll get the message. Of course, I’ve got to finish Fellas first.  That’ll be my last one.  So that’ll be the first one.  If you see what I mean.”

So, in that spirt, I’ll give a brief description of each book in reverse order.

Fellas, Fellas (unfinished) – 20 years work went into the 25,000 word fragment published posthumously in 2015 (by Mould’s long time publisher Wattstown and with the permission of Mould’s agent and executor George Dupree).  

Approximately a third of the projected novel, the story follows a small cluster of microbes as they scale the face of piece of organic matter, dissolving particles to use for nutrition and to assist adhesion to the surface of the unidentified object.  

Refusing to employ either the anthropomorphic approach – none of the microbes has a name, a character or any but the most rudimentary and ambivalent of distinguishing features – or the omniscient perspective, Mould attempts to render the perceptions and sensations of the microbial horde directly with no reference to an outside context.  

An overarching narrative tension communicates itself indirectly to the reader, causing us to form a question in our minds which has not and will not ever be asked by the microbes through whom the narrative itself ‘sees’ reality – what is the bit of stuff over which they are all crawling?  

Mould’s achievement is to suggest this focus to the reader with the utmost clarity and without any textual authority, for there are neither far-seeing microbes nor a far-seeing omniscient meta-narrative to frame such a question.  

Behind this initial trick, as in the case of most of Mould’s inventions, we slowly begin to see its value as a wider, thematically suggestive suggestion concerning suggestibility.  

Achieving a sort of hypnotic clarity, a claustrophobic intensity of attention, this is undoubtedly Mould’s funniest book.  What critic Macy Gray has called ‘bacterial slapstick’ (in her famous review of Fellas, Fellas for the revived Branding’s online journal) leads to many broadly comic set pieces.  

Viewed in Mould’s terms, as the unfinished first novel of the series, these microscopic antics make sense as the loam and the soil from which his earlier works will grow.  

The essential Mouldean viewpoint is present here at the most concentrated extent he would ever achieve, forming a microcosm of the author’s key obsessions.  

How the tale would have developed if Mould had lived is anyone’s guess.  It seems likely that a revelation concerning the nature of the organic speck from this first part may have played a part in the later parts of the novel.  

Based on Mould’s work notes, it also seems likely that the resolution would have involved eggs.

Tomorrow: We’ll take a good look at D.K. Mould’s third novel, published in 2003, the notorious and perhaps misunderstood Slouch of the Sybarites.  Why not join us?

Mystery MP3 of the Week

This week’s entry was sent in by Dennis Biscoe of Ferndale, who writes:

“Got a bit of an odd one for you here.  I certainly can’t explain it, maybe your readers can.

“I was at a record fair in Cardiff recently, having a browse.  I’m a fan of soundtracks, theme tunes, library music and other musical ephemera, I dunno why, but I always loved that kind of thing, been collecting for 30 years, even though many people – my wife included – think it’s a stupid hobby.  She even used the word “retarded” once, which is an awful thing to say, regardless.

“Anyway, so I’m at this record fair, looking for titbits to add to my collection, and I spot a nice little 3 CD set of old Radio 2 stuff – jingles and bumpers, you know, 70s and 80s.  Lots of good stuff on there, including a tune I used to love as a kid, listening to Radio 2 in the kitchen while my mother got the dogs ready.

“It used to be the theme to Terry Wogan’s breakfast show back in the day, they’d play it at the start of his show every morning, and I just loved it.  I can remember bouncing up and down in my high chair when it came on.  It was so lively and upbeat.  I particularly remember enjoying the drums, I thought they were smashing! 

“Much later I learned that the tune is actually called Just Like That by a group called Brass Incorporated.  They did a load of stuff for the BBC back then. Probably best known for a tune called At The Sign Of The Swinging Cymbal which was the legendary theme tune to Alan “Fluff” Freeman’s Pick of the Pops – not ‘arf, pop pickers!

“Anyway, so that was on this CD, along with my favourite, Just Like That.  I’ve got it on vinyl but not on CD anymore – lent it to a mate for use in an amateur theatrical production, never saw it again - so I bought the set, 3 CDs for eight quid, even though I knew very well what my wife would say when I got home.  I tell you what, she thinks I’m mad, she really does, she says look at all these records of bloody test card music cluttering up the house what’s the matter with you, she says I’m a geek and a weirdo and that I’m not capable of love.

“So I takes it home, puts it on, and I’m listening to this track, right – track 14, it said clearly on the label, Just Like That – Brass Incorporated.

“And it starts okay, well, except the quality is all off, it’s speeding up and slowing down, plus it’s fuzzy as hell and not properly aligned to the left and right channels.  So I’m thinking, right, so, this must be a duff pressing or something.  But at least it’s definitely the right tune.  Except it’s not.  Because about eight bars in, something weird happens.  I can’t tell you what exactly, but it definitely never happened in the 70s, at the start of Terry Wogan, while I gurgled into my Shreddies.

“It seemed to turn into a different song – except you can’t really call it a song, it’s just a noise really, a noise pretending to be a song.  

“Every other track on the 3 CD set is completely normal.  It’s a professionally produced and packaged unit, not a bootleg, by a British record label using a Danish distribution company.  

“I can’t even imagine how this happened, let alone why.  I’d be keen to speak to anyone else who owns a copy of Classic Cuts Radio Set Volume 2 on the Varsity label, particularly about track 14. 

“My wife says she’s just keen to speak to anyone else.”