The Chanteroels Soap Opera according to Flashy-Mike

LNA / Culture (February 12th 2007)

The unlikely tandem Richard Mutt/Flashy-Mike offers a transcription of the writings covering the tablets of Chanteroels which are different from the one James Brayes finished some time before his death. We remember that according to Brayes, the content of the text is implicitly linked to the shape of the writings, which, however vernacular they may seem, show graphic specificities that he linked to play on words/images, “semiotic” ways inherited from “preterition” and lures. Once again according to Flashy-Mike, those same semantic combinations could contain mistakes.

Indeed, says the young researcher, Brayes was right in thinking that what had, at the time, transformed the resounding heart of spoken language into global and random images was the need to answer the call of writing. The reflexion and analysis done by Brayes were rooted in poetic intuitions linked to his ideas on writing and the evolution of writing – and this is not the least of his merits – but, according to me, such partial elements are not enough.

On the contrary, the method Richard Mutt and I have used is rooted in solid logic, built with the help of deciphering software. Indeed, this software is classical but it has enabled us to elaborate data-sources applied to the mechanisms of our perception of contemporary art. Which means that even if there are differences in the two interpretations, both translations of the text are the same as regards rhythm and content.

The beginning of Flashy-Mike’s transcription of the text–

Writing became drawing in the space of one day that was the first of all days and in the space of all the others that followed.
– Writing became trace in the space of one day that was the first of all days and in the space of all the others that followed. Then they swelled so as to become visible and secret. Thus, the walls’ pale face became filled with them and so their soul was born. Eventually, they became illegible to all those who hadn’t created them, as for all those who despised them. It is then that the letters assembled and overlapped. In their multicoloured violence they recognized each other so as to shout the names and the places of those who were outlawed by society because of negligence.
– In its fright and in its desire, the writing clung to the grey walls of steel giants before leaving the bastion in an unbearable shake. Then time disappeared in the speed of exhilaration. For a few moments.
– In a thousand white nights, the steel sheeted and wooden chariots were colourfully dressed. Thus the spirit of poetry ran along the iron way and, running through the velvet undergrounds, its silver horses awakened the frozen countryside from its ignorant bigotry.
– In a thousand and one days, the writings left their prints under the bridges of grey earth and the hideous guardrails of their bypasses.
– In a thousand and one nights, they covered the blind façade of closed down palaces. Every day was stolen from night time. Every night was the dawn of a thousand poems. The writings covered the walls of lead in the haunting panic of the sirens. Then they brought joy to what was left to be seen of the sky and to what was left of the cemented earth.
– In the midst of intoxicating aerosol fumes the writing then became the voice of the one who traced its plumpness and the evasiveness of its lines. Thus it became the cry of acknowledgment of the Other whose hood made them anonymous. And, for each and every one of them, the colour of their difference.
– Then, that was the way things went, the writings blurred and the pallid face of the concrete blocks and bars saturated with signs became obscure. The murals cursed by the mind forgot the name of the Writings. The desert sands swallowed them.
– Yet, the desert had modelled the soul of men who wandered and got lost in it for centuries, to such an extent that its wind wouldn’t have been able to bring us the words, those words from which finally the tale rose . It was improbable and yet it was beautiful.

The beginning of Brayes’ transcription

– In the beginning was writing.
– Writing was shapeless. Darkness covered the face of its movement for the spirit was carried by naked words.
– Yet, it was said: let writing become beautiful.
– Then, the light of the spirit illuminated writing which was filled with it.
– Writing was given the name of poetry and the spirit was given the name of dream.
– It was also said: let the soul of poetry be born of the womb of the spirit and let this soul separate writing from the spirit.
– And so were the words made, and the words were seperated from the words. And this was done. Then the words thus assembled were named sentences. This way, speech was appointed. It could land when the winds died down.
– It was also said: let the words run on stone and join in one single place so as to create the tale. And this is the way it was done.
– To the stones thus united was given the name born of the desert’s breath, the Writings. In this way, the silence of the night, the immenseness of the days, the stretch of sands that are never ending, the song of the Leviathan in the abyssal oceans were forever engraved in the face of the stone. Then the stone had a secret and acquired a soul. It was said: let it be good.
– It was also said: let writing produce some spirit and let the spirit contain the seed of writing. This is how the spirit of writing and the writing of the spirit carried the seed of the sleeping wind. The breeze became dream. Thus foly could be written on the face of the earth.
– Then it was said that dream and foly were united as one. Thus, the enchantment of words sprung from the metamorphosis of the spirit into writing.
– It was also said: let the words be cut in the space left by the writings so that they may separate dream from foly, let them serve as signs to write the spirit of the tale, let the tale belong to the spirit and let the words glow on the dark bottom of dreams that are caving in and let them be illuminated. This is how it happened.
– This is how two great poetic bodies were born, the bigger one presiding over the dream was called spirit; the smaller one governing matter was called tale. Thus writing was united to spirit and spirit to writing.