Roland Clare 2005

SA4QE, Bristol 2005: the first text I used was ...

Everything is twice itself, this I often think. Things are what they are every day, but then sometimes they are not. Sometimes I see people talking, crossing the road, running to catch a bus. Suddenly it is like TV with the sound turned off and I see that this is really Death dressing himself up as these people talking, crossing the road, running to catch a bus. So that is what is really happening, no?

But who am I that I should say this? My mind is like a top that spins crazily just before it falls over.

- from Come Dance with Me

This quotation made cameo appearances at the following locations:

A lamp-post was pre-equipped with cable-ties, just asking for an SA4QE addition. This page bears a different text, the opening of Dream Woman from The Moment Under The Moment:

Every teaching lesson today was devoted to Russ and his writings. I carried around a box filled with his works and operated a kind of Hoban jukebox (the smaller box in the picture below contains a Riddley Walker mug). My Year 10 class in particular spent a happy session hearing about SA4QE and the Some Poasyum and reading this:

Dream Woman


The dim light, the faceful shadows murmured, tinkled, gleamed. The steady flame of the candle on the table made a globe of stillness around the two of us, a warm bright globe of stillness in which she raised her glass and the luminous rosy wine made a smaller bright globe, a little world of the poised wine of this moment. She tilted the glass, the wine poured out, its brightness in the candlelight falling, falling. With an indescribable smile she looked at me and poured out the wine and never said a word, saying with her smile that she knew herself to be a dream and lost to me. That was how the first time ended.

The next time I saw her she said straightaway, 'Why do you bother when you know I'm not real?'

'I don't know that. I refuse to know that.'

'How am I real then? You know I'm only a dream.'

'What is that? What does it mean when you say "only a dream"?

'I'm only in your mind,' she said.

'What does that mean? The whole universe is only in the mind of God and nobody says the universe isn't real. '

'Maybe your mind isn't as real as God’s mind. In any case you'll have to go back, you can't stay here. Why should I begin something with a man who can’t stay?'

'You're in the world that's in me,' I said. 'I'll find a way to stay.'

'For me there's no future in this. I've seen it happen before with dream women and realies and it never works. '

'Is that what they call us? "Realies"?'

'Yes, and it never lasts. They see the man a few times, and that's the end of it. Sometimes they're left with a child. It's hardest on the children I think - it's like growing up in whorehouse. '

'But you're not a whore. You're not here for anyone else, are you?'

"'Not here for anyone else"! You amaze me. I've seen you once before and for all I know I'll never see you again and you want me to keep myself pure for you. You're not even young: in a few years you'll be dead and this world in your head will still be here in other heads and I'll still be in it. What am I to do then, wear black and live on memories?'

'You're saying you've been with other men,' I said. 'Other realies.'

'You don't seem to have a very quick mind. How do you suppose I occupied myself until you turned up? With needlepoint? How would you like to live in this awful tatty place where nothing ever works properly? You go to the bathroom to wash your hair and maybe there's a sink and maybe it's the front half of a crocodile. Whole neighbourhoods disappear overnight without a trace, you're lucky if you can find the supermarket two days running. And in between times you sit around waiting... '

From The Moment Under The Moment

(pp 61-62)

A new Child Protection directive means that we mayn't show their faces in photographs without written parental permission ... I can assure you they are all smiling nonetheless. These documents will be dropped in twenty choice locations by the end of the day.