Repetition

I reread recently Lemurian Time War, part of the CCRU oeuvre. It had me reflecting on literary repetition, and in particular the parallels between William Burroughs and Captain Mission on one hand; and Miguel de Cervantes and Pierre Menard on the other. This kind of repetition at first glance is so close to the infinite capture I discussed in an earlier blog, the only way infinite capture might be possible really — it’s easy enough to perfectly replicate words with the selfsame words. Mightn’t that be the literary equivalent of writing a perfect sunset?

But in both cases, what happens is the exact opposite of capture. Even in these, the most contrived examples of perfect replication, what spirals out is not identity but difference, imperfection, dizzying newness. How beautiful.

Brief recount follows for those not familiar with either piece.

Lemurian Time War describes William Burroughs’ war against the One God Universe (OGU). The OGU is time considered from the perspective of a single reality. It is the representational, linear world of ‘objective truth’ and determinism. Lemurian Time War’s main subject is a story called The Ghost Lemurs of Madagascar. It is a story written by Burroughs in 1987 and again by the pirate Captain Mission sometime during the 18th century. Burroughs encounters Mission’s version in 1958 and recalled writing it in the future — Mission encounters Burrough’s version in the 1700s and uses it as a guide, resulting in the very story Burroughs will write. The story is written twice, breaking the lines of linear time, engendering a closed loop, “time-twinning waves where Mission and Burroughs coincide.” There is no original version.

Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote describes a superior version of Don Quixote written in the 20th century by Pierre Menard. Menard did not seek to copy the Quixote, rather to write it afresh entirely based on his own experiences — only in such a manner that each word would still coincide perfectly with the original. Borges describes all the ways the influences of the 19th and 20th century have lead to this version of the Quixote, which takes on an entirely different aura despite the fact its words are precisely the same.

I’m not going to do an in-depth analysis of either of these two pieces or their similarities or differences or particular peculiar philosophies (although you could write theses on either and I’m sure this has been done), since this blog is meant to be light and easy and I don’t want to do anything other than record my most immediate thoughts.

But what these two both bring so strongly to mind is that every act of representation, no matter how perfect (because in both pieces representation is perfect, the words all maintain a precise 1:1 relationship with their counterparts), adds or subtracts things, so that there can never be such a thing as capture.

In my last reflection on writing I talked about capture as the drive to immortalise and pin down every vanished moment in time; the possibility of writing an instant so perfectly that both words and moment annihilate, inseparable.

This is, of course, an impossibility. What is possible is only repetition, duplication, imitation. We take a moment and try perform it again — imperfectly, even if only because it no longer and can never occupy the same space and time as the original. But in that imperfection other things appear, other kinds of beauty. Repetition takes a different attitude toward time than capture — it recognises that time is only memory, and the act of capture futile since it will never have full access to the moment — to duplicate something so perfectly would take an infinity of time alone with a frozen instant. Repetition means letting go of perfection.

The more I can let that infinite gap into my work the more beautiful it might become.

What does this mean about the videos I’ve been taking? Because, on the one hand they are so much less than real life. The quality is pixelated, the sound overblown, the colours dull and faded. But on the other that’s enough to trigger a memory, and I think what is most beautiful is their ability to transplant a memory into another time. The act of sitting down to watch it, as well, embodies a certain way of being, even if I’m just sitting at my desk. It makes me reflexive in environments where I would not otherwise be. Is that the importance of their difference?

I don’t know what all this rambling amounts to. Maybe nothing. Maybe these are just videos. What I liked about them is they were closer to capture than my writing — but in a way this has made them less interesting than my writing, hasn’t it? But it’s not about more or less. Everything has difference, qualitatively different difference (fuck, sorry for sounding like Deleuze. I swear it was an accident). What I mean by this is: the gap between my writing and the world; and the gap between Pierre Menard’s Quixote and de Cervantes’; and the gap between my videos and the world; and the gap between Burroughs’ and Mission’s versions of The Ghost Lemurs of Madagascar — all these gaps are different differences. I think it’s futile to measure them as more or less near to whatever in each series is called reality or an original; because that’s not the point. The point is that they’re all qualitatively different, and that each does something new, something all of its own.

Here’s January’s video by the way. Anonymous evidence that I was there.