Two Modern Cynics
By sean mcnulty
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I wanted to let you know that this summer we are making a film about our community and I’d be very pleased if you were to lend your wonderful voice and presentation skills to the project. We hope to capture the essence of what we are all about here, nothing more than a simple meditation retreat, and nothing less than hands down the most dynamite meditation retreat in the world, though we will make sure to tone down that sort of language in the film. Simply put, we want to dispel the rumours of sinister goings-on out here which have turned up in a number of insulting articles of late. Even sex magick has been mentioned, of all things, but to be honest we’re not too bothered about that one. Filming will occur in the month of August. I can provide you with a room of your own, so that you are not denied the material comforts many here have chosen to abdicate.
I hope this letter finds you and your parents well. Be sure to give them my regards.
The postcard had an optical work by Bridget Riley on the other side of it and was stamped April 25th, 1979. Between the years ‘77 and ‘79, every postcard ELDER sent had an artwork of Bridget Riley on it and postmen and women across the country were at best none too pleased about this and at worst absolutely traumatised.
Cynicism was a thing in these fading 1970s. True, there was warmth everywhere you looked. But surely these cosy patterns were designed to tranquilise nations, decelerate brains with all their homely browns and marigolds. ACTRESS was one of the untranquilised vicenarians who constantly smelled a rat and walked the last days of the decade with her head down, only looking up to see another thing she would very much like to be done with forever. Be gone you, 70s, with your multitude of popes and your bell-bottoms, punks and rubber bullets, your tracksuits and pastels, crazy pastels and feather boas; be gone as well the shit music in McGonagle’s, and your coups, assassinations and sieges, industrial disputes and nuclear expansion. Horror unleashed recently when her mother spoke of the women’s movement and how it could now rest on its laurels with Thatcher getting elected. All the newspapers seemed to agree with her. Surely a win for feminism. Mother, really...
Change.
A change – that’s what she was after.
Knee-deep in politics and cynicism for so long, she now sought transcendental diversion, some spiritual nourishment with a side of personal growth. She had missed out on the 1960s and all those colourful but wholly righteous pursuits. The 1970s had been grim by comparison and aghast she was at the prospect of the oncoming 1980s. If she couldn’t change the times, she’d at least change the Self, adopt new methods and ways of muddling through. Presenting ELDER’S film might allow her to do that. She could get close to these New Agers and see for herself if truly they had unlocked a greater level of consciousness----or if it was all just narcissistic folly. She hoped now that it was not all narcissistic folly; however, they were still in the 1970s, after all, and there was just no telling. In spite of all this, she kept reminding herself that she was not a journalist and was not going there to investigate their inner space hobbies and show them up or anything like that. ELDER did not want a journalist. He wanted someone who would willingly follow all his directions in depicting the grand story. And that was her stock in trade, of course. Who was to say? It might turn into something half-decent, something worth shouting about and it was about time she made that long-postponed shift from stage to screen anyway.
ELDER wasn’t that old, in his mid-fifties. He was a little younger than her father, who he’d known at university, where both men had co-edited a highly controversial student magazine. The last time ACTRESS saw him was at a family wedding ten years before. He was not related to anyone at the wedding but he gave a rousing speech anyway. She remembered he was all spruced up like an eminent Edwardian geographer about to address the Royal Society about impact craters in the Earth with his hair held to with brylcreem, though her memories of him outside of that day built a more heterodox picture of a man. She wondered if he still had that scraggly hair like a mad scientist’s and the bushy moustache that made him every inch the guru in her remembering mind. And the voice. It was inscribed in her memory too. ELDER was known far and wide for his soft enchanting voice. If his voice had been any softer, it would have been a pillow, completely silent, and an effective pillow it would have been, for heads were known to droop often and plead for its calming properties.
The rain was long gone as they neared the hills and warm sunlight filled and radiated the car. Now we’re talking, August. There was a book of Mina Loy poems next to RUNNER in the backseat and when his hand fell upon it accidentally, ouch, he nearly burnt it right off. Coming to a fork on the road, ACTRESS took the right-turn given to her and drove a mile along a dark and woody path until they came to a jarred open but stubborn-looking gate which RUNNER realised he would have to get out and push open if they were to pass through. Another road was after the old gate and it ran for another mile or so until arriving at a white country house and you could see from the distance grey fluffs of smoke pumping from its chimney with mellow charm. Even from afar, you could see the house was a stranger in this setting, a million miles away from the modest cottages common to rural Ireland; it had a spirally space-age design that made a number of different things spring to mind: Bruce Goff, Northern California, The Jetsons. This was the house of ELDER and it sat at the foot of the hills like a strange milky pendant; the full necklace was rounded out by two purple streaks of foliage running up the hillside behind the house like the horns of a deer. There was not much else in the way of life in the area. Except---RUNNER could have sworn for a moment as he was forcing open the gate that he saw a figure moving across the hilltop, though it was to his eyes the size of a matchstick; whatever or whoever it was quickly vanished. A trick of the eye perhaps. Or maybe just one of those hippies they were about to meet dancing around naked. Must have fallen over the side, the fool.
When he got back to the car, he said to ACTRESS: Middle of fucking nowhere.
--Yes, she said. It’s great, isn’t it?
--I thought you would be hankering to get back to Dublin already. I’m shocked.
--Ah, you know me less than you think, she said, back on alert as she started driving again, a slow creep along the lumpy track which led to the house.
--I saw a man falling off the cliffs just then, said RUNNER. Well, maybe not falling off. I couldn’t see him clearly. And maybe he wasn’t a man. A hippy?
--What is it you have against hippies?
--I’m not against them. I’m merely undecided. You know, some months back I was on Camden Street and there was a gang of them there frolicking. There were these two in particular – a couple. The man was tall, big red goggles on him. And his woman was pregnant. They were flogging fruit and vegetables at a stall. Well, you know my old cumbersome bike----I was walking it along the pavement and the extending pedal knocked one of their baskets over and all the apples fell out on the ground. Complete accident. Now the man with the goggles was perfectly polite but the pregnant woman hit the roof. All up in my face, screaming bloody murder. I wasn’t shy about giving her a piece of my own mind in response but it started a whole scene because the next thing you know I was surrounded by a crowd of them, hair and beads all over me, and while some were trying to calm it down like the sincere-to-style hippies, there were many others who I’m confident were just itching to give me a box.
--Sounds like pure hell. I bet you wished you were back up in Belfast, safely behind the barricades.
--Well...I know myself from up there real comradeship you’ll only get when lives are on the line. What do these ones know about any of that with all these fashionable beliefs? You know, no matter how noble the cause it will always attract many that are ignoble too. It makes sense for blowhards and bullies to do their nasty work while sheltered under a huge umbrella – just like the ones they have in golf.
--Hmm....I agree with you, generally speaking.
--You do?
--I do. In fact, you’re kind of turning me on a bit.
--Really? Great!
And there they were driving along: two modern cynics.
Ahead of them: the most dynamite meditation retreat in the world.
Coming up: how they got on there.
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Comments
Love the dialogue, in
Love the dialogue, in particular. The writing itself is of a very high standard, of course.
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This is brilliant. :)
This is brilliant. :)
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Coming along nicely - if a
Coming along nicely - if a little intriguingly. The bit about the traumatised postmen made me laugh, thank you Sean
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