Spirit of Boz

In fact, this locution is resonating with many scattered fragments in our book. From associations to associations, it creates a string of which we can point to the main terms : Hell - fire - smoke - a “sultry heat” - even “crematorium furnaces”, correlated with a holocaust. Each term in the series proving besides to be a “track-word”, we will de facto consider “matchbox” as a signifier lending itself to a progressive derivation of the whole Work. Oppositely to the “extinguished candle”, we will then sense the existence of a very blazing  and blinding luminous power. This will draw a kind of demarcation line between Good and Evil, unknown at first.

In this case, in avoiding to make the thesis heavy, only a text will be quoted. Evocative of a “sultry heat”, this text will exemplify , in a litterary way, the idea exposed in “the Boz and the Net”.

We are on the page 232 in the Book of Boz. After many tribulations, our 3 clowns (Jack Balance, Ego and the Scribe) reach an overheated full of vapor house.

This will then be written….

Roots : fragment 1

“The room was small and bare (40 square meters).

It was very hot there.

The walls, cream color, were studded with spots.

“Those aren’t spots,” noted Me, wiping his brow.

He was right.  They weren’t spots.  But graffiti.  Or drawings.  Even miniature texts we took pains to decipher.  Most often, they were enigmatic sentences, in the style of “To be grazed by the abyss as by an angel’s wing” or “If life is a metaphysics, Death builds an aesthetics.”  These sentences were reproduced hundreds, if not thousands of times.  Their arrangement, the way they were scattered, constituted a long spiral, interspersed with empty spaces.  But there was one “spot” whose shape leaped to the eye.  Observing it up close, it showed three characters walking.  I accompanied the “seeker of light,” perched on the shoulders of the “Bagman.”  A microscopic text specified that they had entered onto a journey like ours, but in another dimension.  A note added that, since synchronicity was essential, their adventures took place at the same time as ours.  Boz himself appeared like a Swiss cheese perforated with exits (Work Cat. No. 90, AI).

God knows how many travelers were circulating in those perforations today.  Together they form the sub-group of Ghosts.  Half angels, half men, they hardly appeared and were hard to grasp.  That came from their gift of ubiquity.

Being everywhere, they were nowhere.  That wasn’t easy to  understand.

“Incredible!” I exclaimed.

“It’s frightening,” grimaced Me. “It’s too reversible.  The idea of being a Ghost gives me goose flesh.”

Once again he was very hot and his feet splashed in a puddle of sweat.

Jack Balance was also suffering from the dog days.

He removed his perpetual cap.

“What heat!” he said.  “It’s unbearable!  “You’d think you’re in a sauna.”

From this, we could go further in refining the process.

A Gruyere cheese holed with exits (work cat nr AI)

Such a sequence will indeed find an accurate visual illustration as a small installation; namely : a cheese cover containing a “Book of Boz” copy, trimmed and nibbled on the right corner; on the same table, a piece of “true” Gruyere cheese laying on a small wooden board, beside an old grater. A fake mouse, raised to its hind feet, complements the installation (the mouse is laid on the ground facing the viewer, so under the table - “under the counter”).

And the net surfer begins to understand. For, what is Boz other than an expanding universe, exposed to the winds, object of  a thousand metamorphoses, using all techniques to introduce the subject to his own destiny.

In our newsletter we  simply said, “a soul supplement”.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 1st, 2006 at 11:20 am and is filed under 3- The Book of Boz, Roots. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.