A Bright Ship Part One
This is all a metaphor
There are no passengers on this ship! If you haven’t got the coin let it be the gold on your tongue instead.
Thanks friends.
Found the coin?
This is A Bright Ship.
This is all a metaphor. Remember that, as best you can, for now.
This is the invitation:
We are setting sail together, you and I. Know this: There are no passengers on this ship.
You carry all that you need for this voyage. Believe it.
Salt splash and awake at sea hunkered in seething crab hull your eyes track the lone strands of light. They dance. They are dancing I should say. They are dancing a song that has been sung before. Further ahead they are dancing again. Crossing no paths as they make way with no ill omen. You know this story and so: you are not a passenger. You are carrying this all in your head as we speak. You are co-creating. Participating. Curating and debating the best way forward. Remember this is all a metaphor.
The captain comes to you but their eyes are deep caves of ocean hollow. An eel glistens in one socket. Something darker lurks beyond sight in the other. They know the way, they say, only the way they say is a ripple of images too broad for a monkey brain like yours. It is a floodplain kaleidoscopic. Earthshattering truth dug from the congealed womb of the sea stalked beyond long ago. This is the way, they say, only each image is fat like an overripe fruit split at the side on the edge of sugar rot collapse. It would be like swallowing the Thames. Biting down on the sun. The vomit kaleidoscope of meaning has a name: Myth. He is trying, you realise, to tell you a story. He belches brine. It is a thick conceit but we’ll get there. It is like a puzzle: I want to tell you a joke but there’s too much context. Too much panic exhaustion echo of time invaluable forgetting the sweet release of no more.
So the puzzle pieces are flying out the mouth and the fish with legs on the deck are in a fuss reaching and gawping like they’re drowning except they’re singing? Stay with me here. They gape and gawp and gulp and make lines across the deck and they stand up one monkey and another and they get close and oh it is you and it is me and I told you we were going to figure this out together and then BAM! And CRACK! And SLAP! And suddenly between us a rupture of words is our insides inside out we are smashed you and I (We’ll get to that later) and in the wound between the singing rises and the Old Smoke agrees the terms and shows you where to sign and before you’ve picked up the pen the smell of gasoline and burning rubber like an Islay whisky is washing blood from the wound you’ve taken a fall and cracked your skull they say or else they would but they’re gone and the boat is boiling in the ocean and the things that made it boat like are sloughing off meat from the shin and the thick bright bones underneath clack and crackle with excitement as the world begins to spin and the floodplain is your brain and across the wine dark miasma of rattling things the captain is talking to you and they say the river rich speech into your heart the only organ heavy enough to hold it and walk away like the wasteful things we used to do with our body behind them a husk grew mottled and lobster old and the captain is speaking now.
Into the whole hole in our heads the stories poured and stirred and howled and a journey began long and long ago which is still being told right now and for the time that it is ours, let us walk a while together and see what may come to be.
Transform! Take a shape that goes beyond.
Did I tell you that this is all a metaphor already? We are inhabiting a space that is floating through space.
This is the speak making place: Welcome. Forge/Ship/Sepulchre. We are making magic from a dead god’s head. Someone once said ‘Don’t think, but look!’ and so that’s what we’ll do. Well listening mostly or should I say surrendering or am I getting ahead of myself. Listen. I am trying to make the most sense but I cannot make a door just anywhere anyway so I can only keep moving forward until you find your own way in: Some lessons you must only walk the path yourself. Something is too big to be said straight sometimes and so we are finding ways to keep in touch with indecision and misapprehension sweeping the space between.
We have pulled at so many threads – too many – to see what was inside. And now we know and all hell has broken loose. The too many questions child has asked the world in two.
It won’t all be like this, but maybe one day there will be more of us. More molten minds of metaphor. ‘Stick with the image!’ Said a someone else. Stay close to the breathing beast and let not the moment end in violence let not another murder kill the wild world again. Look into the eyes of the braying beyond and see a majesty beyond words. Fall upwards just a little until you can believe that it be so. This is working, I think. Somethings lie beyond speech I suppose – I know not what. Let them lie.
Into the pot at the beginning of time was poured the wisdom of the world they say and on accident it found its way out perhaps I am the snake that tugs the ear and says taste or else the shat remains of Raven in disguise. Well we weren’t supposed to go there they reckon but we did and it changed everything but that was before and I want to talk about next!
This is river speech DAM SPEAK which I give to you at a taste it and see what your tongue makes of it. I am launching a ship and I need a crew. We are sailing to chart the way ahead. We will track to the edge of knowing and trace a tangle through. When we’re done things will be different. Always are.
Time to move beyond the petty us and them. Time for fire on the tongue in service to brave ideas. I am an act of dismemberment made manifest so many putting togethers the Frankenstein not ruled by fear.
I am talking to you as I’m able but we don’t have much time: Only our lives ahead remain and what to come beyond we only dream.
There is something here, here like this. I don’t know who else has noticed. There is no sailor at the helm. It is the bleak house of verdigris the half forgotten promise the dead dream at the bottom of the barrel with the lid on. It carries on regardless. We are here, you and I, to see if it will stay dead. Maybe then we can go back home. Or make a home. Or dream something new that will hold the world together a little better, or longer, or stop us thinking a hunk of rock here longer ‘n us is cracking under the weight of our beaks. So reverent for so long and it couldn’t save us. The dead stayed dead.
With the invitation the warning: This is all a metaphor. Dun taik eet 2 seerius lee. We are not setting sail to change the world. With words we will walk a path into our own lives and so: We are changing the way we see it.
Welcome friends! Thanks for persevering through the canals, swamps and wide oceans of the web to seek me out.
There are no passengers on this ship! If you haven’t got the coin let it be the gold on your tongue instead.
Thanks friends.
Found the coin?