End

“Knowing is nothing,
doing is everything.
But this doing is
fundamnetally
an act of
communictaion...”
Page 65, Stanfod University Press, 1991


(3)
Radio

Broadcast

2
 19th February, 2010

[i]

Because I refuse to be vacuous, but very of-

ten, I usually I am, I’ve decided to enlist the
help of a very thorough man. In retrospect
though, I should have been much more spe-
cific, because a thorough method is not the
same as thorough content, and there’s noth-
ing worse than a man who’s all method, and
no trousers.
[ii]

Of course I can write, I’m doing this now,

but on this occasion it’s really not the point.
Today’s text is much more to do with creat-
ing the conditions to make something pos-
sible, and in this case the condition is some-
one else. Not a collaborator. An element. An

3
 Resonance, 104.4 fm

external element. A foreign body. A cat for

the pigeons, to ensure the text performs dif-
ferently, and never the same as before.

[iii]

Today, I’ve already written quite a bit. I

don’t want to repeat that here. I don’t want
to stultify with a repetition of my previous
text and beyond this I simply won’t mention
‘that word’ which the man repeats to me dai-
ly. Do not be stultified. Then he hands me a
text, that will help.

[iv]

Now i’m writing a performance, which needs

to emerge from scratch. Except it cant, be-

4
 19th February, 2010

cause nothing ever does and in this case I al-

ready started. Worse still, it seems I’m hav-
ing to do almost all the hard work, which is
no longer exactly my work, it’s very much
his.
[v]

My work, i say, is different. It’s about new-

ness. Absolute newness. Change, mobility,
progress. Moving anywhere. Going every-
where. Breaking the lines. Basking in mar-
gins. Finding some freedom from total con-
trol. My work is limits, my work is people,
process and thoughts, public and private
and…. gush. “Well” he says “today the end-
point is open. But the process you go through
is not.”

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 Resonance, 104.4 fm

[vi]

I pick up where I left off; Monday night, af-

ter the man has verified that, yes, I’m on the
right track and, yes, I’ve reached page four-
teen. I’m complaining because the method
is slow, and I’m going to stay rooted to the
same book-on-loop for one hundred and for-
ty pages. I cling to the method and whine:
“I’m lost, I feel desperately lost, do you feel
desperately lost?” “No” he tells me, “I just
want a coffee.”

[vii]

One man wants to speak, the other wants

to figure him out, and that’s that. That’s all
we need to take us from one person’s pri-

6
 19th February, 2010

vate idea to something more public. Then,

when two wills agree that they both want
to know, they will produce a thought. This
will be visible to two men at the same time.
Someone-one speaks it, someone-two gives
form to it using his ears and his eyes, and
then they swap. This is a metamorphosis;
private to public. It’s the effect of two wills
helping each other out. It’s supportive. It’s
social. You know?

[viii]

“Do we need a desk?” I agree that we prob-

ably do. “Shall we move it forwards?” he
says. I agree that, yes, we should probably
move it forward.

7
 Resonance, 104.4 fm

[ix]

When two people confront each other to

speak, speech becomes words and then
words become thought. Does that sound
right? I lost the page number. I start again.

[x]

An idea becomes matter and the matter be-

comes an idea but he threw me matter long
before ideas; one hundred and forty pages
of matter. Page after page of matter, all mat-
ter and not a scrap of will. “Do you realise
you don’t have much will?” I tell him.“I told
you to transcribe that”. He says.

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 19th February, 2010

[xi]

Right now, in this situation, our intelligence

doesn’t count when all you claim to know
about this text, this thing, means nothing,
because you are just knowing, without very
much doing. And in this case, doing is ev-
erything. It says so right here. In your very
own text . “I’ll stop the recording now” he
says. “It’s already 42 mega bites”.

[xii]

I say, he’s wholly inactive. He blames the

flapjack he ate for a snack, but continues to
read and know. Knowing is nothing, doing
is everything! And doing is fundamentally a

9
 Resonance, 104.4 fm

communication. For that, I know speaking

is best, because it says so, here in the text.

[xiii]

Through speaking, a man stops transmitting

his knowledge and starts to speak poetry.
And don’t laugh out loud. It’s your text that
said that, not me. So please, tell me, what
are you finding? If you’re not finding that.

[xiv]

The communication between two people

who confront a text which they don’t know
how to read is simply the effort one brings
every minute to translating and counter

10
 19th February, 2010

translating someone else’s position. This

will help you understand your own. But he
won’t translate. He just reads.“You just read
the reading”. He just reads about text, which
he’ll never inhabit because it’s always too
precious to live in. He needs it intact.“You
need it intact”. So he can point to it and tell
me “that’s evidence”.

[xv]

“Should we lose the desk?” he says.“The

head-to-head negotiations are over.”

[xvi]

The power of good translation makes one

11
 Resonance, 104.4 fm

speaker confront another. It’s social. Can

you help? He only half hears and busies
himself with a pile of proofs in the corner.
He jangles his facts, and whistles out evi-
dence.
[xvii]

“Don’t you understand that you’re copy-

ing”. He studies his handbook. I want him
to know that he’s copying. He orders his
words on a post-it note. “I want you to know
that you’re COPYING”.

[xviii]

“Should we find a whiteboard?” he says.

I agree that, yes, we should probably find

12
 19th February, 2010

a whiteboard. “We can transcribe, what you

just said, on the whiteboard. It will give us
some idea of where you’re at.”

[xix]

Wanting to do, is wanting to to say, and

wanting to say should always be addressed
to any reasonable person. To do this takes
practice. It’s the practice of moving others.
It’s a language to learn, and you’ll never
learn it from behind a text, because if your
text tells you, ‘show yourself and speak’,
what will you say then? What will you say
now? Now your text turned against you.

13
 Resonance, 104.4 fm

[xx]
We’re thirty-one days in and I’m starting to
have some ideas, but that was three weeks
ago now and today I’m not so sure they’ll
have worked. Nonetheless, I did propose the
solution and the solution was “positions”.
To which he replied“maybe”. But I’m in-
dignant. “Without a position we’ll be noth-
ing. We’ll make no progress, we’ll be feeble
interpreters, tribute-bands, soul-suckers,
hopeless, fruitless, academic D-listers”. But
it doesn’t work. Every position is attempted,
then quickly abandoned.

[xxi]

“Shall we have some lunch?” he says.

14
 19th February, 2010

[xxii]

If i’m allowed to take a position, and close

down the ending, open the process and
throw out the method, we’ll get somewhere,
we will. But he likes the text-on-loop, with
the narrowest margins for error.

[xxiii]

We start at the start and read to the end. We

take a fact, we find a quote, we lay it down.
It’s a jigsaw. A giant one-man sport. Method,
selection, perfection and goals. Do you re-
ally believe this is thinking? Of course not.
It’s method, on loop, with no content.

15
 Resonance, 104.4 fm

[xxiv]

By now, I’m desperate. I’m begging “please,

let’s get out of this text, because it’s really
soon. In two-weeks time and something’s got
to go in there.” “No” he says. “Something’s
got to happen there”.

[xxv]

I have departed from my right way and lis-

tened to yours and now I need you to listen
to me. I do not have a book. Or a fact or
a method, but I do have a structure, which
was always quite simple; 27 vociferous per-
sons to disrupt your rhetoric at precisley
the choreographed time. “But the 27 comes
from you.” He says.“I’m not interested in
the 27.”
16
 Resonance, 104.4 fm

[xxvi]

This week, next week and the week after is

simple. I’ll commit to the text. I’ll do as you
say. I’ll read it, I’ll read it, I’ll read it again,
I’ll write it I’ll break for tea, I’ll drink cof-
fee, I’ll push it forward, I’ll learn it as bible.
So when can we start? Friday? No good?
Wednesday? too soon... two evenings, could
work, next week? Is better, a desk would be
good, but should we move forward? Should
I start? Should you? Here is a text, a space
for us both, which I’m reading and reading
and reading outloud. And the interruptions?
Arrive and arrive and arrive.

[xxvii]

Piece For A Male Speaker & Twenty-Seven Interruptions, 2010

Documentation of a thirty-one day negotiation and a 9 hour 41min rehearsal, broadcast live.
“It remains that
thought must be
spoken,
manifested in works,
communicated to
other thinking
beings...”
Page 62, Stanfod University Press, 1991

18
 (2)
Rehearsal

(Re-enacted)

20
 6th February, 2010

Piece For A Male Speaker & Twenty-Seven Interruptions, 2010

Public renactment of a 9 hour 41 minute private rehearsal for an undetermined radio broadcast.
Edited from the original to (approximately) thirty-six minutes and twenty-seven extras.
“Learn to speak
on any subject,
off the cuff,
with a beginning,
a development,
and an ending...”
Page 42, Stanfod University Press, 1991

22
23
 (1)
Exhibition

Post-rehearsal

24
 19th January, 2010

We’re basically back in the coffee shop, exactly where we started. You’ve
made me come all the way to Mile End, to an enormous room with loads of
potential and we’ve restaged the same limited situation we started in the
coffee shop two weeks age. Shall we do something else? Well, it does seem
like a waste of space, but I’m quite happy here now. Ok. So, the situa-
tion is that I have to put something in this show on Tuesday and I was
originally going to use a transcription of our conversation, the bit near
the end where we said:‘well, we could do this’, and then,‘no we can’t do
that, because… well, because no one was in charge… And that would just
be pinned next to the picture of the children. But then I thought that
maybe i’d like to use what we’re doing now instead and pin that with
the children. But how do you feel about that? Yeah I feel that that’s
useful. So that’s the beginning sorted. But then there’s this thing in
the middle. And it’s been advertised as… A public performance. But then
there’s a… Radio show. And so, what we have is a… slot? Yeah, a slot, I
guess… and I think we’ll use it to record the results of this. Is the
thing in the middle a performance? To be honest, I don’t think it really
is. Well if we change anything it’s the public thing, not the performance
thing. No, you’re stuck with the public thing. That’s a given. And the
radio, that’s a given too.Oh. And we’re both going to be speaking, that’s
a given, no? Well… not necessarily. Look, it’s fine, we have the beginning
and we have an end point, so we just have to deal with the middle. Deal
with what? Deal with where we’re going to get 27 interruptions from.
But the 27 comes from you. I’m not interested in the 27. The 27 is a use-
ful co straint, and that’s why you’ve got to be interested. It’s not an
interesting constraint. Yes, except i’m saying to you: you’ve got to be
interested in it. But that’s something YOU put down. It’s something I put
down, it’s something that’s arbitrary but it’s something that exists and
it’s not an interesting limitation it’s an arbitrary limitation and you
just have to ride that. Yes but 27 is 27. And anything is only anything
and this could have been anything and now we need to make something, so
can we please just start. But where did 27 come from? It doesn’t matter
where it came from! Where does anything come from, it’s irrelevant where
it’s come from. It doesn’t come from anywhere. We just need to start from
something so we can do something else. Ok. We need to perform. Ummmm.
No, we need to perform. That’s what we need to do. We need to develop a
performance. It’s just such an annoying number. It’s a number. It’s so
horrible. Look: it’s just a thing to return to, not a thing in itself,
it’s just a … It’s a strategy. So it’s the beginning of a thing in com-
mon? Yes, fine, essentially, it’s that.

Piece For A Male Speaker & Twenty-Seven Interruptions, 2010

Photocopied transcription of a 2 minute 40 second extract from a 9 hour 41 minute rehearsal
for an undetermined radio broadcast (rear view)
CHELSEA Space

(front view)
Translated from
the original
ISBN: 0804719691