BRUTE! PROBE!
( as transcribed from a series of interviews with the author in the solitary cells of the De Stjel prison, Netherlands, between 1988-1991, with the notorious vampire of experimental literature, Dr. Hans Erlich, and edited together by Dr. Olaf Peterson and the authors friend, Ian Jones. )
DH: This is pretty grim. Do you expect to be here long....?
MB: There is no such thing as long.
DH: Excuse me, then how would you describe your time here?
MB: Well, wasted, if all I do is get to talk to cunts like you.
DH: Please. There is no need for that. I'm just thinking that your next several years here will be grim.
MB: There is nothing grim about the box. It is a uniform shape constructed with bricks and metal bars. Like literature. The book itself is a prison for words. Written words.
DH: I'm not sure I understand, Malcolm, and we have only fifteen minutes.
MB: You have fifteen minutes, doctor. I believe I have several years.
DH: Excuse me.
MB: No.
DH: I'm sorry, Malcolm.
MB: Don't be. You're missing the point completely.. As a surgeon you are clinical about your approach with the knife. From the moments before you take to the stage until the applause after, you have set about your business in a manner which suggests a uniformity and professionalism. Literature is similar. But, whereas your clinical daggers offer a certain reward of security and an extended grasp on life, then so stories and words offer the entire carnage of escape and all the danger that comes with it. To die of cancer has to be a slow, miserable and personal thing. A dagger might solve it. But only words can recreate it. My mission is simple.. What I'll do is take a fistful of the most badly behaved and disparate fuckers, put them in a hat, my hat, and intimidate and threaten until they are ready to emerge from the confinements of their lazy dictionary all at once to survive and take upon themselves a life of their own.. Initially mere maggots of demand, with all the loose spittle and colour of their demands, they now scuttle into thy permanent frozen death of structure. From the grunt to grammar.
And so Brute! is born.
MB: You're off your head, mate! The Guard can only protect you from what you conceive as danger. Physical danger. But a word not only represents that fear, it is the physical reality of fear in a sound. Whereas the blade offers a wound, the word itself displays your dismemberment and death whilst alive. Each one has a power. Like a stiletto. But grouped, they're a bomb.
DH: So you're here for words...?!
MB: What else would convict me...?!
A SCREW brings in tea. There is an uncomfortable silence as all parties glance to their wristwatches. At his point BENNETT notices or feels the urgency and his expression changes.
PLUS! He doesn't have a wristwatch.
MB: I’m done. Why don’t you pretend I’m still talking….
DH: Have you been writing in your time here, Malcolm….
MB: No. I’m not allowed a pencil.
DH: Couldn’t you pretend you had one…?
MB: Mate, if I had a pretend pencil I’d pretend to stab you in the fucking eyes with it.
