Interrogation (2)

Interrogation (2)

Interrogation (2)

How do you do your magic?

How is so balletic, how is like a dance spectacular, getting up
from your seat at the back of the stage and rushing into the
spotlight, rushing into movement, a body doing not exactly
what is ‘natural’ to it (is dance natural) but what its potential
is, the shapes that flesh didn’t command only opened.

How do you do your magic?

If there is a worst word it is nostalgia, the choirs
twisting a larch into a tea towel, if you make it
warm and curling, and so the twitching knowledge
sinks a little, my instinct to stuff leaves into my mouth
recedes, smaller and smaller the incantations and the
freshness.

Have you written your spells down for others to make use of?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Where did you learn your knowledge of witchcraft?

I could pick any woman, i.e. Iphigenia, i.e. Jane Grey.
Buy a wife, have a nice and symbolic wedding, take her home,
put your penis in there, make some humans. Sometimes you buy a dress.
Sometimes you are sort of kind and have a blond face, sometimes
you are shit, or drown her with one hand pocketed. Inside that, never.
Inside, a slick web. A field of tubers processed under electric lights.
Please record a million, million, million, million, million ghosts.
Please record a system of language never heard before on the surface of the earth.

What are your plans for treasonous action against the King and state?

If I say the witch knows things, you won’t enjoy. I could smash every
dousing crystal, apparition, rune, astrological symbol, bassinet, globe
of silver, dagger, pleated skirt and we would still. Dogs come
singing like well-born ladies on a good day.

How many times have you used your craft for material gain?

There was once a person I led to be killed. In the ballad it
was four roses on a pale cheek, it was wet long hair like
trailing oil. I found myself radicalised. I found the state I was
in unbearable. I found that violence looked pure, all the clean
edges. When the call came. He was quite small for what he’d
done. I never felt less bad. I was. It was freezing, totally freezing.
Everything was a new country, the way you notice things when
you first visit a city, the half-open windows, the smell of orange
blossom, the bottle-green trams and full-skirted waitresses.
Something after all this time had occurred or was occurring.
Not good, existent. Afterwards my lover put a small
kiss on my mouth and said, do you really hate us all?
And I said, obviously.

Have you attempted to draw others into your dark arts?

The best time though wasn’t then, all that dry, agonised
scratching. The best time was a Tuesday, we didn’t go
into college. We cut up magazines into strange artforms
and listened to the radio. The sun had the touching innocence
of the early ‘90s, hair bleached a pale lilac at the edges.
There was a little world and it didn’t say anything, nor
did it have to perform. No one self-consciously had a
pillow fight in their training bra. Instead, our legs got
warm. Instead we made mothers into a word as easy as
drinks in a bowl of ice. We found all the thoughts
there had not been time for in the previous, saw tremendous
fleets of new work flood into the hallway. The Odyssey had
a bit about periods. One new love poem for each asteroid
in the outer atmosphere. Some thawing. All the time I was
thinking, I got it back, I got it all back.