Archaeologists of our own lives
Apologies for my low word output over the last week but a) I was recharging the batteries after the taxing (but enjoyable) editing job I did on the David Sque interview, and, b) Our PC decided to shuffle off its mortal coils…thus forcing us to shell out for a replacement. Now with energy levels restored and a spanking new machine on which to blog like a madman, I can get back to the regular routine (discussing matters whimsical and of little importance).
A strange, and thoroughly disgusting, experience led me to renew my acquaintance with an old comic strip friend – Peter Blegvad's sublime Leviathan [See above]. The circumstances were as follows…
Having installed our shiny PC in a new office space I found myself down on my hands and knees pinning a cable along the skirting board from phone outlet to broadband modem (no wireless carry on in this house).
My journey took me around the back of the couch – a seldom frequented space full of forgotten biros and stray pieces of change. It was when the cable's path took me past the radiator, however, that I first witnessed a horror that left me reeling and scampering for the Hoover. Nestled snugly in the space between radiator base and skirting board was a giant, hideous, amalgamation of dust balls. As I inspected it more closely I realised that caught up in the midst of the mass were dozens of finger/toenail fragments and numerous strands of human hair!
On their way o'er the carpet, around the back of the sofa and on to the promised land of warmth and shelter that was the radiator's base – these tumbling balls must have collected/absorbed these 'cast offs' from various human bodies that have inhabited the house. Fearing that an X-Files-esque monstrosity was assembling itself – incubating in the heat with a view to eventually absorbing us1 – I turned the vacuum cleaner to its most powerful setting and quickly destroyed the abomination (unless of course it's now reassembling itself in the bowels of the bag…with a mind bent on vengeance).
Anyway, the experience sparked off a memory of an episode [See above again] of the wonderfully witty, eerie, and (oddly) moving Leviathan2 where Levi (the featureless infant protagonist) traced the life and times of a dust ball as it tumbles about ingesting particles (and smaller dirtballs) before finally meeting its end as a blob of black slime (after an encounter with water).
In another segment (not reproduced here) Levi's parents abandon the "perils of upright perambulation" (simply put – bipeds have further to fall) and take to crawling about…a decision that leads his mother to exclaim (on finding a dust ball) "Look what we’ve been missing! We can be Archaeologists of our own lives!" As Blegvad adds: "Crawling affords one an intimacy with the terrain that would come as a revelation to bipeds."
Hmmm…certain kinds of intimacy I can do without…as in the case of the 'hair-and-nail beast'…
Anyway…the long and the short of it is that the strip is absolutely marvellous and magical, so if you see a copy of the Book of Leviathan collection, snap it up post haste. You won't regret it.3
[tags]leviathan,peter blegvad,independent,comics[/tags]
- One can imagine it tumbling up the stairs in the dead of night. [back]
- Serialised in the Independent on Sunday some years ago [back]
- A fustar.info guarantee. [back]
March 30, 2006
17 responses to Archaeologists of our own lives
Strategic mistake. Where better for a dust and debris monster to gather itself for an attack then inside a hoover bag?
I know Simon…
I’m glancing nervously over my shoulder in the direction of the hoover as we speak…
I remember all the Levi cartoons from the IoS as well. There was a particularly good sequence revolving around other babies with no faces in past illustrations.
I thought of it again when they gave the Fairy Liquid baby some kind of face. I was disgruntled.
Or “faceless neotenic grotesques” as Blegvad calls ‘em (I’ve got the page open in front of me).
He mentions: Walter Berndt’s “Smitty”, Carl Anderson’s “Henry”, Crockett Johnson’s “Barnaby”, ‘Nothing’ Yonson from “Dick Tracy”, J.W. Anglund’s “larval minx”, and (of course) the Fairy Liquid Baby.
I too was annoyed at the FLB’s sudden ‘enfacing’…a bit like when the Pink Panther, Tom & Jerry (etc) were suddenly talking (in shitty remakes).
The IoS had, for a while, the best Sunday colour magazine. The Sunday Times Culture magazine comes closest now, but it can’t bring itself to run past two pages, so everything seems to be rushed to a unwelcome conclusion.
Nick Hornby’s column was above Levi for a few months and I still grin at his experimental efforts to write down everything he could remember from school subject by subject. For chemistry he had the sole phrase “bunsen burner”. He was enraged when he thought of all the years he’d spent cooped up behind a desk.
He could have picked up the slip of paper containing everything he had retained, learned it off in one morning and spent the next 11 years playing at being an aeroplane.
Can understand Mr. Hornby’s frustration. Five minutes after completing my Leaving Cert most of the technical/scientific stuff I’d learnt disappeared into the realms of forgetfulness, never to be recovered.
I can recall Archimedes Principle though…so not a total waste of time…
Are there any strips as original as Leviathan being published in any of the Sunday papers now I wonder?
I can vouch for Fustar’s understanding of Archimedes Principle. He has the extensive collection of rubber duckies to prove it.
I spend many a happy hour in the bath with the duckies, scribbling copious notes and displacing fluid all over the floor.
Use of the ambiguous term “fluid” duly noted. I await foolhardy’s contribution from his Dr. Moreau-like island in the morning.
copernicus,
I feel rather upset that the mention of “fluids” would lead you to predict an arousal of my attentions. Well, here I am so you may not be too far off the mark.
I am utterly unfamiliar with Leviathan (the cartoon – I have seen the Peter Weller movie. Any relation?).
I have nothing more to contribute as I have been suffering, of late, a terrible dose of insomnia and am currently doing a sterling impersonation of the Hesparus. Given that the fate of the world rests in my hands I’d be getting a little worried if’n I were you. Were I to drop the tube currently residing on my bench we’d all have precisely 37 minutes to live. ho hum.
jesus i felt unwell reading that post. i’m thought i was a complete slob but even for me its not too much to pull out the couch when doing the hoovering. Radiators can indeed be dodgy though – i moved into my current pad last new years eve and it was about a week (ONE week and only because i had to BUY a new hoover) before i got around to cleaning under the radiator in the bedroom – where i discovered horror of horrors a particularly well waxed q tip holed up just where the pipe met the floor. aghhhhhhhhhhh
On the subject of domestic grime,
Copernicus, do you happen to recall a Hazel Park chip pan? Apologies to all for the ‘insideness’ of this but, to enlighten you, Copernicus and I once had the pleasure of sharing a house with a man and his chip pan. The pan in question (perhaps the man too) went uncleaned from one end of the year to the next – FAT AND ALL! By years end you could pick up the entire set-up by touching only the strainer.
By the way, to say that the pan went uncleaned is not to say that it also went unused. No sir, that man liked his chips.
Oh man!
What were those black spores on the surface of the grease??
The icing on the cake was when foolhardy gently suggested for reasons of health that the gentleman change his oil, so he bought a new bottle and poured it onto the solid mass already in the pot!
After discovering this horrific fire hazard in our midst, foolhardy suggested that the gentleman soften the grease over a low heat and evacuate the pot – so he did, into the sink and all over every bit of crockery, cutlery and cleaning product we had!
We ate out after that.
I believe I managed to avoid setting foot in that kitchen for at least 4 months. The mere thought of which fills me with a cocktail of pride and serenity.
That, Fústar, is indeed a thoroughly disgusting story. What abject squalor you must live in.
Leviathan is weird, frightening, and wrong. It used to scare me and now, thanks to your unwelcome stirring up of memories, still does.
I hope you’re happy now, dust-boy!
Hey man…like don’t have one of your bourgeois freakouts on my turf man. My squalor is a statement…designed to mess with the minds of ‘squares’.
Leviathan, frightening? Surely not. I mean, what’s frightening about a faceless baby and a talking cat? Err…
Best wishes,
dust-boy