They were good fun, lovely paper.

He's gone again, he went back. I thought at least for a while he would be eating correctly while he was with...curse these cigarettes, they demand your full concentration ...yes, those people, he would be looked after, which means he wouldn't be devouring all those cheap sweet biscuits. He might never tell you this himself, but he went back there to have a rest. It is a long intriguing story, even if a little baffling at times.

Now please don't think I've picked the bones of his imagination, but this is the story, with only a few improvements from me, and exceptionally fine improvements if I may say so.

Of course this time he's gone completely mad and everybody blames me. Quite unfair, I am not entirely to blame, although I daresay I have left my mark.  I must confess, I did set him up as something of a phenomenon and then in total conflict with myself, sensing that he was finally going to let me down, I would turn around and ridicule him.  You see, although he amused me, Henry (along with many others) also repulsed me. I should never have taken him to that whore house, he became over-excited, it was too much for him. He is fine in a restrained safe environment, but in an environment like that, he cracked up, he went dingbats. The truth is I wanted to see how far I could push him and the humorous thing about it all is, he knew it. I have spent hours and hours laughing over this. Even so, I was playing it safe, I knew he wouldn't put a gun to my head, nothing of the sort.  Maybe next time, if they find him, I'll push him even further.  One of the girls in the place said, and rightly so, I was throwing poor Henry to the wolves to see what would happen.  Naturally there was more to it than that, the fool did not realise I was doing him a favour, nobody thinks of that.  Back then I continually set him up to be tricked, had him perpetually believing there was a piece of magic around the corner.  I not only took him to my favourite place with all those rooms and those fantastic women in them, I even suggested that most of the rooms were out of bounds to him, just to put a little excitement and challenge into his dull life, but what does the nincompoop do?  He takes me seriously because he was unable to see through the illusion of authority; it's laughable. Well, I tried, what more can you do for a person? Nobody has ever made me feel guilty of course, they have only disgusted me and you can't blame me for feeling disgust when I offer to open another door for a man and all he does is become angry, resentful. He is resentful because he can't take the leap, but you offer it all the same at the risk of his wrath, of losing your neck, although I must admit, the thought of Henry putting a gun to my head did get the adrenalin going and for that I was thankful, it hardly ever happens these days.

I chose Henry in the first place because although he was repressed and awkward, he did seem to have potential. He had shown signs of a somewhat bizarre imagination, the kind of imagination which belongs to children or perhaps ravaged poets and yet here he was, leading a grotesquely tedious life. However, instead of being thanked for my good intentions, everyone scuttles away from me as if I'm some kind of monster.

I tried to explain to Henry how I felt about people and the world in a way which I hoped he would grasp.  'A baby shitting in its napkin,' I said, looking at him in that direct way I have which unnerves people, 'clambering after an infantile happiness.'

I gave up on happiness at the age of twelve when lying in a hot bath one day I realised I was going to die. Fear gripped my balls and I felt a horrible excitement. I've been trying to pass this excitement on to certain people ever since, but it terrified Henry.

I wonder if he will come after me when he turns up again. I wonder about other people too, people I have pushed into certain situations, hoping they would meet the challenge. Not that it matters in the long run whether they do or not. 

There are days when Henry says he does not know how he arrived at the rest home the first time. On other days he says he was driven there in a vehicle from which he escaped. He says he ran across the flat desolate countryside toward an empty horizon, not a tree to be seen, nothing but  patches of dreary grass moving in the wind and up above him, a blood red sunset.

I can imagine it with exceptional clarity, a small desperate figure in black running across the God-forsaken countryside. He says it was hours before the big cream brick home loomed up on the horizon and even after it became visible, he felt he was running for a life time under that horrible sky before he could actually reach...Mmmmmm....OK.

It wasn't like that at all.

Lily Doyle greeted him at the front entrance and led him along a passageway into a well-scrubbed living area with green linoleum and cream cupboards and a window which looked out onto 'all that nothing' as Henry put it. 

For a long time Henry refused to look out of the window.  He would ask Stanley Doyle to go to the window for him and tell him if it was still raining.  It had begun to rain on the night of his arrival and during the days to come there was no rift in those dark clouds. 

Now let me explain why I was there during the early stages of his first visit. The thing is, somebody had to be with him until he settled in and apart from his sister who virtually ignored him and seemed in fact to dislike him, I was the only person who even vaguely knew him. Let's say I was there to assist ...yes, I was obliged to take time off and leave somebody else in charge of the gallery.

I had even brought a wad of paper with me to keep Henry occupied, beautiful hand-made paper which I used in the gallery, bearing my own letterhead - the silver outline of a sphinx and underneath it in sharp persuasive print 'THE ARB GINGHUS GALLERY'. Exquisite pale grey paper which lasts for centuries, but that would mean nothing to Henry.

 ...It was raining so heavily when I arrived, I became drenched in making a dash for it from the car to the home. Henry reacted to me in a peculiar manner. The whole time I stayed out there with him, he refused to acknowledge that he knew me. Of course, I did have a frightening amount of time on my hands, the kind of time which enables a man to study an oddity like Henry. I think I have made a confusing leap here, but this is simply because I have an energetic mind without which these observations could not even be put to paper. Allow me to explain that Henry, like many social misfits, is beautifully useless just as a work of art is useless. Anyone who observes him in his madder moments can see there is a great truth to be learnt. Although he cannot see it or know it himself, Henry's very presence breaks through the irksome nonsense of mankind's logic revealing, or so I personally believe, an illogical and exquisitely alarming truth about all of us. Henry's existence is impossible to justify,  yet like any rare objet d'arte he is infinitely original to the point of mystification. You see, I do not pursue pleasure;  art, for me, is not a source of pleasure, it is something much greater - a source of mystery. You can imagine how tickled I was when they recently discovered, after this second visit, Henry had left his diary and a few articles of clothing behind. I demanded they send them to me immediately. Obviously he had left the Doyle Home in a hurry, escaped in fact, which is bloody rotten luck and I have yet to find out the details.

Right from the beginning of his first visit Henry refers to me throughout his diary as A.  'When A. entered the room the atmosphere immediately became uncomfortable. I took note of this,'  he writes.  That is true because  I had the upper hand from the moment I entered the place, a simple technique, as simple as breathing in and out.

Henry writes:  'Lily Doyle said, "It must be wet out." I know she was trying to make conversation. A. apologised and said he didn't think there was anybody here, he thought the place was closed down, I suppose because the rest of the countryside is deserted. Anyhow, I am positive he just wanted to stir her up a bit. She wanted to know who had given him this incorrect information, she was in a bit of a sweat. I knew straight away A. was going to move in on them so I immediately picked up my hat, thinking that moment was as good a time as any to get out. There was something queer and familiar about this rain-drenched chap with his stack of papers.'

Very funny, the sneaky little bugger obviously had intentions of someone reading his diary. I think he saw it as a kind of report which he would eventually hand to somebody in a high position with that company he worked for.

He writes, 'I made a remark about it being late and I had to leave so I could be up early for the office, but A. made an abrupt gesture with his hand and said that in my present state, this would be a false step. He said, "It would to speak plainly, be bordering on a physical impossibility, therefore I do not advise it." He confused Mrs. Doyle, she was in a state, wanting him to explain himself and she sounded very frightened.'

None of this is true, it was Henry who was worried and wanted me to explain myself. I was looking beyond him through the rain on the window, waiting for my driver to take off in the limousine, and Henry told me later he thought there was something sullen about me. Although he described me in his diary as 'disturbingly familiar', he wouldn't admit that...

...My guess is his refusal to acknowledge me as an acquaintance was from acute embarrassment, even humiliation. Perhaps the intended report had nothing to do with it.  Never mind, enough about Henry and a little more about me.

I was born in 1924, thirty eight years ago. My father was an anthropologist and he has written two rather mediocre books on the subject. However, he did once write a charming article on 18th century Chinese porcelain of which he was a voracious collector.  Over the years his collection extended beyond the 18th century to ancient vases and ornaments from various parts of the world, Europe, China, Greece, even the Amazon. He had travelled through the Amazon several times, bringing back figurines from past civilizations, tiny triangular figures, gods with huge eyes painted on misshapen heads. 

In his article on porcelain he spoke of rare colours no longer in existence, colours named by the Chinese such as 'tint of old lama books' and 'Imperial Yellow'. The Imperial Yellow had ritualistic significance and porcelain objects of this resplendent colour could belong only to emperors or their concubines. The concubines' household wares were glazed white on the inside to distinguish them from those belonging to the Emperor.  According to my father, the Emperor's porcelain wares were bright yellow both inside and out. When I was sixteen he took me to a Qing Dynasty exhibition.  I am still fascinated by one of the exhibits - a large plate which had an indecipherable undulating shape delicately etched under the glaze.  Just before he dies, I will ask my father what that obscure and faded shape represented, but for the moment, I prefer to be intrigued.

He lectured at the new Angus Chatwin University in Hoban. Not that he needed to, being born into wealth.  To lecture to other human beings was his choice because he loved to communicate verbally 'out in the real world' and I believe he loved the sound of his own voice.  He was a dignified man, he could afford to be, with a smooth unlined brow even at the age of sixty. My mother was also ageless, spending most of her time playing classical piano, going to the theatre and organising parties.  I am relieved to say she never did much for charity.  Together my parents led an untroubled and diabolically predictable existence; however, my father did travel to a great extent on his own. Apart from his travelling, his passion for archaeology and obsessive collecting, my father was not excessive about anything, including his love for me, but I suppose he was proud of me in his way.  From the age of ten I was considered to be something of a prodigy.  I will not boast, I won't say a child wonder, but I was virtually left alone both at school and at home to do exactly as I pleased.  I was never once punished for anything at school and for very little at home. I was fascinated with most subjects and I learnt quickly, too quickly, then I became bored.  I also became arrogant and dismissive of my peers, mixing only with adults, although on the whole they did not seem any more challenging than boys of my own age.  I did not spend any time with my school mates out on the football field;  while they were playing I was reading books on anthropology and ancient art. 

My father was Jewish and my mother had been a Roman Catholic.  I was brought up by Jesuit priests in a school where I was despised by the other boys for coming from a wealthy non-Catholic background, but this amused me, I was never caught up in other people's emotions, instead I was greatly entertained by them. For instance, my parents were always throwing dinner parties which would begin at nine in the evening and often last the entire night. At eight o'clock the next morning the guests were still sitting around in formal dress, drinking Italian coffee. I was permitted to dine with the adults, but at ten o'clock, after I had washed down my dessert with a sip from my father's champagne flute, I was promptly sent to bed. Believe it or not, this was my favourite time of the evening. I would dutifully kiss my parents goodnight and make sure they saw me going upstairs, then as soon as they had returned to the needs of their guests, instead of going to my room, I would silently slip into one of the closets which faced onto the landing at the top of the stairs directly above the dining room.  And it was here in the  narrow confines of this closet with its door slightly ajar that I believe my entire future was formed. Here in this claustrophobic hiding place, I believe I began to understand about great art. I would sit in the closet among my father's precious amphorae, porcelain vases and 19th century European urns, listening to and watching the trivial developments of the evening. I must have done this about half a dozen times before finally falling asleep one night and being found there the next morning. Often I grew drowsy long before midnight and took myself quietly off to bed. On other occasions I stayed happily in the closet until the early hours and on these occasions I could not help comparing my parents' guests to the porcelain images which surrounded me. It seemed to me then in the tangle of my adolescent mind, bordering on eloquence I should nevertheless point out, that our dinner guests in their elegant attire and with their sporadic attempts at wit were hoping to imitate art. However, as the evening moved along with a hideous gaiety, these glittering people drank and they ate, they became dishevelled. The ladies' make-up smudged under their eyes, their lipstick faded, everyone ended up looking pale and horrible. Some of them relaxed, some collapsed and others became verbally aggressive. They would flirt and touch one another up while my mother played Mozart or Scarlatti on the piano.

It also seemed to me as I watched, that the way humans  became anywhere near a work of art depended on how they communicated or played with other human beings. These days I push this theory even further, it is what you actually do to another human being that becomes a superior aesthetic act. If you do it well, you do not have to worry like my parents' friends did about the animal beneath the glittering surface; I should imagine you will eventually see what I mean.

I remember we had on the dining room wall, a dark kidney-shaped mirror with a heavy ornate frame. There was a young European woman who came to every one of our dinner parties and often stayed until the morning. Just before coffee was served, she would stand in front of this mirror, endlessly brushing her hair. One morning she had a fight with my mother and she threw her hairbrush into our mirror, smashing it to smithereens. Even as a child I understood why people smashed things, it was their only revenge against the superiority and immortality of art.

My parents' guests were an excellent example of the fact that try as they might, most humans could not sustain themselves as creatures of perfection and at the innocent age of ten or eleven, you expected adults to be just that. Compared to the marvellous figures on the Greek vessels, Chinese porcelain and European vases, these people were like phantoms flitting about on the surface of something, something which my young brain was not yet able to define. But the painted figures strolling about in their misty gardens or running from the paths of mythical monsters, playing their lutes and making love by a moonlit pond had, for the child in the closet, a strange ineffable substance to them. By the age of twelve I had decided art was greater than nature. Nature, after all, is simply mechanical, having a numbing predictability about it - this is how it seemed to me even in my limited experience of youth - while on the other hand, the possibilities of art seemed endless. I knew even then that when I grew up, I would be a collector of rare objects, exquisite and grotesque, and I would exhibit these treasures in my very own elegant gallery. What I did not know was, I would, for a short period of time, also  be a collector of outcasts and deviants. I merely sensed I would become intensely interested in the unnatural, or what I thought was the unnatural. Of course at the age of twelve, I was unable to articulate any of these ideas as precisely as I do now, but the seeds were there all the same.

Now I warn those of you who are nervous of divagation, I am about to make a considerable leap here back to that rainy night when I first entered the Doyle Rest Home, so here we go...

 ...I stood looking at the rain on the window for quite some time, then I had to laugh.  I don't remember, but I must have winked at him and if I did, it would have only been to make him feel more at ease, but Henry writes - 'He turned towards me and gave me a meaningful wink. I knew what he meant although I pretended not to. It threw me off guard.  He said that something...I don't know what it was, but something...was no longer there. "Not where?" I asked. He laughed and repeated my question.  He made a joke.  He said, "absolutely without grounds".  It didn't make any sense, I didn't get it.  He kept laughing, but Lily Doyle was very anxious.  I know he was trying deliberately to confuse me and to stop me going out the door.  He told me not to look so worried and to stop fiddling with my hat, but I was  awake up to him, he was not going to trick me.  I told both A. and Mrs. Doyle I had to be at the office by nine.  Then A. snapped at me. He looked at me very directly and I felt he was insulting me and I know that Stanley Doyle did not want him there either. I was very pleased when Stanley offered him his truck, saying he'd have to go down in the truck for grocery stores anyway. A. was naturally not to be swayed.  He was deliberately misleading, rubbishing God, queen, flag and country when he said a number of things.'

These ill-formed observations make me smile; they are interesting distortions of the truth and maybe that is why I value them.  Although they reveal a simple mind in turmoil, they also tell us that Henry Ditassio is not the kind of lunatic who endangers society; not at this stage, certainly.

'He said it again.  "There  is nothing there",' Henry continues.  'He was still having a go at me and his grin was coming. Mrs. Doyle was very nervous. She made some comment about the rain being the cause of it all. I think she said, "It's this darn rain," then A. started to stare at her with a very direct looking. He placed a bundle of paper on the table with too much confidence for my liking. Stan did not help, he began to hum under his breath, but I did not take my eyes from A.  I was drawn that way, I smelt a rat, and it is a shocking thing, but I think he did something to Mrs. Doyle because she soon changed her tune.  I know I heard her say, "It doesn't concern us at all, we hardly ever go out." Then A. started speaking in riddles again. He said he was trying to point something out to us. Mrs. Doyle invited him to sit by the heater and I do not like the way she was so easily put upon. I heard a car start up and drive off. Stanley asked A. how he was getting back to the city, but Mrs. Doyle did not, so I knew she was going to let him stay.  A. admitted then that there were certain things which even he didn't understand.'

That time we had a deliberate distortion of the truth; it makes you laugh - is that what I am looking for, laughs?  The following comment however, is far from a lie. 

'A. would not take his eyes from Mrs. Doyle. I was shocked when she helped him off with his coat and heard her say something and he went and sat down in a chair. I told them again that I had to be at the office by nine. Mrs. Doyle said, "You'll have to hang fire," then she called me a funny name. I was very annoyed.'

My God, you know, the power of words, it's marvellous. I referred to all that empty space outside the rest home, but perhaps I speak with more eloquence and vividness than I am aware. I simply said we needed some new kind of structure and damn me if Henry...but that's much later...you'll see.

Well Henry was right, I sat down in the chair which she'd offered me. Lily Doyle was smiling at Henry...and what a smile...she was telling him not to worry, that it wasn't worthwhile bothering about.

Henry writes - 'Stan was looking very doubtful. He said as far as the immediate situation was concerned we need have no anxieties, but I was very frightened and I could tell by his face he didn't know anything. He was making a soft tapping sound with his foot on the lino.'
 

From Taking a Fool to Paradise: A Psychological Thriller, Indra Publishing 2004
 

Note on the pictures:

In a new series of works on canvas which he calls Baroque 2004, Douglas Kirwan explores the way patterns, both ancient and new, can be layered upon one another, even played against one another, yet co-exist harmoniously within a concise architecture.  His fragmented paisley/French curves leap across large grids, creating works which the artist compares to the early 17th century Venetian composer, Montiverdi's Vespers - spiralling colourful forms dancing across rigid classical structures. As in Kirwan's '97 show, the dancing figures seem free & independent, but this is not so. These figures are still linked & totally influenced by the grid. In this way the painting becomes a metaphor for "free will".

Kirwan extends this idea by fusing a suppressed playfulness with sober formality.New narratives appear in the reconstruction of old patterns on canvas. The work looks back to modernism, to pattern making of the 19th century & to the baroque. The background of each painting appears as a tightly woven thread over which a transparent geometric form emerges.  Forcing its way through all of this is an almost baroque curvelinear form. These playful paisley outlines & French Curves grow around the structure as over a supporting scaffold.

Extravagant brushwork flows within the forms but never obscures the woven thread which underlies these images & the tension between the two styles is the source of the work's vigour. The danger with eclecticism is that a work may not hold together, but by using transparent layers, the opposing patterns knit & fuse into one narrative which gathers together all possibilities.

Note on the story:
Taking a Fool to Paradise is an exploration into a mad imagination,  a story of obsession and potential violence, unsettling and darkly amusing.  Two men, unknown to one another, spent long hours of their  childhood confined in closets. Arb Ginghus, born into wealth, chose to be there while Henry was helplessly and maliciously locked inside  his grandmother's dollhouse.  When they meet many years later, bored, spoilt, narcissistic  Arb becomes intrigued with the predictable life of Henry Ditassio,  who has worked as a  lowly clerk for 21 years with the same firm and lives alone in an almost bare house.   Arb cruelly guides the descent of  Henry who travels full circle but is always contained by a single  room - from the childhood cupboard and dollhouse, through the clerks' office with its mysterious stationary room, to the brothel - "a world of lurid  & lascivious shenanigans" (John Jenkins) and finally out into a countryside rest home  where the soaring ladders and underground tunnels of Henry's grand architectural dream contrast with the sterility of solitary confinement in the rest home's white room. Henry Ditassio's journey twists and turns, leading us to dizzy heights until he mysteriously disappears inside his architectural nightmare.