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A Cloud of Ink, written in the present tense and first person, is a wryly elegiac fragment of a memoir of a younger version of the author, Anna, a hermetic, self-styled “femme fatale” inclined to the perspective of Radical Traditionalism.
G., the object of her dedicated affection, is a Modern Guy (his band) and the picture of a troubled young man with the promise of genius – a mathematical prodigy, a successful song writer and Parisian rock star who has, in a philosophic turn, eschewed the impositions of early fame to study film at UCLA while, on the side, ghost-writing a well financed biography of Picasso under the ruse of doing “research”. His employer is a rising, enigmatic phenomenon in the worlds of American society, politics, and publishing, who has recognized in G.‘s talents and childhood familiarity with Picasso’s family the elements of a valuable resource. G., on the other hand, invites speculation as to whether his own dark psychological struggles have crept into his narrative of Picasso’s life when he confesses to having embedded “monstrous fabulations” into the work.
The two inhabit a world where anguish and ecstasy coexist like a narcotic obsession, where the full intensity of destructive and dangerous beauty blossoms into a sorrow bordering on plaintive horror. The story constitutes a probing, poetically rendered passage through the looking-glass surface of privileged, somewhat languorous lives ravished by emotional and sexual passions – against a background of Project MKUltra drugs and New Wave in the mid-1980s – into a complex psychological chess match in which the prize slowly morphs into a question of mortal survival.
In the form of a conversation between Anna, once creative director for Filmways, and G., screenwriter and budding director, during a walk around Lake Hollywood, an appendix contains an exegesis of a controversial film directed by a close friend of the author’s. This is Performance, listed among the greatest English films ever made, written and co-directed by Donald Cammell. While its marketing appeal initially centred on starring Mick Jagger in his first screen role, it has long since been eclipsed by a faithful audience’s fascination with its mysterious complexity, driving fans to view it myriad times in attempting to unravel its secrets. After more than fifty years of mystifying viewers, the close analysis presented in A Cloud of Ink at last severs the Gordian knot.
Echoing the phraseology of Timothy Leary, an authorial crony, A Cloud of Ink might aptly be described as a hedonic neurocrat’s navigational disaster, located at the crossroads of nonfiction and hermetic philosophy. It condenses certain esoteric, philosophical, psychological, and even (for the initiate) alchemical observations regarding the nature of substance abuse and its subtle effects, distilled in a narrative delivered with such intensity as to leave an indelible impression. Yet perceptive readers will neither depend upon a familiarity with the threads of pop culture, nor even the esoteric traditions invoked, to appreciate the dreamlike stories within stories, full of enigma and contradiction, which trace an elliptical course through the pages of the book. A final deliverance, a catharsis of sorts, is the closing note of the memoir.
As literature may be a sword that paradoxically ministers to the wounds it inflicts, so the healing enchantress of art finds a home in this tragedy of both ancient and modern dimensions.
Edited by A n t o n K a i s e r, University of Vienna, BA Yale Russian Studies, MA UC Boulder.
“His knowledge may be grounded in truth but it incinerates thought. Is a woman ever proof against the powerful fascination such a man commands, where conscientious piety and iconoclastic barbarity strangely mingle and sin becomes a sacrament? G. is a poet, and although I apprehend him a rebel angel of Satan’s party, unlike Milton he embraces it. He tells me his nom de guerre should be ‘Israel’, a theophoric name meaning ‘struggles with God’, which in itself is a Luciferian concept.”
“G. tells me John Cale called, asking him to write a requiem for Andy Warhol.”
“Chas looks out the limousine window as his body lies dead in an upstairs room of Turner’s mansion.”
“Donald confided in me that he’d been raised on Aleister Crowley’s knee. Crowley was often a guest in the family home; his father Charles wrote a quiet biography of him. The other two circulating were libellous.”