Diaries rarely
make interesting presents, but you might
want to try this one. Its novelty lies in
the fact that it tells you what you are
going to do every day this year. Examples:
on Thursday April 29, go without your sense
of hearing. Thursday February 26: "Try food
that scares you." Saturday March 20: "Today
start to eat a piece of furniture." Their
tip is to use a nail file to shave a small
amount off each day. They estimate it will
take you 20 years. "They" are Ben Carey and
Henrik Delehag, a couple who under the name
of "Benrik" appear to be trying to revive
situationism.
The Zeitgeist is certainly propitious, if
you believe that we have not wearied of
flash mobs or "bookcrossing" (leaving a book
in a public place for others to read and
pass on). Benrik offer the public the chance
to receive details of their own flash mobs
only with a much higher chance of getting
arrested".
The difference between modern demonstrations
of the bizarre and those pioneered by the
Situationist International, Guy Debord and
the anarchists who took over the Easter high
mass at Notre-Dame in 1950 to proclaim that
God was dead is that these days there is
little purpose, anger or defiance. When all
readers are urged to do something together
at the same time, the idea is to raise
eyebrows or smiles, not the wrath of the
state.
Benrik occasionally suggest we spend a day
defying hierarchy, or collapsing a currency
(they suggest the Bangladeshi taka, which
may be the only one possible to fool around
with, but it's tough on the Bangladeshis).
But on the whole their pranks are directed
to the self, to our own guilty awareness of
our failed responsibilities. "Confess to a
Priest" is the exhortation for Friday, June
4, with droll do's and don'ts at the foot of
the page ("DO accept your penance, this is
no time for haggling"); but I imagine a few
people will be doing that anyway, and in all
sincerity.
Of course, this is all a bit of fun, and
when they do say "protest violently against
the government", it is during a week when
you are meant to be in France, behaving like
the French. Autres temps, autres moeurs.
Anyone individually minded enough to buy
this book will presumably be unwilling to
engage in communal activity at someone
else's prompting.
Still, we all have vague yearnings to
introduce significance, integrity, surprise
or worth into our drab and predictable
lives, and it is these yearnings that the
diary mostly addresses, and capitalizes on.
If there is a common thread, it is that
nothing need be taken too seriously.
Everything can be turned into a benign joke.
It is illuminating how, on Benrik's website,
you can see three of the pages that were
deemed unacceptable by the publishers: pour
cocaine down an anthill and play Russian
roulette with five bullets in the gun. Now
you may begin to see the problem: they have
been told what to do by their publishers and
complied. But it is to Benrik's credit that
the publishers feared that people would do
any of these things; they -Benrik, that is -
may be on to something.
Then again, so are the publishers. They have
let two authors produce a hip, visually
delightful and almost endlessly engaging
book - almost endlessly, because it
encourages us to imagine our own variations
on our status quo, what we might do to
survive other, even grimmer years. It is a
useful picture of what lies over the borders
of our lives. |
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