1. Hubert''s favorite work was Mountain Tea. It''s why he''d gotten into poetry. He loved a stylish sentence. Strong vibratos. He loved that Amis book about castratos, The one that has a character called "Hubert." He loved to say he loved the works of Schubert. Most of all, he loved to love great books.
His earnest views, though, often earned him looks Of pity. Books are "texts," and love? All wrong. The point of reading (someone paused, mid-bong, To tell him) isn''t pleasure or escapism; The point is pointing out the hidden racism, Sexism, and/or classism of the text-- Which left the English major feeling vexed. He''d found himself inside the sort of dorm Where young men, parroting their profs, perform The part of well-read mind and talk til dawn Of Butler, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, And other luminaries of the Left. But Hubert, waving off the bong, soon left. A life-sized holo Scarface followed him, Machine gun swiveling. At home, his dim Room, sensing movement, raised the lights a notch. To raise his spirits, Hubert liked to watch The sort of film his classmates liked to hate Or label "problematic.
" "Ziri, 8 1/2," he said. "First scene." He yawned and sank Down on his futon. In his fauna tank, A sleeping bonsai panther wagged its tail. The mail had yet to beam down on the mail Pad by the door. The smart paint on his wall Began to play Fellini''s picture. (Small Dead spots, where paint had chipped, stood out like stone In rushing water.) Artists work alone, The picture seemed to say.
It was about A film director, Guido, wracked with doubt About his half-formed film, while all around Distractions--mistress, wife, and actors--hound Our hero. Hubert liked the lesson: men Directing films have merely swapped out pen For megaphone. They pick and place their herds Of extras as a poet would his words-- Though their words, armed with legs, will often wander Off. Fellini''s man had paused to ponder Life. His wife, it seemed, thought he''d outgrown her. But Hubert liked that Guido was a loner Floating like a god above the fray. Of course, he knew that those who brood the way Fellini''s privileged male director does Ignore the drones enabling them, the buzz Of labour on the set. And yet he felt The self behind each scene.
The cult band Felt, The poet Frost, Fellini--Hubert knew Their work expressed their souls, which passed clean through Our sieve-like theories. Souls were real, the art They made the proof. The film had reached the part Where Guido and his wife explore the set That''s been constructed for the film he''s yet To start: a giant spaceship''s skeleton, The sort of ship some blob of gelatin With tendrils would attack. The science fiction Of a simpler age. He loved this vision, Hubert, of a future that would never Happen now. He pictured it whenever He imagined what tomorrow might Be like. Fellini''s spaceship, poised for flight, Was dated now, a silly dream, but in Its time, it gleamed. Likewise, a dorsal fin Was de rigueur when navigating stars In 1960s Jetsons bubble cars.
And in the novel Neuromancer, human Beings--jacked in, wearing trodes--would zoom in On vast tiers of data; outer space Had been replaced by pre-Zuck "cyberspace," Which Hubert figured would''ve looked like Tron: The ground a grid your avatar slid on. The futures we prefer have long since passed. Tomorrow is interred inside the past. *** Hubert loved looking back. He''d waved off eye Replacements; Hubert had a glasses guy Who sourced assorted old-school gear for old Souls and their skulls. His frames were bold, As quaint as whalebone corsets, hunting foxes, iPhones, and those primitive Xboxes That weren''t implanted but, instead, sat on Your furniture. He loved the off-brand dawn His window ran, recorded when the sun Could still be seen. He loved such stuff as Fun House, Horses, Astral Weeks, The La''s, Pet Sounds, Thomas Disch''s essays, Ezra Pound''s Translations, Orson Welles as Harry Lime (The Third Man), poetry that dares to rhyme, The books of Paula Fox, the bass of Carol Kaye, that moment when the poet Daryl Hine compares some "love-disordered linen" To "brackish water.
" Hubert longed for hymns in Churches, first editions, and constraint. He loved the room he rented in a quaint Toronto house. He loved artisanal walks. (He wouldn''t teleport.) He thought Talk Talk''s Last record music''s cloud-wreathed apex; Toto Its nadir. On the mail pad, MOJO Materialized. (The mail beamed in at night.) "Pause.
" The wall became a black-and-white Tintype: Fellini''s hero''s face in doubt. (One eye, where paint had chipped, appeared burned out.) Hubert watched his mag, like Star Trek sand, Take shimmering shape, then touched it with a hand: Still warm. There was the standard MOJO mix Of articles, reviews, and concert pics. There also was an obit for Oasis; The aging band had fused and perished, faces Picassoed, mop tops mixed--a teleporter Mishap while on tour. One shrewd reporter, Who''d glimpsed the Cubist mess, could not refrain From wit: the band''s two stars now shared one brain, Which was ironic; Liam and Noel, rock gods And warring brothers, spent their lives at odds. But now their hearts, once split in two, were one Big mashup of a muscle in a ton Of flesh--the band''s last huddle. Noel''s song "Slide Away" was playing; Hubert had subscribed To MOJOplus, the upper-price-point version Of the mag--and Hubert''s main diversion From the grind of grad school.
MOJOplus, On pixiepaper, was superfluous, But awesome. If you tapped a tintype (what His folks once called "a foto") it would strut Or speak or turn into a talking head Voiceovering some footage. If you read About a song, the page might start to play Its chords. That said, the reader had no say In when concentric liquid ripples might Begin to spread across the text, a white And foamy head of Stella swallowing The type; or when the letters, following Their own discreet imperatives, might swarm Like filings in magnetic fields to form A BMW. A barnacle Of kale might crawl across an article And bloom into an ad for superfood. Your MOJOplus could analyze your mood, Decide you need more sleep, and push a pill Designed for you alone--bespoke ZzzQuil. On pixiepaper, type, no longer black And fixed, could stretch, divide, curl up, go slack, And vanish. Pics could puddle, spread, and blend, Like Rorschach blots set loose.
Towards the end Of every MOJO was the "Buried Treasure" Essay. This one-page feature took the measure Of some minor work time had forgot To, well, forget or scrub from human thought: The sort of record that was out of print Or went for hundreds when described as "mint." And it was this page, in the June edition, Hubert later likened to a vision.