A morning note on How to ghost write
Guest, ghost, host: a trio to bring us to a ground, a something we find support from below our feet.
We’ve had pigeons on our balcony this summer. A pest, an experience. The nearly two year old child of the household as well as adults, delighted in keeping track of the changes. First som sticks, then one egg, then one more. Then some more sticks – really, this may be the most sloppy nest ever built. When they hatched they were so quiet. And we learned it is a special secrete and not simply regurgitating of grown up food for the chicks, as we had assumed. We put up a cardboard box around them to shield us as much as them. As the chicks grew and began producing an ample guano puddle, we congratulated ourselves on that decision, and could still use our grill on the opposite side of the rather dark northernly oriented balcony. Now, several weeks later with autumn nodding its head, and the slight wilting of leaves they’re practicing flying, and our cohabitation is coming to an end, perhaps. Growing up I read a comic where an ageless entity connected with dreams sat on a bench feeding pigeons, to hear the sound of their wings. A sound that reminded this entity of their sister. Flap flap flap. Very much like a grey wind.
What has this got to do with ghost writing? To speculatively place oneself into the story of someone else. To figure as a host for someone, something else, without their consent. There is something there, rather than nothing. More to the point, practicing getting past the notion of linear rationality as the only option of how to deal with description. Many entities of the world never qualified for the position of subject, neither in law nor in the ownership of property, and as Denise Ferreira da Silva remarks, these can then not be rediscovered, but they can haunt the stories about the past, let alone current time. So to begin with, to get away from the linear, or at least try to shove it to the side, I picked up a tarot deck from my youth. There is an unexplored connection with designation to a certain economical class, this leaning towards folk beliefs, pop-culture and the supernatural, but I leave that alone for now. Here is what followed: I choose me the card two of cups as a representative for Marie and Bolette, now we're on first names. It's easy to slip into the intimate space they made for themselves, ask what they would choose, to want to join. I shuffle the cards for a long time, draw and lay: the queen of coins covers them, above them looms the Tower from the major arcana, below them inverted is the king of cups. On the left side are three of wands, on the right eight of coins turned upside down. Next to this configuration of cards, comes a row of four cards signaling: attitude, surroundings, hope and outcome. Respectively: the Sun, ten of swords, the Fool and four of wands. I breath, listen to the wings flapping. The cards give themselves to the following reading: Two of cups are soft and close, yet strongly exchanging. A two become one situation. They are covered by the rich, feminine weight. She, or possibly the living of a life framed by the limited understanding of women as a category described in the social, is a resistance to them, and perhaps also protection. Beneath them lies an overturned ruler of emotion ("Is it the ground below me, or your feet", as the electro band Austra sing). Extensive upheavals are taking place above them, the Tower is collapsing, where the current glue of what makes meaning must break. They have traversed farewells, leaving behind a rigged game. In front of them is the craftsman who diligently shapes and saves, but inverted, turned upside down, so suggesting a waste of talent, ability and resources. When it comes to the side panel, it shows with the Sun an energy, that cannot be consumed or corrupted in the association, to find its own without thrashing. A real time out of sync, where the large social space (perhaps not the public one) - here at ten of swords -, is a killer. The hope in the Fool that both they and time may carry, the possibility of becoming curious. And then the goalpost in harmony, four of wands is a sign of celebratory victory. In a sense: it is now their time.
At this very comforting reading, I should perhaps have relaid the cards or asked again. But why not let beginnings be hopeful and celebratory as a host for ghosts.
Images
Found image bioluminescent sea creature. Thinking about Judith Herskos’s Objects from Anna Schwartz’s Cabinet of Curiosities» Cut out from found image: Detail from glass negative of Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg. Courtesy of Preus Museum, Horten. A crack. Artists own photography, the guest/ghost/host perching, Oslo august 2022.