+++

This film is insanity and so is my riff on it. I wrote the first draft a little bit weird, mostly following the plot but it didn’t feel quite right, so I added some Indonesian history, specifically the Anti-Communist massacres of the 60’s, and tried to figure out who the witch in the film would represent. Fascist obviously, but also pagan, and not fascist with the government behind her, one to one fascist, fascist over her little realm…

Eventually I just rotated things and pretty much everyone became guilty by the end.

+

Catherine “Cathy” Kathode is a foreign smut lord who travels to Bali to meet a post-Hegelian dimension totally outside her grasp. Safely embedded, she learns of Lectosign magic from her native lover Kandinsky, who is also the PROPERTY OF NOTRE DAME.

‘Could this be an iteration of the sublime, a section of it?’

‘Eat your dragon fruit.’

‘A derivative?’

‘Baby.’

+

Approaching a jungle beach that swore on the phone it was Bali, Cathy and Kandinsky buffer in violent contradiction via dialogue as IT itself beggars belief, dies inside the claw of its own pride, detaches from main body, slithers unapologetically into the sea.

Soon after, a witch appears, shockingly local.

Rubs sand on her thighs.

Says you are either not judged or already judged and far worse than innocent.

‘I’m a blank hotel,’ replies Cathy, unsettled, scraping Kandinsky’s forearm.

‘Don’t listen to her, she’s drunk.’

‘I am?’

‘And a summertime Agorist.’

‘Totally.’

+

Later, after attending a ceremonial ritual with pedantic drum beat drowning out the cries of those allegedly killed in a year with a six but were they really we didn’t hear anything nothing on the news killed where by who, Kandinsky agrees to help Cathy study the ways of the Lectosign. To celebrate the hollowness of the vow, they share a kiss, gradually sliding down onto the ground and fingering each other with kapok leaves as the witch from earlier lies flat on the grass nearby, waiting to be studied empirically.

Out of nowhere, a pink Australian walks by in a CAI shirt, aroused, but his dick has been chopped off by the spirit of Caesar’s first step from Republic to Empire to Plastic Coronet Franchise, and, fuck those hippies, he didn’t want them anyway.

Meanwhile, Kandinsky inserts the top of his skull into Cathy’s vagina and asks, ‘how’s that, baby? Too tight?’

Cathy doesn’t answer, just stares off at the static on the TV poster pinned to a nearby bael tree.

An Indonesian analogue of POLTERGEIST.

Four years before the original.

Behind them, the witch cackles inanely, licks residue from the kapok leaves.

Refuses to stop.

Until the cops are called.

And even they have to ride out a few more cackles.

Before the beating begins.

What a beating.

Not as vicious as the year with a six.

But still.

+

The next night, in the midst of a passively thematic thunderstorm, the two lovers materialise beside the cackling leader of the local cult, an ancient witch with long, rubber fingernails known as the Queen of the Lectosign.

‘Who are you?’

‘Kandinsky.’

‘That is not an Indonesian name.’

‘My father calls me Mahendra.’

‘And the girl?’

‘I’m Cathy, from the US.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Geographically, very far away. Base-wise, everywhere.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Really? It’s quite an insidious place.’

‘Apa?’

‘Insidious…in-si-dios…not good…very bad.’

Denying all knowledge of barbed wire poles and CIA porn sets [plus synsigns], the Queen wiggles her rubber nails and AND AND AND advises them to add more salt to their soap then mutters something ambiguous about what you’ve lost never existing to begin with. Then repeats the line about the salt and clarifies that, no, she is not a druid offshoot.

The two lovers stare back, just past the left shoulder, which now that the lights are fixed looks not dissimilar to a backhoe loader.

‘Are you a mysticalist?’ asks Cathy, pale white.

‘Do you generate pleasure or unpleasure?’ adds Kandinsky.

‘I am a violent sore,’ replies the Queen, shedding grey-scale skin from her breasts.

There is no answer to this.

In Bali.

At that specific time.

How could there be?

The Queen resembles a Sandfish.

Bursting out from the cinema of poverty.

Agitating broke bitch fingernails.

Cathy tries to turn, self-extraneate, but what does that even mean?

Start a travel vlog?

Video after video of shit Indonesian sold as shit Indonesian spoken by someone implicitly fucking a now mute Indonesian who’s just standing there, apparently named Kandinsky but by who?

Okay then. Triple threat?

Ugly can be sublime but this witch is malting.

They do not want to fuck her.

But then they think about it a bit more and realise they do want to fuck her, primarily because of the malting.

‘Is there a shack near here that we could-…’

‘Apa?’

‘Or a hotel maybe?’

‘Apa?’

‘A car wash?’

Not understanding an aggressively Delaware accent, or English, and fearing a weak first impression generally, the Queen of the Lectosign shows the pair an abstracted version of her face and warns that it will become further abstracted each time she appears in this degrading narrative.

Cathy is fine with this.

Kandinsky starts to weep.

‘Hush, hush, peanut brain. You may not know this in coo land, but it was beauty that originated in the ugly, not the reverse.’ The Queen stops, sucks in the sky, the grating sand. ‘All you have to do is take away the exit-…the excess from evil, just a little tiny piece…and bam…MADHUMATI! Our version not the Indian melodrama. Gods, I miss killing sheep. PKI devil goats. But that was ten years ago. Ten years. Ten years already. Been so long I don’t even remember where the graves are, or who’s in them. Communists I think. PIK types. But were they? We did take a lot of mushrooms back then.’

Across the beach, a new ceremonial ritual is starting up, this time with culture-appropriate candles and a giant projection screen that…is…just…depressingly kitsch.

‘Do not look,’ says the Queen, twisting off her left arm, putting it back on.

‘But-…’

‘They’re dancing is counter-rhythmic. Sorry, their. Don’t glare at me like that. You’re the pedant. Look. Over here. Focus on my creased blue face. Now that’s rhythmic. If you reconfigure what everyone else thinks it means. How is Bali treating you? I understand. Please, avoid subversive types lurking behind trees, they will attempt to puzzle you. Puzzle and spit-roast. Bah akoomba. That’s Jamaican for arid. As in your face is arid. Wah, it’s late. The moon looks ekphratic. I don’t know. Meet me tomorrow for training. Only the girl. And remember, no knickers.’

Before departing, the Queen shakes hands with Cathy, only to disappear with her severed arm left in Cathy’s grip.

Aroused beyond blues/noons/episode one of THUNDERCATS, Cathy drops the prop in mock-fright, then watches via barfly sociopath face as it crawls a short distance and stops before assuming the external position of agent and observer to whom history is nothing greater than a transparent process not that great at all really.

‘Wish I could sigh.’

‘Forget that old crone, Cathy. The ritual’s warming up. Let’s go and check it out.’

‘Or turn to dirt at least.’

‘Looks like there’s a foam machine.’

‘Apa?’

+

Back at the hostel, Kandinsky stretches out his PROPERTY OF NOTRE DAME t-shirt and says, ‘hey, what a night.’

Cathy stares at her crotch.

‘What a night, what a night, what a night, what a night.’

Pictures the Queen.

‘May have been the lack of visibility, but that hag looked a bit like Suharto in a witch wig.’

The long, rubber fingernails.

‘Don’t tell anyone I said that.’

She looks up, confused, glancing at the child’s map on the wall.

‘What is it?’

‘Is this really Bali, K?’

‘Well, it’s not Java, Cathy, that’s for sure.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Not Buru Island either.’

‘Hmm.’

Kandinsky parks himself on the edge of the bed, leans in close to Cathy’s spine. ‘You know, they say Lectosign magic is the pagan worship of colourism.’

‘My neck feels kinda loose.’

‘And when there’s no more colour, it can get aggravated…’

‘In an erotic way.’

‘…and if it stays that way for a while, it can even kill!’

‘Is this normal?’

‘Don’t worry, Cathy. I love you.’

‘Me too.’

‘Get some rest.’

‘Ya baiklah.’

+

The following night, Cathy drags Kandinsky by the hair to the chicken farm where they abstract several bottles of peasant blood for the Queen to drink. In the e-mail, it said she was parched, physically and mentally as she suspects Kandinsky is not a true Indonesian and Cathy has the brain of a ramshackle infant.

Pre 9-30, it would’ve made no sense, but in these times…

‘She’s really drinking this,’ says Cathy as the Queen cracks the first bottle open with her teeth and bathes in the blood she realises might not be chicken-sourced.

‘According to my uncle, she needs it to revitalise her conservatism.’

‘You have an uncle?’

‘Sorry…magical powers. Conservatism is visual. Terror-based.’

The Queen, who has taken the form of an abandoned tongue, tells Kandinsky to piss off and leave Cathy to have her pussy mangled.

‘I’m staying put,’ replies Kandinsky, almost a whisper.

Cackling inanely, the Queen as prehensile tongue shoots up Cathy’s skirt and etches a tattoo on her thigh before re-emerging and lying in bored monotone that she licked her out.

Kandinsky balls a fist and that’s about it as he knows he can’t hit a tongue.

Cathy, meanwhile, runs to a nearby technology park and returns with a machine gum phantom, which she places carefully on the Queen [as tongue], types I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU then steps back and cackles not quite as inanely as her mentor but still a cackle.

‘Good American,’ cackles the wiggling tongue.

‘Good American,’ echoes Cathy.

+

The next day is THE BLUE ANGEL in reverse as Cathy traces the letters scarred on her thigh and shouts at Kandinsky to buck up his dictionary app cos the best he’s done so far is LECTOSIGN and she knew that already they both did it’s what she’s the Queen of for fuck’s sake.

‘Cathy…’

‘What do the other words say? Come on.’

‘…I love you.’

‘Ah, you’re right, that’s enough translation. I love you too, K. I’m so happy you’re here. I think my training is almost finished and I’ll be so relieved when it is.’

‘Me too, Cathy.’

They kiss.

Camera cuts.

They fuck.

Watched from a background Melati plant by the actor playing Uncle Okra.

Who is in turn watched by the Kopkamtib.

Who is in turn watched by Suharto.

Who is in turn watched by-

+

In the afternoon, they manage the first few lines of Bogdanov’s RED STAR before the cops burst in and torch it. Kandinsky half pulls up his shirt, revealing another underneath, but Cathy doesn’t really care, claiming soon after the cops have gone that the witch probably wouldn’t like that kind of mythology anyway.

‘I don’t think you should meet her again,’ replies Kandinsky, flicking at his own throat with a plastic sickle. ‘In fact, I don’t know how we met her in the first place. You said it was me who arranged it yet I can’t remember doing that. And how would I? She looks like a Bollywood drunk. Where did she come from? How did I know where to find her? None of this make sense. Unless…’

He looks at the wall, the giant poster of Suharto with the H and T scrawled over old letters.

‘It’s nearly midnight, K, I have to go.’

‘But-…’

‘Wait up for me. I may want to cuddle afterwards.’

‘The Sumurun costume?’

‘Hmm.’

+

On the jungle beach that may be the same beach as the previous two beaches it’s hard to say there are no beach signs or beach towels no eight-foot cracked syringe, Cathy slips out of her discount tapis and does an ahhh face as the Queen materialises without a woosh and tells her that this is not a beach but an arthritic, pagan graveyard.

‘Arthritic?’

‘Ya. Lots of irritating dead people buried here.’

‘I see.’

Cackling as ritualism demands, both witch and blank hotel transform into pig suits and warn each other how sexy they look telepathically.

‘I feel like I’m standing in front of a huge wall of fire,’ mutters Cathy in hog form as a man in a ME FOR THE WIN t-shirt cremates himself quietly in the background.

‘Better than in it,’ replies the Queen, adding a cackle for continuity’s sake.

+

‘That wall of fire means a life was extinguished,’ explains Kandinsky, stroking the t-shirt under his t-shirt, the PROPERTY OF NOTRE DAME. ‘Hopefully one of those ageing fascists. The ones that hang around outside the supermarket all day.’

‘I killed someone?’

‘Yes. Don’t worry, Cathy. I love you. It was not by your hand.’

‘I feel ill.’

‘Lie down. Reflect on the pig transformation. I’ll go and see one of my uncles, ask him if there’s anything useful on Radio Tirana. A mantra or something to debilitate the Queen. Please, Cathy, don’t look so pale. You are not a murderer. Cup of chai? Wait, I have an idea. Let me see that thigh tattoo again. Maybe rub my thumb against the fringe of your cunt. Put the tip in. Pagan gods, I’m tired of playing a eunuch. I need to fuck. Oh look, it’s getting dark again. Rest now, Cathy. Close your eyes. I’ll get the chai.’

+

With the Sun as judge-stroke-predecessor, Kandinsky shrugs off the black eroticism of the pig story and visits his favourite uncle, OKRA, who is busy digging up dry dirt with his fingernails.

‘Uncle, that Lectosign Queen you warned me about, I’ve met her.’

‘Take off that t-shirt, give it to me.’

Kandinsky does as he’s told, handing over the PROPERTY OF NOTRE DAME and mumbling fuck in Indonesian as his uncle tosses it into a hole and buries it in dirt. Continuing topless is an option as K is in relatively good shape but Uncle Okra already has a new t-shirt in hand, this one a not so discreet condonement of the crack epidemic.

‘Now, there is a chance that your girlfriend will demean herself. Expose her entrails to reactionaries. Tell me, how does her neck look?’

‘A little bit saggy.’

‘Hmm, then it’s worse than I thought. We’re gonna have to act fast. Here, take this dagger and-…’

Uncle Okra drops the blade, staggers back into another dirt chasm as the cops pull up and demand to know where the radio is.

‘Uncle, what are you doing?’

‘Nggak, nggak. There is no radio. I’m clean. I love Lectosign magic. Love it. Islam too, the fundie kind, the barbed poles. Please, not the toothbrush, kawan. I’m clean, I tell you, clean for years, decades. Take him instead. His t-shirt…look. He’s on crack, the chief of it. All over his-…’

+

On the drive back to the hostel, Kandinsky reflects on what his uncle said.

Wonders if the cops were real.

Crack?

+

Ohm ohm ohhhhhhhm

Ohm of an ohm

Ohm ya OHM nah

From blind action to obscure situation to fluctuation of cut-out skull into floating plug of unmoored spinal column, Cathy zooms through Indonesian nightscape into the house of the second niece of the third cousin of Sukarno’s sister-in-law.

‘Suck out the parasite,’ cries the Queen, safe in the bush outside, and Cathy’s head obeys, latching on to the pregnant niece’s cunt and thwarting yet another resurrection of occulted, pagan-before-pagan, PKIKIPKIPIKKI communism.

Or so the Queen says afterwards.

Telepathically.

+

Fresh from questionable sex act, the blank hotel reattaches to its mannequin body and joins Kandinsky for a spot of light breakfast.

‘You look tired.’

‘Ya.’

‘How about a trip to the beach?’

‘One point five million slaughtered.’

‘Huh?’

‘Not twenty thousand.’

‘Err…’

‘All of them coffee lovers.’

Kandinsky glances at the poster to the right, checking the eyes for pinhole camera tech. ‘That’s supposed to be my line, isn’t it?’

‘I’m tired, K.’

‘Or is it the Queen’s?’

‘Saya sangat lelah.’

‘Eh?’

+

That night, the Queen of Lectosign is visibly disturbed, her cackling sub-par.

She has an enemy in the local printing factory and the only way to defeat them is for Cathy’s head to float in through the skylight, light a match and incinerate all locatable copies of a demonic script called API PEMUDA INDONESIA.

‘And BUMI MANUSIA, if you see any.’

‘Bumi…’

‘The cover is disgusting. You’ll recognise it.’

‘…Manulife?’

+

As a disciple, Cathy is committed.

As a floating skull, she is continuously cosmically restructuring.

Bedazzled in American terms

continuously

cos no one cackles quite like the Queen of Lectosign, no one makes her feel this unsure of herself this paralysed and that kind of doubt is a godsend especially in the late 70’s.

If only she didn’t massacre Communists.

Though the way the Queen tells it, they were shadows of the enemies of the Lectosign, and Communism was just a word made up by turn of the century Germans so best not to think about all that and besides she didn’t physically kill anyone the floating heads of her disciples did and most of them are doing fine now albeit a little blurry-looking after raiding all those brothels.

‘So you didn’t kill anyone, back then?’

‘Is a pole a spear?’

‘Oh, you didn’t. Thank god.’

‘Printing factory, girl. Focus.’

‘Thank the Lectosign.’

+

Elsewhere, Kandinsky is trying hard not to pick up the pieces yet there he is, in a graveyard full of defiled communists, picking up the pieces.

‘She is not the same woman you wanted to poke previously,’ says Uncle Okra, back from the cop shop, wires spilling out of a beige cotton shirt. ‘You need to bury her body and…ah, skip that…the mice are gone and she’s already eaten out Sukarno’s niece…let’s just go and kill that Lectosign hag. See if she’ll stand there and allow us to do it. Catch her mid-cackle perhaps.’ Uncle Okra cups a hand to his ear, nodding at the electronic fuzz. ‘Yes, kill the witch. She’s not even a real conservative. Or Muslim. Wah, I forgot about that. Paganism is what the monkeys do. Same as Communism. That’s why they’re working together. K, are you hearing this?’

+

Arriving at a graveyard they no longer have permission to abrogate, the uncle launches himself at the Queen of Lectosign but misjudges his flight path and dies off-screen from jaundice.

Fortunately, a new UNCLE is subbed in, ready to rip off the batik shirt he stole in PHUKET and drool on a recycled songkok, and soon enough he has ripped off the shirt and drooled on the songkok and pretty much shattered the completely black situation well most of it the moving parts at least.

The QUEEN of Lectosign responds in kind, morphing into a source of assistance as much as aggression.

So little aggression that she fails to notice Kandinsky creeping up from behind.

But then she does notice and kills him.

Kills the substitute uncle too.

Cackles up at the sky.

‘I am the feint of HIS wretched duel.’

Aroused yet reticent, the beach turns retrograde.

Cathy’s head once again detaches from blank hotel base and sails off towards Java which is in FACT Bali. There the natives become raw erraticism. [Insert PKI theorist name] appears vows land reform once someone HANDs him the keys building reform too sociology schools campus freedom no more Heidegger but first the keys. Intrigued the Cathy head tries really tries but is subjectively not a metal detector. The theorist realigns and HAS his face peeled off by a visiting Bergson. The Queen adapts fast murders Bergson pisses on the DURATION lie on herself. Meanwhile an interval between action and reversal. Darkness is the place where light stops even in JAVA-ville. Hurt Cathy HEAD risks a sudden thrust retreats worm-LIKE. Cannot settle. Crawls back to spine-threat rectitude. Here is the reign OF SECONDNESS cries the Queen [cackling] all monsters a pair all acts the function OF WHAT the other WILL ELIMinate. Is this pleasure? A BInomial? No way to know as Uncle Okra returns an immobile receptor COPPER wires erupting from chest hair shaved OFF THE NIGHT BEfore. THIS is why traditionalism he STATES before THE QuEEn swoops in cackles HARD HATES HERself for doing so ovulates. The ovulation has little effect. It is regretted. Why would nature do that? Nggak NGGAK tradition app splutters Okra sweating like HELLS kettle exhausted yet the farmer’s union in ChoeuNG EK REMAINS unconvinced disturbed put out and finally dissolves into cowboy shape shifts to PhNOM PENh conducts surveillance of ex-members in sax den plus Club Tirana kids plus FPI HQ plus THUG outside in white sarong plus CHER fan plus Rainy MAN FassBINder plus themselves their wives their HUSbands friends colleagues who CONstantly fall back on aphorISMs plus NADJA plus séance trope plus my beautiful laundrette plus topology PLUS PAYphone PLUS power surge PLUS The guy who set up thOSE cameras pLUS the orange ball of carTOON light shootING OUT from the QUEEN of the LECTOSIgn who was oNLY pretending to BE A vegetable aND now THEY’re ALL VIBE THANKS TO a POOr UNderSTAnDing OF ApraXia PAGanisM otHER CALLoUS THings mOST OF thEse preDICted A DECade aGO bY-

A short break.

Indonesian pipe music.

Bird killers.

Producers circling producers.

Past as pity like.

Die or remain a child.

Tremble.

Emanate.

Paint electricity like it’s-

Up in the air, semi-famished, CATHY HEAD flickers goblin choice, resituates itself within naturalist co-ordinates, attempts to cope with the absence of a Queen who said she would have answers nightly, distracts by seeking out fresh muff, native muff, dreams of Kandinsky with mother’s knickers in his mouth, penetrated by unused dick curved the whole way round maybe as deep as ten metres, absorbs HEAD VI, HEAD IV, Bacon himself, the idea of the MAN, returns to hapless static state defeated.

‘Not a hotel,’ she whispers, dripping yellow ichor.

In the distance [matte], further cackling.

+

The next day, Kandinsky takes a tray of Ferrero Rocher to CATHY HEAD’S room and asks if she’s feeling okay.

‘Bit of a headache.’

‘Yeah, quite a night last night. You remember anything?’

‘Tired. Confused. Nauseous. Terrified. Cold. Weirdly detached. Communist but not.’

‘Don’t worry, Cathy. I love you.’

‘I love you too, K.’

‘Chocolate?’