the afternoon, he quickly opened his own.
'Hello there. What a lovely outfit. Delightful little black skirt, Sylvie. You look as though you're on your way to a date; or coming back from one, perhaps. How's your work in the labyrinth going?'
'In the labyrinth, Hamish? You mean on the labyrinth, presumably.' She was laughing. Silly little man.
'Oh, do I. '
She didn't have time to listen to her messages, but gathered together her notes and went straight to the lecture theatre. It was full. That was gratifying. Lionel fixed his eyes on her legs, where they remained for the following fifty minutes.
'I want to start with a quote from the poet W B. Yeats. He is thinking of the goings-on in seances, in which he was very interested. The emanation of spirits. Ectoplasm. Here's what he says: "If photographs that I saw handed round in Paris thirty years ago can be repeated and mental images photographed, the distinction that Berkeley drew between what man creates and what God creates will have broken down." Now just think about this for a moment. Photographs are going to abolish the distinction between what man creates and what God creates. Photographs. The afterlife of images. Conan Doyle had already become convinced of something similar, when he believed those photographs of the Cottingley Fairies. They were fakes, of course, but they fooled the creator of Sherlock
Holmes, that fool-proof detective. Why such an extraordinary dependence on the photograph? Might it be because of our distrust of the human imagination? Might it be because we wish to make memory scientific, and therefore forensically irrefutable? Might it be because we have so come to distrust our own eyes that we wish only to trust the cyclopean eye of our recording lenses? That way we can separate the image from all subjectivity. This would explain a great deal of the modern cult of celebrity, since only those who spend enough time before the cyclopean eye can be said to be truly alive. Until you are sufficiently photographed, you haven't even been born. This might be one explanation why people are prepared to abandon all their dignity for the sake of ten minutes on a television programme. Because they have now been made immortal in an image. We're all Egyptian pharaohs now. The painted food on our walls is an image, so it can never rot. That's the origin of the still life. Anyway, next week we are going to examine photographs from the cave at Lascaux. Let's see if we can work out how every single image appears to have been painted by Picasso.'
She had at some point, without thinking, moved around to the front of the table and sat down on it, crossing her legs. She always did this. But she didn't usually wear the short black skirt and stockings she'd chosen for Henry the previous night. Alison came up to her afterwards with a wary smile – she was merely fulfilling the University's peer-review requirements by attending the lecture in the first place.
'Decided to promote your talks amongst the male student body, I see, Sylvie?'
'Why?'
'It's just, with that skirt, if a chap had been in the right place this evening, he could have caught the whites of your thighs above the stocking-tops. I did.'
'Oh shit.'
'Lionel's gone off in search of para-medical attention. Or maybe just a bar. I've been told that alcohol in sufficient quantities produces detumescence.'
Only when she got back to her room did she listen finally to the message from Henry. Minotaur. It struck her what Hamish had said earlier. In the labyrinth. Coming to or from a date. There had been a rumour for some time that Hamish listened in on everyone's calls, keeping personal files on the lot of them. This caused some merriment; some irritation. Nobody was sure if it was legal under the new European legislation. She felt no merriment at all, but considerable irritation. She walked across the corridor to his room and, after the most perfunctory of knocks, walked in.
'Hamish, have you been listening to my
'Hello there. What a lovely outfit. Delightful little black skirt, Sylvie. You look as though you're on your way to a date; or coming back from one, perhaps. How's your work in the labyrinth going?'
'In the labyrinth, Hamish? You mean on the labyrinth, presumably.' She was laughing. Silly little man.
'Oh, do I. '
She didn't have time to listen to her messages, but gathered together her notes and went straight to the lecture theatre. It was full. That was gratifying. Lionel fixed his eyes on her legs, where they remained for the following fifty minutes.
'I want to start with a quote from the poet W B. Yeats. He is thinking of the goings-on in seances, in which he was very interested. The emanation of spirits. Ectoplasm. Here's what he says: "If photographs that I saw handed round in Paris thirty years ago can be repeated and mental images photographed, the distinction that Berkeley drew between what man creates and what God creates will have broken down." Now just think about this for a moment. Photographs are going to abolish the distinction between what man creates and what God creates. Photographs. The afterlife of images. Conan Doyle had already become convinced of something similar, when he believed those photographs of the Cottingley Fairies. They were fakes, of course, but they fooled the creator of Sherlock
Holmes, that fool-proof detective. Why such an extraordinary dependence on the photograph? Might it be because of our distrust of the human imagination? Might it be because we wish to make memory scientific, and therefore forensically irrefutable? Might it be because we have so come to distrust our own eyes that we wish only to trust the cyclopean eye of our recording lenses? That way we can separate the image from all subjectivity. This would explain a great deal of the modern cult of celebrity, since only those who spend enough time before the cyclopean eye can be said to be truly alive. Until you are sufficiently photographed, you haven't even been born. This might be one explanation why people are prepared to abandon all their dignity for the sake of ten minutes on a television programme. Because they have now been made immortal in an image. We're all Egyptian pharaohs now. The painted food on our walls is an image, so it can never rot. That's the origin of the still life. Anyway, next week we are going to examine photographs from the cave at Lascaux. Let's see if we can work out how every single image appears to have been painted by Picasso.'
She had at some point, without thinking, moved around to the front of the table and sat down on it, crossing her legs. She always did this. But she didn't usually wear the short black skirt and stockings she'd chosen for Henry the previous night. Alison came up to her afterwards with a wary smile – she was merely fulfilling the University's peer-review requirements by attending the lecture in the first place.
'Decided to promote your talks amongst the male student body, I see, Sylvie?'
'Why?'
'It's just, with that skirt, if a chap had been in the right place this evening, he could have caught the whites of your thighs above the stocking-tops. I did.'
'Oh shit.'
'Lionel's gone off in search of para-medical attention. Or maybe just a bar. I've been told that alcohol in sufficient quantities produces detumescence.'
Only when she got back to her room did she listen finally to the message from Henry. Minotaur. It struck her what Hamish had said earlier. In the labyrinth. Coming to or from a date. There had been a rumour for some time that Hamish listened in on everyone's calls, keeping personal files on the lot of them. This caused some merriment; some irritation. Nobody was sure if it was legal under the new European legislation. She felt no merriment at all, but considerable irritation. She walked across the corridor to his room and, after the most perfunctory of knocks, walked in.
'Hamish, have you been listening to my
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