Chapter 7: The Hours of a Lotus Eater

About noon, I had lunch at the table under the stairs with Tony, a seventy-year-old artist who wore a scarf in all weathers, for his health, he said. Tony’s scarf was always colourful and always neatly arranged on his chest. Today’s colour was cerise.

‘How is your week going?’ he asked me, his query genuine and not simply a formality. Tony liked me.

‘Awful,’ I answered. And I explained about DreamAds. While I was talking about the harmful effect that the new technology was having on me, we were joined by Paula – Spanish, mid-thirties, holding a bowl with a rice-based salad – and Carmel – Irish, early twenties, Pot Noodle.

‘Is this is film you saw?’ asked Carmel, taking a low, padded seat.

‘I wish it was and I could leave the cinema. No. This all too real. This is happening to me.’

While Carmel looked horrified, Paula unzipped her black jacket and having hung it over the back of her chair observed calmly that we were living in an age of revolutionary technological advance. Like the 1960s.

Tony shook his head. ‘Adverts in dreams though. I find that a terrible thought.’

‘Me too,’ said Carmel earnestly, parting her fringe to look at me. Her blonde dye was growing out, so that the first third of her shoulder-length hair was brown. ‘Oh my God, Cyn, what will it do to your imagination? What’s it like? What dreams did you have?’

Tony began to speak but checked himself to favour me. I hesitated; he waved that I should go ahead.

‘I’m not very good at remembering my dreams. Sometimes, bits of them come back to me when I fill in the daily form on the app.’ I tipped my phone towards them to show the DreamAds icon. ‘I did remember something important this morning though. My unconscious has a personality and it sent me a message: “Stop Neo”.’

What did I hope for from my friends at this statement? Understanding? Help? Empathy? I mostly didn’t believe my own words. Surely my unconscious was myself and not a separate being? Would anyone challenge me? I would have to back down, if so. For now though, now I’d voiced the thought, I found it felt true. It had truthfeel. My unconscious has a personality. And she needs my help.

Concerned to alleviate my fears Paula tried to say that adverts in dreams were going to be no more harmful than adverts on billboards and screens. I felt it was wrong to underestimate the dangers of DreamAds but I appreciated the effort to reassure me. By contrast, Carmel was so seriously affected that her Pot Noodle stayed untouched on the table, steaming and radiating a peppery scent into the air around us. Carmel recommended I find a human rights lawyer willing to take my case for free and see if I could claim sufficient damages from DreamAds to pay my fine. This was a clever and helpful idea and I made myself a note on my phone as a reminder.

Tony waited for our conversation to lapse and then leaned towards me, green eyes conveying his sincerity. ‘You said your unconscious spoke to you.’

‘It did, surprisingly.’ I felt defensive.

‘Carl Jung spoke to his unconscious. He thought she was his soul. André Breton thought his unconscious was his better half. You must listen to yours Cyn.’

The two women were still and attentive. Above us a cloud darkened the skylight. A powerful shiver starting from my neck became a convulsion of my relief that I couldn’t hide. Tony understood.

‘You’re right. I know you’re right. But how?’

Something about this question made Tony uneasy. He glanced at Paula. ‘Find out how Jung and Breton managed it.’

I sensed this was not his full answer but I didn’t press him.

‘Did you ever wonder where art comes from?’ asked Carmel, then immediately answering herself added, ‘it’s got to be the unconscious, doesn’t it? I reckon it’s a miracle of some sort, don’t you think? Of course we all have our influences. When I paint something new, though, where did the novelty come from?’

‘Are you talking about spirituality? About God?’ asked Paula.

‘Perhaps. I really don’t know the answer. I just know that I feel happy when I paint and that it’s like being plugged in to the universe. There was this Iain Banks book I read,’ she laughed at herself, at what she was about to say, her expression apologising in advance. I liked her for it. ‘… where this spaceship, to travel faster than light, had to reach down below the usual level of the universe to tap into a deeper level, a level filled with nothing but a pure, shiny energy. It’s like that. I feel like that.’

‘I know what you mean.’ Tony’s expression was solemn and attentive, as though he were listening to a prophet.

Paula shrugged and gathered a forkful of salad. ‘What about AI art?’

‘My God!’ exclaimed Tony angrily, ‘that’s not art.’

‘I am thinking it is used a lot in games, also by film makers, book cover designers, and advertisers…’

I felt sick. As though a cloak of silver silk had been wrapped around me by Carmel, only to fall to the floor, leaving my body exposed to cold.

‘Humans are becoming like AI,’ said Tony. ‘We empty out all that’s creative and unique, all that’s quirky and strange. Pour it out onto a desert sand. Then we walk around like automata performing roles that have evolved over the years to be meaningless, listening to AI music, watching AI TV, and now, dreaming AI dreams.’

‘Hah, hah! That’s bleak.’

No one else was laughing with Paula and I was still recovering from the thought that if Carmel’s image of being connected to the universe through creativity was right, then because of DreamAds taking away my unconscious half, that connection was broken. I was suffering from the realisation I could no longer paint anything new, I knew that if I tried, I would just be going through the motions, recycling old ideas.

***

That afternoon I went up to Tony’s studio. The ten rooms on the upper level of the building were large: on the lower level we just had cubicles, with partitions not much higher than my head. Here, steps descended into a room about six metres by four metres. High above me, alabaster leaves in a circular design surrounded a point from where, in Georgian times, a chandelier would have hung. Now the decorative flora only served a cable with a bright light-bulb at the end of it, screened by a simple, cream lightshade.

Like me, Tony was inspired by the natural environment for his art. For the past six months he’d been in a tree phase. Unlike me, he was a realist and his focus was on the details of bud and leaf. Looking at his paintings – several mounted at eye level, others stacked against the walls – I would say that Tony was interested in the character of the tree, rather than what the image of the tree suggested in the mind of the human viewer.

If I had a big space like this, it would soon be cluttered to the point that moving around without knocking over jars and frames would be difficult. Another Francis Bacon studio. Tony, however, was tidy and his furniture all served its original purpose. Two chairs were available for sitting on, a small table supported the kettle that he was filling at a deep sink and on this table too were four mugs, a bowl of sugar with its lid on, several small spoons and a carton of almond milk.

I accepted a mug with mint tea, the decoration on it was of Napoleon, the Jacques-Louis portrait of the general on horseback, pointing up towards the heights of the alps.

‘You’re a fan?’ I turned the picture towards him and Tony smiled.

‘Of the artist, not the subject.’

‘What am I to do, Tony?’

His eyes were sympathetic. ‘Can you stop?’

‘I suppose. Ultimately, that might lead to prison for a while. But I’m beginning to think that’s not the worst option.’

‘Carmel had a good suggestion, that you try to sue Neo for harm to your mind.’

‘Oh for sure. I’ve already sent a few emails this morning. But even if someone is willing to take up my case, that route is going to take months. I really feel I have to stop now. Only I can’t afford to. And it might already be too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘My unconscious self seems to be trapped in some fashion. You know the Philip Pullman books, His Dark Materials?’

With a rueful shrug, Tony shook his head.

‘Well, there’s a daemon that everyone has in those stories. A kind of spirit. And if you are severed from it, you will both wither and die. I have a premonition that something like that is going to happen to me.’

‘I might be able to help you.’

In the silence that followed, I became aware of the distant tremors of Dublin’s traffic.

‘How?’

‘I believe it’s your soul you are talking about and there are ways of speaking with it…’

I waited. He wasn’t easy in himself any more: fidgeting with his scarf and looking at his tea rather than me. At last he met my eyes.

‘Did you ever take LSD Cyn?’

‘Oh, is that what you mean? Four times.’ I felt disappointment, anti-climax. I didn’t believe in souls and I didn’t like drugs, although I generally would go along for whatever ride was on offer.

‘What did you experience?’ he asked.

‘Short version: everything is connected. A bit like how Carmel described the silver energy of the sub-universe.’

‘I experienced that too. And not just connections within the material of the universe. Several times, very specifically, I felt that I was connected to my soul and understood it in a way that was impossible under normal circumstances.’

‘I’m not going to take acid Tony.’

The smile I received by way of response was warm. Spiritual confession over, he was his usual calm self. ‘There’s no need. Once you know it’s there, you can commune with your soul in a variety of ways. While sitting in darkness, Jung liked to start with a dream or a fancy and let it develop. Breton, being a writer, preferred to let words appear on a page, written in his hand but not directed by his conscious mind. My preference is for Tarot.’

‘Tarot,’ I repeated, surprised again but careful to avoid any note of scepticism. I appreciated that Tony was trusting me with a part of his world that he probably did not share with many others, or any.

‘I think you should try it.’

‘I don’t believe in Tarot, Tony.’

‘Your soul might.’

That was such an interesting answer that I had to smile. ‘It can believe what it likes. But go ahead.’ It still seemed wrong to talk about my unconscious as a distinct person, one with different beliefs to me. Yet someone had told me to stop Neo.

At least I’d made Tony happy. There was an energy in his limbs that replaced his usual languid and careful steps with eagerness. Kneeling by a cabinet draw, he picked out a thick and large box of cards. Returning rapidly he opened the box lid and spread the cards on the tabletop. I was faced with a sprawl of symbols as the cards were face up.

‘Aren’t they supposed to be the other way around?’ I asked.

‘That’s one way of using Tarot. Such as for a horoscope. We are doing something else. For this to work, you need to see the images. Study them please. Move them if you need.’

One of the skills they taught me at NCAD was to really look, to be mindful of all the information flowing into me via my eyes. Most of the time we have a focus on just one part of a scene and our mind fills in the missing parts. And that’s usually successful for navigation and decision making. Now though, my gaze moved, noted a colour, a curve, a sign. But I did not dwell on any one card, nor let myself drift into reveries about the characters, or about what little I knew of Tarot. Swords, sunbeams and sycamores. I held the vivid contents of the table in my mind.

‘Think of a question, Cyn. What question do you want to ask your soul?’ Tony’s voice was gentle and did not break my concentration.

How can I help you?

‘Ready?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘Pick up a card. Concentrate on your question. Good. Another. Another.’

When he said I had chosen enough, I found myself with five Tarot cards in my hands.

After tidying up his deck of cards and stacking them back in the box, Tony asked me to place the first in front of me.

‘What does it mean?’ I asked him.

‘What it means to anyone else doesn’t matter. What matters is what the card means to you. Suppose your soul to be answering your question, why would it start with this one?’

‘For context,’ I answered at once, confident I was right. It wasn’t my soul speaking but it could certainly be my unconscious and troubled mind. My twin. And what it was saying here was that we were perfectly fine, my unconscious and myself, until disaster struck and threw us both down.

‘Your next?’

‘Why this one?’ Tony asked.

‘She’s battling. Trapped.’ I almost felt tearful looking at the card. My inner self was doing her best and acting bravely too. She was penned in. And in danger. I had to help her as soon as possible.

‘Next.’

‘That’s me. I have to go on a journey.’ And I knew the path ahead was going to be dark and difficult. Looking at the card, I sensed that the golden goblets I was leaving behind were the comforts of my current life. It was as if I was looking out of the window of a luxurious home and seeing myself turned away, walking in darkness.

‘Next.’

‘That’s Neo. He even looks like him. The smug expression.’ I felt a deep antipathy to the figure in the card. There was a warning here. The armoured foot; the suggestion that Neo was treading on the dead. His throne depicted diabolical guardians. Neo was our enemy, and I was not to underestimate him.

‘And lastly.’

‘Love.’ The word was positive. It gave me confidence that there was an answer to Neo’s technology and the answer was love. At first, I felt that it was Daniel and I in the card, that I should rely upon the love between us. Yet that wasn’t right. And the more I examined the card, the more I felt that I was the man and my inner twin was the woman. And yes, there was love between us. It was a frightening kind of love though, a black hole of attraction and danger. I was living happily in a kind of delusion but she had spoken with the snake and the fallen angel. She wanted me to wake up. I had an awful feeling that the world was inside out. My waking hours were unimportant, the hours of a lotus eater. Only with her did I experience the world as it really was.

‘Well,’ asked Tony, ‘did your soul speak to you?’

‘My soul – my unconscious – is very eloquent.’ I took a sip of tea. ‘Tell me Tony, if you were Adam in the garden of Eden and Eve offered you a bite of the Apple of Knowledge, would you take it?’

‘Absolutely not. You?’

‘I find danger irresistible.’