We have to watch Stroszek to prepare us for our trip to America, W. says, and read Marx. You have to read Marx, W. says, if you're going to the heart of capitalism. The heart of capitalism, the heart of darkness, W. says.
What Marx should we take to the USA? Perhaps we shouldn't take any at all, W. says. We might get arrested at customs. We might get sent home for Unamerican activities.
W. forwards the DVD to the famous sequence of a chicken dancing in an amusement arcade booth. Bruno Stroszek, the film's protagonist, puts a few quarters in the slot and wanders off to shoot himself. The chicken dances – how it is made to do so is a mystery – bobbing on its claws. The chicken dances, its comb bobbing, its wattle swinging, its black eyes manic …
Herzog speaks of finding images adequate to the world, to the state of the world, W., says. The chicken is one of those images, do you see? I see. Everything is there. Everything, the horror of it all, concentrated in the image of the dancing chicken.
Stroszek: didn't Ian Curtis watch the film just before he killed himself? He saw the chicken, W. says. He really saw it, and it was too much for him. The chicken is cosmic, that's what we have to understand, W. says. It's a bit like that statue I have in my flat, W. says. Who is it supposed to be again?
Shiva, I tell him. The highest of the gods. Shiva as Nataraja, the cosmic dancer. Shiva's dance shook the foundations of the world, I'd told W. His locks, whirling, collided with the stars, his steps split mountains asunder and his arms whirled through the full breadth of the universe. The gods descended from heaven to watch him. They saw the very dance of the universe, the great cosmic cycle of creation and destruction.
'What's your cosmic dance like?', W. says. 'Do the funky chicken. Go on, fat boy. Dance'. W. likes to watch me dance, he says. It's so improbable. So graceless.
The chicken won't stop. That's what's etched into the runoff groove of the last Joy Division album. The chicken won't stop: it's like a mantra to W. – 'You won't stop, will you?', he says. That's part of the horror: I show no signs of stopping. But it's part of my glory, too. Who am I amusing? Not even him. Certainly not anyone else.
In my best moments, I do resemble Bruno Stroszek, of Herzog's film, W. says. In my best moments, he emphasises. Otherwise I resemble no one but myself, more's the pity.
But sometimes I achieve a kind of pathetic grandeur, W. says, almost despite myself. There I sit, in the squalor. There I am, a squalid man, amidst the squalor, a bottle and a glass close at hand, some discounted sandwich boxes lying empty around me, and I'll say something truly striking. I'll make some pronouncement. I'm like a savant. It's like a possession.
Sometimes W. thinks it's from me that a thought will come that's adequate to our civilisation. This is what he hopes will happen in during our American trip. – 'It'll come to you', and by extension, to him, too. This is why he accepted our invitation. It's why we're going to America.
If I resemble Bruno Stroszek, W. supposes he can only resemble Bruno's elderly neighbour – what was his name? Scheitzer. Scheitzerhund. Just Scheitz, I tell him. Scheitz had an interest in animal magnetism, W. remembers. He bothered people with it. He confused them. That's how it will be with his interests, W. says, which are equally improbable, equally irrelevant. We're off to bother the universities of America!
Lars Iyer's Blog 