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Now where
were
we?

So they take the Hunger Artist out of his cage–he fights it for a while (doesn’t
want
to leave–is there a name for that? I don’t know why, but I’m thinking it might actually be called ‘Hostage Syndrome’. Isn’t it what happened to Patty Hearst? Where you kinda
become
your oppressor?), but he’s so weak now that they can easily drag him out, even under duress.

Then the band strikes up (to prevent him from speaking–he’d probably ask to go back
in
again, or make a depressing speech and ruin the celebratory atmosphere) and he is set down in front of a table laid with food (a veritable banquet) and obliged to eat some of it.

But he cannot.

So the Impresario crams a few bits and pieces into his hapless mouth as the band plays on. Then the Impresario pretends that the Artist has asked him to propose a toast to the public (although he proposed no such thing) and the toast is made, then everybody disperses, perfectly satisfied.

Time passes (in the story), and a gradual change takes place in the public’s taste re fasting. Kafka says that there may’ve been ‘profound’ reasons for this change, but, ‘who was going to bother about that?’, i.e. he doesn’t give a damn what the reasons are. Or
he
does, perhaps, but society doesn’t. So what the heck, eh?

This apparent ‘indifference’ eventually turns into an active hostility (which is where we are now, fasting-wise, I guess–except for in India, maybe, and some other Eastern countries where doing without still has strong associations with devotion and piety).

The Artist and his impresario go their separate ways. The Impresario is just an opportunist–your typical shonky manager–and within the story he basically represents Capitalism (note, capital C). The Artist subsequently sells himself to a circus who simply want to trade off his famous name (and have no interest in his craft,
per se
).

And
then
(to cut a short story shorter), he’s just left in his cage to starve and nobody actually gives a damn about him. Because the Impresario isn’t there, he just carries on (he never
stops
). He breaks all these fasting limits and records, but nobody even notices (in essence, Kafka’s implying that while the Impresario was merciless he was also an essential
cog
in the fasting machine–because in his own, rough-hewn way, he was committed to the Artist. You know? The way McDonald’s, say, are committed to the
cow
).

Anyhow, the Artist fasts and fasts, but nobody even sees him any more. He’s just this bag of bones in an old cage under a pile of dirty straw.

One day the circus ‘overseer’ observes that the cage is empty and asks why. They shift the straw and expose the Hunger Artist. He is still alive, but only just. He’s in a terrible state–not at all blissful or victorious (as you might’ve imagined) but full of hatred and self-disgust. He whispers (in his last breaths–and to an indifferent audience) that his fasting is in no way ‘admirable’, and then he explains why…

Man
–you’re just gonna have to go out and buy the book. Because I can’t quote this entire section, even though I’d love to. Suffice to say, the Artist whispers to the overseer that the only reason he ever fasted was because he couldn’t ever find ‘the food I liked’.

Then he dies and they replace him with a panther.

Fin
.

After I throw down the book, I can’t help dwelling on it. This idea (this–a
hem
–‘grande dénouement’) that the Artist is only what he is (
who
he is) because he actually
hates all food
is rather an ingenious one. And it’s not just
literal
, i.e. it’s not so much food he rejects as life itself (love, ambition, Art, sex, who cares?
Everything
).

Did Blaine sympathise with this tragic creature (I wonder) when
hold him in contempt? he
read the story? Or did he hold him in contempt? Is this how
he
feels? Is this
his
psychology? I mean are his stunts about holding life precious (which I suppose would have to be the official PR–or they’d
section
him, basically), or are they about holding it cheap (or even holding it
at bay
)? Because surely if you hold life cheap, the risks you take
don’t actually signify anything
? They’re just empty gestures. And the stunt itself is stripped of all meaningfulness.

What makes
us
so angry (we puffed-up, sensitive, Western
ticks
) is seeing all the aspirations of capitalism degraded by the man who has pretty much everything (this young, handsome, charming, intelligent, multi-
multi
millionaire). He has it all- everything we yearn for- and yet he casts it casually, haughtily-
publicly
- aside…

Well
, for the princely sum of five million dollars…

The ultimate Capitalist gesture of
Anti
-Capitalism.

No
wonder
we’re so pissed off.

He’s magnificently lit.
Blaine
. I ponder this fact as I turn
my
light off.

At night you can see his bright little glass pod from miles around. In ‘A Hunger Artist’ Kafka says how the Artist loves to have the full glare of artificial light upon him. The Impresario actually provides especially enthusiastic ‘watchers’ with pocket torches so that at night they can shine them full in his face as he tries to rest.

And the Artist welcomes this.
Screw
sleep! He
loves
the light. He wants everything to be seen. He wants the light–he
needs
the light–to dispel all doubt.

Blaine is also lit–day and night–for TV. I’m not certain how he feels about it. But I suppose this masochistic urge to be focused upon is all very much part and parcel of the modern idea of celebrity. Why else would they call it ‘the limelight’?

The light brings truth and it brings validation (‘If everybody wants to
look
so badly,’ the tragically hounded yet horribly insecure star reasons, ‘I
must
be worth looking at…’).

The light also brings moths. And mosquitoes. And all manner of other pests.

But that’s just the arse-end of showbusiness, I guess.

Can’t sleep.

I lie in bed, shivering, my mind
infested
by the Kafka. To temporarily distract myself, I try and remember Blaine’s TV shows. I half-recollect seeing them–ages ago now–the one with the pole-standing stunt and the one when he was packed up in ice. The stunts (so far as I can recollect) were interspersed with Blaine wandering around the place, just doing his tricks.

He had this one scam with a discarded beer can: approached a couple in a park (lying on their picnic blanket), picked up this spent beer can next to where they were sitting (was it their can? Or his can?), tipped it up (it was empty) then ran his hand over the ring-pull so it looked–for all the world–like he’d
resealed
it (how he do dat?). Then he opened the can again and started pouring. Beer spills out in apparent abundance. He even offers the can to the blanket man so that he can drink some, and he does.

Right
.

So it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how that particular trick worked…Some kind of tiny, sliding door inside the can which–when you tip it a particular way–latches back and allows a portion of beer–previously trapped in the can’s bottom, to pour forth.

Then there was a trick with a pigeon, a dead pigeon. Blaine (apparently arbitrarily) attracts the attention of a passing eccentric (this oldish guy, walking about the place, ‘exercising’ his pet budgerigar on his shoulder) and shows him this pigeon lying dead in a patch of sun…

I open my eyes in the dark

Yeah
like your average New Yorker is gonna be so incredibly
distressed
by the premature demise of a ‘Rat o’ the Air’.

Anyhow, Blaine holds his hand over the bird (like a Healer, if I remember correctly) and after a short while it stirs, then it stands up, then it flies. Apparently (if my investigations on the internet are anything to go by) he does the same trick with a fly (maybe the fly was just a dry-run for something bigger).

This prank is
all
about timing, the way I’m seeing it, and refrigeration. The only thing that’ll simulate death in any sentient creature is the cold. So Blaine sticks some godforsaken pigeon into a refrigerator until it passes out, calculates the time it’ll take for it to come back to again, then engineers the entire ‘meeting’ to take place at the exact midway point in this process–keeps the guy talking for as long as he thinks he needs to etc.

I presume his ‘team’ will’ve picked on this guy for a reason. He probably exercises his bird at the same time in that park every day. He obviously
likes
birds, maybe he feeds the pigeons or something–I mean this trick is hardly gonna work out so well if Blaine randomly picks on some passing neurotic female who happens to think pigeons are a pest–has 3,000 of the fuckers ruining the masonry on her building, shitting everywhere etc. or is
phobic
about them (just imagine, he calls her over, shows her the dead bird–a cause, in her mind, for righteous celebration–and then brings this vile creature straight back to life again. Good
God
. I see a major lawsuit pending).

I clearly remember him doing a load of tricks on kids, and one particularly bad one where he takes this young boy’s penknife and sticks it–with much
oohing
and
aaahing
–through his tongue.

The kid isn’t entertained. He’s absolutely fucking
horrified
.

And Blaine? Totally delighted. Eyes shining. Feeding on his disquiet. Smiling crazily.
Eating
it up.

Now I don’t want to come over all Mary Whitehouse (and if I do, and it creeps you out, then just bear in mind the traumatic legacy of Douglas Sinclair MacKenny, Post Officer
extraordinaire
), but wasn’t that tongue-stabbing thing just a little bit too much? Kids are suggestible, and that makes them vulnerable. So maybe (and I have to give the guy a fair
go
, I suppose) Blaine showed the boy how he’d done the trick, afterwards, to make sure he wasn’t utterly fucked-up by it.

Maybe.

(
How’d
he do it, anyway? Has he got a pierced tongue? Was it an optical illusion?)

His public manner (magic-wise)–now I come to think about it–is not at all what you might expect. In interviews he can be difficult (unhelpful, sarcastic, slow, monosyllabic–that’s all part of his mystique) but on the TV shows he’s almost sycophantic. He
really
wants to please. He actively
seeks
approval. And he’s
clumsy
. Most of the tricks depend on him distracting the attention of the trickee for a second, so he drops an object or stumbles. Then he repeatedly apologises (another distraction, you fucking moron, so stop saying ‘that’s okay’, and start looking at what he’s
doing
…).

He’s not a scary magician. He’s a friendly one. He smiles a lot. He maintains plenty of eye contact (can’t be shifty, can’t look down, can’t seem uncertain…)

Shit
.

(My own eyes fly open again.)

I suddenly remember how he did this whole section on one of the shows from Haiti (or somewhere), a place where magic isn’t just a beguiling branch of the entertainment industry, but a fundamental part of the culture–a
religion
–and he’s doing all these tricks for these people who plainly think he’s the Devil (or at the very least, the Devil’s proxy–his American catspaw). And they’re scared.
Really
scared. And–at points–
he
seems a little scared (by the fear he’s generating).
Man
. That was so…
Uh
…

A second later–I remember how, in another episode, he went into the South American rainforest and met this tribe of primitive people and did a bunch of tricks for them. In the commentary he’s going, ‘They could quite easily kill us if they get at all frightened or suspicious…’, then the next thing we see is Blaine on his knees in front of a pack of rainforest
children
, cutting circles with a knife into the flesh of his hand, then telling one of the kids to open up
his
hand, where he sees–to his palpable horror–that he has the exact-same blood-mark etched into his own tiny palm.

What?
You’re telling me that the tribal elders wouldn’t’ve lopped his damn
balls
off if they’d actually witnessed this baroque spectacle for themselves (and were as ‘dangerous’ as he said they were)? And are
we
–the viewers–seriously meant to believe that these ‘dangerous’ pygmies would just stand casually by and applaud as he fucks around with their young ’uns delicate minds and go, ‘that’s weird, how’d he
do
it?’
Eh?