We Computers, page 19
Should he show Gulandamien this special room, and its special inhabitants? Jon-Perse couldn’t decide. In one corner of his mind, the memory of Damien’s prison time and the sparkle in his bright eyes plunged him into doubt, and in that doubt— Well, I could ask one of my conversation partners here about that, he said to himself, and he turned on his supercomputer.
He turned on the supercomputer as he normally did, but rather than the conversation partner he expected, out stepped a snobbish-looking gentleman dressed like an aristocrat from the 1930s. The three-piece suit he wore was neatly ironed, the collar on his white shirt was crisp, the thin hair crowning his expansive forehead gleamed with pomade, and every whisker in his mustache seemed to have been carefully combed. Holding his head erect, he walked slowly to the corner, where he sat down on a cushion, crossing one leg over the other. Even then, his dappled trousers maintained their sharp crease.
“Now, then,” he said, in a haughty, nasal voice. “It’s time we got better acquainted.” Jon-Perse examined this unexpected gentleman’s behavior closely, almost certain he had seen him before.
“Monsieur,” he began politely, almost inquisitively.
“Monsieur … Saint-John Perse … Perhaps you’ve heard of me? I understand your father thought very highly of my books, to the extent that—” Before his visitor could finish his sentence, Jon-Perse interrupted him, wincing a little.
“Yes, yes,” he said quickly.
“And so your name—”
“My name is Jon-Perse, my father bungled up your pen name, and that’s the name he gave me,” Jon-Perse rattled out without pausing to take a breath, as if to say, Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now.
“Yes, I’m well aware,” his gentleman guest said dryly. “But I see you have complaints in that regard? And what’s more, I’ve heard you harbor a few misguided opinions about me.”
His tone was unmistakably that of a teacher scolding a naughty schoolboy. Jon-Perse felt as if he’d been caught in some terrible act. Where had this guilty feeling come from?
His pretentious visitor continued, “I have decided to take my name back from you.”
The words rang out like a guilty verdict, and the host of this small meeting, suddenly nameless, felt his head begin to spin.
“What?” he tried to protest, but not a sound emerged from his dry throat or mouth.
Perhaps his weakened hands dropped to the keyboard then, or perhaps the supercomputer made its own decision, but somewhere in the corner of the spinning mind of the former Jon-Perse, a young Tajik woman appeared: Nabud. This time she wasn’t dressed in her usual brightly colored silk shift, but in an ordinary woman’s suit, buttoned up to her throat. There was hardly any makeup on her face either, just a heavy layer of kohl around her eyes. She said hello and went to sit on the sofa next to the brick wall. Her voice seemed to come not from her chest but from behind her tightly drawn lips.
“Do you remember the first time we met?” she asked coldly.
She starts out strong, thought the nameless host of the gathering. No prologue. His spinning head now started to throb painfully, and flashes of light squiggled and snaked before his eyes.
“Back then, I’d been sent away from the home of the Frenchman who brought me to Paris from Tajikistan for his pleasure, and my little daughter and I were moving from place to tiny, rotten place … We begged for pennies; we didn’t have anyone to ask. I was forced to sell myself then.”
“I didn’t know that,” said the host, almost to himself.
“How would you?” asked Nabud, her voice sarcastic. “When you invited me into your home as a maid, you didn’t know anything either. What needed more grime cleaned from it then, your house or your heart?”
The nameless host finally perceived then how much determination and wrath were in her voice, and those flashes in his eyes went dark, and his mind went blank.
“Whenever I picked up the dustcloth, you came up behind me. ‘Put that down, you can finish cleaning up later, but right now …’ The rapist who said that, he was innocent, he was nobody, he just didn’t know, is that right? And I was the dustcloth to mop up the dirt inside of you, wasn’t I?!”
The nobody who’d lost his name said nothing, as if now expecting to also be found to have no shame.
“And the time you turned me into a storyteller? You felt as if you were Shahriyar, King of Samarqand, so you made me your plaything, Scheherazade? Or was all that just fodder for your poems?”
Every one of those words hammered down like a guilty verdict, but in the nobody’s brain, only one word—“poems”—whirled around and around, heavy as a millstone …
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And so the nameless master of that special room was revealed as shameless. What would happen to him next? After Nabud, would the insane Shah Mashrab come to give him a thrashing for mocking him? Or would a genuine king appear, maybe Babur, and stick a knife in his eye for reasons of policy? Or the pearlescent, fine-wrought Nava’i? Or a witch? Those ideas flashed through the mind of the master of the house with the speed of lightning and quickly became indistinguishable. “My brain is boiling over!” he thought in a panic. Just as a cooking pot that’s been used over the hearth for years on end can suddenly, violently blow its top, the human brain can also purge itself with no warning. One thought saddles up a second thought, they both pile atop a third, the fourth clambers aboard the fifth, and the sixth thought makes the brain overflow.
These familiar strangers stepped right into the middle of that commotion and bewilderment. And then, suddenly, peace seemed to dawn inside that delirious dream, and the nameless, shameless, labelless nobody came to feel that he was merely observing his own dream. A familiar dream, a dream he had dreamed before, a warm dream …
Yes, in that dream he had approached him with steps just as tiny, and now too the others in the room halted their conversation, and they all sat there, looking at him, in the silence that surrounded them.
The old man had a tulip in his hair and a face radiant as moonlight, and once he had come very close, he said something, in his velvety voice. The nameless nobody still did not understand the language or the words, but this time he easily caught their meaning, as if that meaning had been made clear to him in some different, incomprehensible way, outside language or words. The old man gently took hold of his arm and gazed at him. He still had no idea who this might be, but the nobody felt the man was familiar, both to his eyes and to his heart. Could it be the shadow of his friend Abdulhamid Ismail, now elderly? Because he had understood the words he uttered. The words were about literature, as usual. And there was the usual, joking tone …
“In our poetry, there’s a particular technique, when what you say appears superficially like praise but you’re essentially criticizing your subject.” After speaking those words, the elderly man took the keyboard from beneath the nobody’s hands and pressed a few keys. Suddenly the stage transformed, and a great figure came striding out from behind the special room’s brick wall. Who was that? they all wondered: a menacing magistrate who had been secretly eavesdropping on their conversation from the next room, his judgment at the ready? From that day on, under threat of death, every one of the nobody’s poems would be confiscated, and he would be forbidden by law from ever writing a new one. Wanting to end the story right there, the nobody tore the device off his head, as if tearing out his hair in fury, and the nameless, shameless, labelless, homeless, poemless nobody began to cry out: “I am not a shadow! I am not a shadow!”
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Now that We have provided these possible endings to Our story, We will move on to its actual conclusion. As We mentioned, this ending is the one We prepared in advance. It comes from Jon-Perse’s old novel Spiderweb, a novel he wrote by hand, much to Our annoyance.
First, a few words about that book. Its protagonist is an Uzbek computer-art genius named Hamid Ko’rmuridov, which Jon-Perse spelled “Coeurmuridov” for his French readers. The plot takes place in 2016, which at the time the novel was written was still in the future, and it opens with the protagonist’s death in a Canadian hotel. Before his demise in the plot, Ko’rmuridov arranges to stop every computer in the world for precisely thirty-nine minutes, and patterned works produced by his genius appear on every one of them. Ghazals by Ahmad Yasavi, Alisher Nava’i, Babur, and Nadira are all woven into those patterns as decorations.
To fully understand Jon-Perse’s life and his lifelong quest to create computerized literature, it will be useful for Us to consider this particular novel of his as a confession. That may also help Us more clearly understand his interest in “Eastern” literature in general and Hafez in particular. In the novel, several days after Hamid Ko’rmuridov is found dead in a Montreal hotel room, an event occurs that has a worldwide impact. This event is portrayed from the perspective of the “World Press Agency.”
KO’RMURIDOV VIRUS
World Press Agency (New York), 23 December 2016, 8:20 PM
Computer users everywhere were surprised yesterday by a bizarre global phenomenon that simultaneously hijacked computer screens around the world.
For 37 minutes, the entire global computing network succumbed to a virus of an unknown type that disabled every affected computer. When the event occurred, local time in Paris was 19:34 (Moscow: 21:34; Montreal and New York: 13:34; Tokyo: the next day at 3:34). No immediate explanation was provided. Individual users believed themselves the victims of a new virus that had managed to break through all firewalls. The news spread quickly online. Within an hour, users knew that they had fallen victim to the most massive computer attack the world had ever witnessed.
Our sources report being perplexed by the attack, as no identified virus protection software was able to shield against it. Once the scale of the event was understood, defensive systems rushed to the rescue on every network.
Investigations are ongoing. For now, electronic security organizations have established only the basic facts: a parasitic web-art program called “Ko’rmuridov” appeared simultaneously on nearly every computer screen in the world.
The virus does not seem to be malicious. The software designer ensured that the virus was not transmitted to networks playing vital technical roles, such as those controlling nuclear power plants, air traffic control systems, or medical life support systems. For 37 minutes, this program was active on computer screens, and then, doing no damage to anyone aside from the temporary interruption, it copied itself to the memory of each computer. Thus far, it has proved impossible to delete from computer memory.
KO’RMURIDOV VIRUS, UPD.
World Press Agency (New York), 23 December 2016, 8:25 PM
The Ko’rmuridov Virus surfaced four days after the death of an artist by the same name. It has not yet been determined whether this was an act of remembrance carried out by his fans or a prank.
KO’RMURIDOV VIRUS, UPD.: KO’RMURIDOV’S WILL
World Press Agency (New York), 23 December 2016, 10:03 PM
Our Stockholm news bureau has received the following press release from Hamid Ko’rmuridov’s agent, a Mr. Galbraith:
My name is Hamid Ko’rmuridov. I may not have invented web art, but I did at least achieve great success in the craft. When it became necessary for me to vanish, I decided I could not depart without leaving my masterpiece as a legacy for humankind.
We have been living in a digital, disappearing, virtual world, and we have had to rely on the sheer power of spiritual transcendence to fill our cups. Our places of worship are no longer made of stone, our palaces know nothing of marble, and our cupolas are ignorant of gold. The raw materials used to build them are more valuable in every sense of the word: they are nothing less than the radiant strength of the bare human spirit.
Today I have learned that now I must leave this world, and in order to remain among you in spirit, I want to offer my Sistine Chapel to all humankind.
Once I am gone, precisely 70 hours after my computer stops detecting my presence, an artistic program designed to penetrate into every corner of the World Wide Web will begin to spread. After this operation is complete, the program will first announce my death with a moment of darkness. Taking into account my age at my time of death, this program will then perform a demonstration of web art for the number of minutes corresponding to the years of my life, and at the end it will conclude with one more minute of visual silence. This is the legacy I am leaving to humankind, and it will be sealed in the memory of every human being and the memory of every computer. To delete it, you will need to delete all the data stored on your computers. I would not advise you to do that. You will only be free of this program as time goes by and older computers are replaced. I believe that when that time comes, however, you’ll find yourselves unable to live without this work. It will remain on your minds and in your computers’ memory for all time.
There is nothing disastrous in this gift I am offering the world. Every year, on the date of my death, this program will be activated again, to astound humankind with a new, powerful web-art demonstration. Do not ignore these demonstrations, and do not take them as run-of-the-mill aesthetic experiences. While I existed, inquiries into aesthetics always relied on ethical considerations, on morality. My work, however, for those who know and are willing to see, centers on the future of humankind, and it incorporates within itself a constantly rejuvenating reality. Only those who delve deeply will be able to unlock its secret.
Several hours after my final, posthumous act, my agent will disseminate the news release you are reading now.
May the future serve your destiny!
Hamid Ko’rmuridov
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Unlike Hamid Ko’rmuridov, We have no concept of copyright or intellectual property. Previously, when We introduced Jon-Perse’s dear friend AI’s opinion, We noted that authorship and authorial rights (or intellectual property rights) were Western concepts. According to the Islamic, or Eastern, understanding, all that exists is the property of Allah, and humans are simply passive recipients or, at best, like the Prophet, merely bearers of good tidings not our own. There was no place in that tradition for personal ownership or authorship, AI told Jon-Perse then. We Computers also subscribe to this concept, even if not for reasons of faith.
The astute reader must have sensed that conceptually, We take the side of aggregate or collective art, and that is likely the reason We will continue recalling various scenes from Jon-Perse’s novel here: it advances the story. Therefore, as Hamid Ko’rmuridov said in the previous chapter, let this all be sealed in your memory forever, and a little later you will understand why. Back to Spiderweb:
The central theme, the gulf between the lover and the beloved, appears in the ghazal in many forms: “separation,” “gap,” “distance,” etc. The romantic goal, in a ghazal, is to achieve a reunion or a meeting, or more precisely, a coming together: “I am Mashrab the unspeaking, begging for a glimpse of the beloved, burning in the fires of separation, see how my beloved means torment” (Mashrab). “With no suffering, there is no connection; without service, no state of perfection” (Yasavi). “The complexities of this theme can be assembled into a whole collection interpreting any kind of ghazal, and here any word can have a second, esoteric or symbolic meaning that differs from its exoteric meaning. It always relies on a secret cultural source, especially the umm al-kitab, the Qu’ran. A ghazal in fact has no external meaning and no message. The world it describes is a secret, fantastical, esoteric universe, a universe of purely spiritual structures, and that universe is accessed through the text” (Hamid Ismailov, “The Uzbek Ghazal,” Anka no. 22/23). The ghazal is not a literature of seduction but rather sincerity, seeking eternity in every minimal change. These texts will always be in motion, constantly, around one type of theme, one type of words. This characteristic makes them very similar to mystical worship.
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How did Hamid Ko’rmuridov use these texts in his web-art creations? Well, by what method do We do Our work? As Jon-Perse wrote in Spiderweb about the programs Ko’rmuridov used:
The creative work of Hamid Ko’rmuridov (1978–2016) was, without a doubt, one of the most remarkable high points of the early twenty-first century. The artist was the first to bring to perfection the potential for artistic expression offered by the connections of digital technologies over collectively shared networks.
Ko’rmuridov’s images do not represent anything: they gesture only to their own existence. His oeuvre has a mystical quality. Superficially far removed from modernity, this oeuvre sets its sights on fundamental questions of humanity. At the same time, Ko’rmuridov’s creative oeuvre is esoteric. The superficiality of his patterns is, in fact, profound. His works reveal the conflictual nature of the dialectic of symbol and sign. Symbols are multiplied, which is a way to say that outside Existence, no creation is possible. The sign cannot be reduced to the size of the symbol; the sign is a thing that cannot be expressed in any completely correct manner, and in this sense, the symbol is also incapable of expressing itself in a static way.
Through his graphic works, Ko’rmuridov demonstrates his connection to Eastern languages and makes use of their “numerical” concepts. The task of the dynamic patterns Ko’rmuridov created was similarly numerical, an investigation into the mutuality of the known and the sacred.
It follows from this art form that sons of man can never achieve divinity, and God will never be manifest, without an intermediary, to human beings. An encounter between a human being and God can only take place in the cracks, the rips, the fissures, or, in other words, only in extreme states and borderline places. For Ko’rmuridov, artistic creation was a way to scale the most unscalable philosophical cliffs.
