PILES (by KATIE)

This blog is contributed by – by my reckoning at least – the youngest of the GANTOB collaborators.

Katie submitted it to me three weeks ago, since when I have been exploring, GANTOB style, the possibility of recruiting experts in the topics to answer some of the questions that have emerged. So far I have not had success on this particular topic. But as The Tillerman once said, in a slightly different order:

“GANTOB was relentless 

GANTOB was exhausting

GANTOB became an inspiration”

That’s me.

We have two strands at play in the 52 Pamphlets project at the moment.

One is a golden thread of ideas and inspirations that seems to be weaving its way from William Blake to American counterculture in the 1960s, and then a couple of other destinations, before attempting to explain some outstanding mysteries in the world of K.

The other strand is an interest in the mechanisms behind generating and disseminating ideas, particularly in the form of pamphlets. Katie’s piece is very much in this category, and therefore most welcome in providing balance to the blog. And she does, of course, by nature of her relationship to the funder of GANTOB, have some particular insights that we probably wouldn’t hear from anybody else.

Last summer there were lots of GANTOB pamphlets disseminated across the UK, with the aim of promoting the original Kompetition. Over the winter – and with my change in job from travelling salesperson to telesales operator – the approach has shifted online, with blogs and electronic dissemination of longer pieces – what we’re calling pamphlets, but are really just 0s and 1s in the digital realm. With the peak of the spring bulbs upon us and lengthening days extending our range outdoors I think that we’re ready to return to a more physical approach.

So I am excited to say that 10 copies of The Photographer’s piece 6 Times, uploaded to the blog yesterday, have been printed in a booklet and are being disseminated overnight to selected independent bookshops in north Edinburgh. These will be delivered by the food and literature delivery rider who has worked shifts for the project at various stages. I have no idea what the bookshops will make of the pamphlet/ booklet. Perhaps they will recycle them. But hopefully they will place them on the counter ready to be picked up. GANTOB (the project) thrives on collaboration, and some new participants recruited through these booklets would hopefully take the 52 Pamphlets book (published January 2025) in new directions.

Over to you Katie, or should I say “The Foundation Doktor”.

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I leave the hospital on time for once, and hunt down a bus from the strip of stops strategically placed between car parks. No bike for me tonight. Some idiot has locked their frame onto mine at the bike shelter. I refrained from retaliating by locking mine onto his. Has to be a bloke.

I catch the next bus into central Edinburgh and walk down the cobbled streets to my grandparents’ flat. There is still some light in the sky as I take the shortcut along Saxe Coburg Street towards Stockbridge. I can hear the cats before I open the door into the lobby. They are standing on hind legs, crying behind the inner glass door, furious. They are hours late for their evening feed. I shut the front door, securing the airlock between their world and outside. They force me to dish out their dry food before I can start on the errand that my grandfather had tasked me with.

“To The Foundation Doktor,” the diktat started, “we are going to be away for a few weeks, on ‘kultural activities’. Please could you flat/cat sit? It will be a great opportunity for you to stretch out after the constraints of your digs. I wonder if you could also help with a projekt that I am exploring for a GANTOB pamphlet. I’ve left everything you need beside my desk. A few leads. The cats need 23 grammes of salmon pellets in the morning, and the same amount of chicken at night. And the usual business with the litter tray. Gratefully yours, The Benefaktor”.

And a few minutes later, from my granny Urs: “Thanks for doing this. Don’t forget to top up the water every day. Have a few friends round if you like, but don’t go wild”.

What do they think I do all day? I have another set of 12.5 hour night shifts coming up. I would much rather roll out of bed in the hospital accommodation and toddle along to the wards than have to bus or cycle all the way to the other side of town. And I have a couple of weekends away planned. I called my granny, but they were off already, heading to an undisclosed location in Europe. “I’m sure it’ll be fine dear. Must go.”

I locate the extra key that my grandfather keeps in a freezer bag in the coffee beans at the bottom of the chest freezer and let myself into his study (“The Kino”). I have rarely been inside. Recently it’s only been for GANTOB discussions, until Urs was inducted into the secret after asking about the grapefruit logo that turns up whenever we are logged into the shared GANTOB accounts on our phones. The desk is situated between bookcases of film reels and boxed papers. The blinds are drawn to protect the paintings and spines of the books on the wall behind me from the afternoon sun. No risk of that in February.

There are piles either side of the desk, others spilling out of the in tray onto the desk, and even some propped up papers on his revolving chair. What a mess. He’s obviously been flat out on one of his hare-brained schemes. I check the spelling (hare or hair?) and the definitions: “ill judged”. Is that a fair criticism, after everything that I’ve done to enable him? Probably.

I skate over the books. They look heavy (topic wise). The FT and Guardian piles are precarious, so I ignore them. I sit down with the top few issues of London Review of Books. Not the sealed ones, some going back years, in white envelopes or recyclable wrappers. There’s a reasonably recent one – 30 November 2023, and it’s opened to page 22-23: “A National Evil”. On the surface, it’s a medical piece. Quite interesting really, about iodine deficiency and supplementing salt in Swiss cantons. But I’m not at work, and I’ve done enough revising recently for Membership exams. But there is also a lot of social commentary and cultural interest. It’s clearly caught my grandfather’s attention. There’s a little yellow sticky marker beside a paragraph on the first page. It’s about a GP called Heinrich Hunziker: “Hunziker was also a poet, who wrote short, formally precise verses of yearning and revelation that he published in slim volumes”. The yellow arrow points at the last two words. “Pamphlets? Must get” is written in The Benefaktor’s distinctive back slanting capitals. On a Post-It note he has listed a few titles and prices, from Abebooks and a couple of Swiss and German bookshop websites. I wouldn’t put it past him. Searching them out on my phone I reckon that some of the titles are by the wrong Hunziker, and others are too late to count as his early slim volumes. Hunziker, born 1879, died 1982. Jonah Goodman in The LRB is writing about the 1910s. But the relatively easy to find Die Idylle vom Holz that The Benefaktor has listed is from 1951. We need to rewind 40 years. I poke around a bit on a few websites, but there are too many false leads, and I don’t speak German unfortunately. I wonder what he’s looking for, but I know that he loves a bit of intrigue. “Revelation”. That would be enough of a catalyst. I wonder if this is something that the libraries he frequents could help with. But perhaps it’s tricky if it’s in German. And what role did pamphlets have in Hunziker’s medical work, persuading Swiss politicians that a centuries old problem affecting hundreds of babies every year had a quick fix?

I wonder if that’s everything that my grandfather is looking at. “A few leads”. Well, I’ve hit a brick wall with this article so I turn on a few pages. Quite a few pages. These are long articles! There are no further handwritten notes about Hunziker. But the next article, “How to Plan an Insurrection”, has more of the neon stickies. A piece by Niamh Gallagher on James Connolly, Scottish revolutionary, born to Irish parents, grew up in Cowgate, Edinburgh, executed in 1916 following the Easter Rising. My grandfather has marked out the following section: “and like many of the Scottish socialist activists of his generation, he was a prolific journalist, producing pamphlets and essays…”. And there is another list of references that he has tracked down from an internet search presumably. This is well outside the comfort zone of GANTOB and her art project. From what I can see from a quick internet search, the text of at least some of these pamphlets is collected in various books. But if I know The Benefaktor he will be seeking out originals, or finding out what became of them.

“Legacy”. When you’re 83 years old (like a lot of my patients) many people give up any interest in that word. They’re caught up in their own issues, where they’re going to live, wondering when their family are going to visit. Not The Benefaktor. He is caught up in his projects (and projekts). Have his cultural investments allowed others to get their message out there? Is his name in the programme, the sleeve notes, the credits? (In kontrast, he keeps his name out of GANTOB’s kultural aktivities to avoid kross kontamination).

So, what is he planning? I think back to regular GANTOBer Missi Formation and her request to hear less of The Benefaktor. But also her claim to be an anarchist and her goading about the cosiness of some of the December 2023 posts on the GANTOB blog. And recalling the “Welcome to the Dark Ages” stuff from Capt. Apophenia’s recent pamphlet “The Magic Number” I remember that revolution was in the air in The JAMs’ book 2023 (which I still haven’t finished). But that is not what GANTOB (the projekt) is about. Then again, some of the advice in the first GANTOB book was pretty edgy. There were quotes on Death, War, Protest. A picture of a burning figure on a bridge. But surely The Benefaktor is not planning to break out, foment riots. There’s an Alan Moore quote in one of the chapters: “Don’t leave home without your sword – your intellect.” No, I cannot accept that The Benefaktor is planning anything more than writing about these subjects.

I’m exhausted after all this reading and searching. Violence is not my thing, even on TV. I log on to Netflix on my laptop and flick through the list of romcoms that are suggested. It knows me too well. But there’s nothing that appeals. I am unsettled. I head to bed and scroll through dozens of posts about kittens, and puppies, the Japanese macaque that had just been recovered near the Highland Wildlife Park in Badenoch, another about a fugitive raccoon in Sunderland. That’s more like it.

That night, sleeping in my grandparents’ spare room, I dream of towers. I’m surrounded, speeding through a city, but viewing it from above like a computer game or drone. At first I think it’s New York, from the height of the buildings and density of the streets. But then I realise that it’s George IV Bridge, looking down onto the Cowgate. Layer upon layer of windows, families, lives. But something is different. Gas lamps on the streets. Candles in windows. And a glimpse of a figure bent over books scribbling ideas for pamphlets. I detect an urgency, a clear sense of purpose. Did pamphlets ever change the world, in Switzerland, Scotland or anywhere else, and how would we know? And I suspect that is the task that The Benefaktor has set us. Submit your responses to this question, in the form of a pamphlet, via gantob.blog/pamphlet

Katie, uploaded 2/3/2024

Number 10 in the #52Pamphlets