The ghosts of Curt Finks and Ian Macpherson happened to be together in the vicinity of Dalwhinnie when the distress signal went up on 22 March 2024. The signal related to the two blank pages in Bill Drummond’s memoir The Life Model for that day – specifically the “above” or “over” section for the year 29 April 2003 to 28 April 2004 (AKA “I am Fifty”). (Catch the official version here if you’re reading this on the day itself, or later on its 71 day orbit). We might call it the “conscious” section. But that is in the past, for the ghosts at least. They have promised to supply 1,000 words to fill the gap.
Ghosts are not tied by the rules of mortals. They are more like quantum entities: sometimes wave, other times particle; potentially entangled with other objects; able to be in more than one place (or indeed time) at once. It is not clear whether they were together when the distress signal went up, or whether the flare resulted in the encounter that is their present.
At this point the GANTOB legal team have asked for the following disclaimer: While this pamphlet (number 19 of the 52 Pamphlets) relates to Bill Drummond, it is not by or sanctioned by him. It is the work of GANTOB (the project). And as a piece of fiction, it does not have any connection with anybody else mentioned in the pamphlet, including James Robertson. Any inaccuracies can be landed at the (green) door of GANTOB (the person).
The ghosts are in Dalwhinnie, but it is now early 2004. They are hovering around the person of James Robertson, author. He is wandering about the village, taking in the sights, jotting down notes that will go on to populate his novel The Testament of Gideon Mack (2006), which is thoroughly recommended and goes on to be longlisted for the Booker Prize. The two ghosts are making mental notes as they cannot write or type. They do not tend to forget. But because of their slippery relationship with time, they cannot always be relied upon to give an accurate chronology.
The ghosts have been following the GANTOB saga since their previous contribution midway through the second GANTOB book. They have been itching to make another pitch. Macpherson is the more successful of the two, in terms of overall publication record, but Finks has managed a publication in the intervening period, albeit within a piece contributed by his daughter-in-law Gillian. At 400 words (before adjusting for the publisher’s typos) and with a circulation of 313 copies, it does not compare with Macpherson’s output, but Finks will take what he gets.
The pair of spectres are filling out a mental table – they have ticks in the following boxes for both the Gideon Mack book and the GANTOB project:
– Badenoch connections – tick
– Scottish minister – tick
– Disappearance into a gorge – tick (if we count the recent Thelma and Louise bit cited in a recent pamphlet by Gillian)
– A fictional book within a book plot – tick
– Death – tick
– Morality – tick
– Unreliable narrator – possibly.
And after Bronwyn’s recent pamphlet on porcine-named peaks, our time-fluid spirits cannot help but notice that 2024 is the bicentenary of a book by James Hogg that his namesake references: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).
And this takes us back to another memoir of a justified sinner – The Life Model (2024) – which is about but not by Bill Drummond. Of Justified and Ancient, The KLF and Big in Japan fame. His memoir was written by a cast of 168 people apparently. As previously mentioned, the ghosts are keen to fill in the gap in the book for 2004. (Though an attempt at a memoir, they have not written this piece in any person, first or otherwise. They are ghosts silly!)
By any measure 2004 was a busy year for Drummond, dotting up and down the UK talking about his project “How to be an artist”, cutting up an expensive photo by Richard Long, raising money in the process that he then hopes to destroy. This seems odd to the ghosts, but they have very little “skin in the game”, with no possessions or money. Their spiritual needs are already met. Their existence is dictated by simpler rules, or at least terms that have become familiar through years of use. They are only allowed in places they visited in life, and times when they were alive or existed as ghosts after their death. Other than that they can be flexible. If they have travelled a road from Perth to Inverness for example, they can revisit any spot along that route from the date of their birth onwards. If they had both been to the same spot in the past, they can visit together, in the same time frame. Their encounters documented so far for GANTOB have been around living authors in the lunar landscape around Dalwhinnie. It is not clear to us as GANTOB readers whether there are opportunities outwith such literary congregation for the two to meet. But the accompanying note to this piece explained that they have never been in the right place at the right time to encounter Bill Drummond on journeys that he must have taken on multiple occasions through Badenoch right up to the current time. If they can only rendezvous around authors, their hypothesis is that Drummond did not stop off long enough to write anything of substance in these locations – he was simply passing through, or perhaps breakfasting. The one occasion we have him documented as writing anything in Badenoch (a moratorium, in 1995) was at a trucker cafe in Newtonmore. Our literary ghouls would not frequent a place like that.
Drummond published two pamphlets in the stretch between birthdays, both in 2003: one that might be considered a standalone piece “What The Waves Were Always Saying”, which the two ghouls are delighted to see was written on the occasion of a performance by a band called Cadaverous Condition, in Reykjavik. This was alluded to recently in a pamphlet for the GANTOB project. The other Penkiln Burn pamphlet that year was called “A Proposal” and described Drummond’s Long snipping activities. His next book was Wild Highway (2005), about a trip to central Africa in 1996 with Mark Manning (his co-author) and an entity called Gimpo. The ghosts, knowing the writing process, can imagine that at points in 2004 Drummond was holed up with his co-travellers and editors, slaving over a draft of the text. Eight or nine years is a long time – a labour of love. But they cannot comment: neither ghost has been to the Congo or the type of place where you meet somebody who goes by the name of Zodiac Mindwarp. Or indeed Gimpo.
With that our two ghosts forget Drummond and get back to the story of Gideon Mack and his encounters with the devil. That is much more promising territory. They follow Robertson as he pokes around Dalwhinnie, before he checks into the room that will become the opening scene of his first book. They disappear at that point, because it is getting dark and they do not want their spectral glow to be spotted.
The two ghosts, 22 March 2024
Pamphlet 19 of the #52Pamphlets
A contribution to the 9 Missing Years project
This pamphlet had been paired with RIGHT HAND MAN (by BRONWYN) because it takes an alternative view of the same year. Together they answer question 9 of the 23 Questions: What are the two sides of the same coin?
If you would like to contribute a pamphlet please get in touch.
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