Episode written & produced by Ross Sutherland

Voices: Ross Sutherland, Luke Wright

Transcribed by Sathya Honey Victoria

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 Imaginary Advice, Episode 43

Exorcist Martin Cole

Ross: Hiya, welcome to the podcast. 

Um, quick note at the front: I’m doing a special Imaginary Advice live show on Tuesday, November 7th at Battersea Arts Centre in London. It’s gonna be a very visual show. Most of it is not gonna make it onto the podcast. It’s gonna be its own separate kind of live visual thing. Um, we’ve got guest performances from Joe Dunthorne and Chris Hicks plus uh, I’ll be presenting a couple of new things, including uh, a new essay film that I made about Howard from the Halifax adverts. 

It’s uh, it’s pay what you can. Show starts at eight o’clock. You can reserve a ticket from uh, Battersea Arts Centre’s website. That’s bac.org.uk. Um, hope to see some of you there.

[loads cassette into stereo]

So, uh…[pushes cassette in] This episode. We have a ghost story for Halloween. [horns from old-fashioned horror film] I should warn you in advance that um, it contains uh, it contains violence and uh, references to devils and stuff so um, make sure you’re cool with that before going any further [horror film horns].

This piece here is a-is a kind of follow-up to a story that I told at the start of the year. It’s a story about an exorcist. Now, you don’t have to have listened to the other previous story beforehand. [horror film horns]. Um, this one is actually about like a totally different exorcist. It-it just, it just exists in the same universe as the other story. That’s all. However, if you like this one, then I recommend going back and checking out the other one as well. 

OK. [takes big breath] So. If you’re sitting comfortably…Hang on. [clears throat]

[continues in demon voice:] If you’re…[unintelligible demon language] OK, that’s better. Ooh, yeah. OK.

[dark music building]

Demon Ross continues: So, if you’re sitting comfortably…Let’s begin.

________________________________

[glitchy dark music - tape hiss]

Sinister, elegant voice: In those days radio was a power and a light in the land. People in their homes at night gathered by the radio and heard the crackling, stilted reports of a world they had only read about and now imagined more intensely. Radio fixes the person but frees the imagination. And the people most affected by it were those who lived and listened alone.

[music cuts out]

[Imaginary Advice]

________________________________

It um, it all started on uh [vespa zooming off], on that bus in Italy. 

[city street - traffic]

It was…1988? Rome… was the city. The bus was on the Via Catania. I remember that much. Not too far from the Basilica di San Lorenzo. Somehow the bus driver was overtaken [alien creature sounds] by an evil spirit. [tense percussive music begins]

By overtaken I don’t mean the demon cut him off in traffic, you understand. By overtaken I mean…his soul.

[creature noises grow louder - percussion - screaming]

[tape stops]

Interviewer: Hang on, can we back it up a bit?

Exorcist: Oh, yeah-yeah-yeah. Sure, sure, we can.

Interviewer: How did the possession come about?

Exorcist: Well, um. I’ll tell you what I know.

[tape starts rolling again]

Now, according to the other passengers on the bus, the bus journey began as, you know, as typical bus journeys do. There had been some disgusting smells, some sporadic weeping, the occasional scream, but, you know, nothing more conspicuously demonic than the traditional bus experience. [street noise - coughing - chattering on the bus]

[tense music starts again] The change happened just as the bus passed the Cultural Centre. [creature noises] Several passengers reported a sudden drop in temperature. Shortly after, the driver—his name was “Teo Brasó”—parked across three lanes of traffic, [cars stopping, honking] stood up, dropped his trousers, and changed the sign on the front of his bus to “VACCINATI STO CAZZO” (word-for-word translation: “vaccinate this dick”).

[honking - music continues]

Brasó then sat back down in his chair, soiled himself and then continued to listen to the bus stereo. A cassette of U2, as I would discover to much disturbance.

[U2 – “With or Without You” playing over traffic]

Whenever a passenger tried to leave the bus, the driver would fix them with a stare in the rear mirror then begin to croon the names of their dead childhood pets in a sarcastic voice.

Driver, in a sing-song voice: Bianca, Bianca! [laughing] Oh, Bianca!

The demon repeated this niche mind-reading trick on every passenger that tried to leave.

Driver: Oh, Bruno! Oh, Baffi. Pavarotti! [demonic laughter]

[music continues] Each time, the passenger immediately returned to their seat, pierced by an ancient and confusing grief.

When the bus began to levitate off the ground, the police cordoned the site. [police sirens] Soon there were a hundred bystanders, maybe more.

It was then that flames began to lick the outside of the bus. [fire roaring] Crowds looked on in horror as the vehicle was engulfed, now resembling a huge burning yule-log in the sky.

[music cuts out - clock ticking heavily]

Meanwhile, I was working in the waiting room of the Salvator Mundi dental school, giving small blessings to those in pain. 

I’d been in Rome for about six years, now in my final year of training at the seminary. Not quite a priest but uh, no longer a layman.

The dental school was a dreary placement, but I tried my best to embrace the work. Even though the junior dentists all wore leather trousers and stank. [sighs] I finished blessing a young lady’s crowned molar around 2 p.m.

[music continues - traffic]

Heading out to lunch, I could see the streets were gridlocked. Soon enough, I had followed the traffic jam to the source. I turned the corner [chuckles in disbelief] and there it was before me:

A bus, engulfed in flames, somehow held fast in the sky. And there, somewhere inside the inferno, the sound of U2. [“With or Without You” playing in the distance] I think he was playing The Joshua Tree. 

No matter how scared I was, I could not turn away. [music and sound cut to silence] I could not turn back. [coughs for a while]

[mournful organ music starts]

I was um…I was so young back then. Young, and iiiiincredibly stupid. I wore a crucifix earring in one ear and referred to songs as “jams.” I thought ‘Chairman Mao’ was pronounced ‘Chairman Mayo.’ 

My spiritual education was hardly better. Back then I would have called it intuitive, but I was lazy. And arrogant. I see that now. I was not ready to hear the voice of a demon.

I’d met several exorcists since coming to Rome. I loved their gravelly aloofness, their obtuseness. As the frontline against Satan, exorcists were not required to host happy-clappy charity events or make appearances at bingo halls or smile. You’d never see an exorcist with an acoustic guitar. They were fuckers. Conceited, nasty. The Church made huge allowances for their behaviour. I thought they all looked like ageing rockstars. I idolised them. Though I was far from ready to carry the name exorcist.

[music continues - police siren in the distance]

Nevertheless, in the words of Pope Pius XII, “the Devil loves a chicken, which is why you gotta beef.” Which uh, sounded better when he said it back in the 1940s. But the essence of the quote remains true, even if you strip out all of Pope Pius’ signature hipster slang.

The essence is this, I think: Satan is always banking on our cowardice. When we shit bricks, the Devil builds temples. 

So, should you ever feel his hand on your shoulder, you don’t run, you don’t flinch, you just have to turn and go at that motherfucker…as hard as you possibly can.

[music continues - sirens]

[tape stops]

Interviewer: Before we get into the exorcism—

Exorcist: —Yeah?—

Interviewer: —tell me a bit more about your training.

Exorcist: Yeah, yeah, sure-sure-sure. Well. Well, um. I believe that I knew the basics.

It was um, one of the older priests—Father John, you know him. He was the one who first explained it to me. [music ethereal starts] Father John believed that a haunting should be considered the highest form of art.

A haunted house, therefore, was a kind of gallery. One should walk slowly, room to room, and allow oneself to contemplate the various expressions and materials. He insisted that all demonic behaviour should be appraised using exactly the same methods that one would apply to the Old Masters.

Interviewer: That’s a nice way of looking at things.

Exorcist: Yeah, yeah, I found it instructive. 

Interviewer: Quite respectful, considering you’re talking about the Devil here.

Exorcist, quietly: Yeah, well. It’s uh, [smiling] it’s complicated. 

[beautiful choral music]

Years before the incident on Via Catania, over coffee, Father John gave me his full lecture on Art and the Devil. 

“Man has forgotten how to look,” he told me, throwing a biscuit at a pigeon. [pigeon fluttering]

Father John: Just go to the-to the Galleria Borghese. Look at the people as they walk room to room. You’ll see. Every idiot staring at the captions, reading all the captions. Oh, yeah. Raphael, he lived on so-and-so street. Oh, look, it says Bernini was influenced by woof woof woof…Reading all the plaques, reading all the guidebooks. Oh yes, such, such lovers of art! 

But only the briefest, briefest glance at the paintings themselves. Why? Cos we have forgotten how to look, do you understand?

[frustrated sigh] Of course, the Church is the same, you know. We obsess over the curation of God. Few remember how to look at God himself.

Exorcist: So-so-so, Father, you uh, you think of God as a kind of…artist?

Father John: Yeah. Sometimes artist, sometimes architect…Of course, my speciality is uh, the art of Lucifer. Demons are far more prolific than angels, anyway and a damn sight more pretentious, too.

I remember looking at my reflection in Father John’s massive aviators. He raised his teaspoon to my eyes almost as if he planned to pop one of them out. 

Father John: The work of the Devil is all around us. Do we fight it by ignoring it? No! It gets stronger if we ignore it. So we must turn and face it, Martin. Absorb it. Analyse it. We must become connoisseurs of the Devil’s work. With mastery comes control. And mastery begins with learning how to look.

Take my word Martin, if you can’t lose yourself inside an image, if you can’t spend a whole day in front of a Caravaggio…you will never see the face of Satan.

And then he tapped me hard on the nose with his spoon.

[beautiful choral music continues - sirens]

Most evenings Father John and I would walk together to the record shop on Via Nomentana to check out the new vinyl releases. Despite my academic failings, John had a soft spot for me. I think it was because we both smoked so much. Also, Father John had once seen me with a copy of Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade. This had seemingly sealed the deal on our friendship.

Interviewer: Good album.

Exorcist: It is. On the way home from the record shop, John continued his lecture on the paranormal.

[walking down busy street]

Father John: You should treat a haunting as a-as a kind of…metaphor. Demons, they-they twist reality. It’s their material. It’s the same way that a-that a sculptor bends steel. They bend the world, and they use it to make artistic statements.

If a demon decides to fill a sink with slime, or uh, kill a field full of cows, or just appear in a children’s bedroom and do some performance poetry…it’s just working stuff out. Yeah? That stuff that it’s working out, it might be political, it might be personal, they’re probably working it out as they go. They’re reaching out to the rest of the demon community looking for some sense of emotional validation.

Exorcist: So, what? It’s like a kind of…bad poetry?

Father John: In a way. [chuckles] In a way all supernatural activity is the poetry of Satan.

And we are his harshest critics, Martin. Only the exorcist possesses the necessary education required to properly critique a demon. The exorcist is the red pen of God.

In general, demons don’t give a shit what mankind thinks of their art. Does a sculptor care what a lump of clay thinks about the history of ceramics? No! Of course not. It’s the same here: a demon doesn’t care if Barry the bank manager gets it or not—it’s not for them!

But they listen to priests, Martin. As scholars of imagery, the demon secretly respects our opinion on their art. So, when, [wheeze-chuckle] so when we slag off their efforts, they pay attention. You bet they do.

And if we show no mercy, if we utterly destroy their faith in their ability to create…they will return to Hell and give up on art for good. This is why we are here, Martin: to protect humanity from the pretentious manipulations of Lucifer. 

[eerie children’s song, street sounds]

That night, the two of us sat on a bench at the edge of the Piazza Navona. We smoked a packet of Nazionalis and listened to Father John’s Walkman, one earphone each. Father John stared up at the moon as if it was an exhaust pipe right into heaven.

[eerie song continues]

It was this night, or a night like it, that I made the decision to devote myself to the path of the exorcist. To map the invisible space between prayers and dreams. To become a connoisseur of evil, just as Father John had wished for me. I would learn how to dismantle even the most fiendish of the Devil’s art projects. I would smooth out the sound-poetry of madmen and calm the freaked pets of Rome.

Meanwhile in Hell, the demons would obsess over my critiques. They’d give me some slanderous nickname. Something like “Father Fucknuts” or “The Priest of Dicks.” The filthier the name, the clearer their longing to be judged by me. They would scream my name. Hating me, loving me. All Hell would yearn for my disapproval.

[tape stops]

Interviewer: OK. So, you had your calling.

Exorcist: I did.

Interviewer: Mhmm.

Exorcist: The problem is…progress was slow. 

[solemn music starts]

Despite Father John’s emphasis on experience over curation, I was prohibited from joining him on the job. Instead, I was carted off to do standard pastoral work: me and my fellow seminarian Lou were sent to hospitals, prisons, roller-skating rinks…wherever a man of the cloth may prove an amusing comfort.

Meanwhile, Father John continued to carry out his exorcisms in secret, answering only to Archbishop Barbara. I only caught fragments of Father John’s stories, overheard anecdotes from the shadows of Vatican City. Father John unleashing a withering review on a haunted slaughterhouse. Father John’s hatchet job on a shop full of bleeding statues in Milan. Father John utterly destroying a talking goat in a debate on aesthetics. Each tale more tantalising than the last.

Only once was I permitted to accompany Father John into the field. A post-box in Garbatella was somehow continually filling itself with rabbit droppings. The case was deemed safe enough for a novice to attend. 

I was tasked with holding open the bag as Father John posted twenty copies of the Bible through the letterbox. As an example of the Devil’s work, it was somewhat underwhelming. The old priest tossed off his criticisms with apposite scorn.

“Barely a joke,” he whispered, “painfully unfunny. You must fuck off, I command you in the name of the Almighty Lord, Word of God the Father. Fuck off with you smirking student humour, so pathetic, it’s been done, now begone. Begone.” 

No matter how patronising my role, I still managed to mess up my duties. I accidentally touched the cursed post-box during the ritual and have been mildly dyslexic ever since. [chuckles] Is it any wonder that the Church refused my requests to accompany Father John again?

Interviewer: Mhmm.

Exorcist: In place of exorcisms, I visited galleries. [steps echoing in great hall] The Uffizi in Florence. The Bargello National Gallery. And Sant’Ignazio, the Church of Illusions, where Andrea Pozzo’s trompe l’œil ceiling seemed to bend reality around itself. This was to be my training, such as it was. I tried to teach myself to look deeper, look harder. My eyes would swim in art until I would learn to see what others could not. 

Perhaps if only I had done more, stayed later, brought more sandwiches, it would have made a difference. I had so much more to learn.

[nervous percussive music starts again] For when the time came, and I turned the corner onto Via Catania that day, [sounds of crowd and flames slowly returning] when I finally found myself standing in front of a piece of bona fide demonic art…[sad laugh] he was all too much for me. 

The closest feeling that I can compare it to was age nine when I bought a cinema ticket to see The Wild Bunch, and accidentally walked into Jodorowsky’s El Topo. [sci fi synth music starts] I took one look, and then my brain…my brain just immediately shit its pants.

That was how I felt that day. I was lost.

[synth and ethereal vocal music - flames]

Nevertheless, I pushed forward. Seeing my dog collar, the police let me cross the cordon-line. No one spoke a word to me. In fact, I could feel the crowd retreating in my mind. And soon, I felt…completely alone with this image.

I tried to imagine myself in a gallery. A modern gallery, like the one I had visited in Bologna that summer. I pictured myself inside it: empty white rooms, high ceilings, myself, alone, walking room to room, brochure in hand, the smell of varnished floors, dust dancing in the afternoon light. 

And then there, as I entered the central hall: a bus on fire, the bus driver inside shouting the names of deceased pets over a cassette of U2 with the destination marked “Vaccinate This Dick.” I told myself, “Do not look for the caption, Martin.”

“We do not care what year this demon was born, nor who their influences were. We do not care who commissioned this hell-bus nor what the demon claims this bus represents. We do not question the demon. We question ourselves. How does this work make me feel? What does it mean to me, really? We take our time.”

So there, in the gallery of my mind, I sat upon an imaginary bench and I took it all in. I weighed every gesture, every material, every theme. And then when I was ready, I put a pen and notebook in my hands…and I judged the fuck out of it. 

[sounds from the world filtering back in through the music]

Soon I could feel the concrete beneath me once more. My gallery scene dissolving back into the chaos of street, my forehead scorched from the heat from the bus floating above me.

[honking - crowd noise]

A fire engine had manoeuvred through the traffic and was now extending a ladder up to the door of the bus. The pressure canons doused the burning vehicle long enough for a fireman to grab the possessed bus driver from behind the wheel. As the ladder retracted, I could hear the bus driver sarcastically shouting the names of the fireman’s dead pets, his trousers still bunched around his ankles. [demonic voice shouting sweet pet names under the flames]

One by one, the bus passengers were rescued, their faces caked in soot and weeping. While the police carried the possessed bus driver into the empty school opposite. I followed the officers through the gates.

Together we found a classroom and tied the bus driver to a table. I asked the officers to wait outside for their own safety. [door slams] I drew a crucifix on the blackboard then searched the bookcase for a Bible. All I could find was a children’s illustrated edition. It depicted Jesus as a fox and the disciples as frogs and otters, etc. Nevertheless, it was the Bible. A Bible. It would have to do. I clutched it to my chest.

[music fades]

It was dusk by the time I began the exorcism. A golden sunset filled the classroom windows.

Interviewer: Sorry, a what?

Exorcist: A-a golden sunset. 

Interviewer: Right. 

Exorcist: You know, like, coming through the classroom windows.

Interviewer: Right. OK. Sorry, continue—

[music starts continues]

Exorcist: The sunset, it uh, it gave everything a kind of…sulphuric glow. Like we were standing in some kind of old sepia photograph.

The bus driver, Teo Brasó was in his forties. His eyes, black. His driver uniform, shredded.

I pointed to the crucifix on the board. He shrugged.

“Unclean spirit,” I yelled. “In the name of He who commands you, He who once stilled the sea and the wind and the storm, our Lord Jesus Christ, I command you, tell me your name! Tell me your name, foul dickhead, confess it!”

Demon, calm: I go by many names.

Exorcist, frustrated: Cliche! First draft. Unambitious genre writing. Try harder, snake of Satan. I command you: tell me your name!

Demon, unbothered: …Bones Macfarlane.

Exorcist: Bones Macfarlane! [speaking quickly, gaining momentum:] Bones Macfarlane, enemy of the faith, foe of the human race, begetter of death, robber of life, fuck off back to art school, I command you! You, of no emotional depth, ambiguity, or psychological or moral complexity. You, of jaw-dropping banality. You are the art equivalent of a tee-shirt from Camden market that says “WEED.” Now begone!

Demon, whispering: Penelope. (The name of my first hamster.) She died stuck in a tube and you had to push her out with your mouth like a blow-dart.

Exorcist: Well, you know a lot about dead pets, that’s for sure.

Demon: Thank you. It’s so nice to be complimented.

Every word the demon spoke filled me with nausea. After a few seconds, my vision began to blur as if I was about to pass out. His voice somehow sucked the air from the room.

Demon, conversationally: So, what do you think of Rome? Are you enjoying it here? What do you think of the gelato? I think it’s yum.

I fell over and vomited. [retching]

Demon, innocently: Just making small talk.

Exorcist: [coughing] Silence, beast!

[tense piano music starts]

I climbed back to my feet.

Exorcist, through gritted teeth: Silence, beast.

[piano becoming more agitated]

Exorcist, shouting: Derivative! That’s what I think of your work out there. A burning bus. Could you have come up with a less original idea? My God! I mean, as a symbol of the hopelessness of humanity don’t you think a bus is kinda played out? Haven’t you seen the end of MASH?

Demon: Overrated.

Exorcist: Not overrated, actually. Genuinely moving.

Demon: Fuck Alan Alda.

Exorcist: You’ve got to be kidding me. At least that scene made a coherent point about the horrors of humanity. I mean, it had layers to it!

Demon: Did it, now?

Exorcist: Well, it wasn’t just about how much people hate being on buses, was it? The fucking arrogance! 

Yield! Yield, insufferable snob of Lucifer! Self-important pretentious art jock, who I bet tells anyone who will listen how they “don’t own a television set.”  Don’t deny it!

Demon: Oh, I’m sorry—I’ve got better things to do.

Exorcist: [scoffs, disgusted] I knew it. [whispering intensely:] In the name of Jesus and Christ of Nazareth, who was led into the desert after His baptism by John to vanquish you in your citadel, get some fucking perspective. Also setting things on fire is not “edgy,” alright, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown? It’s been done.

Demon: Why should I talk art with a man who loves sitcoms?

Exorcist: Oh, so this juvenile whimsy is High Art, is it? The dick jokes and the dead pets and the shitting yourself whilst playing U2?

Demon: It’s mixed media.

Exorcist: Ooh la la! So sophisticated!

Demon: Juvenilia is meant to be confrontational. It’s about puncturing pomposity.

Exorcist: Well, hard luck because the gestures come across as empty and clichéd. Oh, and by the way, plenty of people like The Joshua Tree so don’t think you’re getting under our skin with that one!

Demon, scoffing: But the leather waistcoats…

Exorcist: It’s hot onstage!

Demon, laughing: You’re delusional.

Exorcist: U2 have always made strong aesthetic choices! I mean, you can say what you like, but they-but they always have a message!

Demon: Eugh.

Exorcist: A coherent message, as well! Unlike your ham-fisted melange of references out there, all pulling in different directions. My uncle Tony could do something more cogent and powerful and he’s not even dead yet!

Demon: I’m sorry you don’t get it—

Exorcist: —Yield to God!—

Demon: —but I am not to blame for your lack of education.

Exorcist: Yield! Twat dilettante of the black sun. Yield to God! Pretentious serpent. Un-proofed opinion columnist of the Pit. I command you! Fuck off back to your open mic night, basilisk. Fuck off back to your bedsit in Hell and cry! 

Demon: I am very comfortable with this kind of reaction to the work. In fact, I consider your reaction to be part of the art itself. So, please, continue.

Exorcist: Oh, so proud of how inaccessible you are, aren’t you? Well, look, no one’s fooled mate. There’s nothing behind the mask—that’s obvious. You’re a…[deep breath] you’re a combination lock on an empty room. You’re a-you-you took a window and you painted a brick wall over it like a kind of inverse trompe l’œil. Why don’t you come back when you actually have something to say, instead of finding elaborate ways of saying nothing?

Demon: Did you even consider that maybe not having a point is the point? I mean, maybe it’s about the impossible search for meaning—” 

Exorcist: —Oh don’t be a prick!

Holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God and Father to our Lord Jesus Christ, save me from art about art! Strike terror, Lord, into the beast who thinks he’s the first person to ever talk about “resisting interpretation.” You…numpty! 

[demon howling]

I remember his screams. That noise will be etched onto my memory for all time. I remember my skin crawling as if the room had filled with insects, how every single chair in the classroom began to levitate, blood dripping from the ceiling tiles.

A piece of chalk leapt to the blackboard and drew a picture of Colonel Saunders giving Jesus a vasectomy.

[Exorcist, bored:] Yeah, yeah, very provocative. So much to think about…oh, no, wait, there isn’t.

[a beat of silence]

Demon: Didn’t take you very long to dismiss it.

Exorcist: Yeah well—

Demon: —I mean, you barely considered it.

Exorcist: Well—

Demon: —I mean, how do you know if you barely looked at it? All I’m saying is I wouldn’t go throwing my opinions around unless I was prepared to properly engage with the piece, that’s all—

Exorcist: —OK, OK—

Demon: —Why should I listen to someone who has already decided they hate me? Why should their opinion matter?

[eerie tone rising]

Exorcist: Well it does matter, actually. I mean, if I dismiss you quickly it’s only because your work is so shallow that you’re not worth the—hang on, wait-wait-wait-wait, hang-hang on, wait…

I could feel my heart, trying to punch its way out of my chest. The demon exhaled slowly,

[tone rising]

Demon: Dagenham, 1975. You were fifteen. A friend played you John Cage for the first time. You told him it sounded like someone trying to fuck a xylophone.

Exorcist: But I-I was mostly listening to rock back then—

Demon: —1978. You see a photograph of a Jackson Pollock painting in a National Geographic, Lavender Mist. But you call it by a different name, don’t you Martin? A clever play on words. What did you call it?

Exorcist, quietly, in shame: “Hangover Shit.”

Demon: What?

Exorcist, sighs: I called it “Hangover Shit.”

Demon: What?

Exorcist, a bit louder: “Hangover Shit.” 

Demon: Why?

Exorcist: …Cos it sounded a bit like Lavender Mist.

Demon: Why?

Exorcist: …Because it looked like diarrhoea.

Demon: 1983. This is only five years ago, Martin. 1983. You bought a copy of Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino. The book was incorrectly bound with the last forty pages actually belonging to a non-fiction book about fishing in Quebec. Did you notice?

Exorcist: I noticed.

Demon: Did you notice it was a mistake?

Exorcist: No, not exactly.

Demon: You read the whole thing, didn’t you?

Exorcist: I did.

Demon: And after you finished you lent the book to your friend Roger, isn’t that right? And what did you say to him when you gave him the book?

[pause]

Demon: What did you say? [whispering intensely:] What did you say?

Exorcist: I told him it was a postmodern classic. [grimaces]

Demon: So, you know… Now I’m just wondering if you are really the right person to appreciate what I’m trying to do up here. You’re very hung up on meaning, I can see that. It’s important for you, isn’t it, that meaning can be articulated in words. You’re uncomfortable with things existing outside of language. [chuckles] Maybe you don’t even believe there could be such a thing.

But there is. There are just so many things I can’t tell you. So much before The Word. And so much beyond it.

Look, don’t uh, don’t blame yourself Martin. [smiling] No one expects you to be able to see the bigger picture. I mean, how could you? You’ve never had a feeling that someone didn’t already feel for you. You’ve never believed in anything that someone hasn’t already chewed up on your behalf and spat back into your mouth. I mean, perhaps if you had ever created something for yourself. Like, anything! If you did some sculpture, or uh, wrote a little expressive dance routine, or, I don’t know, learnt to play the fucking kazoo—God, even smearing your disgusting monkey shit on a wall would be a start. If you had ever created anything…if you’d stepped beyond the shelter of the Word even once, maybe you would stand a chance. You could begin, at least, to imagine the possibilities of meaning. The bandwidth of the soul.

But that would require surrendering your ego. You’d have to give yourself away, Martin! And we both know that you can’t do that. 

You’re just a dog barking at aeroplanes. You’re talk radio in a dead man’s flat. You’re a fucking windsock, mate.

But I don’t give a shit. Cos I’m Bones Macfarlane. Winner of the 1978 Black Star Prize for Demonic Sculpture. Curator of the 1980 Hell Biennale. Listed number three in The Underground’s Top Ten Conceptual Artists list of the 20th century, brackets “Hell, subcategory” close brackets. Shortlisted for the Shrieking Skull no less than eight times. Considered by most of the broadsheets in Hell as the creator of one the most influential art pieces of the last twenty years, my 1985 sculpture, Erasmus. People talk of art being Macfarlane-esque. My name has entered the fucking critical lexicon, mate. I’m the GOAT! G-O-A-T, Greatest of all Time. I’m the fucking Frank Sinatra of art.

And you, Martin…are no-one.

[sounds of reality filter back in]

Exorcist: And with that, the demon left the body of Teo Brasó for good. [breathes out]

Colour began to return to the bus driver, along with a coarse Milanese accent that I didn’t really care for. But it was over. Outside there was a horrendous crash as the burning bus fell back to Earth. [roar of metal and flames]

It was funny. I almost missed him. 

Interviewer: I…find that hard to believe. [an understatement]

Exorcist: Yeah, well. Almost.

Interviewer: Right.

Exorcist: As a medic stretchered Teo into a waiting ambulance, I remember him grabbing my hand and asking, “Father, what happened to me?”

“Art project,” I told him. 

“And?” he said, as they lowered him into the vehicle, “How did it go down? Was it any good?”

The doors closed. [ambulance speeding off] I never got to tell him.

[calm piano music starts]

I left Rome shortly after. I had no future in the Church, that much was obvious. I had no regrets about the time I spent in the service of Christ. But still, I knew I was not ready to be the red pen of God.

The world is riddled with strangeness, I felt that now. These tiny moments that creep up on us where time and space shift beneath our feet, our existence kneaded like clay.

When an object disappears from my house, when a friend calls me by the wrong name, a flicker of déjà vu, a face I know but can’t place. Since Rome, I came to think of all those moments as living poems. The writing of both demons and angels upon the surface of the Earth. 

Of course, sometimes the artworks are more elaborate. I see them in the newspaper: a mysterious fire, a horse found on a hotel roof, a footballer predicts an earthquake. Sometimes it’s a red fog in a faraway city. Sometimes, a fresh symbol appearing in the underpass.

But I had no idea what any of it could mean. I didn’t even know the right questions to ask. I could not feel the edges of these artworks. I did not know where one poem ended and the next began. See, deep down, I knew that Bones MacFarlane was right. If I truly wanted to understand I would have to...I would have to move beyond words and make something for myself.

And so, returning to England I rented a little studio in Dagenham, round the corner from my dad’s old house. And I started to create.

Interviewer: Good for you.

Exorcist: Thank you. I started with sculpture. I wanted to try and invoke some of the concepts I’d seen in hauntings and possessions.

Interviewer: Demon art.

Exorcist: It’s in conversation with demon art, yes. I’m not trying to rip anyone off. I just wanted to explore the territory for my own education.

So, I played a lot with temperature. Too hot, too cold…I spent a fortune on fog machines. I did a lot of stuff with gas poisoning: it’s good for clamminess, also it causes hallucinations.

Soon, I began to feel reality bending at my touch. Just a little. I imported slime from Croatia. Did a lot of scream installations.

Interviewer: Uh, don’t forget the skeletons.

Exorcist: Yes, that’s right. I-I-I filled a friend’s house with skeletons. [laughing] He was-he was terrified, had no idea what was happening at all. I mean, that was a piece very much on the theme of permission. Afterwards, for months, apparently, I kept appearing in my friend’s dreams. I had no idea I was doing it [smiling] at first but uh, [deep breath] I was-I was starting to understand now…the relationship between material and gesture, the personal expression of a haunting. Stuff that I would never have grasped as a priest. [smiles]

It was the skeleton piece in fact that first brought me to the attention of the art scene. An exhibition in New York followed. I called it: “Hello, Chaos!” with an exclamation point. Which had a nice ring to it I thought.

Interviewer: It did.

Exorcist: It’s kind of foreboding, but also with a little bit of levity, which always makes the darker stuff more palatable, I find. The show was an absolute success, even if I do say so myself. I sold a gorilla suit full of scorpions to Elijah Wood for eighteen grand. I called it “God.”

Interviewer: That was a game-changer.

Exorcist: It was.

Interviewer: I’d like to say that I was an influence on that one.

Exorcist: No doubt, no doubt!

Things just…went on from there. I was commissioned to make a sculpture for HSBC. I did a kind of weeping eye that made you cry if you looked at it. Saatchi loaned my levitating goat carcass. I did that thing in Germany where I appeared in everyone’s dream and told them when they were going to die. 

I even returned to Italy with a special exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Father John even turned up on the opening night. He must have been nearly a hundred! I didn’t even know he was still alive.

He was standing by one of my latest pieces, a swimming pool filled with black tar, with a swan in the middle. On fire. I approached him tentatively. “It’s called Hope,” I told him, but uh, he didn’t turn to look at me. He was still wearing his trademark aviators. Even when he viewed art, it was always through the gloom of his shades.

Interviewer: It’s odd.

Exorcist: Yeah, I did think that. It suddenly struck me as quite comic, actually, how the man who taught me to love art lived himself beneath a permanent layer of shadow. He’d never truly experienced the colours of a Renoir or a Mondrian. The Night Watch must have just looked like a couple of hats in the fog. It didn’t really make sense to me. 

Yeah, well. He didn’t even look at me. He just stayed rooted to the spot. He stared at that same piece all evening, you know, like nearly four hours. Right up until it was time for the gallery to close.

I thought he might have been trying to teach me a lesson. Reminding me of his impeccable method, how even after all my years of dedication to the unknowable I still should have stayed in the Church. You know, I should’ve been patient and waited for his personal guidance.

Or perhaps, perhaps this was the greatest gift he could bestow upon me: to give one of my pieces the same attention that he would give to a fresco in the Vatican Museum.

Interviewer: Or to a demon.

Exorcist: Or yes, yeah. The same attention that he would give to the work of a demon.

Interviewer: Maybe his plan was to exorcise you, Martin.

Exorcist: [scoff-laughs] That’s funny. At the end of the night, I went for a cigarette outside and uh, there he was.

“Father John,” I said, “I’ve missed our walks together.” “Me too, Martin,” he said. “So, what did you think of the exhibition?” I asked. “Shit,” he said. And then he left.

Interviewer: [exhales] That must have been tough.

Exorcist: Eh, it’s-it’s not for everyone. [pleased:] I think he probably saw my work as being too confrontational. You know, maybe overly flamboyant. 

Interviewer: But you own that.

Exorcist: I do own that, if you ever read an interview with me. I very much own my tendency to go big, as it were. 

Interviewer, smiling: Yeah. So, then what did you do?

Exorcist, confident: I uh, I uh, followed him back to his hotel.

Interviewer: And then what did you do?

Exorcist: [long pause] Forced my way into his room. 

[horror film horns]

Interviewer: And then what?

Exorcist: I uh, I hit him in the head with a massive bronze crucifix.

Interviewer: Several times.

Exorcist: Several times.

Interviewer, voice sounding strange/in between dimensions: And then what?

Exorcist: I laid him out on the hotel carpet and um, [horror film horns] scattered dog teeth all over him.

Interviewer, more and more demonic: And then what?

Exorcist: I drew a picture on the bathroom mirror of Satan enjoying some ice-cream.

Demon interviewer: And then what?

Exorcist: Well, then I set the bed on fire [horror film horns] and uh, and I levitated it about five foot off the ground. It was a, it was a metaphor for—

Demon interviewer: —Despair.

Exorcist: Yeah, for despair. The death of sleep. Humanity’s reckoning, you know. [horror film horns]

And then uh, then I cast a spell so anyone entering the room would involuntarily take out their mobile phone and text a single kiss to their ex-girlfriend. [horror film horns] And then I made it rain blood outside. Aaand then I soiled myself.

Demon interviewer: Ooh, nice touch.

Exorcist: Thank you. Oh, and I put the stereo on. Just a little signature detail.

 [“With or Without You” starts playing in the background]

And then I got in this bath, and I filled it with spiders. The spiders represent depression.

Demon interviewer: Mhmm.

Exorcist: And um, that’s it. I think. That’s us all up to speed. That’s the whole story, wouldn’t you agree?

Demon interviewer: Mm. And what exactly do you call this piece?

Exorcist: Er, I call this installation, I call it…Untitled. Untitled VIII. Um, what do you think? [shyly:] I mean, it’s-it’s-it’s your work, too.

Demon interviewer: Yeah. I’m happy with that. It’s mysterious. 

Exorcist: It’s like you said, you know: there are some things that are beyond words.

Demon interviewer: Yeah.

Exorcist: I mean, I don’t know. I still consider myself to be relatively new to the art game. But um, [pleased:] I mean, I think this is my best yet.

[“With or Without You” rises to the foreground]

Sleight of hand and twist of fate
On a bed of nails, she makes me wait
And I'll wait without you

With or without you
With or without you

Through the storm we reach the shore
You give it all, but I want more
And I'm waiting for you

With or without you
With or without you
I can't live

[“With or Without You” twists and echoes away]

________________________________

[ethereal synth and vocal music starts]

[IMAGINARY ADVICE]

That’s all from Imaginary Advice this month. Thank you so much for listening. 

Thanks also to the poet Luke Wright for lending his voice. Luke is probably my oldest collaborator. We’ve been making stuff together since 1999 so it felt apt to cast him as a demon that takes over your brain and pressures you into making diabolic art. [chuckles] 

I really enjoyed revisiting this world. If you want to check out the other story in this series uh, check out episodes 33 and 34. It’s called Exorcist Dave Stewart.

Each of these podcast episodes takes about two weeks to write, record and edit. It’s an incredibly time-consuming task. So, if you would like to help cover my costs, then please support me through Patreon. Subscribers are gonna have a bonus episode before the end of the year, as well. You can find a link to my Patreon page in the liner notes of this episode.

I hope to see some of you at the live show on November 7th.

My name is Ross Sutherland. All this time you have been listening to Imaginary Advice. Don’t have nightmares. Thanks for listening.

[music fades out]