Decoys

Back In June

No more decoys until early June. The archives can be browsed in the meantime.

Silent Echolalia

[Of silence at No Answers.]

± A missionary stands on a hill and calls his mission across the darkness. His call is indistinct, appeals to indistinctness, hollows it out in the nothingness, and then, in anonymity, silently releases its echo among a million other missions to listen, like them, for what resounds.

Surpassing Expectations

[When excellence is awarded.]

± Far up in the mountains, the writer assumes the lotus position opposite the master, and begins to unburden herself. ‘Master, I am a writer who has just read that I have been given an award for excellence, and not being in the least bit ungrateful for the kindness in this regard, I am unsure about what to do about it. You see, the writer awarding me was herself awarded among nine other recipients, and has listed me among nine more, so to receive the award I must give it in turn to ten more writers. This, however, troubles me, because it is unclear to me what excellence is.’

± ‘Why is it not possible, for instance, that my writing is excellent regardless of my passing on the award? It is not as though anything in my writing changes according to my actions subsequent to it. And yet, despite all this, what the award suggests is that writing, whether by me, the person who has given me the award, and the ten people I am expected to pass it on to, can only be called excellent by being called excellent. I suppose that by calling something excellent we are making aware; the excellence is prior to its being called; but in its being called, the calling distracts us from what the calling amounts to.’

± The master encourages the writer from her pause with a smile and a nod. ‘Oh master, I do not write for awards, and though it is an honour to receive them, I fear that in not knowing what excellence is, I know not how to respond, and will have the award retracted. It is dizzying. Why should I fear its retraction when I did not write for it? Why, do I even have it to lose it if it is under threat of retraction? If the flowers I presented you on my arrival were conditional on being passed on to ten other masters, you would be forgiven for being confused as to whether I gave you the flowers or their conditions of acceptance.’

± ‘It is not that I wish to demean the spirit of the award in any way: the scheme seems like a thoughtful way to spread joy. However, even its success in spreading its message seems to contribute to the failure of that message, for if the message successfully reaches all writers, then all writing will eventually be called excellent – and then what would be left for this excellence to be compared with? Which is why I am so confused, master. How do I respond to an award for something that I do not understand despite its already appearing everywhere else every day of my life?’

± The master’s eyes close for a while. The while extends into a long while, and the long while extends into a while longer. The writer looks towards the valley from whence she came. It is engulfed by mist in the same way the mountain top was engulfed prior to her ascent. After what seems like an age, she too closes her eyes. She drifts into the mist, suspends herself on it, floating as though a lily on a pond without horizon. She opens her eyes as the master at last begins to speak.

± ‘You have thought about this a lot, but clearly not enough. Excellence is everywhere every day because it is nowhere. Something must surpass our expectations to be called excellent, and while the award says your writing does this, the condition for acceptance imposes another expectation. This is because there is no surpassing an expectation without creating another to be met somewhere. You are like the lioness that is offered a lion-tamer. The tamer can reveal to others what you are but only at the expense of making you what you are not. Whether the lioness can meet or surpass expectations is down to what is within the lioness herself.’

± ‘Writing’ says the writer.

± ‘What kind of writing?’

± ‘Stories that occur to me after reading other writers.’

± ‘Ah’ says the master with a nod and a smile. A pause indicates that their time together has come to an end. She returns the master’s smile, gestures a prayer, bows in thanks, bids her leave, and then makes her way back down the mountain into the mist below.

Profound and Rare Pleasures

[On phrases less welcome than others.]

± It is annoying to F. that some of her friends have a habit of singing a phrase she has just uttered because that phrase happens to be the hook in a song (or advert). She scrunches her lips and rolls her eyes to extract the apology for the inane and irrelevant interruption. She backtracks through the mist her annoyance has become to pick up from where she was before her breath was stolen. ‘Where was I?’ she asks them. The question is an opportunity for their redemption should they prove they were listening. She is the inquisitor watching their embarrassment, fear, and stumbling.

± The annoyance, though, is not at them. It is at her cursing herself for enjoying the song being sung by another at the instant it appeared in her head. How dare she feel so precious about what she has to say that she cannot enjoy its interruption by inanity and irrelevance! Who is she to judge those whose inanity and irrelevance is the comfort with her presence that her preciousness shatters?

± And this is what happens every time. The annoyance is physical and beyond her control, while the cursing is cerebral and considers a considerate response in the future. But, alas, this considerate response never comes. This is because the hook in a song that uses a strange phrase could weight an interruption with pleasures profound and rare, which is precisely why it falls silent. Only the hook that recycles a phrase that has long since lost its profundity and rarity to inanity and irrelevance can guarantee an interruption the Esperanto it craves for its survival. A sung phrase that adds understanding is as nought if it goes unrecognised; likewise, for that phrase to be recognised is equally nought if it subtracts understanding. There is therefore no phrase, in F.’s book, that can pass through this conundrum and into a meaningful interruption to her speech.

± This is how her annoyance is too deeply entrenched to override. It is at how those phrases from those dreadful songs find their way into interruptions in the same way that they find their way into her singing, and quite spontaneously. They have insidiously seeped into her pores against her better instincts. And this is why her enjoyment is also too deeply entrenched to override. She knows she is not alone in having her pores insidiously seeped into, which is why her enjoyment expresses itself in annoyance: she shrinks from the contagion. She immediately starves it of further oxygen by denying its confession (leading to the embarrassment, fear and stumbling of those wishing to redeem their interruptions). This, she hopes for everybody’s sake, is the explanation from which she derives her self-flagellating remedy.

± She takes her cue from how the phrases that she welcomes into her head are ghosts that can be laid to rest by their playback. Their strangeness is an insistence that is immediately silenced upon its being heard. And, mad though it sounds, she treats the unwelcome phrases the same, only more so. She collects those dreadful songs and mixes them together into one recording in which they play simultaneously, each shouting over the other to recover the recognition they have accumulated and taken for granted in their lifetimes. The noise of their collective inanity and irrelevance is strange, profound, rare – almost pleasant.

The Incursion

[Turned inwardly from the excursion at No Answers with stylistic apologies to Alcoholic Poet.]

± She is often told that the initial proposition is that she is, and that she must continue in order to meet with her confirmation of this.

± She gathers statements unto herself about whether she has correctly restated and summarised herself; if she has contradicted herself then she must comes to terms with this and with her tangential wanderlust, take herself in hand, and question her terms. She resumes anew then, or as anew as she can; anew that is, in whatever form it suggests itself to be today, appearing as it does from between outright rejection of herself and tenets reliable enough to modify. Advice on this varies from advisor to advisor, requiring navigation as appropriate, a manoeuvre seemingly at odds with itself under the circumstances, what with herself being the problem from which she launches all solutions.

± And eventually she must make decisions. How strange then that these decisions are the termini at which her incursions have met with what made those incursions the incursions they are – the cessation of themselves that they were previously. She is the exhaustion of who she could be. She is also the exhaustion that marks the renewed need for renewal.

± She is the matter of taste that is created by and within the interim.

± She sways and is swayed among others like herself who are as unlike her as she is. It depends on the mood you catch them in. They shape themselves to the amorphous, project themselves with an image that recedes upon approach, speak a language that nobody can be fluent in, and in this, learn to tolerate the intolerable.

± For some it is an end in itself. To chase the unchaseable in all directions is the exhaustion of who they can be to the extent that the exhaustion fuels itself circularly. It is the movement from the field of vision the moment the sight rests on them that is the target. This is the being at one with restlessness she must master if she is to have any rest. What rest/lessness? Her shortfall from others pushes her on to them in the hope that she can lead them astray one day as they have her. Making the right mistakes is where her elegance will come from. One day it will happen, she tells herself, whoever that turns out to be. She has no idea who it is within her who doubts who she is. She worries that by the time she finds out, it will be too late.

Imagine Staging Events

[Staged from the teaser and its comments at The Photography Pages]

± Willoughby F. is a photographer who believes that the things he imagines actually stage themselves before him in the anticipation that he turns up with his camera. Take, for example, the sine qua non of historical events – war.

± When he recently wanted to follow his heroes of youth by being a war correspondent, hey presto, war broke out! Better: wars were declared; and on they still drag, on multiple and multiplying fronts, and on pretexts that were cooked up, so he thinks, to disguise the fact that the combatants have been mobilised for nothing more than his lens and his whimsical desire that they be in front of it. Sometimes, when pressed, he admits that political and military leaders may be oblivious to his requirements; but even in this he persists in believing that they nonetheless act in accordance with his imagination.

± It is the same with those against these wars as it is with those for them. All of the protestors, from those riding the bandwagon to those who are militant, act against war for the sake of F.’s photography. Without him, not a single protestor would make a stand any more than a soldier would: of this he is certain.

± Telling his photographer friends about this leads to arguments that ultimately freak them out. ‘If photographers want to show what’s happening in the world’ he claims, ‘then it must happen for them to show it.’ ‘I can’t quibble with that’ they more or less agree. ‘Nothing’ he adds, ‘happens without imagination.’ And it is on this very point that they diverge from him: ‘The events already happen with or without you and your imagination. The idea that they happen because you imagine them happening is the part you imagine.’

± ‘No!’ he cries. ‘You have it the wrong way around. Only the things that we want to see ever happen for us to see them, thus we imagine it all into being, both good and bad. This makes me one of the most powerful people in the world! I imagine, point my camera, and into its path come my imaginings – it’s a straight line from cause to effect. The same thing happens for you too. The only difference between you and I is that I have the imagination to see this relationship, believe in it, and then use it in my photography. Anybody can imagine what is believable – only those with belief in their imaginations have the imagination enough to imagine what is unbelievable. It’s the power of this belief that makes imagination act. Those with this power have applied their imaginations to make the wars and the protests against them stage themselves before lenses such as mine. Nobody counts photographers as one of those doing the imagining. I am, if you like, one of the world’s unacknowledged legislators.’

± ‘You’re a crackpot’ say his photographer friends, ‘that’s what you are.’ ‘I grant you that’ says F., exercising his power once again (and unbeknownst to them). Yet for all their arguments with him, they argue in shrinkage from the possibility that he is right. It is sometimes apparent to them that they share this feeling that there are events they imagine that give them déjà vu and pangs of responsibility when they look through their viewfinders. They are veritably freaked out, so they argue against him in fear of what confirming his mania might feed - not just for him, but for them also. Then they cover themselves by shrugging their shoulders and saying ‘I’m only a photographer. The world turns without me.’

± But Willoughby F. dismisses their arguments and laughs himself to sleep before dreaming his dreams of what might be tomorrow. Why, without the power of imagination, tomorrow would not even exist; nor, for that matter, he imagines, would he, let alone his ‘crackpot’ ideas. Ah that Willoughby F.: what a guy.

The Club for Those Losing Interest

[Given a lift by the mutual attachment at reli[e]able signs.]

± It is one evening while F. is commuting that he feels, yet again, that he is losing interest in things. He shrugs his shoulders at the possibilities this evening.

± There are conversations with his partner, and maybe one with a friend or relative on the phone, but these, he knows deep down, and as much as it pains him to admit it, he has often grown as accustomed to as the guilt in letting custom obscure these people.

± He could say the same about the entertainments that parade before him in ever growing numbers. They force a sigh from him at how they ever kept him from other people. Perhaps the two things are related? Perhaps people often take each other for granted because they join each other in distractions engineered to keep them apart?

± There is always the evening meal. Whether to settle for convenience or to interrogate the cupboards and fridge for something truly interesting; yes, that is the inescapable question. The thought of eating makes him sigh again. He concedes that his is a privileged evening lying before him.

± There are those for whom there are few options to lose interest in. He concedes further that he has some interest, a cool interest, one that goes with having options and any interest in them at all. But it is this very cornucopia of options that tries his interest so. He must continually judge them to show who he is in his judgements. He must continually show attachments to them too, yet with the cool indifference of detachment, for detachment towards attachments shows that he could change his mind at any moment, being the free subject he is. And it is on evenings like this that he is exhausted with facing it all.

± So on this evening he judges that his first judgement is to make a new attachment. When he gets home he will open the telephone directory and look up clubs for those who are losing interest. There must be others like him who spend their days expanding on their options they spend their evenings indifferent to. If there is no such club, then there should be one; henceforth, F. resolves to set one up should there not be one already, and he resolves to call it ‘The Club for Those Losing Interest’. The club is where those losing interest can get together and talk about all the things that interest them no longer. It is good to spend time with people with similar uninterests.

± But hold on: we encounter a knot. The members are united in their interest in losing interest. Their detachment from things leads them to an attachment to each other, the club, and their discussions in it about their detachments.

± F. concentrates on the road ahead. It is easier to lose concentration when the road is empty – easier still when your mind is interested in something else. This is when accidents happen.

The Visitor - Part III

[The final part of the context to the disturbance at Black Mirrors.]

± The Post-room Co-ordinator feels a thrill at supervising covert surveillance of a library visitor. Withholding his cards about the surveillance from the other staff gives his role an important air that is held in check by the cards about the surveillance that are withheld from him by the Chief Librarian who has bestowed this role. What compounds this thrill at being sandwiched between those who know less and the power that knows more is the thrill at being informed about and informing on Visitor F.

± The peculiarity to F. is the frequency with which he is asked by the events staff to give up his chair. He is frequently in the way, and could easily be so for a reason: namely, that he is a trouble-maker. It is when we take into account how he reacts to being moved on that we find another peculiarity. There are always misfits for whom a chair is a plan for the day and its disruption a cause for hostility. That F. is usually very reasonable about being moved on suggests that he wishes not to draw attention to himself and his plans, which, whatever they are, have two notable features:

1. They go beyond having a chair, and
2. They remain in place so long as he remains unnoticed.

± Someone whose presence is consistently disrupted by book events might reasonably be expected to be unreasonable about their treatment. Instead, F., aside from objecting on one occasion, has hitherto passed unnoticed. It is good and justifiable then, the Co-ordinator reasons, that there are mechanisms in place to scrutinise that which would otherwise pass unnoticed.

± It is, moreover, a wonder that surveillance has not been instigated before. Or perhaps it has? Perhaps it was conducted with the same secrecy as now? Secrecy gives the best of both worlds: it generates data on suspect visitors so that action, should it become necessary, is based on something concrete; additionally, should no action be necessary, nobody need know the data existed. The Co-ordinator figures that this is why he knows that crucial bit extra than the librarians about what they know: less is more. And so it is to them he turns for his data.

± This, he is unaware, is a pity, because in cottoning on to his investigations, they have sussed that he is reporting to the Chief because he is in line for a promotion. Their joke on him has been to raise to his attention a visitor with no distinguishing features: they now continue this joke by misdirection, exaggeration, and above all, fabrication. They recount incidents in such a way that the dots can be joined up to draw the kind of pictures that hungry and overfed imaginations take so much delight in drawing. They tap their noses when tipping off the Co-ordinator about Visitor F.’s proximity to several ‘unconnected’ incidents. Surely it is no coincidence that he appeared at both an emergency nearby some display cases and a fire? According to one staff member, F. deliberately visits areas marked up for book groups, a clear indication, surely, of something. ‘A signal to someone?’ the Co-ordinator suggests. ‘Possibly.’ ‘An exchange of something with someone?’ ‘Do you think so?’ So convincing is the staff performance in duping the Co-ordinator that they dupe themselves into paranoia. The more they drop the hints, the more they laugh at his gullibility, the more their laughter makes them queasy. What if they are unintentionally right? There must be, after all, a reason why the Co-ordinator is reporting to the Chief. Now they are the ones who can hardly bear the menace they create.

± It is with relief then that the Chief announces that Visitor F. is to be the model for a statue at Central Library. The reports augur well, says the Chief, summarising his conclusions about F.:

• His long and frequent spells in the library mean that he uses library resources more fully than most visitors.
• Aside from vocalising himself on one occasion, his reasonableness when moved on exemplifies how, despite the frequent disruptions he suffers, he is the very model of patience and understanding – even his one vocalisation was polite and to the point.
• This concern for staff and fellow visitors is evidenced further by his appearance near the emergency at the display case and the fire.
• Yet in this studious and civic figure is an unassuming one, one that is quiet and straightforward in his dealings.

± These qualities give Visitor F. the image the library needs to change its own image: an image of what the Chief calls ‘the extraordinary in the ordinary’. And so it is that F. will forthwith be cast in bronze by an artist famous for figures in public spaces – everything is arranged.

± However, the librarians are horrified. There is something the Chief does not know. A security guard, while edgy at monitoring F., and suckered as she was by the growing unease with the untruths the staff propagated, put off their exemplar and would-be model from coming to the library ever again. Picking a moment when F. appeared on the brink of being, albeit for only the second time, disgruntled at being moved on, the guard suggested that if he was unhappy in coming to the library, then maybe he should not bother. Nobody has seen F. since. The librarians have since increased their vigilance, keeping an even closer eye out than they have of late, but he has yet to reappear. Worse still, they explain, and diplomatically, for the Chief is boiling in disbelief, they have no idea what the visitor’s name is. Nobody had asked, and nobody can recall any reference they can trace to a membership number – it is even possible that the individual is not a member. Nor can anybody recall where the moniker ‘Visitor F.’ came from (though it has been mooted that it may relate to a novel somewhere in the library).

± A silence quieter than the silence in a library follows. The Chief’s eyes wiggle around and his fingers press his temples as he thinks on what to do next, his research and development potentially in tatters because of ill-informed and over-reactive security which, to his chagrin, is down to his secrecy. It is too late to search for another model in a way that keeps staff in the picture. It is too late to do anything much.

± The chosen one is gone. ‘He is gone, possibly forever, and there he was, unknown to us all along. Then again … yes! Perfect!’ cries the Chief. ‘The security guard can save the day. Get her to look through the video stills. Visitor F. is an unknown man, one very much like many around him, someone ordinary who is extraordinary, a visitor like any visitor, like every visitor. That is who we serve.’ And so a video still is found and forwarded to the artist. It is fuzzy and lacks detail, but the artist is overwhelmed at the sentiment it carries, and casts a figure that interprets it with insight and humanity, a figure that to this day stands aloft the Central Library, standing as it does, for everything the Library Service thinks of itself as about. Its critics say that it cuts an uncertain figure, facing inwardly with its shoulders hunched from the weight of its holdings. Nobody knows who its model was any more than he knows he was the model. Maybe he is one of those guys who hang around the mini-mall the building has become since the decline in visitors that the stature was supposed to help reverse prompted the library’s closure.

The Visitor - Part II

[Further context to the disturbance at Black Mirrors.]

± The Chief Librarian holds the note that cuts through the piles of reports that, in the minds of the librarians that compiled them, will help find the image that will help shift a growing perception of libraries as dull. There are millions of words, but for whom?

± A few enquiries trace the author of the note to a post-room. He is an administrator, no more a librarian in the technical sense than many whose job titles suggest otherwise; and perhaps it is in his not thinking otherwise than being no more than this that he is more than this, for wheeling and driving items around brings him into contact with most of the staff but little of the politics. The Chief has a theory that this distance is how the simple question was possible. Libraries, places of quiet and solitude, are hardly where you might expect intrigue, back-stabbing, jealousy … and yet the unsolicited reports clamber over each other with burning ambition. The authors have acted on their own initiative unbeknownst to their colleagues. They seek to impress through motivations the Post-room Co-ordinator is permanently quarantined from. This is what makes the Chief’s plan opaque to the Co-ordinator’s understanding and thereby exempt from contamination by ambition.

± The Chief asks the Co-ordinator to sniff out which library visitor stands out the most. ‘In what way?’ he replies, unaware of the rapture this question induces in the Chief. ‘Good question! Again a good question! You have an unusual, and, I think, insightful perspective on things. Let us not spoil this’ comes the cryptic non-answer.

± The Co-ordinator wriggles with this attention. To him, the Chief had always been a person of legend, someone whose path, if crossed by a lowly Co-ordinator, would be unlikely to be noticed without an introduction, and consequently forgotten in an instant; someone, in fact, to junior staff, whose very existence was shrouded in as much doubt as indifference, so far apart are their spheres. And now, here sits the Co-ordinator, spoken to by the power that is, sought out by that power no less, charged by it also with a mission, and a mission that he is sworn to secrecy on. What joy!

± He thinks hard for days about all the visitors he passes on his travels to and from the branches in the region. He recalls innocent conversations with his colleagues around the country. Libraries are aplenty with characters. They are the pillars of the community whose acts behind the scenes add dimensions impossible for paid staff to contribute. They are those whose regular visits facilitate achievements for themselves and others. They are those whose presence is sometimes noticeable for its downright strangeness. He generalises, he realises; visitors are, of course, individuals, as many of whom there are as there are many. Which of them stands out? He is truly befuddled. The mission is an impossible one without criteria. How to choose?

± So he asks, discreetly, for the opinions of the staff he respects. He polls a few of them, and then waits for the ideas to come rolling in. In the meantime, as befuddled as he, they too discreetly consult with others. In a week the whole system is awash with chatter about nothing else. The usual gossip that turns inwards and dissects those who do not stand out is turned outwards to dissect those who do. The unfair, incompetent, and above all, undeserving, are supplanted by their opposite numbers from outside the library service. It is soon evident that staff members have as many ideas about outstanding visitors as there are staff members. The Education Officer is inclined towards the learned visitors, the Equality Officer towards those who must overcome disadvantage, the Communities Officer towards the public spirited, and so on. Arguments abound to no avail about visitor frequency, eclecticism or focus to visitors’ reading, who is the oldest, the youngest: facts, just bald and interchangeable facts; facts, in fact, that they soon doubt are beyond those they supplied in their reports to the Chief. And it is with this thought that things change complexion.

± The librarians have cottoned on to the purpose of the Co-ordinator’s ‘casual’ enquiries about visitors. He is clearly in line for a promotion way above his pay-grade. This is another fact. This is the glue that libraries are stuck together with. The Co-ordinator is duly shut-down by the staff: nobody will share with him their views on outstanding visitors any longer. Worse still, they humour him. The joke is to nominate the unthinkable: a visitor whose outstanding qualities are the least outstanding, a visitor who stands out for no better reason than being noticed, and recently. What he is noticed for is mind-numbingly banal. He is a regular visitor who has been disgruntled at twice being moved on by staff running events. He expressed his unhappiness at having to make way for otherwise non-visitors who have only turned up through being encouraged to do so by event organisers. He said his bit, calmed down, then quietly disappeared. But this is at the forefront of a few people’s minds purely by being a recent occurrence. And so it is that he is bigged up as an outstanding visitor for the Post-room Co-ordinator’s benefit. And so it is in this way that the Co-ordinator is dragged into library politics. And so it is too, in his political naivety, that he takes the joke absolutely seriously.

± As promised, the Chief calls him to check on progress. ‘… and so I think this is the very visitor you are looking for’ he says proudly. ‘It’s taken a lot of thought and a lot of listening to my colleagues.’ ‘And you told them nothing?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘Good man! You have excelled yourself! Now, I have another mission for you. This time it will involve supervising your colleagues. Do you think you could handle that?’ ‘Most certainly.’ ‘Good man. I want you to use them to watch over this visitor in detail – but without knowing why.’ The Co-ordinator gets out his pen and notepad.

[to be continued]

The Visitor - Part I

[The first part of the context to the disturbance at Black Mirrors.]

± The librarians broadly agree that their raison d’être is to serve visitors; and while humming and hawing on quite how they go about this, they are seized of the principle that visitors’ library usage informs policy and practice both today, and crucially, tomorrow. This is why, says the Chief Librarian, ‘libraries must change to meet today’s challenges: from bookshops that supply the growing demand for private ownership; from the deluge of searchable information available in the web; and from new media competing for attention from a ‘declining’ younger readership (note the scare quotes). It is to these challenges that we must rise when overcoming the drab image that, according to our research, libraries have. In short, and for reasons just cited, visits are down.’

± ‘True, we are doing much to increase footfall. Our programmes of events encourage the public to discuss their reading with others in a friendly and constructive atmosphere. Book groups, readings, signings, exhibitions, and partnerships with other institutions all have their part to play in promoting dialogue between the public and its library services. The time has come for this work to shine brighter. It is time to communicate what we do, get our message out there in a way that will appeal to a visual culture. For it seems our research also shows that the solution to our image problem is in finding a new image. This is the nut we have to crack: to find something non-textual that captures what we are about. The plan on the handout is only the start. Over the coming months the workshops and meetings will thrash out your ideas in full. Coming up with these ideas is something I feel confident I can leave in your capable hands.’

± The librarians are inspired, so much so that there is a hesitation before putting their capable hands together in applause, applause that is as rapturous as it ever will be. Immediately after the meeting, rejuvenated by the fresh air that the mission brings, everybody goes back their routines to think in pictures. Should the image be one of staff friendliness? Should it, perchance, express the efficient administration the service prides itself on (oh, no, please, thank-you)? Should it convey the stock itself, its quantity, quality, age and accessibility? The programme of events, it is quickly realised, is an opportunity for polling the visitors themselves on how they see the service; this feeling is especially strong among all those whose job involves public contact, how this contact may be where the answer is, where that image can be found, that image the Chief spoke of that could just lift the library service out of the drabness it falls foul of to misconception or prejudice.

± As these discussions with visitors are undertaken, the librarians, being their ever resourceful selves, begin to compile comprehensive reports on their findings for the Chief Librarian. These cover the usual aspects of usage that you might expect in a modern library system: throughput figures on internet access, borrowing of sheet music, inter-library loans, documents of special interest kept in collections at local and national level, etc. etc. etc. However, in addition to the numbers are personal testimonies written by staff on qualitative matters raised in meetings, informal chats, and always with the emphasis laid on contributions made by dialogues with the public. The reports can rightly boast to be the most comprehensive reports ever compiled on library activities. There are pages and pages of details beneath page after page of section summaries in volume after volume bound with economical and durable non-PVC plastic covers. Most of them arrive with a compliment slip that adds a casual and personal touch with its neat and legible schoolboy or schoolgirlish handwriting. The reports are a triumph, in a sense. They ascend skywards from the Chief’s desk into a totem to conscientiousness with writing and the foolhardy optimism at its ever being read. Is this, the Chief wonders, the spirit that few other professions could match for dullness? This verbal avalanche is in all probability the very problem the image it seeks is meant to overcome. It is perverse then, that right in its midst is a sticky-note on one of the compliment slips that unwittingly cuts through the thicket with something as banal as a request for a contact. ‘Who is this all for?’ says the note. ‘For whom indeed?’ agrees the Chief, for whom an image is forming.

[to be continued]