1. Do you know what an ortolan is? It’s a small bird that the French eat. They catch it and they poke out its eyes and put it in a cage. Then they force feed it millet – perhaps for some weeks – and then they drown it in brandy, roast it and then they eat it whole, the guts and brandy mixing with the blood that the bones of the bird will scratch from the roof of your mouth. You eat it with a hankie over your head so God can’t see you and your mess.

I don’t know how you hoped to console yourself after that.

Was it the eating of the bird that was meant to be consoling?

Were you consoling the bird when you fed it, after you poked out its eyes?

Where you reconciling it to the hope-lessness of its situation – of its whole situation?

Where you reconciling yourself to your situation as you ate it?

Your own whole situation?

How did you ever lift the hankie from your head?

Did you use it to wipe your mouth, in defiance?

How did you get into this situation? Who was complicit in this consoling of yourself? If God wasn’t watching you, who was?And what will you eat tomorrow?

2. He said that the bird was about the size of a young girls fist, and that you could begin from either end while going about eating it – only it must be eaten whole.

‘The bird is about the size of a young girl’s fist.’

What an amusing analogy, you thought.

‘You can begin from either end while go-ing about eating it – only it must be eaten whole. You must take it into your mouth like when you take the Mass into your mouth from the priest’s hand in church and you think about God.’

Ah, only I shall be administering to myself this time..

‘You put the hot bird into your mouth – as hot as you can stand it – and let the rendered fat run down your throat. Then you can chew. Some people say they can taste the whole of the bird’s life as they work their way through its body - the lavender of Prov-ince where it was caught, the millet it had spent its last days gorging on... One friend described how on his teeth reaching the birds heart and lungs, the experience was like having burst a tiny flower filled with liquor.’

Well that will be something.

We both placed the white cloths over our heads, and I could feel between my fin-gers the lace edging I hadn’t noticed while at the table. We sat in darkness under veils waiting for our birds to arrive.

Ortolan began to be eaten as a French delicacy in the eighteenth century and are still eaten in France, although their purchase is illegal.

The first academic and imaginative conception of Orientalism was developed at Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in the late eighteenth century. Edward Said describes Orientalism as a Fran-co/British cultural enterprise achieved through their domination of the Orient from the begin-ning of the nineteenth century to the end of World War II. Said largely confines his discus-sion to the Anglo/French/American experience of the Near Orient or Islam or the Arabs, this being what ‘The Orient’ was understood as for a thousand years. A function of Orientalism was to represent Islam for Christians. In ‘Orientalism’, Said also offers the idea that the Orient has a feminine cultural resonance in relation of Orientalism to sexuality that is both a fantasy and fear in the (male) Western imagination. The obsession with the harem in western culture offered a fantasy of multiple partners. There is a notable theme or fantasy of European women being forcibly taken into harems within Romanticism and Orientalist painting and literature.

Harem - definitionThe word harem has been in usage in English language since 1634 via the Turkish HAREM, from the Arabic Haram (Forbidden), originally entailing ‘womens quarters’, literally ‘something forbidden or kept safe’.

Harem The separate part of a Muslim household re-

served for wives, concubines and female servants.The wives or concubines of a polygamous man

A group of female animals sharing a single mateOrigin C17: from Arab. haram, harim, lit

‘prohibited place’ from harama ‘be prohibited’

Harum ScarumTo act foolishlyCharacterised by unthinking boldness and hasteA reckless and impetuous personCheerfully irresponsibleIn a wild and reckless mannerOrigin C17: reduplication based in HARE and SCARE.Concise Oxford English Dictionary

Text by Kathryn Elkin, 30.06.08 in re-sponse to an art work by Jens Strandberg, ‘Shadows Out of Hell’ first shown 04.06.07, which features an art work by Rowena Mor-rill ‘Shadows Out of Hell’ 1980. A copy of her painting was found by the American troops in one of Saddam Husein’s safe houses in April 2003. Jens Strandberg would like to thank Rowena Morrill for all her help.

kathryn finalA3.indd 1 8/7/08 16:19:18

“When you meet by chance, it’s not by chance,It’s kismet.

When two hearts stand still, it’s destiny’s will,It’s kismet.

The wheel of fortune spins, round and around it goes.

Who will the arrow point to, only kismet knows.

Until you came by, kismet and I, were strangers.But now that you’re here, it’s suddenly clear we’ve met.

This is my lucky day, love’s in the cards I’d say,

Thanks to kismet, kismet, kismet.”

Having been fatally wounded just prior to the defeat of Napoleon at the battle of Trafalger 1805, Nelson’s body was preserved until it could be returned to England by submerging it in a barrel of (reportedly French) brandy. The bullet that killed him entered his left shoulder and passed diagonally through his body. The phrase ‘tapping the admiral’ (meaning to drink illicitly) is derived from a rumour that the crew of the ship siphoned off some of the brandy from the barrel during the journey home, replacing it with wine.

There is much conjecture over Nelsons dying words. It was alleged that he summoned the ships captain, Hardy, asked him to look after his wife, asked him not to throw his body overboard, and then asked him to kiss him. Hardy complied.As a means of explaining this curious, ‘un-manly’ request, some purported Nelson to have said, ‘Kismet, Hardy’, intending to make it understood that he accepted his fate and died with composure and bravery. Kismet was not in common use in the English language until the mid-19 century.Nelsons last words are alternatively reported to have been a series of commands issued in an effort to reduce his suffering as he died.‘Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub’Another report from the physician attending Nel-son contended that the Admiral repeated,‘Thank God I have done my duty’ until he passed away.

3. You lowered the limp body into a bar-rel of brandy. Pierced from end to end, and not a one of us could sing our song for the tears.

You left him to rest for some weeks be-fore you did it. Out of respect. A good place to be put to rest in any case. You liked to think of it as a consoling of yourself, of a private communion. Who else would administer to you if you did not help yourself ? As you drew from his casket, you drowned him again with wine. Was it macaroni that you used to draw the liquor? You daren’t lift the lid, was that it? You siphoned off the brandy with a straw? Well how would they tell? He might sim-ply have absorbed it..You drew from his barrel, then you bap-tized him with wine. You only looked at him when you topped him up – easier in that situation. You covered his head.

Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub.Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub. Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub. Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub. Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub. Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub.Kiss me.

Kismet.Kiss me. Kismet.

Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub. Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub.

Kiss me Hardy.Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub.Drink, drink. Fan, fan. Rub, rub.

Kismet From WikipediaKismet is another word for fate. It is derived from the Arabic term qisma (see Qadr), modified in Persian as qismat and then from Turkish kısmet, it came into English usage.Qadr is divine destiny in Islam[1].Definition Qada + Qadar1 - Both mean the sameConcept: The phrase reflects a Muslim doctrine that God has measured out the span of every person’s life, their lot of good or ill fortune, and the fruits of their efforts[4]. When referring to the future, Muslims frequently qualify any predictions of what will come to pass with the phrase Insha’Allah, Arabic for “if God willed [it].” The phrase recognises that human knowl-edge of the future is limited, and that all that may or may not come to pass is under the control of God.

Elvis Presley starred in the musical Harum Scarum (also know as Harem Holiday) in 1965, the soundtrack including the song Kismet. The film had been produced on a minimal budget using costumes and sets from other films with similar settings. (Including the set from the 1944 film, Kismet, starring Marlene Dietrich) The plot was convoluted and the songs were poor. Elvis’ character, Johnny Tyronne, is a film star touring in a fictional country somewhere in the middle east- Lunarkard- when he is kidnapped in an attempt to force him into assassinating King Toranshah. He escapes, falls in love with the Kings daughter and returns to America with his own harem of dancing girls to compliment his act. The film was generally condemned as an embarrassment.

4. Some of them are just laying in the dark, limply gorging on the different sorts of wet rolling around them. They have lost all sense of themselves…or perhaps are simply resigned itself to the situation they are placed in. That is the motiva-tion for this passive gluttony, this endless ingestion of their environ. Their guts are spilling out into it – it looks hardly enough to drown in, but then it doesn’t take much. It only needs to cover their heads. It wafts around them in mists and veils.

It only needs to cover her legs. She enters the scene legs first. She must have come down from heaven. No, she came up from below..

She drops the veil and climbs up to swipe it at you, to remind you and the others that this dance is for your benefit. You have invited this ritual. She descends again those steps below you and violently moves through the ways you might enjoy her. She reclines on the ground in elegant profile, in supplication. But this might not be so thrilling after all – she mounts the stairs again, slowly, and with a murder-ous stare she towers over you until she has eclipsed the room…and then in an instant she drops back and the floor is a sea of spinning veils and she is the centre and this frenzy is all for you! It is in your honour! It marks your victory!

..Although, I feel it is only fair that I re-mind you that what can be seen, thought and said is divided equally among us all.

Turner’s painting, The Battle of Trafalgar, 1805, was commissioned by George the IV eighteen years after the event. The work hung in St James palace, but was generally perceived to be an embarrassment due to Turner’s disregard for presenting the scene according to the accepted chronology of the events and it was subsequently removed after six years. Knowing that the paint-ing was to be hung unusually high in the Ante Room, Turner concentrated the dying soldiers and sailors struggling in the sea at the bottom of the image with the intention that this scene was met at eye level. This altered the composition of the picture significantly in that the proportion of the painting depicting the sea was minimised unusual to Turner. Floating as a fragmented inscription in the bloody sea are the words ‘PALMAM QUI MERUIT FERAT’, which was Nelson’s personal motto, translated as either as ‘who dares wins’ or ‘let he who has earned it bear the palm’.

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