The Lost Interview

Well done for finding me here, in this lost corner of the Treasury. I’m, if you like, the genie in the bottle, or the genius loci (to go all Latin for a moment, and that will already have put some of you off), the spirit of the place. And this “site” is surely a place, but where you can’t talk with a physical location (though some would disagree) you can talk with this one because, here am I, ready to tell you things and tell you how to ask questions. But to liven things up a bit let’s make it an interview. You go first,- Alright, this “TReasured”, this “Poetics Of Trans”, is a new idea surely? Well, not really. If anything’s new it’s using the idea to present transgender to people, but the basic idea is very old. It’s a kind of encyclopedia, and that’s a book, and since the compiler of this one is a compulsive reader there’s a lot of previous books which it’s like and which they always wanted to have a go at writing – but somebody got in there first. For example? There’s quite a few. I’ll give you a top six,- - there’s “A Lover’s Discourse” by Roland Barthes which is a collection of 80 short sections dealing with love and it’s a combination of Barthes’ own experiences and ideas and quotes from other people about each of the themes (though Mr B wouldn’t have liked me calling them “themes”) - and there’s “The Arcades Project” by Walter Benjamin which was his attempt to understand the 20th Century by looking at the capitalism of the 19th Century mainly in Paris. It’s also ram-full of quotes mixed with his own ideas and has a few big essays about history, fashion, architecture. This Mr B would rather his topics were called “convolutes”, because they’re like twisted-up sweet-wrappers, - with the sweet still inside. This is a big book but there are pictures. - easier to read, but not at one sitting, is “A Pattern Language” by Christopher Alexander, the veteran Architect and ideas-man. In this one he breaks down the development of building into many, many subjects (each of which Mr A thinks of as a “pattern” which together make up a language), nested inside each other but every one about something practical like neighbourhoods or window-seats or kids play-areas. In every pattern there’s a picture, some diagrams and a how-to-do-it section and more. Very user-friendly and sane. - another Mr B, Gaston Bachelard, wrote “The Poetics Of Space” in which he looks at species of space and the poetry they generate, like the quality of feeling to be found in a shell or a nest or a house or a corner, and this being a “poetics” and very much not a collection of types of things it appeals to our compiler a lot. - then there’s “The Whole Earth Catalogue” by Stewart Brand which is a big hippy book from the 60’s which is a catalogue of things you might want to know about to change the world with a collection of articles like a big fat magazine. It’s dated now (and quite hard to get hold of), but it appealed to our compiler, who may have been a hippy themselves, because it’s also very “How-to…” in spirit. - not forgetting Doctor Johnson’s Dictionary which, as we may know, the good Doctor made up as he went along from his prodigious knowledge and reading, and needless to say the compiler of this text, for whom Doctor J is a big hero, aspires to have done the damn same thing. But this isn’t really a book, is it? Not in the form you’re reading it now, no. In the future, who knows? But it is a text, which doesn’t just mean that you can read it, obviously, there being pictures, images and film in here at the very least. Taken all together they are also “text” really, because you can make sense of them by looking hard into what they’re saying. Just like I’m saying something about this work while also being part of it. But there’s no order to it all, is there? Isn’t there? Are you sure? You can’t read web-sites end-to-end. I tell you what, I’ll sketch in how this trans thing works. Have you ever seen a picture of the earth at night taken from space? I guess so. Well, if you have you’ll notice that it’s a picture of light and dark and the lights cluster in certain places, yes? Yes, OK. The lights are where human activity is. There’s activity in the dark, but less so. Now if you could aim a trans-camera (I just invented that, by the way) at a whole area of the globe or just part of it and it picked up where trans was happening there would be similar clusters, clusters of trans-ness. And generally these clusters wouldn’t have hard edges but fuzzy ones where there’s less trans-ness and then farther out apparently none, - but that would depend on how sensitive your trans-camera was. That’s what your compiler has done here, aimed a trans-camera at the world of human activity, feeling and ideas and captured a picture of trans-ness, all, I would remind you, made up of individual lights or points or traces of trans. Some are hardly trans at all but they all register on the camera. So? So this accounts for the form of this site-that’s-not-a-book-but-is-a-text. Just as in the global light-picture all of those clusters have names, - Los Angeles, Murmansk, Cape Town, - so our compiler has looked at the clusters of trans-ness shown by their camera and seen that each of them has a certain character, a different – well somebody, I think, found the word “jism”, not meaning semen by the way – or maybe so actually, - but expressing a unique defining quality, yes, each of the clusters of trans-ness has a “jism” which marks it out as different from all the others. (If you’re a fan of Chaos Theory you’d be calling this a “strange attractor”.) And possibly because of the compiler’s orderly, classic-minded fixations they brought the number down, or up, to 36 which is 6 rows of 6 on a wide-screen. And they gave each a name. But they’re not names are they? Correct, - in a way. The first thing they are is images, 36 images, and that’s just a way of capturing each “trans-ness” in a single visual idea. But they do have words attached when you click on. There’s something we might call a category [usually in brackets] which is the part of a catalogue you might find them in if this was a catalogue, which it nearly is. And there’s a film which talks to you about this particular trans-ness mainly from the point of view of the compiler, talking to you in the way that I’m talking to you now out of the site. And there’s a title which is the name of this particular film, reminding you that another person could say it a different way, and though it would still belong to that category, it would have a different title. And finally there’s all these “convolutes” or “patterns” or “figures”, and it’s full to the brim with quotes, ideas and references which our compiler has decided fall into that category. So it’s all their idea, really? It’s a personal collection, which is why it doesn’t claim to be an encyclopedia, or a dictionary, or even a thesaurus, but a bit like all of them. The fancy – and quite nice – word for it is a “Poetics” but basically it’s an inventory which means that it’s just a collection of all the things or items this particular person had available to them. But it’s a very big collection, and they have taken some trouble to make sure that it isn’t just their view of the world of trans. Like how? It starts with images and that’s much less prescriptive than words. You might see an image differently from me. But anyway the moment you include quotes and references it’s stopped being one person’s view of anything. Then there’s no big order here, just a lot of items to be considered. You can draw your own conclusions from it all, and take your own route through it. Then the categories and convolutes are, thanks to the wonders of web-development, linked in various ways, with tags, and if you click on something you can zip quickly across to another category or a set of ideas. You can even, if you get lost or bored, get a random-deal of a new image. Think of it as a game, or, No, think of it as a playground, a somewhere to go to explore and play with trans-nesses. I’m sure that’s what our compiler had in mind. Couldn’t it all be simpler, less complicated? Playing isn’t that complicated, is it? You managed well enough before you found this clever corner of the site. Thinking too hard about it makes it complicated. Why don’t you go back and play some more? It’s been fun and interesting so far, hasn’t it? Yes, it has. I might just do that. But why all this trouble for trans? I think the philosophy, if there is one, would be that trans is a whole world, and a life-affirming world, which is to say that if you immerse yourself in trans-ness you will get all the stimulus and sustenance you need to keep your life-spirit thriving, and growing. But before you go – I should say that there’s one other way it isn’t just an inventory-compiler’s fantasy-site. There’s an invitation to give feedback and,- Yes? There’s an invitation to suggest things which could be included in the site and,- Yes? You might want to create a contribution yourself. Eventually. When you’ve got to feel more at home here. This is the address to use. mandylaromero@hotmail.com OK. And a question to you, if I may? Go on. Are you interested in knowing more about the world of transgender and its many clusters? Well, that’s why I came here, and stuck around. Then please pass on the link to others. The more visitors the more truth will be in here. Alright, I will, but can I ask one last question? By all means. This compiler-person, - it’s you, isn’t it? https://www.treasured.org.uk/tag/cest-moi