Home.

After 5 days of working from home/isolation I am prone to think about 'Home', the television adaption of JG Ballard's Enormous Space, back when channels could be unashamedly creative with their programme listing. It has been a while since I last saw 'Home', and I can still feel the impact it had. Some films leave behind a physical impact, I am still unable to step over a worm on a rainy pavement thanks to David Lynch's Eraserhead.  I was, an unashamed lover of anything JG Ballard and have read a number of his brutal tales. I heard his voice as an indictment on the banality of suburban living and his half step away from reality leaves me with a feeling of horror so much stronger than any complete fantasy world. I imagine a mind like Ballard's as a natural product of the strange suburban childhood dichotomy:  where Santa, Jesus and the Tooth Fairy are equal truths and where oddities and curiosities are shielded from eyes as 'not nice' and 'don't stare'.  'Home', begins with trauma; a man decides he will not step out of the front door after recovering from a severe car crash and so he will survive from the resources he finds within this home. At some point Gerald begins to find his sustenance through eating cats; I can't help but imagine that Ballard is toying with perverted sentiments, for example, how some will tolerate cruelty towards women or black people in fiction, but even the most stalwart of entertainee will blanche at the idea of eating of pets. Gerald's maniacal chuckle as he closes the front door to his neighbour, who is out looking for his pet dog, seals his fate as a villain.  However, it is clear that Gerald has sailed close to the edge for a while- he has a scant number of visitors to his home; they blunder on, seemingly none-the-wiser to his increasingly unhinged behaviours.  As if all it takes is the  clipped tones of middle England and a polite commitment to subterfuge to cover a multiple of sins. JG Ballard is forever successful at unpicking why I never feel at ease in the 'burbs. 

Gerald sees his home expand beyond the capabilities of his imagination. He is obviously an intelligent man and records what he encounters in a series of line drawings that are both mathematical and artistic. He faces his hand held camera and produces monologues that delve into light, source, physics and infinity, he is certain he has found a profound truth exactly in front of him. After a series of gruesome events he is able to review his video using a newly acquired 'playback' cable and is finally faced with his carefully constructed video journal. He doesn't discover the light fantastic of truth but an ordinary home with the additional horror of death and decay. He concludes that his truth is too perfect to be captured by ordinary tools and reassures himself that his truth is of an other-worldly nature.  

After several days of not leaving it, my house refuses to expand before me; bizarrely even though I have time to immerse my self in all things home,  I am becoming more and more detached from it.  I long to go outside. Gerald begins his journey with an inability to leave his house because what he sees outside is fearsome and then he turns that fear in on his inner space. Gerald has convinced himself that his experiment is a pursuit of peace and light without any acknowledgment of its ultimate destination.  It cannot be forgotten that he is a product of the suburban dream where your house is your castle and your home furnishings are a reflection of your soul.  Gerald's constant clipped middle England voiced mumblings and excuses are a reminder of even now, when class divisions are supposedly being broken down, keeping up appearances is everything and we will only consider even the greatest of crimes when it is inconvenient to our way of living. Gerald's home begins beautiful and yet he purposely destroys furniture and belongings. I wonder if it would have been so easy for Gerald to behave in such a cavalier manner if he had not always been surrounded by such things, for example, if his home had been tattered, small and dingy?  I wonder if Ballard is laughing at our pursuit of material comfort and our spiritual confusion over such things, that whilst all of us long to be safe, warm and clean - a matching twinset kitchen is never going to provide us with peace and happiness. Gerald has a longing for clarity beyond the furnishings of his house that requires him to draw upon the resources of himself, only within, he finds cruelty, brutality and unfettered 'truths'. The petty occupation of his suburban life, a good dose of fear and trauma becomes a recipe for a Molotov cocktail of human breakdown, all safely contained behind a smoothly painted, olive green door.  Perhaps, I think after enjoying Gerald's demise, my tattered home is a limp rebellion against all things neat, middle England and suburban, I would rather be outside than in.  My light source will forever be the sun.




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