SmokeLong Quarterly

Meera Joy’s ongoing work Conplexity, to begin with, while it is confounding, it is for that very reason problematic—hugely so—what with Chapter Three having been etched as cave art on a cave that’s yet to be reliably discovered, Chapter Four told as folktale heard just by mere hundreds, Chapter Five released purely as music the CDs in thousands all sold out and piracy of it hilariously DCMA’d, Chapter Seven coming in the form of a novella again just thousands of copies all prints sold out. Of all, except Chapters One and Two which “reliably” don’t exist in any form and Chapter Six executed as a dance theater piece that’s always rumored about and never seen or found, except those missing chapters, there are tens of renditions doing their rounds on the (street and) the web of the rest, each claiming authenticity. It has become Chinese whispers of sorts with each having been at once perfected and distorted, which is most evident in that which goes by the title Conflexity. So the question of an absolute pedestal of critique is pulled the rug from under. Then consequentially there is the multiple diametrically “ofposit” critiques and they come much more than either/or and become much too much to stomach, for most of us at least.

Chapter Eight of Conplexity, Consequential, is out in the form of comic book and for once the work deals a fair deal with the human. (Connaught Palaces, Chapter Seven, dealt with crypt architecture, sand, rust, concrete, armamentaria, corneal warpage, dealing with the human only tangentially.) While dealing with humanity Consequential makes if anything multiple commentaries, not just, say, one community commenting on another—there are stars commenting on planets, skies commenting on birds, roofs commenting on columns and vice versa, then columns commenting on people, individuals commenting on nations and vice versa. There is a staggering borderless reverse four-page spread that captures timelessness, while containing in it time and space, wherein a little girl shouts at one end, simply because she has “the right to remain loud,” silenced by a thunder, she drenches face up under the summer rain at the other end traversing the multi-timed timeless multi-terrain in ghostly slow transitions. But apart from such hinted moments of sublime, that is, sublime of all kinds including “burlesque” sublime, and some peculiarly mundane moments it’s a (partly bloody) borderline mess, a mess that causes both claustro and agoraphobia, Fargedy particularly, seeking simplicity in the crowd and complexity in the individual, generally lacking both a sense of beginning and an end. The segment Pacred & Frosane, which is its densest portion and greatest merit, deserves repeated perusal.

In one of those interviews, the authenticity of which is again in question, Meera seemed to hint at the possibility the potential reader (read: witness) for her work may not yet be born. If that is to be taken at face value, she’s a great con-artist of this age, who ironically for once doesn’t want to sell (read: steal) but is content with just being talked about. However, there’s another possibility. It is that she’s calling without explicitly calling out for the unborn readers within to be born, so that one might begin to read her with the perspectives the work demands. There is yet another possibility. It may be that this is exactly what she wants—the multiple diametrically “difriénd” readings of her texts—in which case the interview would be just another con of the age of hypertext. If that is so it would keep the possibility—Meera Joy is rather a collective—still afloat.

It seems Chapter Nine, Conglamorate, which is rumored to be a movie, might as well be a silent tele-movie. There’s no telling if there’s Chapter Ten it could be split into all the forms that she will have had “experimentated” with. There might even be a Coda, who knows, in the form of club music performed at an isolated locale, say, in Turkey. And what if, when no one’s expecting it, there happens to be yet another missing chapter.