Jack and The Beanstalk
Companion piece to “Fuck History?” in Issue 0.
Once upon a time there was a boy named Jack who toiled with his mother on a farm. Their toiling was so miserable that Jack devised a plan to overcome it: he would inflate the value of his milk through artfully representing it, in hopes of exchanging it for magic beans. When he was finally approached by the magic-bean wizard at the weekly market with an offer of exchange, Jack accepted, even though the wizard warned him of the consequences: every time he climbed into the land of giants, the people back on earth would age rapidly, while he stayed young. But Jack was elated and planted his beans as soon as he got home. Overnight the beanstalk exploded into the sky, and Jack climbed his way up through the small doorway in the clouds. He found the stash of gold coins and dropped them through the doorway, watching the golden rain shimmer in the sunlight as he climbed down. At the bottom of the stalk the village formed a crowd to receive him, thankful. And Jack did notice that even though he was gone for an hour of his time, two weeks had passed on the land. Yet the village needed more, and he was happy to scramble up the beanstalk again to collect more coins.
Jack repeated this regularly, a form of labor better suited to him than farming because the thin air improved his breathing condition. But Jack one day noticed that his mother was now very old, and despite all these valuable coins, he could hardly take care of her, so he thought about what he could do to make his journey to the land of giants more efficient. He designed a beanstalk elevator that took him up there faster, and instead of taking golden coins, he went straight for the goose that laid the eggs where the golden coins came from. This meant fewer trips and a sustainable gold factory for the village. But the wealth did not make the villagers happy, and he was pressed to find more by the community. Jack knew that one more trip to the land of giants, even for a few minutes, would mean that his mother would die while he was away. So he thought about what he could bring back to the village that might make his journey worth this sacrifice. As he elevated above the crowd one last time, as the beanstalk withered away, he set his mind on the final heist. Outsmarting the giants, he made away with their prized possession, a Golden Harp. But when he returned, the community was outraged. They had no use for music, they said. But Jack explained that this was no ordinary folk music, the Golden Harp was a device that held all the songs of all the ancestors of all time, and like a hologram, projected the lives of the vanquished in all their expressive melody. Feasts could be arranged, reunions of souls a regular thing, meaning brought into their toil. He tried in vain to explain to the community that the entire history of humanity, as well as the gods, could be temporarily reanimated and sung, to vibrate and awaken the dead souls on the brutal land. He demonstrated, playing the harp, and a harmonious vision of his deceased mother came into view, singing the songs she sang to him as a baby, an experience which he re-membered for the first time. The villagers were not amused.
George Cruikshank, Jack, climbing the Bean Stalk, 1854. Etching. The Victorian Web.
One night when Jack was asleep, the villagers formed a mob, hungry for gold, and rationalized that Jack was the village dictator hoarding the gold, even as they secretly hoped to use the Golden Harp just one time to see their deceased loved ones. In the mob’s march to Jack’s farm, individuals were born. But when they broke into his small home, all they found was the Golden Harp, which they then scrapped for gold, breaking it into fragments and distributing it equally to every community member. The house was set on fire, and Jack perished. The only remains of the entire event were the disjecta membra of the Golden Harp, fragments dispersed around the community that no one was interested in reassembling. Indeed, as generations passed, the community didn’t even know the gold they exchanged was once a magical history machine, and its memory spiraled down the seemingly eternal drain of human suffering.
But the community continued to grow, and its wealth slowly became consolidated once again. Those in the administration began to have random dreams of people past, because they were closest to the fragments of the harp and increasingly isolated from the community. Still, they couldn’t quite grasp what the meaning of these dreams were. The community grew and expanded, and its scientists put forth countless theories about their unique social and economic situation; artists emerged and painted various forms of suffering in detail, the likes of which had not been seen before, and so on. The historians conjectured that there was once something like a Golden Harp that could play the memory of the species in redeeming detail. They ultimately became outcasts of the community, laboring underground, and galvanizing interest in re-membering the Harp. Ultimately a sect emerged called the New Jacks, who set forth a theory for remembering that there is a possibility of reconstructing the Harp. Generations passed, the New Jacks became abstract scripture, and ultimately superstition as dark ages, silent spots on the career of humanity consumed the living and disintegrated them.
George Cruikshank, Jack gets the Golden Hen away from the Giant, 1854. Etching. The Victorian Web.
But yet again the countless fragments of previous wealth congealed into a centralized monument, vulgar and proud, a pigeon-art of history. Accumulation once again stimulated dreams of times past, and in the most consuming stage acts of the most palpable dreams, the army of the dead was prepared to lead humanity further beyond the meaningless toil of the waking days, if only their visions could be shared. And once again the monuments were torn down by zealots and redistributed to the herds in fragments. They were heaved into the rivers once and for all, washed away into the oceans to settle and be licked by primitive bottomfeeders. Fragments were smuggled into private homes and fetishized as sex shrines. And so on. A disclaimer in the form of caution tape was placed on the precipice of the pit where the Harp’s pieces were supposed to have once been artfully reassembled into a monstrosity of a monument barely resembling The Harp and certainly incapable of working as intended. Millenia passed, communities warred, then came together, and split apart ad infinitum. In each iteration, the world became a little smaller. The ocean was dredged by the elites, terrible dictatorial powers accumulated humans alongside materials and artifacts, and over a long period of time, there was once again an accumulation of wealth, a great trash heap of human suffering that fostered strange visions in those who could squint hard enough to make a coherent image of it all. Visions of freedom began to form, expressed in the barbaric languages of the times, and then tragically filtered through malicious interpretations by those who had not seen such visions.
Once again, the communities came together as one final mob to pulverize this consolidation. But they were not only vengeful and heartless, but clever, and they devised a way to break apart this consolidation not directly, but indirectly, through the manipulation of perception. They used their technically sophisticated soapboxes to pronounce that the visions were lies, having never seen them, planned smear campaigns aimed at dismantling not the accumulated fragments of the Golden Harp, but the perception around the visions. Visions as such were made taboo, and those with visions were soon exiled by the masses of communities. Publicly, the rallying cries were a vigilant “Fuck history!” While in private, people secretly yearned in the depths of their sordid lives to make love to history, to consummate it. To bury this last iota of an inkling of feeling, it was decided that people from a young age would be indoctrinated to administer the empire of dirt upon which they stumbled. The perceived sanctity of official duties and job titles coldly nipped in the bud any sentiment or plan that, like Jack’s, might yield something beyond itself. The wizard tried to donate his beans to this callous society, but they were refused. Scattered to the wind, they can be seen from time to time growing between the cracks, before they are harvested by bean hunters and sold on the black market. There are rumors about them being extracted for anti-aging serums, but no one can verify this.
George Cruikshank, Jack and the Fairy Harp, escaping from the Giant, 1854. Etching. The Victorian Web.