Column Chronicles: Writing the ultimate Dadaesque prose

Writing the ultimate Dadaesque prose

Frank Cotolo
September 24, 2015

Most of my adult life, if not all of my child life and who knows, maybe some of my embryonic life, I have yearned to be able to put into words the spirit and energy of a painting by a Dada artist. I understand that members of the infamous Dada movement wrote prose and poetry but I am not sure if they did so merely because some of them could not draw a crooked line. Anyway, there has not been any work classified as classic Dada prose. That is what I have always wanted to create, even though there is not a speck of interest about it in the world. In fact, Dada-wise, that is every bit the reason to do it at all. So what follows is the opening of my classic Dada book, which currently has the title: "No Title."
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There is something to be said about my soldier of fortune's resistance to mayonnaise. It could be that the tube steak is sour or the milk has not left the cow's utter but whatever is said about it there is surely no other man with a rifle that is obsessed with the modern-day sandwich. This, and only this, is why I will defend the extraordinary in the face of property damage, when all else is hidden in the pillows of the antique couch. Why else would I fall deeply in love with Esmerelda?

She was slicing bologna when I noticed her behind the counter of the grocer's service center, highly brightened by yellow paint upon the wall where once hanged a design of willow blossoms and celery stalks. I thought at first her name was Estacantopolis but that was just a thought, having no basis of evidence or a legal proposition or a starving ambition. Indeed, I just heard the "Es" part of a name and went with the Greek-type sound, much of which is due to my love for stuffed olive leafs and the mythological clouds above a hexagram.

"I am in love with you, whatever your name," I said to her.

"Me too," she said, "and my name is Esmerelda, not the Greek name you made up in your head."

She was so perceptive that my cufflinks fell off of my sleeves and hit the floor, where three vagrants fought for them. I rolled my sleeves up and looked into Esmerelda's eyes. That’s when I realized I had no knowledge of human corruption and yet I would be happy to shove slices of liverwurst into my shoes if only there were no royal family to stop me.

My love for Esmerelda was just the beginning of a journey that bore no resemblance to the entails of a pig or the sweetness of dawn as it lights up a traffic jam or a sense of salvation, deprivation, alienation, elevation, tintinnabulation or, for that matter, this matter.

...to be continued

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.