FLOOZMAN
«By a
scandalous abundance, he brings deliverance »
FLOOZMAN IS A MULTIMODAL PLATFORM
Depot S.A.C.D. 174 627
© BC, 2005
Somewhere at the heart of the financial system flows a
mysterious and inexhaustible money source. Fred Looseman is among the very few
who have found it. Like them, he has carried a long investigation, like them he
has caught a glimpse of the truth and like them, as he approached the emanation
origin, he has lost his memory…
Only yesterday, he was still the smart Worldwide Credit Corporation
Chief Risk Officer and the president of the anti money laundering commission.
Since his fall, he survives on the job the bank found him in a computer
maintenance team. His family and friends have become estranged. Isolated, his
faculties obscured, he only lives to mend the cash dispensers and the network
which connects them up to the central computers. Sometimes, after long work
hours, he happens to hear voices. Closing his eyes, he distinguishes prayers.
Some are so clear and sincere that he drops his tools and starts to cry.
This is how he becomes Floozman. He comes to light and recovers his
minds. His banker calls him on the phone and it is not about his overdraft
because she remembers as well. They both know what Floozman has to do. He has
the required resources and more. But this wealth is not his: it is the magical
money of deliverance.
Relax: in spite of its mystical and industrial
pretensions, Floozman is a hyper cool concept. It is both corpuscular and
wavelike. It lends itself to decomposition into primary colours. You can put it
in your pocket to take it everywhere.
Rejoice: Floozman is alive and young as the world is
young. By essence, he can not remain captive neither of his author, nor of a
style, even less of a mini-towels packaging. Resisting to the categories of
real and imaginary, he sells or gives himself and freely infuses himself into
every domain, journeying in a condensed form to be perpetually reborn beyond
the realm of he who invokes him.
Get rich, at last: if he prefers casting his bread upon
the waters, Floozman also knows how to put in place more reasonable business
models. He thus invites you to create wealth with your own contends thanks to
the device described in these pages.
Indeed, as part of the technical paradigm into which
we shall engage in due course, this concept and its treatment will constitute a
‘platform’, that is an organized set of functions on top of which authors and
producers will capitalize to generate a large variety of intellectual works or
‘oeuvres de l’esprit’ (excuse my French).
We will use the language and the tools convenient to
our industry to describe it, while waiting for the spirit to blow if he so
wishes. But before this, with the liberty we still enjoy, let’s see what can be
said of the central idea.
The
concept
« By a scandalous abundance»
The inextinguishable money flow expanding through
Floozman emanates from a point beyond understanding. Thus, the celestial source
of his power provides him with the most material and mercantile fluid ever.
This paradox is echoing to the famous incarnation
scandal. Can we imagine the divine presence in the money rather than in the
flesh? Would the eternal elect to invest himself rather than incarnate?
This is also about a logical scandal, as nothing
justifies the overabundance of the assets mobilized by Floozman. Offending to
those who are working or remain subject to the economic constraints, the injection
of such a wealth into the financial system is a threat to the establishment and
a crime before justice.
Indeed, Floozman is dangerous like a revolutionary or
a prophet. With him, the familiar finiteness of which money is the mark is
threatened by the spring of the incommensurable, announcing the end of scarcity
and the end of times.
At last, in spite of its load of evil, money
circulates around the world as a universal equivalent. Value of values in the
anomic skies of the times, its might constantly extends to new domains and
captivates attention. We love money. Nothing is more fascinating than its
unveiled operation in the crude light of the economic exchange.
For this reason, the obvious sense of some adventures
will sometimes take an obscene twist. It will often be hard to believe that the
hero’s prodigality is a reflection of the celestial outpouring on a lower
plane.
Though the above suggests that Floozman lends himself
to different levels of interpretation, it is not certain that one can account
in a coherent manner of such a symbolic monster, unstable synthetic figure born
of elemental forces mating.
As the verb animates the Golem, as the lightning brings the Frankenstein
creature alive, the money unchains the slave. This can have no happy end.
«He brings deliverance»
Why does the epigraph have no complement? What sort of
deliverance is it about? To whom is it offered and what does it free of?
The joker Floozboy has said: the evil. This is what
the soul is delivered of. But can it be delivered of good?
The learned Floozboy replied: Answers would alter the transcendental
realm of the idea because there is only one deliverance.
Floozman adventures have nevertheless stakes and
protagonists. Floozman hears with compassion the complaint of the captives who
sincerely aspire to liberty. Like an angel, he traverses the worlds to grant
their prayers. Money is the sword in his hand cutting the bonds. Like a
Messiah, he delivers men from darkness and spirit from matter. Money is the
superior light of which he radiates.
In spite of Floozman modernity, we feel as if we were
in a very ancient world, rooted in antiquity, a universe from which the
demiurge has shrunk at the dawn of times and to which he seeks to return. Or is
it that a cosmic catastrophe has happened so that the spirit has fallen with a
rain of sparks into the thickness of matter?
Floozman only knows that prisoners need him and that
he has the power to help them. He confronts the evil without ceasing to be
vulnerable, sometimes strong and sometimes weak depending on the fate of this
fight in which he struggles like a mortal, in spite of his divine part. He does
not know the ultimate meaning of his presence into the world but he will
certainly bring elements of response in the disputes to be written.
The captives are most of the time ‘true people’
although Floozman happens to deliver a company dog or an iron. Their slavery
and pains are quite common.
It is to be noted that the hero is more often faced
with lassitude than body corruption against which his power still needs to
build up. We shall see however that in certain circumstances, Floozman does not
hesitate to descend into hell.
Treatment
Now that we have extracted the concept, it is time to address
the way in which we are going to exploit it here.
With all his powers, his mission and his large coat,
it is convenient that Floozman be a super hero. He then needs an operating
mode, mostly for screen adaptations.
Here are the essentials of this scheme. It is
described further as a state machine to facilitate the development of
industrialization tools.
Floozman lives mostly in a sleeping state where he is
none other than Fred Looseman, a half dazed poor fellow who can not remember
his fatal contact with the holy banking secret. His story is unveiled in the
initial episode.
Sometimes, Fred Looseman hears a prayer from a
desperate creature. At this moment, he falls into trance and transforms himself
like his comics counterparts. The response to the call is the first pivot
point.
As Floozman, he enjoys infinite cash and a virtual
team who supports him in spending it in a quasi instantaneous manner. In the
field, these Floozgirls and Floozboys help him organize the salvation.
Each Floozman sortie takes place with the utmost
urgency in an increasing messianic elation mood. Depending on the success of
the operation, Floozman, his gang and the persons he is saving can accomplish
miracles or even reach superior states of mind, thus triggering the
accomplishment of cosmic processes such as dissolution of the material world.
But evil is not definitively repelled. More than
police or bandits, against whom Floozman gets stronger every minute, reason,
computation, spirit of seriousness and idolatry undermine his forces until the
link is broken which unites him to the inexhaustible source. It is often by
surprise that Floozman shall fall into a mundane trap.
Sometimes, Floozman faces real difficulties or the
perverse effects of his own actions. The trap is then made up of the limits,
the failures and the irreducible elements which compromise the hero’s mystical
momentum.
This contact with vile thoughts, doubts or resistances
constitutes the second pivot point.
The spell is broken. Contaminated by evil, Floozman
experiences the fall again. He becomes Fred Looseman anew while a different
order emerges and stabilizes itself. The freed slaves enjoy liberty, he returns
to his gloomy life and his anonymous states. It is the end of the cycle.
Psychogenesis
I will reveal its essentials although this does not
have a great interest. Floozman will do his job without referring to the
circumstances of his creation.
I have imagined this first version of the character in
the loose chains of common slavery. Produced in the interstices of servitude,
it is the result of constrained intermittent thoughts, of subterranean
elaboration hastily gathered in the fear of the morrow.
Floozman had to turn into a monster to exist. To be
heard, he had to prove he was alive, moved by the most brutal necessity, a
force equivalent to the one which constrains me to work in the techno structure
steerages.
In order not to fall into dizzy forgiveness somewhere
on the A4 highway, he had to crudely talk money until the reality of his
existence woke me up. A vaguely obscene abstraction was incarnating itself for
real into a burlesque hero calling for hope, armed with the hyper real fluid
money is.
I had to renounce the project of a consistent novel
from the beginning to let flow his liberating word.
Attentive to his resonances in exile traditions, I
have endeavoured to give him form and sense in my universe, bearing in mind
that the poor clothes I provided will never be worthy of the transcendent
grandeur I see in him.
I would like to borrow their skilful chemistry to the
spider which secretes its lead or to the genes which make the cat’s pupil.
These living systems are organising the poor molecules around into complex
forms. They assemble long polymers and produce unique clothes so beautiful that
they please immediately, without concept (excuse my Kant).
A similar capability would enable me to spin a truly
original story. Now I only use prefabricated material to construct an episode.
When I am not transplanting a whole sequence of life, I go to the public place
to take away complete elements as one builds up a hut: myths basics, shavings
of great Scriptures, pieces of series, comic strips, fragments of classics,
managerial recipes…
Without shivering, I sew the ones with the others. I
always have with me some iron thread to keep it together. In reality, I am
having fun but am I not just a poor hurried tramp amassing no moss? In spite of
the fact that tinkering about is part of cultural creation, I will not invoke
ethnology to justify this plundering. I rather invite the reader to visit the
shanty town and signal the borrowings I am not concealing.
Steeped in intention though he be, Floozman shall be a
hero. Most of the times clumsy and heavy tongued, he will tell the misery of
captives.
And most of it, once the germ is sowed, as I will
drift away into the haze like a crooked peasant, Floozman will become what he
is.
Multi
modal platform
So we are in presence of a platform. It can be
literary because Merdre! It is multimodal because it sounds nice and because
creations could be declined along a multitude of genres and activities most of
which will not pretend to art: theological gadget, TV obscenity, charity,
financial product, social movement…
I propose this foundation to all the talents who want
to exploit it. God willing, I will continue to write Floozman into the vein I
like, while remaining attentive to those who are in exile, waiting to return to
the sky of ideas.