"The Slashmodernists is a project which ebbs and flows between 4,000 word short story and proto-novel depending on the phases of the moon and prevailing winds. It’s about an emotionally damaged super-artist named Harrison Brodie." - Steven-hall.co.uk, via Archive.org
"
Not Jesus Yet", published in 2005 on 3ammagazine.com, is
described as an extract of "The Slashmodernists"
This "deleted scene" was on Steven-hall.co.uk:
"On channel four four five Godzilla is fighting a giant spider in cardboard Tokyo, I press the button. On channel one six eight there is an old cartoon about robots that turn into cars, I press the button. On channel seven nine two dogs are pulling a black sledge through the snow and a ball of fur that might be a man is on the back shouting mush, I press the button. On channel seven seven seven is a science program about osmosis and transfer of elements between cells, I press the button. On channel zero three five is a film with Brandon Lee and he is tying a man into a car and the man is saying “But you’re dead, we killed you. There ain’t no coming back,” and I press the button.
Tomorrow I am meeting Simian Keslev at his home and the day after that I am at a press conference with the Artourage but today I have nothing to do. This is down time. It’s down time Harrison. I am in the garden, watching television. The garden is quite big and mostly green and there are two long cables running from the back of the television one is brown, this is the aerial, and one is black, this is the power. I am sitting in a green padded chair with a white garden table in front of me and the TV is on the grass. It is not a portable TV, is it big and widescreen. My maid, Marci, is walking down the line of the two cables from the house towards me with a drink and a sandwich and an umbrella. Marci is wearing an apron which is printed with a picture of grass.
“Mr. Brodie,” Marci says “It’s starting to rain.”
This is true. The raindrops Marci is talking about are big fat slow ones. So far, only three of them have landed on the TV screen. Two are running down the glass in distortion lines and the third sits, a fat ball, droplet, acting like magnifying glass and making the tiny pixels big.
I press the button. Yesterday, I met one of Barry’s new up-and-coming artists who kept quoting ‘I am the resurrection and the light’, from the bible at us and he said he had learned what it meant, and nobody asked him but he told us anyway, he said it meant the light was God and God started out whole, but the world shattered God into colours and frequencies and nonsense and Mcaffery said “well, what about the resurrection bit then?”
and Barry’s new up-and-coming artist shone light from a torch into a glass prism with ‘the world’ written on it in biro because he thought it would prove something, but it didn’t, even though Barry clapped.
I press the button. On the TV, the rain droplet becomes part of a grey battleship’s side. The magnified pixels are red, blue and green. I press the button. The droplet becomes part of a yellow cornfield. The magnified pixels are still red blue and green. I press the button. A cowboy shoots a black and white Indian off his horse, a gigantic alligator chases a small canoe, the space shuttle hangs in space, a newsreader reads news, a scientist splits a rock, and the magnified pixels are always the same. The magnified pixels never change. The magnified pixels are red, blue and green. I think about recording this somehow to upset Barry and his new up-and-coming artist but I realise it is impossible. The rain gets heavier and the picture starts to distort into streaks, stripes and rolling colour-balls. Tape, video camera and photograph would not really record what I am seeing, the image would only be another trick.
Mr. Brodie,” says Marci, who is standing next to me now. “It’s raining. Shouldn’t you come inside?”
What I need, I think, is some kind of hat."
