Martin has been busy.
He telephoned on Saturday from Slurp and Blush in what can only be described as a state of elevated purpose – that particular vibration he gets when something has crystallised from the merely theoretical into the actionably theatrical. He had, he announced, finalised the venue for the Convention for Adhesive Ribbon Enthusiasts venue announcement event.
"In front of the gate - Parliament House", he said, with the composure of a man announcing a garden party. "Macquarie Street. Just at the top of Martin Place".
I asked if this was symbolic.
"Everything is symbolic", he replied, in a tone that suggested the question was beneath both of us. "The question is whether the symbols are paying attention".
The event, he explained – and one must admire the ambition here, the sheer unflinching grandeur of a man who treats institutional failure as an occasion for pageantry – will centre on revealing the venue for the convention as well as the presentation of a receipt. A large, very large receipt. The sort of oversized ceremonial prop one typically associates with lottery wins and novelty philanthropy.
The significant difference with this receipt is, there will be no total at the bottom. It is also not like a receipt from a chain store. You know, the ones that after a pretty short period of time the ink does a magic trick and vanishes? Unlike invisible ink either, it does not require a special formulation for the secret to be revealed. This receipt does the opposite. In its own magic trick of sorts, this receipt's text gets darker.
The itemised list in this case will represent something rather less celebratory - a failure whose scale is exceeded only by the effort invested in not 'seeing' it. Martin sounded almost concerningly flippant about this. "Every event, every detail, every accumulated data point is listed. We have the patron saint of patience SB to thank for that. If there is one thing SB knows better than anybody I have ever met, is that adhesion requires precision. You cannot stick things together carelessly. You cannot tape over the cracks and call it architecture. It is though an excellent stop-gap".
"The items exist", he said, tapping what I can only assume was the end of a teaspoon on the edge of his saucer. "They have always existed. It is just that nobody asked to see them. That is not, I know, entirely the same thing as them not being there".
It is also most certainly not a cheque. Cheques, he said, imply that something is being given. "We are not giving. We are returning. A receipt is a record of what has already been taken. One presents it for reclamation".
The intended recipients of this presentation are, of course, numerous. The Premier. The Ombudsman. The head of the Department of Public Prosecutions. Various commissioners. Various heads of various agencies whose names Martin rattled off with the brisk familiarity of someone reading a list of former flatmates who still haven't cleaned up the mess their dogs made in the back yard. This has happened to Martin on more than three occasions with a Flemming-esque reliability that has since been outsourced.
"And the Governor", he added, almost as an afterthought, the way a host might write themselves an invite to their own party".
I asked about attendance more broadly.
"Everyone is welcome", he said. "Particularly those who may feel the heaviness of their lanyard".
He let this sit for a moment. Martin has always understood that silence, deployed correctly, does more work than language. The heaviness of the lanyard – that accumulating weight of identification badges, security keys, clearance levels and institutional cross-affiliations that one wears around one's neck until the neck itself begins to bow. He did not elaborate. He did not need to.
"There are also people", he continued, "who have been carrying things for a very long time. Folders. Files. Boxes. Thumb drives. The Cloud. They have been carrying these things from place to place, from decade to decade, in suitcases and under beds and in weatherproof storage containers disguised as garden benches, because nobody in any position to read them has ever demonstrated the slightest interest in doing so. This venue naming event is for those people too. The Convention for Adhesive Ribbon Enthusiasts is simply for them to exhibit their tapes if that is their wish and/or discover new ones".
I noted that the event, as previously established, maintains a strict prohibition on acronyms.
"Naturally", he said. "Reduction is the language of those who wish to make things smaller than they are. We are in the business of full articulation. Every syllable. Every word. If the name of the thing is long, that is because the name of the thing is long. It is a nonsense to abbreviate a life or demonise pedantry to a binary".
He paused again and ordered another citron pressé, which I heard acknowledged with the quiet efficiency of a waiter that has learned not to interrupt Martin when he is mid-communiqué.
"The event is not a protest", he clarified, "A protest implies that one is asking for something. We are not asking. We are presenting. There is a difference between a petition and a receipt, and I trust that even the most wilfully obtuse recipient can distinguish between the two, though history has not inspired confidence on this point".
He then outlined, with the procedural relish of a man who has discovered that bureaucracy can be wielded in both directions, that the gathering will feature what he described as "an industrial grade paper receipt spike on a card table". Attendees are invited to bring their own receipts, their own records, their own carefully preserved, frequently ignored, occasionally corrupted and universally 'inconvenient' evidence of transactions they fulfilled and impale them.
Think of it", he said, and I could hear him leaning forward, "A literal stationery impalement. It will also be very large — an echo of the wrought iron gates and nearby Centrepoint Tower". He paused, and then added, with the slight awkwardness of a man who knows he is about to undermine his own precision, "There is of course a longer tradition - the pillory, the stake, Vlad had his methods. We have ours. The difference is that we are impaling the paperwork, not the people. Though I suspect this tableau is not entirely..." he trailed off.
I asked if he was nervous.
"About what?" he said. "It is all public. The receipt, the tapes and scissors are packed".
Ding!