Another event that happened to me between the age of 16 and 17 years old that had great impact on me: two public speeches I held at school. At Dutch schools, at least at that time, everyone was obliged to hold at least one speech in front of the class about a self chosen subject. Usually these speeches were 10 minutes long and a lot of students were sort of nervous about doing that.

My teachers name was Hans van Es and he was a soft, friendly and sympathetic sort of character. His subject was Dutch language. He had given me good grades and compliments about my writing abilities before so we generally seemed to like each other. Since I could chose my own subject I somehow got the idea into my head to try change everyones world view in my speaking time. I was somehow expecting that was possible. I got in front of class and spoke for 45 minutes about quantum physics, universe, shoestring theory, all sorts of other stuff relating to how weird a place the universe really is. I was totally emerged in the job and wasn’t even using any material as far as I can recall. The knowledge I had stowed within through years of reading and thinking simply poured out of me like I was exploding. After 45 minutes, which I had hardly noticed had passed, students literally rushed out of class. The teacher was rather impressed, though, and gave me an A but all I cared about was the effect my lesson had had on my fellow students. To my great disappointment none of them had even understood a single thing I had been saying. I questioned a good sample and most of them were simply unable to even tell me what I had been talking about that hour. I was severely disappointed by that awkward laziness and inability to understand the simplest things. I felt really pissed off.

So, one year later I had to do another one of those speeches and I thought like: fuck it, no concessions this time. I have to try something different. I asked Hans van Es if I could again take the whole hour and this time have a classroom I could prepare for the occasion. Hans gave his permission.

I asked some guys from the squat I was living in to come be surreal figurants. They were wearing weird masks and robes. I emptied the classroom so everyone had to sit on the floor. I darkened the windows with garbage bags. I had weird music playing and two tv’s with strange art videos a friend had made. I put one of the guys in masque in front of the door and burned heavy incense. I had a bunch of texts printed out from Crowleys Book of Lies. The class came in, bewildered, and all sat down on the floor. The only thing I remember about the 45 minutes that followed is that I went completely bonkers. I screamed, I danced, I read texts, I raved like a lunatic. All my energy was coming out. It was incredibly trippy. The entire hour is some sort of black hole in my mind. After I felt finished I sat myself down in front of the class and said ‘game over’. Right at that moment an alarm clock went off I had set before, really loud, and the students and teacher who were already freaked out jumped up.

It was one of the best things I did in those years. It gave me great mental independance. It was a performance I did for myself rather than for them, and that absence of concessions was superb. However, one blind guy who was in my class was completely fascinated by the whole thing and he thanked me repeatedly. Some girl who was there and was from our squat told me that a lot of the people the entire hour had been staring obsessively at the television in front of them. Fear of the unknown, it is an interesting thing to defeat.

Some years later I one time returned to that school and saw Hans. I asked him if he remembered that performance. He said he was still having nightmares about it. What really blasted my mind however was that someone had painted a portrait of Crowley and hung it close to the classroom i had done that performance in. I pointed it out to Hans and he gave a real troublesome look.