Ken Campbell:
I'm not mad, I just read different books
Saturday 27 September
"So this is Durham." announced Ken Campbell (pictured left, having a crafty cigar in the Market Place before his performance at the Town Hall on Saturday 27th September). "That's an anagram of Damanhur, almost. Hold on to that - we'll come back to it." We did - eventually, but first we were off on a consideration of the films of Jackie Chan (paying particular attention to the last 20 minutes of his Drunken Master II) and Aardman Animations (the very early works, before they became famous with Wallace and Gromit), the "laughing Jesus" of the Gnostic writings and the Cherokee booger event.
Ken Campbell spoke without notes, and apparently without pausing for breath, although he did occasionally refer to one of the books and films scattered on the table behind him. Did you know that the economy of Prince Edward Island has been saved by the influx of Japanese tourists visiting the setting of Anne of Green Gables? Ken Campbell learned this from an islander he met in Philadelphia, where the local public service television in his hotel room was showing a full day of films about L. M. Montgomery's heroine. But, since we were at a literature festival, he announced triumphantly that Anne's popularity in Japan also featured in a book: and he brandished a copy of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.
Did all this mean anything? "I don't believe," said Ken Campbell. "But I can suppose." Very well, then, let's suppose... And when, one hour in, he asked us if he should stop, "Carry on", we said. Which took us on to time travel and the possibility that we may be living in one of a very large - but not infinite - number of parallel universes. At each instant of time we may be faced with a choice. At this point the universe splits, into one where the opportunity was taken and one where it was not. And on, to encounters with David Deutsch and Stephen Hawking.
Half an hour later he asked the same question and got the same answer - and this at last brought us to Damanhur. The people of Damanhur have embarked on a unique experiment in social, economic and spiritual living, based around the construction of an elaborate temple, built deep into the heart of a mountain. For over fifteen years, this building was carried on in secret, with some two million buckets of earth and rock being dug out and secreted around the valley.
Then, having talked like a whirlwind for two hours without notes, and having brought us back, breathless and exhilarated, to our point of depature, he stopped.
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