Well, you've got lots of friends. Better ones. What's so special about her?

BILL: 

Why do you want to do this? 

DOCTOR: 

She's My Friend. 

She's my oldest friend in The Universe. 

BILL: 

Well, you've got lots of friends. 

Better ones. 

What's so special about her? 

DOCTOR: 

She's different.  

BILL: 

Different how? 

DOCTOR: 

I don't know. 

BILL: 

Yes, you do. 

DOCTOR: 

She's the only person that I've ever met 

who's even remotely like me. 

BILL: 

So more than anything you 

want her to be Good? 

NARDOLE: 

Are you having an emotion? 

DOCTOR: 

I know I can Help Her. 

NARDOLE: 

Yeah. Look at that face, he's having an emotion. 

Yeah. Yes, look at that bit, yeah, he's doing emotions. 

BILL: 

Oh, leave him alone. 

NARDOLE: 

Can I take a selfie with you?

Your latest project Unearthing has gone through a number of different stages, starting off as a piece for an anthology put together by the pyschogeographer Iain Sinclair to how it stands now with these amazing photos and music by great musicians, along with yourself doing spoken word which is like performance poetry. I was wondering how much you've come full circle and returned to your days back in the Arts Lab in the late-sixties.

AM: Very much so. I suppose it could be argued that I'd never really gotten away from the Arts Lab, but certainly over this last year I have very much returned to my roots. The multi-media explosion of Unearthing rather took me by surprise, because it was such a strange project to begin with. It all really commenced with Steve Moore himself — the subject of the writing. Back in 1976 he bought a Chinese coin sword made of 108 coins all tied together and used it in this very simple magical ritual which he came up with on the spot. He used it to ask for guidance and perhaps a confirming dream. The next day, he woke up with a voice in his ear saying the word 'Endymion', which, he later found out, was the title of a John Keats poem. This started the bizarre course that Steve's life would take in many respects. It began his unusual relationship with Selene, the Greek Moon Goddess. So, in 2004, when Iain Sinclair asked if I wanted to contribute something to his London: City Of Disappearances book, I had something to write about. I'm always a sucker for anything that Iain suggests, really. 

Is Unearthing a work of psychogeography?

AM: It's more of a human excavation than the excavation of a place, but because Steve Moore has lived his entire life in one house on top of Shooter's Hill and he currently sleeps no more than four paces from the spot where he was born, it does become a work of psychogeography as well. So we do go very thoroughly into what Shooter's Hill is.

The etymology of the place name?

AM: Absolutely. Well, right back to the basic geology of how it formed. Apparently it was just because of a chalk fault that collapsed on the north side of the hill and that's what created the Thames Valley. So without that, no river Thames, no London. And yet it's this fairly isolated little hill, and there are lots of strange little places on it. We look into the place, but it's more an excavation of Steve's peculiar life which crosses into all sorts of different areas and crosses over with my life to a certain degree. It was certainly an odd little story that was self-referential. I've often found that if you write self-referential stories that feedback into your actual life then all sorts of weird things start to happen, or at least appear to start happening. Then Mitch Jenkins called round. I hadn't seen Mitch for years, but he told me he'd got to a point in his photography career where he was pretty much at the top of his field. He was bored of getting all these commissions to re-touch the irises of the latest American TV star, so he asked if I had any pieces of text that he might be able to turn into a series of photos. The only thing I had lying round was Unearthing. I said, 'Look, this is a bit big and unwieldy but there might be something in there.' Mitch came back in a state of excitement, saying that he wanted to realise it as this huge book of photographs. I said, 'Sounds good to me.'

How did it expand from that into music?

AM: Mitch said he'd been talking to the people at Lex records and they suggested all these wonderful musicians, which sounded fantastic. I came to this studio and recorded the various passages which the music was then composed around.

The piece has this ending where you describe sending the first draft of the piece to Steve and the instructions that he had to follow on opening the envelope. You read it, or listen to it, for the first time with him...

AM: He first read it exactly as it's described in Unearthing itself. I sent it to him in an envelope with the ending already written that was actually telling him to go out for a walk around this neighbourhood, and he did. He went all the way round to the burial ground and stood with his back to it, as I'd already described in my creepy self-referential story. He said he felt very weird.

Well, you would, wouldn't you!?

AM: He did actually feel a shudder run through him when he was standing with his back to the burial ground and since then his life has changed drastically. Unearthing itself was a big part of that in that there were people Steve had known for decades, and lived with in the case of his brother, who did not know how very, very strange he is. The thwarted love interest in the story read it and she was quite upset by it at first, but their relationship and their friendship recovered and became a lot stronger and healthier because of it. Steve has a new love interest. His brother contracted motor neurone disease just after Unearthing had come out and a couple of weeks ago Steve finally buried his ashes in the back garden. I was there with a number of the characters from the story. And, yes, this will eventually lead to a sequel. I have told Steve that I want to write a story called Earthing...

Would it be right to say that he's your best friend and he's been crucial to your career in a lot of ways? How did you first meet him?

AM: Oh yeah. Well, this was a different world, a long time ago. It would have been around 1967, so I would have been 13 and I was a comic fan. Every Saturday I'd go out and buy all of the Marvel or DC comics that had been shipped over from the States as ballast. And I would also buy the very few interesting British comics that were around then, which were mainly published by Odhams. They used to re-print black and white versions of the American Marvel titles. And there was an announcement in one of the issues of Fantastic that their new tea boy, Sunny Steve Moore, had got together with some friends and had put on the first UK comic convention. Now, I was probably too young to attend that, but I became an associate member, which meant that I paid some money and got all the literature. And in one of the fanzines that came in my introductory package there was an actual address for Steve Moore. I basically began stalking him and wrote him a couple of letters and we began a correspondence that has lasted for years. When I was starting out he was an invaluable help. When I decided to move from being a cartoonist to being a writer, it was Steve who read through my early scripts and told me to lose half the words and gave me a lot of pointers on how to do it. And then later it was him who inspired me to become a practising magician. In many ways, he's completely ruined my life!

Pearl

And goode faire White she het; 
That was my la dy name ryght. 

She was bothe fair and bryght; 

She hadde not hir name wrong. 

(Boke of the Duchesse, 948–51). 

THE [OC]: We offer you a gift. Return to us the human on your Tardis and in exchange, you may speak with her again. 

OLD GRANDFATHER :

Speak with whom? 

(A shadowy figure walks out of a ground floor archway with a bright light behind her.) 

OLD GRANDFATHER :

Young lady, who are you? 

PEARL : 

Is he here? Is the Doctor here? 

(Her Doctor, Dr. Disco AttackEyebrows comes out of the TARDIS.) 

PEARL: 

Doctor! 

(they hug) 

I knew it! I did, I knew it. I knew you couldn't be dead, you don't have the concentration. Doctor? What are you doing? 

(He scans her with the sonic screwdriver.) 

AttackEyebrows: 

Just keep still, please. Pearl.

PEARL: 

Yeah. 

AttackEyebrows: 

My friend Pearl was turned into a Cyberman. 

She gave her life so that people she barely knew could live. 

So, let's be clear. NOBODY imitates Bill Potts. 

Nobody MOCKS Pearl

Pearl: 

Bill Potts is standing right in front of you. 

DOCTOR: 

How is that even possible? 

BILL: Well, long story short. 

I totally pulled. 

The Queen of Courtesy. Do you remember, The Girl in The Puddle? 

Well, She showed up. She came for me. 

‘O perle’, quod I, ‘in perle  py  t, 

Art þou my perle þat I haf playned?’ 

" It has been objected that the child as seen in Heaven is not like an infant of two in appearance, speech, or manners: she addresses her father formally as sir, and shows no filial affection for him. 

But this is an apparition of a spirit, a soul not yet reunited with its body after the resurrection, so that theories relevant to the form and age of the glorified and risen body do not concern us. 

And as an immortal spirit, the maiden’s relations to the earthly man, the father of her body, are altered. 

She does not deny his fatherhood, and when she addresses him as  sir she only uses the form of address that was customary for medieval children. Her part is in fact truly imagined. 

The sympathy of readers may now go out more readily to the bereaved father than to the daughter, and they may feel that he is treated with some hardness. 

But it is the hardness of truth. In the manner of the maiden is portrayed the effect upon a clear intelligence of the persistent earthliness of the father’s mind; all is revealed to him, and he has eyes, yet he cannot see. The maiden is now filled with the spirit of celestial charity, desiring only his eternal good and the cure of his blindness.

It is not her part to soften him with pity, or to indulge in childish joy at their reunion. 

The final consolation of the father was not to be found in the recovery of a beloved daughter, as if death had not after all occurred or had no significance, but in the knowledge that she was redeemed and saved and had become a queen in Heaven. 

Only by resignation to the will of God, and through death, could he rejoin her. 

And this is the main purpose of the poem as distinct from its genesis or literary form: the doctrinal theme, in the form of an argument on salvation, by which the father is at last convinced that his Pearl, as a baptized infant and innocent, is undoubtedly saved, and, even more, admitted to the blessed company of the 144,000 that follow the Lamb. 

But the doctrinal theme is, in fact, inseparable from the literary form of the poem and its occasion; for it arises directly from the grief, which imparts deep feeling and urgency to the whole discussion. Without the elegiac basis and the sense of great personal loss which pervades it, Pearl would indeed be the mere theological treatise on a special point, which some critics have called it. 

But without the theological debate the grief would never have risen above the ground. 

Dramatically the debate represents a long process of thought and mental struggle, an experience as real as the first blind grief of bereavement. In his first mood, even if he had been granted a vision of the blessed in Heaven, the dreamer would have received it incredulously or rebelliously. 

And he would have awakened by the mound again, not in the gentle and serene resignation of the last stanza, but still as he is first seen, looking only backward, his mind filled with the horror of decay, wringing his hands, while his wreched wylle in wo ay wrazte. "

Prof. J.R.R. Tolkein's introduction to Pearl

38 The court where the living God doth reign

Hath a virtue of its own being,
That each who may thereto attain
Of all the realm is queen or king,
Yet never shall other’s right obtain,I
But in other’s good each glorying
And wishing each crown worth five again,
If amended might be so fair a thing.
But my Lady of whom did Jesu spring,
O’er us high she holds her empery,
And none that grieves of our following,
For she is the Queen of Courtesy.

39 In courtesy we are members all
Of Jesus Christ, Saint Paul doth write:
As head, arm, leg, and navel small
To their body doth loyalty true unite,
So as limbs to their Master mystical
All Christian souls belong by right.
Now among your limbs can you find at all
Any tie or bond of hate or spite?
Your head doth not feel affront or slight
On your arm or finger though ring it see;
So we all proceed in love’s delight
To king and queen by courtesy.’

40‘ Courtesy,’ I said, ‘I do believe 
And charity great dwells you among, 
But may my words no wise you grieve, 
You in heaven too high yourself conceive 
To make you a queen who were so young. 
What honour more might he achieve 
Who in strife on earth was ever strong, 
And lived his life in penance long 
With his body’s pain to get bliss for fee? 
What greater glory could to him belong 
Than king to be crowned by courtesy? 

41 THAT courtesy gives its gifts too free, 
If it be sooth that you now say. 
Two years you lived not on earth with me, 
And God you could not please, nor pray 
With Pater and Creed upon your knee –
And made a queen that very day! 
I cannot believe, God helping me, 
That God so far from right would stray. 
Of a countess, damsel, I must say, 
’Twere fair in heaven to find the grace, 
Or of lady even of less array, 
But a queen! It is too high a place.’ 

42‘ Neither time nor place His grace confine’,
Then said to me that maiden bright,
‘For just is all that He doth assign,
And nothing can He work but right.
In God’s true gospel, in words divine
That Matthew in your mass doth cite,
A tale he aptly doth design,
In parable saith of heaven’s light:
“My realm on high I liken might
To a vineyard owner in this case.
The year had run to season right;
To dress the vines ’twas time and place.

43 All labourers know when that time is due.
The master up full early rose
To hire him vineyard workers new;
And some to suit his needs he chose.
Together they pledge agreement true
For a penny a day, and forth each goes,
Travails and toils to tie and hew,
Binds and prunes and in order stows.
In forenoon the master to market goes,
And there finds men that idle laze. 
‘Why stand ye idle?’ he said to those.
‘Do ye know not time of day nor place?’ 

44‘ This place we reached betimes ere day’,
This answer from all alike he drew,  
‘Since sunrise standing here we stay, 
And No Man offers us work to do.’ 
‘Go to my vineyard! Do what ye may!’ 
Said the lord, and made a bargain true:
‘In deed and intent I to you will pay 
What hire may justly by night accrue.’ 
They went to his vines and laboured too, 
But the lord all day that way did pace, 
And brought to his vineyard workers new, 
Till daytime almost passed that place. 

45 In that place at time of evensong,
One hour before the set of sun,
He saw there idle labourers strong
And thus his earnest words did run: 
‘Why stand ye idle all day long?’
They said they chance of hire had none. 
‘Go to my vineyard, yeomen young, 
And work and do what may be done!’
The hour grew late and sank the sun,
Dusk came o’er the world apace;
He called them to claim the wage they had won,
For time of day had passed that place.

46 THE time in that place he well did know;
He called:  ‘Sir steward, the people pay! 
Give them the hire that I them owe. 
Moreover, that none reproach me may, 
Set them all in a single row, 
And to each alike give a penny a day; 
Begin at the last that stands below, 
Till to the first you make your way.’ 
Then the first began to complain and say
That they had laboured long and sore:
‘These but one hour in stress did stay; 
It seems to us we should get more. 

47 More have we earned, we think it true, 
Who have borne the daylong heat indeed, 
Than these who hours have worked not two, 
And yet you our equals have decreed.’ 
One such the lord then turned him to:  
‘My friend, I will not curtail your meed. 
Go now and take what is your due! 
For a penny I hired you as agreed, 
Why now to wrangle do you proceed? 
Was it not a penny you bargained for? 
To surpass his bargain may no man plead. 
Why then will you ask for more? 

48 Nay, more –am I not allowed in gift 
To dispose of mine as I please to do? 
Or your eye to evil, maybe, you lift, 
For I none betray and I am true?’  
“Thus I”, said Christ, “shall the order shift: 
The last shall come first to take his due, 
And the first come last, be he never so swift; 
For many are called, but the favourites few.”
Thus the poor get ever their portion too,
Though late they came and little bore;
And though to their labour little accrue,
The mercy of God is much the more.

49 More is my joy and bliss herein,
The flower of my life, my lady’s height,
Than all the folk in the world might win,
Did they seek award on ground of right.
Though ’twas but now that I entered in,
And came to the vineyard by evening’s light.
First with my hire did my Lord begin;
I was paid at once to the furthest mite.
Yet others in toil without respite
That had laboured and sweated long of yore,
He did not yet with hire requite,
Nor will, perchance, for years yet more.’ 

50 Then more I said and spoke out plain:  
‘Unreasonable is what you say. 
Ever ready God’s justice on high doth reign, 
Or a fable doth Holy Writ purvey. 
The Psalms a cogent verse contain, 
Which puts a point that one must weigh: 
“High King, who all dost foreordain, 
His deserts Thou dost to each repay.” 
Now if daylong one did steadfast stay, 
And you to payment came him before, 
Then lesser work can earn more pay; 
And the longer you reckon, the less hath more.’

51‘ OF more and less in God’s domains 
No question arises’, said that maid, 
‘For equal hire there each one gains, 
Be guerdon great or small him paid. 
No churl is our Chieftain that in bounty reigns, 
Be soft or hard by Him purveyed; 
As water of dike His gifts He drains, 
Or streams from a deep by drought unstayed. 
Free is the pardon to him conveyed 
Who in fear to the Saviour in sin did bow; 
No bars from bliss will for such be made, 
For the grace of God is great enow.

52 But now to defeat me you debate 
That wrongly my penny I have taken here; 
You say that I who came too late 
Deserve not hire at price so dear. 
Where heard you ever of man relate 
Who, pious in prayer from year to year, 
Did not somehow forfeit the guerdon great 
Sometime of Heaven’s glory clear? 
Nay, wrong men work, from right they veer, 
And ever the ofter the older, I trow. 
Mercy and grace must then them steer, 
For the grace of God is great enow.

53 But enow have the innocent of grace. 
As soon as born, in lawful line 
Baptismal waters them embrace; 
Then they are brought unto the vine. 
Anon the day with darkened face 
Doth toward the night of death decline. 
They wrought no wrong while in that place, 
And his workmen then pays the Lord divine. 
They were there; they worked at his design; 
Why should He not their toil allow, 
Yea, first to them their hire assign? 
For the grace of God is great enow.

54 Enow ’tis known that Man’s high kind 
At first for perfect bliss was bred. 
Our eldest father that grace resigned 
Through an apple upon which he fed. 
We were all damned, for that food assigned 
To die in grief, all joy to shed, 
And after in flames of hell confined 
To dwell for ever unréspited. 
But soon a healing hither sped: 
Rich blood ran on rough rood-bough, 
And water fair. In that hour of dread 
The grace of God grew great enow.

55 Enow there went forth from that well 
Water and blood from wounds so wide: 
The blood redeemed us from pains of hell, 
Of the second death the bond untied; 
The water is baptism, truth to tell, 
That the spear so grimly ground let glide. 
It washes away the trespass fell 
By which Adam drowned us in deathly tide. 
No bars in the world us from 
Bliss divide In blessed hour restored, 
I trow, Save those that He hath drawn aside; 
And the grace of God is great enow.

56 GRACE enow may the man receive 
Who sins anew, if he repent; 
But craving it he must sigh and grieve 
And abide what pains are consequent. 
But reason that right can never leave 
Evermore preserves the innocent; 
’Tis a judgement God did never give 
That the guiltless should ever have punishment. 
The guilty, contrite and penitent, 
Through mercy may to grace take flight; 
But he that to treachery never bent 
In innocence is saved by right.