Why is Ciplusius a man?

When C first told me about their book idea, I was honoured. Excited. Inspired. Jealous. That was what I wanted to do.

Hide myself in another’s name, to reveal my true name.

Hide myself in another’s genre, to reveal my true nature.

Hide myself in another’s story, to reveal my true self.

And then when C first let me read their manuscript, the thought occurred to me: without their name on it, written in that style – my style – well, would people think I wrote it? Should I say I didn’t, but knew who had? Should I say I didn’t, and didn’t know who had? Should I say I didn’t…not write it?

When I voiced these questions out loud, C sighed in relief – an actual audible sigh. This is indeed what they wanted, but they didn’t know how to ask. It’s a lot to ask of another writer, and even more to ask of another writer who has experienced success in their career. Such a thing could break them, unmake them, embarrass them, end their success.

But I didn’t care. I wanted that, welcomed that.

All I wanted was to say ‘you don’t know who I am, you’ll never believe who I am, you don’t want to know who I am’.

So, when C asked if I’d mind being ambiguous about my involvement in the book, I said, without any hesitation ‘not at all’.

And so, we forged ahead with our plan, I knew what I would say – or not say – if asked about the book.

But…

No one asked.

Not a single person.

It wasn’t that no one picked up on the possibility that it was mine.

It was that literally no one read it. Not a single copy was sold. You couldn’t give a copy away.

It was so strange. C’s circle knew about it. My circle knew about it. But no one cared. The thing was, seemingly overnight, the genre had gotten stale. So stale that it didn’t matter if it was fresh blood or the best bestselling name writing it, no one wanted to read it. It was effectively cancelled. Both C and I were simply the last to find out.

And so, the book was an utter complete flop, without even being given the chance to flop.

Until G found it, that is. Until G decided it was up to them to make everyone know about it, or, more accurately, know what they thought about it. Know just how bad they thought it was. Not even because they wanted to destroy C’s reputation – or save mine –, but because they thought the genre needed saving. Resurrecting.

Turns out, they had always seen the book as the death knell of the genre. It wasn’t, it was a coincidence that it was cancelled the same week it was released. Possibly the same day. Complete coincidence. But, they held a grudge. For years. YEARS. And then, when they put out some feelers to see if there was any appetite to even read some critiques of the dead genre and they weren’t immediately shot down, they thought ‘this is my chance to make my name’. And so, they tweeted. And, enter the algorithm.

We all saw that tweet. Everyone did, literally everyone. Years after everyone had decided it was to uncool to read a single word of the book, suddenly everyone had read all of it, but through the lens of G’s tweet.

What. A. Knob.

The shocking thing though? That everyone bought it. They had all been there, they knew no such person as ‘Ciplusius’ existed. Not only that, but they all knew the basis of the character of Ciplusius. It had been drilled into each and every one of us in school, for Jupiter’s sake.

But people needed that lie at the time, you know? I get it, I do.

Anyway, as we all know, it wasn’t until G got cancelled too that people took a second to really think it through themselves. So here we are. I just wish C could’ve stuck around long enough to see the book get its due.

Lights slowly come up. First see battered photograph, still hanging on the right side of stage, still covered in torn pages. Then see the overhead projector, which is now on the opposite side of the stage, with one of the Kerkylas t-shirts draped over it. Then see that the ARTISTS have set up an exhibit of Ciplusius-inspired works in the centre of the stage, with many diverse pieces (including books, displayed on pedestals). 

Exhibit name sign at top: 'Ciplusius is'. Pieces are grouped into themes, each with their own sign: ‘Ciplusius is alive’, ‘Ciplusius is borrowed’, ‘Ciplusius is the undead’; ‘Ciplusius is…him?’.

Crowds pass by, stopping to look at and admire each group in the exhibit. Someone sees the projector in the corner, shakes head, and wheels across stage so it is part of the ‘Ciplusius is…him?’ group, right beside the battered photograph. As the projector is placed, the torn pages fall off the photo, which has been restored. Lights go down.

When lights come on, see CHORUS standing in close group, facing the audience and behind an overhead projector, in centre of stage, turned off. Hanging on right side of stage is the battered photograph of 3rd century BC Ciplusius, covered in the torn pages, surrounded by ARTISTS working (with easels, laptops, notebooks, etc.), one in drag, cheery stage lighting on whole group. The CHORUS and ARTISTS don’t seem to see each other. Dark background behind all.

Projector turned on, blinding entire CHORUS, who don't seem to notice or mind. One poem per transparency, changed by someone crouching behind the projector, never seen other than hand reaching up to place next sheet.

CHORUS is a variety of genders, all wearing same t-shirt with Kerkylas fresco, otherwise looking professor-ish. Sing in high, staccato monotone, after each poem is placed on projector.

First poem (Delia 3.8, but not labelled) is put on projector.

CHORUS MEMBER #1: Ci-.

Next poem (3.9) is placed on top of first.

CHORUS MEMBERS #1 and #2: Ci-plu-si-us.

Next poem (3.10) is placed on top.

CHORUS MEMBER #1: Ci-plu-si-us is.

Next poem (3.11) is placed on top.

CHORUS MEMBERS #1 and #2: Ci-plu-si-us is the.

Next poem (3.12) is placed on top.

CHORUS MEMBER #1: Po-et.

As next poem (3.13) is about to be placed on top of pile, an elderly person who must be nearly 200 years old, dressed in early/mid-19th century clothes, walks on stage and stealthily removes those already on projector, placing them in a pile on floor, and leaves the stage. 3.13 is now the only poem being projected.

CHORUS: CI-.

Next poem (3.14) is placed on top.

CHORUS: CI-PLU-SI-US.

Next poem (3.15) is placed on top.

CHORUS: CI-PLU-SI-US.

Next poem (3.16) is placed on top.

CHORUS: CI-PLU-SI-US IS.

Next poem (3.17) is placed on top.

CHORUS: CI-PLU-SI-US IS THE.

As last poem (3.18) is about to be placed on top of pile, CHORUS MEMBER #1 suddenly blinks and sees the pile of 3.8-3.12 lying on the floor, and slips it under 3.18 without the rest of the CHORUS noticing.

CHORUS: CI-PLU-SI-US IS THE PO-ET.

Projector is turned off, lights go down.

When the lights go up, a statue of Dante Verticordia is revealed in the centre of the stage. Two people hold a red ribbon in front of it. A shy youth in a white robe holding a giant pair of scissors walks up to the ribbon, and is photographed by the crowd as they cut the ribbon. Lights go down.

When the lights come up again, the statue has been moved a little off-centre, and a framed photo of the youth in white is now hanging beside it, with a plaque: ‘Ciplusius, dedicating statue of Dante Verticordia’. Crowds pass by, stopping to look at and admire both pieces. Lights go down.

When the lights come up again, the statue is now in ruins (missing an arm, maybe the head), but the photo is still intact. The plaque has been updated: ‘Chaste Ciplusius, dedicating the statue of Dante Verticordia. 3rdcentury BC’. Crowds pass by, stopping to look only at and admire the photo. A couple of people sit on a nearby bench, contemplate the photo, and then begin furiously writing in their notepads. When each reaches the end of a page, they tear out the page and place it in a pile between them on the bench. Lights go down.

When the lights come up again, the statue has been removed, and the plaque has been taken off the wall. The photo is still there, but has been destroyed by time. Crowds pass by, only taking quick glances at the unidentified photo, if any. One person stops for a rest and finds the pile of pages on the bench, reads them, looks up at the photo, and then stands up and quickly tapes them up over the photo. Lights go down.

The beginning of the end was when one said to another “you should look him up, something strange is going on here”. A slip of paper with my name was passed from one hand to the other, and tucked away for a few months. Then the holder of that slip of paper moved away, to find themself, start a new life. It didn't work. So they returned, found that slip of paper, and made it their mission to focus on that name, rather than their own.

There were many strange stories going on around this name. My name. It seemed so clear to the person in possession of the slip of paper what was going on. The usual story, really. The name was a fake. A ruse. A sleight of hand. A metaphor. Why this person got it and no one else did wasn't a mystery. But why they would care enough was.

If I could ask them why, perhaps they would say the name on the paper matched the sound of the ringing in their ears. Matched the story in their own head. Matched their own fake name.

Perhaps.

I want to read writers that make me want to write.

I want to read sentences that make me stop in my tracks, do a double take, require multiple repeated readings.

I want to read pieces that break my heart, that are hard to read, that make no sense, that make everything make sense.

I want to read genres that play with genres, forms that play with form, novels that make you question what a novel is, poems that make you question what a poem is.

I want to read words that attempt to redefine their definitions, to redefine what it means to be a word.

I want to read things that are transgressive, marginalia made text.

Story is secondary, narrative potentially not relevant.

And perhaps therein lies my approach to Ciplusius.

It's not about what the story is, who he(?) was. It's about what the story isn't, how to see yourself in it.

The first time they saw a supposed portrait of Ciplusius, they didn't think too much of it. It was a bit flattering, sure, that someone was inspired enough by their writing to create art, but it was only one limited interpretation. And, in their opinion, it was rather flat, as it only captured the surface qualities of Ciplusius, a portrait painted after only a single reading, without sitting with the words for days / months / decades to appreciate the nuances, to tease out possible alternate readings, to guess at what the author may have been trying to do with Ciplusius given the context...

No matter, it was fan art, and only one piece of fan art. It didn't have that much impact on them, on Ciplusius. It couldn't.

But it did.

Over the decades, they watched, first in slow motion and then whipping down the track like a high-speed train – that one piece of fan art, that single, 2-dimensional rendering, began to be regarded as a portrait of...them. The author had become equated with Ciplusius, the writer with the written.

And there was nothing they could do about it. It was a mindfuck, walking past a bookstore and seeing a supposed portrait of them watching over the table piled with copies of the newest edition.

Assigning the face someone had given to Ciplusius to the author had suddenly made their poems a bestseller. An overnight sensation, after centuries of largely being ignored. It had gone too far to stop it now, being equated with that face – beautiful and serene, but a face with no reality behind it.

If they suddenly stuck their hand up now and said “actually, that's not what I look like”, they would most definitely be ignored. As they had been for centuries.

They didn't look anything like Ciplusius, whether in the form of that particular piece of fan art, or anyone else's imagined rendering. Other than the same colour of hair.

The fan art: a seer, a timeless but unapproachable being, hiding some sort of arcane knowledge behind that peaceful but piercing (and slightly judgmental) gaze. The colourful garb indicating taste, contentment, perhaps wealth.

The actual author: an androgynous artist, uncomfortable with meeting anyone's gaze, wearing their nearly all-black clothes as armour, posture nearly permanently tilted as an outward expression of their constant questioning of everything, their suspicion of everything, their guardedness against everything.

And they weren't entirely sure they cared enough to correct the mistake; they could just avoid walking past bookstores until the interest in their poems inevitably died down.

But, some nights, they dreamt as if they were Ciplusius. Not about Ciplusius, but being Ciplusius. Like, they'd look in the mirror, and there was the fan art face. The fictional face was becoming merged with their own. A face they'd managed to keep secret for centuries – nearly millennia – for no reason other than their face didn't matter, shouldn't matter, for reading the character of Ciplusius.

Now that Ciplusius' fictional face had been made their own by consensus, it completely changed the reading of the poems. Ciplusius had been made real, when Ciplusius was never intended to be real. Ciplusius was an exercise, purely an creative exercise.

That researcher 10 years back had somehow managed to dig up their number, had followed the very small trail of breadcrumbs they hadn't bothered to sweep up. They had asked permission to publish their piece – an exposé on the fan art phenomenon – and I had granted that, curious if anyone would even care. But then that researcher dropped off the map.