sutures and scars, image by Pedro R. Rivadeneira
D(r)ea(m)th Passages: A Sound
Poem MP3
Song of Anonymous
(a nomadic novel)
Section
II "As far as the I can see" (a work in progress)
as far as the I can see
it's been five years since i moved to
the city by the lake hoping to escape
a life of dead end jobs and the destructive clutches of toxic relationships i got a job as music instructor at the
local community college now the cold leaden skies the dilapidated peeling factories the garbage strewn fields and dumps the rusted out ships and abandoned grain
elevators on the shore seem to signal
the end of another phase my life
appears to be moving in slowly swirling cycles of four or five years at the end of which i move to another city in an attempt to
change jump start my life the excitement i feel at the prospect of
such a change fills me with hope and a sense of opening ensues as if i’ve
walked into a sunlit field that expands boundlessly in all directions and a suffocating paralyzing dread is suddenly lifted from my
shoulders my chest allowing me once more to breath freely on these occasions my entire body seems to change become
lighter full of energy and life again appears vast full
of promise and wonder as only dreamed of when i was a child
now having finished grading papers and exams and
my contract ended i am poised once
more to relocate this time
however the move is to a city abroad in
Northern Europe soon my face will begin to erode vanish my features my characteristics erased forgotten lost to those who knew me or thought they did a shadow that for just a brief moment in their lives has crossed over onto their paths a
formless wisp of cloud pushed along
by unseen forces my countenance
lost slowly washed away among a
faceless crowd of others dissolving into time’s receding wake
the moment has come sooner than expected and i’m on my way down highway 90 rolling
along with my belongings in a rented van heading east toward the intersection
with highway 81 in Syracuse then south
toward Binghampton attention
span snap back track toward what was left behind in the fray the sway of the river now becoming a murmur
in the bluing horizon looking for a place a space
left my little red Japanese car
to a friend lost in drink and blues
with my old guitar amp in the trunk which he kept without a thanks or a bless
you for nothin’ just moving along what’s left to say washed away by the
oncoming rain as a train of thoughts and
feelings gushes on looking forward to
the oncoming hills or are they mountains really?
i parted in the late afternoon and now night catches up with me with a sheet of
rain the sun zap!
fizz! evaporated in the hills of northern Pennsylvania just
past the southern border of New York State
the steep hills i should say way too steep in the pouring rain thick strands of water becoming sheets and these
layer upon layer becoming
walls of a thick translucent substance blunting the head lights of the van visibility no better than ten or fifteen
yards and meanwhile enormous sixteen wheelers roaring past in a
fury downhill barreling
into the darkness blindly or so it
seems rattling my nerves as i catch a
glimpse in their more powerful head
lights of the rocky scraggly ravines below and in the flash of their headlights i get glimpses of a network of long gnarly
fingery twigs and branch-like
i came here searching for pages pages to write on surfaces to scribble
on i came here looking for somethink
to write somethink to write on somethink to say somethink concrete to say to write on somethink concrete to write on somethink concrete to write to say
somethink to say on
somethink concrete to say on i
came here looking which is to
say searching what point? what?
what matters now? the
something to say i means the search matters now (no, don’t be critical, that is, not too
critical, overly critical . . . )
i began somewhere
i know i began somewhere i know
in the middle perhaps in the
middle perhaps i began and moved away
toward the edges the other areas of the
story perhaps the ledges where other stories begin where other stories feed the stream the murmurs conversations and monologues the
thoughts overheard in the dark edges of the story overheard in the distance as if brought about by a restless wind a breeze
the way voices carry in the
distance overheard in my sleep
limbs entwined
reaching clutching at each other
in a scrubby mass impatient
bastards i mutter to myself where could
you all be going in such a hurry such a fury where oh where? they must know this road these rocky wooded hills like the backs of their bony
veiny hands their trusty
machines splashing forward a veritable
caravan of roaring mastodons rushing the way back home and all the while
my mind has been turning churning as before
that is to say as it always
has as it always does or to put it another way a different part of it (that is
my mind) a strata of activity
(one of many) a strata
as i was saying a different strata of my mind has been
churning yearning to make itself
felt heard (some tend to think of
to explain these as
processes “mechanisms” by which the
mind (some would say the brain) “handles”
“deals” with all the stimuli and information experiences feelings and perceptions we are besieged by
on a daily basis that is to say by compartmentalizing it all but
this presupposes a central controlling entity
an administrator of sorts who in
effect sorts things out makes decisions judgments
and as it were like in the post office puts these experiences perceptions etc. into little boxes and stores them away
somewhere till a later date but
who or what makes these decisions? and on the basis of what are the judgments
made? i say maybe we’re not in control of anything i mean
these processes these
interacting strata of activity most
of which the “I” is not even aware of (or so me thinks) these as i was saying interacting strata of activity over which “we” have little or no control
whatsoever the mind
the brain as i was saying being comparable perhaps to a kind of chaotic
system (no not system
that’s too mechanical
too neatly so) a process maybe that transcends the “I’s”
self-centered boundaries [. . . us i mean
we
a process as i
was saying little meat machines
that consists of several layers the lot of us
of stuff which
sometimes scurrying about
as it were bubbles
over worrying about until our
into each other transferring energy little chemical programs
or information in the form stop or are halted
of energy “packets” bursts
by
some disease or impulses desirings
yearnings catastrophe,
influencing each other too comforting an
in an ongoing process of explanation another
way of
transformation or. . .or . . . sweeping under the rug the
not. . . or maybe getting caught responsibility
we
in a repeating cycle have for our actions. . .]
where the yearnings and desirings cannot become yarns and thus
escape their strata and so over time
become embedded in the flesh
become in fact flesh
buried alive as it were as if words left unsaid seeking an
outlet going round and round inside my
head yes a limit cycle as i’ve already said . . . and all the
while as i was saying i had been thinking
i mean pondering about how it had been my intention my desire to write a discription to
give an account of of what? what
can one give an account of much less a
description an account a description are they the same thing? an account requires describing perhaps? but i
mean yes
over and away from the herd the acoustics of the mind’s ear the perspectives of the mind’s eye searching
the overview everybody’s been
talking while i sleep about how i’ve been talking in my sleep
overheard in a dream this everybody of
shadows unseen peopled by
shadows a room in shadows
a cornerless room peopled by shadows talking shadows without corners or the corners are
buried in the shadows buried alive in
a room full of shadows
i
never finish the book
i
never finish a book
i
never finish reading a book
i
never finish reading i never finish reading not writing and
but
writing too i never finish never finished writing a book
never
finished writing the book i mean i only read in bits and pieces bits and pieces of writing
spawning events
as
by means of an engine like so:
(//
a kind of Spawn.
Task({
loop({
SynthDef("My_Klank" ++ i,
{arg out = 0;
var env, exciter,
spec;
env
= [Env.perc(rrand(0.01, 0.1), rrand(1.0, 2),
rrand(0.05, 0.3), -4),
env =
[Env.perc(rrand(0.01,0.1),
rrand(1.0, 2), rrand(0.05, 0.3), -4), Env.linen(rrand(0.1,
2.0), rrand(0.5, 2), rrand(0.5, 1), rrand(0.05, 0.2))].choose;
n
= rrand(5, 13);
// number of simultaneous
as i was saying
an account a description
perhaps of the goings on the events one has experienced over
time i mean me my experiences this had been my intention all along an account
which is to say to bear witness
to our everyday life experiences what
goes on on a seemingly regular
basis not the least of which is the nastiness that goes on on a daily basis and to which many turn a blind eye as i was saying on a daily basis the “little” horrors as they call them of everyday life the so-called insignificant horrors and subtle violences we commit
against each other on a daily basis as i was saying the gossiping the using and abusing the power
and sooner or later plays and exploitation and how
overtime it all builds up into
larger horrors breaks out into even
larger catastrophes and tragedies
producing unspeakable destruction and suffering as we have already seen
so many times throughout history our
ruinous history and of course of course
one needn’t look too far back
for even as we speak that is to
say even as i think and write these
words and someone somewhere perhaps someday
reads them the little
violence as i was saying and the greater ones too are
going on right now and i was wondering if perhaps it’s true that even one’s thoughts one’s words one’s feelings gentle and otherwise are indeed felt throughout i mean
vibrate reverberate throughout
the universe it being as they say
one body in which
everything every little molecule atom
subatomic particle and every
string of energy including one’s
thoughts are intricately and intimately
connected to each other in web-like fashion
if so then maybe
we’re in a heap of trouble i
mean in deep shit even
as i was saying as i write these
words in a somewhat distracted
manner as if half looking away in fear
and disgust perhaps even shame these meager words these even
more
rudimentary thoughts that i struggle to latch on to and which in these scribbling motions i tries to make sense of and
as i’ve already mentioned i
can’t help but doing in a somewhat
detached and distracted manner as if
half looking away in fear and disgust
and as i was saying possibly even shame accompanied by a sickly vaguely nauseating sensation
of numbness while at the same
time peeking at it all in wonder the way a child does through his fingers in a scary movie
none-the-less it had been my intention as i may have already said to give an account to bear witness to the goings on in our
daily lives that is to say my daily
life yet knowing full well that such
an account entails an enormous amount of detailed work both on the micro and macro levels very close attention to detail precise detail while at the same time maintaining one’s
vision an unwavering state of
attention to the overall flow direction and shape that all the details are
taking in bricollage fashion and it
seemed to me to be virtually impossible to create an accurate mapping as it were
with words of the goings on as i’ve already mentioned both
one’s inner world so
called as well as of the world outside
as some are wont to
say and how these “worlds” are in
fact intricately and intimately connected
p
= rrand(8,0.2))].choose;
n
= rrand(5, 13); // number of simultaneous instrument exciter =
[PinkNoise.ar(0.007),
Dust.ar(rrand(5, 200), rrand(0.007,0.2)),ClipNoise.ar(0.007), BrownNoise.ar(0.007)].choose;
spec
= Array.fill(2, {
`[
Array.fill(p,
{50.0 + 20000.0.linrand}),
nil, Array.fill(p, {0.1 + 5.0.rand})
]}); instruments
21);
// number of partials per instrument
21);
// number of partials
// per instrument
Out.ar(out, Pan2.ar(Klank.ar(spec, exciter),
LFNoise1.kr(0.25),
0.3) * EnvGen.kr(env,
doneAction: 2))
// Klank is a bank of fixed //frequency resonators which can
//be used
// to simulate the resonant //modes of an object }).play(s);
rrand(0.1,
1.5).wait;
// wait anywhere between 0.1 and //1.5 seconds before playing new
//event.});}).play);
sounds like an aperiodic carrillion
with bowed crotales, add to that, old oil drums
banged upon with blunt objects,
using random number generators to control each sound’s envelope, each with
their corresponding attack, sustain and release times also controlled by random
number generators, such that an attack may be short, long or somewhere in
between (likewise with the sustain and release times) and the time at which the
next event occurs is also controlled by random
such that the distinction between inner
and outer becomes severely blurred
further complicating matters
an
anomaly a moment of otherness a kind of singularity disrupting the
familiar flow of one’s sense of self and time
making the task at hand that is
to say the writing endeavor all
the more difficult
number generators thus undermining one’s tendency one’s conditioned response to expect
sound events musical events to occur
on a periodic basis one’s expectation to be comforted,
consoled by music it having been
relegated, barefoot and pregnant to society’s dark dirty little
corner subservient to enslaved by the image
just as the truth it seems to me is
known only to the one who experiences it
and if one chooses to relay it to others one automatically falls into falsehoods and
inaccuracies all this compounded by
one’s that is to say my
faulty and inaccurate recollection of events and things (more so
after my so called accident
as some euphemistically refer to it)
thus it is distortions inaccuracies and lies that are
communicated the notion of
communication perhaps being the
greatest lie of them all and the more
one tries to untangle this abstruse web
as i was saying the more mired
one that is to say “i” becomes in falsehoods and falsifications
the desire for the truth like any other drive is
the quickest way to arrive at falsehoods and inaccuracies the facts themselves being distorted by
one’s very own desire to express the truth
distorted by one’s hopes and aspirations thus
to write about one’s life one’s
recollection of things past one
period or even one moment in one’s
life results in the accumulation of hundreds or even thousands of inaccuracies and falsifications a veritable patchwork of memories dreams and half-truths all of which in collage-like fashion are
as it were stitched together by
the writer in his or her vain attempts at conveying the truth which are nonetheless familiar to the one describing them and the
period in question is seen as truths
and nothing but yet somehow the description the very act of describing distorts the truth however hard one tries to be factual
one’s
recollections follow precisely the chain of events in precise chronological order still
the results are something quite different from what things were really
like or seemed to be the descriptions
make things clear that is with the writing one makes an event clear and
this is in synch with one’s desire for the truth but
not with the truth itself
for as we have already seen the truth is quite impossible to convey
we
make a series of events clear that
is one makes the effort to describe a
series of events clearly yet it is never the events as such one aspired
to describe they always end up being
something different fictitious
even this even though one begins the endeavor
over and over again having crossed out
or erased one’s failed attempts one
starts off from the beginning again
only to find oneself wandering down a different path a different series of events ostensibly led astray by one’s very aspirations
to tell the truth it is one’s very
desire to convey the truth that leads one into a veritable maze of recollections that is to say an inscrutable web of corrections
i’ve
always been told that to write well
one must write about what one knows
well what i’ve known most of my
life is disorder and chaos illness and
unhappiness violence and fear contradiction and dishonesty hypocrisy and corruption callousness and insensitivity cut throat competition and odious
destructiveness isolation alienation and loneliness manipulation coercion and domination snickering
malicious gossip and gloating
the will to power in all its nasty manifestations large and small in short
the all around malice humanity is capable of and has been involved in
for centuries for thousands of years
in fact
i’ve known very little order
clarity very little love kindness and sympathy
this sort of thing this
nastiness as i was saying we see reproduced at the corporate institutional governmental and international levels
and it is reflected at the micro
level too that is to say at the interpersonal level in our families at work and in school in the various kinds of relationships we’re
involved in and it’s all a direct
reflection of what is going on at the macro level that is to say one is the reflection of the other they are mutually dependent
the nastiness
at the macro level would not be possible if it didn’t also occur at the micro
level that is to say in our minds to begin with the whole process having become a feedback
loop a negative feedback loop as
i’ve already said a limit cycle and
no matter how one may try to overcome this situation how one may try to free oneself from
humanity’s nastiness due to one’s deeply
engrained conditioning both social
and biological the more one struggles
to free oneself as i may have said the more deeply mired and enmeshed one
becomes in the whole mess
due to one’s hypocrisies deep
seated contradictions and blind spots
one ends up betraying the best of one’s intentions and this process goes on as i’ve already said regardless of gender regardless of what ideological camp one may
be identified with what religion or
belief system one may adhere to
whether one believes in a god or the left the right or the extreme center being as we are in the grip of that is to say at the mercy of our envies jealousies
greed and the odious intensions
they generate at the mercy as i may have said of our fears and insecurities for which we are incessantly trying to
compensate endlessly trying to patch
up
not
writing what one knows but writing toward.
into uncertainty. crablike. backing into it. perhaps then knowing not knowing and what “i” means in this
context belonging perhaps to these
turbulent motions if to know is to
be then what are we when knowing not knowing?
and
the difficulty in all of this is further compounded by the developments of the
last one hundred and twenty years or so
the exciting but imposing and sometimes intimidating precedents set by
the various avant-gardes the various
experimental currents from Baudelaire Rimbaud
Mallarme Roussel the Dadaists and Surrealists the
Futurists and Concrete Poets the Noveau Roman and others with their cut ups
and permutations collages and pastiches the
Oulipos Vispos and Fluxeses up to and
including the Language Poets in the U.S.
all of which have claimed
established and staked their
place their various territories within
grounds broken tilled and re-broken and
whose broad and varied innovations have so thoroughly exhausted the field of
experimentation such that any notion of
a poetic or literary beyond a literary
or poetic future which does not simply regurgitate what’s been read said and done a million times over seems
impossible
we
that is to say “i” can no longer construct any new form of
poetry literature music
painting or any other kind of
artistic endeavor since every
option as far as “we” can tell as far
as anyone i know can tell i mean as far as the i can see has been exhausted has already been tried has been done before . . . that’s been done before being today’s
operant phrase it seems yet those who gloatingly mouth and savor it
with relish seem unaware that the very
phrase they use to invalidate the works of others that very phrase they use to gloat over the
failed attempts the failed efforts of
others has itself been said before a million
billion times over and is
therefore by the force of its
own logic made invalid further bringing to light that this
process this process of exhaustion as i’ve already mentioned has reduced one that is to say me reduced me
confined me forcing me down to a
mere motion physical action a collection a repertoire of physical motions of
scribbling of doodling or typing as
the case may be which are the direct
result as i may have said the direct outcome of a nervous energy an anxious energy twitching a fidgeting yes
that’s it all inscribing all writing
is now a fidgeting and it a trace
the direct result of a nervous quivering a fidgeting in one’s mind and therefore one’s body a fidgeting in one’s body and therefore one’s mind as i was saying the fidgeting in one’s body and mind the distinction between them now blurred or even erased by so much
fidgety scribbling the distinction between them no longer being
clear in one’s mind in one’s body nothing left to say nothing left to do but fidget and scribble scribble and fidget i can’t control my fingers i can’t control my brain i can’t control my thinking it’s driving me insane
i mean this historical this apparent historical cul de sac the vertex of which exerts such tremendous pressure on my
head in my head my thoughts confining
reducing me forcing me down compressing me my actions
my thoughts my thoughts as
actions down as i was saying into a corner the vertex of the corner acutely pressing down on my writing and
thinking my physical motions my physical and mental actions down to a limited repertoire of scribbling
motions and its constant yet intermittent
stuttering stream
production projection of nervous
and anxious energy its incessant
production and projection of images and impulses feelings old and new voices and fears monologues and dialogues in the ongoing ill attempt to cover up
to avoid to escape divert and disperse the ill attempt as i’ve already said to distract from the incessant the ongoing feelings of unpleasantness el
malestar and the emptiness that
lies beneath
my
tongue tied my brain fried my tongue and brain tied by fences restricted the rusty barbed wire fences of so many ideological
considerations such that to say that’s been done before is itself problematic because
it’s been said before and is therefore made invalid by force of its
own logic which means that one that is to say i
have no choice but to continue
even though . . . that’s been said before . . .
it’s
at times like these that is to
say when i’m inundated by thoughts like
these that i wish for i think of constructing a machine or i
fantasize about writing myself an
algorithm with which to convey to the machine the necessary instructions that it may deal with take care of all these sticky details and the complicated
web they begin to form over the course of time
trying then to find perhaps
construct a writing machine that
would do the job for me with only my
having to feed the machine bits and pieces of language or languages phrases
words thoughts sounds
thoughtsounds imagisounds and
thoughtimages scraps of found language scraps and shreds of found language scraps and scrapes found in the ongoing process that is one’s
own internal monologue duologue triologue etc. energy flows currents of energymatter flows
currents of energymatter
electrochemical currents and flows
that is to say a veritable polyphonic
structure consisting of several voices layers consisting of several strands of sounds
images thoughts dreams impulses and desires each having its own tempo and direction perhaps akin those contrapuntal
compositions one finds in a certain period of the Renaissance or
more recently in the works of
composers like Elliott Carter such as
his Third String Quartet or his Triple Duo
or the collective improvisations
one hears in John Coltrane’s “Ascension”
and finding as i’ve already
mentioned these pieces of scrap these shreds of language in the environment
as well that is to say the ongoing monologues of others in
the various media through which they are disseminated and heard without
my having to distress myself with all the thoughts and feelings the unpleasant ones one often finds while
writing hurting myself further tearing at the memories the scabs over countless unhealed wounds my own and that of others the one’s we never found the time to
properly tend to caught as we
are in the mad rush of things
and
these pieces of scrap as i’ve already mentioned these
pieces of scrap and shreds of languages would then be arranged and rearranged connected
to each other (or not) and subjected to permutations different orderings in unpredictable ways by
the machine or algorithm (are they the same? is an algorithm a kind of machine?)
thus producing a web a flow of varying
//click here to highlight, then press "enter" to play
thisThread.randSeed
= 4;//set random seed
t = Task({
loop({
SynthDef("My_Klank" ++ i, {arg out
= 0;
complexity and intricacy
a web a flow as i’ve already
said of associations and
connections a web
or flow of
relationships one as a writer
had not foreseen or imagined discombobulating the rigid tangle the rigid grid formed by the
language-thought-perception triangle the writer
the reader we that is to say humanity
having become so used to what we think
having become so used to what we
see so used to what we hear and
feel so used to what we smell taste and touch the reader the writer
we
Env.linen(rrand(0.75,
2.0), rrand(0.5, 2), rrand(0.5, 1), rrand(0.1, 0.75))].choose; 0.75))].choose;// Each time a new event is generated, choose
an envelope with new values
For ADSR
n = rrand(13, 21);// number of simultaneous
instruments
p = rrand(8, 56); // number of partials per instrument
exciter = [Dust.ar(rrand(5, 20), 0.007), Impulse.ar(rrand(0.5,
1.5), 0, 0.025)].choose;
//exciter = Impulse.ar(rrand(0.1, 1.5), 0,
0.025);
// Each time a new event is generated by Task, choose an exciter
from array.
spec = Array.fill(2, {`[Array.fill(p, {[30 + 1000.0.linrand, 50 +
5000.0.linrand].choose}), nil, Array.fill(n,
{0.1 + 5.0.rand}) ]});
Out.ar(out,
Pan2.ar(Klank.ar(spec,
exciter)
that
is to say humanity
being the result of hundreds if
not thousands of years of biological
cultural social and ideological conditioning
and
these pieces of scrap as i’ve already
said would then be arranged and rearranged connected to each other (or not) and
subjected to permutations and other means of transformation and variation by as
i’ve already mentioned the machine
the algorithm in unpredictable
ways according to certain
guidelines
* EnvGen.kr(env, 1, doneAction: 2), LFNoise1.kr(0.5), 1))//
turn off each event when done.
}).play(s);rrand(0.1, 1.5).wait; // generate a new event anywhere between 0.1 secs and 1.5 secs.}); }).play(SystemClock.sched(90.0,
{t.stop;}));//control
overall time of event with SystemClock.sched) this one is similar to the
one above except that the attacks here are of a sharper percussive nature
with greater dynamic
contrasts . . .
var env,
exciter, spec;
env = [Env.perc(rrand(0.01, 0.1), rrand(1.0, 2), rrand(0.1,
0.75), rrand(-1.0, -4)),
using
perhaps random number generators and probability operations thus producing an open field of
possibilities in which the linguistic events would then be placed and connected
in different and unpredictable ways
according to a list of guidelines
guidelines for example as to whether there are morphological
correspondences between the different scraps or shreds of language i may have
already mentioned and between the
elements contained within them that is
to say individual words or syllables
even and these
morphological
correspondences would be considered not only in terms of the words or parts of
speech and their grammatical and
Under
such
The full
panoply,
Pursued
and perused
Some
areas
With caution
Marked by
a number
For
inclusion here
Increased
elevated
Of this
now shaping
Related
to that all.
For
inclusion here
Marked by
a number
With
caution.
The
outcome is a number,
Marked by
caution,
And what
has been scattered
In some
areas under such
Increased
elevation
For
inclusion here
Present
in the language
syntactical
functions as well as their semantic
surface that is to say their apparent meaning but the morphological correspondences would
also have to be considered in terms of the various sounds contained in these
elements that is to say words would have to be considered in terms
of their overall sound as well as in
terms of the sounds of their individual components their syllables their phonemic structure
the
words the imagisounds imagithoughtsounds and their phonemic
components would have to be considered as well as the vocal formants that
constitute them that is to say the frequency range where vowels are at
their most distinctive and characteristic pitch
and
being as i may have already
mentioned that words are a kind of
nexus where sound image and thought are intermingled the guidelines would also have to take into
account graphemes that is to say those written symbols letters
or combinations of letters that represent the same sound and what’s more
they would have to take into account the graphical aspects of words their visual appearance in print their various shapes their various thicknesses and the varieties
of textures they form over time on the page
a machine then that would deal
with all the non-linear aspects of writing
thinking and feeling and that
would thus save me the emotional duress that writing can sometimes bring something comparable perhaps to those
synthesis programs that produce all kinds of complex sound events depending upon what kind of algorithm one
writes for them what kinds of
instructions one
Perused and pursued
This
interrogation.
Such a
turning
Was from
the late,
The
experiencing self,
While
ever disappearing,
Increasing
in some areas
Related
to all that
This
interrogation
Pursued with
presicion
However
fitfully
Toward
fulfillmeant
The
outcome was a number
That’s
been scattered.
In some
areas here
Under
incision
And
continuing perusal,
By force
of poignancy,
Momentarily
at least,
As if by
inclusion sometimes,
Casual
directions became
The central
influence.
Such a
turning was,
As of
late,
A nexus,
as such, a turning
Is a
nexus, is such a turning
Will be a nexus as such
a turning. There is in this approach, never disappearing and not merely a
diversion,
But also
a deflection,
Continuing
increasingly
Into the
present.
Our
mapping is thus
An ongoing taxonomy of
movements toward a new narrowing of
course and off course of scribbling motions
As casual
directions
Becoming
a central nexus,
Momentarily
at least,
And not
merely a diversion,
Continuing
presently
And never
disappearing
Or
rather, an ongoing
Flickering,
in aperiodic
Fashion
gives
to the machine with all kinds of
parameters controlled by random number generators thus creating a varied and complex texture
that changes evolves over time words are after all sound complexes themselves or to be more precise complexes
of
codified noises a kind of nexus in
which sound and image intersect
a
fashion of non-periodicity
at
times using repetition
as
a means of creating
disrruption
and variety
within
the flowing sameness
of
ongoing change
sound
images and images in sounds colliding becoming imagisounds
this even though i realize that language itself is
a machine or that language and thought have machine-like characteristics and
that one that is to say the writer
need only be attentive without
choice to what the language looks like
on paper and perhaps more importantly what it sounds like in order to know what to write next if
anything at all in other words one needs to be attentive sensitive to what the materials require what the sound materials and the graphical
materials imply or suggest how they
connect and don’t connect how they move
and thus how the language projects itself into the
future into the unknown it having its own logic its own self organizing properties and
propensities
all
this knowing full well that the
mind the brain can sometimes function like a random number generator its deeper layers of activity generating events thoughts
ideas images sounds
impulses emotions and
desires at random (or seemingly so) the subconscious and the unconscious behaving in a seemingly erratic manner having a logic of their own having their own reasons their own perceptions
and motivations which conscious thought
or the will the “I” can’t seem to control (just as discursive knowledge has the truth
in front of it but can’t posses it) it
the brain being an adaptive complex system as some like to call it consisting of several layers of activity
some of which go on in an independent manner
or seemingly independent manner as far as one can tell that is to say as far as i can tell or
rather as far
as the “I” can tell
this
even though one may be stuck that is to say one’s feelings may be stuck in a kind of
feedback loop (and they are) one being reluctant afraid to let them go despite their
(mostly) unpleasant nature they being
the only familiar thing one has left connecting one to the past as it has given some kind of meaning to
one’s life and yet still
trying to shake it all off by means of repetition slippages
misreadings and mishearings
misinterpretations and miswritings
and thus not knowing before
hand what will be written what will be
said not knowing before hand where the
story (or stories) will go just as the
reader can’t know before hand what the story
or stories are about and where they are going or how they will end assuming there is an ending at all or a beginning for that matter as writing is always already a kind of
reading
and perhaps more importantly a kind of listening and it the readwritelistening is already made readymade to move across the page a plane
having begun somewhere somewhere
like an elsewhere (elsewhere like
here?) somewhere in the middle
perhaps and moved dispersed toward the edges of the writing
surface if it be a piece of paper
or as electric impulses on a hard drive’s magnetic surface representing
a series of binary numbers which in
turn are encoded to represent the text
one is writing stored in a place a locus on the computer’s hard disk its vertex being . . . the text’s point of
origin being . . . being what? what is the readwritelistening’s origin?
if it is a monologue of sorts an internal monologue a kind
of talking to one’s self in one’s
head the brain talking to itself pretending to talk to someone else in its own
created virtual space in the brain’s own virtual holographic space then
perhaps i think perhaps the monologue that is to say the readwritespeaking originates from a wound an unhealed wound which for a long time now has been bleeding the wound speaking at varying rates of profusion bleeding
as i was saying sounds words
images and sensations a kind of short circuited damaged tissue
substance electrochemically firing and
misfiring creating a self-hypnotizing
barrage of noises[1] a
kind of verbal-sound-image-sensation stream
hemorrhaging all of which comes
to form an ongoing wall of static like
white noise or tv snow all of which
is perhaps again
an attempt an ill attempt to
heal the wound the self trying to heal
itself to comfort itself with an ongoing stream of
noises where it is thought
that noise is perhaps preferable to what lies beyond it that is to say the noise having become a kind of enclosure a screen
providing one with a feeling a sense of security from against what lies beyond
but just what is this beyond? the noise of others perhaps? one’s noise being as i’ve already said a kind of membrane separating
one from the rest of the world
but as all of humanity seems to
be engaged in this production of noise
the noise outside may be continuous with or a
reproduction of the noise inside that
is to say in one’s mind
such that there really is no “beyond” and no
“other” as we are all engaged in reproducing the same wall of sameness within
ourselves around and against each other
by turning up
one’s own “inner” noise one tunes out
the noises of others a kind of masking
effect to borrow the term from
acoustics where as i may have already mentioned waveforms of the same frequency amplitude
and phase cancel each other out
such that the noise “inside” is proportional to the silence “outside” that is to say in
the so-called social sphere all of this
pointing to the astonishing fact that the mind
the brain rarely if ever
is quiet not even while
sleeping wreaked as we tend to be by
our never ending desires fears and anxieties
and this wound as i’ve already mentioned this slit
this gash this
rift this fault
this trauma may
be akin to or a
reflection of a fault that has been in
existence on a larger scale and for a long time between us
that is to say humanity and
the rest of the world nature
the universe life a relationship that for the most part has been marked by violence and
destruction divided as we tend to be within ourselves and between each other . .
.
and yet knowing this
our progenitors and our so-called
educators in their zeal to press upon
us their knowledge and wisdom their so-called well intentioned zeal to
instruct us for our own so-called good under
the pretext of preparing us for life’s so-called difficulties waste
no time in delivering with cruelty their hard earned life lessons gloating
with relish at the sight of their young and helpless victims squirming with
pain and humiliation perhaps out of envy of the children’s as of
yet unsullied minds out of envy of the
children’s freedom feeling no qualms
about imprinting upon their defenseless minds
their own fears their own
suspicions and hatred of life poisoning
the children’s supple pliable and trusting
minds with their cynicism and with
their harsh sarcastic words cutting everyone down to size reducing everyone down to their that is to say our educators’ our progenitors’ level of baseness and
brutality cultivating callousness insensitivity
and cruelty producing thus a culture
of brutality and barbarism preparing us
for the corporate and militaristic mentality the ideology of domination that
prevails in the world today that dominates
our lives today
and
the adults evidently under the guise the excuse of education and convincing
themselves they are doing good
feeling and thinking that they have license that they have the right to dominate the
children the helpless children and impose upon them all their various kinds of neurosis their fears and prejudices with
relish with gusto perform the nasty
task while at the same time turning a
blind eye that is to say dissociating
themselves from the fact that the very same callousness and cruelty they
cultivate and inculcate upon their victims
the helpless vulnerable children who trust them with their lives that very same so-called education in the
hardness the harshness of life is what makes life hard harsh in the first place
it
is that very same kind of thinking that self-serving thinking that
self-justifying thinking that self-replicating
kind of thinking those very same self-justifying
rationalizations that make life so-called
this so-called life hard it is they
our so-called progenitors and they our so-called educators and our so-called leaders
with their half-baked ideas
excuses and rationalizations
that make life hard life life
is hard they say
they say this with authority throwing those expressions around as if they
knew what they meant as if anyone knows
what life is or means or should be as if
they were omniscient they our so-called educators our so-called leaders in their ignorance and arrogance taking
advantage of the defenseless innocent
minds of the children feel no qualms and with gloating relish imprint their brutality upon us and later act surprised when finally one
of the children one of the destroyed
children no longer able to take the
confusion and contradiction no longer able to take the fear and
humiliation snaps and goes on a shooting spree with
weapons provided him by society itself and again
acting surprised society through
the various media the various talking
heads and spin doctors asks ponders
wonders how could something like
this have happened? how could someone
have done something like this? but it is in the very same act of asking such a
question it is in that very same
question that society dissociates
itself from itself from what it has
produced and fostered a society that
takes for granted that domination is a so-called fact of life a so-called
necessity and that therefore violence too is
necessary a fact of life this society acts surprised when one of its
victims behaves violently
a
society that cultivates the ideology of domination therefore
justifying violence a society that
takes for granted that exploitation is a necessity acts surprised when one of the exploited
snaps a society that fosters and
practices competition and humiliating comparison acts surprised a society that practices and fosters the
organized forms of murder called war acts surprised when one of its own acts
violently a society that bombs children
to pieces in a faraway land acts
surprised when one of its own children kills others in its midst . . .
(now the blind spot looks on watches
stares us down realizing too
that the mind the image is a blind spot
and the blind spot a scab on the wound of the mind’s eye the mind’s mouth and ears the blind spot is an image and
that image projects another and
then another . . . the mind itself an
enormous blind spot a scab on reality
itself projected or better yet cut
and pasted onto reality itself
just as a work of art is mute
and through its muteness speaks volumes
the entire sensory apparatus an
obstacle the truth and descriptions
thereof an obstacle the descriptions themselves a scab on the
described the descriptions themselves erasing and replacing the described a
blind spot projected on reality the brain
itself and the entire sensory apparatus so-called being
an impediment an obstacle the blind spot itself . . . coming into contact
with this imprisonment brings about an acute state of nausea not
just a physical nausea the autonomic
nervous system triggering a physiological response reaction
consisting of repulsion
vomiting and piercing
headaches but a deeper (inadequate
word) kind of nausea and discomfort (again inadequate) arising from the pit of
my stomach rising from the marrow of my legs
trembling weakened by an uncontrollable
feeling of dread this even though i’ve
barely read Sartre he so tedious
with his little cigarette and
his deadly second hand smoke . . .
born in a casket a coffin
staying there for life they might as well have been born in a
casket a coffin and stayed there for the rest of
their lives this labyrinth of cages we that
is to say humanity
throughout the ages have constructed and anyone who tries to get
out free himself from the cage the labyrinth
is discouraged everyone
in their cages! their glass cages everyone
in your cages! touching without feeling feeling without thinking thinking
without insight hearing without listening looking
without seeing they are born inside
a coffin and stay there all their lives
they were born inside coffins
they might as well have been born inside a coffin inside coffins and stayed there for their entire
lives born inside a coffin as i’ve already said and stayed there for life in our little cages our prisons
the walls and alleyways of which spread indefinitely and infinitely in
all directions like a maze so dividing
the world into two kinds of people creating thus two kinds of people who
populate this world
there
are two kinds of people in this world
two kinds of people who populate this world the victims and the victimizers whose
roles are nonetheless
often interchangeable producing a
sadomasochistic web of relationships mechanical relationships
and
few there are who desire to stray away stray away from their cages their confinement these
having provided over the ages a sense of security false security to be sure but which they nonetheless
settle for as if nothing else existed
nothing else mattered
and very often the doors of their cages remain open very often the way has been shown them in which to wander away the way has been shown them by which their
freedom can be gained yet still
they prefer their confinement their confinement originating from
within that is to say in their minds afraid perhaps of wandering off into the
human made labyrinth and getting lost
this human made prison and the
indefinite infinite infinitely indeterminate sprawl of walls and
alleyways which all too often are dead ends all too often fatally so
it
is the confinement within that is preferred most that
is to say the confinement in our
minds it is to begin with this confinement from within that
is to say the imprisoned mind the thoughts and perceptions caught in a
grid the habitual feelings and gestures
that create that generate the various
kinds of confinement which overtime
crystallize petrifying like
mineral deposits into strict rigid
forms and courses confining our actions
and as overtime
one by one they drop dead even
while new ones are born their
pallid boney bodies or their bloated torpid bodies are assimilated into the
structure of the maze their minds their brains
their flesh and bones becoming an
integral part of the labyrinth’s calcified
petrified structure their skeletal remains their agonized expressions and even their sometimes peaceful
expressions can be seen as occasional
incrustations in the walls and alleyways of the interminable maze which is the
labyrinth of our cities our civilizations the outskirts of which blend into the night
and with the periphery of our dreams and nightmares coming true . . . )
By now the rain has begun to thin out and it looks as if i’m the only soul left on the road. i see no headlights approaching from the opposite side, nor any from behind. A quick glance at the dashboard clock confirms my suspicion, it is nearly midnight. i’m feeling hungry and tired so i decide to get off the highway at the next possible exit and find a place to eat and maybe rest up for the night. The darkness beyond the head light beams appears immutable, impenetrable, and gives the impression of encroaching upon the meager beams of light the van produces, as if a thick, black fog. This unpleasant sensation is dispelled by the occasional flash of lightning seen in the distance above the wooded hills, each flash revealing, in stroboscopic manner, a different and yet somewhat familiar topography; here a group of saplings and bushes shaken about by the gusty winds, there a scraggly, rocky escarpment and, further down, the dark crack of another ravine. The highway seems to be leveling out, with less twists and turns as if i’m entering a valley. A sign appears by the roadside in the distance, still too far to be legible, but which, nonetheless, gives me hope i'm nearing a town. i slow down as i approach the sign in order to get a better look at it. As the sign draws closer, i read “Harford 2 mi” in the familiar dayglo white against dark green background typical of these road signs. Encouraged by the thought of food and rest, i step on the gas and the van lunges forward without effort. In a few minutes the exit appears on my right and once again, i slow down to make the turn. With a sense of relief at the thought of getting some food and rest, i enter the off ramp that veers gently toward the right and then forward in a downward slope, Then, as i approach the road at the underpass, a flash of light catches my eye, my right eye, to be precise, i mean, peripherally, i catch a glimpse of a red light blinking in the distance. Stopped at the intersection, i turn my gaze to the right and looming a few blocks away, i see a large barn-like structure with a luminous sign above it that reads in blue lights “DANNI’S BARN” and beneath that in smaller, blinking, red lights, “live girls topless dancing,” there are no other buildings in the vicinity as far as i can tell. i can’t help but grimace in disappointment but then i notice that in the sprawling parking lot around
[1] noise here is meant
in its two though not entirely unrelated
senses that is in the sense usually used in music which is
those complex sounds that are characterized by a high level of
randomness in their frequency components and
sounds whose frequency components are in an inharmonic relation to each
other that is to say complex non-periodic waveforms i also refer to noise in the sense used in
information theory that is the presence of extraneous information in
a system or to put it another way information that has no apparent relevance
to the system (in this case language) but which is nonetheless present as part
of the mechanism or technology used by the system for its expression.
the building, parked in neat rows, are
the enormous hulks of the trucks that just a few hours ago passed me in a
frenzy on the highway. i begin to wonder
if perhaps DANNI’S BARN is more than just a strip joint. Maybe it is a truck
stop with a diner – i think to myself - taking into account that we are in the
middle of unpopulated hills it doesn’t
seem like such a far-fetched notion – i say again to myself -
i
have always felt apprehension at the thought of going into a strip joint, the
fact that, by and large, they seem to always be in secluded places, operating at
night, often in seedy areas of town, in windowless buildings, as if the
activities taking place inside were something to hide, is enough for me to feel
little or no attraction, repulsion even. What’s more, the people i’ve seen
entering these places often look rather shady, or if not shady, they seem to
cut a sad, somewhat pathetic figure, mainly that of horny, middle aged men
bored with their lives bored with their wives. . . But what bothers
me most about strip joints and the entire sex industry, is the repetition, the
constant repetition that seems to me to represent the enslavement, exploitation
and debasement of desire and the use of desire to keep people, that is to say,
us, under control. i resent the constant teasing, the constant titillation, arousing
our desires, keeping us always in a state of longing without our being able to truly fulfill them.
A kind of sadomasochistic mechanism in fact, designed to keep us all like
hamsters on the proverbial treadmill chasing after the proverbial carrot, just
barely out of reach echoing thus the larger state of affairs, that
is to say, how the dominant socio-economic order keeps us all under control by
never fulfilling the promises it makes, freedom being the main promise broken, indefinitely
postponed
a kind of claustrophobia
would arise in me when witnessing the repetitive, mechanically ritualistic
behavior often seen in porn movies and usually associated with everything
sexual in our society; the constant pressure to be sexual, the obligatory
nature of the whole thing, sexual pleasure being, all too often, the only means
we seem to have of escaping the doldrums, the dreariness and meaninglessness of
our lives and where, the pursuit of pleasure, comes to take the place of the
need for meaning and purpose in one’s life so becoming society’s principal
instrument of control . . .
well
- i mutter to myself - maybe or maybe not
maybe i need to retrace my steps
my thinking maybe
i’ve been reading too much critical-theory maybe these are no more than clichés and
stereotypes maybe people in there are
just having some harmless fun and maybe in these secluded mountainous areas people find it difficult to entertain
themselves and make a living any other way
the fact is you’ve never been to a strip joint so how would you know? - i say to myself - everything
you know or think you know about them the people that frequent these places is mostly hearsay you
have no actual experience with any of this
maybe you’ve seen a few movies too many hon - i argue again against my
fears - why do you give others so much authority over your own perceptions and experiences over your own experience of reality?
These
thoughts, these rationalizations, become all the more powerful as my stomach’s
demands, its rumblings and grumblings begin to assert themselves more vehemently, such
that even as they are coursing through my body and mind, i begin to make a
right turn onto the main road. i move along slowly in the direction of the
building it’s blue and red blinking
lights casting elongated, intermittent reflections on the wet surface of the
pavement. As i approach, i notice that there is another structure annexed to
the barn, it has a lower lying wing, in bungalow fashion, which has been added
to the barn’s rear. Though much lower than the main building, it seems to jut
out several yards from the back wall and from one side of the barn into the
parking lot forming a large “L” shaped structure. From where i sit, it gives me
the impression of being a medium sized, single storied house. Seeing this, it
occurrs to me that it might be the diner part of the building - or maybe it’s just
the owner’s living quarters – i think to myself – cautiously. i press on until
i reach the parking lot’s entrance. Egged on by hunger and fatigue, i decide to
put my rationalizations to the test and turn onto the lot’s gravely surface, i
park the van nearby where the trucks are, their enormous frames stand silently
between the tall lamp posts whose greenish, metallic light shines serenely upon
their massive backs. i turn off the motor and unbuckle my seat belt. In a state
of lethargy, i slowly open the van’s door. The long hours of constant driving
have made my legs and the rest of my body stiff and numb. i descend onto the
gravelly ground stomping my feet and shaking my legs one at a time and close
the door. Then, i begin ambling across the parking lot toward the barn finding
it difficult to walk on the thickly graveled surface.
The rain has stopped completely and scattered
about the parking lot in irregular fashion, i see several roundish or oval
shaped puddles on whose oily surfaces are reflected the various blinking beer
signs from the barn’s opaque windows. The puddles with their intermittent
reflections, suddenly strike me as being large, insect-like eyes impassibly staring at the dark, rolling
sky.
i
continue walking slowly and not without apprehension, but still hungry and
thirsty and with great need of a bathroom. i muster up courage and head with
more determination toward the building’s entrance. As i approach, i hear the
thumping of loud music. Finally, i arrive at the entrance and with my legs
still numb, i hobble up the steps and push open one of the double doors, the
strident sound of hard rock comes blasting out compelling me to retreat, still,
i plod on into the murky, smoke filled depths ahead of me.
From the inside, the barn
looks a lot more spacious than it appears outside. As i stand inside the
entrance doors, i see the bar straight in front of me at about thirty feet. Behind
the counter hangs an enormous antique
mirror contained in a dark and ornately crafted wooden frame consisting of
volutes, whorls, spirals and scrolls. Above the mirror hangs an old and frayed
confederate flag with what appears to be bullet holes in it. Further away and
to my left, at about forty-five feet, there stands a stage bathed in
multicolored lights that move slowly across, to-and-fro, blending into each
other. The stage has three brass poles distributed at equal distances from each
other. Gyrating around two of the poles are two women wearing nothing but
thongs and high heels, their sagging breasts, flabby bellies and thighs reveal
these are not the girls promised by the signs outside but middle-aged women
who’ve been around the block a few times too many. Dispersed around the front
of the stage are tables and chairs in which sit five or six men smoking and
drinking and, on occasion, cheering or hollering comments at the women on stage, comments which, in the overall loudness of
the music, remain unintelligible from where i stand.
To my right is
a large room with more tables and chairs and more people, men and a few women
seated drinking and talking. i’m about to turn around and leave when suddenly i
see the restroom sign. A bit shaky, i walk in the direction of the sign which
points to the back of the large room on the right. Behind the bar area i find
the door to the men’s room and walk in. As is to be expected, the walls are
covered in graffiti, most of it obscene, and the smell and filth is almost more
than i can bare. After relieving myself, i walk back out into the main room and
approach the bar. Behind the counter, the bartender stands straight in front with
his back to me polishing shot glasses and beer mugs with a rag, a small cigar
juts from one corner of his mouth. He
is a tall, lanky fellow, about six feet eleven wearing nothing but a black
leather vest and an old pair of wornout jeans. On his head he wears an old, frayed,
olive green marine cap. His dark hair is short and on his long, pointy nose, sits
a pair of round, metal-rimmed Marshwood style glasses through which peer two
impassive, steely grey eyes. Noticing me in the mirror, he turns around and
looks at me. He puts down the rag and glass he is polishing and approaches the
front counter. As he faces me, i notice
a large tattoo of a carp across his torso in the Japanese ukiyo-e style; a symbol of bravery meant to ward off evil spirits and
bad luck. He stares at me coldly through his glasses as the music and smoke
continue to swirl around us - are you Danni?
- i inquire timidly – naw - he says curtly - that’s Danni over there -
he gestures with his thumb. Sitting on a stool on the far left end of the bar,
is a man talking to a large, heavyset woman who stands on the inside corner of
the counter. Her copper-red hair seems to glow under the overhead lights and
against the low-cut black blouse she is wearing which reveals an ample cleavage.
The man sitting across her is also heavy set and wears a red baseball cap and
black leather jacket, an old pair of jeans and light tan work boots. A large
gold ring glitters on the annular finger of his right hand as he waves it
around while talking – is that him? – i ask again – her - the bartender corrects – oh . . . that’s Danni? - i say trailing off – that’s right the one and only Danni van Kralingen - he
says smirking – Van what? - i ask – Van Kralingen - he responds - New York
Dutch or somethin’ so waddayal have?-
he continues drily – do you have any food? - i responded meekly, nervously
shifting on my stool – does this look like a restaurant to ya? - he says
annoyed - his voice has a long raspy drawl to it reminding me of a recording i
once heard of William S. Burroughs reading from one of his novels – well . . .
i was hoping it was a diner . . . a truck stop you know . . . – i answer somewhat shaken –
well it ain’t - he snaps back in a matter of fact tone – so . . . what happened
to the girls you have advertised outside? - i ask changing the subject, trying
to break the ice, he gestures with his head toward the stage where the two
women are dancing – you call those girls? - i say in a failed attempt at humor –
what were you expectin’? - he sneers back – well i guess i was expecting you know . . . young women? – i respond trying
to chuckle – the young ‘uns are in the back - he gestures again with his head,
this time in the opposite direction. i turn my head toward my right and in the
far, right hand corner of the large room i notice for the first time, an
entrance covered by a bead curtain behind which emanates a faint, red glow. Realizing
this is the entrance to the annex i had seen outside, i turn back toward the
bartender – you mean there’s more dancing back there? - i inquire incredulous –
oooh yeah they’re dancin’ allright - he cackles meanly - ya oughtta check ‘em
out they’re really somethin’ so waddayal have? - he asks again, looking amused – do you have any coffee? – i
ask - nope - he snips back – how about a
coke a bag of chips and some peanuts? - i say with
resignation. Grimacing, he turns around and with a long, wiry arm, plucks a bag
each of chips and peanuts off a stand on the rear counter which he then tosses
in front of me. He then reaches into a cooler under the front counter and takes
out a can of the soft drink and places it in front of me with a sharp clank
along with a glass – that all? – he says visibly impatient – yeah – i say, as a
dark feeling of emptiness suddenly wells up in me - black like a swirling cloud
of India ink - i think to myself - a
rapidly spreading stain - the starkness of the clank still echoes in my mind
while at the same time, i feel a palpable, black silence surrounding everything,
as if waiting its moment, gently pushing with firm and even pressure despite
the loudness of the music which now seems to issue from far away in the
distance. i turn my eyes to the meager pickings in front of me and begin eating
without noticing the taste my
attention still focused on the silence and darkness that seems to encase
everything around me as if somehow, i've entered into a parallel world that lies
a hair’s breadth away from our own. The vague memory of having read or heard
somewhere about quantic processes occurring in the brain, in the midst of its
electrochemical processes, in microtubules in our neurons, enters my thoughts and
the fantasy that maybe one’s mind through some kind of quantum wormhole in the brain,
might, momentarily, enter into a different, a parallel world, seems to me to
make sense, the way physicists say an electron, in its indeterminate orbit
around an atom’s nucleus can be in two places at once, what they call
entanglement - if an electron in one’s brain suddenly makes a leap such that it is both in the brain and
somewhere else at the same time say the
other side of the universe who’s to
say one’s mind one’s consciousness one’s awareness doesn’t go along for the
ride too? - i think to myself, munching on some peanuts - our brains after all
consist of about one hundred
billion neurons roughly the number of stars in our galaxy and
each brain cell is connected to about ten thousand other brain cells forming a
vast electrical network who’s to say
that deep down at the subatomic level in the electrochemical firings of the
neural network we aren’t intimately connected to the quantic
processes of the rest of the universe at the hyperspace level through wormholes or some other means? well
holes for sure i have - i muse, this
time munching down on some chips - and worms? i wouldn’t be too surprised either all
things considered all that sushi i’ve
eaten . . . but this darkness where’s
it come from? this darkness behind the
scenes behind all that exists seeming to be immanent to being itself – i
think to myself, taking a sip of the soda - and the silence? this seemingly eternal silence that
underlies and surrounds all sounds? it
is this silence which by
way of contrast makes all sounds clearer brighter
as if i’m hearing them for the
first time ever – i muse, munching down on some peanuts again - maybe i’m temporarily
stuck between two worlds two universes: our universe some seem to think may be
a membrane with a parallel universe just a millimeter away from it floating in hyperspace and for some
reason i
suddenly find myself in this cosmic crawl space in
between looking into our reality from
the midst of this unfathomable and seemingly aware darkness this
space between membranes what? what is it? a kind of limbo? - i say to myself, drinking down the last of
what’s left of the soda vaguely feeling the coldness of the can between my
fingers - no of course not it’s just me the
mood i’m in i’m tired that’s all it is the
fatigue has changed my mood and the way i see things there’s
no darkness between worlds i’m not stuck between parallel worlds it’s
the tiredness that’s making my eyes dim
the darkness emanating from my
eyes from my mind through my eyes into the world around me - i
reason trying to comfort myself, suddenly realizing that the bartender is
standing in front of me. i turn my gaze up and see his expressionless face
looking down at me, his lips move silently
no sound appears to be coming from them - wha . . .? - i begin, sitting up alarmed –
anything else? - he asks pointedly – uh . . . no . . . thanks - i mutter disoriented
– well? ain’tcha gonna go? - he inquires raising and lowering his eyebrows
rapidly – go where? - i ask puzzled – ta see the young ‘uns - he says with a
facetious grin, pointing in the direction of the bead curtain with his thumb. i
pause looking toward the faint red glow – don’t know – i answer with
apprehension. The barn now seems livelier and loud conversation and laughter intermingled
with music fill the entire space as if during my obscure reverie, unbeknownst
to me, more people had entered the establishment – well ya oughtta check ‘em out they’re really
hoppin’ - he cackles meanly as he removes the soda can, glass and wrappings off
the counter and with one quick sweep of his rag, wipes it clean – you mean
there’s music and dancing back there too? - i enquire reluctantly – oooh
yeah they’re dancin’ alright to
their own brand of music - he chuckles pursing his lips into a kind of
lascivious pout while gyrating his hips. The tattooed carp on his torso
suddenly comes alive to the rhythm undulating obscenely on his chest and
abdomen. i shift uneasily on my seat and suddenly get up not knowing why – weeelllll
. . . maaaybeeee . . . i’ll check it out . . . - i mutter in a daze, part of me
resisting the motion which makes my body sluggish and stiff while
at the same time, another part of me begins pulling toward the annex’s entrance.
Moments later, i arrive at the bead curtain as if in a dream, my heart pounding
in my ears along with the music which seems to have gained in intensity. Taking
a deep breath, i gather resolve and step through the curtain. A bleak scene
greets me on the other side. i’m standing in the vertex of the angle formed by
two hallways, one right in front of me, the other to my right, both illuminated
by bare, red light bulbs. The walls are made of painted plywood and the floor appears
to be old linoleum. Sitting immediately next to the entrance is a large, heavyset
man in his thirties, he’s wearing a black Harley Davidson t-shirt with the
sleeves cut off, a pair of jeans the cuffs of which are tucked into a pair of
black, worn out biker boots. There are tattoos all over his thick arms, among
them a swastika. His head is almost completely bald and his clean-shaven face is
framed by two wide, untrimmed side-burns. A large, round golden earring dangles
from his left ear lobe as he looks up from his comic book with a wide grin that
reveals a sizeable gap between his front teeth – howdy - he says cheerily -
looking for somethin’? - he smiles at me facetiously winking an eye – the
bartender said . . . there’s more dancing back here? - i answer cautiously with
apprehension – did he now? - the man chuckles - well you could call it that it’ll
be twenty bucks - he says as he opens an old cigar box that sits on a stool
next to him. In the box i can see rolls of bills tied neatly with rubber bands.
The man sits there looking up at me, a
grin frozen on his face – twenty dollars? - i say in disbelief – well yeah if you wanna see the show ya
gotta pay you know how it goes - he
says with another wink getting chummy –
i . . . i . . . - i begin hesitantly – aw c’mon - he gestures with a thick
hairy arm - ya know ya wanna! - i shift from one foot to another as if pulled
in opposite directions, fearful of complying yet at the same time, fearful of
walking away and angering him. i reach
into my pocket and pull out a clump of bills, find a twenty-dollar bill and
handed it to him – go down this hall - he says pointing to his right with the
comic book - turn left first door on your left ya have
half an hour – frowning, i began walking in the direction he indicated and as i
pass him he says cheerfully - enjoy! - with a facetious grin still on his
face his eyes quickly turn back to
his comic book. i stop midway down the narrow, luridly lit hall in front of a
set of double doors on my right and timidly look back inquisitively pointing
with my hand in the direction he just gestured. Shaking his head, he suddenly
gets up and says annoyed - you guys! you’re
all the same! desperate to get some
but when it’s right in front of ya’s y’all chicken out! - with a firm grip, he
takes hold of my arm and pushes me past the double doors around the corner into
another hallway, he then opens the first door on the left which swings back
into darkness while at the same time saying with an aggressive snap - turn the
light on bitch! - a weak sound, barely a whimper, reaches me through the
darkness. A bedside table lamp suddenly lights up as the door slams closed
behind me with a laughter. i stand with knees shaking, staring in horror at the
sight before me as the acrid smell of shit and urine fills my nostrils. Sitting
on a low cot covered with a dirty, soiled bedspread, sits a young woman, a girl,
no more than sixteen or seventeen wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt – pl.
. . please don’t hurt me - she says stammering and begins to shake
uncontrollably as she brakes into a sob. Petrified with fear, i’m unable to
move or utter a single sound – please – she mutters weakly again – I’m sick I
need my medicine – i notice her arms are covered in small bruises and soon
realize these are needle tracks. In a
mechanical daze, i move toward the door and slowly pull it open. Sluggishly, i
step into the hallway, close the door behind me and still in a daze, begin
walking. As soon as i turn the corner
into the main hallway, the man at the entrance sees me and exclaims – well that was fast! what happened? didn’t she wanna put out? – he grins again
facetiously – the girl in that room is sick – i mutter back – naw she’s just overdue for her meds – he grins
and winks at me – i think she needs medical attention – i say meekly – we
should call an ambulance she needs
medical attention – i say again mechanically – an ambulance? i
ain’t callin’ no ambulance – he answers back annoyed – well if you’re not going to i will – i retort – you ain’t callin’
nobody – he says angrily and turning his head to the hallway in front of him
yells – hey Joe! Joe! come out here! – soon i hear another voice
respond from the depths of the hallway somewhere – what is it? waddya want? – we got a problem ya gotta come out here – says the man by
the entrance – alrightee – says Joe from a distance – and i hear a door slam
followed by the sound of heavy footsteps. In a few seconds a tall, somewhat
chubby yet muscular figure with long, dark, curly hair and full beard appears
at the hallway entrance – what’s up? – he asks smiling – this guy here says our
little bird in room one is sick and wants to call an ambulance – answers the man
by the entrance pointing at me with his thumb. Joe looks at me with a grin and
taking a step toward me says in a friendly tone – naw she’s not sick man you know
she just needs her medicine s’all she’ll be fine don’t worry about it – she looks really
bad – i answer back with trembling
voice – i really think she needs to see a doctor – Joe’s demeanor suddenly
shifts from friendly to aggressive and he says angrily pointing a finger at me –
now look here asshole I told you she’ll be fine now you go in there and do your business or
get the hell outta here
y’understand? – shocked, i step back a few paces – i’ll call the cops if
i have to – i say with fear. Joe suddenly stops and looks at his friend by the
entrance, they both stare at each other quietly for a few seconds, then a big
grin appears on their faces and suddenly, they erupt simultaneously into loud
laughter. Joe stomps on the floor with one foot while slapping his thigh – you
go ahead and do that! – he says laughing – you just go ahead! lets see how far that gets ya! – they both
shake laughing uncontrollably – the chief of police is one of our best
customers! – Joe says laughing even louder stomping his foot and slapping his
thigh again. They are now leaning on each other shaken by violent paroxysms of
laughter, their faces flushed red with exertion, i step back further uncertain about
what to do next when suddenly Joe straightens up and getting aggressive again
says – I think it’s time for you to exit these premises bud – he and his friend
walk quickly toward me and overpowering me they each take hold of my arms and
push me toward the double doors on the side of the main hallway. Joe vigorously
pushes the doors which open violently onto a small cement landing which has a set
of cement steps that lead down to the parking lot outside – wait! i’ll leave you don’t have to do this! – i say
stammering again with fear – you damn right you’re leavin’ – says Joe as they
both push me forcefully through the doorway making me stumble on the steps on
which i trip falling on my hands and knees on the gravely surface of the ground
outside. A sharp pain rips through my right knee as i hit the ground tearing a
hole in my pants. i lie on the ground writhing in excruciating pain while
clutching at my injured knee – that’s what you get for being a trouble maker –
i hear Joe say, the two friends look at each other and begin laughing again –
you better get the fuck outta here now or we’ll really put a hurt on ya – says
the other guy stepping onto the cement steps. i roll over and slowly pick
myself up and begin limping across the parking lot toward the van still
clutching at my knee – that’s right you dipshit go back to momma – says Joe mockingly –
yeah get the fuck outta here you fucking pussy –
says the other guy with angry disdain. Still limping, i speed up my pace. i
reach the van, unlock the door and with great difficulty pull
myself up into the cabin. i sit in the driver’s seat, slam the door shut and
quickly lock it. i look at my knee and
notice the pants material is soaked in blood. Moaning in pain i
reach for a box of tissues on the other seat and pull out a handful and stuff
the wad through the tear in my pants onto the gash in my knee. i sit there for
a few minutes pressing down on the wound trying to stop the bleeding. i switch
hands and keep the pressure on with my left and taking the van key in my right,
i push it into the ignition, turn it and lightly press on the gas. Much to my
relief, the engine starts up almost instantly. Still rattled by fear and pain,
i reach for the seat belt, buckle up, then release the hand break and slowly
begin moving across the parking lot toward the exit. Turning left onto the main
road i decide to go back to the highway
and search for a motel in which i can spend the night – the further away i can
get from this place the better – i mumble
still trembling with fear. The asphalt is still wet from the rain and i pass
large puddles of water by the side of the road as i move forward. In a few
minutes i reach the ramp that leads to the highway and accelerating with a
growing sense of relief turn onto it splashing through another puddle. In a few
seconds i’m back on the highway heading south again. As i step on the gas a
thought begins to insinuate itself in my mind arising from the unease and fear,
triggered by the recent trauma, a familiar feeling begins to make itself felt, the
feeling i’ve always had, a feeling that surfaces every now and then under
certain circumstances, a feeling of not belonging and that i’m living behind
enemy lines. The realization suddenly
hits me that not only have i just had a brush with what some call the criminal
element, but, that i have also just been kicked in the face by fascism, kicked
in the teeth by what i’ve always felt, always known was there, in one form or
another, veiled as it were, lurking in the seemingly innocent actions of men
and women going about their daily lives; a kind of potential force which under
the right conditions suddenly becomes a kinetic force that slams into one’s
life, one’s being, with the violence of a freight train, discombobulating one’s
mind and body - a violence over which one has little or no control whatsoever –
i mutter again to myself as a shudder runs through my entire body making me
feel out of sorts with myself, my body, my senses, making me feel unreal as if
i’m in a dream wandering aimlessly in the darkness of the highway . . . In time
i see the large luminous sign of a motel ahead of me to my right. i pull onto
the off ramp and reaching the main road, i turn right and see the motel about a
block ahead on my left. i pull up to the
entrance and cautiously turn onto the cement surface of the parking lot and
move slowly toward the motel’s office. Once parked in front of the office, i
turn the lights off and then the motor. i unbuckle the seat belt and opening
the door, painfully climb down from the van’s cabin. Still limping, i amble
toward the front door and pulling it open step inside and hobble toward the receptionist’s
desk. Sitting at the desk i see a heavy-set woman in her mid to late twenties, she’s
wearing a grey cardigan style angora sweater that reveals an ample cleavage. Her
abundant blonde hair is bunched up at the top of her head and held in place
with a large pin - hi! – she says cheerfully – what can I do for ya? – i need a
room – i mumble back weakly – ok for
how long? - she asks – just tonight - i mutter – okaayyy that’ll be sixty five dollars – she says
while typing on a computer keyboard with stubby fingers which i notice are clad
with long, pointy ornately decorated
finger nails. Wondering how she manages to type with those long nails i pull
out my wallet and extract a debit card which i hand her. After a short while
she says cheerily – here is your key, its room number eleven to yer right at
the end of the lane, ya have to be out by ten am tomorrow mornin’ – she says handing
back my card - i also need a first aid kit - i mumble cautiously - oh! what
happened hon? cut yerself or somethin'?
- she asks showing concern - i had an accident . . . hurt my knee - i mutter
back. She reaches under the desk and
pulls out a small plastic box which she places on the counter in front of me
and says winking with a big smile on her face – is there anything else I can do
for ya? – frowning i respond cautiously – uh . . . no . . . thanks – still
frowning and with key in hand i grab the first aid kit and turning around begin
walking toward the office entrance and as i reach the door i hear her say –
well if you change yer mind you just give me a holler hon – i turn
around slightly as i’m walking through the doorway and see her winking and
smiling at me again. Puzzled, i hobble back to the van and climb in. i start
the motor and pull out of the parking space in front of the office and slowly
drive down to where my room is. i park
the van, clamber down with first aid kit in hand and then reach inside the
cabin for my backpack and suitcase. i limp to my room, unlock the door and walk
into the room which smells like cigarette smoke. i lock the door and walk
toward the bed and throw myself on it leaving the back pack on the floor. i lie on my back for a while with my eyes
closed and almost fall asleep. i suddenly sit up and begin taking off my
clothes. Once naked, i amble into the bathroom and turn the shower on. i stand
under the flowing water for a long time feeling relieved letting the warm water
wash over my entire body caressing the gash in my knee. After the shower i dry myself with a large fluffy
towel and walk back into the bedroom and sitting on the bed, i reach for the
first aid kit. i apply disinfectant to the wound and put some gauze on it which
i then secure with some adhesive tape
i’m sitting in the dark on the edge of the
bed staring at the window it has
started raining again the parking
lot’s metallic light seeps in filtered by the gauzy curtains and rivulets of
rainwater which flow down the pane creating a translucent undulating
pattern of shadows on the wall which divides the room into a triangle of
gray-green luminosity against the darkness in the rest of the space
a new combination of space and time
seems to be taking place a flattening
of all objects felt into a web of surfaces
surfaces interlocked surfaces within surfaces projected on the
wall there are different times going on different time continuums a
mesh a web of different time
continuums inside me in my body and
mind my thoughts my brain
and also outside in
the world around me the rain has its
own time the water has its own time the
thunder and lightning too my breathing
and heart beats their own time my
thoughts and feelings their own times
for
a long time i sit on the bed staring at the window as the rain keeps falling drizzling
then pouring again staring at the shapes on the wall created
by the light from outside filtered by
the rivulets of water on the windowpane and the gauzy curtains an hour or two maybe three maybe
more go by the pain in my knee
throbbing and the bandage i made for it fallen off onto the carpet
entranced by a thought or
feeling a memory which usually grows
disturbing me with shame embarrassment fear and melancholy what should i think what? as if thinking will make a difference to persuade and be persuaded perused
looked over locked into a grid
of mutual manipulation
permutations next what
should i do? held firmly against
myself in fear paralyzed i wait for a moment or two for a revelation
to release me from this stultified state as
light from the parking lot outside flows into the room filtered by rivulets of
rain water streaming down the window forming undulating designs against the
wall i feel the presence of someone in the room
staring at me in the dark an immense
presence seems to insinuate itself into my mind but i know there’s no one there
i stare blankly at the moving shadows
on the wall without thought frozen
stiff stifled from within by fear in the dark shivering
and as i stare at the patterns i
begin to mumble to myself unknown to myself words
words seem to drift down the wall
in changing designs drooling down
into the shadows
words are moving again shifting places changing order permutating drifting
like banks of sand groups of
words
streaming round ‘n
round bumping into each other groups of
words are shifting changing order intermingling getting mixed up caught in a whirlpool
streaming round and round words are shifting floating
like so much debris flotsam some jetsam too bumping into each other inverting order interjecting changing place swirling round and round branching out in all directions
words are moving permutating and drifting like sand
banks groups
of words forming islands bumping
into each other
bumping into one
another words are forming permutating and sifting drifting like sand banks shifting
groups of words forming islands
of varying texture and density
groups of words and the thoughts the feelings they represent dissolving
disseminating into textures of varying density varying degrees of points of view intertwined disrupting a flow the flow of something or other not quite the
same bumping into each other and curly cues forming convolutions and
counter-involutions deforming into sentences streaming
jetsam and some flotsam too swirling round and round changing position words are shifting of varying density and texture like so much debris thoughts are drifting and some words too bumping into each other jagged black and white shapes words are moving again their wavering shapes erratically bumping into each other
shifting
positions bumping density swirling round and round forming curly
cues drifting and permutating branching out in all directions interjecting bumping
intertwined disrupted flow
moving inverting order interjecting
changing bumping moving
sifting dissolving thoughts
reforming density something convoluted swirling
intertwined disorder interjecting changing convolutions round debris black bumping deformations groups of words the feelings and thoughts they represent
electrochemically firing
intertwined
becoming a flow their undulating
shapes words are moving again changing form branching out in all directions into textures of varying density dissolving
disseminating shifting positions drifting and permutating sifting through thoughts this orders again
into inverted other form shifting forming
jagged shapes bumping into each
other wandering drifting like sand
banks shifting like so much debris
words are swirling round and round
streaming some jetsam too
floating inverting order words like islands drifting and density disseminating deforming
sifting texture dissolving view
round debris black bumping
forming bumping bumping swirling bumping curly cues and
round interjections changing convolution something round debris black
re-presented again
bumping
de-formation electrochemically firing
words are of sand words in
whirlpools churning islands round and
round bumping turning forming curly cues bumping bumping swirling round and round
intertwined disorder bumping de-formation electrochemically moving again
jagged black flotsam and white jetsam too floating swirling bumping drifting words are shifting
jagged
white black and white jagged shapes puzzle-like slowly swirling round and round caught in a whirlpool near
the window’s edge where the bend
begins blindly searching each other's
edges words and their sounds their
undulating shapes erratically erotically bumping into each other never quite fitting in
undulating in slow wavering
motions vibrations reverberations convolutions through in time and space undulating like mollusks squids in a dark abyss amorphous thought and flesh bone
indistinguishable where i
begins and ends difficult to discern who
or what is doing the discerning down
this corridor before soon
language words and thoughts becoming
sound vibrations pure energy currents dissolving into each other emerge
out of darkness serpentine ephemeral waiting in an office building blinded by
the lights the street lights
distracted looking at the
streets below as if in a foreign
country a foreign northern country where
the cold the drizzle covers
everything with grayness
indefinite gliding above it all
as if in a helicopter or blimp
drifting gently in the silence
my head feels like a balloon gently drifting a weakening formation so small infinitesimally small a forming weakness adrift
in the darkness of sleep i search for myself muttering adrift in the ruins among the ruins i search for myself passing in the screen like sky the tv snow sky faces appear and disappear flicker into and out of existence passing by like gentle clouds behind an
endless landscape of ruined cities and ideas
cities of ideas and images digitally crumbling flickering into and out of existence it was a reflection that led us me
the me echoing here in the first place it was reflection that led me here
indefinitely into an abyss certain
that the silence listens the
darkness the silent darkness
listens is aware intelligent infinitely listens absolute stillness listens unflinchingly here next to me in the boundless darkness
and
silence listens to me to us our thoughts our words the sounds listens to the glistening in each other as becoming and going in a wilderness of molecules randomly interacting undressing squashed up to personal trees up close and personal no division mutually interpenetrating don’t know what in the not knowing the everything and the nothing flickering up close and personal infinitely listens the boundless silence as galaxies turn churn burn onto walking down the rusty streets volume laughter squirming in unison opportunity clearly blurring loop derangement black translucent vision sheer energy meets automatism advanced in stages of degeneration yet still without a goal could wind up anywhere where someplace means a place of repose for the crowd unpleasing in its unconscious appeasing resonating now with the fears of a world trembling since day one watch the sun they do not feel do not know what they steal when they touch anyone mist passes the rise the hillock the trees remain silent as ever in the unflinching stillness clearly this resonates with someone in the distance of what is trying to be becoming and going in the harshness of winter hear the clocks ticking relentlessly ticking away at the bottom of despair as ice congeals sometimes clinging to the the to speak petty empty mouthed a jabbering in the dark they so like it so much they so love it so much cling to it in the dark with mouth and terror can only say but a few words in the dark fuss full of nothingness translucent black fuzzy static clinging to the air hanging low like a headache blurring the vision disturbing the thinking interference like black tv snow hanging low over the city licking thick thinking sick nausea membrane elastic stretching with our efforts to break free in the sun in the dark in the spring in the winter unknowing splintering in the coalescing ended retreat into being chopped tiresome drooping away inflection beyond remains upended reasons become from past gleaming the everything knowing the silence biting evening the bushes straight into the reading begins by a sea enough comes cut under retreating so now too names meander whose sometimes telling bell sounds reverberating a few words not knowing no me in sounds in the trees among the across breath blowing interference membrane spring chopped past the whose sounds gleaming telling so much so that enough is not enough again and then some more what leaves into sun waves coalesce into disorder upon the ridge in one boundless squirming simultaneously sounding scrambled what motions interjections frozen through future darkness up close and personal to the edge i knows “I don’t know” clambering piece meal like into a description falters the way through unconsoled mourning as past becomes re-past piece meal the names because to antipathy the things they were away in the distance and the nothing to i knows no knowing i blurry vision sound mass vibrations discombobulating aphoristic listening
antipathy begins croaking the names such that
clear cut i'm the sun's waves
sometimes with with light frozen
inside out through futures i know no listening to the sounds biting dissolving me such by i'm told
a few words membranous again boundless
darkness up the river description because to vision moans chiming in the trees figures system is to the and all the
making posh as the me was a parapet synchronized posting what the they
philosophically reproduced thinking
re-produced
enough to antipathy moans in this night coalescing into inflection such that
enough is not enough again that restriction begins ended in a piece of blank
planks across out by the telling of the it like it is by a sea retreating the
names drop sometimes scrambled into rain
reproduced enough comes into being because becomes such that enough again restriction ended undercut cut under chopped
to antipathy this day of clear cut divisions moans by a sea retreating so tiresome the things that meaning means
open ended “i” i’m told a timeless the names now too droop away what breath blows what leaves into sun’s
waves coalesce whose inflection
beyond prone language is languaging
language and somethink sometimes remains
upended motions piece meal like a
blank plank across out by the telling
reasons with light interjections scrambled howl’s appropriate place is
when bell sounds become motionless
frozen sounding simultaneously in one boundless time reverberating from
past present through future
unrelentlessly squirming in their seats a few words gleaming in the distant
like darkness turned inside out i don’t
knows in the not knowing the everything
and the nothing up close and
personal i know no knowing i knows no
knowing unknown to i knows no knowing “I”
up close and personal listening to the “me” in the silence that
listens blurry visions and my ears are
grasping the distance in the sounds biting at them in the night a sound mass of
frog and insect sounds amasses me in the evening air dissolving me into
vibrations croaking chirping and chiming in the trees among the bushes what more
to do? such by the rain whose remains
blow breath across the straights into the tiresome in a timeless universe I’m told a
multiverse i read somewhere reading
aphorisms aphoristic reading watching expressions on tv explosions on tv film
video the war continues centuries
thousands of years there are wars
everywhere wars of all kinds on a daily basis in the mind among each other institutional wars aesthetic wars corporate wars everywhere wars of all kinds reproducing the war mind set reverberating throughout space and time echoing each other in a timeless web of
interdependent ill will and nastiness
paradise lost
‘cause i never had one axiomatic action
figures synchronized posing watching cretinism purdy please automatic autonomic
authoritarianism system is what they stand for
"just what we needed them
saying how subversive to logocentrism
to the philosophical tradition of conceptual thought writing is as if they discovered the whole thing and all the while taking it to the bank marketing 'their' 'ideas' turning themselves into authorities making posh academic careers for themselves
in the process stars authority figures the boring lot the boring self serving self satisfied lot" heard them saying
that as whispering with spittle in mine
ears as me was thinking in a dreameandering echoing in mine ears more like a buzz saw purdy please with a
parapet for jumping off a cliff into an abyss stuffed with reams and reams of
paper and rusty dust
just as well intransigent motherfucker wants
music for every line every
sentence i’ve been put to death a
million times by now rotting away in my niche
my grave my cave platonic
and otherwise can’t stand the stench can’t stand their stench tireless wannabes insular self-motivating
international organization hypnotic surveillance team insecurity safety pin
cushion death machine fabrication morale posture slump turn around torniquet
disaster area aerodynamically puttsying round ‘n round fuddy duddy
involutionary seduction intestine technological banality contest for fan fun
machines drool driping mouth on pillow i is mumbling to myself
no one writes here so insane
scribbling sense jabbing fragments in the dark jabbering who may be conceivably
possessed and foreign other nobody manages experiences so beautiful about
memory and agony two decades of whole horrors playing their parts coruscating
here and there at their best makes “me” err
thought dis orders “you” phony ummmm
a sort of lapsus al revés de
vés? moments later neither
manner meant ceased to cause and effect
heavy duty cycle and absence as who needs “it” the “it” of “that” that is to say what
say say what? de-essencialized for purdy please
comfort sonrisa tormenta metáfora ya vés
mas palabras al re-vés
distancia this stance of doing
al revés a line meant discombobulation
borders punish meant: fascism align meant: obedience these lines are curving in time bent out of shape well that’s “your” problem for a change of
fashion clothes as revolutionary duty cycle
watching “it” out of my hair
electrochemical Miss conduct surely never knew - say a wood - seguro
nunca lo supo verse-like dream - hood
for “beauty” ahora el “tu” no me ve “nothing”
language grates distance lo supo
nuevamente pienso en un salvage this
stance of doing al revés “belleza”
significa idioma entangle meant: escritura
como ”maleza” i.e. a scrub un yuyal
una maraña de cosas all tangled
up in sounds nuevamente en tí: un bosque, espera per
verso; la que todo el decir “nada” en este “de tu” se desintegra smile
simile smile miles and miles of
smiles similarly smiles sonrisa storm metaphor tormenta metáfora see words in more more ya vés
palabras y más más decisive X-with knife una decisiva equis-con cuchillo a new neo
blinds from a distance this stance of
doing al revés un nuevo neo enceguece desde la distancia “at entrance” stops senses sentences thinking “a
la entrada” se detienen los sentidos oraciones pensantes no one writes here so insane sense jabbing
fragments jabbering who what may be conceivably possessed and foreign other
body nobody manages experiences so beautiful about memory two decades of whole
world horrors play their parts coruscating here at their best in a timeless universe multiverse read the aphorisms look at the expressions watch the explosions on film on tv
video the war continues wars of all kinds continue for centuries thousands of years there are wars everywhere wars of all kinds which reverberate throughout time and space echoing each other in a timeless web of
interdependent ill will and nastiness
pressure
writing perhaps synonymous with face to face sequential curling round ‘n round
the slow action toward this juncture frozen
in shreds of darkness staying and not to
mention the rest of “it” what when
say what windblown not only a whisper this as planned “us”
becomes “we” what purpose as perilous
clockwise control pleasure control prank thinking the great what impulse around us what known meant the take just as says
should remark as a through the writing
they can whatever as what in a sense imposed upon our “is” valley breaking everythrough falling
purpose thing as before what meant
the take thinking what will the meaning lotsa restlessness sometimes meant
pretty just as says so what they can
whatever means made alike a knot only thought should be or as they are that
what upon a sense person valley through
thinking though upon an almost when
no book just meandering of paths
and night faces between destinations aperiodic then of this crack an image initiated round
the squirming name eventually forgotten inside but also
themselves inscriptions like fissures soon forgotten whereas nowhere and now here forming a skin
as web spilled perhaps then opening up where the drop responded within and some
way shared forming how an agile tangle meant becoming sive i might say “as you say” say what accumulated belief twisting as
desire to them beyond the more remains about writing writing desiring desires unraveling unquote quiet touch of trajectory there
recollecting myself perhaps as nobody stroking the self to what twigs now
involved as such an expression if
anything now said still depraved might come aground again and or on having to
move to another shattered order so what’s a crowd la oscuridad creek like aqueduct crossed out for a
ride to know that floor dancing these
almost then a mouthful her “as
is” of hard long soft whose humor then
wanted to be then as rows now rising bewildered they came curvilinear breaking
a long answer short to make another
who asked me short coming before that question marks smeared down away the
treading fast as you say toward what
end giving permission misunderstanding
under being what gasps said misled eye over under beneath becoming must have
been a bridge an optical what is somewhere like an elsewhere we are as if a location
turned the hand turning a page as blank as a stare when “i” was going somewhere
where was now looking back then nothing
before that and there like and like there the and so soon adrift so anyone this journey cannot hold
then of images round the eventually but also inscriptions soon nowhere here as
web then where within way forming a
tangle i might say accumulated way saying what twisting to them moving cracks initiated name inside fissures
themselves whereas now a skin perhaps up some agile because and shattered creek
ride a bridge elsewhere turning then
soft rows curvilinear meant before the giving under turning “i” and now so soon
held then forming inside fissures
bridging everything round ‘n round again as is la oscuridad now involved
perhaps becoming the more trajectory to know that wanted almost rising say what
you say what soiled thoughts the faulty
haphazard slippages starts the straying
construction and away a way of becoming and going letting go of the
staying not my territory which is to say straying and resting for a while which is never enough such that enough so
much more said and then again some more straying starts to begin again an aporia and doing the risk again layers of making sense sedimented becoming
non sense encrusted meaning in formation
regimented into resisting assimilation
the tension between what is central and what is digressive arises and
the possibility for new meanings is generated
this function and
dysfunctional it doesn’t work i.e., it doesn’t serve power turbubabulent curlicues involutions and
counterinvolutions meandertalltelling vineyarns yearning with a mouthful of words and sounds
disintegrating and reintegrating in re-creation
slippages sopping through fissures and interstices encrusted with
meanings rusted the issues becoming
like tissues of which here and there where endings begin misfiring into
misreadings and mishearings electrochemically pitterpattering and stuttering
discombobulating into disjuncture a
swarm a shrapnel a multiplicity of voices and sounds
following upon the exploding of fixed meaning and instrumental language
careening into disorder and this ordering again this writing as yarn translated
into yearning a yearning translated into
yarn to spin and to spawn a twist discovered in the unconscious
downward into body as transducer a betrayal of course and off course a
discovery of bodymind as the locus of
languaging musicking droping off the false dichotomy of mind versus
body as close a transduction into sound as
possible oneiric landscapes and language as wilderness yarn
vineyearning sloppily sentimental as
wheat against blue out of pain or
tangled weeds bloom dwelling interest
into foggy story shared to light of fiction haunted by inky ghosts a line of green to root this tale leads nowhere or lately at least what illumination i choose if history’s a
chiaroscuro floats over entering sinks into vision exactly at shade positioned on waterway wondering wandering through realism’s entangled
looseness such that silence is
approval of ephemeral copies darkness
late in the spinning leaps into pattern “it” shimmers wobbly in places goes into rain meticulous
calmly meticulous the grim grind of stony ground concrete stories of sound and round wind
down the bend leafy articulations mossy
perambulations and then some more after appetite’s return glide down the slopey detail’s
construction upon old cold
clods of sullen earth with dread dearly read ready-made statements to an
end and then again and
then some more that is to say languaging not languishing! i means
verbatim not verboten! which
is to say in other words nobody
now knows what a talk to what edges left to these we each a then in what say what inflection
sound saying the what itself which is to say we kept and when to say what in a
way which is the is is what say what the is knows when a breeze and then some a tangent
of of say what’s left to say to write what’s left of right to say what
again say what’s left to say what to say
to to say what what to say to say say what to say what’s left to say to say say what
you might say what’s left to say
say what?
a ray of sunlight touches my eye, my right eye to be precise, blinking awkwardly i turn on my back trying to avoid that luminous intrusion into the comforting darkness of my dreams. i lie still for a few minutes trying to recover the thread of the dream i lost. Finally, i give up and blinking painfully, slowly open my eyes. i look toward the window and see a beam of sunlight streaming in through the dusty white curtains. i check the clock on the bedside table, it is nearly eight am. i try to move, but the ache in my knee paralyses me. Carefully, i sit up on the side of the bed. i’m feeling raw, physically and emotionally. Thoughts of the events of the previous night come flooding into my mind and as the memories circulate randomly in my head, a shudder ripples through my entire body echoing with feelings of fear, shame and regret. i look at my knee, it is bruised and swollen, a large scab of dried blood and pus has formed on the kneecap overnight. i get up off the bed and hobble over to the bathroom where i left the first aid kit. Returning to the bedroom, i sit on the bed and begin applying disinfectant gel on the wound. i then make another attempt at putting a bandage on my knee. This time, i apply extra adhesive tape which i wind around my leg and the damaged area securing the bandage tightly. i sit on the bed for a few minutes eyeing the telephone on the bedside table. i'm startled by the phone's sudden ringing. Shaken, i pick up the receiver and hear a friendly female voice on the other end - good morning sir - i hear the cheery voice say - we just wanted to let you know breakfast is available in the lobby until ten am thank you! - uh thank you - i mutter cautiously and put the receiver back in it's cradle. i sit there staring at the phone for a while pondering whether i should call someone and report the events of the previous night: the girl held against her will, drugged, forced into slavery. i take my road atlas and lap top out of my bag, looking at the map i see i'm in the county of Susquehanna, a little bit north of a town called Lenoxville. i get on the web and start a search for the nearest FBI office, i see there is one in Lakawana, the next county down from Susquehanna in the city of Scranton. i write the phone number down on a piece of paper and sit on the bed looking back and forth at the number and the phone for a long while, wavering. The image of the desperately sobbing girl in the stench filled room comes to mind prompting me to suddenly pick up the phone and dial the number. The phone rings for a long time, i'm getting nervous and think of hanging up when suddenly a female voice says - FBI Scranton - hello - i say shakily - how may I help you sir - says the voice at the other end - i . . . uh . . . i want to report a case of human trafficking - i answer back nervously - ok - says the woman's voice - let me transfer you to the Criminal Investigative Division just a moment please - she says efficiently - a phone begins to ring, i wait for several seconds again wavering, i'm thinking of hanging up until another female voice suddenly says - FBI Criminal Investigative Division how may I help you? - fretting and looking around the room in a panic i mutter back with a trembling voice - i . . . i want to report a case of human trafficking – Ok sir let me transfer you to the agent in charge one moment please – says the woman followed by a ring tone which goes on for several seconds until a male voice says – agent Warren how may I help? – i want to report a case of human trafficking – I mutter back meekly – ok where are you calling from sir? - says the agent in a calm but firm voice - i . . . i'm in a motel off of highway eighty one . . . just north of Lenoxville in . . . in Susquehanna county - i stammer nervously - is the trafficking going on there at the motel? - asks agent Warren - uuuhh . . . no no not here - i spit out frantically - try and calm down Mr . . . what's your name? - i'd rather stay anonymous - i say meekly - ok Mr. Anonymous . . . could I at least have a first name? - i hear the distant voice say, seemingly amused - you can call me Robert - i answer slightly annoyed - ok Mr. Robert where is this trafficking taking place? - the agent responds calmly again. Feeling the urge to get up and run out of the room barely controlling myself, i stammer again - it's a bit north from here in Fordham off of highway eighty one - is it at a motel in Fordham? - the agent asks – no . . . no - i stammer again trembling - it's in a bar a place called Danni's Bar - i say muttering nervously - in a bar? - agent Warren asks - yes . . . well no not in the bar itself - not in the bar itself? what's the name of the place again? - the agent asks - Danni's Bar with two ns near the exit to the town of Fordham - i respond still shaky - Danni's Bar with two ns - i hear the agent repeat as if he's writing down what i just told him - so if it's not in the bar proper where is this trafficking taking place? - agent Warren asks again - it's in the back of the bar behind the bar there's an annex a kind of bungalow you enter it through a door in the rear of the bar - i say now with increasing confidence - so just what were you doing there Robert?- i hear the agent ask seemingly amused again - me? i uuuh . . . - i tell him i had been driving all day that i was tired and hungry and that i was looking for a place to rest and get something to eat - so you were looking for a place to rest and get something to eat - he repeats - well yes i mean i thought it was a truck stop with a restaurant you know the kind i saw several semis parked in the lot outside so i thought it was a truck stop – i repeat and then tell him how i walked into the bar and headed straight for the rest room and then, after that, how i had sat at the bar and asked for food but the thin, tall bar tender with a carp tattooed on his torso said they didn't serve food there and gave me some peanuts and a soft drink instead - ok but that doesn't explain how you know about what was going on in the annex what were you doing there Robert? - agent Warren emphasizes - well i . . . uh . . . – i start with embarrassment - i thought there was dancing going on in there - i respond feeling shaky again - dancing? what kind of dancing Robert? - i can almost hear agent Warren smirking - well . . . you know . . . topless dancing i've never seen it before i've never been in a place like that before i just wanted to see what it was all about - i respond annoyed and embarrassed - never seen it before never been in a place like that wanted to see what it was about - i hear the agent repeat as if to himself - so what prompted you to go to the annex Robert? - the agent asks - well the bar tender told me about it he said there was more dancing back there - i say - more dancing? – the agent asks - well yes i mean there was dancing in the bar room too there was a kind of stage near the bar where two women were pole dancing but he said there was more dancing going on in the back and that they were younger - i say again embarrassed – who is “he”? – asks agent Warren – the bar tender – i respond meekly – the bar tender more dancing in the back younger dancers – i hear the agent mutter as i feel myself blushing profusely with embarrassment – so what happened next?– asks the agent - i . . . well i . . . i sort of dragged myself toward the rear of the bar where the door was . . . it was a doorway with a red bead curtain . . . – i stammer again – you dragged yourself? what do you mean you dragged yourself? were you drunk?– the agent asks emphatically – well no i . . . i wasn’t drunk one side of me was curious to see what was going on while at the same time i felt apprehensive i felt something was not quite right – i mutter back again with embarrassment – i don’t really know why i went back there i guess i was just curious i knew something was wrong it didn’t make any sense i mean why more dancing in the back where no one could see them when there already was dancing going on in the bar room – i say trying to sound logical, rational - i was definitely afraid but something kept pulling me along – i say trying to shake the shame taking over my entire being – ok so you went anyway and then what happened – the agent says again in a serious tone of voice. i tell him that i was greeted by a bouncer, the biker guy on the other side of the red beaded curtain that separated the annex from the bar room, i tell him how i had to pay twenty dollars to see the show as the biker guy had described it with a grin, i tell him how the bouncer had dragged me by the arm down the hallway, opened the door to a room and shoved me into it where the girl was sitting on a bed, i tell him how she had tracks all over her arms, how she was sobbing in despair and had said she was sick, i tell him how i left the room in a panic and told the bouncer the girl was sick and that we needed to call a doctor and how, instead, he called his friend Joe, who came out of another room and how they both had threatened me, i tell him how i told them i’d call the police and how they mockingly laughed at me saying the police chief was one of their main clients and how taking me by both arms, the bouncer and his friend had shoved me out the double doors on the side of the bungalow onto the gravely surface of the parking lot outside where i tripped and fell injuring my knee – I see – says agent Warren – I think I understand ok Mr. Robert you did the right thing in calling us we will investigate the place thank you for informing us about this as you might know we have been investigating human trafficking in this area for several years now this might be very helpful to us is there anything else you want to tell me? – no – i reply dryly – is there a number we can reach you at? – he asks again – i . . . i rather not – i say annoyed - you understand you could be an important witness in this case – i sigh exasperated – look i don’t want any trouble and anyway i’m going on a trip – going on trip? were to? – he asks – to Europe and i don’t know when i’ll be back – i say briskly – where in Europe exactly? – he asks again – mostly Northern Europe – i say – i’m just going to wander around maybe i’ll visit with some friends in the Netherlands i haven’t made up my mind yet – I see well can we stay in touch with you via email? – what?!? – i exclaim agitated – are you kidding me? i don’t want to have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder! - we’ll protect you – the agent says calmly – what?!?! what do you mean? like in a witness protection program? are you joking? no way! i’m supposed to go into hiding? change my name? relocate? what about my family? my friends? are you crazy? – by now i’m yelling into the receiver outraged and in a panic – try and calm down Mr. Robert we already know you are calling from the Best Western outside Lenoxville all we have to do is get your credit card information from the motel to get your true name and address – says agent Warren calmly – no! no! – i yell back – no way! i did everything i could to help! leave me alone! – i yell again and slam the receiver down. Gathering my things in a frenzy, i walk out of the room into the day outside which is bright and sunny and jars my dark and angry mood. Putting on my sunglasses, in a hurry i walk toward the office dragging my suitcase behind me with backpack slung over my shoulder. i fling the office door open in a fury and walk up to the desk on which i slam the room key startling the young woman at the counter – i’m checking out! – i exclaim - are you ok sir? – the young woman asks visibly flustered – uh . . . yes yes – i say agitated – yes i’m ok i’m just in a hurry – i say breathing heavily – i just need to check out now – she looks at me then at the computer screen in front of her and says – would you like to sign up for our preferred customer plan? – no – i answer curtly – may I have your email address so we can send you our current deals and discounts? – no – i respond dryly with increasing impatience – very well sir you are set to go have a nice trip – she says smiling. Reaching for my suitcase i turn toward my right and am suddenly paralyzed by the sight of a long table at the side of the lobby. i realize i’m looking at a breakfast buffet, a rather elaborate and appetizing buffet. On it are several pots of coffee and two jugs filled with orange juice along with a couple of platters loaded with doughnuts and pastries. Realizing this must be the breakfast i was told about earlier, i remain motionless and silent contemplating the scene as the gurgling growls in my stomach, of which i had been unaware of until now, begin to make themselves felt with growing assertion. Remembering the meager meal i had the night before, i turn my head toward the desk and see the woman staring back at me with a smirk on her face – would you like to have breakfast sir? – she asks cheerfully – uh . . . well . . . yes . . . i guess i better – i mutter slowly, embarrassed - you don’t want to get on that highway with an empty stomach now – she says knowingly and still cheery – no . . . that’s probably not a good idea – i respond slowly, blushing – i walk over to the far side of the lobby where the breakfast buffet is and set my things down by a small table by the window, i walk back to the buffet and pick up a plate. i look at the two platters in front of me, one piled up with doughnuts, the other with pastries. The first platter has several types of doughnuts on it: plain, dusted with regular sugar, dusted with powdered sugar, chocolate and maple glazed, cream and jelly filled and so on. i pick up a chocolate glazed cream filled donut and place it on my plate, then i pick up a powdered sugar, jelly filled doughnut and put it on my plate and as i do, the growling, gurgling sounds in my stomach get louder and more intense. The second platter really catches my eye, it is piled up with several of my favorite pastries. Among them are plain croissants, ham and cheese croissants, chocolate and almond croissants, Danishes of several kinds, slices of apple strudel, cream puffs, custard filled chocolate éclairs and tarts, some filled with custard and some with fruit. i stand by the table astonished, wondering how these scrumptuous pastries got here, this motel in the middle of nowhere – maybe there’s a bakery in Lenoxville - i think to myself while picking up a pair of tongs by the platter. i begin to load my plate first with a plain croissant, then a ham and cheese one, then, a cherry and cheese Danish, this is followed by a couple slices of strudel, a cream puff, a chocolate éclaire and finally, a custard and a strawberry tart each. After setting the plate down on the small table by the window, i return to the buffet and pick up a cup and a glass and proceed to serve myself some coffee and orange juice. My stomach is growling really loud now. Feeling self-conscious, i look around wondering if anybody can hear it. Back at my table by the window, i begin the process of eating my breakfast. At first slowly and methodically, i pick up the plain croissant and dunk one end of it in my coffee the way i used to when i was a kid and put it in my mouth savoring every bit of it. Soon, however, any semblance of decorum has evaporated and i’m now stuffing myself frantically, with hands ashake, pushing the donuts and pastries into my mouth voraciously. In my mind’s eye i see my stomach as the head of a ravenous wolf with glowing eyes and mouth wide open scarfing down every last crump of food i give it and which still, ferociously, demands more. This process goes on for a few minutes at which point i feel satiated. i pick up the remaining pastries and donuts and wrap them up in a couple of napkins and stuff them into my pockets. With a growing feeling of anxiety, i get up from the table, pick up my backpack and grabbing my suitcase by the handle quickly walk to the front door which i open in a fury stepping into the sunshine outside. In a hurry, i trot toward the van. Once i’ve unlocked and opened the driver’s side door, i throw my suitcase and backpack into the cabin, climb up onto the driver’s seat, put on the seat belt and start the motor. Soon i’m driving south on highway eighty-one past Tompkinsville, East Benton, Wallsville and Waverly. In about an hour and a half, i’m in the outskirts of Scranton driving past the towns of Blakely, Dickson City and Dunmore. Near exit one eighty seven, at the intersection with highway three eighty, highway eighty one veers south west toward the town of Wilkes Barre not without passing first the town of Scranton. As i’m passing Scranton my anxiety returns as moments of my conversation with agent Warren come back to mind. Once i pass Scranton, i’m feeling relief, i’m feeling glad i’m leaving the FBI and the events of the previous night at Harford behind me - hopefully now i’m moving toward a new life – i mutter quietly. In about a half hour i see the sign for the town of Wilkes Barre on my right and on the other side of the highway, the hills of the Lakawanna State Forest.
The cloud covered sky has become an even, lead gray color with occasional patches of a lighter, whitish gray. This brings about a dull pulsating ache behind my eyes and an anxious, empty feeling churning in my stomach. Soon i’m feeling in a daze, like i’m just floating here in a kind of suspension, as if i’m not going anywhere, as if i’m not doing any progress at all, as if the wheels of the van are spinning pointlessly in a void keeping me stuck in a loop, a limit cycle, as miles and miles of concrete, power lines and colorful, luminous plastic sign sameness unfolds around me; a seemingly endless landscape of fast food restaurants, strip malls, motels and gas stations repeating themselves over and over again, hour after hour. Doomsday has come for me today - i say to myself - i can see it in the streets in people’s worried frowning faces i can see it in the leaden sky it buries me in ash and asbestos in fast foods garbage and consumer goods it suffocates me in a haze of smog it taunts me with toxic waste and pesticides drowns me in a sea of lead poisoned water i can see it in the phosphene spot that suddenly appears in my eye my left eye to be precise the spot a visual representation of the growing black hole of anxiety and emptiness churning in my stomach - i’m suddenly reminded about why i left everything behind in the first place, why i decided to quit my job teaching, why i stopped composing, why i stopped writing, years and years of teaching, years and years of composing music, experimental, so-called avant-garde music, years and years of writing experimental so-called avant-garde poetry and prose, only to find i don’t know why i’m doing it any more, what’s it all for any more, what it’s all doing in our culture, our society, in this world . . . and it’s not because i don’t enjoy it, no, one day i just woke up to find it all felt empty, i felt physically disconnected from my work, like i lost my footing, my foothold, i felt disjointed from my work, as if my mind and body were at odds with each other, in two different places, spaces, in parallel worlds . . . Some of it wasn’t so bad. i mean, some of it was the way i like poetry and music, gnarly and disjointed; fragments of a broken mirror reflecting landscapes and faces, thoughts and feelings from different angles and places, standing in critical opposition to perfectionism; those tidy little aesthetic packages, pretty as the truth tied at both ends. The contrast this place i’m now in elicits, brings forth the incongruency that is me in these environs, in this world, this world of businesses that surrounds me. Academe wasn’t much better either, with its nasty, backstabbing competitiveness, its pretense, nor being with other writers, other composers, i could never understand what we were all doing there – here - what we’re all doing here with our work. All that pretentious, pedantic crap about culture, high culture and all that shit about intellectual rigor. me? i oscillate irregularly between high and low brow and anything else in-between, i’m a survivor, somewhat of a pirate, a wanderer, i’ll make use of what i find lying around at any given time as i traverse, cut across the various territories i’ve never been able to fully identify with. i could never stand the idiotic, aggressive, defensive stance, that war-like mentality, i don’t think Alban Berg’s “Lyric Suite” is exclusive patrimony of academe, or Cage’s 4’ 33” that of the avant-garde, nor, for that matter, is Hendrix that of the anti-establishment hipster either. A masterpiece! A masterpiece! Groundbreaking, revolutionary! A cause for celebration! A brilliant new work! Admirable, breath taking and disturbing! Dazzles with invention! Riveting! not for the faint of heart! Brimming with insight and wisdom! As open as life itself! Obsessive and gripping! A writing so simple it becomes radical! Vibrant and new! A wonder to behold! They go on like this forever, critics, literati, reviewers and others, tidy little aesthetic packages, pretty as the truth tied at both ends. But me, me, i hate master pieces. But more, i hate the adulation and fawning of the admirers, the worshipers of culture, the hero worship, wanting to be near the glow, the aura as if in some kind of swoon, some kind of religious ecstasy, as if their being near the admired object somehow, transfers them to some kind of spiritual realm, brings them closer to God, purifying them of their humanity, which is to say, their all too human inhumanity, somehow protecting them from the vicissitudes of life under capitalism and the certainty of a pointless death after years and years of a meaningless life, while in the mad rush to further their careers as they push and shove each other, stepping on and kicking each other, stabbing each other in the back as they stake out their various territories. But me, me, i’m never really here, in this place, any place, i’ve been displaced, misplaced and me, me, i’m never really here, neither here nor there, nor somewhere in between, i’m a traveler, a stranger, always a foreigner, furtively moving through the established spaces and boundaries, territories to which i’ve never really belonged. Being homeless, i take what i can and use what’s around me at any given moment, as best i cani’m trying to think of some good news, to cheer myself up, something positive as they say, you’re so pessimistic, you’re so negative, my family and friends are always telling me, but i can’t help but see the thin, gray veneer of a shadow cast over everything, the certain shadow of death casting itself over all things positive and negative alike, marring all the positive things people are always going on about, working hard at denying what’s inevitable. The good news, whatever good news there is, is always in the shadow of the very bad news that our lives are now immersed in, and that is, that our planet is dying. Not just dying, no, we are the ones who are actively involved in killing it, unable to stop ourselves, forced to participate in the crime if we want to survive in the system that feeds us, even as i speak, here, now, in the van, driving down the highway, spewing more and more co2 into the atmosphere as i go along my merry pessimistic way . . . It seems clear we were all, we are all composing or writing because we enjoy it, it is gratifying, it brings us pleasure, we basically do it to please ourselves. i mean, i compose the kind of music i find interesting, challenging, the kind of music i would like to listen to that i’m not entirely finding elsewhere. The same goes for my poetry, my prose, my writing. It’s clear then, that we do these things to gratify ourselves and to meet a need in what is increasingly an unbearable world, unbearable because frightening, a world increasingly violent and self-destructive, unbearable because impoverished and ungratifying in so many ways, where imagination, thought, knowledge and perception and the various alternative views they can generate are no longer welcome, increasingly less and less so, less cherished, less valued, less respected. And it’s not so much that they’re not welcome, as if there were some kind of hostility, no. In a very real sense it’s worse than that, it’s the blunt indifference with which it’s all met. It’s as if the music, the writing doesn’t exist, they have no place, no place in which to make a connection. At least with hostility your work, what you have to say, your point of view, is being acknowledged, dealt with, but indifference erases you, your work, your thoughts, your point of view, as if you didn’t exist, it reduces you to a lifeless thing, a mere blob, where they, the ones erasing you, see you the way they want to and treat you accordingly, the way it suits them, their own purposes. They paste onto you the image they have created of you, they filter out your persona, snip it here and there, cutting and pasting you, they re-write and re-arrange you. Indeed, they are like editors as they re-think and re-write your identity until it fits their image of you, as if you were a character in a novel or a play. It’s all utterly self-centered and about power, it’s about them, the erasers, the editors, having power over you. So it gets to a point in which, writing and composing, to satisfy myself, my needs, is not good enough, not good enough, not good enough, because there is one crucial need that is not being met and that is, the need for connection, the need to connect which would make the work so much more meaningful. Meaningful because it would have a purpose. A purpose because it would have a social function, one that maybe provides the listeners, the readers with new information. An input, as it were, for difference. That is, new and different information as opposed to an output for sameness; the same old information always already circulating in the limit cycle that is our society, our culture, and which reinforces the psycho-emotional limit cycles in our brains that keep us stuck in the same old feelings and thoughts. What’s more, there was a time when composing, writing and teaching, at least in my case, gave me a sense of purpose, i felt that what i was doing was something positive, something constructive for our culture, our society, that i was making a positive contribution, however small, to humanity, to our world . . . in vain in vain in vain again naïve again in vain, i’m suddenly reminded of my left eye again, behind the lens of my sunglasses, with its phosphenic spot staring at me like a scab on the eye of my aching brain, obstructing the view. In light of everything that is happening in our world today, the ever-growing economic disparity, the rise of fascism, the wars, the climate crisis, to just sit at home and write my music, my poetry, my novel, just for the sake of making myself feel good, strikes me as empty now. Empty because utterly self-centered. It seems to me that, in light of everything that is happening, a different kind of action is needed but i still don’t know what that would be . . . in this age of destruction, this age of self-destruction we all seem to be participating in. Of course, this so-called age didn’t just start yesterday, or even recently, say, since Trump has been president or, let’s say, a decade ago. No, this age of destruction, of self-destruction, as i was saying, this age of poisons, of toxicity, this age of contamination, has been going on for a long time, at least since before i was a child in grade school, where in science class our teacher told us that scientists were warning about the dangers of pollution and overpopulation. A few years later, as a teenager, i first heard talk about the greenhouse effect and that we needed to take steps to prevent global warming. Now, decades later, here we are, in the midst of it, this climate crisis, and little if anything has been done to prevent it. Hearing the sound of the tires on the pavement a familiar feeling re-surfaces, the familiar sinking feeling i’ve been having now for the past several years, a feeling that eviscerates everything, all enjoyment and all certainty, all sense of purpose. A sinking feeling of dread, remorse, disappointment and confusion arises in me from the realization that it all has been an immense failure, that the project of knowledge, of thought and reason, a tradition to which i thought i belonged, yet was never really allowed into, has failed to bring light to our situation . . . or rather, the belief that by bringing light to our situation, seeing and understanding things as they are, would free us from the bonds of need and the sway of our base impulses, this belief seems to have failed to lift us out of barbarism, that intellectuals, artists, scientists and politicians have failed, despite their claims to revolution, and that the revolutions themselves have failed miserably to bring about a radical change of consciousness and that we, artists and intellectuals, despite our revolutionary claims, have failed miserably at preventing, warding off, stemming the tide of regression into barbarism and destructiveness we now see unfolding everywhere in the world. After countless years of reading and reflecting, thinking and writing, after countless years of composing experimental, avant-garde music, after countless years of reading all those writers, philosophers and critical theorists we so avidly read and admiringly placed on a pedestal, turning them into authority figures and whose words we so obediently and accurately regurgitated authorizing ourselves as we chided and corrected the hapless victims of our arrogant, self-righteous moral outrage, thinking we were changing the world for the better and seeing it all fail, seeing those of us, who were supposed to know better, collapse into the usual back stabbing competitiveness, hierarchism, authoritarianism and territorialism, those of us who in such a patronizing manner preached, chided and corrected others, arrogantly believing we were changing their minds, their consciousnesses, thinking we knew better, thinking ourselves revolutionary, yet failing to change our own minds, our own consciousnesses first, have thus ended up reproducing the very same behaviors, the age old structures we had set out to change and free ourselves from in the first place, all of which we ended up swallowing whole as with time we learned our places in the various hierarchies and power structures in society, in the academic and artistic worlds so-called, always keeping our heads down, always showing respect for our superiors, hoping perhaps to catch a favorable glance from one or two of today’s major composers, writers or critics who roam those environs the way a great white shark casually lords over its deep blue territory . . . or at least to avoid their wrath lest we wither and fade away under their terrible glare like a desiccated vine that never quite made it past the first or second rung of history’s ladder as it rises indefinitely into eternity . . . not to mention if you happen to be Hispanic in the so-called academic, the so-called artistic worlds, why, you’d find out soon enough that you’re not on equal standing with your white, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Nordic, Celtic etc. colleagues, who think of themselves as being ideologically, politically to the left, calling themselves liberals, socialists, Marxists, anarchists and so on, and for whom it is ok to say things like: “the U.S. is not a democracy, it is an oligarchy” or, “the U.S. is an imperialist power and has no interest in democracy” or, “capitalism is a form of totalitarianism, it has no interest in democracy, its sole interest is total domination” and my all-time favorite: “America is not a country, it is a continent, the U.S. is but one country among many others in the American continent, to refer to the U.S. as America, as if that’s all there is to the American continent, betrays an imperialist mind set” all of which i agree with whole heartedly. Yeah, it’s ok when they, these supposedly left leaning gringos, say all those things but, for some odd reason, it’s not ok for you, as a Hispanic American, to say them. No, if you, as a Hispanic American, born and raised here, in the good old U.S of A, were to speak those very same phrases, word for word, you’d be liable to getting an earful, you’d be liable to get gringosplained by the very same people who uttered them. You’d hear things like: “well, you should feel lucky you live here in the U.S. you know, where you’re free to speak your mind” or, “you should feel lucky you live in America where you have the opportunity for a better life” or, “you should feel lucky you have a U.S. passport” and so on . . . well, it just so happens i have a U.S. passport because i’m a U.S. citizen gringos and, i’m a U.S. citizen because i was born here, in “America” gringos cabrones de mierda! It’s not as if someone did me any special favors when they gave me my passport and it’s not as if this country belongs to you exclusively, you hypocritical shits! And forget about saying anything critical about academia itself, you can rest assured some kind of punishment will befall you, usually in a surreptitious manner, and these kinds of prejudices and double standards become more obvious and painful if, as a Hispanic American, you should happen to be applying for a job, good luck with that. The hard and brutal reality of these injustices, these veiled and often not so subtle hostilities, settles in with the aplomb of a lead weight bringing back that sinking feeling, that feeling of an existential threat with its attendant shudder that ripples through my entire body in chaotic waves accompanied by that churning sensation of emptiness drilling through my stomach, as i realize that all along, it’s as if i’ve been living behind enemy lines, and so, disheartened, the desperate realization that prejudice and fascism, all too often, are lurking in the most unexpected of places, behind the most unexpected of faces . . . Too late for art and culture now, a threshold has been crossed and a different kind of action is needed, especially in light of climate crisis and the implacable wall of denial it has been met with; there won’t be any art, any culture if we don’t have a habitable planet
i’m
feeling choked up inside, like i should be crying, i feel like sobbing but i
can’t, there is a vast desert inside me, filling me up from head to toe with
parched, dry dust, like a large, bloated fungal sack brimming with sterile
spores ready to burst at the slightest touch; the dust of infinite libraries
and study rooms accumulated after endless years of reading and thinking; a
desert filled with the parched dry sounds of scratchy writing, etched in
shifting sands and the breezy, flapping sounds of turning pages. You pay a high
price for not submitting to the will of others, for not submitting to their
authority, for not going along with their charade; whatever little game they
have concocted to keep their beliefs alive; encased in their mental armors that
shift position to attack or defensive mode as the case may be; this kind of
cystic, tubercular thinking, which, by its very nature, that is, its
self-enclosed structures, walls itself off from the rest of the world,
forestalling any possibility of influencing or changing that world it so much
abhors except perhaps, through brute force alone
no
words of wisdom to be found here now, wisdom has long since fallen flat on its
impassive, impartial, pudgy face, as has, evidently, the age of enlightenment
and reason which have given way to the age of catastrophe and barbarism. The
age of anxiety still prevails and we can now add to that the more recent age of
depression, all of the above seeming to be evidence that the Dark Ages have
never really gone away; it, with its chaos, superstitions and plagues, the
latter of which, today, consist of several viral diseases, the ever growing
cases of autoimmune illnesses and cancers, respiratory and cardio-vascular
ailments, obesity and diabetes, all of which have reached epidemic proportions.
Rota Fortuna. The wheel is still in spin as the struggle continues between the
Dark Ages and the age of Enlightenment, the age of Reason, the latter not
faring too well evidently. At the same time, the re-enchantment of the world some
were touting a few decades ago, doesn’t seem to have fared very well either.
More like fortuna rota me
thinks broken fortune – i say to
myself with a helpless chuckle –
and as i
drive along, i seem to hear a little ditty, a little song begins to insinuate
itself into my mind, sung by a middle-aged baritone voice. It suddenly occurs
to me that the voice belongs to that Medieval, Aristotelian monk, Saint Thomas
Aquinas who is sounding more and more like an old, street wise tango crooner,
dressed in the typical garb of a tanguero consisting of a dark colored pinstripe
suit, with a white, silk scarf elegantly wrapped around his neck and a dark
grey fedora hat sitting on top of his
tonsured head and who, standing in the
yellowish light of an old street lamp, sings - at times low and soft, at times
with assertive macho fervor - the following words occasionally tinged with
ironic inflection . . .
There is no consolation
at this late hour
Not from Boethius or
any of the others
The ones who preceded
and followed him; the countless
Philosophers, critical
theorists and spiritual gurus
All of whom have fallen
flat on their bland, pasty faces
In the shadow of the
darkness that now looms over us
Like a billowing cloud
of toxic fuuuuuuuuuuuumes!
We’re down to the bone
here, scraping the bottom of the barrel. i look around and see that whatever
passes for relationships, is all transactional, all business, there really is
no connection between people at all. We’re all like things, packages on a
conveyor belt, one after the other following a predetermined course over which
we have little if any control at all . . . The highway goes on forever it seems.
Not only do i wish i could turn off it, but, i wish that i could turn it off;
its roaring sounds, the recurring sameness of the scenery as it glides past in
a rush. i wish i could turn it all into a poem. Not so much verse but prose.
But then again, i really don’t want to, no, it would disgust me, make me sick,
my stomach would churn with that acidic feeling of emptiness and nausea again. It
would be too much. Not just because it would trivialize the experience of the
highway; banalizing it more than what it already is by way of romanticizing it,
it would also sentimentalize it. i’d be avoiding saying, with so many words,
what i’ve been feeling and thinking all along: that i hate people, the
so-called human. It’s not wanderlust that keeps me going but wandering lost:
never quite fitting in, never quite feeling at home anywhere, always a stranger,
a foreigner, who keeps searching, feeling like i’ve been living behind enemy
lines all my life and i blame capitalism for that. It is capitalism that is not
my friend, not our friend, not a friend to those who truly want to be free. It
is our enemy. These places seem so sad, they seem so pointless, they are
wasters of time, wasters of life. i can see countless lives whose time, whose
energy has been diverted, put in a harness and made to work, made to serve the
interests of others for eternity. By definition, that is what slavery is. i can
see countless lives erased and forgotten, replaced like so many machine parts.
i imagine countless lives erased and forgotten who passed through here, worked
here, at these dead end, unrewarding jobs; jobs whose sole purpose is to make
profits for people the workers never get to know, their faceless masters. The
entire social, cultural space has been taken over and defined by the business
mindset, there’s nowhere you can turn here that some kind of business isn’t
shoved in your face, forced upon you, there’s nowhere you can turn that the
business aesthetic hasn’t taken over the entire landscape with its empty
shallowness . . . there doesn’t seem to be anything outside this totalizing
business landscape as i’m given over to these thoughts, dreams and fears. My
thoughts of the highway and its environs
and the lives it has taken, the horror
of it, that is to say, the highway itself, the meaningless horror of it: this
monstrous snaking body of cement, asphalt and tar, punctuated every so often by
lamp posts with their metallic lights, traffic signs and the impassive,
watchful gaze of traffic cameras; the thousands, millions of cars, trucks and
vans, the onrushing flow of vehicles of all kinds of colors, makes and models,
pushing forward, as we move along toward . . . the thought of being swallowed
up and dragged down, disappearing into the dark depths of endless horizons
and very often, here in my
cubicle, this tin box with wheels, very often, i can’t hear the sound of the
traffic outside given over as i am to my thoughts, in a hypnagogic state,
brought on by the endless highway itself, intensely occupied with my fantasies,
with my thoughts of the highway and the strip malls, gas stations, restaurants
and motels passing by outside, i can’t tell when someone is passing me or
suddenly cutting in front of me startling me in one of my obscure reveries, one
of my fantasies of opening the door and stepping outside into, then, with my
entire body, plunging into the headlights of the onrushing traffic, into, as i
was saying, the cold relentless logic, the horrendous, mechanical logic of the
whole thing, the ruthless, self-organizing, self-perpetuating logic of the
whole thing, and which with mechanical impetus pushes us forth, inexorably,
into the frigid night, in a series of catastrophes, now past Hazelton and
Allentown, expanding endlessly, with the mechanical ruthlessness of its logic,
expanding, as i may have said, in seemingly exponential fashion, in a series of
catastrophic events, leading us, it would seem, eventually, toward total disaster
and suddenly finding myself face to face with a sign that says Harrisburg
five miles and the horrendous contrast between the concrete, matter of fact
simplicity of the sign and my despondent gloominess wrenches my insides with
guilt and self- consciousness, a shame that washes over me like a freezing cold
shower making the idea of jumping into the traffic outside look more and more
appealing by the second . . .
and very often, as
i’m sitting here in the van’s cabin, driving, munching on some trail mix or
some sun flower seeds, i think about the highway and its relentless motion, the
rushing traffic around me as it passes and recedes into the darkening horizon ahead,
and staring into that dark distance, i think of the lives, the bodies it has dragged
away, both willing and unwilling, down into that dark, gray blue, cold horizon,
the countless broken lives, the silenced broken souls it has taken into its
fold, perhaps even mercifully, like no mother or lover ever could, and who’s
stories remain forever untold, i think of those countless, erased lives, those
broken souls, whose now no longer struggling bodies, the highway, in its
relentless passage, has engulfed and with brutal indifference, crushed, dragged down and away, as i’ve
already said, into that murky distance and with the ruthless force of
thousands, millions of tons of cars, vans and trucks, hundreds of thousands,
millions of tons of glass, steel, rubber and plastic, trapped those bodies down
into the hollow of smashed, totaled vehicles, like some dark metal and glass box
or coffin, confining them in their final resting places forever
but
no, i say to myself, that is, i think to myself, there is no final resting
place in this, the highway, for even as i think to myself, that is to say, i
speak to myself, in my head, ceaselessly so, the highway, in its endless flow,
with utterly brutal force, continues to pummel away at those now lifeless bodies which, as i’ve already
said, lie boxed in, as if in a coffin, helplessly
pinned down in the hollow of a smashed up car somewhere, and the highway, as i’ve already mentioned, with brutal force
continues to pound away at all that lifeless flesh, and over the course of weeks,
or perhaps even a few days, pressed on by furious after furious tire tread,
like so much squashed, mashed up road kill, erodes, eats away at the now putrid
tissues, tearing away bits and pieces, even chunks of what is perhaps a flesh
in an advanced state of decomposition, and over the course of weeks, or perhaps
even, just a few days, strips away the flesh in patches; swaths of skin peeled
off, then the fatty tissues below, followed by the muscles, sinews and tendons,
eroded, peeled away, as i was saying, until, in a matter of weeks, or perhaps just
a few days, only the bare bones are left, upon which the highway continues, in
its relentless process of demolition, to pound and grind away at, rub and chafe
the cold bones against the hard, rough surface of the pavement which, as i may
have already said, over the course of weeks and months, the incessant grinding
and pounding slowly but surely turns the bones into clay or mud which, over the
course of weeks or perhaps just a few days, is pushed away down the highway
toward that distant, dark horizon; the bones lying, as if in a mortar of cement
and asphalt, pounded upon by a gigantic
pestle made of millions of tons of steel, glass, plastic and rubber, day after
day, ground into a fine dust, that is to say, pulverized, now turned into clay
or mud, pushed away, dragged down the highway, by water and wind, every last bit, every last
particle swept away, inexorably toward the edge of that darkening horizon
a ledge broken off from
which to begin again alleged
beginnings it is said commence here where nothing it
seemed there was left to be said as
stray sections foiled streaming my own
interests messy into musical mis-hearings ends ruins
from logic a kind of oneiric logic accidental other territories resisting ideology reproduced
enough and again not enough the
words whirling langwidge langwheezing whimsical
languaging saying verbatim in places as
i was pounding in re-creation through speechlessness and speaking verborragia hemorrhaging bricolage a
composite digressive possibilities whatchamacalliting into sounds dismantling verbatim into day dreaming
turbubabulent curlicues in recreation
a shrapnel meanings disordering and this ordering meaning this here beginning as mishearings electrochemically into this juncture into
into trance elation transacting a while that
is to say looping round and round again the
ongoing digression into my beyond stumbling into clusters embedded
contradictions refracted sense locus sounds rejecting explamutilations whirl
windy words then say to the whirr where other whirls in conjecture without
between someone shown under “i”
arriving at an edge again writing this again starting location a
skin to be theme all some more and
then again enough is not enough in dislocation which is that
i only have myself my body and mind my embodied mind and my senses with which
to know the world we only have
ourselves and each other with which to do the knowing each other and language with which to
conduct the task even as we know that
ineluctably everything sooner or later slips away into silence at last only that the silence isn’t as bad as
some have thought as final
it is the silence after all that
makes the utterance possible
audible
and i’m never really
who i say i am again,
not in these environs
or any other;
at work, the highway, the
writing, the text,
not since someone said the
map is not the territory.
Yet the map remains nested
in it,
tossed around by the
wind,
frantically flapping
its broken wings, begging to differ,
given that being
embedded in the territory,
for all intents and
purposes, makes the map part of it,
which proves the
inadequacy of the metaphor.
i much prefer the
description is not the thing described
where the description,
nonetheless,
is not separate from
the thing
as they are in a kind
of mutual relationship
one in which they give
each other meaning and therefore reality,
which brings me back to
the map and the territory.
If by territory we mean
reality, life, the universe and everything,
where else would the
map be? Is there an outside to reality?
Not to the best of my
knowledge, although i admit,
the latter leaves a lot
to be desired, dubious at best. The horizon’s
glow, the aura is ever
receding, especially at this late hour,
yet almost always
within my reach, seeming to blink back
at me impassively,
irritating as hell. Taking dictation is no problem here,
despite my reputation
for being difficult, deficient, and this is because
the music provides the
meaning while the semantic surface
of the words becomes
more and more superfluous; dangling
their feet in the flow,
testing the air, the water, with the tips of their toes,
as the highway curves south-west across the Appalachian Trail passing Green Point and Fredericksburg and then the intersection with highway Seventy Eight in the direction of Harrisburg where i will have to hook up with highway Eighty Three which will then take me into Maryland, not without stopping first to rest and replenish myself, whereupon i turn right onto the offramp that leads me into the suburb of Linglestown in the outskirts of Harrisburg. Onto and moving along, splashing down the recently rained on streets searching for a place in which to eat, i make a left turn on Mountain Road and after a few seconds spot a Japanese steak house and sushi bar on my left. Waiting for oncoming traffic to pass, i feel my stomach growling with anticipation as i consider what i’m going to eat. i’m thinking of some makizushi with sticky rice and ingredients, usually some kind of raw fish like tuna or maybe some shrimp, scrambled egg, raw or pickled vegetables and spices, carefully rolled in a sheet of nori seaweed. Or maybe some gunkan maki, also made with a strip of nori wrapped around a ball of rice topped with salmon roe, squid or sea urchin, and along with that i think of having some temaki which consists of rice held within a sheet of nori wrapped into a conical shape with different kinds of toppings such as squid, sweetened omelet, pickled plum and fresh vegetables all of which i intend to wash down with a pint of ice cold Sapporo Yebisu beer, by the time i’m making the turn into the restaurant’s parking lot my mouth is watering profusely and my stomach is growling wildly, i realize it’s been hours since i had that scrumptuous breakfast at the motel in Lenoxville, five hours and twenty minutes to be precise, it seems like ages since i left. Looking back, it all seems unreal, like a dream as does the night before at Danni’s Barn, like actions i’ve seen in a movie late at night, lying half asleep in a motel room somewhere. Such is the effect, that i’ve forgotten about the dull aching pain in my knee. Soon i find myself seated at a booth in the restaurant enjoying a meal consisting of miso soup, sushi and an ice cold beer. Once i’m done eating and drinking i relax for a while and lean back in my chair as i mindlessly stare out the window at the traffic, the trees and the leaden gray sky. My breathing has slowed down and become very gentle, like that of a baby’s. Sporadic thoughts drift by like gauzy clouds and i slowly slip into a semi sleep state, the distinction between wakefulness and dreaming seems to have vanished and all of life, existence, seems to me to be like a dream, as if images in a mirage, gently oscillating, wavering in the dull afternoon light. Time seems to have stopped as i drift in this pleasant, languorous state; a blissful release from all cares, until the polite sound of a voice wakes me from my reverie – do you need anything else sir? – the voice asks, i raise my eyes and see the young Asian man who earlier had served me my food. He now strikes me as being South East Asian - Thai maybe not Japanese – i think to myself - no – i respond sleepily – thank you just give me the check – he pulls the check out from a small black folder, places it on the table and quickly walks away. For a while longer, i sit at the table and look out the window again – it’s all done finished – i say to myself – i’m done finished i’m finished i’m done for – i say to myself with a sinking feeling in my stomach. Where just a few moments ago i had slipped into a kind of timelessness in which the world, my thoughts and feelings seemed to me to be like a dream, slowly drifting and changing, having the tenuous consistency of clouds or mist, and feeling myself suddenly freed from the anguished thoughts brought on by my usual state of anxiety, now, that very same scenery of trees and sky strikes me as oppressive; a dead end wall painted with a pleasant landscape of sky and branches against which i’ve smashed into head on - am i condemned to spend the rest of my life trapped in these dead end places these dead end spaces? – i say to myself with exasperation – but of course it has always been a dead end – i whisper under my breath – academe the so-called world of the arts culture society civilization it was all a dead end to begin with all a suffocating dead end – i shift around fidgeting in my chair as a shuddering feeling of panic courses through my body - this time is no longer ours this time is no longer mine time has been yanked out from under my feet ripped out of my body my mind my memories my desires this is no longer my time it never was just as mine is long past the time of the great intellectuals the time of the great thinkers the time of the great artists that time is nearly gone me and my generation quite simply have arrived too late out of time no matter how clever and insightful one may be it will go un-noticed – i say to myself – it will fall on indifferent minds indifferent senses our works our thoughts our words will fall on indifferent ears indifferent minds not because in and of themselves they necessarily lack merit but because you and your generation are in the wrong time – i say to myself - for the older generation and the ones before the time was right the time was ripe but for you and your generation and for generations to come you have no choice but to go around in circles stuck in a feedback loop a limit cycle condemned to repeat the past what’s already been said and done thousands of times a vast collection of clichés it’s all derivative derivative thinking derivative ideas all that’s left for us to do now is rearrange in a practically infinite number of permutations what’s been said and done a million times over for you and your generation quite simply your time is up you have no time you are like ghosts – i say to myself in a whisper - no substantiality no matter how hard you try how hard you work how well made and interesting your works are they are essentially empty have nothing to say for you have fallen in between times – i mutter to myself – you are in between eras you’ve come up at the end of an old dying era and at the beginning of a new era you are in between eras – i mutter again - in a kind of limbo but what new era is this? is this really a new era or yet another cul-de-sac? this is more than just a dead end for me personally no this dead end is more than just me it is more generalized – i say to myself with a growing sense of claustrophobia – it is my entire generation we are stuck between eras our works no more than academic exercises condemned to dust away in the shelves of some college or university’s music library if lucky or worse yet as digital files no one will ever see or hear - all this is further aggravated by the enormous proliferation of musicians, composers and writers around the world, all of whom are hawking their wares, trying to get heard, trying to make their mark, struggling to find new sounds, new techniques, new forms, struggling and competing for attention even while the idea of the new is itself exhausted, is itself old, in fact, a romantic notion as is that of authenticity - mere clichés derivative notions – i scoff disdainfully – i the experimental composer conscious of the materiality of sound and sound production oscillating irregularly between constructivism and expressivism searching out new sound resources new techniques new forms rebelling against the old traditional musical values i the experimental writer subject to an ethics of alterity emphasizing the materiality of language following a constructivist rather than an expressivist poetics aware of the nonidentity of the signifier and the signified after years of writing after years of searching for new strategies of writing and reading new poetic structures which challenge our habitual modes of reading and thinking now find myself in a cul-de-sac of tediousness the whole thing now seems to me to be utterly pointless totally meaningless utterly tedious nobody cares about this stuff anymore – i hear myself say in anguish - certainly not the lay person the so-called average person on the street most people don’t give a shit about this stuff – i mutter under my breath - why do i even care? – i mutter again annoyed – i’m thinking now of Goya’s “Saturn Devouring his Son” which i saw years ago at the Prado museum in Madrid. The disheveled old titan, with scraggly gray hair and the wild eyes of hysterical madness, fiercely clutching a limp body, already having devoured the head and one of its arms, with mouth agape about to tear off more flesh from the bloody torso of his hapless victim. It is said the original painting, which Goya painted on the walls of his dining room, featured a half erect penis on the old god, who, in the throes of frenzied violence, was apparently aroused by the destruction of his own progeny
early on, as a teenager, my music and my writing had the tendency of being very expressive, romantic even. i would model my musical compositions after Chopin’s etudes and Brahms’ Intermezzi which i loved dearly, i could not get enough of those rich, complex harmonies. In my writings however, i looked to Rimbaud and Baudelaire, especially the former, inspired as i was by A Season in Hell and the Illuminations. In my late teens i became more interested in the music of the impressionists, Debussy in particular, and wrote several piano pieces in the style of his Preludes. Later on, now in my early twenties, i began to strive for the intellectual coolness and detached objectivity of constructionism and shunned expressivity, inspired by the works of Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Edgar Varese as well as the architecture of the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier. By then i had already discovered the writings of Kafka, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett and soon after that, Kurt Schwtters’ Ursonate and the concrete poems of Brazilians Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, Décio Pignatari and the Swiss-Bolivian poet Eugen Gomringer as well as the sound poems of Henri Chopin. In time however, after having fully studied all these works in detail and after having written many of my own versions of poésie concrete and poésie sonore, along with several musical compositions after the New Viennese and Darmstadt Schools, including many electro-acoustic compositions, i began to feel something was missing, i felt something was amiss, i began to feel something was missing, something is always amiss, something is always awry, something is always missing, which is why i have the tendency of repeating myself over and over again, i mean to say,tautologically, that is to say,
finding ways of saying more or less the same thing but with different words,
like variations, verbal variations, hoping to create a web, a net of words with
which to catch that which is missing, that which is amiss and which almost
invariably slips through, escapes me, slips through the fingers of my senses as
it were, trying to cover reality, the so-called objective world, with a grid of
words and descriptions such that nothing will escape my perception, but in time,
as i was saying, i began to feel something was missing, in time i began to
realize something was amiss, i began to realize
i was neglecting something,
i was neglecting myself or rather, i was neglecting a certain aspect of myself
which was making itself felt by means of certain emotional states, states
characterized by anxiety and at times depression. Depression and anxiety began
to insinuate themselves into my life, as i was saying, stemming from a deep
seated sense of dissatisfaction, despite all my successes, my academic and
artistic successes, despite my mastery of
the various art forms in music and literature and even some of my
philosophical writings, my philosophical commentaries on the works of other
philosophers some of which were published in reputable specialized journals, in
time, all of this began to pale, to become meaningless, increasingly necrotic,
which led me to realize something was amiss, something was missing in my life
which was being flooded by the
dark, cold, bottomless waters of meaninglessness and futility, futility and
meaninglessness, all moving relentlessly, with the force of a boundless river toward
a paralyzing systemic despair. In time i began to realize i was neglecting
myself, or rather, a certain part of myself, in time i came to realize i was
neglecting
my needs, i was neglecting my basic needs, i realized i had emotional and
spiritual needs i was systematically neglecting, i realized i had emotional
needs which i could no longer ignore as they were nagging at me constantly, i
could no longer turn away from my feelings, i could no longer deny my feelings,
my sorrows, my pains, my fears and anxieties, nor for that matter, those sparse
moments in which i felt joy, just as i could no longer turn a blind eye to the
suffering, the pain of others, were i to do so, i felt i was betraying a deep
part of myself, that i was betraying some very basic need my intellect could
not fulfill, so i began to allow in my works, my musical and my literary compositions,
moments, even entire sections of expressivity, not without pangs of guilt, and
began alternating them with moments or entire sections of pure constructionism,
though also, not without the afore mentioned pangs of guilt, such that soon, a
conflict, a divide ensued in me, caused by the tension between constructionism
and expressivism, one whose push and pull produced a wobbling effect in me and
in the works themselves; a kind of irregular oscillation between both aesthetic
views which would nearly drive me mad with the feeling i was betraying both and
their adherents, my friends and colleagues; a moral dilemma i felt pulled apart
by
in
opposite directions and in the academic and artistic so-called worlds, pressed
upon from both sides; an
instability
that worked against my sanity and the formal integrity of the works as they
wobbled irregularly
between
integration and disintegration. In time, my musical and literary compositions
consisted of vast fields of discontinuities made of bits and pieces of scrap,
scrape scraps, leftovers from other works, shreds stitched together forming a
vast fragmented texture made up of sutures and scars; the signs of a
battlefield, a war that raged within me, racked as i was by guilt and shame,
pulled in opposite directions by the rational force of constructionism versus
the emotional forces of expressivism; the entire mass, the entire edifice,
teetertottering on the verge of disaster
when i was young, i plunged myself into
my studies with the manic energy of a zealot. i plunged myself into my music,
my writings, my readings, my philosophy with the manic energy of a fanatic.
Inspired by the thought that music, writing, the arts and thought would change
this dreary world we have constructed, that they would change my mind, my
consciousness, thus liberating me from the social and biological conditioning i’ve
been weighed down by for years. Thinking i was digging myself out of the grave i
was born into, the grave culture, society traps us in at birth, i worked on
with joy thinking that i was digging myself out of the grave, i, the
experimental composer, conscious of the materiality of sound and sound
production, oscillating irregularly between constructivism and expressivism,
searching out new sound resources, new techniques, new forms, rebelling against
the old, traditional musical values. i, the experimental writer, subject to an
ethics of alterity, emphasizing the materiality of language, following a
constructivist rather than an expressivist poetics, aware of the nonidentity of
the signifier and the signified, after years of writing, after years of
searching for new strategies of writing and reading, new poetic structures
which challenge our habitual modes of reading and thinking, now find myself in a cul-de-sac of tediousness, the whole
thing now seeming to me to be utterly pointless, uttery meaningless, utterly
tedious. For years and years i plunged into
my studies with unabashed enthusiasm, into
my so-called creative work with unabashed passion, happily
thinking i was digging myself out of a life of tedium and despair, thinking
i was working myself out of a cul-de-sac, only to find that, in
fact, i had been digging myself into a
dead end, only to find that, in fact, i had been constructing for myself a cul-de-sac, i was in fact, all along, entombing myself further, just like all the people i knew growing up in my
neighborhood, my friends at school who grew up and settled down and
mortgaged up their lives, their bourgeois lives, their petit bourgeois lives, only to find that i too, like them, had
walked into a death trap, i too had
constructed a cul-de-sac for myself in the form of my academic and artistic
careers, for the arts, the humanities, are fraught with conflict born of
jealousy, ambition and fear, the politics of territorialism, where one is
forced to acquire and secure a position, mark and defend one’s positions, one’s
territory, not to mention always having to prove oneself by producing papers
and compositions which were supposed to be the product of research, original
research; it was all supposed to be original research, one’s compositions,
one’s writings, they were all supposed to be original works which made original
contributions to one’s field. But it soon became obvious that this idea, this
concept of originality and the related concept
of authenticity, of the genuine, both these words, these ideas, these concepts,
it soon became obvious, were anything but original and authentic and that much of what one reads or hears
today are recycled ideas, recycled sounds which, by dint of being recontextualized
may seem original or authentic, but are in fact nothing more than derivative
ideas, derivative sounds, derivative writing, derivative thinking, this whole
idea of originality, this entire notion of the authentic, is nothing more than
the product of derivative thinking
it is
utterly derivative all such claims are
utterly derivative devoid of any
originality devoid of any authenticity such thinking if it can be called that is utterly derivative utterly formulaic all such thinking sounds utterly derivative these days all such pronouncements such criticisms one hears in the media in the so-called specialized magazines sound utterly derivative and utterly
unimaginative and most of all utterly repetitive it is all utterly repetitive utterly redundant everything one reads and hears today is
utterly repetitive and redundant – i think to myself - one has heard it
all over and over again decades ago decade after decade the same useless
tripe decade after endless decade the
endless tedium of humanity the endless
tedium of the so-called human the
so-called human condition the
so-called human and its self-importance
as if that’s all there is to life
as if that were all there is to this vast mostly unknown universe we’re in it is maddening! one feels like an animal trapped in a
maddening labyrinth a labyrinth made
of derivative thinking derivative
talking and derivative writing a maze
made up of stock phrases and derivative
formulaic thinking the maddening
tedium of it all! no longer can i
escape from the maddening tedium of all these derivative thoughts and stock
phrases that are forced upon me from all quarters no longer can i escape such crushing tedium
such mind numbing idiocy by listening
to some of my favorite composers of
which there are countless examples
from all historical periods no
longer can i find consolation no not
even in Boethius and all the other philosophers before and after him – i
mutter snickering to myself - or by studying and listening to my favorite
composers no longer do i find solace
in Hildegard von Bingen’s Alleluia, O virga Mediatrix or Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame nor for that matter Dufay’s motet Nuper Rosarum Flores or my
all-time favorite Ockeghem’s Requiem! – i whisper with increasing
agitation - what’s more i can no
longer escape this condition this
crushing tedium by listening to
Josquin’s Ave Maris Stella or
Pallestrina’s Pope Marcellus Mass nor for that matter my all-time favorites the madrigals of the marvelously dark the murderous Carlo Gesualdo! not to mention the madrigals of Monteverdi and Arcadelt! –
i think to myself with mounting anxiety – no longer can i escape this paralyzing
boredom by reveling in Archangelo Corelli’s Trio Sonatas or by meditating on
J.S. Bach’s partitas and sonatas for solo violin or Mozart’s Divertimenti! no! nor do Beethoven’s
late quartets satisfy nor do the
fantastic Nocturnes by Chopin or any of Brahms’ works nor
for that matter my all-time
favorite Mahler’s Fourth! – i whisper again to myself nervously fidgeting
about in my chair – no no longer can i find pleasure in Debussy’s Jeux
or Stravinsky's Rite
nor do i derive any intellectual satisfaction from the works of the
New Viennese School Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire Webern’s Five
Movements for String Quartet or for that matter my all-time favorite Berg’s Lyric
Suite! – i say to myself clasping my hands together and raising my eyes
imploringly toward the ceiling – no no
longer can i escape this agonizing condition i have fallen into by listening to
my favorite avant garde composers that
revolutionary master piece of musique
concrète Symphony
pour une Homme Seul by Pierre Shaefer and Pierre Henry or Stockhausen’s Kontakte
and Microphonie no
none of those manage to pique my interest anymore neither do Cage’s marvelous compositions
for prepared piano or Feldman’s Durations
or Milton Babbitt’s mysterious Philomel for computer and voice not
even the wonderfully poetic so-called
acousmatic compositions by Parmigiani
his De Natura Sonorum for
instance no none of those any longer provide me with any
kind of pleasure or interest no
longer can i escape this petrifying condition i’ve fallen into this petrifying condition i’ve fallen prey to – i whisper loudly - this insidious condition that’s taken over me body and mind by listening to Ligeti’s Atmospheres or anything by Xennakis anything really – i say to myself, as if
suddenly distracted, sighing loudly – nor does La Cuhte d’Icare by Ferneyhough
provide me with any intellectual pleasure or the amazing sound compositions by Helmut
Lachenmann such as his Les
Consolations or Salvatore
Sciarrino’s Sui Poemi Concentrici or the enigmatic this(continuity) by the equally enigmatic and reclusive Peter
Riverdale or Harry Partch’s wondrous The
Bewitched or for that matter my all-time favorite that incomparable noise music theater Hellhörig by Carola Bauckholt! – i mutter
to myself whimpering as i sink back into my chair with resignation, covering my
face with both hands -
no no longer do any of these works
satisfy or rather
manage to distract me from the eternal tedium of the so-called human with
its constant fighting and competition
its constant bickering its
constant wars and hatred its constant self-inflicted terrors and
fears no no longer
can i escape from the maddening tedium of all the derivative thoughts and stock
phrases with which i’m bombarded from all quarters almost on a daily basis from the various media no longer can i escape such crushing tedium
such mind numbing cacophony the endless tedium of the so-called human
and its so-called human condition with
its self-importance and its eternal whining
its constant complaints and mindless chatter no longer can i escape this maddening
tedium by reading some of my favorite writers some of my favorite poets and novelists some of my favorite thinkers of which there are hundreds maybe even
thousands from all historical periods
- i quietly whisper into my hands while shuddering
- no no longer
can i find any consolation any
relief from all that madness no
longer can i find any consolation by reading and studying some of my favorite
authors of antiquity starting with that pre-eminent master piece of Italian
medieval literature The Divine
Comedy by Dante nor for that matter do i find any
longer any relief from the boredom that
is humanity in that incredibly witty satirical master piece of English medieval
literature Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and related to these Boccacio’s Decameron no
no longer do i find relief from this oppressive mind numbing reality not even in the hilarious dialogues
between Sancho Panza and Don Quixote in Cervantes’ ceaselessly amusing master
piece Don Quixote a novel which some claim is perhaps the first modern novel or a precursor to it with its concern for showing life in a
more realistic way with both its
pleasant and unpleasant sides and in
which its characters develop over time
showing us during the
narrative’s unfolding their inner
lives their emotional their psychological struggles a
novel which for me has
always been a metaphor for art and the artist and his or her precarious place
in society a society involved primarily with purely materialistic pragmatist
concerns the artist who on a quixotic quest dares to dream to imagine beyond the norms established by
that society with its dead end places and its meaningless spaces such as i now
find myself trapped in no not even that novel which once inspired me
on a heroic quest of my own in the
arts in the life of the intellect and
imagination can now rescue me from this horrid despair –
i mutter helplessly with hands still covering my face – nor can i find relief from this tedium this human tedium by reading those other masterfully witty
luminaries of Spanish Baroque letters
the poets Francisco Quevedo and his life-long rival Luís de Góngora these too are no longer helpful in
weathering this time of meaninglessness and despair these dark times of devastation in which
ignorance stupidity and meanness prevail nor
are the more contemporaneous writers such as the most eminent of the Spanish Generation
of ‘27 movement Federico García Lorca or the many fantastic
Latin-American writers like Octavio Paz
Carlos Fuentes Gabriel García
Márquez Ernesto Sábato and my
all-time favorites Jorge Luís
Borges and Julio Cortázar! no no longer can i find refuge from the
banality of today’s society today’s
world by reading some of my favorite plays like The
Tempest and The Winter’s Tale by that giant of English letters William Shakespeare not to mention his sonnets which have
always been an immense source of pleasure
and reverie along with that incredible epic poem Paradise Lost by
that other giant of English letters John Milton
all of these now seem to have crumbled into ashes vanished
into a meaningless void the way the
pages of an old discarded newspaper are swept away down a
dark empty alleyway on a cold wintery night
to say nothing of all those other English poets who once enthralled and
inspired me the mystical Blake and those other two romantics William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge and my all-time favorite the amazingly musical and most original of
the Victorian poets Gerard Manely
Hopkins perhaps one of the most
innovative poets of his time with his
lively rhythms and striking imagery of nature
no none of them matter
now not at all it’s as if they never really existed – i
mutter to myself bewildered, still hiding my face in my hands - not to mention the more contemporary British
writers such as those three Irish giants Yeats Joyce and Beckett Joyce’s Wake being perhaps one of my favorite experimental
works of all time and Beckett one of the few writers i tried in earnest to
emulate as a young man along with Kafka and Thomas Bernhard all of whose inspiring influence eludes
me now in these dark and unsettling times the same goes for all those French poets i
once held so dear and which inspired me to write with their radical
experimentalism beginning with
Arthur Rimbaud who as a teenager i
regarded as a hero for his rebellious attitude
and because the bulk of his work he wrote in his late adolescent years culminating
with one of his major works The
Illuminations at the age of twenty after which he gave up writing altogether nor are the works of his one-time lover
Verlaine of any help to me now in
these dark and eviscerating times nor
for that matter is The Flowers of Evil by Baudelaire the forerunner of the Symbolist
movement or the fascinating Les Chants de
Maldoror by that other poéte maudit Le Comte de Lautréamont whom the Surrealists regarded as their
prophet and the Surrealists
themselves who once exerted such fascination over me especially with their technique of
dislocation which they got from Lautréamont none
of them can help me now all seeming to
me to be utterly pointless and irrelevant in my own current state of
dislocation my current state of alienation this widespread state of displacement and
misplacement i and so many others find ourselves in where we ourselves have been rendered
totally irrelevant and discardable – i whisper quietly, almost sobbing into my
hands - no not even Mallarmé can save me now he whose highly experimental work
foreshadowed many of the experimental artistic schools that followed in the
early part of the twentieth century
such as the Cubists the Dadaists
the Futurists the Surrealists all of which mean nothing anymore to me nor for that matter do all those movements
of high modernist French experimentalism like the poésie concrète and the
poésie sonore schools as
well as the
Noveau Roman and the Oulipo schools which i once read with ardent fanaticism to say nothing of that pataphysical genius Alfred Jarry and
his master piece
of absurdist theater Ubu Roi a
performance of which i once saw as a teenager not
to mention that other eccentric of the French avan-garde Raymond Roussel and his amazing writing
machine which is described in detail in his novel Impressions of Africa a
machine which i for years dreamed of
building one which i could feed
words sounds that is to say phonemes graphemes that is to say letters phrases and found literary matter which the
machine would then take and construct a text with a composite a literary object a complex non-linear open literary system an ongoing literary process thus saving me time and energy and above
all the emotional pain that often
accompanies the act of writing to this
effect i thought of writing an algorithm which would implement this ambitious
plan that is of creating a writing machine but which
to this day i have failed to do because one day before i even started working on the
algorithm as i looked at myself in the
mirror while shaving and nicking myself in the exact same spot on my chin i
always nick myself on i realized i am
a machine that writing machine i so
much wanted to construct a thinking writing and talking machine three or more machines in one all of them interacting with each other yet
at the same time capable of
functioning independently an array of machines clitter-clattering jibber-jabbering non-stop day and
night i am that very same machine i had dreamed of
constructing of reproducing of cloning and that all i was trying to do was to
build another machine that would do the writing for me while i that is to say this writing machine would use that time for other
endeavors not the least of which is
sleep an ever increasing
predilection for not only am i a
writing machine no but i am also a dreaming machine the dream state seeming to me to be just
as important as the waking state if not more
for all our thoughts and actions in the waking state are rooted in those
of the dream state a double life if
you will where one state shadows the
other something akin to wayang
kulit the Javanese shadow puppet
theater seeing this fact this reality soon deflated all my lofty
plans to construct a writing machine
no even these ambitions which
once inspired me creatively intellectually now reveal themselves to be paltry flimsy in light of the overwhelming crushing tedium of this our human
condition with its endlessly
repetitive routinary behavior all of
that seems dead to me now a
landscape full of crumbling monuments under the hollow light of an empty lifeless moon – i say to myself, still
speaking into my hands, somberly, as if kneeling and praying in the ominously
dark shadows of an unknown, towering temple -
no no longer can i escape the
madness of all the endlessly repetitive and derivative thoughts and stock
phrases that characterize this our tedious human condition this mechanical this endlessly repetitive human state of
degradation by reading some of those
wonderfully inventive and original writers of the North American tradition like
Emily Dickinson Edgar Allan Poe Walt Whitman Hawthorn and Emerson and later authors such as Hart Crane
William Carlos Williams and novelist William Faulkner with his stream of
consciousness writing culminating with
what is probably my most favorite writer of all time and from any country Gertrude Stein and my most favorite book of hers How to Write which despite my ardent enthusiasm i have never finished reading only having read about half way through which i kept reading and re-reading and re-reading
no none of these suffice in providing relief from this agonizing meaninglessness i am now plagued by nor do any of the later writers of the North American tradition which i once admired and emulated poets like Ezra Pound and his Cantos or objectivist Louis Zukovsky and his magnum opus A nor for that matter Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems as well as other poets of the Black Mountain School like Robert Creeley and Francine du Plessix Gray the same goes for the Beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg and one of my favorites William S. Burroughs with his collage-like writing his cut up method with which he wrote several of his most important works like Naked Lunch and The Nova Express in which he completely discombobulates the novel’s linear narrative structure and then there’s that all time elusive enigmatic and obscure author Pietro Della Riviera (whose name now strikes me as that of an Italian gigolo) with his one and only novel that magnum opus of late twentieth century high experimentalism Writer Unknown and who supposedly disappeared without a trace in the mid-nineties and who some think was never a real person but a concoction a construct designed by that equally enigmatic and anonymous avant-garde collective of experimental writers known as The Editors and whom no one i know recalls ever having met no not even that very entertaining labyrinthine work manages to distract me from this desperate and feverish state i now find myself in nor does one of my favorite American experimental poets of all time Jackson Mac Low with his wonderful homage to Kurt Schwitters his 42 Merzgedichte in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters and then of course there’s another one of my favorite poets of all time John Ashbery and his The Tennis Court Oath which had an enormous influence on experimental poets who came after him not the least of which are the Language Poets or the Language School or the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E School as they are also known all of whom i just loved with a passion absolutely all of them a movement which began in the nineteen seventies but which i still feel are very much relevant more so today considering the current reactionary social and political climate the triumph of neo-liberalism and globalization which is one reason why until recently i still read them why i used to read all kinds of things i used to write in all kinds of exploratory ways systematically and a-systematically turbubabulently my brain a random number generator an erratic percolator bubbling over with the messiness of the erotic alluvial dragging the me kicking and screaming as far as the I can see and beyond slipping between arguing dentures gnashing languaging not languishing! wandering writing and thinking wanderfully directionless along whatever path the writing saw fit or seemed interesting addressing the needs that needed to be addressed is i might say a method a kind of textual and contextual play transgressing the boundaries the established territories of the various –isms aesthetics and procedures read writing write reading to create impossibility allowing for the imaginary transgressing the limits of normative signification and ideological framings questioning power and authority in all its nasty manifestations from left to right through the extreme center transgressing the limits of normative signification again the whole point of revolution is to break out of to undo the nasty vicious cycles we’ve been stuck in for millennia by changing the way we think and perceive the way we relate to each other in our daily interactions of which writing and reading are but one example a writing making explanation obsolete ex-splash!-nay-shun! swerving erratically between closed and open economies undermining the will to power guerilla style critiquing the various schools and their constant fortifications defense mechanisms their will to power and the war mentality they mimic the imperialist powers of the world they end up echoing and reproducing a migratory writing that wanders across boundaries aesthetic frontiers i’m a mongrel – i whisper to myself - a racially impure migrant wandering across the borders of frontiers with pen and paper in hand lap top overheating programming code slip slop slithering off screen into air waves writing against aesthetic cleansing and ethnic cleansing for they go hand in hand swerving irregularly between aesthetic frames as i was saying between order and disorder personism projective verse prose proceduralism a la Oulipo the Newlipo conceptual poetry the New York School the new New York School language poetry post-language poetry lost language poetry modern post-modern Alt Lit the New Sincerity the older sincerity cyberpoetry sampling lifting and appropriating (which i call borrowing) excessivism the professional confessional poetries parody irony and flarfing around a bit too the mother tongue and the other tongue not tongue tied but tongues lashing out at each other like serpents in heat dancing entwined an entangle-meant: a meaningful tangle of events all this i was wont to do all this i enjoyed indulging myself in yet despite it all despite its apparent relevance not even all that can help me now - i whisper again almost weeping - not even they can rescue me from this paralysis none of them can for i am nested embedded and petrified confined in that very same social and political milieu trapped entombed in it as i’ve already said always already confined by it from the very start even as i thought i was digging myself out like the creature in Kafka’s Burrow all i’ve been doing all along is to strengthen to buttress the walls of my prison all i’ve been doing all along is to shore up the walls of my cell with my books my reading my writing my music my listening my thinking my compositions my career shoring up the walls of my prison no in fact it is they all of those writers and their marvelous works it is they who have led me here to this place to this state of reckless despair they whom i blame for having inspired me for having motivated me early on in my life to pursue the arts thinking i was working myself out of a life of tediousness and mediocrity – i whisper loudly with anger and resentment, tears welling up in my covered eyes -
but mostly what got me what made me stop writing what made me stop composing what made me stop dead in my tracks was this fever this feverish state this cold black fever hollowing me out a state caused by a kind of
intoxication an intoxication caused
by the promise the hope the years of hoping and imagining the visions of an alternate reality music
and writing the arts promised a reality that never quite became
realized it was this constant
imagining and yearning this constant
state of living in my mind in my
imagination with its hopes and
visions my imagination in constant conflict with the
prevailing reality which finally made
me ill this permanent state of nausea this permanent state of nausea and feverish
paralysis intoxicated blinded by the endless images in my mind this
idea that with art we could change the world
bring about a revolution of consciousness the fact remains it hasn’t changed much of
anything hasn’t revolutionized much
of anything not even us the artists who proposed the revolution subject as many of us still are to our old
habits stuck in our old competitive and territorial behaviors subject as we still are to greed envy and resentment
the fissures the cracks the abysses into which i fall with so much
certainty what might emerge against
the silence? what emerges against the
void? the darkness? am i a man or something dimorphic? not entirely male not entirely female or something in
between not entirely human
either what am i anyway? am i a human being or something else? something amorphous? a cloud
a mist a being in a gaseous
state a wisp of existence blown
about by a restless wind ultimately dissipated in this cosmic wind without beginning without end where am i now?
what am i now?
that the wind
has erased
my hands
my face
my
eyes
where
are you now
that
the now split
of
a second
to
none of my
business
as usual
when
the phone
ringing
in my ear
hollow
and homeless
we
are in our rubble
simmering
confined
to a shimmering
ruggedly
disoriented
is
amazing ad nauseum
in
a very ouch
kind
of wave
in
the vertex
of
an historical cul-de-sac
biding
my time
counting
my blessings
there
gives
through
meaning
a
lack having nots
this
content
a
face mixed
forming
a page
not
myself
an
other
with
both
yet
at
to
run
out
the
haves
and
the
have
knots
am
i words? only words words and the spaces in between words as islands from afar
just a black dot in an infinite sea of white silence or soft white noise a
jumble of words sequences of words forming sentences like columns of ants meandering thoughts entangled with each other breaths inhalations and exhalations punctuated by occasional gasps or coughs at some point in time fated to cease forever somehow transformed into something else traces of writing perhaps and writing traces sequences of sentences series of words pieces there of syllables letters
phonemes forming divergent series resembling thus an
infinity of creases and pleats of unified and dispersed matter random thoughts not
much more than that am i this i that no one knows and i myself barely
an elusive shadow that can’t be grasped by my very own words my very own thoughts incomplete me
finished in my incompletion
composed of units that are neither logical nor organic the writing folds unfolds and refolds me
pleats and creases and ragged
pockets with holes inside out and outside in the i riddled from within and without by a writing
practice that scatters everything that would form a unity or a whole now that my body the world is infinitely cavernous – i whisper gently
to myself, almost lovingly, with eyes still covered - caverns within
caverns fissures and cracks and
ravines within cracks and fissures and ravines that is to say made up of gaps spaces
interiorities and absences because
someone has tried to kill me since i
was young there’s always been someone who has tried to
kill me to put me under do me in shut me up bury me alive as the subject is enveloped in the
predicate implying perhaps that the universe is a chaosmos a chaotic cosmos as Delueze and Guattari
would have it
no
not even all of those philosophers
those amazing thinkers i once read with so much enthusiasm so much hope as a young person none of them can help me now no matter how brilliant how clever their thinking was or is how deeply revealing their insights were
or are starting with the philosophers of antiquity
such as Heraclitus who believed that permanence is an illusion that everything is in a process of constant
change and whose insights today all
things considered are probably the
most relevant of them all or Diogenes of Sinope Diogenes the Cynic as he was also
known who having eschewed the
trappings of society and embracing poverty
lived in a barrel in the city square and whom i admired for his
irreverent attitude toward authority
these were followed by Socrates
Plato and the polymath Aristotle
and then of course there were some of the medieval philosophers
like Boethius with his Consolation of Philosophy and his Quadrivium and
later the scholastic the Aristotelian Thomas Aquinas none of these are of any use to me today – i whisper to
myself with trembling voice again - nor
are the philosophers of the enlightenment
the so-called age of reason
rationalists such as Descartes
Leibniz and Spinoza or the
German Idealists such as Kant
Fichte von Schelling and
Hegel which eventually led to my reading Marx and Engels whose political philosophy had an enormous
influence on me especially
Marx’s Das Kapital all these i read with utter fanaticism
until i mastered their concepts and was able to recite by memory entire
passages of their works all of these were
later followed by Schopenhauer Kierkegaard
and Nietzsche with whom i was obsessed
for the course of a year especially his
concept of eternal return which nearly drove me mad with fits of anxiety which
i could not control and which led to my having a nervous breakdown and having
to spend an entire summer in a clinic in therapy resting - i say to myself shaking my head
- and yet after about a year of not
reading anything i began reading again
i began studying again but
this time carefully cautiously a little bit at a time not voraciously like i used to before my
breakdown i began reading the works
of Henri Bergson with his emphasis on the senses and intuition as a way of
knowing reality as opposed to reason and science which i found charming i found his downplaying of science and
reason and his emphasis on intuition and the senses really quite charming captivating
enchanting even until about the third book of his i
read his Creative Evolution in which i began to find the charming side
of his philosophy annoying irritating with
his ubiquitous references to nature and its shapes its patterns it’s recurring shapes and patterns echoing
each other its cycles
its recurring cycles its returning
cycles nature and its patterns of
returning cycles began to worry me
began to make me feel unsettled these
recurring cycles and patterns began to make me feel trapped again began to make me feel claustrophobic again
as had Nietzsche with his eternal return
imprisoned within cycle upon cycle of eternal returns trapped in a fatalistic universe . . . as
an attempt to counteract my growing feelings of anxiety i immediately stopped reading Bergson and
drastically changed course diving into the works of Wittgenstein whose cold and
rigorous logic i found calming comforting the antidote i needed to counteract Nietzsche
and Bergson both of whom i have difficulty
naming even to this day without breaking into fits of shortness of breath cold sweat and nervous ticks Wittgenstein was later followed by the works
of phenomenologists Husserl Heidegger
and Merleau-Ponty the latter of whose work The
Phenomenology of Perception i
loved greatly even though at
times it reminded me somewhat of
Bergson
i
later discovered the Frankfurt School of which Adorno was my favorite and whose
works i read in their entirety
culminating with his amazing last work Aesthetic Theory which fanatically i read countless times this
was followed by other later Marxist theorist and thinkers such as Baudrillard and Althusser whom i greatly
admired and who further inspired a revolutionary fervor in me around that same time too i encountered the works of Hanna Arendt especially her seminal The Origins of
Totalitarianism which had a profound effect on me yet
even so the fervor i once knew now seems paltry laughable pretentious even of no use to me now – i say to myself mired
in panic, chuckling helplessly - none of it seems to have any practical application
now none of it ever really did there always seemed to be a gap between
what i read and every-day life with its endless drudgery and exhausting
routines that sap us of our energy undermining any effort to resist the system
we’re trapped in the ideas expressed
in all those wonderful books all
those great minds all of those great
ideas kept getting postponed from actually being realized into kinds of action
that would transform our world for the better
all of those works all of those words and ideas now strike me
as mere noise useless information now that the social political and economic contexts seem to have
shifted in a manner such so as to make them all seem irrelevant impractical all of this owing to the absolute domination
by capitalism around the world and its eradication of any opposition – i
whisper again further burying my face in my hands - a threshold has been
crossed which has recontextualized everything the arts philosophy their significance their value their function whatever meanings and function the arts and
philosophy had by virtue of contrast
to the gravity of the situation we now find ourselves in: the destruction of
nature climate change the collapse of liberal democracies and
the rise of authoritarian nationalist governments all that seems to have reduced the arts
and philosophy down to the level of mere academic exercises a kind of escapist entertainment for the
privileged powerless to effect any
change in the minds of those who create and consume them seeing as how we tend to remain trapped in
petty competitiveness territoriality
and defensive egotism let alone the
general public who seem completely unaware of the existence of the arts and
critical thinking while remaining addicted to all kinds of mindless
entertainment and consumerism the
deadening influence of the mass media to which millions are currently
condemned a social field devastated
by capitalist subjectivity - i mutter helplessly again – the same is true for
all of those very interesting structuralist writers and thinkers people like linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure anthropologist Claude
Levi-Strauss psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
and Russian linguist Roman Jakobson who founded the modern discipline of
Phonology which is concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in
spoken languages which to me being
a musician a composer was very compelling given that since i was
a child languages always struck me as being kinds of
music which i imagined we learned a long time ago by mimicking animals and
other sounds of nature but all of
that is useless to me now just as are all those amazing
post-structuralist thinkers and writers who back then had a very liberating
effect on me and my creative work
people like Michel Foucault
Roland Barthes Julia Kristeva
and Jacques Derrida with his deconstructionism
not to mention Deleuze and Guattari and their mind blowing
book A Thousand Plateaus as well as later more
recent thinkers and writers like Judith Butler Luce Irigaray and her beautiful book The
Way of Love all of those writers
and thinkers whose works whose ideas for a long time i was beguiled by all of these and many more i read
and studied with utmost interest and careful devotion all of those wonderful minds who no doubt to be sure are
or were aware of each other’s works
each other’s ideas and thinking
having read and thought through each other’s works many of them having known each other
personally i mean throughout the course of history great philosopher or critic or theorist A has read big critic or
philosopher or theorist B and C’s works
while philosophers B and C have
of course read and mulled
over great philosopher A’s works and
philosophers A B and C have read the
works of philosophers D and E and in turn philosophers D and E have read and possibly
written about the works of philosophers A
B and C just as it’s very
likely philosophers and theorists F
G and H have read and thoroughly mulled over and
written about and perhaps even deconstructed the works of philosophers A B
C D and E and so on each one with his or her cadre of followers
and admirers their established
territories their embattled
fortifications their positions of
power their cadre of admirers as i once did latching on to every utterance hanging on to every word as if the words
of a god . . . and yet here we are on
the verge of disaster teeter
tottering on the verge of the abyss – i mutter to myself in a frenzied whisper
- countless years of reading writing and
thinking crumbling away into
dust into the
dusty dark corners of academe with its endless libraries and their labyrinths
of study booths intoxicated by the rusty dust of knowledge’s project accumulating
in my lungs my aching joints my fatty organs my body and mind choking me like some kind of
psycho-emotional asthma mercilessly
squeezing the last remaining tears out of my body the last breath of air before i’m able
utter one last word cry one last cry
no even
they all those philosophers and
theorists all those composers and writers all of them
now after all these years of
close listening and study of close reading are dead to me empty shells meaningless they all sound overdone empty utterly derivative all too familiar – i repeat to myself with hands still covering my face – empty
really they’re all empty this is why one day
i just stopped writing and composing
i came to a complete halt this is why
one day i could not write a
single word not a single note not a single quarter note not a single eighth note i could not articulate a single musical
idea it became blatantly obvious that
it is very difficult to know what to write anymore what one needs to write let alone the historical necessity if there is such a necessity at all one day i just had to stop i had to stop trying one day i just stopped trying i couldn’t go on anymore for a long time i would torment myself by
trying over and over again to write something to compose something please
i would say just let me write
on more meaningful musical idea just
let me write one more original musical idea
one more musical idea that doesn’t sound derivative this i would say to whom?
to what? i don’t know perhaps to myself to God the universe to some unknown deity i
would implore like this i would
implore humiliate myself to
whomever to whatever by begging in this manner i would say
please just one more musical idea just one more piece with some semblance of
originality one more fragment which i could then if nothing else repeat over and over again and at least
sound contemporaneous with the so-called minimalists and their so-called minimalism
i would whisper emphatically as i wandered in
the dark around my apartment drink in hand
let me at least repeat myself in
this most tedious manner and so be contemporaneous with my minimalist colleagues let
me at least repeat myself this little
musical idea of mine as i’ve already
said let me repeat it in this most insidious this most annoying and irritating
manner and thus by force of sheer redundancy that is to say by means of sheer brute force force it upon myself make myself believe in it make myself feel it is meaningful convince
myself i am doing something meaningful
maybe not entirely original
maybe not entirely authentic
but at least by force of sheer repetition create a context which would provide some
semblance of meaning to this little musical idea of mine and so
in this manner convince myself
it is meaningful convince myself i am doing something meaningful – i mutter impatiently
shuffling my feet on the floor – my so-called colleagues my
so-called minimalist colleagues all this i would say to myself think to myself all this
yet knowing full well that to say such things to have such aspirations is itself derivative old hat
cliché over worn
it
all turned out to be one gigantic mess
accumulated over the years decades one gigantic mass of stuff an avalanche a
tidal wave one gigantic defense
mechanism generated to deflect the world outside generated to create the illusion of an
inside as opposed to an outside; a gigantic mass of noise with which to blot
out the world outside reality so-called
. . . everything seems to be stuck - i whisper again to myself in desperation -
the entire world seems to be stuck in a kind of box a mechanism a
kind of musical box that keeps repeating the same series of elements ideas
pitches words images
but in different permutations different orderings our thoughts and feelings our perceptions and sensations caught in a whirlpool that never cascades
out of control but keeps all the flotsam and jetsam in place circulating over and over again trapped
in a limit cycle making me feel increasingly suffocated – i
think to myself, as the idea, the ever
recurring hope of freeing myself through art, through music and writing, brings
about yet another wave of piercing headaches and nausea as i see, once more,
that all such hopes together with the total domination of society by
capitalism, are nothing but the bars and walls of my imprisonment -
i’m sitting here
waiting, with blinkered eyes and mouth agape, staring out the window at the fractured
sky: aberrant, waiting to be, to become an aberration, longing for it, hoping
to be rescued, maybe resurrected by it; a growing, eerily luminescent phosphene
aching in the eye of the beholder, the eyes of the so-called world, the
universe: me, an aberration, the proverbial splinter in the eye, poking their
eyes out with the ideal of beauty itself;
the ideal, like a scab on the mind’s eye, always getting in the way: anxiety
sears through me like a cold bolt of lightning freezing me into paralysis as
the placid afternoon light softly streams in through the restaurant’s windows:
all the knowledge and culture that was supposed to help me, save me, make me a
true individual, a real human being, an autonomous agent capable of thinking
for himself, capable of discernment, creating a new kind of subjectivity; all the
ideals of the enlightenment, our ability to think, to reason, the belief that
by means of reason we would come to know and understand ourselves and the world
we live in, now nothing but a vast desert of crumbling, eroded monuments and
the ever growing mountains of garbage dumps expanding out to the horizons
surrounding our overcrowded and polluted cities; all that savoir, now no
better than the stained, used napkin crumpled and twisted in my sweaty hands
not knowing how or why,
i suddenly raise myself up and standing stiffly with both hands resting firmly
on the table, i turn my head left and right several times, mechanically, like
an automaton surveying the space around me. i see i’m the only customer in the
room and in the far-left corner, i see the young man who, just a while ago had
served me my meal, standing behind the cash register staring at me intently with
a big frown on his face - why is he looking at me like that? what is he
thinking i’m thinking? - i whisper through my teeth – what does he think i’m
going to do? – i say to myself – he seems alarmed – i mutter under my breath –
or is it just me projecting my anguish and anxiety do i look alarmed to him? - Afraid of upsetting
the waiter, i stand with tense muscles, unable to move while at the same time
feeling the uncontrollable urge to turn and run out of the restaurant. With a
sudden spasm i move away from the table and with stiff legs walk quickly toward
the rear of the room where the rest rooms are. i slam the door shut behind me
and walk to the urinal and relieve myself. Then i walk to the sink, wash my
hands and begin splashing cold water on my face with maniacal intensity. Over
and over again i splash water on my face, my actions are so violent i also
splash water on my neck and shoulders soaking my shirt. There is a dark outline
made by the water on the top part of my shirt spanning from shoulder to
shoulder across my upper chest. i look at my shirt in the mirror and laugh
hysterically until i notice my face. i stare at myself in the mirror for
several seconds but don’t recognize myself, i don’t recognize my face – my face
is not my face – i whisper frantically -
my face is not me – i say again with increasing terror – this is not who i
am this is not my face this is not me – i mutter almost sobbing
now – i begin splashing more water on myself again while vigorously rubbing my
face with my both hands, sporadically checking myself in the mirror in the
hopes my face has gone back to normal. The water has become very cold now,
making my entire body shudder with displeasure – my body is not my body - i say
again frantically – this is not my real body
this is not who i am this is
not me – in a panic i run out of the bathroom and approach the cash register
with face and hair dripping water onto my shirt. Wide eyed, the young waiter
looks at me and asks – is everything ok sir? Yes! Yes! – i answer curtly – i’m just
tired been driving all day need to lie down need to rest is all
thank you – i say, handing him the money mechanically and then abruptly
walking away. In a few moments, i find myself sitting in the van’s cabin
staring blankly at the steering wheel. Leaning back in the seat, i close my
eyes and quickly fall asleep.
When i wake up, it’s almost dark.
There are more cars in the parking lot now and the restaurant’s sign on the
roof has been turned on giving the lot a strange but pleasant blue-green glow. Through
the restaurant’s windows i see people seated at tables, eating dinner, talking
with family and friends. i turn the cabin’s light on, roll down the window and
stick my head out to look at myself in the rearview mirror. My face has gone
back to normal, i now recognize myself. Puzzled, yet feeling relief, i turn
back around, roll the window up and staring at the map, study the route i am to
take to continue my journey. i switch on the ignition and slowly begin moving
out of the parking lot. In a few minutes
i find myself on highway eighty-one again, heading south west into Harrisburg,
searching for the intersection that will take me to highway eighty-three south
into Maryland. In about ten minutes i’m on the Harrisburg beltway on highway eighty-three
heading south-east past Colonial Park, Progress and Glenwood. Then the highway
veers west toward the river. In about fifteen minutes i’m driving across the
bridge over the Susquehanna and in a few minutes more i find myself on the
other side of the river passing the town of Lemoyne and soon after that, i’m on
the exit ramp heading south-east onto highway eighty-three toward the town of
York which is not far from the Pennsylvania - Maryland border.
As i’m driving along, heading toward York, a memory slowly crops up, slowly
insinuates itself into my mind, a memory of the time i saw French theorist,
philosopher, Jean-Francois Lyotard give a lecture at UNC, Chapel Hill. The
title of his lecture was The Foreclosure of the Other or something to that
effect. The thesis of his paper was the eradication of difference by the rising
forces of neo-liberal globalization; a kind of homogenization of the world that
leveled all cultures, cultural differences, reducing everything down to the
level of a commodity. Toward the end of his lecture he said that it is the duty
of artists, educators, writers, thinkers and so on, to bear witness to the
foreclosure of the other. i was struck immediately by this last statement because
it seemed to me that we, artists, educators, intellectuals and so on, are among
those being foreclosed and are by and large powerless and unable to resist or fight
back against that implacable erasure. When after the lecture i approached and
confronted him with this conundrum he was unable to adequately address the
issue, he was unable to suggest any strategy or action that we could take to
resist or counteract the very powerful force of globalization - how do we bare
witness? how are we supposed to do
this? how do we resist if we are the
ones being foreclosed? - i asked somewhat irritated and whiny, all he said was
- you must continue with your work you
must continue with your art your
writing your music whatever you do - even in total anonymity? - i retorted - even
if the work never gets heard or read or seen?
even if as educators we aren’t allowed to talk about
this foreclosure you speak of in the academic environment? and how do we continue if we have no
employment? little or no money no
health insurance no basic
economic stability in which to do our work?
those who can continue working
are the privileged those who have
secure academic positions – i said getting more agitated - the ones who by and
large are not affected by this foreclosure you speak of - i remember saying with
increasing despair, feeling my chest getting tight, beginning to wheeze - for
most of us if we’re lucky that is
if we have the basic financial means
we can continue our work by going underground by receding into total obscurity total anonymity – i said getting more and
more agitated – i mean you’re speaking from a very lofty perch you teach at universities in France where
the government supports intellectuals and artists and you teach at big universities
here and elsewhere around the world
most of us aren’t quite as fortunate - well - he said, looking at me
with what appeared to be compassion in his eyes, which made me feel even more
irritated - you have to try you can’t
give up – two or three years later, he died, and was soon forgotten, and that
was the end of that. Now, decades later, i find myself disappearing, i find
that i have indeed disappeared, i’ve been rubbed out, no longer part of
academia, no longer part of the art world so-called, just a wanderer lost in
space, in a kind of nothingness, that is to say, without a place, a community
or home, condemned to wander these endless highways of cement and asphalt, lit
by the empty, eerie cold glow of fluorescent, LED or metal halide lamps; this
mad, pointless rushing about that gets me nowhere
i’m approaching York now. Even though it’s night-time, i can see it is smaller
than Harrisburg. From what i can tell, from my vantage point on the highway,
the buildings, the architecture seems to be older, the town seems to have an
air of old, historic quaintness about it compared to Harrisburg in which there appeared
to be taller, more modern looking buildings, at least along the river front.
i’m finding this seeming quaintness of York attractive for some reason and suddenly
catch myself desiring to get lost in it, in its shadows, it’s eaves and
awnings, falling into a slumber of summer nights gone by, maybe curling myself
under a bush like a stray dog in the main square and dream myself away till the
morning sun wakes me. i regret not having arrived here earlier, i might have
wanted to stop and have a look around but it is well past nine in the evening,
i want to at least cross over into Maryland before turning in for the night. Driving
past Emigsville, i’m entering into the north side of town. Soon i’m driving
past North York, a borough in the north-west side, and notice that the highway
cuts through the middle of the city the way the Susquehanna cuts through
Harrisburg dividing it into two halves. The highway curves eastward for a few
minutes and then continues straight for a while until it curves back westward
and then continues straight heading south again. Soon i’m reaching the southern
outskirts of the city and find myself driving past the village of Jacobus. As i’m
leaving the outskirts of York, i notice the vegetation along the roadside is
getting denser consisting of wooded areas alternating occasionally with open
fields which i imagine might be farmland. The traffic, which wasn’t very dense
while driving through York proper, has thinned out considerably on both sides
of the highway. i’m now passing the borough of Loganville and heading into what
appears to be open country. In a half hour or so i should be approaching the
town of New Freedom and just a few miles south from there, the Maryland border.
Feeling excited at the prospect of getting some rest soon, i step on the gas and
plunge forward into the night on a mostly empty road.
As i’m driving through the dark countryside,
another famous French man comes to mind, a big composer, who once came to our
university when i was a graduate student to give a master class and talk about
his music. During the presentation of one of his compositions, which was a
large piece for orchestra, he explained that the pitch material and
orchestration was based on sounds taken from traditional Mongolian music which
he subjected to spectral analysis. The timbral information he got from the
analysis he used to orchestrate his piece which provided the composition with
unusual and attractive tone colors, he said - but isn’t that a kind of
exoticism? – i suddenly blurted out interrupting the lecture, the room grew frigidly
silent – a kind of cultural appropriation whereby you make your music sound interesting
– i said emphatically not without a bit of sarcasm – i mean here you are a white European yet again plundering the
cultural resources of a poor so-called
third world country did you get
permission from the musicians to use their sounds? – i inquired again. By then
his face had grown red, he was clearly angry, some of my colleagues were
looking at me pale-faced and wide-eyed, evidently shocked by my audacity and
several of the faculty were glaring at me with anger and disapproval. One of
them suddenly spoke up and asked the composer to please continue with his
lecture – we can deal with those questions later – he said visibly irritated,
shooting me a dirty look. The composer ignored my questions and continued with
his presentation. After he was done, i approached him and asked if he would
address the questions i had brought up earlier. He looked at me sternly and
with a thick French accent and curt tone of voice said – if you want an answer
to your questions you must make an appointment with my secretary in New York – he
quickly turned around and walked away – goodness what an asshole – i remember thinking –
what an arrogant asshole – a wide grin
forms on my face and a chuckle gently issues from my mouth as i roll
down the window. Soon i’m tearing down the highway laughing my head off, the
cool evening air blowing on my face and through my hair as i stick my head out
the window laughing and howling at the waning moon that now hangs low in the
night sky. i suddenly feel free, released, glad i no longer have to deal with
shit like that anymore - happy i no longer have to deal with assholes like that
one anymore – i yell out the window – i mean what a fucking asshole that guy was! – i
yell out the window again laughing maniacally. This was a grown man, a famous,
powerful, influential man, an adult, who had everything one could desire, a
very cushy job at a major university, professional performances and recordings
of his works on major labels, his works were known the world over, getting
defensive, unwilling to answer a simple question from a unknown, powerless
student. i have always been surprised at the prejudice and pettiness i’ve often
encountered in adults, mostly male, in the academic environment, especially
coming from people who are supposed to be highly educated - why the nerve of me! the
gall! – i exclaim out loud, laughing my head off again. i’m suddenly feeling
fortunate, glad i no longer am in those environments, in the academic and
artistic environments, where everybody acts as if they’re walking on eggs all
the time, self-consciously looking at each other, always feeling they have to
save face, it’s enough to drive anybody crazy - who wants to live that way? - i
yell again out the window. If in the academic environment we’re not allowed to
question, to have discussions, to debate, to disagree, what can we expect from
the rest of society which is increasingly suffocating and oppressive, how are
we supposed to bear witness to the foreclosure of the other, as Lyotard put it,
if we’re always already being foreclosed in academia itself, if questioning,
disagreement and debating is already being closed down
and yet . . . and yet . . . on the
other hand – i think to myself beginning to waver, the cool evening air still
swirling around me - discussions and debates, i mean, the questioning can get
out of hand too, it can in fact turn into an abusive event. Why, i remember
another incident, at another college i was a student at, involving another big,
famous composer, this time from Germany, accompanied by a retinue of followers
who apparently went with him wherever he went. This was during a new music
festival where a young student, a new student, maybe no more than eighteen or
nineteen years of age, presented a composition for piano that sounded a lot like
Tchaikovsky. After the concert, the
young composer was confronted by the famous composer and surrounded by his
entourage whereupon the older man began attacking him for writing such a
conventional sounding piece. Didn’t he know that the nineteenth century had
ended a century ago? Didn’t he know that tonality had ended along with the
nineteenth century and that new sounds and techniques, new conceptions of form
and structure, new ways of organizing sound material had been developed during
the course of the twentieth century? If he’s going to present a composition at
a major new music festival, he should at least be aware of the history of the
past one hundred years and make an effort, do the research, to produce a work,
even if that of a beginner’s, that at least reflects some of those changes and
shows some historical awareness as opposed to merely repeating the past, merely
repeating more of the same, said the big composer sternly, staring the younger
man down. Though i agreed with the older
composer’s criticisms, i found myself feeling increasingly repulsed by the
scene developing in front of me, clearly this was abuse, the big composer and
his group were shaming and humiliating the young composer. The young composer’s
eyes rolled around in his contorted, agonizing face as he seemed to be making a
gargantuan effort in trying to respond to his attacker but hardly a sound came
out of his trembling and gaping mouth. The big composer’s entourage were
looking at each other with smirks on their faces, snickering, evidently
enjoying the pummeling the young composer was receiving. All along, members of
the audience, mostly made up of students and faculty, had been gathering around
the event and stood looking on and listening, many in apparent disbelief, judging
from the frowns on their faces. As the big composer attacked the young composer,
i could hear the stir of voices, whispers, rippling through the crowd expressing
shock and disapproval, but no one spoke out loud enough so as to be heard by
the big composer. As i watched i could feel my heart sinking, i remember
watching it all with increasing anger and disappointment as i had been an
admirer of the big composer’s music and writings, but mostly what i felt was
shame and disgust at all of us who just stood there looking on doing nothing to
stop the humiliation the young composer was being subjected to, not even his
teacher and other faculty present did
anything to stop the abuse. All the while, the boy’s bewildered face was
flushed red with shame and anger and i could see that tears were beginning to
well up in his eyes. For a short while he hung his head down in defeat and
humiliation and began to cry and then, with an abrupt turn, he pushed his way
through the big composer’s entourage and ran for the exit quickly disappearing
behind the door as it slammed shut. Slowly and silently we all began moving
toward the exit and walking out into the main hallway. Some people stood around
in small groups quietly talking to each other so as not to be heard. i walked
out of the room slowly and once in the hallway, began walking away at a quicker
pace toward the building’s main entrance. Feeling sick with disgust and anger, i
wanted nothing more than to get as far away from that place as i could. i
needed a drink, badly, all i could think of was throwing back a shot or two of
bourbon, straight up, and forgetting about the whole affair. But I couldn’t. Soon, i found myself sitting at a bar nursing
a double shot of bourbon, there was a ball game on tv, people were sitting
around watching the game, talking and drinking and i sat at one end somewhat in
the shadows watching the game too and mulling over my thoughts and the recent events
at the school. i saw the crowds in the bleachers in the ballpark suddenly rise
up and cheer, many of them triumphantly with arms extended reaching up to the
sky with their hands extended. Endless masses of people, myself among them,
seemed to pass before my eyes, pleading, yearning to be something, something
they are not, can’t be, no matter how hard they tried, sliding back, tumbling
down the bleachers which had suddenly turned into a muddy hill, getting
swamped, sinking into mediocrity, clambering over each other, stepping on each
other, pulling on each other, pushing and kicking each other down, shouting out
as with contorted bodies they tried to snake their way up to the top. There were convolutions, involutions
and counter-involutions as they extended their fingers, hands, arms and legs
branching out in all directions, straining and curving their agonizing bodies, forming
curly-cues and swirling motions in the muck, shooting
out sighs and muffled screams, their tortured torsos twisting and straining, limbs
stretching like dark, gnarly roots
grasping at what remains unseen . . .
already feeling the effects of the alcohol, i finished my drink in one gulp and
ordered another one, this time followed by a chaser, and soon found myself
ordering another and then another. i didn’t know what to do with my feelings,
my anger, my pain and my shame, all of these emotions were churning around
inside me, pushing and pulling in my body like fighting cats in a sack. i
vaguely remember stumbling back to the house i shared with other students and
waking up next day on the old couch in the living room with a terrible
headache. From what i heard a few days later, the young composer never came
back, he quit the music program and never returned. It also turned out he suffered
from a disability; he was hearing impaired.
No, i
can’t say i’ll miss any of that; the ill will, the aggressions, the attacks,
the humiliation, the condemnation, the ostracism, the cancel culture as they
say today, not to mention the sexual harassment which i and other students were
subjected to. Sexual harassment was par for the course at that place, no one
talked about it much for fear of retaliation but, it was there, everybody knew
about it, including the faculty who did nothing to stop it. A few years after i
left that university, i found out that several of the faculty were sued for
sexual harassment and they were all forced to resign. i took satisfaction in
hearing the news but i’ve always regretted not having done something about it myself
while i was still a student. i regret not organizing the students and
confronting the faculty who were harassing us, as far as i'm concerned, they
deserved to have had the shit kicked out of them - no i won't miss any of that - i say again, as the
cool and invigorating evening air washes in through the window making me feel
light and relieved
and yet . . . and yet . .
. years later, as a professor, dealing with students in the academic setting,
things turned out to be not much better. i experienced aggression and hostility
coming from a different angle. Aside from the nastiness of academic politics
and competitiveness, which reared their ugly faces all too often, as time went
by, dealing with the students became increasingly difficult. The hostility i
experienced was of a different order and for different reasons. Whereas
previously the criticisms had originated as a defense of knowledge,
intellectual rigor, academic integrity, imagination and creativity, now, the
attacks came from those who saw education, knowledge and all of the above as an
encumbrance, as obstacles; a kind of empty ritual, a mere jumping through
hoops, as i'd often heard students say, in order to achieve their goal of
obtaining a degree. Their concerns were purely pragmatic, there was no
enthusiasm for learning for the sake of learning, no pleasure in learning new
things, new ideas, no pleasure in understanding and resolving problems, no
sense of wonder about the subject matter at hand, about the world, life,
history and the human endeavor. As the years went by, increasingly, i found
myself facing a growing student body made up of angry anti-intellectuals in an
environment which, by definition, is one in which using one's intellect is, or ought
be, the norm. What to me had always been the obvious notion, that is, that as
students we were in college to work, that is to say, to study, to learn new
things and to have our own views and ways of thinking challenged, with the
passing of years, this idea became less and less obvious to the students who increasingly seemed to take for granted
that one, as an instructor, as a professor, was supposed to allow them to pass
with a good grade without them, the students, having to do much to deserve that
grade. And if one, as an instructor, as a professor, didn't do this, it would
incur the student's wrath who, at the end of the semester, during the course
evaluation, would give the instructor a very bad review often consisting of
absurd accusations. All of which led to instructors feeling more and more
intimidated by the students and who, out of fear of retaliation, would submit
to the students' demands which in turn led to the further lowering of academic
standards. A phenomenon which seemed to be occurring everywhere in society
beginning in grade school and continuing in high school, where, i had heard,
angry parents would often confront teachers and the school principle if their
child didn't receive a good grade. Over the years, i began to notice an
increasing disrespect on behalf of many students, for those of us who were in
the front lines of teaching and who often found ourselves caught between the
students' hostility and the college administration's unwillingness to deal with
the problem, the latter, evidently, all too concerned about student enrollment,
would often place the entire responsibility on the instructors' shoulders. Things
became even more distressing after the passing of the state law which allowed
students and faculty to bring guns to state college campuses. Having a
disturbed, disgruntled student, who, say, got caught cheating on an assignment,
threaten the instructor with a gun is not my idea of a productive, enjoyable
teaching and learning experience - so much for trying to do the right thing so much for doing your job and doing what
you were hired for so much for teaching what you were hired to
teach your specialty your field of expertise i can't honestly say i'll miss any of that enough is enough - i whisper angrily - allowing
people to come to campus armed and some of the stories i had heard from other
instructors about incidents such as the one i mentioned above, was the last
straw which led to my decision to jump ship and abandon the academic world for
good. From one day to the next, it all came crashing down, like an eighteen-wheeler
smashing into a brick wall - no i
can't say i'm going to miss any of that any more i’m glad i’m no longer in those
environments those schizoid contradictory environments that put one in
a double bind a damned if you
do damned if you don't situation good riddance to all of that i say – i
hear myself mutter angrily under my breath, while at the same time beginning to
feel euphoric again, happy to be on this highway to nowhere, enjoying the fresh
air and the moon, suddenly feeling fortunate that i don’t really know where i’m
going, suddenly feeling released from the anxiety of not knowing what i’m going
to do with my life, actually enjoying the not knowing – i can go in any
direction i want do anything i want
now or do nothing at all either way it’s ok – i mutter – maybe now i can finish
my book my novel – i say with
increasing enthusiasm - i’m glad i don’t have to deal with all that crap
anymore or any of those assholes, students and faculty alike, which is just as
well, given that i’m not, nor ever have been, your effete connoisseur of the
exquisite sound, the deliciously spacialized sounds in the ever-increasing
multi-channeled panning fields of academe, with its aesthetic packages all in a
tidy row, with their cute little ribbons and bows, pretty as the truth tied at
both ends, as the song goes, most of it boring as hell, some of the most
boring, pointless, empty shit i’ve ever heard, and many of us, faculty
included, just tolerating the whole thing, all those festivals, wearily putting
up with them, hoping it would all end soon, not knowing what we were all doing
there, what all that music was for, how any of it connected with society, the
world, if at all. However ingenious, however clever some of it was, much of it
not having anything to say other than how clever they were, or listen to this
interesting sound or technique, to which i would say great, good for you, so
now what? not that i have anything against
interesting sounds or techniques, it just depends on how they’re used. i
chuckle to myself getting cheery again, getting excited again, with that
feeling of release again, and that feeling of relief again as if i’ve just
escaped a dangerous, deadly situation, relief at escaping certain death, seeing
as there are different kinds of death – frozen embalmed condemned to write that empty freeze-dried shit again – i say grinning
from ear to ear, feeling the cool evening air blowing over my body, suddenly
noticing the smell of earth, grasses, flowers and trees inundating the van’s
cabin, realizing again i don’t know where i’m going and enjoying it; knowing
not knowing and feeling ok with it – now i can write compose what i really need what is meaningful to me – i say to
myself. i tend to like the raw as opposed to the cooked. In academe, where they
often use culinary terms like taste, exquisite, delicious, to describe
qualities of sounds and compositions, they tend to like the cooked and the
overcooked. i like the under cooked, al
dente, the raw, the rough, the imperfect, the incomplete, the fragmented,
that which resists closure and completion, that which resists packaging – they
over cook everything – i mutter to myself and then, sticking my head out the
window, i yell laughing maniacally – they overcook everything! everything!
everythiiiiiiiiiing!
The road looks
endless, expansive like the night itself with its blinking stars and reeling
galaxies that spin ponderously forever on their unseen paths. i’m now passing
through the environs of Shrewsbury, Stewartstown and New Freedom. In a few more
miles i’ll be crossing over into Maryland and then on toward the outskirts of
Baltimore where i’ll find a place to spend the night. With renewed enthusiasm,
i step on the gas, the dark silhouette of trees in wooded areas by the roadside
zip past followed by open fields where an occasional farmhouse light can be
seen shinning bleakly like a beacon in the depths of the darkness. In a short
while, i notice a large sign in the distance and, as i approach it, i see it
says “Maryland Welcomes You, Please Drive Gently” which makes me
chuckle. i also notice it is a rather ornate sign featuring the state’s flag
with its heraldic banner of arms belonging, as i later found out online, to the
second Baron Baltimore Cecil Calvert and which also consists of the escutcheon
of his father George Calvert, First Baron Baltimore. i’m now driving past exit
thirty-six and the environs of Freeland and Bentley Springs heading toward the
area of the Gunpowder Falls State Park which i’ve heard includes a beautiful
river by the same name and a large lake all of which i won’t be able to see
from the highway in this darkness. In approximately another hour i should be in
the outskirts of Baltimore where i plan to spend the night, possibly in the
Cockeysville or Sunnybrook area. i’m looking at the night sky, the moon now
seems to be below the horizon and i’m noticing how much more of the sky i can
see without it as well as the lower levels of man-made light pollution here in
the countryside. i’m wondering how many of those twinkling stars i see are
actually galaxies
i also notice what appears to be a fair amount of darkness between all
those gleaming astral bodies and wonder what might lie in that unsounded depth
- there seems to be more darkness than there is light – i say to myself slowly
as if with caution - the stars and galaxies are like islands of light in a
boundless black emptiness but what lies
beyond the farthest star the farthest
galaxy? – i ask myself softly – an incomprehensible darkness a darkness you can’t really look into as
there is no point of reference your eyes can adjust to the darkness is in your face as it were in your face staring back at you
relentlessly – i answer back quietly - It
occurs to me that, with the exception of those islands of light which are the
stars and galaxies we see, darkness surrounds everything, it would seem that the
entire universe is surrounded by an eternal night. We focus our attention
mostly on the shining objects we see in the night sky but most of what we are
really seeing when we look at that sky is darkness, a boundless, unfathomable
darkness, nothing but solid darkness, an intimate darkness that stares into our
minds, into our hearts - this can’t be a good thing this does not bode well for us - i think to
myself - a night that lies in waiting mocking our every step as we go about our
daily business oblivious with
unquestioned confidence - i whisper gruffly with increasing trepidation – i
suddenly realize that most of what i’m looking at in the night sky is the past,
the majority of the light coming at us from the galaxy, the entire universe, is
light that left its source hundreds, thousands, even millions of years ago, who
can really say if those objects, whose light we now see, in the midst of this,
our present moment, are still there at the place from where their light originally
issued, we may be looking at nothing but ghosts, remnants of times and places
that no longer exist, our present, here and now, is not their present there and
then, our present here and now does not occur simultaneously with their
present, a universe that is mostly dark, empty space in which things and events
rise and fall, no more substantial than fragile, temporary bubbles of foam on
the crests of waves that disappear almost as soon as they take form, and what
we, reassuringly, like to think of as our present, is already in someone else’s
past who may be looking at us from a distant world
before long, i’m passing exit thirty-one which leads to the Gunpowder
Falls Park on the west and the towns of White Hall and Wiseburg to the east. Soon i’m passing exit twenty-seven and route one
thirty-seven that leads to the town of Hereford which brings back memories of
the town of Harford in Pennsylvania where i had the altercation with the two
goons at Danni’s Bar the night before, and where i was thrown on my face on the
parking lot gravel injuring my knee. For some strange reason, it all seems to
have taken place a long time ago, in the distant past and to someone else. i
touch my knee and feel a dull, aching pain but am glad to notice it feels a lot
better than it did the night before. The cool night air keeps me awake and
alert. In a short while i’m passing exit twenty-four and the environs of the
towns of Butler on the West side and Manor and Glencoe on the East. Now it’s
only ten or fifteen minutes till i reach exit twenty where i’ll turn off the
highway and head toward Cockeysville. Up ahead i see the sign for exit twenty
and begin slowing down, soon i’m veering off the highway onto the exit ramp on
my right. The ramp slopes downward gently toward the intersection with route
one-forty-five. i stop at the intersection and switch on the turn signal and
then make a left turn into the underpass. After emerging on the other side of
the highway, i drive for a few miles on route one-forty-five until i reach the
intersection with route forty-five where i make a right turn and head south
toward Cockeysville. Having checked in the internet earlier this morning before
leaving Lenoxville, i know there are a couple of motels in the Cockeysville
area. Soon enough i see the sign of a motel in the distance on my left,
anticipating a shower and a comfortable bed i step on the gas a bit. In a few
minutes, i’m turning into the motel’s parking lot and find a space near the front
of the establishment’s office. i turn off the head lights and switch off the
ignition then unbuckle the seat belt and open the door and slowly step down
from the van’s cabin. My legs feel wooden and heavy as i lean into the cabin
and reach for my backpack and suitcase. Moving slowly and awkwardly, i walk
past the double glass doors which slide open automatically and into the motel’s
lobby where sitting behind the front desk is a thin, middle aged black man with
graying hair and beard dressed in a maroon colored vest that has a bronze colored
nametag pinned on the right side that says Thomas. i tell Thomas i want a
nonsmoking room for one night and hand him my id and credit card. He quickly
turns his eyes to the computer screen in front of him and energetically types
something on the keyboard. He then reaches under the desk and brings up a key
card and hands it to me together with my id and credit card – that’s room
two-o-seven sir – he says in a matter of fact manner – the elevators are that
way – he says pointing toward a hallway on his right – your room is half way
down the hall as you exit the elevator on your right- he says with a polite
smile – have a nice night – he says smiling again – thank you – i respond with
a hoarse, tired voice distractedly
pocketing my debit and key card and then shouldering my backpack and pulling
the suit case after me, begin ambling toward the elevators in the hall the
attendant indicated a few seconds ago. As i walk down the hall, i suddenly feel
my stomach grumbling, raucously, and realize it’s been a long time since i’ve
had anything to eat, not since the Japanese restaurant in the outskirts of Harrisburg
in fact, and that was over seven hours ago. At the end of the hall i see a
couple of vending machines and decide to visit them first before going up to my
room. i’m too tired to go out looking for a restaurant and in any case at this
hour of the night, they’re all probably closed. There are two machines, one
dispensing snacks, the other beverages. i buy several bags of snacks, among them
chips, mixed nuts and trail mix. From the beverage machine i get two cans of
ginger ale and a bottle of water. i put all that stuff in my backpack and walk
back to the elevator. As soon as i enter my room, i rush to the bathroom and
relieve myself and then begin taking my clothes off throwing them in a corner on
the floor. i step into the shower stall and turn the water on letting the warm jets
massage my skin and wash all over my body. i crouch down and sit in the tub
under the soothing flow of the water and close my eyes momentarily drifting
into a shallow sleep. After a while i open my eyes, get up and turn the shower
off. i step out of the stall and dry myself off with a large fluffy, plush
towel i found on a shelf. i wrap the towel around myself walking into the
bedroom and sit at a small desk near the window. While munching on some snacks,
i pull my laptop out from my backpack and begin searching online for the flag
of the state of Maryland which caught my attention on the highway. Its design
and colors seemed quite unique to me compared to other state flags i’ve seen in
the past and was curious about its origins. After googling the state flag of
Maryland i decide to look at a printout i have of the manuscript of my novel in
progress. i pull it out of my backpack and lying back on the bed begin leafing
through it at random. i fall upon a page near the middle section of the novel
that catches my eye and as i begin reading, i faintly hear the raspy, muttering
voice of an old man
“one has nothing except this black silence sometimes I think there’s a way out there there’s a way out somewhere but soon I’m overwhelmed by thoughts and
emotions weighed down drowned in a flood of thoughts and emotions
– the old man says wheezing again - a panic as I see there’s no escape I only think that I think but it is not me who thinks it is not the me that does the thinking
something else does the thinking
it is language it is the
writing perhaps a kind of parasite it is this other process from which thoughts
and feelings arise which the I vainly
believes belongs to it are of its own making the I is a small temporary vessel thrown about on an
endlessly flowing river of changing forms
this is our life this ever
changing continuum to become attached
to anything even this the idea of non-attachment makes no sense our refusal to accept this fact is at the
root of all our troubles you see this
beginningless river is more real than you and me – he says sighing – we’re only
temporary configurations brought about by conditions that are themselves in a
constant process of change it is
hopeless to try and grasp anything
ourselves or anything else we
are condemned to lose ourselves sooner or later more so as soon as we try to crystallize
ourselves into a kind of freeze dried existence the only thing we can be certain of is
change the only thing we can expect is
the unexpected an idea that seemed
good yesterday an idea that seemed to be
a stroke of genius yesterday today seems
completely mediocre lifeless seems like shit – he spits out - even so
despite these changes for most
of us life is tedious most of our lives are utterly boring we are utterly bored with ourselves with our lives numbingly bored with each other if there is a hell it must be this life of ours in which we are condemned to listen to each
other’s voices each other’s points of
view we are condemned to listen to each
other’s incessant whining what forced
me into hiding is the incessant whining
within and without the ongoing
complaints the ongoing aches and
pains this labyrinth of faces one is
forced to face day in and day out until one dies and then who knows what happens? depending
upon how well we have endured our present punishment how well we have dealt with it how well we have learned to deal with
it with patient acceptance for it is always about this acceptance we must accept our punishment deserved or not just or not
we must learn to love what has been crammed down our throats forced into our minds it is this constant exposure to the
terror the horror the horror story is this our minds
our current reality this is the
true terror our so-called everyday
life having to face each other every day
the incessant boredom and the
sordid tedious violence that is forced
upon us on a daily basis this is the horror story all those idiotic so-called horror novels
and films that people consume so voraciously are trivial compared to the horror
of our everyday lives it is this
constant exposure to terror to the
terror of existence that makes us
brutal we are brutalized by
existence therefore we ourselves are brutal the searing harshness of our existence our longings to be free to awaken
foiled over and over again by
the ongoing rushing flow of changing events
while we cluster ourselves here and there on whatever island whatever promontory of temporary stasis whether natural or fabricated as we struggle to awaken from this nightmare among so much death what choice do we
have? we are nothing but
necrophiliacs consumers of death
this I see
hear when I’m writing the words themselves broken
their sounds their images fragments of materials adrift like
flotsam debris from a wreckage in the
onrushing current of circumstances that is our existence the writing itself the drifting words a kind of mapping of catastrophe bumping into each other searching each other’s jagged edges like
chunks of ice floating refuse drifting
down river toward the falls like flotsam jagged
white grayish shapes puzzle-like
slowly swirling round and round
caught in a whirlpool like
jetsam near the river’s edge where the bend begins blindly searching each other’s edges shapes
erratically bumping into each other
never quite fitting in”
i don’t recall exactly
when and where i wrote this rather dark section but i find myself enjoying it.
Intrigued by what i’ve read so far, i flip the pages forward until another
section catches my eye:
“not knowing why
I raise myself up – the professor suddenly says in a quiet, gruff voice
- my body my mind my thoughts and feelings I who am a car . . . a car . . . a
carcajando me like carne nigra gran ganando gangrenous carcass amid a mist mu .
. . mue . . . muerto mujer rota morta
est amidst a buca rest with fallen teeth out of rotting gums and tongue’s
unrest deceased by disease by disease deceased so I
raise myself up off the bed and sitting on the edge gaze out the window at the trees
outside at the branches
intertwined crisscrossing each
other forming complex shapes and
textures this is what I see see as an example of what to do where to go not only what to write but how to
write their lonely lovely
brightly colored autumnal
leaves seeming to have a light of
their own they have a light of their
own the luminous bushes and the colors of the fallen leaves
replicating themselves spinning
in my room like the leaves outside turning
in the wind in my head this of course is an allusion but we are
tired I can no longer go on like
this all thoughts all words are excremental – he whispers gently
with eyes closed sniffing the air - what we tried to get at with words for
years now centuries is it meaning in the commotion of its
gleaming or yet another voice in a turbulent night of dreaming? motions of something reading itself reading itself was something in motion
with a voice for propulsion rather agitated antiquated
yet still effective looking for
a purpose ‘neath the sun’s glaring stare bare of all intent one
notion will suffice to organize a life and project it into unusual but viable
forms so that they become a luminous backdrop to ever-repeated gestures do you know any Ashbery? – he asks looking
up at me - Ashbery and Stevens are my favorite poets but then there’s Artaud who destroys all that . . . but . . . as I
may have already said writing can be a
demonic endeavor . . . writing is primarily a kind of activity I mean to say a kind of physical activity which is to say a kind of bodily function as is thinking an
excretion if you will all writing is
excremental the brain’s electricity
bleeding into the surrounding atmosphere
only through this destructiveness can one speak freely you see
it is only through this disintegration
this ongoing destruction that
one can think and speak freely
alienation becomes the singularity that allows for total freedom”
Mystified, i don’t recall having written this section
either while at the same time finding myself drawn to it, absorbed into it. Feeling
pleased and contented with myself, i let the manuscript drop to the floor. Smiling
and relaxed, i yawn and switch off the bedside table lamp and turning on my
side quickly fall into a deep sleep
i see the
highway in the headlights ahead of me disappearing into a dense fog. Without
knowing it, i seem to have suddenly stopped somewhere and now find myself walking
in the fog. The visibility is no more than just a few yards. The ground feels
sandy, like that of a beach. There are tall, pale grasses everywhere and a cold,
murmuring breeze from the north is playfully drawing figures in the sand. As i
walk on, i begin to see the dark, slightly domed shapes of large cement
structures placed at equal intervals from each other receding into the murky
distance. i walk closer to one of the hulking shapes which is covered in
graffiti and find a furrow that is wide and deep enough to accommodate me. Fatigued
yet feeling relief, i lie down and looking up see the grasses and weeds arching
over me forming a vault-like structure that reminds me of the ceiling of an ancient
cathedral. i close my eyes and begin drifting away feeling comforted and
protected by the fog and the grasses. i hear the breeze whispering and open my
eyes, there is a dark figure clad in a long, black coat leaning over me with
hands clasped at either side of his pale, cadaverous face. He has no eyes, only
empty, black sockets. His open mouth seems to be screaming but only a weak scratchy
sound comes out. i close my eyes, burying myself further in the dream as the
breeze begins to whisper again - a life still mine - it says in a raspy
voice - a still life mine in
bits and pieces strung together in
word metal scraps same old words same old scraps a patchwork a million times over and then some more and then again . . . – i
mutter in my sleep, i mutter to the breeze, to the sand and the sea, to the
tall grasses leaning over me. Sinking further into the dream i feel my body
slowly begin to rise. The breeze has now lifted me up, gently carrying me above
the grasses, then we float over the silent, rounded cement structures and deeper
into the fog above. Before long we are floating high above the clouds and
further on up, i can see the clear night sky which is cluttered with stars. We are
moving faster past the sky and into space, some of the stars now appear to be
galaxies slowly turning on their axis as they speed along their unknown, invisible
paths. There are nebulae and clusters of stars and galaxies everywhere around
us occasionally interrupted by gaping patches of black emptiness. Clutching at
myself, i feel my body quiver from head to toe as the endless cold of eons
penetrates me to the marrow. i begin screaming in terror but the wind which has
been blowing from a beginningless past, is indifferent to my complaints as we
move ever closer to the brilliant center of a cluster of galaxies. i now see
that the entire universe is ablaze with an all-consuming fire; all its
galaxies, stars and planets with all their creatures, burning in an interminable
fire. Realizing i am helpless to do anything about this, i cease trying to
resist and stop screaming giving myself over completely to the wind as we
approach the incandescent center of a galaxy. Clad in a long robe, pitch black
as the deepest recesses of the sidereal night, i go forth into the searing
light, my eyes blinded by its scorching incandescence. Soon there is nothing
but light all around me, i myself seem to be made of light, my eyes, my entire
body and mind flooded with light as we sink into the galaxy’s center, which
extinguishes us, the wind and me, the refulgent light having consumed us
completely. As if in a photographic negative, i suddenly emerge on the other
side into the absolute blackness of an eternal night now wearing a blinding
white robe of light on which a swirling mass of letters, syllables, phonemes,
words and sentences snake around randomly and whose paper sharp edges begin
cutting into my eyes, my flesh, into my mouth, worming their way into and out
of my body and in the process, weaving me a new one, a new mind, new eyes and ears, new senses, a new voice made
up of many voices which are articulated as simultaneities; massive chordal and
polyphonic structures where each voice, each line, with their own time and
place, echo throughout the past, present and future. Countless feedback loops made
of micro loops locked together, circulate information, my entire body is a mass
of interlocking feedback loops in which information circulates at an alarming rate.
My eyes are suddenly filled with columns of bright white symbols which move
against a black background. i don’t recognize any of the symbols as they flow
up and down vertically. Feeling dizzy and nauseated, i look past the columns of
symbols into the blackness beyond, my eyelids become heavy, soon, i can no
longer hold them open and darkness engulfs me completely. The wind is
whispering again, i can’t make out what it’s saying but it’s got me firm in its
embrace as we continue on our way, but where? i can feel the cold of eons
creeping up on me again. Shivering uncontrollably, i wrap my arms around my
torso as the chill penetrates every fiber of my being. In horror, i realize
there is more darkness than light in the universe, in fact, all those stars and
galaxies i last saw are surrounded by an unfathomable blackness. i can hear the
wind’s whistling chant as we fly away from the last of the galaxies which is dying,
smoldering in heat exhaustion. In time, the wind’s whistling too begins to fade
as we move further into the darkness ahead disappearing into the endless night,
i close my eyes and mutter myself to sleep
i,
in wind flung
night
abroad again;
perishable poem
writing
what to write
necessity
beginning
with scratches
searching
leftovers
in keeping
with scraps
inherited
entrance
to trances
incomplete
like everything
desires desiring
a poem passes
it has
a word here
what were
with which
beneath unfolding
the eyes
enfolded in
same time
conceal-meant
all its figures
whose orderings
knows when
say we
say as
just who are
devoid of
any
these days
drifting
like clouds
i,
comes here
distant
in windy sun
far from
far off
a shadow
dances
writing
a bout,
an about
face
without
orders
that disorders
into
off course
what
at any
mo(ve)ment
continuously
depth like
likelihood
no longer
point of the
-ment
a distant
scheme
image
is both
a time of
glow with
from the
input is
at this
has been
by the
-ing
yearning
that is to say
also
a kind of neither
if it can
be called
one hears
in the in
over and
over again
in the like of
rarely if this
nor have i
probably of
each voice
from after
another what
makes it
possible
writing all together
not a single syllable
writing what to
write any more
or if there
even
is such as
an open window
nothing at
all
with which we
this language
constructed
there with
that’s been done
not to
born of and
yet
back again
as if just a
following forth
which looks at
continues
beneath
what seems
word window images
chiaroscuro leaves
at night’s edge,
a hand having
studied the most
of them
a body of sounds
i means to say
in flesh and blood
the emphasis on
most of them
with what’s
that of color
and some husk
of a word
on their the
rays
it is all this
in even who
are always
in the as
if
these days
most of all
one reads
devoid that
of
heard it all
of the so-called
mostly unknown
is to
all such
of a
what’s more
and so
has and then
to say
what we would know
of the surface,
the reflection
of
an abyss,
one’s hands
becoming
a labyrinth
questions wrapped
while at the
concealmeant
remains at the gap
before the naming
a bright light touches my eyes. Irritated, barely opening an eye, i see a ray of sunlight shining in through a gap in the curtains. i roll over with my back to the window and briefly fall into a semi-sleep. A few minutes later the alarm goes off and i open my eyes again and stare mindlessly at the wall in front of me with its floral wallpaper. i notice the pattern with its small bunches of red and blue flowers tied together with brown colored twine against a pale grey-green background repeating itself transversely across the wall. Sighing, i turn onto my back and lie there staring at the ceiling - what the hell was that all about – i say to myself suddenly remembering the dream – goodness were those shitake mushrooms i had yesterday or were they something else – i mumble sitting up in bed rubbing my eyes and yawning – all that thinking about the universe light and darkness did a number on me the idea of an unending darkness surrounds everything gives me the creeps serious fits of anxiety – i think to myself while lying back in bed, vainly covering myself up from head to toe with the sheet so as not to be seen by anybody or anything; i can’t shake the uncanny feeling that the darkness knows, it can see me, all of me, inside and out, through me, into me, it knows all my secrets, it knows where i’ve been and where i’m going, my thoughts and feelings, it listens to my heartbeat, the gurgling of my stomach and intestines, my thoughts, it listens to my listening . . . unnerved by these thoughts, i suddenly throw the sheet off and quickly walk to the bathroom and standing at the sink, frenetically begin splashing cold water on my face. i think of shaving but just as soon as i had begun splashing water on my face, i freeze, rigidly fixed in the awkward position of being bent over, face down, staring blankly at the drain, afraid to look up at the mirror for fear i might not recognize myself again. Very quickly, i peer upwards at the mirror and then back down again, feeling relief at noticing i’m still me, myself, as i remember myself from previous days, nothing seems to have changed - i’m still me – i whisper cautiously yet sighing with relief – i slowly straighten myself up and then begin shaving with quick, precise strokes. Once finished shaving, i splash more water on my face washing off any excess shaving cream i might still have on my skin. i then dry myself off and walk back into the bedroom were rapidly and with a sense of urgency begin to dress. All of these actions i perform with mechanical precision and purpose until i'm all dressed up. Then, with the same mechanical focus and intent, i begin packing up my things, first putting my computer away in my backpack followed by my notebook and the excerpts from my novel then, i put the dirty clothes i discarded last night before showering in a plastic bag and pack it in my suitcase. i look around the room to make sure i haven’t forgotten anything and then with a vigorous pull open the room’s door and step out into the hallway carrying my backpack and dragging my suitcase behind me. With stiff legs i walk quickly toward the elevators and as i do so, i notice my stomach is grumbling and realize i’m going to have to have breakfast before getting the road again. i arrive at the reception desk, hand in the key card and look around the lobby hoping breakfast is offered at this motel. This time there are no buffet tables in the lobby with trays full of donuts and pastries, not even a coffee pot or jug full of orange juice, nothing - i’m going to have to stop somewhere for breakfast - i think to myself disappointed and irritated as i’m anxious to get on the road again. i walk out the sliding doors at the entrance into the parking lot and find the van parked nearby as i had left it the night before. i unlock the driver’s side door and angrily pull it open then throw my suitcase and backpack in the passenger seat, climb in, slam the door shut, insert the key in the ignition and turn the motor on. i then strap the seat belt on and with a loud sigh begin backing out of the parking space. Soon, i’m driving back on route forty-five toward the intersection with route one hundred and forty-five where i thought i saw a fast food restaurant the night before. In a few minutes i see the restaurant on my right. i hate eating at these places but i’m in too much of a hurry to search for something better. i roll up to the drive through and order orange juice, coffee and a couple of egg and cheese muffins. After picking up the order at the delivery window, i park the van in a parking space in the restaurant’s parking lot and with trepidation begin eating my breakfast. Immediately after the first bite i find myself wolfing down the muffins and every last drop of the orange juice and coffee, and, to my surprise, i find myself enjoying every last bit of it. i didn’t realize how hungry i was until i remember that all i had for dinner last night were some snacks from the vending machines in the motel. After i’m done eating i study the road atlas to see what route to take to get around Baltimore. i’ll drive back to highway eighty-three South and then hook up with six ninety-five West, the Baltimore belt way, and at the southern end of Baltimore, hook up with highway ninety-five South which will take me to Washington D.C. i start the van and slowly pull out of the parking lot turning left onto route one forty-five heading West toward exit twenty on highway eighty-three. In about ten minutes i arrive at the highway, drive through the underpass and make a left turn onto the ramp and in a few seconds find myself on eighty-three heading south again
i’m thinking about the writing now, my writing, and the sections
from my book i read last night which i didn’t recognize, wondering why i
couldn’t remember what i wrote some time ago, not only what i wrote but who
wrote it, which i now realize is quite alarming - i should be alarmed by it but
somehow i’m not so much – i mumble softly under my
breath, how is it that sometimes i can’t remember what i wrote or perhaps more
precisely, who or what wrote it. Sometimes it seems the writing writes itself, languaging
not languishing, as it were, except that it doesn’t have a self as such, a me,
an “I”, not even a body, that is, a carnal being, yet the text is a kind of
body in progress, an ongoing process
i’m now driving through the general vicinity of The Lakes,
a suburb in the north side of Baltimore, it’s about nine thirty in the morning
and the traffic isn’t as bad as i thought it would be, in another twenty
minutes or so i should be arriving at the intersection with highway six
ninety-five, the Baltimore beltway
my
writing, my composing has always been about change, impermanence, transiency, not
about but a bout, not writing about transiency, but rather the process of
writing and the text, what it’s saying, if it is saying anything at all, is
transiency itself, is only a temporary configuration of meanings and intents,
structures which arise and then in a page or two disintegrate, an ongoing
process of disintegration and this integration; i never read, write into
the same textual stream twice as it were, because the text is never quite the
same and i, the writer too, am never quite the same as i am edited, rewritten
by the writing and reread by the text - the activity of writing and the text written and read are the locus in which both subject and
object meet there is no distinction between one and the
other when one is writing when one is
giving one’s complete undivided attention to the writing the reading – i mumble to myself
the GPS on my cell phone tells
me we have a few more miles to go before we reach the intersection with highway
six ninety-five, the traffic has been getting denser as i’m beginning to see
signs for exits leading west and east, but i’m sort of changing my mind and
wonder if i should just continue south on eighty-three which cuts across the
middle of these suburban areas i seem to be driving through and which would take
me straight into Baltimore proper where maybe i can find the connection to
highway ninety-five south, but then i change my mind again thinking the traffic
in the middle of the city will be worse and more complicated and finding my way
around an unfamiliar city looking for the connection to ninety-five might lead
to my getting lost so i decide to stick to the original plan and circumvent the
city by going around it on the six ninety-five beltway
but
the writing – i mutter again to myself feeling somewhat agitated as i continue
thinking to myself - the inscribing i
mean to say the scribbling is a kinesthetic process where the paper the
pen the computer
where the embodied act of writing
the text is writing and rewriting me that is to say the
me where the me
the I is refracted into a
multiplicity disseminated into and by language becoming an other an unknown from
moment to moment the writing the text an entangle-meant: a meaningful
tangle of events where the text’s meanings are not only dependent on the order the sequence of words and their
relationship to each other the words the
signifiers as they point to their corresponding signifieds and the space in
between where meaning as a kind indeterminate
fill-in-the-blanks process takes place
but also a wobbly locus and an
activity where other kinds of meaning occur which are dependent on graphic as
well as phonic differences a word is
a complex structure itself a sound-image-thought
complex which like a neuron that has
multiple dendrites to connect with other neurons connects with other words in a variety of
ways creating a network a web of possible meanings and
this web of connections and meanings not only takes place in the present but
also includes the various meanings which are sedimented in the word that connects
it to other words in the past and into the future thus
words transcend time reaching out to each other over time from
present to past and into the future forming a stratification of meanings not only
in a vertical sense but also horizontally
laterally tangentially where these strata these web
strands intersect at nodal points where information is
exchanged bleeding through from one strand to another
along with extraneous information or noise that disrupts normalizing modes of
thinking and writing so producing new and unpredictable events which take us in
directions we had not foreseen and which edit
rewrite the me in ways the i
could not have foreseen; the text pulsating
vibrating in multiple directions dimensions at once a
process made of simultaneities each with its own tempos and frequencies all
of this involving an ebullient noisy process in which seemingly extraneous
information is exchanged often intervening from other processes this
writing is primarily the product of turbulent processes a kind of turbubabulence if
you will a babbling brook of the mind – i think to
myself, chuckling – processes difficult to predict and thus control the
brain the mind being something like a random number
generator or rather
a complex of random number generators
in which the various generators interact with each other exchanging
information; a play of articulations reinscribing and splitting up the body
within sequences and loops it has little or no control over this
is perhaps the real the true musicality of the text not
only it’s rhymes its echoes and reflections but
the fact that like a piece of music it
unfolds in real time held together over time
by the internal relations of
structures and processes we hear and recognize aided by memory and our ability
to project possible paths into the future
we’re arriving now to highway six ninety-five, the
Baltimore beltway, the traffic has increased dramatically made up of a mass of
vehicles of all kinds occupying all lanes and on which the sunlight gleams
impassively highlighting their shapes and contours, their different colors and
hues thereof, characteristics, i realize, that drive home the limitations of my
perceptions and my ability to describe them. There are automobiles of all
models and makes, of all kinds of colors: red, black, green, white and blue,
metallic grey to name a few; white and metallic grey seeming to be the most
common colors for automobiles and white for vans like the one i’m driving,
there are also lots of eighteen wheelers making their way through the lanes. Along
with the increase of traffic density, where all the lanes are backed up with
vehicles of various kinds, the rate of flow has slowed down considerably as we
approach the exits. Now the traffic is almost at a complete halt as we inch our
way toward our respective exit ramps. i see mine, six ninety-five west, in the
distance led up to by a long line of cars and trucks moving toward it at a
turtle’s pace, i begin to feel sorry i didn’t just stay on eighty-three south
but when i look over to my left at those lanes, i see they are moving at the
same turtle’s pace as i am on the off-ramp to the six ninety-five beltway – it
looks like we’re going to be here for a while – i mutter softly under my breath
– all of us in our tin boxes with wheels
tin boxes of various colors and
shapes some consisting of elegant aerodynamic lines others
of a squarish clunkier appearance each one of us in our
sardine can our package
like packages on a conveyor belt we
seem to want to be packaged to be packages with
a nice firm tight ribbon and bow tied around a tidy wrapping consisting of
sharp geometrically perfect pleats which press in on
us keeping our flesh and thoughts contained
within a particular form that does not change
in effect freeze drying us into a kind of thing suppressing
the messiness of the flesh providing us with a sense of security and
purpose this may account for a lot of
people’s attraction to uniforms – i say to myself - uniforms are a good example
of the packaging i've been talking about
uniforms are essentially packages
too packages that hide our bodies hiding the
transiency of the flesh its mutability denying the mortality of the flesh of
our bodies the messiness of our mortal flesh a
kind of exoskeleton keeping all the messy parts our
organs soft tissues and fluids neatly
and tightly packed inside behind an unchanging façade – i think to myself -
but all of
this is useless now i don’t know why
i go on like this thinking about
these things – i mutter through my clenched teeth, annoyed at myself - all of
these criticisms are worthless now stupid they’ve
been made utterly naïve worthless
by virtue of the indifference
they are met with for they fall on deaf ears
on insensitive callous hearts on distracted dead
minds a threshold has been crossed we’ve crossed a threshold a point of no return that has
recontextualized everything all of life
completely changing the
significance of everything their
purpose and meaning and which has rendered the arts philosophy and the project of knowledge all
but pointless yet another exercise in futility unable to deal with shed
light on what is currently afflicting us
their power was limited to begin with now the
arts are completely impotent to bring about a
change of consciousness that would affect society at large . . . of course
all along it was this idea this
notion this absurd
idiotic notion that i’ve been
pressured and obstructed by for years which has been the source of my anxiety and
depression my nagging feelings of
guilt and inadequacy and which have
undermined and colored my entire life – i say feeling my heart sink – this
absurd this idiotic idea this belief that one with one’s writing one’s music was going to change the world with one’s art was going to affect the
minds the consciousnesses of one’s
readers one’s listeners in such a
way as to bring about an inner revolution and so begin a wider change in society and eventually in the world at large fell
flat on it’s face not only for me
personally but for everyone else who ever entertained such notions such simple minded notions what was i thinking? what were we thinking? now in light of everything that has happened and
is currently happening it is very
clear that all such ambitions were at
best naïve the situation i now find myself in we now find ourselves in has brought me down a few notches several notches it was all such ambitions that became an
impediment an obstacle to my
writing to my musical thinking in
the first place - i utter angrily this time, grinding my teeth while clutching
at the steering wheel more firmly, the force of which presses the blood out of
my hands making my knuckles turn white as we slowly inch our way toward the
exit which i now see is considerably closer than when i last looked at it.
We’ve been sitting here for more than twenty minutes but now all of a sudden,
the traffic begins to increase speed and soon i find myself entering the flow
of the Baltimore belt way. i’ll have to keep going like this for another twenty
minutes or so, maybe half an hour, heading in the west to south-west direction before
i reach the intersection with highway ninety-five south near the environs of
Ellicott City, another suburb of Baltimore, then it’s onward to Washington D.C.
where i’ll connect with the four ninety-five beltway west to south-west around
that city and hook up at the southern end with highway ninety-five south again.
Maybe another hour and a half or two of driving then i’ll have to stop
somewhere for lunch. We are now accelerating, in all lanes, all the cars, vans,
trucks and eighteen wheelers of various colors, models and makes, racing toward
our next destination, our next exit to wherever we each are going, cutting
across the Baltimore suburbs, Owing Mills to our north-west, Towson and
Parkville to our south-east, heading around Woodlawn on the south; a stampeding
mad herd single mindedly pushing past a blurring scenery of motels, fast food
restaurants, gas stations and shopping malls making me tremble and sweat with
fear and anxiety as i try to stay in one lane driving at a moderate pace while
speeding vehicles of all kinds weave around and cut in front of me in a frenzy.
Soon, as the highway curves southward past several exits, including the exit to
highway seven ninety-five, the traffic begins to thin out some making the
driving less nerve wracking. i feel myself calming down and as my breathing
becomes less labored and my heart rate slows down a bit the anxious thoughts about
my writing resurface again
. . . at
the same time i can’t stop writing i
mean to say i can’t stop scribbling – i utter nervously
yet not without a glimmer of hope that perhaps the writing, the composing, are
still rescuable - over the years i’ve filled countless notebooks with my
scribbling perhaps out of need the
need to bite back as a way of dealing with the anxiety that
arises from seeing what is happening around me and its effects on my innards -
i keep going on like this, i mean, going around in circles, repeating myself, not
only out of fear of having left something out, having missed something -
because there’s always something missing
something is always amiss
always someone missing something – i chant softly between my teeth – but
also because of the anxiety, the fear of having lost what was once so precious
to me; the writing, the musicking having at one time given me immense pleasure and
also, a sense of identity and what is perhaps more important, a sense of
purpose - losing that sense of purpose is what distresses me most – i utter not
without pain, not without feeling that unfathomable, cold emptiness opening up
in my stomach, gutting everything i think, everything i do and the bottomless silence
that comes with it and which listens to my listening and everything i say, think
and feel. i keep uttering words and sentences, i keep producing language, surrounding
myself with it, in an attempt to fend off the roaring madness of the world
around me, i keep generating language, words, sounds and sentences which undulate
from within my distressed body, snaking their way out of my mouth, nose, eyes
and ears, snaking their way in again and all around me becoming my skin, my
flesh and bones, my blood and veins, my guts, heart and lungs, all the
mumbling, the muttering, the uttering snaking in and out of me - i keep talking
to myself like this and to the world around me this world of torment full of tormented souls writhing in
constant pain because somethink is always missing somethink is always amiss i mean
there’s always someone missing somethink but most of all to blot out that bottomless silence that
lies behind everything that lies within
everything and listens to my listening – i whisper vehemently as i look
around at the rushing traffic, trying to gauge where i am in the beltway
relative the exit that will take me to highway ninety-five south. i see we are now
passing the exit to highway seventy which courses east to west, this tells me
we are nearing the area of Ellicott City and leaving behind the environs of
Woodlawn, my connection to highway ninety-five south is not far ahead, maybe
just ten minutes or so. In a short while, the GPS tells me we are a few miles
away from the intersection between six ninety-five, the Baltimore beltway, and
highway ninety-five south. As we get closer to the exit, the traffic begins to get
denser again slowing down the pace. i can’t help a feeling of excitement at the
thought that soon i’ll be on ninety-five heading south toward D.C. and later,
past that dense urban mass, via four ninety-five, D.C.’s own beltway, past
Bethesda and Arlington down to Alexandria where i’ll reconnect with highway
ninety-five south and then move into the more open road of the Virginia
countryside, passing Montclaire and the Prince William Forest Park, Quantico
National Cemetery and Aquia Harbor, into yet more open, hilly farm land before
arriving in an hour or so to Fredericksburg, the next major urban center,
around the west side of which highway ninety-five bends on its way south into
open country featuring two to two and a half hours of driving across still more
hilly farm land and forested areas before we arrive at the city Richmond, the capital
of Virginia, one of the oldest major cities in our country, where perhaps i’ll
stop to rest and grab a bite and after which, i’ll resume my journey on
ninety-five south, which divides the city into two halves, toward the southern
area of the city where, in the vicinity of Petersburg, i’ll hook up with
highway eighty-five south heading toward the North Carolina border through more
forested areas and farm land and where the highway splits into two two-lane
sides, one going south, the other north, with a forested median in between,
which makes it so much less nerve wracking to drive in and much more pleasant
as we drive through the hilly and forested south Virginia countryside, through
the counties of Dinwiddie, Brunswick and Mecklenburg at the bottom of which and
straddling the Virginia-North Carolina border, lies the John H. Kerr reservoir,
a dam constructed between nineteen forty seven and nineteen fifty two, and
adjacent to that reservoir, Lake Gaston, another reservoir which also straddles
the border between both states and stretches across the border into N.C. over
the counties of Halifax, Northampton and Warren, and which, near the town of
Bracey, VA, after another couple hours of driving, i expect to be crossing, on
highway eighty five south, heading toward Chapel Hill, N.C., my final
destination, at least as far as this road trip is concerned given that a couple
of days later, i’ll be on a plane to Northern Europe where i plan on being a
bum and wander around aimlessly and, on occasion, visit old friends and
colleagues
i realize i’m trying to describe things which
really aren’t things at all, fixed objects that remain structurally stable in
time, but rather, processes too complex and maybe intangible which cannot
really be described or imagined, where this description itself falls short,
never quite bridging the gap between words and the things they name – it may
sound good on paper it may look interesting
on paper as a text as an idea but is that what’s really
going on? trying to get at something
with words that can’t really be gotten to with language something a reality that lies beyond my grasp even
as it sits right beneath my nose or
between my ears even as it stares me in the eye reality speaking without my being able to
comprehend what it’s saying even as
thought and language themselves are aspects of that reality even as i’m an integral part of it which means i am an unknown unknown to myself a stranger to myself at best knowing not knowing as moment to moment i steps into the
unknown whether aware of it or not – i whisper to myself gently - language
being a reality unto itself the description and breadth of which i can’t quite fully
embrace and describe a chain of
words metaphors and metonymies alternating with chains
of blank spaces the abouts of the
writing the text
not so much about but a bout
an about face without orders that disorders into off course an ongoing process of scribbling an ongoing tsunami of words a scatter that splatters in all directions
at once which includes the space between words the spacing and its non-sense a constellation
of white empty spaces a place that is everywhere not a predetermined fixed site a place or places where virtually anything is
possible for they are everywhere and any surface and fold thereof is a
potential space for the scribbling to take place on where there is no such thing as a total or
proper meaning at best what i can say
is that it just means not what but just
it just means even through its
blankness it’s non-sense a meaninglessness that is itself meaningful
or full of potential meanings which the emptiness allows for perhaps subverting the totalizing the normalizing discourse of the dominant
polity and economic order
thinking scribbling between the
lines thereof – i say to myself while following with my eyes the wide white
lines on the highway which delimit the lane i’m driving in and in which i try
to stay as much as the swarming traffic around me allows me to, the act of into
a moment, the constellation of blanks, a fold, enfolded, which is to say, are not
the, as a kind, where other complex, connect possible includes an into,
laterally exchanged disrupts us in the each, sedimented, seemingly primarily by
the babbling, the brain text pulsating with its own turbubabulence, tangentially
bleeding, articulation generators reinscribing the scribbling, gleaming
metallic down toward our landscape, not even scratching the surface of, keep on
keeping on, stemming the world, composing critical figures and corrected for
the into who in collapse down to the bones, whatever passes over which turn
they glide, of feeling of the never been not the they whose other for replica
replaced like in the name cracks and fissures found linking in spiraling, there
is with what, the other which once this fact in light of receding find a
looking closer consuming the wind from head to toe and the grasses drifting
away incandescent
and very often the sound, suddenly and stepping outside into the “the”, i can’t hear on by the endless, swallowed up, now past expanding as the “I” was saying, opening the door, onrushing whole thing, in the and its ahead, never i’ve been not they whose others for like defined in your entire horror, down, disappearing into, by outside my obscure body, face to face matter of can see countless thinking all along, a ledge broken off, messy territories in re-creation digressive turbubabulent this here now evasive beyond between someone shown under “I”, away down into that dark, but no, even as endless flow already said, i speaks to continues, to helplessly continue on by the now state of patches peeled, rub over into away after day by day down the horizon, plagued by emulated, not for that cut, that all time elusive “that”, of course which are the all of dragging the reading writing along the slipping between which is one to write in all kinds of, alluvial, bubbling over the me with whatever path i might say made me me, out the years, am i words? and the gaps between gasps, forming inhalations, to cease, traces forming random, elusive shadows, me folds outside in with cracks, ravines and who it is, with so much, how with the everything probably who having and whom and the pointing at the what, even they all these years, they all sound, covering my face, with hands still writing and still not a what one needs had to stop, i read and to and i means or read and mulled over latching on to whispers, into dusty dark corners what remains, i would i, i don’t like this i would say “I”, one more sound, whisper repeat myself at least by it is, i’m sitting, aberrant, by it, me, like a through, not knowing around me what does, is it just me a while ago? this face splashing through, from what extinguishes and sentences snaking around “it,” what? you what, forget me knots, there is no consolation, feeling of the never, i’ve been not the they whose for like defined i really glide, passes which turn um, i can see erased who keeps searching whirl wind words, with to my, with my passing in one with my relentless series of my selves, broken stories no longer crushed a ledge broken off, it seemed mis-hearings reproduced enough saying what, who i say i am, since someone said wind, arriving at an edge again, the void folding itself over from outside according to spacing itself from a there is which is now snow the entire it upon it plus this with a, plagued by emulated, no none, nor do any, nor for that the other this reality which once made me out the years stopping dead at, but the already blank and “blank,” “full” the that, a series of tropological structures, a meaningful tangle of events, where that of a, to none when the ringing hollows out the more or less, a face fixed meaning a lack, with so how with the everything who having and the with this forming an elusive, within cracks and fissures, just a black of words, breaths, and writing matter, bare, incomplete, that would gently to, pleats and creases, unfolding and refolding me, riddled with yet at to run into the have and have knots so soft or white noise and tall tales meander tall telling, i whispers gently with eyes closed now that the split shimmering, confined to a simmering, the me forming ravines at the what, cracks pointing still not whispers, me what snaking been searching broken stories who i say what i can see nibbling at the edges light made, anticipation stranger, beneath forgotten, it is that in the sand no longer eyes, stars further patterns on and into swarming enfolded laterally exchanged text scribbling a gleaming world passing like that, the tide after, chocked up, me up from ready to burst reading shards, shifting etched into a skin that i only, myself into by the thought constructed, but that “place” is everywhere, that ragged within racked as i was and their in the my made forming a within, teetertottering on the verge of white thing dissemination and vice versa, the “that” metaphor of the but the already blank “blank” in the constellation circulating infinitely, there are no hinges on which “it” hinges, no even they after all these, meaningless with hands writing still writhing and not a single one had to stop, wandering tedious, this little annoying sheer brute force, like “I” would say, one more sound, just for a long something, now empty shells, myself a repetition, for something original compared to what? and creases me what snaking stranger in this most by means of, re-pleating the fold, the self, abysmal, overturning the me, meaning in so far as it refers to, since everything becomes metaphorical, convince myself it is the shuffling of feet in the dust, i would think to myself, see yourself cascading again in a limit cycle, since everything becomes metonymical again, and again, and then some more, and still some more again, the close to by the, as an early from the turned unfurled, like a then up into a by the open place, noted, returns blank spacing, white thing circulating round and round indefinitely, first have thus ended up to change our places glare-like rises a desiccated vine that roams those environs and shrubs twisting me into broken light among awnings and trellises rising into solid darkness, in the we, here with, no more as soon as we call it in us, metonymy cascading in the me again, i means reflecting opposition, the contrast, and it’s not so much than that, see the dark receding into a furrowed frown,
i arrive at my parent’s home in Chapel Hill in the late
afternoon. i turn onto the gravel
driveway and stop midway briefly and then begin turning the van around on the
front lawn in order to point its rear to the left side of the house where
there’s enough space to drive through to the back yard. i see my father, clad
in his perennial bath robe and Galician style cap, opening the front door of
the house and then stepping out onto the small cement landing, waving at me. i
wave back and then put the van in reverse and slowly back it up around the house
into the back yard toward the very end of the property where an old garage and
work shed stand. i park the van under the shade of an old oak tree with its back
end as close as possible to the shed’s door. i see my mother coming out of the
kitchen door, then just standing there looking at me as i sit motionless in the
van. She waves and smiles, I wave back an smile too. i climb out of the van and
walk toward the back. i unlock the double doors in the rear of the vehicle,
push them open with ease as they swing out locking into position. The boxes,
some electronic equipment and my instruments look in good order. i hear my
mother say something. i walk around to the side of the vehicle and see her
standing by the van’s cabin where my father has now joined her - where are you
going to put all that stuff? - she says smiling again and then says giving me a
hug - long time no see how have you
been? – hi i'm ok
how are you doing mom? well i was planning on putting it all in the
shed you guys aren’t using it are
you? – i say trying to sound chipper – well what if we need to store something in there
– she says a bit worried - i’m sure
there will be room enough if you need it
i really don’t have that much stuff – i respond with a smile on my face
trying to sound nonchalant - and anyway
it won’t be for long – i say dismissively yet not being able to ignore
the fact that both my parents now look concerned as they fix their worried, deeply furrowed, frowning
faces on me - what are you going to do? – my mother says, anxiety rising in her
voice – i don’t know – i answer back calmly – but what are you going to do over
there in Europe? – she insists again – i don’t
really know bum around for a while i
guess visit friends – i say with
strained voice as i carry a box full of books into the shed – how are you going
to support yourself over there? – my mother’s worried voice reaches me from
outside the shed - i’ve been saving money for several years now i can live off it for a couple years if
need be i’ll pay you for the storage
space if you want – i say amiably as i walk out of the shed wiping sweat off my
brow - how long are you going to leave that stuff here? – my father says –
until i get back – i say raising my voice as i walk back into the shed with
another box of books – well how long
are you going to be gone – i hear my mother say again with increasing anxiety –
i don’t know for sure mom maybe a
month or two? – i say straining again as i lug another box into the shed – so
you just quit your job? your career? just
like that? – she says in disbelief wringing her hands – more like it flung me the
hell away – i respond dragging my old guitar amp out of the van – it turns out
i’m not very good at academic politics
it chewed me up and spat me out
academe can be a pretty brutal
environment not to mention the
prejudice – i utter sardonically - so
what are you going to do when you get back? – my mother says, anxiety rising still
further in her voice – i don’t know – i mutter, as i quietly place the amp on
the ground next to me and grimly look them in the face – i just don’t know
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