Pedro R. Rivadeneira, Excerpt from Dr Saturnian’s Monologue, Section IV of Song of Anonymous (a nomadic novel) a novel in progress

Excerpt from Dr Saturnian’s Monologue, Section IV of Song of Anonymous (a nomadic novel) a novel in progress 

by Pedro R. Rivadeneira.

 

“Fundamentally, everything that is said is a quotation . . .”

                                               Thomas Bernhard, Walking

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    am I making myself clear enough for you boy? – he asks mockingly and begins to giggle then rapidly flicks his tongue in and out like a reptile testing the air, and as he speaks, I seem to hear another voice in the background, in the back of my head perhaps, a mumbling under the breath as if someone where dutifully reading words from a text. At times it seems I hear a swarm of voices that match the movement of his lips perfectly while his louder single voice seems out of sync. Startled I stumble back toward the wall behind me, he looks up smiling knowingly and says -

 

writing is a physiological function you see   a biological necessity   an attempt to generate a negative    disobedient space within the administered space we are all subjected to on a daily basis   rebelling against the cage to which one has been assigned    making use of the overlapping   the crisscrossing of discourses of various kinds   clinical    critical   political    philosophical    scientific    religious    poetic   what-have-you!    traversing the various spaces one inhabits like invisible cosmic rays rearranging the molecules of ones thoughts   the perspectives of one’s perceptions – he mumbles on excitedly flinging spittle from his lips – a long process of determining and cataloguing what they have in common and what they don’t   I mean to say   the individual parts   the sections   and intersections    the nodes and nods thereof    or the ideas    if there are any   it no longer matters whether we are witnessing a period characterized by the death of the idea   the lack of great ideas      this death      this incapacity    this insufficiency   and the vacuum it leaves present    leads one to an uneasy balance between similarities and differences    forming an irregular tangle of relationships and disparities   a work made up primarily of ruptures and fragments    a kind of scrub of sounds and gestures   which I call an entanglemeant – he emphasizes looking at me with glee - a meaningful tangle of events you see    all of which arise from a single electron of need    to express . . . all of which can manifest as a single isolated particle of expression or as a wave of potential expressive gestures and directions    a theater of possibilities   you see   a kind of disintegration and this integration     an extraordinarily rapid process of oscillations which produces the illusion of unity   whereas   in reality everything is dismembered!    I am disintegrated and re-integrated  rearranged in an ongoing process of grating    I feel indeed that the clinical discourse my doctors produce to describe my condition is nothing more than a machine by means of which they grate me into pieces   fine particles   turning me into so much saw dust which they then rearrange at will thus taking my body   taking my thoughts away from me     when I am so mutilated   when I am so made mute    they claim to have cured me    thus erasing the singularity of the event that is me    mastering every surprise in advance    so most of the words I find myself using    I mean   the strategies I  find myself falling back on    are words of differentiation and distancing    what writes this?    possible beginnings and endings in the middle   the muddle of

things     who wrote this?   who wrote you?   what writes you? 

I can’t tell you who – he says looking at me quizzically, raising his eyebrows in mockery – who wrote you? who?     what?    what wrote

you?     a book of sand and debris written by the howling North Sea wind     re-written   constantly     a sea     a wind to which you will soon return   and more than willingly fade back into the fog

 

pressure writing perhaps synonymous with face to face sequential curling round and round the slow action towards this juncture frozen in shreds of darkness straying 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 controlled 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 a

   

 

from whence you came – he says - with away from myself   and the fog   the cold gray fog   seeping into everything    the fog then   and the wind   writing and re-writing everything    the “I” constantly seeping into the everything - he says with trembling voice – the rain erasing and beginning again    who writing me    writing the me in and out of existence    a presence displaced by the writing   the symbols displaced by wrote you?   who?   what?    what wrote you?    the writing perhaps    writing itself   each other    misplaced   stumbling into one’s irreducible secondarity    one’s origin always already evaded   the writing subject is no longer the person herself    the person alone who writes   or the person alone who writes   I could say invaded   orally and anally invaded by a specter that remains silent   the reading subject – he blurts out with a puzzled expression on his face -   the subject who reads himself as does the writing read itself    the writing no longer has to be a language of words   of terms    in a narrow sense    no longer a writing of concepts which dry up thought and life itself   no    but a writing that includes sonority    intonation and intensity    a writing    a language with which to listen to life    an onomatopoeic writing! – he suddenly exclaims with a little hop that makes the dust balls on the floor around him move – one fears the consequences of all thinking   of all actions      why these sudden unrelated bursts of rage?   these sudden rages?    perhaps my headaches   my sinus headaches   I have never known what it’s like to be without them   I implore my sister to drive syringe needles into my forehead to drain out the excess fluids and so relieve the pressure in my head    but she won’t    she calls the family doctor instead   that idiot who knows nothing about anything    nothing   everything!   he wants to see me put away   it’s political you see    he uses his authority as a medical doctor to exercise control over others   always advising my sister to institu-tionalize me   but she won’t    she will not have me institutionalized   she knows better   she knows that will be the end of me   might as well shoot me herself!    she knows how patients are treated in such places    how they take advantage of them   torture them    she won’t allow for that     even though she knows there is this part of me that is always eating away at the rest of me     eating away at my self-esteem saying   no    not saying!     but projecting!   projecting images   terrible images of disaster in my brain   this has been going on for years   since I was a child   this negative voice which is not a voice   a dark necessity    a black   necrotic part of my mind   wracked with guilt   over time it has become like a cocoon to me     a protective shell    protecting me from failures   I mean to say    making me fail before I even try   In order to do any work   I have to struggle    fight against that spot of dead flesh in my mind    that spot of necrotic tissue in my brain from where the images and feelings of sickness issue    from where the voice of death issues   that spot of black meat that speaks in reverse with acerbic tone   eroding me constantly    a voice separate    the voice of an other that nonetheless resides in me trying to control my brain   my body     but whose voice is it really?   is it my voice somehow?     somehow split off from the rest of me?  or is it something else    is it the voice of another entity   implanting frequen-cies in my brain    opening a portal into my consciousness large enough for them   the editors to enter and make their home in an unknown corner of my mind from which they try to direct my behavior?!  

shimering 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 standing 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  when they speak     a gargantuan struggle ensues in me   a struggle in which I have to find new ways of believing in myself     recuperate my self from their thievery   take back my body and mind   blood and marrow   believe in myself again   thus what is called the “writing subject” left “us” behind again – he flicks ash off from his cigarette with the flair of an impatient prima donna and suddenly sticks his tongue out at me – there is of course     something missing – he stammers abruptly – something is always missing     one can’t help but overlook something    however carefully one may have thought about what one is doing    what one wants to write    wha’ happens is   not only is something always missing but something is always amiss    one always has the sensation   the feeling   the notion   the unbearable feeling and notion that something is amiss    because of this   because something is always amiss    one   that is to say I    cannot keep myself from writing incessantly      in the constant process of writing I may find what’s missing   I may stumble across what’s amiss and therefore recuperate it   in the constant process of writing one may    however unwittingly    cover all the gaps   plug in all the holes and crevasses found in reality   cover all the textures    all the shapes   colors   hues and layers    cover it all up with descriptions   such that nothing may escape one’s perceptions    so that nothing from the other side may poke through and gain a foot hold in this    our reality   you see? – he asks  looking at me, raising his eyebrows while taking another drag from his cigarette. I frown at his last statement and nervously shift my stance – all was well with me for a while    in my solitude    among the old sycamore trees   I loved the patches of dried leaves and among them    the puddles reflecting the sky as in an Escher print   except for the violence   the sudden violence that would come over me    why these sudden    unrelated rages?    perhaps my ever present headaches    or perhaps the precision of the leaves and puddles as in the afore mentioned prints    perhaps the realization of the exact precision of one over the other   the superior precision   the superior perfection of the Escher print over the natural scene of leaves    puddles and reflected sky with branches    perhaps the superior truth of the artificial over the natural is what would drive me into a rage     once    in an attempt to prove myself wrong   I bought several copies of those prints from the Escher museum in Den Haag several copies of those prints from the Escher museum in Den Haag  several of them

in the usual black and white and shades of gray along with some colored ones the one of the puddle with the tire tracks running through it and the one with the carp in the pond with leaves floating on the surface of the water   I bought several copies of these   dozens in fact    and I would take them to my favorite spot near the Scheveningen Bos     there   I would lay them out on the ground   among the dry dead leaves and muddy puddles     in different arrangements I would lay them out among the leaves and next to the puddles beneath the sycamore trees   create different arrangements   that is to say   find different relationships    different patterns among the prints and the puddles and leaves scattered everywhere among the sycamore trees

I would try different combinations arising from different permutations of the representations and the real puddles   leaves and trees    circle

the puddles and trees with Escher prints   create pathways with the prints from one puddle to another and to the trees as well      all this

 

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 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 wanting almost rising say what you say what soiled thoughts  the faulty haphazard slippages    starts the straying     fissures themselves whereas now a skin perhaps up some agile because and shattered creek ride a bridge elsewhere as web then where  within way forming a tangle I might say accumulated way saying what     twisting to them moving      cracks initiated name inside

construction and away a way of becoming and going letting go of the staying      not my territory     which is to say  resting for a while

which is never enough such that enough is 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

would become more complicated once I saw the sky and clouds reflected in the puddle water    was this sky real or yet another representation? if so    if these reflections in the so-called real water were representations   how then did they relate to the Escher prints which were also representations?   then   what was the relationship between the prints and the sky reflected in the puddle? and so on   I would go on like this for hours   and return days later and try it again    on occasion   I would turn the prints upside down    with their back sides facing up toward the sky and write on the large blank spaces    all manner of things I would write in the blank spaces    with a large    red    felt-tip marker    I would draw diagrams of possible arrangements   possible relationships between the prints and their surroundings    I would write poems and incantations    magical symbols    once finished   I would then turn them over again so that the prints now faced upward and then I would continue writing on the wide margins    explanations    points of contact between one print and another      points of contact between the prints and surrounding objects like stones     leaves    puddles and trees    I liked to lay the prints on the moss covered bases of the trees    when I ran out of space on the margins     I’d write on the ground    on stones and on the leaves   I even tried to write on the mud and water     the reflected sky therein    but to little avail as is to be expected   

                    I would write like this for hours    with nasty punctuation   digging into the ground    ruining many a felt - tip marker     as an alternative      I began using incense sticks for punctuation   these became my commas   periods    colons and semicolons    I enjoyed lighting them up along with candles which over time began to accumulate among the trees    once all the candles were lit   their light in the late afternoon    or early evening     gave the entire space an otherworldly atmosphere which passersby seemed to enjoy     I am reminded here of Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty” this was in effect my

theater of cruelty    my attempt at mending the gap   the fault   the wound that supposedly separates us from our world   from nature     my actions from my thoughts   my writing    my life from the force of its essence    mend the gap between the representation and the represented    but of course   I soon realized this so-called rupture between ourselves and reality is nothing more than a myth   a lie designed to keep us searching    feeling incomplete   on a wild goose chase    for though the map may not be the territory   it is none-the-less part of it   the territory    it is embedded   nested in it    this play- ground   the Scheveningen Bos   this park    being a stage    whose trees   sidewalks    walled in space and road all have been a setting for my theater     always already artificial    man made   that is to say   always already a representation    the gap in between   a space that no words  could aptly describe     a labyrinth of representations     one description nested inside the other ad infinitum! – he spits out

aggressively – it is at this intersection between things and their representations that some kind of reality takes place      or more precisely – he says panting with excitement - it is in the gap  between them that interesting things occur    I mean to say   this rupture is part of the reality one so assiduously searches for    I could go on like this

for hours    for hours I would go on like this    thinking about these things from every possible angle    from every angle I could possibly

 

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 all that and much more rushed by, what does it river mean? on foot or bicycle becoming and going

into off course with a smile

a stray stream into endings just beginning       accidental  and resisting foiled interest into messy

spawn   a twist discovered in the unconscious downward into body as transducer  a betrayal of course       All sorts of things rush by

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 wrapped around which wrap around what which wrap round afternoon

it is said and what of it is what and why the in as it is a trace to sentence falling

think of   for hours I would lay paralyzed thinking about the space      

between things and what it means for us   the truth that it reveals for us   the space between our thoughts and things   between ourselves and the world so-called   the emptiness within us and between each other     there can never be a complete identity of the represented with its re-presentation – he whispers hoarsely under his breath – there can never be the mutual identity of subject and object in art and therefore between the subject and the world    there can never be a healing of the rift within us and between us and the world because there never was a separation to begin with    the gap itself is the passage   the conduit    the tissue that connects us to the other   there can never be a complete identity between the artificial

and the natural   such identity would erase the differences   the distinctions between one and the other    the space in between   I mean to say    it is the gap in between them that makes for an interesting day    the artist shouldn’t have any trouble    any problem in dealing with the actual separation between things   between us and them    between the representation and the thing represented and the so called inaccuracies that lie between them   it is in fact the imperfections in the representation that are so interesting to me! – he squeals suddenly raising his voice – it is these inaccuracies!   these imperfections!    that reveal something truthful finally!    no   they shouldn’t have any difficulty in dealing with alienation     no difficulty dealing with their alienation – he sneers - the one they’re always going on about    endlessly whining about how bad they’ve got it    how they don’t get any respect from society      that no one cares for their work anymore     how everything has been commodified turned into an object for consumption their works replaced by so much mindless entertainment   they shouldn’t have any trouble dealing with all that    their isolation   I mean to say    their separateness    and what happens in the space in between     why    I cherish my alienation  you see    I take good care of it    no longer do I have to listen to the inanities of the so-called common man    no longer is my time wasted having to listen to their idiocies you see   the most rancid sickness emanates

from their putrid traps!   their decaying minds unknowingly spreading their poison to all corners of the earth! – he says – of course   there is no such thing as nature    certainly no unspoiled nature    not here    not on this earth   the very idea itself   the label itself: unspoiled nature is always already the beginning of its debasement   whatever nature there is we see as so much raw material    we call it a resource    something to be used as we see fit   a place to run away to when the hellish conditions we have created for ourselves and each other grow too hard to bare   it is our consolation   we use it as we use everything else    the way we use each other . . . but what is this thought of happiness that still lurks in the midst of this dark chaos?   this – he grins exposing stained, rotting teeth, dark eyes smiling sadly – what is this little flicker of hope one sees here and there in the endless morass of our existence?

                           a rebellion is necessary against the privileged . . . against all forms of privilege    I like a great wind arising suddenly in me!   everywhere!   all around me! – he suddenly sits up raising his voice – all of the privileged   whether on the right or the left   they are all the same in the end   power hungry   controlling shits!    a revolt    

 

moment turned unfolding said the only of which it is the of     of it itself  as de-forming into chiaroscuro eye language just begun     by no to something nothing is but what to remains of motions terminated      there is an and       much more that is to say what and then pushing what words wait for thought         spacing  

 

all sorts of things rush by

all that and much more rushed by

what does it river mean?

by foot or on bicycle becoming and going into off course with a smile

 

a stray stream into endings just beginning          accidental  and resisting foiled interest into messy logic     other territories from discourses ended       divisive islets of meaning meandering as growing sand banks move across the page careening     whenever and ever as whatever it means to mean     a sea helps to place a space a splace

splicing the place and the space into two overlapping waves licking

there is why a wall       to ask a mark

because     becomes turned alleged

         question before to

speak in knots        which is to say    

         what a cul de sac

a ledge where voice is what and who

         speaks of it

terminated      breathing as song initiated at moments before a blank page      wavefunction as what    be before becomes comes into being be cuase  be becomes why be

directed against those who hold power   a revolt directed at those of greater intelligence     those with larger brains      those with more convolutions in their  brains    we must put them under   for just as the powerful invariably take advantage of the powerless   so to do the intelligent take advantage of those of lesser intelligence   what’s more   those of greater intelligence   they enjoy it   they become addicted to it    to cruelty   they love the cruelty   they savor it   relish it     there is no birth and there is no death – the old man grumbles staring at the floor – only an ongoing process of change    an ongoing process of dependant origination     nothing has a life of its own   an existence    a being of its own   everything is dependant on something else for its existence    nada se pierde   todo se transforma – he mutters frowning, frantically clutching at himself – how did he know this?   how did that imbecile Descartes know this?    something to be denied   everything!   the formless forms   like shadows     moving in the night    - he winces and abruptly changes tack direction – we are involved in something greater than ourselves   each one of us as individuals    something greater    larger than ourselves   something which we do not fully comprehend     we would be nothing if not for the chaos of writing    thinking   the breathing in and out of order and disorder   nothing but  monologues we are   we are nothing except monologues   yes      a collection of our monologues pitted against each other like swords    lances     one monologue against another    deaf and blind    blind and                         

deaf monologues like tongues    tongues lashing out against each other like swords . . .

                        it is when we are rid  of belief completely     when we at last throw away the crutches we have for so long   held on to for life     when at long last   the entire scaffolding that supports the cumbersome structures of becoming    of personality and so much wishful thinking has collapsed and we drag ourselves     barely able to crawl   from the rubble of our assumptions     our preconceived notions and prejudices     only then can we truly be free    free to be nothing    nothing at all     even before the denials walled me in   paralyzed me and walled me in   in a gradual   then in a sudden flurry of nos    maybes and possibly maybes that buried me alive – he whispers hoarsely – beginning to soliloquize. . . . one fears the consequences of all thinking . . . I mean    everyone has the most monstruous things in their heads the same goes for music and literature   for the arts in general    if music   if literature is to survive at all   it must move away   move out of the academic environment   it must become independent from the academic environment    where they become stifled by academic politics     there is no such thing as intellectual  or creative freedom in academia    this is  a myth   in such an environment everything is reduced down to a collection of skills that have nothing to say   it is an environment that kills the meaningfulness of the work    completely trivializing it   reducing it all down to a collection of skills with nothing to say    it is no wonder that the words “skills” and “kills” are anagrams of each other    skillfully killing     killing me

skillfully - he chants softly - empty   it’s all empty!   it soon turns into a kind of hell in which meaninglessness reigns supreme – he cackles maliciously – and  yet . . . and yet    at the same time   there is something incredibly naïve in the whole academic endeavor – he begins to laugh uncontrollably – I mean this idea of greatness  

 

laid bare     bore because agape in

                   cloudlessness

because becomes be caused      became turned away things turned out commencing here against each other and one another as be before goes round unfolding into answer   

wrapped around which wrap around what which wrap round afternoon moment turned unfolding said it is said and what of it is what and why the in as it is a trace to sentence falling       the only of which it is the of     of it itself  as de-forming into chiaroscuro eye language ended     by no to something nothing is but what to remains of motions terminated      there is and much more that is to say what and then pushing what words wait for thought         spacing

 

sign flotsam discombobulation  

                          some jetsam to forget      

 

and then some more again so what of it    it means what it is what means it is        -guished  from each other  

-sively ideological          nobody now knows  what dissipation’s when a talk a breeze of doubt   to what of it and then some edges left to the to       undo the what it is that these are a tangent of

                                                  is almost a say

the page where on when       the moment to each and away     another to which   is or is not on debris is on    on as away  is a bare is a or is on a cloudlesssstreaming

 

sensual

                              

achieving greatness    historical greatness   wanting to be a historical figure    a Beethoven   a Mozart   a Bach  what have you!    the puerile arrogance of it all   something like that can’t be orchestrated    willed to happen!   in any case    it is the chaos of the work I find so compelling   the gaps and fissures    the truth of its imperfections is what matters most to me     it is always a work in progress – he says distantly as he looks out the window, his face turning to white, black and gray as in an old noir film - loci of order in a constantly shifting ocean of rising entropy   the work emerges from the chaotic and disorderly as islands of negentropy    it is the relationship between order and disorder   and what happens in between   that has always motivated me   the reverse side   as it were    of causal determinism    with my writing   I seek out that ebullient state   that place close to fertile chaos from which forms are constantly being born    random fluctuations at a local level have the potential of propelling the writing toward a point of bifurcation    a point at which the direction of change becomes unpredictable    just as physical systems that are far from thermal and chemical equilibrium may act indeterminately and I don’t only mean this in a figurative sense   no   mainly considering that

language   thought and writing are all aspects of that psycho-physical system  we call the mind   the brain   the point is    that small    random fluctuations in the work    in the act of working on the work

not only can bring about macroscopic transformations in the larger structures of it    but they can also produce profound changes  in the reader    as they most certainly do in the writer     the work begins at multiple trail heads as it were     multiple trajectories from which different sequences of events can unfold   just as nature changes form in moments of truly protean metamorphosis   in this case     our so called everyday language  is  inadequate to describe what is taking place   even scientific and mathematical languages are unsuitable – he says - the various languages of the arts are far more suitable for the task    no longer does the work emerge only from the idea   the story as idea   where language is but a mere vehicle for the story    the mere instrument for the story’s expression    no   whatever story there is   it emerges from the linguistic material itself   in other words   from the structures constructed from this material    I mean to say   it emerges from the different possibilities     the permutational possibilities always already present in the linguistic material    the text I’ve been writing

of course – he continues in a somewhat pedantic, academic tone - lies in an indeterminate area between subject and object     its status as an object not clear    nor is its intersubjective function clear either    it is in fact a kind of quasi-object     I mean to say   not an object as such     and yet    still    it is one    given that it is in the world     at the same time however     it is not a subject    at least not yet    not until someone has read and internalized it     but     at the same time   it is a kind of quasi-subject    given that it does indeed designate a subject

          over the years – the old man whispers cautiously – I came to the gradual realization that I no longer loved music   no longer loved writing it    no longer loved teaching it     I came to the gradual and shocking realization that    not only did I no longer love it   but that I actually now abhorred it    that what was once a liberating experience was now    had now become a new form of imprisonment   a new burden   I came to the gradual realization that everything about music

 

so what of it

                 it means a what

                 it is it means

                                             we each kept each we kept

a then now and when in what to which to say a violet

 

means by a sea repeating

                            

we is a cul de sac

 

rusting ideological      

  

reproduced enough     becomes into being because       such that enough again restriction ended

to antipathy this day of clear cut divisions     moans by a sea retreating    so tiresome the things

and meaning the names now droop away     what breath blows what leaves into sun’s waves

coalescing        whose inflection beyond prone  language     something sometimes remains ended

motions piece a blank plank across out by the telling     reasons with light interjections scrambled

howl’s appropriate place is when

and now a remains

 

from which broken erroneous formation message

continuity gap agape frozen circuit plosives meaning “I” as of in the with what distinction plenty marks a place

 

enough more resting just begun

endings growing again meaning laid bare because things      and one answers    became speak

a ledge terminated and then it is what –sively

was nothing more than an unbearable tedium   the same I can say about all the other arts    especially in light of everything that is happening in our world today     in particular   the massive destruction of the natural environment   the arts are starting to look embarrassingly irrelevant    more so considering how the entertainment industry has monopolized what social spaces are left    no work of art . . . not all the works of art in the world put together can replace a species of plant or animal that has gone extinct      in light of everything . . . – he pauses looking out  the window distractedly and as he does the background voices begin to swell in a subtle but steady crescendo inundating the room, my mind, with the swarming buzzing sound of a crowd swirling round and round making me reel, feeling dizzy, I fall into a waking dream from which I can’t release myself no matter how hard I try to move, my body is paralyzed as I sink further into the miasma of sounds swirling around me like the hypnotic, throbbing, interweaving sounds of a steamy jungle at night – . . . names connected have metaphors entanglemeant physically is      from  what “you” tells me is “what”not an “is” pondering away at the reason they once represented    more such leaves into pounding entangle meant represented since metaphors not at this juncture gone astray wondering    an “is” blows even as “is” is what things once began so tiresome connected as words made more words wait windblown just because what this is interactive made so enough and once again languaging as wheat in fricative (in)formation as waves crests reconnecting to valleys of the moon reads into  just and what in and gives this    the constantly dawning into waves, what music clear colliding light which roots wait in flux so figured into ever at what without warning confined the blood    an expression as purpose wrenching everything as thoughts are of night that writing is a thinking and then pushing what waits for pause      listening to the whereabouts of when what words were saying in whirls spinningout and what was “meta” a metaphor for a restless word in multiplicity      ground a possible nexus which shoots out flames      turbubabulent becoming and going     in places     the night’s ongoing change remains sometimes approximate wandering into similarity’s device looping round ‘n round      background this rhythm means intrinsically relational

everything cascading     writing friction to      of such imprecise

 

a knowledge meant this that of course into disorder     ragged fragments restlessly rustling to stop and to have such feelings hushed as if meant to be more lights forming sporadic glassy ruffled edges across isolated words    trajectories’ curvilinear drip down an almost unwinding  face up-ended for whatever there is an excrescence frozen over into shreds of darkness 

coming and going and staying to face the waiting a wisp of her hair it can as always whatever a what   not only knots of this content as if by an intent bouncing     an elaborate period this as dislocation in an echo as away thinks an easy can be thought as much as many or any as much as tissue toward tide glance happening while the puddles, for the violence me ever present leaves, an attempt to prove this gray in the usual copy of “these” in the usual black and white soliloquy, seeping abstract position, arrangements next to a rebellion chronically  superior there among the wounded, played slovenly – paid slavery as a kind of  charity  party lined up for needed disgrace soliloquy distance as no is to maybe the cheese wiz -  from right to left the arrogance reeks distended in slow motion – an

attempt as I was saying privileged convolution on the right or left against

directed those from the usual running tire tracks present as headaches

occupational hazard and then these the page away is then by now a means  such that this day of clear cut erosions began deforming

 

languaging

landscapes of languages colliding as wheat against blue to light of fiction

 

fricative nasal plosives in-

formation with or lately at least     all sorts     all that what and does rushed by on foot talking at yaking becoming smile knots freely disproportionate into a reduced version of this continuity as something other than working against the shaping       final fallen repetition      I mean plenty marks a place     some so such and so such is enough   such that enough some so much said made so  gives this constantly summer into interactive

about which just then so remembers

what this is      stories foreigneous  ‘n everything just because discovered at

intrusive of when is then

windblown light about which these so figured words wait in wobbly places       so much so words

more much so that then enough much so that made when is said so much so said that them words  again seldom said begun again so said and

 

– there I would leave me be and my irreducible secondarity - hypocrisy consensus continuity contest for the extreme center – permafrost encounters unconscious fee waivers for free meal ticket delinquency – brawny intellectual battleship personalities bullying my goldfish - the John Wayne of the left is always eager to punish - the one on the right was bad enough, always eager to please power – now, this monologues – and other swords lances deaf and blind pitted knot against knot not to comprehend disorderly “everyday life” something if nothing . . . sweep it all under the rug of this content - stigmata keeps dripping innocence into the dustiny generator – cannot be identified with the ugen discombobulator of cause and effect ‘cause which is just as well doneAction: 2 – no page numbers here and there where I was this content as discontent soliloquy people you’ve been before they push and they shove and won’t bend to your will     wholesale  spirit petrified as “they” sees fit - I’m for an anarchy of production and not a poetry of narrative unity and ease of communication      if “I” “may” “say” “so.” Duality self reference manual. the brain is a sex organ when they say so – ay mi Corazon de limousina! automatic autonomic authoritarian –ism is what the us in U.S. stands for . . . night     that writing is a thinking and then pushing what waits for pause listening to the whereabouts of when     what words were saying in whirls spinning out     and what was “meta” a metaphor for      a restless word in multiplicity ground a possible nexus which shoots out flames     turbubabulent becoming and going in places     the night’s ongoing change remains sometimes approximate wandering into similarity’s device       looping round ‘n round     background this rhythm means intrinsically relational everything cascading     writing friction to      of such imprecise  a knowledge meant this that of course into disorder     ragged fragments restlessly rustling to stop and to have such feelings hushed as if meant to be more lights forming sporadic glassy ruffled edges across isolated words    trajectories curvilinear drip down an almost unwinding     face up-ended for whatever there is an excrescence frozen over into shreds of darkness coming and going and staying to face the waiting  a wisp of her hair it can as always whatever a what     not only knots of this content as if by an intent bouncing     an elaborate period this as dislocation in an echo as away thinks an easy can be thought as much as many or any as much as tissue toward tide glance happening -  just as well intransigent motherfucker wants music for every sentence tireless wannabe insular  self motivating  international organization hypnotic surveillance insecure safety pin cushion  system - machine fabrication the old  fashion runway – they always say what they think except when they’re talking – sign out latest news misfortune quiz queen – imprison meant: why these sudden ever present leaves of text flying about everywhere? fluttering breathing us as individuals involved in winces abruptly greater than ourselves burping we each are one of  a collection of doneAction 2: against each other which belief crutch clutching at wishful thinking throwaway cumbersome disabled structures  whose scaffolding onto held up long ago for support of collapsible preconceived notions – it is when we throw away supported life system personalities we drag assumptions  mind telling me forehead thoughts the wind of what “I” means – clockwise crawl space pulling the noise production discourse solipsistic slurping cowlick promotion – sex organ sextuple fugato temper tantrum for ever fever reverse river discontent this content the “he” sees everywhere  - “he” “stays”

 “quietly” – disgruntle this  clockwise academic crawlspace pulling the noise production discourse solipsistic slurping cow lick discourse as noise production promo sees the eye speaks the seems to ‘ear another voice in the background mumbling      something if nothing breathing us as individuals involved in winces abruptly greater than ourselves we each are an us    one being a collection of monologues and other sword lances deaf and blind    pitted not to comprehend disorderly doneAction:2 against each other with belief crutches clutching at wishful thinking      all sorts of things rush by,

all that and much more rushed by,

what does it river mean?

by foot or on bicycle     becoming and going into off course with a smile

a stray stream into endings just beginning accidental  and resisting foiled interest into messy logic

divisive islets of meaning

meandering as growing sand banks move across the page careening    whenever and ever as whatever it means to mean     a sea helps to place a space     a splace     splicing the place and the space into two overlapping waves licking     there is why a wall       to ask a mark     because     becomes turned alleged question before to speak in knots        which is to say     what a cul de sac      a ledge where voice is what and who speaks of it terminated      breathing as song initiated at moments before a blank page     wavefunction as what    be before becomes comes into being be cuase  be becomes why laid bare     bore because agape in cloudlessness       be because becomes be caused      became turned away things turned out commencing here against each other and one another as be before goes round unfolding into answer     wrapped around which wrap around what which wrap round afternoon moment turned unfolding said it is said and what of it is what and why the in as it is a trace to sentence falling       the only of which it is the of     of it itself  as de-forming into chiaroscuro eye language ended     by no to something nothing is but what to remains of motions terminated      there is and much more that is to say what and then pushing what words wait for thought         spacing                                                                                                                                                                      sign flotsam discombobulation  

                                           some jetsam to forget     

                                                                                           and then some more again     so what of it    it means what it is what means it is        -guished  from each other       -sively ideological          nobody now knows  what dissipation’s when a talk a breeze of doubt   to what of it and then some edges left to the to       undo the what it is that these are a tangent of      is almost a say      the page where on when       the moment to each and away     another to which   is or is not on debris is on    on as away  is a bare is a or is on a cloudlesssstreaming    more such that when is then again what blows leaves into valleys entanglemeant moon even as pounding against the gloom is what an “is” is what entanglemeant physically is     from things once represented drooping away so tiresome began since and meaning names connected have metaphors     what “you” tells me is “what” not an “is” pondering away at the reason they once represented    more such leaves into pounding entangle meant represented since metaphors not at this juncture gone astray wondering    an “is” blows even as “is” is what things once beganso tiresome connected as words made more words wait windblown just because what this is interactive made so enough and once again languaging as wheat in fricative (in)formation as waves crests reconnecting to valleys of the moon reads into just and what in and gives this    the constantly dawning into waves, what music clear colliding light which roots wait in flux so figured into ever at what without warning confined the blood       an expression as purpose wrenching everything as thoughts is of night that writing is a thinking and then pushing what waits for pause listening to the whereabouts of when what words were saying in whirls spinning out and what was “meta” a metaphor for a restless word in multiplicity ground a possibility     the wind of what “I” means    clockwise academic crawl space pollution pulling the noise production discourse solipsistic slurp cowlick promotion, sex organ fugato personality tantrum implant jerking off, pretty please discontent, this content was as if by dreams an intent, for ever fever, gotta go to potty training for ideologues contest café mentality twist with an academic cringe for two – academic meandering as growing sand banks move across the page careening    whenever and ever as whatever it means to mean     a sea helps to place a space a splace    logic of other territories from discourses ended       divisive islets of meaning . . . in light of everything . . . – I hear him say as if at a distance, suddenly jolting my attention back into the presence of the room - in light of everything . . .  – he says again as the whirlwind of voices subsides into the background - the story began somewhere    I know – he says - but soon got lost among many others and I’m hard pressed to say which one matters most    though it seems    the turbulence    the mayhem  the energy generated by them all is what counts   that conjuncture  is what’s worth telling about   and behind it     behind the writing     that upon which and against which the writing writes    resisting the indagations    where pen and pencil are like daggers with ever blunted points   prying at the surface of things as one tries to gather    in a few gestures   the facts and events into a landscape which might give it all some kind of sense     wherein even the senseless has its place - he is standing motionless, blankly staring out the window with mouth agape and cigarette in hand, a long, thin string of saliva and phlegm hangs from his trembling lower lip gently swaying back and forth with each raspy inhalation – all the faces   all the voices    blend into one face   blend into one voice – he whispers cautiously - it is the silence that listens   it listens to our listening    this unfathomable    eternal silence at the heart of all things . . .

                                                                                                                          where am I now? – he starts again abruptly - the deluge has passed    leaving behind a blanket of white petals and green leaflets strewn about the ground    and my shadow   my shadow is lost among the shadows of others   further down the road    the muddied furrowed roads    I look down upon them with frowning forehead aching     the darkening shadows of trees growing long in the cool evening air    I need to see   know where the river goes   where it jumped up from the ground among ancient rocks unknown    why it rolls along seemingly without a care     not knowing why or where its next turn or jump will end    without a care it leaps    aimlessly flowing as if life itself

                                                 where are we now?    the deluge is past    or will soon be    for it is still raging and we are here alone    alone on this rock over which a cloud of dust rises    above our heads  

over cities and mountains unknown    a handful of dust over the eons multiplied     rising above the hills   over the restless cities of the night we call our home   these labyrinthine thoughts   voices and images coming out of murky walls   then absorbed back into oblivion echoing    a handful of dust   over eons multiplied    having become a desert   this labyrinth of bones    rising over rooftops and hills   this handful of dust   over the years multiplied    now having become a billowing cloud of brown and gray   a handful of dust or ashes    over the eons having become a desert    lifted up into the heavens by a restlessly searching wind   this cold and empty wind we hear rattling our doors trying to get in    a cascade of sounds   images and thoughts    pounding on our walls   a clatter of dried out bones    rattling the doors and windows   only to be absorbed back into oblivion again   this cold and empty wind blowing through me and everything    alone in the vertex     of a groan that issued ages ago from   where?  from where?    from the center of where    as these words issue from the center of    who?     of what?  of where?   a cold breath issuing from a beginningless past     issued ages ago from where?   from the center of where?   just as these words issue from the center of where     from the center of    where am I now?

                                                                                                                                                    I will never say I    because of everyone    I won’t speak again    no   I won’t speak to anyone   no one will speak to me    I will listen to no one   just as no one listens to me   I won’t speak to myself     there is nothing left to say    nothing but dust will spew from my mouth    dust blown by the cold wind   the freezing cold wind that incessantly blows through everything      throughout millennia    from a beginningless past

                                                                                                           I can no longer stand the sight of myself   thus the lack of mirrors in this house    for when I see my reflection    I see someone I don’t recognize    someone     a stranger has taken over my reflection   my image has been usurped by a total stranger     my body has been taken over    usurped by a total stranger     my mind is all that’s left of me   it is the last strong-hold of me    this is why there are no mirrors in this house   the large mirror in the second floor hall   has been covered over with a sheet    giving it a ghostly appearance at night    no matter   I am not frightened by ghosts    it is only the reflection of the one who has usurped my image   my body   who frightens me    sometimes my reflection in the window pane frightens me   I don’t know who that is    no matter   I sleep on the top floor   the attic      my sister’s atelier   there I feel safe    I like to lie awake at night and listen to the wind blow   watch as dark clouds drift by   listen to the rain taping  on the sky-light    this is the only nature left us    the only nature left in this dead gray city of ours – he mumbles listlessly, I can hear the North Sea wind picking up outside, it rattles the doors and windows of the old house, as if a beast trying to get in -

                                                                                         it is this kind of generalized distortion that gives the thinking its rich     delicious     delirious quality – he says quietly – its saturation with branches     twigs      turns    reflections    eddies and curlicues    tangential planes and lines of flight     somos divagantes – he mutters to himself in Spanish, face up close to the window staring at his reflection which is now hazed over by condensation -  we are divergent      can’t distinguish anymore between night and day     day becomes night     night becomes death and emptiness     day becomes black as pitch and night searing white light     they blend into each other leaving not much of a gap   a small fissure perhaps which    if one were to fall into it     one would lose oneself in a swirling miasma of gray hues which is where I long to be    where I belong    they blend together becoming like photographic negatives of each other    I go forth arrayed in a searing white robe    into the cold darkness of a night eternal    as I reach the center point     the image is reversed    I am suddenly dressed in a frigid   ink-black gown   disappearing blindly into the searing white night    helplessly     resisting all drives to accumulated meaning     into a continuum of time understood as force    I throw myself into death chanting    I throw myself among the dead – he whispers hoarsely now chanting -  I throw myself among the dead      I had always hoped to free myself from the intellectual vanity so prevalent everywhere    especially in the arts and academia    trying to listen to the fragile formations of things and messages coming from within the noise     the chaos     seeming to me to have the delicate enigmatic construction of snow flakes in the wind – he says squinting my way, looking derisively amused – yet to be involved in this sort of thing   the arts   whichever one you may think of    whether music   literature   painting or film    to be involved in this sort of thing is nothing more than self indulgence    sheer egotism    narcissism    no more no less    especially in light of everything that is taking place in our world today   I mean    what we are doing to it    to each other    to ourselves     the utter callousness    the mindless destruction   this rage against life we see everywhere    this absolute nihilism in which we wallow grinning stupidly    lost in our little pleasures    our paltry entertainments    in light of all this    any intention of seriousness in the arts is laughable     no more than vain parody by which we convince ourselves we are doing something important    making an important contribution to culture   to society     baring witness to the foreclosure of the other – he sneers mockingly - assuming our various critical and moralistic stances which are supposed to signal the world we care . . . why   even the critique of moralism itself is a moralistic stance!    o manufactured nothingness in the factory of infinite vanity – he chants nastily – do you know those lines? do you remember them? it was Bataille I think who wrote them    the death one finds lurking in the best of intentions    lurking in all things intellectual   the death one finds lurking in the life of the mind so-called    of course – he says hoarsely, annoyed – everything one says     everything one writes  consists solely of a string of the most abysmal errors and lies     the most despairing distortions and falsifications     all thinking    all writing being excremental    the consequences of which are immeasurable       however hard one may try to focus on and pin point the truth with one’s mind     pen in hand    with one’s concentration     however diligent and determined one may be to tell the truth    the pen     perhaps the paper one writes on    maybe the ink or the hand which has a mind of its own    the self-organizing machinery of language itself    leads one astray   away    past the confines of memory    showing it to be a farce    an illusion     an invention      nothing more than fiction . . . into territories unknown    into dissolution    forcing one to write an intricately patterned meditation on the transience of all things human      resisting     struggling against the stultifying spiritual inertia of social order and reason    I have survived quite well the death of gods and goddesses     in me   reality is conflict . . . but of course!     it is the eye that creates the image!   the object seen     the ob-seen – he cackles meanly and then continues – the eye is in fact a projector     it shoots out radiation from the brain     the mind    with the eye as projector     the mind gives the object seen its shape    even the sun   whose light we rely on for clarity   is no more than an unformed blotch of ink above us until the eye gives it shape    definition      not only does the eye give shape and definition to the object seen   no – he says flatly - it also gives direction    but whose eye is this?   to whom does it belong?   it has a life   a mind of its own     I can’t say anymore   only that I don’t know how this all works    what we like to call reality    more so considering that the categories recently articulated by the science of chaos no longer conform to the traditional dichotomy of order and disorder     rather   our senses of chaos are contested    multiple    calling into question the ability of mathematical and scientific languages to provide clear cut meaning . . . the assassin sings in chaos and his song is a consolation    it is the music of the mass of meaning – he says chanting hoarsely again – the law of chaos is the law of ideas    of improvisations and seasons of belief    as Stevens would have it - he chuckles happily - we live this way from day to day until we die   pretending to know   pretending to find some kind of wisdom by which we can steer our course through life   but it is the eye    independent of one’s will     that determines the direction of things    and they are multiple   crisscrossing each other    forming an intricate web of meanings and directions that overwhelm the horizons in the four directions with the slow motion crumbling beauty of a summer night’s dream    a manufactured emptiness in the factories of infinite solitude – he says slowly, wincing as if in pain - one goes through life like this   stumbling from one horror to the next    a beautiful horror   unable to protect oneself from the contingent and its beauty     but mostly     unable to protect oneself from oneself    the unpredictability in one self     we have lost our senses     not just our minds you see    no    but our bodies    we have lost our bodies as well because we have denied our physicality     our somatic experience of the world! – he cries out meekly, collapsing back into his chair – there comes the terrifying moment in one’s life when one realizes that all knowledge is enveloped in darkness and whatever lofty aspirations one may have had    spiritual     intellectual     artistic     or what-have-you     were nothing more than fantasies one pursued in order to fend off the ever present meaninglessness     as felt in this cold air   this air is the air of meaninglessness     that part of the sky     that small window on the sky with its random brush strokes of clouds     those gray dark clouds are what fascinate me more than anything else     their apparent randomness    that small corner with its occasional gull sweeping past    as in a Constable study    giving one the impression of ages slowly passing by    in front of ones eyes    like a load of hay     it holds so much for me    it seems aware    it seems to know I’m watching     it knows my longings     that small corner of the sky  resembling a Constable study    seems so utterly meaningful    it seems to be saying something    I don’t know what    don’t know why – he insists trailing off into the damp silence of the evening –

 

you see – he suddenly bursts out again - the impetus toward conquest     the drive toward domination we are possessed by     this drive which began thousands of years ago   perhaps a million years ago or so      when we developed the first tools and discovered fire and realized our predators had begun to fear us more than we feared them    when we first caught a glimpse in the dark pit of our imaginations that we could prevail over nature and all its creatures    long before the birth of the Buddha    Jesus Christ    Mohammed    long before all those others that followed    all the ugly  saints and so called spiritual teachers – he wheezes - the Krishnamurtis   the Suzukis    the Dalai Lamas and what not     as well as the western philosophers    the so called great thinkers of our culture with their irrational faith in reason     this drive    which    over the centuries has been incrementing exponentially is now nearing the fulfillment of its telos – he says desperately gasping for air - that is to say     the absolute domination of nature     of the world    which means its total fragmentation    consumption and destruction      in light of all that – he gestures impatiently with cigarette in hand - the Buddhist notion  that one individual’s enlightenment automatically   as if by pressing a button    enlightens the rest of the world    turns out to be a mere fantasy and is evidence of a naïve and mechanistic view of reality    so-called      in order for such a notion to work as it were     in such a wide spread manner   requires the conscious participation of all those who would be enlightened     it requires that they care . . . the two major man made catastrophes in all of history    the first and second world wars and all the barbarities and atrocities witnessed therein    not to mention slavery and colonialism    should be a very blunt wakeup call for anyone harboring any illusions of changing the world – he emphasizes mockingly – just by sitting facing a wall supposedly meditating . . . this realization has vanquished everything – he sneers – every desire to be something or someone    every desire to achieve something    to become someone    something    whatever that may be . . . it should also be a wakeup call to all those who continue unchecked with their destructive ways     a wakeup call as to the true nature of the human animal    who and what  we really are . . . as you can see     I don’t have much use for religion     nor philosophy for that matter – he says – I have no use for organized religions     Catholicism especially      the human animal plugged at both ends by God   the human body bound and gagged    castrated and crushed under the marmoreal weight of that dark religion’s monstruous institutions    this God’s no prude    has no qualms about violating    sodomizing its own children – he snickers – just as we have no qualms     no shame in violating      raping everything that walks    destroying the very earth itself – he says cackling meanly -

                                                   human beings     people – he grimaces - being the congenital    opportunistic cowerers  we really are      live by cover ups and amnesia     there is no crime      however great     that is not forgotten after a few weeks – he says – no political atrocity      no crime against humanity     against life itself     that is not forgotten in a week or two      we are positively congenital cover uppers of crimes – the old man says again wheezing – people    that is to say     human beings      will cover up any crime     no matter how vile    because we are     as I have already stated      congenital     opportunistic cowerers      for years     decades      centuries even       our so-called leaders     our politicians      our so-called business leaders   our corporations and ceos    our bankers and financiers       have committed all manner of murderous frauds and crimes      yet these cowerers cover up for them      the people themselves who are the ones defrauded    the ones who end up paying for the crimes of those in power with their taxes and all too often    with their lives in some war    cover up for them – the old man says – evidently suffering from some kind of masochism     some kind of Stockholm syndrome or some kind of very deep-seated low self esteem    this so-called average citizen     who puts up with all kinds of humiliation at work and    who works his entire life away      who works himself or herself to death     who is enslaved to his mortgage     student loans and other debts     or who barely makes it to the end of the month    scrimping and saving just to get by     living from paycheck to paycheck     this so-called average citizen who dutifully spends his entire life as a cog in the production/consumption machine   and who    after years of this kind of undignified subservience to those who control the machine     ends up being a machine himself    or herself    as the case may be    this so-called average citizen – he says again - who all too often ends up in an early grave and if not      should he or she     as the case may be     reach old age     at the end of her life looks back and sees her life has been wasted     sees he has spent his entire life serving the interests of those in power    those who control the machine      she sees her life has been for nothing     empty    a spiritual     a creative     an emotional and intellectual waste land     he sees that he has sacrificed his real self to the interests of those in power    she sees that she never really had a chance to find out who she really is given that     almost from the day he was born    her subjectivity as been completely colonized by the various ideologies that serve power    his subjectivity has been completely colonized by the official discourses that swamp the social space of our so-called culture    to the extent that those ideologies    those discourses have become a kind of second nature which have accompanied the subject throughout his or her life     and which the subject has learned to recognize as him or herself     the subject never stood a chance     never was allowed to find out who he or she really is      never got the chance to develop into an individual in the true sense of the word – he says gasping for air – this pathetic    so-called average citizen is all too often    all too compliant     all too willing to vote    to support those who do not mean him or her     the workers      the middle and working classes    any good      they only mean to use them      the so-called lower classes    exploit them     take as much away from them as they can without giving anything in return except more misery     more suffering      what those in power really want is to create a vast underclass     indeed      a slave class which they can use as they see fit   decade after decade these unscrupulous politicians      financiers and industrialists      bankers and ceos have lied to the people and cheated them     lied to them about the wars they     the people    are sent to     lied to us about the damage to our health and the environment caused by the various products they sell us    for years lied to us about the water we drink    the air we breath     and yet     these cowerers    that is to say    the people themselves    cover up for them      make excuses for them     wrapping themselves up in some kind of false   twisted sense of nationalism    some distorted sense of patriotism      the lied to    the deceived       the cheated      cover up for them     make excuses for them     cover up and make excuses for those who lie and cheat them    make excuses for those who   for all intents and purposes     laugh at them in their faces    laugh and spit in their faces    the so-called general populace   in it’s constant low self esteem and masoquism    as I’ve already said    evidently suffering from some kind of Stockholm syndrome    is more than willing to put up with humiliation from those who have power over them     why     a dog has more self respect than that – the old man says – a petty thief is prosecuted and locked up for years by our justice system     but those who defraud our country of millions and billions and who were greatly instrumental in the economic downturn we saw in two thousand and eight     walk away free     at worst   chased out with a huge pension and huge bonuses     rewarded with bailouts funded with our    the people’s     the defrauded’s     tax money – he says – and no sooner is all this mentioned in the press      in the various media       just as suddenly is it covered up and forgotten by that very same press     that very same media    and supplanted with hundreds of other stories    and that’s what they are      stories       a mixture of fact and fabrication    more fiction than fact I dare say    if you consider the effect the medium itself has on the message where what’s left out of the frame    what isn’t talked about    says more about the events portrayed than anything else   the tedium is the message of the media   such that meaning means business     and business means . . . as usual – he chants softly and cackles - so too it is with the public     the citizens who were swindled      royally screwed      they too lapse into total amnesia     as if nothing had ever happened   why    our president sends thousands       hundreds of thousands     over a million    to their deaths      to a war created      as we now know     based on lies and misinformation      committing one of the biggest crimes against humanity we’ve seen since the second world war    crimes for which the president     the vice-president and their accomplices should be arrested and brought here to the Hague     to the International Tribunal here in the Hague    and tried for crimes against humanity – he says breathing with difficulty - but the public      the citizens who were lied to    deceived by their president and others in his administration     what do they do?     nothing     not a word    or if they do indeed speak it is to defend him    to make excuses for him and his murderous accomplices   calling what the president and his associates did a mistake    not a crime as we all know it really is    the same goes for the majority of the press    the very same press who first brought the deception to light      who first alerted us    the public   that we had been lied to     why    they too waste no time in covering things up     just as soon as they mention it     a mere token gesture to fairness     to democracy     just as quickly do they cover it up simply by ignoring it     by becoming completely oblivious to the crimes they were so quick to expose the previous day       people spend all their lives cowering and covering up the most horrifying atrocities and crimes in order to survive themselves      this is the truth – he says licking his lips – the president and his accomplices should be brought to the Hague    to the International Tribunal and tried for crimes against humanity       as I’ve already said    over a million people died in that ghastly war     many of them innocent women and children      the elderly and infirm    their entire country completely destroyed and plundered      left a complete shambles      and nobody seems to notice    nobody seems to care       the entire history of imperialism and colonialism in the so-called Middle East and all the atrocities we’ve seen during the past century completely ignored     completetly forgotten     fading into the oblivion of our collective     that is to say    our mass amnesia – he says – most people do not care about democracy    do not care about freedom      don’t even bother thinking what that might mean    they take it for granted     most people care more about their life styles than they do about democracy    this is the truth – he says panting – as long as they have their little homes     their 2.3 children     their two cars      their suvs and their large screen tvs      they don’t care about democracy      most don’t even know what that word means     as long as they have their electronic gadgets       their tablets and their so-called smart phones    the last thing they care about is democracy      most people just want to be comfortable – he says – comfortable and entertained    distracted    they don’t care who or how that comfort is provided them or the price they have to pay as long as they feel secure    even if that security is a false security    they don’t care    this is the truth – he says with disdain - I just want to get by    I hear them say    they just don’t want to be bothered with difficult choices or issues    they don’t want their conscience disturbed     as long as they have their little entertainments and titillations they just don’t care    all those facile distractions with their cheap emotions and pleasures     but of course    sooner or later the veneer wears thin    the various entertainments and distractions     begin to repeat themselves    the various entertainments and distactions become redundant and therefore boring     tedious     one begins to have to tolerate them instead of enjoy them    they begin to wear thin and the emptiness and pain they conceal starts to show through     the utter meaninglessness of their lives begins to assert itself with its cold     silent emptiness – he says – their minds are deeply conditioned by all those distractions and empty   shallow entertainments    their television shows      their so-called smart phones    their computers and so-called social media    which      ironically makes them anti-social    conditioning their minds with so-called sound bites and predigested   trivial information     short bursts of information which do not require people to develop the ability to pay undivided attention to something for long periods of time    thus spoiling their minds     and the swirling mucky mass of constant rapid stimuli    of sensory overload   desensitize their senses making them dull     dull and dim witted . . . which leads to more boredom – he says - is it any wonder then that depression is so pervasive?      is it any wonder that depression has reached pandemic proportions the world over?      at one time it was the age of anxiety      today     it is the age of depression       depression and anxiety together    today it is both     the age of anxiety and depression together      a catastrophic combination

                                                                                                                                           when I think about all this and how it has been hushed up over and over again     year after year     decade after decade     not only by our government but also by the press     the press whose job it is to inform us about the truth    about what is really happening in our country    our world    it weighs heavily on my mind    when I think about all this deceit    corruption and atrocities we see everywhere in our world     it preys on my mind     it weighs heavily on my mind     on my entire body   to the point such that I often break out into terrible head aches    skull craking    nausea inducing    mind numbing    migraine head aches that paralyze me for days    of course – he grumbles on - everyone has the most horrifying   the most terrifying things in their minds    most people today walk around   go through life with the most terrifying thoughts and emotions in their minds and what’s most horrifying about this is that many    if not all of them    go through life completely unaware of the bloody battle fields   the ghastly murders     the utterly dark and malicious torture chambers they have going on in their very own heads every day   they go about their daily business    their daily lives    as if whistling in the dark like a frightened child    wandering lost in an ancient cemetery at night – he whispers gruffly - the most hideous monstrosities fester in the unexplored dark corners of our minds    not the least of which is that terrible gaping pit    that terrible black hole of emptiness in the pit of our stomachs     of our being     which enters us through the umbilical chord before birth     filling us up with the most horrifying sense of paralyzing dread   that horrendous dark silence that knows – he says wheezing again - with every breath we take   the monstrosities fester a moment longer    fester and grow moment after moment    in a desperate attempt to silence the emptiness nagging at our innards    gnawing at our stomachs    our guts    we talk to ourselves   we have this incessant monologue going on all the time    and as if that were not enough    we construct a theater within us    in our heads    in which various monologues argue and snake around each other in an endless chatter    vying for attention    the multitude of voices soon becoming a cloud of white noise   a fog of gray noise blotting out the emptiness inside    and   as if that were not enough – he says again – we turn our attention to the infinity of monologues going on outside    in the so-called world outside    the ongoing monologues of our family and friends    our colleagues   the constant pointless chatter of the various media    countless voices snaking around and arguing with each other    all of whom also feel the acrid gnawing in their guts of that cold eternal emptiness nagging at them and from which they too hope to escape by means of distraction    but of course there is no escaping     no way out     no way to get away from it    the emptiness    because there is no way to escape    no way to get away from ourselves    every breath one takes is the breath of meaninglessness    every inhalation   meaninglessness    every exhalation    meaninglessness – he says whispering hoarsely -     

                  last night    at dinner – he says wheezing through the cloud of smoke around him - I said to my sister: “the idea of meaning is suspect to me because in the world it arouses the impression that meaning is meaningful, and vice versa, what is meaningful has meaning, but the only meaning in meaningfulness,” I said to her, “is its meaninglessness, I mean to say, meaninglessness is itself meaningful” I said this to my sister while she nodded patiently as usual    eating her peas, “just as the utter emptiness, the nothingness surrounding us, within us, is somehow full, filled with all the things we like to call existence, being” I said again, “while at the same time, there is an unsatisfactoriness in being, in fact, it is unbearable, full of meaninglessness, pervaded by emptiness, because it is impermanent, it is time itself in fact    that’s what being means, signifies, if it must mean anything at all” I said, and she said while carefully chewing a mouthful of beef – he says smiling gleefully – “I know what you mean, your insights have always been a source of inspiration to me, they have always inspired my work” – he says she said while still chewing, her left cheek bulging, fork and knife in either hand – imagine that! myyyy words    my so called insights an inspiration!     my empty lost words an inspiration for her work! the poor thing! – he exclaims again getting agitated – those incomprehensible paintings of hers I love so much    with their bits and pieces of materials    of scraps of different kinds of materials constructed in piece meal fashion     why   art collectors and critics from all over the world come to see them     she turns them away!   they offer her thousands of Euros    thousands of dollars   and she won’t sell them any!    she exhibits them herself in her gallery    shows them to some of her friends and to me – he says approvingly - I have some in my bedroom    they are magical    windows    doorways into other worlds     windows into the implicate order      depictions of turbulence     disorders of various kinds     one needs to be careful – he stammers cautiously, eyes wide open - they can take over the entire space    suck you in    you’ll never be found – he seems to drift off and then suddenly exclaims - and then she said to me: “there is the unending irritating tendency to think of all discourse as taking the form of a story, most people have the unbearable habit of negotiating their way through life by telling stories that explain who they are and what they are doing and they graft their stories onto the stories of others, onto ours” she said getting visibly despondent – he said – “upon hearing a word, as if a switch had been turned on, people are ready to tell you their lives’ stories, their sad meaningless stories” – his sister is supposed to have said – “as if some kind of mechanism had been turned on . . . upon hearing a word, a name, a place, the name of a place for example, they are more than willing to make a connection,” – he says she said emphatically with derision – “they want to communicate their experiences, express, show you the commonality of the experiences which supposedly we all share . . . they are more than willing, they are in fact alert, waiting for the opportunity when they can share their experiences and thus show you the connection,” - he said she said with increasing irritation – “but it is in solitude that I no longer feel lonely, it is in utter solitude and emptiness that one, that I, no longer feel the pangs of meaninglessness and emptiness,” she said seeming to me with increasing puzzlement, “meaninglessness is produced by their idiotic, empty chatter about the meaninglessness of life, a concatenation of catastrophes, a self fulfilling prophecy, like machines, at the flick of a switch, they go on and on, most people have this one, unmistakable, annoying characteristic” - he says she spat out with disdain while still assiduously chewing her food, and then he claimed she said - “the spider resembles the fly, its mate, a trick with which the spider lures its prey in . . .” she sat there impassibly staring at her food as if defeated – the professor says – but then she said with eyes lighting up, “we are, each one of us, made up of wildernesses, wildernesses interacting in a symbiotic, semiotic relationship, all one needs to do to understand this is to look at electron microscope photographs of various kinds of human tissue: skin, epithelial, lymphatic, I mean, the adenoids and their fluids; our  blood, liver, lungs, bone and brain: the dura mater, the arachnoid mater, and the pia mater of the meninges; the adrenal, the thyroid, the pineal  and various other kinds of glands; to be sure you will see different and varied kinds of landscapes, each with its own kind of texture and colors . . . not unlike geological formations, or the textures found in different types of plant life both terrestrial and aquatic . . . I fancy them to be like the surfaces, valleys, canyons and caves of unknown planets and asteroids in distant star systems, distant galaxy’s perhaps, I see them in my dreams . . . these are the sources of my paintings” she said looking at me suddenly happy – he claims – “I pour over countless books on anatomy, internal medicine, pathology and geology, avidly studying their illustrations, I like the photos of endoscopies and different types of surgeries too, but it is the pathologies that interest me most” – he claims she said emphatically – “the so-called anomalies, the various kinds of ulcers, tumors and cysts, the warts and birth marks, the different kinds of skin diseases such as psoriasis, rosacea and eczema and my favorites: ulcerated cavernous haemangioma and elephantiasis” she said while ravenously chewing on another piece of roast beef – the old man smirks with amusement – and then she said “it is these so-called internal landscapes that inform my work, I compare them to the illustrations in my geology books, look for correspondences, relationships between these inner and outer landscapes, the similarities are often uncanny between the textures, the colors, thus implying a deep connection between the outer and the inner so-called, I go on like this for hours, I can’t help it, clearly a kind of language emerges from these images, from their relationships” she said visibly agitated with excitement – he claims – “a language emerges from these shapes and colors, these textures . . . or rather a number of languages communicating with each other, criss-crossing each other through me, through my consciousness, my awareness of them, my seeing them acts as a conduit through which they, these languages, made up of various kinds of textures and colors, both organic and geological, belonging to different and distant contexts, the so-called inner and the so-called outer, communicate with each other through me, through my eyes, through my mind, and so too, communicate with me, instruct me, show me how a painting, a collage or sculpture is to be,” all this she said to me last night until the day began to emerge from the east and night began to dissolve and the machinery of rodents both areal and earth bound retired for the day – the old man hesitates, mouth agape and drooling, now staring with puzzlement at the floor, but suddenly inhaling, he continues in a distracted tone of voice – of course     nothing could be easier than to go really insane      from one moment to the next    the problem is not so much that she has something in her head    everybody has the most monstrous things in their heads    and these go on without end until our deaths    anybody else would become unhinged     but not her    it is still possible to be outside time and find that all moments co-exist simultaneously! – he exclaims raising his head - play in the gap between them     but these are all ruins     I mean most of humanity has its head filled with ruins    most human beings have their heads full of ruins    ruins and detritus      like myself    she loves the debris   the fog     the impending grayness   she gathers the fragments     the fragmented    and rather than trying to make them whole again     allows for the absences to make themselves felt     why     the cognitively fragmented world in which we live brings about the desire in many for over arching narratives – the old man says with growing glee – but these turn out to give only illusions of mending the prevalent fragmentation    anticipating a totalizing vision that obscures the importance of local events . . . examples and samples . . . of course the description of the fragmentation itself becomes a kind of meta-narrative    theorists today while subverting overarching theories one moment    create new ones the next  thus betraying their helplessness and hypocrisy! – he exclaims cackling meanly – thus situating themselves as authorities engaged in a power play whose objective is conquest    claiming a territory   domination     as it’s always been! – he snickers mischievously – to be right    always right    but no! none of this matters! no matter     no being      no nothingness     no right    no wrong    no description     no overarching narrative    no local narrative    puaaaagggghhh! these are the strategies of academics jockeying for position      trying desperately    childishly to establish a secure    a stable position for themselves     ourselves    a position of authority - he emphasizes derisively - even while preaching instability     even while preaching the need for a critique of authoritarianism! these are the biggest hypocrites of all!     academics! – he shouts - we are the biggest    most notorious shits there are!    with our idiotic self importance and cleverness!    they are the most prolific producers of turds and consumers of blood who sodomize their students with their alleged truths!     the truth it comes and goes and leaves us in the lurch - he suddenly entones - and now we think we can see it from our lofty perch – he chants playfully - of course    of course   but no! no!  their cleverness comes after their idiocy which has always butt fucked it closely! all the various critiques of power     of authoritarianism     are privileged forms of discourse by virtue of the fact that they occur in    and are the product of    the academic environment to begin with! – he says pointedly – the ability to criticize is what puts us in a position of privilege to begin with    I mean to say – he stabs aggresively at the air in front of him – it is because we are privileged to begin with that we have the time and ability to produce criticism      of course with the best of intentions    to enlighten     on behalf of the truth     the various truths we think    in our arrogance    others are unawares of     as soon as we open our mouths     as soon as we think      we destroy someone’s life     someone’s reputation is destroyed by our thinking    our speaking     our so-called criticisms     we cannot help it     it’s as natural as farting    and as such     we enjoy it   it gives us immense pleasure     in fact    we revel in it! – the old man exclaims with joy scratching his ass and burping – why    as I’ve already told you    each critical endeavor involves a kind of mapping      each description of reality     a sort of emplotment by means of some kind of metaphorical language    whether that of the so-called ordinary language we use on a daily basis    or the more specialized languages like those of science and mathematical notation     but perhaps recent developments in poetic language or musical notation would be better suited for this purpose – he remarks snidely – considering how their overarching narratives render stable the destabilizing methods of writers and poets . . . while rattling  on and on with their various critiques of systematicism and closure     literary theorists    philosophers and scientists alike     systematically overlook music    and    in particular    the variety of musical notations we’ve seen throughout the centuries from that of the Gregorian neum    to classical    traditional notation with its whole and half notes    its quarter notes     its eighth and sixteenth notes and so on    all of which indicate pitch    duration    harmony and texture when grouped vertically or into two or more simultaneous melodic lines as we see in counterpoint    and more recently – he pontificates wheezing with agitation - in the twentieth century    we find all kinds of developments in notation    from so-called graphic notations which not only indicate duration and pitch but also density   dynamics and a kind of gestural language    up to and including of course    a variety of programming languages or code   as they say   used in today’s computer music! – he gestures wildly with his hand while catching his breath - these are all kinds of notation    many of which    if not all     lend themselves to a variety of interpretations thus involving an element of indeterminacy and so    in varying degrees    resisting closure and the absolutism of the systematic     but of course – he says in a pedantic tone of voice - this requires a shift from notions insisting on the deterministic character of nature   to one that emphasizes stochastic     statistic descriptions    why   at the risk of sounding like one of those new age idiots    the entire universe is capable of development and innovation!     random fluctuations at the local level have the potential of propelling the writing   the artistic work   toward a point of bifurcation at which the direction of change becomes unpredictable!     the work no longer emerges from the idea    the story as idea    were language is the mere vehicle for the story    the mere instrument for the story’s expression     rather     whatever story there is    it emerges from language itself    from the structures formed from this material    I mean to say    it emerges from the different possibilities for construction present in the linguistic material itself    the language and its ever changing constructs are what make and unmake me    in it    I appears and disappears    free of all intentionality – the old man says – but    as I was saying    it is in fact their systematic avoidance of music   of the musical     and musical notation . . . I mean to say   the critical theorists’ systematic avoidance of the musical and its various kinds of notation is significant!    it contradicts their critique of systematicism and closure and is evidence not only of hypocrisy but of laziness     laziness of the crassest    basest kind . . . but the world is in order     order of some kind . . .  still    the night indicates a certain fear of chaos    I withdraw into my grief – he chants in a gentle, hoarse whisper, then, clearing his throat, he continues in a louder tone - of course all these theorists and philosophers with their posh academic careers and their luxurious publications are no better than parasites    capitalizing as we do on the works    the insights of poets and writers who came up with those ideas long before  the theorists did     many of whom died destitute and upon whose cadavers those disgusting vultures feed!    once more we see that artists are decades    centuries ahead of the theorists    the philosophers and scientists! – he exclaims triumphantly – of course    of course     we all seek entertainment    not meaning to be scientific about this you see     psychoanalytic   lets say    we all seek to entertain ourselves      to keep ourselves occupied in some manner     somehow    entertain ourselves while we wait      while we wait    we seek to entertain ourselves   from the time we are born we begin to wait    baring the unending tedium of existence     we wait for the inevitable   for the last moment to set us free from this unbearable mess about which we can do nothing except complain    we go through life like this    whinning helplessly   expecting someone    others to give us the answers    to fix things for us     one can hardly blame them    those parasites    those theorists and critics    for the exploitation they indulge in      from the time we’re born . . . the miraculous    the wondrous    the ever changing quality of light . . . wha’ happens is     the ever changing quality of existence eludes us     we become inured to it   dull even    we never fully recover from this trauma    you see?    this is our meaning    the meaning that is us     this is what we     humanity    mean – he says - this is what we have to give    what we have to offer life    better than those stupid questions we are always asking of life    the ones we can’t help asking for we have become dull    traumatized as we are by the newness of life   its wondrous nature     we are a part of the process   the ongoing process    assembled and slowly broken down    over time   disintegrating     the monstrosity of it all – he stops suddenly and stares at me in the face, a smirk moves across his lips –  but in any case – he continues in an amused tone – as I was saying    whatever meaning it may have    music is meaningful not only because it points to something     as it were    outside itself     but because it means     it just means – he emphasizes slowly – not what     but just    it just means    and what it means is transience    impermanence    perhaps unwittingly emulating life so-called     for what does that tiresome word mean?   life   nature   the universe   the everything   existence    being    all of which are just as tiresome    overused and vague and which lead us to the most idiotic question of all: what is the meaning of life? – he says mockingly – and the second most idiotic question: what is the most important thing in your life?    why   living of course! – he shouts annoyed – anybody else would have to be an absolute idiot to think otherwise – he scoffs – you have a life and you live it    that is it’s so-called meaning     that is our purpose      to live    most of the time    people   when they use those words    when they ask those questions     don’t know what they mean    and so    don’t know what they’re saying   don’t know what they are talking about     emplotment enjoyment    employment emplotmeant - he chants childishly – of course    there is no such thing as the soul    why   I lost mine early on    when I was a child     when I was a child    my father told me animals and plants have no souls    and neither do we     this was    of course    a soulless thing to say to a child    which proves my father and others like him right    for how could he and those others say such a thing to a child if it wasn’t because they were indeed themselves lacking in souls?   and what’s more   how could they be the only ones lacking souls?  either we all have souls    are souls    or we don’t    aren’t      souls    now    now in this agony     my soul is filled with unspeakable delights – he whispers gently - sometimes     I think I understand what she meant by those words    Teresa of Avila     what she meant     the suffering of course    is the body and mind dropping off    the loss    and the knowledge that what has been lost is irretrievable   yet at the same time    it is liberating!     it is only possible to experience the devine    if one is forced    violently so   into experiences filled with utter dread    repulsion and ecstasy    like say    for instance    having intercourse with a corpse   or ingesting a corpse   or both   or any other kind of absolutely horrifying    repulsive experience as is often seen on battlefields   in wars    intimately felt experiences that shock us out of our comfortable cocoon of habits     what we fear most    shocking us into wakefulness . . . but then again   why?  what for?  who are we?  what right have we to set anyone straight? what right does anyone have to do such a thing? what makes us think we are privy to the truth    to real reality so-called?   who’s to say that those who are asleep aren’t awake in their own dreaming? who’s to say they aren’t awake in their own way    who’s to say you and I are awake and aren’t just dreaming we are here    awake?  ‘tis rather arrogant of anyone to make such claims     claiming to know the truth with capital     T   what reality with capital R really is    who among us can make such claims?   sheer megalomania!    plain and simple    wake up to that! – he exclaims looking annoyed and takes another drag from his cigarette – some idiot with deep seated insecurities    for which she feels she must somehow compensate    some idiotic narcissist feeling he has something to prove    finally sees the light and in the manner of true American puritan zeal   takes it upon himself or herself to tell everybody    whether we care to hear about it or not   hundreds if not thousands of books are written by all these so-called new age thinkers    the surprisingly consumable notions of the Zen Buddhist industry    they simulate a posture of thinking    subscribing as they do to the pragmatist ideology of “less words and more action” – he gesticulates making quotation signs in the air - where such non-conceptual vagaries represent un-freedom as opposed to say . . . I mean    limiting one’s mind  to ideas open and available at the historical moment of its experience which would be an element of freedom    these notions they throw about    that theirs is a philosophy of doing and not just thinking or reading    are nothing more than moronic! – he shouts again getting more and more agitated – a kind of corny exoticism meant to console   comfort us in the midst of a brutally oppressive society that exploits us and everything else mercilessly!    of course   of course    I’m an absolute idiot too for having taken the time to read all that unbearable drivel! – he shouts again shaking his head – it’s yet another kind of entertainment with which we privileged ones distract ourselves from our present situation    keeping us from reflecting on ourselves and the real state of captivity we find ourselves in at this very moment   even as I speak!   I don’t mean to sound like a Marxist   mind you   but the fact is we are slaves to capital! – he suddenly shouts jumping out of his chair shaking his fist at the air in front of him then collapsing back into his chair coughing – now   would you please tell me    how are reading   thinking   writing and speaking not kinds of action? how are they not kinds of so-called actual action? how are they not kinds of doing? – he inquires mockingly – of course!    reading    thinking   writing and speaking are always already kinds of so-called actual action and not something separate from the body!    some kind of disembodied abstract event! – he sneers - it seems to me that this view where thinking   reading   writing and speaking are separated from what they like to call actual action is evidence of a kind of dualistic view which is only possible if one still believes in the Cartesian division between mind and body    a notion   which    of course    has been proven to be false    a false dichotomy   long ago debunked by so-called western ­philosophers    what’s more – he continues in a hectic tone of voice - the view    where so-called leisurely activities such as thinking   reading   writing and speaking are thought of as non-activities    as kinds of not doing    this kind of thinking is closely related to the pragmatist ideology that thoroughly permeates    I mean to say    dominates    our culture and which sees such activities as not practical   that is to say   not productive    not useful in terms of capital’s interests and those of the production consumption machinery   domination   of course being one of capital’s prime interests – he says - underlying all this idiotic new age drivel are the ideologies of Puritanism   Pragmatism and the Cartesian division between mind and body I tell you!   of course all of society is deeply conditioned by this   from left to right through the extreme center   it’s absolutely hopeless – he whimpers - this also applies to the division those twits are always making between the real and the “non real” which is yet another instance of dualism which   again   I think   stems directly from the Cartesian split between mind and body   to the best of my knowledge     the real   reality    is all there is    there is no “outside” to reality   no “beyond” reality    there is unseen and unknown reality but not an outside to it   to the best of our knowledge    which admittedly is very limited    there is no outside of the universe   the multiverse as some call it now   that being the case    those “things” which are generally considered unreal    such as thoughts    fantasies    dreams    the imagination and its products are in reality   they are an integral aspect of reality as a whole because they take place in our brains – the old man states emphatically - wha’ happens is    reality includes the so-called non real  in “itself” given that thinking    intellection    ratiocination    imagination are all kinds of physical   electro-chemical activities that the body does    kinds of bodily functions    the brain and its activities    thinking   dreaming    reading and writing   as I’ve already said    are material processes   and as such     are an aspect of the body    they are material processes that are an integral aspect of the universe    why! – he exclaims again - it is through us    through our   eyes   our   ears   our senses   our thinking   that the universe observes itself!    experiences itself!   thinks about itself!   imagines itself!  experiences itself as an individual   as multiple! – he raises himself up from his creaking chair and paces about angrily staring at the littered floor -  

                                                  they go on and on about how the self doesn’t exist!   the idiots!   if this is indeed the case   who   or what is that that says the self does not exist?   who or what is that who thinks of saying such a thing    and who or what is that that listens to and reflects upon the self does not exist? – he raises a hand with index finger pointing at the ceiling in a lecturing gesture – what’s more   if the self does indeed not exist   just what does it mean to speak of sentient beings   of beings who are aware    beings who are self aware - he turns toward me squinting – this is all idiocy of course . . . granted   the word chair is not the thing it signifies   and the map is not the territory   but as representations of the things they point to   they are real as systems of signification which we human beings have created with our imaginations which are just as real    that is   as material processes    as electro-chemical activity – he says - as the flesh and blood brains that do the imagining and creating   that the map is not the territory may be true but it takes place within the territory and as such is an aspect of said territory   what’s more – he chuckles facetiously – the map itself is a kind of territory – he winks at me grinning – the map itself is nested in the territory it represents and as such it is part of the territory and    as such     it is an aspect of the territory and as such    it very much is the territory    that as a representation of the territory it is imperfect    incomplete in its descrptions may be true    but this does not mean it is not the territory      it is the territory in as much as the map is nested in the territory it represents     and therefore part of it     an aspect of it   in this case the representation and what it represents are very much interconnected     entangled     an entanglemeant if you will     a meaningful tangle of events   different aspects or sides of the same system if indeed we can call it that    a system    the map may be a stand-in for the territory it describes    it is indeed standing in the territory it describes    it is not separate from it   nor are we     nor is the one looking at the map separate from the territory   no   he or she is very much a part    or rather    an aspect of the same territory the map is a description of . . . that thinking and reading    writing and speaking are kinds of action that may be limited and perhaps inadequate when it comes to apprehending ultimate reality so-called    may very well be the case    but they are not separate from that reality   they are not outside that reality if by reality we mean life   the universe and everything   whatever one may wish to call it – he says with exasperation - but then again   just what is matter?  especially   as I’ve already pointed out . . . I mean    in light of what physicist have been saying for several decades now    that matter is mostly empty space and that the distinction between matter and energy is very slim and that it is in a constant process of change   a constant process of creation and re-creation    a kind of turbulent activity in fact   why   matter is nothing but frozen light - the old man whispers vehemently and then remains silent for a while staring at the floor. I don’t dare move for fear of setting him off again hoping this will be my chance to escape – the role of stochastic self-organization is a liberating one – he suddenly starts up again in a hoarse whisper while staring out the window – just as nature is liberated from determinism by the stochastic leap toward the unprecedented    so too it is with my sister’s paintings – he muses – in the afternoons   one can hear    feel   what remains unseen all around    at the edge of certain thoughtful     uneventful cloud   as the trees seem to make a little sense    more precious than anything on earth – he says softly, turning and looking through me as if at a point in the  distance – the sound of poetry seeps into the day   the way watercolors bleed into each other blurring the line where one begins and the other ends . . . a line or two is lifted here and there from a random collection of poems printed on brittle rice paper   with Japanese style prints of bamboo stalks and an occasional sparrow or crane     perhaps a chrysanthemum   water lilies and a gold and red colored bream seen barely below the surface of the water    the words are chosen for their appearance and complexity of sound   a ventriloquist whispers them in solitude like the wind    again    in the autumn    the landscape longs for a light that is of its own making . . . one has a life    one lives it     more than this there is nothing    why don’t they say so    say so    that is the meaning   this present moment    here and now    is all there is    it’s all we have    I mean   that’s the most important thing in life to me   even if at a later date one finds oneself walking in a park seen in the film of a nightmare and all the sky and each brittle leaf has been thoroughly gone over and every hue has been accounted for    now looking more and more like wallpaper than a dream . . . one jumps the gun of one’s own accord as if grasping at chords from an endless harp . . . the fields    now etiolated    wince and fold in     retiring for the season . . . it is in these moments of solitude and desolation that one finds the truth    some kind of truth despite the frightful noises in the brain     and yet . . . and yet . . . as much as it is possible to be honest   as much as it is possible for the human   to be sincere    now    I know this much    I am constantly being distracted from life   from living   by those dreadful noises in my brain . . . while still a professor    I would lead my students through whatever topic we were discussing    through my thought processes    the dauntingly cumbersome logic of it all     as if through my own darkness    with eyes closed    because of my thorough familiarity with it . . . I was constantly being distracted by the noises in my mind . . . our family doctor    when he visits us    only treats me for insomnia you know    instead of what really ails me    it is beyond him    his meager comprehension    what ails all of us in one way or another    the poor man leaves as quickly as he can   if you could only see the expression on his face!    like yourself    he is terrified of me! – the professor cackles and coughs - why    all the troubles we see around us    in the world at large    come from within us    nobody can say for sure why all these things continue to happen to us you see     but it is certain that the conflict between our reasoning     our thinking    our imaginations and reality is the source of most of our misfortunes     this rift between how we imagine things should be and how they really are is the cause of all our maladies     this is evidence of just how pathetically naïve we are    against the universe    we don’t stand a chance    to be sure   this is the darkest night . . . once you immerse yourself in the gloom   you may find that it has a luminosity all its own  a kind of dark light   if you will . . . just as all of a sudden I found myself incapable of leaving this house    so too I became invisible to those who once knew me   my relatives   my colleagues and friends    suddenly for them I was no longer there   I had ceased to exist    they were   of course    always too willing to indulge themselves in this kind of thinking    this kind of simplistic   naïve thinking whereby everything is divided into light and dark   good and evil   the sacred and the profane     order and disorder and so on   the whole tedious mess!   not even a chance of a doubt appearing in anything they said    anything they thought     if one can call it thinking    for them the world    life    seemed concluded    finished    a closed book as they say   whereas for me   life   the so-called world and myself    always seem incomplete    always starting anew    in an ebullient state    as if it were always beginning again    each moment    I could never relate to this conclusive state of being of theirs    one might as well be deceased!    with the exception of my sister    I may as well never see anyone again   it’s just as well   this has always been the source of my aloofness   but my aloofness originates in them   not in me   it is they who have forced me into being aloof    

                                                                                       what ails me ails you and everyone else   the difference is that I am no longer capable of concealing it   but rest assured   what ails me just as well ails you and everyone else   I’m no longer capable of denying it   that’s all    I am the ailment    we    are the ailment – he says smirking smugly - it seems only natural that the world destroy itself    that the so-called world is destructive    or is it that nature is in a continuous process of destruction? – he asks whispering loudly - a destruction of which we are the unwitting instruments    it seems there is something that rules over us about which we have little or no control whatsoever you see    

 

                                  

 

* * *

 

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 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 everyday   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

     sign flotsam

discombobulation:

 

some jetsam to forget

   me knots as ever present in this content

                             

               *

  foiled me  messy

from ended:

 

a ripple of pink tinged with

white

through

dark

forest green rustling in

the night

                                   *

 

flot·sam

 

Pronunciation Key  (fltsm) n.

 

1.  a.  Wreckage or cargo that remains afloat after a ship has sunk.

                                        b.  Floating refuse or debris.

   

2.  Discarded odds and ends.

 

3.  Vagrant, usually destitute people.

                       

*

jet·sam  

 

Pronunciation Key  (jtsm) n.

   

1.  Cargo or equipment thrown overboard to lighten a ship in distress.

   

2.  Discarded cargo or equipment found washed ashore. See Usage Note at flotsam.

 

3.  Discarded odds and ends

ssss-

ahh-

  eeii-

nnn

    n

n-

fff-

ullll-

                    ought

sss-

uh-

mmm

 

dih-

        ssss-

kuh-

mmm-

                  bob-

   yoo-

                       lay-

               shh-

uh-

 n

      n

     n

   n

n        

 

sssss-     

uh-       

m

    m

m

 

jeh-

        t

 

sss-

uh-

mmm

 

        t-

ooo

 

ffff-

        oh-

        rrrrr

g-

    eh-

   tih

*

a-

        k-

               sss-

        ih-

             deh-

    nnn-

tuh-

         uhll

 

uh-

        th-

               er

   r

r

 r

t- eh

               rrr-

        ih-

t-

        oh-

               rrreee

 

ssss-

               t-

        rrrr-

                       ay

 

ssss-

          eh-

                 k-

      shh-

                 uhnnn-

           ssss

ffff-

        oh-

eee-

uhlll-

duh 

wah-

washed           shh-    d

             a wreckage

    ah              shh-

after  oh-  r

       debris

            destitute a  rrr- eh-   ku- found

                    to lighten        juh

oh-      found floating refuse

rrr        usually                               

     wah-

         remains   t

   rrr-   afloat

  odds   ee-

            washed ashore   mm-     ay- a wreckage mm-          ay-

nn- or

what remains         

 

after        odds       afloat      after

odds and ends     sss    

        overboard cargo  

a-      vagrant

    fff-  

t-               rr

    dih-   usually destitute

          sss-

   k-   found floating

            ah-    r-

 d-    eh-     d

overboard               sh-                           washed ashore                                                                          odds afloat after

                  oh-       in distress                        a wreckage or what remains                            ah-      people     dss

        rrr                                                                      after discarded odds afloat after                                       debris

fff-     floating refuse   ou-            debris discarded vagrant usually        a-  cargo   fff-       ull-

   thrown    nn-    discarded    duh   destitute thrown overboard cargo                                            refuse           oh-vv-      usually    ay-   destitute   found floating refuse  and ends                      t people   ll-  and ends

people  gr- after ah-  sunk  nn-   to lighten a ship in distress after                               I-    usually    t-

    wreckage   t                         cargo and equipment washed ashore     eh-  destitute    nn   afloat

d-        eh-           ss-         found floating in distress overboard                  you- washed je-

     tih-        too-                vagrant, usually destitute people afloat                                oo-

              t             ss-         after a ship has sunk, floating refuse or        ah-   equipment    ll-

  uh- floating refuse or nn-         debris, discarded odds and ends                                      ee

 

                 k usually destitute d- refuse or eh- refuse or brr- found floating ee       

th- eh-  destitute    nn   afloat  d- wah-

washed           shh-    d

             a wreckage

    ah              shh-

after  oh-  r

       debris

            destitute a  rrr- eh-   ku- found

                    to lighten        juh

oh-      found floating refuse

rrr        usually                               

     wah-

eh-   ss- in distress overboard                 

you- washed je-

     tih- in distress too-                vagrant, people afloat                                oo-

              t debris, discarded ss-   after a ship has sunk, ah-   equipment    ll-

  uh-           nn- odds and ends  ee

rr-        oh-            oo-       

nn      fff-     floating refuse   ou-   discarded vagrant

              a-  cargo   fff-       ull-

   thrown    nn-    discarded    duh   destitute   oh-

vv-      usually    ay-   destitute   found floating t people   ll-  and ends

people  gr- after ah-  sunk  nn-   to lighten  I-    usually    t-

    wreckage   t  cargo a  eh-  destitute    nn   afloat        

rrr-   afloat

  odds   ee-

            washed ashore   mm-     ay- a wreckage mm-          ay-

nn- or

what remains         

 

after        odds       afloat      after

odds and ends     sss    

        overboard cargo  

a-      vagrant

    fff-  

u-             rr

    dih-   usually destitute

          sss-

   k-   found floating

            ah-    r-

 d-    eh-     d

        oh-

eee-

uhlll

duh               d-       

eh-  in distress you- washed je-

     tih-        too-               

vagrant, usually destitute people afloat          oo-

              t after a ship ss- has sunk ah-   equipment    ll-

  uh-         nn-      debris, discarded   ee

odds and ends

                 k remains    t

   rrr-   afloat

  odds   ee- washed ashore   mm-     ay- a wreckage mm-          ay-

nn- or

what remains         

 

after        odds       afloat      after

odds and ends     sss    

        overboard cargo  

a-      vagrant

    fff-  

v-              rr

    dih-   usually destitute

          sss-       keh-   found floating

            - outside the window I see dark, heavy clouds lying low in the sky, impenetrable, the trees tremble almost imperceptibly as a light breeze wanders through them carrying a fine drizzle in the dull, late afternoon light, the garden is suddenly imbued with an unforeseen clarity, I can see the cracks, fissures and grooves in the trees’ moist black bark, the veins in the partched, translucent bright yellow of the few leaves that still linger on the branches, the varied lines and shapes criss-crossing each other in the etiolated, unkept grasses and weeds, a plastic bag, an empty bottle, garbage randomly scattered about the grounds, each thing seeming to have a light of its own, giving the entire area a serene sense of place in the present moment -

                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 off 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

                                                                                               but no! – he suddenly blurts out – I must tell you!   show you something!    the machine I’ve been working on for years!   no one has seen it   what it can do!    with the exception of my sister of course    but   you’d be the first!    you must see it!    what it can do   my writing machine!   perhaps you can try it yourself! – he exclaims again this time giggling nervously – it has something in common with Raymond Roussel’s writing machine    but of course with today’s technology . . . – he trails off then continues energetically - actually   it differs greatly in that with my machine I can work directly with the brain’s waves    the machine opened up territories in me I didn’t know existed   the dreams I have are extraordinary   unprecedented    I see landscapes that can only belong to other worlds    I mean to say  those territories are in me   but the me no longer is    that is to say   I become an otherness it seems . . . come I will show you! – he suddenly gestures at me with his cigarette hand while at the same time jumping out of his chair with the spontaneous agility of a child and walks toward the studio door the threshold of which he crosses instantly with an effortless skip, he then turns his head toward me and gesturing again, disappears into the darkness of the hallway laughing. I remain still for a few seconds until I hear him shout - come on! – I hear his voice as if from a long distance away. Sluggishly, I begin to move toward the door that also seems far away, impossible to reach, as if I were stuck in a kind of dreamlike Zeno’s paradox; the distance between myself and the door, though only a few meters, never seeming to end. Finally, as I’m approaching the studio door, a sinewy hand suddenly pops out of the darkness and gripping my forearm with surprising force drags me into the hallway. With lead feet and wobbly legs, I stumble behind the professor who, cackling maniacally, pulls me along by the sleeve. I see a light pouring from an open door at the end of the hall - voilå! - the old man exclaims gesturing with widespread arms – this is our laboratory! our playground! – he squeals - this is where my sister and I conduct our experiments   with language and perception   with brain waves and sound    manipulating our brain waves with negative feedback – he says smiling at me with glee as he stands sideways in the doorway with one hand on his hip, the other, with cigarette between index and middle finger, palm facing upwards raised above his shoulder gesturing toward the interior of the room like a proud house wife. I enter into a windowless, rectangular room with a high ceiling filled with all kinds of electronic equipment, old and new. The room reminds me of an old analogue electronic music studio. The dust-covered walls are painted in a faded institutional gray-green color. Against the opposite wall, along the length of the room, are two long worktables, and on the wall above them are shelves stacked with books and papers. On the tables stand four large LCD computer monitors. Below the tables, resting on wooden pallets on the dusty wooden floor, among stacks of books and papers, cables and power strips, sit four state of the art computer towers linked to each other, seemingly working in tandem. Against the rear wall stands a table with a large multichannel sound mixer and a tall equipment rack that includes a patch bay full of connecting cables. There are also several synthesizers; an old Arp 2600 and an even older Moog synthesizer complete with all its modules, patch cables arching and dangling from their dark surfaces. I also see old multichannel tape recorders, oscilloscopes and filters, and an old ring modulator and harmonizer stacked upon each other in the rear corners of the room along with the latest multichannel digital recorders, oscilloscopes and filters, and an old ring modulator and harmonizer stacked upon each other in the rear corners of the room along with the latest model digital signal processor and other equipment which reminds me somewhat of medical equipment one sees in hospitals. Among them, I recognize an electro-encephalogram machine that seems to be connected to the synthesizers via some kind of interface unit. In the middle of the room I see what appears to be a reclining dentist chair at the head of which rests a kind of helmet with a mass of thin, multicolored wires emanating from its surface. The wires cascade behind the chair toward the floor in a swooping curve and then, a few meters later, ascend coming together into a large horizontal connector plugged into a console in the equipment rack in the back of the room. The rest of the room’s walls are covered with paintings of unfamiliar landscapes and objects, presumably the work of the professor’s sister. Charts of various sorts, as well as scraps of paper with notes and odd symbols scribbled on them in ink or pencil are tacked or stuck with scotch tape onto some of the paintings and whatever spaces are left available on the walls. The professor suddenly halts and speaks up with a wheezing voice - as stated in his “Journey to the Taraumara” according to Artaud    and also    certain phenomenologists     all of reality is a kind of language   all of reality speaks    all of reality is an intricate web of signs   signs and languages that speak about us and our predicament    signs which forever point to each other in an infinite web of relationships    all of reality     a veritable morass of languages crisscrossing    interrupting and dialoguing with each other in an interminable tangle     an entanglemeant in fact – he states emphatically – a meaningful tangle of events    a polysemous tangle of 

meanings    all of life   the entire universe in fact    is a koan as Dogen Kigen   the thirteenth century Japanese Buddhist monk would have it    a web of languages most of which remain    and shall remain     unintelligible to us – he says wheezing softly – we are lost in a maze    an interminable      eternal maze from which there is no escape except for those few whose actions are lacking in self-interest – he says grimacing –

                    . . . my sister’s digital art work and her scanned paintings . . . I mean    thanks to an algorithm I wrote which permits us to take the digital information from her works    her scanned paintings and her digital art works   by means of a kind of mapping   that is to say    we take the values from the digital and scanned works and map them unto the brain’s waveforms   I mean to say   the computer translates the information from the visual imagery into wave forms that by means of reverse feed-back are fed directly into my brain    but first of course – he grumbles - my mind must be made blank   the original brain waves must be   as it were    erased     in order to do this    one must use phase cancellation    this is produced by the sum of two waves of the same frequency and amplitude that are out of phase with each other   the end result is a wave that has less overall amplitude than both original waves      in other words   modeled after an electroencephalogram of my brain    the computer generates a new set of brain waves just like mine in frequency and amplitude  the only difference is that they differ in phase    it then feeds them back into my brain thus adding them on to the ones my brain is already producing so creating the desired effect of phase cancellation – he grins briefly - in this manner   the brain is made considerably more quiet   more receptive than it normally is with its usual internal noises     monologues and other mechanisms by which the mind defends itself against reality    the eternal silence     once this is achieved     little by little   the computer begins to feed the brain the new values    the new information taken from my sister’s digital and scanned works    and this information begins to alter the comportment of the brain’s waves by changing the values of their parameters to match those of the art works   that is to say    their frequency and amplitude values as well as their density    the brain begins to function in frequency and amplitude ranges unknown   this of course will alter the brain’s chemistry and most certainly at the molecular level    its structure    producing highly unusual states of perception     of consciousness     quite literally    one comes into contact with landscapes   with views    sounds    textures and colors one has never encountered before

                                         of course    this is quite a dangerous endeavor   all manner of things can go wrong    one could conceivably end up brain dead    or the brain begin to produce a jumble of waveforms    the brain would become infinitely more noisy than what it already is    one wouldn’t be able to function    one would go mad to be sure    or collapse in the throes of endless seizures    the brain being caught up in a chaotic   cascading feed-back loop – he says whispering cautiously - but perhaps the most dangerous thing would be to be hacked while in the midst of the computer induced hypnogogic trance necessary to undergo the feed-back process   hacked by some exterior   some unknown source    someone hacking into our computers could cause all manner of havoc    this person   this entity – he says suddenly coughing agitated – could change the information going from the computer into the brain   this person   this being   I mean to say    the hacker    could alter the values    the information taken from my sister’s works transferred into the computers and from the computers into the brain    this person    or whatever     could very well reconfigure one’s brain as he or she    or maybe it   sees fit     this person   this creature    could in fact edit the contents of one’s brain   of one’s mind and therefore one’s thoughts     one’s perceptions would be completely transfigured     such a person     such a being    such a creature     would have complete control over one’s mind     over one’s body     over one’s body and mind - he says fidgeting and looking around nervously - complete access to one’s thoughts and feelings      one’s dreams     such an entity  would have access to the deepest recesses of one’s mind knowing things about myself that not even I know    it would thus be able to manipulate me with impunity    without my knowing anything about it     while you normally think of yourself as being in charge of your thoughts and actions    your dreams and feelings   your desires   your physical motions    in reality there is someone     or some thing   who is controlling them     making all those decisions for you – he says – no longer belonging to yourself     you’d find    if you’re aware    that you are completely lost    in a veritable forest of dreams    a labyrinth of mirages from which you can’t awake      set adrift in an ever changing reality controlled and defined    in fact created     by that unknown other to which you now belong – he whispers slowly and softly - of course    one night   it did indeed happen    we were hacked by an unknown source     an unknown force hijacked our system and began changing things around . . . from the someone hacked into the something system jacked into it into me and started changing things around and round    slowly swirling perpetual system dismantling perceptions in re-creation breaking down matter down to its smallest elements – he says with agitation - one night   my sister and I were here in the computer lab working     we had been working for hours   we were working on transferring data of the various parameters of her visual works   the colors   the textures    the shapes   the lines and intersections    the various patterns     from some of her paintings    from some of what she calls her oneiric landscapes   transferring that data into our computers and applying it to the parameters of sound   that is to say    mapping all that visual data to frequency[1]    amplitude[2]     rhythm    timbre and spectral information[3]   in other words    taking all that data and turning it into potential musical information     the values from the data  we then plugged into the patches[4] I wrote in SuperCollider 3[5]    the various instruments[6] I had created using the SuperCollider 3 program which would take all that information and manipulate and transform it into different kinds of waveforms      sound structures of varying textural densities    timbres    frequencies and amplitudes    using different types of envelope generators[7] to produce different kinds of attacks and durations    using random number generators    that is to say   noise generators    to control the values of the various parameters in each instrument   so as to add unpredictability    needless to say    the complexity and variety produced was enormous    one of my favorite patches is the FM synthesis[8] patch with multiple carriers and modulators which produces an incredible variety of timbres     attacks and textures      it’s various parameters     it’s envelope generators      also controlled by random number generators so as to produce as unpredictable a number and types of attacks and durations for each event as is possible     I applied various sound prosessing techniques with the instruments I wrote in SC3    such as different types of filtering    FFTs[9] for spectral processesing   various types of granulation[10]    aliasing[11]   the afore mentioned FM synthesis    all of whose parameters were controlled by random number generators   the brain being the greatest random number generator of all! – he suddenly squeals with excitement - all of these instruments and processesors I put in a kind of list we call an Array   and this Array I nested inside a Routine   which is a virtual object that generates events at given times   these times too were controlled randomly – he says wheezing - all of this produced an effect of great variety and unpredictability     textures would change in surprising ways    all kinds of unheard of tone colors    durations and articulations    creating a sound scape that unfolded and developed in a virtually infinite number of ways    a sound scape into which we would go exploring in a state of complete wonderment – he says with excitement, smiling with pleasure revealing his stained, rotting teeth – yet one night     one night something happened    something terrible    something truly horrific – he says barely whispering in a trembling voice – a door was opened    somehow     somewhere    we don’t know how    a door was thrown open     perhaps in my mind     my mind as conduit    a doorway into a world of an infinite variety of languages    words and voices    bumping into each other in a haphazard manner    snaking around each other in a frenzy – he says barely audible – as I was sitting in our modified dentist’s chair    wearing the headset you see there with all the electrodes and wires coming out of it     deeply plunged into a completely relaxed and open hypnagogic state    our computers all of a sudden began to act erratically    my sister who was sitting at the monitors    lost control of the machines as they began to scroll data up and down the screens with maniacal speed      I began to hear at first a faint humming sound     like the metallic humming of insects     insect mandibules clicking and clacking obsessively   insect wings in the distance humming maniacally    then growing louder and louder and among the humming sounds    I also began to hear what seemed like voices      metallic insect-like voices    laced with occasional bands of staticky noise    nervously chattering mandibules and sharp     fidgety claws clickety clacketing    and in the midst of the images I was receiving from the computers of my sister’s intra-psychic landscapes    there began to appear pitch black   angular shapes     heads with angular pointy ears on wide   angular shoulders from which issued black pointy bat-like wings with sharp claws at their ends   but somehow these were flat    two dimensional shapes gliding without effort among the images of the varied tissue-like geological structures    textures and colors of my sister’s landscapes    as I looked more intently into my self    into my mind    I saw that the flat     bat-like shapes where issueing from one central place    one central point    an annulus   perhaps the very center of my mind    gliding rapidly they began to form circles of flat    sharp    angular bat-like shapes turning clockwise and counterclockwise    one circle within another     suddenly reminding me of M.C. Escher’s woodcut “Circle Limit IV” with it’s concentric circles of black bats     their humming   mumbling chatter    the electrical humming of their metallic mandibules chattering   ringing in my ears and in my insides     driving me mad    tearing at the tissues of my mind    tickling me in different areas of my body    from the inside out    from inside my body     I began to wonder if he too    Escher   had encountered these creatures    these dark angels that now swarmed in my insides    the static of their electric thoughts buzzing in my ears     mumbling mindlessly   they began to nip and cut      nibble     bite and tear at my insides     with their razor sharp angular shoulders and pointy ears they slashed and stabbed at my flesh from within     first at my liver and spleen    then   with their razor sharp claws they tore at my kidneys     my bladder and intestines   scooping out my insides   slashing at the connective tissues that keep the organs in place    puncturing my lungs till they collapsed    stabbing at my heart with their scorpion-like tails    in the far distance I could hear a terrifying scream as if the sky was being ripped asunder     as the scream got deafeningly closer I opened my eyes only to realize the scream was mine    I saw my sister     mouth agape      staring at the wall in front of her paralyzed with fear     I turned my eyes in the direction she was looking and saw a swarm of the shadow-like   two-dimensional creatures swirling round the room   they glided effortlessly along the walls     ceiling and floor     their point of origin seeming to be the vertices of the room’s corners – he says with agitation - instinctively I pulled off the electrode headset and jumping out of the chair   ran as fast as I could to the equipment rack in the back of the room and immediately killed the master power switch to which all of the lab’s electronic equipment is connected      the mayhem disappeared almost instantly – he says with a grimace – they exist in the electrical system you see    in the flow of electrons    it may very well be that another dimension     another universe exists in the electrical system     the flow of electric current   the stream of particles    of electrons    opens up doorways into other worlds where these beings exist     perhaps electricity itself is alive      a kind of living process    with a mind     a consciousness of its own     perhaps through the quantum processes that go on in our brains     something like quantum entanglement ocurrs     our brains    our minds share the same particles with other beings in other dimensions     enabling our minds to connect with theirs    I must admit   a frightening thought – he says whispering softly – it may very well be that these beings    these entities have been my editors all along     cutting and pasting   rearranging my writings    turning them into something I can’t recognize as my own . . .      

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[1] The highness or lowness of a sound which is measured in Hertz or  cycles per second (CPS).

[2] The loudness (or volume) of a sound which is a function of how much energy a sound has.

[3] The frequency and amplitude information in the attack of a sound which are determining factors in that sound’s timbre (or tone color) and which enable our ears to identify the source of sounds and, distinguish one sound from another, e.g., the sound of a violin from that of a flute.

[4] In Electronic and computer music, a patch is a constellation or system of generators and processors (also known as Unit Generators or UG) which are connected to each other and which generate and process signals. There are different types of generators and processors. For example, a White Noise generador generates a kind of noise called White Noise. A High Pass Filter is a type of signal processor which allows through only high frequencies from a signal. If we were to connect the White Noise generador to the High Pass Filter, we would only hear the higher frequencies of the White Noise.

[5] SuperCollider 3 is an object-oriented programing language for sound synthesis and digital signal processing originally created by James McCartney in 1996. In 2002, when he joined the Apple Core Audio Team, he released SC under the terms of the GNU General Public License. SC3 is now developed and maintained by an active  and enthusiastic community. It can be downloaded for free at http://supercollider.sourceforge.net.

[6] i.e.,  patches.

[7] A kind of Unit Generator that controls a signal’s attack, sustain, amplitude and duration.

[8] Frequency Modulation syntesis is an electronic music technique where the timbre of a waveform (the carrier) is changed by modulating its frequency with the frequency of another waveform (the modulator) that is also in the audio range. The result is a more complex waveform with a different timbre. There can be multiple Carriers and modulators which make for even more complex timbres and sound textures.

[9] Fast Fourier Transform is a technique used in computer music to analyze the frequency content of a sound’s spectra. Complex waveforms can be deconstructed into combinations of simple waves of different amplitudes, frequencies and phases.

[10] Granulation or Granulation Synthesis is a technique used in computer music in which an electronically generated sound or a sound file is broken up into very small fragments called grains. These grains can be used as building blocks for larger sound objects as when they are scattered to form cloud-like structures or organizad into streams.

[11] In digital signal processing, aliasing (also known as foldover) is a kind of distortion that occurs when the sampling rate of a sound is more than one-half of the sampling rate. Half of the sampling rate is called the Nyquist frequency. So, if we have a sampling rate of 20,000 Hz (where the Nyquist frequency is 10,000 Hz) and we are trying to sample a sound that has a frequency of 12,000Hz (2000Hz higher than the Nyquist frequency) we will get foldover or aliasing with a resulting sound that has a frequency of 8000 Hz. Aliasing can produce some interesting sound artifacts.

                                                                                                                                  it was the editors I’m sure – he says gasping for air - and if it wasn’t them   then it was . . . just as they rearranged my insides    my organs    they started to change things around    change my brain waves   put thoughts    language    voices in my head I didn’t have there before     I didn’t want there   they put writing in my head    on my pages    I didn’t want    never meant to be . . .       

                                                                                it was the editors – he mutters cautiously -  I’m sure    who nearly killed me    they might as well have   just as they scooped all my organs out    they took my works away from me   they took my words away from me    my writings   my excretions   they obviously wanted me dead     dead in life    a kind of living death is what they had in store for me    keeping me half alive   this is the torment they’ve had in store for me all along    they scrambled my brains   my thoughts    so that I could not have a single    clear thought or insight anymore     I could never love anything I wrote after they finished with me    my body   my mind     after they finished with it   my writings   completely destroyed – he says with desperation - they destroyed the original intention   the original vision   under the pretext of producing something they said the public wants to read    as if anyone knows what the public wants   or even if the public reads at all    or if the public even exists for that matter!    they destroyed the structure of my works    in most cases    it is the structure that says everything    just as much   if not more than the words themselves   I mean to say   the internal relationships between the sections and subsections of the work  as well as the relationship between each of the works themselves   they completely erased the experimental    exploratory nature of my works   turning them into the opposite    turning them into the conformist    complacent kind of literature one finds everywhere     I could never love any of my books after that   I could never consider them mine anymore   they merely had my name on them   but it wasn’t me who wrote those books    not after they finished with them   they changed everything in them   in my books   they altered everything   after they completely rearranged them beyond recognition   I could never see them   read them again   consider them as mine   consider them mine   they claimed the main idea was still there   in the books    that it was the best part of the books    this they said patronizing me    as if I couldn’t see what they had done   but of course the main idea was the experimental nature of the works which they discarded completely   they claimed the main idea as theirs   which they completely changed into the usual drab linear narrative   thus erasing it  the main idea so-called    of course there was more than one main idea    as they called it   they were complex    you couldn’t reduce them down to just one idea    it was censorship plain and simple    it was politically   ideologically motivated without a doubt   the philistines wanted narrative   they wanted narrative stories   they said the public wanted something they are familiar with   something they knew    they said the public liked that   that they like what they know and that they didn’t want any changes made   they said the public knows what it likes and it likes what it knows   it likes what it knows and it knows what it likes    tight little circle this   pretty as the truth tied at both ends – the old man says bitingly - they said they didn’t want this little circle   this vicious little circle of theirs    this nasty little limit cycle of theirs broken    this was not the time to inject new information into it   they said the public doesn’t want its little habits changed    its reading and thinking habits   the public’s perceptual habits should not be changed   should not be challenged in any way – the old man says annoyed - this is what they said    that the time was not ripe for change   but of course it never is! – he gestures angrily - of course   by doing this   by re-interpreting my writings in their own image   and releasing them to the public as mine    the so-called public of which I know nothing and for which I have nothing but contempt    they   the editors   were preparing the way for my suicide   I am discarded   I am discharged like so much refuse   a vagrant   so much jetsam  

                      the I is discarded   this whole story was   is about the destruction of the self   this gradual process of degradation    a long process of erosion that takes years and which got me to where I am now   living in the rubble of what was once myself – he mutters slowly with trembling voice holding on to what’s left of his cigarette with a shaky hand, his knees too tremble, his entire body shudders with dread like an animal in a slaughterhouse sensing the nearness of its time – they took me away from myself you see – he whimpers - they made sure my voice had been made ineffective   I had never even met them    this Mr. Q and this Ms. Z    my editors    I never met them in the flesh   face to face    I don’t even know if they exist    I called the publishers  enquiring after them   but they were always out   they worked from their homes I was told   and were not to be bothered as they were now involved in an enormous translation project and had no time for me and my petty problems   so I was told    of course by changing my writings    my language   they were changing my thinking    by changing the structure of my writings   they were changing my insides   by re-arranging the structure of my writings   they were re-arranging my insides   by changing my language they were also changing my perceptions   pushing me ever closer to madness   it was becoming necessary that I change things back to the way they were originally   I needed to protect myself – he says with increasing desperation – I found it necessary to re-write everything I had written until then   until now    everything that had been published in my name    in an attempt to repossess my work   my legacy    rescue it from these horrendous misrepresentations    of course   in order to do that I had to misrepresent the published works again     misquote and plagiarize the books and writings that had been published in my name    this was a kind of ritual for purifying myself   a self purifying ritual    I mean to say

           certain rites are necessary to purify and protect the space around oneself in which one works you see   this is an absolute necessity   of course it was this obsession with the main themes in my works    that of the destruction of the individual   of the self    and that of how language can re-shape   redefine reality and the self   how it can influence and change our perception of reality and therefore     how it     language can re-define and change us as individuals   the map may not be the territory   but it is most definitely part of it and what’s more    the map itself is a kind of territory – he emphasizes vehemently wheezing – it was these two recurrent themes that brought me to the place where I find myself today   my self demolished   a veritable collection of rubble   unable to find the energy   the peace of mind with which to collect myself   pick up the pieces   literally – he says while sighing – it was these two recurrent themes in my work   one: the destruction of the individual and two: language as a determining factor in how we think and perceive reality   its hallucinogenic properties    and its role as a determining factor in the construction of identity and therefore the individual   these two themes that   ironically    have led to my destruction – he slumps back down into his chair exhausted breathing again with difficulty -  if only I could tell someone about this    if only I could tell people about this   but nowadays   no one talks to anybody   no one listens to anybody   there are all these barriers   everywhere you go   everywhere you look   there are barriers    walls and moats    trenches and barbed wire fences   endless divisors and mazes    erected first in our minds   then all around us in the so-called world outside as excretions of our insides   of course   I talk to all kinds of people   people of all ages you see    I mean to say   if I could talk   if I could go outside   leave this house   if I could walk   I would speak to anybody   a child   an old person    a teenager   a young adult   a student   I could speak to anyone   if I could speak   if I could walk   their age   their station   would be irrelevant   we’ve all been there at some point in our lives   as youngsters   or will soon be there when we get older   all these barriers we have erected and maintain in ourselves and around each other   why do we go on like this? – he enquires barely audible as he stares vacantly at the wall in front of him – I look to the sky   the night sky and no longer see the stars   it has been years since I’ve seen stars   in this city of gray   gray skies   gray walls and gray   foggy nights   there are no stars to be seen   anywhere   the world is a progressive dimming of light    it is only the incomprehensible that has any conviction . . .

                        liking disliking what does any of that mean? – he says pensively drifting off into silence - hob knobbing with hobgoblins! – he suddenly cries out - I care not for extracting more than utter gloom  from this our human landscape of inconceivable devastation!     to ward off the contingent    toward warding off the contained offerings    con . . . con . . . contaminated!    as I’ve already said    this is what we struggle with throughout our lives – he mutters softly almost sobbing - those scenes lifted from real life so-called     the storm  reasserts itself     unable to let go    yet   at the same time    unable to hold on     all of the arts    all such endeavors are dead     pointless – he says softly with mild derision – have been for quite some time now   as well they should be    for they are expressions of a time long gone     it is the silence we must now face together     only one moment of silence and darkness brings us all together    unites us all in a single terrifying realization      that of our bare naked existence – he mutters distractedly staring at the floor as the lights  in the room suddenly flicker - all of the twentieth century with its various schools      its various movements     its avant-gardes    with its aspirations to revolution and changing the world      all of the twentieth century with its sacrificial   heroic movements    was nothing more than an extension of Romanticism and the acknowledgement of the latter’s failure to achieve its goals    we flail haplessly in our self made prisons    helplessly     unable to face the hopelessness of hoping    of course    to exist is to exert conditioning power on the world    it’s a two way street    why doesn’t anybody see this? – he asks almost squealing -

                                                    killing life     killing the world with our thoughts     they force me to repeat myself you see    they take me away from myself    from my body     they make me choke on mine own words     subject to a naïve    a simplistic conception of matter    we turn life  into so much inert material     over analyzing everything to death    into death    with our deadly beliefs    we turn the entire world into one large necrotic mass    one gigantic heap of corpses    the new born come into this world among so much death    the muck of putrefaction   why! ones semen is black    necrotic!    in the end    only kindness mutters     to itself – he chuckles softly – what more is left us    the  tedious   mendacious lot    but to destroy ourselves and each other and everything else    we hate everything   anything   anyone that makes us feel lesser   inferior   inadequate    and life    the universe     makes us feel very small    insignificant    we can’t stand it    we can’t take it    we are incapable of accepting it you see    and we can’t change it   control it    nor can we destroy it    but out of spite then    we will destroy one of its creations    ourselves!    ourselves and this world our planet and everything in it    poisoning everything to death!     the life of the intellectual is a dry   meaningless    lonely life     after all this time  aah aaah I’ve arrived at this realization only to see that all my accomplishments are vain and empty and that reality is so much more than I     in my arrogant    myopic view     had envisioned   reality is so much more complex and magical than we can grasp with our words    our thoughts   the most astute verbal descriptions and constructions     the most clever forms of thinking don’t come close to grasping what’s happening all around us and in ourselves and what we do to the world    subject as we are    have been for centuries    to a naïve     simplistic conception of matter    of materialism    turning life into so much inert matter     over analyzing everything to death   into death I should say   it is into  death that we analyze everything    killing life    killing the world with our thoughts    of course they are all fighting each other all the time   killing each other in the most insidious ways    in an attempt to consolidate their turf    what they see as their turf   their territory   in an attempt to establish superiority    intellectuals and artists    writers    poets and composers everywhere fighting each other   fighting each other over bits of scrap thrown at them by the philistines   the business class    they fight each other over beauty   what they think is beautiful    beauty and truth    wanting to be the first    the only ones who express the truth    wanting to be right    always right    wanting to be the only direct conduit    the only messengers of the Gods   of the truth and therefore establish their superiority over everyone else    all along blind to the fact that all the fighting and its ensuing nastiness is the only truth and it isn’t a beautiful one    quite the contrary    it’s very ugly   it has the ugliness of ego    of selfishness behind it     motivating it     it is the same nastiness behind all the wars all the ugliness and suffering we humans are capable of and have seen throughout the hundreds     the thousands of years of our sordid history   wanting to feel superior     all this born out of a sense of disdain for the human   the mortal   the body and its imperfections   our fear of what’s inevitable     our fear of death and decay   our fear of life  - he suddenly looks at me grinning and swivels around playfully in his chair tapping his feet on the dusty floor displacing dust balls and cigarette butts -  those there are who think me negative – he says derisively – negative   positive   what’s it all mean?   more dualism   more fragmentation    which is at the root of all our problems – he snickers - just think of this    all those wonderful people – he says again mockingly – all those artists   and scientist    those teachers and composers with all their wonderful works   their contributions to history    to culture    to knowledge    to so-called humanity – he emphasizes snidely – not to mention all those wonderful   positive human beings who shall remain forever anonymous   those loving mothers and fathers who had nothing but kindness to give their children    all those teachers who had nothing but support to offer their students    all those wonderful anonymous people   with all their positive thinking   their optimism and perseverance   their love for humanity   none of that managed to prevent   to stop the First World War   the massacre of one million Armenians at the hands of the Turks    the horrendous exploitation of the Congolese by the Belgian    the extermination of the indigenous peoples of the Americas    the death camps and all the other horrors of the Second World War   the Vietnam War   the rise of all manner of brutal totalitarianisms   global Capitalism being the latest incarnation   the ongoing conquest and destruction of the natural world    this sort of thing   this rage against life   against ourselves and each other   this has been going on for hundreds   thousands of years   this destructive movement   evolving throughout time  becoming more and more devastating like a growing wave    a tsunami   an avalanche     

                                                                                                        this is our legacy     this is what will endure    like the old Nazi bunkers by the North Sea which the Dutch couldn’t tear down after the war     so well constructed they are     monuments to our human nastiness    this is what we do best      we excel at constructing destruction – he says in a hoarse whisper - all that positive thinking   all that love and optimism   all that hope   has proven useless in face of the destructive force that is humanity   for we are a destructive force   obviously   just being positive and optimistic is not enough   especially when such optimism entails denial   closing off the so-called negative within ourselves   not facing and dealing with it head on

              obviously   avoiding these things doesn’t make them go away   all the deathly weariness of human existence   as we have seen throughout the centuries    quite the contrary   it comes back with a vengeance

                   our country     all of humanity in fact     is shock    shock and awe   as the military    strategic term goes      a totality involving a ruthless and brain destroying recipe that corrodes one’s resolve to the core   

          in such a weakened state     everyone       including one’s closest family and friends     turns on you    they do everything they can to make you falter     to undermine you     drive you over the edge to suicide    they have no interest in seeing who and what you really are     only in so far as they can use you     exploit you in some manner    this is what they do to you    they judge you      label you    brand you with an image they have concocted in their twisted minds and then treat you accordingly for the rest of your life   in effect freezing  you into a position     into a collection of habits and behaviors from which you can’t break free and which serve as justification for the punishment    the violence they enjoy inflicting on you – he says in a loud hoarse whisper - this destructiveness we see everywhere in our society   in our world    this unabashed hostility    is especially directed at thinkers   intellectuals and artists     people who think and question   people who create new ways of seeing    listening    thinking and feeling    it is directed also at sensitives    seers    people of deep spirituality . . . this has been going on for centuries    thousands of years in fact    but in recent history    it has taken an especially nasty turn with the rise of the industrial age and capitalism    this in combination with anglo-saxon Protestantism and positivism – he says smirking again – anglo-saxon capitalist pragmatism in combination with positivism has completely enslaved our world    has turned our world     ourselves included – he says grimacing again – into so much raw material to be dissected and exploited with impunity . . . an environment   a society that is itself obsessive    fixated on denial   it    society   obsesively looks away from the suffering it has caused and is actively involved in causing    even now as we speak – he frowns and coughs, then continues – as I’ve already said   by talking incessantly and walking around in circles I keep them at bay    it is a kind of ritual dance    an ancient ritual dance   you see   to scare away evil spirits     I learned it from the Abipon   an indigenous people of South America    you know    they lived in the lower Bermejo River area in the Gran Chaco of Argentina     it is more effective if more people are involved    forming a large circle    walking around in circles     chanting and talking    sometimes shouting so as to generate a field of energy the spirits can’t penetrate . . . we are surrounded by them here    our cities are crawling with them    you know    we attract them with our negative thoughts and violent ways    they love our gossip    our mendacity    as do we  you might say they feed on it . . . but if . . . as it is claimed . . . the Buddhists say in the Lankavatara Suttra      that we create reality with our minds     that we create objective reality with our minds    and presumably that means   with our brains . . . – he mutters desperately, aimlessly shuffling about mechanically on the floor – but no . . . no . . . – he stands still for a moment, cigarette in hand, staring vacantly at the wall in front of him, drool dangling from his lower lip and then he suddenly exclaims - what am I saying!   here I go again talking my head off    I meant to show you!    I wanted to show you how this contraption of ours works!     the very interesting results we get with it – he gets up and walks toward the equipment rack and flicks on the main power switch, all of the equipment lights up, he then sits at the computers and turns them on, the screens light up and he boots into the system and opens several applications and programs, SuperCollider 3.9 among them, the lights on the interface units blinking - I’m sure that as an artist yourself    as a composer    you will find these results to be very interesting – he says enthusiastically. In one of the screens I see images consisting of complex textures and shapes of varying colors and hues, they look like electron microscope images of different kinds of tissues. Some of the images also look like landscapes consisting of various geological terrains. The colors, shapes and textures seem to shift slowly as if they were alive, breathing. I assume these are examples of his sister’s visual art. On the other screen I see a window with code and another window for a DAW; the digital to analog interface unit that controls up to thirtytwo channels through which signals are routed. He gets up and asks me to sit at one of the screens and instructs me to click on three virtual buttons with the mouse cursor when he tells me to. He quickly walks over to the modified dentist’s chair and nimbly jumps into it, then, reaching above and behind him with his hands, he takes hold of the headset with the electrodes and fits it onto his head with ease. He then lays back into the chair and closes his eyes. Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, gently, he seems to sink into a deep state of relaxation. In a soft voice, he directs me to click the first button. I suddenly see on the SuperCollider oscilloscope window an image of several very low frequency sine waves. Their frequencies are so low I can’t hear any of them. I look over to the old man and see a gentle smile on his face. I assume this must be the phase cancellation process he had described earlier. I look at the old man again and he seems to be in a very deep sleep, his eyes appear to be moving behind his closed eyelids as it happens in REM sleep. About a minute later I’m startled by a very low and distant voice; a basso profundo coming from the professor, a voice I don’t recognize as his. The voice tells me to click on the next two buttons in sequence, which I do with a growing sense of unease. I look at the screens and see the images of his sister’s artwork becoming more active; their shapes, textures and colors mutating, changing over time into very different patterns and landscapes from where they had original begun. This seems to have activated the SuperCollider synthesis program that is now producing sounds of different frequencies, amplitudes, timbre and articulation; creating shifting textures of varying complexity that seem to correspond to the changing images of his sister’s art. The sounds are projected through an array of eight speakers the professor has distributed around the room creating a surround-sound effect that gives me the sensation of being immersed in a kind of environment, a kind of substance: a veritable roiling ocean of sounds and images. For several minutes I sit watching and listening enthralled, I look over at the professor and see that except for very shallow breathing, he is absolutely motionless. I turn my head back toward the computer screens and as I do I seem to hear a low frequency humming or churning sound. I move my head slightly to the left and then slightly to the right and I think I hear something like a low-pitched mumbling or chanting whose origin I can’t place. I get up from the chair and walk around the studio slowly moving my head in one direction and then the other trying to locate the source. I hear a sudden sound coming from the professor and see he is clutching frenetically at the armrests of the chair and shaking violently from head to toe. In a panic I leap back toward the desk realizing the old man never explained how to get him out of his trance should anything go wrong. I look at the computer monitors and see a dark figure dart across the screen where the artworks are. Another figure quickly glides past and then another. The ceiling and the desk lamps begin to flicker wildly. The monitor where the sound synthesis code was has now gone black and a stream of large, bright green symbols unknown to me stream up and down the screen in a kind of cascading motion. I look back at the professor and see he is now convulsing madly and foaming at the mouth. In the other monitor screen I see the dark, bat-like figures the professor had described earlier, arrayed in concentric circles turning in opposite directions from each other and I begin to hear too a kind of speech consisting of metallic-like clicking and electric buzzing sounds coming through the studio’s speakers. All of a sudden a terrifying scream rents the room like a lightning bolt and I see the professor sitting up straight in the chair, eyes and mouth wide open as he screams hysterically at the top of his lungs grasping at his head with both hands. Flinging his arms toward the ceiling he collapses onto the floor sobbing as the studio door violently swings open and Helena, the old man’s sister, rushes in – Allan! Allan! – she screams – what have you done! what have you done! – she screams again and running toward him falls to her knees putting her arms around him. Angular shadows are now cropping up from behind the work bench, the shelves and stacks of equipment, they glide effortlessly along the walls, ceiling and floor seeming to issue from the vertices of the room’s corners. In sheer terror, I pull myself together and lurch toward the study door and in one sudden move push myself through the threshold and sluggishly, as if in a dream, amble down the darkened hallway toward the glass paneled door and the foyer behind it awkwardly bumping into the paper clad walls in a daze. I reach the foyer door and clutching the handle fling it open in a fury. The door slams against the wall shattering several of the glass panels, the shards fall to the carpeted floor with a muffled clinking sound. In a frenzy I pull at the iron door guard rod and throw it to the side and frenetically begin fumbling with the many bolts, latches and locks the door is fitted with. Behind me I hear cries and screams issuing from the professor and his sister and behind them, the hypnotic chanting of the metallic, insect-like voices of the shadow creatures. Seconds seem to stretch into minutes and minutes into hours as I struggle with the door until finally, I undo the last latch and unlock the last lock and mustering all my strength pull the heavy metal door open and leap onto the steps that lead to the side walk outside. I turn around and in a fit of fear and anger, slam the door shut. I stand motionless still holding on to the door handle and listen. All I hear are the normal street sounds of a late fall afternoon; the occasional sound of traffic and passersby and a few sparrows squabbling over some crumbs of food on the sidewalk. Putting the hood of my coat over my head I turn north and begin walking at a fast pace up Noordeinde street into the late afternoon’s drizzle, past the queen’s working palace, heading out of the old Zeeheldenkwartier. I walk up to Mauritskade and the canal that runs along side it and cross over onto Zeestraat heading north toward Scheveningseweg. In a few minutes I reach the intersection of Javastraat and Scheveningseweg and veer slightly to the west onto the latter. In a few more minutes I’m walking past Carnegie Plain and the Vredespaleis; the Peace Palace where the International Tribunal resides.

                                                   As I walk on in a panic    frenetically   against the north wind    every so often turning my head     looking back over my shoulder     I begin to mutter    I don’t know what I’m uttering    perhaps out of fear and anger    I’m cursing     I mutter to myself as I walk along    I can’t understand what I’m saying    I seem to hear myself say     my dreams disown me    perhaps I’m chanting     at the wind and rain     at the dark rolling sky     soon Scheveningseweg bends straight north    and as I reach the old sycamore trees that line the  avenue    not knowing why    I begin to run     at first slowly   then   at an even and moderate pace    the cold     drizzle-laden breeze gently caresses my face    as I run      I settle into a kind of mesmerized state    soon I’m running past the Zorgvliet park on my left   and through the Scheveningse Bosjes park on my right and in time     I begin to sing    perhaps I’m chanting     maybe I’m speaking in tongues as I seem to hear another voice whispering again     a life still mine      a still life mine      in bits and pieces   girones de viento   in shreds of breezes whispering

all sorts of things rush by,

all that and much more rushed by,

what does it river mean?

by foot or on the wing becoming and going

into off course with a smile

a stray stream into endings just beginning         

accidental  and resisting foiled interest into messy logic    

other territories from discourses ended      

divisive islets of meaning

meandering as growing sand banks move across the page careening   

 

whenever and ever as whatever it means to mean    

the sea helps to place a space a splace

splicing the place and the space into two overlapping waves licking

                                                                                                  

there is why a wall       to ask a mark

because     becomes turned alleged question before to

speak in knots        which is to say     what a cul de sac

 

a ledge where a voice is what and who speaks of it

terminated      breathing as song initiated at

moments before a blank page    

 

wavefunction as what   

be before becomes comes into

being be cuase  be becomes why

laid bare     bore because agape in cloudlessness      

be because becomes be caused     

became turned away things turned out

 

commencing here against each other and

one another as be before goes round unfolding into answer   

wrapped around which wrap around what

which wrap round afternoon moment turned

unfolding said it is said and what of it

is what and why the in as it is a trace to sentence falling      

 

the only of which it is the of    

of it itself  as de-forming into chiaroscuro

as eye language just begun    

 

by no to something nothing is but

what to remains of motions terminated     

there is and much more that is to say what

and then pushing what words wait for thought        

 

spacing         

 

sign flotsam discombobulation  

                                        some jetsam to forget      

 

and then some more again so what of it   

it means what it is what means it is      

-guished  from each other  

-sively ideological         

 

nobody now knows  what dissipation’s wren

a talk in a breeze of doubt  

to what of it and then some edges left to the to      

undo the what it is that these are a tangent of

                                                 

is almost a say

 

the page where on when      

the moment to each and away    

another to which  

is or is not on debris is on   

on as away 

is a bare is a or is on a cloudlesssstreaming

sensual

                 so what of it

                 it means a what

                 it is it means

                                             we each kept each we kept

a then now and when in what to which to say a violet

Listening to the whirls.

                                Una maraña de cosas, all tangled up in sound

                                                                                          In formation with - or lately at least –

             More variety in the form of repetition

                                                                       another time around;

This continuity to which “I” belongs.

                                                       means by a sea repeating       

                                      

                        reproduced enough                                           becomes into being because                       

                                              such that enough again restriction ended

               to antipathy this day of clear cut divisions

                                                     moans by a sea retreating    so tiresome the things

and meaning the names now droop away    

                                            what breath blows what leaves into sun’s waves  coalesce       

        whose inflection beyond prone

                                         language     something sometimes remains ended

motions piece a blank plank across out by the telling     reasons with light interjections scrambled

                                                     howl’s appropriate place is when

      and now a remains

                                               from which broken erroneous formation message

continuity gap agape frozen circuit explosive

meaning “I” as of in the with what distinction plenty marks a place

                              enough more resting just begun

endings growing again meaning laid bare because things                         and one answers       became speak

a ledge terminated and then it is what –sively and then these the page away is then by now a means 

such that this day of clear cut erosions began deforming

                                                             languaging

landscapes of languages colliding as wheat against blue to light of fiction

                                             fricative nasal plosives in-

                                                                   formation with or lately at least     all sorts,

                  all that what and does rushed by on foot talking

at speaking becomes smile

                                     knots freely disproportionate into a reduced version of this continuity

 as something other than working against the shaping     

                      final fallen repetition  I mean

plenty marks a place   

some so such and so such is enough  

such that enough some so much said made so 

gives this constantly summer into

 interactive about which just then so remembers

                  what this is      stories foreigneous  ‘n everything

                                                         just because discovered at intrusive of when is then

windblown light about which of these so figured words

wait in wobbly places    

                                   so much so words

more much so that then enough much so

that made when is said so much

so said that them words

 again seldom said begun again so said and

  

Interjections with scrambled howls approximate

change remains sometimes appropriate wandering

up ended motions now piece a blank page

listening to the whereabouts of when

                              what words were saying in swirls churning this thought in

           something making here a petal      

                                              liking them they think not only who as much or any some not what

                                   will they when a knot make      unwinding pauses

                                                         what when were you saying what an intent was

                that were saying is overgrown

                                                      should be in thought translated as 

                                                                  whisper interjections change up-ended listening

                   were saying something think not will they what

                                              that translating whisper howls at blank page

                          so much across coalescing language

                 telling reasons said so much more than enough 

 

sometimes changes

I find myself wandering near the area where Scheveningseweg bends slightly east becoming Prins Willemstraat which, in turn, veers north-east becoming Juriaan Kokstraat taking me into the town of Scheveningen proper where the street changes name again becoming Gevers Deynootweg; the large avenue that runs parallel to the Scheveningen beach on the North Sea.

                                                                                                          I walk in a daze for a while oblivious of the traffic and the crowds that frequent this busy part of town and then head for the beach. Once there I make a sharp right toward the east in the direction of a town called Wassenaar. I walk past the old hotel, the Kuurhuis, the Skyview pier and the nudist beach, then, onward to Het Puntje and the wooden stairs that will lead me up the dune to where the old German bunkers stand.

                                                                                                                             The beach extends for miles and miles, not a soul can be seen. In the distance, I hear a ship’s foghorn. The night is rapidly closing in. A cold, damp breeze picks up from the sea bringing in more rain down from a roiling, dark gray sky. In time, I see Het Puntje and the wooden stairs that rise up to the dark silent shapes of the bunkers on the grassy dune-tops. They look like patient sentinels, impassively looking out to sea, reminding me somewhat of the Moai of Easter Island. I amble up the old wooden stairs toward the dark looming shapes of the bunkers. Once there, standing at the top of the dune, I turn my gaze back to the sea       I feel the cold breeze pleasantly caress my face and see a heavy bank of fog moving slowly on the surface of the water toward the shore

                                     I mutter to the sea     I mutter to the darkness as I turn around and move further on up the dune until I reach a rusty old sign that says Verboten!: Forbidden! hanging from the fence that separates the field of bunkers from the pedestrian path.

                                                                                     I reach for the fence’s barbed wires and with both hands pull them apart. I duck under and in between and soon find myself in a field of tall, blond grasses walking uneasily toward the bunkers.

                                                                    I wonder if there might be any land mines left over from the war. Inland, in the distance behind me, in the midst of the Scheveningen wilderness-preserve, the old water tower’s light dimly illuminates the southern façades of the bunkers; they are covered in graffiti.  I wander aimlessly for a while among the tall grasses and weeds that grow everywhere      until I find what I’m looking for

                   muttering to the breeze     I lay myself down in a furrow carved out in the sand by the northern winds      covered over by a scrub of weeds and grasses     snug in my overcoat    feet pointing

 

   

toward the gray North Sea     belly warm with the contents of the flask in my pocket      I mutter again to the breeze    

                               - a life still mine - I hear it whisper back - in bits and pieces     strung together in word metal scraps     a still life mine    I hear it whisper      a life in bits and pieces    strung together     in word metal scraps     same old words    same old scraps    a patch work    a million times over    and then some more     and then again     I mutter to the sand    

                                                           I mutter to the sea and to the breeze    to the pale    tall grasses leaning over me     I mutter to the dark   rolling sky      I mutter to the graffiti covered walls of the bunkers nearby    

             and the cold  the fog  the cold gray fog  seeping into everything

Acknowledgement

 

Some sections of Song of Anonymous are composites made of bits and pieces taken from other texts, whether in the form of a direct quote or as paraphrases, which when put together in collage or bricollage fashion, constitute the narrator’s voice or rather, his many voices. A list of these sources is provided below.

1) Adorno, Th. W., “La posición del narrador en la novela contemporánea,” Notas Sobre Literatura, Obra Completa, 11, De la edición de bolsillo, Ediciones Akal, S.A., 2003, Sector Foresta, 1, 28760 Tres Cantos, Madrid, España.  My translation.

(Adorno, Theodor W., “The Position of the Narrator in the Contemporary Novel,” Notes on Literature, Complete Works, 11, From the pocket editions, Ediciones Akal, S.A., 2003, Sector Foresta, 1, 28760 Tres Cantos, Madrid, España.  My translation.)

________________, “La forma en la nueva música,” Escritos Musicales III, Escritos Musicales I – III, Obra Completa, 16, Ediciones Akal, S.A., 2006, Sector Foresta, 1, 28760 Tres Cantos, Madrid, España. My translation.

_______________, “Form in New Music,” Musical Writings III, Musical Writings I – III, Complete Works, 16, Ediciones Akal, S.A., 2006, Sector Foresta, 1, 28760 Tres Cantos, Madrid, España. My translation.).

 

2) Andrews, Bruce, Paradise and Method: Poetics and Praxis, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois 60208-4210, 1996.

 

3) Artaud, Antonin, “Artaud the Momo,” Watchfiends & Rack Screams: Works From The Final Period, Ed. And trans. By Clayton Eshleman and Bernard Bador, Boston, Exact Change, 1995.

 

4) Ashbery, John, April Galleons, Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23^rd Street, New York, New York, 10010, U.S.A., 1987.

 

---------------------, Collected Poems 1956 – 1987, ed., Mark Ford, The Library of America, Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, N.Y., 2008.

 

5) Attali, Jacques, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, University of Minnesota Press, 2037 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis, MN 55414, 1987

 

6) Austin, James H., Zen and the Brain, MIT Press paperback edition, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, fifth printing 2000.

 

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