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
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- 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 . . .
[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.
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(Adorno, Theodor W., “The Position of the Narrator in the
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the pocket editions, Ediciones Akal, S.A., 2003, Sector Foresta, 1, 28760 Tres
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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
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