Monday, September 30, 2013

magnum opus


I've been working on this autobiographical piece for 20 years now, almost. The material in it crosses back and forth from 1981 to the present day. It is 90 per cent loose leaf. 


This began as a simple sketchbook. At some point I cut several pages out: probably under the influence of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is a disease - I didn't lose it simply by switching one set of beliefs for another - one signifier for another.


GR thinks I should write, as did JB. 


Julia Kristeva writes of the paralysis of depression. Questions that begin Why aren't - those come from the ego fantasy of our lives. Paraphrasing Blanchot: Why Aren't is the question that kills all answers


I am a man talking to himself. Sometimes people join me. 


I walk through the garden alone, while the dew distills on the roses, and, hearing a noise, I run naked through the thorns. The terror there as they pull my hair, as they shed my skin ...


we may be left on our own : we may be right on our own


as a child I was left naked in the woods by friends - as a child i was not adequately able to define what a friend was


I could be a poet


I thought for a while that Duchamp was what an artist should be


I created my own box, my own large glass, my own standard stoppages


in the dream i am flying and i am clothed with birds


i sit down to take a test and discover that it is a test of wills


i am clothed with railroads and i have learned the time tables to 1105


i am swimming in blood in a submerged hospital
near the elevator i see my mother
she smiles at me
she is no longer dead
from out of her mouth flies a horse
the elevator teaches him how to sing


a man holds up a store with a poem
in a world that defines righteousness in terms of commodity value
only criminals will have poems

No comments: