#4 - A poem
Hihihihihihi,
Today I wanted to share a poem because that’s been my plan all along and definitely not because I got in over my head trying to write about universal language and the origins of all life on earth.
When I got accepted to this program, the first thing I did was ask to be left alone for 2 months to do research. Was that a good idea? I don’t know, but it felt right at the time and it was very empowering to tell the people paying me that I’ll get back to them once I’ve read 7 books, thankyousomuch.
The second thing I did was write this poem. During the live performance, it will roll slowly across a screen, acting as a kind of narrator or commentator of the scene, to varying degrees of clarity. It’ll play the same role in the video version of this work, but it will be directly on the screen like subtitles.
I think this is a good time to reveal what I’m actually doing here. Basically, I’m working on an interdisciplinary and collaborative performance that we will also turn into a video work. The video and performance will be essentially the same, but with a little green screen action and fun editing in the video for some extra razzle-dazzle.
Ok, poem time!
Three people enter a room. Not all at once mind you, but in a way swollen and buzzing with potential where the difference between absence and presence is negligible. In other words, three people enter a room and all three people have not yet entered a room. In other words, a specter of entering and exiting attaches itself to some of the air molecules and the environment adjusts accordingly. A word reverberates and hangs loosely midair for just a second of rest until it slings back with an inhale and tumbles forth exhale it jiggles on the floor beneath them on its back it rocks immobile in one way, zipping through time space and bodies in another. rocking and sound-making like atoms bumping up against whales plumbed for their positive attitudes and negative outlooks on what can bump and what should maybe grind. The sound we made was like that, with extra plinks and pauses, pregnant with marbles and dried beans. A word reverberates and hangs loosely scared to grip too tight in case another word needs to hang in fact, it does and fast a screen flashes on to reveal how words might hang together an outline of a person shows how you pick up one to attach it to the next and so on it smiles Someone is no longer center stage The best words bounce around the point without obscuring it. Like clouds when it’s sunny and you know its sunny they have no absolute order but rather an implied structural energy like “belonging to the emperor, embalmed, tame, sucking pigs, sirens, fabulous, stray dogs and included in the present classification, frenzied—” And then you chop all that up like an onion And maybe cry “-innumerable, drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, et cetera, having just broken the water pitcher, and the most obvious, from a long way off look like flies.” get real blurry so you can see what’s in the distance and yell about how you think the things you think. Someone will slurp it up eventually. One of the blogs said we need less oxygen not more a quality over quantity thing, you know something I’ve never been very good at quantity is quality if all you want is more Someone slurps it up. We’re shallow like our breaths. These business fundamentals always seemed loose. Like beads on a string and then you’ve run out beads. That quality/quantity thing again or a phatic release to ease tightening tension in the room knots slip slack from icy grips and salt crystals wedge whatever makes us stand in doorways singing how are you im fine im doing well actually not great but you know, these things come in threes A word reverberates and hangs loosely and waits for a mate well, several mates and they pile on and on and then cacophony as we know it no longer exists. Its new meaning is the sounds of something that is productive, useful and shiny. Unity is possible across time and space, contemporaneity is fluid and every moment contains dimensions and facets and they pile on and that all exists at once. and the words are like hills and we run flailing and free because the goal is clear and suddenly every hill is the exact right height like a pile of warm laundry. All words are mates and windows and charms on the edge of a chain clinging and clanging and yes, I understand between the noise an infinite string and infinite shapes and everything is hanging loosely and waiting for the right lens to illuminate how to be a mate. Presence and absence remain interchangeable. It’s something to do with expectations. You expect three so there is three, somewhere. They all exist now, somewhere. how are you and I wait to hear the tender hiss of less oxygen, doing more. The present is nothing until we nail it down attach it to scaffolding that’s also a cell inside and around seeping in all directions is more of a procreation than a failure to contain you you you you you you you is all that really matters in the present I matter too but not in the same way Just abstract thoughts in a blue room Reverberating and hanging loosely dangling still Nominative, genitive, elative Conducive to Bouncing from Vessel to vessel And yet filling both No deficit and no limit Expansiveness is flexibility pushed gently To live in this now with you is to live in easy reaction a word reverberates and hangs loosely and and.