Mar 5, 2020
privacy: the sacred space in which you do not know what the other thinks of you
always this is about what can be done and can’t, what I remember and what I wish I could ignore, where I keep going back to when I’m destroyed and made a foreigner and immigrant by living: when being myself results in being something I don’t know how to be ~ when I find myself speaking in a stranger’s voice
and I must keep imagining myself being read, being brought in to the heads of people I know and remember…the people who are really there, but also aren’t. Could I be the first one to prove our unreality? The problem with the truth is you disappear. Now, this must be poetry, can’t be fact, can’t be talked about onstage or run through “rigorous,” “scientific” peer review.
> “privacy: the sacred space in which you do not know what the other thinks of you”
Well, I don’t think any “other” has my respect as an evaluator of me as a person or as my work; I have exited the atmosphere of being able to be set against criteria; I am unable to be judged because there is nothing I should be like; I’m more than willing to delete almost everything public associated with my name; the displays change with the seasons; I’ll leave it to others to recollect what I’ve been before, what has previously been in my shop windows.
this “essay” may now be about two different things
and so my work becomes a play on adherence, coherence,
an investigation into whether form can hold what an artist has to say together
perhaps I am always hungering for more directions
perhaps I am all play
and just let the thing become something else:
constantly living in liquid
lol, not bad
but let’s keep going [found it]
the problem with my writing was it wasn’t feminine enough
and i prefer to talk only in italics; the world of the unitalicized is too loud; maybe i’ve retired from that
a fine mess of thought spinning and coiling ever toward shining completion
when you write another line to the edge of the visible, legible space
and you hope — hope someone sees; hope someone can do something for you, which they can’t; you are inconsolable; money rankles, as it must; one who writes cannot and will not ever be at ease in the world — something still needs to break; if things were fine, you wouldn’t need to write
Bookmarks
can knowledge save you? Does what you remember [to do] save you?
I’m not sad; even if I cry, I’ve never been sad
I’ve never been lonely
is it true? Who’s counting?
if I wrote an elegy, who would I tell it to?
the freedom to start over is the wretched thing we get back every day
we probably complained about losing
you want freedom? Here it is, sucker…
the damn thing about freedom is no one really wants it — it’s too heavy
there could be another reader — someone else like you
this could be the end of your searching
oh, talking myself into a way out of failure and stuckness
follow your heart & the financial disaster; patch the wound; make blood OK
don’t worry: they’ll all start first thing tomorrow, and three days ago doesn’t exist
🌀 👀
I wonder about old content and how I don’t want to reread any of it and how I only do what I want, a slow-motion hero underdressed in comfy clothes indoors on another sunny day in the year 2022 when the years don’t matter anymore and nothing changes, time just keeps going on, I am playing the intellectual video game of Journaling, Diary, Autobiography, Poetry, making sh1t up
; time moves on, eyeballs move on
this is proof (I am learning it firsthand myself) that the finished work is a lie and doesn’t matter: no one wants to go through it; it is an artifact published so you can say you did it, because a published book has mystical authority; I think I will never sit in a meeting with a book publisher in my life; I don’t see that being the next use of 30 minutes; asynchronous for sure — my undertone is I don’t need anyone, just time. I have absolutely no interest in controlling this material or responding to criticism that it’s rambling and not on topic. Like bro, you ever seen life?
I have very little need to keep two weeks ago and make it make sense; I’m going to add what I’ve got to say right now
NO ONE CAN EVER SAY THIS IS WRONG
that’s a great thing about art
once you have control, you can do anything
never ever ever will I set out to write something, ever! I write and say what it is after: a title and finished work is something you back into, a legacy way of looking at content; my writing impulse pulls my life
The Coronavirus and You and Your Audience would be an obnoxious article to write, maybe I’ll do that
thoughts becoming content
changes what’s acceptable
anything can be Googled, any message can be sent, you can and will speak again and try to be heard, and end the day having been heard by various states, schemes and people — brains, memories — you hope stick. We all hope to stick, all have this memory of landing and being permanent, anchored, real, official, on the record — workplaces are temples of trying to be heard and remembered, every brain enlisted and pushed to the limit to maintain and retain information, orders, obedience, a script — it’s psychological violence, no wonder the “after work crowd” at bars are so awful, they’re humans worn to the brink of destitution spiritually, for the legal entity’s bottom line; awful, awful, poisonous, treasonous, treacherous, how does it go on, how can one by a father after being chewed up by a workplace and a set of … obligations, rotations, obediences, dalliances, dances…survival in the game of hierarchy and appeasing and suspicion and waiting and disappointment and tiredness and traffic and calls and emails, anger, repressed anger, fervent desire rushing about all heads, everyone trying to get theirs, what a flabbergasting awful spectrum of talk and recitation and obedience and mating, yes, mating, like peacocks we try to be seen by the right person, the theater of work, of hierarchy, the network, surely I’ve been poisoned but I’ve also gone away and cultivated my own soul and lens on human situations, hoping never to have to return, I won’t return, I work remotely, am in the air, am interplanetary
*
I really don’t know what writing does; I don’t believe in the power of being read anymore; everything is copy, the teeming black scrawl keeps going onward toward the horizon, there is no stopping place, I have found my voice and I keep writing it but it doesn’t really do anything, it just takes up space; I am observed as a man in a chair: of course what he’s writing isn’t doing anything, going anywhere, has no hope of bringing in an income, — I write about this rather than solve the problem and it pleases me; I add paragraphs to existing skeletal infrastructure; I am not excited about where my work is going; it is my pastime, I talk to myself, I have let go of an old language and have stepped into a new one, one in which there is no rush, life just goes on.
