SNOWSHOES ACROSS THE CLOUDS
21. RUMOUR HAS IT
Sink into the comforts of joists and beams, pediments, mullions, architraves, keystones, corinthian capitals, clerestories, tensioned membranes, iridescent dichroic glass, blueprints, CAD projections, arches, guy wires, slates, spandrels and those little metal things the Inca used to join perfectly polished stones. Feed the dream of permanence. It reminds you of places your father took you to when you were young. As a butcher he saw structure from within the animal, cutting at the joints, through tendon and bone. Years ago I wanted to stand in the freezer with lights out, and now I learn that as much can be secured by the deep whiff of ammonia just at the crucial moment, the moment of the crux, the crossroad, you know, where the son meets his father. Not places you long to see, but if you did they would do things to you that nowhere else could. Here only shadow remains.
The surprise at evening was that dawn could be remembered. Something you can taste in the beer.
A definite feeling is caused by drinking. Immediacy and directness have started to fade from my work.
You can make connections or choose to chill out in your own way, your own cold unit even, but the old and familiar will still be outside. I emphasize line and open space, the fields and hedgerows we find when we finally leave town. Avoid the countryside unless you are going to do something there: isolation is both a blessing and a curse; the ghost of a crow the only trace of others in a long grey sky, a long dull day. Sometimes I am convinced someone else is living here, someone I will never get to meet. Not a ghost, not a delusion or dream; no, someone from my tribe, a fellow traveller, relation or friend. It is the only trace of other I allow, one among many in your absence. We are close enough to see everything but too far away to be heard; poetry is not really a profession, we have other things to do. We know everything.
22. LIGHTS OUT
The names we are given resonate with the past; a long friendship will be prepared for strangers and questions, questions which will be asked. Today’s headlines will bring us back to our senses: we must shift away from technology into the the echo of unconscious thought; the hiss and whine of our own creativity. I cannot pursue this idea very far, but wish to thank all those who made the idea possible. Everybody else has slipped in to terminal obscurity. A lot of people have been doing a lot of talking; I always felt the music took off where words stopped: arcane vocabularies, strange noises and wildlife sounds. I know you are waiting for me to grow up; dramatic monologue is one way out of the dilemma.
Fictions collide; storm-damaged telephone wires and sun-bleached skeletons fill the streets. One day we will learn history again.
The tales strangers exchange on trains bring their own prophecies. Backyards with hanging laundry and roses become etched on the panes of forthcoming windows.
In the lobby of every building a secret trap door waits for us. Every so often it opens and we drop into market expectations that defy diagnosis. The darkness softens so some objects can be seen; we touch these lightly to thread through the possibilities. Scent can be a more certain guide, or the sensations in the kneecaps when we bump against armored bakery trucks. If only we could find a siphon or a colander, instruments for making selections, easing choice. We never know what to do next, where to turn. Some always want to trust the paint on a lamppost; others consult how the wax falls when cut from rare cheeses. I can accept that the future of naive metaphysics lies somewhere within the splat of a dropped crate of ripe tomatoes, but I still want the relief of being the monster I so often assume I am but can never really become.
23. HISS AND WHINE
The ether of lateral genius enables you to give up the reins of your own mind and hand them over to the Master of Tumble and Hurl. It’s totally inertial and relaxing. Deep sigh of relief and you realize what a struggle it’s been to salvage, to nidder and bullyrag, to invent new clapperclawed lacerations and gratings, to consecrate fresh ramraidings of misplaced shrines and overgrown temples. You let Someone Who Knows take you through the waterworks of your own folly. Questions of dreadful duty yield to questions of delight. Ice Palaces melt and riddled terrains erupt into a disposable chaos. It’s a lucrative shill to punctuate the dreariness; prefer the vocation of finding survivors in the avalanche of patience. Wake the town and tell the people that chromophobia is slain. Strike up the symphony of faces. Cannibals and amazons have bequeathed us their ravishing maps.
Carnival-colored balloons empty speech; talk shifts to subcutaneous tissue. Images spill emotion without breaking a formal sweat.
Endless dialogue, lifelong studies, constant delays; dreams of travelling without making a journey; synchronized vacuums.
Elements of tape manipulation and visual research. Unissued takes and tracks accompany obscure animation where small figures do what they are told in the tunnels and mineshafts of discovery. Above, we traverse the landscape of impossible diction and gather the remains of dialects and forgotten language, forbidden tongues. An incredible live psychedelic experience has been discarded in favour of a fondness for computer technology and runaway materialism. The New Simplicity demands the removal of complexity and the ability to remain silent; asks us to seek meditational solace in the distant conversation of others. Hushed stillness and delicate sounds encourage snowfall and indoor games, the capture of melancholy shine. A hypnotic tolling bell, receding hypnotic guitar, the call of birds as the day ends, a steam train slowing to a halt: breeding grounds for new cultures, strategies for success.
24. SALVAGE
Grotesques and gargoyles all around me deny confirmation of direction for today; cryptic narrative and innovative layouts do not help when the present has been washed away. The dripping gutter is a primitive beatbox accompanying birds who sing in protest at the weather. I would like to compress elements of wishful thinking and nostalgia to make a half-remembered memory all of my own, a conceptual shelter for when I am older. A rearguard action as I retreat, swimming along through introspection and despair. The rain has not stopped for a week, the unconscious production of dreams has flooded the market. We have mastered the technique of distorting time and sharing fragmented experience, created a catalogue of deeper imagining and fleeting moments. Disorientation is celebrated here, is no longer the expression of crisis. The resources of perception do not allow us to see into the future; a cold front moves in from the west, numbing the chilled hands of the consumer.
Throbbing motion, jigsaw detail, tape noise and abandoned locations. Compass and sextant, a knowledge of signs, dust blowing along the path.
A drawer of household flotsam, pencils and pens no one will use, scraps of previous projects, traps for memory, not discarded, skeletons and votive offerings.
Nowhere can we find someone who speaks the vernacular. What we would we say remains confused. That melancholy persists that comes of understanding too much and not knowing whom to say it to. Why do we bother with these things at all? An extra pair of shoes won’t help while you’re wearing the pair you are walking in. We can open the gates to the city by pulling the yellow cellophane tab. After consulting the drudge report you will want to reconsider your opinion. But that will only lead to certainty about essentials. It’s rather like basketweaving, isn’t it? Keep the willows pliable with enough rain or well water. Headaches at full moons, solar flares, or the solstice, sends on pilgrimage to Tashkent and Samarkand. There are no flights and all trains are cancelled. It’s the relief that counts.
25. PRIMITIVE BEATBOX
Red and dark blue lights shine through the sleepless snow that hides each ledge. ‘Snow’ in Finnish is ‘lumi.’ If we use Pilkington brackets we can achieve the greatest amount of transparency. In the high mountains, we can see the snow on the ridges sift upward into the whiter sky. The dark blue base floats over the red trees. Sudden bursts of late afternoon sun remind us of how desperately we look to etymology for more illumination than history can give us. The illusions are the same as when we study the tea leaves of coincidence. Each choice of mirage accounts for an older-layer transparency. The exactness she is after can get lost in the image-tension of skin being pulled apart. Kinetic foliage spreads over plasticated dreams while the rhythms of mouths opening in cadence and sequence reverberate through the corrupt environs of pure pleasure, thought and gesture.
Millions of movies and videos have tried to fill the void left by the end of painting. Pigments, like words, wait for the ashes to smolder a while longer.
Sometimes art fails to return our looks; we respond with quiet demurral and are propelled into another realm.
Watch the world in a tangible way. What lies beyond appearance and the drama of human suffering is a horizontal rectangle, set in a gilt frame. There is tension and energy in just being; we must, however, prepare to leave thought behind and head for the limits of description. Beginning with the idea of failure we may find ourselves eager to write but unable to spell half the words we want to use. Map out a system and the way we interact, and exhaustion is heavily implicated: there is a sense of limbo, or of meaning about to be declared. Personal experience and external beauty are relative in terms of truth; according to the laws of chance, culture animated by derived geography doesn’t exist. It is snowing outside. Watch the world in terrible disarray.
26. TRANSPARENCY
You see through me to our place of origin, sit in the hot sun and listen to creation‘s hum. I have to make myself up anew each day, often inventing entirely original forms and materials. You have no future, and your past collapses into your present, hundreds of other birds and animals chattering each dawn. All these distant and not so distant sounds do not make the world a better place. We need a world where we can have campfires and computers, posters and pictures, not just a random array of ambient fragments. You say you have given a lot of thought to the importance of silence and noise; I am eager to explore the tangible world. I want secrets and dreams, strange tongues, dazzling lust, hidden treasures and marvellous music I haven’t yet learned about. You may be the last composer to ever have an audience; the transforming nature of water is only a lingering habit.
I sparkle like ice in moonlight then melt in your gaze, a cracked mirror of self-desire carefully eating an apple.
Night flight takes you across hemispheres, the full moon watches to see if the vibrations of titanium mimic the music of spheres piled on the oak table.
Inner chambers off the streets where stairwells rise through dusky courtyards. The visual delights of decay and decomposition, colors under colors, dust sanded down into layers of ancient dust, crumbling stucco and rusted mesh, all these ruined walls and windows taste of lust never satisfied, stranded in the denudations of time left to rot within its own partially opened husks. Saw a glowing girl the other day and watched her silently fade. The silence from her unspoken words is deafening. Next time, pas mal, aber nicht zehr gut, sumus quod sumus. Just a combination of different moments. Pictures of frozen time on the mind. A broader sense with hints of glitter. Time’s grasp. Soft powder turned hard which only waits to melt. Slow but inevitable. It is not the flower, rather its absence.
27. WATER
Light through the edges of the CD cases makes me think of Iguazu Falls. I want light to stop me. I heard on the radio last night while driving in a ribbon of lights that scientists have found two ways at last to stop light right in its tracks: absolute zero coldness of protons and some other way whose words I can’t remember. Light stops. History. Light starts. Light. Now I see the light rising out of a chimney on this white-gray, cold day. We also call it smoke. I will found the Light Party. A light-stopping gizmo in every home. Just in case and to offer unheard of possibilities. Paris will sue us for divine design rights. Right light is the only way to go. Unless it stops, and then darkness takes the imprint of all that was light, becomes as fluid and serves as well.
At the crux, we learn how to navigate under the surface, where we always find ourselves, no matter how many times we come up for air in the dark.
Shadows of shadows beyond shadows: liquid light pouring through a multitude of parables and songs.
I am looking forward to feasting on new days, celebrating sunrise and the emergence of spring. Sunshine has broken through and the principle of nature is restored: the physics of happiness and photosynthesis are entwined. Worn out metaphors continue to resonate through history: hints of glitter in the substance of it, mined from time itself. Let there be light! And there was; still is. And a rainbow promise breaking through the mist: rain and sun and spring and winter gathered in confusion outside. The sky is torn apart, undecided: see, time has gone adrift, it is dark already when I look outside again. The moon has no part in this, nor has the approaching storm. To make things without echo, reason, crackle or whirl is a lightless quest. Send me your manifesto, to be delivered in the early morning light.
28. RIBBON OF LIGHTS
There is a great and beautiful power to be experienced on the journey. You can hear how revved up and inventive we are as the freeways combine and we head on to the city we presume is up ahead. We make a jazzlike progression, all snaked up behind and ahead, driving half-blind through the night. There is something touching, melancholy and nostalgic about this 20th century procession, this steel carnival of revving motors, loud stereos, dipped headlights and distant brakelights. I occasionally burst into song, challenge myself by changing lanes at high speed. I am reminded of where my father took me to when I was young: long journeys to unknown destinations. Summer holidays, day trips and other surprises, all inhabiting the transitional area between departure and destination, goodbyes and hellos, boredom and expectation. I live with anxiety and chance; now only want to arrive.
What you find isn’t always pretty. Stare into the darkness until you can see.
If we carefully scoop out the center, it will arch and freeze and hold. Then we can sit inside and look out.
Fresh ardour steps off the escalator. Your face looks like you’ve been sleeping deeply for thirty hours. Moving across the city will not rearrange lifestyle preferences quite as much as anticipated. When the Hercules went down, a few remembered it as the site of visions. Strong outlines keep memory from blurring colors. Yet the density of light requires even more density of hidden powder. Throw a sheet over the loveseat to protect it from the winter sun. Pink Parisian damask found in Mexico should not suffer the ravages of frozen light. In the sunday papers you will find a recipe for this thick, antique mousse. Make it and serve the murdered guests so they will not remember whose acquittal they hungered for while the press searched the woods and airports. Everyone knows the color of blood as it circulates. How it needs to be pumped.
29. OTHER SURPRISES
The best method, perhaps the most difficult to practice, requires you to tear off the page after you have read both sides and discard it at once. The book then diminishes before your eyes as you read it. When you put it down and take it up later you must remember what proceeded the page you begin to read, knowing it will be discarded as soon as you finish reading it. Not only does this method imply the permanence of the ride itself, but it calls you into a state of willingness of suspension, an abeyance of balance, even a nausea of vertigo-inducing reality that will test what you are reading against the most massive of ocean waves. Before the crest, under the pipe, the page torn-once-it’s-read speeds toward a trash bin defiant in the face of all fears. The courage of the rider outmatches the courage of the writer. Under the endless brine and foam, sand gets glossed.
A non-fatal error means you have been disconnected before the power reached its catapult. Reboot your headstraps before revisions are discovered.
A mixture of illumination and illusion: the abstract line becomes word in a world already growing dark.
Carefully, I gather discarded pages by night, stitch them back together into mysterious books where time and characters slip and flit from moment to moment. The black foam of text crawls ceaselessly back and forwards on the paper beach: the insufficiency and impotence of language has never been so clear; plot and memory are simply washed away. Chance renders these volumes more balanced and coherent, more exact than silence: see how beautifully all this patching has been done. If every library was to disappear tomorrow the land would not remain empty, there would still be footprints in the sand. Disorder reflects not an imaginary inner world but an actual external space; we are dangerous and disruptive outside. We reach beyond language with a gesture; lightning flickers like a strobe lamp.
30. TRASH BIN DEFIANT
A spin cycle is a distant cousin to a loop; tenderness has always appealed to me. I wake up in the morning feeling happy, a plant reaching for light with the evening star shining, but after a while my true colours shine through. Dark stars are stitched into the new dawn; singing birds respond to casual invitations, recycle small scraps of memory. In the oblivion of sleep, messages to other beings are stacked up in rich coloured mounds with frayed edges: crop circle formations among bare branches, gold metal threads in energetic groups, discarded bubblewrap plastic. Beach huts and pebbles glisten, dense stippling on a perfect summer day; a large and shining wave is breaking. I start out on the day’s outer square and then fill in the inner, my mornings becoming lost afternoons: dark shadowy areas beyond the vibrant haze.
A bunch of very fast signals from space and a collection of old sanding discs revived my spirits during a gloomy time.
Ice piled and scraped, melted and refrozen scumbles the streets, mixes with salt and sand. I slip and fall, cars swerve and spin. Winter sweetly grins.
Permanent press tumble dry gives the daily weave its appealing look. Turbulence rushes through the grains as they’re steamed into bitter essence. Granulated crystals hit the bloodstream, spring multi-colored effects. Inner auras radiate where no eyes see them. Outer radiants get muffled in the fogs of routine, indifference, and distraction. We dam our torrents against flood. Joy packs up and goes underground, bargains for strange ways to resurface, bursting forth in unlikely outer reaches. These days, violet rivulets merge with purple runoffs. Ultra shades prepare us for the fires to come. Gold sifts through the marrow, looking for light in the joints. Our bones announce their own speculations. If I could hear the music of compassion made new every day, I would dance the same streets without disappointment. Will expectations be downloaded without charge? Only projects worth discarding will be funded by the bureau of overcompensation.
