(Thoughts On The Passing Of A Man / Thoughts On The Neverending City / Notes For A Story About Futility).
(How do we live; how do we live.)
1. I wanted to go regularly to sushi bars. I wanted a favourite resaurant. I wanted places to haunt.
I was not one man, but many.
I removed my face daily for the entertainment of others; always beneath was the same face, blinking as if newborn and hiding the deep knowledge of things like a sea trench far away from the lights of the day. I found, afterwards, that all things were just how they seemed to be in the moment -- malleable in the minds of others, and that we did not need to attach so much meaning to essentially meaningless things.
I found out many things, over time.
I learnt to forgive: myself, others, it did not matter.
I learned what it was to love the world despite its cruel eyeballing of humans as insects. The insect swarm biting and tearing at itself in a continuous, mad motion, a psychopathic ballet of destruction.
I only wanted her to forgive herself, as I thought I had done. But the world, she is incorrigable.
(And maybe, I thought -- I think -- maybe it is us who are weak: maybe her rambling chaos and need to destroy the beautiful and the potentially brilliant, maybe this is a strength. Maybe it is me who is wrong.)
I did not know then, and I do not know now -- I am without answers.
2. "It is just a building."
3. I wasn't screaming into the void any longer, I realised, I'd jumped into it heartfirst a long time ago.
An attempt at understanding that coils around and bites itself, rendering the reaching-for-understanding into a need to understand the reaching.
A turnabout that ulitimately destroys itself in a fractal withering of sense.
4. Idea For A Story: ritualistic killing, city as totem animal, conspiracy as church, service text/magic, zeitgeist as offering to the gods, "we are building a monument", Ieda Gloom's last paintings, "a captured sense of the already forgotten", several takes on a diner scene, off-setting the lofty and the lowly, entertaining collapse as if a lion tamer, mutual futility.
5. "In the end, nothing."
6. First create the stone. Then define the shape.
7. I was not smart and I did not want to believe and I was dragged into this against my will.
Needless to say: I am an angry man.
There is a glimpse in the half-light, a suggestion of a man -- a sense of movement around the corner, running away. A dusk-lit figure vanishing from sight, a man removing himself from the scene. A sense of loss, of something missing where once was understanding, truth, or at least the idea of it. A nonentity where once was life.
He doesn't know, he can't know, what all this is for, and yet he continues onwards, for destruction at his own hands is meaningless when confronted with such large-scale monstrosity, such widescreen violence.
8. Something was lost, though we have no idea what. All we have left is the loss, the hole, the void. And we hold onto it deeply, for this absence is our only connection to that which we have forgotten. We are, perhaps, not even aware of this Last Thing. It is, as well, perhaps disappearing from our frame of reference, until all we will have left is the knowledge that there was a hole that needed to be filled.
But with what, and by whom: no answers emerge.
9. He writes a thing: NORTH CITY RIOTS.
(NORTH CITY RIOTS
On Barricades // Conceptual Terrorism 101.
There is a future out there somewhere with my name on it. You're there too. It's kind of a love-letter to destruction.
It will be quick to arrive, and bloody. No slow build up for this one. The spirit of revolution is alive by threads, ready to stab out wildly one last time. Ready to combust mightily, without warning.
Barricades and torch light. Darkness and silence and distant explosions and the air full of bullet stings. Sex and violence. Dreams and despair. Booze and empty bellies. Dead friends and forgotten faces.
The grand failed revolution of our lifetime. The last-ditch attempt to do something right. And when it is over, they will remove us from history, a disgrace.
You will need to know how to fire a gun, when to run and where to hide. You will need to know how to use electricity carefully and wisely. You will need to know what makes the best fires, and how to disappear.
Most of all, you will need to know WHY you are fighting. What is it that brought you here in the first place. Why come back? Without the why the fight is pointless. The why could be the difference between your life and death.
Screams in the city streets; blood on the paving stones.
Destroy, destroy.
We who were never fighters, we must learn to fight.)
10. He discards what he has written as adolescent, as the reachings-for of a man who does not know true pain, or loss, or anything, really.
And he wonders: what then must I do to write with conviction, when all I know is in fact nothing. And worthless.
11. He knows. He knows this: you make your own truth. And by creating it you justify its existence to yourself, and to no others. Present it for eyes and ears and display and perform but do not accept others' attempts at explaining you to yourself, do not surrender to another's idea of that which is coming from you. Put it out there, for its own sake, because in the creation and definition of a stone you are giving yourself life and truth which you cannot find elsewhere.
12. He wonders: Am I alone in this. And he asks: Can I accept this as ultimate truth. Can I simply slew off the awful and desperate connotations linked to this form of thinking.
13. You walk alone into the desert to be judged.
14. This way of thinking, of writing, of apeing another's form -- it is folly. It is wrapped up in gaudy paper and perhaps it is weak-sounding to strong-willed and wise people, but, I think, it is the only way I have at the moment. It is the only voice I am hearing right now.
(I have other voices, and other faces, but today they are silent, and this is all I can do.)
15. Quiet reflection on the giving-up: have we already surrendered?
I would like to think not, I would like to shout that we have not and will not and will fight it as hard as anything ever fought, but I suspect this will just be another example of a man lying to himself so as not to be pulled under by the waves.
A story-teller story-telling by the fire-light, creating gods to keep the demons at bay.
16. We tell ourselves stories because it is the only safety we have in and against the darkness.
We must do it, forever.
17. A man walks into a bar and asks for a punchline.
(A stone on the pile. It is not just a building.)
(How do we live; how do we live.)
1. I wanted to go regularly to sushi bars. I wanted a favourite resaurant. I wanted places to haunt.
I was not one man, but many.
I removed my face daily for the entertainment of others; always beneath was the same face, blinking as if newborn and hiding the deep knowledge of things like a sea trench far away from the lights of the day. I found, afterwards, that all things were just how they seemed to be in the moment -- malleable in the minds of others, and that we did not need to attach so much meaning to essentially meaningless things.
I found out many things, over time.
I learnt to forgive: myself, others, it did not matter.
I learned what it was to love the world despite its cruel eyeballing of humans as insects. The insect swarm biting and tearing at itself in a continuous, mad motion, a psychopathic ballet of destruction.
I only wanted her to forgive herself, as I thought I had done. But the world, she is incorrigable.
(And maybe, I thought -- I think -- maybe it is us who are weak: maybe her rambling chaos and need to destroy the beautiful and the potentially brilliant, maybe this is a strength. Maybe it is me who is wrong.)
I did not know then, and I do not know now -- I am without answers.
2. "It is just a building."
3. I wasn't screaming into the void any longer, I realised, I'd jumped into it heartfirst a long time ago.
An attempt at understanding that coils around and bites itself, rendering the reaching-for-understanding into a need to understand the reaching.
A turnabout that ulitimately destroys itself in a fractal withering of sense.
4. Idea For A Story: ritualistic killing, city as totem animal, conspiracy as church, service text/magic, zeitgeist as offering to the gods, "we are building a monument", Ieda Gloom's last paintings, "a captured sense of the already forgotten", several takes on a diner scene, off-setting the lofty and the lowly, entertaining collapse as if a lion tamer, mutual futility.
5. "In the end, nothing."
6. First create the stone. Then define the shape.
7. I was not smart and I did not want to believe and I was dragged into this against my will.
Needless to say: I am an angry man.
There is a glimpse in the half-light, a suggestion of a man -- a sense of movement around the corner, running away. A dusk-lit figure vanishing from sight, a man removing himself from the scene. A sense of loss, of something missing where once was understanding, truth, or at least the idea of it. A nonentity where once was life.
He doesn't know, he can't know, what all this is for, and yet he continues onwards, for destruction at his own hands is meaningless when confronted with such large-scale monstrosity, such widescreen violence.
8. Something was lost, though we have no idea what. All we have left is the loss, the hole, the void. And we hold onto it deeply, for this absence is our only connection to that which we have forgotten. We are, perhaps, not even aware of this Last Thing. It is, as well, perhaps disappearing from our frame of reference, until all we will have left is the knowledge that there was a hole that needed to be filled.
But with what, and by whom: no answers emerge.
9. He writes a thing: NORTH CITY RIOTS.
(NORTH CITY RIOTS
On Barricades // Conceptual Terrorism 101.
There is a future out there somewhere with my name on it. You're there too. It's kind of a love-letter to destruction.
It will be quick to arrive, and bloody. No slow build up for this one. The spirit of revolution is alive by threads, ready to stab out wildly one last time. Ready to combust mightily, without warning.
Barricades and torch light. Darkness and silence and distant explosions and the air full of bullet stings. Sex and violence. Dreams and despair. Booze and empty bellies. Dead friends and forgotten faces.
The grand failed revolution of our lifetime. The last-ditch attempt to do something right. And when it is over, they will remove us from history, a disgrace.
You will need to know how to fire a gun, when to run and where to hide. You will need to know how to use electricity carefully and wisely. You will need to know what makes the best fires, and how to disappear.
Most of all, you will need to know WHY you are fighting. What is it that brought you here in the first place. Why come back? Without the why the fight is pointless. The why could be the difference between your life and death.
Screams in the city streets; blood on the paving stones.
Destroy, destroy.
We who were never fighters, we must learn to fight.)
10. He discards what he has written as adolescent, as the reachings-for of a man who does not know true pain, or loss, or anything, really.
And he wonders: what then must I do to write with conviction, when all I know is in fact nothing. And worthless.
11. He knows. He knows this: you make your own truth. And by creating it you justify its existence to yourself, and to no others. Present it for eyes and ears and display and perform but do not accept others' attempts at explaining you to yourself, do not surrender to another's idea of that which is coming from you. Put it out there, for its own sake, because in the creation and definition of a stone you are giving yourself life and truth which you cannot find elsewhere.
12. He wonders: Am I alone in this. And he asks: Can I accept this as ultimate truth. Can I simply slew off the awful and desperate connotations linked to this form of thinking.
13. You walk alone into the desert to be judged.
14. This way of thinking, of writing, of apeing another's form -- it is folly. It is wrapped up in gaudy paper and perhaps it is weak-sounding to strong-willed and wise people, but, I think, it is the only way I have at the moment. It is the only voice I am hearing right now.
(I have other voices, and other faces, but today they are silent, and this is all I can do.)
15. Quiet reflection on the giving-up: have we already surrendered?
I would like to think not, I would like to shout that we have not and will not and will fight it as hard as anything ever fought, but I suspect this will just be another example of a man lying to himself so as not to be pulled under by the waves.
A story-teller story-telling by the fire-light, creating gods to keep the demons at bay.
16. We tell ourselves stories because it is the only safety we have in and against the darkness.
We must do it, forever.
17. A man walks into a bar and asks for a punchline.
(A stone on the pile. It is not just a building.)
Kuke.
sushi:
- 10/10/2011 04:49:39 PM
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