“This ongoing writing practice is foundational to a lot of my work. This excerpt draws on some ideas that I was working with in my most recent film, Distracted Blueberry.”
Banana is the perfect word for banana. Only a banana can taste like a banana. What are you thinking about? At this moment? About me? That’s an invisible moment. I hope this moment will last forever. Imagine something you can’t imagine. The thought of thought. The back of the sun. There’s a necklace on your facelessness. Something was wrong. Then that something got wronger and wronger. The banana on the ground, pick it up. Go on, pick it up. Eat it. The banana can no longer be picked up. A magic banana. Excuse me, you’ve got a banana in your ear. Pardon me? You’ve got a banana in your ear. Sorry, I can’t hear you – I’ve got a banana in my ear.
The universe has a thickness. A centimetre of air. The sun is shining on half of me. One square foot of fire. Half a piano is better than none. I am as simple as I can possibly be. The dimensions of infinity. I only have two backs of a head. I am always walking away from you. Imagine a bubble on your tongue. Right on the centre of your tongue. Now close your mouth. I sit in front of myself. Narrate my own life back to me. God never made fire upside down and backwards. My penis is always moving forward. Moving forward is also moving backward. The length of your face divided by the width of your face. A piece of thinking.
Understand life by building something that is lifelike. I made a guitar out of my own skeleton. When I write I wish I was painting. That thing over there is another one of me. Make the grass more green. Outside the cage is the cage. Speak my name into the wind. Let me smile. A teardrop made of water. A poet without pen and paper. Burping the alphabet. I could see the frame, but I couldn’t see the picture. A square hole. I can think of a circle. I don’t have to draw it. I am what you are not. A robot draws a picture of itself. The mirror is empty. He was only able to look by looking slightly elsewhere.
What did that mean? Describe to me the space that I form. Everything is burning. Everything is extinguished. A thought that is not thought by me. I look for you in you. Black following black. Each of us is only a reflection of the universal reflection. I enclose myself in a circle where I am the only one who knows there is no one there. One day I will say a word I don’t know. Will you be there to help me say that word? The word “I” vibrates between my teeth. The illusion of a circle. Instead of being inside a sphere, I form its surface. Could I have been more outside him that he was outside me? Dizzying. Too dizzying.
Sex is not interesting. Take a coin and silently put it into my hand. Say something interesting. A whisper that is too close to silence. Say you write all your poetry on drugs. There’s nothing interesting happening at the top of a mountain. Images on top of images. A flying shovelful of dirt. A rat wearing a watermelon for a hat. The sound of the chair is as interesting as the shape of the chair. The tinyness of tiny things. The act of looking is interesting to me. It’s hard to see a piece of paper. Something going from one to two. What’s that? That’s something. That’s the problem. Sex is only interesting because everything else isn’t. Someone came and then we had sex and then they left. Nothing interesting happened.
I throw away all my artwork. I then proceed to reveal the human element by denying it. The anti-development of development. It’s about what it’s about. A speck of stardust. I’m looking for the emptiness which is at the end of every art. Emptiness is never empty enough. I like how your drawings smell. You can smell a smell. You can’t describe a smell with a picture or a sound. An artwork that situates itself outside of art. I can smell the grass grow. There really aren’t that many smells in this world. I can read the air. But I can’t read the air enough. Sitting at my table eating an orange. This is reality. It’s not good enough. A step. One single step was enough.
Photograph the back of an artwork. Describe a puppy for an hour. There’s music coming from the garbage can. We talk about a lot of things. But we don’t talk about the thing itself. Life. The whole thing. Like a table with too many things on it. The table is unable to be seen. I think I’m looking at nothing. Nothing is happening in my eyes. I can make a poppy bloom just by looking at it. Everything means nothing. Why do things have names? Because they’re given them. My name is Art. No one knows my name. I am glad I exist. I wake up screaming my own name. A name that is not a name. A name that does not name anything. Carry this false name. Carry me out of context.
My thighs are pressed together. They’re hiding a secret. I’m trying to reveal the secret. It’s like a secret that everyone knows. It’s everything combined together. This is just a poetic image. The wave crashing on the rock. Poetry that does not contain a secret. You stared at a piece of paper for a thousand hours. When I communicate with you, I’m actually communicating with the most secret part of myself. A secret part of a bigger secret. I want somebody to know my secret. A massive ocean that’s only one inch deep. There’s one thing I consider as a secret, actually. What is it? Inside you there is someone, and around that someone there is wrapped a larger someone who is your size, and you contain both.
Distracted Blueberry screens at the Cinematheque (Vancouver) on Wednesday, September 29th at 6:15pm PDT. Presented by ReIssue, DIM Cinema, and STILLS: a moving image tract, with the artist in attendance.