Language + The Flesh + Artaud (+ Spero)
Musings:
When the pen pierces the page does it penetrate the skin. When the words cover the face does it become disfigured. When the mark marries with the body, is the trace erased or does it burn deeper. When language and the body are at one, does the father die?
All writing is pigshit, because it bares the mark of something else, because it becomes an object outside of the body - a partial object that survives its start point - at the authors throat. That lingers and becomes autonomous, that seems to "out grow the natural limitations of the organism affected by it". What of autonomy and the written word?
Where is the body that escapes me. Where is the body that is alien within me. Where words become the signal for the anamorphic real, where signs are permitted with enjoyment, with jouissance, which is replayed but never touched.
Wannabe
Wish I could be in this band
"No one knows who the Beattle-ettes were. They were one more answer record knocked off responding to the maelstrom of the Beatles’ invasion of New York in 1964. (It was rushed out so fast, in fact, that they got the spelling of the boys’ name wrong, with an extra ‘T’!) But it is sure that they were produced by “Shadow” Morton just before his breakout success with the fabulous Shangri-La’s. Because of this, and the definite New York moxie of the singers, many believe it might actually be the Shangs! This would be cool as all hell, of course, but no one knows for sure.
What we do know is this is a rockin’ two minutes of punky Beat music that sticks in your head all day."
Then I wish I was this band
.... Which turns out to be suzi quatro and sister patti and arlene...
I also wish I would have wrote A Lovers Discourse, but I didn't, Roland Barthes did.
And I wish I could have wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But I didn't
These both written by men but I consider to be feminine in a lot of respects.
And the reason I didn't was because I wasn't born yet. Everyone got there first. I may be too old to be in a teenage girl band, but I'm making moves on all the other things. Now the main dilemma is plagiarism, iteration, or envy? "Let's start over," is a mode of Art Writing according to Adrian Rifkin. He could be very very right.
Out of practice/Return to practice/Lacanian Paradigms...
A good strong woman, as if anyone needs to be convinced of that, has mirrors fixed to a wall in every room of her house. They are positioned unusually, awkward to stand before, easy to walk past and catch a glimpse at another potential being, present, absent, unknown, a glimpse. Her head rests upon good strong posture in a fixed forwards position, it is only the eyes that betray good strong posture and head held high tautness. They stretch themselves to the furthest corners, painfully but briefly, springing back to forward facing, correct positioning in order to aid with navigation and general observation. When out in the street she maintains correct postulation, sure footed strides, flowing sweeps of her arms through the air, masterful composition. But a smile forms in those disobedient eyes at passer-bys and reflective window displays close circuit TV and distorted images upon vehicle bodies. They turn and glance from left to right, but head strong strolls on.
A good strong woman, no proof required, shows signs of weakness, where perhaps her strength is not tested but highlighted. Upon darkness's descent the surfaces which held the figure of her constant companion depicts a new shadowed creature haloed by the glow of street lights, moon light, head lights, stop lights. Go, go, go. Her pace is quickened her posture flails and she fights against the invisible hands stiffening her legs. Her chest is tight, her head turns slight - determination prevails and curiosity does not get the better of her. She is not alone. As she progresses between street lamp after street lamp a shadowy figure looms ever closer, only to fall behind when absolutely beneath their glare. And cars which pass cause the shadowy creature to gain ferocity, increasing velocity and to pounce upon the next shaded area - allowing her to catch up. She is a strong woman who feels terrified by the figure that creeps her, that won't leave her within the lightness of night. Upon returning home all lights are turned on and she races to her sanctuary. She sits at an empty desk. Hands pressed together between her thighs. She raises her head. Corrects her posture. Before her is a sheath of mirrored glass. The remnant of one once shattered.
One once shattered then walked over in bare feet, sharpened edges digging into her penetrating her souls, her spine jolting backwards then stiffening as if a pole were shunted along side it, straightening her out, displacing the weight of her body, opening up her lungs, widening her mouth for the cries of pain they were expected to carry. Not a sound was heard that night nor any other. Good posture = self sedation. Primitive war tactics passed down unknowingly from generation to generation, when human recognised itself, an animal, and instinct determined everything else. The glass remained in her feet until scabs formed embracing them, welcome to the family. At this point she stood up reenforcing her good posture, pressing the shards into nerve endings and reopening the scabs of good intent. She lifted herself so as not to further the injury to her feet, a strong woman can carry her own weight, metaphysically heavy. She placed her body into a hot bath and watched the sweat drip from her forehead, sometimes joining the bath water, sometimes evaporating into the surrounding steam. She took hold of her submerged foot caressed each protrusion of glass before sharply removing each and every piece. Never once did she tear her eyes from the surface of the water; did the back of her head leave the nook it rested upon. Once the last shard was removed she rested in red waters.
At her desk she looks into the remaining sheath positioned at eye level. Too thin to see a full image of her face, wide enough to gaze into her companions eyes. And in those eyes she is fixated, she stares desperately into them, flicking from left to right rapidly, before settling on one or the other. Dead eyes with no soul attached beyond the reflection she sees inside them, a figure, darkened, silhouetted. She sees herself.
(video nasty Boogeyman 2)
Les Grande Mains...
Deconstruct this anomaly...
I look unrecognisingly, at my emancipated reflection in the mirrored door of the wardrobe, lean forward, pull a face and 'ha' on the glass. I put my fingers in the condensation as if ro stroke my neck, staring into the unknown eyes of this stranger. I kiss the cold flat glass, open mouthed, my tongue snaking about on the ice, feeling for warmth. 'What do you want?' I enquire of myself, looking into the reflection of my tired eyes. But I refuse to allow myself to be led by this silly question to which I have no answer. I shout at myself and stare into my yellowing teeth. I grimace and snort, purposely fogging up the mirror with my hot breath, then pull a silly face and answer myself in an idiotic little voice that I scarcely recognise. 'Meeeee,' I squeak. 'talking to yourself is stupid,' I say, subtly trying to change the subject, but I carry on bullying myself regardless. 'Who is "meeeee"?' I cross-question myself, intent on tripping myself up and making myself a laughing stock.... The wardrobe door swings open and once more reveals a twisted hideous body that I don't recognise as mine; the paleness of my limbs; my hollow cheeks and purple rings under my eyes; my teeth already tobacco stained and broken. I see myself as ugly and despise myself...It's funny how mirrors hold an interesting dynamic in relation (and reflection) to ourselves. We are so desperate to catch a glimpse of ourselves through the eyes of others but, being unable to take up the position of the other, with each attempt we fail fail fail. We then rely on mirrors, photographs, a passing glance in reflective shop windows (hoping if I can turn my head fast enough I may catch myself off guard). The mirror as deeply flawed as skin, smudged and imperfect, the eyes we stare into, a cold dead reflection. The camera grains, pixelates, we are not made up of tiny little squares, we choose to ignore that which we are made up of, further still, out of sight out of mind... Perhaps we may faint upon opening up - this is just an avoidance of truth. So we rely on others for a true image... Another false image. It is easy to feel alone inside your own body, sometimes the company of others only serves to exemplify this lonelness, then again it they may be only opportunity to truthfully gaze upon ourselves. It is true that I have fallen in love with people off the back of the reflection I caught of myself in the glistening curve of their eyes. Just yes billy childish, yes.
I try to stand but fall twisted to the bed, my calves and knees locked in cramps. I straighten my legs, screaming in pain, cursing and rubbing my calves vigorously until at last the cramps subside and I can stand on my numb and tingling feet. On reflection, it might have been wiser for me to have sat in my brother's blue nylon sleeping bag. But comfort is not what makes great literature.
another extract...
Killing (In the Name Of) the Father... Extract
2.
“I killed him.” This is a confession. He is dead and it wasn’t easy. The pressure of my V7 Pilot Pen (favored to the 0.5 Uni-ball for its keen nib, thick stokes, ease and comfort) firm against the skin,over and over, back and forth, repetitive strokes. When the skin finally broke, blood was met with black ink and tears of relief. It took months, through severed veins and arteries, through bone and marrow, through the rigor-mortis of repetition and sedative euphoria. Then there was a dead man with a stigmata-esque injury through each wrist. I contemplated mourning over him. I contemplated worshiping him. I did love him. I loved him more in his death than was ever permissible in life. I do mourn, not because of the space left empty by him, but for myself and the earth. I died too. It wasn’t easy, no it was not. Liberation is like new skin, sensitive and vulnerable to surroundings; the atmosphere more easily absorbed through painful oscillations of needle like air altering my typically jaded state to a dizzying new suprasensual. The earth softened with every step and I pulsated with the breath of the wind, totally aware of every single cell, every single molecule that amounted to universal being: myself. Every step fully combined, my mind, my body at one, all that it touched and it was as beautiful as that. But it wasn’t easy. Everything shook as I collided continuously with the ground, with the eyes of passer-bys. The tyranny of such devices. They looked and judged, how limp and 'unaware', oh how wrong their impressions. I killed him and transgressed the tyranny of the eye. I killed him and entered into constant orgasm with the Earth as phallus. I killed him. I killed him: he is earth. I took a life. I took control.
The eye. That initial pusher granted me this downer, that gave me access to this language, to the pen, to the earth. My muscles once kiln blasted clay now soft and indiscernible from earth. It’s brave of me to admit all that isn’t it, that sort of sensitivity leaves me vulnerable and you know where my weakness lies, but you must be edged by fear to know that I could take a life under my hand; under the pressure of my V7 pen. Quite a weapon.
It wasn’t easy and now everything is out of focus, and everything trembles when I touch it but nothing touches me. “I confess to you, it wasn’t easy, but now it is all over. Now we are dead, now we are earth.”
3.
“You and I are earth,” There is an old man in the corner, he is stood on a soap box where girls once gathered around, held onto his words and collected them, wrote them in journals, savored them, revisited them, resisted them, repeated them, ruined them, lost them. He now preaches to the air. He thinks he is a wise man, he glares into his own future and reckons that this justifies his position, but his future is littered with aged memories and we have chosen to forget our memories as they deceive us, as they cause us to ignore inherent dangers whilst irrationally fearing the appearance of butterflies and moths. He directs himself at the naive, like they are idiots but a there is a new word on the street counteracting his stale air. He cannot access this word as it is uttered behind his back, outside of his generation, it breaks in the new kids who deceive their next of kin. So there is a rebellion and his words wreak of otherness and decay. He is channeling, disseminating the dead. We kill the dead. There is talk of killing the old man but we all feel so sorry for him and he happens to be someone's father (and he dares to speak of liberating ourselves from patriarchal constraints). This is the only thing that saves him, that assures his presence. We can’t bare to see her eyes stream on the news of his death as we stand in front of one long mirror, we look at ourselves. We spare him. His remains loiter ghost like in our minds, full of resentful respect, and sexual angst, ashamed at our own defiance to both him and ourselves. Regret all our actions. What must he think.
4.
What about...?
What about what?
Well, you know...
...
You know, her
What? What about her?
You know...
Well I haven't really given her a second thought.
Wrong her, it's a different one.
There is a silence, the kind of silence that fills the air with small needles which ferociously stab at the neck and chest; which inject small flushes of heat and emulate suffocation. It is usually indistinguishable from regular air to the person/s in the surrounding proximity. They have been twiddling with old bits of paper, flicking at lighters, finding small talk in the strangest of places. The talk is quashed. One twiddler is suspecting that the silence indicates an inappropriate use of small talk, that twiddler suspects that they have unintentionally broached on big talk. There is a sudden calmness now, the needles have finished and although she is still slightly flushed there is an urge to remain - keep the focus with the her....
I have only just began fantasising about her. A flirtation really. To be like that. Is that who I wish to be today? To emit charm and confidence and warmth and intelligence. That's who I was yesterday and the day before. But now, stifled. I fell from her shoes and when I got back to my feet... I'm a little shaky and the persona is slipping. And I'm unsure as to who it is I am fooling. But it's just a fantasy anyway. It isn't hurting anyone.
Oh. I didn't mean, her, actually I meant... Well that doesn't matter. I suppose the main thing is, well what about, him.
Him? You mean him...?
And make no mistake, this did not require contemplation. For as long as she could remember there had only been one him. That ‘him’ is a shape shifter. It does change but beyond the shell is a recurrent theme, or persona, or fiction, or thing. Him is fixed. He becomes a mark of all predecessors and stands before and remains after all, after all.
Well. I haven't thought of him for months now. Well that's a lie, since his death I mean I hadn't. Yet last night I began to fantasise about him. It seems less dangerous now. I severed several electrical wires and pulsating arteries... and yet I cannot fully heal the wounds where they had hooked themselves into my infrastructure. There was something there before. A mark of something or someone. I don't remember quite fully enough to tell it. I suppose that is why people are repulsed by this, it simultaneously reveals and conceals. Always something underneath determined by a... something else. Still at least this one isn't an open gushing wound a direct window into...
The scar itches then and there is a hypnotic glare adopted by those present. They begin to think of their fathers, but whenever anyone tried to speak they could only talk of their mothers. They all knew: the mother implicates the father too, mother is merely a concealing device as everyone fears directly the consequence of naming him. He bred them, he fed them, he allowed them to stay over on Wednesdays and every other weekend. His presence was inescapably bound to their existence. They gave up on language then and sat in silence for some time until one of them finally piped up...
Prosthesis: Written Jouissance
Theory as prosthesis
Subjectile/Projectile
The fallible phallus
Written Jouissance
Reader as parasite
Author as Frankenstein
Book as a coffin
Identity Theft
Paraphiliac tendancies
Écriture féminine
Subjective subjectile
Revival of the mark
Survival of the mark
Symbolic substitution
signified signification
Binary oppositions
Difference/differance
I only exist because you exist
I stink therefore I am
Sex is Death
Autoerotocism as alienation
Suggestive Tautology
Mystic preservation
The cuckoo kills the cat
Missing links
Bataille
Marquis De Sade
Sassure
Lacan
Derrida
Sontag
Artaud
Irigaray
Blanchot
Foucault
Cixous
The Count Censored
The White Album
Paul McCartney
Stefan Sagmeister
Zizek
Charles Manson
yes it's nearly hand in time!
ANY APPROPRIATORS OUT THERE...
Firstly thanks to all the responses I've recieved so far.
If you are still intending on participating or still haven't posted the response then it may please you to know that I am pushing back the deadline until end of June early July (probably 6th at the latest).
The Appropriation project aims to find a collective author through the reading and reworking of piece of text. Once all texts have been collected I will set about collating and re-telling the piece through the responses, hopefully drawing on the experiences of others and the text itself. So the more responses the better really.
If you are yet to participate and are intrigued then please email for details or check this site:
http://usergenerated-text.tumblr.com/
The text:
All kinds of diverse responses so far, texts/images/mark making... Keep 'em coming!
We Never Felt Joy...
We never could affiliate ourselves to a side, we stayed strictly down the center, in the light. So centeral that we realised everybody else was to the left or to the right. We owned that space. Even then we could find no joy, only ignorance.
Keep in a cool place...
Did you ever get the impression that you had been crafted? It was the result of an uncomfortable stretch, pivoting joints seemingly fractured. All these twists and turns began to separate themselves from the body. I began looking a little like a piece by Hans Bellemer. Disjuncture; Displaced; Disappropriated; Disjointed.
It looks like an act, there is a gesture towards eternal desire. This how you might look if you were to place your insides outside. Too much revealed, unnatural, not normal. Revelation, elation, liberation. Submission. The skin disappears and you are revealed as a mechanism. Let him turn his hand unto you and mould them around the artificiality of your limbs.
That is a falsehood as he is a falsehood, artificial mechanisms of otherness. Reduce each other to mannequins and find there an uncanny likening for something you once thought that you knew. The body curls in on itself then around itself - the surreality of it all. Life has been unveiled to you as nothing more than you had already found inside and there is a dissatisfaction to that. It was never the outside that oppressed you, it was always the inside.
Inside you found his hand and you were doing all you could to escape it before it's thick fingers clasped tightly shut around you. On running you had tied yourself in knots then questioned how it could possibly occur that the hand you were running from has now become a surface which you rest your tangled hide upon. This is how we represent each other.
Grotesque rippling of skin and flesh is tied into itself, it was never a part of me, it was just some additive. Something to dig at. Something to protect my core. How this did occur. How I have become so falsely represented. How you are, were and always will be the wire, distorting and manipulating my reality and my phantasy, intercepting thought processes and projecting yourself unto my limbs. I remain unmarked. Pull your wire once more and a little more tightly please, I am beginning to rise again.
OWT #5 Atmosphere...
It is
Beautifully put together
with
Hand/screen printed sections
from
Talented northern youths
and
I'm in it!
OWT.OWT.OWT.OWT.OWT.OWT.OWT.OWT.OWT.OWT.OWT.OWT.OWT.OWT.
The I that lies...
If I did have anything to say it perhaps should merely have been this: What can I say? And maybe the depth of différance within the response, the antecedence of the personal pronoun, the implications of the shifter, could have given us all some fat to chew on for a while.
***aside. A deconstruction of self. A presupposition of the speaking being.
As I entered into your language my mind was washed with nothingness. I had forgotten the thing that I was searching for and so I began to look for clues to help me remember. The clues that I found were ambiguous; they were surfaces for me to rub myself against in order to test whether I existed; they enabled a space for me to contort myself into. Although it is quite possible that one of these spaces had been made for me, I felt uncertain and thought perhaps that it was best not to claim any of them until I am sure that they aren't already inhabited by others (possibly out to lunch, visiting a family member in hospital, or holidaying in Spain). I suppose I could ask you about these spaces, but I am struggling to think of an example. The only thing I can recall is that I misread girth as girl. Upon reading it again I smiled. I didn't know whether to wrap my arms around your waist or to sit on you, neither is possible as you are supine when it comes to irrational outbursts of lust and/or desire. This is a bad example, but the fact that it is an example means that it cannot serve in it's particularity, it is in a paradoxical position of 'it is but it isn't(ness)', for which I am quite grateful as this renders me golden. I go out of my way to build spaces, it is an inevitable construct of language, yet I am uncertain who I may find loitering in these words. Every time I look, it is a concept of you, but when my back is turned I am unknown as is you.
(Possessing the I of a song)
Devils Advocate
Not everything you do will be understood
Maybe that is the point
Communication is based on a series of errors and misunderstandings
I am only trying to communicate after all.
Samuel Beckett Fans and Retro Video Game Fans REJOICE!
WAITING FOR GODOT THE VIDEO GAME HATH ARRIVED.
http://vectorbelly.com/godot.html
Addictive 16bit theme, shitty graphics, 2player mode available, well executed. One could not ask for much more. However I can't help but feel Beckett would have been slightly unimpressed bu the staging.
A Walk Through H
"I've always been fascinated by maps and cartography. A map tells you where you've been, where you are, and where you're going - in a sense it's three tenses in one... My father had recently died, and the subtitle of the film was 'The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist' - my father was one. Through his life he had amassed an extraordinary amount of information about bird study, and I was very aware that with his death - as indeed with any death - a vast amount of very personalized information had gone missing, was totally irrecoverable. The film is on the journey a soul takes at the moment of death, to whatever other place it ends up - H being either Heaven or Hell. I devised 92 maps to help this particular character get there. The whole film was divided into five sections that represented movement from a very urban landscape to a wilderness landscape, and there were references and cross-references to all sorts of systems."
Greenaway added the subtitle as a memoir to his father, perhaps this walk through H is inability to understand all his father's 'stuff' - one has a tendency to loot for memories once someone important has died, perhaps sentiment is displaced only in death. This film is a tribute then, a memoir to something of which he has no direct memory. A something. A possibility. A reincarnation.
A very engaging, surreal, and wonderful account of a journey that was worth the voyage. It's such a shame that you cannot engage with these maps in reality. They seem well structured and thought through - all 92 of them, baring resemblances, carrying with them meanings, associations. Crammed (lovingly) into 41minutes of film, doomed to be lost in the landscape of my memory as I desperately attempt to recall it, to retell it to you. I suppose I failed: I just ended up talking a heap about myself... Well it is my blog. All is not lost, you can still watch it. Here's the link:
http://www.ubu.com/film/greenaway_walk.html
You + I = You + I
"We are first of all, as friends, the friends of solitude, and we are calling on you to share what cannot be shared: solitude" -- Nietzsche
But what of You and I. How will We ever combine? How do We take the You and the I and bring them into matrimony? How can We transform our respective singularities into, not necessarily a universality, but a connectivity, a relation, a singular duality. Watch as these words fall through my body, to my fingers, onto a keyboard, through binary, onto the screen of my computer, into the ether of the internet where, hopefully (although dependent on blog popularity and further than that, whether I am holding your attention), You have received it. Notice as the words enter your body through the retina of the eyes, You begin to interpret and understand. Have I made a connection? Are we in some form of exchange where in you somehow gain knowledge of me through the words I write? Perhaps. But is that a connection? Are you not in fact understanding this based on a system You have within yourself, a system of knowledge, a system of semiotics, a system of experiences - experience that I can only tap accidentally. It is my belief that it is only when you hit that latter raw nerve that connectivity becomes aflame. We are no longer a You and a I, We are now a 'We', an 'Us' - Or we are somehow more than that, maybe friends, maybe lovers, maybe enemies, but We are still separate.
On conversing:
"the relation whereby the one whom I cannot reach becomes present in his inaccessible truth" -- Blanchot
If You and I begin to engage in conversation, or interact, then You and I become a We/Us. See how those two words "We" and "Us" are formed. Two letters. One for the Other (You) and one for the I. Two, a duo. They are still unconnected, they are still a duality; although condensed they remain You and I. The 'U' and the 'S' do not merge and conceive a new letter, a singularity, they still signify two separate letters, only now in union through the mode of a word*. The only place that a connection has been formed is the space between those letters, the space in which we converse.
"[A]s long as 'we' are engaged in conversation...'I' can't get a fix on 'you'; 'you' remain both unbearably close and inaccessible." -- Dianne Davis
The word 'I', in reference to the self, (myself or whatever Other self chooses it) is in fact the only personal pronoun which signifies a singularity. A One. An 'I'. And 'You' further signifies our relationship to the Other. Three letters. No longer a duo in conversation. The letter 'Y' touches the 'O' but never the 'U', the 'U' touches the 'O' but never the 'Y', and the 'O' acts as a mediator between the 'Y' and the 'U', keeping them separate, ensuring they do not interact.
Perhaps then this psychological business of the Other of mental and physical distance is not what separates You and I. Perhaps it is nothing more than letters, words, conversations organised into systems. Something that may or may not be innate, that has developed in order to unite Us, but so far has only heightened the differences and mis-communication between Us.
I'm sorry that it had to end this way. In fact I didn't want it to end at all. But now that it is over, know that You are still embedded within I and occasionally it rises to interrupt my discourse, only to be swallowed back down, hard. The Other. You.
*A thought that needs developing: The connectivity we achieve through love is still a desperate act to become the Other, to gain knowledge of the Other. Perhaps the act of love making is as close as humanity can get to transcending a two to become a one. This is perhaps where 'Jouissance' (mentioned in a previous post) leads in it's displacement. Sexual intercourse is perhaps the most effective form of relief for the exploration of the unknown Other. Two combine to form a one - the conception of a child. However, if this is blocked via contraception then merge is unsuccessful and 'jouissance' can only be relieved temporarily through orgasm, which leads back down to the Cat and Mouse scenario.
typographic design: www.mandigoodier.co.uk