10) My main urge at the moment is to withdraw. To attempt to stop the production of so many things, to concentrate my volume into only a couple of places. I feel like the Hotel Splendid. Falling apart, riddled with debt, one thing after another needed to be tended to, to be fixed, only I am also the weather, I am the swamp, I am the mislaid pipes, I am flooding, I play piano in the lobby and I get ill, wither, wait for health to return. I put my I everywhere, on top of the entire thing. I am attempting to reconfigure this I, to rewrite this I, such that I do not flood, such that the weather is predictable, such that I play piano at the proper hours, such that the bouts of poor health are manageable, such that I can take care of my debts. Yet this weekend I have failed in that. The time has passed by, there are things I should have quit, addictions I should've resisted, and instead money left my balance, I've ignored my debtors, ignored the phone calls that I am to make, the messages I am to send, and I am dealing with who I am, who I was, in relation to who I am trying to be, who I am trying to become. Noctilucents: "neither being nor becoming, substance nor process, but rhythm: a flow of interruptions" — a cascade:
It is as if she were waiting for something that never comes... The work isn't going anywhere. There are unforeseen complications. That is the way it always is with construction... I am the only one who comes and goes. I am acclimated to the swawmp... No matter how hard I work to take care of it, I can see it is falling apart... Now the Splendid is showing the flaws in its construction, now that it is too late and the harm has been done... The Splendid is quiet all of a sudden... Apparently the project was badly designed and they have to start over. The heat broke all of a sudden... They don't care that it is falling apart. As long as they are waited on and never have to do anything. It is as if they were on vacation here, an endless vacation... She would have liked the grave to stay new forever, like the Hotel Splendid... This is the first time there has been such an invasion of cockroaches during the cold. The hygiene must leave something to be desired, or else there would not be so many cockroaches... I understand grandmother. The Hotel Splendid was her life. And me too, without the Splendid, what would become of me... Without the neon lights blinking in the night, the Splendid would no longer be the Splendid... I have always thought the swamp was an inexhaustible natural resource. If that turns out to be true, it should not be long before the railways is built... I am never completely prepared for things. I wasn't ready for the cold weather... She never plays the piano anymore, she never rehearses her lines. But if she doesn't rehearse, she will not be able to act anymore. She will forget everything. That is the worst thing that can happen to an actress, to forget her lines... Far from making a profit from the prospectors, I have lost money. All that because of the freeze and all the firewood I had to burn... The rooms are freezing. There are no guests. And yet every evening, when night falls, I turn on the neon lights... All of a sudden she no longer believes in anything. She is gloomy. It's her age. There is nothing worse than getting old for an actress. She thinks with regret of all the parts she never played. She never made any kind of name for herself. She was always unknown. The idea of ending her days at the Hotel Splendid eats away at her... I don't think about the future. The present is all that counts... They are gracious guests, and they know how life is... But maybe their life at the hotel is what changed their personalities... I don't like to have debts. But what else can I do? It's either debt or the end of the Splendid. I have no choice... Ada and Adel live in a dream... Adel cannot bear solitude... I don't even dare go up to the attic anymore, for fear of finding some more serious kind of damage... The swamp is swallowing up the cemetary. Ada says soon there will be nothing left of the cemetary, because there will be nothing but the swamp... And at any rate, the cemetary scarcely exists anymore. Only a few of the gravestones are still above water, and soon they will disappear as well... Like grandmother, my sisters have seen a lot of htoels. I am the only one who was known nothing but the Splendid... She drew on all her experiences to create the Hotel Splendid... she says the garden isn't the garden anymore, but the beginning of the swamp instead. She is not completely wrong. The garden is beginning to look like the swamp... They are conviced the company is doing the right thing in trying to put a railway line through the swamp. They say that will give it life. But the swamp does not need the railway to live. It isn't dead like they think... They believe in what they are doing... Adel has become friendly again. She has taken a new interest in the swamp all of a sudden, thanks to the geologists' maps of it. It is as if it was all new to her... They are unhappy with her. She has no more stories to read, she was read them all to us... The swamp might be a blessing... I have to think about paying off my debts... Ada is shapeless. At night, she dreams that the railroad tracks run through the hotel... When I said grandmother was a pioneer, I did not know how right I was. If I hadn't built the Hotel Splendid on the edge of the swamp, the railway would probably never have come here. You can't see the swamp from the rooms just now because of the fog. The foggy season has begun... When the fog comes, you never know how long it will stay. You can scarcely make out the signs of the Hotel Splendid anymore. The hotel disappears in the fog, and the swamp as well. You can no longer tell where the swamp is, or where the Splendid is. You have to know your way along to not get lost... The plumber covered them with a special compound to protect them. But he knows as well as I do that no compound, not even a special compound will fix everything... Ever since the fog began, there have been no more flies... My sisters really have no memory... Her favorite movie, one that she saw several times when she was young, was Hotel Splendid. That was what gave her the idea of naming her hotel the Hotel Splendid. In the movie, the hotel was not on the edge of a swamp, it was in an oasis in the middle of the desert. The wind never stopped blowing. The oasis was slowly becoming choked with sand, and so was the hotel. Grandmother often told me the story of the Hotel Splendid buried under the desert sand. There is no danger of that happening at the edge of the swamp. That's what grandmother must have said to herself when she chose this spot for her hotel... For me things are less glamorous, spending all my time unblocking the lavatories... The workmen think Adel is someone... The workmen do not really understand who she is. They think she is a former movie actress... Every day, some new problem comes up. The geologists could not foresee all the problems. Their studies were very superficial. I was right to think they didn't understand anything about the swamp... The swamp is unrecognizable. It looks as though it's on fire, especially at night... It smells more like fire than like the swamp... Nothing looks familiar to me anymore... She took down all her photographs of actresses. She has begun to doubt the movies all of a sudden. She is disoriented. She says everything is phony in the movies. Only in the theater can an actress really perform to the fullest. Movies are false. She no longer knows what her calling was. She is lost... He agreed to make some repairs, but only on the understanding that he took no responsibility for the results... Little by lttle, she even stopped thinking about the movies. In the end, she never paged through her magazines anymore. The Splendid was the only thing left. She succeeded in life... I am feeling strong at the moment. The Splendid is holding up. It's the embankment that is not holding up... Where the cemetary used to be, now there is the embankment, It encourages the workmen to see the embankment moving forward. What he doesn't know is that in certain places the swamp exerts suction. That is where the embankment is sinking... I spend all day in the office sorting through grandmother's papers. Everything is out of order and unintelligible. The Splendid is no longer making money... The construction is over. The men have left. The garden seems empty all of a sudden. I walked along the embankment and the tracks. The entire company will be there for the opening ceremonies. The first train will cross the swamp. The shutters are closed in Ada and Adel's room. It's the only room that still has shutters. My sisters never touch their food anymore. What can be going on... She says the sand is swallowing up the Hotel Splendid. She is delirious. She thinks she is at the movies... She says death is worse than life... She must think she is already dead... Adel called me Ada. And then she died. My sisters died of the same illness. I prepared Adel's body. I also covered her face with a lace veil that belonged to grandmother. I laid Ada next to Adel. I no longer have any sisters. I only have the Splendid... Who knows where grandmother's coffin is now that the swamp has swallowed up the cemetary? Apparently there are underground currents that slowly suck you in, and as soon as you are caught in one it carries you away... Grandmother knew all about the dangers of flooding. She did not want the Hotel Splendid to be cut off from the world. She had it built just where the pathway is, where it never really floods. That says a lot about her perfect knowledge of the swamp, to have found the only spot that stays dry... They don't make outhouses of that type nowadays. They only make lavatories, with all the problems they bring. Lavatories are my eternal overriding concern, along with the Splendid, of course... It's a miracle tha thtey Splendid has never been flooded. The water always stops a few yards away. If the hotel were flooded, in its condition, that would be the end of it... The debts are starting up again, I will never be free of them... No matter how often I go over my accounts, I cannot manage to balance my budget. I still have a lot of debts. That's not good for the reputation of the hotel. Debts do not inspire confidence... I am already beginning to forget my sisters. I have a bad memory too. The grass is beginning to cover up the graves. I like coming back to the hotel... I see it from far away... The signs are on day and night now. That is my one luxury... The hotel is returning to its old clientele. Travelers are very happy to be able to stop at the Splendid before continuing their long voyage through the swamp... All I need to live is for a few rooms to be taken... Ada and Adel never saw the swamp covered with snow. The swamp is all white. The Splendid is also all white... The hotel looks brand-new under the snow. You can no longer see its flaws... The whole embankment is sinking. My hopes were in vain. The embankment is going to be swallowed up like the cemetary. My sisters' graves will disappear. And their beautiful wooden coffins will fill up with water. Ada and Adel will never escape from the swamp. They are going to join grandmother somewhere on the bottom. I did not succeed in sparing my sisters an uncertain fate at the bottom of the swamp... Nothing can resist the swamp. All it took was the weight of the snow to make what remains of the embankment disappear little by little. Only the Splendid resists the swamp, because grandmother found the right place to build it... I still have debts, but fortunately they are not growing... When night falls and I turn them on, only one word is lit up, the second one, Splendid. That word stands out against the sky. Travelers cannot help but see it. But since the word Hotel isn't lit up, the travelers cannot know that the Splendid is a hotel... From far away, the Splendid must look like a boat that has run aground there on the snow, with its wooden hull half rotted away. There is no chance of it sinking, since it has run aground... The swamp is still the swamp, even covered with snow. Thanks to grandmother's enterprising spirit, this is the only swamp with a hotel in the entire region. The Splendid is visible from everywhere in the swamp. Its signs shine at night, they are visible from a great distance. There are two bright spots in the sky and on the snow. They are the reflections of the Splendid's signs..
Points
12) I finished Nevermore today. There is only one more Marie Redonnet novel with an English translation left for me. Candy Story. Once I read Candy Story, I will either have to learn French or wait for translations to be published. Jordan Stump wrote the translations for all of the books I've read. He is still writing translations. I started to watch another Rivette today but decided to save it. I was very tired. I went back to sleep. Most of the day went away. I didn't do what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was unclear. As far as the short immediate steps. Now I remember what I wanted to do, and the steps were clear. But it is too late to do that now. I must wait. I still don't have a cellphone that works. I turned Instagram off. I suppose this text production is evidence of that. I am changing myself in the ways that I usually change myself, which leads me to question if there is a change occurring. O reminded me of my resolutions on Friday. The ones I brought up were new to her. I have many resolutions and they are all difficult. Somewhere else I will start to write my first novella of the year. The month is waning. I lost weight from not eating enough. And from being sick. I am trying to be better in a number of ways. Time feels as though it shrinking. It felt right to finish Nevermore today. The president was inaugurated. In the book a man becomes the President. In the book there are people fighting for power. In the book people have sex and try to love. But the love feels hard to reach, just behind a veil. On New Year's, O and O2 came over after the party. O2 and I finished his bag of coke, talked about Africa, the horrors of the world, what we've inherited, what will happen. He doesn't remember it but I'm glad for the conversation. I've started praying again and I hope to pray more. I feel bad for not going to the temple today. I've been putting off going to the temple for two weeks. It is in Flushing and now I don't have a phone. But I think if I go there and I pray, it will help with change. It is snowy and icy and cold outside. But I am inside. My laptop is hot. I recall "whoever anywhere will read these written words". I decide to write words from Nevermore.
Translator's Introduction:
"...an outsider's construction of the American West: a West where accounts are settled in francs, a West marked by both volcanoes and disused concentration camps, a West in which one finds such quintessentially French conveniences as the buvette (a small, modest, but not inelegant sort of cafe, common at French tourist sites) and the pissotière (a rather rudimentary public urinal, now vanished from the streets of Paris)."
Readers familiar with the novels of Marie Redonnet will find in Nevermore all the hallmarks of her unique vision: an insistence on repetition, duality, and duplicity, a meditation of the dangers of identification, an examination of the perils and the possibilities of writing, a style of bewildering simplicity, understated power, and offhanded humor, and most important of all, perhaps, a faith in the rare, frail, but incalculably precious ability to transcend the omnipresent darkness and to start anew. Nevermore — the novel or the word itself — implies an end, perhaps a death, but also (or therefore) a beginning and a rebirth.
Words from Nevermore:
...he wants to forget what he had dreamt of, just as he wants to forget the past... It is forbidden to remember the past. It is forbidden to compare the present with what I had dreamt of... Seeing her emerge from her coupe in her white poplin dress, he would never have thought that she was going to San Rosa to sing at the Babylon... he became used to being alone, and even came to like it. How could he have imagined when he arrived in San Rosa that he would still be here after all this time, and that his only desire would be to stay here forever? It will be San Rosa right up to the end for him... The files, already yellowing, were put together by his predecessor, who was obsessed with files and wanted to leave some mark of his existence behind him... Why did his predecessor keep all those files? No one has ever read them... Everyone is taking advantage of the lull, as if it were going to last forever... That is how she sees her life up to now, as a larger and larger wheel which, after having turned faster and faster, suddenly stopped... She asks Willy Bost who he is and where he comes from. But he does not want to talk about himself. The only thing he wants is to move into his room... Only one thing matters, what I came to San Rosa to do. What did I come here to do?... Concentrate on that question alone... Write everything down right away as soon as he feels the need. What would he do without his notebook?... he did not renta. room at the Gold House just to jerk off all alone with no hope of ejaculation! That is out of the question... it never occurs to her that he might be a maniac or a madman... Old images come back to her before she can chase them away. She jumps up and runs to the ocean... No matter how she tries to chase away the old images, she still has the same body, and therefore still the same atavisms. That is what she repeats to herself: the same atavisms. It is aprt of the inevitability she must live with. Is Willy Bost to be the new face of the inevitable for her?... he thinks that he must look like a novelist taking notes for his next novel. That idea pleases him. But there is no question of his becoming a novelist even if he enjoys looking like one. He takes out his notebook again and adds: Don't try to be what you are not. Be what you must be... The words of her songs are very simple. They are about the bombs that never stop falling on Alejo, women from faraway places being sold from one whorehouse to the next up and down the west coast, a little girl crying in the snow because her dog has died, an old man freezing to death under a bridge as he watched a fireworks display lighting up the city, a woman who looks for love without ever finding it and finally gives birth all alone on a desert island, a poet who kills God as if he were His executioner, a priest somewhere in the middle of a desert who gives food to a dead man without noticing that he is dead... How could she have lived all this time forgetting the pleasure that she had felt only once, in suite 103 of the Eden Palace, when she played the first role of her life?... particularly terrible because there is no explosion... But where will she go then? She has nowhere to go. She would rather sing at the Babylon than leave for nowhere in her coupe... She answers that she has nothing to tell him because there is nothing to know... But to go where? With her CV, no one would hire her. She has just come to understand this evening what it means to have been hired only on the strength of her cassette, without being asked for her CV... Even though they are inseparable, they do not tell each other their secrets... It is as if she had loved a dream... Yesterday seems long ago, almost unreal. A new life is beginning for him with this new position... How could he have been so careless as to let it turn into a diary?... He has never tried to find out who she really is... From now on, he wants to do as his predecessors did, write everything down so that there will be some trace of what they discover... What is essential in an investigationof this importance, one concerning the city's most prominent figure, is determining whom to question and how... She is relieved that he is behaving toward her as though nothing had happened. That is the best solution for both of them... That is good news, it proves that everything is going in the right direction... Why isn't love always this simple? Why does passion come along and spoil everything? He pays the girl and gives her a tip, for the music, he says with a smile. When she leaves, he falls asleep, thinking of nothing... why does he find it impossible to give it to her as he had intended?... What must be done is not to destroy the city center, but to save it, in order to make of it the city of God... He does not want to be a man of God only in the house of God. He wants to be a man of God in the city of men in order to defend the word of God there. God visited him in the night as he slept and gave him this mission... She talks to the hummingbird as if it understood everything. She calls it the philosopher... Down at the bottom of Angel Cove there is a submerged grotto whose wonders Mattie wanted to show her. Cassy told her that every time she dives she is afraid the sea will swallow her forever. Mattie laughed. They would dive together, and they would go to the grotto... Here, atop the volcano, she forgets everything that is happening below. The buzzard glides above the crater, then dives... In his opinion, it won't be long before the volcano erupts. He hopes it will be a splendid eruption and that he will be able to film it... She thinks that he knows how to charm and that he enjoys love. She finds him attractive, even if he is not for her... Anything can happen, thinks the commander, even when you think that nothing can ever happen again... He realizes by the pain that he feels how attached he was to her. But he had never wanted to know anything about that either... Why did she not start her life over again?... She used to care about and listen to everyone, but she became withdrawn, never speaking ot anyone anymore... They will behave as if nothing had happened, as usual... "Lacl of logical thought. Impulsive and undisciplined mind. Mistakes his dreams for reality."... The first thing Willy Bost does when he is alone in his room is to write down in his notebook everything that has happened... Now he needs a notebook to write down everything that happens. The threads become untangled as he writes. Willy Bost feels great pleasure in writing. His style is growing more sure. he is learning to master his style... The reason he came to San Rosa, and he trembles to think of it, might be finally to become the master, rather than remaining the slave who rebels because no one respects his merits and no one takes account of him. And he is becoming the master through this notebook, which he can no longer do without... When he goes back to the shooting range, it will be to erase his shame. He has not given up... He has only one desire, to take her like he took her in the cabin on the Moby Dick. He moans even louder inside her. It is so intense that he can't leave without starting over again, until he can't anymore. Gina Koll is one of those women he can't resist because they predict his desires and fulfill them without holding back. But when he leaves her he has learned nothing. What she knows she won't tell. Now that he has had all he desired of her, to the point of feeling an emptiness worse than any nausea, he is determined to never see her again... Like an innocent child, he has fallen into her trap... They had never spoken of the past, as if it did not exist... In memory of Mattie and their meeting at Angel Cove, she swears to do everything in her power never again to be the victim of the past and never again to be the victim of her enemies... Of all of them, he is the greatest victim, because he had to live in pain and remorse, with no hope of salvation... She no longer feels anything of the great love she once had for him. How everything has changed!... Her songs are the weapons she made for herself, all alone, so that she would no longer be afraid... They are willing to be moved, but they don't want to hear about what they don't want to know... He is as talkative about his film as about the volcano. He will show San Rosa as it has never before been sen. There will be no professional actors and no script in his film. The actors will be the people of san Rosa and the story will be their stories. But because of the way the film is shot and edited, no one will recognize them. He does not tell Cassy Mac Key about the films he as already made. She thinks that he doesn't talk about them because he wants to forget them... It is as if he were waiting for her. She undresses without a word. She is trembling she is so afraid... The next morning, when she wakes up in her room, she tries to remember what happened during the night with Willy Bost. Because of the marks on her body, she is sure she wasn't dreaming... Why didn't he simply love her instead of feeling this devouring passion for her?... It is a message of love. On the way back to San Rosa, he understands that his passion prevented him from loving, and that passion is love's greatest enemy... He has suddenly developed a personal ambition and wants to have a destiny... He does not want the force of logic to replace the truth of facts... Locked in his office, he writes as if he has never written before, in a constant stream, without taking his eyes off the paper. For the first time, he is writing an article, and he will sign it with his own name. He has finally become Commander Roney Burke... Then he will love her as he was never able to love her, as if it were the first time... For the people of San Rosa, overwhelmed by what they have just seen and heard, it is as if the earth were opening up before them... To Stive Lenz, who has been filming all of this first night of the campaign, it is a historic evening... What hope is left?... Willy Bost has nothing left to wait for... By stealing his notebook, Gina Koll has forced him to write the book that he never wanted to write, for fear that it would take him where he never wanted to go, the Santa Flor camp where his parents had disappeared forever... Since the other night, she has been haunted by Willy Bost and can no longer sleep... Now he understands what he had not understood... They no longer believe that anything will ever change for the better. They see only the worst before them... What makes his book so difficult to write is that it is a book of memories written in the absence of memories. He invents his memories as he writes. But the more he writes, the more he discovers that he knows nothing... Each time he throws away what he has written, he doubts that he can go on. But he starts again. He sees no other meaning he might give to his life than to bear witness to what no one wants to know... They could love each other there at the edge of the volcano, but something keeps them from it. They stayed for a long time pressed up against each other looking at the crater, thinking of nothing...
Now it has a name, the Nevermore. It was Willy Bost who came up with the idea, from the title he wants to give his book, if he ever manages to write it: Nevermore. Work has begun on the Nevermore... Willy Bost is sitting alone, in the last row. Everything seems unreal to him, even the Nevermore. As if he were deaf, he can't listen to Cassy Mac Key's new songs, and he has a dark veil over his eyes when Lizzie Malik does her act with Livio. He is thinking about his book, which he no longer believes in. The truth about San Rosa, like the trust about Santa Flor, escapes him. He has the impression that his words lead to nothing but a black hole in which he is lost. How could he have hoped he would succeed, when he has never been able to finish what he began? Now he knows that it is not only the fault of those in High Places. It is the fault of his central collapse, into which he sinks every time... It is as if the end of the world had come... At the same moment, the volcano finally reawakes and launches is own fireworks toward the heavens, while lava flows down the slopes of the volcano, burning everything in its path... Stive Lenz is running from place to place filming everything he sees, as if this were one of Tony Landry's blockbusters. Sirens from fire trucks and special service cars are blaring everywhere... He has given up on finishing his book and wants to forget everything... Even if she sings to a very small crowd, it is a real crowd... For the first time since she was released from prison, she is not ashamed, and she feels freed from the past. She is keeping the promise she made the day Mattie was buried. The hardest thing for her is not to think about Willy Bost, from whom she has heard nothing. His absence possesses her despite herself, even when she is singing... Culture... will be a decisive weapon in this combat. Culture must be a duty for each of us and the right of all... A new career is beginning for him... For her, it is not so easy to begin life anew... What she herself is lacking is an inheritance and a memory. That was what brought her so close to Willy Bost. He has no inheritance either, and his memory is the lsot memory of the Santa Flor Camp. Singing every night at the Nevermore is her only reason to live, and yet it is no longer enough...
At the very end of this very deep grotto, there is an extraordinary sight, the complete skeleton of an enormous whale. The whale must have come there to die, as if that were the cemetary it had chosen... Some days when she feels very sad, she tells herself that she could go to sleep there near the whale, and never wake up... Cassy Mac Key is the first to break the silence. She tells Willy Bost that she has something to show him. They dive together down to the grotto. She leads him to the very end, to the skeleto of the whale. They stay for a long time, motionless and silent, looking at it.
A few days later, the Mangor was discovered drifting in the middle of the reefs. There was no one on board. As for Cassy Mac Key, she never reappeared at the Nevermore. We will never know what happened between Cassy Mac Key and Willy Bost in the grotto. Ever since Mattie's death, Angel Cove has become a cursed place, which everyone wants to forget, and where no one ever goes.
Points
14) Tonight I talked about the writing machine with O and O2 and M. We went back to my place after the opening and did coke, drank beer and wine. The coke is better right now because of the service K referred me to. Tomorrow, I'll refer O and we'll mutually benefit from it, while opening up the risk of possible externalities. I've been doing a lot of drugs lately. Partially because of my supply, partially because of the circumstances of life. I was explaining it tonight, the lump in my neck that the doctor told me not to worry about, that I was quite worried about before, where I was constantly thinking of death. The situation with P, the most minor of heartbreaks that wasn't so much about her but about the opening of the heart, or rather the attempt to do so, but also the vicissitudes that accompany a crush, the sort of return to a steadier state once it's ceased — the heartbreak of the general inability to form crushes without the crutch of text and distance. I talked about N telling me I need someone on my level. I'm still ghosting C because I don't know what we'd talk about if we got drinks and I don't want to play the character of interesting artist type. There is the trap of my job, what it does to my head, how I have to perform a role there. The world at large. On Wednesday I will play a DJ set as Classic Selena to celebrate the release of L's album I Don't Have That Problem. I suppose these are my problems right now. There is also the problem of the machine, and the problems of art — the problems of the text to work through. My inclination is to call that a different set of problems. Another inclination follows, to investigate this idea of sets. Set Theory remains a signifier to me, I cannot do math Like That.
But tonight I did coke with O and M, I don't think O2 did any of the coke. We talked a lot. It was a good conversation. I talked about the walls I feel while trying to talk to N about certain things, how those things bleed into art, and our mutual understandings of our respective projects. But we talked about the good in his work, and in T's work, and now I am listening to a piece from 2 years ago which I haven't listened to in some time. It is tremendously beautiful, and I think the issues I have are justified and make sense, and I think this tension is good. I believe O said as much too. I talked a lot. O talked a lot. M didn't talk as much. O2 talked some. Talk about hope. Talk about suicide. Talk about purpose. Talk about the present. Talk about the future. Songs called Talk in my library — Unpacking my Library (O said N2 had never heard of The Arcades Project; I was talking about The Arcades Project and Balzac to H at the opening and she told me to swing by the bookstore she works at tomorrow, while I go to galleries in Chelsea — the ease of the tangent, the prison of linear language, the stalled plan to map the Arcades Project into a spatialized view, how the Mnemosyne Atlas functions, the cascade continues, I must stop this flow) — Talk by Yeat, Talk (feat. Lil Baby) by Skrilla, Talk 2 God by Yeat, Talk 2 Me by DJ Nate, Talk Facts by Dthang, Bando Gz, & T Dot, Talk is Cheap! by Autumn!, Talk by Ishhh (feat. Kobe) by Dj Crazy, Talk My Shit by Bossman Dlow, Talk My Shit by Fetty Wap, Talk My Shit by PGF Nuk, Talk of Da Ghetto by Wiley, Talk of the Town by Nino Paid & HavinMotion, Talk of the Town by RealYungPhil & Gud, Talk Shit Like a Preacher by Future, Talk That 2020 by BandGang Lonnie Bands, Talk That 2024 by BandGang Lonnie Bands (remember Lonnie Bands as one of the pre-eminent diarists in the face of so much loss and pain in that window) — N worked from that gorgeous section of Lil Keed and the piano into World of T-Shirts and O and I were talking about how we works, how he thinks about the texts, but also his restraint and his discipline in composing, his ability to sample these sorts of texts in an incredible way, how World of T-Shirts says I'm trying to figure out where the ground ends and the lake begins as the strings pick up — I don't know the sample, nor does Shazam — but there is a buried memory that is slightly excavated, of writing those words before while listening to that passage, perhaps a tweet, which pulls me into the tide of thinking of both N and I's composed works of samples, where and how we pull from, how that moment of creating such compositions has faded, transformed, how the reception of our compositions bleeds into the production of our works now — Talk This Way by EBK Jaaybo (recently freed), Talk To Da Dead by Leaf Ward (incarcerated for at least 5 years I believe), Talk To God by Chicken P (has gone Up since being freed — that one line on Bussabrick Vol. 2: Fifteen thousand dollar bond you ever pay for your freedom — and the transformation of his texts since, how Capital has shaped them), Talk To God by Super Throwed Dave, Talk to Me by Skillibeng, Talk to Me (feat. Drake) by Drakeo the Ruler (RIP), TALK TO ME NICE (feat. Quavo) by Lil Yachty, Talk to the Doctor by Randy Newman, Talk to Ya by Rich Homie Quan (RIP), Talk To You (feat. Hone$t) by Cash Cobain, Talk Trash by Landmark 205, Talk Wit God (feat. $Amaad) by Osyris Israel, A Talk with Vlad by Zelly ocho, Talkin the Hardest by Giggs, Talkin Wet by Rio Da Yung Og & RMC Mike, Talking (feat. Aidan Swank) by Tek Lintowe, Talking 2 A Ghost by OsamaSon, Talking Out (Feat. MoneyBagzBuzz) by EBK Young Joc, Talking Stage by lilic, TALKING TO A WALL (feat. Harto Falión) by evilgiane, talking to joejoe by frankie cosmos, Talking to My Dad by Lil B (something I need to do tomorrow, Talking World War III Blues by Bob Dylan. Not every Talk was named and I am trying to recall the purpose. The cascade. There were questions of purpose tonight. I tried to explain as best as I could. As best as I could, yet still incoherent, incomplete, on the verge of, not all the same, the precision of language, trying to wield it. When I would write so much, I would repeat what I had written in conversations. And then if people would read them later, they would think about how much sense it made, where the cogency stemmed from — J remarked on this when she gave the book back to me. I talked about how that time had ended, and talking about how that time had ended, along with sending this most recent iteration to O reopened the opportunity for what the machine could achieve. A call and response. A relationality of data and discourse. What will we do, in light of all that there is to be done? I scroll up and remember: I was unpacking my library.
Points
xiv.
bouquet
15) I am waiting until I am tired enough to fall asleep. I am settling into the idea of this diary again, and the purpose that it can serve me. And I am thinking about what I want to inscribe in a manner that I don't think existed before. I am searching for a moment to pinpoint since the last entry, that would be helpful to probe. There's a general sequence of events but I've already inscribed those elsewhere — there doesn't seem much of a reason to inscribe them here. An alternative, short version: tonight I went to a party with my friends and we talked and played music and danced and took pictures and made a music video. It can be that simple, that short, with omission functioning in an alternative way. Not trying to be this cascade of memory, but to be a minor record of an event, that shapes a certain thing. It is the morning now, but once I sleep and wake up again I can transcribe from the Blanchot. And I can attempt to recount yesterday's dream, which surely will have faded some, and I will be recounting the recountings I told to J and I told to L. It was a dense dream. There is so much to write about.
Points
xv.
bouquet
16) One can imagine the most trivial circumstance as the starting point of a great work; nothing is compromised by that triviality: the act by which the author makes it into a crucial circumstance is enough to incorporate it into his genius and his work... Every work is an occasional work: this simply means that each work has a beginning, that it begins at a certain moment in time and that that moment in time is part of the work, since without it the work would have been only an insurmountable problem, nothing more than the impossibility of writing it.
Let us suppose that the work has been written: with it the writer is born. Before, there was no one to write it; starting from the book, an author exists and merges with his book... What is written is neither well nor badly written, neither important nor frivolous, memorable nor forgettable: it is the perfect act through which what was nothing when it was inside emerges into the monumental reality of the outside as something which is necessarily true, as a translation which is necessarily faithful, since the person it translates exists only through it and in it. One could say that this certainty is in some sense the writer's inner paradise and that automatic writing has only been one way of making this golden age real — what Hegel calls the pure joy of passing from the night of possibility into the daytime of presence...
Because the reader has no use for a work written for him, what he wants is precisely an alien work in which he can discover something unknown, a different reality, a separate mind capable of transforming him and which he can transform into himself. An author who is writing specifically for a public is not really writing: it is the public who is writing, and for this reason the public cano longer be a reader; reading only appears to exist, actually it is nothing. This is why works created to be read are meaningless: no one reads them. This is why it is dangerous to write for other people, in order to evoke the speech of others and reveal them to themselves: the fact is that other people do not want to hear their own voices; they want to hear someone else's voice, a voice that is real, profound, troubling like the truth.
Points
17) S asked me for a link to a mix that didn't exist. It was not recorded. I sent links to sounds and images to try to reconstruct the night. A dancehall remix of Take Care was marked by the xx guitar riff for her; different memories and associations in relation to place and time. Someone commented on a Chicken P fast mix I made (Rollin), so I looked at the top listeners profiles and found a song: sturdyyoungin - Freestyle pt.2 Ft Mizz, GE3Z & Bril. It samples DJ Nate's May Be Sum Day. I've been listening to both on repeat all day — different memories and associations in relation to place and time. Chicago. New York. Paris. I Wud If I Cud But I Can’t So I Ain’t
Points
18) After the album release moment L asked if I was interested in doing something at Earth. It was at a bar, maybe after 2, I was drunk and still a bit CK'd, and I suggested a play, The Old Masters, that I had talked with A about staging a table read of, which stalled out immediately after the idea came to be. No reason for it, too many things in our lives. I suggested other things too, but it had a sticking effect, and I voiced my other qualms, and then I got on the Ridgewood bus. He texted me the next morning and then we texted more. We made plans to talk about it at T's show on Friday but there wasn't really enough time, nor was it the space. So we hit E-Chiban on Sunday. They brought out the sushi boat. And it was a good talk, nothing super fixed, but the potentials for possibilities were opened up. More plans were made — to see the Anne Imhof piece at the Park Armory being the immediate one.
In the time since, I've gone back into the obsessive research mode that I can be prone to get into. I explained this to L and I'm sure he could already tell it would be like this, at least to some extent. It's the reason why I can be so encyclopedic to people, and also why the web of signifiers would make such a place as Earth fraught to me, whereas when I mentioned it to J he had never heard of it. Which is nice, because now I can enter into a headspace that mostly focuses on The Work being The Work, without getting as mired within the bounds of site, audience, reception, the Public. Writing as a means to manipulate reality — not in the sense of mediated dominoes, but the reality of myself as I write this writing, and the the reality of the room it takes place. I am attempting to be wary of hijacking, though I'm sure if it isn't the direction L wants he'll let me know. The music he sent me is really exciting. I've been living with it, thinking with it, writing with it — writing in a new sort of way, filming my computer with my phone, the sound playing off the computer speakers. Writing without typing, although there are words, words-as-images.
There are a number of elements I am thinking about. My reason for typing right now is to think through them, to think through their purpose. Perhaps the main thing I am thinking about is a plexiglass structure, similar to that of Dan Graham, and also works by Richter, Imhof, and Dean. I'm interested in what that sort of constructed architectural object would do to the space — familiarization/defamiliarization, opacity/transparency, boundaries. I'm interested in the parody aspects of it as well — I found the way Imhof puts graffiti on hers to be extremely funny. I wrote about graffiti in response to SR's email to me in the summer. He recently sent me some graffiti from Brazil. I don't think the piece I am trying to write is "about graffiti", nor do I think it is "about parody", though I am thinking heavily about parodying Imhof and Rivette, the former with a sense of serious humor, the latter with a sense of reverence.
As such with my obsessiveness I go down rabbit holes. Today's was about Helmut Lang in relation to Balenciaga, Austria (and Austro-Hungary) in relation to Germany, with Bernhard popping in, Richter popping in, a Celine show with a Dan Graham piece popping in, a fragment I wrote about L's performance and Hungary and Germany popping in. As I make the "writing" videos, I am thinking about them as both exercises and source material — works to be adapted into a script / set of instructions. Similar to Bruno Dumont writing novels to adapt into films. I have thought about how this might be a time to write a novella — I was thinking that while reading Blanchot's "Literature and the Right to Death" and making my underlines. That now I might have enough momentum, or rather than momentum occasion, to author such a work. As it could be incorporated into the thing. There is so much bubbling around, and almost all of it will get stripped away. There is too much, and not enough time. But small traces will be left from this process.
One of the other major texts I've been re-working through, that folds itself into these videos, is Washington, which deals with the problems of producing work and its reception. But it also seems pertinent because L also has a relation to Washington. Right now things are murky, but there are ideas. My means will probably settle much of them into place. As will more conversations with L about how he wants his music to function, more about what he's thinking, since I have dominated the Are.na, and seeing the Imhof. But now things have been thought through and typed through, in some capacity. Soon they'll be spoken through.
Points
19) It's strange only doing C+K. My stomach is rumbling. And there is a sort of disconnect — the stimulant pushing forward text production, the dissociative making the mechanisms feel foreign. I was sober at Earth. I was sober at the River. Line of K in the Dr. Clark bathroom w/ a little C. I saw C at Earth, gave him a bump, he offered me an opening slot at a rave. Told me he'd message me on Instagram but I'm not on instagram right now. He'll forget. In the line for the bathroom with K — she was using Instagram for safari, we talked about how I deactivate, I have to deactivate because I still have other log-ins, it's not about deleting the app, it's about the flow of information. And also being tethered. I had a phone tonight and then it died. In the Uber to C2 and M's party, everyone went to Brown except me. L living in midtown godmother apartment, must be nice no stress life. This girl A overhears my conversation with I about Contemporary Art Letterboxd — I decide not to cook after talking it over with I. I wonder how drunk she was, if she'll remember or forget. If I'm cooking that with someone from Brown it's I and A2. But in any case. Institutions. The Brown Uber. The Bards of The River. People who asked for things tonight: C, was fiending for C, T, did deduction after I talked about being Berlin Sober and doing accents with him and M2, hung out in the Dr. Clark's bathroom, threw a few off the hand, N inside the barn doors of The River before I said my au revoir, too turnt, needed some more, his night, his party, good party as far as the conditions go, and I will be running into such conditions soon as well.
I suppose what I am trying to grapple with is how little happened. Even the linear approach. Saw A3 en route to N's performance which we missed. Found out after seeing O outside walking back to her place. She said M3 was there, but I saw M4 before him, eventually they got together as well. I saw H and talked to her for a bit, I met E in person for the first time, I don't know if she knew who I was online. Talked to D. Talked to N. Talked to D2. This could go on and on. It all stayed quite surface level. People were talking while the bands were playing. The music was not the primary thing, but the ritual of watching a performance was still feigned. I'm curious for what it will be like for the play A3 is in tomorrow. I feel like the only conversation I had all night was with C3 at C2's party, about hair and hairlines, images and appearances, aging and its inevitability.
In the car I was thinking about what I'm Built Like. the ways in which one can be Built Different.
Points
20) The dominant feeling, the reason I've been getting so high, is that I feel that much of my life has been a vacancy, that where the primacy is supposed to be, there is only absence. This absence cannot and will never be filled. And thus, I preemptively empty structure the future such that it will remain as absent as the past, all the while ensuring that the absence's of the past remain both forgotten and apathetically held. The destructive character sees nothing permanent. But for this very reason he sees ways everywhere. Where others encounter walls or mountains, there, too, he sees a way. But because he sees a way everywhere, he has to clear things from it everywhere. Not always by brute force; sometimes by the most refined. Because he sees ways everywhere, he always stands at a crossroads. No moment can know what the next will bring. What exists he reduces to rubble - not for the sake of rubble, but for that of the way leading through it. The destructive character lives from the feeling not that life is worthing living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.I put my bags inside of my bag, inside of another bag. That bag belongs in a box with a latch that I closed and placed on the top second from the top on the cart in my room. I am attempting to make a resolution. My other resolution has held steadfast.
Points
21) I return to this cascade, to the illusion of progress it provides. Perhaps it is not progress, but volume, production. I looked at my most recent collection of watercolors and ink drawings. That is what they are, drawings. I am not attempting to paint, and the scale of these works are humble. They are within a book. They are pages that one turns. This too, this cascade, will end up a book, of words and images in a series of pages to turn. And my attention turns to scale, to attempts, to essais. To things done already, and the things that must be done. Right now I am struggling in a way that I haven't struggled before. It is an honest struggle. One that will continue. Elsewhere I wrote deciding to end the war I have been having w/ Myself — words that I must make true. There are matters of being and becoming, of wrestling with the self, but this war, this series of poisons I've been inflicting upon myself must come to a close.
At dinner with J I said I wanted to leave. That I have been here too long without leaving. I also spoke of the stagnation I feel, and there is a relation: this leaving and wandering and moving to avoid stagnation, akin to the production of text for the sake of production. Leaving would mean more text, leaving would mean an increase in production. And I tether myself to this production. There are parts of this production, of this life an artist, feeling necessary, because I do not have a world otherwise. There is no other place for me but placelessness, this is no other place for this placelessness but art. Or philosophy, Novalis, the threads connect, the warp, the weft, the weeping. I turn the page, I make another gesture, another motion. I record another attempt.
Points
23)
Nightlife is a beautiful compound word. Etymology functions differently with compound words — it seems as though Melville was the first to use the word in 1852: “All the garish night-life of a vast thoroughfare, crowded and wedged by day, and even now, at this late hour, brilliant with occasional illuminations.” This was in Pierre; or The Ambiguities, a book that I do not have the time to read right now. I have been accumulating books that I do not have the time to read, or rather accumulating links for them.
The first chapter of The Landscape of Events focuses on night and light. Once it became possible for the night to be lit, time changed. With it, language changed — many compound words with 'night-' were born.
Points
25)
The thing about Secret Defense is that you actually find out “the secret” unlike the other Rivettes which move about the secret, where the secret is fundamentally unknowable. The secret in Secret Defense is not unknowable but unspeakable — no one is able to utter the secret in its entirety. Which is the cause of Sylvie’s death. The impossibility of speaking the secret is the cause of the film’s final death.
The impossibility of speaking the secret is the cause of the film’s first (on-screen) death. The final death that preceded the commencement of filming, the last death before the initial cut, is not the secret. The death is known. As is the first death before the initial cut. After the death[s], the authorities assemble the evidence in order to create a reconstruction of the events. The reconstruction leads to a judgement, a cause of death is assigned. This cause is not the secret, nor part of the secret, but the veracity of the cause is. Only truth is not a binary, but a spectrum, or rather a topological space, where true and false do not represent fixed points but rather regions whose boundaries remain indeterminate — truth values exist in relation to one another within this space but cannot be assigned definite positions or topoi; true and false mark distinctions that dance about points rather than being definable locations. J.D: There is in every poetic text, just as in every utterance, in every manifestation outside of literature, an inaccessible secret to which no proof will ever be adequate… ‘One will never be able to prove that someone has lied.’
veracity (n.) 1620s, of persons, “habitual truthfulness;” from French véracité (17c.), from Medieval Latin veracitatem (nominative veracitas) “truthfulness,” from Latin verax (genitive veracis) “truthful,” from verus “true” (from PIE root *were-o- “true, trustworthy”). By 1660s as “fact or character of being true.”
Curiously, the first death strikes Véronique, who goes by Vero, whose name comes not from verus or were-o but from the Greek, from Berenike, goddess of Victory, rendered into Latin as Berenice. And Vero, this embodiment of a misheard truth, is replaced by a double. It is the double that pulls the trigger. Sylvie dies at the hands of near-truth’s double, hands which have pulled the trigger of Paul’s gun.
One can retrace the sequence of fallen dominoes the lead to this final death, a final death that is a reversal of the first death. The movement swings back and forth, like an idealized Newton’s cradle. Science functions as a fundamental staging device, with action migrating between the laboratory and properties purchased through the wealth of Pax Industries, the weapons company Sylvie’s father ran with Walser. A final etymological concern: that Pax is latin for peace, that the first domino fell for peace. And with it, a cemetery was borne.
Points
26)
I think it's good that I'm not getting geeked up rn because I really want to get geeked up rn. Last night I started two oil paintings that I plan on working on for a long time. I struggle with this — working on the same thing for a long a time. This morning I read Romeo and Juliet on the train and felt delirious. The biting of thumbs and accusations of quarrels felt like gang signs and calls to squabble up, the sort of approximation of language where you lack a precision of meaning towards each individual part, but can intuitively understand the whole — flu flamming, coals/colliers/cholers. Like we know the truth, like language living and dying, everything feels so foreign and I don't know when I'll be able to leave. I realized I want to leave because time works differently here and I desire the illusion of manipulating time. Which is part of the desire to get geeked up — to manipulate reality, writing of the holiest purpose, et cetera and so on. The track loops. I'm like Giannis. Bitch I need Bucks.
Really it's just this same feeling of nowhereness, and a lack of belonging. It's unfortunate because drugs do solve those problems in the short term. I have so much to do. That's what I do, give myself things to do, tasks to accomplish. It's not the boulder up the hill, but something else, movement around the map, writing the map, making the map. I'm hoping that I can feel something soon. The crisis will pass and there will be another crisis. Elsewhere I wrote that soon I would feel good, but now I'm not so sure. I would like to turn everything off, if only that were possible, but it is possible.
Points
27) An old feeling — obsidian bleeding
Points
28) The interest of the diary is its insignificance. That is its inclination, its law. To write every day, under the warranty of just this day, and to remind it of itself, is a convenient way of escaping both silence and the extravagance of speech. Each day tells us something different. Each day noted down is a preserved day. Doubly advantageous operation. We live twice.
"The diary in the beginning represented for me the supreme recourse to escape total despair confronting the act of writing," and also "The curious thing in my case is how little I have the feeling of living whe my diary accumulates only its deposit."
Down there, in The Waves, roars the risk of a work in which one has to disappear. Down there, in the space of the work, everything is lost and perhaps the work too is lost. The diary is the anchor that scrapes against the bottom of the day-to-day and clings to the roughness of vanity.
Someone does nothing in his life but writes that he does nothing, and there, all of a sudden, something is done.
... finally the hope, by uniting the insignificance of life with the nonexistence of the work, to raise null life up to the beautiful surprise of art, and formless art to the unique truth of life — the interlacing of all these various motives makes the diary an undertaking of redemption: one writes to save writing, to save one's life by writing, to save one's little self (the revenges one takes on others, the nastiness one distills) or to save one's great self by giving it scope, and then one writes in order not to be lost in the poverty of the days or, like Virginia Woolf, like Delacroix, in order not to be lost in this ordeal that is art that is in the limitless demand of art.
One writes to save the days, but one entrusts one's salvation to writing, which changes the day.
The diary linked to the strange conviction that one can observe oneself and that one must know oneself. But Socrates did not write.
It is tempting for the writer to try to keep a journal of the work he is writing. Is it possible?... To question oneself on one's projects, weigh them, verify them; as they develop, to comment on them, for oneself — that does not seem difficult. Doesn't the critic who, as they say, is a second creator, have his word to say? Can't this word take the form of a ship's log, in which from day to day the fortunes and blunders of navigation can be inscribed? And yet such a book does not exist. It seems that the experience unique to the work, the vision by which it begins, "the sort of wandering" that it provokes, and the unusual relationships it establishes between the man we meet every day and who carefully keeps a journal of himself and the being we see rise up behind each great work, the relationship between the work and the act of writing it, as between Isidore Ducasse and Lautréamont, must remain incommunicable.
We see why the writer can keep the diary only of the work that he does not write. We see, too, that this diary can be written only by becoming imaginary and by immerseing itself, like the the one who writes it, in the unreality of fiction.
We also feel that these fragments constitute the anonymous, obscure traces of the book that is trying to be realized, but only insofar as they do not have a visible connection with the life from which they seem to come, nor with the work to which they form the approach.
For the edges of a secret are more secret than the secret itself.
Points
29) It's not that this is the most depressed that I've ever been so much as that it's impossible to remember past depressions, just as it's impossible to remember past highs, the precision of what it felt like is lacking in a significant way and my memories of memories seem to be forming into this muddy mass of gray. But also that I've cut myself off from the short-term escape routes, and have to wander the passageways until I find some sort of change in the geography.
Points
30) I described this to O as a game — that this is a game called reorientation, with new points from Rome and bouquets from the Orient. I am gathering the bodenlosflores from the past while writing new points and at some point there will be a convergence, upon which there will be no more new points and no more old flowers to gather but for now the bodenlosflores continue to bloom. I am producing texts, as I always am, although I am attempting to concentrate these productions through systems into more concretized forms. A play, an opera, a libretto, a music blog. Once there was an ideal of a novella. Before that was an ideal of a film.
People asked me what I did and I struggled to remember. Then it came back.
I have been trying to write but I feel an emptiness, as though my being is pure vacuity. All of this and there is still the I that I am trying to empty.
Points
31) I just won a lowball on grailed. It is a funny thing to have “won” — not explicitly, a game, and I don’t feel like a winner, I don’t feel like he’s a loser, and I don’t know if I want these pants, I forgot that I had made an offer on these pants, when did I make an offer on these pants, I deleted the emails saying my offer was accepted, just as I deleted the email saying I made the offer. But I did not delete the email where he messaged me back asking if we could meet in the middle. Only 5 minutes later he accepted my offer. The economy is bad. People need money. I need money, so why did I spent 40 dollars on a pair of used pants from Japan? I don’t even know if they’re actually from Japan or not, everything is vague. Tuesday night, I went on a non-date, which seems like the best term for such an evening, because it makes it clear that it wasn’t a date even though the activities were some date ass activities. I’m still trying to reconfigure my relationship to desire and obsession, right now I just feel this emptiness with most things and I keep proceeding forward, that notion of progress and the wreckage that is my life, my life that will come to an end. I am waiting for it to end, and I will keep waiting.
Points
32) For a moment, I was I tonight. We went to see Bonjour Tristesse and then we went to JG Melon for a burger and a beer. When we got there, the man said that the wait would be 30 minutes. When putting a name down, I said my name was I and then I spelled it out. I and I walked to a nearby deli and each bought a small bottle of sparkling water. The bottles were glass. As we checked out, I noticed that I paid a little bit less than I did. My total was $3.26, his was $3.8something, my memory tells me $3.86 — I could ask him to check his charges. We walked back and when the host called us, he called me I like my name was I. Because I said it was.
Before we met we were both at work. We both work in offices. We talked about this, working in offices, and we talked about many other things. On Tuesday O had his thesis show, and later M and I were talking. We were talking in M's room and then we were talking on their roof. A few weeks ago, before starting this job in the office, I came over for dinner. We were going to talk about starting a company; instead we talked about our lives leading up to that moment. And the future.
We walked out of the theater and I said that Bonjour Tristesse was "buns". Which was probably the best way to start the conversation. I and I had gone to see a film that I liked and I didn't like. I read the film in relation to Va savoir (2001) and the idea of the French film in the 21st century. In relation to the past, present, and future of cinema. Bonjour Tristesse was a film which was a book, written by a teenager, which was made a film by Otto Preminger, before being remade today. On the walk to JG Melon, I asked if Preminger was German or Austrian, and I recalled together that he was Austrian. It's a significant difference. I wondered where exactly Preminger lived in Los Angeles, how far it was from I's house, or rather I's parents' house. Now I wonder how many of Preminger's residences remain. The Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, which is now a museum, survived the Palisades fire but remains closed due to smoke damage. While the house was not directly destroyed by the fire, the damage is still being assessed, and the building needs a deep cleaning before reopening.
I is from Los Angeles and lives in New York. I am not from Los Angeles and live in New York. I and I live two streets away on Fresh Pond Road. We talked about living in Ridgewood, living with our parents, and the specifics of living where one grows up on the train ride home. I think I was tired at this point. I was talking more. I had taken a concerta that M had gave me on Tuesday night, or rather I took it and then told him, although he had said earlier that I could have some. I took it while I was doing cocaine with O. I didn't have an ideal place to put it, so it was loose inside a silk bag with various accoutrements. If I am wearing cargo pants, this bag is usually in my front-left pocket. If I am not wearing cargo pants, this bag is usually in my back-left pocket. On the train ride home from O and M's I ran into C and L. L didn't recognize me, I had changed how I'd looked, and we've only met briefly every time we've met. At O and M's, there were many people I knew that I'd met but that I couldn't remember but I did recognize. I knew that L didn't recognize me rather than remember me because he said "nice to meet you". There is a difference.
C had a bracelet on his arm that he was trying to take off. He doesn't work in an office. He works for an art gallery. He said he was working at an art fair and that that's what the bracelet was from. The bracelet was very tight and strong. He couldn't take it off with his hands. He looked in his backpack for scissors. There were not any scissors. I wondered if he had spray paint in the backpack. When I saw him at C's birthday party, C had just been arrested. He was allegedly walking on the train tracks at night. His backpack allegedly had cans in it. But he was not caught in the act. I don't think I need to use allegedly there. We talked about this and I realized that I had something sharp to cut off his wristband. In my pouch was a razorblade, Romanian 1 Leu note, slightly crusted with blood, and a small amount of cocaine. Everything else I had left at home. N left the razor blade here when he stayed one night. It has become a sort of a signature, as has the bag. Signature bear meanings and associations. They are recognizable signs for people to observe.
I messed up the last time N stayed the night. C and G came over. J came over too. In my mind we were going to talk about music and music-related things. And then I invited N because I was at his apartment working with A on a video. So there were 6 of us, since J was there too. N brought cocaine. Everyone drank beer except J and I. But I drank kava, kratom, and thc seltzers, snorted ketamine, snorted cocaine, smoked weed, and a cigarette or two or three. They went to get more beer. The amount of empty beer cans in the morning, considering only four people were drinking, was tremendous. But before the morning, N arrived. Probably around midnight. He had been drinking with Z at a nearby bar. I don't recall if he buzzed up but I don't think he did. I made him a set of keys to make things easier. In case I'm not home, or I'm sleeping. But now he was tired and I had told him earlier that he could sleep on the couch. But now we were on the couch, drinking snorting smoking, making music, and talking. He sat in the adjacent room, charging his phone. His charger is still there. So I told him he could sleep in my bed. Only bed is not a bed, but a mattress on the floor, and my bedroom lacks a strong delineation from the living room, there is only a curtain, and not a wall. We were up until 5 or 6 reveling. Once everyone left, I wrote for another hour or two. I was meeting L in the morning and I wanted to have some semblance of progress to display to him. When we met, we didn't look at the text in detail, rather we glanced at its surface. It is read best that way. I slept on the couch and N slept on my mattress, and when he left I went back to my mattress. I slept for a few more hours and left to get coffee with L. Later that day, I sent a link to a flickr album with images I had made from that night to the group chat and realized that I hadn't invited Z or I. I had realized this early in the night and thought about sending a last minute invitation, before the list of substances induced forgetting. I felt bad and apologized. It was a miscalculation — I am now trying to determine if it was a computational error, and if computation and calculation imply the use of a quantitative system, or if miscalculations can be errors in judgement where values are not fixed by systems or numerals. I am refraining from referencing an etymological dictionary, for the sake of time. Like I, I have to be in the office tomorrow.
If you recall, earlier I was in M's room. At first it was O and I in M's room. We used a Jutta Koether book. M picked out a picture frame. At one point he tapped the blade against the glass. It made a noise. It made a sound. There is a blurring between taking and taking. But I took half of what I took on Tuesday this afternoon, even though this afternoon has both passed and is yet to be. Perhaps this is not a day in the sense of a sunrise and a sunset, or in the sense of a fixed quantity of hours, minutes, seconds, measures of time — perhaps this is simply a set, a set that I am defining through writing it, and under such definitions, such a thing as this afternoon can exist without breaking the rules. The rules of time. The rules of the game. I was having a great run writing sans references. Sans titres. A collapse into Sang titre. I was moving files tonight. After I said bye to I, after we looked at the street signs wondering how long they had been there, I said they looked new, I said I had never noticed them before. Va savoir was moving between French, Italian, and English. The English was mostly in the subtitles. But I was thinking about how close amour is to a mort. Love and Death. It is not the same in English.
August 20, 1937
The English language is an infinite sea with no shores;
French is a sea which is full of enchanting islands, but also of
perilous reefs.
The first quotation; the first interruption. Will there be another? How long will it go on? I took half of what I took from M at the office and I continued to work. After work I took the train uptown, to meet I. We were going to meet at a deli with a hotbar that J had shown me when we went to go see a Johnnie To movie at the museum. But now we were meeting at the theater. I was running late. I asked I to grab me a Clif bar and told him that we should hit JG Melon after the film. I texted me that he had "chicken nuggets potatoes some pasta" and that it was "delicious". And that he had to wander far from the vicinity of the theater in order to find a bar. And then that he'd found a bar, that I should go and find seats at the theater. I was confused, I had forgotten what kind of bars we were talking about, or rather texting about, but then I remembered. For a moment I read I's message as saying something along the lines of: I'm going to a bar to drink instead of watching this movie, because I found this bar, and it is calling me more than Bonjour Tristesse is calling me. And that this was a joke. But then language aligned. I told me where he was sitting and then I found him. He showed me two bars and I took one of them and ate it discreetly. The film hadn't started yet, but I didn't want anyone to get mad. Before I got there, I texted me about the amount of old people there. This was who I figured would get mad. I replied asking about baddies. I and I agreed that there were a fair amount of baddies. I texted baddies seated behind us and then it got dark, I and I changed the settings on our phones, the film was screened, and then we got up, changed the settings on our phones, I went to the bathroom, I waited for me, and we walked up the stairs. There were many old people. The way in which we walked was different.
I narrated the trajectory of the director. How she came to make this film, her first film. I pointed out how there were not even short films that preceded it. Her filmography begins with a feature. And I traced back how such a thing came to be. I traced it back to the British colonization of Bengal and the establishment of Calcutta, now Kolkata. This is not entirely my tracing. I've talked about it with P, who has talked about it in regards to his academic sphere, where the glut of Bengali post-colonial scholars can also be traced back to colonization. Material conditions and aspirations. Before Tuesday, I was at M and O's apartment, it was M's birthday. I made him a card. I also met P, who said it was good to meet another Indian and asked me how often I go home. I didn't get into the complications of such a word like "home" with him and told him the last time I went to India. He said it had been six years since he's been, that he's from Singapore, but his family is from Delhi and Darjeeling. I had to ask questions to get this information. But it made sense in the way I expected. I talked about this with M later.
He asked if I was bothered but I wasn't really bothered. A different P came over last Friday. She came over to braid my hair but it wasn't the right day for that. I said that I would make food and I struggled with that. She wrote that we made soup and that I was dead and that she taught me how to use a can opener. I was dead because I didn't sleep, I was busy arranging a song, attempting over and over again, to get it right, and once I had settled on an idea of what was right, I had to make a video for the song. And I had to finish it all before it would go away. So in order to not sleep I was snorting cocaine and ketamine. I did not have to work the next day because my office was taking the day off for Easter. I do not get paid time off because I am not a full-time employee with benefits, but rather an independent contractor. I was trying to explain the nuances of this situation to H on the roof with M, but we were interrupted by K. This interruption was later, before I was working and not sleeping, which lead to my death. While I was dead, P and I talked about J, how they are both half-Indian but they are different. I said something about how one chooses to engage with their race. I can't remember exactly. I was still dead. P's dad is from Calcutta. I was reminded of it before, but I didn't write it, but now I must write another reference: Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta. The same sounds as India Song, with different images. On the roof I was telling M that I don't think of myself as Indian so much as Tamil, that the Indian nation-state is problematized for me, that it is a problem of language, Tamil is Dravidian while Hindi is Indo-European, Hindi is linguistically closer to English and I only know a few words of Hindi, while I can speak Tamil poorly while understanding most of it, but that when I go to the North they think that I am from the North and don't understand why I can't speak Hindi. Years ago I watched an episode of a Louis Malle documentary about India, the episode focused on Tamil Nadu and the organized protests against Hindi in the schools there. The film recorded a process that shaped who I am, a process that I was not present for. Material conditions. While walking uptown, I and I talked about Bonjour Tristesse as this sort of aspirationally French film, and its relation to dislocation. A novel, written by a French teenager, adapted into a Hollywood movie made by an Austrian Jew. The novel was translated into English, the translation censored parts of the novel. It was translated into English again in the 2010s, this time without censorship. It would make sense that Preminger's film was adapted from the censored English novel. The industry moved fast and made a lot of money then. But I don't think Durga Chew-Bose used this new English translation. She was born in Montreal. I would assume she speaks Québécois.
I did not talk about this with I while we walked uptown, I read this later, I read this now. Now it is late. I have snorted all the cocaine I said I would snort. There is another bag, but I don't want to open that bag. It is 4:10 in the morning, like a Drake song, 4:10 AM in Ridgewood, 4:10 AM on Fresh Pond Road, Fresh Pond Road Flows, 4:10 AM in Queens, 4:10 AM in New York City. This is where I live. I lives here too. J is gone right now. He's in Paris visiting his brother. Z and I suggested that he meet up with J, but she is not in Paris, she is in New York. She got here on Tuesday. When I saw her at O and M's apartment, she talked to me about how I know S, and how the world is small. I said French words with J and O, but I cannot speak French. Material conditions. It only gets later and now it feels both inevitable and right:
material(adj.)
mid-14c., "real, ordinary; earthly, drawn from the material world" (contrasted with spiritual, mental, supernatural), a term in scholastic philosophy and theology, from Old French material, materiel (14c.) and directly from Late Latin materialis (adj.) "of or belonging to matter," from Latin materia "matter, stuff, wood, timber" (see matter (n.)).
From late 14c. as "made of matter, having material existence; material, physical, substantial." From late 15c. as "important, relevant, necessary, pertaining to the matter or subject;" in the law of evidence, "of legal significance to the cause" (1580s).
condition(n.)
mid-14c., condicioun, "particular mode of being of a person or thing," also "a requisite or prerequisite, a stipulation," from Old French condicion "stipulation; state; behavior; social status" (12c., Modern French condition), from Medieval Latin conditionem (nominative conditio), properly condicio "agreement; stipulation; the external position, situation, rank, place, circumstances" of persons, "situation, condition, nature, manner" of things, from condicere "to speak with, talk together, agree upon," in Late Latin "consent, assent," from assimilated form of com "together" (see con-) + dicere "to speak" (from PIE root *deik- "to show," also "pronounce solemnly").
Classical Latin condicio was confused in Late Latin with conditio "a making," from conditus, past participle of condere "to put together." The sense evolution in Latin apparently was from "stipulation" to "situation, mode of being."
Meaning "rank or state with respect to ordered society" is from late 14c. in English. From the notion of "prerequisite" comes the sense of "a restricting or limiting circumstance" (late 14c.). Also in Middle English "personal character, disposition" (mid-14c.).
And it would be tidy and clean, but I am not quite yet ready for it to end. Unwoven, stray threads, looming in my memory. It would be clean and tidy, but it would be abrupt. Would it be properly woven? It is how I work, I was talking to I about this while we ate burgers. I got mine medium, I got his medium-rare. I got a Budweiser, I got a seasonal draft beer. I can't remember what it was. We split fries. On the menu they're called "cottage fried potatoes". I used ketchup, I talked about how he doesn't like ketchup on burgers. I had to shake the bottle vigorously for the ketchup to come out. It was heavy and glass. I was talking to I about the office, I was talking to me about the office. We were eating burgers and drinking beer after work. We talked about burgers, we talked about drinking, we talked about drugs.
I took a break from drinking about two months ago. But I have not been sober, clearly. But today, "Having a beer" became a linguistic problem. Maybe it's because it was so nice out. J and I left the office a little after noon to go get lunch. We wanted to get banh mi's from the food truck on Water Street, but there were many people waiting. This was because it was so nice out. So we went to the Japanese deli. I got a Poke bowl and an Asahi Dry Zero. It was the first non-alcoholic beer I've bought, sometimes I drink the ones J leaves in the fridge. I'm not sure if he buys them or boosts them. It doesn't particularly matter. But I had a beer with my lunch. And I had a beer with my dinner. I had been saying that I was not going to drink until the play. I have been talking about the play, because one has to talk about the play, yet talking about the play then constitutes a situation in which one must talk about the play. I switched from I to one. The play is coming together. But it is a lot of work. And different kinds of work. I have described it to a few people, and I have described L and I's coffees to a few others. I've written about it in correspondence. What a formal way to put it.
And I was talking to I about not drinking, because he didn't drink for a long time, and now he drinks but he rarely gets drunk. I was talking about being at the bar with O and M and K and J and N and J and K and J and all the repeating letters. This time there are no numbers. L and I were not drinking. L went home at a reasonable hour. I went home at a reasonable hour too, but it was after K wanted to leave, so she left without me. And I went home and I read and I wrote, I wrote what I felt was the foundation of the play, a foundation of ideas, with some text. I wrote a secret, a secret between L and I, and M who prints and binds the books for me. Another quotation, this time M. Blanchot, interrupts For the edges of a secret are more secret than the secret itself.
M was talking about the lack table. Later I was re-writing my writing: There was no grand epiphany, no incredible realization by the end. The end wasn't the end, it was simply a departure. Plans were made for the near future, both firm and loose. Handshakes were exchanged. Deliberations were conducted. The night ended at a certain point, but the task that remains is to ascertain when. Paris Belongs To Us was playing in the theater of The 400 Blows, or so said M. Lack. The name was striking. It recalled cigarettes and absences. When the room was empty, I played a song I had written earlier, about picking things up and putting them down. I sent O and M my film, from when my voice was different, from when the world was different, but the same. The world was always different, the change was always constant. I don't have hope, nor do I have the absence of it. And I recognize the role that time will play, in this future to come. It will come and things will be different, the change will be continue to be constant, I will continue to live, to die, to pick up, and put down. An exercise emerges: How long can I hold a pose? And does holding a pose change the nature of time's length? If the past was brief, then that was a matter of memory. If a recollection was brief, then that was the nature of what the two parties felt was owed. He was talking, he was talking and repeating himself outside inside common knowledge, thinking of all the games to be played. Traincars turned to dominoes. Factories on the horizon signified an exit. So much of it was gone now, the glowing sign was neither haven nor solace. Eventually: 1610s, "pertaining to events," from French éventuel, from Latin event-, stem of evenire "to come out, happen, result" (see event). Meaning "ultimately resulting" is by 1823. Perhaps that was the signal. He stumbled into an old habit, realized it was best to wait, that he could wait while taking action.
I said I couldn't be a Sunday painter. An old phrase comes back, from where? From memory: this is where I've been keeping myself.
5:00 AM in Queens. Tomorrow I will go to the office. Incorrect. In the morning I will go to the office. Remember: this point can close. And another point can open. Is it opening and closing, is that the operation at hand? Or is it something else, like emerging and submering, dissolving and solidifying, condensing, materializing. These words are not opposites, nor are they pairs. I can quote myself again, this time from prosthesis rather than memory: This question of a stopping point... Stopping does not mean writing ends. Stopping does not mean inscription ends. Stopping only means that these [points and bouquets] must stop. Must stop - because that's what feels necessary. Writing of the holiest purpose: I realized stopping must stop... There is a realization: I don't desire stopping any longer. This isn't to say that this stopping is different than that stopping, or that the desire to embark on one stopping is different from the desire to embark on another stopping, only that I don't want this coda, this ending, this musical term — that I desire the ending but not the ending. I want free fall, but I don't want impact. I want and I desire yet what if I stopped wanting and desiring, what if I embraced this finitude with open arms? Is it possible? This infinite text, another infinite conversation, a coda, an ending, a musical term, that comes after the body of the text, after the footnotes, but before the last things last, ever expanding. And yet this can't stretch out forever, it needs things, oil and minerals, extraction of the earth. I don't desire the stopping of this coda, this ending, this musical term — do I desire the stopping of this extraction?
Does it work here? Do these interruptions of stopping stop? It is not a matter of force, earlier I was talking to I about discipline. The dawn is creeping in. There was something else. It was about remembrance.
Points
33) But I stopped being I. It had to end. Because I went to the office and I didn't.
After producing such a volume of text, I had to face the question of what had been produced besides production.
Perhaps I continue linearly, of what was written after stopping:
I went to my mattress and laid down, but I couldn't fall asleep. I laid there for a few hours, swiping on my phone. Eventually the sun started to rise and I went back to the couch. I snorted more K and realized that I wouldn't fall asleep for a while. The light came in and with it a sort of delirious dreamlike state. What happens when you dilate time and days. I used to do this so often, but I hadn't done it like this in a couple of years. I ended up going to bed around 4pm. I'm trying to recall what happened in the hours before then. I tried to watch some films but I couldn't. I made some arrangements for the text to be performed. I read and I took notes. I ate some freezer waffles. I worked my job from home. I went to bed. I missed Z's screening. I didn't take out the trash. The next day I woke up and got ready to go print with M. I had everything with me but my keys when I left. I realized this immediately. So I texted N, asking if I could come to New Jersey to pick up the keys from him. I told M that I would hang out with him, but had to bail. To some extent, the drugs are fucking up my friendships. I printed with M and felt insane in the printing environment and what American academia / art school is. We went to O's show, which I read in more detail, before leaving with the books in hand to meet L for coffee. I got the espresso shaken with sugar that I had been craving and we talked for a bit before going back to his apartment. We talked more about the play and setting things into action. We listened to some music and worked through some references. Made plans. Then he went to work and I went to New Jersey. I went to N's house. It's a house and not an apartment. We talked there and then we got Japanese food and talked there. Then we went to an empty classroom and screened parts of films and talked more. Went back to his house and talked. And in the morning we talked. We attempted to make a track, during which we didn't talk much. All this to be said, I am trying to make sense of what was said.
Points
34) I will wait until the morning. And attempt to start anew. Reorientation is something of a captain's log. The act of mapping is more direct. Tonight I dock at port in order to coordinate the journey.
Points
35) Maybe the situation is that I am able to draw considerably, but that I struggle to bring a work into completion. That many of my works are the stringing together of drawings, in such a way that they bring about the illusion of completion. Or that by framing these drawings as a work I stop them, they become ossified. And then there is nowhere else for them to go.
What I see in Rivette is this chase, this paranoiac chase for someone sort of answer, some magical text, that will bring the disparate threads into a unification. Goldoni's lost play. When Colin realized that his search for the thirteen was misguided and that there were better questions that he could ask. But what are these questions. Perhaps this is what the play can be — the play is not fixed, it will evolve and continue to evolve as it is read and rehearsed. I have a starting point.
What N talked about was what gets in the way of creating the work, and what accelerates the drawings that remain drawings. Of course, I have my sort of obsession with the drawing. With the work around the work. But L and I were talking about that Berenson quote, about the life of a work of art, and how facile that sort of statement is. Rivette's life was a remarkable life yes, but the films are what are truly remarkable. And his life was a secret, that's what Bulle Ogier said in that interview, along the lines of it being inpenetrable, unknown, she only knew him through the context of his directing, through work. I rewatched parts of Gang of Four last night and was blown away yet again. N showed me a book of plays by Marivaux. When I was meeting with L I talked about rewatching certain Rivettes and the idea of rewatching these films again once I have read the plays that are being cited. A new meaning-making formulation would unlock itself.
And I texted O about the commitment. Throwing away the fryer after my soujourn. What the subtitle said: You must have destruction and doubts in order to rebuild, create, invent. Destruction and doubt, that's what I have to teach you.
Now I am in the office and the day remains.
Points
