<documenta X><blast> In A, Space

cd (cwduff@alcor.concordia.ca)
Wed, 20 Aug 1997 04:12:12 -0400 (EDT)

In a dream I encounter the ruined hotel. Then later the figure of
someone loved. Showing me the words on a tablet, a pad of paper, fingers
pointing to the pad; the words speak, or seem to, but words from paper
which speak in dreams is rather like enunciating in one's sleep. And one
says "one." But who is the one, and what is the word, but a piece of
broken imagery, of jewelery. From a woman's hands and fingers gazed at so
intensely on the metro. In the gaze one cannot see her face, she peers,
gawks, actually drills the page of the book she is reading. She becomes
your body in your intense stare. She is unaware of the stare. Crowded
other bodies hustle for the door the terminus. That woman's beringed
fingers become the source of imagined sexual pleasure reaching
orgasm. Her (her eyes tightening closing flaring inward
scream),
orgasm is heightened by the metal close to her skin, her thigh has a
tatoo. More and more thighs have tatoos. Doors open and shut and people
clamour out, you "disappear" into the crowd. The room widens as you emerge
from unconsciousness, the room revaporates, takes shape again, you are
a cluster of memories and desires, you slip away, back to sleep. Missing a
letter of the words, missing the words of the hoped for letter. It is like
Finnegans Wake. That missing letter, ladies and gentlemen. Where did it
go? Suddenly you are Shem the penman looking for Shaun the postman. But
the postman has become all e-mail, and the fee for the mail is too high.
The female of the mail carrier (who carries what virus from what planet?)
is the archetype of the drop dead gorgeous look alike of the woman who
almost ran you over near the metro. Only to realize she knew you, and
loved you, but some censor kept her from admitting it (never mind acting
upon it), then your glance steered away. Then the grinding of the cheese.
The matching of clocks. So you smiled as you fell back alseep saying, okay
I will write those words down later, the one you got in the dream from
the lover never encounted in the flesh. She was saying those words so
intently to you, and you knew they were important. Even though you dying
and getting sick each time you wrote more words. So then you ran back to
your body and ran down the street singing. I am alive I am more alive than
dead. But the letter kept composing itself in your head. You kept thinking
of you and that very fashionably got up Chinese woman who was your lover.
How she looked at you before ever a word was shared. Said by the eyes of
her look over the train tracks. When you heard the train rushing into the
station, between the reality and truth stations. She was your lover on a
physiological level that could not be explained by words, clutter of
culture, bonding, common passions and interests. Something about the body
so connected and kinesthetic you spoke right across the station de la
metro. Rather like two shades meeting in kindred shape. Knowing each
other's bodies before the cognizant fact, before the rude awakening of
cognition shook you back into the normative frames of everyday boring
life. What else could you say and she followed you and you followed her,
because her look across the tracks said it all. She knew she was you,
long before you met.
Space, the final frontier where bodies and kisses mesh. Space,
says Paul Virilio no longer exists. We live in time, and we speed the
runways of death doing so. We speed death up, rather like the poem by John
Donne. About the unruly sun the lover wants to catch up. And stop. Oh
lady, have we time enough and world....
The speed of the city, of the dromos, has made arrival something
that happens before the fact. Departure occurs before arrival. "We arrive
with the arrivals, depart with the departures" says Tzara in L'Homme
Approximatif. Virilio sees that as the terrible possibility that time has
become the dominant player on the planet of permanent war, or apocalypse.
Howard Hughes versus L'Homme Approximatif. No, we refuse the speed of the
chrono-Polis. WE take back time, like the French Communards shooting the
clocks of Paris during the Commune. Virilio reads space as being defeated
by the speeds of the dromomaniacs. He sees time as the ravaged bridegroom
of the speed machine. Hans Arp on the other hand sees it as the source of
Joy. Like the Dada he was, whereas Tzara sees it more ironically. We
approximate the movements which create our territorializations. Later
other terrible bridegrooms will see nothing but the emptiness of being
drained and sucked away by the end of the monotheistic signifier.Other
bridegrooms of dream that presage desire at its most dangerous, the
nightmares of Kleist and the savage bands of motorcycle murderers wearing
black uniforms stamping across the cities of Europe, Russia, North
Africa, the walls of Britain. Titanic energies will be released in the
process, mad bandits of fascistic desires that terrorize the cities.
Thousands of bombs raining from the skies forever and ever. Deserts burnt
to a crisp. Oil wars, umbrellas which only mount higher and higher with
one solo monad like man (Magritte) as their accompaniest. This is the what
the end of the speed game presages. Or the stung lovers of Crash as they
machine sex to orgasm bliss death and make the crippled burnt bodies their
locus of pleasure. Even then the haunted word of echo and cognate worries,
secret etymolgies, half-denied glances and sniggling looks will penetrate
their core. The core of their libido gone mad with the necessary glue of
their tortured beauty - the terrifying Orgress eats them alive as they
glue themselves together near the burnt out cars and scraps of metal
sizzling by the side of the road. Crash naked lunch pirate night mare of
single destiny desire and death wish, the death drivers of the plateau
2001. Not to be missed coming soon to a theatre near you. And all your
relatives should be there, with all their broken languages and awful
memories which have scarred the genetic codes of their children.
Even then the haunted word of the cognate will take pleasure in its death.
And Virilio speaks of the time getting shorter for the little missiles and
their smiling death. And shooting down one hundred jets in a day becomes
the average work of the average pilot in the better than average
air-forces when necessary. One night I sat beauty on my lap and found her
repulsive - O witches O sabbaths O nights! I fled I ran across the forest
table looking. And found them then sitting there like the rattling skulls
of the forest. Someone shouted to me:Space Space Space. All words are
scattered forests looking for their murderers. After the first love,
there is no other. At the doors of the church I sat down and laughed as
the echo of the dream receded. MY Chinese lover woke me up gently holding
my head in her hands, she cupped my chin with her hands to kiss
just as if she was red-haired Croatian who I used to live with. She
whisperd to me in ideaograms I couldn't quite grasp, it's time for coffee
and croissants. Come for a walk and taste space. Every where the clock
struck the hour and the bells of St. Sulpice rang out.
Space became the tender toy on which we wrapped our hands as we
sauntered down to the cafe.

"All words are lovers haunted by their ruins. "

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documenta X Kassel and http://www.documenta.de 1997
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