This text is a collage made from several other letters I received in my early adult life. I came across a box on my back porch and began reading. I was so moved by the poetic imagery and the apocalyptic tone. Most of these letters dated from the early eighties , and there was a collective sense that not only the world was NOT ours, but that we would not last in it. This was a time when Reagan and Thatcher were developing a more hostile based capitalism using methods such as torture, mass death and undermining countries at odds with the New World Order. This was not the sort of thing that was common knowledge, but could be read about “between the lines” in the papers every day; El Salvador, Nicaragua, The Contra Arms scandal, the Faukland Islands.
All said and done, this collage became a sort of manifesto for me for retaining a sense of hope based on Love and Friendship. This summer in Berlin I was missing so much of the spirit of my youth, and many of these people . I filmed my apartment and recorded the sound of the rain that fell in through the open windows in an attempt to find out WHERE I WAS. In rediscovering the text, I found the answer to that question.
Dear Tim,
I must explain the strangeness of hearing from you, and that it may be hard to distinguish how much time has passed. What we talked about was a mirror of what I'd been thinking, it was good to be true. The sky is blue and the air is so clear. Where are you in this cruel summer? Supposedly tomorrow the decision will be made about war. I'm hoping that we are at the end of civilization. I saw something the other day which I felt truly summed up things here in the 20th century...it was a big, blue banner outside Skipper's fish and chips that stated, "Baked or fried, it's your choice". I laughed my head off, twisting that around. It's like the gas chamber or the firing squad, it's your choice, but at least you have a choice. To me America is not the social/political structure. As far as that goes, it is time for it to go up in flames. It's an idea whose time has come and gone. This America is like a play acted out by thieves which has run too long, but the rest of the audience, the population, has been tied to their chairs, drugged, and cannot leave. Here life is corruption, time is disposable. Things are okay I guess except for when I go to work, which contorts my mood into a wrath of sourness, and I become incapable of talking myself into finding any false pleasure of being there. I spit my loose and bloody, stinking teeth into the face of those perfectly inept caricatures of humans, who day in and day out find their sole purpose in hanging out in that "ain't that America" shit factory. It's just no fun. I want to belong, somewhere. I felt it best to let you know about the hatred I have in my heart.
I'm going into my final isolation. I've got a room. Actually a mattress in the basement, and it's hard to sleep down there because there is no window. It's a very dark and disorienting place to sleep....have to turn on a light or something so I don't go crazy. I can't stand complete darkness because I feel like I'm going blind. Have you heard about blind people who have had their sight restored but could not look at the world with any sense of comprehension and preferred to keep their eyes closed, and go back to feeling their way through the world, or people who have their speech restored and are frightened of the sounds they make, that garble from their throats, and refuse to speak? I feel like that sometimes, afraid of my subconscious, of the strange, terrifying noise it would make if it were ever freed.
I was born angelic. Born innocent I was not. Candy says you can disguise your emotions, you can even numb them, and finally you can paralyze them, and that is tragic. Our emotions are the only clues to our identity and the only true meaning in life is passion. Everyone I meet ends up being twisted in some ornate pattern of longing. The creative instinct is greatest in those whose destructive instinct is also great. Potential is our downfall. Maybe all of us, we're so intoxicated by the Dream, the Desire, that we don't see another path as if we have been gravitating ourselves towards the sky for some time, that we are unconsciously shifting in this process. That's what fortune is, fortune is fate, through many lifetimes, walking out of a dream. I'm not remembering much. Have you ever wondered how much of your life is luck? In spite of what others believe I am not possessed by Satan, I am possessed by truth and beauty. People still aren't terribly willing to look at the truth.
I'm confronting the emptiness of my life in that concrete devastation called the City, and attempting to map out its forgotten secrets. It will be a map leading to nowhere, a map loaded with dead end streets, avenues under construction, boulevards of emptiness, overpasses that crumble, freeways to an absolute abandonment of logic. Read one way, the map is out of control, it is no longer a map but a maze with a sealed, lost and forgotten entrance, the only exit being complete self destruction, combustion by immeasurable degrees of heat. No melt down, but sheer high pressure explosion. The only choice besides eternal damnation is to combust, disappear and disintegrate like glass becoming a fine powder then evaporating completely. But read from some other perspective and you can locate this other place, an ancient place. The tops of the hills kiss the sky, that city of hills upon which you ascend and disappear into the sky. That city in which you can discover cracks in the foundation and peer into the abyss. As if suspended in formaldehyde, everyone sees something different. Here night is a clean, shining razor and the day a powdery, weightless heat. I want to see it again. I want to see there still is beauty in the world. I don't know what I want except Bliss, so who knows?
My goal has been to go to nowhere, somehow I lost my path. The other night I dreamed of this and tried to remember what I really am. Pieces of me came back. It's frightening to think about being here, I wake up and am nervous. I have no objection to leaving this town. So maybe I'll learn to drive. So why don't you wander around and I will send you a ship made of Band Aids, and it will be waiting for you in the Atlantic ocean, in the middle, at the bottom.
This morning I sat for an hour listening to my Walkman and watching all the people go by on the conveyor belt. Today it rains and is kind of sad out. Maybe I'm just reflecting too much today. All these masks that we love to wear. Lying that they hide our true face, knowing that some people see through and that terrifies me. Oh hell. But I am slowly gaining control over my evil. I've been so cold and frozen in my heart that it has been impossible to feel compassion towards anything, but I feel it's changing. Fires in my toes and fingers. The sun is coming out. I love you and the sun. I just know something good is going to happen. I have to go because I am shaky, dizzy, and can't think.
P.S. The photo I'm sending was taken at the exact moment I felt GOD.
No comments:
Post a Comment