It is manifestly necessary to look at, failure. I don’t think defining success as an extension of present circumstances,
or a quantity based growth upon current trends in oneself, is a constructive definition. I receive encouragement in this
form often and it is well meant: you are solid in your place in life. But without falling to depression or dismay, I find
that by the rule of my dreams, my present circumstances are a failure in many ways. I work a service industry job
for low pay and no health, I am segregated from vital artistic community, I have no great or accessible public
works by which people may know me, I have no savings but tens of thousands in debt, I own no house, have no
car or even a bank account, my immediate family is estranged and only barely have we some of us reacquainted
in the past year. Torn apart by rape, abuse, lawsuits, time, hatred, personal prejudice and assumption.
I am 27 and I am drifting, badly, in a desert of familiar symbols and routines whose vital essence has moved on to
other worlds. I need an intuitive leap.
I dream. Like all the trillions of minds on earth falling through the neighboring infinity, I dream,
Trapped up in a high metal room, all metal, electrified vapor is cold pressure and a sawtooth sine wave gristles
against our form, in our awareness. It is a hollow black place, a charged abyss stinging with rust and is a desert
for thought. We do not make conversation here and there is no transaction. We make a sojourn, desperately
seeking water, we raid and we wander on guts through clear labyrinth, circling and doubling back on the seasons
with a glass panel (memory–desire) shearing this dune from that. Our dance is dervishwork to outsiders, we are
mad twins fever stalking, whispering intimate, obscene intimacy, twin languages cheek by jowl, thus we survive
and are unnamed. When a new one comes among us we are compelled to feed and to clothe, to succor them for
three full days before we may even speak, even ask.
Where did you come from, What is your name? They might have been a ghost.
This is our habit, in our desert, which is absent light, in the tense electric damp metal room.
I stop working, only labor by day and drift at night, drinking or passively viewing. Stagnation curdles my creativity,
I begin to compulsively repeat the words and ideas of others, I cannot think for myself. There is that fear that your
brain has finally failed you.
I know that small tasks are what must be set, no large thing is set in motion without thousands of small tasks
first, but where do I, how can I begin?
The solstice comes. The night before, a serious renegotiation of relationship happens with my closest friend. I’m
not getting what I want, what I need, which is regular artistic input, initiation, provocation. I want someone to
play dare with, to collaborate with, I need an environment of collective output.
We break down, she cries, walk, we fall in the snow and swoop out angels on the burnt bricks and a cop car pulls someone over in front of us, slicing us with blue klaxons, we collapse at home, arms in arms.
I push us up to go to the party, we have to. The eclipse is eclipsed by clouds, the darkest day is the darkest day.
All is rest, all must be rest in order to renew.
From sundown I drink until my liver gives up and the taste of alcohol becomes repugnant, lots of people around me do the same. Games, games, diversions and games and you must forget the world, this is the competition of our age.
Distracted
Dozens of new meetings and openings rack up in the endless night and we feed the fire until dawn and the new
day comes.
Beginning immediately, we tear our apartment apart and begin to make a new order. I am involved too shallowly in
too many things, I must cull out to stay still. I can do anything, but I will only accomplish so very few things in my
life if I am to accomplish anything at all. This is the weakness of the polymath style, the equilibrium of dabbling,
of being a diletante. I know a bit about a great many things.
I could build you a house, paint your portrait, cook you amazing meals and bake you bread, mend your clothes, fix your motorcycle, turn your screw, weld your steel, ride your bike across a continent, climb mountains with you or suck you off, whatever you are, but I haven’t made the right organization of these skills yet to make my life soar, to free me from scraping for food, to make the things that I love who I am – what I do – all that is.
