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Laurence Demaison Psychés (2009) ‘The photographic work of Laurence Demaison is exclusively constituted by self-portraits from 1993 to 2009. Since 2010 she occasionally uses mannequins or dolls. The used techniques – shot, development, print – are analogicals and realized by the author. No particular manipulation intervenes beyond the shot (except chemical inversion of films for some series).’
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Fábio Magalhães Various works (2010-2016)
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Mariel Clayton Various works (2011)
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Shi Jinsong Na Zha Baby Boutique (2013) ‘Bound to solicit horrified looks from fellow parents, Shi Jinsong’s Gun-shaped Baby Carriage is part of his series ‘Na Zha’. It is a ‘brand name’ for a line of outrageously unsafe baby products.’
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Dawn Kasper Untitled (2013) ‘Kasper is noted for immersing herself in live dioramas simulating her death “in disturbingly and sometimes absurdly gory ways” (to borrow one writer’s words)–as in this enactment of a fatal motorcycle accident.’
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Marlene Haring Letting My Hair Grow (2014)
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Stephen j Shanabrook Evisceration of Waited Moments (2008) ‘Remnants of an 18 year old suicide bomber cast in chocolate.’
Sleeping with Chocolate (1996) ‘autopsy table, a self-contained unit, where chocolate is pumped to the surface and returns through a middle drain.’
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Louie Cordero My We (2011) ‘The Louie Cordero exhibit showing at the 2011 Singapore Art Biennale features some over-the-top gruesome sculptures. The exhibit, titled My We, has multiple figures impaled with numerous objects that range from knives and saws to broomsticks and shovels. The work of Louie Cordero brings you to a level of morbid brutality that has never been seen before. Bones protrude out of the bodies as they are stabbed. The different Louie Cordero figures are seen in individual poses. One lies on the floor in agony, another seems to be pinned to the wall, while a third is on his knees with a hand raised as if reaching for help.’
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Gottfried Helnwein Los Capriccios (2006)
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Abigail Goldman Various works (2013-2017) ‘Goldman takes the fake grass, dirt and tiny plastic people used in model railroad layouts, and turns them into imaginary crime scenes. She’s been making the macabre and gory art for four years, and it’s become so popular there’s a waiting list for her work.’
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Grant Waud Death By Hollywood (2011) ‘Photographer Grant Waud chose celebrities and their deaths as the topic for his most recent series entitled “Death By Hollywood”. Waud settled on Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and John Dillinger as his subjects. The reenactments appear to be painstakingly accurate. Which may disturb fans of the five celebs portrayed.’
Elvis Presley
John Lennon
Marilyn Monroe
James Dean
John Dillinger
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Blake Neubert Various works (2015-2016)
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Oleg Vdovenko Various (2015 – 2021) ‘Oleg Vdovenko is a Russian-based artist and one of the brains behind the upcoming FPS horror-title ILL.’
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Naoki Sasayama The Scene of the Accident (2010) ‘These paintings by Naoki Sasayama recount, in stark realism (almost surrealism), gruesome destruction and deaths. Despite the subject matter, Sasayama’s work is dealing with the facets of life and includes allusions to social and cultural ideas. His technical ability and craving for the complex are also in the upper echelons making for a secure position of someone doing something no one else is doing.’
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Carsten Güth Private Bunker Series (2013) ‘In her “Private Bunker Series,” photographer Carsten Güth depicts suburban abodes that look completely shut off from the outside world. Though not specifically built to seal interior spaces from impending doom, the houses in Güth’s photos appear to have no windows or doors.’
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Jessica Harrison Various works (2014-2017)
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Adeela Suleman Various works (2014)
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Xue Chuang Ying Inflatable Corpse Dead Victim Scary Ornament (2021) Inflatable Mannequin x1, Metallic Tape x1, Black Body Bag x1, Long Rope x1
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Korehiko Hino Various works (2014-2016)
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Arsen Savadov from Book of the Dead (2001) ‘Book of the Dead is a series of ten photographs of a group of mostly naked autopsied human bodies arranged around a central plinth. Some leaning against walls or each other, some slumped in chairs. There a number of sundry items of domestic furniture such as step ladders, heating radiators, lamps, a hat stand, mugs and children’s toys. A single bare and partially obstructed spotlight cast a harsh light on the scene. The composition of mainly black accented with vivid visceral red plays on the western funereal tradition, denotating mourning and grisly sanguinary nature of carnality. And of course the pallid whites and greys of the deads etiolated flesh.There are small sporadic green items hinting at growth and organic decay. But we don’t need symbolism with such explicit illustration of the several very dead elephants in the room. The expressions on the corpses faces are predominantly acerebral and zombie like. Somnambulist sleep walkers who have settled a moment in their dead domesticity, freezing, playing possum for the perception of the living. Some appear crazily blissful.There is a harmony to this family of carrion, a sense of mutual comfort in their post-mortem bond.’
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Ho Tzu Nyen The Cloud of Unknowing (2011) single channel HD projection with 13 channel sound, synchronized smoke machines, floodlights and show control system
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Peter Caine Various (2014, 2015) ‘Peter Caine is a youtuber, dog-trainer, artist, comedian, and military veteran.’
When it dies
He was The Best
I Hate Grandpaw
*
p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thank you, Ben. ** Misanthrope, I will say I don’t think anywhere else can compete with Paris when they put up the Xmas lights. Lil D is adultifying. That’s not a word? Goofy’s okay. Heck, dude, you’re no small amount of goofy yourself. ‘Bad’ influence? ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks, pal. The future yes or no is pretty preoccupying. ‘Talk to Me’ is probably on my free/illegal site. I’ll go check. I just remember watching that very clip I linked you to yesterday when I was a young teen and being horrified when that big guy started singing like that. I think that might have been when I figured out what ‘gay’ meant. I just gave Zac a booklet of dinosaur stickers not two weeks ago. He’s obsessed with dinosaurs. I have to keep telling him that making a film starring dinosaurs would be too expensive. Love installing an oven in my apartment — I only have a microwave — plus all the ingredients needed to make chocolate chip cookies and teaching me how to make them so they stay really soft because he’s such an expert, G. ** Bill, Score! I remember that movie ‘Twister’ that CG starred in being charmingly self-consciously weird. Bandcamp, yes, exactly. Give it serious consideration. I mean, there are so many books and films out there, but that doesn’t stop me, if you know what I’m saying. I read the Keenan book, and I think that filled me to the brim with Coil information. Oh, strange, yeah, that problem of not seeing the newest post used to happen here a lot, but then I thought it got fixed. Have you tried emptying your browser’s cache? I know in some cases that made a difference. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Interesting about the new Morris doc. Being quite the large fan of his, I’ll hope for the best. How was the Radu Jude? I just saw the Yves-Marie Mahé documentary ‘Jeune Cinema’ about an very important early adventurous French film festival that launched the work/careers of many great filmmakers, and it’s very, very good. I’m not sure if it’ll make it overseas or not. ** 2Moody, Hey. The thing is, I don’t do lectures. I’ve always refused to do them. But the Pinault Collection put some money into Zac’s and my new film, and the lecture was part of the deal for them giving funds. And now I’m regretting say ok because they didn’t give that much money. But now I’m whining. Thank you for your due diligence. I’ll owe you if that works. But not owe you lecture please. There is one just barely noticeable seagull that flies through the upper right corner of one shot in ‘PGL’ that we missed, damn, but no one seems to have noticed it, whew. No, I don’t think I do know the films of Marco Berger. I’ll look into his stuff post-haste. Thanks. ‘Ollie’ was always rapping on the ‘PGL’ set when he wasn’t shooting. His raps were extremely sweet and sincere, which is what made them beautiful. Very unique. The problem was his manager or Sony Records seem to have chickened out and and made him adopt this kind of ‘thug’ look and demeanor, etc. in his music/videos, and it just didn’t work at all. I’m hoping he reinvents himself and tries again because I think he could carve out a place for himself. Uh, I think my vomit was discrete enough to only splatter my shirt but it’s been a while. May I strongly suggest you do LA/SoCal for Halloween? Like … strongly? And if you do, it’s Knotts Scary Farm that you want to make a beeline to. Universal Horror Nights is an overpriced after thought compared to it. Not that I won’t hit it, of course, because I’m relentless. Plus you’ll see here next week the dozens and dozens of haunted reasons why LA is your target. ** Ollie 🐡, Ah, a bat! Much better! I think I told you my building has bats that fly in tight circles in our vestibule furiously for about three minutes as soon as the sun sets every day. I’ll figure out how to catch yours and introduce him/her/they to their new cohorts. Promise. No, no practical effects in our film. Fake blood, yes. A little. The haunted house in our film is supposed to be an earnest, disappointing failure, so we couldn’t make it too good. Being tall is overrated, but the running fast part is kind of alright. Your bat spoof was like the Halloween version of the Crown Jewels, no worries. Thank you, thank you! ** Matt N., Hi. I’m okay, yeah, I’m okay. Oh, weird, interesting about that script/post coincidence. Luck galore on the funding. We’re waiting to see if we get any of about 7 postproduction grants we’ve applied for, and … yeah. Up to, me? Um, I just scored tickets to go to the Halloween makeover version of the fairly great nearby amusement park Parc Asterix on Sunday, and they have a giant new roller coaster, so that’s in the offing. We go back to work on the film in a day or two to try to improve it further before the next festival deadline. I’ll try to work on this short fiction collection I’m tying to put together. Stuff like that there. You? No, I’m an early to bed (between 10-10:30 pm when possible), early to rise (6 am-ish) person. I only liked staying out all night when I used to do drugs, and I didn’t even like it all that much then. Are you partying down in the wee hours of late? What else? ** Okay. Halloween continues on the blog today with this carefully curated scare show of an exhibition. Wander about therein please. See you tomorrow.
‘A woman named Maude Laures is translating a novel set in the Arizona desert. She becomes obsessed with the characters and the author, Laura Angstelle, who remains an enigmatic unknown. The arrangement of the book is of a postmodern/metafictional nature, with the following order: a section of the initial text; the translator’s notes on the book’s characters and themes (and her reflections on the author); biographical text about the translator (some or all of which she also wrote herself); and finally her translation of the part of the text included at the beginning. The English translation (from French) includes both the initial text and the “translated” text in English, though they are slightly different from each other to represent the effect of translation on a text. Presumably both texts are in French in the original version, or else it would have been mentioned with the other brief notes from Brossard and the translator. As for the content itself, it varies in ease of comprehension. The “book” text was easy enough to follow, but some of the translator’s notes read like dense prose poetry and/or philosophical fiction, such as that of Clarice Lispector or Maurice Blanchot. These latter sections require close reading to tease out their meaning.’ — S. D. Stewart
‘Split into three parts, Nicole Brossard’s Mauve Desert takes storytelling and translation apart from the inside. The first section follows 15-year-old Mélanie as she speeds across the Arizona desert in her mother’s car, ‘moving forward in life, wild-eyed with arrogance’, while also fleeing the insecurity, awkwardness and tenderness of life at her lesbian mother’s motel. Next, the middle part catalogues the experience of Maudes Laures, who finds Mélanie’s story in a second-hand bookshop and spends two years obsessing over its meaning and the actions of its characters and author, Laure Angstelle. The final section is Maudes Laures’s translation of Mauve Desert, which is at once similar to and very different from the original text.
‘Rich, ambiguous and fluid, Brossard/Angstelle’s writing sweeps the reader into the heart of teenage longing, using fine details to evoke intense experience. Long, sultry afternoons around the pool consist in the glint of wet tiles and the snaking of a hose pipe, while the rush of speeding through the desert shimmers on the horizon and in the dizziness of dehydration. Deliberately ambiguous, ‘both in focus and out of the frame’ as Mélanie describes her driving experiences, the narrative opens up a vast landscape of multivalency so that we can often never be sure exactly what is taking place. ‘Reality had a meaning, but which one?’ reflects Mélanie at one point.
‘As Maude Laures discovers, this confusion is precisely the point. While she strives to get to the heart of the text that has obsessed her, picking apart places, characters and events, and even at one stage imagining an encounter with Laure Angstelle herself in which she berates and interrogates the author over her treatment of one character, she finds herself dazzled by ‘the inexorable light that transforms lives of flesh into the bare bones of narrative’. As she records and analyses conflicting assertions that she finds in the text and her discourse with it, some sort of truth emerges like a line drawn through a cluster of points on a graph, tying trends and outliers together into a kind of coherent whole.
‘This exploration of the mysterious alchemy of translation and the anxieties around the authenticity of such renderings – as Laure Angstelle puts it in her imaginary dialogue with Maude Laures: ‘How am I to believe for a single moment that the landscapes in you won’t erase those in me?’ – is utterly engrossing. It is without question one of the most innovative things I’ve ever read.’ — A Year of Reading the World
Prologue au Désert Mauve, projet d’opéra de Symon Henry d’après un roman de Nicole Brossard
Nicole Brossard reads in English
Nicole Brossard Reads from Fences in Breathing
___________ Mauve Desert: A CD-ROM Translation by Adriene Jenik ‘Based upon the novel Le Desert Mauve by Quebeçoise author Nicole Brossard, Mauve Desert, a CD-ROM road movie, was five years in the making. Shot on film and video, framed by original graphics and creative programming structures, and performed in three languages, Mauve Desert finds its voice in the driver’s seat (of a computer). Mélanie is a fifteen year-old girl who steals her mother’s Meteor every chance she gets and drives away from her mother’s lover Lorna and toward the dawn. Maude Laures is the middle-aged academic who stumbles upon Mélanie’s life in a second-hand bookshop and translates her into another tongue.’ –– Video Data Base
What about writing changed for you when you began to be translated?
Well, firstly — with English especially — if we think of feminism, I think translation brought me material, through reading and meeting women writers in Canada or the United States. I think that has always been very important. Also, it’s also important if once in a while I am away long enough that I speak a lot in English, and there might be a contamination of my language in a positive way.
For example, I am exposed more to narrative in English poems and things like that. So that interests me very much and I learn from that. Even when I was at Sage Hill recently as an instructor, it was very exciting to see a range of different writers and to see writers who are close to the tradition and those who are renewing and scattering that tradition. It’s always interesting to see that range of approach in another language.
Last year [2006] I was writer-in-residence at the University of Montréal, and the writer-in-residence has to organize a one-day conference on a subject. The subject that I picked was the long poem, because I had noticed that in English there’s a lot of long poems, the long poem is major material, and in French since Mallarmé we write short poems most of the time — very abstract and existential and very few of them are narrative. So we had a lecture on that, and I would like to turn it into a book, because I noticed with the long poem that writers writing in English have gotten rid of the “I” of subjectivity but in French it’s the contrary, it is with the long poem that we bring back this subjectivity.
Is it an interesting thing for you to talk to Robert Kroetsch? [The event surrounding this interview involved a panel with Brossard and Kroetsch.] Because he’s of course the one in English Canada, at least on the prairies, who is most responsible for jettisoning that “I” in the long poem and really being an influence here.
Yes. I want to talk about prose and poetry because both of us write prose and poetry, but certainly this is a topic that we could discuss.
Now, when you say you think you’d work on a book concerning the long poem, do you mean writing long poems yourself, or a critical work?
No, we’ll put together some of the, not the lecture, but the papers, the proceedings. Because I think it’s interesting, because even the professors in French think that idea of the long poem is not with them. If you plug in that idea then suddenly you read Québec literature in a very different way. So I look forward to it and I might have a text also from someone writing in English, a critic.
In the English edition of Mauve Desert, Maude Laures translates the word “inventing” from the first text as “storytelling” and then “lying” in the latter text. Of course this is the English edition, and not necessarily the words you’ve chosen, but in what way is a translation an invention, or perhaps something that can also be considered a story, or species of lie?
It’s interesting, but in Mauve Desert or in general?
In general, or in the book if you prefer.
It’s a different posture, though of course because of the freedom I had, as the one writing the third part — I had to really push myself because it was laborious, it was a labour. It wasn’t the same thing as in the first part, when I was totally free to go wherever I wanted, because in the third part I was labouring with the material I had to translate.
An invention, story? I think the idea might be more relevant to that specific relation in Mauve Desert. I guess the translation can be an invention or a reinvention, but a lie? I don’t think it can be a lie unless it is transformance. But if it is a translation I don’t think it can be a lie, because definitely you have to recognize a universe, the universe of the writer.
You have to recognize something, and unless you are a very bad translator it does not become a lie. So maybe it that those two dimensions of storytelling and lying are more connected in this specific book, Mauve Desert, than in a general sense of translation. Certainly, if you want to go into it one way, if you want to absolutely prove that a translation is a lie — well go ahead, that might still be possible.
In what ways maybe a story? I think especially Mauve Desert tends to posit translation as the story of its own coming into being. And that is always the case in a certain sense, that a translation, in addition to being what it is, is in some respect also the story of coming into this other language. Is there a sense in which this book is also pointing to the story of its initial creation, reception, and re-creation?
It could, absolutely, it’s a matter of how the reader can locate those passages, those traces — but when we talk about Mauve Desert, it is the story of translation but it is also the story of reading, because the translator will reshape the language but nevertheless her first task is to read. And as a reader she will make mistakes. She will over-invest certain passages, she will go too fast on other passages, and so on.
So in that sense, it is the story of loving — falling in love with a book and then reinventing the book, in the sense that getting stimulated by the material she finds in the book, and getting stimulated enough that she would like that book to belong to her as a translator. I would say it is a love story with a book, and it is a love story about reading and what reading does to us, which is allows us to fly somehow in the language — in the imaginary, but as well in the language.
When I was reading the English edition of Installations there’s a line that reads “the text is an invitation” and certainly the text is an invitation to read, but is the text an invitation to translate? Is every reading a sort of translation?
Well, it would be an appropriation of the text. With the word appropriation then, we certainly have the word meaning. The appropriation of the universe, appropriation of the meaning that can be swallowed by our own individual singular imagination. In that sense, and this is what we keep doing all the time — that’s why also I was interested in translation, because we keep translating what people are telling us even in the same language, in our own mother tongue.
So we are always interpreting what is being told to us or spoken to us all the time. Of course, sometimes we follow the easy path, but most of the time our mind has to process what’s being told to us and translation is that process, which is redefining meaning, and of course rhythm if you talk about poetry. But in the case of my novel, I would also talk about rhythm. Especially in Mauve Desert, even if you read just the first page you see how important the sound is.
Is translation a radical act? Or can it be?
Oh, it certainly can be a radical act, absolutely. Of destroying, or of love. Of a kind of embracing absolutely.
And, well, it can be a neutral act as well. For most of the people working for big publishing houses, they are being given a novel and told, “You translate that in the next three months and you give me some results.” That’s one thing, but I have been lucky enough to have had translators who I believe liked my text and liked my obsession and my approach. Therefore, they have a very special relation to the text that they will be translating.
At this point in your career you’ve amassed a substantial body of work, which is known for being diverse and for having experimental qualities. To what extent do you see yourself engaged in developing a body of work like that, or when you begin a new project are you just thinking about that project and not so much how it will add to or complement your previous work?
Usually I am interested in the new project, but I can see now with time the coherence. I can see the recurring obsessions, the recurring questions, and I can see also the curves that I’ve taken. For example, if the text goes too slowly for me, if the sentence is too slow and hasn’t enough tension in it, then I will soon try to put a new tension in the sentence. Because I get bored and I don’t like the text to be too slow. Sometimes your whole line needs that slowness though, sometimes you want to oppose speed.
I wrote a long time ago that I write to understand, by which I mean I write to understand process. I’m a poet, but I have a fascination for science, for exactitude, or at least for understanding process. At the same time, I make space for the singular. For the I. And I make space for whatever at that moment in my life seems to be important. If it is not, then it will fade out by itself. If it is not pertinent it will fade out, but nevertheless I will have given it a try.
Why is that kind of that experiment, that constant experimentation, important to you?
I don’t think you can rely only on yourself, on your experience or your own personal vocabulary. I think that if you go digging in the language it will bring you material. Not only to express, but material to think, to feel, to renew you.
Yesterday, I read three short poems in French [at the reading the previous day]. I gave myself the constraint to write a poem where all the words in that poem would start with the same letter, A or B or C [etc.]. Sometimes I cheat a little bit, but mot of the time I respect the constraint. That was a very interesting experience because I could see how much we deprive ourselves if we don’t go and dig into that huge immensity of language.
___ Book
Nicole Brossard Mauve Desert Coach House Books
‘This is both a single novel and three separate novels in one. In the first, Mauve Desert, fifteen-year-old Mélanie drives across the Arizona desert in a white Meteor chasing fear and desire, cutting loose from her mother and her mother’s lover, Lorna, in their roadside Mauve Motel. In the second book, Maudes Laures reads Mauve Desert, becomes obsessed with it, and embarks on an extraordinary quest for its mysterious author, characters and meaning. The third book – Mauve, the horizon – is Laures’s eventual translation of Mauve Desert. Like all good translations, it is both the same and revealingly different from the original.
‘Nicole Brossard’s writing is agile and inventive; from moment to moment gripping, exhilarating and erotic. Her language drifts and swells like sand dunes in a desert, cresting and accumulating into a landscape that shifts like wind and words; she translates the practice of translation, the pulse of desire.’ — CHB
‘With the appearance of Mauve Desert … Nicole Brossard reinforces her claim to be ranked among the few truly radical text-makers in North America.’ — The Toronto Star
‘In Mauve Desert, Nicole Brossard writes from the point of impact; from the collision between languages, between forms and ideas, between cultures and genders. Her effects too are the effects of collisions: brilliant sparks and white hot fragments, alarm and the possibility of danger, and a momentary light in which we glimpse the bizarrely distorted faces of strangers, which turn out after all to have been our own.’ — Margaret Atwood
_____ Excerpt
Very young I had no future like the shack on the corner which one day was set on fire by some guys who ‘came from far away,’ said my mother who had served them drinks. Only one of them was armed, she had sworn to me. Only one among them. All the others were blond. My mother always talked about men as if they had seen the day in a book. She would say no more and go back to her television set. I could see her profile and the reflection of the little silver comb she always wore in her hair and to which I attributed magical powers. Her apron was yellow with little flowers. I never saw her wearing a dress.
I was moving forward in life, wild-eyed with arrogance. I was fifteen. This was a delight like the power of dying or of driving into the night with circles under my eyes, absolutely delirious spaces edging the gaze.
2.
I was well-acquainted with the desert and the roads running through it. Lorna, this friend of my mother’s, had introduced me to erosion, to all the ghosts living in the stone and the dust. She had described landscapes, some familiar, some absolutely incompatible with the vegetation and barren soil of my childhood. Lorna was inventing. I knew she was because even I knew how to distinguish between a Western diamondback and a rattlesnake, between a troglo- dyte and a mourning turtledove. Lorna was inventing. Sometimes she seemed to be barking, so rough and unthinkable were her words. Lorna had not known childhood, only young girls after school whom she would ostentatiously arrange to meet at noon. The girls loved kiss- ing her on the mouth. She loved girls who let themselves be kissed on the mouth.
The first time I saw Lorna I found her beautiful and said the word ‘bitch’. I was five years old. At supper my mother was smiling at her. They would look at each other and when they spoke their voices were full of intonations. I obstinately observed their mouths. Whenever they pronounced words starting with m, their lips would disappear for a moment then, swollen, reanimate with incredible speed. Lorna said she liked moly and salmon mousse. I spilled my glass of milk and the tablecloth changed into America with Florida seeping under the salt- shaker. My mother mopped up America. My mother always pretended not to notice when things were dirtied.
I often took to the road. Long before I got my driver’s license. At high noon, at dusk, even at night, I would leave with my mother yelling sharp words at me which would get lost in the parking lot dust. I always headed for the desert because very young I wanted to know why in books they forget to mention the desert. I knew my mother would be alone like a woman can be but I was fleeing the magical reflection of the comb in her hair, seeking the burning reflections of the blinding sun, seeking the night in the dazzled eyes of hares, a ray of life. ‘Let me confront aridity’, and I would floor the accelerator, wild with the damned energy of my fifteen years. Some day I would reach the right age and time as necessary as a birth date to get life over with. Some day I would be fast so fast, sharp so sharp, some day, faced with the necessity of dawn, I would have forgotten the civilization of men who came to the desert to watch their equations explode like a humanity. I was driving fast, alone like a character cut out of history. Saying ‘so many times I have sunk into the future.’
At night there was the desert, the shining eyes of antelope jack rabbits, senita flowers that bloom only in the night. Lying under the Meteor’s headlights was the body of a humanity that did not know Arizona. Humanity was fragile because it did not suspect Arizona’s existence. So fragile. I was fifteen and hungered for everything to be as in my body’s fragility, that impatient tolerance making the body nec- essary. I was an expert driver, wild-eyed in midnight, capable of going forward in the dark. I knew all that like a despair capable of setting me free of everything. Eternity was a shadow cast in music, a fever of the brain making it topple over into the tracings of highways. Humanity was fragile, a gigantic hope suspended over cities. Everything was frag- ile, I knew it, I had always known it. At fifteen I pretended I had forgotten mediocrity. Like my mother, I pretended that nothing was dirtied.
Shadows on the road devour hope. There are no shadows at night, at noon, there is only certitude traversing reality. But reality is a little trap, little shadow grave welcoming desire. Reality is a little passion fire that pretexts. I was fifteen and with every ounce of my strength I was leaning into my thoughts to make them slant reality toward the light.
*
And now to park the car in front of the Red Arrow Motel. Heat, the Bar. The bar’s entire surface resembles a television image: elbows everywhere leaning like shadows and humanity’s trash repeating themselves. I have a beer and nobody notices I exist.
*
Longman puts his briefcase on the bed. He has been hot, he loosens his tie. He heads for the bathroom. He thinks about the explosion, he thinks about it and it s not enough. Something. He knows some lovely little footpaths, delicately shaded areas. He hesitates in front of the mirror. He washes his hands. He thinks about the explosion, he thinks about it and nothing happens in his head. He removes his jacket, throws it on the bed. A ballpoint pen falls to the floor. He does not bend down. He lights a cigarette. He fingers the brim of his felt hat which he almost never takes off. He thinks about the explosion. For the pleasure of sounds he recites a few sentences in Sanskrit, the same ones which earlier delighted his colleagues. He paces the floor. His cigarette smoke follows him about like a spectral presence. Longman knows the magic value of formulas. He thinks about the explosion. The slightest error could have disastrous consequences. Longman stretches out with white visions then orange ones then the ground beneath his feet turns to jade – 1 / am / become / Death – now we are all sons of bitches. Longman rests his head on the equation.
*
p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yeah, this period where you’re totally dependent on film festivals to move forward is stressful city. SCAB keeps unfolding impeccably. So good. I’ve heard of ‘Talk to Me’, but I haven’t seen it. Should I? Love has excellent taste. Or he did yesterday at least. Love wondering if this is the weirdest song and group ever or the worst, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, I keep waiting for CG to come show his films in Paris, but he never has. Small rugs rule. Don’t ask me why, they just do. ** Mark, Hi, Mark. Oh, that’s awesome news. You so rule. And, great, ‘cos people here in the big P have asked me where they can get the zine, and now they can get it at the big P’s best bookstore, or maybe best store period. You’re a joy spreader, sir. ** Misanthrope, I’m not a Nolan fan. I think I would enjoy his stuff as massively expensive B movies if there weren’t so many people calling him the new Kubrick, which is very teeth-gritting and dunderheaded. I’ve never quite figured out why Paris is called the City of Lights. I can’t think of a big city that isn’t a city of lights at night. How’s shit? ** Ollie 🎩, I bet there’s a rabbit in that top hat. I’d like to know Dennis with no leg. Agreed about vegan Mexican, but, like you, how would I know. Skin is fascinating. I’m going to try to think more about skin when I look at people starting today. I mean, ‘Scab’ is a good title too, obviously. Dominik’s great lit zine is called SCAB, if you haven’t seen it. It’s the best lit zine out there. People I know who run or jog rapidly swear by it. I never do that. I did in high school. I was shit at every sport, but I could run really fast, I think because I’m tall. That was the only time the coach didn’t look like he was going to barf when he looked at me. ** Okay, that was easy. Today I spotlight a very fine novel by Nicole Brossard that I obviously suggest you spend some time today investigating. Thank you. Best wishes until tomorrow.
Nicole Brossard Mauve Desert
Now available in North America 