Härtill: October 2016

Black hearts eat all night long, carrots of sequencing.

a Chamber Play

John Lundberg

Motto/Preliminary Invocation:

Whenst at beginning,

Round table and rod,

Foul chimes, their song

Like blood left flown

Ignored can shelter pod

Of crabgrass long,

I shall not fail to o’ercome.

- “Henry IX” (The Apocryphal Plays of William Shakespeare)

Characters

Andrea Palladio

Christiaan Huygens

Act 1

Scene 1

Small of the back of the neck

The wind eats through layers of rust and cheese. Nick Drake walks by, sighing (time has told him). Rare birds are not there at all (and as such are completely unsymbolical). The desert extends in the four directions, the sky burns, even though the sun can hardly be seen. The air is chewable, but it does bite back. Getting comfortable in the back of the burned out black Pontiac Trans Am, Andrea Palladio kisses Christiaan Huygens on the mouth.

Palladio Well, I am mostly drunk. At night. You know, sand in my pants.

Huygens Yes. Carrots don’t give you good night vision. That was a WW2 lie.

Palladio If knowledge is to have meaning (if it means something to talk of it) then I assume that what I know will work through me. I enjoy talking. I feel no need to make arguments (as you know) because that kind of thinking isn’t me. And I also see huge problems with it in general – the polarizing right/wrong debate format – I am not interested in that – in “politics” then? Yes. I have no interest in that, I don’t have the temperament, the inclination etc. So why fight it? There are other things. Like art. Like the aesthetic justification of life.

Huygens I get so little of it. Seriously, almost nothing. I am lazy and scared and bad at getting it. Even when I know what I want I don’t go about it. I forget it, that is possible (and a lot is cheap and easy, really). Need to work on that. Just remember it exists! Pleasure, beauty.

Palladio Talking before thinking. Which you (also) know I like. I enjoy the possibilities, and creativity. It is pleasing. (in the right venue/situation: such as art & (higher) education; where there is a security/freedom). Doing it matters to me. I guess I just need to accept that this is for me a form of art (like a stand-up routine). (I know it already, we might even have discussed it. But I need to accept it, embrace it).

Huygens I don’t want to exist. As in ONE) I am tired now, let me be… TWO) I want to be able to unsee me, to break the connections with ideas and taste etc. to the breach, the empty core (the no-core), to let go, really let go of the idea of me.

Palladio I said I want to be Joyce or Pynchon. And you’re right. I don’t (well, a little). That is too “good”, too polished. I keep forgetting (is remembering to forget to forget?) these things that are important. Grit. Texture. The outsider-art of it all. But, how can I “be” that? I really can’t. But I can, because that is what I do. (it’s the getting-anyone-to-see-it part that is going to be hard). It is insider-outsider art. (even if that term “outsider” is really bad, of course). Everything I do is awkward, and rough, and unfinished, unpolished, clumsy, inept…and sort-of-bad. Or just bad. (and I do not mean that in a bad way. I like it, mostly) Drawings, writings, classes. (Ooh! I am an outsider-teacher! - whatever that is). Mhm. I read some Bukowski instead now (only got two books, read another few over 20 years ago). It is so good. I forget (that too). And it is kinda outsider art, too, non? Makes me want to write about university-life, like Post office. (Couldn’t obviously). But I still so enjoy all those weird things you can do with language (Burroughs, Pynchon, etc.) And I don’t know what to do about images.

Huygens You really shouldn’t put the words of others in my mouth, even if I do not have one. The California sun makes palm trees of us all. It isn’t that non-knowledge is not nowhere. What are love songs? Science is fiction. Fuck, now I am putting words in my mouth. What is that tradition?

Palladio That is religious superstition.

Huygens Here, wait, I’ll help you off with your pants.

Act 1

Scene 2

Roses that smell like roses

Around the world it is Sunday. This means little but that growling motors of industry hides behind hardly conceivable monsters. Not as the future, but the forever-extension of whatever you would call this passing for now. Mutated cacti celebrate their gods (born 141 years ago, two days from “now”). Livestreaming, livetweeting, but hardly living, the electric flashing thundernet of ubiquitous connection lights up the electric city, only some hundred miles off. The remains of the black Trans Am, (the eagle on the hood not hardly visible, nor the Coors in the trunk) sends out shivering shadows, tentatively searching for the least possibility of undoing.

Palladio I read, somewhere: I don't want to explain; I want to tell a story I know, it was a specific “answer” here for this one thing, this time, but (you have written that before, haven’t you? Now, if I am right about that…), this is what I am getting at. This is what I need. Even if theformat of the “story” is not straightforward. Fuck explanations. And the co-creation, complicity in/of/to power, through fiction, through our “answer” to power is…mhm … I don’t think you’ll agree here…but I think…maybe …not sure…this would be my the-artist-is-not-responsible. The art is a machine. You use it, it’s on you. I don’t care about anyone else, and I don’t exist. You grind the machine up on you, and who knows? Who knows what will happen. Mostly shit.

Huygens I don’t agree, of course. How can you not be responsible? But it seems to be what you are thinking anyway. So back the fuck off with this Socratic shit, will you?! Just, get those pants off already! Show me what you want to show! What the fuck do I care about your parody-shit? Bleating, aren’t you? You know perfectly well that Nick Drake killed himself.

Palladio Because… otherwise I get stuck, I can’t do anything: Because I can always find a point of view to undermine what I want to do. There is always a way – and I always seem to see it – to claim what I do is bad/unjustified/wrong/stupid/ugly/useless etc. My fear of judgments. So, I am not sure where I am here. But you made me think this. (not really, but you triggered something). Creation as resistance – and you have to resist, but to resist is to become entangled with, complicit in (whatever you resist). Like, use art to train your resistance muscle (i.e creativity). Art as a hurdle. Build up those legs, etc. But, yes, I totally agree about the wtf is the reason, this public, these people, what can you do in such a space? On violence and all that. (is that why I don’t even?)

Huygens Art, just, I dunno. Just, I need to think of how to talk of this. But this is anti-academics. Or am I so crazy? Is there a serious way to talk of aesthetic pleasure within academics? About producing it, having it? Is this a conjunction of “academics” and a superficial aping of conceptualism – as if that gives permission to be “theoretical” and then abandon other concerns? Like the body, like scraping blood off of the steering wheel. You fear the body.

Palladio No. Or, maybe. Or, I don’t know. Sterling silver, blood, snot, mucous, cum, tears…all of it. The angles of unwanted mysteries?

Huygens …

Palladio Well, maybe. But even saying that is just words. It isn’t the taste of blood in your mouth. Just black-and-white on your screen. I think these questions, I shouldn’t. All of this. Fuckit. I kinda sorta know what I want. That’s good enough.

They kiss again.

Exeunt.