there's our catastrophe

On the Suicide of the Refugee W.B. // Bertolt Brecht

I’m told you raised your hand against yourself
Anticipating the butcher
After eight years in exile, observing the rise of the enemy
Then at last, brought up against an impassable barrier
You passed, they say, a passable one.

Empires collapse. Gang leaders
Are strutting about like statesmen. The People
Can no longer be seen under all these armaments

So the future lies in darkness and the forces of right
Are weak. All this was plain to you
When you destroyed a torturable body.

Anonymous asked: What are your thoughts on Jenny Holzer, then?

I think some of her work is incredible, especially the pieces with her own original texts.  I’ve been obsessed with her Inflammatory Essays for years.

(I’m also really into “destroy superabundance” but it’s kind of dangerous reading if you have any kind of mental illness linked to ideas of purity or asceticism.)

But some of her recent works, especially around the “war on terror”, have felt a bit lazy to me — simple quotation of other texts, without particularly interesting recontextualisation — it feels like she’s trading on her reputation.  Also, I am often disappointed in her more explicitly political statements and actions.  When she’s not speaking vaguely, allusively, elliptically, imitatively, she comes off like any other out of touch left-liberal white First World art dickhead.  I’ve talked a bit more about this here. 

the city in which I love you//li-young lee

And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
and I mount the scabbed streets,
the long shouts of avenues,
and tunnel sunken night in search of you…

That I negotiate fog, bituminous
rain ringing like teeth into the beggar’s tin,
or two men jackaling a third in some alley
weirdly lit by a couch on fire, that I
drag my extinction in search of you…

Past the guarded schoolyards, the boarded-up churches, swastikaed
synagogues, defended houses of worship, past
newspapered windows of tenements, along the violated,
the prosecuted citizenry, throughout this
storied, buttressed, scavenged, policed
city I call home, in which I am a guest…

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Foreign Wife Elegy//Yuko Taniguchi

My language has its own world
where he doesn’t know how to live,
but he should learn my language;
then he can call my mother to say
that I am dead. I drive too fast
and someone else drives too fast
and we crash on the icy road.
The death sweeps me away.
He can tell this to my mother
if he learns my language.
Her large yellow voice travels
and hits his body, but at least she knows
that I am dead, and if I die,
I want him to tell my mother
with his deep voice shaking.

joanne burns, accessories

you like it? it’s my favourite necklace. and popular too. everyone likes it — even better than my jade one. though it’s not such a deep green. it’s quite valuable. i was really lucky to get it. a friend, George, gave me some pieces of what looked like glass and i had them made up into this necklace at the jewellers. George said the glass came from the test site of the first atom bomb. you know, THE bomb. way back in the forties. apparently this stuff the necklace is made of is called trinitite, after trinity, the name of the site. such a cute name. George said there was so much heat in the bomb the desert sands hardened into this green glassy stuff that’s here on my neck. some say it looks like the glass from those old coca cola bottles. you know this necklace has a really magnetic effect on people, even strangers who don’t know its history stare at it. the first night i wore it — to a family wedding — it was such a hit. a businessman i met in hawaii last summer offered me the earth for it when i told him its history. but i wouldn’t sell. it’s far too original.

2 Girls, Ania Walwicz

2 girls. 1 girl and another 1 girl. That makes 2 altogether. That makes 2. 2 is a bad number. I don’t like 2 now. 1 girl. I can have 1 girl. But I don’t want 2 girls. I don’t want 2 girls. It’s alright to have 1. But 2 is no good. 2 is bad to me. There were 2 girls. I only want 1 girl at a time. I want 1 girl only. There were these 2 girls. A 1 and a 2. A 1 and a 2. I had nothing to do with this. I didn’t do it. I didn’t know it. It happened to me. How can I have 2 girls when there is only enough room for 1 girl in me. For me.  How can I have 2. Only 2 arms 2 legs. Where can I put the other 2. 4 eyes in my mirror. 4 legs. I get to be a dog. Can’t stand up at all. There was girl 1.  That I was to begin with. There there was the girl 2 in me. I had to have more clothes for them both. Different ones for each. Girl 1 clothes and girl 2 clothes. Girl 1 that I was wore old ones and different. Girl 2 wore what anybody else. Tartan skirts my mother made nice and clean and not really me. I didn’t like girl 2. I only liked girl 1. I was girl 1. To begin. I was girl number 1. I start as 1. I begin 1. I began 1. I started 1. I was only 1. I get born 1. I never lost 1. Not completely. I was only 1. I had that 1. I love 1 only. I was 1. In bits and pieces. In parts. At times longer or shorter. I hid in my corner. While girl 2 took over. Girl 2 took me. Girl 2 was a model girl. 2 was somebody else that grew in me. Girl 2 was an act girl. 2 was a cover girl. 2 was a mask I had at the start. Then she got stronger. Girl 2 got big and bigger. Girl 2 was my sister. Girl 2 wasn’t me.  I was told to be a good girl. I was a bad girl. Girl 1 was a bad girl. Girl 2 was good. What is good. I wanted to be good. I wanted them to let me be. I was going to hide till it was time to leave home. I was going to get another girl on me to cover me on top of me to act me that wasn’t really. To hide in and on. I invent girl 2 to be an act to be in. To act somebody else. To get by. To hide. So they wouldn’t hurt the girl 1. So the girl 1 stays safe until it’s time to go away to leave home. I was going to be girl 2 to protect me. To be girl 2 only surface. Cover girl 2 was an act a lie.  When you lie you start to believe that it’s really true. When you lie all the time you don’t know where you are. Girl 2 that began as a mask grew on my face. Girl 1 was me. Girl 2 was another. Was my bad mother. I was 2 girls all the time. I go out of focus. I get double. Before I was only 1. I was single. Then I got to be 2. And 2 and 2. I tried to be my sister. To lie the good girl. Don’t be too clever be nice. Not too clever. Girl 1 is clever and me. Girl 1 says what I think. Girl 1 didn’t get on. Girl 1. They didn’t like girl 1 at all. Girl 1 is quick. 1 does what she wants. Girl 2 was slow and cute girl. 2 is like a girl is supposed to. Girl 2 did what she was told. Girl 2 was stupid and good. Girl 2 as all pleasant and please. Girl 2 loves her mommy. Girl 1 doesn’t. Girl 1 hides behind girl 2. That is only an act that becomes her. I had 2 girls in my bed. We wore the same shoes. At the same time. Girl 2 lives in a dream. Hazy. She can’t think. She can only do what other people tell her to. I made her up. She took me over. 

this starts strongly but I’m pretty disappointed by the way it develops — specifically the good girl/bad girl dichotomy and the specific characteristics attributed to each and the way girl 1 is presented as the underneath, authentic self.  it’s a bit cliche, I think, a bit cringeworthy, but mostly it just doesn’t resonate with me.  Like, many women I know have a massive case of imposter syndrome, but they most often think it’s their clever, quick, flashy, offbeat self that is the act, the mask.  I guess that is about the world, though, not the family, and this is a poem about dissembling within the family home. whatever, no reading is definitive, no experience is universal, etc. 

even so, I’ve been thinking about this poem a lot today.  I keep returning to the feeling Walwicz conveys of the divided self as two individuals in a suffocating relationship, or two different love interests chasing you: “I had 2 girls in my bed.  We wore the same shoes.  At the same time.”  to me this is about queerness, I guess, and internalised homophobia.  when I think about presenting different selves to the world I think a lot about sexuality, presenting a straight self, being pursued by your other self — by another girl, by the idea of girls, by girls together, 2 girls.  and also more generally of something seemingly apart from you that is revealed as a part of you. 

but the thing I am particularly struck by is the sense of being overfull and invaded and bursting at the seams that Walwicz attaches to multiple identities and forms of self-presentation — the sense of having multiple bodies trying to occupy the same space, of having too much body (2 much body).  “How can I have 2. Only 2 arms 2 legs. Where can I put the other 2. 4 eyes in my mirror. 4 legs. I get to be a dog. Can’t stand up at all.” ugh, yes.