Audio: Read by the author.
A human is not such a perfect machine.
I didn’t design it for interaction particularly
with other machines—not closely—not non-stop.
I made the campfire, for example, to be nature’s
television but with a human being basically
I was thinking of a tree, of what a tree needs.
A root system, distance, light and air. Even living
you are tearing through something made not
of particles but of the relations between them.
This morning, it really does seem necessary
to tell you, I made the mist lie above the contours
of the forest in the precise shape of the remains
of a poster a boy is ripping from a plywood siding
on Rue du Regard in the Sixth Arrondissement.
As to the question of pain—why it hurts, why
sometimes we crave it—I have here a number
of promising leads but the matter is dark, so
called because it does not interact with light.
As you know there is no decent performance
without restraint. And all these polyphonic
symphonies it should not be possible to generate
by one person alone and yet—and yet—and yet
when any of you come into my presence
the room takes on a new tone. I did my best
in the sense I didn’t underestimate the depths
of tenderness an animal—almost any animal—
might stir in us like color into paint. I gave you
that, and if I slept in a stone or slept in a bomb,
or slept over a brothel during the gold rush,
if I slept in a cave in the mountain of Ulrith—
what I dreamt of was myself as a child of three
or four standing on the top step, dressed for bed,
weeping inconsolably and still getting yelled at.
