Tombstone – or ‘Just that enough time has
passed...’
(circa 2018/19; photo: Ben 2019-01-01; below is the text from Luke's BDS
tribute for Ben)
Just that enough time has passed such that another slab of residue can be
removed, smelling of piss and ash. The confidence in depression building
all the time, in other words, my tombstone is steadily rising to meet me
by process of sedimentation.
Knowing "what it is" feels good, not knowing is the worst. By definition,
not being able to properly attribute names to one's anxieties is a
disability with unknowable consequences. The impact can range from feeling
that when someone asks you to *pass the salt* - that some euphemistic
communication that you don't understand is being attempted, to something
like blindly hacking and slashing at those around you to get them "off
your back”.
Quite a range.
Understanding what is your "place" and what is someone else's territory
isn't the same thing as the game of labelling intangible worries to render
them tangible. The former requires the real research, however informal, of
entering different spaces at different times and in different modes,
making comparisons, *testing the water* and repeating already-tried
actions to see if they yield the same result; feeling your way through
assumptions in an absolutely physical way.
Once we're there, and have a somewhere that permits us in our reflective
mode (however it is achieved; by force, by attrition, through the
compassion of others) then work can start on producing sets of names for
things that need looking into.
What most people would call “having somewhere to sleep”. The reason for
making the distinction here is to invite consideration of the
asymptotic(1) space that exists between eyes-open and eyes-closed.
My claim is that it is in this space that names are produced, this is that
space from which names can spring.
Playing a role at all, ever, makes you scum. That means, having it be
possible for you to expel(2) the limits of your self, expression,
manifestation, etc. That means you are sitting back in someone else's
chair, and you know full well that chair is rented.
Fuck you.
And basically all I can do is "E36, they won't let me go forwards so
there's only one option; going sideways, E36". The promise of nothing but
tombstone ahead, just a bug-person in disguise behind some kind of
half-baked royalty-type figure. Flitting from one leaf to the next in
traditional style. Must to go sideways, E36.
Learning to recognise one's own hunger and having the resourcefulness to
address the issue; how we build [a] post-apocalyptic wasteland on top of
the real world. Something approaching illness, not quite it, but too close
for comfort.
"Solutions now!" runs the cry, nothing to be done. Nothing to be done but
wait.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
1 (of a function, series, formula, etc) approaching a given value or
condition, as a variable or an expression containing a variable approaches
a limit, usually infinity. (Mathematics)
2 original text missing, expel is a guess
¡Que haya luz! Kerenza ha yeghes da! Dad/Andrew x
A video of Luke
A variation (the third one I have written) by Andrew
I would like to propose a variation...a bit like
those variations in classical music (I guess)...
...sort of playing from Ben's musical score, and interpreting it to make
explicit the way I play it/the way I read it...
I sometimes try to tell Ben what I think he means in his works -
especially his writing, and this is one of those attempts...