Speak, Tongue
(As now the Heart - already always - has been broken)

It is not nor it cannot come to good:But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue. (William Shakespeare – Hamlet Act I, Scene II, 158-159)

1. Jean-Luc Nancy & Art

we try to remember
the moment movement motion
no, not the moment
let it better be the origin
the gap la brèche la béance peut-être l’océan
we know it is neither a promising beginning nor an end
that heals and frees
no Archè no Telos
in no way does it refer to time
it is καιρός not χρόνος
anyhow not at all that time that equals space
it is what our gaze sees through the window
then when its hope is realized just to see nothing at all
that what our faces on our ID-card see and grasp (and kill without any mercy)
neither miracle nor prodigy
we cannot escape
and not try to remember
that primal scene cette présence cruelle muette et absurde
(and scene became theatre)
(and voice became language)
(and sound became music)
(and eye became eyesight)
we first saw ourselves as that strange marvellous monster
it was at night when light had died already for more than one or two hours
when no light allowed us to see all the things we were not
when the only thing we could see was our imagination
das Ungeheure
when we left ourselves and stood there in front of ourselves
(we were not laughing we were not crying)
we were no longer in ourselves we were out of ourselves
we were that blind mute silent deaf thing
we were no longer (only) inside but merely outside
something had extracted us from ourselves
like a portrait or a photograph extracts someone from himself
we saw that strangeness
that strange scary monster
us were shown and opened
(something resurrected that never hung on any cross)
(something took a step forwards)
it was ourselves and it was not ourselves
we became seers of ourselves but the seers were not ourselves
we could caress it and we could clasp it to our bosom
and
it could caress us and clasp us to its bosom
and then it passed
it was a passage (an event?)
that night
we went back to the cave there where there was no light
we went back to the cave
no to eat or to drink or to make tools or to chase game or to make love
we never did anything in the cave
we went back to the cave only just and simply to see ourselves
and
we left a trace on the wall
so that we could see that what cannot be seen by anyone of us
we left a trace on the wall not an image
only an exposure a passage
(Chauvet, Cosquer, Lascaux, Altamira)
just as we made music to hear that what cannot be heard by anyone of us
[…]
we engaged in the investigation of the vestiges
we lost the world there never was a world
we lost the cosmos there never was a cosmos
we never offered anyone blood, toil, tears, and sweat
how would we ever dare?
we lost the divine order and coherence of things
there never was such a divinity
we lost the system’s totality there never were was such a totality
only a nothing an immonde an immondice
a passing monstrosity marvellously pure fresh and clean
a nice trace a brute rudiment a bare remnant
the ruins of some former ruins
and from then on
we condemned ourselves as criminals having committed a crime
we sentenced ourselves to life imprisonment
we did it to them
and they did it to us
et ils passèrent des menottes aux fleurs (Fernando Arrabal, 1969)
you did it to me
and i did it to you
[…]
lying in my bed
i am inside and outside myself
i smile i am free of all those centuries of burden
and i forget i no longer try to remember
i have already forgotten what i have written above
anyhow it was but a trace a vestige
some smoke without fire
i cease to be i livei live in a state of first class dementia
neither in reason nor out of reason
neither nostalgia nor melancholy
i am no more nor less than the experience of some whatever
i was born to be whatever
and to die whatever death
i am not a flower
i am not busy pissing in the ISS
now
now that i have finished myself
now that i am perfect
i disappear immediately
i am no longer nor do i become
a trace missing its origin
a thought that reflects no Idea
a model without copies copies without a model
a surface without the illusions of depth and ground
a surface being itself an illusion (David Hockney)
living in the cave
watching staring gazing at the wall
and even the trace without origin
disappears slips away vanishes

(if i was able to say that i am demented
i would not be demented)
(maybe i am just offline)
the bed absorbs me finally years after it has banned me
it opens all of its gates
and no one any longer can see or tell
where the bed begins and i end
or where i begin and the bed ends
out of space and out of time
i cease to be a point or to be a line
i cease to be an arrow
i am no longer the one that i am not
neither inside myself nor outside myself
i simply ceaseas art ceases to be Art
what seemingly but not obviously remains
is that marvellous monstrous trace

a whatever an il y a
oddly off
(28-29 August 2009



Eric Rosseel
http://zarathoestra.wordpress.com