Kathleen ROONEY & Elisa GABBERT
DIAGONAL LINES ARE DYNAMIC
The "I don't know what" to taking an enduring
"I don't know what" is a line of rebels rising behind
the heat-shimmery horizon. What the camera sees,
the mind unravels. I still can't find the water's
edge, or the border of the frame. For the good
of the class, I make no suggestions that aren't also
double entendres. Sometimes we have a hateful
debate about the value of debates: Gold
standards can't stop downturns in the general
morale, & kids who are scheming to be adults
sometimes fail at growing up. Holden Caulfield
gets an A for banging his head against a wall.
But I'm feeling banal, semi-kicking my sense of self
to provide punctuation for my lateness. The first
tenet of Auteur Theory is in the Cahiers du cinéma,
so when in doubt, shout something French. A blank
in a workbook begs to be struck through. A portrait
w/o a frame begs to be stolen, looking so naked
& nimble on the floor against the wall. Sometimes
I step out into the hall, become a symbol,
& the lockers wave open & shut, signify back at me.
Other times, it's like a still life. Like I'm hardly
more than a well-placed skull.
THERE ARE NO STARS IN ANY OF THE PHOTOS
In the uncut version, I cut right through
the empty lobby. It doesn't hurt, just kind of
renders the thing obsolete. This is a documentary
that's going to teach no one anything.
That's about all I can reveal; we don't know
ourselves—familiar yet peculiar between
the hotel sheets, the hotel TV off &
reflecting our own reflections, all convex
& perplexing. We totally freak out
when the power goes out & then the phone
rings. One of the rules was Don't ever stay
the same; keep changing, so—out of boredom—
that's what we did. A sign on the coffee
maker will only convey so much authority.
Beyond the hills out there, maybe the highway
is decisive, but in here, life is an inexact
sequence of unrelated events. When we learned
the task of the artist is the education of
the masses, we wondered which classes—working?
middle?—felt special. But alone. An empty
set. The hidden cameras & the obvious
cameras, side by side, must make the crew curious,
but this is as much about the human condition
as it is about inertia: an extended stay in ignorance.
BRAINLOCK
I made a list of the "charming" things I've done
while ingratiating myself & I couldn't exhaust it,
as much as I gave myself the benefit of the doubt.
From the vantage point of some expressway,
I spun out. What really flashes through your
field of vision when confronted w/ absolute
darkness is not a mysterious light, like they say,
but a boring gray, a deliquescing expanse.
The basics of sex, learning to dance. Words
are not horses, but they do have ultimately useless
beauty. These & other things occur but are not
quite feelings to me ... will I keep on spinning?
Is the guardrail guarding anything or am I
some kind of omnipotent being? The optical
illusion is actually 3-D—I can touch the blocks.
I'm going crazy. I miss my sense of disproportion.
I'm afraid of dying obscure & dispirited. If I could
do it all again, I wouldn't. Or else be someone
else. Last night I checked, & checked again,
but this morning my phone was not in my hand,
where I keep it as an obstacle to too much sleep.
Wake up restless. Turn off the white noise
machine. My morning ritual sunsets the bad
dreams, & my days persist in calm obsoleteness.