You Not There (triptych)

1.

Can you imagine your life without you in it? I can. And cannot. Can and cannot, because when I am not there, who is doing the saying, who the authoring, who or what the voice? You must imagine yourself from all angles, in this case gone from your life, yet the narrator, the voice, continues to go on and on about your life. It has something to say whether you are there or not. It continues whether you are a ghost, a rumor, a zombie, an avatar … choose your calling or guise, it doesn’t matter. The voice, in its power of unlimited speech, eclipses your personal ending every time.

2.

Imagine that you are not there. You are no longer taking up primary residence and occupancy in this thing called your life. You are gone. Yet you hear echoes spanning an archive. A voice, an existential device, a neutral orator, speaks on your behalf, in Memoria. You get to outlive your death, outlast your ending, which is pretty cool. You departing your life did not spell out The End. Imagine yourself talking about yourself to someone else, not unlike you, but somehow truer, better. A more reliable source. In becoming the witness to the witness, you drift a little further away from your so-called life, this drifting both glacial and cinematic. It would serve you well to remember that: the drifting is both glacial and cinematic.

3.

Imagine your life without you in it, or imagine your life without your life, it seems impossible, how can one imagine such a thing, doesn’t the exclusion and evisceration of you consequently preclude the imagining, the capacity for imagining? No. You must imagine beyond those limits. We are pushing you beyond your comfort zone, we know.  We are asking you to become you-less just long enough to experience what might become a revelation. Or a waste of time. Subjectivity is in the I of the beholder.

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About John Biscello

Originally from Brooklyn, NY, writer, poet, performer, and playwright, John Biscello, has lived in the high-desert grunge-wonderland of Taos, New Mexico since 2001. He is the author of four novels, Broken Land, a Brooklyn Tale, Raking the Dust, Nocturne Variations, and No Man’s Brooklyn; a collection of stories, Freeze Tag, two poetry collections, Arclight and Moonglow on Mercy Street; and a fable, The Jackdaw and the Doll, illustrated by Izumi Yokoyama. He also adapted classic fables, which were paired with the vintage illustrations of artist, Paul Bransom, for the collection: Once Upon a Time, Classic Fables Reimagined. His produced, full-length plays include: LOBSTERS ON ICE, ADAGIO FOR STRAYS, THE BEST MEDICINE, ZEITGEIST, U.S.A., and WEREWOLVES DON’T WALTZ.
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