We slip through our own fingers in bluest forget-me-nots, and keep on slipping wondering where the falling leads.

Artwork by Chua Ek Kay
We slip through our own fingers in bluest forget-me-nots, and keep on slipping wondering where the falling leads.

Artwork by Chua Ek Kay
Time, the sound of time racing through our ears, slipping past us, children’s bicycles the sound of brrrrrringgg brrrrrringggg, bells on bicycles brrrrrringgging, and the children become more or less old then more or less dead and we hold funerals for bicycle bells and old dead children, old, new, alive, dead, terms of flippant interchangeability, rabid the rainwater flees down the drain hissing like pissed off baby snakes, at our funerals the cheery racket of bicycle bells bringing us back to life brrrrrrringgg brrrrrringgg even if for just a few fictitiously warm seconds.

Artwork by Louis Jover
There is the future. There is other future when tramps ambling shuffle-footed across failed roads, across dust-pecked destinies, along citywalks imitating lizard-toed pigeons, tramps with newspaper hats and brown bag hearts billowing and contracting and reeking of long past lunchrooms, these tramps molded into aluminum foil busts and scrap heap sculptures, we don’t remember them, but there is this word—tramp—it was a word once upon a time, a designation, a class, a dead word with spited history and fleas, and when I see myself projected into the boxcar, the cameras following me, I will look around and smell around and hear around, and the word tramp will be resurrected as living homage, and there will be one, a rare yet archetypal specimen, with a too tight calico vest corseting his girlish frame, a doll’s wiggly fish of a moustache, dark, hyphenated, and there will be torn baggy trousers, a dusty bowler, lopsided bowtie, and this tramp will expose me to famous golden silence, the ultimate celebrity of all silences, and the stalking camera will proceed to zoom in on the tramp’s ghost-born face to show long opaque eyelashes and impish glee making of his features a creased cakewalk, and in our communal boxcar he will penguin-waddle from one end of the car to the other, and again the same splay-footed strut repeated, tirelessly, he is saying without words, with his feet functioning as mode of speech—How you walk in the world is everything. And then as our train rumbles thunderstruck along the tracks, there will be time allotted for further tutelage, he the tramp will teach me how to fall, how to take falls, the fall is all, it is the be-all end-all, how to walk, how to fall, how to execute these things and conjure the spirit of your own indefatigable tramp in a world that once upon a time roasted tramps on spits, or spit on them directly, or simply erased tramp from the vocabulary of the every day. You, he will announce through his famous golden silence, you will learn how to walk in this world and fall in this world as this is all there ever was or ever will be.

In the beginning the dreaming not the word. The word came later. It came whenever and betrayed silence and this was the beginning of fiction. Now you’ve got what passes for a world of dreaming of fiction and parallels splintered into multiples merging. Metaphors moved worlds. People grew from wilds. From the bones of sound. Someone heard someone else talking and that someone and someone else were born through listening and talking. When this happened no one knows. To say it happened a long time ago or that it has yet to happen amount to one and the same thing. The bones of sound rest on symmetry. Time is required to keep a beat a rhythm yet music itself resounds timelessly. Symmetry is proof of the dreaming. Within the dreaming there are many stories beginnings parallels multiples and everything everywhere dreaming going on dreaming going on dreaming going on. The bones of sound endless. Symmetry indivisible. Let me tell you a story someone once said and in telling this story they were also saying Let me tell you a story about me telling you a story. In the telling is the me and the me and you. In the telling parallels merge then split and merge again endlessly. Stories cannot die. They are the impossible.

Painting by Jackson Pollock
Our lot is a sorry one also blessed. None of us object. Out here we feast on slimming heaps of gratitude. No one is greedy. No one complains. We no longer expect answers from the answerless even though we keep asking our voices parroting empty exercise. Like practicing scales in a small mirrorless bathroom. With no alibis forthcoming. Daily savvy is our moveable manger. We merge as best we can. A sorry lot but yes blessed. Texts to be read aloud inside your head. This the music the proof of lasting born. From the volumes of echoes cycling we heard it said If music be the proof of love then play on. We can’t discern the source of that voice saying what was said. The volumes of echoes comprised of many voices with no citations no references no footnotes no anything to dissimulate one voice from another from the next. None of the voices attached to name. The volume of echoes being a catalog a compendium of anonymous voices forever auditioning. But to go back to what we heard said If music be the proof of love then play on. We decided this was us from what we were made. The gist of our essence raveled in this core phrase. We have become a hymnal species kissing our motherless want on the lips.

Artwork by Cris Qualiana
It has become hymnal. The lasting proof. The lusting after the lasting proof the music. This is not proust. Then again everything is proust because everyone in search of lost time cycling through guises manias assassins guesses all the rest. Blessed be the alchemy of our gist our lore. We the cause the effect with hymns seeding. On the ninth day everyone revolted realizing there wasn’t gonna be a tenth. In truth no days at all no edges so everyone went on as is. And went on going on. From the pinched nipples of clouds we received this pearl this chance glisten To cherish to bless is all. We held that in store in our chests. The lot of us trespassers fools tramps. From the grainy past from the sourced cinema of our graves the image of the ringleader the anointed one with the too tight calico vest crooked bowtie torn baggy trousers spindly joints dustcaked bowler clipped stache the one deathless in the annals of burlesque. The camera followed him as it does us. The camera hissing like snakes in rapture like rain pelting slats. The camera’s sleepless eye of many minds conjuring all at once. Perpetuity of simultaneities the cause the effect. The camera our deadly ally our fiend. We must remain hymnal in our creed. The camera doesn’t want our words. The only time our tramp idols spoke was when he sang otherwise nonsense otherwise mute and ambling onward with pluck and vim.

Painting by Van Gogh
We recall fondly. We recollect. The good old days in which we titled windmills redolently and rode clanging dusty boxcars across the glaring horizontal spread of america. What a lay we said hitching up our pants sticking our peckers into every gopher hole and indian eardrum we could wrestle or manage. The good old days an unrolling panoramic canvas of america painted over with screaming reds graying blues mudpacked browns other colors running together like luxuries found lost. We posed as stiff hipped sheriffs marshaling laws to frontiers unexplored my god we were real artists then painting with the light just right to conceal any shadows creeping unwanted across borders. From beyond history I sit here now in this abandoned boxcar a tramp with torn baggy trousers too tight calico vest dustcaked bowler writing songs no one will ever sing or listen to but that’s fine just fine. A train trackless running outside of time is concerned solely with mythology. Mythology in this case being the preset moment expended upon infinitely within the mantling of lore.

Photograph by Josef Sudek
Grief lies here like an insomniac pining for sleep. Like scissors running dull to the touch of fate. We paper over grief its ruins and brittle slates with hordes of torn pages. Forget me nots band aids christ sporting a porn stache. In this romance worn down to plots of kitsch. With words amassing to memorialize to clarify the haul of plague doctors wandering roadsides barking Bring out yer dead Bring our yer dead. Ten pages twenty thirty. Nothing novel here. The words both deed and barrow to the bones. We give graves to our young. Our candles rage mirages that merge with fall winds. Beneath the shadow of all things moving we incubate. We are sworn to the word to worlds unseen because the rules of the game assure us that paper covers rock. Grief an insomniac attending its own coma nightly. From near distances we keep close watch.

Installation by Yoko Ono