Wednesday, November 25, 2009

things as looking up



Not “things are looking up.”

As a kid, I liked to sit on a high branch in a large old tree, quietly as someone walked below not noticing I was there. All I had to do was move or say something, and I’d be discovered. The stealth, the power of secreted presence, was thrilling. I didn’t yet anticipate the archetype, from the cyclicality of life to figures of evolution (invalidated by “lateral gene transfer”) and relations of knowledge infusing one’s subconscious.

Imagine that all the branches are an elaborated website with tens of sections (branches) and tens of pages in each section. Having the tree flourished out before I say I’m here is thrilling. It will be as if I sprang fully formed from the branches, amazing you and a whole netweave of people.

Miranda July, Venice Biennale, 2009

What other reason should one need for loving to write in solitude, obscurity, freedom from the temptation to presume or cater to a given audience? Here, it’s just the things themselves, the light of their appeal,
a self-formativity of things—his little cosmos.

John Hundt, “Boy Genius” (2010)

These are the days before—humble, funny, androgynous.