Considering Myself
Axiom: To write about others is a selfish act. Reflection: If I write honestly, it is in jest or for pleasure. Axiom: I cannot express what I truly love. Problem: What is truly?
When I was a teenager I experimented with writing about myself. I attempted to express what I thought to be radical ideas through the limits set by my own life. My conclusion, which I maintain today, is that what I perceived to be radical ideas could not be expressed within the limits of my own life. They were entirely foreign to my personal experience. So I abandoned them. So I tried to abandon them.
Reflection: Everything I write concerns myself, moreorless. Reflection: All of this takes the form of a confession. Problem: To whom do I confess? Axiom: Rhetoric is the framing of ideas in contexts foreign to the life of the speaker. Problem: If, language is not equivalent to life. Then, all language is rhetoric. Therefore, the previous axiom is false. Problem: One cannot express that which is foreign without that very expression causing the thing expressed to no longer be foreign. Reflection: And so on.
SPEAKING
"Yes, the best thing is to return to Lesson One. And this business of returning is just a figure of speech because we can't be sure that we ever passed by that lesson. It certainly isn't in the program nor should it be. I am referring to Lesson One of our subject for future historians. Everything that we are going to do could be useless or end up in an etcetera, and this could be good or it could be stupid, depending on the contents, quality and impulse of the etcetera. Have you ever thought, sirs, of how terrible it is to say '… and so forth'? Just as when we say, '… forever and ever'. This could be a marvel of stars and of centuries but it could be something trivial, empty, unbearable as well. Let us specify. I am referring, I insist, to our specific subject. What difference does it make if I continue talking or if I stop, and that you pay attention to me or not, facing forwards or sideways?" says Don Julián in Rafael Dieste's TALES AND INVENTIONS OF FÉLIX MURIEL.
Axiom: Every conflict is ultimately a problem of communciation. Problem: Will everything I do end up in an etcetera? Reflection: No.
In October, 2010 I arrived in Asheville, North Carolina to put on a play. The play was written to take the place of a panel discussion about contemporary anarchist practice. The characters in the play corresponded to the real participants on the panel, as well as two members of the audience. The arguments by the characters corresponded roughly to the ideas of the panelists. The panelists were not given the script until five minutes before the panel was to begin, and when they saw it, all of them refused to read from it, despite the script containing many of their objections to scriptedness. I chose to read from the script anyway, though I was nearly prevented from doing so. My script elicited a few laughs in what was otherwise a boring and unheated exchange of fantasies. A few people talked about performing the script later, but they did not do so. The script was never made available online.
Trivial. Empty. Unbearable. Let us specify.
