You really pour yourself into something when there’s no money to make things.

— Róisín Murphy

 You’re not free to say a lot of things. You notice it in every single crisis that pops up

— Laurie Anderson

 there’s such silence about the pandemic in art. After 9/11, we built two towers of white light to represent the people who died. We shine them again every year. With Covid, nothing. Why are people so silent?

— Laurie Anderson

 Art should have a mood, I think, before it has anything. That can unlock personal revelations for people.

— Róisín Murphy

 Creating a kind of dreamlike situation which works in sound and image, that conspires to take the listener into another less judgmental place…

— Laurie Anderson

“Oh, this is why I’m doing this. Love: that’s why.”

— Laurie Anderson on the death of Hal Willner from COVID

try to tell the truth. But the real thing I have to say is just try to really like and love yourself, because if you don’t, it will be so much harder. Realise that you already are perfect and you don’t have to worry about anything. Take that as a starting point. That kind of sounds idiotic, but advice is idiotic!

— Laurie Anderson

the way creatives are going at the moment, they don’t need my advice. They see all this straight away. “I’ll do it myself, I’ll make a movie one day, I’ll do whatever I want to do.”

— Róisín Murphy

there it is, the answer to the anodyne pap being served out as cultural commentary

here

and the answer is …

POP

no but really, really consider this critical moment. Yes, it’s always a critical moment. The present is a problem time.

Read this if you want to know about problems.

so how it works is the present critical moment throws into question all the preceding stories-we-tell-ourselves-to-put-ourselves-to-sleep-at-night and so that we can.

pomo, postmodernism celebrated the end of the master narratives. No more authoritative version. No absolute truth. Just egos puffed up and wanting to dominate, dominate the narrative.

The present critical moment throws into question, celebrates throwing into question ALL THE MINOR NARRATIVES.

the minor narratives are the ones we whisper to ourselves, like it’s going to be all right

like lullabies, the infantile babbling … of what used to be called the inner child now in this critical present moment DOMINANT,

fattened on narcissistic narratives of identity the inner child …

is now THE political representative. Is OUR political representative.

so how it works is the present critical moment puts the problem

and putting the problem opens what is called a solution space

putting the problem sets the terms to articulate the problem

what is the problem?

it’s not absence of creative opportunity

it’s absence of opportune creativity.

return to top, reader. Read how it’s done …

that Anne Carson wrote for her brother, the epitaph, ... I was trying to find a name. 

a name for new project, a photographic project. I have never, in fact I have avoided photoing
people | as much as I have avoided proper names, in places. Places... as Carson writes, Places in

         the world where we saw things.                               In places I've not a-

voided it at all and that is because in those places the people have died. , so reading on
I made the following notes                                              in case something
   
jumped out.                        It hasn't happened yet.

Anne Carson: I didn’t know the for ld print black on the film did you? /and: it is for God to fix the time who knows no time /and: the sheets of memory blow on the line /: a room, where one gropes for the light switch. /in the face if [sic] what has just been said/: the word, discandied, melted, … /:haec adversaria sunt menstrua illae aeternae these adversities are monthly, those eternal. /:As in some cave may lie a lightless pool./: omne supervacuum pleno de pectore manat the whole pointless night seeps out of the heart. /: ave … (on sepulchral monuments) now it is night. /: …[something] [something] the stairwell [where he was when his mother with her hands crying What now oh what now?]

Si pour un fois de nouveau le regard bleu dans le sac rempli de poussière–je parle de moi, j’ai le droit–cette attente, cette patience–si pour une fois de nouveau–qui me comprend?–je pale des jouets brisés, je parle d’un sac noir, je parle d’une attente, je parle de moi, je peux le faire, je dois le faire. Si tout ce que j’appelle ne vient pas une seule fois encore quelqu’un devra rire, quelqu’un devra fêter une blague atroce–je parle de la lumière sale qui courre à travers la poussière, les yeux blue qui patientent. Qui me comprend? Une seule fois encore la petite main entre les jouets brisés, le regard de celle qui attend, écoute, comprend. Les yeux bleus comme une réponse à cette mort qui est à côté de moi, qui me parle et c’est moi. Si pour une fois de nouveau mes yeux terrestres, ma tête enfoncée dans un sac noir, mes yeux bleus qui savent lire ce qui exprime la poussière, sa lementable écriture. Si pour une fois encore.

— Alejandra Pizarnik

If for once again the blue gaze inside this sack full of dust–I speak of myself, I have the right–this expectation, this patience–if for once again–who understands me?–I speak of broken toys, of a black sack, of an expectation, I speak of myself, I can do it, I ought to do it. If everything I call doesn’t come to me just once again, someone will have to laugh, someone will have to toast with an atrocious joke–I speak of dust riven with sullen light, blue eyes patiently marking time. Who understands me? Just once again the small hand among broken toys, regard of her who waits, listens, understands. Blue eyes as a response to this death right next to me, which speaks to me and is me. If for once my earthen eyes, my head stuffed in a black sack, my blue eyes which can read what dust scrawls, its pathetic handwriting. If again each time.

— trans. Forrest Gander