9/27/12

My hands are not that big.

Michaela Murphy graciously wrote this text for our inaugural show.  It's so great.  The show ends October 7.



My hands are not that big.

Joel asked me to write about love. I am inclined to begin with an excuse: I am the wrong person to write about this. (Who is the right might be a trickier question.) By definition or rather, by nature, love linguistically is an excess, the point where the prior capacity or descriptive capability is breached. Language stalls. Mine is no exception. I initially tried to pass the idea off, hoping to exempt myself of interaction, tried to incite conversations decidedly dead on arrival. Then I just gave up.

Q:
“I don’t know where I'm aiming. It’s so huge, I can’t fit my arms around it.”

A:
“Well, that’s kind of it, isn’t it?”

Banal platitudes have turned my tolerance to zero, and I’m gagging on cue. When belief is bankrupt, where do we turn? I turned to text. Joel, I turned to our old faithful, Lauren Berlant, who delivered what upon first appearance is a ham-fisted aphorism. In repeated readings, it unmasks itself as appropriately clumsy: The book of love is sad and boring, no one can lift the damn thing.
[I realize a month later the line is lifted from Stephin Merritt. A pop song has always already beat me to the punch.]
Hasn't everything been said on the subject of love?
I am exhausted. There is nothing to be said, and certainly not from me. I tried to say feelings but it came out failings.
Someone recently compared me to the Citadel. I do not need to elaborate.

It is not the idea, but the upkeep that is difficult.

I think when Joel said love (at least this time), I think he meant attachment and not love. The way we bind ourselves to scenes, people, objects. It's hard. It's hard. We are always so inadequate. Attachment allows us occasion for excuses. (Appropriate). Distortions are expected in this realm of relation presupposing need. You say connection, I say projection. The tone is taking a turn towards black and white. Shit. Should I rephrase? Where do we locate the line between love and attachment? Why am I looking? For what? How did I end up here, do we end up, in love? I think sometimes we back into it. As we go through the motions, we find ourselves subscribed suddenly. It's a form of faith that makes its own meaning.

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