a few million more or less stolen wor(l)ds on working with sébastien chou & time/space travel. (pack your ermines, mary, we're leaving this planet…)
sébastien chou left a comment on my blog a few years back with a link to a short video he had shot to an old audio track of mine he found online. i am running the video in my mind as i write this. i didn't reply but this video remained in my mind for 3 years. sustained. & in this heap of broken images we call the internets: this signified.
yeah: time jumps like some Magic rebound. it is now. i send him a new song i just finished (with christophe van huffel). he sends back a video. i send him another song. he sends back another video. and so it went. and so it goes. and so forth. and so on.
as i continue to work with him i can't help seeing Indra's net stretched so clear right there, right the fuck there where you are now. where we are now. filigree of trade winds. that invisible ese hairnet where all communication is silently happening, has happened, will happen. & it seems (Time, gentlemen) he gets his images there - reaches right up & plucks out the exact that says: is this what you were looking for ? is this what you meant ? like this ?
you know: he gets right at that shit you pretend is not happening. but is all/ways happening. that shit that people are willing to pay you not to notice. the shit which recognizes. the shit that informs. that Real that's encultured out of you in kid prison. the little kid shit you remember when you get real clear. when you become see-through, transparent. as clear as a cut crystal pony. outside of language, outside of space, outside of time. he throws it down, right here, right now, right nowhere every where. revealing: that which transpires behind that which appears.
his photographs too Inform in a way we haven't named yet. necessary because there are no words. trans-trans-lingual. using that very stuff that dreams, clouds, memory & cricket sound are made of. that's as close as i can language it. & these are someone else's words. no doubt. we are all word thieves. tea leaves. & i can see two tiny pictures of what i mean. one in each of your eyes.
the ethereal material Beauty of sébastien's work is way the fuck beside the point, almost a shiny object to distract, pretending to be the thing. no newtonian measuring can get at it. what it's Doing. what it Does. all known parsing strategies fail. sound & image flakes falling. this happening is taking place someplace somewhere else. noplace. where gravity is an add-on. what is happening here is something else entirely. a portal. an event. a verb. his work is Verbing Large & to try & de-scribe it as an object is lost keys the minute you're not looking.
& i'm leaning hard in this doorway. this carnival. & these images whisper. point. signify. testify. remind. pun. ping. forge new neural pathways. this way. this way. over here. remember. invent. discover. this is what you meant. this is what you meant to say. this is. this. this this this this. this this.
i've never talked to sébastien chou. we write emails in languages not our own. the writing is just pretend. a pretense. these our actors etc. we are children pretending. we play work. but: it's already written. my friend. writ large in a puddle of water. clouds moving across the sky. wind through the pine trees reflected in a piece of broken mirror leaning on some crumbling wall in brazil 2012.
all this trouble trying to get you from there to here. reader. all these ridiculous mendicant words worth less ly falling. father points a crook finger at the night sky. look at the pictures, look at the sky, open your mouth in awe and silently mouth the word: owl.
leslie winer
february 2012
vigny, france
Rub out the word - laughable if you will, Leslie - Alan - hear me ?
- Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs (page 24)
For I have known through faulty human equipment the vacant courage to let all messages in and out.
- Mr. Bradley Mr. Martin (hear us through a hole in thin air) WSB
