Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.40.0112180251420.14888-100000@panix2.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: CYBERMIND@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Subject: Florid
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 02:51:55 -0500
- Florid Florid0: Water, ripples: i can't remember anything any more. one person's disaster is another person's pleasure. everyone has had us, azure writes, writes alan. there is too much water in the world, it flattens everything. Florida: Azure, pool-side, jeans, red blouse pulled up, mad (crazed) look in her eyes, seated: i'll drown myself and then i'll drown you Floridb: Same as above, looking at camera: then i'll drown everybody else Floridc: Pool interior, distorted, from within: you're out here i can feel you Floridd: Pool edge, ripples in blue-green water, like skin: then i'll drown everyone else Floride: Azure at pool edge, same as above, leaning back into the water, camera head-on: late at night i lie here and i think of you, john, and i think of you, susan, and i think of you, david, i think of you fucking me, and i fall backwards and i drown myself and i will take you, i will take you with me Floridf: Same as above, camera from side, Azure's face ecstatic, ripples in blue-green water, like skin: i am thinking of you, may, and i am thinking of you, george, and i am thinking, your mouths are on me, your dead eyes are looking at me, you are fucking me hard, you are dying there Floridg: Alan, leaning back into water, t-shirt and black jeans, exposed, shot from side, water black: i'm thinking about everything, i'm writing you into this, the way the world is, is awful, i'm out of control, i'm aroused and writing this, this is from my state to your own Floridh: Azure, exposed, shot from beneath by pool-side, black background: cynthia, i want your tongue against me alan, please don't be upset, jack, alan write me down, peter, azure inscribes me, i am everything you want, i am everything you could possibly want Floridi: Azure, still naked from waist down, astride pool-side left-hand beach chair, blue shirt (right-hand chair empty, partially visible): i am mad. i am completely out of my mind. Floridj: Alan naked, lying back, right-hand beach chair (left-hand beach chair empty, partially visible), camera head-on: i'm writing this, azure in the drowning pool, she takes her lovers with her, she says, they're not as good as you are, they couldn't be, they're down there, she's pointing, i'm aroused, this is the beginning of the game, this is the ending: how the world works and everyone dies Floridk: Two empty beach chairs, adjustable actually, the right-hand one partially supine, the left-hand one partially erect, no text. Analysis: Azure and I live alone together. We have no friends. I think: We are horrors. Again and again our story turns on us. Our story repeats like a bad record. Our story decays. We go for a drive. We drive long and hard and nowhere. There is nowhere to go. We return home. Sometimes I go and teach. I face students. We leave. We get in the car and drive long and hard and nowhere. We go and return and look at each other. We stare at each other. We wrestle each other to the ground. We take our clothes off. We put them on. We strangle ourselves. We turn ourselves inside out. We are walking advertisements for art and poetry. I swim in the black pool, the blue-green pool like skin. I swim two lengths beneath the surface. I have heard you can pass out and keep swimming. You can be swimming and drowning underwater. The surface looks: You are alive, you are perfect person. The depth looks up: You are still swimming and you are drowning. How can you drown in so much beauty. We go to the pool and photograph. We return for image and text, for art and poetry, for gimp and photoshop, for perl and protocol, for process and program. Online we teeter on the brink of culture. It is at the edge of the pool. The edge is an outline of water. The apartment complex is Everglades reclaimed. At night I dream alligators. I am ungainly; I can move fast, strike. No one is here. I am thick-scaled, reptilian. My brain slips to edges. My brain swims. My brain swims beneath. Analysis: Too much work on exposure. Too much exhibitionism, too much exhibition. As if the body could be fixed, pierced, held in position. As if the world were pure exchange. What other information we might provide. Too many circuits of sexual tension, terror, power, language withdrawn in the other face of the body, the other body of the face. Work a caricature of itself. Stale work. Work which should have remained stillborn. Dead work. Repetitive work. Work of the reflex arc, work of the twitch. Analysis: Tearing apart, artist and model. The apartment is silent. Azure reads upstairs; I type this on a laptop borrowed from the university. The university has closed down new media. New media is tainted, condemned. Images leak out: Our exposure is that of the naughty politics of the world. I keep quiet about my work at the school. I show no one. I am close to slaughter. I continue to swim submerged. At the edge, I will push and push off. I will make the other side. _