Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.58.0403130254130.12999@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Playnt
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 02:54:22 -0500 (EST)
Playnt I'm selfish and I'm tired. When I die I'll sleep an eternal sleep. I'll have no choice but to sleep and sleep and sleep. I'm selfish, I keep waiting for my due, for my books to appear, for Marjorie Perloff to pat me on the shoulder, for a MacArthur grant, for Katherine Hayles to realize I have something to say, for something that might get me out of debt. I help everyone I can, and there are so many people who don't like me, precisely because of this, my incessant posting, my whining, my obvious depressions, my aggressions, my acerbic nature. At the last few conferences, I've been in troubles, sometimes I think I'm invited only out of guilt by someone or other. All I can fall back on is my work, and what does that amount to, if I'm in everyone's kill file, if I'm not in bookstores or Kim's video or Target? I keep putting out trash-work, hoping someone will see the value in it. I think I should disguise this playnt by coding and recoding cleverly - as if my own works had any significance in the first place. In any case, as soon as I'm dead it will all disappear. Look at the fury of the world around us. We keep placing ourselves out 'there' for no reason at all. Even rebellion is stillborn, the enemy has literally billions to push its way through our hearts and minds. So my own quibbles mean nothing in this regard. But I want to present my work in a clean and proper way, I still want, at 61, to teach a class in media, in experimental work, I still want, at 61, to receive my first grant for my work since 1976, to see my book on a bookshelf in a nice store with someone looking through the pages; I still want, at 61, before I can no longer think, to find my soundwork at Kim's Video or Target or Borders, my images in a wonderfully prepared and printed book, my audience not one I have to force myself onto; at 61, I'm so so tired, bone-tired, death-tired, fear-tired, sick-tired, of self-justification, self-explanation, self-critique, self-theory, ugly and useless self-promotion, as if this narcissistic hole-in-the-wall is all there is ___