Spurious

The Waterwheel

Afternoon, the office. Another afternoon, the office ... What day is it? What was I supposed to be doing? Administration, endless administration - but isn't it a relief to have an excuse? To say: what chance did I have to do anything else? To say: I was too busy, I didn't have the time.

A kind of eternity breaks in nonetheless. Breaks apart from moment from moment, separates them and breaks the forward movement of time. The moment droops, falls. The moment contracts into itself and draws the past and future with it. A present without present.

No one here. The afternoon, another afternoon. Who's left here to do anything? Who's left to finish this task, and that one? So I try to gather myself together. Read, I tell myself. Pick up a book. Follow a line of prose. Follow a sentence as it binds itself to another. Follow a little arrow of sense that opens up again the past (what you have read) and a future (what you are going to read).

But that fails, too. I had that little Michael Chion book to read. On The Thin Red Line. I thought, it looks simple enough, I'll read that. Text and photographs. A line of argument (quite free associative, it's true, quite informal, but refreshing for that).

On the desk, far more forbidding: a book on Messianism. A book on Rosenzweig, on Cohen. I pick it up, read a few lines and put it down. What did I read? What did I understand? Nothing, nothing at all. I couldn't be bothered. I wasn't up to it. The book streams above me. The succesion of time streams above me ...

Anyway, I've written this kind of thing before. Over and over again, a thousand times. Until it seems I've written nothing else. And worn writing away. And worn everything away. A thousand blank pages. A million sentences written in the wrong direction.

When's The Kindly Ones going to arrive? When's that going to bind the past and the future for me? When's the moment going to turn, roll, into another moment? When, like a waterwheel, time filling the hollow and rolling it on?

The Threshold

Clearing my throat to say - what? At the threshold of writing, but what to write? And now dream instead of a writing that remains at the threshold, that reports nothing, or, by way of that reportage only announces the simple fact that it was possible.

At the threshold: a crowded office. The Arbus book arrives, another Xmas present. And with it, a letter from Corwood. There's a new Jandek album being packaged: Skirting the Edge: the 60th? the 61st?

Then cardboard packaging, remnants from lunch, jumpers for the cold weather, anti-bacterial cleaner. Sun Kil Moon playing again: 'Lost Verses': wasn't I going to write about that? Wasn't I going to make it my 'song of the year'? Laughter.

Beside me the manuscript with its crossings out and annotations. I haven't worked on it for a while - for how long? There's no time. Or rather, the time you get is so short, too short for anything except standing at the threshold.

Clearing my throat - but to say - what? What was it you wanted to write? To achieve by writing? No matter. What's left: to mark the moment when you could begin, when you drew the day around you and made a space to begin. To begin - and then to end immediately. That's what the day permitted. That's what it took away.

December 12th. Five years ago (nearly five years ...) I began writing here. Five years ago to mark a threshold, the same one I'm marking here. Not to say anything. No communication. Except: it was possible to write. Except: I wanted to write and I wrote.

In the office: six bottles of wine in a cardboard carrier. A post of Neal's Yard moisturiser. An El Vez poster from that shop in Knoxville, peeling from the wall. And this to say: what? That the day and this space could be gathered here. That the day folded itself into a place in which I could write. And then, almost instantaneously, could no longer write.

Empty Pages

Unable to write, or to write anything that would convince me. Which is to say that would have its own kind of life, apart from mine. December 10th - is that the date? Don't I have a deadline for something or another? Two cranes on the skyline. A bright, clear day. I can see all the way to the clouds along the coast.

The office is too big. Too big today, when nothing happens here, when it's all for nothing. Too big - as though it were held up and exposed to something, judged - by the whole sky. I have a manuscript to work on. But it's not really a manuscript, not quite. I want to push it to that stage, when it has its own life, when it is something, apart from me. Only it's not there yet, not close. A few pages with crossings out and annotations. A few dog-eared pages, with scrawlings in pencil and pen.

But there's nothing I can say here that I haven't said better before. Nearly five years since I began - haven't I said it all? Didn't I say it better another time, a year ago, or two years ago? In truth, it's only limping along. In truth, there's nothing new to write, nothing that I haven't done before and better, which is not to say well.

Five years ago ... what was happening then? A different office, three floors down. I was more solitary. No one could have lived that way for long. And now, my new life? A lack of belief in writing. An inability to join word to word. I begin and then stop. Nothing new to be said. Or nothing that does not echo in the direction of something already said, already done.

Why waste time? Why bother? And that 'why bother' disjoins word from word and sentence from sentence. It's too late, it's gone, it's finished. That Bergman Archive book open on the table in my mausoleum-office. I have the money now to buy what I would have visited a bookshop a hundred times to look through. But now I can buy it and open it there on my desk to read, to be read.

The open sky is reading. The space of the office reads. It was a Christmas present, very early. Why did I ask for it? Why did I want it? To want again what I wanted once. To let it flame up in me again, some kind of ardency, some desire. That was one with my desire to make something - a book, perhaps. A 'something' to hold out before me like a torch. Only there's no torch now. The darkness of the manuscript instead. Darkness of printed words in 12 point and crossings out and annotations.

Why bother? Why join sentence to sentence? Nothing to be done. Nothing to be said. Sometimes I read books that sweep me before them. That push me ahead of themselves like terminal moraine. And I feel I can write, that it's possible for me. That sentence might link to sentence and lead somewhere. A torch burns.

And now? Today? I'm not reading any such book. The sky reads Bergman. The near-empty office reads him. I can't read a page. 'Lost Verses' by Sun Kil Moon playing. Didn't I want to write about that, about that song, that album? Laughter: but you won't write about anything. You don't believe in writing. You can't lend it your substance.

Once you were a ghost to writing, and now? No desire to write. Only a desire to desire, to begin again. Only the dream of a reading that would carry you forward, that would give you the strength. To what? To write? You: to write? Laughter. Five years ... although it's fallen away lately. In truth, it's been falling away for a while. You do not deserve an anniversary.

You fell before the line. You crashed down. You didn't last. Your only chance: to read a book that is stronger than you. A succession of books. To give you the strength. To bind sentence to sentence. Faith, belief - that's what you lack, isn't it? The substance of writing? Its content?

When's 2666 going to arrive? When's it going to appear? Because you need it, don't you? A book to believe for you. A book to believe in writing. But when's it going to come? Tomorrow? The day after? And meanwhile, the sky reads you. Meanwhile you are open, empty pages, for the day to turn through.

RINGLETS

Cinema uses your life, not vice versa: that sentence in my notes. To be absolutely within your own creation: that as well. From Marker's film on Tarkovsky? One house - rooms opening onto one another. And: the greats leave us with our freedom. Notes written scrawlwise across the page: continuity of writing - doesn't just double up life. And then - rather pompous - difficulty even reaching a blank page. And underlined: even reaching it. Then in big letters: RINGLETS.

Difficulty of beginning again, even though that 'again' will make no difference to the surface of writing. In what book did I read: months may lie between these sentences? Think of Red Thread(s) and the days and weeks of silence that surrounds each plateau of posts (and the way you have to scroll down the page to find a new post). Is that what you miss when you read blogs through readers (Bloglines, etc.): the space in which nothing begins? But here (at this blog), there is a continuity of writing, a continuity from one block of words to another that can never be interrupted.

A lack of capacity for facial recognition: more notes. People are avoiding us: I made a post out of that ... RINGLETS: next to the words, Idiot Messiah (there are all kinds of Messiahs, W. and I learnt at a conference ...) Stalker - sounds appear and then vanish. Silence - sometimes called 'atmosphere' or 'room tone'. And then: poetic realism. Poetic or symbolic montage.

Red Thread(s):

Regarding sequencing: if I do not look here for awhile, wch tends to be the case -- but if I use this as a notebook, transcribing things here as I might write in project-oriented notebooks -- the red notebook, the blue and orange books; the green one for dialogues... I discover a process of drafting [draughting] at work; moods and breezes dictate a general climate or tone. One item suprisingly connects to its lost predecessor. Another gesture might echo across lines months from now. Somethings lost in the flurries and mists.

To proceed with doubt as a general rule,

Ten Minutes ...

Tuesday morning, ten minutes spare in the office. My stupid notes read: doors creak open by themselves, objects rool about and fall to the floor, they rattle, bird's wings flapping in alcoves, a bird breaks a pane of glass, a lamp goes out and relights itself. Notes from some book or another (which one?)

They continue: dialogue: few looks between people establish a relationship. Protagonists look down wearily or look away from one another. No reaction shots.

And then a quote from Dante: 'in the middle of life's path/ I found myself in a dark forest'. And a quote from Klee (what does it mean): 'distance is time'. And then Tarkovsky (and now I get it: these are all notes from a book on Tarkovsky. Still, though - which one?): 'Artistic creation is by definition a denial of death' (Tarkovsky himself ...)

And a dictionary definition of chiascuro: 'darkness used to enhance sense of light'. And notes about films: Asafayev, weeping and whistling. Kris has a white streak in his hair, like Stalker, like Gorchakov. Off screen sounds used to enlarge space (a train whistle, birds, dogs barking). Flaky, scumbled, textured walls (notes from a book, but which one?).

Ten minutes: I would like to pan through the notebook as Tarkovsky pans. 360 degrees, a writing pan (a post) and take in everything, all the notes and the whole of my life. To open - what - within the day? To open the day itself around a kind of sacrifice, a writing burning. There's a kind of boredom that blows upward like methane released from permafrost. A boredom (is that the word?) that wants only to catch fire.

Works In Progress ...

The effort to begin again. To mark what? To say what? Tuesday afternoon, summer. Tasks I set myself: to organise works in progress into the six drawers of a tallboy. Pompous phrase: works in progress. What does it mean? Bad half essays and bad notes towards essays. I entirely lack the temerity to finish what I've written. I've lacked it for a long time.

Do I believe in what I've done? Did I ever? How did I ever raise myself above the page (rather than being collapsed alongside of it). Above it, and in command, letting sentence follow sentence: how is that possible? How to finish a single, determinate line? Half-essays, notes towards essays, three dots constantly turning any sentence from finishing. A few phrases, and then three dots.

Incomplete thoughts. Thoughts of incompletion, unfinishable, uncontainable. Sentences cored out and worn away. I lack the temerity to finish. The belief. I believe in none of it. Still, there they are, half-essays and notes towards essays. There they are, more than essays in lieu of themselves. Perhaps they believe in me, I tell myself. Didn't I write them? Don't they attest to my power to write? A power, it is true, that has dispersed in all directions.

There's no one here, I tell myself. Perhaps the half essays, the notes towards essays, will bring me back to life, as a mirror image conjuring an original. Once you raised yourself above the page, I tell myself. Once you were capable of that. And now? Every beginning is arbitrary. Nothing can harden itself into a origin.

Half essays, notes towards essays: how to mark what does not allow a beginning? How do you mark it, the incapacity to begin?

To Say ...

Nothing to say. The afternoon, the desk and computer, a pile of CDs (Miles Davis' Dark Magus is playing) ... It still speaks, the nothing that says itself by means of everything (the afternoon, the desk and computer ...). Nothingness that exhausts plots and treatises. Nothing but the 'to say' of language as it says itself between ourselves and what we would say by means of it.

The 'to say': a murmuring before signification, a sonorousness before sense: how is it that the heaviness of language resonates with the heaviness of the day? Ceaseless rain, westerly after westerly: only language is as heavy as the day. Only the 'to say' of language as heavy as the grey clouds, full of rain.

Office Summer

Day after day in the office. Day after day, but it is as though one day buries into another: that days, great sheets of light lose themselves in days, falling without settling. How many years have passed this week?

No meaning in work, no purpose. Administration, endless administration, wearing me away and wearing away everything. Is this the end of something? The endless end, the end that forgot to end.

This a period of unfinished posts - who could gather themselves together on an afternoon to finish something. Who'd have the belief, the drive? Meaningless, all meaningless.

Read Pessoa instead. Pessoa who has strength enough to make the afternoon into a pocket in which to write. Who folds it around him, around Bernardo Soares, the clerk, and writes a book in his name.

We share the same afternoon, I tell myself, Soares and I. Only I lack Pessoa's strength, being unfolded by the same afternoon he was able to draw around himself (around his absence in the shape of Pessoa).

Cranes outside; I'm high up - the sixth floor. All the building and rebuilding. Dust in the air. Very quietly through my computer speakers: a Shostakovich string quartet, the 5th. Books on the other side of the office - what are they? Golding's Free Fall, finished.

Didn't I mean to say the other day something about the Shakespearean distance of his prose (what a stupid phrase)? The sense of a whole other order of talent (another stupid phrase). That a kind of writing was as natural to its author as breathing (what an idiot I am!)? Never mind the plot - what plot was there? And his The Paper Men, next up to read. Aren't I still halfway through Saramago's Blindness? And shouldn't I make a start on The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis? But it's the afternoon, when nothing's possible.

Lie on the floor then, I tell myself. Open up that Cy Twombly catalogue, read that, look at the pictures. Boredom. No, far beyond boredom. In a state known only to advanced monks and administrators. You've worn yourself away, I tell myself. You're just like anyone else, anyone at all. In fact you're more like anyone than anyone.

I go out to buy some water. Dust in the air from the streets. What are they building? Big green cranes. Scaffolding. Some new frame around the station. To open up a greater station inside the station. They did the same in Manchester, I think to myself. A new station in the station, all that retail space, I think. I was there the other day, passing through, I think.

Unfinished posts - how to finish this one? Why bother?

A Holding Pattern

Of course there's something fussily indulgent about placing each post in a category. Nothing worse! It's pure bad faith. There's something of the collector about me - it's revolting. A collector of my own 'work' - what laughter! Work, as if I'd know the meaning of that word!

What day is it? I look at the clock like a sleeper rolling over. It's the afternoon, the afternoon. The day doesn't matter. It's any day, it's everyday. But haven't you said that before? You've said nothing else! Not a thing! And all your categories laid out, your archives! Imagine that, having archives! Who could presume to have archives but you!

But there they are, the archives, the categories, a way of pretending to yourself you've achieved something. But what have you achieved, what really? Swimming in place - is that's what it's called? A holding pattern - that's it, isn't it?

As though it were enough to mark the day by writing. A prisoner marking the wall with a line, and then another - and then, after a few, a scratched line across the others. Except you'll never get there, will you? It's the same line, the same attempt at a line every time. The same attempt to make your mark in the day, when the day is in fact the very impossibility of making such marks, a black surface and nothing else.

Back to your admin, then! Back to it! You love it! You're so good at admin! It keeps you from doing anything, from writing anything! It's a perfect excuse: I've too much admin, when in fact you're relieved that admin exists. For what else would you do in these perfect, open days, the one falling through the other? How else would you pass this expanse of time?  

Passage

No easy way to get back to writing. I had made a mental note to look up Scott Walker's words (at the time of Tilt or The Drift?) of wanting no separation between music and his life, thinking, that's it, that's the beginning of something. ('Is there an element of putting on the work clothes when it's time to record, then?' - 'I'm trying to get rid of that. I'm try to reach a state of neutrality where I'm living my work, existing within it and for it. I'm trying not to make a separation between the two.') What would I have said? No separation between writing and life. The two absolutely equivalent. To write, to live, and both at once.

And another note, this time from Balthus: 'I wanted to paint a dreaming young girl and what passes through her, not the dream itself. The passing therefore, not the dream'. To write about the passing of writing itself, not of what might be written, that's what I would have said. Beginning from the living room, here, the new printer to be used for printing wedding invitations, the dresser, the antique brass lamp brought back from Lisbon. Beginning only to have said it was writing of which I wanted to write - the passing of writing over these and other objects, touching them without disturbing them. Writing as it stays with them, these objects, when I am away.

Then a scribbled note to myself on an old notebook: difficulty of reaching a blank page. Even reaching it. What did I mean? That to bring oneself to the edge of a beginning is already a great deal. That it's enough to mark that beginning, to write to say - nothing in particular. And finally, a thought last night: the impossibility of writing a diary. Of allowing one voice to still itself and speak, usurping all the others. To speak from one voice - it's not enough. The beginning is at the brink of all voices, of any possible voice. And just because it is at that brink, the voice of writing, of writing writing itself, as it allows those voices. Stay close, then, to the possibility of a voice, of writing, where anything you might say will be arbitrary.