PUBLISHED IN YALE PAPRIKA “FIGMENTS” 

I notice I am being overcharged for my coffee, but I still tap my card. The screen on the credit card reader glitches when I hover over it due to, I guess, some kind of magnetization. A split-second glimpse of a primordial residue in the flow of optimized life. I don’t say anything until after I pay. The manager arrives with annoyance in his tone at the new hire and I offer not to accept the partial refund, but accept it nonetheless.

I sit in the corner booth, a persisting unease prevents me from reading or writing as I intended to and my mind drifts towards fragments of the absolute. I think about the ghostly signals that govern me beneath the veil. About the technology of nature and its omnipresent influence on my impulses. I no longer have reason to be here.

I think about my thoughtless walk here. How often I’ve left the house with no destination, always ending up at one of three places. Today, again, the expensive Japanese cafe. It is as though there is an invisible tunnel that connects my house here. In this tunnel I have no ideas, no perception, no momentum — just an infinite music library pulled from the air to pacify me. It is now raining outside, though I could’ve sworn it was sunny on my way here.

I have always been drawn to the glitch. The rarity of a glitch. I have always liked working on my obsolete laptop, forcing programs to overload into technicolor hellscapes. I like visual failure— programmed, definable failure. A sort-of rhizomatic collaboration between my own futility and the futility of a robot. And I think maybe the true function of forming a routine is to allow us to finding meaning; new movements at the breaking points.

 VINTAGE HAS USURPED NEWNESS BUT CURATION IS ALWAYS DECAY. IN CURATING AN IDENTITY THE SELF IS GLIMPSED IN THE LAPSES.
IT IS EASY TO OVERVALUE AN OBJECT THAT HAS ALREADY STOOD THE TEST OF TIME BUT IT IS BETTER TO LET THINGS REST.
I FEAR STILLNESS EVEN THOUGH I SHOULDN’T. I ENJOY WHEN I GET TO EXPERIENCE IT MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD.
LAYING UNDER A COMFORTER IN THE DAYTIME IS SOMETIMES AN EXAMPLE OF FEELING STILLNESS BUT IT IS NOT GUARANTEED.
THE SOLITARY ARTIST SHOULD ONLY ACCEPT COMPELLED ACTION IF THEY PLAN TO UNDERMINE THE ACT WITH THEIR METHOD.
TO PRESENT/DECLARE AS A SOLITARY ARTIST WAS ONCE AN ACT OF REBELLION BUT IS NOW A TRAGIC DEFAULT.
AI HAS BIRTHED HYPERABSTRACTION BUT THIS WILL CHANGE AFTER THE ARTISTS UNDERSTAND IT BETTER AS A TOOL.
I’VE ROMANTICZED ABSTRACTION BY VISUALIZING IT AS A FOG, BUT AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF DIRECTIONLESSNESS IS AN EARLY DEATH.
I NOW KNOW IT WAS NOT A FOG, IT WAS FROST. THEN, LAYERS OF ICE OBSCURING THE TRUTH. NOW, FIRE IN THE HEART.
WHY DO I SEE MYSELF ONLY IN THE MIRRORZONE OF A PARADOX?
THE GLOW FROM POOLS OF SCAREDTHOUGHT REFLECTING EACHOTHER IS FLUORESCENCE. THE GLOW OF A SHARED MEMORY IS PHOSPHORESCENCE.
THE TRUTH REMAINS AFTER AN ACT OF DECOMPLICATION. DECOMPLICATION MUST START FROM A POINT OF TOTAL COMPLICATION.
I STILL WANT IT ALL. I WAS 18 WHEN I FIRST TOLD MYSELF THAT BUT RECENTLY RENEOGTIATIED WHAT IT MEANT.    

The nauseatingly vague phrase “the best ability is availability” has crept its way up from varsity coach proverb to the whiteboards of the digital world. The instinctive tension we feel for not keeping up with the speed of our vast social sharing in our professional or private practice is leading us to a quiet, shared mania— Cultivating in a countercurrent of hermitic idealism that breathes dry ennui into the minds of many young, creative human beings.

In this prolonged stillness I have seen the smoke clear, it has shown me that this paralyzing disdain is just a phantom presence. Ghosts of agencies past. Chronic affect from the legerdemain of the capital-focused. Fragmented memories of the unholy brief-deadline-invoice trinity. No one is actually watching me but my own self. Stuck in a juggle of spectator, judge and performer. There is exit

It was only in the Real of fiction and rare coordination in nature’s chaos that I was able to recalibrate. Otherwise, swimming in the grey void.

/

When I received these transmissions I felt it. To be involved in the eternal journey towards deciphering interconnectedness. To be total. To be buried in it again and to care about it all. 

In my estimation, the modern freelancer has more in common with an on-call medic than any sort of definition of freedom. In service of no one thing but to every one. Dreadful but anxiously tethered. Swayed by poison seeds. Conditioned by the hype glow that we can be too late for our own creative intuition. Corrupted, automated words. Decaying in wait.

We can be steadfast in our stillness. Let it die ringing. We can be steadfast in our hyper-production even. We can fix our own speed. Sometimes it feels like drowning, but we can collect from the deep waters of our void. Sometimes boredom dominates. Not all boredom is created equal. The boredom of excess is far more boring than the boredom of lack. Sometimes it feels like there are two worlds. Sometimes I understand there is only one. We can reflect off of the mirrors of others. Ancient mirrors. There is the chain that shakes — It doesn’t require you.

I woke up from a nap on a train once — still at full speed, after a disorienting shift in my physical reality I had realized this momentum was just another train passing while we were stopped at an intermediary station. The sun soaked gentle flow of the invasive wheatgrass species stuck me as immensely beautiful and in a daze I totally absorbed the stillness of the universe.