silikon sueños, vol. 3
At 5 a.m., my eyes opened on the realization that my brain has a great many dreams about houses—vast, strange, dark houses that sprawl with intricate, crooked floorplan layouts and multiple levels. Passageways that twist and angle. Hidden rooms. Lots of tilting. Always a sense of foreboding, the awareness of secret chambers, the ever-present threat of getting lost. These are not just physical structures, they are alive, they are menacing, they breathe around me, and they often shift and morph around me, too.
Long afterward—sometimes even years later—I can clearly conjure specific rooms, hallways, wall colors, stairwells, of a particular “dream house.” These are dark spaces, internal, psychic heterotopias that overflow with meaning. Each dream gives rise to a completely new, unique house. But they are never “new” in a temporal/historical sense—they are always in a state of decay, with peeling paint, dust, walls in disrepair, exposed wiring. They seem always on the verge of collapse. Stuffed with disused, broken antique objects and draped paintings, they are often held together by old repair jobs left half-finished, or half-begun. The “newness” of these houses lies not in their state, but only in their being new to me, spaces that I have never experienced or known before.
And yet, even in this, there is the hint that they might not be new at all, that they are already mapped on the peripheries of my memory, that this is never the first time I move inside them, nor they inside me, even if I cannot remember any other. For these are spaces of decay and disuse, but they are alive with memory, a memory that is broad, and so vague, that I cannot distinguish whose it is. It is multiple—my memory, your memory, the memories of strangers, the memories of all of us.
But how to distinguish between them, when all overlap and intertwine, when all memory is an oscillation?
As I move through them, it is as if I am scraping up against the damp memories of countless, vague lives that have lived these spaces, moving through the traces of the psyches of all those previous inhabitants, and those who still wander these passageways and unlit rooms with me. The spaces are still alive with the passages of bodies, their emotional landscapes and articulations, their interior traumas. Sometimes, the previous inhabitants are people that I can recognize as having known in my life; more often, they are total strangers, or, even more strange, people that I have never met, but that I know with absolute certainty that I will meet and know well in the future. There is the sense of knowing them retroactively from an (un)imagined future—they are people that I have indeed known, but only from some future point that I have yet to reach.
I move through these dark houses; I find myself lost at some point, or unable to exit, even if I can see outside through a window or other opening. There is the awareness of some kind of social gathering—a party, a discussion—in a nearby room. I can hear it, and I can feel it and sense the emotional experiences of those in the room. But I catch only glimpses of these rooms, snatches of sound from behind walls or doors. There is, as always, the awareness that I will not be able to find my way through the labyrinth of passages to the right door where the gathering is taking place, or, that I am too distracted by some other task to even bother looking. I am busy looking for something, or preoccupied with trying to get something to work, or to find a way out, or fix some element that has fallen apart, or ceased ticking.
At those times, though, when I have entered these social spaces, I move through the groupings of people unnoticed and uncommunicative, swiftly. I flicker. Our shadows overlap, our movements intersect; always, we are one another’s perpetual blind spots.
*
THESE ACTIVITIES LEAVE THE BODY DULL & THE BRAIN STUPEFIED.
*
These conspiracies are in plain sight, right in front of our eyes.
There is no need to dig around the archive, or beyond the archive, into classified documents and rescinded texts.
You will not find the evidence in grainy footage, building blueprints, subtle discrepancies.
It is much more transparent than that. In fact, it is completely transparent. It is all around you. It is in the mirror.
Who do you see when you look in the mirror?
Everything, everyone, everywhere—all of it is a vast Inside Job.
This conspiracy operates with complete transparency. It reveals itself more and more with each unfolding. Only the shadows that it casts are opaque, and these find their source in the light from your own gaze. You stare beyond the object at the shadow that the reflected light from your own eyes casts. You search there for evidence of hidden motives. But nothing is hidden, all is laid out in plain view. This conspiracy is clear and visible at every moment.
So, who creates it? Who deploys it? Who manifests it?
You think that there will be a way out. You think that a moment of enlightenment will free you. You think that a time will come when you will have the ability to fully realize your self and actualize your desires for freedom. You move through space hyperaware of your alienation, your isolation, but convinced that at some point, you will find other ways of being, seeing, interacting, and you will be able to put them into practice in your own life. This group. That ideology. These beliefs. Those tactics. Spiritual leaders, revolutionist screeds, rock music, fashion, communal gatherings, the aesthetics of the avant-garde . You walk through the city from one site to another, seeing, gathering, accumulating, discarding. I do not drive. I only buy food at the farmer’s market. I don’t eat any animal products. I compost. I ride a bicycle. I make/sew/brew/assemble/publish my own __________________. I have an organic garden. I advocate for prisoners' rights. I screen films. I forward text messages about state-terrorist raids on undocumented communities. I document the resistant practices of my people. I record the sounds of those who have lost their ability to properly function in, and successfully navigate, the parameters of city space. I tag the city with subversive graffiti. I tag cyberspace with virtual text. I distribute anti-state literature. I vote. I don’t vote. I live out the tangled performance of a multitude of contradictions. I talk about evading surveillance detection as I move through an intricate, vastly complicated system of ubiquitous cameras and other recording devices.
You do all of these things, you do nothing. You buy things, you go to meetings, you create art, you host parties, you strum your jarana, you stomp your feet, you run into people, you get on the bus, you get off the bus—none of it, none of it will get you anywhere.
Because there is no escape, there is no way out.
It is all alienation, it is all the violence of isolated, desensitized bodies bouncing ruthlessly off one another.
None of it will get you anywhere.
None of it will get you anywhere.
All that you can do now is walk, keep walking, oscillate between the one and the zero, first one foot, then the other foot, propel yourself on the flicker, tightrope it above the void, don’t look up, and do not stop.
Because there is no way out, but there may be mutations here.
There may not be mutations.
But there may be mutations.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
references
WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE
LIGHT IN AUGUST
UNNATURAL FORMATIONS: CHILDREN OF THE DARK HOUSE
MICHEL FOUCAULT: “OF OTHER SPACES”
MICHEL DE CERTEAU: “WALKING IN THE CITY” (THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE)
BLADE RUNNER
Long afterward—sometimes even years later—I can clearly conjure specific rooms, hallways, wall colors, stairwells, of a particular “dream house.” These are dark spaces, internal, psychic heterotopias that overflow with meaning. Each dream gives rise to a completely new, unique house. But they are never “new” in a temporal/historical sense—they are always in a state of decay, with peeling paint, dust, walls in disrepair, exposed wiring. They seem always on the verge of collapse. Stuffed with disused, broken antique objects and draped paintings, they are often held together by old repair jobs left half-finished, or half-begun. The “newness” of these houses lies not in their state, but only in their being new to me, spaces that I have never experienced or known before.
And yet, even in this, there is the hint that they might not be new at all, that they are already mapped on the peripheries of my memory, that this is never the first time I move inside them, nor they inside me, even if I cannot remember any other. For these are spaces of decay and disuse, but they are alive with memory, a memory that is broad, and so vague, that I cannot distinguish whose it is. It is multiple—my memory, your memory, the memories of strangers, the memories of all of us.
But how to distinguish between them, when all overlap and intertwine, when all memory is an oscillation?
As I move through them, it is as if I am scraping up against the damp memories of countless, vague lives that have lived these spaces, moving through the traces of the psyches of all those previous inhabitants, and those who still wander these passageways and unlit rooms with me. The spaces are still alive with the passages of bodies, their emotional landscapes and articulations, their interior traumas. Sometimes, the previous inhabitants are people that I can recognize as having known in my life; more often, they are total strangers, or, even more strange, people that I have never met, but that I know with absolute certainty that I will meet and know well in the future. There is the sense of knowing them retroactively from an (un)imagined future—they are people that I have indeed known, but only from some future point that I have yet to reach.
I move through these dark houses; I find myself lost at some point, or unable to exit, even if I can see outside through a window or other opening. There is the awareness of some kind of social gathering—a party, a discussion—in a nearby room. I can hear it, and I can feel it and sense the emotional experiences of those in the room. But I catch only glimpses of these rooms, snatches of sound from behind walls or doors. There is, as always, the awareness that I will not be able to find my way through the labyrinth of passages to the right door where the gathering is taking place, or, that I am too distracted by some other task to even bother looking. I am busy looking for something, or preoccupied with trying to get something to work, or to find a way out, or fix some element that has fallen apart, or ceased ticking.
At those times, though, when I have entered these social spaces, I move through the groupings of people unnoticed and uncommunicative, swiftly. I flicker. Our shadows overlap, our movements intersect; always, we are one another’s perpetual blind spots.
*
THESE ACTIVITIES LEAVE THE BODY DULL & THE BRAIN STUPEFIED.
*
These conspiracies are in plain sight, right in front of our eyes.
There is no need to dig around the archive, or beyond the archive, into classified documents and rescinded texts.
You will not find the evidence in grainy footage, building blueprints, subtle discrepancies.
It is much more transparent than that. In fact, it is completely transparent. It is all around you. It is in the mirror.
Who do you see when you look in the mirror?
Everything, everyone, everywhere—all of it is a vast Inside Job.
This conspiracy operates with complete transparency. It reveals itself more and more with each unfolding. Only the shadows that it casts are opaque, and these find their source in the light from your own gaze. You stare beyond the object at the shadow that the reflected light from your own eyes casts. You search there for evidence of hidden motives. But nothing is hidden, all is laid out in plain view. This conspiracy is clear and visible at every moment.
So, who creates it? Who deploys it? Who manifests it?
You think that there will be a way out. You think that a moment of enlightenment will free you. You think that a time will come when you will have the ability to fully realize your self and actualize your desires for freedom. You move through space hyperaware of your alienation, your isolation, but convinced that at some point, you will find other ways of being, seeing, interacting, and you will be able to put them into practice in your own life. This group. That ideology. These beliefs. Those tactics. Spiritual leaders, revolutionist screeds, rock music, fashion, communal gatherings, the aesthetics of the avant-garde . You walk through the city from one site to another, seeing, gathering, accumulating, discarding. I do not drive. I only buy food at the farmer’s market. I don’t eat any animal products. I compost. I ride a bicycle. I make/sew/brew/assemble/publish my own __________________. I have an organic garden. I advocate for prisoners' rights. I screen films. I forward text messages about state-terrorist raids on undocumented communities. I document the resistant practices of my people. I record the sounds of those who have lost their ability to properly function in, and successfully navigate, the parameters of city space. I tag the city with subversive graffiti. I tag cyberspace with virtual text. I distribute anti-state literature. I vote. I don’t vote. I live out the tangled performance of a multitude of contradictions. I talk about evading surveillance detection as I move through an intricate, vastly complicated system of ubiquitous cameras and other recording devices.
You do all of these things, you do nothing. You buy things, you go to meetings, you create art, you host parties, you strum your jarana, you stomp your feet, you run into people, you get on the bus, you get off the bus—none of it, none of it will get you anywhere.
Because there is no escape, there is no way out.
It is all alienation, it is all the violence of isolated, desensitized bodies bouncing ruthlessly off one another.
None of it will get you anywhere.
None of it will get you anywhere.
All that you can do now is walk, keep walking, oscillate between the one and the zero, first one foot, then the other foot, propel yourself on the flicker, tightrope it above the void, don’t look up, and do not stop.
Because there is no way out, but there may be mutations here.
There may not be mutations.
But there may be mutations.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
references
WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE
LIGHT IN AUGUST
UNNATURAL FORMATIONS: CHILDREN OF THE DARK HOUSE
MICHEL FOUCAULT: “OF OTHER SPACES”
MICHEL DE CERTEAU: “WALKING IN THE CITY” (THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE)
BLADE RUNNER
posted by kualyque at 17:18
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