Thu, 19 May 2005

Dances for Variant Anatomies
Injury to the wrist and palm can be a serious thing. Not even taking into consideration the dangers of carpal tunnel and repetitive stress, anything in or by which the hand may be crushed, punctured or torn is a constant threat to anyone who uses their hands regularly. As such, they are prime targets for anyone who would want to do such a person malicious harm. Take, for instance, my previous girlfriend meghan, who had the odd habit of throwing items for purchase to me in the supermarket. “Heads up! It’s rutabaga!” she’d laugh, sending vegetables hurtling towards me at high speed. At the time, I thought of this as just another example of how Meghan was all fucked up in the head, but now I am certain she was deliberately attempting to cause me permanent nerve damage in my hands.

My friend William would listen to my explanations as to Meghan’s systematic attacks on my hands and tell me this was yet another example of how I had no appreciation for the women in my life and how fortunate I was to be in my position. William is a crybaby who spends the majority of his time alone in his room staring at a wall and wondering why he’s never met anyone, so his take on such issues is fundamentally flawed, having never been in my position. I knew this before I brought up the subject, but had hoped perhaps he’d have some side-door into the subject: having no actual personality gives William a strange perspective on issues, occasionally, but not this time. As such, I knew the only person I could actually talk to as Meghan, who took my concerns with that air of bemused indifference which left no doubt as to her implication in the crimes against my hands.

“Meghan, if I ask you a question, will you respond honestly?”

“Maybe. You’ll never know. No, I’m kidding, yeah, shoot.”

“Are you attempting to destroy me?”

“I don’t think so. There’s really nothing in destroying you for me, is the thing. Do you wanna be destroyed? I have this friend in Buffalo…”

“Good lord no, that’s the thing! If you destroyed me, I couldn’t work with my hands, couldn’t get the process in motion.”

“What? What do you mean, ‘work with your hands’? Do you a job of some sort now?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean, you verminous harlot! The Work! The Great Work!”

“Oooooh, okay, The Great Work. That explains everything.”

I suppose, for the sake of context, I should explain The Great Work. This may take some time.

On a fundamental level my life is predicated on the notion that all things can be used to provide insight into situations I do not understand. Anything can serve as a theoretical model, and once such a model is held in the mind’s eye, solutions to problems arise spontaneously. Some objects serve more aptly as models for theoretical problem-solving than others, obviously, and this is where The Great Work comes in.

The Great Work is a machine I have built from an old metal carousel, run by two double-a batteries, whose horses have been replaced by wire and plastic locusts, an image from a dream I had often as a child. The carousel is incomplete, however, as I have not yet been able to create the sound these locusts made, which is integral to the function of the piece as a thought-model. My attempts to make field recordings, while certainly of interest themselves, have not matched the ferocity and metallic nature of the clicks and hums from the dream: it was as thought the locusts were made of bits of copper and tin, rusted and worn. I spend my weekends sifting through thrift stores, yard sales, warehouses, looking for a means of recreating that specific sound.

Meghan, in her nature, thought this was preposterous.

“So why not just make it with a computer? Just whip up a file and mess with it until it sounds right?”

“Because. Because it needs to be generated from an actual physical object in order to work. Are you not paying attention?”

“But you’re never going to find anything that sounds right. Maybe you don’t remember it all that well and you can trick yourself into thinking, like, ‘Okay, this sounds like the dream’, but really it won’t, you know, because nobody’s built anything for that, or like that.”

“Exactly! There’s some thing, some child’s toy, and though they never knew when they were making it, they made it so it’d sound *exactly* like in my dream! That’s the magic of it!”

“Why does something always have to be something else? Why can’t anything ever just be what it is?”

At which point our conversations always broke down. It was ludicrous to even start, but we did it, again and again. Perhaps we were bored. Like William and I. It’s something of a wonder I talk to anyone at all.
(12:05.05.19.2005) [/alpha] #