bucknbury

this is the oppressor’s language / yet I need it to talk to you

I want to suggest an intimacy between anxiety and hope. In having hope we become anxious, because hope involves wanting something that might or might not happen. Hope is about desiring the ‘might,’ which is only ‘might’ if it keeps open the possibility of the ‘might not.’

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

They are our creatures, clover, and they love us Through the long summer meadows’ diesel fumes. Smooth as their scent and contours clear however Less than enough to compensate for names. Jagged are names and not our creatures Either in kind or movement like the flowers. Raised voices in a car or by a river Remind us of the world that is not ours. Silence in grass and solace in blank verdure Summon the frightful glare of nouns and nerves. The gentle foal linguistically wounded Squeals like a car’s brakes Like our twisted words.