There
is nothing more normal than the Swiss. There is no reason for them to
die, so they are more terrifying in a way. They are us.
— Christian Boltanski
This much we understand: the desire of
not wanting
to die, of avoiding death
as much as possible. Which is the same.
Which is: how it rises, how it widens.
How, if the winds drag another shutter open
then it is
only air that holds us above the billow
of clotheslines: chimney-slant, open-winged.
And if this is the end, hand us a blanket
and sing about
the city, its smoke of brick
and knife fights on the wharves.
This we understand: each thing is of itself.
Each thing is its end.
In the cupped palm of a cup: at the corner
of corners:
in the light of light: we stand
on roofs in the rain and watch the clouds move
through the city because it is this that lets us move on.
The delicate map of breath on a window
is no longer
ours when it leaves us.
The skin of a plum, the inside of a mouth.
We hang on so tight to them our fingers
mold into
their shapes and we become them:
a violin's case open and empty,
a cloth to
wipe the sweat, the rosin.
Penciled marks to remember
where to pause,
where to end...
You and I, we want the same thing, the same ending.
And
in this wanting lies a failure
to see clearly, straight to the thing,
to
the light that illuminates us
on the street, crouching low
against the
walls of a pub in a strange country.
Maybe Switzerland, maybe not.
Either way, we are drunk in the rain.
The knives
in our pockets begin to sing
and we know the cobblestones are not ours,
the doors
to the barrel-maker's warehouse
are open but they are not ours
and the want bursts in our pockets
like a plum
as we sit and mumble
about the weather, about our lives.
And we hate each other for not dying.
And for dying.
____
This assortment of words is loosely (and
perhaps poorly) based on Christian Boltanski's installation Reserve:
La Suisse mort, an amazing assemblage of hundreds of rusting tin
boxes, each attached with an anonymous photo found in the obituary section
of Swiss newspapers. Boltanski is one of my few heroes. Feel free to make
him one of yours, too.
Boltanski on Boltanski:
" A large part of my activity has to do with the idea of biography,
but biography that is totally false, and that is presented as false, with
all kinds of false evidence. You find this throughout my life: the nonexistence
of the person in question. The more people speak of Christian Boltanski,
the less he exists. The more biographies and texts there are, the more
the man becomes mythical. There is, for example, a little book from 1972,
which shows Christian Boltanski at various ages, but it's never the same
person—each time it's actually a different child. Photography is
used to furnish a proof, and the proofs are always false." |