writing experiments from creative process
alys longley
Something about calculation
something about the things that evade
that ceaselessly evade calculation
and the stuff you need to be able to count
for the communicating of a situation, for the noticing of a situation,
but you can't quite
calculate
this spill of crossing out of dignity and into
it is excessive
and it is exceeding
all you can do is helplessly register the excess
these cascading states of emergency
the cut between the banal and the extraordinary
the unforseeable distances
the city as a petri dish
for change
where the singular and collective bodies are just so deeply confused
as to be indistinguishable
donde los cuerpos singulares y colectivos están tan profundamente confundidos como para ser indistinguible
the state that we are exhaled by place
el estado en que nos exhala el lugar
We stand in for others, we're
Defendemos a los demás, somos
thrust inside alien languages. We
empujado dentro de lenguas extrañas. Nosotros
embody a population.
encarnar una población.
The only words available
Las únicas palabras disponibles
are produced by this deeply singular set of interior bruises
son producidos por este conjunto de contusiones interiores profundamente singulares
this particular organisation of veins.
Esta organización particular de las venas.
Your train eloped with all the carbon
tu tren se escapó con todo el carbono
it left this intangible distance in its wake
dejó esta distancia intangible a su paso
it left again and again
se fue una y otra vez
always late
siempre tarde
always a metonymy
siempre una metonimia
Extracellular punctuation, singular rules crossing continents, bound for misapplication
Puntuación extracelular, reglas singulares que cruzan continentes, con destino a una aplicación incorrecta
balloon blooms/
flores de globos /
epic sharing
intercambio épico
across the other countries we all are
en todos los demás países todos somos
The crest of time between us travels in tipping points
we need salt for our hearts to continue their baselines
Language becomes vibration
the relays to which we are accustomed slow and shred
our voices crest across auditory canals and circles of narrative
are spooling, we can't tell the difference
between injury and motion
the trajectory is clear in its swell
but not its equation
and this is a mathematics that can't really be measured
it's a tidal thing
these felt numbers
creasing and pushing the shared pumps of our collective body,
somewhere quite elseward
somewhere quite else
All the things we haven’t said
We haven’t talked about the drawn-out political negotiations between the governments of Peru and Chile, over who owns a triangle of ocean, marked out in the sand, and filmed from above.
We haven’t talked about this performance as a kind of mapping of intangible things, things that are too complicated to say directly, things that perhaps can only be addressed through evocation and suggestion.
We haven’t talked about the role of artistic practices in creating ethnographies that resist the colonial imperative of clarity.
We haven’t talked about the demarcation of nation states as the result of political games of chance.
We haven’t talked about collaborating across oceans and sharing ideas via Google Translate, how we have made the possibility of collaboration come alive despite not having all the words we need to carry all the things we want to say.
There are so many things we haven’t said explicitly, but instead we have offered you a series of fragments,
a series of presencings – moments born from reflecting on the lines between and the lines that join, the mesh works that cross date lines and oceans,
embodied by no one, possessed by no one,
that bind us and separate us in the wash of time.
the other country that you are/este otro pais que tu eres
these bacterial forces that feel like emotions/estas fuerzas bacterianas que se sienten como emociones
and move us in bewildering riptides, weaving a mesh of routes through a mesh of cities| y nos movilizan desconcertados por la corriente, tejiendo una red de rutas a traves de una red de ciudades
where the singular and collective bodies are just so deeply confused
as to be indistinguishable| donde el cuerpo singular y el cuerpo colectivo estan tan profundamente confundidos que ya no se pueden distinguir
the state that we are exhaled by place
el estado en que nos exhala el lugar
/ We stand in for others/
/ Representamos a los demás
we wonder if the logic of bullets has formed our grammar /
/ nos preguntamos si la lógica de las balas ha formado nuestra gramática
which now needs urgent medical attention/ from student doctors wearing makeshift medic uniforms/ we break the language a little with the sound of pans and spoons, endlessly calling us/ untethered / together
/ que ahora necesita atención médica urgente / de estudiantes médicos que usan uniformes médicos improvisados / rompemos un poco el lenguaje con el sonido de sartenes y cucharas, llamándonos sin cesar / sin ataduras / juntos