A Deeper Shade (for Richard Prince)
or Why I Read in the Dark
by James Adams
He felt like he was reading. White pages, words, some sort of narrative, but not really. Novel?
No, there were sounds and images, too, like a film he'd seen before, but can't remember how it ends.
The buzz of static in his ears; was it the sound of an untuned radio or the hum of his own central
nervous system? If only it were quiet I could get something done.
"Books, pamphlets, periodicals, pornography [...] magazines, movies, t.v., and records,"1 but not
necessarily in that order. He felt as if he were built of these things. Lists. Lists of words,
grocery lists, to-do lists, top-ten lists, lists of important dates, lists of people he knows,
lists of places he's been, lists of places he's never been, lists of things he thought he saw
out of the corner of his eye but weren't there when he turned his head to look, lists of sexual
positions, lists of his favorite philosophers, lists of all the lists he has ever made, and lists of
lists he needs to make before he can finally get started.
Lists of things he thinks are real and another of things he's not so sure about...
"what was given was anything public and what was public was always real."2
But what is public, and what is private? "The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs
which dissimulate that there is nothing, marks the turning point. The first implies a theology of truth
and secrecy (to which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates an age of simulacra and
s(t?)imulation, in which there is no longer any God to recognize his own, nor any last judgement to
separate true from false, the real from its artificial resurrection, since everything is already dead
and risen in advance."3 But then again, he had never read Baudrillard.
He looks at the page, his latest list, as if he were watching television, black and white,
the words vibrating shapes, signs with no relation to anything but other signs. Signs, signs, everywhere a sign...
blocking out reality. He remembered that line or something like it from somewhere,
someplace in his distant past, or at least it seemed like his memory, but perhaps he'd only seen it on television.
When he was nine years old, he fell off the jungle gym and landed face first on the pavement,
breaking out one of his incisors. Blood spurted onto the cement and his head felt like it was on fire. That was real.
When he was ten, a spider crawled into his left ear while he was sleeping on the lawn.
His father punctured the eardrum trying to get it out with a pair of needle-nosed pliers. That was real.
Pain is the biological reminder that things do happen. Violence, war, disease, sunburn,
the passage of time, age, death. It's not cause and effect, but the accumulation of permissive
states coinciding with the dissolution of non-permissive states. Every thing falls into place
as all the obstacles fall away. Then it happens... whatever it is. He adds another entry to his list.
Numbness setting in. The hum is getting louder. Maybe it's just the medication, he thinks. John Cage wanted to
experience true silence. He sought out an anechoic chamber at Harvard University, a room designed to absorb
all reflected sound. Ah, some peace and quiet at last. But after settling into the room, Cage heard a rhythmic pulse
and a buzzing sound...4 Even in the anechoic chamber, isolated from
the external world, there is the sound of your own heart and the sound of electrical current sizzling through
gray and white matter no matter how much you try to flip the switch. You can never escape yourself, buddy boy.
"I have nothing to say and I am saying it."5
UNTEN
Heimgeführt ins Vergessen
das Gast-Gespräch unsrer
langsamen Augen.
Heimgefürht Silbe um Silbe, verteilt
auf die tagblinden Würfel, nach denen
die spielende Hand geift, groß,
im Erwachen.
Und das Zuviel meiner Rede:
angelafert dem kleinen
Kristall in der Tracht deines Schweigens.
6
Perhaps masochism was an option. A sharp blade drawn across the skin, not to deep. Just enough to draw blood.
If he punished himself before they could punish him, wasn't that a kind of radical act? Wouldn't it take away their
power, at least to some degree? A freeing up of possibilities. Does the potential for pleasure lie in pain?
"While the sadian hero subverts the law, the masochist should not by contrast be regarded as gladly submitting to it.
The element of contempt in the submission of the masochist has often been emphasized: his apparent obedience conceals a
criticism and a provocation. He simply attacks the law on another flank [...]
The masochist regards the law as a punitive process and therefore begins by having the
punishment inflicted on himself; once he has undergone the punishment,
he feels that he is allowed or indeed commanded to experience the pleasure that the law was supposed to
forbid."7
And besides, sadism requires so much energy. He adds another entry to his list.
"Wait a moment, I will show you another picture of myself, one that I myself have painted,
and you shall copy it."8
"A painting is done at close range, even if it is seen from a distance.
Similarly, it is said that composers do not hear: they have close-range hearing, whereas listeners
hear from a distance."9
"Boulez says that in a smooth space-time one occupies without counting, whereas in a striated space-time
one counts in order to occupy."10
"What are the consequences?"11
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at his list, wondering if the drugs had taken effect.
"I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in... yeah, yeah," Oh yeah.
12
At one point, he looked out the window at the sun rising over the palm trees and dirty rooftops and thought
how beautiful—how real—it would be, if it were only on film.
Cage gave up on silence and accepted every sound, every bit of noise, as composition,
by design or chance, or by some designed form of chance.
He sits on the edge of the bed, waiting for something to happen. This space,
he thinks as if having a breakthrough, is smooth.
Does everyone think like this? No, they say. If you keep acting like a depressed,
moody intellectual, it will ruin your reputation. But that is my reputation.
He sits on the edge of the bed as if there is endless potential in the act of sitting—poised just before the
moment of action, of getting up. He looks at the list again and wishes someone
would take a photograph. The handwritten notes around the margin (when did he write those?)
flowing in rhythmic curves like a sine wave, or rather the pulses of an EKG. The beat slowing, slowing...
He thinks about turning on the television but remembers there is no antenna here, no more satellites, only noise.
He turns it on anyway.
Published 05/18/2007
