Where and how Dada began
There are curtains to be drawn, drawers to enclose, corners around which the traces may be tucked away unless you’re sitting in the right place. Just there, beside the bookshelf, is a drawing by bill to celebrate my name-change. bill bill bill whose name insists on effort, three versions to override the AI which wants to capitalize. bill whose words float on a breathy column, high, now low -- inhabiting boom and vulnerable treble – is the only one who’s made the cut.
It takes a lot of courage to write a novel, he says.
And the operation was fun. Raging. Xcellent.
I know, now, the difference between desire and fear, and I’m not afraid of him.
It’s not so hidden. Even after a dozen years I still know where to find the smell of art and wounded men. Turps: resting ever-so-lightly on top of the dust and mould and whatever else creeps in with age. “Where and how Dada began is almost as difficult to determine as Homer’s birthplace.”
Here, he says, handing me the book to pack in my suitcase. Off to university.
(No gift to be trusted. Here. Means take it away, this past that you were part of. You are an inconvenience.) I keep it, like the scores, the poems, the photographs, the tapes of what could never belong to me, and the books, with the name I gave away.
In this room, where art is difficult, terrifying, and mine.