ARTIST STATEMENT
Lyn Hejinian
Any artist’s statement is also a misstatement, not because artists don’t know what they are doing but because what they are doing will generally end very far from where it began.
Actually—at least according to Viktor Shklovsky, and why not trust him as well as anyone else—no good art work has an end. It stops, but abruptly, as dreams do. You wake up.
The birds are singing, but it’s not yet light.
What can one learn from dreams? Unconsciously, one’s mind was working.
What I am reading at the inaugural event of the yet-to-be-named literary series curated by Alli Warren and Brandon Brown is a set of pieces from a work that I’ve given several names. It is a night work, though not always a dream work. One thinks many things at night, picks up many different nocturnal languages, without being asleep.
I’ve been working on this project for many years. When it’s finished, it will be called The Book of A Thousand Eyes. Relatively short pieces intended as additions to it have several times turned into projects of their own. My book A Border Comedy was supposed to be a part of The Book of A Thousand Eyes; forgetting was to be incorporated into it and last for about a page.
The Book of A Thousand Eyes is an homage to Scheherazade, who knew everything of importance in her time. It’s addressed to knowledge, then, but it sits on very shaky epistemological grounds. Whatever knowledge is contained in (or obtained by) insomniac perseverations, fairy tales, lullabies, ideational feedback, erotic fantasies (or actualities), etc. is suspect.
The nocturnal terrain is uncertain. It’s also frightening, albeit sometimes funny.
There are a few poems in the work that I can’t read without laughing. I won’t read those, because my laughter gets out of control—it verges on hysteria, overt grief.
According to the ancient story, over the course of one thousand and one nights, Scheherazade re-educates a vicious ruler, and under her tutelage he learns to be just, benevolent, and kind; he becomes almost as wise as she. Nothing any of us can do today can have quite that impact. Perhaps this is because we don’t have access to the ruler.
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ARTIST STATEMENT
K. Silem Mohammad
All you retards deserve to burn in hell. I would like to see you get crushed by a motherfucking bulldozer.
Go fuck your syphilis-infected mother. Take your motherfucking ass and cry to your fucking pedophile slut. Go finish killing yourselves, you little pussy fucking liberals. Get it through your head: your government doesn’t give a fuck about you.
We have to “get behind the president in wartime” my fucking ass. Think wisely because the motherfucker can’t keep most his life. In 1987 he stomped his mother to death to the tune of kids running around screaming “BALL HAIR FUCK PENIS.” “Fuck me harder bitch” and “lie to me” are examples. It is just a stupid concept and really needs to be syndicated immediately.
My father and mother have recently been arrested for growing and selling a stickman Apollo Creed who makes cups of tea without fucking your wife first. Continue groping as her Washington Monument slips. The split is clean and the two halves fit nicely into the mother mold. She had a big ass then, she’s got a big ass now.
To the farmhouse, fuckboys! Prepare to have your ass laminated yet safe sex and overall self-fulfillment. Two men show up claiming to be poets. “Are you my Caucasian?” “My mama buys me the motherfucking undies.” “Fuck these old bitches,” my sister barked, just because her mother’s gone nuts.
I’m glad you like mocking Christians because they really blow heavy ass. We’re gonna speak up through this art form because it’s fucking powerful. Thank you. I would like to see you get crushed by a bulldozer.
4/3/08
