May 6, 2010

I am writing this while sitting in the waiting room for the ferry. I missed the 10 am ferry by about 10 minutes, which is typical. But I REALLY needed that coffee I went to pick up around the corner. And, truth be told, I am getting a lot done sitting here in this room. I left a message with S about his connections on Riker’s and Randall’s. On Ward’s Island there is a psychiatric hospital “for the criminally insane.”

Last night I had the worst nightmare. In my dream, there was a serial killer who went around with his little son killing people by throwing them on the ground, planting his foot on their backs and shooting them in that soft mushy spot on the back of your skull, where the skull meets the spine. But before he killed them, he talked to them about how insignificant life was, how were are all so meaningless, how we’re all just going to die anyway. And he brought his son as a way of “teaching” him this truth. And in my dream I was thinking: yeah, sure, of course. But I’d still be screaming and begging him to spare my life. A says serial killers don’t kill because they think life is insignificant, but the opposite.

S called me back – the wife of his friend on Riker’s Island just gave birth and is still in the hospital. He says she’s doing pretty well and that it’s a big baby – over 9 pounds. I didn’t ask much more. But he said that she is waiting for him to call so that she can tell him we are coming to visit, and then can tell us when we can come. He’s been so helpful – he also has a contact on Randall’s Island and is working on getting me a visit there. But it seems he wants a date in return.

So now I’m out here – we just missed the rain beginning. They are still moving the sand today. I think they might have finished today, but I’m not so sure now since it’s raining. The sand will be so much heavier when wet, so I’d think they’d stop working until it dries.

I’m still on the Foucault, and I’m simultaneously feeling quite conflicted about this piece. I have all these video and audio recordings of other people, their lives, their rhythms, their work and rest, their spaces, but I don’t know what that says, or what I’m bringing to it. There’s not enough in it, I haven’t made meaning yet. I think there needs to be true collaboration; I need to open it up and open myself up to create a real conversation that is human and caring. And I’m trying to figure out where the art is in all of this.

F writes:

… representation within the image is not enough; it is also necessary to continue the delirous discourse. For in the patient’s insane words there is a voice that speaks; it obeys its own grammar, it articulates a meaning. Grammar and meaning must be maintained in such a way that the representation of the hallucination in reality does not seem like the transition from one register to another, like a translation into a new language, with an altered meaning. The same language must continue to make itself understood, merely bringing a new deductive element to the rigor of its discourse. Yet this element is not indifferent; the problem is not to pursue the delirium, but by continuing it bring it to an end. It must be led to a state of paroxysm and crisis in which, without any foreign element, it is confronted by itself and forced to argue against the demands of its own truth.