Talking to Myself
Summer 2019
Columbia University, GSAPP
Critics / Karla Rothsten (Columbia DeathLAB, Latent NYC, Greylock Works)
Speculation of two vessles, for the alive and the deceased
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Out beyond the ideas
Of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field.
I’ll meet you there
When the soul lies down in that grass.
The world is too full to talk about
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
Doesn’t make sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch
The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep.
- A Great Wagon, Maulana Jalauddin Rumi
An oversimplification of a complex relationship, my vessel is the interface of me talking to myself. Splitting out of the metropolitan chaos, this vessel is a well for me to dawdle in. A container of my breath, sounds, smells, thoughts, and cacophonies. With the deceased self naturally buried without any paraphernalia, it forms fodder to build the field beyond the status quo (as described by Rumi). Lying down on the patch of grass with nothing but the view of the infinite, it is completely undistracted. Here I just talk to myself. The interstitial space in the city where we can talk about death or not talk about it. it is the field where I/we coexist with myself/ourselves along with the ones who once existed. The interaction is active or passive.
plan, axonometric / two vessels, convestions and the physical world; tiers of the vessel/liminal field
Talking to Myself
From the light to the dusk
My space is packed with consequence -
The stories and soliloquies of all to be heard
And yet I choose otherwise
To cover my ears and run,
To sit beneath my own breath.
I choose to dive in the water and
Just scream out loud
And watch the bubbles of my own breath -
Surrounded by an uninterrupted flow
Of my own consequence.
With my ears shut I can hear voices
I hear them sing cacophonically
I hear them scold methodically
I hear them speak my language.
Separated from the quotidian, the oozing density
I watch my own air -
Swirls dancing out of the cigarette
Swirls of my own breath.
With the symphony of the world lurking in
I run back and cover my ears
And listen to the voices
And as I lie beneath the shelter of my own breath
I see and I smile
For despite the other consequences to listen to
I lay in my space singing all along
And just talking to myself.
- Kabir Sahni
...I won’t get heavy
Don’t get heavy
Keep it light and keep it moving
I am doing
No harm
As my world comes crashing down
I’m dancing
Freaking out
Deaf, dumb and blind..
- Present Tense, Radiohead
From the light to the dusk
My space is packed with consequence -
The stories and soliloquies of all to be heard
And yet I choose otherwise
To cover my ears and run,
To sit beneath my own breath.
I choose to dive in the water and
Just scream out loud
And watch the bubbles of my own breath -
Surrounded by an uninterrupted flow
Of my own consequence.
With my ears shut I can hear voices
I hear them sing cacophonically
I hear them scold methodically
I hear them speak my language.
Separated from the quotidian, the oozing density
I watch my own air -
Swirls dancing out of the cigarette
Swirls of my own breath.
With the symphony of the world lurking in
I run back and cover my ears
And listen to the voices
And as I lie beneath the shelter of my own breath
I see and I smile
For despite the other consequences to listen to
I lay in my space singing all along
And just talking to myself.
- Kabir Sahni
︎
...I won’t get heavy
Don’t get heavy
Keep it light and keep it moving
I am doing
No harm
As my world comes crashing down
I’m dancing
Freaking out
Deaf, dumb and blind..
- Present Tense, Radiohead
︎