QUOTIDIAN / TEXT BY GEORDIE MILLER

at feverish intervals. what is this sickness, this paroxysm? daylight

all night long. the song of the taxidermized sparrow now belongs

to those who listen in different frequencies. to be busy being more

present in the future. these intimacies with catastrophe. break the

spell of countless sentinels. candles reduce themselves to lessons on

appearance and essence. the poplar branches are a cracked mirror.

curtains of smoke hanging on 500 million years of buried sunshine. a

bowl of delicious dislocation. chopped up in abstraction. a patchwork

of jagged, broken states of attending. who took your time? but you must

recall the last unmediated dusk. the neighborhood band played that

union city tune. words in air drifting across the front lawn where

you’d assembled yourselves. tunnel to the other side. you were a crowd

of one, eyeballs on the sky. on the edge of town. inside the best view.

when we’re still feeling sentimental about darkness tell us that story

set somewhere they’d never seen any stars. on a planet with six suns.

the terror of an eclipse. the madness of mistaken annihilation. how

does it end again? don’t look it up. you can stay here, unrenounced.

hundreds of millions of individuals precipitously began spending many hours

of every day and night sitting, more or less stationary, in close proximity to

flickering, light-emitting objects. fettered not tethered. more of the same

-ness. attention attention, leashes unceasing. all the simulation leaves

out is the thisness. this unfinished bone-house. this tangerine peel a

rope swing. this dragonfly guides you through the glitches. lamp

smashers out-of-time you toss rocks at the gallows, aiming for the

head. no one else to demand the night. an army of shadows will never

be defeated. stalking the property relations, blocking the road.

tangled up in suburban macabre. the sidewalk a belt of gravestones.

unmarked is the opposite of exist. non-consensual continuity. the one

where you’re alone together without warning on the high dyke

behind the industrial park, barefoot. that path between the hay fields

and the riverbed. what’s coming for you is coming for you, the long

grasses clamouring. it’s too late to say. we must not be dreaming.

—with additional words by Richard Seymour, Debbie Harry, and Jonathan Crary.