Fragments (c. 2020 PC)

It’s an old evolutionary tale: adaptability beats expertise. It’s better to create than to know everything.

I write from curiosity, 
because the world may not be enough
To hold the otherwise unsaid.

These words left lonely, stillborn
Impossible springs and twilight tears
soft shadows of a question mark:
What do you create towards infinity?

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Is it important enough to say? Is it important enough that you can’t avoid saying it? Rather: what is the price of not speaking? (“I say only this, the things too important not to say -”)

I speak because there may not be time
For the things too important not to say. 

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Here is the most important question of all: creating at a world’s end. 

What do you create at a world’s end?
Tuck in the threads and rework the song
Craft its ends into hidden rebirth.

We are here to work, we are here to listen,
Tie off ends towards memory, towards forgetting –
Snip the artery, tie off the vein. 

In the needle, within the weft; in the warp and in the hum
You may lose the art of beginning again. Let it go. 
Sometimes you must lose pain, 
But all artists donate organs. Today I give you my heart. 

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The act of creation is implicitly one of questioning authority. You are implying that God and your mother didn’t do the job right the first time. What other authority figures might you question?

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Is there any question mark to mark this??? Make my mark, mark the record, history will mark? (…Will it?) 

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Does any artist have the option of escape
Except by the trick of their own fate, 
The small trick of asking why
This doesn’t yet exist – 
Utopia? At world’s end.  
A small price to pay
For a heart.

Here is my only true confession: forgive me impatience, anger, apathy and pride. Whatever remains, let it remain in love.

Given the choice between my work or my life, 

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Curator’s Note: Pencil on paper, c. early 2020s PC (Pre-Crash), Austin, Texas. These fragments were likely part of a notebook or workbook. They were found during an excavation of former Austin apartment complexes by a team from the University of Texas at Big Bend.