Eke Name
We can imagine, easily, the name Nothing. Nate might even be short for it. Lord knows Margaret can’t handle any more nicknames. Bill Williamson, Will Billiamson. There aren’t many names that are longer than what they’re short for, but there are a few. I can’t name them now. I left my notesbook in the seatback in front of me, the one by the floatation device I was so tightly tied to I couldn’t even squirm with right.
I am here — in spirit. I have two mediums — media — one’s large and one’s small and I use them to commune, to get closer to unity.
That every introduction begins with our name indicates — insists — that there are secrets hidden in those names, that dropping the aitch or saying it twice might get us closer to understanding, to intimacy.
The best political jokes are formally political not politically contented.
Every word written then read carries its own informal time travel. I am there, behind one camera but in front of another. It’s incredible how few people tweeted in the 70s — it’s like they had nothing to say back then. Here, now, again — I was watching the watchers; I was. I was the sandwich flexing and smizing and just trying to look alluring.
We spent the day watching dransubsdantiation. Like how you marinate in a marinade or urinate in a urinade. The Puppy Bowl and their kitty caddies. It’s Sports Season again. “I only golf on days that start with T,” someone four times my age once told me in a hot tub, “Tuesday, Thursday, Today, Tomorrow!” “Look,” I didn’t say, “I love this joke but I’m not crazy about the message.” This is before the days of tub sdep.
Between each space there were words. Each had its own way of being. Using data — information in formation — we ordered them by age. The transformation from Olde Englishe to News Jersey, Hampshire, Mexico and Carolina was smooth. I missed my flight and my mother.
Sometimes 555 is the number of G-dash-D and sometimes it’s just a phone that doesn’t exist outside of the diegesis. There’s a hesitation about a speculative etymology involving diegetics and deities and deixis—words like “me” or “here” that cannot be fully understood without additional contextual information. Like using that site to define these words. Like the “I” in all of these referring indexically and indelibly to different objects.
There are machines that turn paper to metal and vice versa and only the latter charges commission. This would be hard to imagine in other eras, in eras when metal felt so vital. Of course, paper is too. How many pieces of paper have been wasted with the phrase “forest for the trees”? DJ Escher was just the slightest bit too giddy and afraid when to notice the mafia-level intimidation that paper taped to a tree meant. There were wood chips strewn throughout the garden. “If this is how you’re going to treat us,” their impossibly deep voices threaten to leave, “ .” The pause is so we note that treed is as good a word as any for your screeds; beavers and their could’ve would’ve damns.
A slow news day sounds pretty good sometimes.
Our photobooks of the future are infinite loops and durational spaces. The avant-garde won and everyone stayed poor. There are solemn lemons and sillent lentils, but so what. If you’re given change at a store and don’t incite revolution, you haven’t heeded the charge. The photobook and the phonebook and the phonebooth and the photobooth all merged.
Why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway? Don’t we know fossil fuels are killing us?
Early music videos were looking out the window with the radio on. Roadtrips were the first Top 40. You will always have a special feeling toward numbers your local highways were named after. Lottery tickets are a great there and then: birthdays and addresses. If your password isn’t password, you’re trying too hard. Username is actually short for Justin. A lot of people don’t know that.
Our days are numbered and named. Thor, Saturn, slow returns and retrogrades. My friend Nick’s name is Nick. DJ The I in Stream. DJ TK. D[EFGHI]J. In the list of languages with the cutest diminutive form.
The Set Speaks
Week 1: February 8 – 14 /
Concept and Images: Kera MacKenzie and Andrew Mausert-Mooney
Writing: Jesse Malmed