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| You Still Don't Understand, RTomens, 2026 |
'You still don't understand' sounds like an arrogant statement, doesn't it? As if I am saying something too deep, complex or clever for 'you' to understand. I like it though...as a stand alone sentence...obviously...that's why I left it as the remaining legible statement.
What did Miles Davis once say? 'If you understood everything I said, you'd be me'? Ha-ha. By god, sir, you are a card, as Sydney Greenstreet might have replied, had he been the recipient of Davis' wisdom. I'd like to be able to impart some wisdom but I have very little to share. As I joked with LJ last night whilst we watched a 40s crime film, 'I've lost the plot already!' We were about ten minutes into the film. I blamed the internet. It's rotting everyone's brains. Concentration...hmmm...
Where was I? Oh yes. It's recognised that the internet can alter the way we read, therefore, cognitive skills...are...deteriorating? Perhaps it's an age thing. Perhaps if you grew up being weened on the internet it has less of a debilitating effect? A bit like growing up in a hot country...
Perhaps my current erasure phase relates to my increased inability to retain information, to concentrate. Although concentration is required, the way I work on them is the way I usually work, which is to improvise...yes...to make it up as I go along...the real short spells of concentration required being demanded by typing as precisely as is needed by any given section of a piece, although even there, as you know, I'm happy to be imprecise. I am the anti AI - ha-ha. But I bet AI can be imprecise if you ask it...? I've never attempted AI art. Why bother? Yes, yes, I know that programming 'roughness' into art via software is old news. Today we can pretend a human has made something actually made by technology - whoohoo!
I erase to...reflect the erasure of...whatever used to be in my mind?
The urge to destroy is as old as the time when primitive people took a club to their huts and starting smashing them up, saying 'Fuck this shit!!!'. OK. That never happened.
Nowadays I like 'destroying' text. I like erasing all that was said on the page except for a few words. It's strangely satisfying to run a black marker pen across a line of words. Luckily, I'm not a teacher marking homework, otherwise I'd be doing it to the poor child's efforts.
I find the patterns left by the black lines...pleasing. Perhaps no-one else does? After all, it's not the fancy 'erasure' of Tom Philips, is it? I'm not in his league. No, I mean, I don't want to be. He was truly dedicated to a long project, his A Humument. He applied his art school skills to full effect, brilliantly.
I didn't go to art school (you can tell?). I couldn't even concentrate, thinking about it, as a kid at school. Not because my mind wasn't up to the task, but because my mind was usually elsewhere...the classic staring out the window instead of paying attention to teacher. And I couldn't blame the internet!
Forgotten knowledge...we'll never know what's forgotten...
Be seeing you.
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| Forgotten Knowledge, RTomens, 2026 |
