Let Me Read You Roughly
2023
Video, 16:55 min.
Materials: 1 chair, 1 table, 6 frames, 6 banners, 6 ring lights, 6 tripod with ball heads
TRANSCRIPT:
Let Me Read You Roughly
[Music playing]
My life, is this the living?
My life, is it anyone’s giving?
My pain, phantom bone pain
Is in my fiction
Free from mythology
My life shut down straight face
How I scream at different volumes
My life, is just fine by me,
for if I rest at the Bible back door
My steps, pain has no steps
Mythology, pain,
See ground breaking
I did not discover I am a killer out of capacity. I did not engage with killing out of bravery. I was sad. Sadness, right? Would you say there's a difference between motion and movement?
We laughed. We have screamed before crying, before hugging, before silence. We have laughed, we have danced, start a sink at the sink, shared blinks of innocence and fleshly appetites. We laugh, so go. Go fast, no looking back at the lies. Only memory tells so accurately. Get out of my sight. Stop the fear. I'm not a fan of hugs. Your bones have taught me hugs do heal. Not looking for healing. It's unfortunate, really.
The proposition seems to be: we live a board game like reality. Love the rules, the aims, the colors, the shapes, and victory. Love the victory of the rules, the aims, the victory of the colors and shapes. I do not love the rules, the aims, the colors, the rapes.
Look at my voice and discern if you can afford not taking me to heart, not taking me seriously. No, I'm not warning, threatening, or informing. I'm breathing. This is breath. Do consider yourself warned, threatened, and frightened.
I confess that I would love to wake up like that. Motion, motion, motion versus movement. I had to kill a friend. This is how it went.
Sorry, my friend. This is where we end. I didn't say that. There was no need to feed the ego with cinematic sentences.
It was obvious. We were no more ‘we’, just ‘he’ and ‘he with a multiplicity of unpaid fees in between a beautiful story that insisted in being told with a melancholic tone’. It was shattered by the abuse we can only deliver to those we love. There are indeed creatures with the most perverse of capacities, fuckers that just can't leave a love story alone.
Over the phone? Nah, the murder happened live. Five witnesses and all. Shame was there, anger was there, disbelief was there, self-pity was there, and relief disguised as: “I hope one day we'll talk about it.” Oh, that kind of disguised relief was there.
There, in the moment, I feel like I felt once before, after dropping a baby. I forgot the baby was a living thing. It happens from time to time to forget about the living. Hopefully not dropping babies, no? It's a hell of a thing to feel about one's own character.
I imagine that people that can smell their own bad breath feel like that from time to time. They'll feel it for themselves and for those they must utter inevitable putrid sonic waves. Some kind of inner disgust. I don't know. I did read somewhere that Andy Warhol was the king of the strategic … I don't know. I believe I deserve more of a ... I don't know.
What we deserve, what we get. The things we think, the things we do think, the things we do thinking, and then how we feel. I don't know. Anyway, this occasion that I'm sharing with you was not an occasion for, uh, I don't know. It was not the occasion for such acrobatics. I did know. I was assassinating a friend with my eyes wide open.
I did not exactly look at her eyes. I could not take my gaze from the blood. It was just so much of it. Her robust olive eyes became secondary. So beautiful, so fluid. I remember thinking to myself that it was a waste of perfectly healthy blood.
And then, you know, assassinations. Yeah, assassinations are like that. A high percentage of waste is almost always part of it.
I confessed that my next thought was inappropriate for someone in the act of killing, but the blood. I salivate thinking about it, part repugnance, part appetite for more. Such is the lust of not being your loved one’s punching bag no more. So I feel that it's so important to know how to kill your loved ones that I made a list.
[Cooking video clip]
… in all these people, if one struck a certain nerve a certain moment, something happened. And what happened? For a moment...
Eight crucial things to remember when killing a friend. No matter in what fashion, no matter what occasion, no matter what circumstance. Eight crucial things to remember when killing a friend efficiently. Eight crucial things to remember when killing a friend effectively, permanently and shit. Well, that felt a bit too much, no?
1. Do it with your eyes open.
2. Clarity is the sharpest of blades. Stick the blade in the flesh of the matter as deep as you have the capacity to do so. And before removing it from your beloved subject, draw an imaginary eight. The number eight. Draw it.
3. Once you have let go of the blade, do not look at the blood dripping. That shit might fuck you up.
4. Make sure before you wash your hands, that you eat something like a sandwich or some shit.
5. Do not be alarmed. Your physical and mental memory will hunt you down. The degree of your memory's harassment will depend on how open your eyes were when you agreed to the killing. Regardless of when this happens – because it will happen –, accept memory, without giving it the credibility of thought articulation.
Be with a killing.
7. You've just killed someone. Don't go around sharing the fact with individuals that have never had to kill a loved one before. When you do share, always have your stomach full and a clean liver.
8. Remember: you are not only capable of killing, you are able and you will kill again. Not sure if you'll ever enjoy it, but you will kill again.
Killing as a value is something dodgy, right? Killing as a necessity is something that doesn't sound very inviting. Killing, dying. Available for it, ways in which you do that. I know that it's kind of far away from our minds and, you know, the so pandemic, the so kind of killing of individuals, the killing of perspectives, possibilities, mobility, whether of motion or of movement.
When the pandemic started, I was in Acapulco. I was having an affair.
[Music playing]
Learned lessons, I guess, right? How do you look at your story? What happens to you? Are you taking everything that happens to you and doing something with it? I find it always super weird that we refuse advice of people that have failed at their own goals.
I was talking to somebody and they told me: “Who the fuck are they to give me marriage advice? That motherfucker is in his third marriage. Who the fuck is he …” I say: “Maybe the perfect person! Who the fuck are you gonna listen advice from?”
I don't know. I don't know. I know that I lie a lot. I know that I am on the trajectory to lie with as much joy as I can. I'm gonna lie to you today, lie to you today. I'm gonna lie to my loved ones tomorrow and the day after and the day after. And that must provide to me some kind of solace. When you lie, do you make it count? When you lie, do you make it count? What do you lie in favor of?
Vanity. Vanity of vanities. All is fucking vanity.
I don't know. I don't know. As far as I can tell, they never met. But as I said, I don't know. Reality has taken so much concrete to build. So much blood to maintain, so much sweat to make it shine, so much eye poking to make it breathe on its own.
You know, I don't know. I want to wish you a good time. Yes, a good and joyful time with your family, friends, colleagues. You know. The most important thing being time. Nah, I don’t know.
Be genuine, right? Be original, right? Be exciting, right? Be new, be fuck, give it to us. What do you have to say? It's your personal voice. What's the story? Only you can tell. There's something that only you can give. There's something that only you have. Get in line, motherfucker, get in line. You’re unique as a motherfucker.
“Vanity, all is vanity,” they say. And with it, I guess the grief of wisdom. I don't know why I feel like this is an important question: “What are we willing to die for?” Having no answer for that shit is tragic I would say. “What are you willing to die for? Are you willing to die for something?”
Spectator: “Sure.”
“Oh shit, we got an answer, motherfucker. Sure, who's willing to die for what?”
Spectator: “For my children.”
“You’re willing to die for your children?”
Spectator: “Of course.”
“Why?”
Spectator: “Because they will live longer than me.”
“Oh, come on. Maybe your children are bad people. You don't know that shit. You don't know who they are. No, no, I'm serious, right? Because they're younger, you say.”
Spectator: “Yes.”
“Because you love them?”
Spectator: “No.”
“You don't love them? So what's going on?”
[Spectator incomprehensible]
“Holy shit. This is a bit more real than I thought. I hope they're not watching this shit? Believe that she's joking or some shit. I don't know.”
I don't know if I'm willing to die for any other human. Like that. Is that a bad thing to say? I guess.
Principles. I guess I'm willing to die for ideas or some shit. I'm willing to die on the way to somewhere. I'm willing to die while we build something. There's not an unconditional bone in my body. I've never experienced something that I so, like, unconditionally, like, I don't know what that shit is.
[Cooking video clip]
… the potato and gender. The potato and hard work. The potato and unpaid work. The potato among other potatoes. The potato peeled and cut in pieces…
I don't say most of this shit in my everyday life because I don't want to be alone, you know? I have this sense that we don't say a lot of shit and we don't come clean with a lot of things that we feel and sense and desire because we don't want to be alone. Or perhaps even worse than alone, like lonely.
What resides within me is, above all weariness/fatigue. Not of this or that, not of all nor nothing at all. Fatigue, just like that, weariness. Like, weariness. The subtlety of useless sensations, the violent passions in favor of no single thing. The intense belovings for the it in whoever. All these things, these things and what within them eternally escapes. All of this nurtures in me a fatigue/weariness.
Without a doubt, there are those that love what has no end. Without a doubt, there are those that desire the impossible. There are those, without a doubt, that want nothing from nothing. Three kinds of idealistic beings of the three. I, none.
Because I endlessly love that that has an end, because I impossibly desire the possible, because I want it all, or a bit more, if available, even if not available. The result for them: lived life or dreamt life. For them, dreamt dream, or lived dream. For them, the ratio between all and nothing. That is that. For me, only a massive, a profound, and an infertile weariness. One supreme fatigue, supreme, tremendous, gigantic fatigue/weariness.[LB1]
I think there is no fucking poem that I wish I had written myself more than this shit.
This is by Álvaro de Campos, right? One of the heteronymous of Fernando Pessoa. I've had this poem with me like since I was a teenager, you know, it made with me the transition between suicide and …
For a long time I had this need to say that I care about shit that I don't give a fuck about. Not because it's not important, not because it doesn't matter. I just don't give a fuck. It could get me quite fucked up, excluded. If I say shit, for example, imagine if I come out and say, "Fuck, this guy has got nothing to do with me." Black fuck, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. I want to do videos about the clouds and shit. Fuck, I don't work no more.
But okay. Okay. I am declaring and submitting to you that if you would care about only about what you care about, you're going to live a better life. All you have to say: “It’s not mine. It's not mine. It's yours. Your pain, your story, your fucked up sense of self, packaged in lustrous amounts of right-doing, right-standing, and right-turning without considering the validity that left's left presence provided. Because right, you fucking tasted it, right?”
But as I was saying, I was just saying that it's not mine. It's not mine. Fine is fine line when comfort’s so absolute. I must express the insult that has been this confusion: insult, insult, torture, illusion of context masked as the dilemma of the right thing to do.
Who the fuck knows the right thing to do? The fuck out of here. The right thing to do? The fuck out of here. Like the right thing to do. Who the fuck knows the right thing to do? Holy shit.
It's demanded of us: the right thing to. Like the statement of being on the right side of history. The right side of history. I wrote a thing to a friend of mine saying that: “All I want is to participate.” What has participated? Disney has participated. Goddamn fuck! Hitler has participated. I want to participate, that's all. The right thing to do? The right side of history. The right side, of history.
No, for fuck's sake, no, I would meet like the right side of history. We have motherfuckers, all structures, expressing that they want to be on the right side, like, of history? The right side, of history. No, no, your energy is not matching mine. What the fuck, the right side of history?
Okay, I say normally a lot. I'm repeating myself like a motherfucker. I'm getting old, but I say: “My grandmother knows nothing about fucking history.” And this does not mean she has no relationship with time and space. History? It's not mine. I told you already, I'm positive, you know what I mean, meant, and refuse to repeat.
I think I want to be remembered, you know, as we're talking about history and shit. I want to be remembered. You want to be remembered? Do you have a relationship with your existence now? Does anybody here wants to be remembered? Nobody wants to be remembered? Stop fucking lying.
Look at that. Sure. If it happens, it happens, happens you know, they remember me, they remember me, they don't, they don't, I live my life to the fullest. That's fair, that's fair, that's fair. I want to be remembered, man. That's why I want to die. There's certain things that seem to only come to us when we die. I think about it, right, like heaven and shit. Can heaven be a possibility? You could look down and see if people are remembered, that would be the shit, right? The only reason why heaven would be cool.
You know what I mean, there's no … that kind of pressure, no nipples, no nothing. Just being and looking how people remember you.
I'm willing to do a few things right here, in life, so that I am remembered. That's why I started lying, you know? Yeah, why do you lie? I think it's important, you lie. I know your motherfuckers lie. You're not saying anything.
“No.”
“No. Shit. Just lie.”
More. More of what? When what more reveals itself to be one more. I am Poem. I am Poet. That happens to be fortunate coincidence.
Not wanting to live forever does not mean I want to die just any kind of death. I don't want to die from choking on a chicken bone like an untrained dog named Karma. Emotional isolation is not a "I am lonely" kind of an issue. It's being surrounded by people that never left their mother's breasts and love to order steak. Medium rare. It can be done gracefully. Most of the time, just sad to invest on a full-grown community ready to slaughter a cow and have no company to cut the beast’s throat.
They clap and celebrate. Crystal ball. Crystal balls were never a fantasy of a child. The soldiers are coming. Massacre to justice in the mind of a few. Like drunk ants they run. Bullets chase. I see it.
I watch Max Stahl, changes my life forever. I'm not a kid no more. I'm old folk’s strange folk pain. Over in a full empty garage, my tears are synthesized. People pray, people pretend to be dead, and I don't know why I care. I don't know why I care. I see no weapons. I see no weapons. People win me over. War no over. I saw machete cut life, reach machete, fail, child. I don't know why I care. I just don't know why I care.
I've spoken to priests. I've spoken to curanderos, pastors, medical doctors from west to east, legal and semi legal, looking to find a liberation, to find an availability for more, a more that contemplates all the boring acceptance of mediocre relationship with dreams I've not manufactured but that have been channelled through me.
It's a bitch. I finally understand the imagery of brutal westerns where the magic of being was the wild horse. Chasing them, you know? You're riding in that bitch, like your hair in the wind … I have an afro, it would be, you know? But chasing wild horses.
Now I understand all those melodies. Chasing wild horses. Explain it to me. Try to make me understand. Am I worried about you? Are you okay? Will you be okay? No, not okay? Are you far away from home? Sounds good to say that shit. But where is home? Got no home? Some reliable houses here and there, family, true friends, here and there, no home. We are not what we love. We are what we trust.
What do I trust that keeps … All of a sudden more doesn't sound appropriate. More feels like the fruits of pain, a pain you recognize and hold on to. There must be what home feels like, something familiar. Like Bruce said, that it helps you recognize yourself. I wonder, though, I wonder what that looks like without dysfunction: Home. More of what when what more reveals itself to be one more. Let it be one more, I guess. The iPoet is ready. More. Not sure who found this shitty proof of life, but please tell my mother I do love her deeply. My name is now, my name is here.
This was one of the many suicide notes, you know? I imagine, like, deciding when I'll start to be remembered, you know? I'll take my own ticket and shit. I've written many, many of these letters. In some of them, I'm super kind, you know? I'm so kind. I make lists of people and shit. I leave people with responsibilities they didn't ask for.
More. One more. We want more, more, more joy. More pleasure. More relationships. More impact. We want to relate to things in people that matter. You want to do a job that matters. Somebody has to speak to our hearts and when they touch there, they'll get the true us. When the conditions are right. When they become accessible. When I understand what … No, no, yes, that is the shit you need to understand. When you understand, then you won't be ‘one more’. Then you'll be yours.
I don't know. I'm still in the fatigue part, you know? I'm still in the fatigue part. To give a fuck is very, very, uh, tiring. Is it not? Just me? It's very tiring.
Sorry, I know I went, you know, on and on and on. You asked me a question and I came to help with homework and yes, sorry, your question, an answer to your question. Yes, I have sucked dick before, why?
No more villains. I am a killer, and I lost. I lost.
I had a clear goal. I was committed to debunking identity, you know? I thought, "This shit's gonna kill us, man." Fuck identity, what do we want to build? Where do we want to go? Like, how the fuck are we going, like, let's find out about each other as we build, whatever the fuck we want to build.
That sounded good to me. Sounded like a good proposition. I don't give a fuck about what, who, where, how. Just: why? Why are we going straight? Why are we turning left? Why are we going up? Okay, I'll go with you. Who the fuck are you again? You know?
But I lost, I lost, I lost. You motherfuckers love your identities and shit.
Okay, that's fair. That's fair. There's something important about admitting defeat. There's something important about declaring what you want and not achieving it. Well, they're not achieving part just a consequence, I do hope, you know? You achieve what you want for yourselves and shit.
There's something extremely valuable in declaring what the fuck you want and go all in.
This is a text by Khalil Gibran:
Defeat, my Defeat.
God damn, just this shit. My defeat, my defeat. You know, the intimacy of your attempt, like the depth of your commitment, shit.
Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness;
You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs,
And sweeter to my heart than all the world-glory.
Defeat, my Defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance,
Through you, I know that I am yet young and swift of foot
And not to be trapped by withering laurels.
And in you I have found aloneness
And the joy of being shunned and being scorned.
Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword and shield,
In your eyes I have read
That to be enthroned is to be enslaved,
And to be understood – motherfuckers – to be understood is to be levelled down,
And to be grasped is but to reach one's fullness
And like a ripe fruit ready to fall and be consumed.
I wanna be understood, motherfucker. Do you understand yourself? No fucking body understands you. They can agree to love you. Can do shit together. I can celebrate you. I don't need to understand you. I don't understand myself, bitch. Like what, what the, what?
To be understood is to be levelled down,
And to be grasped is but to reach one's fullness
And like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed.
Defeat, my Defeat, my bold companion,
You shall hear my songs and my cries and my silences,
And none but you shall speak to me of the beating of wings,
And urging of seas,
And of mountains that burn in the night,
And you alone shall climb my steep and rocky soul.
Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage,
You and I shall laugh together with the storm,
– Fuck, I would ad lib Khalil, but, … shit.
And together, we shall dig graves for all that die in us,
And we shall stand in the sun with a will,
– Oh, goddamn –
And we shall be dangerous.
Ooh, shit, wanna be understood? I prefer to be dangerous. Oh shit, I'm like, we shall be dangerous. Oh, be dangerous, motherfuckers. Be dangerous, be dangerous, be dangerous, be dangerous. Release the track, my boy.
[Music playing]
I beg you don't Robert Johnson me
I beg you take the money.
Leave my soul alone.
My sweat so salty.
You wanna credit the sea?
Is it a skin? Is it the eyes? Is it the walk? Tell me, what's so hard to see?
I will fight, don't know if I'm right.
I'll fight right for the right to fight good fight.
No, no, give us right.
Free nothing, more than calm and good, lie low, nothing, free flowing.
I freedom and free, I love and loving.
About time we realized the cup only holds the drink.
Now life is gone.
Life is gone for a pussy to dick currency.
Stop bringing the devil into it, I say.
Life of a man at the cost of an emotion.
Life of a woman at the cost of a dare.
No, we ain't begging no more.
We pleading with God no more.
We ain't pleading for mercy, mercy, me no more.
We looking men in the eye.
We looking men in the eye, barrel of a gun and ask him if he wants plural eye to beg.
Like a lover he pays for rent, you want plural I to beg.
It seems you didn't hear me.
I can pay my own rent now.
Oh road, sweet road, sweet road.
Free nothing more than coming and go.
Like love, nothing, free flowing.
I freedom and free, I love and loving.
About time we realized the cup only holds the drink.
Concept & development by Nástio Mosquito with input by Francisco Antão
Writing* & performance by Nástio Mosquito
Dramaturgy by Jörg Albrecht
Graphic design by Eva Gonçalves
Scenography by Studio Mimese
Technical set up by Brigitte Hamar, Dennis Kipp
Recorded at Bennohaus, Münster, by Caroline Wart in May 2023
Camera by Marten Bothe, Franka Fingerscheidt, Paula Brieden, Clara Koßmann, Phillip Wachowitz
Photography direction by Emil Koltermann
Sound direction by Jana Stegemann
Video team management by Noah Weckenbrock
Video edit by Phillip Wachowitz
Sound post-production by Gernot Fuhrmann
Project coordination by Sophie Stroux for Burg Hülshoff & Godelieve Mosquito for ZZZZZ Creative Solutions
Coproduction with Burg Hülshoff – Center for Literature
within the framework of the project Mit Gespenstern leben (haunting|heritage)
Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of NRW within the programme ‘Regionales Kultur Programm’, by Commerzbank-Stiftung and Kunststiftung NRW.
