‘Grind questions onto the glass on photocopiers…’
Today I found one of many little quote books I used to keep and still do. I can never keep all the words in one book so there are dozens spread across different drawers, boxes and hidey-holes. I guess it’s an attempt at holding words down and taking them out of the air – out of our heart’s mouth. I like to keep them the way I like to keep images on these blogs. I like what they evoke, or what they made, and make me feel. These words are like other people’s photographs – 100s spilling out of old albums – reminding me of all the good and bad, how I was and how I wanted to be. They’re like the books that line the shelves, or litter them. The films, the old cassette tapes, the pages of memories – shining a blinding light on the totally zenless trajectory of my life and what I loved, or thought I loved, or thought I should love.
The memories little letters carry – it’s freaking amazing.
Here’s a few of those excerpts, or quotes, and some pikkers:
‘Our Father which art in Heaven / Stay there / And we will stay on Earth / Which is sometimes so pretty.’ Jacques Prevert
‘…the word cannot be expressed direct, it may be indicated by a mosaic of juxtaposition…like articles left in a hotel drawer.’ William S. Burroughs
‘This is Plan B. Every day for the rest of your lives, all of your living moments are to be spent making others aware of this need – the need to probe and drill and examine and locate the words that take us beyond ourselves. Scrape. Feel. Dig. Believe. Ask. Ask questions, no, screech questions out loud… Grind questions onto the glass on photocopiers. Scrape challenges onto old auto parts and throw them off of bridges so that future people digging in the mud will question the world, too. Carve eyeballs into tyre treads and onto shoe leathers so that your every trail speaks of thinking and questioning and awareness. Design molecules into question marks. Make bar-codes print out fables, not prices. You can’t even throw away a piece of litter unless it has a question stamped on it – a demand for people to reach a finer place.’ Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma
