for Paul Sharits
"Seeing, at last, your mind as it must be at times in unendurable anguish, a series of events leading to that sense of self as burden, artaud making art of it, misery, saw your minding of such in my own horror, shocked, shaking my head a crazy catalogue of images, classical symbols, cartoons of grief -- but it is not always so and it is that lack of it which has to stand for joy in the absence of blessings -- and there are, in rare instances, blessings and you are often there at those places and I have a total sense of sense and you are absolutely cream, having to step on plastic flowers, my mind bursting, blossoming -- someday I will tell you my dreams when it is quiet and I am more willing to let the tragic have its due warmth -- that comes later; now I am content that my dreams were dreams."
--Paul Sharits, 1966
“This very task of destruction poses again, in the last resort, the question of a pure immediate violence that might be able to call a halt to mythical violence. Just as in all spheres God opposes myth, mythical violence is confronted by the divine. And the latter constitutes its antithesis in all respects. If mythical violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythical violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood.”
--Walter Benjamin
In these greatnesses these smallnesses great blue an instance
Of standing armies and waves opposite
Blue law of blue undreamt
Stick to everything no thing plastic flowers absolutely cream
The colors you see you see to hear
Of standing armies and standing waves
The law new law of red not sensed
Like the fourth clause of Augustine
No man should punish who does not love already in his heart
Is thus unpunishing
War could then be just (only contradiction is just)
Of a proposition red made blue blue made red
Wholly of another law unwoken in these tones
No man should punish who does not love already in his heart
Is thus unwarring
War might then be just (only con-spiration is just)
In this dream of armies the war of the sky
And the earth again elemental gigantomachia machine
His white eschatology Benjamin or Augustine
Whomsoever loves eternally holds no peace for the just
Only for the wicked conserve the pieces
The pieces again alighting our time
On earth tears shed mantles between men
Partition apart a Messiaen of varied light
And colors like tears begin
The colors of a cabinet
Cubby-holed to see sound appear
The colors you see you see to hear
A non-sense of number
“A total sense of sense”
Float tones a thing of forms the thinking does for war war also does
A thing of bones to think the flicker oxygen takes hard to hover pink
Float tones a thing of forms the thinking does for war war also does
More disgust by anthem the wind what earthly sense is this to flower
A thing of bones to think the flicker oxygen takes hard to hover pink
Float tones a thing of forms the thinking does for war war also does
False flowers to flower the false a thing of tones to put pieces in
More disgust by anthem the wind what earthly sense is this to flower
A thing of bones to think the flicker oxygen takes hard to hover pink
Float tones a thing of forms the thinking does for war war also does
The inside again brains emote this thought of tones a might of babes
False flowers to flower the false a thing of tones to put pieces in
More disgust by anthem the wind what earthly sense is this to flower
A thing of bones to think the flicker oxygen takes hard to hover pink
Float tones a thing of forms the thinking does for war war also does
Each misses each like tears asunder the tears of all invested by when
Cunnilingus a lingual thing reconciliation born in the where of red
Born out by the multiple mind wind more disgust by anthem the wind
The mind’s alibi each tear discloses the in itself one-by-one the for
For each frame is when where we are in sense to be total to be a piece
Cunnilingus a lingual thing reconciliation born in the where of red
Born out by the multiple mind wind more disgust by anthem the wind
The mind’s alibi each tear discloses the in itself one-by-one the for
For each frame is when where we are in sense to be total to be a piece
Born out by the multiple mind wind more disgust by anthem the wind
The mind’s alibi each tear discloses the in itself one-by-one the for
For each frame is when where we are in sense to be total to be a piece
The mind’s alibi each tear discloses the in itself one-by-one the for
For each frame is when where we are in sense to be total to be a piece
For each frame is when where we are in sense to be total to be a piece
Wage the each instant the occurring born in where the wager of each at piece a now so there
Stained to a voice stayed to a touch of them flowers the wages of them to recover each sense of when
Of wend the total doing our pieces go to light surrender red defender defender red
Of blue of blue the opposite is when pure means of will to render wind
To wend the opposite to encounter frame my number your number sympathetic share
Conspire tears of blue of blue or tear here
In the inside of the face
Swelled then the opposite is when flowers bend urgent flowers mind content to render
them
Alone alone one one each each all all
One one one two two not two bluish fog of war so blended frame
Your frame of when your frame of when your frame of when your frame of when rushed to blue vertical red horizontal hold to defend
When frame is where number frame is where number frame is where number wends and split
The each for the all all of a piece the each for the each out of place to move space the each
To piece end war to piece piece end war end piece end piece war end war piece don’t end red don’t end don’t end red don’t end blue reconcile don’t end wend don’t end when to not stop the tears a furtive reel
A feel for sense of number for sense of number when a sense of when is enough
Conspire tears of blue of blue or tear here
In the inside of the face
Swelled then the opposite is when flowers bend urgent flowers mind content to render
them
“Take me
[understanding] from grief
and take me
to yourselves from understanding
[and] grief.
And take me
to yourselves from places
that are ugly and in ruin,
and rob from those
which are good even though in ugliness.
Out of shame, take me
to yourselves shamelessly;
and out of shamelessness
and shame, upbraid my members
in yourselves.
And come forward to me,
you who know me
and you who
know my members,
and
establish the great ones among the small
first creatures.
Come forward to childhood,
and do not despise it
because it is small and it is little.
And do not turn away
greatness in some parts from the
smallnesses,
for
the smallnesses are known
from the greatnesses.”
In these greatnesses these smallnesses great blue an instance
Of standing armies and waves opposite
Blue law of blue undreamt
War could then be just (only contradiction is just)
"Surrealism -- we cannot sense its destination otherwise -- is and has always been a collective experience. This is its first trait. Here we may suspect that Andre Breton's role was different from the one that is recognized through admiration, affection, or personal ill will as having been his. He was neither a master nor a guide, neither the leader of a party nor the head of a religion, any more than a simple arbiter or genius who would have taken the place of all others through his innocent superiority, founding a coherence and an existence where, without him, there would have been only the stirring of a few dreams or a configuration of ardent wishes. If he was predominant, he was only so outside the group, through his books, his prestige, and his radiant authority: his manner of being truthfully present everywhere. Perhaps, however, within surrealism, he had the particular power not of being the *one* any more than the others, but of making surrealism each one's Other, and in the attraction of this Other taken as a living presence-absence (a *beyond the day* at the horizon of a space unknown and without a beyond), of living it with friendship in the most rigorous sense of this exacting term: making the surrealist affirmation, in other words, a presence of a work of friendship.