I feel like I have a little bit of competition here, with this setting sun. So I’ll speak a little louder. What I’d like to do is a kind of monologue, which actually comes from a text I wrote in conjunction with visual art, but I decided to get rid of the visual part of it entirely and just go with the monologue. It’s called
Saying Water
In the waiting room of a doctor’s office some years ago I overheard a mother talking about how her kids were afraid of it. If they couldn’t see into it, they wouldn’t go into it. It’s like being dismembered. When you wade into this dark fluid, a kind of milk without nurture, you disappear.
Disappearance: that’s why suicides are attracted to it. It’s also why children fear it. It’s a soft entrance to simply not being here. When I imagine the river, it’s something I can enter, something that will surround me, take me away from here. But then the pain of it is less imaginable, too. Less than violence or chemistry.
Thinking about water is thinking about the future — or just a future. My future — yours. It’s a personal thing—especially now. It makes sense that children fear water they can’t see into. And then, too, doesn’t it make sense for someone who can’t imagine a future to be attracted to it, to this semblance of water, to this other water? It is night. The darkness of the water reflects the darkness of the sky. But when daylight comes again the water will remain dark, cutting everything in it off from everything beyond it.
The water is opaque. It is comforting to imagine that once you are in it, you won’t be visible any longer and you won’t see anything, either—relief from the unending demands of simple sight.
Hidden by the dark. It’s only night and that will pass. But the blackness of the water won’t pass. The blackness and the water pass by but they never go away.
The color of the water (whatever it is) changes constantly. Half of it is the sky.
The color of the water (whatever it is) changes constantly. Half of it is khaki: with all
the colors in it, though none are visible, and the whole of it nondescript. And anyway, you wouldn’t really see it once you were under. It suits me — beige; it suits me — it isn’t a color; it’s like white that way — but without distinction. Beige is a form of mediocrity.
White is important, maybe a labyrinth of sorts—that makes it a wager for life.
You say it’s a river.
I can believe that.
But when you say it’s water, I get suspicious.
Is the Thames a case of mistaken identity?
When you say water, what do you mean?
When you say water, are you talking about the weather or yourself?
When you see your reflection in water, do you recognize the water in you?
The deserts of our future will be deserts of water.
What does water look like?
See sand. (Especially sand dunes.)
See deserts, for example the Gobi or the Sahara.
Can you all hear me? Just checking. I’m getting to the good part now.
A man travelled by tube to Westminster Bridge handcuffed to a chair. He threw himself in the river with the chair. He was found some days later downstream, attached to a stick of wood and a section of naugahyde (almond colored).
Water receives you, affirms you, shows you who you are. And all the near-imperceptible qualities that are water tease you with their ambiguity. Tease you and extend you out into the world.
The Thames has the highest rate of suicides of any urban river. Well, maybe it’s not the highest but it’s close. And it doesn’t really matter because even if it doesn’t, it looks like it does.
A young Parisian woman came to London recently to drown herself in the river. It’s curious how the Thames attracts people from far away. I’ve never heard of any other river doing this. I mean people don’t travel from Canada to kill themselves in the Hudson—or even from Ohio.
Black water is opaque water, toxic or not. Black water is always violent, even when slow moving. Black water dominates, bewitches, subdues. Black water is alluring because it is disturbing and irreconcilable. Black water is violent because it is alluring, and because it is water.
Darkness reflects the sun. Blackness reflects nothing. Darkness reflects the sun. Blackness reflects nothing. (“Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.”) From the novel The Wild Palms by William Faulkner. Black and water are twin elements. It’s a mistake to believe black is merely an adjective.
What do you know about water? When you talk about water, what is it you’re really talking about? What do you know about water? When you talk about water, aren’t you really talking about yourself? Isn’t water like the weather that way? What do you know about water? Isn’t that part of what water is, that you never really know what it is?
Oh, what do you know about water? That it’s everywhere, so familiar-seeming, and yet so elusive (a kind of everything without definition), never quite graspable, even as an ice cube? What do you know about water? Only that it’s everywhere differently?
You hold onto the idea of water, which is the water you grew up with, clear and sexual. Somehow this is part of your personal identity. You share it with everyone, even strangers. It is an a priori communion.
Is water sexy?
This is the good part.
Water is sexy. It’s the power and the vulnerability of it; It’s the energy and the fragility of it. Water is sexy. (The sensuality of it teases me when I’m near it.) Water is sexy. (I want to feel its liquid form slipping over my skin. I want to feel its liquidness washing me all over, washing all over me. I want to feel the fluid mass of it rushing among the parts of me: my hairs, my fingers, my toes, my eyes, my ears.
I want to be near it. I want to immerse myself in it. I want to go deep into it. I want to go deeper still into it. I want to feel the weight of it lighten me, ease me, release me.) Black water is black milk. Is milk milk when it’s black?
Isn’t transparency to water as whiteness is to milk? Water’s always a spiritual presence. (In the company of water, I feel in me the presence
of things that exceed me.) Water is always a mysterious presence. (When you look at water you never know what you’re actually looking at.)
And what about these vaguely poetic observations about another water? The possibility of poeticizing it — is that part of the human condition? To ameliorate something awful, something life-threatening, something so insidious and protracted in its danger, because not to prevent you from seeing it altogether?
It’s so familiar and so spectacular: the times when sunlight strikes the river and sparks twinkle and flit on the water. They surprise and mesmerize the way stars do. I imagine the darkness that surrounds them, an unknown universe and just a few feet from my grasp.
I won’t talk about how water is a mirror.
You know how a lake can be a mirror? A mirror as in a bathroom. A country scene where the sun sets in pairs and you see on the still lake water a still and perfect reflection. That kind of mirror isn’t a part of river language anyway. Okay, there might be an occasional evening when the water is calm and things multiply in a mottled way, but mostly things don’t double in rivers, and maybe there’s a different kind of solitude near them because of it.
You know the way you walk along a river? Well, you don’t walk around a lake the same way. You might sit in front of it in the same way, but you don’t walk. You walk and the river runs, you watch the currents or the reflections or whatever. You think maybe you’ll see something in the water. You watch—waiting for something to appear.
Usually nothing does, but while you’re waiting, you’re drawn in, your thoughts meander, one thing leads to another and so on.
You know the way you walk along a river? You walk and the river runs, you watch the currents or the reflections or whatever. You think maybe you’ll see something in the water. You watch—waiting for something to appear. But you know if it was a lake, you’d be sitting down. If it was a lake, there wouldn’t be this feeling of anticipation, of imminent discovery, of something perhaps awful—or valuable.
There are so many bridges over the Thames—it’s a virtual forest. It’s not like any other river that way. And they’re all so invitingly scaled and full of character. They’re not exactly the Hoover Dam, but who can relate to the Hoover Dam?—I mean, personally speaking. When you approach the Hoover, or any other five-hundred-thousand-ton mass of concrete, there’s nothing but distance between you and it. Even when you’re standing on it, the dam is still a distant view. And forget about the Colorado River, I mean where is it? Way the hell down there. (Seven hundred and twenty- six feet down there.) You wouldn’t even know there was a river if it wasn’t a dam.
There are so many bridges over the Thames—it’s a virtual forest. It’s not like any other river that way. And they’re all so invitingly scaled and full of character. They seem to include me somehow. And when I’m on one of them, the river itself seems so invitingly scaled and full of character. Whenever I approach the river, I hear it saying, “Hello there. Come on in.” Or, “Welcome.”
A middle-aged man was found in the river last week. £3,000 in notes was taped to his chest along with instructions for his funeral. Blackness is complete. No room for anything else. Complete with an untouchable purity. Blackness excludes everything—including you. You can’t participate in it; you can’t add anything to it or affect it. Jumping in, entering this blackness, being surrounded by something that reforms endlessly, that can only admit you by disregarding you.
You say water is troubled or calm. You say water is rough and restless. You say water is disturbed. You say water is quiet. Water is serene and sometimes clear; it might be pure and then it’s brilliant. Water is heavy; that’s a fact. Water is often tranquil, even placid. Water is still and then it might be deep as well. Water is cold or hot, chilly or tepid. You say water is brash or brisk, sometimes crisp. You say water is soft and hard.
You say water irritates and lubricates. You say water is foul. You say water is fresh. You say water is limpid and languorous. You say water is sweet. Black water is never sweet. Black water is cold, often frigid; sometimes cool, but never tepid. Black water is hard, not soft. It’s brash and rough; it might irritate. It still lubricates. It’s often disturbed, but it’s never calm; at least, not simply calm. It might be fresh but you’d never know it, and I’m sure you’d never believe it. It’s frequently agitated, it’s often troubled. I don’t think you can question that, even when it appears quiet. Black water is never serene or brilliant or clear. It’s unsettled even when still. It can be deep, but it’s hard to know where. Even black water is wet but mostly in a parching way.
You know this water is filthy.
But isn’t it strange the way you still go places around it? It’s true you go different places than if it was clear. But those places are as alluring as the pastoral variety, don’t you think? Or is this the view of a pervert? You know very well this water is filthy. But it’s strange the way you’re still drawn to it? The way you still hang around, watching it.
I know very well this water is filthy. It’s more compelling that way, more unknown. A young woman drove her yellow Ford Fiesta down a ramp into the river. When police pulled the car out, all the windows were closed, and the doors were locked. They found the woman in the front seat and in the back—Samuel, her dog (an Irish Setter), his leash wrapped around her hand.
The opacity of the world dissipates in water. Black water cannot dissipate the opacity of the world. Confused? Lost? Large expanses of water are like deserts; no landmarks, no differences. (If you don’t know where you are, can you know who you are?) Just tumult everywhere, endlessly. Tumult modulating into another tumult, all over and without end. The change is so constant, so pervasive, so relentless that identity, place, scale — all measures lessen, weaken — eventually disappear. The more time you spend around this water — the more faint your memories of measure become.
Water is a mysterious combination of the mysterious and the material. Imagine something that, impinged on by everything, in contact with everything, remains to this day mostly transparent — even crystal clear, when taken in small enough quantities.
Water is transparence derived from the presence of everything. Water is transparence derived from the presence of everything.
That is, water is sifted down, filtered out through the planet, earth. Earth: aquifer that clarifies and realizes purity. This filter of everything modulates to exquisite balance. A substance is obtained that bears no likeness. All things converge in a single identity: water.
Water is utopic substance. Among water? Isn’t water a plural form? How could it ever be singular, even in one river? Where did that water come from? Which river did Neil Young shoot his baby down by?
See the song “Down by the River:” (“Down by the river, I shot my baby . . . . I shot her dead . . . .”)
He doesn’t identify the river in the song.
A body of a middle-aged man was taken from the river two days ago. In a pocket of his overcoat, police found a large dictionary. In his trousers and coat pockets, and in a pouch buckled to his waist, they found various bits of hardware—nuts, washers, and screws, and £168 and 52p. in coins—weighing thirty-two pounds.
This water exists in monolithic, indivisible continuity with all other waters. No water is separate from any other water.
In the River Thames, in an Arctic iceberg, in your drinking glass, in that drop of rain, on that frosty windowpane, in your eyes and in every other microscopic, microcosmic part of you (and me), all waters converge.
Indivisible continuity is intrinsic to water. This continuity exceeds us even while being the biggest part of us. It’s this continuity that makes our effect on water an effect on us. That is to say: “I am the Thames!” or “The Thames is me!” When you go down to the river you’re killing two birds with one stone: you stand there and you go places.
Anhydrony.
Anhydrony is waterless water.
The opposite of water. The form remains liquid, but the substance is altered—replaced with another identity. Anhydrony is dry water.
Anhydrony is not a recognized word. Its nonexistence points to the difficulty of accepting its meaning.
When you see yourself reflected in water, do you recognize the water in you? “The sea-reach of the Thames stretched out before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. . . . A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.”
See Heart of Darkness.
The English have a penchant for dismembering their murder victims. I doubt there’s a period of London history free from the heads, limbs, and vital organs found in the Thames, or washed up on its banks. Last week police found intestines and a leg (they didn’t say if it was right or left). Over near Silvertown—intestines and one leg.
Yesterday I read in the Evening Standard: “A passer-by spotted a man’s head and limbs sticking out of the mud. . . .” Eleven body parts were found in the river but, “significantly, not the torso.”
Where is the torso?
Body parts (victims of murder), corpses (suicides—mostly jumpers), sewage (human waste), heavy metals (lead, mercury, cadmium, for example). Herons and cormorants lighten up the look, but not much—only briefly.
There was an article in the newspaper some time ago about a young man jumping off a bridge. He strapped his bicycle, a black Phantom, to his chest, and jumped in.
(It took six months to identify the body.)
Isn’t that what you’d expect? Isn’t that what you’d be after—to lose your identity?
The Thames looks like a solvent for identity.
Which river did Bruce Springsteen get his baby pregnant down by?
See the song, “The River:”
(“. . .We’d go down to the river and into the river we dived, oh . . .down to the river we’d ride. Then I got Mary pregnant, and man, that was all she wrote . . .That night we went down to the river and into the river we’d dive . . .Is a dream alive if it don’t come true, oh is it something worse—that sends me down to the river, though I know the river is dry. . .”)
My gaze alights on the water—on some spot on the river: here where the water is turning around, where the currents turn the water in tightening circles. (I can’t turn away from these tightening, turning circles.) I want to feel myself twisted around. And I want to watch, I want to feel time twist as I watch these spirals forming. I want to feel time twist and myself turning as I watch them disappear. I want to twist with the turning water. I want to watch these spirals turn themselves invisible. I want to watch them turning from the surface, turning down into the depths, where I cannot see them. I want to turn invisible with them. I want to turn with them: invisible — and keep turning.
See the poem “Domination of Black,” Wallace Stevens.
My gaze alights on the water—on some spot on the river: here, where the water is turning around, where the currents turn the water in tightening circles. I want to feel myself twisted around, I want to watch these spirals swelling and bubbling and expanding. I want to watch the flattened water as frothing ripples form around it.
I want to watch as the stillness of the swollen and smooth water comes. And on the surface of that stillness, I want to watch as dry-looking water rushes over its depths, rushing with the intricate texture that water has at this temperature and viscosity and flow.
My gaze alights on the water—on some spot on the river. And as my gaze alights it feels as though I’m seeing something I’ve never seen before. How does water remain so unfamiliar?
Your reflection uncouples in this water. It drifts away from you. As you stand there on the bank or bridge, helpless, watching your reflection float downstream and disappear, you may wonder what forces black water gathers. But instinctively you already know they must be closer to witchcraft than geometry.
“Best witchcraft is geometry.”
See poem No. 1158 by Emily Dickinson.
Do you remember the young Parisian woman I mentioned earlier? They found a suicide note in her hotel room addressed to her sister. (It was written in French.) The note referred in detail to her problems, including her bad teeth. (She thought she had buck teeth.)
Police said this surprised them since, in their judgment, she did not have buck teeth. A boy is baptized in a filthy river (under a false name). The next day he goes back and drowns himself in it.
See the short story “The River,” by Flannery O’Connor. Have you ever noticed how water camouflages light? I heard an account recently of a young man drowning himself in the river. He was deaf and dumb. He used a sign language invented by his parents. (Only the family understood it.)
This river casts a shadow into itself, becoming itself. The shadows and dirt thicken the water with a darkness and distance that slices through everything: identity, place, geology. The water rushes along in its unseeable depths, full of a darkness that has no image.
The sound of the river at night is a landscape of possibilities.
The sound of the river at night is a landscape of possibilities.
You have to get fairly close before you can really hear it. I mean, hear something more than the white noise of its rush. And what you hear in the dark are delicate, elusive sounds. Sounds that must be there in the day as well, but are unheard, muted by the light.
Water sighs. Water sucks. Water licks. Water laps. Water splishes. Water swishes. Water sploshes. Water splashes. Water washes. Water swashes. Water sloshes. Water murmurs. Water hushes. Water rushes. Water gushes. Water burbles. Water babbles. Water gurgles. Water sucks.
Do you know this ditty?
“Blah, blah, blah, your hair,
Blah, blah, blah, your eyes;
Blah, blah, blah, blah, care,
Blah, blah, blah, blah, skies.”
From the song “Blah, Blah, Blah,” written by Ira Gershwin. Probably the Thames was never clear, but its lack of transparence means something
different today than it did two hundred or five hundred years ago. Yesterday I read in the evening paper: “On the night of July 8th a man walking on the foreshore at Lower Pool stumbled on a human head.” To obscure the identity of the dead person, the article went on to note: The face had been skinned. The body it belonged to was found in pieces over the following weeks, a leg here, a hand there.
It took one month but police found all the parts including the torso.
(Water is the master verb: an act of perpetual relation.)
Have you ever noticed how light camouflages water?
Have you ever noticed how rarely water looks like water?
What does water look like?
See military camouflage. For example: “Polish Presidential,” “Italian Woodland,” “San Marco Mediterranean,” “Indonesian Spot,” and “Belgian Jigsaw” patterns.
Which river did Jimi Hendrix shoot his baby down by? Well, I’m not certain it was a river, but it probably should have been.
See the song “Hey Joe:” (“I’m going down to shoot my old lady, you know I caught her messin’ round with another man . . . .”)
“Take me to the river, drop me in the water.”
(In the Thames that would be murder.)
See the song “Take Me to the River,” by Al Green.
A congress of star-like specks, bubbles, infinitesimal rainbows, and finely though quickly wrought reflections. Ephemerals among other ephemerals of coincidence, giving momentary visibility to the transient and transparent. I don’t know if you’ve had this experience but occasionally when I’m watching the water I hear snippets from various songs drifting up from the river. (Sometimes I even recognize the voice.)
Last night when I was watching the water “Ain’t No Way” came wafting up, slow and endless: “Ain’t no way. . . just ain’t no way, no. . . ain’t no way, baby. . . sure ain’t no way. . . just ain’t no way. . . ain’t no way, baby. . .”
Well, you can tell why I’m not a singer.
From “Ain’t No Way,” by Carolyn Franklin. The version I’m trying to sing was once sung by Aretha Franklin.
In the light, water is water more simply.
Water shines. Water shimmers. Water glows. Water glimmers. Water glitters. Water gleans. Water glistens. Water glints. Water twinkles. Water sparkles. Water blinks. Water winks. Water waves.
This water is full of unknown things — unspeakable, unpronounceable things.
Sometimes I console myself by imagining all the things in the water. I console myself with the horror of it. It’s not just the obvious stuff like rats and condoms and sewage. That’s easy to imagine. But I try to visualize the viruses and bacteria as well, like hepatitis and E. coli and the little bacteria of dysentery and cholera, and that disease called Weils and, who knows, maybe a remnant of the plague, just lingering the way things tend to do near water.
And what about the gold? All the hidden treasures? The wedding rings, for example — or the gold fillings?
And what about all those Greek chemistries that are modern mythology: polyphenols, polychlorinated biphenyls, chlorinated hydrocarbons, trichloroethane and those kinds of things that don’t have much of an image but come from all over the world?
And what about all those prostitutes, whole or in pieces, that wind up in the river?
And what about prostitutes? Have you ever wondered why it’s so common to find prostitutes down by the river, or even in the river?
River story: begin with a scene that takes place along a river, possibly the Rhine.
It’s summertime, early in the morning, the sun is rising. The view is murky and dark.
A male prostitute is working the waterfront. Soon he’s picked up by a john and you see them kissing. But the prostitute is upset when he realizes that the john (who is dressed as a man) is really a woman. The john, whose name is Elvira, is beaten up by the prostitute’s cohorts. Later in the story you learn that Elvira was born a man. To please his boyfriend, he had his sex changed. But Anton didn’t want him as a woman.
In the end Elvira kills herself.
See the film In the Year of 13 Moons, by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Do you know this ditty?
“Blah, blah, blah, the moon.
Blah, blah, blah, above.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, croon.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, love.”
Remember Psycho? — remember the sound of the windshield wipers? (Maybe it was the violins.) It had this kind of insistence — this prophetic insistence — river water’s got it, too, especially at night. And that insistence doesn’t have to stop, the way rivers don’t. In fact, those violins don’t stop, they keep going, on and on, in my head.
Do rivers ever really end?
Do rivers ever really end? Even while you stand here and watch the Thames flow itself into the North Sea, does it end there?
Do rivers ever really end? You know they just keep going, keep going with another name.
Watching the water, I am stricken with vertigo of meaning.
Watching the water, I am stricken with vertigo of meaning. Water is the final conjugation: an infinity of form, relation, and content.
A young actor drowned himself in the river a few years back. He had just been chosen for the part of Edgar Allan Poe in a play based on the life of the writer. Recently he had spoken to the author of the play about dropping the part of Poe and replacing it with a
role in which he would play himself.
In the rain, or under a grey sky, in a weather that imparts little light, water is water less simply.
When it rains, fly-like specks mass briefly on the surface of the river. Each raindrop is a pin-sized bit of darkness, a dot seeming to flit and disappear.
What are you thinking about? Rain falling on water flattens the reflections and tranquilizes the view.
What are you thinking about? Rain falling on water is so alluring, so soothing and tender. The river becomes a meadow, a soft place to lie down in.
When it rains, fly-like specks mass briefly on the surface of the river. As each raindrop touches the water, miniscule circles form, ephemeral geometries of contact.
Which river did Hank Williams attempt suicide in?
“I went down to the river to watch the fish swim by. But I got to the river so lonesome I wanted to die. Then I jumped in the river but the doggone river was dry. . . . ” From the album Low Down Blues.
You can’t see the blackness at night—only the darkness. It’s only during the day that you can see the blackness. That’s when you know it’s not a reflection.
Black is a place. I don’t know what it’s like, can’t see it, but I know it’s there. You can go there—though it’s not fixed in location. Black travels well, it’s inert, incorruptible — like gold. And no matter where it is, it’s always the same. You never know much about it, it doesn’t give much away (that’s the idea of black); you just have to go there.
Black is where you can suspend your faith.
When you look at water, you see what you think is your reflection. But it’s not yours.
(You are a reflection of water.)
Thank you.
Performance at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebæk, Denmark), May 2012
