The Ecstatic Silence: 36
The lunch was a light salad. There was love and sympathetic understanding extended over the brisk terrors. That night the background was a grey undulation that accented varying objects. Any conversation that might have happened was merely a shaded modeling of individual parts. It was the start of Johnny’s aura-framing experiments. Aura-frames connect objects and places to attention and flickers. These are normally missed or don’t even exist. The idea is to dissolve the boundaries of spatial perception and create a continuous environment. The absorbtion would be a drag for anyone wanting to move. This was a constant distraction that shocked haptic sensations and induced a loss of time and space. He experiments with shock by creating tension. Combined materials lit up patterns. They cut openings into your background.
These were his favorite objects at this time: lampshades, headless mannequins, jewelry, hats, fabrics, geese, molded aluminum, opaque glass, shoes… His encounters were constantly oddly placed. He stimulated pauses. Intervals of hesitation were common parries. He was hoping that the enigmatic would open up a state of distracted awareness. He was wandering about in a hustle against somnambulence. He wanted to stay awake. His tactic was that of the forced pique. His tools were profane illuminations blended with collective bodily innervation. He hoped to signal a species of borrowed power affected to spark attention, wonder and leaning. Leaning had magical properties for him. You stayed put at the base but still swung all around. The lithe spine was its fetish diction.
In this way, everything was to be, metaphorically, down the hall so to speak. Naturally, several people were anxious.
‘Something is going to happen.’
‘I don’t like it. I just hope he didn’t go and make anything mad.’
‘This is practically his only vice,’ gestured someone.
Everyone tried to smile through it. Glancing from one to another they could hear slow rushing movements. In the end they all left. Johnny tried to stay courageous as the ongoing cold came up to him.
‘There are disadvantages everywhere,’ he commented. ‘ In the lake regions you get mosquitoes.’ Nothing was exactly descriptive. Nothing was entirely informative. Sometimes the interest was more about dynamic gestures.
‘Lives have to be expanded. Our facades need unifying so that our fronts are part of the frame. We should be like electrical signs,’ he wrote.
'What the hell?...We should retain a view and then sweep down and tell our stories to passerbys,’ he intoned.
‘But then we’re just fashion news. An event. A talking newspaper. A sales robot,’ complained S.
‘But a labyrinth too,’ he shot back. ‘A labyrinth of commodities, not an internalization but the promise of an immersion,’ he rattled off excitedly.
His aura was the enemy of possession. Maybe he resisted trace effects. But his idea of being seen by passers-by was a critical shift. Aura wasn’t marking time or space so much as reading off memories for the future. Clarity can be worked as a ruse. It may even be an ornament. He walked into rooms like a breathy halo scratching the surfaces. Organisation, mistrust and pessimism clung to his worn shirt sleeves. His speaking was a lure to an illusory interior. Naturally all the moments he lined up were partial. They were suspended tactile qualities.
The fear of being buried alive meant he disapproved of anything concentrated on merely three dimensional living. Hooking two to life’s flying machine was the duty of sensation. Destroy the confinement when what’s left is a screen by dispersion techniques. He often told the old joke: a man is sobbing by a grave in a graveyard. A tender hearted woman approached him.
‘Why are you sad?’
‘My daughter’s in the grave,’ replied the weeping man. ‘Some days I wish she was dead.’
Concentrate attention to destroy confinement sensation. He was searching out contrived positions of intimacy whilst avoiding intimidation. The task was enormously complicating and without wing mirrors. An aura of authoritative presence would often suffice. He became a closely-expanded space in bars, pubs, and those rooms where he showed girls his best tenth of a second. Retaining the conscious presence of mind was always his final twist. His face held an illusory atmosphere and an odd distracting unity.
‘I am the ideal guy,’ he sometimes ruminated, ‘ a house of silence,’ he nodded whilst opposites contracted arrangements. He worked to see the limits of the body, as if skin modulated interior life. He never lost the disconnection between interior life and city life. His own body seemed more porous than elastic. His tactics of display proved virtual states of distraction and hallucination. He may well have lost touch with the habits of his actions. Everything has inherent physical limits and one worry was the pull of dwelling somewhere. Anywhere. At least once. It boiled down in the end to thinking for himself no matter what. In fact he recommended it for everyone. Fellow travelers were astonished as he denied the temptations of universal principles, material knowledge and the habits of all their howling teaching manuals. Something had taken their place.
This is what it looks like after a while. Temerity wore a creeping silence and rejected smile. Invent. Organise. Explore. Research. Innovate. Build. Analyse. Sway. Fondle. Caress. Kiss. Shake. Pound. Swallow. Beat. Swim. Run. Rock and roll.
