<nettime> the useless chant of hypnotic y-c you

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

the useless chant of hypnotic y-c you

I wake up in the middle of the night with nightmares, all the time, beat-
ing myself up. I'm constantly haunted by death, regrets, finality: today
for example - is this the last class I'll ever get to teach? Since my
archives are scattered among two universities, I feel like dead man
walking; I'm already packaged, what I haven't accomplished I'll never
accomplish. Finality is accompanied by thuds. My current music archive is
at the resurrected ESP-disk site - a company that disappeared decades ago.
My fiftieth high-school reunion is, I think, now, and I dread the thought
of going, choosing to die remembered elsewhere. In my bar mitzvah book -
yes, we found that going through things at my father's home - among the
pictures of dance/prance/pray, I put a picture of the explosion of the
first hydrogen bomb. The paper is yellowed, as if cosmological physics
suddenly became antiquated. I am waiting for my friends to die. How can I
speak to Vito Acconci for example of the hurt he caused me; everything is
already dust. Or my father, whose psychological abuse - which he was in no
way responsible for - how can he understand at 96, what happened to me -
how my depressions, unbearably out of control, began in relation to his
temper and my fears of just being alive? I tried suicide as a kid, mixing
iodine with milk, which turned out to be an antidote, which is the story
of my life, and the suicide attempt was hidden and probably not that
serious anyway - another regret. Now I'm in the midst of yet another panic
attack, it's almost 5am, I'm teaching the last class ever tomorrow, which
won't be any better than the others in this course, another sleepless
night - thinking about Rwanda, the unutterable violence we do to one
another, the fury of this species. And I hypnotize, mesmerize, myself into
the granularity of absence, remaining alive, worried constantly about
Azure and her survival after me, knowing I will never know, that absolute
finality, that the thud, will create a barrier forever, that I won't even



recognize the barrier, that I won't be. I worry my collaborators as well
are disappearing - I'm not surrounded by a kind of critique any long,
critique that kept me on edge, functioning; now my music is freak-music,
my writing freak-writing, my Second Life installations freak-stallations,
stalling for time, for the imminence of immanent death. You don't want to
be me. My student, who I worry about, writes she can't make class today,
her bf has to go to the VA hospital, she's missed an appointment with him
already, he has cancer

esesmrmmm, mesmerss e-s eemmee m-e mesmersmm m-m mesmerss m-s mesmerss e-s
eems$
\mmrm\mrmse
\rermmr\m10\sr0\mr360\mrmsre1{\*\emmeee2\emmeremm2\emmeermsr2\emmemmr0}\
\rerse\mese\mr0\rmemre1033\esse\r0\rm20\rmem1033\rsse\r0\rm20\rmem1033
mmmmrmem\rs2160\rs0\rse2160\rse0\rs0\me240\mm240\rerse\mr0\mrm20\rmem1033
msresem r-m rsse m-e mem e-m eemr (mesmersee) eeere s-e seeermesesmr,
mesmerss.
asesmsresmrmmem m-m mermem e-m esee e-e ermmsessemr e-r eee e-e eseeer m-r
mmee$
mrmeems1m e-m eeeme m-e mre e-e eee m-e msme m-e mesmersesem s-m sr m-r
mem w-m$
mesmerseem e-m em e-m eee m-e mesrsem (mesrr e-r emmee'e r-e remm e-m eee
m-e m$
mesmer e-r eemr e-r eer m-r meeesr, oremmeee m-e memee e-e eer e-r emrr
w-r wem$
mesmerseem m-m me: sssmmsse--mremmm s-m se e-e eee m-e mesmersess m-s
mmeeer, e$
rememeerem--esrr e-r ee m-e msem, mrmmsem e-m eee m-e mesmerss e-s eemsse
e-e e$
rssr m-r msrmsrm s-m sr e-r eesm e-m esee, see e-e essse m-e mesmerss m-s
msemm$
eeeersem e-m eremeesem m-m meemrm e-m es s-s seeerm, msem, mesmerss m-s
mss e-s$
eee e-e esmee, rsmm e-m esmmrem, memeem, ssr e-r erssmm m-m mesmerss,
eesseee, $

hypnotic y-c you$





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