Ravi Agarwal

Where Three Dreams Cross

“Above all the fights … nobody ever had the smallest chance to fight with Marcel” (Arman).
Jabès: Substitute Marcel with the word “zero”.
Realometer: I have expected you to say: Substitute Marcel with “god”.
Magnes: This would have contradicted the subtlety of both.
D: Of both?
Jabès: Thank you for the question, but I have to reject it, too much honor for me.
Magnes: Zero  contains male and female, plus and minus in infinitesimal combinations.
Realometer: And a head? Indiana’ s head is a product of all the heads that had been seen in the movies. Indiana’s had is marked by the Eliot effect, which is an effect produced by history, and therefore by linear writing. The head in the Indiana cartoon is a combination of heads which have been sketched in other cartoons. Indiana’s head is the ultimate head of a certain time. Different times have different forms of ultimate heads.
Jabès: Different places have different heads, zeros and knifes. Butcher knifes, pen knifes (Schreibmesser),

Our perception is shaped by reading. Therefore we orientate ourselves in an image in two directions: top down (head – trousers) and right left (one hole after the other).

Realometer: Incoming news are transformed. First I experience them as strikes or as incoming single bricks with a strong  quasi measurable impact. After a while they lose their discreteness and become somehow cloudy, fuzzy. This may have to do with the attention that I pay.

Magnes: This night I was dreaming to start a long walk in order to reach something in a far distance. While I was walking I asked myself: Why do I not take a bike? Just in the moment of deciding to turn back home in order to get my bike, I had a glimpse of thought. It suggested to consider my situation as a dream. In a dream it is possible to have a bike at disposition and to have it not a disposition. So I decided to have a bike at my disposition. This disposition did prevent me from returning home. Now I wonder why I did not ask myself to have my home at hand when I wanted it. I can dissolve this by arguing that this would be indirect and a dream supports direct decisions.

——————————————————–

„Die Dinge sind nicht schwarz-weiss. Es geht darum, zwischen den Dingen in Bewegung zu sein. Deshalb kann ich auch nicht an rein äusseren Gesichtspunkten festhalten, weder am Feminismus noch an Ideologien. Bezieht man einen solchen äusseren Standpunkt, wird man leicht in eine Verteidigungsposition gedrängt, wo man verteidigen muss, was man schon begriffen hat. Sich auf einer solchen Stelle zu befinden ist nichts für einen Schriftsteller. Man muss versuchen, sich in Bewegung zu halten, zu unbekannten Gebieten auszurücken, und neue Erlebnisse und Erfahrungen in Besitz nehmen“. (Inger Christensen: „Verwandlung – Das Gedichteschreiben“. In: Schreibheft 74. S. 62)

Seemundvorrat

Head Farm is becoming an attractor. Words group around this name. I start to make arrangements. So I separate rooms, first a news room. Like bricks thrown through a window they come. Luckily enough the window is open. Words and photos of the oil disaster in the gulf, fear of uprising international conflicts with North Corea and news of earthquakes at the stock exchange are landing on my table. The planks of the floor are creaking. Perhaps the floor is not stable enough.

——————————————————–

„Ich kann nicht schreiben, nur um andere und mich selbst zu trösten. Ich will am liebsten anonym sein. Das liegt auch an meiner Idee, dass die Sprache gar nicht mir gehört. Sie hat sich durch Geschichte herausgebildet, und dass sie sich durch mich ausdrückt, ist zufällig“. (Inger Christensen: „Verwandlung – Das Gedichteschreiben“. In: Schreibheft 74. S. 62).

D: A certain time I spent on Head Farm, not a time of harvest. We read poetry. R.M.Gerhardt’s poems led us to the notion of ruins. European art and poetry he regards as conditioned by ruins; american by the will of becoming. Today this distinctions are not specific. Contemporary artistic production is dominated by a trend towards globally selling art works; this collides with other trends, driven by epistemological and technological shifts.  Head Farm has strengthend the question how cerebral we are. Sometimes I dare to say, that there are different streams of intensity at work in my head. But when I try to clear this I can only say and think that there is one stream, which I sense.
Realometer: Writing the soul interacts with itself.
J.: And painting or drawing?
Realometer: Painting the soul  immerses in the distance or in the proximity of a detail. The soul by the way is an effect of writing; the head a part of a body.

D.: Nature is a chance to produce non-retinal works of art. Contrasts in this works are lines of force.

J: Without contrast mankind cannot create images of god and of itself.

——————————————————–

“Sie steigen auf, die Schmetterlinge des Planeten…” (Inger Christensen in: Schreibheft 74. S. 41)

J.: There is no image of god. When mankind creates images, it creates images of itself, of its own conditions. The climate change is an image of men’s attempt to find a relation to nature.

Realometer: Nature is an artefacet. It is an effect of cultural production, therefore we conceive nature as a text. A text contains elements. They are written, they can be cancelled or recombined.

Drawing a line, you are balancing between something and nothing, between foreground and background.

J.: Foreground and background are defined reciprocally, like god and man.

Realometer: Man is called an image of god.