stones may fall is the performance text written for and performed during the group exhibition "Tip of the Tongue" in Garage Gallery, Prague in May 2023.
Feeling like a villain when I put my raincoat hood on. I go home and shout at my mom. I make the dog mad and forget about my friends birthday. I drink at least three cups of coffee everyday. at least. I write everything in my Moleskine. I leave nothing to chance. I wear the same socks for three days in a row. at least. I never do what the doctors ask of me. I externalize my anger to some others because I see myself in their actions. I smoke weed in my room and dry my dirty hands on the common space towel. I think of my parents as roommates and not the right way around. I know I haven’t come out of a womb. I don’t mind not changing the sheets. I don’t mind getting scolded, in fact it’s what I expect. I feel like a villain when I put my raincoat hood on ready to take on the entire city of broken hearts. On my new desk, there are not a whole lot of words when I come to think of it. I But too many words when I run to write of it. Too many blank spots. And not a lot of things to tell but too many words so the story becomes form out of its own responsibility. Too many words to make up a few writings. No words to make up so many stories. Good morning. Now shut up. Like the world itself, the word means nothing and everything, I blink to my friend.
Have you ever noticed a difference between someone who always carries a pen with them, and someone who doesn’t? When I hear the question “does anyone have a pen?” I go: Yes! I do! As if I have invented the pen myself. There are many ways to tell if you can trust a person. I don’t know if this is one of them, but that’s the whole trick about trust, the one trick about trust. Is that you also don’t know what to tell it by.
I saw my dentist last summer. By then he hadn’t seen me in years. He told me the shape of my face had changed, and asked me to clench my jaw. Apparently it’s more square now, now that I press my teeth together during sleep. I couldn’t tell him about my dad, or the break-up, though I wanted to. My mom believed that if she organized enough stuff, she’d win the war. I believed there was no war.
All this time moving I learned one main thing: That we spent most time decluttering, organizing, choosing, standing, throwing, carrying, replacing, letting go. So when we say we’re tired, its the weeks-long decision-making. It’s the remembering when you find an object, and the immediate need to forget about it; it’s the not having a choice but to remember what happened fully, and the knowledge that you could perhaps, not forget, but not remember if you wanted.
You should narrate my life, I tell him. It sounds more simple than I make it be.
Call it prison. Call it an odd afternoon. Call it the last 3 km to walk. Call it a past home. Call it a park. Call it the seat by the emergency exit. Call it a Thonet. Call it a single rubber band fallen on the ground. Call it a startup. A notebook. A cutting board. Call it the municipality building. Call it a ballot. A bullet. Call it a roll of tracing paper. Call it a ruler. Call it out.
And get as mad as you want, we have so much to celebrate this year.
Drop The Years. Grab Agua Viva. Google Print Shops. Patch the 10th piece of the performance. Finish designing business card. Pour coffee in your and your mom’s cup, for she gave you half of what she had this morning. And so you brewed more coffee. Now you feel guilty. You don’t even know if she has the energy to get up or not. Did Clarice Lispector already say everything? How many writers out there already wrote what you only thought of? Thinking is pathetic, is what I think these days. So the act of packing bags and going to Prague is a good start I guess. I can already hear myself thinking on the plane. Did I forget anything?
It seems everyone is moving in some way. As in, even without a direction and the act of packing itself becomes the only noble thing about the act of moving. I hear houses being left, and I hear about other houses being settled in. Though never not quite. The carrying van, or sometimes the truck itself becomes the new home for something in motion feels safer than something still.
My eyes are props today looking over the world. No one knows why they’re there. No one has a clue about their function. We’re not sure if they even look beautiful or fit for the shot. Nevertheless they make the scene happen. And the world means something for a brief second.
Okay the frame looks good. Let’s move on. Who do we shoot next?
Doing all of this I don’t sweat as much. I’d blame it on my new deodorant. I guess freedom partly lies in letting go of the concern for whether the lover shares the same sense of duty as the loved. Our family is being thrown out of the apartment I was brought to live before I even celebrated my first birthday. I have declared myself as the ministry of impatient affairs. Housing crisis everywhere.
I’m still whispering the word geni*us. Or not saying it at all. Talking way less in general. It helps me to be more specific. I’d blame it on my diarrhea pills. I remember how to be or become a little bowl to contain love inside again. This is good news, like Christmas. It lights up like the fake tree in our living room. I’d say your bike is still around. And other precious things chained right outside your door, close enough yet far enough, just how you like it. I often want to feel your gaze upon me as I’m walking through the city, often motivated to find love doing that, and I take it seriously. I hope this trip takes me to places I would otherwise not be able to see. That’s what happened the first time. Keep your friends close, their business cards even closer, I blink to my friend.
So the orchestra might start a song from scratch but it can never pretend to not have played it initially with a few off sounds. And drums as will, as intent. And how similarly the brain holds the score. But I'm sure there is still another undiscovered organ. Too much happening all at once is nothing nothing ever happened. I will remember you glancing over your shoulder gazing at the world so sourly, playing the drums for me.
I remember finally what it is that I like about grocery shopping. That it leaves me with a purpose, a bag. Something to carry from A to B.