SOLIPSIST MANIFESTOS

Note--THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. The entire contents of this work are the invention of the author's poor imagination. The characters and places mentioned herein are either a PRODUCT OF FANTASY or are USED FICTITIOUSLY. Fuck you. --Ed.


Poke me with a fork. Spent the past few days alone, off and on, regrouping. I don't know why; preparing for a move that can't happen.
Yes, I'm a sentimental bastard, and it's time to admit failure. The past six months trying to correct mistakes and I'm in deeper than ever, because I couldn't let go of the corpse of this city until I knew it was dead.
But here I am. Failed like last time, like every time. The plan has failed and I'm stranded reading comics and planning my next gimmick. I've awakened in the worst way. Yet I'm too much of a coward to finish it, mark the dividing line and step into whatever nightmare I've been shielding myself from.
I don't know why i'm writing this down.

* * *

You know, she does talk to angels. And anyone else with a dime's worth of attention. I wonder if the afterlife will be bored with her before she even gets there.

* * *

Letter to 1996. Get off your ass. You haven't changed. "Growth" is a joke told by those who want an excuse for not amending their mistakes. You hate people like it was going out of style, like a true calling. You now spend your breath masking the curses you're too callow to utter aloud. Your poetry's dead, killed by common sense. Exploring emotion? Who the hell cares if you can tell me you're angry in 14 languages? Doesn't make me want to fuck or own or kill any less. For me, everything's about being left alone. All these useless words I've been gibbering and I relate to the animals less than I ever did. Only in pain can I relate, but I'm convinced that everyone feels pain differently. You've been there? I don't think so. You've got your problems. I've got mine. That's it. No magical bridge for us to meet on and compare scars. So spare me the drama. Your little morality play's got no punchline.

I'm the weakest piece of shit I know. And I know everyone else sees straight through what I'm saying. The fact that a few people think I'm 'an allright guy' only shows how much more pathetic I am, that I can't stand up for anything. What if I did stand up one day, throw the card table over? "Fuck you"; you deserve to hear it, I deserve to say it. They'd tell me to sit down, that act hasn't been fashionable since '93.

I'm too dependent on the art of others. I need them to say what I cannot, what I'm too untalented or too cowardly to. Whenever I try to speak I stutter, my tongue flaps uselessly, my jaw's crooked, I sound like I've got a mouthful of gravel. I've lost control of language so I babble on endlessly like the pretentious idiots I fucking hate. I hate that I envy tortured people their intensity. But nonetheless I depend on the art of others as an outlet. Someone somewhere probably called that 'civilization' before going off on another shooting spree. I guess it doesn't matter. For every way one man tries to find a voice for the shit in his head it'll tell fifty others to kill everyone they know.

* * *

This is not a drill. No surprise I haven't written. Who's missed anything? I need to shut up but there's this urge, to keep talking and talking like eventually I'll say something right, just out of the law of averages.

* * *

A dream to build a kiss on. Sometimes I imagine she has hollow bones. I like to pretend there's something that could be, but it's dreamy, sleepy, vague. I want to be your first and last. I don't know why. You want to look but you don't want to see. The priceless illusion. It's all just another brooch to you, I know. But you'll soon find the pin embedded in your chest.

* * *


I bet you think this is about you. I'm going to tear you out from the inside. I'm going to find every little piece of broken logic in your fractured head and make a mosaic that spells my name. I will forever live in your retelling of me. You are never going to be able to sleep next to anyone else without waking in the night and wondering if it's still me next to you. Nothing you say will ever surprise me. Nothing you do will ever daunt me. Nothing you sing will ever be believed. Nothing you offer will be accepted. Nothing you desire will be offered. You will never be happy as long as you allow yourself to continue hocking borrowed logic. "You're in Hell, and you're too stupid to know it." I refuse to allow one more moment of my life to be monopolized by a child who cannot accept that there simply is not. I leave you to your emotional mobius strip as i walk away, whistling a tune that will never have your name in it.

* * *

Burning. As usual. Doing time in the underside of this city. I'm floating from place to place, touching down nowhere, looking for anything I can stop and gawk at. A girl asked me today, "why are you so sad?" I still haven't replied. I don't know that I have a right to answer. Everyone's sad in their own way, on their own level, to their own soundtrack playing in their heads. Everyone wants to be sad--it's important nowadays to look complex. The most important fashion accessory now is a sob story. I lost my job. I lost my family. I lost my boyfriend. I lost a child. We're all, to hear ourselves tell it, just lost people with downcast eyes drifting, bumping into each other to remind ourselves that there is an eternal audience. Our lives will live in the retelling of our lives. It's the only shot at immortality we really have. Sure, I'm sad. I have my reasons. But you don't really want to know. Your habit is to listen patiently to all the details, nod sagely and sympathetically, and then try to figure out how to play this so you can be the main character. You'll osmose my pain into your cheap displays of horror and empathy, as though my difficulties were somehow a physical blow to you. "I bear the pain of so many friends. I don't know how I manage to carry all that weight." This is why I live in silence.

* * *

A dictionary of misunderstood words. She always said to him, "I love your body."
She always meant, "I love your body because it's holding me." No other reason. But she restrained herself, wisely she thought. She believed that love, like success, soley consisted of how long you keep your audience from knowing you're a failure. Thus she thought she was safest behind a smokescreen of flattery. Always direct the attention away.
Like Houdini.

He had always liked the sensation of drinking. Not the buzz, but the physical sensation of alcohol sliding over the lips, swirling in the mouth so as to leave only itself behind. There was something sensual and meditative about it, making sure each corner of the mouth is covered, the pallette completely inundated. He was a slow drinker, and he liked it that way. It was his own private pretension.
This wasn't why he began drinking, however. He tried to explain it to her once or twice:
"It allows me to think about one thing at a time."
She would meet this with a blank stare.
"All right, say you're at the symphony. As nice as a full orchestra is, sometimes you just want to hear one violin. It's quieter, easier to concentrate on, you know you wouldn't miss a note if that were the only thing you were listening to. Now let's say that for each sip of wine or beer or whatever i take, one member of the orchestra disappears. On and on, until I'm left with that one violinist."
She'd nod gravely. He knew she didn't understand.

* * *

Bigger. Better. Faster. More. It's kind of ironic, that I consider these people my people. They have nothing to do with me. I start to feel like an outsider now, perhaps due to my age, or maybe I just missed the latest fad, decided to sit down comfortably with this one. I'm an outsider in a world of outsiders. Alone in a niche that only fits one anyway.
I have to wonder what draws people like these at the next table here. Status quo or no, I find it difficult to believe that they would callously invade a scene they don't understand. I mean, do I waltz into a country club randomly and demand a rum and coke? I can't believe I guard this so jealously, claim to understand it myself. I know it's all just a stigma I've created. A guardian of a 'scene' I was never really a part of. A guardian of nothing. But for all this posturing I do, and as claustrophobic as these places get, I feel more at home hiding in the corner of this café a thousand miles and eleven states away from home than I ever did sitting at my kitchen table.

* * *

Help me.The other day I watched a fly struggle against a window. All of a sudden it struck me as patently absurd: here this little insect, with god-given instincts to fly home and mate, should die on this windowsill having never gotten past the glass, and never knowing why, when all the while freedom lay in every single other direction. Then it struck me as absurd that after a life like mine I should notice this about a fly.

* * *

The infamous invitation. I found a letter today. It was caught in the fence of a construction site downtown, buffeted by wind. It couldn't have been more than a few days old.

Dear Nancy. It was an affair to remember, wasn't it?
Only I think I've forgotten most of it...it comes back to me every once in a while. Like when it all started. You know, I don't think I can say when it all started. Maybe that day I waltzed into the café as usual, only to receive your typically indifferent hello, but this time laced with the slightest twinge at the corner of your mouth that I wouldn't have noticed except that I was looking for it. Or the day soon after that I asked for your help on a meaningless problem, only for an excuse to call you at unscheduled hours. Whatever the reason, we soon reached a comfortable familiarity. I never really cared why.
I also remember that walk we almost didn't go on. You had my sick and bed-ridden girlfriend to thank for that. Sometimes it's easier to think that day was planned by some director flitting around our perception. Our dialogue was inspired, rehearsal unnecessary. I remember that walk facilitated that infamous invitation, and your unexpected long-distance midnight phone calls for the next week.
And who could forget that weekend? How many times have I tried? The dinner you made, despite my protestetions to help, the dancing. Or how on the eleventh hour of my stay, we kissed as though we had never kissed each other before, never kissed anyone before. And I wish I could forget your anger, my childish reactions, when we thought we had the world figured out only to find the world plays its own games, miscommunication not being the least of those.
Now I spend my days listening to sappy love songs and drinking heavily. Reruns click on and off my ceiling at night , and I spent all day today trying to find a copy of that record we danced to. My wife complains of how she's getting fat, breaking out--and I just can't care enough to tell her she's right. I don't even think about it, not even when I'm with her, save to remind myself that you were still beautiful as ever the last time I saw you. Even though you wouldn't speak to me. Even though your eyes and your whole body dangled off the end of his attention; you know I never liked him, never approved of the way he treated women.
Oh well. You probably remember none of this.
Sincerely, John.

I left it on the table of the diner I was reading it in. I don't need it. I don't think anyone ever will.

* * *

Let's have another, shall we? Got what I wanted, and as usual I regret it. Damn me for not accepting my lots, for choosing the wrong backdrops for the big scene. Venting's pretty useless. So's sitting here. I wish I could realign my zone. My waking world is uneventful and difficult. All of god's creatures are waiting at the table for the food to come.

Still waiting. Perhaps I'll sing. Maybe for the death of cynicism, since the girl who just walked in is cute. Many say that I am not honest. This is honest: that I cannot smile to her.

I can stay here because they know me. Knowing is not loving, but they know me nonetheless. The pain of that knowing is mounting. I am insufferable. But unflappable. 'Woman is beautiful but you twist like a handkerchief in the wind.' I twist like a serpent in on itself, the bones snapping. There is art here. I am reborn, not as whom I wish, to whom I wish.

* * *

Point. Beauty is the war paint of Death. Many sacrifice at the altar, bring their money, their goods, their services to lay at the feet of what they deem beautiful, but it is Death they worship, Death that they will find with stunned looks on their faces when they're left with a sucking chest wound filled with their unfulfilled expectations. He who loves Beauty loves Death--it cannot be otherwise. Beauty fades, right? Everything fades. It's just some entropies are slower than others. It's all I live by. All I hope for. Counterpoint. Beauty is nothing. It is what the mind creates, deems beautiful. Something which is created by the mind is blameless but for who created it. Those who go mad for beauty create their own cells, barred with white arms, locked by the outline of a hip, wardened by a smile that was never meant for them.

* * *

All the white horses are outside, dear. And they're pissed. Carving some old memories into my arm this evening. Here's another: fevered, sweating, moonlight in the front seat with us like the silent one in an orgy. Your arched back, my slick hands, our tired breath. I think it was raining. You wanted me to hurt you. You didn't say this until later. One of us accidently kicked the 'eject' button on the cassette player. You didn't know yet that I hated you, or thought I did; these memories all biting into my flesh, the blood sometimes runs together and I can't tell one face from the next.
After I'm done carving this testament into my limbs, I think I'll go for another walk. It's so much colder out now. The night air's sharp like a jazz note. The air will give me time to think, time for my wounds to heal. I will carry this memory of you, blood-clotted and scabrous by now, with me around the block again. Just like last night. Like every night.

* * *

This is for all of you. I have an urge to lash out. Don't act surprised. I am constantly defeated, so many people see me coming. I am sitting in the shadow of a man who is greater than I, of many men. My hamartia is to serve as an illumination. It's humiliating. Nothing I do will ever matter to anyone, anywhere, at any time. I'm flattering myself to think I've taken pieces from those I've met, or left pieces with them. Their life goes on. It's for the best. My life sits here. I have nothing to offer. I have nothing to accomplish, nothing to prove. I wish I did. Fate? We'll see.

* * *

I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Every time I think I'm doing anything right, I'm just...wrong. Every time I think I'm getting what I want, I don't. I am frequently convinced that nothing will make me happy, and I know just how lame it is to say it. You can only berate yourself for so long until it settles into some sort of liquid hatred, cashable to yourself or others who are unlucky enough to get in the way.

"i know for sure you'll never be the one
but it's the forbidden moment that fires our sad escape..."
--Red House Painters, "Grace Cathedral Park"
I know I quote songs a lot. Fuck off.

Every day reminds me what a fucking waste of time every day is. Always reminded that your dreams are shit, you can't have them, don't even fucking bother if it involves depending on other people. All a sad waste of my time. It's a wonder to me that anything actually occurs, ever. How the hell do you talk about isolation? It's like trying to tell a crazy person that they're crazy. It's like trying to decide between screaming and crying and being paralyzed in the middle. It's no secret to me that the problem's me. I keep thinking "I'll round this corner, I'll achieve this amount of peace, I'll do this and I'll be okay, I'll be ready to deal with other people." You know what? Fuck other people. When have I not been screwed? I often wonder why I should have to be the spiritually centered one, why I have to be the one that's "bigger than this", I've got to be the "mature" one, why I have to be the fucking eye of someone's goddamned emotional storm.

I know I'm just beating my fists on the floor. I know I'm essentially selfish. But when the fuck is it okay for ME to be "crazy"? Who is going to be my shoulder? Who's going to provide a stable foundation for FIVE GODDAMNED MINUTES when I'm falling apart for no good reason?

You know what's the most pathetic? I wish I had someone to talk to.

* * *

to be continued


Read the artist's statement. Or don't.

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