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Hall of Letters
or, Distance Over Time
(or: Chronological Order)

“At 2:27pm on February 13th of the year 2001, the Universe suffered a crisis in self-confidence. Should it go on expanding indefinitely? What was the point?”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake


(in chronological order) ⊥

maybe this ‘art gallery’ is like slipping through time. looking at some things i did, the ways i spent past presents. that transfer from present into past—is that what work is?
in physics, the formula for work is W = Fdcos(θ), force times displacement (taking account angle of exertion). it’s measured in joules: kilogram meters squared over seconds squared.

it makes a lot of sense. it's good to be focused—that way you take care of the cosine. the more force and the more distance means the most was done. that's what it means to be a hard worker.

a good question that is so often considered too trite, i argue, these days, is that one: what’s this all for?


my current tentative answer is not an answer, because it’s inherent in the bones of it all, right? because if i think there's an answer i'm being daft, no? bc...when you ask the question, you’re not In It, because when you’re In It you don’t even need to ask, you know. or something like that.

anyway, below is the first thing i wrote about this:



Global satiation of basic needs has occurred. This has indirectly caused the dissolution of firms like Sotheby’s, Christie’s etc., because now everyone has become so advanced in self-actualization that anything disearnest now withers at its natural rate (thus much faster than in our current times) because it no longer has the opportunity to consume the vampire energy of false power through munitions like neoclassic money. Thus, everything in physicality is bespoke and excruciatingly exquisite, as mirror to the state of the collective human psychosocial state. The understanding of Living No Bullshit is so well-grasped that everyone’s psychic troubles become alchemically transferred into precious lump metal at a much more rapid, manageable, and elegant pace—thus: perhaps the whole society is an ‘art gallery.’ However, a citizen from this era might object to this very statement, saying that such rhetoric reflects the very myopia of the 21st century age (creating infinite distance between ourselves and the experience at hand through distance-based lexicons (thinking we think, therefore we are)). Regardless, because this is what I saw when the fog parted, and I shan’t lie, I presume the most honest response I could give to the prompt is nothingness—silence.

But. This assignment, of course, is a wicker basket for exploration of idea and tool, the creation of a focus point to allow for freedom; hence, the earnest completion in this time-space channelled into this physical embodiment on this particular plane would be to actually labor, especially given past precedent. Hence, I made something.

The thing I knew I wanted to do was to take inventory of all my notes from the past weeks. I have a very particular note taking process I do for all my academic work. These are from that. I keep it all in one notebook. Currently I’m using a Leuchturm 1917 dot-paper volume with a deep blue cover. I went through each week’s notes, and captured anything OOS-related. Now that I’m writing this, with that focus on earnestness, which has been my current favorite in my quest for self-mastery, I’m realizing that this notebook might just be one of the most earnest places for me. It feels so, so good to use it. The only time it stopped feeling so good was for, a while back, an Older Successful Artist told me I should capitalize on these spreads, make bigger works based off this, sell them. Shit hit the fan. I started agonizing over each page, trying so hard I could feel my neurons creating domestic disturbances every time I pulled it out. The utilitarian balance-of-power shifted, and suddenly, despite trying so much harder, every page was SO UGLY. It’s obvious to me now why, but not so much then, because I was sooooo little and naive and now these days I am obviously perfect, infallible, and done with all my worldly foibles! I was taught to play the piano by my mom who would always tell me some anecdote about how Mozart would play until his fingers bled when he practiced or that Lang Lang pushed through a bunch of miserable miserable misery as a kid with the instrument, and, thus, so would I aspire to these ideals. Basically: I was taught something about being able to 吃苦 (somebody's blog i found explaining it in some way which i kind of liked, maybe because i carry the bias of a martial arts background—i've never heard of them, but i thought it was cool their website tagline ended with "lessons of the distance").

So I've always tried really, really hard. But I have come to realize I fell in the trap of that unsustainable-kind-of-hard. I was killing myself, literally, and the funniest part is my head was so down in the sand I didn't even ever really ask what it was all for properly until I was forced to by dint of, I don't know, almost passing away. I was doing a lot of work, but something wasn't right.

Anyway, that’s all to say: it took me this long to finally understand the psychic difference between hard work and effort, between push and result, between action and allowance. So that’s what I’m trying to work on now. But not too hard, of course.

Anyway, I tracked the camera to go through most salient or favorite bits, for example, the camera goes through Robin’s beloved what turns you on? question, Bodys’ model quote, “fruit on the bottom. . . like detectives we go... you’ll feel it in your nerve endings...” and a fellow classmate’s brilliance from last class: “you can’t climb a cone structure,” (to name a few).

I ultimately did this with a screen recording of the animation, because I liked the way they were improperly lit when they were just used as references—although exploring lighting them as planes could have also been really cool. I then processed it a bit through Final Cut—I was really just messing around, but then I ended up almost being able to mask out the original background, which was blue.



Technically, it’s all tracking along the Y axis. I liked that because I was thinking about movement in time—almost like falling through all these pages from the past. Almost eerie to see all that stuff I did go by. Why is time doing this? And yet somehow I must forget it all. And yet somehow the present moment is the richest. And yet my most sacred responsibility is enjoying all this forever distance.

“At 2:27pm on February 13th of the year 2001, the Universe suffered a crisis in self-confidence. Should it go on expanding indefinitely? What was the point?”

I also learned about volcanism in space on Friday—possible cryovolcanism on moons like Europa and Enceladus. It’s my only in-person deal, and it’s kind of saved my life. We’ve had a lot of guests come in through Zoom, and they’ve all been splendid. Somebody asked if it was just fact that all volcanologists were cool as fuck, or something like that, and the actual, earnest answer that germinated from our professor was that it might just be because it's hard to study something like volcanology and have an infected, oozing ego. Because it's all so big, and there's so much stuff and so much distance.

Have you ever climbed a mountain? Been caving? Been in the water?

Art as exquisite as the perfection of a redwood forest—that is my goal.





scry the pages yourself here