Photograph

10/29/07

Boy moving like a leaf in the wind, I know you tremble on the inside. When the stars are above you and the road is a lurching demon, it's your fear, I saw it once there in your eyes, screaming so afraid, and I know it isn't gone. Not yet, no, still there. Waiting underneath, but I've barely scratched the surface--hear me out, this won't take long. Even at your weakest, I think that you are strong.

You're sitting and I'm looking, thinking, who are you, do I know? Trying to find a way to show the world what I mean, I'm putting this on film, I've got to look into your eyes before I can seize the art inside and pull it out, but what's there? Who you are, you won't tell. So I'm snapping pictures of a shell. And the outside, yeah, the outside is all I see, at first.

(If we breathe, this time together, we can maybe open your eyes wider, then we'll see...)

I'm struggling with the entity. Hearing the heartbeat in your chest and hoping to put it into words, grasp my hand, hold my soul, I need you to take me to the place in your mind where you can be whole. Men are like grass, and they're lost boys inside, down to the last, you can break his bones but he'll never admit that he feels he's all alone, a flower, a boy not a man. Give it up. Breathe out. You're fogging up the lens. It's not the focus that matters but the side of you that wins. I'm reaching in and pulling out, I think I wanted to take something but now I see that it's you who has to reach inside of me. Reach into my eyes and your soul is like an arrow piercing through my heart. This story is about you. Who you are. Let it go and reach me.

You the lost boy and me the closed book, we're becoming art on pages and I need you to scream, not whisper. Scream it out. This is who you are. This is who I am. Not your face but a thousand voices, a thousand pictures, your imagination, be a melody. The vessel isn't art no matter how long the potter looks at it, until he throws it across the room and it dashes on the wall, until it explodes and the pieces scatter themselves like stars across the earthen floor, and where they fall, how they land, the shards left over, that's the art. The art is in the explosion.

So take me with your eyes and demonstrate the outburst, crumple me up and toss me out, hurl me at the wall full force. And make it live. That's the image. That is what I am trying to show.