by Caridad Svich
Need not be an actual analogue tape. could be a mix of digital audio, photos, video. The feeling of shifting through someone’s collection, as they search for whole-ness. And maybe too, in so doing, a letting go.
Where are we? The desert. the wilderness. The outback. Place full of history, blood and alie/nation. Cos this is a kind of home too.
What I remember is
Skin
The touch of it
A certain warmth
The smell of their hush
Amber breeze blowing through lazy skies
“The purity of God,” they said
“Here it feels as if we are in the presence of the purity of God”
I looked out the window of the car
The breeze settling on my pores
The cracks of the earth meeting the cracks in my skin
We had travelled miles and miles
Across all sorts of terrain
Your tornados and floods
My sudden snow and way too early blue-sky summer
The anger of the gods was far from our minds
But we wanted out, anyway
Out of the stuff that had made us
And had asked too much of us
In the big cities that bled grey
Like the greyest day in one of those far northern cities
Sad-faced song-makers sang about on the warbly radio
Out of the capitalist chapels
With their swoony aura and gilt-edged glamor
Out of all the things that held us and bound us to compromise
And into the wide, wide vastness
Resurrected from a catalogue of bad medicine
Sold to us by a carny devotee of bombastic faith
We knew not to trust
But we still made time to offer them cake
(beat)
Here in the desert
The snakes rattle a low slither
That wraps our skins in sheer alertness
Primed for emergency, we are
Primed for emergency, we were
We were the children born into blood
First memories tainted by violence –
Shooters with rifles aimed at kids
Aimed at us
No thought in their brain
We carried this with us
Like we carried the ghost of falling towers
And blazing fires
And the sorrowful faces of the dispossessed
We thought if we just ran away
Into this desert of no dreams
Into this place that gives others pause
We would be happy
As if happiness was an entitlement
And not simply a state of being
(beat)
This was then
When we were together
back when we shared things
Back when we thought touch could save us
Even though we’re far from touch now
Something Other 