Tranche De Vie

I often go to a library or museum and watch people. I use to bring a tablot to sketch them~ But that really was an excuse. I don't know how to draw at all. I'm just fucking noisy. I watch men and women while they look at paintings and things, books, panoramas, etc. I enjoy the moments of others. How do they hold a newspaper or sip from the water fountain? Are they wearing socks? do their feet smell? Why is there dirt under this guys fingernails? He's wearing a fine suit! Often children smile while being spoken too. Often men awkwardly joke to break the ice, then touch the woman who they are attending the event with whilst they laugh. I have watched an elderly woman cry while standing in front of a Jackson Pollock. She wanted to touch the painting although security would not allow her.

I've listened to confessions and criminals. I have stolen moments from lovers and warriors and from these people I have tried to duplicate their words in my life.. Sometimes. I mean/ please don't get me wrong, I am not a criminal, Although I have heard a woman talk about how she wanted to murder her dog. In great detail she shared this with an estranged partner whom didn't seem to believe it at all. It was only for a moment that I imagined I would do the same. But, I don't have a dog.

I would give anything to brush by myself. To look into my life at some public event in just the same way that I have looked into these strangers' lives. At some social mumbo jumbo LA evening/ just so I can hear what comes out of my mouth. Just so I can rate how full of shit I really am. I want to catch myself being caddy or throwing a salty look. Is this difficult to understand?

So, because I am myself and not these strangers, what do I do? I can take a slice of these peoples life away from them as they are living it. I can rearrange it. This is how I write. Mixing and matching these moments on a secret canvass in my brain. I make them make sense. I make them make poetry. I can not see a person's future or past, so I simply go out and find it. I will paste a young child's "cut-out" sequence of life that I have stolen from the library and match it up with a moment from a married man that I find reading in a park with a baby. If I want to know what happened in between: I will go to a university and find him walking to class with too many books in his bag, or holding hands with a older woman in a tight skirt. This is my process. It may or may not contain any plot progress and sometimes very little character development, and it often has no exposition, conflict, or denouement. But, I often discover my characters to be astonishing and ravishing. With a wide beautiful open ended life, and with no lesson yet to teach to anyone. I then reach inside of myself and ask what it is time for me to learn. And they show me the way.