on problems of mechanical reproduction

i woke on a windy Friday

morning to find the specter
of Benjamin had abandoned me
in the night. i remembered only the
splices, the celluloid scars of the psyche.

we dream
in fragments.
we live in pieces.
our memories are
a scrap heap of the
people we were, the
lies we have lived, the
i's that might have been:

is a matter

of perspective.

last night
i read Genet
to my lover. she
fell asleep listening:
Erotic play discloses a
nameless world which is
revealed by the nocturnal
language of lovers. Such
language is not written
down. It is whispered
into the ear at night
in a hoarse voice.
At dawn is it
forgotten.

i read until i was hoarse.
i dreamed in montage.
i did not forget.
the words of
the specter
remained:
A man who
concentrates
before a work
of art is absorbed
by it... The distracted
[man] absorbs the work of art.

concentration?
distraction?

plagiarist?

It is
hard
to define
exactly how
the words have
changed the image
but undoubtedly they have.

The image now illustrates the sentence.

(approximate) Bibliography
...
images 1-4: author (1999, 1980, 1995, 2001)
images 5-7: Jean Genet, Walter Benjamin, John Berger (dates unknown)
quote 1: image 5; quote 2: image 6; quote 3: image 7

all other text and montage by author