11 December 2010

star-crossed

Now I wonder if I ever knew the authentic you. I think I did but you've changed beyond recognition and that, in turn, taints my perception.


When I saw you the other night at the concert, we were two metres apart and we acted as if we had never met. And I was trying to concentrate on the band but I kept thinking of how all of that history, that fierce loyalty, that life together was gone.


And there is no proof that "it" ever even existed because you've disowned everything. I have to chronicle these memories because they are a part of me and if they don't exist, I feel as if a part of me won't exist. 


05 December 2010

accidentally on purpose

I have one photo of you from when we were twelve/thirteen years old- it was a Halloween party and you were dressed up as a punk-zombie; Offspring t-shirt ripped to shreds on your skinny chest- as hardcore as a twelve year old can hope to be. You're wearing a Jesus cross around your neck though...evidence that you didn't entirely think through your pseudo-anarchic look.

In the photo I'm standing with my friends and you're standing behind me on a table flipping-off the camera (you were so hardcore). I think you and your cousin ambushed the photo. I was upset when you did, now I'm relieved because it is the only photo I have of you and I together.


We never took one photo together in our adult lives.
Accidentally on purpose.
It's as it should be.


I remember you were growing your beard at one stage and you said you wanted a photo of my combing it; that's as far as we ever came to chronicling "us".




Adrian Ghenie



04 December 2010

en y va

I've been told that I should write to you. That I've internalised everything that has happened between us.


All I have wanted to do was speak to you, to have myself heard or to have you hear me; I'm not sure which of those was more important.

I've been sitting on the idea of writing to you for over a month; now that I can "speak" to you I don't know what it is that I want to say to you.

I proclaimed vociferiously that it was only fair and just to give me a chance to speak-audi alteram partem. Argue my banal legal principles over matters of the heart- uniformity throughout my life. A principled life.

Alors, en y va.

Adrian Ghenie