pre-sent

[Alan Sondheim]

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pre-sent


Leslie Thornton, to me, in a dream, "I realized something about your work,
Alan. You never historicize anything. History has no place in it." I re-
ply, "It's similar to Michel Serres taking Lucretius as his contemporary.
My work is situated in the present and argues in the present. I have no
use for history."

I am on a vector now towards death. When I was younger, I could always
believe my life was only half over, that my creative work was ahead of me.
Now, it's now, and I have no time to lose. Every day wasted is an irre-
trievable loss.

Samuel Johnson: "I have no begun the sixtieth year of my life. How the
last year has past I am unwilling to terrify myself with thinking. This
day has been past in great perturbation...and my distress has had very
little intermission... This day it came into my mind to write the history
of my melancholy. On this I purpose to deliberate. I know not whether it
may not too much disturb me. ..."

I work towards the purpose of canceling such melancholy, which necessar-
ily in-forms everything I do. In other words, the subject of the flight
towards death becomes a subject of a flight against it, melancholic, a
great waste. In every dark night, I take comfort only in the vanity and
uselessness of comfort.

I do not write history, because I fear it; that way lies madness and even
earlier death. Thus: I remain on the barrens of the present. As long as
present is present, I survive.

The slightest break brings black corrosion.

http://www.asondheim.org/readhwk5.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/readhwk6.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/readhwk7.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/readhwk8.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/readhwk9.jpg


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