genlauf

[Alan Sondheim]

genlauf

Most usually you do not write me, and for those of you who are unreading,
those of you I do not know. But you are on the same wires and in the same
habitus nonetheless, otherwise separated since the beginning of communi-
cation among us. Always the telephone appears the last resort, only a
century and more old, but the grain of the voice, the guarantee of
presence however distanced. From here in Geneva, international city of UNO
and communications, Alabama room of the Geneva Convention, I wander from
place to place, searching for connectivity fix, tenuous, fragile, precious
in the sense of vector thrown into uncanny space. The unbelievably small
space of the city, perhaps a kilometer or two, is sufficient for meander
from sleeping space to rehearsal space, that most intense communication of
bodies in largesse presenced within one another, the room with the scent
of movement, emotional tensors. Like you perhaps we held our breath,
almost in tears, as the Chinese pair skated to second place after a fall
that would be devastating to any dancer, and is always present, the
potential for a living career ended in one inadvertency. I search for your
presence among the bodies here, the lived wires, the plugs peculiar to
Switzerland for the most part, the coursing of electrical current, Romania
and Croatia and Bulgaria loud on the short-wave. The waters from the Jet
d'Eau course through our veins as we imagine skate-boarding perhaps 130
meters up in an artificial tornado that would break a finger faster than a
match-stick, close down the throat, explode the body across the lake. As
far as we can tell, no one has done this, although all our lives we're
picking up the pieces.

http://www.asondheim.org/genlauf.mp4