an idea of farewell
1.
I read your invitation again. I wait for an idea. I do nothing. then the idea comes. and after talking to you I try to put it into practice, but in vain.
I’d like to tell you that I’ve been wandering around the city looking for something to tell you, to propose to you. nothing. life became safer here, outside of ideas, inside of words.
I told you that I wanted to delete some information about myself. things that anyone can have access to. well, that too I couldn’t achieve. someone told me that it’s not possible to erase myself, that it’s too late for that, that the only way to die online is to lose relevance, to be forgotten. but we have no idea if what was once forgotten won’t be remembered again.
one sound wave is enough for the riot to begin.
2.
two months passed. I didn’t keep the promise. I don't know what kind of relation I have with time. I don't know if I give time any use – and although I like to think that that’s the best way to deal with it, suddenly the mirror reflects back a strange face, and also a feeling that something is missing. the feeling of not having kept a promise.
two months – a kind of death. writing to you now revives me. because somehow this is the beginning of keeping the promise.
3.
among other things, in a document that had the same name as this letter, there was a small list:
picking up trash on the beach
helping a bird to fly
turning off the router
turning the page of a book
embracing a terrestrial body
things I did without having promised I would.
the rest were beginnings – a document full of beginnings that were dead ends, that had no purpose.
I waited for time to speak to me.
4.
two months without love. (I'm waiting for someone to talk to me).
to write a letter, to fill in the void. to spend a sleepless night.
to fill a lover's void throughout the night, cut off from the rest of the world.
in the document that had the same name as this letter I am writing to you, I stated: offline is: to disappear. and then I asked: is offline to disappear? (in this or any other order).
5.
ten years ago, I wrote a text about disappearing for a show. it was a letter that became a text about disappearing - about wanting to disappear - and that was later heard in the dark. I thought: that’s it, I will publish this text. it makes perfect sense, especially after revisiting it ten years later.
but that wasn't it either. but that was almost it.
that text. about losing relevance. about being forgotten.
a sort of testimony and testament.
6.
my proposal is a fragment – as always.
it’s the end of the performance.
it’s also the end of an idea about myself –
an idea about the end of the world.
an idea of farewell – because it rarely is more than that.
why am I always threatening to say goodbye once and for all?
a nostalgia for the analog. that is, for a kind of knowledge. the fear that something of it might be lost. evidence that time has passed, but also that everything hasn’t changed that much. very little. almost nothing. and even these ideas are there, in that text. written ten years ago.
7.
and if writing is placing on the outside what was inside, then writing is talking to oneself.
I ask.
offline is: often talking to oneself.
offline is also ecological thinking. recycling. reappropriating. savoring everything to the very end. it is admitting the second hand – which remains as or more relevant than the first one.
it is to say: everything has been said and done.
it is to stop using time.
8.
now, the question that haunts me most persistently is: what for?
why make more? why create? that’s the question that is always latent.
maybe to know whether or not it's worth it. (there will always be doubt.)
maybe things that aren’t worth doing are worth doing.
what remains is what is always left when everything fails: the sun, the sea, the beach, the pages of books, a table close to the ground where we share food. laughter. and that which is common to all of this – love – an expansion beyond the limits of the body. love for one another.
