THEME AND VARIATIONS ON THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF HEALING:
THIS IS A FICTION ABOUT (IM)MORTALITY
OUVERTURE
The other night, not that long ago, I got lost. It was midnight and I couldn’t find myself on the faces that walked past in search of recognition - what is midnight other than that time of the day when you don’t know which mask to wear?
THEME
In the beginning there was potential. In the beginning of everything there was nothing but a body, a topological point, a desiring machine. This point was the body before being known, before being codified as an organism, that is, a tool. This point was the body prior to any attributed qualities and prior to any attributed functions. On this body, taken as the ground, strata were then formed by processes of sedimentation, strata of qualities and strata of functions. Qualities and functions became the body’s identity, its credit in the ontological stock market.
VARIATION n
At first cells were joined together by chance but according to their potential for attraction, i.e. desire. Then a body was born. This body was breast fed while young, had prehensile thumbs and on top of that, it had a penis. It was thus seen as being different from other bodies: he was a man, a body codified by its qualities. This body-man then connected with several differently coded bodies - the love of his family, the first girlfriend in school, the love for his country, the Sunday morning prayers, the success of his career, marriage, the first house, the smile of his wife, the birth of the first child, the holidays abroad with the family, watching his children grow, getting old, happiness, accomplishment: this body-man became a human-body, a body overcodified by the functioning of its organs.
BRIDGE
I’m broken and I can’t be fixed. I’m dead and yet I breathe. I’m here and nevertheless I’m already a memory of myself. I fade as I become alive.
VARIATION n+1
At first cells were joined together by chance but according to their potential for attraction, i.e. desire. Then a body was born. This body was breast fed while young, had prehensile thumbs and on top of that, it had a penis. It was thus seen as being different from other bodies: he was a man, a body codified by its qualities. This body-man then connected with several differently coded bodies - the embarrassing hard-ons in the school changing room, the first pill of ecstasy, the walks in the park at night, the search for love and recognition under the thick sweaty air of the city’s dark rooms, the feeling of another man inside him and the warmth of his semen, the poison in his blood, punishment, loss, and a certain sense of inhumanity: he then became a faggot, a body overcodified by its multiple organ failure.
CODA
Picture your body opened.
Picture your body bleeding.
Picture your body failing to heal.
But don’t be afraid:
an open wound can still survive
Just as much as you do.
João Florêncio
