Failed Visionary
Matt Johnson’s Inertia Variations film/ installation
will be presented in Gothenburg, Sweden this month.
http://konstepidemin.se/kalender/radio-cineola-the-inertia-variations
http://www.rodasten.com/rs_events/view/radio_cineola_sv/?lang=se
For too long a conduit I have been,
receptive only to the works of others.
In this way, in a way, I have kept myself
going; and were it not for the pleasure
and enrichment I receive at this font,
I might long ago have given up.
Then again, I might have
achieved something myself.
I have spent my entire life
preparing to do something
that I am never going to do.
I thought that accumulating
all this learning and experience
might result in something: a body of work…
or a body. While neglecting to take into account
that I might actually have to do something to achieve that end.
Out of perversity, idleness, cowardice, fatalism and integrity,
I have chosen to shun my true path.
Despite it all, I have developed, in my time,
a certain unavoidable attachment to my life
and my ways: the chronic circlings between frustration
and inertia somehow comfort me – and, in the end,
I would rather be myself than anybody else.
Still, I suppose most people feel that way.
Beauty depresses me,
Knowing that it’s temporary.
Positivity requires too much energy.
And even if I were happy,
I wouldn’t admit it,
For that would be insulting
To those who are not ,
And those who pretend to be.
(Artillery, Sept 2012)
