Status Updates From Le Pion

‘—a twisted paradox—Nevada, Alaska & New Mexico—to prepare for annihilating the enemy, or to prepare for your own annihilation—by launching an up-front act of self-sabotage, so you can personally feel the blow to your flesh, the depth of the wound, the shape of the scar—poetic horror—stretching relentlessly—terrified birds—camera always films from a distance, a cowardly voyeur—tempers reality—anaesthetises the gaze.’

‘King, queen, rook, knight—bishop. All capable of undoing—movement—correcting a mistake. Only the pawn’s advance is irreversible. Only—pawn is condemned to move ever forward—never looking back—the only pieces with a spirit of solidarity—weak &—often threatened, among themselves they form a colony—a siphonophore whose organs absorb the shocks of the game—All for one & one for all. El pueblo unido jamás será vencido—’

‘—photographs render their subjects mute—as if the moment the aperture clicks open it swallows not just—light, but every decibel in the vicinity. People & places—sentenced to eternity in a sonic vacuum—The silence is all-consuming, emphatic—the sort of ontological silence we associate with immortality—man was shot through the heart—Los Angeles, California—We don’t never forget—better known to the world as Malcolm X.’

‘Coincidence? The biographers ask. Coincidence, of course, they say in answer to their own question. Poverty has a smell—a viscous vapour that penetrates the amygdala through the olfactory bulb & never leaves the mind; a fragrant memory that serves as a deterrent against Alzheimer’s. The stench of squalor is inescapable in the Chicago shelter—winter of 1943—The radio won’t stop playing ‘I Had The Craziest Dream,’’

‘There has always been a principled vanguard minority ready to sacrifice—The—sacrifice is what propels history forward—The hero never gets to savour—The spoils go to the cold, calculating cowards, safe & warm in the rearguard. It’s drizzling as he stands for the tribunal—The hierarchy speaks of the common good, and to tell that tale, they need you—And the game, which you now see was never your game, will carry on.’