Saturday, September 8, 2007

Attend Moi

Being lost at sea is a luxury I aspire to. The object is to float out of sight of land, puch a hole in the hull and vanish without a trace.

I don't have the money for a boat, nor boat launch fee. I don't know how to sail, really, but thats fine.

I propose this as an art "action" and I'd do it for the cost of materials. The documentation is of course yours to auction off or fetishize, whatever - I'll be dead.

So far so good.

The conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader sailed into obivion, so this isn't some original avant guard gesture. Its just a pathetic attemt at manufacturing meaning in an otherwise unremarkable life. Its a gesture - a pissing into the winds of chaos from whence the creator manufactured order, to his liking, but not mine.

Nor am I rebelling. If someone has a better idea I'm open to it. I could build Viking longboats for other people to burn themselves to death in. I could rig diving bells to sink endlessly into the deepest trenches of the worlds oceans.

Nor am I particularly romantic. I'm no reader of Goethe with his sorrows. Nor a Fascist hiding in a bunker while my empire collapses. Nor a duellist fighting for the honour of my family. Nor a soldier dutybound to the army of man.

If I can't find a boat I'll go for concrete overshoes off the side of a party barge, a clown outfit, pockets full of rocks and a dirty limerick gummed to the railing that neither confirms nor discounts foul play.

But the idea of being "lost at sea" is of course a conceit and in the end I am forced to admit my real reason - I would very much like to be googled until a satellite picture is found - of me vanishing beneath the waves.

3 comments:

Cartooniste said...

Sorry, but I have to reject this idea on the grounds that it is silly. Being lost at sea is actually terrible, horrible, worst than anything, ever.

Think about it. Your survival instincts will take over. You will plug the hole with your shirt. You will drift, blistered by the sun, parched with thirst. You will drink the salt water, and start vomiting. Once you are in the water, the heat will leach out of your body. You will shiver violently. If you have a PFD, you will eventually pass out from exhaustion, only to be awakened with the excruciating pain of a sea animal, small or large, starting to eat you. And lastly, there is the drowning, widely thought to be the worst, most hideous death of all, largely because it takes quite awhile- at least a few minutes. Remember how long a few minutes can feel, like when you have to miss part of recess and just sit there? It's like that, only with wracking pain all through your lungs and the lingering certainty that your gesture, if that's really what this was, is meaningful, especially when compared with all the thousands of people who lost their lives to the sea trying to go somewhere, or make a living, or win a war.

So if I were you, I'd do something else.

shannonononon said...

i broke a window on the way to recess once. it wasn't intentional. i just wanted to get to the swings first. i don't think anyone ever knew it was me... until now...

Cold Bacon said...

S,

you said conspicuously little about this window. where did this take place? when? it could have been last week. was it last week?

Z,

"Its just a pathetic attemt at manufacturing meaning in an otherwise unremarkable life."

I thought that was the official definition of conceptual artist? Wait, now I'm lost.

P.S. Did that guy really do that? Did he kill himself thusly? If so that is pretty cool. If not, then I beseech you to never speak of him again.

Cartooniste,

I'll deal with you later.

 
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