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| “Josefine and I” |
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The other one, the one called Josefine is the one things happen to. I walk
through the streets of Oslo and stop for a moment, perhaps mechanically
now, to look at the door of an entrance hall and the neon signs on the gate;
I know of her from the emails and see her name on a list of artists or on a
webpage. I like shoes, geometry, computer games, astronomy, northern light, fishnet
stockings, the taste of sparkling water (and a golden shower), Iphones and the lyrics of an
obscure French band, yet to be signed; she shares these preferences, but in a vain way that
turns them into the attributes of an actor, imposter or a poser. It would be an exaggeration to
say that ours is a hostile relationship; I live, let myself go on living, so that she may contrive
her art, and this art justifies me. It is no effort for me to confess that she has achieved some
valid works, but those works cannot save me, perhaps because what is good belongs to no
one, not even to her, but rather to the arts and to tradition.
Besides, I am destined to perish, definitively, and only some instant of myself
can survive in her. Little by little, I am giving over everything to her, though
I am quite aware of her perverse custom of falsifying and magnifying things.
Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally
wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in her, not in myself
(if it is true that I am someone), but I recognize myself less in her artworks than in many
others or in the laborious strumming of a synthesizer. Years ago I tried to free myself from
her and went from the small town soap operas to the violence and strategy of computer games
and the beauty that lies beyond time and infinity in the big city, but even that belongs to
Josefine now and I shall have to imagine other things. Thus my life is an escape and I lose
everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to her.
I do not know which of us has written this page. |
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| Josefine Lyche, Oslo, October 2013. |
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