The More You Ignore Me by Travis Nichols Read Free Book Online Page B

thoughts, and so I must play out the string.
    I know it doesn’t work to write it out, that all of this won’t leave me just because I make it manifest in language and, for example, post it to the public. I keep it inside of me and its corridors expand accordion-like as I write.
    The ideas—and the consequences of the ideas!—become vast and, at the same time, dense, like dark ice spreading over the expanse of my soul. And yet I continue to write, to think, to act, and to communicate, for dear readers, I’ve been told my examinations of the dark floes illuminate the world for others.
    These troubles are not mine alone, and though it often feels, here in the deep night, that I am the only one struck by the cold, it is not so! I have found peers, and through these admirers, or even simple acknowledgers, I find a thaw becomes possible. It does not occur, mind you, but it becomes an object of hope for me. And so I go on, and in some instances, it’s true, I act out a scene with my hands or type out the vagaries of a thought with the hope that I will in fact be able to fling it from my mind, as if it were some kind of parasitical crustacean hoping to suction out my essence through my face or mouth.
    I fling it out into the world: Begone!
    But perhaps I am cursed, for postfling I often find myself unable to quite forget. There was something beautiful in that parasitical purple flesh. Or if not beautiful, at least valuable. To me, or others.
    True, there is something of “John Cage” in my imaginings.
    No doubt I could make a mint if I were to indulge some ascot-wearing poof at a gallery with my renditions of Chris and Nico’s scat. But, you see, I have standards.
    I have integrity. My hands are not show ponies. Though it is no real effort to put forth this scene for you, members of the community, it is not art .
    It is simply a way of both siphoning off the pressure accumulating in my skull from inside and of blowing off the imposition bearing down on my face from outside.
    A letting.
    I’ve found that I am inadvertently bridging the gap between otherwise isolated islands of consciousness, providing a service, but my true art, dears, lies elsewhere.
    I will reveal only this to you now: it is in the grand American tradition of Eakins, Roth, Poe, Rockwell, and Eastwood.
    I am well aware what nonsense the tastemakers put forward today as “art,” but I am not fooled.
    I know the scam.
    They must pretend it is art available and accessible to all—for aren’t galleries free? museums pay what you wish?—but this is a lie.
    Knowing they can’t physically block the people, they set up shibboleths, passwords, codes embedded in the work that only the ELITE have had opportunity to learn through their private colleges and grant-funded retreats.
    It is a racket, and if one does not know the passwords , the ways to talk about “art,” then one will be escorted from the premises, the conversation, the milieu, just as swiftly as workers and vagabonds once were escorted from the salons of Europe.
    But don’t misunderstand me: I know the codes!
    It would have been irresponsible of me not to learn them.
    It was easy.
    Duchamp .
    Black women .
    Digital reproduction .
    But just because one is aware doesn’t mean one must endorse!
    Don’t be a fool!
    My art is in constant battle with these forces.
    Soon, perchance, I will reveal some of it to you, but until then, a little more of this Left Hand and Right Hand routine?
    Would that please you?
    Yes?
    Well, it seems my mind is full of voices tonight, so let’s forget the crash and explosion I presented on the blog. (I admit, I may have gone too far there to make my point that lives are in danger, but I feel justified in my exaggeration, for the community must be made aware!)
    Let’s instead roust Nico from his slumber in the Honda “Civic” and have these two converse again so we can learn more of their