10.15.2007



nan goldin


I imagined TRUE out in the bars nearby, drunk out of her mind, having lost her phone and her wallet, not to mention her punk rock denim vest. She was rape bait—young and pretty and blasted enough to wander off with nearly anyone, which is what she often did.

I imagined her running along the West Side highway, sweating and screaming…I saw her several stories tall, as though on a giant drive-thru screen, staggering through the streets as the sun came up, laughing to herself, singing and crying. Cut to her lost in the morning rush, her pale face and zombie eyes staring out from the vast crowd...there are opening credits, some music, like “15 Minutes” by The Strokes or “Take You on a Cruise” by Interpol or “Straight to Hell” by The Clash. (…water frozen, in the generation.) Some rock and roll that’s dirty like skinny jeans after a three-day bender—an ode to all those who were beautiful and stank and criminal minded.

(an ode to all those who took it all too far, even tho they couldn’t play guitar)

Cut to her squeezing onto a crowded 5 train, along with all the suits and designer dresses and office girls and boys wearing well-pressed, inexpensive knock-offs…they part like the Red Sea, allowing her lots of room to stagger with her arm outstretched for the pole, which the camera watches her hook her arm around as she spins Mayday style around it, rapping to herself something we cant make out over the music…and its at that moment that the camera discovers the bright pink river of vomit plastered thickly on the right arm of her wool blazer, the existence of which she’s either blissfully unaware of or too fucked to care about--either way she gets a lot of room…and the space around her makes her seem very small and fragile…the other passengers cluck and shake their heads at this wasted young lady so desperate to be hurt, to be made real in the only way she actually understands—she takes intense blasts of pain as her electroshock therapy—frying that which is tender and toughening it up…she’s the sacrifice, she’s Neo, The One…the version of the version of the version of the Real Thing…

The more space they give her the less she takes, as she spins faster and draws closer to the pole, sliding further down it, half rapping and half singing in the same whisper voice that’s audible only in bits and pieces…


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

very cool.

Anonymous said...

yeah that's class.

Ophelia Mourne said...

Sweetly disturbing :o)

landry said...

goosebumps.

the pants said...

i'd do "take you on a cruise" for full effect.

TRUE said...

pants,

good call on the interpol. i will edit that in on the book version. p.s. i just added u to the link list--i didnt mean to leave u (and im sure others) off. Huge oversight not to have cavalier of odds linked. HUGE.

xoxoxo