LG&M index richard grayson. linda marie walker angus trumble. sarah thomas Introductory essays from the publication "LAWYERS GUNS & MONEY"
Title: Yes
LINDA MARIE WALKER
Co-curator, Lawyers, Guns & Money
Introduction: Yes, that's the word, yes, falling in love, yes that's right, you are right, yes, turning around, yes, the bottle-top spinning in the air, too late, falling, forever, yes, too soon, "come in she said I'll give you shelter from the storm", in, staying to stay, yes, that's the word, yes, a word, graceful, one snowflake, one raindrop, take beauty away, take that face from my view, "come in she said", yes, listening, yes, falling in love, Carlos watching, reaching for the wine, yes, that's right, yes, ok, can say yes, yes.
It is, it was, just now, then, 2.30am.
I've tried to ring G & J, and they're not answering, Jesus, don't they know I ring to hear their voices. Sure, I've found an excuse, but what the hell. I mean it's just a stupid phone call. And I get a message today saying I can't have visitors staying in my hotel room, and, well, that's a blow. They can sleep on the floor, I don't mind, they don't mind, it's the orders, the small relentless ones, that get to me finally. Always this and that, no and yes, ok and no-ok. And waiting. Take you to jail, my friend, lock you away. I was told, a long time ago, that if I didn't start behaving, if I didn't stop being a deliquent (answering back), I'd get 'put in a girl's home'. I now know I'd frightened someone, worried them sick, and they were trying to teach me good and bad, and I was bad. And I'm eating my brain ("stop eating your brain," he said), because of love, or ambience, or attitude, yesterday, because I may have said something wrong, and I can't go to the bar because I'm speechless, (another excuse: 'untitled', which appears like a secret, like the person, me, is a secret by default), and the loss of love needs a few words, don't you think, like: I hate you, in this moment I hate 'you', I wish 'you' dead, etc. You did me wrong ( like: "too blue to sing the blues, waiting here just like a fool, too blue to sing the blues, I've been missing you"), as the country song goes ("won't you come back just this one last time": these lyrics are from 'Blues For My Baby', Vargas Blues Band). Other songs, just as awful, crying, don't say that. I like country music, I like sad songs, that bearing of history. Anyway, lawyers, guns, and money, send me lawyers guns and money: that's a refrain, in a song.
The next afternoon: it's raining cats and dogs, there is thunder. A slight breeze. Are there lawyers for touching, are there guns for language, is there money for nothing.
Are there dreams I don't recall, are there words I don't imagine, are there dreams I'll never dream, are there words I'll never hear.
As if in a dream, the bells call people to church. It is Saturday evening. I hear their footsteps. Is everything shaped by lawyers, guns, and money. Are these the institutions, the fingerprints, of transience. Are these the markers of language, the passages, passes, paths by which one as person, as compulsory member of community, is scored, made a particular sound, made the one who speaks in, for, and with you. I speak within the law, you speak within the law, I speak with me within the law. We are lawyers: guns at our head, money close by, pressed to the wall. A friend crept up behind me on Thursday, in a car park, and poked a finger in my back, and kindly, well he couldn't do it any other way, demanded my money. I can't exactly quote him. I knew it was him, but I felt the stab anyway. And his mistake was he spoke in my language not his. A gun or knife, his invisibility, but his body anyway, I did not hear him. And I laughed at his game.
The ten ways I love you, only ten, otherwise I'll be here all night, forever that is:
1. I am sorry.
2. I want to say something.
3. I like to speak to you.
4. I write a sentence.
5. Please interrupt me.
6. I listen to you, sometimes.
7. I am tone deaf.
8. I make mistakes.
9. I am a memory.
10. Please call me.
(I said to him, the one with a 'gun' in my back, that I'd written about his 'hold-up'. And he said: did you say I spoke in the wrong language. And I said, no, I'd forgotten, but I'd certainly write it in. As that was the most important thing to him, speaking the 'wrong' language, the one that would make me doubt, and more, the one that would scare me. And of course what I'd really forgotten was that I had mentioned what I'd said I hadn't. I mean, what would this mean in a court of law, this forgetting, this remembering, this repeating. It could look like a significant clue.)
Looking through the newspaper (25.5.97) I see the photograph taken in Rio de Janeiro of the policeman shooting the young man, a boy, who is kidnapping a child, in the head. A flame is coming out of the barrel of the gun. The picture is taken from a video-recording. On the page there is about two millimetres between the flame and the head. The young man is already dead, his eyes open: does he see the bullet. So, for all the stolen children, everywhere: peace: everybody knows you, and if not everybody, then someone, who is everybody, everywhere.
And now, the ten ways 'I love you', in more detail:
Each time, time after time, from the mouth: I am sorry: how can this be heard when, if, it is said. Is it something, thing-like, is it speaking, is it speaking with eyes and heart, is it something like sorrow, the something I or you or him or her or they or we or them want(s) to say, or is it 'the something' that even when said is an object not a relation, is a stranger, the stranger in 'one', remaining, who is at that moment, instantly, given, kissed, blessed, to say "I am sorry (I did not hear you, or me)", and the one who, then, now, therefore, lawyers, guns, and money won't or can't recognise.
An economy: I want to say something, syllables, or words by syllables, as sound, bit by bit, as a way of bringing into line, lining up, by breathing in and out, by being carnal, not by pushing into line, by lining up, fully lit, to search or identify. I want to ask you something, actually, without the letters L, G, and M, without uttering them as seals: awyers, uns, and oney: s(l)a(w)yers, p(b)uns, and hon(m)ey, for instance.
The pact: I like to speak to you: the point is I 'like' to speak to you, as if in a garden, as if there are two people remaining two people, one for and to the other, etc, as if there are always two communities.
Knowing nothing about it: I write a sentence: although I'd rather go another way, like, into the bush, where bodies have been found, or along the bank, where bodies have been found, or across the park, where bodies have been found. I'd rather go way out to the towns, and even further, to the stone fences, and even further, to the fishing villages. I'd rather go to the dunes and the reefs, where someone told someone they'd seen someone, once, who they thought they knew, and then someone told me, and it sounded like someone I knew too.
A last fatality: Please interrupt me: or, yell at me, wave me down, and this is simple, in a library, or at home, during silence anyway, although who knows, it could become a nightmare, it might already be one, because you might want to beat me senseless, say, or tell me lies, or read me litanies, or say: look, I tell you this as a friend and then go on to explain in detail, and with 'good intentions', having found me sitting, reading, or folding clothes (happy, that is) an irresistibly awful fault you think I have (and should correct (huh, what rot)).
Wishing in the dead of night: I listen to you, sometimes: and that is useful. Lawyers, guns, and money: speak, sometimes. There are sirens outside, the day has been warm, and law(yer)s are made, and guns are made, and money is made, and I've just seen 'Journey to the East '97', a set of four short plays from "The Chinese Diaspora", and each written in response to the end of colonial rule in Hong Kong, and each using the standard Beijing Opera set of one table and two chairs, and each about a particular type of cultural violence or violation, some sort of deep interference with/to body and soul.
A secret which is not a secret: I am tone deaf: this is a confession, a ceremony of sorts, musical, as near to making music as I am likely to get, a choral attention to fact, although tapping in time (to a beat) is possible, as is dancing (to a rhythm). I wonder why I can't sing, what inhibiting rule (or damage, did someone scream at me, or did I flatten my own voice, drown its noise) rules my ears, throat, mouth, and tongue. Recently I saw Saint Teresa's (I think it was Teresa) confession cell, it was tiny, the doorway very low, and tourists could sit on the seat where she had told her sins. I bet she could sing.
There are schools: I make mistakes: and I saw huge ancient paintings, with much gold leaf, of all the saints with the instruments used to torture them.
The right angle: I am a memory: I (I imagine) am a memory of forgotten living, it is easy to forget, and the body never seems to forgive forgetting.
An appeal: Please call me: three words of loss, and the door closes quietly, and legally one can't name it otherwise (e.g. you can't say, to the one leaving, "through me passed"; or you can but it wouldn't mean "please call me"), no other sounds will do (please call me), for this trouble, for the anticipation of a troubling wait. The passion of trouble (waiting), the ammunition, and the legal right to remain silent, or the personal and public freedom to neither ask nor answer (of/to oneself, of/to the other), are of an order, and can be witnessed, can be testified for or against, as a secret, or, as if a secret. And the secret, in solitude, opens up and onto speech which can never know or end.
So the phone isn't working, it hasn't been for days. I can't ring J & G, to hear their voices, to fill them in, to be filled in, I don't know if anyone anywhere is 'at home'. I can't call, or I can, downstairs, in public, but it wouldn't be the same.
June 1997