joseph-simmonsWhisper

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“Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.” – Michael HanekeLooking forward at what my life could be there is something so poignant about this quote. There is a recurring sensation I experience in life, that we are all forever lying in some way. A white lie. A huge suppression of the truth so that the lie that is told, is told so habitually, that it is the truth. Lies that mean nothing to those you tell them to, serves to anger ourselves . Twisting the truth, torturing what is true until it squeals out a lie. Though I am an honest person I lie constantly. About what dreams mean, about my future, about my fears. I analyse my dreams generously, I talk about my future optimistically and stifle my fears quickly. I am predisposed to hide to be human, but what I have found is that hiding the truth in the convenience of a lie is not a full life. When life delivers to you a fragment of time where you are in a blissful ecstasy, you see the stupidity of protecting yourself in an armour of lies. Having stripped down to your natural form you can feel your skin breathe. Film is more than an art-form to me, it lies about details, places and names, but if it finds truth in these lies I am naked again.

1

Jun 12, 2013

Our Primal Function is Child's PlayAfter each honey-dipped dispute the hapless toddler bounces on a squatter’s mattress, / Teething and drooling like an adorable zombie, gormlessly tossing chewed toys and causing a mess. / On a drenched bed drifting in a flooded car park, the infant paddles towards a collapsed lamppost using a G.I.JOE.

12

Jun 12, 2013

The Fruits of Our ActionsMy sunbaked hands, that are worn in places, handle the grapefruit moon. Juiceless craters embellish the surface that is smooth to the touch, but ¾ it’s natural size, as it has been prematurely picked from the tree above. Flatlands an Amazonian green, resembling the most courageous leaves that journey to find the purest sunlight, with polka-dot peaks that resemble the tint of dewy summer grass in the shade. There is a hole where once stood a pylon that connected the moon to the universe it knew. The scar’s mark forms a pupil and in it’s orbit I see nothing but the incomparable eye of a chameleon. While it twitches and inspects the world, tiny white rovers scuttle across the glossy hide of their new-found planet and big black bugs invade. Bugs! I drop the moon, as it is infested, and recoil as it hits the ***** concrete floor of what is known and rolls into what is expanding.

1

Jun 12, 2013

What is Falun Gong?A massacre warped becomes justified. A pack of wolves wear the skin of sheep they have killed, as the sheep ran. Swam against the current. Electrocuted, drowned and burnt till they renounce individualism and yell from the rooftop, hanging by their frightened feet, that they were wrong! Then they are sent to a prison to be ***** or killed. A super-power did this because they didn’t like people being themselves and hoping for more. Opposing a regime that wanted no opposition. / Dying foreigners’ swarm wishing that they only had a heart can get one in a week or two. No problem, if no questions are asked. / Those people that only wish to become more than a number become only that which they strive against. A digit in a program. A point on a graph. A blood type can condemn you to death, and have parts of you delivered to those who think kidneys magically sprout out of the ground.

6

Jun 12, 2013

A Curious VisitorA flamingo in a bright back garden is grooming it’s feathers. What it sees from the shade cast by the statues of ancient Gods and facing an incarnation of the Buddha is a mystery. Balanced on one foot in a corner pond covered in dark green pads and innocent opulent white lilies it peers down towards the warm tiled floor. The limestone slabs are etched with chalk hearts like fortune cookies next to hopscotch and drawings of monsters and men. I am a scatter-brain, but I cannot feign an understanding of what this bird is looking at, and so fondly. Parched dead leaves not cleared from autumns past dwell below a dusty circular patio table mixed with used cat litter and fallen grapefruit that have dropped from the tree above. Though most of the colour is muted or bland there are infusions of vibrancy from the vermillion bed sheet to the violet bloom of clusters of flowers that pierce through the vines and corrugated iron. My garden at Giverney without a bridge in the centre of the picture, there are instead are two chairs. Comfortable chairs whose metallic legs and arms glisten in the light and whose black pleather fabric absorbs the heat of another wild day. / The flamingo is a strange visitor to this garden that is mostly derelict and sparse, / It’s gangly frame leaps out of the water ***** it’s wings and departs.

3

Jun 12, 2013

Trashed TreasureDumping skip-loads of furniture through the missing wall of my three-story house. Tossing a broken pool table with its hammered slate-top. Me and Max smashed it to pieces. We shook the whole house as if it were jelly, flavoured lime green and mixed in with insipid gobstoppers that block drains. One mahogany-stained side, with rusty poorly placed nails jutting out of it, flies through the air towards the arresting vistas in a makeshift panoramic frame. It frisbees, then falls. Falling like the leaves outside Carol and Dave’s place did, in the umami-infused oxygen. I have never tasted cleaner. They are graceful autumn helicopters that scythe the strings holding the world together. Until the world can repair, we are somewhere else. / The ****** mouldy wood flew like that. But, it cut the strings differently or severed different strings all together. Rain is curling the once neutral carpet, and I sit where I can see the mustard yellow skip receive another treasure.

2

Jun 12, 2013

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