John, I already know that you know,
My tricks of meaning -meaningmaking
And my obfuscations…
Well. They are moreso observations if you ask me.
I know that you know that I like substitution,
Plotting and slotting you into forcibly drawn maps.
It’s a bastardisation of cartography, but it sings, somehow.
In portraiture as in physics, practitioners must construct representations
Of reality, empirical reality, and whatever else is out there.
They build these representations which enact denotations, demonstrations and interpretations.
Representations ‘as’.
A line as sine wave,
A self portrait as madame X,
A little bit more about the self and madame X that is subsequently uncovered through the representational process.
How close, how far? (towards, away from madame X)
And, crucially, the antirepresentational rhizome that flattens it all back down, but
Not in the Clemmy Greenberg sense as such, more like
The way Francis Bacon lived and breathed in oils.
John. You are everything I could have wanted to encounter,
As a shifting alignment across discipline and experience.
We only really met a short time ago, when I became infected.
John, I know I said you were like a disease.
Don’t take it the wrong way,
All I meant was that you are embedded,
You’re occupying some of my centres and helping to build.
Think of yourself as infectious, (maybe)
Influential, (maybe)
Plot yourself on the lines.
Replace John with Your Name.