wjsullivan.net

Overloading the Machine

Under My Rug

October 27, 2001

Everything's great, thanks.
I went to write a letter.
It's insurmountable. Look over there.

No high-protein diet energizes
the wrapped loaf. The swept sea.
A four-cylinder
means two are striking.

Nose for the present,
you on time,
deliberating,
my favorite mug.
The soundtrack is out.

But if not for noise and valleys,
where could we debut? Mere
possession of facts is face.
But count some up;
cool and garnish.

Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Today's audience isn't listening at all - it's participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital.

-- William Gibson