Todd Swift
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Todd Swift
is a brilliant poet and performance artist whose reach h As "Swifty Lazarus" (an electronic/sound duo with Tom Walsh) he has written the words for José Navas' acclaimed dance piece Sterile Fields (which premiered at the St. Marks Dance Space in 1996). "Swifty"'s track History Is Dead/Read My Lips is featured on the new Wired On Words CD Millennium Cabaret. author photo
copyright You can read History Is Dead/Read My Lips below, or find
out more about his work at the Budavox
web-site.
History is Dead/Read my Lips
104 years ago today Oscar Wilde extolled the virtues of lying. That was during the Decadence. Now it's 1997. Welcome to the Imminence. History is dead and the full weight of the present hovers over everyone. This is no slow disintegration from Truth to Beauty. We are in the rapid fire line of information, which erases whatever lies, or tells the truth, in its path. When exactly did history die? Paradoxically, that's a question for historians. Still, it is possible to provide various moments that might have been the instant that history ceased to matter. The Coming
Down of the Berlin Wall. The End of the Cold War. The Persian Gulf Conflict.
Ross Perot. The former Yugoslavia. All of these signal: the end of a
linear transmission from (f)act to witness to you; the end of ideological
struggle; and the beginning of media(tion), when the appearance/reality
distinction fails to be a duality and becomes a complicity instead.
Now, the amount of data printed, broadcast, and performed at any one moment exceeds the total amount of all data that exists about the past. It is an inverted pyramid, widening at the top every second at an exponential rate. Existence Is Out Of Control.
Now historians long for an Apocalypse, so they can call a halt to the velocity of change long enough to catch up. The rest of us know the end of the world is old news. Reality is Speed. Only if you are there first can you create, instead of eat, the bullshit. That's why CNN had the cameras on the Somalian beach before the Marines landed. Speed is Reality. Only those plugged-in to their machines at all times can move at the speed of Information. Money is Too Slow. Make Language Intravenous. The fastest thing alive is the Picture You Are About To See. The Image is Light. The Image is Faster Than The Eye. Welcome to Your Mind. Eat My Inscription. Some people deplore this state of affairs. Conspiracy theorists want to know what's really going on. The point is, We Are Going On. All the time. Nothing is more or less important than where you happen to be. Right Now. JFK was caught in a triangulation of fire. Pat Buchanan was on Crossfire. There is no lone gunman. There is no Lone Ranger. 50,000 women have been raped in the Balkans. The Good Guys Won. The lies on lies on lies are Freedom. We Have Got To Surf on the Waves of Lies. Way Cool. Not. 2+2=4. Not. Smoke Winston Smiths. Zamiatin is right: poetry is a Commodity. But Consumers must stop being suspicious of the labels. The Label is the Labia. Read My Lips. You Are What You Eat. In The Catcher in the Rye Holden Caulfield hates fakes. But We Are All Fake. Inherit the Brave New World! Fade in and Blackout. Resistance is Futile. What I don't understand, what I will never understand. though, is: If History is dead, why do things still happen? If there is no Truth, why do I bother lying? If Fiction is Real, why do words never die? If Reality is Fiction, why do bodies hurt? If memory can be erased, how do I know it's you? If Justice is a lie, why do I hope those bastards get caught? If Sex equals Death, how come I am still alive? If History is dead, that means it can haunt us. O Something Something Very Palpable My Love Inside My Language: Remnants of YOU When We Were Safely Human
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as
been felt throughout the spoken word community. He is a well-known poetry
editor, and the new book of his own selected poems