Turned Away

I have always loved those artists who were turned somehow from the world. Turned, and let their work speak for them, or, better still, got out of the way of what they made made and let it speak of itself and not of them.

Let the work speak for itself. For itself – and in your absence, as if you had been dismissed from what you made. But in truth you dismissed yourself, and that’s why you made the work. To not be, somehow. To open a future that did not contain you.

Let it speak for itself. And speak of what you are not.  Blissful sound. To have made a place to disappear. To have opened a door through which to vanish. And the work is the door. The work is the place, the grove where no one is, and especially you.

What is the word for the opposite of narcissism? How to name not Narcissus’ gaze but the river’s as it gazed up to him? What is the name of the river that knew itself by his drowning? The word that unravels every word you would like to say. The work that unworks; that writes to turn writing away …