The lIve stream reminds one of cold fresh air and a grey sky. Cold, blue-grey sky. Faces, some forgotten, moved elsewhere. Memory farmers call in the children, designer bags, rucksacks, for sale: black ice, light yellow time. Bargain for the shortest distance between two arguments, guarantee, a traded paycheck, an emotional sign-off sheet, a stunted growth chart. Themes of parental horror, blaming all the while mild tremolo. A single image: ambient midnight lullaby, ringing metallic joy. Say no to large foundries, yes to small foundries, temporary, dwelling for entertainment. SSRI, playback error, any day now, were it not for faces you remember, without judgment, picture: a cloudy scene in the back of the bar. She leaves you this, a ripped encoded melody. Tender elision of a postcard, an SMS for declined apology. Will it be a second-order observation, this: a view from the back of your head. Ask yourself: what kind of exits are there? How to enter them? Construct your own taxonomy of exits. All this thinking, what does it bring you, here again, thinking ‘what does it bring’? Who loves you, who does not. Bring it in, start over. Who enjoys life, who does not. Each failure is regionally specific. Settling down for pasture, like automated mowers, planted among row houses. Why not instead totally reverse energy, all this photosynthesis, resist. The grind, the crop. To seek the pile of ash, deep grey, warm like the sun. A fertile soil, for once undocumented, totally out, of observable range. On late evenings in hours where one often finds clues, wander these heard thoughts without ambition. After all, why so eager? Tonight stores threads of evidence, grows with each cloud more convinced that some moment long before there was already some distant catastrophe. Everyone forgets or will dare not remember their parts once played in times already medieval.

Text by Nikhil Vettukattil