‘After all, what better way to contact someone than to cut and rearrange his actual words?’

(‘It Belongs to the Cucumbers’, W. Burroughs)

 
Almost every paragraph of the ‘Self-portrait’ chapter starts with one or more quotations, which are almost all taken from my collection of diaries. They are expressions by others that I have chosen for their assonance and commonality.
Together, they constitute a writing in fragments that contains various singular voices, but which as a whole create an identity delineated by many individualities.
 
Through a way of doing that is more like divining than it is systemic, I use all these texts as if they were from an I Ching book which, opening it more or less at random and asking it about my themes, helps me to find answers and concurrences. It is from the intimate sound of others that I find the voice with which to express myself. As if the fact of superimposing myself onto other interiorities helps me not to feel alone. It is the others who give me the words to speak with. It is as if a writing were being formed through the words of others.

(Written in 2024)