Zak Byrd (born 1981)

At these times outside myself I flick back to the time I was thirteen and felt a surging conviction that I liked the idea of life. My future was going to be my own modern revolution, afresh by the unfenced feeling that it is morning, that behind the curtains the Moral is what you look for, and that relationships you start to design appear fully-grown in the brain—the brain, bigger than the skies in Holland. For some reason, cartoons by Daumier are more real than you thought.

Having time to stand and stare—from up here to the sprawl behind me rolled over the snow-covered sunshine—has the endless living emptiness which filled me utterly, that is, until I had graduated to unemployment: a stepping-stone to real ambition.

But everything switched in a flash when I stepped into my mercurial new concept of self as a machine of solid dream that could create solely with words and laugh instructions onto the stage while avoiding the rising Moral of the picture which can trigger a stock response and direct a man of passion to cloak that tender verb, “to interpret.”

Like all cartoons, I couldn’t help remember the light-hearted game life used to be. Now came bottles, medicine, arms hung limply, eyes the most hellish I’ve ever had.

Come over here. Just look. Touch this slobbering disaster. I often listen, cold, wet, to the steady blub-blub-blub of dying emptiness while weeks pass with alarming speed into a battle with the odds.

Enough of that. This is beyond nothing nor anyone, tucked away elsewhere.