Extraction (2024)
Inkjet and Watercolor on Hanji Paper.
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"Language stops being representative in order to now move toward its extremities or its limits"

"We hit a nigga with the flame he went potty"

Last night I talked to C and H on the phone, I talked about much of the above and more, and they talked about their lives. It was nice, it's good to miss people and to talk to them on the phone, to be able to talk to them on the phone. I went to bed thinking about Cixous and Hyperdream yet again, when she can't call her dead loved ones on the phone, and I thought about that dream I had where H died, that maybe I'll tell him about when I see him next.

This morning I read D&G's "What is a minor literature" while listening to Philly music and thinking about this IG Story:

Hopoutblick reposted it, it's a transcription of an old song of his, one, like many, that never got a "proper" release and has leaked online after travelling as a file throughout Philly. I listened to the song once but I didn't save the link and now it's gone, at least it is to me. The lyrics won't show up on any search engines, and I could DM the account that posted the lyrics, most likely a teenager somehwere in Philly, but he'd want to charge me for file, that's the way the circulation of these leaks works, there's an entire economy built up around it, one that I'm so distant from.

When I look at the image, I think 'who could've written this', and it's something that I never could've written, even when I transcribe lyrics, I'd never write the emojis like that, and I'd never write my g's as q's to bypass Instagram censorship and I think of the Jackie Wang interview that I read this morning where she talks about how technology has shaped the form of writing, citing the character limit of Twitter, and of course the reason I can write here in this way is because I've set the technology up in such a way to create this ongoing tumult of words. Wang describes poetry as useless, superfluous to capital and difficult to commodify - "how many poets do you know who support themselves on poetry alone"? This is why she loves it. She also talks about technology hijacking her dopamine reward system.

Why does Hopoutblick rap? There's the dopamine, of being 18 and getting those views and followers and DM's, but that came later, that's the feedback loop that emerged to sustain his writing machine. The uselessness of poetry is entrenched in his entire practice, of course there's the possibility of him getting out of the hood through art, but the hood will still exist, and this reality seems unescapable for him. D&G point out that a major characteristic of minor literature is that everything takes on a collective value - in this case Hopoutblick's music doesn't exist in a vacuum, but with the opps he's beefing with their music, their lives intertwining in a sea of young black death. And now he's still on the run, 18 years old, wanted for homicide, and still making music, because the realities of jail are something he's come to terms with long ago.

"How many people today live in a language that is not their own? Or no longer, or not yet, even know their own and know poorly the major language that they are forced to serve? This is the problem of immigrants, and especially of their children, the problem of minorities, the problem of a minor literature, but also a problem for all of us: how to tear a minor literature away from its own language, allowing it to challenge the language and making it follow a sober revolutionary path? How to become a nomad and an immigrant and a gypsy in relation to one's own language?"