on conversation
I am always suspected of a sickness, she says. All I want is to trust a man with plain, unshaken faith. I couldn’t speak for days once.
No one knows the cause, he says. There are rare phenomena that you have to be so close to the source to witness. Why don’t you look outside the window till you see it. No one owns a polished stone on the street. Of course broken streets are empty. The crowd can’t be bothered by cold air.
I am always suspected of a sickness, she says. All I want is to trust a man with plain, unshaken faith. I couldn’t speak for days once. My mother came over many times like a beating. But some men form ash-heaps in their mouth with words. I wouldn’t step outside. I’d dry out.
How old-fashioned, he says. I’ve seen other people go through their lives believing a laceration is a system of privacy. Even a brief pause becomes its own self-machination. No such thing as mildness in utterance. Go and open up our presence, I don’t care about that anymore.
There are many forms of dissonance, she says. I imagine I’d begin every conversation with white noise. Someone who has never stolen will not understand me. Someone who has never stolen and not felt love from being caught will not understand me. I told you then. I wouldn’t change my mind now.
Anything they say now is toneless. So insert the mirror, like cleaving the natural color from a word. Opacity opposes the noise and voids the options. The project to be prolonged in terms of lack.
Photographs of “On Conversation” in the exhibition
Excerpt from Mouth Words, Muster Murmurs
To patiently sit with contradictions, to confront our anxieties with uncertainty, and to operate despite conflicting realities is offered in Mouth Words, Muster Murmurs. Together with visual artists Roan Alvarez, Jorem Biadoma, Henrielle Baltazar Pagkaliwangan, Camille Quintos, Miguel Lorenzo Uy, and writer Carissa Pobre, the exhibit attempts to traverse tensions palpably present yet often kept quiet. The works, having less to do with material, meander through a spectrum of concepts that contemplate on connections with community and how that is influenced by the history of our people. Whether it is from society-at-large or one’s personal expectations, what are we saying when we’re not really speaking? … Then we could trace the artist’s thoughts in their works, and ask: what have they mouthed that would muster our murmurs? (curated by Eya Beldia)
Compositions by Carissa Pobre is available through Everything’s Fine Press and various local bookstores in the Philippines.
Carissa Pobre
