Nothing Ever Happens Cherry Nin

Nothing Ever Happens

Cherry Nin

1

To fully admit to yourself that you want to be an artist, to attempt to break through the shame of that, of wanting something for yourself, something so dripping in Capital, amongst the collapse of it all—will the systems that uphold my dream even be in place? I want them to fall, I usher this collapse onwards, I poke at the beast. I enjoy doing things quickly. There is always a rush even when things must happen slowly and most things must, and this extreme urgency is the most uncomfortable part of being a human, this disconnect, this being stuck in time thing, this never having enough of it. Yesterday I was reading Eileen Myles and they said something about needing to write quickly as to avoid making too many decisions. Harry Dodge said that the art object itself isn’t the thing, because the thing is moving so fast that the object can’t keep up. These are two arguments for rushing. But maybe they are also arguments for surrendering, avoiding overthinking. There have always been great artists, in different worlds, outside of capitalism. They are tucked away but I need them like I need wind. Do you know where they are and would you mind sending me links to their work? Feeling this curtain cloud in front of my face brain. Rat said my characters are always about to explode. So am I.

3... This condition of being lodged in time… do you feel it too? I know not everyone does. It’s like dysphoric. It’s like

2... the feeling of your appearance not matching how you feel on the inside. I know you can relate to that at least. Most things must.

1... Sorry I have to go now, before this thing starts leaking meaning.

2

James Baldwin’s character Giovanni said that you don’t have a home until you’ve left it and once you’ve left you can never return. I think a lot about familiarity and connection to place and non-place and placelessness. I am not quite sure where I want to be yet. I am 25 and I miss my dead mom and I want a family. I am seeking signs of something. I think that being queer and an artist is really about non-place, about trying to find place but being perpetually sort of in the shadows. We are trying to make a place, we are all doing the same thing (floating, getting by, working our asses off) so the thing we are doing is okay, queer artists have always done this right? And they are grown up and okay now right? They have places and freaky families and were kind of late bloomers but now go to parties with other famous queer artists right? But this is not the 20th century right? We don’t get happy endings just the toxic aftermath right? Saying all of this I realize, what about AIDS and white supremacy and the many other horrific things? And so I realize I am really only thinking about a select group of people who made it to middle age, seem to be doing fine, at least by the standards of this world, even in this world. But still. I doodle in my journal: THINGS GET BETTER OK. At night I am asleep but actually I am in a very long tunnel, I am alone but actually I am with all of you, each and every one of you, and there is a light at the end and I (we) are walking towards it but it is going to take a long time, much more time than we have time for and much more time than we have hoped for. WE WILL have small moments where we can breathe again and I will smile at you as we pass each other on the street and I will feel like the luckiest person in the world just to see a stranger’s (your) entire beautiful face. Beautiful day, isn’t it? Nothing ever stays the same. That’s the only thing I feel I can really count on. The sky too. Though I heard that some scientists want to pump sulfur into the atmosphere to slow climate change which would make it so that the sky is no longer blue. Yeah, gorgeous.

3

Jackie Wang writes about the idea of oceanic feeling (which I understand as a sort of transcendence, a universality, or the feeling an artist gets when they feel the compulsion to create), describing it as a manic defense against pain, a thing rooted in pain, but also something that can be experienced as ecstatic joy. A terrible gift, she calls it. Hannah Black says that New Jersey looks like the apocalypse already happened and nooone noticed. These four walls. Trenton’s motto is TRENTON MAKES THE WORLD TAKES, and there is a green bridge in the city that says it in all caps and you can see it through the window when you are taking the train from Philadelphia to New York City and you will be a bit startled by this, its bitterness, you will be entertained by it, but you yourself will never actually step foot in Trenton and you yourself will not feel this thing rooted in pain. You will think, Trenton is the kind of place where nothing ever happens. But also I read that something is

happening—Trenton is infested with crows. To the point where the city enacted sonic warfare (loud sounds of crows in pain) against the crows to get them to leave. It sort of worked. There’s shit absolutely everywhere. You can’t even read the street signs. How can I acknowledge my fear, my grief, my shit, without letting it take over? I wake up each day still living, still needing to scurry from one place to another under dark, crow-filled skies. These four walls. Making art makes me shit and also suppresses my appetite. It’s part of my morning routine. My friend is sitting next to me on a grimy coffee shop couch. This was a while ago. I’m like a lab rat, she is saying, moving her hand up and down through the air. When something feels good I keep hitting the button for more. A terrible gift. Experiments have shown rats will forgo food to the point of starvation in exchange for brain stimulation or intravenous cocaine. At least that’s what it says on Wikipedia.

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In an interview Fred Moten said that the thought of the outside can only occur from the inside. The interview was at Harvard it was extremely long and extremely formal and the interviewer’s

introduction was about a half hour long, very difficult to follow, created an awkwardness that hung in the air throughout the rest of the conversation, palpable even to me, a person watching through the dirty window pane that is Youtube, way after the fact. I’m not sure if Fred Moten is queer but he is evidently very influential to queer artists which I think makes sense because his ideas are rooted in Black study and so could be relatable to a multidude of marginalized groups, people occupying other types of insides. Today it is snowing, it has been snowing for days which is great because it means I don’t have to go to work and can instead stay home and do my real work. I look around my bedroom and think that the funniest thing about being me is that I made up my entire life. I mean I guess there is sort of a vague precedent or equation I am trying to follow. I guess I am sitting at my desk at 11:00 AM in a short sleeved t-shirt and I guess every so often I turn to look over my shoulder out the window at the snow still falling into soft sugary piles. I guess I am curious about how I want to write, how I want to make things, and is this even a decision I can really make or do I venture out only to inevitably return to a natural equilibrium that is my own and how do I know that I’m there. This is a question of style I guess. I am always so poisonously unsure of myself. Isn’t it all just wonderful? This breathing, these moments. I truly enjoy  “academic” writing, I truly believe in “common language.” Maybe I should just talk like me. What a feat that would be. When I heard this, Fred Moten saying that the thought of the outside can only occur from the inside, Rat and I were inching towards the end of making a movie that we will have worked on for a year. I am proud of the fact that we have been working on it for a year and so you will probably hear me saying it several times, I can be quite repetitive. Wait I don’t use the word  “quite.” I can be really repetitive. That’s better. Repetition in any form reminds me of chanting, of some ancient song meant for transcendence. Because of this I tend to think of repetition as one of the most effective artistic devices. Anyways I wrote it, the base of the movie, I think last March or April, and we have been shooting it slowly, scene by scene since. But the thing is that the movie has been changing over time—what we have now is different from the original document. We play characters and we have become those characters

and the characters have become us, you know? It is a fantasy, but it is about us, over time, through seasons. In it, my character Maggie finds a door to an underground world. She needs it and so the door makes itself available to her. She renames herself Maggot, enters the underworld, and finds a realm of artists doing freaky shit. She also meets Rat’s character there, Dirt. The movie is about Maggot and Dirt, their relationship which circles around conversations through space and time. Part of it is that Maggot and Dirt are struggling to decide whether to remain underground where they feel a sense of belonging or to return to the surface, visible and in service of others. The thought of the outside can only exist from the inside. It is all very insular. In the end Maggot decides to return to the surface, but Dirt can’t: there is a difference in identity. Dirt is a trans woman of color and so can only exist inside, in the underworld. Maggot is white and cis passing. She can exist outside, amongst dominant culture. But once outside she will forget Dirt, the door, the underworld. They say a teary goodbye, Maggot leaves, it ends in snow. Isn’t it all just wonderful? This breathing, these moments.

Artwork by Mateo Genoveva