Apichatpong Weerasethakul

*** i dream in Bengali.

slow cloudy scenes

my limbs are sticky from the mist

and when i wake up i almost forget alwaysssss ***

Like licking a soap bar or peeling off ur nail varnish, a slow strange alien feeling nearly invasive ||||| u can feel it in ur bones, it doesn’t sit right, but it’s also not that wrong. ||||

like a sticky slowness that only happens in dreams or in films      .

This work is slow and hazy and i appreciate the darkness, truly deeply. i have visited it so many times.

once: when me and my boy came to the new tate on an art date.

we curled up with pillows and i rested my head on his shoulder and our breathing fell in sync.

second: showing my aunt from Bangladesh around London (she thought Louise Bourgeois was ¡escandalo!)

third: on my own, bored waiting, i made use of my time with art as company, as friend.

fourth: on an art date, we dipped in, dipped out. went to get coffee. said we’d come back but never did.

fifth: my boy fell asleep in the darkness.

so u crawl all the way down and you enter pitch black turn the corner and you’re set apart from these massive slow screens/scenes/dreams

it has a slow cooked tenderness, it melts when i chew it.

sometimes, u see some art, and u just hold it close to ur chest and u don’t know why

i want to work thru that by writing about it

it was like smoke. i am ok with the spiritual, the ethereal. something painful to hold onto so tightly, so u have to loosen ur grip. lean in to give.

i am ok, comfortable with mysticism.

i am not a cynic, i can suspend my disbelief, i have felt God’s hand before,,,,,

i have seen possession by gods. it is rage and it is fury and it is beautiful so u can’t help but believe it, wholly and fully. it looked like it felt like it must have been like running your finger over the thin skin of a barely healed wound. when you can feel the lumpy scar tissue beneath it, and you are soft and vulnerable and so close to being in pain but not quite but it feels half way between disgusting or quite nice actually and it’s almost/almost violent.

[like this the work was scar tissue; an underlying meaty lump of almost/almost violence - - - the remnants of violence —— ]

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something about time and space, virtual village/documenting the goings-on, fiction and history, but something unstable and not-quite-nailed-down about it all because it felt like smoke

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i have a memory; i’m not sure if it was a dream or a film or a past life;;;; a snake moving through water, purple and fat, rolling through grey waves///// a hand (my hand?) reaches down and glides along its smooth back /// the viewer/my face looks up to the horizon and sees hazy blue mountains//// i remember lights and fire and almighty noise //////  but the snake slips through my fingers and my grasp misses its tail /// my fingers are now moving through wet silty sand

have you ever seen Dil Se  :::::    that’s what narrative feels like here

echoey and distant, like ur watching through a pane of glass.

there’s a degree of separation.

i have a t shirt that says “Are you in a film or in reality?” and i hate its irony, it sticks to my teeth i hate it i hate it

and when i wear it, i feel that same feeling::::

that feeling of having gritty dirt stuck under your nails, and you try and slide it out with your teeth, and then it’s in your mouth and you’ve felt your jaw move on your finger it makes u feel not quite sick, but bubbly in your stomach.

like there’s an air bubble trapped but it isn’t

:::::: ye, the art feels like this

heavy-eyed mysticism. my aunt believes in Sai Baba

he is a saint who died, and now his spirit leaves fragrant dust where its footsteps are.

he has lived twice, and will live again before leaving again for the spirit world, for heaven or that place beyond.

[this is part of the background, this is part of me;;; i guess that’s why this is relatable content]

future / past / film / real life / it’s all the same we are souls in bodies / mortal vessels here to learn lessons of love and compassion / we pass on and come back again / sometimes we remember ///////////.

i forget to remember my body [it is lost in the darkness, and i am only a viewer, i am only gaze]

disembodied but not powerless

a gentle touch

i think that’s why it feels like a dream or a film -  - — -  - because you’re in a body, yes. but you can’t see it or feel it and you forget it really.