the gaze, the ghost
I click through my photo archive. 25,000 blurry pictures or brightly lit with the flash of the phone camera in increasing quality over the years, starting with the old drug dealer's phone that M. had given me back then. the pictures: intoxications, ashtrays. glasses with beer, wine, zubrovka, tequila, rum, urine. half-full, half-empty, spilled. the kitchen floor sticky. amphetamine traces on the carpet in the living room. animals and memories living in the rug. memory animals. the dust mites carry my pain through the rooms. I look into the images like looking through windows into silly little broken worlds. everything about these worlds is broken, only the feelings they conveyed are not, the associations, ideas, dreams are perfect, even if they have nothing to do with reality – which perhaps is what makes them really perfect.
not in the picture: me. my feelings, my vulnerability, my hurts. I'm always behind the camera, behind the image, the sharp, documenting gaze, productive in conveying the image, but hardly in shaping the scenery. 25,000 versions of my gaze, through 25,000 small windows, onto 25,000 fragments of a broken world. that was how all the pain I carried around with me since I could think became bearable. how else, if not through this shameless romanticisation of a life that felt forbidden and right at the same time. poisonous and sweet.
so here they are, all those years, this life, at the same time gapless and flawed, archived on my laptop, everything. only I remain a ghost, remain gaze alone.