Not a Poem, Nor a Parasite

(Read at the “La-La Show Down”, November 13, 2016, NYC)

This is a homage to the New York School of Poetry, particularly to Joe Brainard's “classic,” I Remember. And to the newly discovered—newly discovered by me—Bernadette Meyer. It is called “In the Tub.” But that title lacks imagination. So it could be called, “In the Bathtub.” More imagination there. Is it a poem? I cannot remember. Once in the tub, I cannot remember much. So maybe it's, “Things I Cannot Do While Sitting in the Bathtub.” Like remembering. I cannot remember what the exact title is. I fell asleep at some point. Falling asleep is one thing you can do in the bath tub. “Reasons for Falling Asleep in a Bathtub.” Maybe that's the title? I cannot remember.

I am probably already dreaming. I can dream up three reasons for falling asleep in the bath tub. Anxiety; blacking out; excessive inhibition. All probably caused by a threat of aggression. It could get bloody; most accidents happen in the bathroom anyway. Most murders, too. Am I going to assassinate Donald Trump or not? No that's not the question, that's just day residue-something I remember from the dinner on Thursday night. The unchained aggression that could make me pass out is different. I could be seduced—and that, on the surface, not so enigmatically so—I could be seduced into simplicity, by simplicity, into just making fun of the tub paradigm.

Readers of Laplanche know this image. The tub paradigm is a visual model that pretends, as any visual model does, to be outside of what one is in, while imagining it. Taking the bath and having it. By seeing it; watching it by being taken by myself as other. Strictly a phantasm. That, of course, is not an argument in itself, for or against anything or anyone. Any model—and I am convinced by the enigmatic seductiveness of models—is some sort of reduction or condensation of a phantasm. But you still have to write it. Or read it. Or hear it.

Plantsch- Pop Art Moment. Is the image of the baquet of this great trans