Maybe I don’t know
in a time of such free-floating anxiety
and bad political hair
with everything running on empty
it’s hard to think of anything
in terms of show
or no show
it’s not cultural pessimism exactly
more holding one’s breath
waiting when it’s too late
and anyway it is a very grey-days winter
not conducive
to doing anything
and I feel I am making
connections of the wrong sort
not ones that turn out well in the long run
I spent the last year buried in words
distracting from other things
more important but harder to deal with
we live in an age of distraction (and apology) screens actual and psychological
a screened world
and I am reminded of when adults used to say to children in exasperation: you drive me to distraction (which no one says any more)
and anyway perhaps because of all this bad political hair and rambunctiousness
I find myself thinking about an image of
an entertainer dead now but with perfect
hair — an accidental image taken
from a frame fragment of an old movie
though not old in my head
and the detail on the right of frame
shows the back of his head in a mirror
and I don’t know why but it is the only image
I have seen in a long time which has aroused my curiosity and everyone I show it to agrees and they don’t know why
maybe because it seems right
for a particular moment
this man with perfect hair
turning his back on the world
face to the wall
and maybe also the fact that the image is
not original but a copy of a copy and
though it is obviously him
(or pretty obviously)
there is always a chance it is not
but an impersonator or a double or a fake
or someone else who fell to earth
and this fake / real image of a fake/real man seems to please people in a way that also makes them a bit anxious
maybe even a little nostalgic for a time when
it was still possible to have such perfect hair and look to the future and still turn one’s
back on the world
and in one way it’s like he has never been gone into those blue skies turning to black
and maybe for all these reasons it’s the
image I want to show to you




This soundtrack was originally produced by Mordant Music as part of the exhibition with the same title by Chris Petit at Decad in Berlin, inspired by a freeze frame accidentally rendered from Petit’s late-night viewing of Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth.