The thing that makes me feel smartest
is enacting my art. I watch the video titled
“Python trap using live chicken”
in which the python inserts itself into
a blue plastic tube in order to approach
the chicken, catching the string trap
which holds it in place. The chicken
pecks serenely just out of reach.
The internet enacts its art in the same
writhing way as the python. By inserting
itself into things. In the winter of 2022,
I watch David Cronenberg’s 1988 film
Dead Ringers 17 times. I only start
asking myself why on watch 14 or 15.
As fewer and fewer animals exist,
we get less and less used to living
our lives alongside them.
People secure spikes to the branches
of their trees in order to deter birds
from perching on them. In Phoenix,
it seems every apartment balcony
has a menacing plastic owl
for the same reason. What’s the point?
We made dogs into dogs by
being nice to them
and bossing them around.
Does it seem like the world is
full of cruelty enacted by
myopic people? Mutation
and mutilation sound kind of the same.
Either way, we’ve changed, drastically,
in the name of our “art.”