I want to write you back right away because these days I never know what thoughts will come upon me at such and such an opportune or inaccessible time and I must make sure not to let thoughts of you slip away. So you can be content of my condition, I assure you I am very much alive and well, living out my days in Oslo for the time being, sharing an apartment with my partner while we both hone our energies upon the task of proliferating the lists of tasks which must be done before the end descends upon us. Yes, I feel these are trying times, more so than ever in some ways while also perpetuating more of the same mediocrity I have always been aware of, which is to say the world is a disaster that we are and must continue shuffling around, trying our best not to be swept up into the vacuum of violent affairs or destructive ideologies, but I also admit that it has been very difficult for me to focus on my art amidst all this idiocy and turmoil. Living in Sweden was a tower of self-imposed exile - as I fondly refer to it - and then spending six months in Iceland felt like entering into another quality of dome far exceeding my architectural comprehensions - to run with the metaphor a bit longer - so that upon returning to our home land I was sent whirling into a labyrinthine vertigo, of body and senses and solar plexis, the likes of which I am only now beginning to recover from while also beginning a new infusion of nausea. All that is to say that I had a hard time enduring the USA for 3 months, even in the relatively incubated bunker of my parents house which is more a fallout shelter than a sanctuary. I tried my best to stay on track, building a new website for myself and getting thoroughly involved with an autobiographical video experiment as a method for articulating this ontogenesis idea we had been hatching in Iceland, but with the combination of my parents neurosis, the paranoiac talking heads broadcast across the perpetually illuminated boob tube, the general late-capitalist malaise inflicted upon my psyche by the suburban sprawl and compartmentalized ecosystem, and the added hallucinatory reverie of my adolescence sweeping back in from swollen chests of nostalgia and affective artifacts, I spent most of the time enduring some kind of haze, a fog of gray gauze obscuring my vision even amidst the white beams of the blinding New Mexico sun. I got some work done, took many notes, plowed through a few books and filled a few hard drives with footage so as to avoid a total calcification of my cerebral joints, but now that I have left I can see the beast for what it is. I did spend some time in Colorado and I feel it suits me wonderfully. Norway is nice, gray and damp and cold and all very nice, an excellent place to be working for the time being since I only go outdoors on a voluntary basis. I have also been thinking about our last encounter and have been reworking the documents towards various experimental ends, adding new voices and instrumentation to the recordings and making plans for some new visual orchestrations. Yes, while in New Mexico it seems I had to confront some demons I had been trailing along with me, as well as my relationship to my parents, all of which I thought was part of my project but has turned out to be simply life, raw and ravaged, purposelessly purposive in its own form. Now that I have reclaimed my serenity I'm back at work. Yes I've been writing a libretto for the opera, a "narrative" you might call it, from the prologue which we have already begun and onwards through the first act which is now filling up with a caste of characters and conceptual personas. I am glad you are still invested in a collaboration and of course I want to actively pursue this, but I think we must share in some rigorous dialogues on the matter as I'm sure you will agree that our last meeting, despite (or in spite) of its brilliance, was also riddled with clandestine tensions of the mind and musculature that have yet to be massaged out. I'm not harboring any ill will, but I also think we are both wise enough to learn from our shortcomings and take every new encounter as a revitalized opportunity to manifest a new reality. Let's talk immediately, whenever you can, I'm ready and willing and have much to share with you. Hmm yes, the future looms large even as I struggle to bring it into focus. I will be in Norway until January 27th and then will fly back to Los Angeles with no destination. I have a loose plan to spend some time in LA before making my way up to the Bay Area to reacquaint with the friends that reside there, possible for a few months, but it's really hard to say for certain until some more firm soils are sighted. Camaron mentioned you and MR are headed that way? Perhaps we should consider sharing a domicile? What are your plans? I'm also applying to PhD programs: EGS in Switzerland/Malta, PhD Arts at the Royal Academy in Den Hague, and maybe some schools in Ghent and Sweden. At the same time I'm continuing to pursue residency/funding options and have recently decided that I must attempt to format my enterprise towards gaining some viable employment as a community college professor, leading to more rigorous assignments later in life. This last option seems realistic and would keep me rooted in the states for awhile, as well as provide some much needed income for enacting our shared dream of setting up shop in the form of some kind of alt-civilization compound conducive towards the pontification of posthuman proprioception. If I can get a decent teaching job, say in CO or NM or TX, then I'm gonna buy a fucking house and start living in it and building it up immediately and I certainly will always have a standing invitation to you and MR and OZ to come lay your heads or lift a hammer to start singing the song of our own sovereignty. Of course yes yes yes I want to keep having a conversation regarding a communal effort in this regard also, and I certainly don't feel like the energy has been dissipated by time or distance or tempers or dissonance. On the contrary, I feel like I have been silently preparing for that time to come which is not too far now. Let's also talk about this, as soon as possible, and in the same breath I want to hear about what you are reading and what you are watching and what you are making and how you are articulating your "new ontology" of the meta mineral mind you mentioned on the fjörd. Let's compare notes, compile them into a new lexicon, articulate a novel method of interference interlocution, fold it into a book and write out the score and bring it on tour. It's not just words, I'm serious and I'm studious and there's nothing else I would rather do and no one else I would rather do it with. We must keep the conversation flowing and chart all its trajectories and tributaries, like the consilient scroll that was once mounted to our shared wall! Expanding out in the nth dimension beyond the scope of the page or any other human scale! Beyond mechanism and artifice! Towards the zenith of zero point energy pulmulgating out of the fleshy nodal sponge wedged between our oily orifices! Keep the tension without becoming unwound, old friend. Let's talk soon.

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