A World of Nothing but Self-Infliction

Dear ____,

You might remember this book I’m sending, A World of Nothing But Nations, published in 1999.
Or parts and pieces, choices from the tiny notebook entries. The time, or duration of time was
captured not by the movement within each entry but by the many entries thrown against one
another so that thinking would lengthen and darken the white page without a formulaic and tidy
package of sound … as if to enter the page which thinking found at its end ... as if to leave the
musical quality of composing behind and enter something made and un-made at the exact same
time ... came into thinking’s existing on the page and into its composing.
So I discovered a way of working, a mode that harnessed the movement of the moment
alongside a stillness of the thought of the lyric ... residing intention, at the heart of composition.
And then I blew my brains out.