Evan D’Alleva
The sun stutters
1
, and each repetition, each frame, draws a thing closer to fulfillment, but forgive me if I
repeat myself. Imagine another history where Jesus had his hands screwed to the cross, where the small
crowd heard two short drill bursts, and in no time flat, up he was. The world spun upon a metal thread. A
world incessant to turn in on itself; first as tragedy, then as farce
2
, then as tedium, then...
I want you to imagine Jesus, and really reach out and touch faith
3
, hauling a wooden canvas frame to
class. On his walk, he passes upon miracles laying in wait. Past comrades and thinkers, interdisciplinary
freaks that harbour a backwards bohemian camaraderie. In their fingernails, he can see the grand schemes
they made up as kids or on the spot for an assignment. A played out, made to surrender fantasy. They
hang charcoal motor exercises on the wall they call an allegory for the perfect death. Imagine Jesus, and
not as a white bureaucrat. When he walks to work, he puts on music that matches the weather, he puts on
clothes that match the music. He paces through social pockets of acceleration and meditation. He repeats
what he cannot bear
4
. The sun stutters. It is evening and the streetlights turn on one by one: first to go are
those kept in the shadows of banks and skyscrapers, and last are those adjacent to the reflection of their
windows.
When I’m on the street and the lamps ignite like a battery-operated priest, the subjects in its light are all
that I see. There doesn’t seem to be a passing thought between pedestrian, just onlookers and their
personal truths. There’s the resurrection of the flaneur; I see cacophonies brought to life. I see myself
walk within the dream of a group of kids. I see horror in metal and sanctuary in real estate. Imagine Jesus
donating blood. I conceive of my little narratives, my self-mythologies, doing damage to the mass
hysteria, the romance that threads through society. I see a student not entering some screwdriven history
but abandoning her homeschooled reality. I see people lost upon a heated coil. The sun stutters. I see
myself walk in and out of the dying dreams of youth; in and out of the rotten ideas of the artist.
Jesus is not an artist but a man obsessed with wood. The artist is not a saint. His work is not history or its
failure. His obsession is not righteous. He is tempted by satans and schoolbooks. Every interpretation is a
reach. In the tasting menu of desire, an obsession can mark a particular attention, as it asks if we are
overcome with desire or if we desire to be overcome. The artist is obsessed with the idea of being a good
artist. A slug’s urge. Maybe the artist is nothing outside of this antagonism. When Jesus died, one of the
people he saved was himself. When a pedestrian looks at you on the street, there’s something sordid that
threads through history. There’s the sound of a drill looped, chopped, screwed, and repeated. There is
rationality in repetition. When I walk to work, I look dead on, straight ahead so that for a moment I’m
completely consumed, and it’s something like bliss. Jesus is strung out in his room and it’s something like
bliss. Order and obedience are smooth but the sun stutters and my God, you’re just like your father.
4 Cynthia Cruz, Fatigue Empire
3 Depeche Mode, Personal Jesus
2 Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
1 Shuji Terayama, Throw Away Your Books, Rally In The Streets