I want to become more productive.
I can't effect enough change by myself.
I must make a difference.
My work is too important to be ignored.
I must find a way to extend myself.
I want to package the way I think to influence others.
I know they are out there.
I can feel them.
There are others like me.
I can't sit on what I have any longer.
I must come out with it.
The way things are going, I can't stand the thought of remaining inside.
I have to make a difference.
I can't stand the thought of being overlooked.
I'm begging for an audience.
I have to reach the right people.
I can't find them without you.

I need your help to find them.
I need to reach them, just as I need you.
Through you I will find them.
I know I'm pressing.
I have to get to know you before I can advance.
There is a barrier.
I face a broken thought.
My thought breaks up on my way to you.
First I must reach you.
Before I can touch them, we must recognize each other.
You have an image.
I recognize you on the street.
I begin with you in a crowd.
You stand out. I know you
are the one before you notice me.
I am looking for you inside.
You don't know I'm coming in.
It's my advantage.
You must find me on your own.
Make me be who you will.
Make me stand out.

I'm presenting myself.
I'll be clear--I'll stand out.
I'm waiting.
I'm being patient.
If there is one thing I've learned over the years, I know I must wait for you.
I want you to see me in your own way.
I want you to read me true.
I want you to find me yourself.
I'm desperate to reach you.
There's time.
I now there is time, but I feel I must connect with you soon.
You are the key to my entrance.
You will be my introduction to them.
I know you are the key.
I can see it in you.
I can feel you on the street.
You're slowly moving into place.
You are coming around.
I remain motionless as you are moving into place.
We are much closer.
We are closer to the same.
I am watching you change.
It's my advantage.
I respect you.
Take your time.
Be precise in
our observations.
Look for me where nothing else matters.
I'll tell you a lie to get our attention.
I'll tell you I know all about the others.
I know what they are looking for.
They are looking for something inside.
I have something hidden away for them.
I offer everything to you.

Lift me out of this text.
Extract me with your concentration.
First I will speak to you about the others.
We must share the others through our differences.
The others will come between us initially.
We will see them clearly through each other's eyes.
Turn around, I can't wait any longer.
I'm here for you now.
I've set a trap for you.
I'm not interested in the others at all.
I've set this up for you.
Turn around, I'm behind you.
I represent you.
In a way you depend on me.
In a way you don't understand yet.
I'm waiting for you to turn around.
I can't wait.
Our time together begins here.

We are together in the same thought.
You are beginning to sense my direction.
I am focused on your image.
All of who I am is invested in your image.
I have fallen for you.
I hope you will recognize my investment.
I am coming up behind you.
I support your image.
I know you.
Turn around.
I can't wait any longer.
I want to touch you.
But that would be too easy.
That would be a cheap mistake.
It wouldn't last.
You have to find me yourself.
You must eliminate the others.
As you clear away the others I am moving around you.
I am cautiously manoeuvering into a better position.
At this moment I am moving under you.
I am under you.
I want you.
I am under you because you are all that matters.
I am waiting for you to make a move.
Do something.
Seize control of the situation.
The circumstances favour your immediate approach.
Take me.
I face your rejection.
You sense I am under you.
You recognize me.
If you can see me, why can't the others?
Why can't I reach them?
Can you explain how you see me?
Tell me with your eyes.
Take your time.
Your face has changed in the last few moments.
You are different now.
What is it I see in your eyes?
What is it?
Easy.
Keep me under.
Your face has changed.
Your face is their face.
I see their eyes.
Through your eyes they must see me.
They see me beneath you.
Through your eyes they are aware of my presence.

Now that I have their attention, you are expendable.
I'm sorry, but I've been receiving their signals through you like you are
invisible.
Your transparency is your only saving grace.
They are amazing.
Their eyes deliver so many stories.
I love their mass.
I'm drawn to their texture--their totally involving surface.
You remain a ghost.
They are your new flesh and bones.
They are shaped by your form.
For me they have become you.
They are you.
I know I've just finished dropping you cold, but I've realized a
few things, and I want to tell you.
While I was apparently intensely involved with their mass, it was really your singular
form that was most attractive to me.
I could never see them for who they are.
I could only see them in relation to you.

Before you write me off--I can change.
Have faith in me, I can change.
I want to recognize you for who you actually are as a person.
I've decided they are far less interesting to me than your phantom.
But your fleeting image itself is not enough.
I've lost touch with both you and them.
They would simply not be deep enough in the long run, and I'm afraid I've lost my grasp on who you really are.
If I was on television, if you could imagine that, I would have my own channel with no regular audience.
I would be alone on the screen.
Most of the time I'd be talking only to myself.

I have a channel's time to fill with no reason.
I sit 'on camera' in isolation.
This is a pitifully empty display.
There's nothing here and there's nothing out there.
I'm opening myself up all the way, but there is no flow.
I'm on television-- I've got my own channel, I could be reaching millions.
I feel only you.
I sense you are out there.
I first noticed you were on my channel in the mornings.
You would come to me while I was washing my face with hot water.
And I would feel you later after lunch when I would put my feet up on the coffee table.
I found I would break the connection if I went to the window to look for you.
I was difficult to act impulsively without breaking the connection.
When our channel broke down it was hard on me.
I would feelpainfully empty.
I would freeze inside.
Then you would return with that subtle buzz behind my eyes.
You are on the other side of that camera.
You are the someone who is watching.
I raise my eyes to the lights, exposing my throat.
I sense your reaction.
I turn my back on you and lower my eyes.
I guide my hands to my hips.
I study the pressure in the soundproof room.
There is no one here.
There is nothing but a silent static field of hot studio light.
That loaded expanse of bright white light.

I clasp my hands behind my neck and spread my chest to the camera.
There is nothing coming back.
I stretch open further.
I don't have a plan.
I've misread the pattern.
You are gone.
I'm stretching myself too thin.
I'm not strong enough to sit tight in my own weakness.
I'm trembling with embarrassing fragility.
I must bear down to find myself.
I'm pulling in my feelers, all my queries.
Once more, I'm my own total audience.
100% inside again.
I ask you to please accept my chronic introversion.

Again I face the possibility of our rejection.
I can only hope that my collapse will interest you.
If nothing else, you may watch me shrivel up.
I will withdraw completely.
My expressions will all be grotesquely distorted by this unavoidable, irreversible compression.
I will tighten and blacken under my eyes.
I will soon be unrecognizable, dark, and unknown.
I will completely shut down my physical system--I will black out, and I will inevitably face the critical problem of heat loss.
I will dry out.
I will cool off.
As I lose my body I will progressively become transparent.
Exposed but shameless.
My whole being contracts to find an acceptable level of presence within the context of this station.
I concede to the colour of the room.
I become beige.
I am perfectly motionless.
I am as wooden as the table I sit behind.
I am as static as a word.
I have become the word 'nothing'.
My life is worth nothing.
I disappear.
This is self-destruction.
I ask you who will be next?
Enter the studio of Channel 107.
The self-destruction chamber.
I am inside.
I am nothing, and there is another full day's programming to fill.
I'm scheduled to be on 'live' from 6 am to midnight.
I programme the whole channel with nothing but my presence.
Good morning, this is Channel 107.
I am nothing.

What is the value of the individual artist in a society where culture is discussed in industrial terms?
In the spirit of evolutionary self-destruction, I offer myself to the Dream State.
There are ants in my nose and my tongue is cold.
The machine watches and records me exactly as I appear to be.

If there is a lie here, the camera tells it.
If we cannot believe the recording mechanism, who can we trust?
I ask you to believe in me.
I am behind you.
I represent you.
I am under you.
I've got ants in my nose and my tongue is cold.

--originally published in Impulse (Toronto), Vol. 9, No. 2, summer 1981.

--direct feedback: twsherma@mailbox.syr.edu