Text from Interior Scroll, 1975

Scroll 1, 1975:

BE PREPARED:
to have your brain picked
to have the pickings misunderstood
to be mistreated whether your success
increases or decreases
to have detraction move with admiration—in step
to have your time wasted
your intentions distorted
the simplest relationships in your thoughts twisted
to be USED and MISUSED
to be “copy” to be copied to want to cope out
cop out pull in and away
if you are a woman (and things are not utterly changed)
they will almost never believe you really did it
(what you did do)
they will worship you they will ignore you
they will malign you they will pamper you
they will try to take what you did as their own
(a woman doesn’t understand her best discoveries after all)
they will patronize you humor you
try to sleep with you want you to transform them
with your energy
they will berate your energy
they will try to be part of your sexuality
they will deny your sexuality or your work
theywill depend on you for information for generosity
they will forget whatever help you give
they will try to be heroic for you
they will not help you when they might
they will bring problems
they will ignore your problems
a few will appreciate deeply
they will be loving you
as what you do as what you are
loving how you are being they will of course
be strong in themselves and clear they will NOT
be married to quiet tame drones they will not say
what a great mother you would be
or do you like to cook and where you might expect
understanding and appreciation you must expect NOTHING
then enjoy whatever gives-to-you
as long as it does and however
and NEVER justify yourself just do what
you feel carry it strongly yourself

(1966; text published in Cézanne, She Was a Great Painter, 1975)

Scroll 2, 1977

I met a happy man
a structuralist filmmaker—
but don’t call me that
it’s something else I do—
he said we are fond of you
you are charming
but don’t ask us
to look at your films
we cannot
there are certain films
we cannot look at
the personal clutter
the persistence of feelings
the hand-touch sensibility
the diaristic indulgence
the painterly mess
the dense gestalt
the primitive techniques

(I don’t take the advice
of men who only talk to
themselves)
PAY ATTENTION TO CRITICAL
AND PRACTICAL FILM LANGUAGE
IT EXISTS FOR AND IN ONLY
ONE GENDER

even if you are older than I
you are a monster I spawned
you have slithered out
of the excesses and vitality
of the sixties . . .

he said you can do as I do
take one clear process
follow its strictest
implications intellectually
establish a system of
permutations establish
their visual set . . .

I said my film is concerned
with DIET AND DIGESTION

very well he said then
why the train?

the train is DEATH as there
is die in diet and di in
digestion

then you are back to metaphors
and meanings
my work has no meaning beyond
the logic of its systems
I have done away with
emotion intuition inspiration—
those aggrandized habits which
set artists apart from
ordinary people—those
unclear tendencies which
are inflicted upon viewers . . .

it’s true I said when I watch
your films my mind wanders
freely . . .
during the half hour of
pulsing dots I compose letters
dream of my lover
write a grocery list
rummage in the trunk
for a missing sweater
plan the drainage pipes for
the root cellar . . .
it is pleasant not to be
manipulated

he protested
you are unable to appreciate
the system the grid
the numerical rational
procedures—
the Pythagorean cues—

I saw my failings were worthy
of dismissal I’d be buried
alive my works lost . . .

he said we can be friends
equally though we are not artists
equally I said we cannot
be friends equally and we
cannot be artists equally

he told me he had lived with
a “sculptress” I asked does
that make me a “film-makeress”?

“Oh no,” he said. “We think of you
as a dancer.”

(text from Kitch's Last Meal, 1973-1978)