response to ray's email

no notes on zarathustra. I sat in class like a mouse and sniffed around. but i can write on him from what i remember. this will be something else, later.

Basically this is how I feel: figure out the books you want to have with you; the books that pull at you now or one’s you see winking at you from a distance. Bring them with you. Bring some clothes and food and the essentials.

You are planning for a few years from now? You need to just go. I know there are issues with career and whatever but nothing will matter when you’re in the woods. i'm not sure plans are a good way to go

Thinking about recording – I would definitely be attached to the idea of recording things (with synths and everything else) – but I think it’s more important to attach yourself to the notion of solitude. Are you embracing solitude when you’re recording things onto an electronic device (things you can use to communicate with people in the future?) time. hmm. Fuck time. Your recordings are going to be used in the future? To communicate with yourself?...in the future? Then you aren’t alone. I don’t even understand solitude. it can't be possible. You need to figure out a new way to remember. Recording is a weird sort of group activity. even if it's just you.
On the other hand there are many aspects of it which seem extremely beneficial and powerful. And probably it would be best to record. But under the banner of solitude I would be more hesitant. I just think it would be better for the world. But I don’t know.
You’re making the calls. Just don’t actually make any calls.

Solitude, I think, is a sort of cleansing, a shedding of skin, a forgetting; but it’s also a taking a bath in remembrance. You can strip yourself of erroneous shit and bask in glorious memories of childhood, where you laughed and cried and screamed and played without inhibition. You get back to those things and you strip yourself of some accumulated layers of dead skin but not all of it. and you should forget a lot of things you learned because your mind begins to fill up with wood and leaves and water and bugs. and probably you get deep inside your head also with the words of others. You can’t escape it all and you’re not alone unless you take only food and things to help you survive. But I don’t know what type of loneliness is desirable. I would just want a guitar. But not really. I’d want a lot of stuff so I could create a lot – recording equipment, etc.

I have to penetrate this more in the next few days. Reading foucault in the park in 20 minutes, been ‘alone’ all day. But with museums and buildings and artists (and thinking about my fascination with cities and their construction (urban planning as a possible course)) and my books and this laptop which I write on from the lobby of a chic hotel called Buddha. When I get deeper I will write more on this.
The most important thing is to be alone.
The most important thing is to be with one other person naked.
The most important thing is a boundary.
And what happens, where you go, when it’s destroyed.