YO-YO AND DESPAIR

Aglaya Nogina

​

last night I dreamt of erotica, and then — a terrorist attack.

as if I had bought a ticket for a connecting flight with a layover, and suddenly the airport was being bombed.

 

and I also think I’m a yo-yo.

constantly trying to test the limits of distance from myself,

and then — the further I run,

the faster I return

and crash at full speed into the same wall, catching myself like a palm catches a ball.

if this were an audio performance, I would insert the sound of a glass goblet shattering right here.

 

sometimes I dream of men I’ve never seen before.

in the dream, I wake up and don’t remember who’s lying next to me.

I don’t see faces — only silhouettes and fragments of bodies.

I pretend everything’s normal,

while trying the entire time to remember who it is.

I never do. I wake up. I can’t fall asleep again.

 

now for the part about despair.

I recently realized that most of what we do in life happens for one of two reasons: out of love

or out of despair.

 

and the same actions, triggered by different states,

end up feeling completely different —

and leading to different outcomes.

for example, traveling.

I travel a lot.

almost always alone.

to be honest, I mostly travel to escape the loneliness that presses on me every day —

that is, out of despair.

to escape thoughts of war,

of my own failures and fears,

of not knowing my place,

of having no plan.

maybe if I had a home,

if I were happy,

if I had a job that fulfilled me,

a partner I never wanted to leave, not even for one night,

and finally the chance to buy a beautiful lamp at a flea market

without wondering:

“how soon will I have to move again,

and where to,

 

and how will I transport this lamp?” —

maybe then I wouldn’t travel so recklessly,

on my last money,

anywhere at all,

as long as it’s far away,

until the very last moment.

 

sometimes we go on dates out of despair,

because we can’t let go or grieve what’s behind us.

we overwork — out of despair.

because working a lot helps us forget, for a while, what hurts.

we read,

we eat,

we exercise,

we scroll,

we even sip our morning coffee —

sometimes from that same place of despair,

because so much of what we expected from ourselves, from the world,

from our life —

doesn’t match reality.

¿and how do you force reality to match?

 

from a place of love, it’s all different.

you can be in balance

— in New Balance or in New York, it doesn’t matter —

but you create from overflow,

you travel with lightness and the wish to return soon.

then I guess that delicious coffee,

and having a favorite café in your city, stops being a substitute for meaning —

or a reason not to hang yourself.

then you stop being a substitute for your own truths.

 

and then I take that coffee from that beautiful café

and go to the studio.

because going into art is always safe —

from anywhere,

no matter how bruised or kissed you are.

it’s a certainty:

if you repeat certain gestures,

if you enter a certain state,

magic always happens.

everything else fades.

the wounds start to heal.

you stop replaying strange dreams

about terrorist attacks and unfamiliar men.

the yo-yo returns to the palm.

​

in a documentary about Samuel Beckett yesterday,

a male voice said:

“Samuel started to write because of the pain.”

and yesterday,

I started to write because I thought I was a yo-yo ball.

 

if this were an audio performance, I would now turn on the sound of an ocean storm, and let it collapse over the audience,

wave after wave,

for another 30–40 seconds.