“I thought maybe the rewards and punishments would even out but I later realized that they would not.” (Rebekah Rutkoff, The Irresponsible Magician)

The intense work of Love Sounds has rendered me useless.

“I shouldn’t pretend that things only happen where men are concerned.” (Rutkoff).

It feels like Rebekah, writing about Michel Auder’s video, Voyage, is describing Love Sounds as well any anticipatory life:

“The night tells secrets. The speakers tell secrets too—not so much to each other as to us—-because they are neither meant for us nor for assembly alongside those of the other callers. The secret is both that we’re all having versions of the same conversations and that culture provides few ways for us to know and encounter this fact. The secret is that we need transcripts from the stream of thought and from the flow of talk for our own experiences of health and communion…Women speak of the workings of desire with certainty amongst themselves—and invoke knowing these things less surely with a male lover. We’ve heard of these dilemmas before, but we don’t know them in this form, all at once and from the mouths of strangers.“ (Rutkoff).

Crossposted with Love Dog.

Photo from Voyage to the Center of the Phone Lines, Michel Auder, 1993