Giannina Braschi - United States of Banana

Writers have forgotten the subject matter. They think they can substitute matter with plot. But where is the subject matter? The subject matter that matters is the market value of the plot. What matters is triviality, banality. I am neither against banality nor against triviality. But I am not a scribbler. I like scribblers because they babble bubbles — and out of the bubble bath they come out clean and refreshed. But writers are stripped of the distinctions that exist in writing. Even the prizes are nondenominational. They are given to more of the same and nothing new. Old would be good if it tasted vintage — but it has no taste or odor — it is the odorless tastelessness of more of the same and nothing new. It runs in the family of no distinction — envy, democracy — of more of the same and nothing new. It will not turn me into a vegetable. It tries to serve me as a side dish — to pass me off as a carrot — but I am not orange. I am juicy like a steak — and I am the leader of that plate. I am a subject that is a head — not a complement of a chicken that has no head. The subject has become the passive observer — the spectator — waiting for the curtains to fall like the guillotine. Artaud said theater can exist without the text — the production has to liberate itself from literature — and it did liberate itself — it became self-sufficient — it became a conjugation. I was backing Artaud — cut the head — cut the literature, cut the text, cut the letters. Make it a verb — an action. What is not functional should not exist. Off with their heads. Revolution — cut the heads of states. Cut the poets, the philosophers, the minds. Now what do we have left? Politicians and preachers who conjugate the past — past orders of the past — and instead of great thinkers who cut the head of God a long time ago — now we have chickens with their heads cut off. Pirandello was right at his moment: Six Characters in Search of an Author . The author is dead. What are we going to do about it? Don’t substitute God with author. Don’t replace death with more death. I should not be thinking in a straitjacket of a sentence structure that is also dead. I am drunk — and I don’t have a body to jubilate my drunkenness. My thoughts are stuck in my head — full of wine and cheese — memories and worries. My head needs an agitation of some sort — a revolt in the files — to produce flashbacks — to return the subject matter to the place of the subject matter — to alleviate my head. Verbs jump back into their places and die when they become what they were. They already were there — and once they start replacing each other — and recognizing that they can function in different places — without their traditional meaning — that meaning — real meaning is created out of a dissatisfaction with the past — a displacement from comfort — a refusal to sit tight. Originality is going back to the place where you were what you were — and finding an empty chair. Would you gladly sit on it? No, thank you. It is empty for a reason. That’s where my ass was. Not where my head is now. Now that I am seated in the audience watching feathers flying, claws scratching, blood splattering, I should not be nostalgic, wishing I were there on stage — on top of that headless chicken — giving it meaning and unity. No, that would not be a happy ending for a chicken that is jumping for joy to be free of my commands — free of subjugations — and I believe in all kinds of liberation — and I will cheer that headless chicken until we both die of sheer jubilation.

Hurray! Hurray! What a great chicken! The president, the secretary of state, the businessman, the preacher, the vendor, the spies, the clients and managers — all walking around Wall Street like chickens with their heads cut off — rushing to escape bankruptcy — plotting to melt down the Statue of Liberty — to press more copper pennies — to breed more headless chickens — to put more feathers in their caps — medals, diplomas, stock certificates, honorary doctorates — eggs and eggs of headless chickens — multitaskers — system hackers — who never know where they’re heading — northward, backward, eastward, forward, and never homeward — (where is home) — home is in the head — (but the head is cut off) — and the nest is full of banking forms and Easter eggs with coins inside. Beheaded chickens, how do you breed chickens with their heads cut off? By teaching them how to bankrupt creativity. By spending their energy declining verbs:

I do

He does

You do

She does

We do

It does

They do

Everything is in the doing. What can I do for you? What can you do for me? Scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. I can pilot a jet. I can order a salad. I can rollerblade. I can write a play. I can fall in love. And I can do what the subject matter could never do — decline verbs — and subjugate subject matters to become attributes, compliments — feathers in the cap of a chicken that walks like a chicken with its head cut off. Ask me if I can. But never ask me who I am. Because that can only be answered by a being. A doer cannot be. A doer can only do. I am what I do. And if you ask me: who are you? I’ll blink my teary eyes and feel pity for my lack of being — and I’ll threaten to kill myself, but I’ll have no self to kill. I’m caught between two psychosomatic dilemmas — the one that wants to sleep at night in your fat lazy arms of comfort and the one that cheats on your fat lazy ass. Serves you right, old fart, for making me do what I don’t like to do just to support you. Life is short but it feels so long. Serves you right that if I die you get nothing because you’ve spent it all. You didn’t earn the respectability or the visibility or the bread and butter. Serves you right to get nothing — you earned it. I made it — you blew it. My wallet is empty like my life, misspent by my wife. And when I lost my head, I lost my statehood — where I could learn to decline other verbs:

— what was

— what is not

— what does without knowing what was is not anymore what is

— and what I do has nothing to do with what I am.

I was commanded by a subject matter that mattered — but now I am repeating ad nauseam the same conjugation because I killed the subject matter that matters.

I read

I do

I play

I scream

I jump

I pray

I weep

I kiss

I fall

I am, I am, I am — what I do when I do what I have to do. My being doesn’t exist, but when I do, I bring my being into a state of forensic frenzy, and I do what I have to do always. I always fulfill my deadlines because they are the lines of death, and I can never skip what was meant to die by a deadline. And that is my goal. To die when I get to the deadline.

This is the era of ticks and dust — of convents and seminaries — of nuns and priests — of clerics and sheiks — cloaked in black robes — the color of obscurantism. See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Eat now or forever hold your tongue. Bite your tongue if you don’t speak now. I will speak tomorrow, even if I don’t eat now. Nobody will hold my peace or send me to sleep. Nobody will substitute one reality with another reality. But realities are doomed to collide. One being devastated and harassed by the other. The other.

Identities are not tangible anymore. If you look for an identity you find inequality. If you look for similarities you separate one truth from another. The self has been refracting. Decimals are decimating. Solutions are not consulting consultants to find jobs. Jobs are out of work. Meaning has become so valuable, so huge — so stupendously absurd, so useless — such a glittering object of desire — it glistens — it supersizes all the shapes. The forms have shrunk. They are crouching in shame for having been consumed by the fads of consumerism. Now this immense prodigality — this giver of gifts — this creative energy in our muscles, bones, cavities, and caves of our brain with juices of jubilation and rage to transform, to not be deceived, conceited, alienated, defeated, minimized — drawn to a corner — surrounded by four walls — seated. This is what bothers me the most — why seated — why do we have to observe — laziness — and all this introspection is dying inside without an objective correlative. We attack on false premises. We have nothing real to give and plenty to take. We take what you give, and if you don’t give it willingly, we enforce our rule of law, democracy, and free trade agreements until you comply with the deadline. It is time to take the center and move it to the corner. We don’t need the center. We need to strategize the margins. In the margins are the whistle-blowers and the asides.