It's not a new story, not a particularly interesting one, it's not a story that, for anyone else, really needs to be told or heard. Every single goddamn moment I want to tell it but it is nothing. I want to tell the sound of the echo of this room. I want to open my mouth, make no noise, and have someone nod and say "Ah yes, I know what you mean."

The other day I was wondering, if what was happening around me right at that moment was a scene in a film, who would my character be, and what would he be doing? What would it seem was happening to him as he sat silently, listening to the music in the bar, smoking and ignoring the beer? I had no idea. I could only see a group credit: "Men in Bar". Not even a speaking part.

Later that same day, unprompted, a friend I hadn't heard from in two years mentioned that someone she knew was "so self-involved he thought of himself as the star of his own movie." How much more, then, am I, to criticize my character in my movie, to be my own stage, screen, distributor and Pauline Kael? Maybe this is why it's all only silence, I've fallen inside the event horizon of human company and no signal can escape the black hole navel.

Many words to say there are no words, eh? But it's all pummeling the bush. This is about what it is when music loses point, when books lose purpose, when ideas carry no spark, when the relentless tug of why has turned to nothing but a dull repulsion saying "What for?" This is when everything good is the odd rock pillar in the badlands that casts its shadow for miles at sunset and tells you how flat the ground is to its figure. I have no connection to you. I am not related to you.

Do you understand? It is most important that you understand, that it be understood, that I am not misinterpreted. It is not that I do not want to talk, it's just that nothing is all I can say. All else is styrofoam.