Jeffrey Schultz – VIII. Papers Please

Jeffrey Schultz

VIII. Papers Please

I hear nothing
In language
But what’s lost
Beyond the border
Of a frontier
So far forgotten
It cannot be mourned
And whatever
It is its name was
Doesn’t even
Bother to taste
Of ash and never
Gets caught
Anyway in anyone’s
Teeth. I mean,
The 60s for Christ’s sake…
Or to think of one’s youth
As anything at all
And then go on
To make a whole thing of it…
In the 90s
I read about the 60s
What did I feel or do?
What did I see?
Who knows? I tell
The same stories
Over and over
Every year. I embellish
Freely to keep
Myself from becoming
Too much over-bored.
I don’t remember
People’s names
Nor what was
Or wasn’t real
And am concerned
Little if at all.

Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:

Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.