The Practice of Love-Jenny Hval/Laura Jean/Vivian Wang

[00:01.85]Ok. (So, page 2?) [00:03.72]Yeah. As I inhale, as I inhale, as I inhale and feel my lungs fill up with black breath to exhale, what comes out is: I wanted to write to you about love. [00:17.93]I hate "love" in my own language. It contains the entire word "honesty" inside it, which makes it sound religious, protestant, hierarchic, purified. [00:21.42]-Someone who thinks that she's made, 'cause she's the most, like, blasphemous being by some, like, just have, taking different choices in life. Like, you know, like all the sacrifices you make as... isn't, like, uh, some kind of archetype, that difference, and the, the mother and the, the, the person that chooses where you begin in life, and then there is some kind of... maybe you, when you're older, you get to this point where you, um, realise that maybe we're just like all the others anyway, it really didn't matter whether you were different. Yeah, so, I thought I was different, it's something. It's like a, it's like a teenager would say, like, "I thought I was different but I'm just like the others." [00:31.66]The word "love" comes in the way of love, and makes me want to say sorry. I say sorry with black breath, black letters staining the air around me, the walls of the house, the bed, the desk. Maybe "sorry" is the closest I ever got to expressing love. [00:51.11]In my bed, honesty is lying on top of love, sucking the blood out of it, occupying it. What's left is a little corpse. I hope I don't laugh when I read this. [01:04.74]Remember when I started saying "of corpse"? Hahaha! Every time I wanted to agree on something... This is so funny. [01:11.39]-Yeah, but a, a teenager always believes secretly that they are different, um, and... [01:14.38]Remember when I started saying "of corpse" every time I wanted to agree on something? I was inserting a little slice of death with my agreement. [01:16.82]-Mm, they do, yeah, so, it's like, everyone always thought they were different, but as you get older... [01:20.51]-Yes. I'm still hanging onto that a little bit, but, I've, I've just done some writing about, um, this stuff, um, for a book about abortion, and, um... what, one thing that I kind of felt, um, becoming someone who's in their late 30s that doesn't have a child, it's like, I have to accept that I'm part of this human ecosystem, um, but I'm not the princess and I'm not the main character? Because I feel like maybe the main characters are the people that have kids because they literally keep the virus going. But, um, I'm like, I thought, maybe I'm the talking tree, or, like, maybe I'm the witch, or maybe I'm, I'm the, I'm a, a supporting character, and that's a hard thing for my ego to take, 'cause I wanna be the star of the human story, but I'm not. I'm like a, I'm the, I'm someone that is in the background in regards to survival 'cause I'm not directly supporting survival, I'm just, I'm supporting it in a very abstract way, and possibly not supporting it. [01:24.49]Whether it was coming out of my parents, coming out with my parents for a boat trip, or agreeing that a boy was cute. [01:34.12]Corpse will definitely be sitting inside the world for love. [01:53.20]Is that how you pronounce it? 'Cause I've heard so many pronounce... Um-umbilical? [02:01.99]This is very visual, I have a thousand placentas, they are all burnt, language doesn't fit, community, affinity, togetherness, the words don't work, or they are blackened, of corpse. [02:21.24]So, what about you and I? For you, I feel a closeness that I can only explain as love, the unknown, the black hole. [02:31.12]I was going to say "chaos", but I say "the unknown" because I don't know where uncommon ideas and thoughts come from. Because I don't know where uncommon ideas... Do you have to say common? [02:39.39]-Possibly not supporting it, antagonist? [02:43.59]-I'm, I could be an antagonist but antagonists are imperative for a virus to survive because it makes it stronger, yeah. [02:46.62]Um, is it ok to say, "But I say that wrong because I don't know where ideas and thoughts come from"? [03:02.75]Yeah.