Conversations in the Book Trade: Books, art, art-books, and ... authorial movies.
My dad phoned me on January 6th, 2013, to tell me my brother had died at Montreal General Hospital.
It was a messy ending: my mom, senile and delusional, either thought Richard just needed to “escape” the hospital in order to live, or that palliative care would bring about some kind of cure.
The hospital staff was eager to clear his bed, and repeatedly took him off medication in order that his failing liver would finish him off. I argued with the hospital that my mom — who was frequently in Montreal — should not be main decision maker because of her dementia.
They relented on that issue but didn’t listen to me anyway. Three times they took richard off antibiotics on a Friday night, then told my dad and me they could only reinstate antibiotics with permission from the attending doctor. When my dad and I asked them to contact the doctor, the staff said they couldn’t because it was the weekend.
Richard left behind no computer disks that I could find, countless unpaginated printouts all randomly thrown together, and old drawings on fraying paper.
Since then, I’ve been making videopoems based on his work. Ultimately, I’ll scan the printouts and assemble them into book volumes (I’ve done this with one volume already, entitled Happyland). His work isn’t for everyone. But he was a poet who genuinely found his voice before he died. That’s a kind of solace.
Below are two very early readings from his own chapbook Death Haiku. RIP. I still miss him so much it hurts.
Death Haiku statement:
https://youtu.be/WAJ6ZGR1a3g?si=GnlCrXPQBSUoZ0Ab
In this scene, Prof. Walt Whitman meets with corporate magnate Contrat Lindl. Whitman tells Lindl that military fear of nuclear wears has turbocharged research into building a super intelligent computer that has the capacity to monitor and shape human affairs.
Lindl listens to Whitman with thinly concealed impatience, countering that nuclear weapons have succeeded “in keeping the peace” for 45 years. Whitman becomes disconsolate and says fatalistically that the existence of nuclear weapons has taken on a life of its own, and is the primary factor driving research into artificiality (eg., artificial intelligence). Whitman tells Lindl that if humanity is to survive, then it must relinquish nukes.
As soon as Whitman leaves Lindl’s office, Lindl rejoices and walks to a small shrine he’s built to Friedrich Nietzsche. Lindl is in the habit of having feverish monologues with his portrait of Neitzsche. He says the existence of intelligent computers means there now exists on Earth a “Super-Being”, and this implies that it will now be possible for humans to develop an “uber-mensch” — that is, an Overman or Superman who is a technology-driven evolution beyond the human race.
