Silence Is The Blood Whose Flesh Is Singing

Statement for Homa Bazrafshan’s exhibition at Shirin Gallery, titled ‘I Am a Vineyard Myself’.

Silence is the blood whose flesh is singing.

Or I am nobody. Your gaze passes through me. I gaze out from behind the mirror. From Nothingness. I snarl. Waiting for an opportunity. Blood jumps in my veins.

Or pull them out. Carve my body. Wrap them around my wrist. My life is a bucket of blood which I put on the ground. It brims. Certain drops spill out.

Or I donated it happily. As if in an orgy. I would pour it in glass not spill it on the ground. I would take out my knife, cut my carotid artery. In other words, I would break my glass when it is my turn.

 I am a vineyard myself. Returning your gaze to you.

Stained with blood of lusty grapes, in a thousand lusty shapes, I spread my veins under other people’s skin.

It is my blood that they kept captive in glass.

Silence is the blood whose flesh is singing.

Or my boat would land each time on blood gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues. I wished to see the city quake, the earth filled with blood, and I, I that love Thee raised Thee on this Rood! Each time I would sail on blood. Or I would become obsessed with democratizing Dionysus. With being-together. I loved it. To be where the beloved can accompany the lover in a garden. I loved binges. The cries of cheers. It was ok if wine’s blood divine poured on the sluggish tide of mine. I loved Rubens. It was as if he visualized my look, my belief that if an angel out of heaven brings me something other than wine to drink, I would thank him for his kind attentions and go and pour it down the sink.

Silence is the blood whose flesh is singing.

Or to deprive others of sleep. Or somebody would come to this conclusion to deprive me of the sight of her face. To convince me to mourn to a point where I had no tears left for weeping, nor my eyelids would close in sleeping.

And each time I was convinced that silence is the blood whose flesh is singing.

And each time it came to the same thing: wine becoming blood in a strange Eucharist. In an uncommon ritual, they would be intoxicated by the victim’s blood. Both were unclean. And it remained so for such a long time so as to force I, who write about blood, to leave a part of my flesh in the inkwell each time I touch it with my pen and to force you, who transform the blood of others into wine, to call yourself a vineyard or you, who are looking right now, to see what you see at this moment and read what you read.