oh, renoir

you and i: a seismographic timeline from nothingness to infinity.

you -- a placeholder. you -- a place to hold me. you -- at once impersonal (you who?) and personal (you there, you whom i love). it's you. second person. first class citizen. singular. sing-you-lar. but not you and i. you and my eye. you in my eye. you -- a mirror. i/eye see you, but you are only a reflection of that which i/eye perceive you to be. the architecture of the letter -- the way u/you circumnavigates an empty space, one to be filled by i/eye. ewe/you -- lamb of god. je. jeu. toi. trois.

"an always present i is constituted only by confrontation with an always absent you." --roland barthes

"look, i have friends here who want to meet you. this is my friend y. this is o. and here comes the letter u. when they are together, they're a word. and they're the best name in the world. if you want me to, here's what i could do: i could sing this song i wrote just for you." --herman dune

a grid of 9, 3'x3' mirrors hang from a picture rail molding at a 45 degree angle slightly above standard museum vantage point. on these mirrors are inscribed the letters y, o, and u.

i face you, which is to say, you face my reflection. and therein you recognize. but do you reconcile? do you return the implicating glance (glass)?

you is both subject and object collapsed. i can only be subject. me is the object. you and i is (in)different than you and me. i choose to be i. i choose to be the subject subjectified.

no such thing as understanding -- standing under -- the Other. only real-ationship. (to depend upon the selectivity of memory rather than proximity.) no matter how many times you explain yrself to me, it is always i who explains you to me. i grasp you in my able arms and you are either agreeable or not and this is not affected/effected by the narrative provided by you and interpreted by me.

"i shy away; it is not you who will give me pleasure, it is i who will make you play, and thereby rob you of yr pleasure." --jean baudrillard

"and, between you and me, will there not always be this film that keeps us apart? . . . between 'i' and 'you,' i want there to be once again a passage and a sharing in life and in death." --luce irigaray