Linguistic Turning

I can’t stop reading. That’s not meant to be a boast about bibliophagy. No, I can go weeks without cracking a book. What I mean is, if I see words, especially words in Roman script, I am going to see them as words and not just shapes. I am going to read those words, and I am going to think about their meanings.

I tried otherwise last week when visiting the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles to look at Desert Islands, an installation featuring quotes from various Semiotext(e) authors and a dreamachine from Hedi El Kholti. I was in an art museum, a place where I prefer to focus on shapes and colors, and I tried to look down the tunnel in the museum's bookshelf and not read, but there were words and they were interesting words and sure, I was drawn to the short quotes, the ones with the bigger font, more negative space, but still, I was reading and not looking.