Xavier Lopez Performance # 20: Masking Tape. 2019.

 

Performance: Masking Tape (2019).

Making a mask out of masking tape, what could be more natural. This performance marks the beginning of the Dematerialization/Denial/Disintegration series of works. I am at the beginning of this series and excited to see as it progresses.

I'm afraid 

I'm afraid 

I'm afraid that it is cancer. 

I'm afraid this is a dream. 

I'm afraid my teeth are rotting 

I'm afraid I need to scream. 

I'm afraid that it's not nice. 

I'm afraid that it's no good. 

I'm afraid the aliens are coming, 

I'm afraid we're all alone. 

I'm afraid there is no heaven 

and we're never going home. 

I'm afraid I have no money 

and I'm lost in all this debt. 

I'm afraid that we're all dying 

and it hasn't sunk in just yet. 

I'm afraid this diabetes 

will take my eyesight, legs and art. 

I'm afraid there is no forever 

and no reason to even start. 

I'm afraid of those who hate me 

and those that love me more. 

I'm afraid of domestic terror, 

airborne viruses, killer wasps and war. 

I'm especially afraid of thermonuclear devices 

and I'm afraid of Russians, Arabs and the Chinese. 

But then again, 

I'm not half as afraid of them as I am of 

my own government, 

and this American disease. 

I'm afraid that this is all just a complex hologram. 

I'm afraid of cosmic rays, solar flares and asteroids. 

of floods and hurricanes, earthquakes and famine. 

and I'm afraid of the second coming, 

my parents sure as damned hell made certain of that. 

I'm afraid of getting old. 

I'm afraid of being hit by a car. 

I'm afraid of flying in a plane. 

And I'm too afraid to learn to drive. 

I'm afraid that we're all in hell, 

I mean that this is actually hell, right here and now. 

Not a personal hell, but a very real fear. 

I'm afraid of all this honesty. 

I'm afraid of your lies as well. 

I'm afraid of the void 

and of disintegration 

of becoming nothingness. 

And I guess, 

I'm afraid of losing my mind, 

it seems 

and forgetting all I've ever done, 

all I've ever created, dreamed and pined for, 

of losing all the things that matter at all to me, 

the people, 

the times 

and the memories of making love 

to you. 

Of having it all go away. 

And it's a terror that I can't really understand, 

can't actually wrap my head around, 

can't really imagine... 

and the only thing that gets me through any of it 

the only thing that makes any of this at all... 

bearable 

is knowing that 

I am not the only one 

going through all of this...

That 

I

am not. 

Alone.

--Xavier Lopez 2018