?Interrobang! · Track 60 · middle
The Painted Self or the Bare One
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): an annotated map of her own scarred body. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Nude Norman — body-paint statue artist from the tourist squares; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: the far interior dunes of the Namib. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: Norman paints bodies into bronze statues though he's Nude; left the map of his own scarred body in the oldest desert. Which is the real self — the painted, or the bare?
Lyrics
Namib interior. 04:17. The air is four degrees and smells of nothing but cold stone and distance. Under a slip of parchment, wedged beneath a rock... your map. They call you Nude Norman. I read it in the margin, next to a diagram of a scar above the right knee. “Bike chain, 1998.” You, who paints bodies into bronze gods for tourists in the square. Who stands perfectly still, a living statue, covered head to toe. And here, in the oldest desert, you left the proof of the skin underneath. Every cut, every burn, every stitch. A atlas of accidents. The thin white line on your left palm: “Kitchen grease, 2011.” The pucker of tissue on your shoulder: “Fell from the ladder.” So which one is the real self, Norman? The man of bronze, flawless under the afternoon sun? The god who doesn’t flinch when the coins clink in the velvet-lined box? Or this fragile map of every time you broke? The painted self, or the bare one? The smell of the metallic paint on your skin. The weight of it, sealing you in. You hold your breath for the children who poke your arm to see if you’re real. You are a monument to stillness. An artwork that breathes. But this map… this breathes differently. It tells the story of movement, of falling, of being human and soft. Here, on your own back, a place you cannot see... a shape you drew from a mirror, labeled simply “Her fingernails.” So which one is the real self, Norman? The man of bronze, flawless under the afternoon sun? The god who doesn’t flinch when the coins clink in the velvet-lined box? Or this fragile map of every time you broke? The painted self, or the bare one? Did you bring it here to be erased? Let the wind take the ink, let the sand scour the memory from the page? Did you think these dunes, that have forgotten mountains, could forget your skin? Did you leave the bare self here in the dust so the painted one could walk away, free? The sun is coming. The horizon is a crack of light. And I am holding the only part of you that bleeds. The only part of you that's true? The painted self… or the bare one?