because I can forget

Installation, text and reading by Kate Howe. After Ruben's Massacre of the Innocents and Donatello's low-relief carving. In response to ancient liturgical combs found in the collection of the V&A.

In response to the prompt "I am human" by Wild Parlour. Jonathan Miles, head of the WP, who has a horror of AI, once said to me that a computer suffers the continual tyrrany of remembering everything forever. It is a remembering machine. Forgetting, then, becomes a uniquely human capacity. 


because I can forget
	I loved you
	touched your hand
waited, wanting to see you again

because I can forget
	(pain)
	pain that reaches beyond the edges of understanding
	never-ending pain
	10/10 pain
	pain of the soul, pain of the heart, pain of the body

because I can forget
	that I can be a monster
	that I am complicit
	that I hurt you

because I want to forget
	and so I do

because I can forget
	the sensation of your lips on mine
	the fear that came with the diagnosis
	the sound of thousands of marching feet
	the feeling of a wire coat hanger
	the endless hole of loss 
	the chasm of absence 
		yawning with the sudden extinction of you

because I can ignore
	all the signs telling me 
where to go
		how to be
		what to do
 
because I can decide to turn left when everything around me insists I turn right
because I can lift my head up and question the thick, opaque validity of history
because I can do this

I know I am human