Published in Overland Issue 214 Autumn 2014 Writing Lagrange Andrew Watts We could go, then, to the largest shopping outlet of this lifetime, where among the stops is the car park concrete roof we will aim the car onto, much like Lumiere’s forehead or Athena’s birth in breech. There before the door release in breathe-less front- facing, we both without thought look across the rebar barricade where – without once bothering to change – the blithe limit of the suburb gathers with the sky out of earshot on the breadth of the further blurred lowermost line of the eye chart, lying over Wanwood. This is the never eventful ever unenviable devourment of the world while no-one observes: line of vision drops seatbelt unclasps head raises solid beam cuts horizon collapses returns in the instant: and we lock exit the vehicle, huffle each sole over the fore- court. And the sight if ever unnoticed is there still: all trees have fallen without need of us; we depart and it would remain, the glimpse-and-glimpse baking haloed picture of buildings growing smaller, furthermost lines thunderously violet and unreadable. The waterless planet we cheaply visit: the upturned upper jaw of lampmasts each untuned to a.m. to deter gathering. The entrance, strictly a noun, recedes. Scopes away-out like Vertigo. The frontage, facade-as-facade through to the carbon, is adamantly carbon. This is the interval where garlanded guinea pigs waddle between low grass walls. Only there are no guinea pigs and the air here is heavy. Andrew Watts Andrew Watts has studied English and creative writing. He works from home as a copyeditor in suburban Canberra. More by Andrew Watts Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 23 February 202324 February 2023 Writing From work to text, and back again: ChatGPT and the (new) death of the author Rob Horning Generative models extinguish the dream that Barthes’s Death of the Author articulates by fulfilling it. Their ‘tissue of signs’ seems less like revolution and more like the fear that AI will create a recursive postmodern nightmare world of perpetual sameness that we will all accept because we no longer remember otherwise or how to create an alternative. 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 9 February 202310 February 2023 Writing Please like, follow and subscribe: the pathos of Patreon Scott Robinson Every Substack page contains a glowing white box just waiting for your email address. This becomes, unavoidably, part of the work being produced. What began as a way to fund work and bring existing ideas into fruition is funnelled by hungry platforms towards an engine of content production that demands we churn out words in structurally-required scripturience. None of this is to denigrate the work of writers, artists and creators supported by such platforms. My point is that we should try and understand the effect these platforms have on the work they claim to enable.
