“I would like to give you this but I would not recommend it
Today I changed someone’s gender. A male walked in to work through the glass doors. Using this pen, keeping a tally of the footfall we, I marked him down under ‘F’ instead of ‘M’. He is now a
Today someone recommended me a pen. It was the same pen they held in their hand – a pen which I assumed to be theirs. Later they took the pen and placed it in their coat pocket. Later still they left their coat over the edge of their chair and went to the bar. Whilst they were at the bar I stood up, reached for the coat, put it on and left. Later still I got home, took off the coat and hung it over the back of the door in the kitchen. I put my hand in the pocket and stole the pen too. These words are written with this pen. These words are a confirmation of this very theft. It is enough to write this story on this page rip the page from the note book and place it, folded, in to the coat pocket replacing the pen. I shall return the coat but not the pen and say thank you for the recommendation.
Female. This pen is transcendental of gender but only has affect as far as its ink can stretch, therefore upon back to the other side of the glass door his sex changed back again in time. Much like an upside down nature fountain (a waterfall) and an upside down modernist waterfall (a fountain) things change depending on how you name them. Things change depending on the name they are given.”
I came across this text whilst studying the catalogue for 2011’s Glasgow Film Festival. Someone had left the catalogue on the floor in the foyer of the Glasgow Film Theatre. I picked it up and out slipped a page with these very words on it. Here I have copied them word for word entirely but what I find strange is that this pen, whether it’s the same pen in each side of the story, happens to take on a certain character with a certain agenda. It has the ability to change things. Maybe at one point this was written with a pen in a hand, but now the text exists in print out with the raw element withheld in hand writing.
I’m not entirely sure what I think about it.
