In A song plays from another room, Lesley-Anne Cao meditates on the circumstances of rapture, contemplating the two-faced nature of such an event, sitting atop both planes of joy and terminality. She works with disturbances in the dark and light, and in the air and water to submerge and unearth the relations between wakefulness and sight, somnolence and vision, and the crevices in the in-between. Presenting pensive reproductions of scenes and observations of the “ordinary” as embodied and interdimensional field notes, she accompanies and allows the close mundane to mingle, coalesce, and transform into the eye-opening. 

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DREAM ARGUMENT

slow wave
I am asleep.

Sleep is forever like floating in place. So long as I am in a dream, I am in a reliquary, suspended. I keep my sequences in a box, where I can pick apart my perceptions. I am able to do this so long as I am in a dream. Dreaming so long, I am able to do this.

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paradox
‍I am a butterfly.

A door opens. Out flies one, in full butterfly. One cannot sleep, for one is a butterfly. Instead, I am told that I am a human observing glass tanks lined up in the dark to feel safe. Or, I am told that I am a butterfly dreaming. A beast of prey awaits me from the doorway.   

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awakening
‍Thus, I am dreaming.

Because there is dreaming, every night I meander endlessly into questions. But there are figures in dreams that speak certainties softly, like the path of animals through water. Fins cutting through glass. My whispers mark my location, from where I can cross over. But it is hard to hear sleeping vision. My fate is to open my eyes. Stories told during rest are parallels of stories told during activity. But what separates us from a land of illusion is pain. Prick your thumb on a needle, and fish will glide by a thimble. As I return, there are two wings in my palm.