Bad Phantoms: An Exhibit of Pataphysical Heartforms

 

Body of Water

50% >3,000m depth, other dimensions immeasurable; see coastline paradox. Range from high disturbance (longitudinal and transversal waves) to stagnancy (stillwater).

Heart of Palm

6≥dig/can, >1 hand. Stem, core, central softness; swamp cabbage or millionaire's salad, a gamble.

Prickly Pear

≤ 6sp/areole, opuntia engelmannii. Flowering May-June, spined year-round, clefted sporadically. Pyriform, carmine fruit.

Firework

16+ only. Arterial lumina. Customizable shapes, colors, sizes (list of possible specs avail at request). Detonation warning, murmur, use at your own risk.

Monsoon

2.5 inches, H20, dust, dewpoint, light, flash, flood. Grandiose expressivity in response to minute climate shifts (rich network of reliance made visible). 

Spear

85 kJ/100g; a. officinalis, sparrowgrass, points d'amour (love tips) or kuşkonmaz (bird won’t land). Succulent (adjectival sense); adventitious, fasciculate root system.  

Clock

60s/m, 60 m/h; grandfather, face, 2-3 hands. Expert horologist; superior self-regulation; steady HR with minimal subjective deviation.

Two-Step

2/4 or 4/4, >130bpm; QQS, QQSS, QQSQQS. Whiskey Road, premier high energy country music nightclub midweek dance party every Wednesday (free lessons Thursday at 7). 

Heart on a Sleeve*

45 bpm, three-chambered heart; compact myocardium typical of most ectothermic vertebrates. Viperid, squamate.

Hummingbird*

1,260 bpm; extreme aerobic endurance, ideal model for tap dancers, pure spirits, anxious blurs.

Moth*

60-100 bpm; lepidoptera. Crepuscular, diurnal, paraphylectic. Feathered, varied, non-club antennae. Known fashion-devourer, lover of light.

Sunset

26m. to civil twilight, angle and atmosphere dependent. Bands of ROYGBIV fade to black, ecstatic ending.

Fleabag*

354bpm, resilin, chitin. Ideal model for states of chronic autonomic cardiovascular arousal in bodies of parasitic lifelong hunger.

Free-Tail*

40-200 bpm (not as quick on the rev as uroderma bilobatum, 20-1,000 bpm, hibernation/flight dependent). Ideal slow-rev compact aerial model. Nocturnal.

Abstract:

There are some manipulations science can’t or shouldn’t perform on an animal or human heart, or too many variables that arise in their testing, which we can eliminate through a more predictable model. So we create a phantom heart, a stand-in for what we want to study. Something that is reproducible. A heart allegory built from that slime children play with, for instance; gelatin with electrified sensors placed inside to stimulate, to simulate a beating heart. Or a fake cadaver manufactured from chemicals, salts, and dyed synthetics. This is what we mean by a phantom, something that looks or acts like what we’re hoping to study. 

Trying to think up a solution for missing you, I made a list of pataphysical phantom heartforms, mine and yours. Bodies of bugs, dead and living; tapestries of feathers, disembodied wings; collages of trash loose on the street. I made more and longer entries as the summer passed. Stones, cacti paddles, nonsimultaneous light. Pyrotechnic stars inside their shells; clocks cognizant of their finite lifespans; pomegranates split open on the ground. I wanted to study each alternate form to see where these alternates resonated, where they felt short or overcompensated; to glean what I could about heartforms in general. Some of those heartforms are collected here.

To know x = to know (everything - x), wrote René Daumal. This equation summarized his theory of pataphysics, "the science of imaginary solutions" (Jarry). Only in taking the most alien forms seriously could I hope to gain a serious understanding of the very familiar. Only in becoming a scientist of bad phantoms could I hope to learn something about anything real. 

Sometimes it is convenient to think that your heartform is the only one of its kind that can break in the specific way your heart has broken, but the pataphysical laboratory’s evidence proves otherwise: that every heartform holds such a fury and can love exactly as fervently as your heart has—that your heart’s loved and misses one such as itself (scared alien glitter-lipped pizza-eater).