Words from a Brick in the Wall (Or, What the Dialectical Poet Tries to Say But Fails to Say, and What He Might Whistle or Sing)

Abstract

This is the manifesto from the end of my novel I am China. The novel is about a Chinese punk musician in exile in the west and his love and hate relation to the state as well as his relationship with his poetess lover in China. The novel is written in an epistolary form – in the story the letters and diaries are discovered by an English literary translator from Britain. The manifesto is supposed to be written by the musician Kublai Jian, and focuses on the political nature of being an artist in this world and the possibility/impossibility of revolution. The manifesto suggests that a true artist is committed to perpetual revolution.