Lead Lessons | Virgil B/G Taylor
December 1, 2020
Lead Lesson #1, 2020, digital drawing
The lead is a heavy body, it sits in its cold metallic form like flesh, like a body.
¶ Lead, the English word, is linked to two German words: Lot and leiten. Lot becomes fathom, depth, plumb. Leiten, to lead, like many German verbs becomes endlessly messy, mixed up in all sorts of places. Leiten leads to infrastructures, networks, to connection.
¶ There are two words for “the body” in German. Körper and Leib. Both mean “the body.” There are many ways to untangle which bodies, or when bodies are registered by each word. The tax on the bodies of Jews entering certain German cities was not called the Körperzoll but the Leibzoll.
Lead Lesson #2, 2020, digital drawing
¶ Lead in German is an anagram of Leib.
¶ Leads leads to a heavy body. Blei leitet zu ein schwerer Leib, einer schwerer Sprache. Lead leads me to a heavy body, a heavy language.
¶ A heavy body sits in it and creates the conditions for death.
¶ The specific toxic body of lead is something other than the liberal open linguistic space of the body. This body, this accumulation of lead in a body. The trace of a pose. A heavy body sits in it and creates the conditions for death.
¶ One of the myths of science is its novelty. Lead is one of the first metals used as a metal. People have always known its toxicity, its sweet taste, its threat, its persistence. Lead leads to a heavy body, a heavy body sits in it, creates the conditions for death.
¶ In wells and temples throughout the mediterranean and up into Britain and what’s now Germany are small folded pieces of lead. On the small sheets are written magical curses. Lead leads to a heavy body, a heavy langue. Blei leitet zu einer schweren Sprache.
Lead Lesson #3, 2020, digital drawing
¶ Most organs have pipes made of lead. The heavy metal is cheap and resonates. The pipes are made from cast sheets of lead. Lead is melted and poured onto tables covered in cloth or sand. When sand is used it is mixed with oil.
¶ The curses are written in a mix of languages, real and magical. Lead led me to a heavy language. A heavy body sits in it and creates the conditions for death.
Virgil B/G Taylor is an American faggot based in Beacon or New York or London or Bremen or Berlin. He makes fag tips, an online speculative zine. His work explores histories of care and crisis, magic and toxicity. He is one half of sssssssssSsss, a study-friendship with Ashkan Sepahvand and a member of What Would An HIV Doula Do?, a collective of artists, writers, caretakers, activists, and more gathered in response to the ongoing HIV/AIDS pandemic.
