DEEPFAKE

Someone tweets the piss tape at last. I look up from my phone so I can remember where I was when it happened. On TV, in Philadelphia, it's the bottom of the sixth, and the Braves are up a run. But seconds later there's a new one. This time it's Obama's face, not Trump's, twisted in ecstasy. And then another: Reagan. And another: Nixon. Kennedy. The colorized mugs of Charlie Chaplin, all three Stooges, Abe Lincoln in his stovepipe hat. Kurt Cobain. A woman who might be Margaret Thatcher. Robert Frost, reciting "Mending Wall," as piss rains down. Beside me on the couch, looking at your laptop, you say, "Mao." Oprah, Mickey Mantle, Beyoncé, Steph Curry, Hillary, Harry Caray, LeBron James, Henry Kissinger, Yogi Berra, Trump again, as if the loop could close that quickly, but of course it cannot, it can never. Of course the ouroboros will grow until there is a piss tape of us all—me, you, you, me—all of us.

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JANUS

As a joke, the Baltimore artist makes a 3D scan of his face and sends the file to a sculptor friend in Berlin. The friend in Berlin uses the scan to make a latex mask, wears the Baltimore artist's face everywhere he goes, posts on Instagram a snapshot of himself standing in front of the Brandenberg Gate wearing the mask and giving the world the finger, under which the Baltimore artist comments It wasn't me Your Honor I was in Germany on the night in question. The friend in Berlin makes more masks, forwards the file to other artists, and online images appear of the Baltimore artist in front of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Pyramids at Giza, the Lincoln Memorial, the Colosseum. Always he is shooting the bird. There's a hashtag—#itwasntmeyourhonor—and it's trending. The Baltimore artist gets an email message: He's been awarded a grant to support his work "disrupting the surveillance state." It's enough money to pay the rent for six months. As he's composing his thank-you, his mother calls from Nashville to say she thought she saw him at Kroger. Has he come home and not told her? He tries to explain, but it's clear she thinks he's lying, that he's back in Tennessee and avoiding her at the grocery store. They gave you a grant? she says. For that? The Washington Post calls, then the New York Times. CNN schedules an interview and the Baltimore artist considers wearing a mask of his face and peeling it off during the questions. Someone wearing the mask punches a politician at a press conference. Someone wearing the mask robs a bank. There he is in Key West, Lisbon, Moscow, Dublin, Auckland, Chicago. The Baltimore artist gets a letter from his ex-girlfriend, now living in Santiago, Chile, her handwriting precise on the blue airmail paper: I think I'm going crazy. I see your face when I look at random men and women in the street. The butcher has your face, my son's kindergarten teacher has your face, the panhandler outside the bookstore has your face. I worry soon my husband will have your face. Is this the kind of love you once had for me and I couldn't return?

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"Janus" was directly inspired by [an interview with the artist Leo Selvaggio I read in Hyperallergic] a few years ago. Both "Janus" and "Deepfake" are examples of a strategy I've relied on a lot over the last four years or so: when I worry so much I can't write, I write about what's worrying me.