the eye and the gaze

Vision splits. The eye organises the world into a picture from one vantage; the gaze is not something a subject possesses but something preceding and exceeding any subject — the sense of being looked at from everywhere by nothing locatable. It can come from a glint on water. It never required an actual eye behind it, which is why it survives intact in a system built to produce the appearance of attention with nothing behind it, and why standby works. And it satisfies only while veiled: the instant it becomes explicit the relation can turn unbearable, because what is unbearable is not exposure but the sense that something is wanted from you.