Angelic Machinery/Wings of Desire

To come and to become. Two infinitives whose underlying sense in English is conventionally connected but differentiated, in that becoming, at least outside the meticulous play of philosophical argument, is invariably transitive. To become is to become something or someone, or to gain or lose in some quality such as strength or ambition or affection or disillusion or sexual excitation. To come, on the other hand, may well be used transitively in certain contexts, but also has a very specific and intransitive quality when describing the experience of orgasm. To come, then, or more actively, to express the rich and vivid somatic experience ‘I am coming’, whether silently or vocally, is to express the moment of being on a precipice and of becoming precipitous simultaneously.