Betraying Gestures #30
it's not a sound, it's a vibe
Dear reader,
Have you missed me?
The gap between editions this time was earnest (Betraying Gestures #24): honest, sincere and generous altogether.
There was nothing to be said.
Didn't I say I always had something to say, though?
Rather, there's always something to be said. I checked. (Betraying Gestures #25)
And I can be useful if it stretches into a line that vibrates wildly and ressonates there to here so we can be together. Then, maybe, something can be said.
It's easier to be together in something than to be together in nothing.
But nothing needed to be said, so.
I'm pecking at my cellphone from a swimming spot in Holmen not exactly my favorite. To the left, and a bit more to the left. Snugged between the warehouses, I'm typing naked, a description for body and text.
I could throw up.
Wind and sun competing for territory in my skin, the channel is full of gunk, natural gunk, it's more disgusting than remembered.
This spot was one of my first swims in Copenhagen, along with Lucia. She went back to Spain, and actually, thinking about it, not many others have moved away from the city, but several have had babies instead. Should I have a baby?
This is out of character, but it has crossed my mind.
In my psychogeographical map Lucia is always swimming with me here (that's also a situationist thing— Betraying Gestures #22). I ping back to my memories over and over as I cycle across the city. It creates a groundedness in territory that feels like it will remain foreign, no matter how long I live here. "I want to go home". Where is home, though? Most times I think I am embracing the estrangement, but I may have been simply craddlig to it like someone burrowing into their blankets, rolling in the insulation and putting on a smile not to deal with the world.
What else then? Devouring the danes.
Delirious, delicious.
Dear reader, I miss you.
Writing a gesture gesturing toward... I actually don't know. Sometimes it feels like V. thrives on missed connections and failures of communication, slippages let's call them, and S. loves the stream of counscioussness shtick, I sees them seeing me and it helps we be.
But everyone else out there?
Should I scream?
No matter how much it may want to connect, gesture and move and dance and repeat together together together and relation relation relation, like an excited annoying little bug, none of that guarantees...
Along the way we wrote the word along and then deleted it, and then brought it back, because along is one of those words that creates space. Demorar-se, literally to take time, is the portuguese equivalent I'm craving for. An ethics of demorar-se, an ethics of being long. Of inhabiting the moment as to stretch it. Google says to linger, but that lacks some kind of vital spark, no? Savoring an affect. Sitting down. Let's walk around here and call it "study". Sit down next to me. Sit down, down, down, do-oo-own in sympathy...
I'm lingering, trying to take some nourishment out of melancholy; even if it would be preferable to use my energy cultivating other affects.
But in the name of the squishy vulnerable part of me that is wriggling around with difficulty, and in the name of betraying gestures:
Nothing,
again.
Sunshine licking right temple. Bright open light that tinges the quiet golden. I was at the beach yesterday and everything was so quiet; not the abscence of sound, but an enhanced focus, high definition surround sound. I don't know how to write it.
Organizing constellations and falling in love.
Before I fall for the common place of hating you
I will turn to dust
Before I fall for the common place of hating you
I will turn to dust
For you, water
I turn to dust
For you, water
I turn to dust
For you
To turn us into clay
Clay that turns to shovel, turns to cup
Clay turns to pot and vase
Ready to be sowed
Clay
Turns to shovel, pot
Vase and cup
Clay that turns to bridge
Clay that turns to bridge
So when I'm back to dust
May water always find me
So when I'm back to dust
May water always find me
The full sentence, here, before I edited it: Organizing constellations and falling in love with metaphor, as if poetics could rescue us from the world.
It does.
It does do.
Oh, and that song? That was my recommendation of the day, a simple one this time, combining recent fixations. Pó by Loretta Colucci, and translation as a practice (it sounds fancy to say it like this, right? To write it out. There’s a gap between saying and writing.) Pó to Dust, that is, to english; but go listen to the original. My poor translation is just a means of accessibility to a so-thin layer of meaning, and doesn’t do justice to the melting and bonding of verbal and musical languages happening in the piece.
On that note, three albuns close to my heart right now (the first one has been my life’s soundtrack since last August or so):
I need to listen to more international music.
Samba and MPB are eternal burning flames (Betraying Gestures #28) in my flesh, but I need to feed elsewhere if I'm to continue growing in these territories.
I did quote a James song, somewhere along this edition, so that's a start?
Send me recommendations?
Thank you for reading!
Marina,
in doubt's shade.