Last week, I was told a gesture is never individual. I immediately took my phone out of my pocket and wrote down the sentence. Every Betraying Gestures newsletter has a subtitle. “It varies, there are weeks I start with the subtitle, and there are weeks I have to read the text after it is finished in search of one”, I explained to a friend who asked me about them. I thought “a gesture is never individual” could be this week’s subtitle, a found sentence that contrasts with last week’s “navel-gazing Monday gesture”. But, as you can see, “a gesture is never individual” is not this week’s subtitle. After posting Betraying Gestures #5, I was struck by fear. Right after posting it, I became afraid of the newsletter to come, doubtful of my capability to write. Maybe I’ve already exhausted my life and Betraying Gestures—I did say I wasn't a very long person—and there is nothing to write anymore. A lie. Betraying Gestures is a model for a text that never ends. Two years ago, on my first visit to a doctor in years, the doctor asked to see my tongue and asked me what emotion I felt the most. I answered, "Fear." Nico, the singer, has a song called Afraid. Finishing Betraying Gestures’ webpage is at the top of my to-do list. When I cross it off my list and a visitor opens it, they will see the Betraying Gestures logo, the square image of a hotel room telephone, centralised in the header—it will slowly fade in every time the page is refreshed. Below, there will be dozens or hundreds (I will have to count) of sentences that start with “betraying gestures is” and continue by stating something Betraying Gestures is. Everything will be in lowercase. Example: “betraying gestures is on the phone”. Some of the sentences will include the name or description of Betraying Gestures’ projects; in these cases, the words that name or describe the projects will be highlighted in yellow and linked to their page. For example, in “betraying gestures is a weekly newsletter", weekly newsletter will be highlighted and linked to Betraying Gestures’ Substack page. But it is not only Betraying Gestures’ projects that will be highlighted and linked to another page; there will also be things of importance for Betraying Gestures highlighted in yellow. In the sentence “betraying gestures is afraid”, for instance, afraid will be highlighted and linked to the song Afraid by Nico. Two years ago, when I went to the doctor and told the doctor that fear was the emotion I felt the most, I was listening to Afraid a lot. I listen to it while I write; Nico’s voice sings “Cease to know, or to tell, or to see, or to be... have someone else’s will as your own”. Two years ago, when I went to the doctor and told the doctor that fear was the emotion I felt the most and heard Afraid on repeat, I constantly read Nico’s Wikipedia page. I saw a literary value in it. “On 17 July 1988, during a holiday with Ari on the Spanish island of Ibiza, Nico hit her head when she fell off her bicycle. A passing taxi driver found her unconscious, but had difficulty getting her admitted to local hospitals. She was misdiagnosed as suffering from heat exposure and was declared dead at 20:00 hrs.” I have a document with my favourite paragraphs from Wikipedia pages; they are constantly updated. Checking Nico’s page to write this text, I learned from a recent update that she was openly racist and is even described as “Nazi-esque”. Last week, I saw an exhibition that reminded me of the literary value of Wikipedia texts. Wikipedia-like texts on boards put together paragraphs about subjects such as the Pokemon episode that induced epileptic seizures in more than 600 kids in Japan in the 90s, Princess Diana visiting patients with AIDS in Brazil, and AI image restoration models. Elif Batuman's character Selin in Either/Or mentions the betrayals of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. I searched for Clytemnestra on Wikipedia. “Nevertheless, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus began plotting Agamemnon's demise. Clytemnestra was enraged by Iphigenia's murder (and presumably the earlier murder of her first husband by Agamemnon, and her subsequent rape and forced marriage). Aegisthus saw his father Thyestes betrayed by Agamemnon's father Atreus (Aegisthus was conceived specifically to take revenge on that branch of the family).” Selin said nothing of this was anything she wanted to think about or model her life on. This word, model, is everywhere, and every time it comes up, I’m more convinced that Betraying Gestures is a model for a publisher; that Betraying Gestures’ newsletter is a model for Betraying Gestures; that Betraying Gestures’ newsletter is a model for my life, and vice versa. Last week, living my life involved many keys. More keys than usual. Carrying, returning, picking up, and borrowing keys made me afraid of losing them. There was a day last week when I had so many keys that I had to buy a new
key ring, so I kept them all together. It is easier to take care of a bunch of keys if they are together. I always have Elizabeth Bishop’s poem about loss close to me in case I end up losing something. One Art is its name. The closing lines are: “The art of losing’s not too hard to master / though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.” A gesture is mentioned in the poem: “a gesture I love”. Taking care of keys and using them to open and close doors and locks got me tired. I rest while it rains outside; lying in bed, I think of Afraid after the despicable person I learned Nico was. All my muscles are tired, but I type the newsletter I thought I wouldn't be able to write after I posted Betraying Gestures #5. It showed the image of a side of a dice with an image of a phone, part of a game where the player rolls dice with icons on them and has to tell a story based on the icons they get. One of the icons is a keyhole. I had an incomplete conversation about the iconography of a keyhole, whether it symbolises access or the lack of it. I think of keyholes and fear together. As Selin, who didn’t want to think about or model her life on Clytemnestra, I don’t want to think about or model Betraying Gestures on keyholes and fear. So I leave this newsletter incomplete—a gesture I love.