“Don’t worry, it is all fiction,” I said on Monday on the phone, sharing my idea of starting a newsletter. Actually, the phone call wasn’t on Monday; only on Wednesday did a colleague suggest Betraying Gestures be a newsletter. Also a newsletter. It was probably on Thursday then, even though it seems more distant—like the idea has had time to mature. The colleague who said Betraying Gestures should be a newsletter said it during a group critique class. What she really said was that she would love to subscribe to a Betraying Gestures newsletter. K, this colleague, and I are friends. I confessed to K that I think we have a lot in common. She agreed. We like to talk about the world and art, we take pleasure in the misunderstandings. Our work is very different, but if we look from the right angle, we may see that some of our questions converge. She likes asking others questions. She likes to do interviews. She reminds me of my friend M, who has, more than a few times, had projects related to interviews. I remember one where she was interested in investigating the libraries of wealthy families. K, at another critique class, recommended that I read Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. Flights became my favourite travel companion. The first hundred and fifty pages I read like a normal reader would. From there on, I decided Flights would only be read under conditions of displacement. I read it on the plane from London to Copenhagen, on the ferry from Oslo to Copenhagen, on the bus from Copenhagen to Berlin, and on the ferry from Rostock to Trelleborg. I planned to finish it on the ferry from Malmö to Travemünde. It was a nine-hour ferry, during which I wrote a couple of long emails, starved from eating only candies because I missed lunch, and read Flights. I’ve been exploring the Baltic Sea ferries. I like the interior decoration of ferries, the fellow travellers, the view, and the lack of internet connection. When we reached the river mouth, there were still ten pages to go. I lost concentration. I wanted to look through the window and appreciate the huge vessel manoeuvring to dock at the port. I had to finish Flights on the bus back home. It was a Flixbus bus. It was a less elegant ending to the series of trips I did carrying the Fitzcarrldo blue book with me. In my presentation in critique class on Wednesday I talked about Betraying Gestures, I felt people looking at me uncomfortably. I described the scene to my therapist. She is aware of my habit of exaggerating. Of growing things that diminish me. I described the gesture of someone looking away as a gesture of disapproval. If I expected approval, I can conveniently call the gesture of looking away a gesture of betrayal. I was asked questions such as “What is it you want with this work?”, or “What is this text really about?” The previous day I had received a curator for a studio visit, he understood what I had to say and vice versa. I love the sound of correspondence: prolific conversation. As I had some confidence saved up from the studio visit, I was able to support my work. I went for my favourite pistachio cream croissant afterwards, feeling rather dignified for having backed up my work. I savoured the pastry with the critique and the work I had presented on my mind. The work is a recording of the reading of a text that tells the story of Sally and Lamby in a hotel room. Make-believe Hotel Room Telephone is the name of the text. I imagine this story is set in a hotel, let’s say a Marriott in Dallas, on a Tuesday evening in the 1990s. The sun has just set, everything smells of burgundy carpet. Lamby is a lamb, and Sally owns a call center company. Sally has a business dinner, at which she expects to close an important deal with Japanese businesspeople. Lamby is sick, so Sally needs to find someone who can take care of her lamb while she is out, which sets her on a series of inauspicious phone calls. In my answer to the question of what the work was about, I said it was about phone calls and communication. In therapy, I understood the text is actually about abuse. An abusive relationship with a telephone, to communication, and especially to the narrative. Maybe the abuse was felt in critique class; maybe I should have addressed it; maybe it would have made my colleagues more comfortable to know it was a proposition and not a slip. This week seems to result from the decision I made a bit more than a month ago, to hide less. I’ve been hiding less. I rediscovered the word strategy in my practice. Betraying Gestures is a strategy for writing and publishing. I remember a sentence I read last winter, that secrets are meant to circulate. On Monday, I had a phone call with M to talk about the first chapter of my novel, Roman Mirror. She was the first person to ever read it. I’ve been working on it since April of last year. Her reading made the novel feel possible. In the critique class, I said the words possible and impossible too many times. I cringe if I remember how many. On Tuesday, I said, word for word, that I want to be a novelist. I didn’t say what I wanted to have said the way I wanted to have said it. I realised that going through the trajectory between what I wanted to have said (the way I wanted to have said it) and what I did say (the way I said it) is what makes me want to be a writer. The need to utter in the time of the fingers typing, erasing, and editing is in opposition to the time of the tongue moving, when I tend to say the words possible and impossible way too many times. I, becoming public. Yesterday I went to the cinema. It was only me in the room. In the middle of the trailers, a friend who I had invited showed up. This friend doesn’t have an internet connection on her phone, so I didn’t know whether she was coming or not. I appreciate the surprise. So it was only the two of us in the cinema room watching Tori and Lokita. She said, while the closing credits rolled, she didn’t know if this movie should exist. I agreed. I’ve been trying to convince myself of the necessity of things to exist. My things. I get carried away by an idea, but after I take a step towards making it public, I want it to disappear. It is like getting carried away by some glasses of wine and waking up the next day with a hangover. This week I drank more than I usually do because I was home by myself. My roommate, who is on vacation, went to visit his parents; my other roommate is in China. I remembered life at another time, when every day was a party. Being by myself in a big house made me miss my dog Eva more than I usually do. I’m moving to a tiny tiny apartment. If the size of the place is related to how much I miss Eva, I will only miss her a tiny amount. She has been living with my parents since I left. This week, my dad went to Canada on business. I can imagine him as a bit of a Sally. Sally kills Lamby at the end of the story. When I wrote the scene of Sally smothering Lamby with a pillow, my heart pounded. It made me think of Eva. I always miss her. My parents live in a big house, she has a good life with them. My mom sometimes sends me selfies of them lying on the sofa after Sunday lunch. I talked to my mom three times this week; my birthday, which is in a few weeks, has been a topic. I booked a hotel room, I want to spend my birthday in the bathtub. I could get a room at the Marriott. Even though it isn’t in Dallas, I could encounter something I’ve been looking for in the Lamby/Sally story. The only time I stayed at a Marriott was in Santiago. A football team was also staying at the hotel, so there were journalists outside. My sisters and I had an idea, sticking our hands out from the window and waving. We thought we could convince the reporters we were the famous footballers. One of us waved while the others saw all the flashes go off from the other window. Then we changed positions. We laughed so hard. In a few weeks, when I get older, I hope I get more mature. Stop writing texts that make people uncomfortable in a bad way. Finally learn something about making a text public. About typography. I’ve been studying a typographer called Carol Twombly. The Bartleby of typography. Perhaps all writing begins with a betrayal. Can refusal be encompassed as a betrayal? I wrote a text saying there is only one true way of creating; that the only true way of creating is betraying. It was an answer to the text I wrote with my dear correspondent A for our exhibition, Beliche. We wrote, “There is only one true way of creating; the only true way of creating is fucking.” I wrote the betraying version of the text in an essay I submitted for a magazine mapping practices of irreversibility. Rewriting as a possibility of reversion. If I start this newsletter, I want it to have a degree of irreversibility. I cannot change things once they have been published. They will reach the audience I desire. The audience I desire may be null. For years, I fantasised about conferences for no one. I can hide by saying “It is all fiction”. But where does fiction come from, and what does it mean to not worry because it is all fiction?
I cheer the beginning of Betraying Gestures’ newsletter.