morning alarm or bedtime story

Byproduct*12

My dearest B,

I just got out of bed to write you this. It is not the morning. I have been wrapped in the pleasure of looking over a very empty amount of floor the last two days, with the parquet in a lighter shade of brown, almost as light as a cappuccino, if a cappuccino also had thin dark stripe patterns running through it. The emptiness makes me happy. An empty room makes me happy.

I am joining ways with this new room, who greeted me with a great sense of seriousness and credibility. I do not know yet, on which part of the floor I will collapse, on which side I will jump around, or where I will lay to do my stretching. Maybe it will be all different, to live and to die in overlapping corners, each time reshuffled, even the sitting still, not assigning meaning to any action, climbing a new mountain, on an old armchair.

I saw the film Magnetic Fields yesterday. It lasted for 74 minutes, plus a Q&A with the director. After I left the theatre, I realized I forgot to ask him about the title, where the name came from. I was very sleepy from carrying all the boxes since days. And the white lights in the theatre were bothering me, it was 11:09 PM. I don’t like walking out of the room when someone’s speaking.

It was a story of two people meeting each other in a harbor in Greece par accident. There was a car, then there were two cars, and an aunt, there were mostly her bones, in a box, with a cross engraved on it. There was white wine in a jug, cigarettes everywhere, even indoors, and then there were fields, endless, there was the road, curving along the fields. There were no magnets, but there were people. Two of them.

still from Magnetic Fields (2021), Giorgos Gousis, Greece.

One of the characters would state her happiness in unexpected moments where nothing special per se was happening. She was a dancer who did not want to dance anymore, she was looking at herself in different mirrors and seeing a different face each time, she missed her son. She was a mother who perhaps did not want to mother anymore.

I felt she loved the emptiness too. How empty the fields were. How a name, any name, doesn’t correlate with the rest all that much. And how words find their proper place whether intended or not, always making sure to make at least some sense.

The movie was shot beautifully. But you were able to tell it was a movie. You were able to tell it could have been you doing the trip, driving the car, falling in love, and you were able to tell it could have been you, having nothing left to do about this love, after the falling. It could be you driving through the emptiness. Great scenery.

Later on, the director said that the entire 74 minutes were shot improv. For a week the crew would go around the fields and the rocks and the roads and the landfills and improvise the shots, as well as all the spoken dialogues.

So it could have well been you, is the feeling.

still from Magnetic Fields (2021), Giorgos Gousis, Greece.

It could be you talking about yourself all too much, and in turn to not know a slightest detail about the other person because they don’t really speak.

It could be you not wanting to be a dancer anymore, but still dancing casually.

It could be you driving a man around in your car, because his broke down by the harbor, and because he has no other means to continue the journey.

It could be you inviting someone in, only to sing to them and to choose for their aunt a final resting place together.

It could well be you, investing everything you’ve got to find excuses to continue the journey together. Like magnets.

All I wanted was to live in the milimetric gaps between these magnetic fields, this emptiness that often goes unnoticed, unheard of. All I wanted was this empty floor, and to trace through it with my eyes. And all I wanted was to sing.

I hope nothing is keeping you awake at night. I hope you feel like you belong to wherever you are. I hope your fridge is full of magnets that read out things like: “Leaving happiness for tomorrow is like waiting for the river to stop flowing to get to the other side”. I hope you also have a few useful phone numbers hung up on there.

You can open your eyes now.

See you,

Z.