Peter R. Dante's Adventures on the Other Side of the Corridor - assignment 17/part 1

Peter R. Dante's Adventures on the Other Side of the Corridor - assignment 17 / part 1

Everything is under my total control. Everything, that is, except time. Time is given to me. But from the moment I have it, the rest is all under my control. How is time given to me, you ask? In an envelope, bright and clear, with my name written on it. Peter R. Dante. Once I open the envelope, the rules are clear: I accept the time assignment and I proceed as pleases me. Who gives me the time assignment, you ask? That is clouded in mystery, as they say, clouded in mystery. It gets to me, is all I'm concerned about.

I sometimes sniff the envelope before I open it. This special one I received today is decorated with drawings of pink flowers. And, yes, it surely smells pink too! How it puts me in a special mood! I bite the envelope open with my teeth. How excited I am. I haven't had a time assignment for three weeks now, and it's been under my nails since, itching all over me, the urge to dive down again. A time assignment enveloped in a pink cloud! What more promising an assignment could I get.

The letter inside the envelope is neatly folded, as usual. The person who sends me these letters surely goes through a lot of attentive folding trouble. It's a fine display of character, me thinks. It adds to my conviction that these assignments are not to be treated lightly. Serious business that is, a time assignment. Serious business for which my clock is always ready, always ready, ticking bright and clear.

Now I open the letter. That is always a special moment, as you can imagine. A few seconds to stretch the excitement. There it is! 5 hours and 17 minutes! What a long time that is! No wonder it was wrapped in pink fumes. Where's my coat? I'll need a knapsack with some food too. Where's my hat? 5 hours and 17 minutes. Which way should I go? Maybe I won't need a hat. How's the weather outside? Weather outside is pink. Should be all right down there too, without a hat. I'll wear my coat anyway. Mom, where's my coat? In the cupboard, Peter R. Dante, in the cupboard. Okay. Where are you going, Peter? I euh I have something to do, mom. When will you be back? Probably tomorrow, mom. Why, that long! Yes, mom, but I promise you, I'll be safe. All right then, young boy, but promise me you'll be safe. I already promised, mom.

I'm outside now, on the lawn. I make a little turn. So many directions, so much time! It would drive a sane person insane. But not me, I know where I'll be going. I'll go that way! This hole right here will do. Now, where is my watch? 5 hours and 17 minutes... what a long assignment, I had better make sure to have enough energy... starting in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go! I dive in the hole, and I start digging. That way. As planned.

(to be continued)

documentary

sophie calle:

hazel

Two weeks ago Hazel was born, first daughter to my younger sister. I have been obsessed with coincidences, those most ephemeral twins of the accidental. Reality that distinguishes itself by its own symmetry. That is, I don't have to scratch to find it hidden underneath. Reality that has no cause, so I don't have to give it consequence either. It still disturbs me. The primitive musicality of synchronicity. Well there we are on the theme of failure again. It's the Synchronicity as non causal relation of Carl Jung I'm refering to, a concept that emerged from Jungs failed attempt to establish alternative scientific paradigma for psychology in his debate with Freud. Dear Hazel, the colours and smells your name calls up make it a good omen. Perhaps the one coincidence that will allow me to let go of my own struggle to control these closely timed echos. A complicated verbal construction huh! Does a struggle end when one lets go of it? Is it for better or for worse, the killing of a controlfreak? But what's the big deal, one Hazel and one Hazel, make ... a disturbence so insignificant, that pointing it out ...
Well let me point out that I interrupt myself here.

the safe love house

With the impuls (actually rather a push over the horse) of the regular references to black ink, from sections set in the tatoo shop employing our hero Johnny Truant , "censoring" has become my point of entry into the house of leaves. I am tempted consequently to leave the book in an oven for a couple hours, reducing it to a charcoaled monument to censorship. In spite of the black rectangular walls, shrinking and growing for the sake of whole-sale psychoanalysis, I am not thrilled to let Danielewsky's story become part of my own decent into the one most artisanal tool for censorship: the blotting out, blacking over, such as everyone, sometime, has surely been led to imagine, practiced by burocracies the likes of the old soviet regime: words crossed out on postcards sent by critical tourists.
It's a case of bad timing also, best-seller-cult very much doesn't like me at the moment, as I have just paced my reading rythm to philosphy, from pamflet-like political essays by Hanna Arendt (About Violence) or more recent work by several Flemish academic authors (4 essays collected under 1 title, Populisme), passing through Sloterdijk, ending up in the very rational expositions of Habermas (Marxism as criticism). Instead of write I would prefer to meet and talk over the selfsimilar lack of intrest I find in the senseless passageways of House of Leaves. Leave no written trace, thus keeping further abay any literary pretentions lapping on the tarred sands shoring Danielevski's effort. So we would strike a casual conversation and you would hear my voice hoarse from growling and screaming in professional endulgement, fitting my mood in response to the imposed reading. In truth the profession that caused my vocal chords to screach, was exercised at Walibi last weekend, and consisted of the live entertainment of guests in the walk-through haunted-house opened for the occasion of Haloween. A coincidence that makes all the more ambigous any accusations pointing out that I am criticising a book that I have not finished, a book that itself is a self inflating parody on critical literary analysis, and an MTV "the real life"intrusion on readership.
On my own path I picked up the theme of censorship to form a counterpoint with the concept of failure. I have taken this quite litterally in a solo that I made and performed in Tel-Aviv, pretending in front of the audience, to finally give up my attempts to communicate with them through dance, and in stead decide to have a talk with the spectators, which consequently failes also, since I turn it into a monologue from the start,...
Now I see an opportunity to just hold on to both these themes, since I am surely capable also to fail performing to music, interacting with painters, etc. since in non of these I have any meaningfull experience. I dance to music because I like it, and from there on a program runs my dance. I have never thought about deconstructing my interaction with music, at the I have most read some analysis of a musical score, imagined how I would like the music to sound if I had a composer to make music to my own piece,... Thus I fall into the strategy invented by Pop-art, taking failure to its historical climax.
I am reasured by the little peek I got into the previous process of echo, from which I remember that you also started of with a text, only to relinquish it at the first table rehearsal. Therefor, if the above seems to express any cold-feet feeling about starting to work together, let it pass as another parallel with the story of Johnny Truant who finds it harder and harder to even leave his home. This is the ambiguity of reading The House of Leaves", the ambiguous force of reproduction so beautifully set free by Andy Warhol.
well it all is summed up in an anagram: with the lettres of "of leaves" you can also spell "safe love"
Might this be continued.