Friday, July 13, 2007

I spoke too soon when I said I wouldn’t bore you about the renovation.

I’m going to leave that hanging there, like a threat. They’re pulling walls down today. That’s all I’ll say, for now.

Yesterday I tried to make a slide show of the loop I walk for exercise, which for some reason obsesses me. I know why it obsesses me. It obsesses me because it is saturated with crazy meaning only I know. There is the Murakami House, and the place where I saw Flowers in the Wilderness and the Dangerous Curve Where I Will Be Attacked and the House Where I Went to My First Party (Not Really) and the Road To Alien Abduction. Oh, and the Brothel. So, my imaginary world, as it intersects with the real one. I thought you should see it.

The camera batteries are charging.

On the one hand, I feel that I am in the grips of some kind of compulsion that comes from the deepest part of me, and on the other I am undoubtedly under the influence of Sophie Calle. It bothers me a little that when I wrote “I mean, why is no one interested in writers performing? And why aren’t writers interested in being somewhere and writing at some particular point and seeing what comes from that?” I had already read Calle, and read about Calle in Grégoire Bouillier's book, The Mystery Guest. Calle is a performing writer, when she’s not performing other things. In The Hotel, she was hired as a chambermaid in a Venice hotel and used the job to photograph the rooms she cleaned, glean personal information about the inhabitants, and make up stories about them. I haven’t seen The Hotel in person, but as a plan of action this seems to me to be brilliant. She also had her mother hire a private investigator to follow her around, while Calle herself recorded aspects of her life.

I wonder if her mother enjoyed that.

Mine would. If I have a problem with Calle, it’s that I think she’s too satisfied with the punch that aggregation and surfaces can provide. But I love that she makes things up. I love that she takes real things and lies about them.

There are four flies in my office right now. One just flew into me and then fell down dead.

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