a-mor-te
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Book, mp3 player, headphones, framed photograph, text and recording.
Voice: Rita Manso
6m59s
No, my love.
No.
Yes, my love, yes.
My love.
My love!
Mmmmmm....
But...
... this isn’t my book. I don’t deserve it. I don’t believe it belongs to me. Or to anyone. What makes a book belong? The act of reading it?
No, I think it’s the act of finishing it and leaving it to gather dust on a bookshelf. It’s the abandonment.
Mmmmmm....
Look how filthy it is. Touch it. Try turning the pages. They seem made of lead. It’s a non-book. It’s lost its purpose, but it still is what it was. The information it contains is adulterated. Corrupted. We can’t read it. It doesn’t make any sense now. The words are glued, blurred, erased. The people in the photos, we can no longer see them. It’s a failure. Dead. A sham.
Frustrated, my love? Don’t be.
Sad, my love? Don’t be sad.
I want to tell you the story of this book. It could be said the story only causes pain. The book was a gift for the person I imagined by my side for the rest of my life. I offered him this book, because it symbolised our relationship. He already knew this marvellous place. It symbolised his life before me, with me, and our life in the future. But the book was about people who died, almost all of them. Slowly, wracked with pain. Lesions on the brain. Toxoplasmosis. Septicemia. I knew someone who killed his boyfriend, suffocating him with a pillow, all because they couldn’t wait for death. Funny, this. Celebrating love with death.
But in the depths of this book, they were living in the light, the water, in the resplendent sand. That’s why I offered this book.
- resplendent –
What a lovely word. Like luminous.
Lovely, so lovely.
They created a world for themselves, where they were all kings, but there was no monarchy. Everyone knew how to fly, but you didn’t need wings. Everyone had a tear in the corner of their eye, but they preferred to sing, to laugh, and fuck. They were in a paradise that saved them from all the hate in the world.
I thought we’d never go back and feel this hate again, but I’m afraid that life is a cycle which repeats itself and, sometimes, goes backwards. Love might not be for forever, but then, neither is hate.
I stole this book. On top of it all I am a thief. After our separation, when our lives didn’t know how to separate yet, I took it to my studio. I didn’t say anything, because sadness knows few words. Love knows more. And I still was looking for love. I did drawings. I did other men. Light makes light. Colour makes more colour. One thing leads to another. And then one day, when I was far away, with someone, I got a phone call. There’d been a flood. Water damage.
Damage, my love.
The one thing that didn’t make it out, that didn’t want to live, was this. The book. That’s here, with you.
With us.
I look at it and feel the weight of all the lives lost. They’re inside, and the great majority we can’t see. I feel the weight of all the love lost. Love we have for one, love for all. Love that sings, flies, laughs, fucks.
But some of these pages, when I try turning them, look nice. Transformed. Torn, but new. They’re no longer pages to be turned. Touch them. They’re no longer those people we lost. Try. I took photos of them, as astonishing as they are.
- astonishing –
What a lovely word, my love. Like sing.
I sing it, in many voices.
I belong. We are the book.
In love, and in death.
