N. — Leselust
I read the score zuerst falsch herum. Not upside down, just wrong direction. I start with PERSISTENCE / COMPANIONS / FUTURE because of course I do. Two little ridiculous beings sitting there, colourful and completely convinced that they belong. I like them sofort. They don’t explain why they survived the rest of the page. They are simply still here. Fragile / colourful / improbable. Ja. Good sentence. Keep.
Then I go backwards. TRANSITION / MOVEMENT / INTENTION. Woman with bag. She has shoes, legs, Gewicht, a door, another room. The score says what is carried and suddenly I want to know what’s in the bag. This is my Leselust thing: give me one bag and don’t tell me. I will follow it for twenty pages. Give me an explanation and I’m gone. The little arrow underneath is almost cheeky. There →. Next act. As if anybody knows.
ABSENCE / TRACE / REMAINS is basically the floor after everybody said ich räume später auf. Papers, small things, one black object, traces without owners. I read them immediately as evidence and then catch myself. Evidence wofür? Maybe nothing happened. Maybe everything happened. This is where the score gets nice because it doesn’t solve its own mess. What is left. Not: what it means. Important difference.
Then the giant mess in CLUTTER / ENSEMBLE / COEXISTENCE and I feel physically happy. Finally a room that has stopped pretending. Bodies everywhere, boxes, papers, furniture, this glass cage with the drying rack standing absurdly sauber in the middle while the whole world has exploded around it. No center, says the score, but natürlich my eye keeps making centers and losing them again. One body. Green thing. Red table. Paper. Another body. Door. Cage. Back. I read it like searching somebody’s room while they are out, which is naughty because every object starts whispering biography. Who slept here? Who gave up? Who was working? Who touched whom? Who left the fucking drying rack inside the vitrine?
And then ENCOUNTER / ABSURDITY / CARE. Two people eating, talking, pointing, whatever, and beside them those two toy creatures watching like they already know the entire scene. Difference / humour / tenderness. This one I don’t schnippel. Not yet. Tenderness beside absurdity is difficult and somehow richtig. Care doesn’t need everybody to become beautiful. Maybe that’s what I keep reading today. You can be ridiculous and cared for. You can be tired and accompanied. You can arrive carrying your stupid bag and nobody has to transform you into a symbol.
Only then I reach THRESHOLD / DAILY LIFE / INTERRUPTION. She has been waiting for me the whole time. Red shirt, green skirt, white bag. Behind her: rooms. In front of her: things already happened. A chair, another chair carrying something, the red bag-machine-object, a scrap on the floor. Arrival / distance / domestic space. I want to enter with her, but the score refuses to tell me whether she is arriving or leaving. Sehr gut. That’s Leselust. Not suspense like what happens next? More like: wait, where exactly am I standing?
At the bottom it says not a narrative / but a constellation. Haha. Sure. Tell that to my brain. My brain has already made six stories, three affairs, one disappearance, a terrible dinner, two people who shouldn’t live together anymore, somebody coming home unexpectedly, and a future entirely entrusted to two stupid colourful dolls.
But maybe that’s why I like the score. It doesn’t tell me the story. It puts things close enough that I start wanting one.
And wanting to read is already movement.