“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One
always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that
negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This
universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile.
Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in
itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill
a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Albert Camus
It started like any other Sunday morning. I woke up,
took a shower and went downstairs to McMurphy’s, a kind of Irish bar in the
corner of my street named after One flew
over the cuckoo’s nest protagonist. On Sundays I typically worked there in my
novels, while reading, thinking, watching Germans in the wild and enjoying a
big breakfast by myself. But that Sunday I thought she might be there. She was
a waitress I knew since I moved to Braunschweig to do my PhD in Artificial
Intelligence. I call her the magic blonde, because I still hadn’t had the courage
to ask her for her name. No hurry, I think. It’s only been three years.
I like her eyes. I had put them (and her) in many
micro-novels that I had written in McMurphy’s. I see her as some kind of
guardian angel, who doesn’t know how much she’d helped me just by the mere act
of existing.
When I arrived I noticed she wasn’t working that day,
and that a bunch of old people were mingled around the school in front of the
bar. School on a Sunday? I asked myself. Election day, I remember. That’s right.
Europe needs an inflexion point, a before and after moment in time to believe
that something new and better might happen in this already too old to care
continent. Descendent from Italian and Spanish and raised in Argentina during its
return to democracy I have an interesting perspective about the old and the
new, politically and culturally speaking. I have unique insights, so I abstained
from voting.
Magic Blonde was not there, so I got myself into a
sloppy position over one table and started reading. I had three books in my bag
that day. The first book to come out was my second novel, which I was rewriting
after ten years. The second one was Macendonio Fernandez’s The Museum of Eterna's Novel. And the third one was Mr Gwyn, by Alessandro Baricco. I was
checking on of the many prologues that constitute the eternal novel by
Fernandez when I found such a clever quote that I had to take my phone out of
my pocket and made a picture of the page. Digital conversion of analog
literature, I laughed to myself, while feeling dumb because of the unexpected expression
in my face. “Self-referenced jokes to entertain myself” sounds like an epitaph
for my literary work. Looking up I found myself facing Magic Blonde in her
civilian clothes, next to an older version of her that must have been her
mother. She didn’t greet me and I froze with stupidity. Magic Blonde was
introducing her mother to the waitress that was actually working that day,
while I tried to avoid hearing her mysterious name by accident. They were talking about a flea market, or
something like that. My German skills were not as good as expected for someone
living already three years in Braunschweig.
I closed Fernandez’s book and opened mine. I corrected
some sentences and added footnotes, longer than the actual chapter, refusing to
look up until Magic Blonde and her mother were not there anymore. I felt the
shame of inventing a roll that I didn’t have. She said goodbye and I looked up
wishing she were talking to me to witness her hugging the current waitress
goodbye. She’s a hugger like me, I thought.
After finishing my breakfast I went for a walk. Sunny Braunschweig
made me think of life as a time-variant function. I guessed that my life’s
inflexion point would be the moment when Magic Blonde would finally admit that
she was waiting for me to say, “Hello. I’m Fede and I’ll be here all your
life”.
I have recurrent dreams of a woman covering my eyes
from behind asking: “Guess who?” In my dreams I always answer “Finally!”
knowing the long waiting is over.
In the theater park I watch people enjoying themselves
in small pedal boats through the Oker River. Three years here and I’ve never done
that, I reflected. I would with her, I told myself. It’s not that I don’t want
to live these things; it’s just that I don’t want to experience them alone. I opened
Mr Gwyn and read about another lonely
writer.
I’ve worked in Artificial
Intelligence and studied psychoanalysis in my free time. And I’ve read books
and watched as much TV and movies as possible. For me, all media conceive their
own narrative principles. And by obsessively studying them I can find
structures to help me create my own, while waiting for my inflexion point. To
wait is to learn how to depend on others. Like Lacan’s big Other, fascinating
as his “subject-supposed-to-Know” (SSS). I think of that mixture construction
proposed by Lacan between patient and analyst as a kind of convergence between
entities that can also occur in books, songs or films. And I look forward to my
own SSS through my books.
I was thinking about all that
when a sentence beautifully shouted at me. Holy shit, I reacted. Who is this
writer? I had bought the book in an airport in Argentina after visiting family
months ago but I didn’t remember why.
I checked the flap of the book. Oh, sure, “Ocean Sea, Silk”. I’ve read him. I’ve
felt the SSS. I kept reading. “...Holden School.” Funny, I thought, imagining a
school filled with Holden Caulfields, calling each other phonies. I’d rather be
in a Seymour Glass School, I joked. Thus that institution would not last long;
at least not longer after “Banana Fish’s day”.
But what does this school teach? I took my phone and
googled it. Turin, I read. Interesting. I’ve just been in there presenting my
research in Instituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica a couple of week ago,
during the 8th Workshop on Analysis of Dynamic Measurements.
And then it happened. Just like it happens in movies
before the climax (Studies had shown it tends to be in the 68 % of the whole
progression of the narrated fiction) everything stopped. “A school for
storytellers”, I read aloud and my eyes watered. I could still see the people
pedaling away, only blurrier.
All my life I’ve lived waiting. I thought I waited for
a woman. The myth of love, Plato’s Symposium and all that shit. But it wasn’t
that.
I haven’t noticed it till today, May 25th,
2014. I’ve been learning to live economically comfortable to find free time to
actually study narrative and write. Over the last fifteen years I’ve written
almost everyday. I’ve been written many novels; some unfinished, some personal,
some bad, but all mine, and mostly for me. I’ve only self-published a couple,
almost a decade ago. The rest has been private because I couldn’t find the place
for me to tell these stories nor to have someone interested in reading them.
I’m the definition of self-taught by default, not by choice.
Until now. Suddenly, I’ve found Holden School. I want
to live in Turin and learn where it seems I can be myself. I’ve been between my
hidden books and my scientific work. Now I’ve got a chance to show myself to
the world.
That’s my story. It’s completely true; opened and
honest. Fact-check it if you want. This text is about my triggering event, my inflexion
point. Because the time-variant function that is my life found the point where
the slope changed, making this numbed world feels special again.
This is the overwhelming truth. This is the story of
my epiphany. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing
it. Thank you for your attention and consideration.
Sincerely yours,
Federico Grasso Toro
"Nothing Gets
Crossed Out"
The future has got
me worried, such awful thoughts.
My head is a
carousel of pictures. The spinning never stops.
I just want someone
to walk in front and I'll follow the leader.
Like when I fell
under the weight of a schoolboy crush.
I started carrying
her books and doing lots of drugs.
I almost forgot who
I was, but came to my senses.
Now I'm trying to be
assertive. I'm making plans.
I wanna rise to the
occasion, yeah, meet all of their demands.
But all I do is just
lay in bed and hide under the covers.
I know I should be
brave,
but I'm just too
afraid of all this change.
And it's too hard to
focus through all this doubt.
I keep making these
To-Do lists but nothing gets crossed out.
Working on the
record seems pointless now.
When the world ends,
who's gonna hear it?
But I’m trying and
take some comfort in written words.
“Yeah, Tim I heard
your album and it's better than good.
When you get off
tour I think we should hang and black out together.”
Cos I've been
feeling sentimental for days gone by.
All those summers
singing, drinking, laughing, wasting out time.
Remember all those
songs and the way we smiled,
in those basements
made of music.
But now I've got to
crawl,
to get anywhere at
all.
I'm not as strong as
I thought.
So when I'm lost in
a crowd,
I hope that you'll pick
me out.
Oh, how I long to be
found?
The grass grew high.
I laid down.
Now I wait for a
hand
to lift me up, help
me stand.
I’ve been laying so
low
Don't wanna lay here
no more…
But if everything that happens is
supposed to be,
and it’s all predetermined, you can't
change your destiny.
I guess I'll just keep moving. Someday,
maybe, I'll get to where I'm going.
Conor Oberst
