Tessa sends me a photograph from the bathroom at Malpensa.
I love that airport for one reason only:
water.
air.
soap.
Three things delivered by sensors. What more does a life require?
I am at Viafarini. I have just spoken with Giulio.
Then Tessa arrives at my apartment. She leaves her things.
We drink our ritual glass of water
in one movement, almost like medicine.
She says she only has to finish something on the computer and then we will go to the park across from my house.
The day is unusually bright. 27 degrees.
While she writes her email I watch her fingers. The speed.
How quickly a human body can become almost mechanical when it knows what it wants to say.
The fingers move. The screen receives. She sends the email. Closes the computer. We step into the light.
BAM park.
My morning park.
My evening park.
The place where I walk in circles every day, until the application says: 8,000 – 10,000 steps.
While we walk, a WhatsApp message arrives from Benjamin Paulin. An invitation to the Art Basel home party on October 21. And another thing inside the invitation: perhaps I could make a sonic situation there.
I say yes. Tessa says yes. We are going together.
Then Tessa remembers a woman who called her
about a pop-up art event in Paris during Art Basel Paris.
I lie down on a bench. Look at the sky. Tessa speaks Dutch on the phone with that lady.
I listen. I do not understand a word. This is sometimes the most beautiful condition of language. The Dutch arrives as sound before meaning. Sonorous. But syncopated. I listen to the shape of it.
Then we go to the Lime bicycles.
Tessa needs to install the app. The app asks for an ID.
She does not have hers with her.
So we improvise.
We use my ID photograph.
For a few minutes,
Tessa becomes me.
The Lime app now believes
that Tessa is Julija Castellucci.
Two bodies.
One identity.
One bicycle system.
We laugh.
As we were walking to our bicycles, carried away by a conversation that had become rather elevated, we simply missed the street and went in the opposite direction from Zaza. Then, on the street, we came across a kind of sign by the roadside – a little lost note belonging to someone. We photographed it and kept it as a keepsake. The most important thing written on that little note was: MICRO DECISIONS.
Then we get on the bikes
and ride to Zaza Ramen.
When we arrived there, Brendan Becht welcomed us with a smile on his face and a calm energy. Brendan is Dutch too. I think perhaps Tessa and Brendan can finally speak
their native language in Milan. But when I tell them she is Dutch and suggest they speak Dutch together, they refuse. In solidarity with me. So that I can understand.
Then Brendan shows us the new works. The exhibition inside the restaurant. Because Brendan is not only an excellent cook. He is also a collector. He likes artists. He likes art. There are people who collect objects. There are people who collect encounters. Brendan seems to collect both.
They have a new menu from today. We study it carefully. Tessa orders salmon ramen. I order Verdure ramen. The best possible versions of ourselves according to the menu.
Texture, structure, fresh vegetables – everything was there on that plate. Spring on a plate. Excellent.
We photograph each other with our phones and send the photographs to Sergio and telling him that we miss him. Stereo photograph for our Sergio.
Then something happens to the conversation. It stops behaving like a conversation. We begin moving across the globe. And beyond it. Intergalactic exchange. We speak about my performance Horizontal. I tell Tessa how I dreamed it. How the performance came to me in a dream almost completely formed. As if I had not invented it. As if I had received an initiation. I only had to remember. Write it down and then do it.
The dream had already done the difficult part. My task was to transfer the sonic drama
from dream into sonic reality. Then I tell her about another dream.
LIQUID OPERA.
OPERA IN THE POOL.
A story I have been developing with my godmother Mina Đukić since last year, inspired by the Roman myth of Canens and Picus. Everything is taking a long time. But this is appropriate. Water does not hurry. It changes the shape of things
by remaining itself.
We begin speaking about water. Tessa tells me about a water project she once did,
an underwater music event with Doxiya Music.
WET MUSIC
Then a glass of wine arrives for her
in the Japanese manner. And Japan enters the conversation.
She tells me that one of the strongest impressions Japan left on her was the culture of silent bars. Bars where you can go alone. Where nobody needs to speak.
You arrive.
You sit.
You listen.
Nothing has to happen between two people
except the permission to be there.
Silence is also a language, which I love the most.
The dinner ends slowly.
Brendan brings us a new matcha cake.
Green matcha.
Green eyes.
Green Lime bicycle.
The evening begins to rhyme with itself. We ride back to my house. Leave the bicycles. And because there is still some space inside us, we go back to the park. One more circle.
We walk.
Then we find the children’s playground. There is a netted swing large enough for two people. We lie down inside it. Together. The city moves around us. Sky above us.
I tell Tessa about my research at the residency. Lullabies. I have been asking everyone: What did your mother sing to you? Then I record them. I play her the lullaby Mino sang for me. It is very moving.
Then Tessa tells me: Her mother never sang to her and then she remembers a famous Dutch lullaby. She sings the melody. Then I sing a Nevena’s melody from Božji ljudi.
Two women.
Two mothers who never met.
Two melodies travelling through two bodies
that are now lying in the same swing
in a park in Milan.
We become very quiet.
Almost asleep.
The swing holds us.
For a moment:
No future. Just this.
Only two bodies inside a net under the night.
Then the tram arrives.
Its sound strikes the metal bar.
The swing trembles.
We wake up.
We walk home.
Arrive.
Lie down.
Night.
Such a perfect day.