outro meio desligado

comecei a ler por acaso. ouvi o nome da miranda july algumas vezes, sabendo apenas que era uma multiartista elogiada, no meio do caminho entre o mainstream e o underground. a premissa me pareceu um pouco boba, porém curiosa: em crise criativa, miranda busca algo para fazer e passa a entrevistar pessoas que vendem coisas usadas em um jornal de anúncios. talvez o contato com essas pessoas a inspire, pensa.

quando percebi, uma das primeiras coisas que fazia todos os dias era pegar o ipad e ler um pouco do livro. são histórias simples e curtas, cheias de desconforto e curiosidade. o jornal de anúncios em questão, em geral, é usado por pessoas que sequer usam a internet. pessoas que estão, de certa forma, à margem do mundo de diferentes maneiras e têm uma estranha, artista bem-sucedida (mesmo que em crise), os observando dentro de suas casas temporariamente.

o que torna este livro interessante?

miranda conta sobre sua obra em processo, os pontos nos quais está estagnada. aos poucos, compara sua vida e seus personagens às pessoas entrevistadas – também personagens, mas sobre os quais não têm controle. tudo muito simples e humano, um recorte da diversidade e das possibilidades possíveis.

it seemed i had not only married him but also married my eventual death. before the vows, i might have lived alone, but forever; now i would definitely not be alone and i would definitely die. i had agreed to die

p. 92

“today is my birthday”, read one square. “i’m 45 years old, an old man”. i imagined that being forty-five seemed totally implausible to him, given that he had no wife, no babies, no job, none of the trappings of time as they are described to all of us.

p. 129

most of life is offline, and i think it always will be; eating, and aching and sleeping and loving happen in the body. but it’s not impossible to imagine losing my appetite for those things; they aren’t always easy, and they take so much time. in twenty years i’d be interviewing air and water and heat just to remember they mattered.

p. 132

i felt like miley cirus was speaking directly to me through lynette, and she was being very clear – she wanted me to keep the faith.

p. 144

i thought about his sixty-two years of sweet, filthy cards and something unspooled in my chest. maybe i had miscalculated what was left of my life. maybe it wasn’t loose change. or, actually, the whole thing was loose change, from start to finish – many, many little moments, each holiday, each valentine, each year unbearably repetitive and yet somehow always new. you could never buy anything with it, you could never cash it in for something more valuable or more whole. it was just all these days; held together only by the fragile memory of one person – or, if you were lucky, two. and because of this, this lack of inherent meaning or value, it was stunning. like the most intricate, radical piece of art, the kind of art i was always trying to make. it dared to mean nothing and so demanded everything of you.

p.161

we had to winnow life down so we knew where to put our tenderness and attention; and that was a good, sweet thing. but together or alone, we were still embedded in a kaleidoscope, ruthlessly varied and continuous, until the end of the end. i knew i would forget this within the hour, and the remember, and forget, and remember. each time i remembered it would be a tiny miracle, and forgetting was just as important – i had to believe in my own story.

p. 176