018 ON (other) KINDS OF DRIFTS
dérive into the textures of texts
we are getting back, to (the idea of) urban drifting
dérive has to be designed (and then – let go, let topographies, the chance take over)
_ _ _ having shared glimpses into physical drifts through several urban realities (during co+re dérives I, II, III, IV, V and VI – where I sought to capture and communicate situations of relevance to a greater urbophilia cause), here I inaugurate (what might become a parallel series of) dérive through texts and visual media
_ _ _ this is part of my (re)search of the right way to write this topic, in a broader, previously discussed sense; deliberately digressive, repetitive and open-ended, that way should respectfully offer entries to a reader, spaces to fill in, not the material to learn but thoughts to respond to; that is why my lectures regularly refer to concrete faces and places, thoughts and practices worth thinking with (without urge, with no overbearing suggestions nor guidance)
_ _ _ a love to drift not only through cities, but also through texts, books, magazines (ideally physical, printed, the old-fashioned ones), to navigate spaces and spatial realities invoked, imagined, described there, the spaces beyond physical, other than dimensional, the realities that are not (only) material; such excursions can also be(come) a dérive
_ _ _ when choosing a text to dive into with you, in order to be true to the sense/essence of dérive, I sought to rely solely on chance, not to choose but to just use any text which (at that moment) serves itself to me; not to make, but to use a situation; it happened that at that time I was looking for a book to read on the beach; it had to be small and thin, to fit the pocket of my shorts; on my shelf (where, of course, a certain preselection exists) was one of the right size
_ _ _ a book of the just right size which was closest to my hand at the right time was Antonio Tabucchi’s For Isabel, A Mandala; on its first inner blank page I have found a scribbled date of purchase, 14.1.19., as I usually do, my signature, along with Japanese hanko, while forgetting to add place; then, as I do not often do, I was adding the dates of subsequent re-readings, and notes: “again, 16.3.2020@Jadran]”, “again, 19.4.2023 ST” and, now, “17.7.24, ST”)
_ _ _ in the context of this urbophilia story, I loved to discover (p. 26) how, at one moment, Tabucchi’s hero asks “. . . I think I might be rambling, am I rambling?”; that certainly is what I myself (should) ask often (alas, knowing the answer: yes, yes, you are rambling!); but, please – stay with me; in this (form of writing) rambling has a special role; it helps create the much needed gaps and pauses for readers to enter, to inhabit the text, to re-act, to “re-ramble” a thought, to drift away from my drifts
(do share your departures with me, or with all of us via “Comments” at urbophilia@Substack.com)
_ _ _ thus, in search for new ways of writing, on 18 July I have drifted into my fourth reading of Tabucchi’s Isabel, (re)reading it at that same beach where I’ve read and re-read it before; here are several fragments
visual beacons
_ _ _ on page 28, there was a “note” from one of those previous readings
having read, and re-read it before I knew this book quite well, yet – I felt that do not know it
I do remember “the plot”, but . . . Tabucchi’s textuality has to offer much more than the “what”; his mastery in creating layered, rich atmosphere, rather than (only) an undenyingly captivating plot, makes every (re)reading feel new . . . as in was 2019, 2020, 2023 and as it is now; I am (back) there . . . there (a)new . . . (re-reading that book, at that same beach) . . . as when walking the streets, getting to know them better . . . yet never managing to (truly) know
simply, “space is a doubt” (one of George Perec’s lines which I have repeated in my lectures and essays so often that they feel mine, because they have become my own, [re]interpreted, in a way in which I [might] also claim some nuances of Situ’s drifts . . .)
_ _ _ markings on particular parts of these three texts had their reasons – then; those interventions might, or might not, still mean the same, to me now, in the same way in which an appropriated bench in the park once became “our bench”, etching itself into our memories forever, so do these lines . . . referring back to situated feelings and thoughts; what was on my mind while having an (obviously strong) expresso, and using it to leave the first mark?! or, ink from two of my favourite fountain pens, Gaugin Red (I guess) and iroshizuku subtle blue (I am sure) for the second?! what was I thinking while marking a page with both ink and (it seems slightly weaker) coffee on the third . . . ? whatever the reasons might have been then, at least for a second these marks have brought me back to those places, the places on paper, at this moment in time . . . (I think that I do know the reason for the first two marks; the third one is shrouded but, by that very fact, it is special, in another way)
_ _ _(various) sorts of dérive demand (different) kinds of writing, texts, textures; they leave traces (written) by us, in us, on us . . . in languages which are mine; in languages which are not mine [there is no my language (any more)]
_ _ _ all is translation _ _ _ translation is impossible
beacons, textual
_ _ _ my fourth reading of Tabucchi’s Isabel produced a surprise; I was (re)reading this book, I knew it, but only the fourth reading has brought a new layer to the mystery of Isabel, a completely new level of meaning (fascinatingly relevant to me – at the very moment of writing on urbophilia and the practices of dérive); what was that?
_ _ _ the subtitles of ten segments which structure For Isabelle (A Mandala) are:
introduction Justification in the Form of a Note
chapters
First Circle. Mónica. Lisbon. Evocation.
Second Circle. Bi. Lisbon. Orientation.
Third Circle. Tecs. Lisbon. Absorption.
Fourth Circle. Uncle Tom. Reboleira. Restoration.
Fifth Circle. Tiago. Lisbon. Image.
Sixth Circle. Magda. Priest. Macao. Communication.
Seventh Circle. Ghost Who Walks. Macao. Worldliness.
Eight Circle. Lise. Xavier. Swiss Alps. Expansion.
Ninth Circle. Isabel. Riviera Station. Realization. Return.
For Isabelle (A Mandala) has no contents page. For some reason, for the first time now, after the three previous readings I became curious about the flow of these unusual, titles-as-lists. Each of them feels like a mini story, directing me towards the plot. Nine final words feel like exclamation marks. They broaden the theme, bridging towards the next segment. In the case of the Ninth Circle, exclamation suggests new beginning . . . (not only for repeat readers like me). Each of those four guiding words indicates action, while itself constrained, with Tabucchi’s full stop.
_ _ _
Evocation. Orientation. Absorption. Restoration. Image. Communication. Worldliness. Expansion. Return.
this sequence could serve as a generic map, design of a drift, dérive in search of the mysterious(ly missing Isabel)
_ _ _ a brief etymological analysis confirms that to be true:
Evocatio. Lat. calling the gods of an enemy city to come to Rome; re. Greek anamnesis ...
Orientatio. Lat. sense of "the position or arrangement re. the compass" ...
Absorptio. Lat. absorptio, "a swallowing" ...
Restoratio. Late Lat., "a restoration, renewal," from stem of Lat. restaurare ...
Imago. Lat. "copy, imitation, likeness; statue, picture" "imitari "copy, imitate" ...
Communicatio. Lat. "making common, communicating", "to share …” ...
Worldliness. Old Engl. woruldlic, "earthly, secular", “... from the roots” ...
Expansio. Late Lat. "to spread out, unfold, expand", ex "out" + pandere ...
Return. Med.Lat. retornare, "come back to a former position" ...
All but “Worldliness” are of Greco-Latin origin. “Worldliness”, as capitalism does, smacks of globalisation.
They all end decisively, with a full stop.
_ _ _ this list does sound as a well-structured, itemised plan for a drift, because in dérive
1 we evoke previous knowledges, the reasons for (ad)venture ...
2 we get out, orientate ourselves in space and time ...
3 we absorb what surrounds us
4 we restore the tasks, within situations surrounding us
5 we create images, capture experiences
6 we seek ways to communicate the found
7 we share . . . “it”, thus problematise (as dérive questions “worldliness”)
8 we extend the findings towards new hypotheses, ambitiously
9 we return, or restart
_ _ _ this list could be organically followed by (the previously introduced, detailed Debord’s instructions)
beacons, sensorial, sensual
_ _ _
sounds
even if wanting to do so, one can not retell Tabucchi, his ability to communicate the sensuality of being (there) . . . for instance, in Isabel, when imagining, when feeling a saxophone, a saxophonist who says “. . . tonight, I’m playing a tribute to Sonny Rollins, just two tunes, the first is called, ‘Everything Happens to Me’ . . . She begun to play, softly, and then with more power. I knew it was a traditional song, a ballad transformed to jazz. It was romantic and intimist, with some sort of improvisation . . .”, and then “Three Little Words” . . . (worth turning on, while reading p.52 sq. of Isabel; or, in the Ninth Circle, “a Beethoven tune, Les Adieux, L’Absence, Le Retour”).
_ _ _
images
“The photographer went over to what seemed to be a storage shelf (p.78 sqq.) . . . Take a look at this picture, he said, a photo’s something that watches us, pursues us, maybe; look at this baby sitting on a blanket, a bow in his hair – that’s me. He paused. Now I ask myself, is this who I am? Is this who I was? Who I’ve been? Who was this I that now says is Tiago and is with me every day? . . . if you only realized how tricky photography becomes when it’s studied by philosophers” – yet I am a photographer ... and then I think: do the photographs of a lifetime represent time divided among several people or one person divided into several different times?”. Later on, he continues “ . . . I’m reminded that someone said the photograph is death, because it fixes the unrepeatable moment. He flipped the photo with his fingers, as if it really was a playing card, and went on: but I still ask myself: and what if it were life instead? – immanent, peremptory life that let’s itself be caught in an instant, that regards us with sarcasm, because it’s there, fixed, unchanging, while we instead live in variation, and then I think the photograph, like music, catches the instant we fail to catch, what we were, what we could have been, and there’s no way you can counter this instant, because it’s righter than we are . . . “
_ _ _
time, times
dérive, a string of instants which we (may fail to) catch
space-time, the question: “So, when is it there? I asked” (p. 88)
_ _ _
this theme is to be continued, in a variety ways; as pointed out in 017 ON PALIMPSEST . . . re-touching, we are interested in gaps between objects, at least as much as we are in the fabric (of the urban), in both solids and voids, in both hardware and in software (of the urban), in spaces, the times and meanings in-between, between what the underlays hide and the layers of our experience expose.
P.S.
before my decision to rely on chance, not to chose but find a guide though this post, before finding Tabucchi, the very first author who came to my mind was another Italian, Italo Calvino
his books, in particular a deservedly famous Invisible Cities, expand horizons of thought about cities; an unusual sense of openness which permeates that volume brings the reader in, (un)conscious of a thread connecting all that is there; that invisible structure of Le città invisibili is Italo Calvino’s OuLiPo sensibility, an elaborate sets of constraints carefully, paradoxically designed and crafted to both navigate and liberate the text, to inspire creative reading; his text enables flights beyond its actual contents; to me, Invisible Cities is an unlikely fusion of imagination and order, a true vertigo which results in simultaneity of oneness and multiplicity of the urban; it provokes diverse readings, touching upon some of the key dimensions of the urban – most importantly its diversity, its innumerable, subjective variations – almost defining it
_ _ _ assisted by none else but Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, Calvino weaves stories, their stories, his stories, histories structured as *Cities and Memory **Cities and Desire *** Cities and Signs **** Thin Cities ***** Trading Cities ****** Cities and Eyes ******* Cities and Names ******** Cities and the Dead ********* Cities and the Sky ********** Continuous Cities and *********** Hidden Cities
_ _ _ my advice: (re)read Invisible Cities and, Isabel, of course
CUT, to be continued
