Every good film mimics the path and pacing of an entire lifetime, but squeezed into 1,5 hours. Things speed up as the years pass. We all have our inciting incidents and points of no return. And what about how scenes are ideally structured? “Every scene has to turn,” I once learned that somewhere, probably from […]
moreA woman has not seen her daughter for over a year. Her daughter has become a dancer. She never understood why. Did her daughter realize she was throwing her future away? Mother should know, she used to be a mezzo=soprano but then developed anxiety attacks which resulted in her vocal cords slamming shut. She never […]
moreThe man I was talking to in a bar yesterday referred to his two daughters. They were too old to be celebrating New Year’s Eve with him, with us. Past twenty already. At one stage I asked whether he was still with the mother of his children. “Oh no,” he said. They had separated over […]
moreMelchior’s Xmas. (read here) Melchior = main character, former Consul General Mercy = his housekeeper from Ghana Folkert = friend & colleague diplomat Leandra = his wife who is in a clinic in France.
moreHere’s what I want to do tonight. I want to drink wine with you, or beer, and dance with you and fly into this night, straight through the fears, the tears, cut them in twos or threes or thousands of millions of pieces, tiny grains of sand, cells, amoeba, even smaller still, nuclei which dissolve […]
more“This is A Man. I am Writerontwitter’s husband. I don’t know any other way to say it but that Writerontwitter passed away in her sleep October 8th. Your book was the first and last Ebook she ever read and she finished it in a couple of days so she must have found it very compelling […]
moreI sat in on my son’s music class today. The teacher must have been only 20. She held her guitar against her body like a shield. She practiced songs with the children, taught them rhythm and to listen to words. I had never heard the two songs before. They were about Christmas. My son remembered […]
moreOne song. I close my eyes. Despite the winter I am back there, back in Brazil. In a small place called Buzios. The warmth of daily life at the time fills my ears, spills over into my chest. We were in Rio then. And even though Rio meant we were hundreds of miles away from […]
moreThere was a bag on the floor. It was a small duffel bag, black. It was heavier than it would seem as it looked empty. The top half was dented in its own air. With my foot, I shifted it slightly. Then I kneeled by it. I felt hesitant. On zipping it open I discovered […]
moreTo call someone when you feel sad. And that person is happy to give you advice. That person may well say things like: “Resist every temptation. Be strong. You shouldn’t feel like you need to move to the other side of the world in order to be able to stop this.” “But… but, I was […]
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