PERFECT NOVEL
S02E30. AKA the unwritten one.
PREVIOUSLY — BBH meets Empress outside the text and recounts their exchange through indirect discourse, filtering and altering its meaning. Between compliments, reflections on Better Than Luck, and allusions to the novel HAPPY DREAM, a subtle tension emerges between what is said and what is avoided. Faced with the possibility of confessing her deviation — the column itself — BBH chooses not to speak, allowing a lie to pass unnoticed. As in the Iceberg theory, the meaning of the encounter remains submerged: not in the words exchanged, but in those withheld.
Since this is not a novel, I don’t have to make an effort to let you infer how I feel: I feel good.
The show Blue But Happy runs every Thursday. All three performances so far have been a success (tickets were sold out, Baba Jaga secured interesting press, the first works have been sold).
I’m having fun.
My circle of friends supports me.
The man I flirt with got back with his ex just to provoke me.
The man I actually like hasn’t missed a single show (always with a different excuse) so far.
The friend who opposed the show (Great Mother) is now trying to bury her former scepticism.
I might soon become financially independent from my best friend (though I would happily remain her guest forever).
Am I writing my novel HAPPY DREAM? No.
Studying the manual that is supposed to help me? No.
Abandoning the project? Not even close.
Why? You.
I exist for the moment I sit down at this keyboard.
Every performance, every drink, every sleepless night — all of it leads to the moment when I take a fragment of time and tell it.
All the unwritten pages are a glorious, epic, formidable novel in potential — one no real novel could ever live up to.
But let me tell you about Doll.
DOLL? — What does Doll have to do with anything? Who is Doll? A minor character mentioned here and there in previous episodes — why should we care about Doll?
As I may have mentioned, Doll is… a jewellery designer. Please don’t focus on formalities — whether she has professional training, whether the world needs a new high-jewellery brand, or who Doll thinks she is to — none of these objections have anything to do with why I want to talk to you about Doll.
You see, Doll produces. She doesn’t doubt. And she will soon launch her first collection (35 pieces of multicoloured titanium jewellery with matching precious stones), with an exclusive event. And she asks me for a collaboration.
SCOFF — Where could such a weak subplot possibly lead?
Her brand celebrates “a devotion to monochrome colour.” According to her, my character BBH — pink from scalp to shoes — perfectly embodies the philosophy of her pieces (in which metal and stones are always monochrome). And the works of my artist alter ego BBH — the macro panels of repetition — would make ideal backdrops for her unique pieces (remember? each canvas repeats a single word or a single icon).
So she asks whether I might prepare twenty panels tailored to the event — and whether I, as BBH, might interview her in a sketch opening the evening.
Picture it: Doll promoting her work and her name, me all dolled up in pink, suspended in yet another alter ego.
Magnificent.
Super.
POLL — Show of hands: who here is interested in BBH, the unresolved tragic character who turns a philosophy of temptation into yet another self-deception? No one? As expected.
And speaking of super, I had lunch with my friend Werewolf.
Werewolf did not become the musician he wanted to be — not that I want to go into it now, but remember? He presides over the family business, and with Great Mother he has a one-year-old daughter named Baby — but he orchestrates the soundtrack of our circle, occasion after occasion (he curated the sound of the Blue But Happy performance).
At lunch the other day, he proposed turning each Repetita panel into music (pieces of a couple of notes and a single word) and making an ALBLUEM out of it. We’re meant to start recording this week. Devil will need to be involved for the album cover— of course.
Everything is fun-tastic.
DERAILMENT — Fine, these collaboration-deviations have one advantage over HAPPY DREAM: they exist. But vomiting random episodes of tiny personal success is not exactly a literary effort.
Two summers ago I read, for the first time, a well-known book titled Women Who Run with the Wolves (I’ve already finished my third reread). One of the tales the book explores is the story of Menawee, a man in love with two twin sisters, whom he can only marry once he learns their names. To find them out, he sends his little dog to overhear them. But each time the dog sets off on his mission and returns with the answer… a bone, a cake — something distracts him, and he forgets the names. Until, at last, he succeeds, and Menawee marries not one but two of the most beautiful girls in the region, and they all live happily ever after.
In the decoding of the tale — where each character represents a component of one’s psyche — the little dog is that instinctive, free part of us that fails to focus on the goal, postponing (or preventing) its fulfilment.
HAPPY DREAM is the name of the two princesses and is still — woof! woof! — the perfect novel.
Perhaps writing it would be a great sin. But if anyone would like to correct me — now would be the moment.
See you next week, HAPPIDREAMERS.
— BBH
