THE PLACE TO BE

S02E21. The character in disguise.

Feb 08, 2026

PREVIOUSLY — BBH observes the world around her as a system of autonomous trajectories: friends, lovers, artists, mentors — each busy performing the role of protagonist in their own story. Through a sequence of portraits, she stages the central thesis of Better Than Luck: a character is not what it declares itself to be, but what it does over time. BBH deliberately remains at the margins of the narrative, experimenting with absence as a narrative strategy and recognising that she belongs not to a single story, but to a complex ecosystem. In this shared space, while HAPPY DREAM remains suspended, the question shifts from who am I to how does one live — and from there, perhaps, writing truly begins.

On the dining table in Witch and Vampire’s house (I’ve been living at their place for over a year now — over and out) sits a cardboard scale model of Witch’s gallery, in some scale I don’t know and don’t care to ask about. She brought it for me so I could “familiarise myself with the space, at least on a hypothetical level.”

Which panels do I imagine hanging in which room?
Which space will host the interview-performance?
How do we arrange the seating?
Where do I enter the stage?
And the acoustics?
And the lighting?
Do I want it cold and merciless, or warm and shadowy?

There it is: the miniature of the quietest character in this column so far.
The gallery — excessively white, elegantly sterile, unnaturally luminous — the place that makes Witch a gallerist and me a redeemed performer.

And yet, a thought arises.

SPECIFICATION — BBH omits the place where this thought originates. The unsurprising answer is: the manual Better Than Luck.

In our weekly appointment, which places deserve to be called characters in the story?
And which one deserves it more than any other?

Here’s a brief poll.

A) Witch and Vampire’s house

Oh, you should see it. A cover-ready apartment, the arched living room with glass walls opening onto a tree-lined terrace. The theatrical bookshelf with steel ladders. The velvet Camaleonda sofas (turquoise, fuchsia, lilac, orange, the small yellow one).

But let’s forget aesthetics for a moment.

This apartment is the shell that protects me from the absence of gravity in my I-choose-not-to-choose life: nothing is mine, except the feeling of being at home. It’s also the social hub of a network of friendships weaving together interests and affections. If you want to picture me and my friends gathering in a safe place, the living room of this house is the set of our sitcom. Jonas Wood on the walls included.

B) Witch’s gallery

As I said: the place that makes Witch a gallerist and me a redeemed performer (I think the sentence works).
Imagine an optically white space, grey resin floors, inside which everything appears precious.

C) The city

Who is this city?
Why did I come here?
Where do I come from?

Never naming it is a considered choice, not an oversight — nor a trick. I hope that each of you reads into the streets I mention, the traffic lights that switch on, the traffic I describe, a projection of your own idea of a metropolis, so that she, the City, remains for you, as for me, both important and abstract.

A capital-C City: a concept, more than a collection of details.

D) This room

Greetings from the guest room of option A).
If you’re picturing a narrow rectangular dungeon with an exercise bike in one corner and a wall wardrobe stuffed with skis, Monopoly, and VHS tapes, you’re mistaken.

Imagine instead a room with one wall opening onto the terrace mentioned above, herringbone parquet floors — hey! I’m writing to you seated in lotus position right on these mahogany planks, my back resting against the bed (a minimalist canopy).

WHAT DO WE THINK? — Of this multiple-choice structure. Is it itself a kind of formal place, a space in which the protagonist’s thoughts are allowed to happen?

E) The Repetita panels

Landscapes of analog repetition.
Nerve-wracking surfaces.
Calming surfaces.

Real objects, fake art.
Real art, fake objects.

Would you like to see how they’re progressing?

F) My diaries

Once home and comfort, today places of impossibility.
There is no honesty in my diaries.
There is no invention.
There is no confession.

There is only a selfish need for non-sense, for stories made purely of aesthetics, for mantras that strip words of meaning and turn sound into a portal.

G) Better Than Luck

The writing manual that inspires this column claims to be a map, not a territory. But it is a map we inhabit every week.