Look At Me

(behind her: the grave of Joseph Brodsky, Russian and American poet and essayist)

Brodsky wrote that the real heaven is the lost one, do you know that? It makes sense to me. I enjoy being at this cemetery more than anywhere else. Everyone is gone, everyone calmed down. And not just anyone. Stravinsky, Doppler, Nono, Diaghilev, Ezra Pound – Joseph [Brodsky] of course – are here. It’s not that I have no family, I have. A big one, as a matter of fact. It’s not about that. It’s just I feel more comfortable here, I can relate to this place more. Life has never felt long. Only now, only as I’m getting old. Now it feels long. You know, Stravinsky’s dissonance from the Rite? Diaghilev once asked him how long his chords would go on. And Stravinsky said: ‘Until the end, my dear’. So, it’s that simple really. There is nothing mysterious about life. Old age is just…well, you just feel that everything gets sharper in a way. That you are getting to this place where you don’t exist. Do you know that photography is death, a photograph itself. You can’t change anything, too late. That’s also something he said… Joseph.