Verbatim Transcription
SOUP
A story about being gazed at by a loved one
It was October and we were in the kitchen and I was telling Roberto enthusiastically about a book I'd read. It was a book about gods and mortals, love, death, battle, separation, musicality, timeless themes of our existence of love and death. The joy I was transmitting, it was as though he could feel it tangibly, and he gazed at me lovingly, as though he was trying to treasure that joy, the joy of me. The joy he was feeling through me. He wasn't very well. I don't know if he knew that he was going to die within two months.
But when we love somebody, we're very aware of the fact that we may lose them at any time. And when we're aware of that, we try to treasure them and live the moment more fully. That's definitely what was happening in that second. Maybe he did, I have no idea.
APPETIZER
A memory narrated by a loved one
I think this is really the story about when your heart beats for somebody. I was working in his shop and when he arrived, before I even saw him set his foot through the door, I could hear the keys. He had a big, great big ring of keys with probably about 20 keys and they Jingle. And as he walked very fast, and he always walked very fast, you could hear them Jingle because they were attached to his belt. My heart would beat then, my heart would flutter because that was him. Coming into the shop and he'd make my heartbeat.
Another thing we refer to in In Love in English is when your knees turn to Jelly. It's only happened once in my life, but it did actually happen with Roberto when he asked me to go and visit a friend of his on his Vespa. And at that point my knees really did go to Jelly. And the reason you know they're going to Jelly is because you're finding it difficult to walk and you're not feeling very stable. It's also probably to do with your heart beating quite fast. But anyway, he made my heartbeat and he made my knees go to Jelly.
APPETIZER
Symbolic description of the touch of a loved one’s favorite body part.
This is the description of the touch of Roberto's fluffy, curly white hair. He had a great head of hair and I've always thought that hair really represents the energy somebody has inside them. I remember we always used to go to the hairdressers together because it was an experience that he greatly enjoyed and I think one of his memories of his mother was related to her going to the hairdresser especially for him. So it was like a sort of loved ones almost fetishist. Erotic ritual of going together to the hairdressers. On one occasion, I asked them the hairdressers to collect Roberto's cut hair to give it to me so I could make a collage of a sheep. I think I was joking, but it did actually pass my mind that I could make a collage using Roberto's cut hair with some glue and make a picture of a sheep.
When your loved ones gone and Roberta's gone, he died in November last year. You still find bits of her hair and I found quite a lot of bits of his hair and I don't really want to throw it away. In fact I've kept some of it. As as almost like a mother keeping baby teeth, it's something you can hang on to that's left of their physicality. Everything else is gone, gone, back to dust. But I do have some of Roberta's hair and I've kept it with dog teeth and baby teeth and I'll keep it forever.
MAIN
A. Narrative of profound dreams.
I had a vivid waking dream this morning. It was full of movement. There were projections on the wall, rather like a cinema. There were two bicycles. There was a pile of children 's toys at the same time. There were two pigeons flying down the stairs and on the divan. There was a little black puppy, decreasing in size as I tried to catch hold of him and cut him in my hands. All of these moving objects were symbols of happy memories. The bicycles were short journeys that we'd shared. The pile of toys probably were joys of play and fun and things we'd enjoyed.
The pigeons represent lovers and the little puppy decreasing in size refers to tenderness as the time goes backwards to the early days when we were together. As I was waking, I called to a family dog, Rocco. Then the dream ended with me calling. Roberto.
DESSERT
The sweetest memory
Roberto loved cooking and Roberto loved eating. I think the one of the favorite memories I have is working side by side in the kitchen as you prepared a meal, having lovingly selected the ingredients and sourced them very carefully. He'd take ages preparing things, especially for his friends, and made some really delicious meals. The only thing he'd let me cook actually were the desserts. In the period that he was unwell, I found a package in his office that he'd ordered a foodstuff. The island of Sardinia and I opened it with great curiosity and inside was dried mullet row. It's unfortunate that he was unable to eat it, but by that time he'd lost interest in food. Think he would have been happy though that on the last evening, the day that he departed, his friends gathered at home and we shared a meal together to celebrate his life. And we made a meal with the dried fish mullet and I think Roberto would have been happy that we celebrated his departure with a good, good meal amongst friends.