72 nome d’arte The first of a long series of oddities had not been slow to appear from the moment of check-in, while she reflected on how privileged, as sociological observation points, places of involuntary aggregation such as hotels were. It is no coincidence, she thought, that masterpieces of contemporary cinema - cult frames from Shining by Kubrick, Youth by Sorrentino, Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson's Grand Hotel Budapest, Anomalisa by Charlie Kaufman, Kinetta and The Lobster of that Greek whose early films are not yet dubbed in English and you can only hope for a tv late night subtitled view, what's his name? ah yes, Yorgos Lanthimos - were set in those endless corridors, among tapestries and carpets capable of politely slapping you with their sense of elsewhere, in rooms so aseptic and anaesthetic that they look like hospitals. After all, what are hospitals if not specialized hotels, like those restaurants that only serve risotto. The involuntary aggregation is the same, although the guests, there, have as a minimum common denominator some disease, declared or presumed, with which to present themselves instead of the document. But who is not sick today, she thought, looking around. All distinct, even beautiful, all so post-European looking; but all so lobotomized that those three women at the reception booking a session of seaweed mud, with their excellent manufactured clothing and an authoritarian/aristocratic posture, seem to come directly from a nineteenth-century English court. Or from a fetish club where they tip up like mistresses. TBH, their eyes are zero the same, only richer in aesthetics, not in worn-out practice. OMG, one of them is holding a rabbit. The first of a long series of oddities, we were saying. «Wedo-not-need-your-name. Here-is-the-key-of-your-room. Have-a-good-stay», the receptionist said without even worrying about believing it, flat voice like a dead man's heartbeat, giving her one of those brass-plated keys with a numbered keychain/boulder that she hadn't see for the fab 80s. There still exist hotels in which private and public isolation are separated by a key, and not by a microchipped badge, she thought. Effectively, starting from the check-in desk - without 4K ultraHD screens to store transient identities - the technological and technocratic bulimia of our encrypted times didn't seem to have contaminated that place. Better, that non-place: a utopia, humanistic studies came to her aid [ ού + τόπος , pronounce 'utópos' = 'non-place'], circumscribed that hall as the realm of anonymity - of places, of times, of stories that no one would have bothered to decode. Spaces purified of places. We do not need your name, the receptionist told her, condemning her to anonymity as well - or, perhaps, releasing her. A name is a waste of time, when there is no need to go beyond a more than sufficient surface. If only they knew how to read surfaces in depth... grand hotel lanthimos «Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface» Hugo von Hofmannsthal, The book of friends, I ed. 1922 «That's why I'm easy, I'm easy like sunday morning» Commodores feat. Lionel Richie, Easy, 1977 «Dans le bus il y a vingt cœurs et vingt culs» [= Dans le bus il y a vainqueurs et vaincus ] The killing of a sacred deer, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, 2017
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