74 nome d’arte mented marriage of Madonna with Sean Penn and the exquisiteness of Thatcher's suits, spread a pop aura to the environment more effective the more it was penetrating a Mediterranean démodé aesthetic, among the respectable and the alien, like our old aunt’s astrakhan fur or a fizzle consumed in a bar with beaded curtains at its entrance. Because pop was glorious for that period of time that went from Warhol to Bad by Michael Jackson; after which it turned from popular to populist, and a real mess happened. Very few, today, are ready for pop. However, in that hotel lobby, the congenitally fluorescent tones of pop were neutralized by a clear, cold and sophisticated light, amplified by convex mirrors in which the wide-angle panoramic deformed by embracing, and by large windows that gave impalpable and maimed reflections of that multiple life flowing through those sophisticated interiors. A life concave on the glass, incomplete and mute, like the dry and ruthless shots from Dogma '95 founded by Lars von Trier, or from Kinetta by Lanthimos. The architect of this hotel deserves the Oscar for best photography, she thought, looking to her reflection in one of the windows, realizing that her face had definitely taken charge of time, instead of leaving it behind, like for that ambivalent question recurring in Nimic by Lanthimos: Do you have the time?. Those dark circles of nights spent devouring films for a job that was her passion made her look like a badger, but she didn't care which animal life could have turned her into. It’s the same for all. It was definitely worse for those millions of people who, like frogs, had been placed in a pot whose water was turning into boiling. Her eye sockets, by comparison, were not a Greek tragedy. She looked away from her reflection, widened his field of vision, and she smiled: All animals welcome, favoured the window sticker. So she as well, insofar as a badger. Actually she was surprised by the variety of animals that strolled quietly in the lobby, in the garden, into the pools, cats and flamingos, pigs, peacocks and lobsters, innocent counteraltars of the gratuitous ferocity exerted by a presumptuous and poised humanity, rarely higher than sanctity but often lower than bestiality, she thought, while stroking a wolf who was passing by. As she walked along the path that led to her room, she could not help but listen to the conversations she was stumbling into, struck by the total absence of nerve in exchanging the most banal information as much as the most embarrassing ones; apathetic, robotic in pronouncing empty words, exhausted like them. Sitting at the bar, a splendid couple of distinguished practitioners - probably doctors - was breaking the ice with their host, informing him of their daughter's menarche. At the tables, a young woman was asking her mother what 'pussy' meant, and the imperturbable mom replied that it was a great lamp. In the garden she saw a man, incredibly similar to the doctor at the bar, who was familiarly conversing with a border collie. Back from the wellness program, two of the three mistresses met at the reception were planning the evening: they would have organized a lobster race followed by their eating. In a polite line for the elevator, a graceful and swollen girl was repeatedly checking to made sure that her partner wasn't hungry. In the corridor, a man asked two children if they could recognize who, between him and a woman standing next to him, was their father; a little farther on, a desperately apathetic gentleman was ordering a girl in tennis clothes to bite her nails. No matter how hard she tried to make herself seem indifferent, she realized that all that was happening under the accustomed and vaguely bored eyes of the hotel staff, and it was for her like when the plane goes through a turbulence, and you look at the hostesses’ expressions in front of you pervaded by an angelic grace to find the strength not to scream. After all, she thought, reassuring herself, language is nothing but the umpteenth form of control, imposed by a distant and impersonal above, on monads without any god that could reassure them about the eternal becoming, interacting together with the same anaffective courtesy through which one interacts with the guy who has the number before yours at the post office. «The limits of my language mean the limits of my world» Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, I ed. 1921 «Hey! Are you talking to me? Or are you just practicing for one of those performances of yours? Language it's a virus» Laurie Anderson, Language is a virus [from outer space], 1986 «Today the new words are the following: sea - motorway - excursion - carbine. A sea is a leather armchair with wooden arms, like the one we have in our living room. For example: don’t stand on your feet, sit on the sea to have a quiet chat with me. A motorway is a very strong wind. An excursion is a very resistant material used to construct floors. For example: the chandelier fell violently onto the floor, but no damage was caused to it because it is made of 100% excursion. Carbine: a carbine is a beautiful white bird» Kynodontas, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009
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