Photography

At the photographer’s, you can get a portrait of your likeness after death, but the process is painstaking. A newly engaged couple once proved so hard to satisfy, the photographer had to continue the shoot the following day. Finally, at closing time he’d managed to position them, and the light, the mark of such photography, was also perfect. He turned off the lamps, locked up the shop, and left the couple to stand in the studio overnight. “I love you,” whispered the girl in almost total darkness. Only a thin streak of light from the street lamps pierced the studio from the store front. “I love you too,” replied her fiancé, “but stand still now and look right into the camera.”




Theater

A man performs whole days from his life as a drama, each day at home in his apartment. He goes to great lengths to be as realistic as possible, walking around the apartment and tending to day-to-day business. Only at night, when he sits by himself in the kitchen, does he peek now and then at the window to glimpse his audience. He won’t completely abandon the notion that someone is out there. It’s like when you stand on the landing, in front of a closed door, and you can’t help thinking that someone is watching through the peephole.




Night

At night things become ever so smaller, our shoes and teeth, too, and everywhere in buildings screws turn a quarter of a revolution, but even if you press your ear against the wall, the sound is rarely heard. Always there is someone who plays the gelatin piano, someone who packs his pipe with snow, and on a radio channel from somewhere in the world, where the sun is already on its way up through the mist in the horizon: a gospel choir of hoarse, nearly inaudible women.