Thursday, 23 August 2001 | 1883

Today at lunch, while Earle and I were walking down Ninth Street in Durham, I was telling him about the house Ingo found on Long Island. "It was built in 1883," I told him. Right as I said it, a random guy I'd just passed exclamed, "Eighteen eighty-three?!? Man, that's a long time ago." I turned around and answered, "Yeah, it is, isn't it?," almost as if it were natural that a guy I didn't know, leaning on a wall in a town that isn't mine, would add to my conversation. I almost expected it to happen again and again, heads popping out the whole way to the restaurant, adding comments at the ends of each of our sentences.

Tonight there were written comments, printed on a black TV screen with the fancy white frame, the kind that regularly interrupt any proper silent film. Scott is in town, and has brought with him a copy of The Sandman, a film in which he wears dark eye make-up, fears for his eyes, and courts an automaton. Throughout the film he added his own comments in addition to the supplied ones, laughing in odd moments from his cross-legged spot on the floor.