Text by Belisa Branças and Pedro Nunes, after seeing "Everything in Avignon and Me Here", by Bruno dos Reis. “Hypertext” brings artists into dialogue with each other, in the format of an imagined written correspondence, based on a performance they have witnessed during the Gil Vicente Festivals.

Belise: While driving home, I tried to remember where I was going. I knew I was driving, that was certain, but the destination was less clear. I'd been traveling with a co-pilot for the past few days. The cowboys e snake they were carrying out the act of ir With the help of a playwright and a script. Or rather, with the help of a playwright or a script. It's difficult to tell which came first: the chicken or the egg. Although with a co-pilot to my right, I drove autonomously. And I arrived home every night, almost with my eyes closed. The roads are already familiar to the car, and even without handling the steering wheel, the next few kilometers are anticipated. This anticipation of the kilometers ahead led to several skidding incidents and two actual accidents. It wasn't the end. Each time, the car continued, with at least one door dented, but it continued.  

I remembered the photograph again. That little piece of paper burned by the sun. I remembered that chin again. I know that chin well. I invented it. Do you believe I invented it? I wouldn't lie to you on purpose here. If I say it with conviction, it's because I believe it to be true. There is a chin that I invented, and perhaps it was indeed the one on the little piece of paper burned by the sun. In the end, it matters little whether it's true or whether that's the chin I invented. A chin exists, and that's enough. Although we want to convince ourselves that it's important to distinguish this chin from those that have already existed and those that are yet to exist, a chin is a chin, and it matters little whether it's a single chin that repeats itself, that multiplies continuously, or whether it's a brand new one, as long as it fulfills the expectation of being a chin. I don't see this realization as a sad conclusion; on the contrary, I'm pleased to know that chins are a constant in the passage of time, of which we are so temporarily a part. 

Peter: The future is an animal that slowly moves away. I think of hares, foxes, hedgehogs, and all the other animals my mother saw on the road, animals that I never saw. "Look! Where? Pedro, look!" And I never saw them. Those animals, unlike the future, moved away quickly. 

When I think of night-time headlights illuminating the asphalt, I think of you, Belisa, who arrived in my life yesterday, aboard a car I don't recognize, but to which I am grateful for bringing you here. Belisa—for those who don't know her—is someone who approaches slowly. And who drives beautifully, it must be said. That's a funny expression. I promise that if I ever say anything about stopping, you'll be the first to know. 

Promises are a way of interrupting time. Of asking the future to slow down its march. And a promise is just a lie until it's filled with truth. A promise is a Schrödinger's wish. Well, I'm rambling on about paralogisms here, and you probably just want to get home. Besides, nobody told us to stay for drinks after the show. But returning to the future (I've never seen [the animals by the roadside or] the film): repeatedly projecting tomorrow is an addictive exercise, usually forced by the rugged landscape of an inhospitable daily life. 

This leads (like you, Belisa) to any generation saying that—more than all the others that came before and all those that will come after—in their youth, they felt compelled to chase after an invisible disadvantage. And it's also not difficult to hear a generation say that their youth was somehow hard and demanding, a consequence of the socio-economic-historical-cultural-religious-gastronomic-petroleum-inflationary-gentrifying-environmental-geographical-astrological-artistic-empirical-anti-democratic-Olympic-philosophical-magical-tragic-cosmic-anxiolytic-political circumstances in which they grew up. But damn, ours... And I say this without knowing your age. Although you have a very 90s chin, that's for sure. 

Belise: Pedro, forgive me, but I stayed behind. I stayed composing hares, foxes, and hedgehogs. What roads did you travel with your mother? 

Would you forgive me if I told you that she was the one who told you the first lie?

I believe she saw them all. Maybe she even saw a gun pointed at her—and at you—in the car that was slowly overtaking her on some highway. I believe she could even hear the sound of the gun firing “BANG.” That’s why she sped up and told you, finally, that you didn’t see because you looked too late. They’re gone now, they’re back there. You were quick, Mom. You don’t drive slowly on this road. 

After losing mine, I started driving faster, wanting the years to pass. I completely agree with you on that; thinking about the future had become an obsession. But I don't do it anymore. I'd like to tell you I've tamed the monster, but it's not true, and I don't want to lie to you again.

I continue to drive, although I hate doing it, especially at night (because although you see me as nocturnal, I am a day person) which wants nothing to do with me, nor with me. The first lie I told you was this: I snaked through the night, like an old friend, whom I don't need to speak to understand. And curiously, I saw you that way too. Perhaps you'll tell me that you are neither a snake nor night. And yet, we saw ourselves reflected in that mirror, replicas of the night playing with the shadows of the moon. 

All I like about the moon is its light. 

And you?

Tell me what you like without looking at the page, searching for the answer I might want to hear? There's nothing I want you to tell me, other than the answer you might want to give me. I promise.

Peter: OB Fachada (each with the Chalino Sánchez they deserve) at a certain point, in a certain song, says: 

We spent the flower of our will. 

preparing a come back 

Here he was talking about the PREC (Processo Revolucionário em Curso - Ongoing Revolutionary Process) and a time that seems to have existed only to be mobilized as memory — but look at us: we spend the first ten or twenty years of our adult lives promising some kind of future, and when we realize it, the future arrives late; in fact, looking closely, it wasn't even the one that was supposed to arrive. Perhaps more than an animal, the future should be part of the CP's (Portuguese Railways) rolling stock. Sorry, it's late and I'm not in the mood for more. And sorry for the reference to public transport, considering we write in/from/to the car, but I don't have a driver's license. Conclusion: yes, childhood is the place where an ordinary person goes and says:

ah

What am I going to get out of this?

to lie

Whether looking back or forward, because the fruit of the past is carefully chosen, with a mother's hands in the supermarket, and promising, as we have already established, is lying until proven otherwise.

Belise: I promise again. 

Peter: I want to answer you, seriously, yes, but I can't. The freedom offered like this, without transaction or sacrifice, sometimes scares me. I'll turn on the radio, okay? To see if I can fill this silence. I never learned how to respond to compliments, you know? Not that you complimented me, I was just sharing. Is it okay to share in this car? Deep down, I think I never learned how to deal with other people's generosity. Are you more into Antena 2 or M80? I hope to meet you someday without a steering wheel. You're from Gaia, so I imagine a New Era. I'd like to one day approach you without fear or poetry. At the moment, it's impossible for me. 

Belise: You're forcing me to answer. And you knew that would happen. I'll remain silent about the radio. It amuses me that you're trying to guess and that the radio has now become the only possible option. Up until now we haven't had any trouble talking. I realize that's the case, and despite that, I think we should let the silence prevail. They say I'm a bad Portuguese person. I'm also a bad Gaia native. If it's possible again, share it again. I promise not to praise you. 

Peter: Nina begins her monologue...A Gaivota with men, lions, eagles, and partridges. Animals I've never seen by the roadside. The opening monologue of Everything's in Avignon and I'm here. It's about chins (each with the Chekhov they deserve). In both cases, what's at stake is the impossibility of fiction. The future is the greatest of fictions and, honestly, it seems impossible to believe that things are only getting worse before they get better. But so what? What is there to say? What's the alternative? To drop everything, go to the mountains and say:

What a great idea, coming to the mountains.

Is that it? Waiting for everything to pass? Bullshit. Only time passes. Enough of this talk. Stop the car, Belisa. Let me out. I'm not being dramatic, calm down. Of course I'm not going to jump out of a moving car, I'm not crazy, drop me off at a gas station or something, please. I don't know how I'm going to get home, it doesn't matter much now. By then I might be able to look inside with more tenderness or find an animal heading towards the edge of the night. 

I'll walk. Everything's fine. I promise. 

Belise: I see you like this and I know I should ask if you're alright. You're alright. Notice I said "should". I know you noticed. Don't take it the wrong way, I even have a penchant for drama. Well, if that weren't the case, we wouldn't be here. I ask that you don't take it the wrong way because I interrupted the scene and we had agreed to lie to hide the truth, working better, until the very last night. 

You know I'll say I'll take you home, that I'll insist on doing it, because that's how it should be. 

I'm not going to give you a choice.

I'm going to insist a lot.

Until you realize you never had a choice and the decision had already been made.

The person behind the wheel is in charge. 

And although I hate driving, I was given the privilege of having a driver's license and a car. 

Sometimes I say I'd trade the privilege to go back to the time when I didn't have a car. 

But here we are. 

You and I are on the side of the road, and I'm telling you that we have to find ways to keep going, even if it means eating our own tails. 

I don't know how to do it either, but it must be innate. 

How else could they all do it, without first having seen someone do it in front of them? 

Finding one's way again is something that comes naturally to oneself. 

And destruction, in order to do so, is inevitable.

Peter: You made me think of the inevitable death of Jacinto or my grandmothers, as if we were the ones who distanced ourselves from them and bit their tails. I think of the theater, which without my grandmother will cease to be a promise and without ghosts will cease to be theater. I wonder if a specter embraces or consoles or even answers. I think I only need them to listen to me and that if so, I'll start to believe in ghosts. I think it's dark and you deserve to rest. I think maybe I exaggerated and that if you accept me back I'd like to get in the car. I think you're not to blame for me not knowing how to drive, or how to drive myself. I think it makes sense to apologize. I think this trip did us good. I think about the usucaption I'm making of the words with which I write my disaffection. And I think:

unsurprisingly

outcome 

None of this is about me.