Reading on a screen isn’t like reading on paper. Or is it? With this GIF commented by Joan Pons we start our summer special editorial: Reading and August.
The fan
by Joan Pons
It’s said that the secret resides in insinuating, more than showing. Obvious, that’s why it’s a secret! Right? In any case, it’s true: our imagination prefers to silently squeeze in through gaps instead of trespassing open doors to rooms full of light. There’s also who affirm that the key resides in a slowness of motion, that strategically placed delays and paused reiterations stylise our anxiety. Well, OK, but as long as that doesn’t imply staying in a tantric state. There will be some who believe that the thing is an imitation of reality (although somehow augmented). A plausible setting, a next-door protagonist, vulgar framing, home textures… all of them help us to project. To project us. To think “what if…?” On the other hand, experts on the matter such as Luís García Berlanga, Juan García Hortelano, Jaime Gil de Biedma, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Juan Marsé, Ricardo Muñoz Suay and Beatriz de Moura (all of them members of the jury, at some point, of that famous literary prize that smiled vertically, Sonrisa Vertical) say quite the opposite: there needs to be a novelty element, something out of place, in a familiar situation to turn something vulgar into something exciting. Let’s say wearing sunglasses indoors. I don’t know. It might be the sum of all these variables, even if some of them are contraries, or even exclude each other. Or it might be that sensuality, eroticism, desire or however we might choose to call it is in the eye of the beholder. It’s about reception, not transmission. About responses, not stimuli. It’s a thermic feeling with little to do with external temperatures. A fan making you hot and cold. I don’t know whether I’m making myself clear. I don’t know if I need to.
