PARIS 10th November: A night like any other…

A night just like any other, in a taxi, in the driving rain. It was already cold in Paris. The time was just right for philosophising about all the moving moments which flash by like life itself. Such a simple moment as this has the ability to touch the heart. Ideas come and go. At times the radio is playing a beautiful song and the world inside the taxi becomes a place filled with wonder. When I arrived at my destination, the driver asked me whether we were at the right place. “Yes,” I said, paying him and stepping back into the real world. I walked a few paces and then somebody tapped me on the shoulder and I froze for a second. The man pressed something into my hand and left. I later realised that it had been the taxi driver who had thought that I had forgotten something. Too late, he had already gone! He had given me a video tape entitled “DANNA”. It made me feel uneasy to be given this tape by the taxi driver. The logical explanation was that somebody else had mislaid the tape and that the driver had thought it were mine. Of course I had my own fantasy about why I had come to be in possession of this tape. The tape interested me a great deal and I wondered whether I should look at it. First I tried to imagine whether Danna was a name or a place. Back at home I took out my Duden dictionary and looked up the term, but I found nothing! The internet offered a glimpse of hope. I typed in the keyword ‘Danna’. After a long search, I discovered “DANNA: THE MASTER OF A GEISHA”. Had a Danna lost this tape in Paris? I had to take a look at it. My curiosity was getting the better of me; perhaps this tape was harbouring a secret world unbeknown to me. The shots were of a woman; this woman was incredibly beautiful, so romantic, so fragile. It was a whole new world, one with which I was not familiar; a world full of charm and grace. I looked at the tape over and over again. It was pure magic. Time after time, I was bewitched by something new in her. I couldn’t ignore my insight into this world, so I took a few extracts from the screen to show you. I felt I really needed to share this world with everybody. Why had this tape come to me?

Patrizio Di Renzo website