Paperland

Been planning for 4-5 years to write a book called Paperland. Been presenting papers about it, been reading aloud fragments from along the journey at conferences all over the world, been thinking aloud with dozens of people more important than any written publication.

Today I feel I am approaching. I have 70+ pages of dense drama text, which might one day, if necessary, translate into 300+ pages of prose, but if the drama materializes, I don't find it necessary to write an ethnographic novel after all.

Interestingly, I was never a theatre person in my childhood and youth.I never had the urge to be on stage. Now I have a burning urge to send people on stage. The work is called "ethnodrama", but it has very little to do with concrete ethnicities. It has something to do with the writing process of ethnography, and the various fake parodies dealing with immersion with distant cultures. But even more importantly, the book is about the production of "immigritude" amongst a wide array of recent arrivals in a country that pretends to be very unexperienced in dealing with ethnic. cultural and religious differences.

And it is very funny to find myself in the middle of planning choreographies full of glitter and glue. I never thought I could get so physical. Paperland is almost a musical in its current form. I am playing the piano every day to forward the writing.

Never knew that happiness and satisfaction could be bought so cheap...