closed starter for GISELLE ( @wcitingroom )
jackson's apartment
*˖ ⊹ ──────── " ──...because, i mean, there's this walter benjamin quote about our obsession with self-alienation as aesthetic pleasure in the age of technology, and he was just talking about picture-video. the internet wasn't even invented yet. " jackson rambles without looking up from his project to the silence of his living room. neither duchess or giselle have offered a sound in the last twenty minutes, the former absorbed in her vain attempts at grooming her unruly white fur and the latter pouring over emails. the record player speakers balancing precariously on a few uneven stacks of books clicked with the end of the miles davis' album a long time ago. he doesn't seem to notice.
jackson is lost in this somewhat incoherent argument while changing out the strings on his old guitar and waiting for giselle to finish up whatever she's working on. as usual, what was supposed to be ten minutes turned into two hours, and while he isn't frustrated, he is concerned. he wants to gently pull her from the cocoon of words she's retreated into, on the dimming blue light of her laptop screen, but doesn't know how. he can't figure out how to explain to giselle that he's worried about her. real conversation is not poetry. he's afraid of sounding ungenuine or condescending── like he has some right to dictate her life and jackson thinks there are enough people that do that around them. she's smarter than him. she's a doctor armed with the tools to understand her own self better than anyone else could. yet he feels like she's nothing but fraying edges that are slowly unravelling in a series of flights and appointments, with very little of giselle left at the centre of it all, and he's unsure of what he's supposed to do to stop it from happening.
so, jackson picks at his own thoughts in the naive hopes she might get the same soothing effect out of them. we feel as though we are cogs in the machine, but we aren't. we are in control of our own person, our own thoughts. we don't owe other people our lives, and the guilt that comes with feeling like we do was engineered that way. making grand, sweeping statements about the tech companies profiteering their data and the unnamed corporate ' they ' destroying the planet are comforts for him, as though identifying those problems no longer give them control over him. he doesn't know what's going on inside her head that's pushing her so close to what jackson thinks is the edge of her health, but he prattles on nonetheless in the hopes maybe she'll internalize that he's really saying ' it's okay to put away your laptop and do something you want to do. nobody is going to die. '
he turns in her direction, the old pullout creaking under his weight. he rests the body of the guitar against the ground between his feet and leans into it, fingernails picking distractedly at the initials he carved into the neck. when he speaks again it's softer, more vulnerable, a tone exclusively reserved for giselle, his chin resting against the head of his acoustic. there is no malice or frustration when he quietly asks, " are you almost done ? "