Portishead
Dummy

THE REVIEW

(1970s)

"Do you want to come see the mannequin?"

This story again, those two are always talking to me about the mannequin!!! I'm thirteen years old, the spring within, what do I care about some kind of giant doll? But the fact is that those two are the G. twins and they are at least as beautiful as Fujiko and Lady Oscar.

And anyway, no one knows the story of the mannequin, except maybe the families living on the lower floors of the old noble palace. It seems that Count T. lived with a simulacrum of his dead wife and that said simulacrum is still there after more than a hundred years.

"So, do you want to come or not? You do know it was the count's wife, right?"

"Great idea to be with a mannequin, you always get along with a mannequin."

"Look, it's a romantic story."

"Boh, maybe. But apparently, you can get a lot more than Pinocchio from Master Cherrytree's log." I act all cocky, obviously, and while I do it, I hate myself a little bit. Besides, that's not the point.

"We are friends with the caretaker's daughter and we're always wandering around the palace, we shouldn't touch anything, but how can we not? Once we opened one of the archive cabinets and we saw it. It's made of wood covered with something that looks like skin, but the face is painted plaster. If you help us, we can take it out and stand it up again, it's there folded upon itself like a discarded thing."

"Folded upon itself like a discarded thing." That's the point.

...

We are four: me, the G. twins, and the caretaker's daughter. We climb the stairs as carefully as cats, enter the room without turning on the light. We open the cabinet and the first thing is a sweetish smell, a cube of rotten sugar. Then from a mass of silk and wood, the rosy complexion of the face emerges.

Here are the gnawed hands, here are the disgusting hair. Here's the glassy fixity of the eyes.

Careful not to make the slightest sound, we pull it out and, after straightening it, we stand it up by leaning it against a table. Finally, we step back a few paces...

(I don't know why I keep using the masculine, it's a female mannequin)

...we step back a few paces and she, torn, bewildered, and absent, looks at us from the other world. She resembles Isabelle Adjani in the final scene of Adele H.

...

(1990s)

I feel something bad on me, a half-shiver, a kind of stupid nausea. And so I have to do something, like cleaning: enough chaos, enough dust in the eyes.

I'm chronically messy, but sometimes in moments of emptiness, I'm seized by an sudden urge to tidy up. It might be that when I look at a well-ordered table, I almost feel like I'm climbing out of the hole I've gotten myself into.

But to clean, you need music, I usually opt for safe stuff, hyper classics, albums of the heart, no mistakes allowed in the rituals.

This time, however, I decide to take a risk, yesterday X gave me a new cassette, "people like Massive Attack," they said, and I really like Massive Attack.

Then there's that title, "Dummy" and "Dummy" means mannequin.

Ding ding ding...

...

What is this stuff? Hyper-depressed dub? Melancholic white soul? I feel like I'm in a car, only there's no road, but instead a kind of drift between the walls of the house. It's a sensation I know very well and it takes me back to a place where as a boy I discovered a couple of secrets. And so yes, I'm in a car, but I'm also in an old attic with comics, cookies, and the "Profondo Rosso" cassette.

The music breaks, remains suspended, stretches into a deep echo that redraws the spaces and gives another breath to things. What is this stuff? Cinema for the ears? Sick lounge? And why is that voice so sad?

In response, the cabinet doors, of that cabinet, open like windows in the night, the voice, that voice, comes from there....

...

Meanwhile, the cleaning goes on and wide portions of the house embrace the mystery of a ruthless order. In a slow-motion that hugely separates moments, my gaze embraces every detail, I think it's the other side of things, the one that's advisable to just barely touch, but the impression is that the voice doesn't just touch it.

Once the work is done, there's only one thing left to do: sit and contemplate the new brilliance. Sure, that voice is still there, but how can you feel sad in front of a well-ordered table?

Trallallà...