“Why,” asks the girl at the gift shop register, echoing the question I’ve been asking myself on and off for the last week, “would anyone come here on vacation?”

“I’d had enough of the music scene, all that psychedelic shit and white honky monody.”

Cinema has always been a symbolic bulwark against death, but today, with national economies built on precarity and instant obsolescence, onscreen eternity is more desirable than ever.

I tie linen serviettes around my neck, a streamer, all colors: the plummed point of an artichoke leaf, Cinderella pumpkin orange, gold and cream like an ear of corn.