When I write now I do not invent situation, characters, or

Host: The morning light filtered through the cracked blinds of a small studio apartment, spilling thin rays across a cluttered desk filled with papers, typewriter ribbons, and half-empty cups of coffee. The faint hum of the city leaked through the window, blending with the distant echo of a train horn.

Jeeny sat cross-legged on the worn floor, surrounded by a sea of scattered manuscript pages. Her hair caught the soft light, framing her face with quiet intensity. Jack leaned against the window, his shadow stretching across the room. His grey eyes moved slowly over the chaos, like a man trying to read the language of madness.

Jeeny: “Juan Goytisolo once said — ‘When I write now I do not invent situation, characters, or actions, but rather structures and discursive forms, textual groupings which are combined according to secret affinities among themselves, as in architecture or the plastic arts.’”

Host: Her voice lingered in the air, like a note held too long on a violin.

Jack: “So basically, he’s saying he doesn’t write about people anymore. He builds patterns. Forms without flesh. Architecture without inhabitants.”

Jeeny: “You make it sound empty. But maybe it’s not. Maybe he’s found a purer way — to let the structure speak. Like a cathedral built for silence.”

Jack: smirks slightly “Silence doesn’t sell, Jeeny. Readers want stories, not geometry. They want to feel — not decode.”

Host: Jack’s voice was low, slightly hoarse, like a man who’s argued with himself too long. The rain outside began to fall — slow, deliberate drops tapping the glass like a metronome marking time.

Jeeny: “But don’t you see? Goytisolo wasn’t abandoning emotion. He was reinventing it. By removing the obvious — the characters, the actions — he exposes what connects everything beneath. The hidden symmetry. The soul’s architecture.”

Jack: “Or maybe he just got tired of pretending fiction is real. Maybe he finally admitted that we’re just rearranging words, not creating truth. Language builds cages too, Jeeny — beautiful ones, maybe, but cages all the same.”

Host: Jeeny turned her gaze toward the window, the light catching her eyes like fragments of broken amber.

Jeeny: “But architecture isn’t a cage, Jack. It’s a frame — a structure that gives shape to emptiness. When you walk into a cathedral, you don’t see the air; you see how the space holds it. Maybe Goytisolo wrote like that — to show us how language holds the invisible.”

Jack: “So you think removing people makes it more human?”

Jeeny: “Sometimes it does. Because when the characters disappear, what remains is us — the reader and the text, face to face. It becomes a mirror, not a story.”

Host: The typewriter sat silent between them, its keys still bearing the faint traces of ink and effort. The room seemed to hold its breath, as if waiting for the next sentence that might never come.

Jack: “You know, there’s something cruel about that kind of writing. It’s like watching a dance without dancers, or listening to a song with no melody. Goytisolo stripped it all down — but what’s left when you take away the heart?”

Jeeny: “The structure is the heart. Think about it — when you look at a building by Gaudí or a sculpture by Brancusi, you feel something even if you don’t know the story behind it. The form itself breathes. That’s what he meant — to let the text become art, not confession.”

Host: The rain grew heavier, painting streaks of silver against the window. Jack moved closer to the desk, his hand brushing over the scattered pages, his fingers pausing on one with faint pencil marks.

Jack: “So you think writing should be like sculpture — cold, abstract, mathematical?”

Jeeny: “Not cold. Controlled. Like a composer shaping sound into silence. You don’t call Bach cold, do you? His music has structure, yet it bleeds emotion.”

Jack: “But Bach didn’t erase the human element. Every note carried breath, pulse, life. That’s the danger, Jeeny. You strip away too much, and all that’s left is design — cleverness pretending to be truth.”

Host: Jack’s tone was no longer mocking — it trembled with something deeper, like a fear that truth might be untouchable.

Jeeny: “And yet, every writer faces that — the illusion of control. Maybe Goytisolo was honest about it. Maybe he understood that we don’t create characters; we assemble patterns of meaning. And sometimes, the pattern tells the truth more purely than a person ever could.”

Jack: quietly “You talk about patterns like they’re divine.”

Jeeny: “Maybe they are. Isn’t everything built from patterns? Our breathing, our memories, even our pain. He just translated that rhythm into language.”

Host: The rain softened, dissolving into a faint mist. The city outside blurred into watercolor — forms merging, colors blending, like meaning itself dissolving into its structure.

Jack: “But where’s the heartbeat, Jeeny? The contradictions, the love, the regret? Architecture might endure, but only people make it matter.”

Jeeny: “And yet, people vanish. The structures remain. Maybe that’s what he was after — immortality through design, not emotion. Words that outlast the writer.”

Host: Her voice trembled, not from uncertainty, but from awe. The typewriter caught a ray of light, a thin glint on metal — like the pulse of something mechanical, yet alive.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right. Maybe he saw that stories die when the world changes — but forms… they adapt. They echo.”

Jeeny: softly “Yes. Forms evolve like memories. They survive translation.”

Host: For a moment, neither spoke. The air carried the faint smell of wet paper and dust. Jack sat down at the desk, staring at a blank page.

Jack: “You know… I used to think writing was about invention. About creating people who never existed. But maybe it’s more like uncovering something already there — like carving a statue from stone.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. You don’t invent; you reveal. Goytisolo didn’t stop writing — he just started excavating.”

Host: A soft smile crept across Jack’s face, weary yet sincere. The rain had stopped completely, leaving behind a bright silence that filled the room.

Jack: “So maybe his secret affinities weren’t between words — but between silences.”

Jeeny: “And maybe that’s the truest kind of writing — when the silence between the words speaks louder than the story itself.”

Host: The camera would pull back slowly now — the window, the pages, the two figures bathed in pale light. The city hummed beyond the walls, unaware of the quiet revelation inside that small room.

As the scene faded, only the typewriter remained — still, silent, yet somehow full of life, its keys waiting not for characters or actions, but for structure, rhythm, and the hidden harmony of things that secretly belong together.

And in that stillness — in the geometry of light and thought — the faith of Goytisolo’s architecture lived on:
not in invention,
but in the shape of what endures.