High ceilings, long thoughts
Those ceilings give something square meters can't: air. Bruno needs it. Below twelve degrees his body slows down — he loses concentration, becomes clumsy with his fingers — so the heating is always at twenty-four degrees and the vertical space helps the warmth circulate. When he sits on the balcony in his lime-green jacket, the neighbors can barely distinguish him from the foliage. Inside the apartment, verticality is part of how he organizes his life. Cables hang in order from hooks on the wall. The recorder rests on a high shelf. The map of Marseille with red recording dots is taped to the bathroom wall at eye height for someone who's five-foot-ten standing up.
The praying mantis is an animal that occupies space vertically: it perches on branches, stems, high surfaces. Bruno has reproduced that logic without thinking about it. His build is ectomorphic, long limbs, narrow shoulders. When he stands next to the mixing desk in a venue, his silhouette seems taller than it is. On Sundays he doesn't work and stays in that studio cooking something slow — tajine, ratatouille, dishes that take over an hour on a low flame — while reading about acoustics or insects. His other subject since childhood. He's learned to inhabit dead time the same way he inhabits tight spaces: without hurry, with his hands busy.
