The movie is based on a text I wrote in 1996. It was featured in a novel by Assaf Gavron, whom I had met in the staff room of a local newspaper in Jerusalem. At the time we were writing journalistic pieces, but we already shared a sustained interest in literature. Incidentally, we both left Israel for Europe around the same time, but we kept in contact via email, Assaf from London, me from Amsterdam.
Those were pioneering times: universities were the only practical access points to the interconnected networks. If I was going to get online at all, those were my best bet. I had a friend at the university of Brussels who made no use of his account, and didn't mind "lending" it to me. Every single email Assaf received from me during this period came from this usurped account. The name was Patrick. Out of that borrowed identity, a character emerged, both real and unreal, woven out of experiences and fantasies of men in their mid-twenties, a figure scouting Western, cosmopolitan cities, searching for his soul, thrown in a civilization busy projecting itself against the end of history.
Out of that correspondence, Assaf crafted a companion for the protagonist of his first novel, Ice. Skeleton Armies was written when Assaf told me he needed a final letter by Patrick, and that it should be set in the future.
Assaf's early breakthrough with Ice was exciting for me, as a friend and as an aspiring writer for whom publishing a book was a heroic feat (later on, Assaf compiled a short sory of mine, Minor occultations, in Ototo). Revisiting these formative years, I remember I also genuinely liked the novel, a dark and deranged tale of a psychopath, and participating in the effort was exhilarating. Fifteen years later, Ice is being released into an ebook, and I am reclaiming my text with this video.
