Fifty Avenue, Sunday, October 2, 1960, Dawn.
Audrey was worried. They all said she could do it, that playing Holly would be a challenge, but that like everything else, it would come naturally to her. Naturally, they said naturally. In Roman Holiday, they said she was so lovely and natural, and then gave her the Academy Award. But that wasn’t acting, not like the Patricia Neal kind that made you really think and really feel. Now there, she believed, was a real actress. Pat could play anything, but Audrey, sitting in a yellow cab, waiting for Blake Edwards to call action, just had intuition. Intuition and luck. Audrey missed her ten-week-old baby, Sean, whom she left with the nanny back in Switzerland, and she began to wonder if she was wrong about leaving him in the first place. This was the longest she had ever been away from him. He would be fine, she assured herself, though it was difficult to forget the recent string of high-profile kidnappings back home (she and Mel had taken severe precautions not to publicize the name of their nanny on her whereabouts). No amount of cigarettes could ease her tention, but she was desperate and smoked on anyway, sometimes shakily, like a gambler with a bad hand.
The street was empty, like one of those tumbleweed roads in a western movie. A crowd would be gathering soon. It was all so nonsensically difficult, down to the Danish pastry in the bag beside her. Ho would she eat that thing? Audrey didn’t want to be troublesome, but she despised Danishes, and asked Blake if he wouldn’t mind if she were to walk up to Tiffany’s with an ice-cream cone instead. But he said no. Of course, he was completely justified. This was breakfast after all, and who would believe that?
(…) A man approached the cab and asked Audrey if she was ready. Yes, she told him, she was, and braced herself. She waited. Outside, the sun was not yet up. (…) “They’re rolling…” Audrey heard, and a second later, the second A.D cued the cabbie, and they were off. The scene had begun. (…) They wouldn’t have many takes (the sun would be too bright soon), and even though it was a chilly Sunday morning, the people of New York would begin to pour out quickly. (…) Audrey couldn’t rush it, though. If Tiffany’s was, as she says in the script, the place where Holly and things went together, she would be wise to linger at the window and take it very slow, savoring it the way one would a moment of total satisfaction. (…) One by one the city blocks fell away, and as the cab approached 727 Fifth Avenue, it slowed beside the curb and came to a stop. Audrey stepped out of the car and shut the door behind her. Rather than approach right away, she paused on the very edge of the sidewalk and looked up at Tiffany’s.
![You are the only person on earth, Lover, who has ever known and loved all of me – Men love me ’cause I’m pretty – and they’re always afraid of mental wickedness – and men love me ’cause I’m clever, and they’re always afraid of my prettiness – One or two have even loved me ’cause I’m lovable, and then of course I was acting – But you just do, darling – and I do – very very very much -
[x]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/1e5209799d39ad2cad40807f0875e315/tumblr_misx0o9Oby1rku28uo1_500.png)
![sophistae:
You try to remember the places of your childhood, when suddenly you see the past approaching in a style of music you thought had long ceased to exist, when you realise many of the spirits within yourself which you believed had long since perished are still alive. — Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar, Geçmiş Zaman Köşkleri
01. Validè Sultana, Callisto Guatelli Pasha [1856]02. La gondole barcarolle, Sultan Abdülaziz [1861]03. Muniré Sultana, Callisto Guatelli Pasha [1856]04. Marche Oltenitza, Her Excellency Saide, Wife of Ömer Pasha [1855]05. Şarkı, Sultan Selim III [arr. Guatelli Pasha; 1856]06. Marche Osmanié, Callisto Guatelli Pasha [1861]07. Near the Southern Shore of the Crimea, Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky [1880]08. Bosphorus by Moonlight, Op. 4: III. Allegro, Emre Aracı — 8tracks; download
notes of interest: This is a mixtape for impromptu imperial #feels of Ottoman variety, for reading a little too much Orhan Pamuk, for the mothers and daughters of Sultans who spoke in French and composed music.
more notes of interest: Validè Sultana was the mother of Sultan Abdülaziz, and she once slapped Empress Eugénie on the face. Muniré Sultana was the daughter of Abdülmecid I, and she received a Western-style education. She was an accomplished pianist, and designed a palace for her father before dying at the age of seventeen. Saide was actually named Ida and was from a Hungarian family, and she had been a pupil of Karl Czerny. She accompanied her husband to expeditions and battlefields, so she could have her marches performed during the battles. (& The text on the cover image is a butchered quote from Orhan Pamuk’s My name is Red.)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/7b3323c52b428cbce96cbe0525e5203c/tumblr_mi6nudRzrJ1riatdoo1_500.png)
