Today is my 19th day in Berlin, so far I have discussed middle-english poetry, rebirthing, Web2, the ‘long tail’ and (inevitably) fascism. I have enrolled myself in a German course and banged my head, violently, against the dative. Registered at the Bërgampt, drank countless coffees, partied (and written) till dawn and existed, mainly, in an amiable snowdrift of new and old acquaintances.
Perhaps I am fighting focus – the anxieties attendent upon re-opening the text seem to do with the fact that it’s voice (my voice?) was/is specific to the circumstances of its writing. Now that those circumstances have changed (from cellar to desk / from night to day/ from London to Berlin) can I maintain this voice? Do I want to?
On the one hand the ‘proffessional’ obligation is to the text (not my ego) but on the other the ‘artificial’ maintenance of this older/younger version of myself feels a bit like a security blanket (the vice of nostalgia) – all this ‘lonerism’ the nascent rituals of eccentric bachelordom – smoking, drinking, always alone – through choice apart, never ‘lonely’ exactly but in risk of heading that way.
But again – if writing is really ‘it’ then isolation is the psychological price.
“To dear?”
Perhaps, perhaps not. The notions of reverie and play require and imdenify (provide an alibi for) the idea of private, introspective (creative) space. This, almost by definition in a capitalist economy, equates with the idea of ‘wasted time’ – it is unproductive economically.
If capitalism is essentially the movement of thought to commodity (Late Capitalism would surely resist such a simplistic definition but its complexity belies the fact that this imperative still inherently informs its methodology) then the inversion of this idea, to move from commodity to thought, to create for the sake of creating – is to embrace process over objective, goal, or result.
The ‘solution’ ultimately proposed then is to reconcile (legitimise) play within the residual work ethic which insists upon productivity – a convergence which proposes simply ‘work more like play / play more like work!’
I sit in Sofia turning these ideas over, all terms are inverted, reversed and relisted. The coffee is finished and its time to head for B-Books (Astrid’s reccomendation) where, though German is the lingua franqa of such high falutin’ notions, I find evidence that here others’ thoughts have drifted along the same lines.