Pauses

An article in the New Yorker made me miss Paris. An evening stroll to the store made me miss all other evening strolls to the store when my head was full of ideas. I think in spasms and like all spasms they are barely controllable. If I am lucky, I get something from these mental explosions, I save it for later when it is all over and all is quiet again. But I am rarely lucky and what could have been the most exciting thing in the world yesterday becomes today as meaningless as anything else. And then there is nothing to do but wait: read halfheartedly, speak halfheartedly, and think halfheartedly. This is the time of looking backward. Reminiscing, trying to forget, trying to silence the voices, or voicing over what is normally kept in silence. This is also the time of looking forward; but without hope and right onto death. There is nothing that can be done to vindicate one's longevity, but even more so there is nothing that would justify one's premature departure.  It is a conspicuous waste of time which cannot be simply remedied by a willful act.

Dreams

Dreams are the worst. A bunch of nonsense tied into a loose narrative.

Last night was one of those. First, not only i couldn't sleep but neither could I think of anything remotely interesting or productive. And then this dream.

I had two girlfriends, both crazy jealous, both dressed in all black, hair also black, neither knows about the other. Never had I any fantasy remotely resembling any of this; one is plenty to handle but two! So one of them was super short for some reason and the other had attachment issues. The one with attachment issues had to 'habituate' herself to me by me stroking her lightly until she feels uncomfortable and tells me to stop. Ok I know where this one is coming from. I saw 'Hope Springs' before going to sleep where this was one of the 'sexercises' prescribed by Steve Carell the therapist to a long time married couple of Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. As one of the reviewers said, "If you like watching movies where old people are trying to have sex this one is for you!" But where the second girl is coming from I have no idea. Tommy Lee Jones was very good in the movie though...

I really prefer lucid dreams, ones when the frontal lobe is not completely asleep and tells you what to think of all the mess that is going on in the dream. They also never feel like sleep. Once I even dreamt of nothing at all but my brain still managed to concoct a whole research theory based on the eight pages of Heidegger's exposition of anxiety in Being and Time. Or Bergson's Time and Free Will actually - there was a lot of stuff about managing the idea of duration and extension.

another update

So no, of course yesterday's Grizzly Bear gig was not divine. But not profane either. How could it be: the venue, suggestively called 'Paradiso', used to be a church and is pretty much still is. Right above the stage and above an appropriate stained-glass window it still says 'SOLI DEO GLORIA' ("glory to God alone") which one can easily take as an astute commentary on the fake idols that are present on the stage at any particular day you happen to be there. And the guys from Grizzly Bear themselves are probably the closest thing to a church choir band than anyone else in my music library. Moreover, the smoke machines hadn't stopped working for a second so the band was constantly shrouded in a cloud, another suggestive symbol. To say nothing of the crazy light effects. Well, I'll say a bit. The main contraption looked like a bunch of balloons floating in the thin air and filled with candles. Need I say candles and churches go very well together. The congregation too was very solemn, the "hands folded tight" (Arcade Fire, 2010) kind of crowd. I, however, have failed to experience anything close to a religious trance. I blame my logic exam that was happening simultaneously with the gig and which (the former) I had to partially forfeit for that reason. When I had finished my exam in 25 minutes instead of 90 the woman who was administering the it looked genuinely worried, asked me if I was feeling well and when I answered I had to go must have assumed a close relative had died or, maybe, that an earthquake was coming. Despite the manic bike ride across the city it was worth it. And the afterparty had a revelation or two to offer. In a place called 'Waterhole' for some reason (reminded me of 'Watergate', ah, Berlin), a band called 'Ruben's Cosmic Jam' had a few revelations to offer. In their rendition of Bob Dylan's 'Knocking on the Heaven's Door' the singer insisted that  she'd rather knock on other people's doors than on God's door (who's not there to open anyway). Lesson learned. And a lot of fat kids dancing for some reason.