A Thousand Plateaus

well, happy new year. it's 00:39 and i think for the first time in my life i spent new year's eve alone, drinking decaf diet coke. i'm leading such a glamorous life! i didn't get a single call and i didn't get a single sms. don't get me wrong, i'm not complaining. it just shows you that what it all comes down to is that i've never been more alone in my life.

2005 has not been a very good year. or maybe it has. no it hasn't. i lost s.. i made out with d.. i had a two months relationship with anne. i kissed and fell in love with a czech beauty. i gave two talks, one in front of a quite impressive panel. my body changed drastically: i started to go to the gym at least three times a week and i had the eye surgery so i don't have to wear glasses anymore. and despite all the hassle i still end up alone on new year's eve.

thursday night i was out with blane and two of his friends. it was really crowded and when i went to the bar to get another round i had to reach between two women who were sitting there, talking. so i mumbled "'cuse me" and suddenly one of them said to me: "you know, you smell really well." i was speechless. instead of replying: "and you are very attractive. we should get together and call ourselves an institute" and sitting on her lap directly i just blushed, took the beers, said "thank you" shyly and went back to the dance floor.

sitting at the pc. it's almost eleven at night. sigur ros through headphones. so sweet and delicate. ordinary eternal machinery like the grinding of the stars. i've been missing you all day long and the day before and the day before and the day before that. i've been thinking abou you and your face. i saw someone at the gym today and she walked the way you walked and she wore her hair the way you did and when i first saw her from behind my heart stopped and ice water was running through my veins and i stopped breathing. and then she met a friend and laughed and turned around and wasn't you and i thanked god and i thanked god. i'm missing you so much. it doesn't feel like it would ever stop.

i feel so separated from everything i want to be and everyone i want to be with. i wrote a long mail to paula today. i sat at the window and watched the snow falling. i sat on the sofa and watched mouths on tv speaking and screaming and singing and kissing. i sat at the pc and deleted spam mails. i sat there hoping you would have written. i sat on the sofa again watching more virtual people while my little apartment got hotter and hotter and i almost choked from the dry, stale air. then a reminder, a chance moment, something like a trace that brought me to pick up the headphones and put on the sigur ros cd. your heart like a dam when it breaks.

i'm missing you and your laughter. i was missing your laughter even in the last months that we'd been together. i remember that night at the movies, when we were watching a stupid film and i heard you laughing heartily in the dark next to me, sunken into the action and the silly dialogues, but you laughed and i looked over and i realized that i hadn't heard you laughing that way for a long time. for such a long time that i had already forgotten that you could laugh that way. and i was scared. and i knew that something was wrong.

i'm a one-man freak show. i shoot as good as william s. burroughs. and i'm as good a driver as james dean. i still don't know where or with whom to spend new year's eve. everybody i know is either out of town or at some private party. looks like i'll just stay home and work.

jana hasn't written yet. her face is on my pc desktop. she's sort of smiling into the camera, the strap of her light blue dress painting a longitude onto her bare shoulder, her face covered with freckles, her red hair surrounding it, a living frame woven of copper wire as delicate as the music that's streaming from one ear to the other, meets in the middle and clashes into a springtide. did i really touch this face? it seems so unlikely.

great! it's the first hour of the first day of the christmas holidays and already the ceiling is coming down. guess there two tough weeks ahead. and i wonder when i sing along with you...

the 200 lurkers were asked to play at an open air in summer.

here's something that thomas said yesterday in the colloquium. it concerend a very specific situation and text, but it sounded so zen-like and universal that bernd and i looked at each other in silent agreement and wrote it down:

"it's not lost - it's just organized differently"

went to see king kong with princess superstar and katharina tonight. we left in the intermission. it really sucked. had a beer instead and talked, which was nice. it's a quarter past two and i'll fall straight into bed now. alone. i cannot even begin to tell you how much i miss the feel of a warm, warm body, loving my touch.

i sent two cds and a book to jana today: the 200 lurkers album, a compilation with various songs that make me think of olomouc, and cohen's beautiful losers.

Moon River,
Wider than a mile:
I'm crossin' you in style
Some day.
Old dream maker,
You heart breaker,
Wherever your goin',
I'm goin' your way:
Two drifters,
Off to see the world,
There's such a lot of world
To see.
We're after the same
Rainbow's end
Waitin' round the bend,
My huckleberry friend,
Moon River
and me

tuesday night. the seminar was okay today. i showed video clips of freud, lacan & deleuze. didn't really manage to continue the work on the dissertation during the last three weeks, though :-( at least i'm not sick anymore. last sunday my parents and my sister and her boy-friend came visiting, which was okay. next saturday we'll have a christmas party at thomas' place. looking forward to that.

i really feel like complaining recently, but i don't really want to bore you with that. the other day, however, i stumbled upon a text that is about an interview that claire parnet is doing with deleuze. and it really touched me:

Deleuze asks first [...] what is sadness? It occurs when one is separated from a force of which I believed myself, rightly or wrongly, to be capable: I could have done that, but circumstances didn't allow, or it was forbidden, etc. All sadness is the effect of power over me.

On the other hand, Deleuze continues, joy is the realization of forces. [...] To take delight and joy is delighting in being what one is, that is, in having reached where one is. It's not self-satisfaction, not some enjoyment of being pleased with oneself.

Rather, it's the pleasure in conquest , as Nietzsche said, but the conquest does not consist of serving people, conquest is when painters use and then conquer colors. That's what joy is, even if it goes badly. For in this history of forces and conquest of forces, it happens that one can realize too much force for one's own self, resulting in cracking up, like Van Gogh. [...]

Realizing a force can require a price: one wonders, am I going to risk my skin/life ? As soon as one realizes a force, for example, a painter reaching for color, doesn't he risk his skin/life? Literally, one should think of the way Van Gogh went toward color, then experienced joy, and this is more connected to his madness than all these psychoanalytical stories. Something risks getting broken, it's too overwhelming for me, and that's what the complaint is, something too great for me, in misfortune or in happiness, but usually misfortune. 

you see, and that is the feeling that has accompanied me for so long now: that sadness of being separated from forces that i believed myself, rightly or wrongly, to be capable. and this concerns the two fields of writing songs and of love.

i feel separated from my ability to write, to sing and worst: to love. do you know this feeling as well? to be full of love, to believe of being capable to love someone so perfectly and tenderly but one cannot realize this force because circumstances don't allow it.

you see: i eventually DID manage to complain.

just a very short entry. i was terribly sick over the week-end. it started saturday night after dinner. horrible. i was throwing up all night long. it was gross. throughout the entire sunday every single bone in my body was aching, my skin was hypersensitive and my head felt like exploding. i have no idea where it came from, but thank god it's better today. i didn't go to work today, but will tomorrow because i have to teach.

so for the seminar tomorow i prepared lacan's "the agnecy of the letter in the unconscious" all day long - and i didn't understand a single word. it was frustrating. thomas always says that lacan would be so structural and easy to understand - the hell he is!!

the pre-vomiting week-end was frustrating as well. i feel really lonely lately. i feel like wasting my time, hanging around alone, just working. i want to meet people, that is: female people, that is: charming female people.

good news: someone from kansas has mailed and asked for a 200 lurkers cd :-)

here's what paula wrote in one of her last mails:

"you're just tired and you need someone."

for some reason that calmed me down. i don't knwo why but breaking it down into these very simple and plain registers made everything seem just like i would be able to manage it in the end.

i'm exhausted by my mediocracy. i know that i will never be as brilliant, precise, logic, inspired and academic as all the people i meet, read and admire. but i'm not really sad about this because i feel that this isn't what i'm good at. what makes me sad is that i haven't found the courage to finally concentrate on what i think i can do well, on what i think i'm good at, what i can do better than average. yes, bloody hell, of course that's the 200 lurkers, what else!!??! i think that even the worst song i've ver written was better than the best article or thesis i ever wrote. how can i persue any 'academic career' with confidence when i'm feeling like this? when i'm feeling that i'm doing something that i'm not good at while slowly losing my skills and inspirations for music, for writing? fuck. i've never seen people starting to cry after a talk i gave but i saw them crying listening to a song i wrote. i want to affect and be affected.