A Thousand Plateaus

it’s saturday night, almost midnight. i can’t sleep and i’m listening to laura veirs’s “shadow blues” on repeat. you know what this means: this will end in an orgy of self-pity again. so you might as well skip this entry. i’ve been to the gym again today. been there yesterday and the day before yesterday. i’m there too much. and even though i’m working out frequently i don’t notice any changes on, in or around my body anymore. seems like i have reached some kind of border and from now on my body will change only imperceptibly. fair enough. why shouldn’t it join the deleuzian madhouse as well?

you know what troubles me most, though? i’ll tell you nevertheless. it troubles me that i haven’t written a proper song in such a long time. it might have been the longest stretch of time in my life that i haven’t written a song. i mean, obviously i shouldn’t force it or get all tense about it. i should just relax and think: okay, if a song is coming, it’ll be coming. but at the same time i know that songs don’t just come along. you have to work for them. you have o sit down and fucking *write* them. and nobody has ever gotten a song out of  sweating in the gym each day.

there has been a lot of inspiring music lately that should have made me compose. laura veirs. kate bush, james yorkston. syd matters. and many more. great song. but how can music that makes you become imperceptible inspire you? it’s kind of a paradox. i’m missing rob and his ability to bond with me and then come up with a beautifully crafted song within a single jam session.

girls who like girls
are sitting at the bar
and you are far and my friend says:
with someone else.
as if i cared.

i’ve got a thousand things to do
i’ve got pen and paper
i’ve got a fully charged battery
for my new apple ibook

i’m sitting by the river
sitting in some café
overtipping the waitress
because she smiled at me

girls who like girls
have paid and left the place
and i’ve been here for days looking out
for someone else.
as if you cared.

there are a thousand girls to kiss
i’ll be immersed in beauty
’cause i have got the poetry
that you were always lacking

i’m sitting by the river
sitting in some café
smiling at the waitress
because the only guest that’s left is me

the past days i took the ibook and my ‘real’ books and went to the café around the corner, sat there for three or four hours and worked. surprisingly, i can work better in such a noisy and crowded enironment than at home. when i’m sitting on my own in front of the pc i get depressed pretty quickly. not because of the work, but simply because it’s so quiet and calm - even if music is playing. i don’t know - somehow i’m really enjoying the company of strangers. also in the café there’s no distraction from the tv or from emails. the flipside is that i ususally have to listen to four or five james blunt songs - which really sucks because he is really crap.

so right now i’m sitting in the café again – which is kind of daring, because it’s carnival in cologne. which means: an entire week of total state of emergency: people dress up in fancy costumes, don’t work, get drunk, bawl to horrible songs, puke on the sidewalk.

all the preceding years i fled or hid in my apartment, but this year i wanted to participate as well. it always starts on a thursday: “weiberfastnacht” – and the whole day the women are in charge. which means that they can stop you on the street and ask you to kiss them. a friend of mine once said: “everyone who doesn’t get laid on weiberfastnacht can’t be helped!” this sounded … well … promising to me. so i put a lot of thought into a costume: i glued some old vinyl 45ers onto a shirt and became a… single! i know, it’s hi-la-ri-ous, but that’s just the level of humor you can expect on karneval.

anyway, on thursday night i put on my costume, and even though i had severe doubts whether i would do the right thing (knowing myself well enough that i’m bound to feel uncomfortable in a loud and drunken crowd of people shouting along to senseless songs) i went to a big club in my neighborhood to PARTY! well, i stood in a long line in front of the entrance with a hundred other people who were freezing their balls off because the club was so crowded that they wouldn’t allow any more people in unless someone left. after an hour of waiting i turned around and went home. that’s not my idea of fun. the whole karneval thing is not my idea of fun, actually. so i didn’t get laid. i’m probably the only one in the entire city, but who cares!

so now i’m sitting here in the café, and even though there are balloons and tickertape everywhere and a couple of people are hanging around in costumes, they played the johnny cash version of “hurt” the other minute – which was very weird and intense with this karneval surrounding and the karneval people and the karneval city.

paula wrote. i had asked her about one recurring image in her poetry, that of “birds on the ground, walking through | the snow in the dark, crashing into trees”. and she explained: “i have a fascination with the idea of birds who wake up during the night, stunned, without the ability to fly in the dark sky, so they drop down from their nests and walk around on the ground.” and i thought that this sounded *so* much like her and me.

this myspace thing is really starting off! it’s great! i already have over 700 hits, over 90 friends and the other day i got a message from one deni bonet. she wrote: “Just listened to your clips. I like them alot! Do you ever come to NYC? Would love to hear you live! I’m a singer/songwriter/violinist who toured or performed with Sarah McLachlan, REM, Robyn Hitchcock for many years. (and many others). Recently I toured with Cyndi Lauper. If you ever need a violinist, let me know!” and i thought: wow! the internet is great!

so what else happened: not many good things, unfortunately. bernd, my friend and colleague had spent a couple of days in olomouc where jana lives and he reported that she has a (new) boyfriend now. which is okay, because it only confirmes the by now well-known fact that i don’t really leave lasting impressions on women.

what troubled me more was that another friend and colleague told me that his brother, who is 37, has a brain tumor and that he is going to die. this really shocked me: he had surgery at the beginning of the week but they say that there’s no chance he’s going to survive. he will get chemo, but this will only prolong his life by a couple of months. i felt was so sorry. there’s nothing one could do. it really freaks me out the we (that is: me and my other colleagues) cannot even do anything for my friend. there’s nothing one could say. there’s nothing one can do. it’s terrible and i feel totally helpless and at a loss.

do you know these moments when dreams come back to you? suddenly they’re back from the night before, so vividly and alive that you wonder how you could ever have forgotten them. they come back to you in a flash. and in flesh. because it’s not that the images are first and then they make sense and affect you. but an abstract feeling is first : dread or fear or terror :  arbitrary and unmotivated. it grasps you from out of nowhere. and only then the images come back to you one by one and you remember that this is the very same feeling that scared you up from your sleep.

i am in an apartment with princess superstar. it’s not my apartment, this i know. the princess is packing a couple of things into a bag. it might be she who is living here. suddenly s. enters. and i don’t see her face, only her figure, i recognize her immediately by the way she moves, i see her head from the side and her face is covered by her hair. and her hair is the most amazing color – i’m startled by it and i’m thinking : what color is this? it is a mixture of gold and nacre. its shimmering is unearthly. and i turn around and leave.

you give me terror
and then you give me
more terror.

sitting in the café. writing on my thesis and a song is playing that s. had recorded for me once : “gabriel” by lamb. “i can fly but i want his wings” fuck! i#m missing her so much. i cannot tell you how much i am missing her, i am fucking missing her! everything about her. all the little, abstract things : a movement, a breath, a strand of hair. i cannot hit the keys hard enough or fast enough or blink my eyes rapidly enough. “i can love but i need his heart“. fuck. i had promised myself not to think about her today, even though its valentine’s day. and i had managed pretty well until now. fuck. fuck. fuck. it makes me so tired. it makes my limbs go lead and my palms go sweat.

laziest sunday ever. actually i had planned so many things today - did none.  came home at four last night from dötre’s birthday party, which was really great. so today i slept until twelve, then did the ususal obligatory mail and quotachecking and then i fell asleep again. it’s eight in the evening now and i’m just fixing myself something to eat.

tried some of the chord patterns ideas that i’ve gathered over the years to see if anything like a song will come out. it didn’t really. i have a couple of ideas for the lyrics, but nothing coherent yet. sorry, but that’s already been the most exciting thing that’s happened today. tomorrow the final week of the semester will start.

tonight at 23:00 you might catch susanne and me in the t.v.. we’ve been to the recording of a ”zimmer frei“ show two months ago, and it’s aired tonight.

some random facts and thoughts:

on tuesday night i went to this great cocktail bar with susanne and conny. we stayed until they closed the place at three in the morning, and it was great! we had such a fun time. the bar is very small and stylish! awesome atmosphere and yummy cocktails i paid as much for the drinks as i would have for a three course first class dinner, but it was worth it.

went to ikea with conny and astrid yesterday, which was fun. we were having sort of seinfeld-dialogues and were running around totally immersed in our consumer frenzy. we bought quite a few things. some of them for the copy room at work which is supposed to become a staff room/lounge once we have interiordecorated it. i also bought a closet for my bathroom and i spent all evening putting it together. astrid gave me a cd from a band called syd matters. great songs! inspiring stuff. made me want to compose.

i’m totally confused. the past days have left me restless and wondering about the world. it all has to do with the 200 lurkers. through myspace.com i have received quite a few very encouraging comments in the past days and people are asking for cds. it’s weird to know that there are people on the other side of the earth - in japan, in america - who care abut the music, who download the songs, who put them on their web-pages.

yesterday i got a message from a musician from berlin and he wants to play at a club in cologne called blue shell and he’s looking for a local band to join him so he asked the 200 lurkers - which is extraordinary. the blue shell is a really cool and BIG club. i saw emiliana torrini there with s. two days before our oh-so-fancyful relationship ended because she broke up with me. so if there’d really be the chance to play there it would be kind of ironic.

now, i have no idea what to do. one part of me says: “well, that’s nice. but you have to concentrate on your work! feel flattered and kindly reject the offer!” and another part of me simply shouts out: “go for it!”. i told thomas about the offer today and he sounded as if he was all for it. which is strange because HE should be the reasonable voice that says: “no way! finish your thesis first!”

and then a guy from bielefeld sent me a mail (he was/is organizing concerts and so he knew the nerve bible and our songs) and he wrote that he was putting together a cd for a funeral and if i could send him an mp3 of ‘ohne dich’ because he wanted to include it. and i just can’t get used to the idea that our songs mean so much to people, that they’re even using them for something so intimate and private as a funeral.

and it reminded me of rob’s funeral and how struck and stunned and shocked we all were. and that the funeral service had nothing to do with him. we were singing those christian hymns which didn’t have any relation whatsoever with him. we should have sung a smiths song instead. but it was all so unreal and nightmarish.

paula wrote and sent me a text that her psychiatrist had given to her. i wrote her back the other night and here’s parts of that:

paula wrote: i want to share with you something that my therapist gave me last year. it’s a brief text by kay redfield jamison, who is a psychiatrist who is also bipolar. here’s the text:
 
“I believe that curiosity, wonder and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent ar vital things; and the intense experiences and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do. I believe, in short, that we are equally beholden to heart and mind, and that those who have particularly passionate temperaments and questioning minds leave the world a different place for their having been there. It is important to value intellect and discipline, of course, but it is also important to recognize the power of irrationality, enthusiasm and vast energy. Intensity has its costs, of course — in pain, in hastily and poorly reckoned plans, in impetuousness — but it has its advantages as well.
 
Like millions of Americans, I was dealt a hand of intense emotions and volatile moods. I have had manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, since I was 18 years old. It is an illness that ensures that those who have it will experience a frightening, chaotic and emotional ride. It is not a gentle or easy disease. And, yet, from it I have come to see how important a certain restlessness and discontent can be in one’s life; how important the jagged edges and pain can be in determining the course and force of one’s life.
 
I have often longed for peace and tranquility — looked into the lives of others and envied a kind of calmness — and yet I don’t know if this tranquility is what I truly would have wished for myself. One is, after all, only really acquainted with one’s own temperament and way of going through life. It is best to acknowledge this, to accept it and to admire the diversity of temperaments Nature has dealt us.
 
Exuberance and delight, tempered by deep depressions, have been lasting teachers. An intense temperament has convinced me to teach not only from books but from what I have learned from experience. So I try to impress upon young doctors and graduate students that tumultuousness, if coupled to discipline and a cool mind, is not such a bad sort of thing. That unless one wants to live a stunningly boring life, one ought to be on good terms with one’s darker side and one’s darker energies. And, above all, that one should learn from turmoil and pain, share one’s joy with those less joyful and encourage passion when it seems likely to promote the common good.“

and i wrote: i’m glad though that you sent me the text your therapist gave you. it makes sense. i found a lot of my own thoughts in it. even though i’m not bipolar or psychotic in a clinical sense. but i sure agree that intense experiences are those that move you the most. and isn’t being moved - or moving by yourself - what life should be about? sometimes, when i can’t sleep, i’m brooding over what i would do if some fairy came along and asked me to choose between a quiet life without surprises (you know, like radiohead’s ‘no surprises’) and an intensive life, even if intensity included pain and sorrow and loneliness. almost every time i fall asleep with the firm belief that i would choose intensity. i think a couple of years ago i would have chosen the quiet life. i think i went through some very intense moments in the past years: overwhelmingly beautiful ones and those which left me totally desolate and desperate. both have made me what i am. and i like what i am. even though i’m sad and lonely most of the time recently i would not exchange it with a stupid happiness that lobotomizes you.

i know that all the beauty and the fuckedupness have made you what you are. and you should like what you are. if only because you are someone i love. and you are someone i’m proud of. and you’re someone i don’t want to miss in my life.

it’s when the intense experiences or affects make you unable to move, when they paralyze you and make you unable to (re)act that things really start to go the wrong way. you know that all this is pure deleuze, don’t you? one of the most important terms for him is ‘intensities’ and his entire philosophy is based on the principle to keep things moving, keep them flowing, liquefy structures, using lines of flight. i know: this doesn’t help either you or me. and it won’t turn the sadness into joy.

what i like about good old gilles is that he turns the logic around: an affect is not ‘essentially’ sad or joyful. you have to judge it on the grounds of what it does to you:

“Affects are becomings: sometimes they waken us in so far as they diminish our power to act and decompose our relationships (sadness), and sometimes they make us stronger in so far as they increase our power and make us enter into a more vast or superior individual (joy).” Joyful affects “increase the power to act, to be moved by joy, to multiply the affects which express or encompass a maximum of affirmation“.

i think this ultimately means that even happiness - if it diminishes your power to act because it makes you content and slow and full and unwilling to move - is a sad affect. and similarly pain - if it makes you act and pushes you - can be a joyful affect.