A Thousand Plateaus

what a day. i'm feeling dreadfull! yesterday a friend of mine turned thirty so we had a rather excessive party at a club where you can get over fourty differeny kinds of vodka. when i woke up this morning it felt as if my head was filled with lead. i've got a cold and actually i should not have been out drinking until four in the morning. at about one at night my voice dropped by three octaves, which was kind of cool because at one point during the conversation when everybody was quiet all of a sudden i groaned: "they sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the system from within" and it was so weird because i didn't recongize my own voice. i felt my lungs pressing out the air and my mouth forming the words but the voice that came out was that of a stranger.

an hour later my voice had totally gone though, and it hasn't really returned by now. in the supermarket today i couldn't really talk. not that i would lead extensive conversations in the supermarket in the first place, but not even the "hello" at the cashpoint came out all right. it was more like a barking so i caughed as an excuse.

instead of staying in bed and get some rest i went to the gym tonight. i think i have developed a kind of obsession with working out. i have to go every other day, other wise i'm getting nervous and restless. what is strange is that all the work out does not change anything about the live-savers i'm wearing around my belly.

but now about more important news: mia was right, of course: leo-lingerie is of course underwear with leopard-pattern. shame on me that i didn't get this at once.  well, i did not find this out imperically, if that's what you want to know :-)

so we met on monday and we spent over six hours together and it was fun again. even though, at one point, i started *the* talk and asked her what she was expecting and she said: "a relationship". well, i breathed in deeply and told her that a relationship was not what i was looking for right now. but i was all confused then, and when we said good-bye i think we were very close to kissing. when i went home i was so confused that i took the wrong subway-line.

anyway, we mailed some more over the week and i again told her that i cannot have a relationship right now because i've neither the time nor the energy to lead a relationship responsibly. she wanted to see me again nevertheless, so we're having an ice cream tomorrow afternoon.

what do we learn from that? nothing. exept that i feel bad to write about these things here because, well, i don't know. same old problem of sharing information that might not be intended to be shared.

mia commented: "also kind of interesting is that you thought you saw someone that might be me. what made you think you did?"

well, there are three things i know about you: judging from your mail alias you seem to like movies. i know that you've studied at our institute and i know that you like thomas. and all these things applied to the girl i saw there. i mean quite obviously they apply to about 2849 other students, so in fact the chances ight have been pretty slim that it has been you :-)

i still can't talk. tried some fake p.a. testing ("testing, one-two, test, test") and out came some very weak hoarse whispering. hope that my vocal chords will have recovered by tomorrow, otherwise it will be quite a strange date. i mean what else is there left to do if you cannot talk???

bah: feel lousy. i've got a cold and actually i wanted to go to the gym this afternoon but i've got a headache and all my bones are aching. so i stayed home. it's nine at night in the meantime and i'm listening to leonard cohen to get me in the mood for writing on the The Favorite Game chapter.

mia commented: "did she really say "leo dessous"?"

oh yes, she did! in fact she even specified that she didn't want anything pink or glittery. of course i googled leo dessous :-) i didn't really find anything, though. i must confess that i've never been very informed about women's lingerie, so maybe it's a very famous label. 

"what did you FEEL the moment you read this? teased? flattered? or rather alarmed?"

i think 'confused' says it best. for some unknown reason i immediately had to think of the bloody world-championship mascot "Goleo".

i guess the trick is to make up my mind what i want and then to just play it by ear. one thing i'm pretty certain of is that i have neither the time nor the mental capacity right now to start a serious relationship that requires real commitment. of course i would immediately change my mind if i met the woman of my dreams, but i don't think that this particular scenario is what we are talking about here.

so i have to find out what it is that kathy wants and then just be honest to her about my hesitations.

actually i thought that you (addressing mia now) had seen her the other day because when we were meeting there was someone at the café who i thought might be you.

somehow i knew that i would be a bad day when i woke up this morning. all day long i've been sort of down and depressed. not the kind of enjoyable blues one has from time to time that makes you pop out new great song-lines, but the feeling that it would be best to simply crawl back into bed again, only that it wasn't better in your dreams in the first place. and then while i was trying to order and structure the huge pile of papers on my shelf i stumbled across a letter from pretty much exactly one year ago: the last letter i wrote to s. after the break-up. *that* didn't raise my spirit.

the staff went out together last night because we had a little farewell party for stefanie and nina. it was nice. lots of laughter, lots of interesting discussions, lots of alcohol.

on monday i'm going to meet kathy for the third time. we had a 'date' on monday, and it was very nice. i felt more relaxed, talked a little bit about my work and was slightly charming. when we said good-bye at the subway station we hugged awkwardly. no, we did not kiss. probably because i/we didn't really feel like kissing, and also because the one thing that will not be engraved on my tombstone is: "he was a man of action!"

i wish i was surer about what i actually want: a relationship, an adventure or just the reassurance that i can win over a total stranger? it might be that i only want to test out my 'free market value' - which would really be unfair to kathy if she had serious intentions. but we haven't really talked about our expectations yet. we have to do this on monday!

in a mail which she sent the other day she wrote me that was planning to go shopping next week. "i need new clothes: jeans and a sweater maybe and i also want to get some leo-dessous. and new sneakers..." and i wasn't really sure why you would want to mention to someone you have only met twice that you're going to buy underwear - and what kind of. i'm not sure whether i'm ready for the dessous-information yet and how to react towards it. is that a come on???

this is the first week-end of spring. sun shining. birds singing. window open. heating off. when i was sitting in the café yesterday afternoon people were sitting at tables on the sidewalk in the sun, pursing their eyelids in disbelief. spent this sunday morning cleaning the apartment and now i'm ready for action: i've almost finished the subchapter on The Favorite Game. :-) well, to be honest: it's far from being finished but i still have two weeks of semster holidays left and i hope that i will make it by then. so this is the plan for today: keep writing. gym. dinner. zimmer frei (tv show). sleep.

but first i wanted to quickly update the journal. so here we go. during the last days i redesigned the 200 lurkers web-site. so check it out sometime. i still haven't managed to properly record the new song "the only guest" but maybe i will next week. i've started listening to the three latest cohen albums: dear heather, ten new songs and the future. what a voice :-)

i also wanted to thank everybody who shared his/her thoughts about the latest entry. when i re-read it i realized that it sounded a little odd. it *did* sound, as leah commented, as if i wanted to date a female equivalent of me. which i clearly don't want! but i want to date someone who speaks the same language, in a way. and it's not really so much about the person i'm dating in the first place. it's more about me feeling uncomfortable with what i'm saying and thinking. which is not a good thing. somehow i seem to think that i have to fulfill some imaginary ideal that the other person expects me to be. instead i should really don't worry about the other person's expectations so much. if we don't click, we don't click. and if i have to bend myself too much then it's probably not the right thing in the first place.

bottom line: i should be more relaxed and simply be 'myself' instead of suppressing my way of thinking, feeling and expressing because i fear to be rejected. hm, that's probably it. my fear of rejection. being rejected by someone i don't even know much or have an emotional investment in yet. it's my old tendency to be a pleaser.

hm, leonard is just singing "be for real".

now you see i'm not naive
i just would like to believe
what you tell me
so don't give me the world today
and tomorrow take it away, oh no.
i don't care about the truth.
except for the naked thruth.   

so, against all odds kathy has been mailing me on a daily basis since monday and yesterday she asked whether we should meet again. which we will do on monday. which is tomorrow, i just realize!! well, i'm gonna be relaxed, without expectations and without concerns about what i think she thinks.

and now for some superfluous ramblings from a mail to paula. she wrote me that she thought a lot about what will happen to her when she dies. and that she was sort of scared by what might be or might be not. so i told her my take on things:

i think that when we're asking ourself "what will happen to me when i'm dead" we have a very limited understanding of 'me'. basically we mean our consciousness. that which is concerned with apperception and reflection upon our ontological status. but i think there is much more that is 'me': an abstract me. an unpersonal me. a me that is not me. my body, first of all. it is there and it is working. in a way without me or independently from me. my heart is beating on its own. i don't have to consciously tell it to beat. my lungs are working. my liver is working. all these things happen unconsciously. happen machinically. my lungs, my liver, they don't care about my personality or subjectivity. they are abstract. they are simply working. they consume energy, they produce energy. they perceive intensities and re|act. they are a 'we that is not me'. microbes in my body. forces and energy and pure intensities. atoms and molecules.

the question is: what happens with these things when i die. what happens to my body? these things will not vanish. they simply enter into different assemblages: with earth. with animals. they will become other bodies, eventually forming other consciousnesses. and all the physical energy stored in my body will be released into the world, or rather: into earth. to nourish, fuel or fertilize.

in the same way i think that the psychic energy will not vanish. or at least that is what i experience with, for example, rob. when i listen to songs that we have recorded, they give me such an intense sense of presence and such a boost of energy. something can be stored in language, in music, in painting, in memory. it's not that it's *rob* personally or as an image or as someone you could talk to – but it's his force, his abstract it-ness that shines through the music and with the music and enters my body and my mind and brightens it, affects it. it is the force of *a* life.

so when i die, i know that my subjectivity or personality or consciousness will probably cease to exits. but that which made my consciousness possible, these things will remain and simply move somewhere else, disperse into the world to become something else. but since *i* won't be there, i cannot mourn or feel sorry for not being here. it's like when squidward in the spongebob film says: "too bad spongebob is not here to enjoy spongebob not being here."

this is kind of an important entry. well, not really. maybe it is. i don't know.

i decided that things are going the wrong way. and this is because i'm pushing them. that's not good. anyway, here's the story:

yesterday i met with this girl who i got to know briefly via the net. let's call her kathy. she is very nice and quite attractive. kind of a mixture between some actress whose name i can't remember and suzanne vega. she's got kindoflike suzy's hair and dark, large eyes. anyway, we talked for over three hours while we were having coffee and we even realized that we shared some similarities and tastes: we both like decaf diet coke - and we're probably the only two people in the world who do so.

so i was sitting there with this smart and attractive girl in a nice café and i thought: well, this is going pretty well. but during our conversation i realized that i suddenly changed. i mean i didn't recognized myself. i said stupid things. well, not stupid things, but totally irrelevant and superficial things. hollow words and hollow sentences and just some chit-chat that didn't really have anything to do with me.

with what is me.

with what interests me.

with what inspires me.

with what affects me.

i realized that i was censoring every sentence, that i was filtering everything i said. because, well, because we were so different. she has done business studies and is now working as a tax consultant. how weird would it have been to tell her that i'm just brooding over psychoanalytic concepts of the Fort-Da game and its relation to language in freud and lacan. how can i talk to anybody who is not into cultural studies and continental theory about anything that is important to me. i mean, read the bloody entries of the past weeks: there is not really a border between my work and my life. one is merging into the other. like a moebius-strip. see, there. AGAIN!

it seems that as soon as i begin to talk i start thinking in these terms. which doesn't mean that i'm sophisticated or more intelligent, because i haven't even really understood what i'm talking about. but the mere fact of talking about these things helps me understanding them. i HAVE to talk about them. and i WANT to talk about them. i want to explain to my friends, to my partner, to my lover what a haecceity (in deleuze) is and what it is for me without having them thinking that i'm totally nuts.

normally it isn't a problem, because the people i'm with in my everyday life talk and think the same way. but kathy is from a 'different world'. everything that mattered to me (including music and arts) was beyond the language, terms and concepts of our conversation.

i think i am caught in a very small horizon. it hasn't been a problem yet, since the three girls i had a serious relationships with shared it. and i think - and this is the point - that i someone with whom i could have a possible relationship must share it as well. therefore it's no use to date totally strange women in the hope that they're saying: 'oh yes, sure! corporeal concepts in postmodernism, i though about those last week-end all afternoon!' or 'sure! laurie anderson is great! i really like her early stuff when she was experimenting with these drum machines and samples...'

here's what i need to do: i have to stop searching. i have to stop pushing. eventually i will meet somebody, and ideally i will meet her via friends or via my work or at a concert. and she will get me on her wavelength. and i will not have to think twice about what i'm saying and whether it will sound smart-assish or too stupid.

oh god! s. was perfect!

no, she wasn't. otherwise she'd still be here. "good things never end."

well, well. this afternoon princess superstar called and she asked: waht do you do tonight?" and i said "nothing" "good!" she said, "i need to get out tonight! let's meet!"

so we went out. and it was nice. we had beer and walnut-vodka. i got pretty drunk - and still am :-) and while we were sitting in the crowded bar i felt like the protagonist in the song in downloaded today: "rocket man" in the kate bush version: achingly beautiful! kind of like "space walk":

 She packed my bags last night pre-flight
Zero hour nine a.m.
And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then
I miss the earth so much I miss my wife
It’s lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight

and fucking hell! i felt lonely with all the kissing and hugging going on around me. it was like this was a parallel world that i had no acces to. like another dimension that i would never participate in.

And I think it’s gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I’m a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

i mean i've never been more attractive. i've never been smarter or funnier. why is it that i'm just ignored. i *told* you that you don't want to read this!

fuck fuck fuck. did i mention that i have a blind date on monday? well, i have.

I’m not the man they think I am at home

and i think it's gonna be a long. long time...

arghrgharhgrga. baaaaad dreams tonight. woke up being relieved to find myself in the real life instead of the condensations and displacements of my unconscious. yes, s. was there - or at least a letter from her - saying that she had joined a theater company and was going to canada. and with the letter she had send a package and it was filled with cds and books that were all wrapped carefully and somehow i knew that this signified that she's missing me and loving me.

"when you come around
baby, i feel so blue
and i sleep with the tv on
it's the only sound now love's gone"

here are the subject lines of the mails i got in the past four hours: 

  Urgent Notification #2100389598503064
  NOTICE VISA-MASTER CARD LOTTERY
  Low mortagge ratee approvall
  Get First Pick on FL's East Bay Country Club from $99K!
  Lowest rate approved
  Software

  Own a luxury  property in Spain from ONLY 118,000 Euros

  She wants a better sex? All you need's here!

sigh. i wish i had been cleverer and not posted my mail address on my websie for years. guess it's my own fault. also: i HATE blog.com. nothing ever works. the entire layout keeps fucking up all the time.

it's almost two in the morning. i'm still sitting at the computer, writing mails and correcting parts of the discussion of The Favorite Game that i've written this afternoon. the plan is to continue there tomorrow morning, so actually i should be in bed and in the land of dreams right now. but before i go there i just wanted to write about something else that struck me today:

a friend of mine once said: "the text is always smarter than the author." and today i realized that this is - obviously - also true for a 200 lurkers song: "breathing water". the lyrics are inspired by a story that my first long-term girlfriend told me:

once you told me
how your father
took you swimming
years ago when you were young
 
and he told you
that his daughter
had a magic lung
and that you were able breathing under water
 
when he swam another round
you tried though you could hardly swim
and almost drowned
 
i had trusted you
like you trusted your father
and now i am breathing water

i feel a bit silly explaining the song, but obviously it was meant to create an analogy between how my ex had trusted her father and how i had trusted her and that in both instances this trust was betrayed and led to hurt. i stole the line "breathing water" from a poem by sylvia plath and for me it simply meant: drowning. breathing water means: to drown.

but today i realized that this is of course only *one* interpretation which i had thought would be the exclusive one. because you can read "and now i am breathing water" also as "and now i can breathe under water" - the total opposite.

i think not even the music helps to decide whether you want to understand the song as being positive ('hey, my lover! you showed me how to breathe under water') or as being negative ('stupid b**ch! because of you i have lost my trust in relationships!') because it is sort of indecisive itself.

and once again i was impressed by the infinite complexity of the songs of 200 lurkers :-)

here are two moments that made me startle this morning. the first was an empty plastic bottle of mineral water that a friend (who was unaware) left at my place the other night:

and the other one was when i was wipping off my coffee-mug and i saw that there was something printed on the backside of the bottom:

here's the respective reference by deleuze: