I dreamed I had a criminal record. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but I knew that I had committed something bad.
My sense of guilt was driving me nuts. I actually felt paranoid – anxious about getting caught. When I woke up, I realised how stupid that dream was, but I didn’t understand its meaning. (Yes, I’d read “The Trial” years before.)
Weeks later, I listened to Alkaline Trio’s “Radio” and immediately remembered a short story I wrote that involved murder. It was a ‘first-person perspective’-murder. I haven’t read that story in years. I remember receiving an OK-mark for it, although I think I must have made my tutor nervous. The story is pretty much based on the Trio song. Lastly, I have no desire to re-visit with my former English. I would crouch in shame.
The job hunt has been hell, mainly because I’ve been postponing the flat hunt – ideally, I wouldn’t have to travel to my future workplace. Ah, Hamburg, Hamburg – meine Perle.
It’s intimidating when companies or agencies ask you, “Why should we hire you?”
Depending on the position you apply for, you think…the only answer you can come up with is, “This is the question.” And you freeze.
Anyway, I didn’t manage to cut loose from social media this month. I wouldn’t have signed in on Facebook if the riots hadn’t got me so wound up. I felt it was necessary to communicate. Initially, Alec Empire came up with points that I undoubtedly agreed with, but I didn’t want to worry about that shit because I have a thesis to complete. Thankfully I’m less under pressure now. I should finish it in two weeks. The last two months have been a walking madness. Every step I took ended in sweat. My daily run isn’t enough. There’s still this bursting energy that I need to release. I don’t know what it is.
So I’ve spent a year as a reclusive writer. I need to enjoy it to the very last day of being a student.
Don’t you hate it when diary keepers call their diary content secrets? Who says that the content of a diary is based on your secrets at all? Once it’s written, it’s been told.
At a very young age, I understood that the purpose of writing was exposure – a signed agreement to unload the mind and a devoted commitment to keep your readers’ interest in high regard–one hundred years later.
I never cared about the reader until now.
Then I realised that writing was the best thing ever invented. However, if you want to make money with your writing, for instance, as a copywriter, they will all say you need to “SELL! WRITE PERSUASIVE COPY THAT SELLS!”
This upsets me. And Bill Hicks would agree. I don’t want to kill the artistic world by using evil words to coax people into things, persuade people to spend the money they don’t have. I think it’s more upsetting than helpful. Even if you aim at rich people whose decadence you hate. And you’re only encouraging their decadence.
As a writer, I don’t want to trick people, yet unreliable narration is all I can offer. I can’t fool you the same way Nabokov did with me. Yet, I don’t think I am THAT unreliable.
They all wonder why I stay in every weekend. Even if it weren’t the thesis, I would stay home. I would only go out if I were back in Hamburg, where people are familiar and less intrusive, less persistent.
Sometimes I feel a lot freer in Germany. But what’s freedom without challenges anyway? And this is why I’m here. I’m doing something constructive, creative to revolt against boredom, the absurd, the meaninglessness of life.
Do I care? I do to a certain extent, but overall, no, I don’t care. I can’t show it; I’d be doomed.
Think what you want. I know what I’m doing, but you’re right; I should get out more. I haven’t experienced another Londoner nightlife since New Year’s Eve. After that, I told myself I wouldn’t again, but who knows?
The experience I had about Londoner nightlife is that British guys want me for the night; Indian guys want me as their wife, Chinese guys think I understand mandarin, Austrian blokes refusing to speak standard German, etc. I can’t communicate with them.
And I don’t know where my girlfriends are. What all these men had in common was that they were DRUNK. There’s nothing more off-putting than drunk people. I pretend I find them funny, but they’re not. If you aren’t Bukowski, then don’t talk to me when you’re drunk. London nightlife is all about that.
Then, I figured – no matter where you go in the UK, only in Germany I can cope, despite my friends drinking stupid amounts sometimes too, but at least I have the dance floor to myself with decent music in my ears. At rock bars, Germans give you space to dance. Nightlife never meant socialising to me; it’s always been about music and dancing with friends – and only my friends in Germany get it.
Here, you can’t even dance without feeling someone’s dirty paw on your waist or bum. Why are Londoner men so desperate? I’m desperate myself, but I’m picky. Busy wanting those I can’t have. IT makes me grow emotionally. It’s useful stuff…
A friend just called, asking, ‘What are you doing?’ – “I’m making the most out of the last month of being a full-time writer,” and trying to understand this disturbing energy.
You should hire me because I’m a cardiac surgeon. I’ll make sure that all four chambers in your heart are air-conditioned. I’ll help you accommodate whatever you want, suture each bleeding hole, unclog the coronary pipe, but most importantly, I’m good at persuading in my writing – but in my defence, you have to let me call it fiction.
