Many of the 60pages dispatches seem to have been written in transit, up in the air. Writers are frequent flyers, cosmopolitans, people of the world. I conform by just having boarded the 5:20 pm flight from Tegel to Vienna. Unfortunately I had to leave my research group’s workshop in Dahlem right when it was getting interesting – Tom Holert was talking about queer sadomasochistic film practice as eroto-historicist time machines in his slightly worried, but quite amused way.
Now I am reading Rainald Goetz, “loslabern.” Difficult to translate, maybe best as “babbling on.” He is recounting his adventures at the Frankfurt book fair of 2008, his breathless encounters with the greats of German literature, the great and drunk men of letters. Around page 30 he mentions the first woman by name – before that there are a few anonymous women and Christian Kracht’s nameless wife. The book – besides its chauvinist flair – poses questions about language, being written in an idiosyncratic and untranslatable German – and about subject matter. How far should you reach when thinking about writing? Is arm’s length enough? The coffee table in front of you and your global itinerary? Should your subject matter come to you, elected by virtue (or vice) of the writer’s gaze? Do you have an obligation to go hunting for it? Is that the difference between a diary and a text intended for a reader other than yourself?
At the moment, in the dimmed airplane cabin, black night sky all around, there doesn’t seem to be very far to reach, everything is introspection. Across the aisle from me is a guy reading a self-help book or maybe a bad novel. The chapter he just started is titled “Der große rote Faden in meinem Leben heißt leider Einsamkeit.” He is bald and bearded, wearing Chelsea boots and ox-blood coloured corduroy trousers. He has an instant hatred for the whole row behind us – Berliners, or Brandenburgers even, carrying a two metre long whip (?) and loudly talking about talking loudly. The pilot makes the usual announcement and — holy crap – the captain’s a woman. The row behind me jokes about everyone being doomed.
Bald corduroy guy cannot believe he has to deal with these people, he is huffing and making scandalised noises without them ever noticing. He is travelling with a younger man – son, lover? – who is far above and beyond all earthly matters, eyes closed in angelic beauty sleep in a wool cardigan and crew cut. Just now he pretended to switch off his iPhone when the steward asked him to and then coolly switched it right back on again.
Counter to general expectations we land safely at Schwechat at 6:35 pm. Karola from the row behind us talks loudly about Kevin, which hugely amuses bald guy, “Kevin” being the synonym of proletarian bad taste and failed anglophile cosmopolitanism. I sit down near the baggage carousel and use the airport’s free Wifi to send this post back to Berlin, to the 60pages HQ, and head off into the Freudian slip that is Vienna.