It’s always the same kind of feeling when you leave Basel by train, heading North or West. Direction France or Germany. The land gets flat, the horizon opens. It’s starts in St. Louis or in Weil am Rhein. You know that you are still in the Oberrheinische Tiefebene where you were 3 minutes ago, but it’s all different. It’s Jacques Brel Le Plat Pays, it’s Iggy Pop’s Passenger. Direction West, the feeling is even stronger. If your are early enough, you are heading directly into the sun, into the fire of the Alsace. That’s why Basel and Switzerland, you have to admit, are such incredible hubs. You can drive into the open (with a Swiss salary). You take the plane and you are anywhere in Europe within 1.5 hours. And you are always aware of that. What produces this kind of constant longing for something, for the distance. You see a jogger in a field near Dijon. You see people buying their coffee in the train bistrot. They are longing for something, too (at least in your imagination). Why should they go to Paris if not?
I met Dominique in the café le favorite near the station Saint-Paul (guess what, it’s one of my favorite places). I am happy, they stopped speaking English there, last time in Paris they suddenly started to approach me in Frenglish. Paris is, and will be, the best city in the world whatever it does, it tries. People sitting at their tiny bistrot tables, smoking, eating, drinking. Dominique asked me what I was doing in Paris. I have no idea, I had to admit. Maybe it’s the longing for something. The idea of Paris. Sounds stupidly like existentialism. Never mind. I am just here for the sake of it. Just because I can. It’s like the commissioner Hunkeler from the crime series written by Hansjörg Schneider. Hunkeler sometimes goes to Paris just for doing things (Hunkeler macht Sachen). Just doing things for the sake of it. Hansjörg Schneider once lived around the corner of le favorite, if I am not mistaken.*
I discussed with Dominique which writers we regularly follow on 60pages, exploring preferences. We are both sad, that Armen is done. And we realised, whatever ambition you had in the beginning with 60pages, you will not succeed. You will end up with banalities. Which is actually good, because they are much truer than an artificially enhanced reality which bores you infinitely.
* I was mistaken yesterday. Corrections: It’s not Hansjörg Schneider who lived around the corner (or maybe he did anyway?), but Niklaus Meienberg, who spent time in Rue Ferdinand Duval, a street he writes about in St. Fiden–Paris–Oerlikon.Iit