Double bind*

WE HAVE ALL
BEEN THERE
DONE THAT
 
BRING BACK THE FICTION!

(dream)

During weekdays, or better; nights, I like to take the tube, walk the dark underpasses, look at the people's faces on the last regular train, then I walk home, hasty, solitaire. At this time the city seems to be most real to me. The real inhabitants move about, selling, pushing, threatening, scoring, going out, going to work. A young doctor on her way to her night shift, the screams and almost accidents, some violent drug addict, dancing to my senseless soundtrack, playing from the in-between space of my head, my skull, the void, my vertigo. But no fashion bloggers/artists/design students/writers or anybody else who wears his or her occupation like a costume or a disguise for everyone to see; splattered all over the body like fake blood on helloween. No matter what you do that can be remotely considered „creative“ (a noun that has, just like "love" become a very dirty word) you have to be authentic. Authenzität seems to be the magic concept but when you look it up the literal meaning is quite confusing:

authentic |ôˈθentik| (abbr.: auth.)
adjective
1 of undisputed origin; genuine : the letter is now accepted as an authentic document | authentic 14th-century furniture.
• made or done in the traditional or original way, or in a way that faithfully resembles an original : the restaurant serves authentic Italian meals | every detail of the movie was totally authentic.
• based on facts; accurate or reliable : an authentic depiction of the situation.
• (in existentialist philosophy) relating to or denoting an emotionally appropriate, significant, purposive, and responsible mode of human life.

And although the German definition is almost similar, Authenzität in this city has become something else. If you are considered authentic it just means you are similar to those who judged you in the first place. When it comes to writing over here it implies furthremore that the author is identical to his/her protagonists and lives a similar life. I always thought that was called a diary. I do not regard my self and my little life enough as its mere description could ever constitute art or literature; I still think it takes a little more effort. And no one would call me authentisch over here. As I am just like no one else, which, I fact we all are, but – and this is the crucial bit – I am not in the least trying to be like anyone else. Most of all not like any of them. Young “German” writers and those who choose them that is.

To give an analogy - and those of you who have ever suffered from an eating disorder will know - that sometimes it is part of the illness that the illness itself - despite it seems to have emerged from some kind of goal or aim and as a means to reach it - it is precisely what keeps you from reaching this goal.

So please, please, whoever you are - even if you are hiding inside - give me the strength, the inspiration and the power to leave Berlin. Berlin, this strange and unpleasant virus infiltrating my thoughts and actions with its luring; as if it were some reverse dorothy’s plea: "there is no place like me...there is no place like me..."

Songs: this and that 

(pic by me)


*) A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, in which one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), so that the person will be automatically wrong regardless of response. The double bind occurs when the person cannot confront the inherent dilemma, and therefore cannot resolve it or opt out of the situation.