[february 01, 2004 - pu-rit-ra-na-yu / sa-doo-nam]

[february 4, 2004]
lot of work. hardly time to update the journal. don't even know what to write now because in twenty minutes the party of prof w. will start (who is a REAL party animal). prof w. will leave the department and it's his farewell party tonight. most of the things i wanted to report take more time than twenty minutes. fifteen in the meantime. worked on the paper. am on page five now. three still to go. missing x who's at home and not with me, who's in the office.

[february 7, 2004 - all the stars. all the stars...]

so i'm in a panic: leafing through the fold, difference & repetition, a thousand plateaus, and massumi's deleuze guide at the same time without understanding a single thing. talked with x about my ideas and thomas ideas last night for three hours and she helped me a lot. so that's the state of things: i'm in a panic and actually i don't have any time either to update the journal or to drive over to x's place to spend the night there. still i will. it's 22:07 and i've worked enough for today. i'm missing her. listened to the cd that bernd had given me yesterday: good stuff. i've forgotten the name of the band but they're produced by mitchell froom: sort of indigo girls für heteros. slightly country,. lot's of waltzing rhythm and acoustic guitars playing open E and A chords.

it's pouring, it's pouring, sitting over the laptop with four books spread out all over the desk and thousands of notes and an uncharted nebula mass of thought and letters around me. i want to write. I WANT TO WRITE: I WANT TO WRITE A NOVEL!!!!!!!!!! i'm sorry that i haven't talked to you for such a long time. there's so little time. ive got such a small brain. i've got such a large heart. i've got endless big eyes and everything is happening at once. life is hard but it is beautiful and i will explode i will explode

E M B R A C E

[february 8, 2004 - oh hard times come again no more!]

Subject: Re: The Space And The Sea
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2004 19:15:46 +0100
From: music for life <office@xxxxx.com>

Hallo Philipp,
ich muß Dich leider informieren, dass ich aus Gründen außerhalb meiner Kontrolle mein Plattenlabel "music for life" per sofort einstellen muß, wir daher nicht ins Geschäft kommen können.

Vielen Dank noch einmal für Dein Interesse!

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Thomas

[february 9, 2004 - send you on your way, i'll send you on your way...]

by the way, it's 01:01 at night and i'm dead tired. met with blaine, sirka and eva tonight and we had some cocktails at the 'sandbar' and now i'm waiting for x to come by. she had to work until 1 and now she'll get to me straight from work. tomorrow morning i'll get back to the office as early as i can because there's still quite a lot to prepare for the conference plus: i have office hours tomorrow afternoon and finally people come pouring into the office asking how to find topics for their term papers.

i'll have a 2 1/2 hour drive to heidelberg on wednesday afternoon and i hope that i will finally update the journal thoroughly. i'm really sorry for writing so little.

[february 13, 2004 - you take the stage like there was no tomorrow...]

The conference was better than I had expected. People were friendly and I was socializing quite a lot :o) the conference building was amazing: it was an old mansion, and they had huge apartments. I was in a two room apartment that was twice as big as my apartment in cologne and it had tv, kitchen, a big bathroom, a pc and telephone. So the accommodation was really comfortable.

Since the group of participants was rather small (there were seven lectures and usually four or five additional people) we got to know each other quickly and we went out as a group on both nights. I must say, though, that in terms of content the talks were rather disappointing. Some of them focused on a linguistic categorization, some on computer games and none had an interesting theoretical approach. Except for mine, of course :o)

I don't know. Prof. S. who was a kind of supervisor said when I mentioned thomas' name: "yes, yes, I know prof. B. – and I must say that he is writing the most interesting articles. Although I usually have to meditate for a very long time until I find out what he wants to say… he's always so…unusual! I hope that you are not as gloomy as he is…?" well, after I had given my talk I looked up and people looked at me with a mixture of confusion, amusement, pity, anger, admiration and disgust. Go figure!

The discussion was okay, though. Bruno, a former colleague from cologne was there as well and he encouraged me before the talk. But during the talk when I was looking up from the sheets of paper that I was holding on to tightly I saw their eyes and the question mark in them while I was hallucinating about the virtual and the actual and the possible and the real. And in the back of my head I was thinking: thomas, I hate you for turning me into a zombie! Because I again and again realize that once you leave the secure biosphere of thomas' department people have a hard time dealing with his hard core theory approach. also, the conference was powerpoint galore!! EVERYBODY had a powerpoint presentation. thomas would have puked :o)

so i felt a little bit like an alien. which does not really differ from my everyday situation :o)  however what was most frightening was the face of people when i told them that i've been working for thomas for four years now and that i haven't even started to write my dissertation. "you've got to do it now!" they said, "do it NOW!"

i don't know, all this is so insecure: the future and what will be and how to cope and whether i will earn a living.

Philip glass is playing, an act from "einstein on the beach", jubilating flutes and organs, it's sooooo great, it's like a sonic flooding of light.

[february 15, 2004 - i'll make you laugh if you want to, i'll make you smile at the footsteps, i'll make you laugh at the winter and bring you back down to land]

anyway, it's a slow, gray sunday morning. well, noon to be honest. x just called and we agreed to see each other tonight. the plan for today is to prepare the cohen seminar, that is to make a syllabus and think of possible topics for discussion. i'm tired, though. even though i haven't done A SINGLE THING all day yesterday. i only watched tv and fixed myself something to eat every now and then. i didn't even update the journal. it was like being sick: i stayed in bed and slept and watched tv and slept again and talked to princess superstar on the phone [by the way: here's a photo that might explain her nickname :o)] and to x and watched more tv and ate more and then went to bed where i already was. hm, inserting the photo of the princess makes me remember an incident a couple of days ago. she and i were walking through the belgian quarter of cologne. we had both stayed at the office until after eight and were now strolling to the underground station. and when we were passing a bar she said: "a couple of students from the english seminar are meeting here regularly. but you know, it's an irish pub..." and i frowned: "urgh! you don't want to go THERE!" "no," she said "they're playing irish folk music all night long. you know, like ... bob dylan!!" of course the very first thing i did the next morning was telling thomas about it (because the only joy the both of us have in our gray vie triste is to make fun of other people) and the princess made it even worse by crying: "no, no! you've got to tell the whole story! i had mixed up bob dylan with bob geldof!!!" which made thomas break together with hysterical laughter.

the other week *i* had my share of embarrassment when thomas was talking about "kinetic poetry" in the lecture. achim and i had managed to get the ibook connected to the internet in the classroom so thomas could show a couple of examples from the www. i had set up the projector and made an index page with the respective links and everything went fine: he clicked through the examples and it worked well except that he did the unexpected in the end, something that he usually NEVER does: he closed the browser. it disappeared from the screen and the folder-window appeared. and thomas closed this one as well. and suddenly i felt the blood shooting into my head because it didn't hadn't occurred to me that he might possibly to this and the same moment that i was thinking: "oh no!" a 3x5 meter image of suzanne vega appeared on the wall: usually when the ibook gets connected to the projector it switches into a presentation mode in which it does not show the desktop image that each individual user has chosen for his or her settings, but on that day for some reason it hadn't. so during the rest of the session suzanne was watching from the wall, her mocking smile said it all... when people started to giggle thomas turned around, saw her, turned to me, smiled broadly and said: "well, THAT's subversive!"

but it got worse: while thomas was talking about possibilities of interaction between text and reader in a hypertext he was picturing "a text that reads the desire of the user: it remembers the links that you have selected and reacts accordingly and thus the desire of the user is inscribed into the text..." and suddenly the bloody screen saver started!!!! it consists of the inverted images of film stars from the 200 lurkers page. and the students were giggling again and thomas turned around and said: "well, it's not MY ibook. that's not MY desire...!" and first the face of joan crawford appeared in motion picture size, then marlene dietrich, then rita hayworth and then ... leonard nimoy as mr. spock. and of course everybody started to laugh and i just wanted the earth to open up and swallow me!

But then thomas dug his own grave the other week when he told us, out of the blue: "i love watching cooking-shows. they're so ... soothing! i love watching alfredissimo and my favorite show is kochduell!" first i thought that he was making this up, that he was joking. but he was serious! he IS just very, very strange!

it's also strange that the fact that "the space and the sea" will not be published as a "real" cd does not seem to bother me that much. there are so many other things that worry me much more: the four letter word has turned from future to diss.

[february 15, 2004 - trink doch ene mit, stelle dischnette so aan!]

[february 17, 2004 - I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach.]

i know it's stupid to complain about myself (i said later after i had bought two bars of candy...) but i don't even know where i want to get at with the diss. what is it supposed to be? an overview over cohen's entire works? gee, i hope not because that would make things REALLY difficult! but i fear that's what thomas expects. i would be fine if i could concentrate on the novels. not because i don't want too much primary texts but because they're to heterogeneous! the poems are totally different in style and topic! and i need a focus. that's it I NEED A FOCUS. i need some theoretical perspective other than: i'm going to give you an overview over cohen's writings. that's stupid because it would be superficial. i couldn't de more than shortly describe content and style. that's what scobie and ondaatje have done already! i want to do something different: get a deleuzian perspective, for example. i need a tool. i need something to create a boundary on the one hand but to open up the texts against on the other. does this make sense?

or perhaps i CAN do a genre distinction and just say: deleuze (let's take his name proper as the metaphor for "minor literature" and rhizomatic writing. the specifics of a deleuzian poetics would make up the first chapter) in The Favorite Game (chapter II), in Beautiful Losers (chapter III), in the poems (chapter IV).

the dangers would be: if i start "developing" a deleuzian poetics all i would come up with would be 'thomas recycled'. it wouldn't be original ideas but basically a conglomerate of what thomas teaches and thinks and advocates. i would "do deleuze with cohen" and not "cohen with deleuze".

S I G H ! !

i don't know. i really don't know. what do i want to do? create a (post)modern perspective on cohen. the last monograph was published in 1978! so it's time for some fresh ideas. the questions would be: why is cohen such a popular writer ("pop-star") on the one hand but why is there only such a relatively small academic discurse concerned with his work. the answer that "my" book would be out to dismiss is of course that his writing is of minor quality. so my task would be to show that his texts are well written, but that they did not fit into a specific time frame. i don't even know what i mean. before i start with anything i need to have a tol. i have to decide for a theoretical frame. that's the most important thing right now. i need to find a theory to approach the texts. i can't just ramble along about them, i need a focus. i think i will talk to thomas about this tomorrow.

advantages using deleuze:
- he's cool.
- most of his aesthetic approaches could be mapped onto TFG and BL, if only to show that they do NOT apply to TFG but DO apply in BL.
- his theories have a high level of metaphoricity, are almost primary texts themselves
- the heidelberg talk gave me some hope that i might understand him after all.

disadvantages using deleuze:
- he is thomas' theoretitian, i will always only repeat what thomas has done (he's even giving a deleuze and american literature seminar next semester!)
- he's hard to understand and even harder to explain to other people
- he has written A LOT of works that i haven't really read. it took me an entire semester to read the 138 pages of The Fold, how long will i need for the complete Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus???

<post avant-garde culture content> act III from einstein on the beach:

I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles, and there were these bathing caps that you could buy that had these kind of Fourth-of-July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue, and I wasn't tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach.

and then "ensemble" starts and sweeps away everything, it makes my body DO things like breathing in deeply and opening up to a flow, no: becoming part of the flow but 'part' is the wrong expression because it's a whole without parts and yet a multiplicity. my eyes ache. i'm tired. simple truths. i'm missing you. and i remember how i was making the bed after you had left in the morning the other day: i held the blanket firmly in both hands and i threw it into the air with a grand gesture and i shook it and it flopped back upon the bed awkwardly and when i looked up again it felt as if time stood still because there in midair, two long blond hairs of yours were floating, one dancing around the other, weightlessly, infinitely graceful, shimmering in the early morning light and the way they ignored gravity and mocked the laws of motion made me shiver because they were a part of you and yet so different. and i wished that i could have been able to carefully take this moment of balance and weightlessness and give it to you as a valentine's day present for you to see that you are not only locked and caught within circumstances and your work but that there's a part of you that can float without thinking, that can dance in midair without worrying.

[later]

[february 18, 2004 - Many's the time I've been mistaken, and many times confused ...]

Bigger than my body, John Mayer [P U K E !]
Time and Love, Laura Nyro
Trouble, Coldplay
St. Teresa, Joan Osborne
American Tune, Paul Simon
Like a Tattoo, Sade
Barely Breathing, Duncan Sheik
Story of Isaac, Judy Collins
Red Rain, Peter Gabriel
Can't Let Go, Lucinda Williams
Fortress Round Your Heart, Sting
Ring of Fire, Johnny Cash

[later]

so although i'm seeing a little clearer now i'm not feeling more comfortable or comforted at all. i don't know how to do this: sum up the recent discourse on "the body", argue that these discourses need to be updated, create a new discourse of the "material body" and then apply this to leonard cohen. piece of cake!!!!! shit. fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck. i'm such an idiot. why haven't i started four years ago!?! i'm such a bloody, bloody idiot!! i should become a postman. or a baker. or a writer. or a musician.

[later - on my way to x.]

brian rose is singing about old factory towns. soothing rhythm, 3/4, almost only guitar, strummed, some anton-sanko-keyboard and suzanne's voice far in the background. he's singing about bars in which he's having a drink after work but in the context of the song they're turning into bars of a cage or a prison.

[february 20, i could hear her humming her favorite song when i awoke at the break of dawn]

by the way, it's karneval here in cologne, which means that for the next five days 80 percent of the population are running around in costumes, partly or entirely drunk, singing songs and partying. most of the public life comes to a standstill: shops and schools are closed and nobody is going to work.

seems like i have to add another photo to the "images" section soon: the princess has found a prince :o) she would kill me if i gave away details or even his name here (although everybody - even thomas - knows it anyway!!) but i can tell you this much: he's also working at the university, he's a phd (!!), he's 20 years older than she is, and he is definitely very different from all the other guys she fancied during the past oneandahalf years that i know her now. thomas came storming into the office yesterday and said: "what's this i've heard about princess superstar?!??" and he threw himself into a chair that was standing nearby and continued, acting as if he was outraged: "i don't think that i can approve of this!! students going out with their teachers!! that's not moral!"

[later]

the princess just called. "and???" i asked her (she had met her prince last night).
"it was sooo beautiful" she said "we were talking all night!"
"and??" i said
"and then we were kissing!!"
"and??"
"what 'and?'!?!!"
"..and did he cook for you? what kind of music did you listen to?"
"he hadn't cooked anything because it was already 9:30 when i arrived at his place. and we listened to john, äh, john cale? do you know john cale?!"
"well, of course i do!" i said "cedric is a big john cale fan. he has even met him. suzanne is a big john cale fan as well and has recorded two songs with him and mike visceglia, suzanne's bass player, was a member of the john cale band until that one legendary night when cale bit off the head of a chicken on stage. and when cedric, tara and i met suzanne backstage, she and cedric and mike were exchanging john cale anecdotes..."
"really?!? well, i thought he (her prince) was trying to kid me because the music sounded so much like elton john..."
and this was the moment when i almost dropped the receiver. those young folks! calling bob dylan an irish folk singer and mixing up john cale and elton john! jesus!!!

[february 20, 2004 - you say: i only hear what i want to...]

what can happen to bodies? they can have stable borders (question of 'bordering' bodies, skin as boundary, "a scar is what happens when the word is made flesh" - scars indicate in a double movement the borders of bodies but also the vulnerability of these very borders) bodies can change: from the outside or from within, "from nothing to one", bodies can be coupled to contexts, environments: in Beautiful Losers for example Edith and F's bodies are coupled to the Danish Vibrator to form a desiring machine [do they really? what do i know what a desiring machine is anyway?] there is the smashed body of Edith that is "in no shape to be buried" and the dissolving body of the narrator, the blind body of ray charles and charles axis' perfect body (and you can touch perfect bodies with your mind). bodies are constantly turning from flesh to clay to gold, they change color. Catherine's bruised and self-tortured body turns white after her death.

by the way, uploaded an html-version of the heidelberg talk. so if you're really bored out of your pants you can read it here.

[february 21, 2004 - as always i stop to speak...]

and then i thought: what if god or any higher force should grant me this wish and turn me into a newt that is living in the pond of my old high school in bielefeld. [i have NO idea why i suddenly remembered the pond of my old high school and there obviously is also no causal relation between being an amphibian and the granting of my wish, but in the logic of the half dream there was!] and suddenly i was packed by panic because what can you do when you're a newt living in some pond?! how could i communicate with people. how could i make them notice me and listen to me and get x to me? how could i tell people that i actually am NOT a newt but philipp, and that i want to get back to cologne and be with her? newts can't speak, so i would have to gather little sticks and stones and put together letters and words that say: "hello!! and even to find all the sticks to put together "hello!" would take an eternity for such a small newt as i would be and also people wouldn't know that it had been the little animal that had arranged the sticks that way!! i would be trapped forever in the pond of my old school. living hell!

[february 23, 2004 - the sun is shining / dizzy golden dancing green...]

working all day on scanning cohen's poetry for body images. thought about possible categorizations and came up with THE ASPIRED BODY : my body imagined | THE DESIRED BODY : your body spoken | THE INSPIRED BODY : the body becoming. but this will probably not really work at all. not much to report apart from that. more sun and more snow. i'll meet with x tonight. listened all day to "brazilectro". oh yes! redesigned the index page of entropic-empire.com.

[february 25, 2004 - mark the month and all your memories]

it's 18:15, i'm at the office literally dying of hunger. the corner shop is closed and the cafeteria is closed and i don't have anything to eat :o( outside the weather is acting in a truly post-carnevalesque fashion: sun, snowstorm, sun, snowstorm, sun, snowstorm. talked to cedric on the phone for over an hour this afternoon which was good. we were talking quite a lot about my dissertation and he tried to encourage me and gave me a couple of tips and hints.

the princess has to hand in her final thesis on friday, so she's pretty wound up and chooses to act in stange ways ;o) she asked thomas all kinds of questions concerning the lay out and format of the paper and he just laughed because he couldn't care less about the formal aspects.

there are already 11 students on the "sign-in" list for the cohen seminar :o)

[february 26, 2004 -

tried to uplift x this morning with the above song when she was hiding under the blanket, unwilling to get up to continue writing her ma thesis. "i wish i was dead" she mumbled and pulled the covers over her head. my strategy didn't really work, though :o(

it's 17:31 in the meantime. it has started to snow softly. i am tired and the sun is sinking slowly. the days have become longer already. yesterday thomas was standing next to my desk, looking out of the window, kind of lost in thoughts, when a new colleague, r.,  came into the office and started a conversation with him: he has just been granted money to go to the states. another colleague is going to the states to do research for her phd thesis as well this summer and thomas said: "hey, good news! everybody's abroad researching!" and he turned to me and asked "and, philipp, where are you going to!??" and then r. continued the conversation with thomas and said: "by the way, i have read guattari's chaosmosis and i was surprised: it's really intelligible and easy to read!" and i thought: jesus! there really are people who sit down in their spare time and read chaosmosis, a book that *i* did not understand at all. i did not think that it was intelligible and easy to read AT ALL! i don't know, somehow i have the impression that i'm really a little dumb. and i'm not really interested in thinking too much or too hard. i don't belong here.

[february 27, 2004 - who am i without you?]

listened all morning to "i am kloot", an english band that i have discovered the other day: i saw their video "three feet tall", which is really great, especially the drums! downloaded a couple of more songs yesterday. bought a new frying pan. see, i had an exciting day already! got another order from the states for a 200 lurkers cd :o)

princess superstar has handed in her final thesis today. hooray!

[february 28, 2004 - three feet tall with a head like a bowling ball...]

my favorite song since yesterday: "proof" by i am kloot. it's fantastic. basically it has two parts: in the first one there's an undistorted electric guitar on the right speaker and the voice on the left speaker. the guitar is playing a nicely phrased and accented riff, "it swings, jocko!", and the voice is singing a more or less uplifting melody to it. and then, pretty much in the middle of the song, the bass and the drums set in! great drums! the kind of rolling country rhythm that i love so much! their songs are really beautifully produced! like a mixture of crowded house, radiohead and blumfeld.

"hey, could you stand another drink
i'm better when I don't think
seems to get me through

say, d’you wanna spin another line
like we had a good time
not that I need proof

swell, we're living in a hotel
someone's ringing my bell
in a room without a view

hey, heard you read another book
should I take another look
who am I without you?"

[february 29, 2004 - a weird trail of notes in the water...]