things we talked about in a bar in a small town…
Topics of conversation that touched us that afternoon and evening: Production cuts in media programs; Reproduction cuts; program cancellations; last week’s notes and vignettes; the Pro-Palestinian protests; protests against genocides; the Chinese economy; the Middle East wars; the palette of Fichte, the island of Arno Schmidt; the last vacation; the endless growth in the armament industry; the ludicrous pseudo-commodification of space flight; subsequent podcasts abour dead philosophers; recreational drugs; color television; the last novel by Alfred Andersch; the study of Italian studies, the study of French studies, china studies, the study of sociology, the study of political science; the weather; the past; whether they wanted to have lunch together, but paul already had an appointment with Helmut Maria and Chris wanted to talk about his SF novel, and Lucy about her polyamoric romantic comedy… And the things that we did not talk about: unknown topics of conversation that did not get touched on: fees; the Middle East crisis; engineering; the federal ministers of germany, the belguim government, the british economy. Der Spiegel; Einstein, Reich-Ranicki, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the spies hiding in Anglesea; the history of Starfighter crashes; the AFD fascists, the Labour parties newly ironed brown shirts; religious ideologies; the civil war in Mali and in Nigeria; Group 47; serial music; Peter Handke’s latest book; young korean film; their own body weight; plans; private matters; sexuality.
We talked, among other things, about questions of the day. And so you can see from the above list among other things, we did not talk about some questions of the day. And if there was something of general importance in it, it was in the fact that they talked about matters of the day at all and not about private matters or public matters or ways of earning money. As the music changed and the lights were slightly dimmed people with young bodies danced. They dealt with what they had been informed about, recently, some of what they had been informed about they did not deal with. They were informed, for example, by the morning news of the radio, the evening show of the television, the daily newspaper, the preferred national newspaper or magazine, emails, podcasts and media shows, oral conversation. Information flowed between them. Changed, varied and nuanced according to the usual, accepted (and quoted) way of speaking. According to the customary and acceptable way of thinking. Information and post-information got into the flow of speech, thoughts, as far as they were involved in the flow of speech. Until new post-information superceded the old one.
In the day others were talking about questions of the day as per the agendas broadcast by the BBC of course, they were not only repeating, reproducing and varying what they had just heard or read personally, but they were doing this together with many others at many other places, and all of this was composed of all kinds of things; in all of this possible things, for example, there was also mixed what they had almost completely forgotten. And already they themselves would have been, if they had called it into the consciousness, already almost ready to attach to this conversation only just so much importance, as about goods stereotyped. If it had been possible to read objectively from the mixture of quotation, opinion, report and statement.
Perhaps, however, as no one is safe from becoming such a victim, and only therefore the talk, full of secret fear, in which everyone is only trying to keep himself safe.
