Notes from 24 hours in Mittel-Europa
Pretzels. Schnitzels. Bratwurst. Strudel. Brot. Frankfurter Allgemeine.
Ich bin eine stringen vegetarische. Bitte?
Austrian cuisine. Salt and grease.
Language and faciality. Alistair Darling could so easily be Austro-German. His face looks forever on the cusp of some unctuously Teutonic delivery. Is it the silvery smooth hair – like a senior technician at Audi or Bavarische Motor Werke?
Lets play the face-language game – could this face speak French? Italian? Languages bring a subscript of facial gestures with them – as part of the bodily source code. Faces are shaped thus.
Technik. Technik. Technik. The technikon. Frankfurt airport exuding cold Northern European precision engineering.
Is there a point to Europe anymore? Or, is it a pointless space, set of spaces? A wave that is receding back to the ocean. Returning to formlessness. Everyone is getting old.
The Greek spirit is long gone. Apollo has taken over. Dionysus is mute. There is no Bacchic song. Techne long ago become technology, technics. Nietzschean nostalgia.
There is no wild spirit. There is no death. There is no earth, even amidst mountains.
The question is not what happens after the post-modern. The question is: what do we do, now that we are no longer Romantic? The romantic: expressing alienation. The soul, apart. Desiring return, desiring home. Heim. Heimat.
There is no agency, no grand narrative available. Europe quietly rests, slowly falls asleep. New myths need arise, from elsewhere. New stories, yet to be told.
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6 comments:
For some reason, this post reminded me about a tv program i watched about the making of a "huf" house. Check out the website here:
http://www.huf-haus.com/gb/intro.html
My brain went down the same melancholy path...pure German machinery...hhehehehehehe
I once choked on a pretzel but your notes are underlined by a lot of rather useful experiences. Reminds me a little of terry pratchett's discworld series, there is this character called death, also occasionally called Mort. I think a lot of Nigerian secondary school kids should read a bit of his books i.e. or small gods or the colour of magic where it all began...but there may be some wild spirits
Or perhaps the old truths can come back, borne by missionaries from Africa preaching to the savages on London's lawless streets and telling good news to the hopeless.
Who really wants romantic alienation? Better to have the union in which is neither Jew nor Greek.
I'm sorry (I don't get it) what is it that makes Europe all of a sudden so boring and shapeless?
Can someone please explain.
As Gandalf said to Aragorn in Rohan before Saruman's siege of Helms Deep, "look to the East".
That is where the new narrative is being woven.
Jeremy,
I am not being nasty but you seem like a missionary for current European values in Nigeria. Are you saying that they have no background you can believe in? No validating story?
Where do you get your strong opinions and prejudices from if not from the fruit of modern European meditation?
Or did you spring like Athena, full grown from Zeus's sickness?
On a mundane note have you tried Voyage Buses?
Here is a URL:
http://semper.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/a-better-way-t…ity-in-nigeriaa-better-way-to-travel-inter-city-in-nigeria/
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