Social Media-Distancing

The reality of life in Berlin is much better than the [online] perception.

April 3, 2020

Outside, sun-burnished, friendly people smile their way past me to thank me for leaving them enough space. In parks, balls and discs fly back and forth, in a sort of long distance conversation between players... 

Everyone seems to be coming back together across the divide, unpaving their way back to a less fragmented state. Or out here they do, anyway.

Of all the hesitant wildlife forms returning to the cities, the most instrumental one is probably us. Humans don't normally linger this long in their own habitats, which are too disrupted by "human" activities: traffic, pollution, sirens, stress. Industrialisation stops us from settling in, in our own cities, in our own name.

But today, finding a new niche in this static, airy landscape is an irresistible urge. One that encourages me to find complexity and value in staying in one place, instead of carrying me through it faster or farther away.   

This sort of rich, urban stillness is something that activists and artists have been agitating for in cities since the 1980's, but now some of us are getting a free preview of it. Look at how much room there is, how much fresh air and energy to reinvest in city life. 

It couldn't hurt to spend a bit of time in whatever we've created now, could it? And see what we want to change in this world. Treating it more as a destination, less as a path.

April 5, 2020

In "boring" old Lichtenberg, a clubby straggler with nowhere else to flaunt her latest outfit: towering chunky heels, a short shift dress and a strip of silken fabric draped across her mouth.

A kind of risqué 'mask'. Will she or won't she get sick? It seems to ask.

All these radical dressers / thinkers, wandering around outside, are normally quarantined in clubs, studios, or housing projects. Now they're out mixing with average people in daylight, transmitting their values through face-to-face (apart from the masks) contact with mainstream Berlin. The nightlife is seeing the light of day. It's kind of impossible to deny that it's real, its cultures distinct.

All of Berlin's permutations are on an even playing field for a change. Literally, it's a playing field -- passing the time alone together in Wuhlheide, Treptower Park, Volkspark Friedrichshain and a dozen other places that I went for a walk, this week. 

April 6, 2020

Tonight I went online and found out that some eco-fascist cell's been going around spreading the viral idea that, "people are the virus" while impersonating Extinction Rebellion. 

Still more voices clamouring to rebrand the self-revulsion that consumers probably feel for themselves or their products, as revulsion for the people working in the sweatshops, in India, Turkey, anybody else who's struggling to find enough food to eat.

White supremacy is the perfect vehicle for this sort of moral shift. As a brand, it's got total immunity to idealism and empathy. Once upon a time, people cared too much... and this is how the system responded: by conspiring with haters that persuade people that caring just isn't in fashion anymore

If people are a virus though, they are more like the digital kind: they can be modified to crash any system that's lacking in integrity. 

April 7, 2020

The difference between offline and online, between 'actual' and 'reported', is like the difference between utopia and dystopia, nowadays. Think I'd rather stick with utopia for the next little while...

I feel like more people could do with facing up to their fear of of the offline world, so they don't fall into the dystopian mode permanently. Step through the veil of hysterical social media posts that paint humanity as chronically ignorant and sick, so they can see that it's not all bad out there. The only place where ignorance seems to hold total sway over their lives is online. 

It sounds like it could be a metaphor for life.

Everyone: "Check out abandoned Berlin guys!"

Me: "It just looks the same."

April 8, 2020

Do you remember that book, "The World Without Us"? It shot us off on an imaginative tangent into the future, picturing how the world would look, well, without us. Without humans.

Right now, I have this incredible privilege of being able to see The World Without Us while I'm still alive. I should try to appreciate it and when this is all over, help the world to stay this way with us in it. 

I should try to appreciate it. And when this is all over, help the world to stay this way with us in it.