On being pragmatical, or Notes for a Notably Non-Benjaminian Exile
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I should make clear that this constant glancing towards the horizon and pastures new isn't about pottage, or fleshpots (vegetarian fleshpots: pan casseroles with cheese and eggs). It's not about having good, hot meals and a proper place to sleep. Everything revolves around the work, and as I look back through the reading notes on some of the more blizzardy days, I have some doubt as to whether they will be useful. (Not exactly "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," but I'm certain that there was much more in the text than the mind straining to keep focused could unearth.) I'm also cut off from the culture here, both practically and conceptually, and given my background, that speaks to the center of the work, not an issue about things done in the spare time.
It's as if Dave, floating outside the pod bay doors, discovers some repairs that could be done while he continues the long dialogue with HAL, though as he reviews some of the early repairs, he notices that he hasn't been able to do his best work under the circumstances. Incidentally, if memory serves, a stencil on the outside of the vessel indicates that HAL was created at the University of Illinois, which is hilariously appropriate, in a David Lodge sort of way. I was working in what passed for the arts there, but I did make it a point to go to as many of the campus talks as possible. The closest the supercomputer folks came to the public discourse was one talk by a Dean as part of the critical studies lecture series. Absolutely nothing of substance, just an hour of "shouting out" to researchers and professors in the room, seriatum. Hope not for minde in administrators...
But I digress. The point is that the dissentient, persecuted fellow looking for a place to work abroad isn't looking to the Black Forest resorts of Baden Baden, or a fashionable arrondisement. There are a band of countries on the southern part of Europe that have a living European culture and memories of the old republics, and the cultures percolating within them are a microcosm of the energies moving the Western world spiritually at present. And I could afford to travel and survive with the decent minimum required for professional travel and for the work. I've published my theatre reviews from the last visit in an attempt to point out both that there's something there, and that I can see it.
As an example, my thoughts sometimes tend to Studentski park in Belgrade, and to the nondescript Western chain coffeehouses in Sarajevo. In both instances, these places are far from the cultural or tourist notions of destination travel. And Studentski is hardly Versailles--more like Washington Square before it was renovated and turned into the NYU quad. But it is a good place to sit on an old park-bench and read Henry James, surrounded by the buildings of the university, new and old, and it's a short walk from the theatres. Not to mention that there's reasonably priced fresh bread to be found at all of the chain grocers in the neighborhood. My usual ritual in the first escape was to walk over Brankov Most from New Belgrade, get a balcony standing-room rush ticket in the late afternoon, and then, for the several hours before the performance, head over to the park to read awhile with some coffee in a thermos and some bread from one of the stores.
The point is that this immense seething mass of a country that I call home has formally renounced such notions of civilization, finding them old-fashioned. This general mindset likely has something to do with the fact that the corrupt folks that I've encountered have felt free to use the big Slavic fellow as a bit of a scapegoat and punching bag. Not to whine, just pointing out that the last two decades have been extraordinarily difficult, with many years spent in conditions that not everyone could physically survive, let alone keep attuned to the work when within such frames of existence.
But I have survived, and I'm fairly certain that I have understood. And I intend to head to the living places, in order to see what I can find there.