Life is imitating art

I've been reading lately. It's something I haven't done for a long while and then I got back into it somehow. It may have something to do with my aversion to the academical in recent years where they force you to feed on information you may not be looking to digest. Or perhaps it's my ongoing digital romance, not taking any time off from my computer than to sleep, fuck or make (analog) music. There is no way I can state here that I've broken up with my computer, but after a little re-evaluation of what my brain really feels like taking on, things are more in perspective. It goes for gastronomy, social contacts, wandering about the city but most certainly also for my daily dose of literature.

So, in a way you could say the subtitle of this chapter could be Philistine Reads A Book. It wouldn't be far off. But there's more going on here. Maybe I forgot how books change your perception of the world around you, or maybe after such a long absence one is more susceptible to the influence of the written word. But it seemed my environment changes with every book I read. As if my books are not only windows to other worlds, but as if they transpose themselves to my actual situation. Reading a Tom Waits biography, I suddenly find myself among all kinds of strange cats wherever I go. Even more poignant, reading a collection of Hemingway stories one day and standing 20 feet from a European Buffalo the next. Is it a trick of the brain? Most probably. But the bull was there, in National Parc Zuid-Kennemerland.

I could see the contour of the arena, the sand beneath my feet, my coat becoming full of golden embroideries and tassles, with the cold steel in my hand. And in the same instance my cloths turn kaki, I find a carrabine in my hands, my eyes peeled on the buffalo, ready to pull the trigger.

Life is imitating art I tell you, and sometimes it's hard to not let it take you for a ride.

Thankfully, my books did not spoke of the Indian Summer going on outside. Still, I was supposed to see Ozark Henry at the Paradiso last week... But I'll write my own songs about the blue skies and the leaves on the trees at the Oudezijds Voorburgwal. For this good mood is all my own and I'll sing when I want to.