Chaos. That is when my brain works, when there are a hundred other things running in the background, when the world is just about to collapse, that's the blessed environment when something productive happens. Otherwise it is just the same. Life runs while I stare. It was one such day when I was staring when I first heard of Mr. Walter Benjamin, in connection with modernity.
I paid a fleeting glance to him. Due to the lack of chaos I didn't actually take too much notice of him. It was much later, while on a walk that I got to talking with him. Immensely interesting, that is what I would call him.
A little bit of Youtube documentaries on the one way street, a documentary on Flaneur by a Japanese film maker, talk on critical theory, Wikipedia, some of his writings from a website dedicated to them, critiques of his writings. That is how I got to know him. Knowingly or unknowingly I was applying his own method, of taking things out of context, of taking things from different places and patching them up. May be it was not his method at all, may be it is my interpretation of it.
Not until I was deprived of it did I realize how much I fed on the urban sights, on people, on streets. Again quoting out of context- for Benjamin Flaneur was a modern urban spectator, an amateur detective, an investigator of the city. A sign of alienation of the city and of capitalism. Was I that? A Flaneur? He laughed out aloud at this. His Flaneur died with the rise of consumer capitalism, but did he actually die?
Another one of those conversations, when I commented that he was right in saying the education system only produced workers and in fifty years from when he said this, I actually am a product of it, he was not amused. He was silent and walked ahead. But I persisted, at a level shouldn't I consider myself lucky that I am able to engage in discussions, just for the fun of it? Cannot we call this an act of subversion, right under the nose of crony capitalists?, I said. May be now the education happens at one's own will, not in the student factories, on the street for one who chooses to learn.
Those little objects he collected, what a collection he had. All that spoke of history. I told him with childish enthusiasm, that we all did it, atleast I did it.Collected those tens of things which had no meaning other than being symbols of the time. I told him I had hundreds of them.
Once we also got talking about letters, that's how things happen when you walk, there are so many things that one talks about that inevitably everything under the sun must feature in those one time or the other. He told me he loved writing letters, particularly to thinking people. I told him I read a few of those which he had written to Scholem. He was slightly surprised. I explained myself, that I once did an online course Jewish Mysticism, that is how I knew Scholem. I also sheepishly shared my enthusiasm of how happy I was when I found these connections. An online course on Jewish Mysticism, doesn't that sound very Benjamin like? I also told him how much I wished to write and to be written to but had none to write. He promised to write.
He didn't want to be tagged either as a Jew, as a communist or something else, he was all of it and nothing in isolation. While I write this, he is furious for making him a cult, a figure beyond human. It is funny how my death is also elevated to creation of cult, that is what everyone talks about, but I thought it was a symbol of being human, he says. And they talk about my magnum opus my arcades project, whose manuscript was never found, again the attempt is the same, to elevate me and negate my humanness.
But for once I have no such intention. You will forever remain my fellow walker.