There are layers upon layers of paper on the shelves next to me. vast landscapes of thought, photographed, turned into linear, slowly developing lines of written and printed language, drawings, charts, page numbers. All pressed so tightly against each other, waiting for the moment of liberation. They are worthless unless looked at, they are worthless unless decoded, the layers of black and cyan and magenta and yellow ink, covering various areas on both sides of pages. Advertisements calling out to buy products no longer available, offers no longer valid, points of view burned into pages, published, now preserved, frozen.
There are very peculiar combinations of information on that bookshelf next to me. Wayne Thiebaud's Paintings press tightly against some observations made by Laura Hoptman, pressing against Gursky's photographs, against William Eggleston, against Helen Levitt. Thiebaud painted uptown, downtown, really, Levitt went Crosstown. Gerhard Richter painted for forty years, the back of the book quite abstract, next to him, Tufte, Envisioning information, then Andy Warhol's brilliant drawings from the 50's, next to the twilight of Crewdson's photography pushing against Georgia O'Keeffe's portraits taken by Alfred Stieglitz, resting on Struth 1977 2002, next to Ansel Adams at 100... next to the wall... below all this some Bulgakov, some Bachman, Rilke, E.T.A. Hoffman, J.Pawlik... Goethe on Gingko, Murakami, more Rilke, more Goethe, Heinz Edelmann, Sagmeister, Paul Johnson, Thoreau... gosh... this is quite a wild bunch, right here, right now... I should probably not even spend my time looking at this screen here, but grab these pages again, when there is daylight, and just read a little more again, not using any electricity anymore... just mine the words and little dots that make pictures, and just dive and swim... not surf...
But I will probably close this universal book here again in a few minutes, turn off the light, stare at the stripes projected onto the ceiling by the cars driving by on broadway. They will move like pages of a book, they will wander like the links on some schematic view of a site... they will remind me of the nights when I was in my room and when I had not the slightest clue that any one of the books next to me or in front of me ever existed or would ever exist...
And I will probably try to just slow down to this particular private pace, and then watch the hours and hours of stories concocted by my own brain from what I fed it all of today...
Hmm... so many stories waiting, everywhere, everywhere... always.