Jeanne Stürmchen: Marion! Because I am the me you invented, the me on the paper, the living, the dead me; would you like to talk/think a little, think/talk?
Marion: No. Since mid-September I can neither think nor … that means although, but: these kinds of speeches, that happens to me before I think, I can still do that… but look, When did I ever talk differently? Talking is just a reflex for me…. I can not think…. I don't reach thinking ….
Jeanne Stürmchen: Gut, we would have cleared that up. What does not being able to think mean for your work? You are there now, the almost fifteen year old “Belief” put together differently … no longer chronological …?
Marion: not being able to think; it means, that there is just black, as soon as I want to consciously grasp a sentence that has been spoken, check, make an imprint of it, so to speak …. it means, that I can only guess, what I write at all.
In reference to a manuscript of a novel, it means further, that I have no chance, understand the content as a whole. I think, honestly, that I will never be able to do that again…. Unfortunately I can't keep track of any great novels anymore…. my brain has crumbled into small fragmentary snippets ….
Jeanne Stürmchen: Just a reminder; in the new version of the belief, the two of us seem to be nothing more than two distinct selves. I, your alter ego, your young, eternally frozen, always alive, been, flirtatious you, so won't drown you in a surreal scene at the end. Does that mean, that you with your youthful self and healthy body, of matter, the Ego, the narcissism, the Drama, of beauty, nihilism, etc. broke?
Marion: halt, halt! With so many terms! Yes they do …. oh Gott, have emptied. No, the reason, why I'm not striving for the division of you and me in the last chapter, only for technical reasons….
Jeanne Stürmchen: technical ….?!
Marion: That's right! In my new version, the-God willing – will be the last, I follow the principle of simplification. You know, how complicated, how complex i am … how awkwardly I must think… because I can't think …. to which confusion I tend, because my brain doesn't filter perceptions ….
Jeanne Stürmchen: A hundred little junctions and tracks, but no common thread, no line?
Marion: i don't feel that way! I don't feel linear! But yes, that's the way it is: the simultaneity of a hundred tracks have always misled me, because I wanted to follow every lead. The same thing happened and still happens in the realm of my sensations …. that means no: let's call them: intuitions…. I have it with feeling as with speaking: they are reflexes, that happen to me…. before I own them….put myself in relation to it ….
my problem was, I don't want to say, my lifetime, but in terms of novel writing, it could work: only with the distance can I get an immediate feeling of what has been experienced, of mixed imagination, of spontaneous ejaculation and whims …. this closeness, that I've been babbling about for a while; that's the closeness, who absolutely needs the distance, the separation, to then be as close and intimate as possible, to recreate the chaos of immediacy, this time as a lasting effect…..
The idea, that you me, the author, drown, in a surreal final scene, I still like it. But that's the way it is, that beliefs go down with both of us. We: of, my young me, my cheeky, my unadaptable self, that I, that didn't give a fuck about the welfare of other people, this I, who banged his fist, against everything, which ran counter to her poetic sensibilities, that never grew up, never touched the world…. this bunch of animal instincts, who believed, he would enchant, and me…. your late you, your sick body…. your carcass…. (So sagt Settembrini im “Zauberberg”: a sick body is just a body…. is carcass) your thinking trying ….. your pangs of conscience….. I…… both come up empty…. our motivation, our Destin is the same: it is the OUT of the SELF, the end of the subject….or better: of deeply subjective experience and communication.
Jeanne Stürmchen: The end of artistic expression!!
Marion: I do not know. For you and me, and. for people, who have this radically subjective claim, in art, or for yourself, what do I know. Indeed it is, that I feel like an antiquated piece of furniture with my dreams, in which all people, who meet me, have to be expressive. This me, that I wanted to condense in my literature, has become obsolete, an expression of selfishness itself….. if you say, if I no longer have these stars before my eyes: the beauty, the nihilism, the drama….. in God's name no, I can't. Unless I'm listening to Mahler's Adagio. Otherwise, look….. I am forced, to look out for my surroundings a little bit, the near and distant….. and what I see of this world, DO NOT ALLOW me anymore, to feel good in my subjective expression.
I've grown old and embody nothing but decadence. I've never felt like this before …. sobered up. But that's how the elderly feel, or not?
Jeanne Stürmchen: I don't quite follow you.
Marion: I can not think. And I don't know anymore what you wanted to know.
What could be the task of me? Accepted: i would be healthy, I wouldn't be me?
It should be an assignment, which creates a connection to the outside world, instead of abolishing it with just the possibilities, with which I wanted to create it: with my own resources!!!!!!
It should be an assignment, this time, that I do together with others, a work at the base. Self-sufficiency…..
Jeanne Stürmchen: Do not you think, that you could write, without writing through you? Free from your point of view, your body, your prison?
Marion: No…. I don't know, how it works…. I just know, that nowadays you don't WRITE ABOUT YOURSELF anymore, BECAUSE THIS IS OUT OF DATE…. so, how today you can no longer paint landscapes in oil like the Impressionists, so you can no longer say I…. really me …..you can't say at all: I, if you from here, comes from the greedy west….when you have nothing to say…. which would rather dress you, sich schamvoll zu bedecken, Ausfälligkeiten, Auffälligkeiten zu unterlassen….. eventuell kann man noch schreiben, wenn man ein aktuelles Thema aufgreift, in einem journalistischen Stil…..
Was du aber schreibst, wenn du heute schreibst, muss andere Gleiche, und zwar am besten ganze Gruppen anderer Gleicher, angehen. Es sollte nicht nur dich, und in erster Linie dich angehen. Mit einer solchen Introversion gehst du besser zum Shrink. Oder schreibst deinem besten Freund einen Brief….
Jeanne Stürmchen: die Welt ist am Anschlag und kann das Ich nicht mehr gebrauchen? Das ich, das sich selbstverwirklicht?
Marion: über die Welt weiss ich nichts, still. Ich sage nur, dass mir der Blick in die Welt hinaus, die Poesie und den Egoismus austreibt. The desire, Selbstausdruck betreiben zu wollen, schwindet. Ich verliere den Geschmack an meinem eigenen Personenkult, den ich mit uns betreibe….by getting completely involved in my work …. by inventing you….
Jeanne Stürmchen: how will you “Belief” finished writing, when you can only think in fragmentary snippets?
Marion: I'm not quite sure. I can only rely on my short term memory, my short memory. On the other hand, there are a few blocks, that I can take and put in the empty space; I fabricated these blocks in my late thirties. As little as it is, it's good, that I have these fabrics, because they show a drive, that I once owned. From obsession. These substances are now the sunflower seeds, while the later chapters, the leaves are, two, three leaves without stringency….. exhausted…… which I arrange around the core…hanging and limp.
Jeanne Stürmchen: Will you send this version to publishers?
Marion: I do not know, should I do that again?. I don't want to get involved in free market affairs. A publisher asks about the return. Is it worth publishing MJS?? The answer is no.
Jeanne Stürmchen: How sad.
Marion: no. I honestly don't think so anymore, that the consumer wants something else, than, what is offered to him. The supply determines the demand. “The time of the other is over.” (Byng-Chul): this quote only confirms it, what matter it: People want that, what they already know within themselves, recognize in the other. They applaud and appreciate the same for them. The other is a case for the specialist (twelve-tone music) or for the shrink.
Unless, one is a child: In the child, the other is still accepted. To a certain degree.
But this return and money thing isn't my problem.
Jeanne Stürmchen: Rather?
Marion: When you put a lot of time and effort into a job, one would like to be able to say: I am happy, I have done something. How are you supposed to do that?, if you can't push the work a millimeter away from yourself? writing for yourself, make art for yourself; and, that's the one, that liberates. But what I after? Who takes a part of the junk?
But if so…. in principle it doesn't matter. while writing, you must have lived well!
Jeanne Stürmchen: It will bury you under you. So far you've only lost track of the connections. But it will bury you under you.
Marion: Quite possible.
(20.10.22)