"(...) a simple prop to occupy my time"

Yesterday I was thinking about Bruno Latour’s quotation: “’Who would know how to love without having read novels?” This saying seems to take on a new meaning with the multiplication of virtual worlds, even though the adjective “virtual” may be greatly misleading” (LATOUR, 2007) . It happened to me at the exactly moment when I had been caught into an intense flow of existential thoughts based on some reminiscences and infinitesimal fragments of my past. I was thinking about the old days/years, the first experiences, the great friendships and of course, the people I loved through my whole life. And a song of the 28 years rock and roll band R.E.M. came into my mind and body as a perfect soundtrack for the moment: “This one goes out to the one I love, this one goes out to the one I left behind, a simple prop to occupy my time”. And all of a sudden, a huge charge of virtual feelings started to affect me so intensely, I barely could breath. With lucky, I was not driving my car at that moment, because it had already happened to me when I was doing such thing, what can be pretty dangerous. The power of distraction that it brings is incredible, the power of life too, as much as the consequences of the power of failing. You might be wondering why, sort of instantly, I started to write in English on this remarkable blog. That’s because those thoughts came into light in English too. I’m not sure if this kind of phenomenon happens with you too, or anybody else that you know or live with, it might give the impression of a little schizophrenic act, but in almost every time I start to have these kinds of feelings and thoughts, they come to me in English… like if I needed to face it all through such an absolute distance, the way Blanchot mention it. In a second language, or a minor language like D&G refers to, using several examples like Kafka’s literature. Coming back to Latour, his ideas evoke the necessity of building a new concept for virtual, especially regarding to the massive consequences for social sciences to get access to digital traces. He utilizes Marcel Proust “A la recherche du temps perdu” to show how our processes of memory, affects, access to data, etc are occurring nowadays using the approach of Gabriel Tarde to develop his arguments. Maybe our nowadays’ memories are more related to bits and bites than ever, and Henry Bergson was probably the first one to show us these possibilities of the memory making a comparison with la naissance du cinéma on “Matière et Mémoire” – our memory working as a filmmaking activity – what Guattari had already brought for us to think through his article “Le Divan de Pauvre” when he mentions the psychoanalytical potencies of the black room of the cinema theatre. I have a close relationship with cinema and was through the 7th art that I have learnt how to use English as an effective language. And more than thousands of movies are strictly responsible to the subjective aspects of my personality. I’m almost 30 years of age (next week I’ll be 29) and I have to admit that those thoughts & feelings mentioned here came to me crushing really hard. And I also know that they will come back soon, as if they had never disappeared completely. But in every time they show up, it is different, the sensations are different, as much as the landscapes and consequences. I am still so grateful for the life I had and have until now and the powerful encounters it provides.