I’m not a collector of books. I’m not a Karl Lagerfeld who possessed 300,000 books spread across seven private homes. To me, books are necessary for reference, for work – if you can call it that much, as «work» is a word of dignity – for supporting a development of thought that may take years. Sometimes they come to me, sometimes I pick them up, feeling in my guts that I will need them one day – and then, eight or ten years later their time has come, I open them, and read. Sadly, the urgency I felt back then is no longer the urgency of today, and so what felt exciting back then may have taken on a certain patina, a breath of staleness. Still, the precognition and its redemption are the most wondrous part of it all. So what books serve me in opposition to what they may have served Lagerfeld, is not a fascination with all that is possible, existing, exciting, and marvellous. I don’t cultivate a cabinet of curiosities. Other than Lagerfeld, I’m not a man of the Baroque. (And I doubt anybody would call Lagerfeld a man of the Renaissance except perhaps he himself, but he was a conceited man, so his vote doesn’t count.) Books, and collections of books, are ballustrades that help keep one’s thoughts walking. Even when they pause, or quietly sit for years, when they finally pull themselves together again and start walking, slowly, hesitatingly at first, soon more self-assured and sturdy, the books are the handroll that keep especially the old thoughts, the long-carried ideas, walking. And through them me myself, and the specific ways this me perceives this world.

#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten