Wednesday, 25 June 2025, 3:10 PM

Unlike usual, I'm not sitting in the C/O Café to write this episode of disconnect. When I got off the U9 at Ku'damm and exited the subway station, I didn't feel like going there. I wanted to go somewhere else. I don't know exactly why - sometimes, something simply doesn't feel right.

As I am slowly transitioning from one project to the next, it could have been a desire for change. Not a harsh escape out of my environment, like the ursprung of 40 Nights in Toronto was. More of an intuitive, gentle change of perspective to question the world I live in.

I managed to escape the momentary decision paralysis caused by spontaneously breaking out of my every-second-Wednesday routine with a quick Google search that led me to the Giro Coffee Bar on Knesebeckstraße. Outside, about a handful of tables on the sidewalk, all occupied. Inside, a long, narrow corridor-like room, empty when I entered, except for one grey-haired, maybe 70-year-old man sitting in the back of the room, reading a book. Wooden light brown chairs, comfortable-looking forest green corduroy [?] couches, lined up next to each other. Only now, as I am observing and writing down what the room looks like, I notice that I sat down at the second-to-last table at the back of the room.

A young man and woman [late-twenties or early thirties, Mitte/Charlottenburg creative agency type] sit down at the table next to me. I'm listening to their conversation. For a moment, without context. The woman talks about the 'red-queen phenomenon.' As I hear her talking, I feel it may have to do with what I am writing/will write about today. What I understood from what she said is that the expression is taken from Alice in Wonderland and refers to the constant need to evolve to survive. I noted that I will look up the exact meaning later, when I edit this episode.

‘The conceptual basis of the Red Queen hypothesis is that species (or populations) must continually evolve new adaptations in response to evolutionary changes in other organisms to avoid extinction. The term is derived from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, where the Red Queen informs Alice that “here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” Thus, with organisms, it may require multitudes of evolutionary adjustments just to keep from going extinct.’

[sciencedirect.com - Reference work: Encyclopedia of Ecology (Second Edition), R.B. Langerhans, 2008]

So here I am: Changing the location where usually I write, transitioning into a new project while 40 Nights in Toronto will continue until the end of the year, and eventually I'm somehow in the same position no matter what: In an almost empty coffee shop in Charlottenburg, on a Wedenesday afternoon, drinking decaf cappuccino with oat milk, at the second-to-last table of a narrow, long room [I've always found narrow spaces comforting]. An intuitive, gentle change of perspective - to avoid extinction?

To find space to process and reflect on the release of 40 Nights in Toronto, I went on a walk through the Regierungsviertel one evening last week.

I tried to remember. How did I feel? What did I notice? What did you tell me? Most of it was a blur. At least, too blurry to write down. Some memories were very present and vivid in my mind, but they refused to get out. So I’ll keep them where they are, at least for now. Maybe some memories are meant to stay in our minds?

Now, as I am revising these notes, the one that brings me the most joy is:

* I'm empty rn - no idea what to write

In a world that constantly throws information at us, expects us to be ready to act, to process what's happening around us, isn't it a beautiful, luxurious privilege to be/feel empty?

On my spaziergang, I was listening to 40 Nights in Toronto. I stopped gegenüber vom Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus. Looking at the circle, across the Spree reflecting the surrounding lights, smoothly rocking on the river’s surface, hypnotized me.

After standing there for a few minutes, immobile, just staring at this portal into another dimension of my mind, First Canadian Exchange started playing. It teleported me back into the moment it played during the audiovisual listening session on 14 June, and I remembered vividly how I felt. 

I am amazed by those moments in daily life where you ask yourself, ‘Is this even real?’ Those are the realest moments. Fully present, no distractions. So real it’s unreal. Maybe when we seem disconnected from reality, that’s when we’re living in it the most?

Can you think of a moment that made you question reality? What was it, and how did it make you feel?

Enjoy your day [or night].

glg Soda Paapi

PS: If someone came to mind while reading this, maybe send it their way.