Some notes from the last week

At Bar Italia on the 9th

Things I might need to think about:

• What is a cafe? Different to a bar, restaurant, tavern, diner? How?

• What is a revolution? What constitutes changing the world?

  (Not sure I need to spend long on this. Thorough and clever people have probably already addressed it.)

• Should I talk to cafe owners?

  (In my previous cafe writing I’ve always been too shy but this time it seems more necessary and possible. I can write to them in advance and I can say I’m writing a book which makes it seems a bit more legit.)

At Bar Italia on the 12th

Lucy mentioned a possible cafe in Tangier over dinner last night. (Cafe Hafa)

At Reunion on the 13th

I’ve been reading (on Rod’s recommendation) Constellation of Genius, all about the year 1922 and how it was uniquely special in culture etc (not sure I buy that, but that’s not the point). It’s structured chronologically. A diary or log of things that happened that year, some of them long, some of them short. The short ones are fragments of fact. They act like texture or or context or decoration. Some of the longer ones are also opportunties to break out of the chronology and tell stories that smear across the timeline and stretch outside 1922. I like the rhythm of it.

I wonder if I can (or should?) do something similar with cafes. They’d have to be a lot of them, more than I was assuming, but that’s probably OK. And then I could dive into a few in detail. So maybe I could do it by longitude, sliding round the world. And maybe that would make it less euro-centric. Dunno.

Starting to get nervous about the first paid post next year. Got to write that. Will y’all think it’s worth it?