[HD-9] I have not washed my shirt in ten days.
Seven percent left on the battery, much less left on the brain. Hofgarten Days is almost over and I’m pretty sure I’m still Bernard Soubry, friends, but at this point, who truly knows?
Slow, sluggish. Everything feels long and difficult to concentrate on. When I sit in sessions I find myself thinking about small home-based things, like trying to install a hanging clothes rack with pulleys, or a phone mount for my bike. I get to the venue later and later. I have not washed my shirt in ten days.
Actually, on the shirt thing—this is admittedly bad strategy on my part; I only brought a single shirt to Bonn with me. Some of you may be horrified. My colleagues certainly were. But the justfiication is this: I have been gone now for six weeks, two of which have been spent camping; three of which have been visiting friends and not having a job: and one and a half of which has been at a conference. Standing in my apartment bedroom in Montreal, I rationalized: I do not need a second shirt as long as I don’t bring something that shows stains. Hence, this pink little number.
My high school made me hate suits. We had a dress code that required a shirt, tie, and blazer; we had to wear them at all times on school property, including after gym class, which smelled. A slow-footed, warm-hearted human megaphone called Mr. Racine prowled the hallways during breaktimes, looking for boys who had loosened their tie knot or grown their hair past their shirt collar. Suits melded in with the Catholic Church, poorly-trained teachers, and people who didn’t like my long hair: low-key childhood trauma. And I resolved upon graduating never to wear them again.
Well, look at yourself now, 14-year-old Bernard: Every day, you get into the venue and change into the polyester blue suit you bought in the Oxford Mind shop a few weeks before Sam and Marta’s wedding, the one with the birds on the inner lining. It is your job to wear this suit.
Oh, don't disown me yet: it’s still dumb. You still think suits are a waste of fabric. But they are also a disguise, and thus—your best tool as a reporter.
You have become a sneaky spy. You listen in on conversations. Your whole schtick is getting other people’s opinions before you speak your own. If you are to write down the state of the world and the words of the people who are making it worse, you need to be taken into their trust. And the way to do that is to wear the damn blazer and pants and shirt.
You used to think you needed to be different: you grew your hair long and did a lot of Shakespeare in theatre club and grew your fingernails out on your right hand because you claimed it made your guitar playing better (it didn’t). Suits were an insult to you then. But 14-me, they were actually a great gift: they taught you what other people think is normal.
If you're going to get intel from people, you have to think like them and act like them and dress like them. You need to be the most boring person in the room. So walk into the venue and put on your costume and then go to work. I promise you, you didn’t totally sell out. And you kind of look good.
Plus, you do wear red suspenders, so I guess that’s good enough rebellion for now.
Thinking about laundry,
B