I feel special again. I think it is important for everybody and above all any creative person to feel different and extraordinary and to some extent I believe the crazier the better. Creating means making something out of nothing guided by your obsession to create, what you know and your goals. Those tend to become interesting when you see yourself in a unique way and because you might also be the only person motivating yourself, it might just be better if a crazily extraordinary person is rooting for you. I had lost this feeling after not achieving ill defined goals. Basically I lost almost all of my personality I liked for 5 years and after this time, almost didn't recognize the person who was vegetating away their life anymore. The big change has been the loss of the picture I had of myself as a very intelligent guy who knows something about everyting and dreams of the infinitely small and the infintely big. That was a cool persona,  a very positive one but ultimately killed by the fact that I was unable to make other people believe it or care about it. When your time of doubts and problems comes you need the real, everyday world, others, to reinforce your self image and that means that even the most contrarian cynicist, brilliant scientist or crazy showperson needs to be approacheable to somebody. So here I am again feeling special and very happy. This time I don't feel intellectual or serious. In fact I make an effort to be neither and the contrary really. I feel special because I am chosen by people I respect and love as a person of trust. It happens regularly, I don't know why and I'm blown away by the fact. But in some sense it is a fulfillment of a part of my personallity which I always had but didn't know how to use. That contrary to my father, who was very gentle on the inside but hard and scary on the outside, a style I always aspired to and never knew how to pull of, other than my uncle who is an intellecual powerhouse and storytelling mastermind but surprisingly distanced and egocentric and other role models I chose to have, I am the only one who shares happiness and the feeling that together anything is possible. Without knowing me too well, various people have let me know that they appreciate this and that apparently it's difficult to find. I feel honored and accept the role gladly, a role fulfilling and also immensely creative. On a more abstract level it comes down to finding what's good about most situations, rather than focus on the risks, the negatives, the bad. This is surprisingly rare. The other day I was talking with a Japanese artist who was appalled by me saying that Japanese culture seems to owe a lot to China. The explanation was interesting. She said that Japan as an island, does not have the notion of foreignness. It surprised me because Japan has had history of seclusion and is today still very distinctly different from other countries but it made sense. She said because basically everything is foreign to the small island nation, all is equally and easily incorporated into their culture. When Japanese eat spaghetti, they don't think about italy, when they drink tea, not about China. They just take things because they are interesting and move on. I was fascinated by this interpretation because you really have this feeling here nowadays. In Japan you can find influences from all over the world but the Japanese always have their own take on things. They might call noodles Napolitana and it has nothing to do with the cuisine typical for Napoli and wear Chanel which has never looked so good on anybody as on a Japanese girl. It's not borrowing other cultures but freely using them, forming their own words, making their own versions and ultimately accepting them as typical. And because Japanese do everything with so much care, Ramen and japanese Tea are today very distinctly japanese things, even though people first started doing them elsewhere. I am not a historian but what let me almost jump up with joy while listening to this account is the fact that it is a positive interpretation about something the speaker cares for. It is more difficult to find reasons for why something is good, it is creative and requires the invention of concepts. This is true for the output of a society as for people's individual projects and an important part to play in the grand theater of life. There is another reason. My friend with whom I have been living for 12 years has been telling me for a while that I am an artistic performance in and of myself. I never liked that because it seemed to give too much credit to a life spent doing basically nothing and without success. Notice the positivity? But people nowadays appreciate this combination of approachable positivity and anti-utilitarian lifestyle. Because just as I let intellectual pursuits behind me I also do not care about achievements anymore. They are great but I think you have to be at the right place at the right time far more importantly than is acknowledged and every achievement owes more to other people than the one getting famous. In fact I have been wanting for a long time to lend support to the notion of team effort and basically all the other echelons of work than the head of some organization and might outweigh their contributions by far. With the Japanese artist I also spoke about feminism and how it basically ended in giving women male roles with unfair, unavoidable disadvantages instead of putting lifestyles that are statistically more prevalent in women the same dignity and importance in society. This is one aspect of this problem and goes beyond feminism. Society has one measure of success, which was never attainable by a majority and which today is becoming altogether obsolete as there really arent so many important things to do anymore. There are always things one can do of course, like contribute decorative art, or clean the streets or plant trees or help children cross roads or care for the elderly or think about how a district can become nicer and safer and... none of these are associated with glamor and fame for now.  So being somebody who can at least make his friends feel good about themselves is a role I gladly take. It is a work of art itself. And living differently to everybody else, tastefully, wittily has been a philosophical tool in the past and works the same way today.