Don’t worry baby, it’s gonna be alright Uncertainty can be a guiding light (U2, Zooropa, 1993)

The city lights defeat the darkness, overwhelming in a city so vast like Berlin, with no obstacles so that you can see the universe meet the horizon at the borders of the city. I took a stroll after a day of work, from the library in the east side where I was working, until Charlottenburg former centre of the west. Once you had to see the cities if you wanted to see the future. As I am walking I am asking myself whether that still stands true.

Zooropa was a futuristi album conceived at the time when the wall had collapsed, and so the world as we knew it. The two Berlins where coming together and so was Europe. The future was progress, democracy and technology when it hadn’t lost yet its aura of wonder. It amazes me how that album was already exploring the problem of sensorial overload of new media. That was prior to world-wide-web, and I wonder what we could have thought of social media and artificial intelligence.

I am spending a week in Berlin to work on some personal projects, collect my thoughts, work on some new ideas. I know the city and I don’t mind staying the day at the library working. I have not fear of missing out. I enjoy immersing myself in the life of Berliners as I join their commute in the morning, and getting lost somewhere in my evening walks with no pre-defined destination. I love Berlin because I can text a friend who I haven’t seen in years, and they will invite me to join their plans for the evening itself.

I you wanted to see the future, you had to look at the cities, and I’ve come to Berlin. In the evening I am reading the struggles of Germany in this moment. I wonder wether the future we immagine has never happened or is sill yet to come. I am taking distance from the thesis of Mark Fisher and Bifo Berardi on the disappearance of future. The current scenario shows that future (intended as possibility, alternative) hasn’t disappeared. It may be we don’t like possibilities that are in front of our eyes, and we don’t want, or don’t know yet how to propose a better alternative. I think it is pa position of comfort rather than truth.

My room tonight is quiet and I could extend the same thought to the city. Berliners are kind. The city is vibrant yet most of of its cultural activity is understated. Regardless of the mess and tragedy that can be observed in the streets, I think theres is hope. Hope alone is not sufficient, but there must be hope.