Hotels used to be, many years ago, places where one slept, yes, but also places where one could sit and write. They allowed you to produce. No longer. You are no longer expected to write anything. Much less…do anything. The ubiquitous hotel stationary is now provided more as an afterthought (the last car produced with an ash tray) than as an invitation to jot down thoughts, idea, notes, a letter, a memory, a doodle, etc… Its lonely existence now accessorized by an even lonelier hotel pen. If one is provided a desk, that desk comes with more ports than the Italian riviera. You plug in and face a wall. Like some sort of a punishment from a 1950’s parochial school. A palette of taupe and grey envelope you and make you wonder why the planners of these hotels hate colors. You imagine them screeching in terror at the very sight of a rainbow. This is not a bastion of creative energy, and maybe that’s the point.
We lose things when we do not foster an activity that has accompanied us for thousands of years. We lose a tiny part of ourselves. Our lonely existence in our “suites” highlighted now by thread counts and the ability to stream what we stream at home. It used to be that we brought our neuroses with us when we traveled, yes, but at least the creature comforts were different or non existent. The environment itself was changed, and perhaps, maybe that would change us in small, imperceptible ways. Now, the very shows we watch lying down in our bedrooms are the same shows we watch lying down in our hotel room in Madrid. The very same binging across different time zones. Our comfort neatly packaged and stowed away in our carry ons. We are no longer inspired as desensitized. We are nowhere together, all at once.
The desk and the stationary and the letter writing and the creativity and the production are all parts of the same thing. The inquiry into something greater. The conduit for expression which sits within us, screaming to be released. To question. To inform. To ruminate. To witness. The physical strokes on the pad evidence the fact that in this very moment of human existence on this great globe in this mysterious universe, you made this mark, and this mark shall live forever. The ideas will transmit thoughts of their own and they will change minds for eternity. They are a brutal attack against meaninglessness and unmitigated consumption. The desk allows you to say “I was here once. I walked here. I lived a life that included this very place.” The desk and the letter and the pen makes you immortal. The bed and the streaming and the lying down makes you dead.