The Illogic of Kassel

49

I reached the street, finally heading in the right direction toward the Hessenland, and as I was walking, I started imagining that I had left the city and come back once Documenta had closed, and I went into the abandoned salon of This Variation to see what the place was like when it wasn’t dark, with dancers lying in ambush. It didn’t take long to discover that it was an uninteresting, rundown space. But there was someone there that I hadn’t expected: an old Indian man, who asked me if I was aware that the soul survived in a “suprasensitive” world. I didn’t know that, I said in fright. The soul survives, he told me, in coexistence with forces that those initiates of the ancient world understood very well, even their most mysterious aspects. I didn’t know that either, sir, I explained, and almost felt the need to apologize for not knowing. A shame, he said, because you won’t be able to connect with the superior beings of the celestial hierarchy. A long silence. Here in this room there was avant-garde art, I tried telling the Indian man. And to my surprise my words affected him the way a stake would have affected a vampire. So much so that I watched him leave completely horrified. It seemed clear to me that the term “avant-garde” caused serious problems for the densely populated, cosmopolitan colony of ghosts in Kassel.