Tags
authors, Café littéraire, Nemesis, Paris, screenplay, screenwriting, Vienna
As the day begins, this is what I am given, while driving towards the city. It is 6.55 am. A pinkish mist coats the hedges and the lawns I pass by. Sky promises to be bright blue. There is little traffic before I hit the feeder leading to the centre of the Metropolis. The ideas and whereabouts regarding the writing I am battered in start to roll in my mind. I am making corrections and adjustments already, in the quietness of my car.
I enjoy the rising of the sun. Anywhere I can. It feeds my need for beauty and aesthetics in the simplest possible way. Like a token of joy. I think of the characters I must deal with today. Their motivations, their interactions with others, their conflicts, their nature, the drama, the laugh…
Then, moments later, I sit in front of a freshly brewed coffee. With my laptop, I can carry my work office everywhere. I connect through WI-FI and voilà.
A glance around me, and I dive into the thoughts nurtured by the latest movies or series I watched, or the current piece I am working on, and that I have sorted out during my earlier driving.
The day develops while I keep writing, proofing, correcting, changing, cutting scenes…My brain races. So much to do, so little time. I take a second coffee, then a third. My heart beat quickens a bit. I begin to be very caffeinated. I drink water. I gaze at the walls when they are decorated. When I am stuck in a scene in the screenplay, it is utterly helpful to let fresh air (metaphorically speaking) rippling on the ocean of the codes and conventions one follows to build characterization or inner conflicts.
When Nemesis escapes you, close your eyes and smell the coffee.
It sometimes induces a loop in the field of the work I have to do, like a breath of fresh air.
Writing in a café is highly pleasurable. It makes a daily task blissful. Cafés littéraires, as they are called in France. Cafés or coffee houses where one writes or discuss literature (or politics).
It connects us with all those beloved authors, and allows a spiritual communion to the magnificent prodigy of human nature : crafting sentences and words to craft and explain our lives and the future.
Coffee and writing, seemingly so intimately bound to speak of our human conditions. The best could be found in the cafés in Vienna, the coffee hours held in the Salons in Paris, London, St Petersburg in the past centuries, where ideas for better everything where sketched and refined.
The warmth of the anonymous company of fellow beings. The observation of nature.
A microcosm accommodated within 4 walls and processed by a coffee machine.
Long live the cafés and coffee houses, where we can seek and find matter for writing, fuel for our thoughts, and nicely light ephemeral connections through a smile or a inconsequential gaze.
Café culture addict 