"Two things that have haunted me most are the days when I had to collect the paybooks; and when I left Bill Hubbard in no-man's-land. I was picked up and taken into their trench. And I'd no sooner taken two or three steps down the trench when I heard a call, 'Hello Razz, I'm glad to see you. This is my second night here,' and he said 'I'm feeling bad,' and it was Bill Hubbard, one of the men we'd trained in England, one of the original battalion. I had a look at his wound, rolled him over; I could see it was probably a fatal wound. You could imagine what pain he was in, he was dripping with sweat; and after I'd gone about three shellholes, traversed that, had it been...had there been a path or a road I could have done better. He pummeled me, 'Put me down, put me down, I'd rather die, I'd rather die, put me down.' I was hoping he would faint. He said 'I can't go any further, let me die.' I said 'If I leave you here Bill you won't be found, let's have another go.' He said 'All right then.' And the same thing happened; he couldn't stand it any more, and I had to leave him there, in no-man's-land"

"Years later, I saw Bill Hubbard's name on the memorial to the missing at Aras. And I...when I saw his name I was absolutely transfixed; it was as though he was now a human being instead of some sort of nightmarish memory of how I had to leave him, all those years ago. And I felt relieved, and ever since then I've felt happier about it, because always before, whenever I thought of him, I said to myself, 'Was there something else that I could have done?' And that always sort of worried me. And having seen him, and his name in the register - as you know in the memorials there's a little safe,there's a register in there with every name - and seeing his name and his name on the memorial; it sort of lightened my...heart, if you like. (Woman) "When was it that you saw his name on the memorial?" "Ah, when I was eighty-seven, that would be a year, ninete...eighty-four, nineteen eighty-four."

Rogers Waters - The Ballad of Bill Hubbard/Amused To Death

Liebe ist eine Allergie auf Lust

Hallo Konfuzius. Du sagst mir gerade per Mail: Zu wissen, was man weiß, und zu wissen, was man tut, das ist Wissen. Also, wenn ich immer gewußt hätte, was ich tue, dann wäre ich niemals in der Lage zu schreiben. Schreiben bedeutet ja, dass man etwas tut, von dem man nicht weiß, wie es endet. Schon gar nicht bei einem selber. Man schreibt ja so aus sich selber raus, und wenn Du da sagst, dass man weiß, was man tut, aber dann macht das Schreiben ja keinen Sinn mehr, weil ja gerade das nicht wissen das ist, was dem Schreiben den besonderen Kick gibt. Nicht planen, nicht wissen ist großartig, denn es läßt einem alles offen. Man kann den ganzen Determinismus umgehen, der ja fürs Schreiben eh der letzte Dreck ist. Zu Wissen, was man tut, ist auch in der heutigen Dating Gesellschaft sehr schlecht. Wenn ich jedesmal, bevor ich eine Frau angesprochen habe, gewußt hätte, was ich tue, wäre mir eine Menge Ärger (eine exorbitant große Menge Ärger) erspart geblieben, aber auf der anderen Seite auch eine Fülle von gedanklichen Universen, die mich ja auch erst zu dem gemacht habe, was ich bin, weil ich sie inhaliert habe. So sehr ich leide, so sehr lerne ich auch. Immer nur wissen, vor allem vorher, macht einem zu einem Hamburg-Mannheimer Kunden. Und ich hab noch nicht mal eine Lebensversicherung, aber vielleicht auch genau aus dem Grund.