There are, esteemed female reader, esteemed reader, words that in an era suddenly take on the sound of a morality – not because they are moral in themselves, but because they are treated that way, with a mixture of fear and bourgeois ambition. “Optimization” is one of these words; “hygiene” another; “prevention” a third, which, dreary enough, sounds like a virtue and yet, if you listen more closely, means a business. And finally there are words that appear so innocent, so everyday, that one only notices late how much one obeys with them: “nutrition”, for example, and “activity”.
Nutrition – that was once bread, cheese, soup, Sunday roast; a thing one did because one wanted to live and because life, incidentally, was also allowed to taste good. Activity – that was once work, walk, dance; a flowing off of energy into the world, without anyone breaking the energy down into numbers. Today, however, both – and this is not merely an observation but, if one is strict, a symptom – have become a kind of secular piety. One no longer eats; one “inputs”. One does not walk; one “achieves”. One does not sleep; one “optimizes the REM share”. And one does not sit; one sins.
For it is said – and how gladly people say it, how gladly they give the everyday an apodictic sentence so that it finally sounds like a law of nature: “Sitting is the new smoking.”
This sentence, esteemed female reader, esteemed reader, is one of those modern formulas that both warn and seduce: warn, because they smuggle terror into everyday life; seduce, because they suddenly give everyday life meaning. Whoever sits is not simply tired, but endangered. Whoever stands is not simply uncomfortable, but virtuous. And whoever walks – is almost already redeemed.
In such houses as the Sonnenalp, where in any case everything is gladly sold as ritual, as program, as package, it was inevitable that this new piety would receive its liturgical form: the lecture. For the lecture is the modern equivalent of the sermon – only that instead of incense it has slides, instead of psalms study names, and instead of the hereafter a promise that is called “Long‑Term Health Outcomes”.
Thus it came to that evening in the music room.
