I called the bank. Somewhere in April my wallet was stolen during the Rotterdam Marathon (I didn’t participate) and although I have repeatedly requested a new business debit card since then, I still get nothing. I keep forgetting either to call the bank or to check whether they have the correct information and now I pay most bills with my personal card, even those that don’t have to. In the meantime, I live in constant fear that letters with debit cards will fall on someone’s doormat all the time. And that whoever opens the letters finds out my pin code and empties my business account.
I am stress sensitive and forgetful. This is why I never took side jobs in cafes, and I had a panic attack the first time I tried to make a budget in Excel as a freelancer. I’m easily distracted, bad at performing tasks that don’t interest me, and obsessive about things I do care about. If something frightens me, it paralyzes me, then I forget it. I know it’s cliché: the artist who can knead cannot live.
At the end of June, the series The Bear on streaming platform Hulu. In the series, young top chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto returns to his hometown of Chicago to save the family restaurant – bequeathed to him by his recently deceased brother – from destruction. Carmy wants to make it a respectable diner. However, the switch from putting fresh herbs on minimalist dishes with tweezers to rolling greasy beef sandwiches in paper sheets is quite big. Traumatized, emotionally constipated and ill-equipped to deal with the rebellious staff, Carmy also has to deal with mob bosses and gentrification. In eight episodes you are not only exposed to his fragile yet hilarious mental state, but also to a repetitive bomb of raw meat, hot oil, sharpened knives, swear words and a lot of stress. While watching, I had to hit the pause button halfway through a scene several times so I could scream into my couch cushion.
At one point, when pastry chef Marcus has shorted out after a donut experiment, he and Carmy are sitting behind the restaurant smoking a cigarette. Marcus is sad. To cheer him up, Carmy admits that at the height of his short career, he accidentally messed up the kitchen of a top restaurant. The danger of that one track mindthose obsessive tendencies that many artists have, suddenly becomes apparent. ‘You have this minute where you’re watching the fire. And you’re thinking, if I don’t do anything, this place will burn down. And all my anxiety will go away with it.’
When the bank employee checked my details, she asked if I lived at a certain address in Rotterdam. I said no, but three years ago I did.
“You haven’t updated your address for three moves?” she asked sternly. Was explaining that I was busy with my book a good excuse? In The Bear people are accidentally stabbed, chefs are cooking in the middle of the night and an entire episode is devoted to a disastrous pre-order function in an ordering app. It’s one of the most entertaining, disruptive, and best-written shows I’ve watched in the past year. It also made me a little resigned to my own flaws.
Simone Atangana Bekono is a poet and writer. Her debut novel Confrontations was awarded the Anton Wachter Prize this year.