Korridorium

♫ Dream Ques­tions Med­ley Eo ipso ♫

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I enter the Kor­ri­do­rium dou­ble-decker bus for the fourth time now. Its round trip through the Ger­man coun­try­side leads to my small town once a month, and part of the ser­vice is that you reg­is­ter online or by phone, get picked up from home late in the evening, and get dropped off there again the next morn­ing.

It’s sim­i­lar to the shut­tle buses for club nights in Berlin, except that here, the bus itself is the club. Every month the ques­tion you embark with on your nightly jour­ney changes—and, of course, so does the route, con­tin­u­ously pick­ing up dif­fer­ent pas­sen­gers along the way. Once all trav­el­ers are on board, the bus parks some­where out­side of town—at least that’s my impres­sion from the first three trips. You can crack the win­dows open a bit to let in fresh air, but they are opaque, so I can only go by sound.

The first time, it could have been a high­way over­pass: dri­ving noises from cars and trucks kept blend­ing into the soft ambi­ent sounds. The sec­ond time, I think I heard a river, although I don’t actu­ally know of any­thing around here that bab­bles so cheer­fully. That was the trip with the ques­tion, “What is dream (and where to, once I awake)?” I can’t remem­ber read­ing it on the Kor­ri­do­rium blog, but the­mat­i­cally, it fits, of course.

On the third trip, I dis­cov­ered that you can lounge on cush­ions in the back of the bus. That’s where the DJ sits all night long, illu­mi­nated only by the pale light of his lap­top and the blink­ing LEDs of his gear. That’s also where the woman with the ther­mos sits down occasionally—the one who walks around the bus ask­ing us trav­el­ers the ques­tion of the night and refill­ing our tea.

The music, the con­verted, almost com­pletely dark­ened bus, and the ques­tion whis­pered over the loud­speak­ers again and again cre­ate a very pecu­liar and spe­cial atmos­phere. I’ve tried telling friends about it. One lis­tened, shak­ing his head, and at some point sum­ma­rized: “So, a self-dis­cov­ery trip!” I didn’t want to con­firm or deny that. After all, I’m float­ing almost all night in the inter­me­di­ate realm between sleep, dream, and intense thoughts. “But did you answer the ques­tions?” he asked. Did I? Hard to say. The third one was “Where does con­scious­ness take place (and what do I get out of it)?” and yes, some­how I found an answer. It was com­pletely silent around the bus until a rich cho­rus of bird­song started up in the morn­ing. Appar­ently, on the third trip, it was parked next to a patch of woods. And that’s when an answer came to me. Not really to this ques­tion, and I can’t really put the answer into words either—but an insight came to me that made a night of barely sleep­ing more than worth­while.

Are there drugs? Sex? Is it a cult? My friends find the “mobile music med­i­ta­tion” sus­pi­cious, and they’re look­ing for the catch. Ulti­mately, what tips the scale is that none of them is will­ing to forgo their pre­cious sleep.

So, I embarked on the nightly jour­ney alone again. I nes­tle into my berth, enveloped by soft har­monies into which a voice whis­pers: “Where does sound lead (and into what res­o­nance, silence)?” Strange ques­tions, these, that let the Kor­ri­do­rium bus glide through the night. In my half-sleep, they take on a wild life of their own and pro­vide me with valu­able insights—just as, at night, things go on in my head that I pre­vi­ously had no inkling of.

How Music Trav­els (Film, 20 s):