The Song Before It Is Sung

Wannsee, invisible from the street, but providing a wonderfully natural view from the back of the house through birch trees to the gently undulating water.

Conrad, living in the mouse-nibbled margins of London just a few minutes from great wealth and imposing solidity, sees the city not as home, but as a huge agglomeration of human frailty and greed, held in uneasy suspension.

Actually, Conrad is aware that he is not thinking full-blown thoughts, but highlights, like the trailers at his local cinema complex; these thoughts are presenting themselves to him in a chaotic pageant. It is in the nature of air travel with its barely suppressed claustrophobia and its sexual speculation and dulled sense of movement that thoughts seem to be provoked to go on the exuberant march. (You can only think about thoughts, or consciousness, in metaphors.)