and you're the one vanishing

I saw you /
you were dancing out the ocean
I saw you /
a car tire in the sand contortion
I saw you.
Goodbye my American friend

tales from beyond the bubble wrap

There are no tales from beyond the bubble wrap. I can't tell them. Yet, I can see, out there, there are people living completely different lives. I got on a train, if you want to see Germany, get on that train. I've been a tourist travelling other countries' countrysides, they look different. They are not Germany. It's something about the grass and the trees. Here There Here I am a tourist, too.
FITBW
I sit on a bench in Nowheretown, Germany, reading Rainald Goetz, Klage, from inside the bubble wrap, am I smiling, I am, I recognize the wrapping. My arm reaches out, I am trying to touch the clouds, the sky looks extremely close, close and squeezable. Ridiculously close, why is that, I am only 400 metres above sea level, here there here this is not the Alps.
FITBW
Back. On the train, Jason Schwartzman travelling through India in a perfectly tailored Marc Jacobs suit. I fell in love with a fox in corduroys. On Saturday. Familiar wrappings. I wrap myself in a train travelling through India Germany.
Back. There Here In Berlin. The sky far up, my hands rest in my lap, not tempted. Skyscrapers never touch it, too.
FITBW


foxfit, never touch ground:
saturday's corduroys through monday's slacks.

IntoxicatingMe, IntoxicatingYou

Apropos Christoph Schlingensief's INTOLLERANZA II, his music theatre opera performance at the Festival des Arts in Brussels:

„Der Künstler, hat Georg Seeßlen jüngst in einer Laudatio auf Schlingensief gesagt, sei ein Mensch, der Dinge tut, die ihm vollkommen entsprechen. Das stimmt. Die Frage ist nur, ob das, was dem Operndorf-Begründer und Lungenkrebspatienten Schlingensief entspricht, auch andere etwas angeht. Und ob seine Kunst Kunst genug ist, stark genug, poetisch und reich genug, dass diese anderen sich ein eigenes Bild machen, von sich und ihren Todesängsten, ihren Träumen.“
(Christine Lemke-Matwey, Tagesspiegel, May 17, 2010, p. 23)

Apropos Schlingensief's installation INNOCENCE 1965-2008 at the de Appel arts center in Amsterdam in Spring 2008, I wrote last fall:

„Let's chain the artwork to the artist and behold another therapeutic session...“

I did not answer the question, but merely rephrase it. The question being, again, Is his art art enough, is it strong enough, poetic enough to be more than sheer self-medication, more than a publicly exercised therapy session which does not have to, can't, won't be of anybody's concern because, not only in the end but from the very beginning, he is only talking to himself?

„...standing in front of the triptych, I could only gasp and utter Oh my God. Oh my God. This is pathetic. So it is then, truly is. Oh my God. For here, Schlingensief's insistence on the reality of the possession by one's own biography [...] has been turned into the insistence on the reality of the possession by one's own tumorous biology, leaving behind the exorcism's inherent oscillation between authenticity and spectacle, as its circular folly can once and for all be dissolved into a confirmed medical diagnosis – memento cancri.”
(CINE QUA NON #1, fall 2009, p. 14f.)

Did I imply no? Not art enough?

- - -

Later on, I did say yes, stubbornly. Yes strong enough, poetic enough, and I turned to my own therapeutic session. Its every frame an act of self-medication or an imitation thereof, intoxicating enough, I save myself.

Stills from EXORCISM OF THE LAST GAME I EVER PLAYED (D 2009, 10')

- - -
Last night on the phone, talking capitalism with my father, he is as agitated as I am. We are both shouting, then he says I should cancel that paper subscription. I say This is all so wrong, he says Why vote for one when you can start a party, I mumble uh huh.

Not enough, not nearly enough.

carpe diem (yeah I know)

show me the words that
reorder the world

and I spell check them in

my dictionary.

#manifestomonday


Colin Firth is trying to find a comfortable position for shooting himself in the head. Amongst them: in bed, wrapped inside of a sleeping bag. He lets the gun slide along his cheek, puts it in his mouth, readjusts the angle. The scene triggers a memory - Wednesday nights, watching suicide tales in a sticky seminar room. The outcome, an angry paper, angry at Alain, angry at the protagonist of Louis Malle's LE FEU FOLLET (I/F 1963). Warm summer days spent indoors writing agitated verses, after having read too much Sartre. Alain, you are objectifying yourself by your own gaze, you turn yourself into an easy prey to the judgemental eyes of your predators, Alain, I warn you, project yourself. Otherwise, Alain, the future is always already dead. Look, Alain, the past is chewing you up, it already ate the present. Sartre is angry: I am nothing but my own project, alive. Suicide is absurd (what good shall come from it, you gonna be dead) and btw, it's pathetic.
The warnings hit me right at the beginning, Tom Ford's A SINGLE MAN (USA 2009) might make my skin crawl. For one, there are fiddlers, fiddling a score without pause. For two, a protagonist voice-overing, dancing on the edge of the redundancy cliff. Maybe I just cover my ears and get by. But then again I would also have to cover my eyes, because three, there is beauty. Beauty everything. Beauty everywhere. Pretentious bullshit, anyone?
No. No, I get silenced. No need to be warned. Ford's gaze silences me. Its persistence to set the world on fire. Not burn down, but glow, simmer, gaze by gaze. It's hungry, tender, it zooms in. It looks, pushing back a past that is trying to suffocate the present. A gaze under which ballerina shoes turn ice cream blue (or is it summer sky pool water blue) and lips crimson red, skin gets sun-burnt. Under which James Dean is not dead. Nick Hoult's pullover one overflowing tactile sensation.
A gaze which says, matter-of-factly, carpe diem. And not because life is so thorougly short, but because. Because, look, // Awww! //.

carpe diem (top), project: the future is always already dead.

Alain, LE FEU FOLLET.

carpe diem (bottom), project: trigger, ignite.

Colin Firth, A SINGLE MAN.

Dis-count

#manifestomonday
Would have been yesterday.

Time for some official figures you need to have.

Devide the current number of hairs on your head by the sum of digits of your date of birth.
Multiply the minutes you slept last night by your working hours.
Take the result and add it to the last six digits of your account number.
Measure the length of your right index finger and multiply it by the number of appointments you have in your pocket diary.
Devide your social security number by the age of your firstborn child. But you mustn't devide by zero! Haven't you learnt anything at school?!
In case you don't have a child, simply devide the money your earn in halves. In case you don't earn any money,
Take your postal code and flip it backwards to get the approximate number of wrinkles you'll have on your forehead on the day you die.

End of line.

FAT€

I should burn the morning paper first thing in the morning. It had been Friday afternoon again and I am working myself up. Schicksalsgemeinschaft. Fat€. Oldgreekspoliticsinventors (the openoffice german abc suggestions are creeping me out), inventing politics to be done with fate B.C.. I taste the joke on the tip of my tongue and do not deliver it. Maybe I am already calming down or I just forgot at whose expense I am not not joking. 3 columns on paper, I squint. Fat€. Fat€. Fat€. Fat€. Fat€. Fat€. Take that, capital letters and exclamation marks. FAT€. CDS. FAT€. FAT€. POLITICS. CDS. FAT€. FAT€. WTF!! I am even worse at this than at arguing with the pope *death glare stand-off with the tv screen*.

d.g. You were right. I am going to hum that Bob Dylan song now, soothingly. It leads the way to there. Circularly thinking cylon. DylanRelaxant.

// I'll be with you when the deal goes down. //

RLBR

I could have been a painter/
I could have been a crook/
a real live bank robber/
cos is it that what it took.

#manifestomonday

I read about Damien Hirst's early days in Berlin. Before that auction that coincided with that Lehman Brother's downfall. Does it answer the question, the old one, about art changing the world, or merely the art world. Cut it out already.
I spent Friday afternoon trying to wrap my head around those 22 000 000 000. A man on the radio said that it is against the law. I don't know the man and I don't know the law. I nodded though for a bit until my head got dizzy. Maybe I had been shaking it after all.
In Greece, the Communist Party is sitting in the bleachers awaiting the pre-revolutionary collaps. Imploding Capitalism Inevitable. 0508110905072010
Somewhere I read that it took our dear Guido 20 semesters to finish his studies. (d.g.)
On Wall Street, internet porn is thriving amongst the employees of the SEC. // PornRelaxant // I hear about PIGS and haircuts and lobster ratings and ramschfilme and ramschstaaten and the tickling of the boiling water. Cock shots in a Jack Smith movie. // a fix of lust for a herd of impotent souls //

Disclaimer: I stole everything, especially // that last line // from Jorge Vaz Nande and his Spoiler in CINE QUA NON #2.

There's too much confusion,
I can't get no relief. (d.g.)