der Hammer in Berlin

Air

2011-09-07T20:32:00.000-07:00

Reina Sofía

2011-09-04T14:28:00.000-07:00

Madriz (und ein deutscher Godzilla)

2011-09-04T14:09:00.000-07:00

Der Himmel über Berlin

2011-08-31T17:40:00.000-07:00

Clärchens Ballhaus

2011-08-31T17:29:00.000-07:00

lange Nacht det Museen

2011-08-28T09:51:00.000-07:00

Outis Metis

2011-08-26T16:05:00.000-07:00

Endlich, das Meer

2011-08-18T08:27:00.000-07:00

Weightless

2011-08-18T05:58:00.000-07:00

Alles wird gut

2011-08-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

To compile, gather together, versammeln, recopilar.
Now again just an obsession or its extension. Which means the same.
Why am I so bad editing? Or rather, why I cannot edit.
In all of it, in all the words, in all the lines, there are events, or something of the like.
(Like that song you hear now.)

The principles of a museum or of language learning. Or just of an autobiography. Selfportraits. Selbstbildnis.
To feel your head on rock, as rock, always already. You had to learn that word: der Schädel. Not a very used one.

"Since the beginning." As if your head at some point had understood this. "Since the beginning" = Rock. Stein. Der Rock in German: Skirt. See where the obsession starts? Look at that bust.
It was never exactly a monolith.

It was writing. Remember? At the beginning of the trip, "the zero wasn't a number, it was originally a letter, a notion." (And yet you never saw him again).

(Why can't you focus? Why this need of jumping, saying, seeing, not seeing, usw, usw, usw. etc.?)

"Von einem gewissen Punkt an gibt es keine Rückkehr mehr. Dieser Punkt ist zu erreichen."
F. Kafka.

O. I.

Vor zwölf oder dreizehn Jahre hast du dies gesagt, dieses Zitat. Dann habe ich Malen und Zeichnen aufgegeben, weil es weder meine Rolle noch mein Schicksal war. Ich habe gesagt: "Ich werde Schriftsteller." Aber, wo war der Punkt? "Warte" sagte ich mir oder "schon da."
Zwei Jahre später du hast mich gebeten um ein Drehbuch zu schreiben, das inspiriert von Kafkas "Kleine Fabel" war. Ich habe es geschrieben, und du has mein Drehbuch in einen Film verwandelt. Und wenn der Film fertig war, und du hast ihn mit einem Herz unterschrieben, müssten wir Abschied nehmen. War das der Punkt?
Dann bin ich verschwunden und du auch. Du machst deine Plastiken, deine Bilder, und ich versuche zu verstehen, was für ein Punkt war das.
Weisst du, mit Kafka handelt es sich immer über eine Grenze, eine Linie. Wenn mann spricht über dem Punkt, hat man schon lange her ihn erreicht. Ja, es gibt keine Rückkehr mehr, gab sie nie.

und noch... das Ebenbild

2011-08-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

Without an audience. Without eyes. What are these reflections, these words that you write with the screen in front of you, trying to tie the images, to tell (not say) something to someone ("das hier ist dein Sohn")? You hear "Polly says". And you think of echo, of repetition, of anniversaries and the different rings. Dreimal, 3 times have you been in this city and each time it becomes more familiar (gewöhnlich), even the language changes--This time too much Spanish auf den Strassen--and yet after here you go to Madrid. What can you use from here? Are you confronting something, facing something, besides your most common/vulgar fears? Where are you going to leave this, to write it? Think about the statues, the presences, those eyes over you.

(And yet too much to write, too much to comment, "berichten") You drink now a check beer and it's not your favorite--Not like that time when you were 22. ("Danke dass du an mich glaubst"). You listen to a tribute to Nirvana and one to REM. Exactly from those years. As everything goes. You read Freud auf Deutsch. 9 Years ago. And yet your visage is seltsamer, older and younger gleichzeitig. Narcissismus is not even under consideration, there has never been other theme. Look at the pictures (Guck mal!), at the statues selected, the paintings--Sin, kiss, the hand. And yet.

What was it? Rilkes command (Gebot), 10, 100 years later? What you must say & write. Just post the images. Jetzt die Bilder den Frauen der Maler. The wives of the painters, just as last time it was Hegels & Fichtes wives that called your attention. But in the middle, or right after it. Paris. When have you understood who was him, or what was the city that bears his name? A flower. Unverständlich.

[And now you live with a wirklicher Neurotiker... who besides die Traurigkeit that he spreads around him, jumps every time you enter the kitchen where he lives... Deine Gastgeberin hat gesagt, dass er es nicht einfach hat.... c'est pas facile pour lui... Vielleicht. And you should understand, but the only word that comes to your mind is "jerk", "Arschloch", usw.] Something in the way.

You look at the pictures now and think how to match them. But it'd be too much. For your reader to do it. The portrait of another painter. The new cyclops (plural)... the painting with erased figures. Why again did they attract my eyes? You know me, you should/shall know.

[And now, what you cannot see here... one more reason to type instead of writing. My writing becomes ever so smaller as it tries to hide in every nook of the sheet of paper. As if the paper were never enough, even though I can never-it seems-finish a notebook. Those 3 nice little ones, Moleskine, with dates starting in 2004. I still write in them-when I find them. And that other one with a newspaper cut with the face of Poe--which Guillermo gave me--I wrote something in it last time I was in Mexico. "The room of the painter."] The boy in the writing desk--The title is there, inside the picture. And that other picture, which called your attention, but even more because that girl was also taking a photo of it, fascinated (erinnerst du an das Mädchen begeistert von Balthus Bild? In Pompidou?)

And now Rafael. In the house of your best friend you saw it-as it were-for the first time. Gleichsam. And next to it as no coincidence, the story of drawing, and a ceiling. All was one room including both, an old room inside the reconstructed building. You took all together, it took you. (Listen to "Drive" by The Veils--cover from REM).

Why do objects call your attention so much? Gegenstände. What kind of question is this?

Flowers.Rock Flowers. Marble Flowers. (Writing by the window, another Empfindung zu erinnern. A family eats dinner by candlelight in an apartment down in front of mine. Or maybe just a couple.) Then relief. Relieve. Erleichterung oder wiederaufheben. Aufhebung? Deine ganze Theorie liegt dort. And at this point the Philosophers appear--can you recognize them?

Und dann, Rodin and the "man/human with his thought/thinking"... What I should have taken more photos of. What should I have all the time in front of me. As a horse. (Let her/him understand who want/can).

And now you have fallen in the trap, to comment. You see a fold & a hand, an expression or gesture. Ausdrück--ex-pression. Something that lifts itself & goes out, beyond (ex). "Ex." How has this word come to exist, out of what? What I do not count, what I do not see, what I have forgotten? Existenz. Profile. Neben. Perfil. There's no exact one. Not one either, always at least two. What to do with this? Especially with regard to Wagner.

Not to comment, not to prescribe, not to say. "Not", das komische deutsche Wort. Such das! (In the meantime: los/el papalote(s)).
[Und die Bilder, die dich erinnern daran...]

"Austellungen." The word once you could not remember. And there are several more. And yet yesterday you finally talked with the old lady in the Antiquariat in Leibnizstrasse, and bought a few books from her. And the dinner with Uly, dein ehemaliger Gastgeber and a friend. Then Alexanderplatz without a camera. But this was yesterday. These pictures are from before. "Based in Berlin."

(You're avoiding the sculptures on purpose. Especially the one mit der Frau, reclinant. The leg, foot, breast, nipples, usw.) And your finish/start with the empty red/white building. Nothing really to see there. But you hate to delete, nay, to edit, nay, to cut, nay to forget.

Right now you just wish you could stay here, and bring everybody with you.
You wished to say.
Das Ebenbild.

Spanish on the streets, French in the Museum...

2011-07-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

So how to write this? Especially since I have a few notebooks with me. One for the book on Sculpture that I'm writing together with Omar, one with my deutschem Wortschatz… one for all kinds of notes, and a last one, "my little black book." And now, if we take into consideration that I am trying to pair up here text with images… Well, it just becomes a whole day's work. So maybe I should go with perhaps a brief description-anecdote list of what has happened…

The event of the week was the visit of a friend from ND, a mathematician with a few of his mathematician friends from Mexico and the States. Mostly from Mexico, and most of them living here in Berlin… So, a few beers in Hackescher Markt were in order. And as usual there was fire.

Next day was the last night for a few of them, so eine Weinerei was the beginning, where you pay 2 euros to get the glass, and at the end you pay according to how much you believe you have consumed…

From there we went to get a beer… and then from there we went to another place to get a beer, but on the way, well, we had to get a beer too… (and there was much rejoicing)… and then from there we went home… except for the fact that the crazy mathematicians wanted to go to Branderburger Tor… and I had to leave them at the entrance of the S-Bahn…

Then after a good night of sleep, ok, a night and a day. It was time for the Neue Nationalgalerie. One of my favorite museums in the world, which, sadly, was closed last time I was here in Berlin. I'd love to describe each painting, or at least give you the names… but some of them you know, and when not, you can ask me.

Schliesslich… For our last meal, to Clärchens Ballhaus… a Ballhaus from the 20s that is still in Mitte, and where you can eat, or dance, or take dance lessons.