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Monday, May 14th, 2007
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3:55 pm - Working Ethics
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Mine clearly sucks, at least when it comes to writing. I have a deadline roughly every month (although it easily gets pushed to every five or six weeks).
I tell myself I need that much time to write 15 or so pages, but in the end i just use that time to push my thesis away till the deadline.
So today, as with any other deadlineday, i pumped myself full with nicotine and caffeine and ramble ten pages full. I think ten pages per day really is my max. Of course I did some preparations the days before, yesterday was full of pacing and finding song lyrics, but the actual writing, well, i leave that up till the last minute. And in the end I'm all floored, banging head ache to beat, and sent something off that isnt finished.
I can imagine why my supervisor is not all too happy with me.
So I'm gonna try something new. I do spend those 4-6 weeks leading up to the actual writing with thinking, you see, so I'm gonna try to learn myself to write a bit of that thinking down every day. It can be anything - informant profiles, concertdescriptions, lyrical analysis, theoretical approaces - as long as i write it down. To keep the writing warm, to keep the thinking warm...
And to make sure that in a month's time, i'm not again stuck with 20 000 ideas that have to be cramped in one day.
be warned.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, May 12th, 2007
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7:00 pm - Writing
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"Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat", it said, on one of those ever changing signatures. It stopped me in my track and made me think about it for a second.
Nice catch-phrase, but ultimately, that's not it.
My ass is seated aplenty, but writing... nought.
That other nifty catchphrase, then:
"I write, therefore I am."
See, that's one I can work with. The opposite of that would be "I don't write, therefore I am not." And thát, my friends, is ultimately how it feels.
I like to think of myself as a writer. A potential one at least. More importantly, everybody else seems to think of me as a writer, even though it literally has been years - halfhearted academic papers aside - that I actually wrote something these people might have read.
True, I pour out my heart on this time every month or so, but does that really count?
The chapters I ramble on to page every six weeks or so?
A spark, that doesn't seem to catch on to anything.
It is the not-writing, one thing, something, anything, that is the nagging thing that eats away at my vacant heart.
I don't write, therefore I am not.
What I am not? I leave that open, for now. We'll see. But let's start the writing.
One thing.
Something.
Anything.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, May 7th, 2007
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12:47 am - "This Is As Close As I Get To Heaven"
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So i hadn't seen a gig that rocked my world in a pretty long time. In fact, after I saw Ute Lemper, which should have been my gig-highlight of the year, but ultimately left me lukewarm, I started to wonder if my research in Berlin had spoilt me for pure concert-enjoyment.
Tonight I, luckily, found out this isn't so. Seeing Bettye Lavette live in the small venue of Haarlem was... well... I'm simply lacking for words here, so I'm not even gonna try. It doesn't happen that an artist manages to enrapture me in their world of sounds and words from beginning, letting alone do it twice (last year at North Sea Jazz already was one to remember). And I think part of that magic is, aside from the fact that when she sings a song, even if it's a well known favourite originally penned down by Aimee Mann or Fiona Apple, she makes every word count, puts meaning into them that you never heard, never felt before (and believe me, I've heard Sleep To Dream over and over again). It's also the fact that this woman, of her age and stature (she has, after all, been in the bizz for 46 years. And she can tapdance! Aretha Franklin can't tapdance!), is trying to make contact with every. single. person. while on stage. I swear. She sang some lines looking straight in my eyes, just as she did with my two friends, and many others around us. How many artists still do that? As much as I love Ani, last gigs I've seen of her were highly de-personalized (not even to mention a band like Tool).
So, at 61, this woman still knows how to rock a crowd better than any artist I ever seen. And afterwards, she took the time to sign every single cd and ticket, chatting with the people and all. I was waiting in line with my friend, chatting with the bassplayer who'd knocked off 10 euros of the price of the cd for us, and she started to mingle in the conversation while she signed other cds. When she came to mine, she managed to spell my name wrong, even though I'd written it down, which caused me to tease her about needing new reading glasses (I am very picky about my name). She told me to wait after the crowd was gone to take on the verbal battle, and en passant told me I had a real American attitude. When I asked her if that was an insult ( grinning, of course), she replied "hey, I'm American..."
So we had some more beers and chatted with the rest of the band. When we had to go to catch our trains, I walked up to her. Before I could say a word, she smiled and told the other people around me how much of a bitch I had been (still grinning). I chuckled to tell her that I hadn't had a chance to say what an amazing gig it was. She grabbed my hand, gave me a big smile and said: "Girl, from the minute I saw you... Well, let's just say I know me when I see me."
Yeah, I've been beaming all the way from Haarlem to my bed, I tell ya.
Very Happy It's been a pretty amazing night.
current music: I've Got My Own Hell To Raise - Bettye Lavette
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, November 21st, 2006
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10:52 pm - interesting....
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| You Are An ENFP |
The Inspirer
You love being around people, and you are deeply committed to your friends.
You are also unconventional, irreverant, and unimpressed by authority and rules.
Incredibly perceptive, you can usually sense if someone has hidden motives.
You use lots of colorful language and expressions. You're qutie the storyteller!
You would make an excellent entrepreneur, politician, or journalist. |
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, October 17th, 2006
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1:06 pm - leaving berlin...
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Only 3,5 more hours and i'll be on that train back home again. leaving berlin... and for the first time i know i won't book the next trip already. i've exhausted my stay here. sure, its good to my friends, but it doesnt bring me that excstatic happiness and intense emotions that it did before.
now, it mostly brings me sadness.
maybe its the fever. maybe its the knowledge i have to let go of something that hadnt even properly arrived yet. maybe its the dissappointment of something that was never meant to happen in the first place.
or maybe i'm really
simply
done
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, September 13th, 2006
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4:59 pm - ...
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| Sunday, August 27th, 2006
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5:18 pm - in other news...
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| Saturday, June 10th, 2006
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1:24 pm - TOOL
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| Tuesday, May 30th, 2006
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10:26 pm - groovin'
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Listen to yo' daddy warn you
'Fore you start a-traveling
Woman may born you, love you and mourn you
But a woman is a sometime thing
Yes a woman is a sometime thing
Yo' mammy is the first to name you
Then she'll tie you to her apron string
Then she'll shame you and she'll blame you
Till yo' woman comes to claim you
'Cause a woman is a sometime thing
Yes a woman is a sometime thing
Don't you never let a woman grieve you
Jus' 'cause she got yo' weddin' ring
She'll love you and deceive you
Then she'll take yo' clothes and leave you
'Cause a woman is a sometime thing
Yes a woman is a sometime thing
Yes a woman is a sometime thing
Yes a woman is a sometime thing
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(comment on this)
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| Wednesday, May 10th, 2006
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10:49 am - lethal
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They don't sell coffee before eleven! I mean, they do, but only if you have one of them chipcards, which I dont, and also printing goes only per chipcard, and i'm sure pretty soon BREATHING will only go by chipcard, cause they got to plug that damn thing somehow, but I need to apply for a new bankcard to get a chipcard, which will cost me another €25, and I already paid that half a year ago after some fuckwit stole my wallet at the Kaffee Burger, and I don't want a chipcard! that's one more pincode I need to remember. It's bad enough that the keys on these computers are sticky, and that I get drilled out of my bed every morning at 7 am (well, technically at 6, but I usually spend about an hour trying to ignore it, which is quite impossible since they're rebuilding practically every house around mine, PLUS they're making a tunnel for an absolutely redundant subway line, and all in all it only makes me even more grumpy to lie in bed for an hour, not being able to sleep and giving me a headache as well). And the uni only opens at 9, which means I have two hours which I could use perfectly well for SLEEP, except I can't. sleep. and then I come at uni, and THEY DON'T SELL COFFEE BEFORE ELEVEN (sorry for the shouting, but but but...)
This is bad. Really bad. Possibly lethal. For multiple people.
Urgh. I hate this library
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, February 5th, 2006
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11:44 pm
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tuesday i moved, and ever since i wanted to write... but life got in the way. now the girl and the lady are both to sleep, german running in my head, confused but deep feelings running in my heart, and again the writing fails.
tomorrow i'll go back to work.
now, i'll cuddle up with marlene.
life is special
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, January 30th, 2006
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10:13 am - moving
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after a bizarre (but also wonderful) week, I decided to take S.'s offer. I'm moving into her flat and out of mine. The fact that I'm actually scared of my roommate's reaction (the heroin addict, to be precise) shows how badly I need to do this.
I feel stupid and naive, though my dad tries to convince me I just have too big a heart and need to learn to stick up for myself.
Meh. Time to go and get this over with...
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, January 12th, 2006
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3:27 pm - Bandits
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Dinner at “Pasternak” had been a nice little prelude to start the real work again and get back in the field. A perfect opportunity presented itself the next day: the monthly balkandisco “Datschadance”, at Kaffee Burger. The Ukrainian Rude Boy, dragged out of Cologne for a weekend, joined me for an evening of loud music, happy dancing and considerable alcohol intake. Two of my informants turned out to be there, of which Andrej – not a big fan of Kaffee Burger, to say the least – was the most surprising. Freshly shaven and cleaned up for Russian Christmas, I decided to put the ill feelings after our last disastrous encounter behind us. I really should call him more often, he said sadly. Yesterday would have been a perfect evening for me, lots of Russian lesbians. Oh well, such is life.
He introduced me to the DJ of the evening, DJ Auflegewitsch, who turned out to be from Belorussian ancestry. We chatted a bit, and he told me I should really go to Bassy Cowboy Club the next evening, where Bolshoi Bandits would play. His friend the violinplayer, so he told me, was also a member of one of the first popular Russian-German bands: Apparatschik – “die besten falschen Russen, sehr Authentisch.”
For a city with 3 million inhabitants, Berlin is sometimes surprisingly small.
I spent the next evening chatting with several people, with Bregoviç, Ibrahmoviç and Markoviç in the background, and convinced a regular face of Kaffee Burger and its Russendiskos to come with me to the Russian Christmasparty in Bassy Cowboy Club the following day, as a little research experiment.
In Bassy, the concert was already going on in full swing when I arrived. The crowd seemed a bit more mixed than the typical Russendisko, or at least more Russians. Bolshoi Bandits, its music best described as Russian gypsy rock ‘n roll, carried the stereotypes of being both Russian and Bandits well. Black suits and sunglasses, set in front of a table of vodka, pickels and dried fish. Occassionally they’d throw a firecracker into the crowd (don’t stand too close!) or fire a gun. The crowd loved it all and danced until they dropped. Micha, the familiar face from the previous night was there too, his first Russian party outside of the Russendisko, loving every minute of it. Soon he would see what the Russian world outside the safe surroundings of Kaffee Burger really looked like, when we bumped into Andrej. We didn’t get the time for proper introduction, because Andrej wanted to know if I payed six euros at the door.
Of course I had.
He shook his head and scolded me for always wanting to do everything on my own. I should have called him before. I should always call him before. In his loud and animated way, Mr. Umsonnst dragged me to the entrance and started a discussion with the doorman. I was with him and should get my money back. But what about supporting the band? After some heated debate, the doorman gave in and gave me 5 euros back. One euro for the band, it was settled.
Andrej dissappear to score some vodka, but reappeared not much later to drag me in a corner.
“I found something.”
Not really comfortable with Andrej so close, fearing we would get in another discussion of why I don’t want to kiss him in particular and men in general, I raised my eyebrows and tried to create some space between us, which really wasn’t easy.
“Kuck mal, kuck mal.”
Out of his pocket, he pulled a small handgun. Took out the magazijn (?), which was fully loaded with shiny bullets. I must have been gawking. “Gefunden?” I asked. “Where?”
He pulled an innocent face, like a 4-year old who just broke his sisters doll.
“Here. Somewhere. No idea.”
I made a mental note to stay on Andrej’s good side from now on.
After a second encore and a handful of extra firecrackers, the band finally left the stage and us dancing people were subjected to the mercy of DJ Vlad, a mid-twenties beautiful Russian boy, who also organizes parties in the Russian underground club CCCP. Vlad played a wonderful mix of Western and Russian alternative music, of which most of the latter seemed to come straight from Kaminer and Gurzhy’s compilation cds. Micha danced through it all, happy to have discovered that the Russian party scene outside the Russendisko was actually very much like... The Russendisko. Andrej had knicked the vodka from the band and offered it to me. I took a swing from the bottle, it was after all Christmas, and rude to object.
I made a mental note never to mix beer and lukewarm vodka again. It’s the kind of notes I always loose.
And so the evening proceeded. I collected phonenumbers, danced with Andrej, Micha and the Ukrainian Rude Boy, drank more beer, stayed away from the vodka. Around half past 4, I let myself fall in one of the comfy chairs, and watched the descending crowd.
It's good to be back.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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3:25 pm - Nastephak
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“Sehr süß deine Mama, sehr süß.“ The Iranian waiter had such an endearing expression on his face as if he was talking about his own mama. I smiled silently.
Mum and dad wanted to see a bit of “my” Berlin, or more specifically of my research. It had been three weeks since I had actually occupied myself with research. End years blues and emotional break down don’t lend themselves well for work, especially not if said work involves loud music, happy dancing people and a considerable intake of beer and vodka. My parents, for that matter, don’t lend themselves well for loud music, happy dancing people and a considerable intake of beer and vodka. At least not for the first two. So I took them to “Pasternak”, or “Nastephak” as a reporter of the Süddeutsche Zeitung – not quite familiar with the cyrillic alphabet – once so enthusiastically described.
“Pasternak”, next to café “Gagarin” is one of the Russian restaurants in Prenzlauer Berg were people can not only satisfy their Sehnsucht to Russia, but also their stomachs. It was my first time there, and I was not quite sure what to expect. It sure was a good place to bring the parents: a classic, calm interior, with here and there an old photograph on the wall; equally classic set tables; and backgroundmusic like Norah Jones and other artists that seem to record specifically for the purpose of having a nice, calm familydinner. The menu consisted of solely Russian food, salads named after the former republics of the USSR. To complete this Russian evening, my father and I started out with 100 gram of vodka. We proceeded the evening with borschjt, shaslick and blinis, red wine and more vodka. A beautiful, animated evening. But was this really Russian Berlin?
After the waiter, who’s Russian went as far as the names of the dishes on the menu, had declared his affinity for my mother, I took the opportunity to combine work and leisure. “Does this place actually get a lot of Russian customers?”
His eyes widened. An anxious expression on his face.
“Ah non, bitte nicht, bitte nicht! The Russians, they’re all barbarians. These people from the countryside, they come here and prostitutes themselves, they have no sense to behave.” A swung wildly with his arms to emphasise his words.
“Rich woman, with German husbands, they come. But otherwise no, thank god no. And if they would, we would kick them right out again.”
Russian restaurant “Pasternak”. Too sophisticated for the Russians.
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(comment on this)
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| Sunday, December 25th, 2005
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2:33 pm - my life as i see it
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I used to talk with honest conviction, of how I predicted my world
I'm gonna leave it to stargazers, tell me what your telescope says...
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Saturday, December 24th, 2005
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2:51 pm - Heiligenabend
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For the first time since I moved in, the place is void of human voices. The girls are off to some lesbian self-defense camp, the boys have left to their families to bring the annual feriocious holidayspirit to its evenly annual feriocious anti-climax, and the animals are thrown in dissaray, not quite sure how to anticipate the sudden lack of their respective bosses.
It’s almost Christmaseve, time to close my social cocoon and not come out till S. and K. come knocking on my door.
The heartfelt sadness you find in your conversational partner’s eyes when they hear you intend to spend Christmas alone, without tree, without presents, without family. Shaking their ends when you try to explain them you like it that way, with that sympathetic gaze in their eyes. Sure hon, who are you trying to convince, me or yourself? But it’s a beautiful prospect: piles of articles scattered over the floor, interviews to transcribe, fieldnotes to analyze, and Nosferatu to procrastinate. And for the night, a wealth of Russian christmasparties to chose from.
Merry Christmas everyone! If you don’t mind, I’ll spend mine in peaceful solitude.
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, December 22nd, 2005
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3:28 pm - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHH
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| Tuesday, December 20th, 2005
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2:55 pm - Andrei (not the sweet one)
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After our failed first attemption, we managed to set a date to do the interview. It looked promissing. With his busy, all-over the place life it was rather difficult to pin Andrei down for an interview, but monday was a slack night for him so he agreed to do it.
It took me 20 minutes to find the place, not quite where he said it, circling around the busy intersection around U-bahn Eberswalder Strasse in the snow, to finally discover it was the place without a name on the wall. My coughingfit ensured much sympathy. Tea with rum on the way. As to little surprise, no Andrei.
45 Minutes later, irritation took hold. The owner, quite taken by my appearance, lend me his phone. Andrei was waiting at the station, pissed off that I went to the cafe all on my own. He had plans with me. Other plans. Not my plans. When he stumbled in, drawing all the attention to him as usual, the bar-owner looked a lot less happy. They knew each other. With Andrei, everybody always knew each other. No money in his pocket, he'd been surviving on rum and chocolate, another one on the way. So was the bar owner, obviously annoyed that I was talking to Andrei, not him. Shyely he handed me his phone-number when we left.
That was half an hour later. Still no sign of an interview.
In the seminar, we got taught that though fieldwork is fun, interviews are fun, our informants would be fun, there would come a time we'd hate it all. Would want to glue them behind the wallpaper. Strangle them.
Around midnight, waiting for the pingpong table to be free, I was in more than a strangling mood. Andrei's mood wasn't much better. Pissed off that I had come to the bar, not the U-bahn station. He had wanted to take me to a far to expensive concert. Pissed off that I'd stay until March, while he thought December. He'd been busting his ass for me to get in touch with people he thought could help me. Gratitude he accepted not. Neither the offer for food. That was against his Russian pride. All I was interested in was this damned interview, he said. I didn't even want to kiss him.
The wandering continued, as did the drinking. An hour and two tequila's later, we finally set down to do the damned interview. I'd lost the lust to do so. He'd lost every inch of seriousness and soberness. After half an hour of bullshiting I was done with it.
In the tram back home, I started to wonder why the hell I even was interested in Russia. Was Andrei's persistent talking me down getting to me? Didn't even speak the language. No chance to even get close. Was I like Kunibert? Making up a myth, wanting a fairytale land? I thought of her, off to France, and realised that it bothered me more than I'd care to admit. I realised that meant trouble. I thought of the past, thought of the future, tried to push away the present.
The present pushes Christmas further. It will be a dire one, but I don't want to go home. And thus the bleeding starts.
The graveyard's in a come, the church has got the blues. Jesus has a nosering, Marie has tattoos...
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
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12:49 pm - things i love
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A wonderful new friend, who helped me to preserve my sanity, asked me what I love.
Thought it might be a nice thing to share...
I love people, and the people's things people do (though
I hate it too, but love and hate are two sides of the same coin me
thinks). I love towers, caves, not so much hobbits, but definitely
bats. I love cuddling up in my room on a dark winter evening with some
candals, tom waits or jazz in the background and a book that swollows
me whole. I love going to bars and getting into conversation with the
most randomn, beautiful, interesting characters who I may or may not
ever see again. I love whiskey, scottish preferably, and I love how it
sends a sensation through not just every fibre of your mouth but
through your entire body, and I love tasting that sensation on another
womans lips. I love women and I love men, though I sometimes wish I
fell in love with men instead of women. So far, however, I didn't.
Most women give me headfucks. Most men don't get me wet. Maybe a bit
frank, but that's the way it is, and it's an awkward dilemma I tell
you.
I love the world of words, and I love how when you learn a new
language, you enter a whole new mysterious realm. I love books that
you can dissappear in, that follow you around wherever you go, trapped
in a different universe while you live in your own. I've been trapped
in the bone people for almost ten years now, and i don't think i'll
ever leave.
I love walking around with music on my ears and drift off. I love how
with the right songs, it's like everything around you happens in slow
motion. I love music. I love music more than food, though I love food
too. I love music that touches my soul, and moves me bodily. I love
music that makes me shiver, makes me dance, makes me angry, makes me
cry. I even love music that makes me close to vomit, literary, because
it means its something very powerful. Because of this, I love artists
like Ani Difranco, Billie Holiday, Damien Rice, dEUS, Tom Waits, Thea
Gilmore, Regina Spektor. For the same reasons I don't love Radiohead,
Coldplay, the plastic pop on the radio, or Mozart. I do love
Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and jazz.
I love smoking ~nicotine, that is~, though I rather wish I didn't. I
love coffee, and I love grapefruits. I don't love bananas, but I love people who love them. Sometimes. I love meeting new people and connecting... be it through a spark in their eyes, a smile, or the
untangible thing that is called chemistry. I love connecting with
people without even have seen them, because the same thoughtstream,
because of different thoughtstreams, just because...
I love the world. I hate it too.
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(16 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, November 27th, 2005
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9:13 pm - Hang around
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"Cool people don't stand, cool people hang..."
Fieldwork is hanging around, a friend wrote me today. Building up a masked friendshipnetwork and hang, hang, hang... Well, if you look at it that way, this week I've been a particularly good anthropologist. Cause hanging around I did.
Isn't it funny how the tomorrown after your worst day always bring something remarkable?
Researchwise, this week felt slow. Had a gig at wednesday, which I never reached because, err.. I got kinda distracted. And then some new things lined up on friday - the opening of a photoexhibition on Belarus and another concert, to be precise -, which turned into quite a little disaster. The exhibition I never reached, because I got lost. The concert I never saw, because they still hadn't started playing 2,5hrs after billing time, and the sympathetic smiles at the bar to this lonesome, chainsmoking, beergulping researcher became a bit too much for me to handle. Really made me wonder what the hell I'm doing here. At least I got to eat christmascookies fresh out of the oven, made by the lovely Swiss boy.
And then, when I started to lose all faith in myself and the purpose of research, I woke up into a beautiful saturday. An evening that starts with backgammon and jazz can only end well. First there was dinner with Siggy, his family and friends. Slava never found it, but it was a delightful evening all the same. Little Sasha, 14 months old, was the entertainment of the night, the food was amazing and had some really insightful talks with Siggy. Walking towards the S-bahn, some new telephone numbers in my pocket, my brain was rattling with fresh concepts and new ideas. A start. A keypoint. Something I'd been missing.
... Enter a completely new and bizarre environment. A coffin. A crying widow. A Russian mobguy handing out falsh cash for clues. Welcome to Tatort 1989-St. Petersburg: the Ganovenball.
I didn't come to mourn for Igor. I didn't come for the poker and the roulette either.
I came for Dr. Bajan...
Dr. Bajan wanted to do the interview between the sets, but I really didn't see that happening, so I chatted with his wife instead. Which coincidentally (or not) enough went straight further where I left off with Siggy. And what do you know, only three weeks in Berlin and already I see the same faces everywhere. Tomek invited me for his gig on the 11th, the two danish brothers (sorry guys, so gay...) from the band I failed to see the night before promissed to sent me some cds and the first guy I chatted with at the first gig I went turns out to be a DJ who loathes the Russendisko (and loves Zemfira). Now that's where the interesting stuff starts to boil up.
I left the ball around 3 and swung by the Russendisko. And realised that place itself is really not all that interesting. Discarded the interview with Yuriy, since he was too tired and I too drunk, but he told me he might be doing a gig with the trumpetist from Oi Va Voi. Now these are the things we like.
Found my bed around 6, mind buzzing and satisfied. I found out too late that the cat had used my blanket as a toilet and vomitbucket all in one. A stinky end to a good evening.
On a different note, I got a date on wednesday.
It's good to be cool...
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windeater's journal