autumn tactics

Somehow, German draft beer on a leather love-seat while reading Faust and listening to the Foo Fighters just feels right. Most of my favorite music in high school was stolen from my car in Pittsburgh by a crack head, over two hundred CDs and eight years of music.

Recently I’ve started yearning more and more for those old songs, especially as the fire to play guitar burns hotter and hotter in my soul Foo Fighters, Nirvana, STP, this was the music I blared through my Charger’s Blaupunkt system while driving around northern Frederick. My girlfriend at the time, Mari, cooed at how I pounded the gear shift to the bass line of Cake’s The Distance, a damn great song. Driving a car of my own, a dream unknown to most Japanese teenagers, taken for granted by most Americans. Unique myself lost that special freedom, so long suffering since my father sold my car.

Before I bought it myself, I think I copied this album from Adam and had it on my Walkman. I remember walking around and listening to it, Offspring, Bush, and Everclear. Oh the wailing of guitar, fed into effects so it layers and distorts like a heavy static or a buzz saw. Could I ever cover this in front of Yoyoko in an impromptu live someday? Get Phil and Hayashi?

2010 New Year’s Resolution: no matter what I _will_ take guitar lessons and practice more. I will have at least two exhibition, I will make at least a CDs worth of electronic music.

I don’t know, track ?? just triggered a cascade of memories of Holly, the bad girl from the other side of the tracks (literally) that was on my periphery while dating Mari. We kissed, I came to her house once and we listened to Revolver on her water bed. She had bead curtains to her bedroom. Posa was all excited when we started dating. We went and laid by the river next to Church of the Brethern… she smells like cigarettes and pot. I gotta find and email her…. I was in Berlin and thought of you,

Why didn’t it work out? She had a part-time job at the 7-11 on East Street, sweet. I want to email Phil so much right now and say, “Let’s make a band!”

…

It’s about 7:20 now, well past my bedtime of late. I admit I’m quite bleary. I’m up to the 300-page tier or Faust, sleep, neck hurts. But my train isn’t for another five hours and I’ve no bed.

So, I’ve got to tough it out. I’ve though about hitting up U5 but they don’t open (assuming they’re open on Tuesday), until 800, so I guess it:s another forty minutes of Faust. Poor Gretchen! [in the end, U5 never opened...only weekends it seems]

22:15

Talk about efficient. I got from Fr. Tor to H. Bahnhof in about eleven minutes. That’s roughly ten stations and one transfer. This reinforces my theory that German transit is either faster, or the stations are even closer together that Tokyo. Anyway, the trouble now is my mass market dilemma. I can’t hope to completely avoid Foo Fighters when I travel, but I try to swear offf American bands. Unfortunately the long arm of democratic capitalism has me corner here. I was hoping to get at last one pretzel before I left Germany, I was thinking the Kasse here in Hauptbanhof but they’ve run out. It was either the fourth hoagie in three days, or face Big Brother. So I was left with Pizza Hut or BK, and the question was which would torture my digesting system less in an already long day.

More interesting is the young, Asian tourist couple next to me. How unwittingly they display the stereotypical man/woman disconnect, reinforced by racial stereotypes! The man is fervently trying to fold his receipt into an aerodynamic vessel while the girl stares glassy-eyed into her phone email. If only they could realize the absurd clarity of textbook dysfunctionality they exhibit. After upgrading his plane for supersonic flight and checking its wingspan, the male opens his subcompact laptop and being typing. How droll! The irony. How much time do we spend together communication but not with the person right in front of our faces? So sad, with today’s society affairs of the heart, never physically consummated, yes just as if not more so devastating.

Oh, so much insight to the human tragedy, inwards and out this week. This isn’t a journey of inter-nation, this is a journey of condemnation. The tragedy… and speaking of tragedy, poor Gretchen. I’ll be finished reading of her by tomorrow at this pace. Then what I will do with the rest of my rainy week? Smoke?

It’s cold, even sitting in the back of the Pizza Hut. My clothes reek of CK-1, since I spilled a tester on myself the other day, and I only have one set this week. Cold and stinking of Calvin Klein, a theme for inaugural trek. If I went to America, but the middle of nowhere, would that be a vacation worth taking? Fly to Vegas then rent a car and drive out to Oklahoma or Nebraska, or somewhere. Hmm, driving alone for hours all day. Could I handle that? If I:m going to do that, why not get a Japanese license finally and drive to Kyushu? The cost would probably end up being more in highway tolls and gasoline, ha. So tired. If this train comes late, I may just die.

Somehow, I manged to sleep over twelve hours without any difficulty. I don’t think I would have been able to get up and go look for a club anyway, so now I have a while day afead of me, refreshed and envigorated. Yesterday I made two arcs through the city centre, one from Hauptbahnhof through Brandenburg Gate and then more or less along the Spree visiting Alexandre Platz, the carnivals and the largest remaining section of the Wall in Ostbahnhof. The second route started in Mauer Park where I bought an old poster for an Eastern German performance of Ivanhoe. Afterwards I visited the Berlin Wall memorial and took some photographs through the wall into the Death Strip. I remember vaguely as a fourth grader of learning that the Berlin wall was torn down, but at the time it didn’t make much sense to me. A wall is for holidng up a house, or rounding out a garden, so the idea of a wall that went through a city to keep people apart was confusing. Most of the literature in the memorials has been in English so I’ve gotten a lot out of it. I felt a slight, sobering shiver looking at the electrical equpiment in the Death Strip, but I think I’ll have to meditate on it more today, perhaps at Volkspark.

10:30

Knowing that all of this is tied to the DDR and the Berlin Wall, can we still (should we) evaluate the works of art on their own?

‘Modern history’?!

Two perspectives on the same object, video vs. photography.

Artists don’t shy from the filth, waste, and destruction. They show what is there, and what is affecting our lives, regardless of its conent.

Is time constant? Does our perception distort its passage? So many speeds in these videos, perhaps changing dynamically, subtlely?

12:00

I’m beginning to feel like I was a fool for not having an exhibition in 2009. I need to keep pushing myself and just exhibit because without exhibiting I produce nothing, which was obvious from my 2009 nengajyou selection. I had virtually nothing suitable to choose from. Why? I didn’t take any pictures? Why? I had no burning pressure to produce for a show. I swear I will do at least two expos in 2010!!!

Thus media magnate Elliot Carver rued after discovering that yet again, james Bond had eluded his Arian hitman. The train from Amsterdam ended up leaving five hours late due to locomotive difficulties. We received one notice during those five, but I’m not what it said. Inany case, we had our sleeper couchettes so it wasn’t that bad. To be hoenst, I preferred th edealy because it meant more time for rest in a train that was scheduled to arrive in Berlin at 4:21 a.m. I spent th efirst three hours chatting with a Parisian student from Hong Kong and two Puerto Rican girls.

The days are short here. It’s quarter to eight and the sun still hasn’t come up. In a short while I suppose I’ll trek out and start walking, or perhaps take the S-bahn. There are a number of markets that open on Sunday I’d like to see. Currently I’m debating whether I should change into my long johns. Hopefully toilets don’t carry a charge here as well. To me there’s something very appealing about this all, not knowing when or where your next chance for comfort/self-preservation will come. This follows in the Rob canon of never turn down a chance to use the restroom. Food, warmth, and toilet are all things that you never want to be stuck hunting for, so best take advantage of the opportunities as they come.

…

17:10

Behold! Tegernseer Hell! The dignified white and blue label of true German pride and an unassuming 500ml bottle to match. Germans don’t fuck around with pissy 333ml bottles, hell no. Germans know bier. Brie, not so much. Chene d’Argent “fresh” style brie is virtually flavorless, odorless, and a waste of space. Forget about it. Sausage? Sure, I had me a Bochwurst in a rolee for 2,50 euros at Mauer Park Flea Market. Sucker was over 1.4 feet long if an inch and wide as a half-dollar. The roll is not so much a pitiful concession to carbohydrates as it is an edible napkin, so you don’t get your manly hands greasy. The dude asked if I wanted mustard. What’s German for, “Hell yes I do!”? According to Matt’s hostel guide to Berlin, “Do you have any horny single relatives?”, is… well, suffice it to say it’s past stupid o’clock my knickerbockered friends. As I was trudging back from Kaiser’s I spied a ‘Minimarkt’ across the street and said aloud to myself, “‘MiniMARKT’…’E'?! We don’t need no stinkin’ ‘E’ to spell MARKT!”

Accordingly to my body it’s 1:15 Monday morning which means I just got my first shower and bed in 38 hours. Oh hell yes I am bushed. I have no fucking clue what it will do to my body to sleep now at 5:30 p.m. but I don’t really give a damn. It’s dark out and my muscles are so sore I can hardly move the pencil anymore. It’s time for more HELL, shitty brie francais and Fause. Ack!

Sometime earlier this week Rob was joing about me going to Amsterdam hung over. I told him in earnest I have had the displeasure of flying wrecked before and it was so terrible I’d never do it again. So he administered then that I just stay drunk from Friday night’s excursion, and then I related how I’d eventually come down and feel terrible. This is the poin t in which he introduced the novel idea that I just stay drunk for the entire week, which I was even less enamoured with. No, I would be completely sover by the time I got on the place to Amsterdam. Oh, the best laid schemes…

Somehow, yes, I was drinking until 4:00. Somehow, yes, I am still drunk, and my mind was swimming with a 1000 racy delights on the train here. The black tight-bound leg to my left was so tantalizing I nearly clawed my eyes out in lust. Oh, this week cannot end in anything but debauchery and mayhem. How fitting I’ve brought Faust along with me for the ride.

There is a system in Japan where a single middle aged woman looks after a bar, the mamasan. In Germany it seems the same institution exists.