[august 1st, 2005 - you'd have to be here]
wow.
wow. wow. started the day with inserting bernd's cd with mp3s that he had
given to each of us on the night of the barbecue at thomas' place. i didn't
have the chance to listen to it yet; so this morning when i had switched
on the pc at the office i copied the songs onto my hard disc and played
them. and the very first track started with a straight, mid-tempo rhythm,
very u2 like from back in the late eighties, electric guitar strumming
regularly an open chord and a bass that is playing along to it without
many curlicues. and in the background more guitars playing high notes,
flagolet tones, weaving a blanket of sound and then a female voice starts
to sing an unpretentious melody. and the track is by kari bremnes and is
called "you'd have to be
here" and she's a norwegian singer/songwriter of the kind that bernd
loves to discover and surprise other people with.
and i want you to download the song now. because it is the exact opposite of the fiona apple track i was so mad about yesterday. and this morning it immediately lifted everything from me: anger, worry, troubles, tiredness, and instead filled me with a calm, and my entire body was humming in these open chords, was vibrating with the steady bass and the dark voice. and it was like being opened, relaxing and not relaxing at the same time. longing for the whole world, for everybody. some kind of endless tenderness - i know, it sounds horribly corny. everything that is me got liquefied slowly and sweetly and without pain and without second thought. plunging into warm water and sinking down without ever reaching the dark or the cold. and i wanted to write a song and even now as i hear it on repeat while i'm writing this i want to write a song that is as relaxed and fluid as me and i want to touch you so badly, regardless of who you are.
the sun has begun to break though the cloudswhat else happened today? worked on the hollow earth talk. stefanie was at the office today so we were engaged in some post-conference organizations. talked to blaine and eva today because it has been a hard week-end for blaine. for personal reasons that i won't go into now. got a comment via the feedback form:
she'd have to be here
i like when i see you sleeping
and i like when you just let it go
she'd have to be here
and everything changes and nothing can last
i'm sure you've been here
sometimes i can't help but worry
and sometimes i can just let it go
i'm sure you've been here
the days may have names you can call
but they'll never come back to you
the days are like children that
change into years as they grow
COMMENTS = Ran into you while looking for someone, who is, in fact, one of the minor characters in your journal. And I keep coming back...took the webcam from the office home so now you can see me while chatting :o) the question is, of course, whether this is an improvement.
[august 2nd, 2005 - they play with us here for a while and so swiftly they go]i'm going to meet blaine, sirka, eva, jan and andreas for a beer tonight. anne will be there as well. i have no idea how to act, how to even greet her. weird situation. got a mail from paula and among other things she wrote:
the other day i was thinking about my death, and i wondered if you would come to my funeral. and i decided that if you (god forbid) die, i'll come to your funeral. even if we've never met. i wouldn't know how to get ahold of anybody in your family. i wouldn't even know that you had died. i'm going to tell my sister to email you if i die, just so you know. is that okay?and this, and the music, and the exhaustion from the gym made me cry.
1:45, kari is singing and the letters are dancing. i've had way too much beer,. it was strange meeting anne in this situatiion with all those people around because i didn'T know how to react, so i was neutral. however when she and blaine left - did i tell you that she has moved in with him for a couple of days - i wne t with them outside as well and we kissed and hiúgged and it felt good. it felt warm and right and we agreed on seeing each other this thursday.
when i went back into the bar i realized that i had lost my key, including those for the main entrance of the university!!!!!!!. so i searched my entire bag: it wasn't there. i searched my bag again and my pants and i looked under every table we'd been sitting at tonight: no keys. it was only after ten minutes that i checked my bike and realized that it was still sticking in the lock. it had been there all night. jesus! that's how nervous and excited i had been when i arrived!
i'm really drunk! boy, not good. it's almost two in the morning and what am i supposed to do?
2:03: i want everything. i'm sure you've been here. i want everything. the first meeting. the careful looks, the bold lookes. the word words exchanged and then weeks and weeks of uncertainty: she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she locves me not. the first embrace that ends in shivers, the first kiss that end in tears. i want to savour every single minute of the new, every single moment of the old. when i close my eyes the rooms tarts to spin. when i close my heart the wolrd will stop. there's no alternative. the sun has started to break through the clouds. she'd have to be here. i like when i see you sleeping. and this more than everything else: seeing you sleeping, eyes closed, head resting onto the pillow or into my lap and your soft breathing and peaceful face because you're feleing secure and at home. can i be 'the one solid the spaces lean on' for you and can you be this for me? i don't know. i don't know. where the hell are you. my back hurts, my mind hurts, my eyes ache and the music won't make it better. i need you. regardless of who you are. i've written this before and it scares me. not regardless of who you are because i need those eyes and the loook you gave me and the slightly amused lips, the look that is proud of me, the look that attaches itself to my eyes and won't let go. i'm cold. i need to get to bed. i need sleep and peace of mind. i need you.
my life is goverend too much by high expectations and corny pop song!
[august 3, 2005 - rain down, rain down, rain down on me]i must say that i have to congratulate myself on perfecting the art of as-if-drunk writing. my typos, syntax and grammar mistakes are pretty impressive and create the perfect impression as if i had actually had too much beer yesterday night. of course it's all just made up, just like the fictive characters that appear frequently. like blaine and anne, for example, whom i will meet tonight to watch some videos with. anne will cook. in the little journal world, that is, because in the REAL world i will of course stay home and work. seems as if in the fictive world i try to make up for my unexciting youth. now, with 30+ years i suddenly start to drink, meet people and have affairs. well, at least i'm flirting. but then the y.-thing was a kind of affair. of course y. was only a fiction as well. but a good one :o)
just got a comment via the feedback form reminding me of an album which i haven't listened to in a long time:
COMMENTS = when i am king you will be first against the wall / with your opinions of no consequence at all / ambition makes you look very uglywonder whether i should take this personally. and what scared me a little was the list of people who would actually have a reason to quote this line.
the wind has gotten much stronger. it's almost a storm. the light is yellow and it feels like rain. the leaves are hissing nervously and an arm-thick branch of the tree in the backyard has been snapped off by the force of the wind and it's dangling back and forth lifelessly. my curtains are blown like flags and throughout the house doors are banging and "this is what you get when you mess with us!"
laterit's 1 in the morning again. just returned home. i laughed pretty hard: we watched 'little britain' - hilarious! i don't know why i'm so hesitant. maybe i act like one of pavlov's dog who is just starting to learn his lesson: no food from the bowl that gives you electric shocks.
[august 4, 2005 - ]i'm at the office, almost alone. the secretaries are there, too, but that's about it. the corridor is quiet. listening to the compilation of music from iceland that i did for my mother's birthday (she's been to iceland this year) - i'll spend this week-end in bielfeld because my mother and my aunt are celebrating their birthdays. it's gray outside and cloudy. good weather to work. i'm still writing on the paragraph about symmes. sigh. gonna see anne tonight. wish i had two lives. i still need to do so much: write to paula and leah, for example. got a flyer from the open-air cinema on the roof of the 'museum ludwig' and they're showing Koyaanisqatsi on august 20th. when i read this i immediately thought: i've got to see it! but then, on second thought, i considered that it might be a bit dangerous because i don't want to go to places where the chances of meeting persons i don't want to meet are unusually high. and the open-air cinema, especially this film, is such an occasion.
And then I'll turn and she won't be therelater: it's eightfourtyfive and i'm going to meet anne now. i'm nervous. there's no need to, but i'm just somehow strange lately.
Dusty black windows to light the dark stair
Candles all gnarled in the musty air
All without flames for many's the year
[august 5, 2005 - a family of foxes came to my yard and dug in / so i looked in a book to see what this could possibly mean]friday noon. i'm off to bielefeld for the week-end now, so no entries the next two days. gonna meet nadine (from b.) tonight. i saw anne yesterday night and we had a wine and listened to "kings of convenience" and she said that the online journal frightened her. because she felt parts of it were too much drenched in pathos and self-pity. which is true. of course :o) we talked until two, and i stayed the night. there was one moment when i was standing by the kitchen-window in the middle of the night, looking down the five floors onto the street, and she entered the room and stood behind me and embraced me, her chin on my shoulder and her warmth wrapped all around me, and suddenly we saw a fox straying down in the street. now, not even when i was staying at dagmar's place in bielefeld - which was in the middle of the woods - had i seen a fox roaming around. but suddenly there it was, in the middle of the night in the middle of the city.
[still august 5, 2005 but now in bielefeld]sitting in a bar in bielefeld, waiting for nadine. it's typical b.-weather: rainy, rainy, rainy. rain without drops. spray-on rain. the entire city covered under a cloud. i'm tired. the house of my parents is cold – they've turned off the central heating because it's summer. but hell! it is not summer NOW.
when i wrote a short mail to princess superstar this morning i had an important memory! the morning of october 5, 2003 when i was sitting with x. in a café after our first night together and i thought: 'who is that woman and what on earth am i doing here with her' and i felt awkward and i was glad when she left and i was on my own again. it was a feeling of alienation and disappointment that it wasn't like it had been with 'somebody' because it was new. but of course with the days, weeks and months that passed this changed dramatically and the unfamiliar became the much loved and treasured.
sometimes NEW is GOOD. i tend to forget this because deep down in my heart i'm a conservative breavman who wants to stop time, freeze-frame life and bring everything to a standstill so he won't lose it and can have total control over it. "Everything changes and nothing can last – you'd have to be here"
bloody hell – at the next table there's a local gathering of the Junge Union bielefeld: neo liberal barfbags with rich parents and without fantasy or creativity whatsoever.
[august 6, 2005]it's 22:29, i'm sitting – wrapped into a woolen blanket – in my parents' living room, listening to sigur ros. the other minute our mentally challenged cat decided to sit on my lap – that is: on the laptop on my lap and she almost deleted half of what i had written. spent the day with hollow earth research: read poe and articles on symmes. didn't really manage to write anything, though :o( i've caught a cold and need to blow my nose every other minute.
i wish i was more relaxed about my feelings and wouldn't guard my heart so carefully. it's like i've prohibited myself to have certain feelings and emotions as some kind of self-protection. i think that right now it takes much more effort and energy than it would take anyway to get through to 'me', to get close to me. and i'm not even sure whether anne has this energy and strength at the moment or even if she wants to invest it. seems that all that's left from my two former relationships is a deep mistrust and some equally deep cynicism.
[later]i'm back in cologne in my little apartment. candles on, joni mitchell singing and the ibook has finally broken down :o( the display doesn't work anymore. fuck. it's cold. it's raining outside and it feels more like autumn than mid-summer. my fingers are cold and i'm wearing a sweater. bielefeld was okay. it wasn't as strenuous as i had feared. sometimes it's not easy to put up with my parents and my aunts and uncles - but it was okay. lots of yummy things to eat :o).
[august 8, 2005 -paula wrote and what she said was exactly what i needed to hear. and what i wanted to hear.
blaine mentioned something about the online journal today and it struck me as if someone had hit me with a baseball bat. i'm such a bloody naive idiot! really! careless and just stupid! maybe doing this journal is not a good idea at all. sigh. ich bin so blöd!!! anyway, think i have to screen much more carefully what i write here.
one thing i would like to write about is the moment in the office today when bernd gave me the kari bremnes live cd. and i played it while we were working (we share the office). and then "you'd have to be here" started and i said: "it's a great song!" and he said "yes - it is." and he was humming along to it. and i said: "the live version is different from the album version. on the album it sounds more like..." and we both said at the same time "...like u2...!" and then we laughed and again we said simultaneously "...only without bono's annoying voice!" and then bernd said "i sometimes cry when i listen to it" and the way he says these things is exactly in a balance between being a joke and being real. and the way he talks about these things is very close to how i feel about them, and how i remember rob having spoken about music. and then he said: "i just love listening to someone singing in english with this cute scandinavian accent. it always puts a broad smile on my face!" and it was funny that he would say this because this kind of "broad smile" is also what is happening on my outside when the music is flaming on my inside. it is like a reaction that i cannot control. something in me smiles and this travels through my body and onto my face and it stays there and unfolds tenderly.
[august 9, 2005 - the river goes on and on and the sea that divides us is a temporary one and a bridge will bring us back together]another short-entry day today. first: went to the eyespecialist today. he said doing a laser operation isn't a problem and i can have an appointment on friday. talked to my parents then and they will lend me a part of the money. so: actually all is clear and i could get it done on friday. i'm still hesitating though: it's so much money. is it really worth it? what are my motives? i fear that it might only have to do with my post-relationship metamorphosis. and what if i *do* get it done? what will be left for after the next break-up? only a sex-change, i suppose.
got another comment today:
COMMENTS = http://www.ksta.de/html/artikel/1122790392754.shtmldid i tell you the story about this acquaintance of mine (i won't mention his name) who was looking through the classifieds and found this ad: "looking for a partner: if you like d&g and escada, don't hesitate to contact me..." and my friend told me: "i was so glad to have stumbled upon someone who's also into french philosophy! even though i have no idea what escada wrote..." okay, vielleicht muss man dabei gewesen sein.
two simple lines kept my mind busy the past days:
birds are like words : suddenly awayit's not really poetic, but it has this quality that i love so much about paula's poems: unpretentious, surprising, matter-of-fact lines that you don't identify as poetry from the start - it's only their aftertaste that makes you realize it. and the other line - also by kari bremnes - is:
words are like birds : some of them stay
i still haven't come to do up my hairit expresses so precisely and clearly the idea that it sometimes needs a presence or at least an anticipation of a presence to do all these small, everyday things. and if it isn't there you ask yourself: why bother getting up. why bother getting dressed. why bother making the bed. why bother breathing.
you'd have to be here
[august 10, 2005 - mit fanta und mit butterkeks]i need to get a regular life again! the past weeks i've been up all night, drinking too much and during the day i didn't get any work done! it can't go on like this! i need to get some sense of order again: getting up at eight and then working at the talk and the other thing that i still have to do and which i don't want to mention now. sigh. slight fit of panic on the stepper tonight when i thought about it. how far i am and how far i should have been already.
okay, here's a song by funny van dannen which will be motto for probably the rest of the month:
Du hast Pech in der Liebe, du hast auch Pech im Spiel
Du wirst nie fett erben, hast du überhaupt ein Ziel?
Die Welt ist aus den Fugen, die Menschen sind bankrott
Auch du bist echt am Ende, doch du fragst mich: Wer ist Gott?Gott ist unser Sponsor. Er gibt uns Sauerstoff von früh bis spät
Er öffnet unsere Augen, er öffnet unsere Ohren und alles für ein kleines Gebet
Ja wir sind auf Achse von früh bis spät, Ja wir sind auf Achse bis die Welt vergeht
Mit Fanta und mit Butterkeks. Ja wir sind junge Christen unterwegsDu hast Orgasmusprobleme. Du schläfst vorm Fenster ein
Du hast Durchblutungsstörungen, und immer noch kein Eigenheim
Dann denk doch mal an Jesus, der war besser als du
Er musste so jung sterben, sag mal was dazu!Gott ist unser Sponsor. Er gibt uns Sauerstoff von früh bis spät
Er öffnet unsere Augen, er öffnet unsere Ohren und alles für ein kleines Gebet
Ja wir sind auf Achse von früh bis spät, Ja wir sind auf Achse bis die Welt vergeht
Mit Fanta und mit Butterkeks. Ja wir sind junge Christen unterwegs
next
week the catholic world youth day will start in cologne. over a million
young christians are coming to cologne to celebrate whatever and see the
pope. and today the entire university was just biblically flooded with
them and they were everywhere: organizing and preparing. and believe me:
they do NOT look like the yummy models in the picture! now, i don't want
to hurt anybody's feelings. but quite honestly: they suck.
the comment-function of the feedback form is getting more and more popular every day :o)
COMMENTS = nice conference by the way. some glam and deep concentration, good orga etc.did i already say that the fucking ibook won't work again??
but also a little pathetic in the way johnny golding calls derrida sometimes doing "s.o.s." - same old stories.
guys, don´t let uni play your deleuze but fucking play it yourself.
and maybe you should come back one day to something more specific when you use the term "political". it gives me not the greastest feeling that fellow deleuzians seem to be productive with nearly everything when they turn on their d&g machines - but not when it comes to ideas / visions / provocative lines of flight concering politics.
[august 11, 2005 - at least i have this old guitar / to get me through december]spent most of the morning trying to figure out how to proceed with the ibook. the problem is: in 2002 apple sold quite a large number of laptops which have a defunct graphic chip. ours is among them. we had sent it in two times already! in 2003 and 2004. but the display is broken AGAIN! this really sucks! not only are the bloody fucking apple computers hopelessly overpriced, they are also bad quality. they really are! we had problems with the newer one that got stolen last year as well! so don't buy an apple unless you only need it to look cool in public places!
thursday evening. time flies. discussed personal matter with blaine today (mostly his) - the other night anne said: "hm, i figure the english seminar must be like a big group-therapy room right now" which is closer to the thrush than i'd like it to be. and we have all kinds of psychos: from lovesickbrokenheartedweirdos to alcoholicunabletoworkcranks - and some even belong in both categories.
COMMENTS = you should be careful with those mp3s that you upload to your online journal. you might end up in deep trouble.hm, good point and i've thought about this as well. maybe i should only provide them for a week or so and then delete the mp3 files on the server. hm. but it's such a good feeling to share them. sounds strange, but it really is.
the sky is gray again and it smells like rain. stooped at the store on my way home and bought new bedclothes. 't was about time. yesterday nina, nadine, stefanie and i saw each other again in a long time, which was nice. we started to catalogue the videos and dvds and had a coffee. unfortunately nina and stefanie will leave the team by the end of the year, so we have to look for somebody new. worked a little bit on the hollow earth article and sort of finished the section on poe. have planned to work on it tonight. i GOT to get it done this week-end. it's ridiculous that it takes so much time! i mean it's really nothing special, just some historic survey! sigh.
[august 13, 2005 -just a short note that there's not really much to report.
COMMENTS: as if there ever has been anything to report in your life... come on...stimmt auch wieder :o).
[august 14, 2005 - being together so quiet and still / being who we are so fulfilled / not laughing, not talking, not crying / a riddle beside another riddle]sunday afternoon. taking a break from hollow earthing. weather is changing constantly: sun and then heavy rain and then sun again. my eyes hurt a little - well', they don't really hurt but they're dry and sitting at the computer is more tiresome than usual. did i mention that i had the eyeoperation on friday? yep, i decided to do it. it was very exciting and the result seems to be great: right now i can see as good as if i was wearing my contacts. even a little better. while i'm writing this the rain starts again.
links of the day:
http://www.poetry.com/Publications/display.asp?ID=W5574052&BN=999&PN=1
http://www.religionsfreie-zone.de/
[august 15, 2005 - wilderness approaching!! coming on the left]
great.
just great. it's raining cats and dogs and i'm sitting at my desk, it's
9:24 in the morning and actually i have to get to work. but i don't want
to take public transport because of the 1,000,000 pilgrims who are here
for the world youth day. yes - you've read right! that is how many catholics
they expect to stay in cologne the next week. sigh. but as long as it's
raining so hard there's no point in biking because i'd be soaking wet before
i even reach the next crossing. and looking at the sky it doesn't look
as if it would stop anytime soon :o(
so maybe i'll just wait for the rain to stop and start hollow earthing at home. tonight at work we'll have a sit-com screening: fawlty towers and black adder. looking forward to this!
[august 16, 2005 -well, what a surprise! when i arrived at work yesterday anne-marie (our secretary) said: "thomas is there". and i thought this was a question. and i said: "no, he won't return before next monday." and she said: "no, i mean he's in his office. he has already asked for you!" so i went storming into his office and really: there he was, sitting at his mac, waving hello! and i thought i still had one week without bad conscience.
not much to report. god is in the house. or in town, rather. the screening yesterday night was fun. i had too much alcohol again. this is turning into a bad habit. princess superstar is back from the isle of wright and i'm going to meet her tomorrow night. bernd has mailed: sigur ros will be playing in cologne and he asked if i wanted to come and see them. which i'll probably do. not much chance of meeting unwanted persons there.i think thomas will come as well. he said that the sigur ros tickets were sold in two hours when they were playing in l.a. and that the tickets were over 180$ on ebay. so he didn't went.
[august 17, 2005 - and i just got to say that it grows darker with the day]ugh. need more sleep. emptied another bottle of wine with anne last night again.
COMMENTS = >so he didn't went*i* never claimed that i could speak english. i love the idea of 'watching language', though. like you're observing an undiscovered animal in the wild. waiting for it to stir. waiting or it to move. waiting for it to give away its secrets.
watch your language, boy. aren't you teaching english literature? that's a first-grade mistake. it hurts to read this...
sitting in the office, listening to nick cave. i'm beginning to realize that a thirty minute talk is too short to give a general hollow earth survey :o( i think i'll have to cut drastically once i've finished the paper. if i ever will, that is.
laterjust returned from princess superstar. she's living in the south east of cologne, i in the north west so i had to bike through the entire town. it is full of pilgrims. it's uncanny! und überall ratzingers fratze. it's worse than carnival. i tried not to drink too much wine. succeeded only half. considered staying home tomorrow and keep hollow earthing here. i've got eight pages already. also i should catch up on some sleep.
feedback form no. 55 arrived today :o)
[august 18, 2005 - don't miss the pope! hit him right between the eyes!]stayed home today because it's popemania all over town. slept until ten and then thought that it might be fun do go to the gym. actually i'm not supposed to do any sports two weeks after the surgery but i thought: what the heck! so i went and it was okay except that i'm all tired and without energy - as usual :o) the sun is shining and there's a mild breeze and i'm having all my hollow earth stuff spread out all over the table and i'm gonna start real soon.
listening to cds of the kari bremnes concert that bernd gave me and she's telling a little story between the songs:
"she standing in her kitchen the sun is about to break through the sky and she has many thoughts in her head at the same time like she's thinking of what to have for dinner and she's thinking of her lover and she's thinking of how fast life moves on: the days may have names you can call but they never come back to you but she is not filled with sadness about this she just gets this very strong feeling of being alive."and then the riff of "you'd have to be here" starts and it is played simply on a piano. this very strong feeling of being alive. "and i yelled: help me because i can't stop being overjoyed. and i whispered: run little kitten".
okay, i consider this online journal not only as a medium to record fictive thoughts, ideas and feelings but also to provide some practical help for you, dear reader, in all possible and thinkable situations in life. today: defrosting your icebox.
first of all it helps if you
1. chose a day on which you actually have quite a lot to do (like writing
a hollow earth article)
2. have a very small kitchen in which you cannot really move without
knocking over glasses, pots and cutlery.
3. pick a really hot summer-day. like today incidentally
first you remove all the things that need to be cooled from the fridge: the butter, the cheese, the marmalade, the yogurt, the milk. you spread them all over the kitchen, preferably at places where you will knock them over in the next couple of minutes. then you open the icebox. the crusts of ice should be at least 7 cm thick. otherwise it's no fun. while you have a contemplative look over the floes you suddenly realize that it will take more than a day for the ice to melt without mechanical help. and then you realize that doing this on the hottest day of the year might not have been the best idea in the world because the dairy products that you've so neatly placed all over the kitchen have meanwhile adopted room temperature - which is a little over 30° celsius.
therefore you think about ways to speed up the melting process. the first idea is the most obvious: get the hair dryer from the bathroom and spend the next twenty minutes blow drying the ice. this is not only fun, but it also raises the room temperature by another two degrees. when you realize that this method is not quite as effective as you'd thought you switch to plan b: for this you have to put the hair dryer away (put it on the floor right in front of the fridge) and get up to get the toolbox. when you get up you a) first knock over the milk and b) bang with your arm into the tray beneath the icebox which has in the meantime filled to the brim with water from the first centimeter of melted ice. this water is now running down the walls of the fridge and cumulates as a big puddle right in front of the fridge. exactly where you've left the hair dryer which is - of course - still connected to the socket. after you've escaped electrocution by a hairbreadth you get a hammer and a screwdriver from the toolbox and start hammering onto the ice until it comes of in tiny little pieces that hit you in the face right beneath your eyes. while doing this you stoically ignore the red warning label on the side of the icebox that says: "do never - under no circumstances - use a pointy tool to remove the ice! this might damage the fridge beyond repair!"
the entire operation will take about an hour. add to this the thirty minutes you need to write a pointless account for your journal (in case you have any) and voilá: you have spent half of the afternoon on a perfectly useless mission.
"i can't remember now who took the picture. we seem so very young, i have to look again. you hold your head the way that only you can do. and this is long before i slipped away from you. the look between us as we have forever. as i took down this book this picture came to light: the one by Lem, do you remember it? i still talk as if you're hearing what i say, when it's so long ago that you slipped away."
[august 19, 2005 - i don't know how you show such gentle disregard for the ugly in me]friday morning. the sun is shining and the pope's still in town. and with him thousands and thousands of little pope clones who are roaming the streets, lurking in the subways, singing "kumbaja my lord kumbaja". when i was waiting in the subway station the big advertising screen suddenly showed an animated, barely clothed, strongly homoerotic hunk playing with an apple. the words to the images said: "watch out in the garden of pleasure" and i thought "hm, what the hell is this?" and then the screen showed a bright, red condom. i couldn't help but laugh with all the pope-posters and little holy people ['holygans', as anne called them yesterday] around :o)
"they say you hurt the ones you love / but i don't think it's true / the ones you love they're just the most prepared / to be hurt by the things you do" the blue aeroplanes are singing. i didn't want to get in a situation in which i can hurt or get hurt ever again. because rule of thumb is: if you can hurt, you'll hurt. and if you can get hurt, you'll eventually get hurt. but, as anne said yesterday night: da wirst du wohl nicht drumrumkommen. and she's right of course. "but i don't know where it all begins. and i don't know where it all will end. but we're better off for all that we let in." is the indigo girls' counter-attack.
lateralmost half past eight. listening to joni's court & spark. great songs and great melodies! "a heaven full of astronauts". got a cup of haegen dasz caramel ice cream in my defrosted icebox. ah, the simple pleasures :o)
[august 20, 2005 - she set the jailhouse on fire]feedback form no. 56 arrived :o) we're slowly approaching no. 60!
[august 22, 2005 - life on a string , string , string life on a string]monday morning. sitting with a cup of steaming coffee in the office. paralyzed. not thinking at all.or thinking too much. fuck. day started badly. and now, as a kind of safe sonic haven, laurie anderson is singing "life on a string". i was listening to "tightrope" yesterday night, lying on my back in the near-dark of my room, and i thought: if it is true that your entire life passes in front of your eyes before you die and there is an off-screen voice-over then - of all the voices in the world - i want to have laurie's: "and here is that day by the river with the sunset and trains passing by in the distance. and here is rob and you playing 'estragon'. and here is your first bike ride, look out, don't fall, steady now. and here is your first birthday. that's your mom and that's your dad. and now, i think, we have to go. just walk till you reach that light..."
i saw x. on my way to work. she was walking towards the university and i was passing by on the bike. life on a string. fucking mess: head, heart and belly.
some people know exactly where they're goingin the meantime it's 23:09. work, coffee with blane and jenny. more work. fell asleep at the desk (really!). another coffee with blane and jenny, headed home. gym. shower. reiner called. he's the nerve bible bass player. that is: he *was* because the band doesn't exist anymore. he's visiting a friend in cologne so he asked me to have lunch together. we'll meet on thursday.
the pilgrims to mecca
the climbers to the mountaintop
but me, i'm looking
for just a single moment
so i can slip through timelife on a string
life on a string.
sometimes i feel that my entire life is just some loosely woven texture of different, more or less arbitrary song lines. listened to the live version of fleetwood mac's "the chain" on the stepper and it was so bloody appropriate. i was confused and i was bitter and i was disappointed with myself and then this great riff started and the complex layers of voices made the song look like some rock formation. "listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise / run in the shadows / damn your love, damn your lies" and then the chorus starts and it's so dead earnest.
and if you don't love me nowand bloody hell, i could!! damn your lies! i can still hear her saying: "i don't see any reason not to love you. but i simply don't." a perfect sentence to turn around. fuck. never had thought that my assumed stability was such a very frail balance only. i don't know. maybe i don't have to understand all this. silver lining: the new ikea catalogue arrived today!
you will NEVER love me again
i can STILL
hear you SAYING
you would
NEVER break,
NEVER break
the chain
[august 23, 2005 - hear the west wind blow / far off in the still night without stars]today i got a cd that bernd had sent me with a sigur ros album :o) i really like to listen to them while i'm working. perfect background music, even though this sounds mean. but it's meant as a compliment.
COMMENTS = so what's going on with anne?due to the request of several parties involved i'll be refraining from following this particular subplot of my life for the time being. sorry about that.
later: 21:12. i love symmetric times of the day. the weather is truly depressing: rain and rain and rain. it's pitch dark already. summer seems to have finally gone. worked on the talk and it has grown. still have to do the power point thingy that goes along to it. that should be fun.
COMMENTS = Robert Moog RIP"take to him this hat and hammer and tell him i'm gone i'm gone i'm gone...." not so good news from leah, the journal-ist from canada. no news from paula yet. the undertow is pretty quiet as well. in ten days bernd, nadine and i will be off to the czech republic for the conference. i should look forward to this but i wish we wouldn't fly to a conference but to a sleeping-camp. somewhere where i wouldn't have to think about deleuze, relationships and other things. i told blane today that the concept of hibernating is pretty appealing to me.
[august 24, 2005 -
thomas
came storming into the office this morning and said: "i don't bloody care
if you have to work all day and night: by the end of the semester break
i want to read the theory chapter of your thesis!" he wasn't trying to
be funny. he wasn't joking. he was dead serious. at first i was shocked
and scared. the semester will start by the middle of october and before
i will lose an entire week being on the conference in the czech republic
:-( but then the pressure also made me almost finish the hollow earth talk.
i HAVE to finish it by the week-end. it has taken way too much time already!
so i managed to write quite a lot today. thanks to thomas ;-) and that
is why he's my hero of the day.
today someone handed in a term paper about lynch's mulholland drive discussed with lacan. and i thought: hm, that is something that princess superstar might be interested in. because she wrote her final thesis about the film. so i checked the bibliography of the paper and really: the student had quoted the princess' thesis! da wurde mir doch echt warm ums herz!
there's not much more to report. the new ikea catalogue sucks.
[august 25, 2005 - that fresh feeling]it's cd-day today :-) when i arrived at work a package from paula was waiting for me. she had sent me two cds. she hadn't mentioned that she would, so it really was a pleasant surprise. and then, when i met blaine ten minutes later, he gave me a cd, too, with a great track on it. :-)
sort of finished the talk today. phew. doing some fine adjustments tomorrow plus the power-pointless presentation and then i've finally made it.
this afternoon i met reiner, which was nice. he told me about his new band-project in bielefeld and how the music scene had changed there. somehow i admire him. at an early point in his life he had decided that making music is everything he wanted to do really. so he got himself a job that doesn't really take too much of his spare time or energy (he's a shop assistant in a music store - fittingly) and concentrated on the bass playing. he has played in 90% of all bands in bielefeld. he knows everybody in the - admittedly small - music scene of bielefeld. his entire life is music now. he's got gigs here and there with various bands, sessions in the studio and of course rehearsals over rehearsals.
[august 26, 2005 - na toll!]i hate bad surprises. i really do. and in addition to the unexpected and unpleasant encounter from earlier this week i had another bad surprise yesterday night: i was biting on a piece of chocolate when a filling came out. which means: i'll have to go the the dentist. and i hate the dentist. let me define 'hate' in this context: it means that i won't have a night of quiet, undisturbed sleep without bad dreams until the appointment on monday morning. it means that every ten minutes i will fall into fits of spontaneous and most disturbing panic: jumping onto strangers and biting their legs. it means that there's a carousel in my head with dentist chairs and the music is a mad "it'll hurt it'll hurt it'll hurt!". sigh.
laterit's 00:36 and i've just finished the presentation slides for the talk. only had a short break in the afternoon when i went tot the gym to try out the new songs. worked very well. you know, it's strange: only a couple of days ago someone sent in the feedback form and answered the question: "the reason why YOU should appear in the online journal" with "someone who introduced you to ani difranco". and today i stumbled over this song by ani difranco on paula's cd. it's sort of an anti-song, very weird. but cool. think i've got to write more about it later. or rather: tomorrow because now i'm heading straight into bed.
feedback form no. 57 arrived today.
[august 28, 2005 - the solitude of strength]cohen's "the letters" on repeat all day.
[august 29, 2005 - hey porcupine, i survived!]got a mail from florida today:
I just heard your song "Breathing Water" on the recordcaster.de radio station. Der song ist fantastisch!! Ich wünsche mehr! Can you send a copy of the CD to the States?cool! so they played the 200 lurkers on web-radio :-) maybe i *should* make more music? and someone even asked for a copy of start at the end! hadn't toally forgotten about it! dentist was okay: no pain. feedback from no. 58 arrived tonight. who would have thought that so many people would actually care to fill it out!! so soon someone will send in NO 60!! will it be you? ;-) it's 23:06. just finished cutting the hollow earth paper, because instead of 30 minutes it took 45 to read it to a selected audience yesterday. so it's down to nine pages and a .ppt with 46 slides.
[august, 30, 2005 -helge schneider is turning 50 today. so happy birthday!
[august 31, 2005 - thomas is a daddy now...]wow! this month ends on a weird note: today thomas - who in real life has a totally different name of course - came storming into the office and he was wearing a new t-shirt that said: "thomas". i was a little irritated.
it's hot today!. the temperature in the office is about 10 higher than
outside. tried to read some deleuze but it didn't really work.