Running Around Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Berlin Conversations

Scenes from a second week in a Berlin.  

Our second week in Berlin, we traipsed about, aimlessly around Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, going to dinner parties with our new friends, friends of friends from NYC, from here, to see art, the lakes, the parks, biking as much as we could.   

 

Early in the week, we took in old Marx manuscripts at the German Historical Museum, diving into the workings of alienation and labor, we know so well, all these ideas in the history of philosophy. 

I adore the early Marx and his debates with the Hegelians, looking at the forces which form, which shape and separate all of us.  

The biggest clash, of course, is between the bourgeoisie   and the proletarian, Marx imagined, from the library.

 

Read Brecht's Refugee Conversations, says Caroline. 

"In the dark times, Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing about the dark times,” says Brecht.

Markets are open. 

People zoom about, picking up this, having a drink, walking with a beer in hand. 

 

By Wednesday, the teenager arrives from New York, exhausted but ready to explore. 

We ride to Kreutzberg, sometimes for music, techno, dark new wave, beers on the bridges, lunch, exploring book stores and secret spots, graffiti on the walls, Turkish food and squats. 

Caroline wants to stay. 

Friday, a few of us go Grunau, to the lake.

guys are prancing about nude, showing their goods. 

One man has a cock ring, another a steel prince albert, held along a chain around his waist at the clothing optional beach bathing spot.   Body shame is not a thing here. Old men, kids, elder ladies, hipsters, all shapes, sizes... Lotsa nakedness here in Berlin.

In the meantime, we chat about conflict in Ukraine and the refugees making their way through Poland and Belarus.  They are going to to Bialowieza, a primeval forest between Poland and Belarus. Undocumented people are crossing it to enter the EU. It’s not like in Przemysl where you can just hang out at the train station and meet refugees, says my friend.

Take a train to Krakow and watch, she suggests, just watch whose coming back from Przemysl.

Refugees stay in the forest, as they always have. 

Read the Painted Bird, says Caroline, referring to the 1965 novel by Jerzy Kosiński.

Undocumented people, migrants, refugees still wandering, clashing, enduring the worst. 

On the edge of the forest, a lot goes on.

 

Each day, a different engagement. 

Saturday afternoon in Berlin. A demo in solidarity with Afghanistan, trip to a fave community garden, and Kurdish tea with my bestie.

 

The teenager is watching it all change, becoming a part of a community from New York to LA, New Orleans to Berlin, new friends, skating everywhere she goes. 

Who is this, they wonder, reflecting on a trip to Urban Works in Brooklyn, where they try to make sense of living in the city. They feel a kindred spirit with Dean Johnson and Ari Up, and her Elsa Hildegard Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven, each drafting a new way of being and living, connecting their stories with those of the other punks and absurdists, Surrestists and Dadaists, cabaret performers,  Anita Berber and punks, the Avengers, who we are going to see. 

 

“It takes a lot of guts to inhabit public space,” they tell us, looking at the female skaters. 

“It's inventive, takes guts, takes courage. These tricks women are doing are new, forging a new work, connecting environmental and public space activism.”

 

My friend Ben in New York is posting Bowie albums for me: “Now the last part of the David bowie Berlin trilogy, now lodger, Benjamin Heim Shepard for u!!!!”

 

Saturday, Sunset drinks in Friedrichshain, down from the Volkspark. 

 Artists from Iran and Mexico City, converge, expats who’ve made lives here, new arrivals like us, a foreign service worker who has lived in a new town every five years for the last five decades. Berlin is still in reparations for its history, hopefully it won’t turn right again, as the US seems to be moving. We talk about art controversies over what is antisemetic vs anti Israel. You can’t conflate the two. But given Germany’s history, they seem to have to. 

I guess that's the root of the controversy at Documenta, that everyone is talking about. 

 

For most of us, this is still a special place full of artists and writers. 

“I don’t trust artists who are happy,” says a poet from India. 

On we chat about the poems and our impulse to write, to create, the stories, the anguish we put on paper, that turns into something else.   The ride home through the pulsing city, kids out at the tables, drinking beer, at the clubs, on and on, it's the best part of the night.

 

 I have a dream about running from the fascists, trying to get to Canada, not sure I can make it, I think, eluding their grasp, over and over, until I'm locked in. 

And then, another dream about Tim, whose birthday was last week.

His letter, death wishes, is still painful and beautiful. 

Here and there, in both worlds. 

 

Every day something new to see.

 

Sunday, we explore a wonderful flea market, full of antiques, junk from the east, followed by a ride to the Bruecke Museum,  I’m few k into the ride before I really see it's a 15 k ride from our Prenzlauer Berg.  Kilometer after kilometer I ride, finally out of the city, where pine trees line the path, their scene taking me back to Thomasville, GA, Mom, Grandmom, living and not living, our lives ever shifting through it all, here, not here, looking at art, living, trying to make something useful of our time. 

 

Finally, I get to the gallery. 

Brucke 1910.

 The show focuses on 1910, a formative year for the Brucke artist group. They were still in Dresden, charting a path toward the capital, still naive somehow. Looking back at the very modern color and light, it feels like a zenith before the world turned; war raged and all changed. I fell in love with them the first time I came here, years ago. The feeling remains. 

I walk through the sculpture garden in back, drinking a cappuccino, posting some photos. 

 

Riding back, my path takes me through the Tiergarten, and along the waterfront.

Looking up I see an old friend in the sky, the angel, Victory Column, from 1873 marking the end of the Danish-Prussian war.

And Irwin commenting on my post about the show. 

We are not too far away from this in the US, he explained. ”Was always intrigued by the irony of the “Decadent Art Exhibit” and the thousands who attended. And highly placed Nazi’s stole and stored them for themselves for the future as “investments”. But hypocrisy is not a thing of the past. And hardly limited to Germans. One can look closer to home and Trump’s assertions that the raid on his home was equivalent to a Gestapo incursion. It can happen again in our house.”

 

The day ends with a night of even more music. 

This time, with some old German punks and an iconic US punk band. 

We’d been wanting to be a part of it all year and finally we’d made it. 

 

Cheap Tragedies here in Berlin with @penelopehouston ... I first heard the song in 1983 at David Willingham's in Dallas... As an adolescent anthem... Trey Johnson rip.... we all knew what it was like when the doors flew open and the people crowded in... we couldn't wait for the show to start.... We were on our way to something... They were on the bill famously pushing the sex pistols off the stage in their final gig... Sid vicious was passing out and they owned the stage, drafting perhaps the greatest pink song ever. And then they disappeared.... Breaking up before their 1981 album came out, the Pink Album. Fast forward, there was Penelope, looking at my Avengers shirt. We are from the past, Penelope said during the show, referring to the band's roots in the 1977 scene. But also from the future in the last stop of their tour.... The German crowd loved them.... Dancing away the heartbeat... Some of us slam dancing ...Pogoing, trying to hold onto our beers before one guy poured them on everyone ... Best songs ... Paint it black, we are the one, cheap tragedies, the American in me.... Too intelligent to commodity the product, all of us dancing, singing along. Thank you Avengers. Tears and rage. Thank you.

 

Between young punks and original Avengers fans, the Cassiopeia show offered  something wonderful in a venue for the bank, situating their band, like everything else here in an ever moving history:

 

“Emerging from San Francisco in the late 1970s, The Avengers established themselves as one of America's pre-eminent punk bands. Fusing incisive guitar hooks, explosive rhythms and youthful vehemence, the group forged some of the era's most distinctive songs. Their live shows were legendary, playing up and down the west coast and even sweeping the Sex Pistols off the stage in their last performance. Byron Coley would reflect that in 1977; “The Avengers were by far the coolest and youngest sounding. They roared without irony as if this were actually the year zero (and for a moment it was) as history was rewritten. The honesty of their belief was carried through their sound. And it was convincing! The Avengers' self-titled LP is often referred to as "The Pink Album" because of its magenta cover design. Frontwoman Penelope Houston's iconic voice and razor-sharp lyrics resonate on anthems "We Are The One" and "The American In Me," while piercing ballads like "Corpus Christi" reveal a truly out-of-body euphony. The Pink Album remains The Avengers' definitive statement - containing their classic Dangerhouse EP, sessions recorded with the Pistols' Steve Jones and half a dozen insightful demos. While much has been written about The Avengers over the past three decades, rock critic Greil Marcus puts it succinctly: "The word I keep coming back to is mystical, and that's pretty much theirs alone. Support: The Roxies are a band from Berlin, their vocalist Matthew is originally from Yorkshire, England. He met the rest of the band in 2018 through a flyer in a Kreuzberg pub. Since then they have been writing songs, bringing their different musical backgrounds together and playing loud in a former launderette in a Berlin backyard.”

 

Another week, longest ever, tired, living hard, happy to be here. 

 Thanks for joining us @mothtreee…

.