Last Wednesday, I found myself thinking about dreams and movies, drag and gender flux at the Queerness in Photography show at c/o Berlin…
There's a whole secret history, from Weimar Berlin to the Blackcat in San Francisco, we are only learning.
Each year I try to explore a new chapter, of heroes, artists taking pictures, trying out new selves, swapping old selves, secret lives, black and white photographs, people from a long time ago, who seemed to have seen it all.
Ladies dress up parties in college rooms, cigars, suits and fun.
Ever adapting before she became a school teacher, passing for years and years, always afraid to get caught, still striving, living, teaching and supporting others.
Lights and colors flash across time.
“Destruction as the Cause of Becoming,” that was the theme of the psychotherapy group later in the afternoon at Bartleby and co at Boppstraße 2, Neukölln.
It was Mikhail Bakunin who taught us, destruction can be a creative force.
Essay after essay we chat about “Forgotten names” and surreal dreams, reimagining ahead of waking lives.
A few Spanish grad students and US expats finding common cause in this city of immigrants. What are any of us doing here, I wonder riding home, through the Berlin night, past the Kit Kat Club.
I think of Faust’s Metropolis, looking at the people in the distance.
“The vast majority of the new working class who made up the overgrown industrial slums had not wanted to live in Berlin at all; they were immigrants who had flooded into the city after their traditional way of life had collapsed,” says Richie, highlighting what feels like an eternal cycle, repeated anew.
The teenager and I read Leonard C who “caught the darkness of your cup”
Is this contagious?
Just drink up…”
Each night, we share poems and ideas, drifting into slumber.
Friday, I catch the train early.
Good morning Berlin, I think looking at the graffiti walls and train tracks that have seen so much from Alexanderplatz to Brandenberg, on my way to Brussels.
From Faust’s Metropolis, I flip to the phone.
There’s another story about Anthony Bordaine, who left too soon.
He must have caught a sip of that something Leonard was drinking, losing it all, finding something, and letting it slip, losing grasp.
We all loved his story, but then he left all of us, his 11 year old kid.
Still makes me so sad.
To have it all and let it slide.
We all feel crazy from time to time.
Some more than others, I can hear you say.
But sleep it off. Go for a walk, kiss the sky, hug a tree.
Still the intoxicants are in the air.
They lured Worther and his followers into the river with Ophelia, for the final goodbye, joining Ian, Anthony, and the other emo goths.
A goodbye so far away, you only touch as you stumble through time, never to see each other, passing stars, fleeing glimpses.
Finally, in Brussels Stopping at the train station,
People from Albania dreaming of home...
Walking through Gare du Nord...
Bulgaria in pink.
Kossovars on the move.
Romanians making plans, selling their wares.
Nigerians on the next street up.
Kids selling something.
Everything for sale.
Ever soliciting.
“The glittering color of the demimonde,” that Hans Oswald knew in Berlin.
Pigeons gather, and fly away.
I grab a beer and write something down, taking in the gorgeous morning at the dream bar... noticing the sign, where the waitress is taking a cigarette break, watching people arriving, walking by, wondering if i’ll ever know any of them.
Conversations are ever starting at the dream cafe.
Finishing my pint, I walk up to St Mary's Church, taking the 93 tram back to Ave Louise to see my friends.
Old friends and new, we talk and talk till four.
Desires and stories, worries of war, hopes for something, old lives and new from San Francisco to Moscow, Malaga to LA, many lives and hopes.
Sleep finally grasps at us, warm forever, between here and now, into the darkness.
And finally, the morning, drifting into the sunlight, out for a stroll, looking at the people walking about the city, wondering about Brazil and the election, darkness dancing with light.
Everyone is hoping for something.
Certainly, the crowd down the street from us is, Iranians calling for something different, blocking traffic as we make our way our of town.
Huge, energetic, passionate rally for Masha Amini, killed for wearing her headscarf the wrong way. Signs declare: "women, life, freedom", "no compulsory hijab".
“Our bodies, our choice!” they scream, 43 years of repression wearing thin.
And we make our way, past statues to the Allies, who liberated Belgium during the war.
Onto Haarlem, greeting Naomi and her cats, playing, staying up all night, walking the streets, kicked out of the porn shop, dancing and buzzing about, ever dreaming, buzzing into sleep at dawn.
A few hours later up and about, everyone else is still slumberring. I'm on the move, walking to the train station, to Amsterdam.
Nothing like the energy here, getting out of the train station, seeing all the people moving into corridors of the city...
To find something.
Smell the flowers, walk the canals, have a beer.
Mark and I cross paths along the way, along this
“sunny fall sunday in #Amsterdam and the grachten cafes full-up
with people just having a beer and watching the world pass by.”
On he told me about his night,
“.. on the way back to our hotel, Jimmy and i stopped into #tmanje (the little hand), supposedly the oldest/still operating gay bar in #amsterdam, on the (ever-fabulous) #ZeeDijk (sea dike), the very first dike of the city. the place was small and cozy, and had a very dykes-and-their-gay-men-friends vibe/presence …en lekker bier van vas, and a great gay classics juke box that all were vibing to.” He paused, “JUST what my psyche after 2-1/2 years in lockdown,” smiling after staying up all night long singing Edith Piaff songs.
I walk past the statue of Alida Margaretha Bosshardt, a patron saint of harm reduction, along the canal. She sheltered Jewish kids during the war and supported the drug users, the prostitutes.
“Should I believe that I can fight prostitution? No way! I try to give these women a helping hand so often that they can grab it when they want to grab it. We accept these girls and women as they are in their situation.”
I find myself thinking of Anne Frank, who lived down the street, hiding in the attack, where she wrote love poems to the trees, before she perished.
I keep on walking, taking in the fascinating culture, old world, mixing with new, fun and harm reduction, rejecting prohibitive politics, old struggles and new, old ghosts and new.
Sun shines on the water, the coffee flows.
Pot smoke fills the air.
Many of us wind our way into the Oude Kerk, the Old Church in the red light district, brothels up and down the streets around it, high and low, ever dancing together, everyone looking for salvation.
We’re up Ben, write my friends.
I make my way back to Haarlem.
And then back to Brussels for a beer and frites at the train station, before my train from central, into the air and back in Berlin
Not so fast... Three trains ... Across neighborhoods to finally get back where I started three days ago, home sleep, dreams.
Only for a few hours, and head out past Alexanderplatz again on bikes to Schloss babelsberg Potsdam, where our tour guide tells us stories of the no person zone in front, between the castle and the water, the desperate shot, trying to cross from East to West from 1961-89, exploring the workings of this once divided city.
Past a sign for theTodesmarch durch potsdam/ Death March through Potsdam, and its history of a majestic city that arose with imperial dreams, lived through nightmare of forced migrations and death marches in the 1940's, before bombs fell, flattenning it, before the rubble was cleared and it rose again.
Out in LA, the teenager is thinking about poems:
"a prophet of babylon shouts and mutters to earless gutters..."
She reads, perusing, Mina Loy.
Here in Berlin, history and poems bounce against themselves, yesterday's dreams and nightmares, good habits and bad, always mixing in my sleep.
Ups and downs, wherever we go, there we are.
Virginia Woolfe lulls us asleep with her stories of the London dockworkers, Melville’s whale, Crane’s bridge, carrying bodies, ever imagining, longing, and we drift back into dreams.
No comments:
Post a Comment