Fate moves in strange directions.
The first or second day of the new year, last January, we found ourselves in Williamsburg watching B Movie: Lust & Sound in West Berlin, 1979-89. Mark Reeder’s story of his Berlin exile from Manchester, exploring the squats and clubs of the Cold War era, divided West Berlin.
I wouldn’t have imagined that would be our fate. By the end of year, we’d have spent five months here, living in Prenzlauer Allee, which was in the East, walking those same streets, looking at the same skies, pieces of the same wall, going to SO36 and the clubs Bowie frequented, looking for the same pieces of history, ever struggling to make sense of our own moment. Each day, a new piece, an image from a gallery or the street, compelling me to link the separate parts into the whole, from the streets to the bike lanes to the pubs to the museums, to the trains to the airports, to our apartment, and the people making their way here from New York and back.
Messages the streets and the classes, the writings on the walls and in bathroom stalls.
“I’d rather not work than network,” says one bit of graffiti, with a nod to the Situationists.
“I wanna save Ukrainian culture.”
“Money is your religion.”
This is the refrain we see everywhere.
“I had a flashback of something that never existed,” Louis Bourgeois.
I guess we all do. I do.
“We are all the people,” says the poster outside Neue National Galerie, just outside Potsdamer Platz. Inside, more
“Right now, I'm just like the streetwalkers I painted,” wrote Kirchner in 1916, walking these same streets. “Whisked away, gone the next moment. I try nevertheless… to create an image of the times out of the confusion.” I guess we all do here.
Each day here, I’ve tried to re learn everything, ever reconciling the things I didn’t get right, or didn’t understand, the comings and goings, that are just part of it all, the friends arriving and departing:
A high school football buddy, who suffered a stroke in the shower.
Three AIDS activists, one after another.
One cat in Brooklyn, then it became two in Berlin.
Two international leaders, a soccer star I’d seen from afar, who always seemed to be there through the years.
I still remember watching the game on the TV, that fall of 1977.
I was a kid, looking around, seeing the world.
Elvis had just died.
We’d just moved back to Atlanta, from Princeton, feeling uprooted.
Two years later, we moved to Dallas, where we’d spend the next decade.
Mark Redden was just leaving Manchester for Berlin.
I was just learning about the city, mostly from the movies, particularly from a film about the skies of Berlin. It showed at the Inwood Theater for much of 1987.
I saw it over and over again.
The movie poster seemed to call me, finding a place on my wall.
Wings of Desire changed everything.
I saw it four times this year, two nights last week, at my favorite theaters in Berlin.
These days, Bruno and the other Angels are always with us, Marion on her trapeze, flying through the skies, Homer in Potsdamer Platz, looking for his old coffee house, trying to understand cities in constant flux, ever shifting, people coming, creating communities, displacing others, history ever shaping them, walls rising and falling, chain stores opening and closing.
They are with me as I travel, riding the bus back from Leipzig, on a stormy, rainy afternoon, or getting a coffee at Cafe Kotti, with the teenager back in town from Buddapest.
Sunday, I rode off to Berghaim, a techno club named from the district Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, in the afternoon. Almost no line, I get in fast, never a guarantee. Inside people are getting dressed and undressed for clubland. At the bar, I meet a funny group of Berlinners. Each floor a different experience, they tell me. MDMA at the top, techno in the middle, dark throbbing beats and bodies, half clad.
“1,500 people on three levels, steel stairs, counters made of hard rubber, on the first floor a dance floor under an 18 meter high ceiling, plus darkrooms where not only muscular men dare to kiss with tongues, but also couples of all other sexual orientations,” says one writer describing the interior. No photos allowed. It's all wide open, dancing, celebrating being alive, living a new life, instead of going to church, dancing with new friends, ever reminding me, inviting me into a collective daydream, bathrooms crowded with stories, kids shaking, sharing. “For party-goers from all over the world, the club in the Friedrichshain district has become a place of longing shrouded in myth: the same incredible stories are told from Barcelona to New York.”
Al is in town from Brooklyn.
Over soup, we all catch up for one night and then the next.
He’s not feeling well. But we manage.
Caroline takes care of him.
Two striped lines, merry covid once again.
Another unwelcome visitor.
Finishing dinner, I wander off to Babylon Berlin, my favorite movie theater. Previews from Cabaret, Blade Runner, the tears in the rain soliloquy, after Rutger saves Harrison Ford. It could be Hong Kong or Los Angeles, or a rainy night in Berlin like the one that night.
Later that night, I learn that Terry Hall, of the Specials, has departed.
My mind flashes back to watching Dance Craze at the Granada.
Remembering that old song, watching Terry sing:
“This town, is coming like a ghost town ”
Throughout the years he changed, music changed, bands and sounds evolving, from Specials to FunBoyThree to Colorfield.
Wendy sends me a picture of my friends meeting for holiday drinks in Alphabet City.
Thanks for this wonderful pic @green.map ... I reply, looking at the picture of Andrew and my NYC family extending from Berlin back to Alphabet City. Sorry to miss our Seattle 1999/Buy Nothing Day Jail Solidarity drinks. RIP Chuck. Yo Ben. Miss you. Love you gang. Stay safe. See you on the other side. Globalize Solidarity. Keep on chatting and planning, conspiring, wondering about what was and was going to be...The conversation continues through the years, topics ebbing through time. "30x30 & recent biodiversity COP, criminal referrals, books, clocks, maps, teaching, what kind of pitcher, FIFA 22 & 26 ( in NYC), omicron 2021, friends near & far, solstice, holidays..."
Last year, we all got COVID after going out.
This year, it was quieter.
COVID more elusive, still everyone is Berlin has something.
My booster seems to be protecting me, for now.
My feed sends a memory of Tim, who I met with in Grand Central with Ken, four years prior, before he got sick, before Mel shuffled off, before Aisle and Spider departed.
Winter solstice is approaching.
We spend the rainy December day exploring our fave places, an old cafe, a cemetery, holiday feelings, a cup of coffee, lunch on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, out to Cafe Kotti in Kreuzberg, where we drink tea, the teenager, reading Tank Girl.
A kids gotta have role models - Sally Bowles or Tank Girl?
In between Cocktails and holiday moments, we make our way out for night movies and jazz across town. We had no idea what it was going to be like, riding eight k across the city, over a bridge, past construction, across a direct road, to a smokey late night jazz jam session and midnight showing, the last showing of Moonage Daydream at ZUKUNFT am Ostkreuz.
Each day another walk, through winter markets. Each night, another movie, off to see Cabaret at the Babylon. I run into my doppelganger in the poster of Nesferatu. The National Socialists sitting at the Kit Kat Club at the end is chilling, particularly here in Berlin. Oh Sally, singing what's the use in sitting alone in a room... Life is a cabaret. Why didn't you leave when you could? ... Why so much cruelty wondered the little one. Oh Sally... Singing those prophetic words:
."What good is sitting"
"All alone in your room?"
"Come hear the music play"
"Life is a cabaret, old chum"
"Come to the cabaret"
And as for me, huh
And as for me
I made my mind up back in Chelsea
When I go... I'm going like Elsie
Start by admitting
From cradle to tomb
It isn't that long a stay
Life is a cabaret, old chum
It's only a cabaret, old chum
And I love a cabaret…”
I guess we’re all going like Elsie.
Next afternoon, the younger teenager and I bike across town, to take in the Magyar Modern at Berlinische Galerie. We share a chocolate cake at the cafe, trying to make sense of it all here with the whole crew in town. From one city in motion to another. Berlin had a master planner who wanted to put highways through Kreutzberg. But artists and activists protesters. They superimposed maps of la freeways through funky neighborhoods. And the city backed down. It's fascinating to watch a city that had to figure out how rebuild itself. Miss you NYC. Stay safe. Miss you. I'm glad to be hunkered down here. Not traveling, whirling through airports and climate chaos.
Christmas eve we wander the closed markets at Holtzmarket, around the Cassiopeia, where the teenager is skating, walking the streets of Berlin, chatting with old friends, going to the skate park, off to Winter Vespers at Immanuel with Al. “Life is a highway and I'm gonna ride it,” sings Barrett. Al tells me about Gesualdo and Brahms, Dieterich Buxtehude and Bach, and only a few jokes at mass, regaling us with more stories about Allen Ginsberg... "My life is a series of strange events," Al confessed, having rallied through it, Panels passing, Judy’s passing, still here, stories about music and travel, one after another.
Valerie and her week of wonders that night on this foggy Christmas in Berlin, witches battling priests, vampires vs forces of the normal. Greetings world, I think. Enjoy the mystery of it all, the surreal, the dreams, the memories, the stories, the rituals of it all.
And a walk to the Zionschurch to see Caroline’s show, reflecting on the struggles here.
Al joins us for Christmas dinner, chatting with my brothers and family near and far.
Grateful for these folks, family and friends, to my feet carrying me for Boxing day stroll with my loves. I’m grateful for the old movies, helping us feel a part of it all, passing a wild year. We seem to be passing the end of the year watching old movies, cabaret, blade runner, wings of desire, favorite movies from childhood.This movie is my fate. I loved it the first time I saw it at the inwood in 1987, even more two nights in a row here in Berlin. Heaviness and lightness. Weight and other worldliness. Sartre and Goethe in a movie, A monologue of a day, days, time..
We stumble into the The Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection, as we meander through Charlottenburg, taking in their majestic collection of French Romanticism to Surrealism, as well as their show on Nosferatu:
“Phantoms of the Night100 years of Nosferatu Collection Scharf-Gerstenberg
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's "Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror" premiered in 1922 in the Marble Hall of the Zoological Garden in Berlin and has long since become part of popular culture - from horror films to the television series "The Simpsons". "Phantoms of the Night. 100 Years Nosferatu” in the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection is dedicated to the relationship between this icon of German silent film and the visual arts. André Breton considered "Nosferatu" to be a key surrealist work. Conversely, the film cannot be thought of without art-historical models. The designs for the furnishings contain motifs reminiscent of Francisco de Goya's etchings, German Romanticism or the fantastic art and literature of the early 20th century. Borrowings from Caspar David Friedrich can be recognized as well as from Alfred Kubin, Stefan Eggeler or Franz Sedlacek. In addition, the exhibition with artists such as Alexandra Bircken, Louise Lawler and Tracy Moffatt takes a look at the impact of "Nosferatus" in the field of contemporary art.”
Next day, we take in the Hannah Hoch at the Neue Nationalgalerie, looking at her photomontage, “Cut with the Dada kitchen knife through the last Weimar beer belly cultural epoch in Germany, 1919.” Dada Vs anti dada, dueling it out through the years, their conflict ever reverberating between lives and histories, Machines vs absurdists, military weapons vs wit and fury of the dada movement.
And meet Al for lunch before his departure. He’s now another of my Buddies of Berlin. Lunch and trip to the airport, onward, through time, friends near and far.
Will and I talk about family.
Ron and I chat about ways of looking at the world.
“Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will,” says Ron. “I still think we must strive in the face of impending doom. Our kids and all future generations require it. Sartre got me in high school and college when he and other existentialists argued we create meaning out of an absurd world. So did Liberation theologists and a slew of others that influenced me. My grandparents and parents made it through the depression and carried that message for me too. And of course, the post WWII boom and New Deal policies made such sentiments real for much of the white working class in the US. Lots of streams feed us, eh?”
Camus argued the only real question is why not kill yourself, I reply. Think about it. If we don't then we live. So, how do we live? We take the weight of the world, as Bruno did. As Sartre said; we carry it, lightness ever dueling with light, dada vs anti dada, dodi is anti dodi, dada vs data, says Rev Billy, onward.
The teenager and I talk about the books we reading, hopefully something to make sense of it all with. Something abundant, not quite Trout Fishing in America, but something.
Maybe Dharma Bums again, they wonder.
Some of it isn’t just typing.
Although Truman was right.
Some of it is.
Some of it is something quite compelling.
“What world of is this, not only that friendship cancels enmity, but enmity doth cancel friendship…and the urn cancel all…now that we live, what shall we celebrate, what shall we say, what boidened flesh in Brooklyn, and sick stomachs, and suspicious hearts, and hard streets, all humanity on fire with hate & oido,” says Jack Kerouac toward the beginning of his road trip with Allen in Desolation Angels.
Can we cancel enmity?
There’s so much to learn from this moment, this journey, looking for something, on the move, navigating, between the old movies, the angels along with us? The year started and ended movies about Berlin, trips to Stockholm and Brussels, Rotterdam and Munich, Praha and Milan, Munich and Warsaw, Leipzig and Brooklyn. Friends departed and the city reminded us there was room for all of us to find something.
There’s still a lot learn, a lot to more see.
Hopefully more of it this year.
Five months into my time in Berlin. Happy new years friends.
We have to look out for each other, to love each other, says Alex at the Drag HIVE Tea Party at Klunkerkranich, “DRAG SHOWS hosted by Alexander Cameltoe w. Gieza Poke / Vincent 2.0 / Brownsugarbiscuit / lislbar (DJ) / Luc Sauvage (DJ)
Freitag 30.12.2022 *Wohnzimmer…”
That's really all we have to do.
We sang.
We danced.
We went for late night pommes.
As the year wound into its final hours.
