New years day, the teenager and I were listening to some records, reading record reviews, talking music. And the conversation turned to Eliot Smith, the folk singer, we got to know from the Goodwill Hunting and Royal Tenanboms soundtracks. The teenager strummed “Needle in the Hay,” the song played as one of the brothers attempts to take his life after his failed efforts to connect with his stepsister Margo Tenanbomb.
“What happened to him again?” I asked, having forgotten for a second that he followed in an Ian Curtis story.
They looked up at me, looking up a Guardian article, to refresh my memory.
Something went down with his girlfriend, who locked herself in the shower on October first 2003. Disturbed by the sounds of screams, she came out to find Smith with two stab wounds to the chest, the second fatal, both apparently self inflicted.
Must have been a rough night, I thought, reflecting on troubles we all encounter from time to time, emotions taking hold. Troubles, we all contemplate this from time to time. Imagine the fury he felt and the grief she felt when she walked out of the shower. Recall Debbie Curtis’ reaction to finding Ian’s body.
Why do we push ourselves to this, I thought, looking at the Morion flipping out in the phone booth with Lola after he leaves his drug money in the subway.
The same questions, why I am me not you? What are we doing here? What are you doing here? What am I doing here? What are we doing together?
The Passenger, Iggy’s song about taking the s-bahn, echoed through my head, from the night before at SO36. “I am the passenger, and I ride and I ride and I ride.”
“After the game is before the game,” says Sepp Herberger, in Run Lola Run. After the headache, starts three nights before. No sleep. “This trip has taken ten years off my life,” said a British observer after a weekend in Berlin in B Movie: Lust & Sound in West Berlin, 1979-89.
It had been a long, no sleep, three day weekend.
Drag shows and dancing Friday at the Klunkerkranich, HIVE Tea Party at Klunkerkranich.
A party, cabaret, and all night dancing at SO36… the passenger…la la la la la la la la, Zu Spat, Nina pumping through the crowded dance floor.
“Falling through space and time towards infinity, moths fly in the light just like you and me,” people sing along to Irgendwie. “Somehow starts sometime.”
Fireworks exploding on every block. I’m thinking of Tim and Mel, in the light in the distance.
So was Jim Eigo, who recalled the new years prior.
Jim Eigo in a post to ACT UP NY Alumni:
“Last year I celebrated New Year’s Eve with a visit to ACT UP vets Tim Lunceford & Mel Stevens at Mel’s West Village apartment. Tim, whose ALS was rapidly wiping out his communication skills, permitted Mel & I to each have a beer. Tim’s aging service dog, Margarita, who for years would only yap & snap at me, actually fell asleep on the bed nestled against my outer thigh. I considered it a small victory. During the visit I showed Tim my Facebook posting of a shot I’d snapped on my way to Mel’s on Christmas, the lovely lit evergreen in Abingdon Square Park. Tim seemed to enjoy getting a glimpse of a holiday tree that he’d not have seen otherwise. This past spring Tim died. A few weeks later Margarita had to be put away. In late summer Mel surprised us all & died as well. This New Year’s Eve I wanted to ring out the old by commemorating last year’s visit with Tim & Mel. How have I done that? I’ve taken a shot of this season’s Abingdon Square tree & posted it here. It’s not like I have a lot of options. I do not have the nerve to walk past Mel’s apartment: After dark there are ghosts. Maybe the drizzle as I was taking the shot was trying to tell me: Things have to get better in 2023. Back in my warm, dry apartment, I’d like to wish all of us who’ve survived a “Happy New Year,” &, before I sign off, to toss over my shoulder one last, “Bye, guys,” to Tim, Mel & Margarita, hoping I’ve turned my head far enough so Tim will be able to read my lips.”
I walk from Mitte down to Kreutzberg to the club, watching the explosions in the air, ducking firecrackers. The woman next to us at dinner is from the Ukraine, where they are experiencing very very real explosions every night. Loud cracks fireworks jarring, crack, another explosion.
Back in Brooklyn, the noises on our street tend to be gunshots.
On past broken bottles, fireworks flying through the air at every corner, explosions. Listening it sounds like bombs, looks like Kristallnacht, a pressure release, broken bottles and fireworks. Memories, for some, Vietnam, others Ukraine trauma. Bombs blowing up. I can’t find my way to the club; lost in Berlin, I walk.
Streets crowded, bars full, music pouring into the street, arriving, inside everyone is dancing with Iggy, each of us, “The Passenger.” La la la la, la la la la. Don’t you want me, pumping through the speakers, everyone singing along.
The teenager texts, I walk outside.
How was your walk?
I was assaulted twice, they tell me. Men bumping into them, pushing them, much more aggressive. Guys groping them in the street.
In Brooklyn, Monica is having a similar experience:
“Happy New Year comrades! Ended 2022 and began 2023 playing with the illustrious @funkrustbrassband at the Gemini Scorpio party…New Year festivities were not all sunshine as I also was followed and chased by a strange man as I walked my bike with flat tire back home after the show last night, who drove behind me slowly and then parked his car and got out to try to catch me when I went through the park but I escaped. Tired of misogynistic crap like that happening. Perhaps a sign of the year to come? Exciting artistic collaboration, liberating moments in nature mixed with bouts of fear, danger and patriarchy? I want better for all of us. Hope you’re well as can be, friends.”
Everyone remembers what happened in Cologne on New Years a few years back:
“As a social worker, Franco Clemens has experienced a lot. But nothing prepared him for what happened on New Year's Eve five years ago. It happened "in multicultural Cologne, of all places, a melting pot of integration," he reflects. The night began seemingly harmlessly.
Just as in years past, a crowd assembled in the square in front of the central railway station, right next to the city's landmark gothic cathedral. Nothing unusual for the city in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. But this time, a throng of about a thousand young men was forming in the crowd. Most of them were from the North African-Arabic region.
The atmosphere was uninhibited, aggressive. Fireworks were pointed at people, passers-by harassed, cellphones and wallets were stolen. The police were surprised and overwhelmed; there were too few officers on duty.
The situation soon escalated completely. It came to especially "abominable" scenes as German Chancellor Angela Merkel would later describe it. Packs of men were hunting down women, cornering many of them. There were sexual assaults, rapes.
Everyone is pushing the limits, it's five AM, drink, compulsions, music booming, shadow dancing, with our bad selves, our remembering selves, our sorrowful selves, our high selves, our crashing selves. Permission to let it all out seems reasonable. Assault on the other hand, repression and expression, released. An old song from Ultravox comes on. “Dancing with tears in my eyes,” pumps through the air:
“Weeping for the memory of a life gone by
Living out a memory of a love that died
5 AM, I find myself on the U-bahn, another Passenger, riding along with the tweaked out fellow passengers.
Sunday, it's a slow start. Instead of jumping in the water as my friends will be doing in Coney Island a few hours later, we keep on going, out to Berghaim, where the line is around the block. It would be three or four hours to get through that line.
So, we keep on riding, off to Sisyphos, a techno club in Berlin-Rummelsburg, once a dog biscuit factory, now a home to three floors of electronic dance music.
Broken glass everywhere,firework remains seem to be on every corner. Riding, shaking off the residue of the clash the night before.
Its not much of a trick to get into Sisyphos. People are outside, dressed in a wide variety of colors, unlike Berghaim. In between mazes of bathrooms, where the stalls are full with three or four people, and couches that look like drug dens, pop music blares, various degrees of deep base, techno from light and heavy.
On one floor, they are cheering and dancing with the dj. It's like a Sunday tea dance in San Francisco.
I run into some friends from yoga. Shirts off, tickling armpits, off to the next dance floor, darker, heavier. I close my eyes, seeing the colors, feeling the vibrations, twirling with Caroline, each of us dancing away the night before.
“Dancing with tears in my eyes
Living out a memory of a love that died…”
Back home, Lola is running. The teenager is strumming Elliot Smith songs. And we have stuffed noses. Full New Years weekend, took ten years off our lives.
Watching the Passenger video, with Iggy, la la la la la la la la… he sings with Bowie:
I am the passenger and I ride and I ride
I ride through the city’s backsides
I see the stars come out tonight
I see the bright and hollow sky
Over the city’s ripped backsides
And everything looks good tonight
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