Flowers, Late Night Tea Parties and a Festival of Cultures
The Carnival of Cultures opened last week in Berlin. A response to racism, the festival welcomes everyone to share:
It had been that kind of a week, with school and art shows, the city opening itself.
Tuesday, a few of us joined @seansmuda and the other wonderful contributions at Artothek Berlin. Back in town for a super opening, with friends from school and all over town, chit chatting about Monk and Cecil Taylor, Leonard Cohen and someone who had an affair with someone, who a novel about it, story after story, walking home the wrong way, getting lost in Berlin and laughing. It wasn’t an uncommon feeling.
Raining and pouring, more gallery openings Thursday. Suddenly wonderful when platitudes become form at the @berlinische Galerie opening party with Nina and Marina and Caroline. Can’t find Sean.. who arrives after we leave. Marina tells more stories about Berlin and rats, dancing and art, people watching and good moments...with Berliners enjoying a spring night out with friends, a glass of wine and fun.
And then news from the states,for four years I worked with Mary. She took her time, listened to gospel music, and worked with everyone who came in the door, everyone, every drug user, in between housing, every queer kid, everyone grieving, everyone who was out of place, everyone who made rent with survival sex, everyone just out of rikers, Ms Mary, The original harm reduction case manager.RIP Mary Hall. Finally, enough of this. Off to parts unknown. Another life, another experience a long time ago.
Friday, James and Irene dropped by, meeting for a glass of wine on our balcony, beginning of a weekend out exploring with old friends, off to Muller's with Andreas, with something wonderful from Peru, and dinner and 8mm Friday, dancing Saturday for a dozen hours, taking a stop at the Naked Tea Party ... Lots of sunshine.
For the Naked Tea Party
“d e s i r e
is rising with the spring.
d e s i r e
to connect
to feel free
to feel hot
to have fun
to * p l a y *...”
It would all start Saturday night.
“...we’re excited! We’re excited to be with you again this month, May 27 @sisyphosberlin ! 21:00-4:00 with music from @francesco_rizzi & a secret special guest…
To beat the line, we got to Sisyphos early, for dancing in the afternoon.
Federico showed up around five.
The two outside dance floors kept of pumping through the afternoon, the sun shining through the afternoon, techno outside, disco inside, one scene, followed by the next, more colors in the summer sun, more afternoon music, all of us dancing, feeling everything inside, in between this space and that, eyeballs dancing, bodies moving, two friends from Tokyo, high, greeting us op on the dance floor, telling us about their LSD trip, others on MDMA, eyeballs bulging like the old days, two girls bump in grind with a guy, who winks at me, each of us in our own places, moving, shaking, more techno, a fantastic DJ, more lights, colors, pouring through the sky, singing in the disco room to flowers by miley cyrus: "I can buy myself flowers. I can take myself dancing." A delicious buzz of feeling in between melancholy, dancing, singing along, disco in one room, tech the next, Detroit house, next, feeling the bass, bouncing through our consciousness, everyone in different places, connecting, separating, more beats pumping through us. “I can love me better than, you can.” Everyone has their mood, their up, their down, their not quite connected, then a little connected, on and on, in between this life and somewhere else. Sometimes sad, crashing, sometimes, even higher, more moves, showing off. More and more people coming inside. “See you at the Naked Tea Party,” says one of the bartenders.
My yoga teacher Danielle invited Caroline and I.
Danielle writes about the impulse:
“As a Face Behind the Space. A California native, I moved to Berlin in 2017 to follow my love for the club scene, and the invigorating lifestyle that is this wild city. The idea for TheNakedTeaParty vividly dropped into my consciousness during a ten day silent retreat in 2018. It was already in line with my consistent offerings of NakedYoga and Naked Dinner Parties; A huge wave of excitement rushed through my being. A passion for the body, community, music, ritual, and celebration in all forms, has been much of the foundation which inspired TheNakedTeaParty. Alongside my role as the host of this special event, I am consistently working as a yoga instructor, birth doula, as well as volunteering my time with hospice patients. I am deeply touched by the human experience and I hope to create spaces of presence, truth, connection, and beauty, with all that I do. I am committed to supporting diversity in this space and I very intentionally invite female and ‘diverse’ DJs to play for us as much as possible… TheNakedTeaParty consists of an incredible community of friends and artists that make it all happen. A group of friends that facilitate these events together, we take time to connect as a group, reflect on our experiences, and share how we can continue to evolve to become even stronger. Collaboration is key, where everyone involved is offered a sense of responsibility and opportunity to share themselves. I am pouring my heart and soul into this project and am at times a bit overwhelmed at the powerful responses we continue to get. I am deeply grateful to see what TheNakedTeaParty is bringing into the world and I will continue to hold this door open as long as it is asked of me. ThankYou for being a part of the journey.x Danielle…”
Chilling looking at the moonlight, we jump in line. A woman in a bathrobe reminds us, “Its a naked party, not a sex party, no smoking inside.”
No problem.
Inside, Christian and Danielle from Yoga welcome us.
The bartender who greeted me earlier was already there by the bonfire.
This is my sister, he says to me, introducing me.
Light shone on everyones’ skin.
Federico got us tea.
And a few more of us started dancing, flowers and roses all over everyone.
And then back into the main room of the club, for a few more rounds in the techno rooms, more and more people pouring in, dancing on the steps, feeling the synergy with the music, the whole city inside.
“Love your hair,” I told another man on the dance floor. He gives a hug.
“I love Berlin, I said to him. No other city like it.”
“Techno in Berlin. 1989 East Berlin hunger meets the drugs of the west, creating its own culture.”
And we keep dancing to this open merging of bodies and lights, beats and possibilities.
By four AM, everyone was winding down from our twelve hour dance party.
And we made our way home.
Sleeping well into the next Sunday, lunch and bike rides into the city, to the Carnival of Cultures, a mix of cultures and ideas, ever redeeming itself, one dance party after another.
Write and read all week… Summer gripping Berlin, classes in Zehlendorf, on Marxism, chatting with Georgian classmates about the protests, Xfiles with the teenager, back to AP bookstore in Wedding talking about Freud and repression, followed by techno punk across town in Neukölln , that was anything but repressed. The music a plenty at Loophole, in a small room where the beats fly, singers scream, looking like they want to destroy us all, angry at something, everything, I'm not sure what. ALIEN QUARTETT (All But Science), CAESAR VON SCHNITZLER (Universal Spam), KNABENSCHULE (Die Beichte), GINA D'ORIO (Cobra Killer), LIZZ STYLER (Tiefkultur). It’ll go as long as it can go. And then hopefully more. ,
Spring popping.
Been here ten months into summer where it all started.
Monday morning, Sean left for a month in the US.
Thursday, things were getting quiet again. That old feeling was grasping at me. Daniele was quiet in yoga; the city was quiet, black and white images of a road trip from years ago, an old movie about another road trip that seemed strange.
"Seeing the images while traveling through America, something happens to a person. The reason I took so many photos is because they are a part of the story." says Phil, on a road trip, in 1974, in Alice in the Cities.
I take a lot of photos too, a different city each week, everywhere but in the discos here in Berlin.
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