EFH2T: Here, or on the Horizon?

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Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » Here, or on the Horizon?.

Travel/Culture: Bridge of Sights… Riiiiiiight.

I had this in my previous post, but I think it deserves its own.

This is one of the most hilariously and tragically ironic things I’ve ever seen, and all the more reason why people should stop assuming that Europeans are somehow “better” than us capitalist pig Americans. This is a famous piece of architecture in Venice called the “Bridge of Sights” (Ponte dei Sospiri):

It presently looks like this:

Yeeeeeaaaaaah.

Art/Travel: The VEnice

I just had a lovely jaunt to Venice to perform at Ca’Zanadi for the Biennale art festival. Venice is a town of smartly dressed dogs and meter-wide “streets” that can only be successfully navigated by people who are relaxed but alert after an hour long spritz break followed by an hour-long espresso break.

I was part of a group of artists performing “site-specific” pieces inspired by the Ca’Zanadi house, a gaudy and lovely old Rococo building that now serves as a boutique hotel/art space.

There wasn’t a whole lot of street art in Venice that I saw–mostly just random tagging, but the tags were all layered upon each other in a cool looking way on specific doors and other enclosed areas. And I found this gem of a stencil near the Ca’Zanadi. Look closely–yes, those are chewing gum penises.

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Random nod to the west side… To which “west side” were they referring? California? Portugal? Ireland?

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My contribution to Venice street art: Bloody Mario, made from leftover “blood” from my performance.

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I had the tiniest little hotel closet of a room, which would have been a bit of a bummer if the awesome person who stayed there before me had not left a pair of heart-shaped light up glasses under the bed for me to find.

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So, really great trip. I took a lot of pictures to satisfy my door fetish, but I’ll link to those later. More photos on flickr.

Happy (post) Halloween!

I didn’t plan much, but took inspiration from this ultra-fabulous floor length seafoam green polyester dress I’ve had since I was 15. It’s Chertastic and discolicious. Sanjay took this amazing picture on stage at the Kookaburra. I look completely plastic!

Berlin and Street art: happening upon an awesome mural

I was walking to a friend’s house in Prenzlauer Berg of all places, and happened upon this super cool mural off of Marienburgerstraße. It’s a combination of, like… Everything. I can’t even describe it. There are chickens in suits.

 

So yeah… Enough bitching–this is what I love about Berlin.

Rant: Brainwashing is brainwashing (or “Yes, I hate living in Berlin.”)

I’ve recently announced my decision to move back to Los Angeles from Berlin, and I can’t believe how hard of a decision it was considering the simple fact that:

I… Hate… Living… In… Berlin….

Wow, did I really just say that? Am I allowed to say that?

Here’s the thing: Berlin is cool. Berlin has cred. I think we’re completely brainwashed to believe that it is so completely uncool to say something like “I hate living in Berlin” because that automatically makes me uncool and, um, uncredible (?). So it took me a while to sack up enough to say out loud the reason why I, and so so so many other people, constantly complain about living here.

But uncoolness aside, the fact that it took me so long to admit that I hate living here has to do with another type of brainwashing, which is this idea that I’m supposed to be super effing happy with everything all the time.

So despite the fact that living here has put me in a perpetual bad mood for an entire year, I tried to convince myself to be positive about Berlin, and yadda yadda yadda. And there are things I love about Berlin, namely my friends, colleagues, students and the aesthetic buffet that is the prolific street art covering most surfaces. But I can feel in my bones that personally and culturally, I don’t belong here.

So what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with admitting that this is a place I don’t relate to–if for nothing other than the simple reasons that I don’t smoke or drink beer–and a place in which I cannot envision myself thriving in the long run?

I don’t care what anyone says any more. I no longer believe that admitting that I hate living here is a negative thing to say. It’s another way of saying “I don’t belong here”, which to me is just a fact. It’s a fact that will help me get closer to the place where I do feel like I belong, just like trying on clothes that don’t fit will help find the ones that do. What’s negative to me is the constant bitching that goes on without any real accountability; I’m not saying that I hate it here only to perpetuate the compulsion to say it. I’m getting the f outta dodge.

For the record (whoever is keeping one), Berlin is a fantastic place to visit. The street art is just amazing, and it’s a place everyone should experience just for the environment.

BUT–and not that it matters–there are some things about this place that my GOD I just do not understand:

1. The Germans are fanatic about collecting and returning bottles for the recycling deposit, and yet there is broken glass EVERYWHERE, because the trendy (and passive aggressive) thing to do is to throw your beer bottle on the sidewalk like a duschbad when you finish it, to show your friends how kuhl you are.

2. Not only is there dog shit everywhere, because Germans have a lot of dogs and apparently no aversion to or compulsion to be accountable for their dogs’ refuse, but I have on many occasions actually seen people pull down their child’s pants, lift them up, and hold them over the sidewalk–ie, that place where humans all walk with the shoes they also bring into their houses–until the kids crap right there. What… The… !@#%$#???

3. If you need to call a company, be it your phone company, internet provider, or even to buy tickets to a show, not only are there no 800 numbers, but they actually charge you money, usually around 14 cents/minute. I honestly can’t believe people tolerate that sort of shit, but…

4. If someone at a company that you pay, like a restaurant, taxi service, internet provider–anything, really–makes a mistake, they will argue with you til eternity about it to try and get out of fixing that mistake. I once had a five minute argument with a waitress because I ordered a plain cup of coffee and she brought me a latte. “Why the hell would I order a latte when I don’t drink milk?” I asked. “Because that’s what you ordered,” she said.

There’s plenty more. Again, not that it matters. And why doesn’t it matter? Because I’m leaving. If I were staying, I would be a negative duschbad for living in a place I can’t stand and bitching about things I can’t or won’t change. It’s not my country or my culture, and I’ve had enough experience with immigrants complaining about my country and culture to know that I believe anyone who is determined not to integrate with the culture of the country to which they have immigrated is just being an ass.

But now that that’s done, I’m going to dedicate the next post to the most awesomest mural I found a couple weeks ago.

EFHTT and H.G. Wells: The Superlative Now

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » The Superlative Now.

My second post on Billy Corgan’s holistic livin’ blog looks at H.G. Wells’ description of the world in Comet, and compares the “bad” world then with the “bad” world now.

I’m honestly starting to wonder if we’ve always hated the world, or if there’s ever been a time in the past where people have been generally cool about things the way they were. It seems that as the world gets smaller, our complaints get bigger.

 

 

H.G. Wells: Quotes from In the Days of the Comet

I’ve really been enjoying this book. It’s kind of amazing how much the world Wells describes, the “bad” world, is still the same world in which we live today. Somehow we convince ourselves every time we come of age that now is the time of the world’s great peril, that now things are more difficult than they’ve ever been. And it’s probably true in the moment, but it’s just that: a moment.

Some true-to-today moments:

“We saw everything simple, as young men will. We had our angry confident solutions, and whosoever would criticise them was a friend of the robbers. It was a clear case of robbery, we held, visibly so: there in those great houses lurked the Landlord and the Capitalist, with his scoundrel the Lawyer, with his cheat the Priest, and we others were all the victims of their deliberate villainies.”

“Let me tell you then how you can bring yourself to something like the condition of our former state. In the first place, you must get yourself out of health by unwise drinking and eating, and out of condition by neglecting your exercise, then you must contrive to be worried very much and made very anxious and uncomfortable, and then you must work very hard for four or five days and for long hours every day at something too petty to be interesting, too complex to be mechanical, and without any personal significance to you whatsoever.”

Some misc. enjoyable quotations:

“Below this was a little table that behaved with a mulish vindictiveness to any knee that was thrust beneath it suddenly…”

“The washhandstand so made had evidently had a prolonged career of violent use, had been chipped, kicked, splintered, punched, stained, scorched, hammered, dessicated, damped, an defiled, had met indeed with almost every possible adventure except a conflagration or a scrubbing…”  These are, again, examples of the long and winding narrative, which, halfway through the book, I will admit are getting tiresome. Still lovely, but tiresome.

H.G. Wells: In the Days of the Comet

After The Food, I’ve decided to finish this phone book of a series, and have now embarked upon In the Days of the Comet. So far, I la la love it.

This is one of the most amazing passages I think I’ve ever read:

“The dust-laden atmosphere that was a grey oppression through the day became at sundown a mystery of deep translucent colours of blues, and purples, of sombre and vivid reds, of strange, bright clearnesses of green and yellow athwart the darkling sky. Each upstart furnace, when its monarch sun had gone, crowned itself with flames, the dark cinder heaps began to glow with quivering fires, and each pot-bank squatted rebellious in a volcanic coronet of light. The empire of the day broke into a thousand feudal baronies of burning coal.”

And that’s just a sunset.

This is a first-person narrated story which just underlines the reason why I had such a problem with the narration of The Food, which is that this narration is told in such a perfect representation of the character, whereas the narrator in The Food made references to himself, but was not actually in the story, or explained in any way, and just made the story much longer than it needed to be.

Comet is even longer than The Food, but because I’m connected with the character of the narrator, I honestly don’t mind indulging his musings. They’re really, really wonderful.

EFHTT: Blind Science/Blind Faith

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » Blind Science/Blind Faith.

My first guest post on Billy Corgan’s new blog about holistic livin’.