Flashback: Princess Aura, 2008

In June 2008, I flew to Berlin from Chicago to live as Princess Aura from the 1980 Mike Hodges version of “Flash Gordon” for a two-week performance installation/character exploration/surreal-ass-experience called FICTIVE DAYS, curated by my dear friend Sergio (of Halloween 2008 fame). This photo was from a makeup test before I left.

Flashback: Skizum spooky, Oct ’09

My friend (and photographer of my headshots/web site photos) Justin Harris and I collaborated on this shoot last October. We shot in the dark in Justin’s room at Skizum, using different colored flash gels.

Flashback: Bored in December ’08

Sometimes when I have nothing else to do, or more likely when I’m procrastinating, I will start playing with my makeup. This was one of those nights in Berlin.

Flashback: Halloween ’08, LED-licious

Berlin, 2008… I hosted the Laugh O’s and my friend and partner-in-clown Sergio for pre-Halloween prep, then we all went to the one place in Berlin where you can reliably find Americans avoiding German culture, White Trash Fast Food. My costume was a scavenged together look of shiny things and LED lights that I already had in my possession (in other words, a bunch of glowy bullshit I paid to move from Chicago). I did makeup for a few people, including Sergio, seen in the photo below. He sports my LED top hat while I have a tangle of LEDs in my hair. I was also wearing five pairs of eyelashes.

Flashback: Halloween ’09, Plastic Fantastic (aka AstroCher)

Berlin, 2009… I wasn’t feeling terribly inspired last year, so I didn’t make a costume for the first time in… Well probably ever. I bought this seafoam green polyester dress in Boston in 1996 and have hauled it all over creation ever since. The hair and makeup were 70′s disco/Cher inspired, and in this light on stage at the Kookaburra, I look positively plastastic. Still a fun look, despite its uncustomary lackadaisicalness.

Ve at the Kookaburra Club

Some videos from one of my last performances at the Kookaburra Club in Berlin. I do believe this was on my birthday, December 15th–English Comedy Night hosted by Wodonga’s own Kim Eustice.

More videos on my youtube channel at youtube.com/vemagni!

Keep on movin’…

Only 5 days left in Berlin, and I’m taking inventory. Partially because I’ve been incapacitated for the past week, but also because I am once again starting my life over… Sort of. More like returning to the scene of many old crimes, but as a different person.

Living in Berlin has been rough. Moving here was rough, what happened as soon as I got here (miserably failed attempt at a relationship) was rough, finding a place to live was rough, living there was rough, deciding to leave Berlin was rough… And of course, Berliners are rough. The great irony of being immersed in the English comedy scene of a rough German city is not lost on me. And it’s not rough in the “big cities are rough” kind of way. I’ve lived in many bigger and badder cities, and as far as city life goes, Berlin is pretty mild. But there’s something especially defeating about being a stranger in a strange land while trying to cope with the ordinary roughness of life. My kudos to those of you out there doing it.

As someone who moved practically every year of my life until I was 22, I fully, wholeheartedly, unabashedly hate moving. Hate isn’t even close to being an adequate description. But if we want progress, we do what we have to do to move forward, and for me that meant leaving LA for the past 2.5 years and getting something else from the world. It was never about finding the right place, or believing that LA was bad, or that Europe was better. I loved LA, but was incredibly unhappy. Sometimes comfort is a slow death.

So this should be interesting… Moving back after everything I’ve experienced and having the chance to look some old demons in the face. Hopefully when they look back at me, they see a very different person.

y’know what I miss about driving?

I know I’ve been Berlin bashing lately, and I’m sure a large part of it is a subconscious attempt to distance myself emotionally from my soon to be ex-city, but living here has clarified a few questions I had about myself living in Los Angeles.

For one, am I a car person?

This is the longest I’ve gone without a car since I was 17, and after sitting in traffic and dealing with crazy ass drivers following me home to start fights, I wondered if maybe public transit would be a better solution–after all, I spent many years hoofing it around many other large cities growing up. Maybe it would be a nice change?

Well, I’ve concluded that I am, indeed, a car person. And here are a few reasons why:

First, I don’t like being in crowds. I don’t like outdoor music festivals, amusement parks–generally any place that involves a lot of shoving, standing, and smelling of other peoples’ sweat. And since Berlin’s trains and buses are packed full of smelly, no-shower-taking-because-hot-water-is-a-luxury-item Germans, I’ve had my fill for a good long time.

Second, if I’m going to get lost, I’d at least like to have the opportunity to make a U-turn and get back on course. Today I got on a bus which had a list of stops including Treptower park, but that skipped over about 5 stops, including mine, in an area I don’t know. Why? I don’t ask these questions any more. Ask any good German why anything is the way it is here and they’ll tell you to just accept it and stop asking so many questions. So I had to wander through the typical Berlin wintry mix of slush, ice, and poor traffic control to find another stop. Wah. Also, Berlin hasn’t gotten the memo that Germans are obsessively punctual–most of the time, the buses are either early or late, and sometimes don’t bother showing up at all.

Third, yes there is traffic, it takes forever, and it sucks. But having to take 3 different trains/buses to go 3km while freezing your ass off sucks worse. There are certain things you can do to kill time in a car that you can’t do in public transit, namely sing and/or practice material. Yes, you can do this in public–typically accompanied by a hat and polite request for change–but given my lack of enthusiasm for crowded trains, you can imagine my lack of enthusiasm for the people on those trains staring at me (which they do anyway–wtf are you looking at, Germans? Jesus h.). One might argue that you can read books on trains and buses, but I get dizzy and hate carrying heavy things around all day while climbing the millions of stairs between S bahn stations.

Other miscellaneous reasons I miss driving include the fact that Berlin drivers will hit pedestrians just to prove a point, keeping a barrier between myself and any crazy, vomit-filled drunk wandering around (and here people can drink everywhere! Hooray for puke on trains and buses!), having a place to take mobile naps in the middle of the day should the need arise, not having to carry a small suitcase as a purse, eeetc.

I forget what specifically provoked me to write this, except for missing the ability to sing in my car. Oh, and because I forgot to bring an extra pair of pajama bottoms from Naomi’s apartment, which is now 45 minutes away grrr.

So in summary, I look forward to sitting in traffic in the sun beneath LA’s gloriously thinned ozone layer, especially right now because it’s so unbefreakinlievably cold in here. I am sorry that cars are hurting the environment, but I need one. I promise I will not buy a Hummer, Escalade, Expedition–in fact, I would like a more Euro-style compact after seeing so many cute lil buggers driving (badly) around town.

EFH2T: Wait for the Birthday Girl, Don’t Whistle, Bless You

My latest post on Everything from here to there:

Everything From Here To There » Blog Archive » Wait for the Birthday Girl, Don’t Whistle, Bless You.

I’m back online after many agonizing weeks of living in an internet-free apartment. And no, I couldn’t just go to a café. It’s cold out…!

Wait for the Birthday Girl, Don’t Whistle, Bless You

There are a lot of different social conventions by which we measure each others’ agreeability, some of which may seem obvious to us, although a bit random to an outsider. A recent incident got me thinking about social indexicality, the signs and signals we give that indicate who and where we are in relation to one another. Indexicality is a general term for signs that indicate state or causality (ie, smoke is an index of fire). Socially, we can make strong judgments about a person’s overall character based on small individual signs and of what those signs are indications.

The incident was this: one of my students made a special birthday cake for me this past weekend and brought it to the club where we perform so we could all enjoy it after a late show. The group sat together with the cake, waiting for me to finish working to begin eating. As I was just about to join them, I heard the group telling one girl to wait for me, but she said that she didn’t want to wait any more, and so took the first piece of my birthday cake. I was a bit baffled, because it seems like such an obvious social agreement that the person whose birthday it is should at the very least be there before the cake is eaten, which is what the rest of the group tried to tell her. By itself, it’s not a very big deal, but from the perspective of social indexicality, does an action like that indicate a deeper character state?

I’ve been on both sides of the question, having worked and lived in several other cultures. You could call culture shock “indexical shock”. Many years ago, I worked with a group of Russian women who had a lot of superstitions and traditions of which I was oblivious. One day I really upset them by absentmindedly whistling, because they had a very strong superstition about whistling in the workplace—something about blowing money away from the business—which they considered extremely rude. They were also very adamant about everyone frequently knocking on wood (or your head, if no wood was available—I still do this sometimes!).

Living in Germany, it’s been difficult to not judge people as individuals for the culture’s lack of similar social indexicality to mine—for example, I’m used to the indexical of “if you hold the door for other people, then that means you are a nice person.” Berliners don’t generally hold doors, nor do they engage in many other pleasantries that many Americans find essential for whatever we consider to be civilized coexistence. Feeling that judgment against a large group of people is very alienating, though, and can become a persistent subconscious preoccupation.

Some of our American indexicals include things that baffle many Europeans, like our compulsion to extend invitations out of politeness without actually wanting to fulfill them and our general will to over-consume as a sign of prosperity. One English-culture convention I don’t understand is that we’re still compelled to say “bless you” when people sneeze out of sheer politeness or fear that someone will think we don’t care, despite the fact that the action is based on thousand year old superstitions in which no one actually believes any more. Sneezing, in itself, is not an event that warrants any reverence, yet it’s a popular notion in our culture that if a person doesn’t say “bless you” after someone else’s sneeze, then that person is being rude.

None of the actual conventions are the point, of course, because whether or not something is considered the “right” way to behave is entirely relative to the culture and the subject of endless debate. Essentially, it comes down to what we respect as individuals; a convention becomes a convention because enough people agree with it that it becomes the standard indexical of fill-in-the-blank: nice, rude, generous, hygienic, considerate, selfish, etc.

So how much can we know based on indexicals? Is it appropriate to judge based on a person’s agreement or lack thereof with popular cultural conventions? I think it is valid in a lot of ways, because it helps us feel relaxed to know we are surrounded by people who value the same characteristics that we do, and we can’t very well go around asking people, “Hey, are you nice or are you rude?” We need some sign that indicates in a way we understand that a person possesses these qualities in a way in which we sympathize.

However, there is a difference between social agreement of indexicals and social conformity. Indexicals, as indicators of character traits, are more intuitive, or at the very least associative on a deeper psychological level. But if we’re consciously agreeing to a convention like saying “bless you” without actually respecting its validity as an indicator of character, which I have done and still do sometimes, much to my own dismay, then that is where the action stops being an indexical of individual character and becomes a sacrifice to conformity. Whether or not that sacrifice is worth making is up to you.

I recommend thinking about what you do and do not respect as indexical indicators of character versus blindly accepted cultural traditions. As we go through the major changes expected over the next few years, this could help us feel more relaxed with each other and in general. Personally, I do support the indexical of “if you wait for the birthday girl, then you are considerate”, but I firmly resolve to stop saying “bless you” when people sneeze. Why not say “bless you” because I mean it instead? That seems much nicer.

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.