"Hallöchen" and "een heel klein beetje spijtig"

Well, as promised here the brief reviews of two gigs my dearest husband and me have been to last week. First there were The Miserable Rich at the cafe Steinbruch in Duisburg and it started out quite good, as we got in a traffic jam when we had about 10 minutes to go according to the satnav - and it looked like it would actually take us half an hour longer, so we decided to get off the A40 - and then when we were almost there we were told to turn a quite adventurous bend, but hey those two country bumpkins did manage ;). After this venturesome prologue expectations and spirits were high. Being greeted with "Hallöchen" by the waiter made me feel not only welcome but quite at home from the start, the Ruhrgebiet mentality is very open and hospitable indeed. And yes, the presentiment did not belie us,  we were treated to a wonderful intimate event adequately featuring ghost stories, as James de Malplaquet announced, or even more precisely as he would go on to explain about sex. What more should I say the music was marvellous, the musicians very motivated and interacting with each other and the audience, the dubbing was great and not too loud - something I cannot stand is if the bass is too persistent -, the audience was attentive ("polite"), the drinks were good, they had a go at "Pisshead" ("You're doing this deliberately!") though the orchestration was not right, but it did not show too obviously and at the end we even got a lullaby to safeguard us back home. Thus wholeheartedly an event I wouldn't have liked to miss for the world ;)

On Saturday there followed dEUS supported by Intergalactic Lovers at the Theater in Heerlen. The journey was not that adventurous and indeed also the gig would not turn out to be as imaginative or thrilling. First there came Intergalactic Lovers, who were alright, but compared to Genk in March they seemed less motivated and also had regretfully less time on stage and since the audience, which outnumbered the one in Duisburg by more than a thousand, did not know or care for their performance, a lot was really wasted. What a pity! Still "Dank U well!"
When after a break of more than half an hour dEUS eventually entered the stage, my expectations were high, but got firstly crushed a little by the bad dubbing this time. The show and stage design were really breathtaking with coherent projections, wonderful. Also did they play an extented set, played five songs as encore, played older stuff and most of the new album, all quite well and I did not feel that I could complain. BUT and this is a big one, there was no chemistry between the audience and the peformers, not a word of greeting. Only musicians got introduced. The oddest thing to me yet: though they were in Limburg in the Netherlands Tom Barman as the lead singer seemed not to be able to speak more than one sentence in his native language, Flemish, before falling back into some English jargon. So consequently I was left with the feeling of having witnessed a sort of autistic stage performance that oddly included the fourth wall, impenetrable - to still keep up the Miserable Rich's line of thinking ;) - a lost opportunity - spijtig!

Please Do Give a Shit!

Music For Life lied: Zanna | Studio Brussel

This reconciles me with Saturday's sort of autistic concert in Heerlen, more about this later on.... Please buy the song and do take part in the campaign xxx!

Looking forward to tonight

One of my favourites from Miss You in the Days : Ringing The Changes

This uncannily reminds me of Ronald Colman's recollections of leaving Britain and entering WW1 in Flanders:
http://giovanni-severi.com/html/ww1.html

Still feeling kind of awkward

Though I rather fear that this week all occasion do inform against me , I still keep my spirits up by catching the good vibes of this song....

 

Hope to see them in Heerlen this week!

An odd beginning/end of a strange week or Who am I?!

Yesterday the oddest thing happened to me - and I regret my children had to witness it as especially my son was quite disturbed by it.In Aachen when I was visting my daughter a deranged woman, whom I haven't met before, started yelling at me that I should get lost and get back to my hometown and especially to my garden. Then she went on shouting something about witches threatening me. As I entered my daughter's flat she kept on yelling unintelligable things on the outside before she finally gave up - sad bedevilled being. I never thought I was a sight so menacing to behold to get such a reaction to just climbing out of a car ;), or it all just happened to get me into the right mood for The Miserable Rich ;D. Still can't get myself to believe in ghosts and witches - the heavens are empty and spiritualism has replaced it - odd indeed.

Imagination - Vorstellungskraft

Slow Up

Lavendel

A really amazing feature of lavender - at least in my front garden - is that though its branches look apparently dead, it still blossoms. I love to behold those gnarled, old and strangely twisted beings - often white like bone.

What is poetry?

... Thus the dream of learning by heart arises in you.

Of letting your heart be traversed by the dictated

dictation. In a single trait - and that's the impos-

sible, that's the poematic experience. You did not

yet know the heart, you learn it thus. From this

experience and from this expression. I call a poem

that very thing that teaches the heart, invents the

heart, that which, finally, the word heart seems to

mean and which, in my language, I cannot easily

discern from the word itself. Heart, in the poem

'learn by heart'  (to be learned by heart), no longer names only pure interiority, independent

spontaneity, the freedom to affect oneself ac-

tively by reproducing the beloved trace... (Jacques Derrida, What is poetry?)

Antlitz - Countenance

To me it is exceedingly hard to draw a face. The hardest thing is to capture what Levinas would call the countance - I really love the German translation "Antlitz", because it embodies also the word "anderer"/ the "other" (which is something that cannot be touched by the self) - because to Levinas it incorporates an absolute openess and nakedness. I envision this as the possibilty to have a glimpse at a person's soul, a third dimension that is hard to enclose in the two dimensions of a piece of paper...

Yet there have been those few lucky moments when one feels that by whatever uncontrollable miraculous circumstances one has accomplished it. The more miraculous yet, if another person wholeheartedly agrees.

What a man, what a mighty good man

Finally Michael Pennington's book "Sweet William" will be released in February 2012, details here, and I fully agree with Ian McKellen's view, though there is some more to be added. Indeed Michael Pennington is both a great Shakespearian actor and an equally good scholar, but what McKellen does not mention is that Michael Pennington has got a wonderful sense for music and rhythm, which make eevery of his performances a joy to watch and listen to. Just take his Richard II:

My comment from way back still stands the test of time/rewatching:
Thanks a lot ShakespeareAndMore for uploading this wonderful performance. Brilliantly delivered indeed, how he grasps the idea of circular movements here, from king to beggar and back again, the wheel of fortune, from nothing to nothing, the circular movement of the clock. Poor king who has just his own sorrow and person to circle around. I could watch Michael Pennington for hours and hours.

On January 12th Michael Pennington will be performing his one-man-show at the National Theater in London and signing books afterwards!

Jeugd Sentiment

 

If an Englishman grows sentiments, he goes into the garden and shoots himself. (Anton Walbrook as Prince Albert in Victoria the Great (1937))

My Dearest Enemy/ Mijn Dierbare Vijand

Zij hield heel veel van kleuters en van dieren
En van de vogels in het veld
En zij vond dat je alles moest delen
En dat ik alleen maar leefde voor mijzelf
Mijn dierbare vijand
Mijn prachtige vijand
Mijn dierbare vijand
Die mij bemint
In haar dagboek kom ik niet meer voor
Er zijn jonge jongens met ringen in een oor
Ik zei jouw dwaze lijf is alleen van mij
En dat was iets dat zij niet begrijpen kon
Mijn dierbare vijand
Mijn prachtige vijand
Mijn dierbare vijand
Die mij bemint
Haar schim staat elke nacht
Weer voor mijn deur
Ze vraagt mij of ze binnen komen kan
Ze bestaat niet en toch ruik ik haar geur
De geur van zure melk en oude honing
Kom binnen
Kom binnen
Kom binnen
Kom binnen
Mijn dierbare vijand
Mijn prachtige vijand
Mijn dierbare vijand
Die mij bemint
Mijn dierbare vijand
Mijn prachtige vijand
Mijn dierbare vijand
Die mij bemint
Die mij bemint

Gorki/Gorky (Belgian band!)

Sorry, the video does only play outside Germany!

Somehow this feels like a description of myself, I also love (small) children, animals, birds and believe that there is a need to share ;)! Although sometimes the blackbirds do get on my nerves as they eat up all the grapes - even when I'm sitting just underneath them... The most brilliant view of a wild animal in my garden was in the winter of 2000/2001 when an ermine (white as snow) was jumping all over it ;)!

Paradise is Situated on the River "Wurm/Worm"

Once I opened up the newspaper "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" and there was a headline reading "Das Paradies liegt an der Wurm/Paradise is situated on the river Wurm" and I was a little bit stunned, for firstly who would  know the river Wurm and then of course how  could the paradies be located there. Reading the article it was actually the Wurm I know, that flows into the Rur in the neighbouring village, and it dealt with a book, whose author argues that Aachen and its area are paradisiac - and who am I to argue with this view ;). In fact Maharishi Mahesh Yogi must have felt the same, because here is where he finally settled...

For no reason at all

I just love this song and want to share it

Kafka II - continued and enhanced

Adding to yesterday's post, a more enhanced this view on an artist may reveal that his or her motivation could be actually to share his or her art. In this light my own little happening  from way back, could and does illustrate exactly this.

Kafka or Does an Artist Need an Audience?

I miss those evenings and nights sitting next to the regular guys in the pub or café just listening for hours with no particular interest to their converstions until the lights go on and just then being caught up in a fervent argument and feeling so strongly about it that the discussion would go on for at least one hour on the outside. One of the most vividly rememberred was my view that an artist per defintion needs/craves for an audience. My opponent proposed as an example to the contrary Franz Kafka, who in his will left manuscripts to Max Brod instructing him to destroy them, but Brod published them instead. Yet I argued that by writing his stories down Kafka had an audience though this just consisted of one - himself (Jorge Borges comments on the odd experience of re-reading his own writings and becoming a reader indeed - later on he would also write a short story in which he would encounter his later self). And even Max Brod at least must have been perceived as an addressee by Kafka, in that he left those private writings to him. All in all this discussion turned out to be a most inspiring one...

Inspiration

"Inspiration: das empfangen zu haben, ohne zu wissen woher, dessen Urheber ich bin./ Inspiration: to have received, without knowing from where, that, the author of which I am." Emmanuel Levinas in Gott, der Tod und die Zeit (Engl God, Death and Time); Zeugnis und Ethik/ Testimonial and Ethics

Little bats

Little bats occur at certain times in my life, sometimes I'm puzzled that people do not perceive them, either in this case or when watching the restored version of Lola Montes open air on the banks of the Seine in the Parc de Bercy ;). Anyway I hope there is at least one living in my house because on warm summer evenings at least two are flying in the garden - transcendence.

Who would have thought

that the early hours of November 6th would have me sitting outside enjoying the night and its silence...?!
I was thinking of the bonfires in England and the fact that pretty soon, on November 11th, there will be bonfires in my home region as well commemorating the day of St Martin. Something that links this region with West Flanders and Ypres, since there St Martin of Tours is also especially worshipped.
Futhermore at exactly 11:11 am on the 11th day of the 11th month the Hoppeditz will awake to mark the beginning of the fifth season, Karneval/Fastelavond ;)!

Sehnsucht und Zufall

Odd that my dearest friend would say that the German word she loved the most  and believes to be unique to this tongue is "Sehnsucht" (best translation: longing), for I've just read an obituary for Jacques Derrida, in which "longing" was a main theme, connected with debt and death. And this is where the "Zufall/ coincidence" falls in, for when I was staying at my friend's in Paris and mentioned the name Derrida, her mother told me that she had been working as a nurse in the hospital where Derrida died and did remember his death.

Living

and being unbelievably young ;)!

Oh Hermine

In a letter to Anton Walbrook/Adolf Wohlbrück Hermine Körner maintained that an actor only can enact/evoke those feelings he personally knows congratulating him on his portrayal of Hjalmar Ekdal in Ibsen's The Wild Duck - a slight side note here to the advocates of Anonymous (the movie) Anton Walbrook was never married nor had he any alleged children, so Hermine, who was well aware of this, was not commenting on some autobiographic anecdote, but surely referred to a sensible and sensitive capacity. An interesting point when one considers that Anton Walbrook wanted these letters to be published after Hermine Körner's death because of the profoundness of their thoughts - btw he did not want people to know their addressee because he believed that this would make him look showy, yet Amy Smith, the editor and longterm friend of Hermine, nevertheless revealed his name and Friedrich Luft even cared to retell the story he had heard of Anton Walbrook of his first rendezvous with Hermine after WW2. A wonderful book btw : Amy Smith, Hermine Körner, alas it is only available in German.

In Our Age of Abundance

we maybe should learn to control our consumption, so Mies van der Rohe's dictum "Less is more" regains again in meaning and importance.

A nice reminder of my inherent local patriotism, for Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was born in Aachen ;).

Immanuel

"Im Reich der Zwecke hat alles entweder einen Preis oder eine Würde. Was einen Preis hat, an dessen Stelle kann auch etwas anderes, als äquivalent, gesetzt werden, was dagegen über allen Preis erhaben ist, mithin kein Äquivalent verstattet, das hat eine Würde."/" In the realm of purposes everything has got either a price or dignity. Whatever has got a price can be replaced by some other as equivalent, whatever is beyond all price, i e it does not allow an equivalent, has got dignity." Immanuel Kant

 

Not a second of everybody's life can be replaced by no matter what!