Chaos - Surprise

If everything was neatly tucked away how could it ever resurface?!

Of course one needs to believe that the things will miraculously reappear just at the right moment.

Omnia Vincit Amor

For when the problem may get too hard to handle because one's daughter is pregnant and the father abanoned her, it's best to make up some other problem that one might consider even harder to fix, like the idea that the newborn might not be able to understand a word. After all it's English.

Some Strong Images

De eirde warmt up                         The earth warms up
maar de weireld verkilt                  But the world grows cold

...

Het is oeze plicht voer te genieten    It's our duty to relish
Voor den tid dat hier nog duurt         For as long as this here will last
Voorda w'ons laatste krut                  Before we have used up all our powder
verskietn'en
't onvermijdelijke is gebeurd             The inevitable has happened
Et rum is lek                                      The shipping room is leaking
Den buot makt water                         The boat is full of water
Ma de kapitein gif show                    But the captain puts on a show
Ie zegt verdrinken is vo later             He says, Drowning is for later
J'is kluchtig lik ne clown                   He's funny like a clown    

      

The Sovereign

the body politic

My Beloved Joker

Inspiration

"If a man isn't inspired by his own death, he is beyond inspiration." - If I Were King

Concept

"Today, more than ever, I am left with a respect for the formless hunch which was our guide (he is alluding to his production of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream), and it has left me with a profound suspicion of the much-used word 'concept'. Of course, even a cook has a concept, but it becomes real during the cooking, and a meal is not made to last. Unfortunately, in the visual arts, 'concept' now replaces all the qualities of hard-earned skills of execution and development. In their place, ideas are developed as ideas, as theoretical statements that lead to equally intellectual statements and discussions in their place. The loss is not in words but in the draining away of what only comes from direct experience, which can challenge the mind and feeling by the quality it brings." - Peter Brook in The Quality of Mercy - Reflections on Shakespeare

I'm Just a Sucker for Redemption

Live by Night by all standards was no bad movie, but alas I had read the book beforehand.

It's rather a shame that the protagonists in the movie despite all the fine acting and dialogues only appear to be empersonations of ideas and not full-fledged people. Spitefully Graciella is most underwritten. In the book she matches up to Joe, they are truly partners in crime with Graciella having the advantage of having a purpose, which lends their relationship a depth that the movie cannot provide.

The gravest mistake though was the final scene of Chief Figgis. Wheareas in the book he definitely aims at Joe and only accidentally kills Graciella, in the movie he shoots at the house endangering everybody inside. In the movie Joe simply shoots him afterwards, in the book Figgis is given his moment of redemption, the moment when he realizes what his constant call "Repent!" could actually mean, encompassed in this short phrase: "I'm sorry."

Home

Category

During WW2 my maternal grandfather and his family including my infant mother were evacuated at a camp by the Allies. One day a British officer summoned him. Apparently he spoke German, for my grandfather did only speak German and Dutch. This officer asked him in confidence what he and his fellow Germans thought of the Russians. My grandfather told him the truth, which was that most Germans were very afraid of the Russians , that they feared Russian retaliation. The young officer turned to him and said: "Well, look at me, I'm Russian." He further explained to him that his family had fled to England and that most Russians were nice people, but that the regime was terrible.

"Er wußte von allem, was es bedeutete."*

"He knew about everything what it meant." *Janosch, Popov und die Geschichte vom Schloß/ Popov and the story of the castle

Ever since I first watched it with my eldest daughter in the 1990s this sentence has been in my mind, has been a motto. Unbiased I  try to understand.

By the way the German version has it, but the English version it is omitted - alas.

Because this is the essence of what an artist should be.

Remote Control

Sit back and relax - and this surely also displays a sense of entitlement.

Yet real life is pressing.

Measure For Measure

"Measured Insolence" - Abbé Pierre

Esperanza

"I'll dance my little dance till it makes you smile." - Indeed!

There's things one, dammit, has to accomplish.

Noi

Joseph Beuys: "Wollen Sie eine Revolution ohne Lachen / Do you want  a revolution without laughter?!"

First Impressions

I had to approve of my daughter's good choice in friends when I met her best friend for the first time and she was greeting her with the words:"Du siehst Scheiße aus!/You look like shit!"

"...to be unlike most our courtiers, as good as promise" - Cymbeline, William Shakespeare

Mischievous

"A room full of peasants. Take a look at yourselves."

Still wondering how something novel enters the mind/world if even the category doesn't (yet) exist....

O Aristotle

We Need Protection

Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini - Qui fecit caelum et terram.

A story my father once told me. An acquaintance of his, an entrepreneur, who drove a lot and sometimes too fast, was stopped by a police patrol. When they informed him that he had broken the speed limit, he started arguing and asking them about the reason for this limit. The police said that it was to his own protection. He looked at them and said:"You, you want to protect me?! Come and I show you what protects me." He led them to the trunk of his car and opened it. There was a rosary inside. He gestured at the rosary and said:"This protects me!" Without further ado they let him drive off.

Hernach/ Hereafter

Der fliegende Frosch                                The flying frog

Wenn einer, der mit Mühe kaum              If someone, who under pain hardly
Gekrochen ist auf einen Baum,                has crept up a tree,
Schon meint, daß er ein Vogel wär,          already believes himself to be a bird,
So irrt sich der                                          (then) he errs.


Wilhelm Busch


This never fails to make me laugh out loud because it is true, simple and absurd - succinct.




PS: Apparently the correct translation of the concept of sin in the bible would rather be error.

Post Scriptum Persevering Insistence

...And he even wears glasses.

Persevering Insistence

There is a marvellously understated courage prevailing in somebody who still believes in common decency. Even if he has just been threatened by a fellow man, even if  he is personally confronted with the prospect of being a random crime victim on the streets of Berlin. Silently he smiles to himself, certainly this wasn't the first time he had experienced something like this. Good to witness somebody not giving in to intimidations though people are trying to victimize him. Though probably being the perfect victim he is simply refusing to play that part.

Civil

civilisation and/or nation

culture, education or/and birthright

Anyway it would be kind to drop the weapons and start to organise.

-Isms

One day Raimund introduced us to the works of Hans Bellmer and especially to his collaboration with Unica Zürn. When it became known that at some stage Bellmer abandoned Zürn and that she committed suicide shortly after, some women made up a narrative of abuse by Bellmer condemning him for it. While I argued it could have been different, for example Bellmer might have complied with her (sexual) fantasies and one day when he found himself incapable of going any further, he let her go. Finally I said if we do not know, we cannot judge. Still my opponents would go on arguing that the woman is always the victim. Still clinging to their narrative they reckoned it would have been fine with them if the parts had been reversed and a woman had abused/killed a man, especially since this would be novel to the artworld. Coincidentally I had a copy of a counter-example with me.

Artemisia Gentileschi - Judith and Holofernes

Turn Turn

repentance - redemption

something not to be imposed and something that will be granted

Habibi

Beauty

and where to find it.

I was standing at a bus stop in Münster, when all of a sudden some Arab or Turkish youths started singing. It was simple and magnificent. The sublime could happen at any moment anywhere. Even at a bus stop in Münster somewhere in the late 1990s.

Quid Pro Quo

our daily reminders

Dedication

"It's okay cause we're in this together!"




Bruxelles Ma Belle! or like somebody called it "hell hole"...

No Matter What

...but the sublime is now! It applies especially to the final words!