Devotion

As a believer you never can tell because this is the essence of believing which is not knowing.

My husband's grandaunt and me once had a good laugh at the expense of his brother because he wouldn't know the difference.

Tranquility

Listen

And then the Armenian told the story of when he was a migrant worker in Iran. It was during the Iran-Iraq War and he himself had only sons. He had to watch his Iranian neighbours' sons being drafted and oftentimes killed in this conflict, while his sons could stay at home. "But," he concluded, "my neighbours loved their sons just like I love mine."

Freedom

"I'll go wherever you go, wherever you take me I'll go."

Then There Is

this story about Wahida. Actually it is an excerpt from a diary, in which Mark, the director, writes down his impressions.

The first part deals with describing the atmosphere on their way to Mosul: There are no people, only fighters, there are no inhabited houses, only crumbling walls. And then there is Wahida.

"But Daesh tries to keep out of her vicinity.Wahida's revenge is well known by IS.'If you've got to die, don't do it at Wahida's hands.' Since her husband was murdered by IS, Wahida stops at nothing...

During the dinner she has invited us to Wahida's fingers are tearing pieces from a roasted chicken. She passes the pieces of meat to me. 'Eat.' She indicates that I should have more appetite."

Quest

Would it be the perfect ordinary - in German "ordentlich" which is also "tidy" - life you would be after or are you waiting for something to upset it?

Overcome

There is a certain kind of sadness and it hides in the apparently garish things.

It suddenly overwhelmed me when listening to a song and yet it gave me comfort.

It's not about escapism but rather a nevertheless.

Alors on danse.

Es gibt nichts Gutes, außer man tut es

There is nothing good unless one acts accordingly. - Erich Kästner

Substantival or acting

Aoom

What a strange and wonderful movie - it feels like it has dropped somehow out of time to show the essence of time
- to show the denial to succumb to time
- to show what it is to love somebody, to go hunting for this single one high and low, sometimes ending up in a really tight spot
- to show the realisation of the one that is loved so deeply and his response to her

And on the other hand it is hilariously funny and cruel at times, for example the killing of a woman is pictured in a very relentless way.

When the World was New

As the discussion goes about innovation or the novelty in art, all that remains to point out, is that one needs a certain kind of openess, amazement, willingness to be taken by surprise.

Surprise me or whatever is meant by this slightly paradox challenge to "expect the unexpected."

"Be amazed, simply blown away, live on without getting off your cloud."

Slip and Slide

So one day you find yourself on a totally icy, pretty steep slope - it has been used during Winter Olympic Games -, your skiing instructor apologizes for he wasn't aware...

This is the time to get down on your butt to slide downhill.

No Train Today

at Maalbeek/Maelbeek

Curiosity and Enlightenment

David Hare on Via Dolorosa

And Michael Pennington on David Hare:

David Hare, researching his Via Dolorosa twelve years later, was often met with infuriated bewilderment:"But what are you doing here?" - as if there are places where good intentions and curiosity are dangerous. - Are You There, Crocodile, p 185

I wouldn't be surprised.

Postscriptum - The Good Work

I wonder if the Germans are to blame as everything becomes relative.


"It wasn't hard to take a moral stand right before the Germans came."

Keep Up the Good Work

I'm afraid that if you know how, you'd  better go for it, but no one said that this was easy ;)

Translation

One month after the attack in Brussels

I am eight years old. I live in the Milky Way, Earth, Europe, Belgium, Brussels.
I'm Anas. I'm ten. My mother is Belgian and my father Moroccan. I live in Molenbeek. I speak Arab, Spanish, English, French and Dutch.
I speak Urdu, Pakistani and I live in Molenbeek. My mother and father both speak Persian and they are from Iran.
At home I speak Flemish and Dutch. At my Grandma's I speak Limburgian dialect. At my other Grandma's I speak Campine.
There has been an attack at Zaventem. One suicide bomb and one heavy bomb. I think that the terrorists think that Allah likes this, but actually he doesn't like it at all. Their interpretation of the Koran is wrong. Everybody may believe in their belief, hè. Actually I have more Catholic friends than Muslim friends, but that doesn't mean that I am no Muslim. For example my friend Elliot isn't Muslim, but we understand each other well, we never fight.
Our friend's aunt was at the metrostation, at the stop, and she has died. They actually didn't know anything at first. They had to wait a long time until they got an answer. And then suddenly the police told them what had happened. She started crying and our teacher told us that we can console Hannah if she wanted to.
It breaks my heart when people die for nothing. They did nothing. Actually I was angry and sad because so many terrible things are happening in the world.
People precisely do not laugh/smile anymore. They no longer play on the street or on the pavement.
Why are you doing this? This is not nice. This is not written in the Koran. They've told you this because they want to make people afraid.
Just say: Live a normal life. That they have to stop. Stay in your house, drink a coffee. And life continues in a normal way.
You don't have to show off. Everybody is great, everybody is equal.
I think: Simply talk to them and take care that nothing happens anymore, but I do not believe this possible. I still enjoy living in Molenbeek, even after all that has happened, because actually you shouldn't pay any attention to it, because it doesn't happen that often. If it only happens once in your entire lifetime, and often you aren't affected. You have to be really, really unlucky, because there is only a one percent chance that you are affected.
I shall give them all my money if they are going to stop, although I have been saving for such a long time. My pocket money: two Euros a week. - Why would you do such a thing? - Tell them to stop. They have to stop. - You deserve to get your money back.
Children of eight, nine years are smarter than grown-ups of 28 or 30 years. And we are still so small,hè. I do not know what is going on in their heads. We are still smarter than them.
I think their heads have been cut off and replaced by robot heads.
I think everybody is welcome everywhere. I really want to live in a peaceful world.

"Children Are Smarter Than Grown-ups"

Molenbeek dances after 22/3

If I have the time I will translate.

Konsum und Konsummation

consumption and consummation


still pretty erotic

From the Heart

Communio

Lo and behold, how every little bit makes up the whole and surely something would be missing if just one wasn't there.


Otto Freundlich. Kosmischer Kommunismus. 18.02.2017 – 14.05.2017 (German w/ Engl. sub.) from Museum Ludwig on Vimeo.

"Freundlich" means "friendly" by the way.

The Mystery of Things Lost Never to Return

Like the time when your teacher at school borrows a painting you did some time ago and she promises to return it, but suddenly dies without having come around to do this.

Icon

Back in April 1991 sitting with a group of students from Münster in a London pub at Earls Court Road, some of us get intrigued by a group sitting at the next table and especially by one cigarette smoking woman.

One of us suddenly comments:"What an interesting woman." And someone else and me responded:"Well actually just a woman who thinks herself to be interesting."

Elaborate

Sometimes subjects keep popping up and apparently I'm left with no choice at all.

And the subject is lying - not some white lie, but the vicious premeditated one, the one that is forwarded with true and deep emotion, in the worst case in order to destroy whoever might be the target.

Thinking about it the one thing that could be a hint in such a case is the fact that from the beginning far more detail is given than you initially would ask for, because the good liar would have been thinking of your reactions and possible objections already while constructing his or her little house of lies.

Tough Question

So your friend has messed up in a really bad way. He or she does things that you think are abominable.

Would you abandon them? Or is this just what really, really good friends are for, to listen and then to confront, to tell it like it is?

Where there's life, there's hope!

Unbiased

And that is simply all one should be when meeting some of these paintings. It's really not that hard anyway.

"Come and feel what it does to me, so much more than fantasy. Put your panic on hold, amplify your very soul and keep breathing."

But then I also know that it can be quite overwhelming when you experience it for the first time. Something pretty present and awe-inspiring.

Boil It Down

Abstraction is neither the opposite of concrete, nor some meta level, nor is it unreal. It's simply the essence.

So This Is a Love - To You

and who is to say it isn't?!

If You Love Somebody

or what is the difference between love and sex.

"Possession's nine tenth of the law."

And this is admittedly a song about "ghosts and" .... - dramatic pause in Aachen - "sex."

And love is something particularly else.

Vregelen

The best example for the meaning of "vregelen" is still what my greatgrandfather did to me. It is actually testing people, seeing how good their particular humour is by deliberately driving them to their limits - and never assume that whoever does is is not very well aware of your attitude. It's something people in my home region are prone to do.

Another example is my daughter's former Dutch teacher who admitted that he really enjoyed travelling to Salt-Lake-City and ordering a beer there. Then he would look around at the reactions of the Mormons present.

"Only cause of love. Love's the only thing that makes me do this."

And oddly this is done, at least when I feel like it, out of a deep concern and love for the person targeted.

The Rub

"One must forgive the noisy rushing fools, who have no time for nature's natural schools. They cannot see the life thta's in their hands, like ghosts they disappear across the land."

This little ghostly metaphor has a catch to it. For the ghosts could be revenants and each and every generation is haunted by them over again.

But it also could imply some fun and meaning in life - chasing them away.

Looking At You

From The Heart Down to the Guts

Listen especially to Harry Belafonte from roundabout minute 43 onwards.

"People have been more adventurous." But he is also painfully frank about the costs.

"Und Tschüß" or On a Train Ride to Paris

So one day I went to Paris on the Thalys. Some days before I had watched a movie set in the vastness of Siberia at the end of the 19th century, featuring also a train ride with a motley group of all the different people that once made up the Russian Empire.So I wasn't in the least surprised to have a group as motley as this travelling with me to Paris.

My seatmate was actually a Buddhist monk from Laos, who told me that he was taking a fellow monk to some Buddhist cloister in the USA, and he decided to travel and show his fellow Europe before eventually going to America.

All the while I had noticed a group a French speaking people who were talking about their experiences in Germany and especially that the Germans liked to say "Und Tschüß." when saying good-bye. When we reached Paris and started deboarding, this group noticed me and the monks. They addressed me and wanted to know what the "Tibetan" monks were doing here. I answered that they were Lao. And when they inquired about my nationality I answered: "I'm German und Tschüß"...

Oh what fun we had!

Listen Carefully

and suddenly things will get a twist, like this dialogue lines from some adventure film from the 1960s.

"Er kommt von weit, weit her. Aus einem Land, wo die Menschen sich gegenseitig töteten, weil manche meinten, sie wären von Geburt aus besser als die anderen...Er hat nur eine Liebe und das ist ein Traum...Ein Wunschbild, dem er nachjagt sein Leben lang. Er glaubt, daß ein Mensch so gut ist wie der andere."

"He is from far, far away. From a country, where people killed each other, because some believed themselves by birth to be better than the others...He only knows one love and that is a dream...An ideal, that he has been chasing all his life. He believes that one human being is as much worth as the other."

Some movie I certainly watched as a child and which makes me wonder if I listened at the time or if only the action caught my attention...

My best wishes to becoming a full-fledged human being in all wonderful aspects.

Love Song

"You drive too fast, can you please shut up? I'll call the police if you don't stop. You're just trying to scare me, want me to know that you're not this precious little thing you hold...out of the blue, out of the darkness...into the new, out of the blackness."

The Great Indicator

Greatness as a nation will draw a lot of immigrants - and some of them illegal ones.

So if you are making a country great again learn to live with it. For your dream could be shared by a lot of people on this earth.

Scary

The hubris and pride of the self-righteous. I'd rather have some decent criminal like Flambeau ;).

The Innocence of Father Brown - The Secret Garden

A Call to Arms

Form and Content

When the "how" becomes more important than the "what".



Paul de Man recalling his own experience, his own infatuation warns of the aestheticization of politics.

"Her infrastructure designed by the devil" ;)

Take Care

of each other

Indeed!