The Altogether

 the fun and joy of creation that might also be termed work

Balance

Unwittingly these wonderful guys from Brighton carried me virtually and really through some pretty awful time and I'm rather grateful to them ;)!

"Herz-Schmerz-Eichhörnchen" and else also Herz-Schmerz on the weekend...

On Friday night my husband and me went on an outing to Aachen to attend a concert of The Miserable Rich at the Raststätte in Aachen. Though our lovely daughter Debora, now living there, was to join us, this spitefully did not happen... Still like last November in Duisburg a wonderful live performance by a bunch of great musicians and a wonderful audience. What will remain as special memories about this one for me apart from the performance is the ice-cold almost freezing red wine - "I'm sorry for it, but we store the bottles outside" (at the time -7 degrees C ;)), but never mind so I drank three glasses and the effect only revealing itself very slightly. The cold coffee, the remains of the band, my husband was treated to for free, and of course the expression "Herz-Schmerz-Eichhörnchen", relating to the following song and video, though it all takes a rather graphic turn - something to do with the fact that the animator had split up shortly before ;). And the rather awkward pronunciation of "Kater" after so many German words with "ch" - Aachen-Herz-Schmerz-Eichhörnchen ;)!


The second take on Herz-Schmerz, heartache, was left to Saturday evening when I treated us to watch the final episode of Sherlock season 2, The Reichenbach Fall (notice even there a lot of "ch" and since Johann Sebastian Bach also featured, as Grimm and Hänsel und Gretel, a lot of German stuff indeed). Spoilers ahead so if you have not yet watched it and intent to do so, please do not read on...

I must admit that I've been sort of warned because of the hysteria this episode evoked on the internet - even before it had been broadcast, kindled by several people. Yet somehow funnily though I often can hardly hold back my tears during emotional, or better even sentimental scenes, this one did not provoke so many tears like for example the scene in Nightwatching where Mijnheer van Rijn realises that inspite of his art he cannot revive Saskia. What  nevertheless made it special is its great humour, its being so hilariously old-fashioned (eg when it makes the viewer believe that in a chase featuring car(s) and pedestrians, the pedestrian is able to win). The revelation that Moriarity is more as the criminal mastermind is also a great illusionist, taking on this way down the illusion that the world can be destroyed by a superweapon or a superkey (in fact I despise all the movies where the least thing the hero has to do is to save the world, big, bigger, biggest, megabig). And then of course there remained "The Final Problem", which turned out to be: "What shall I do, sacrifice my life or sacrifice the lives of the people I love?" Yet indeed it was not even that simple because to sacrifice my life would also mean to make the life of the one person, who really loves me, quite miserable. And the answer is not yet worked out - a perfect fix indeed.

Toilettengeschichten-toiletstories

First The Miserable Rich's James de Malplaquet incited by Joseph Patrick:

Then Studio Brussel inciting people to give a shit:

And finally, though not chronologically, Luc Tuymans as well:

There is definitely something about Belgium and toilets these days, please give a shit and donate for Music for Life , spitefully the final edition this year...

"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!

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

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.

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.

If only I could but talk

about what is really on my mind (without giving away too much of what is not really mine, yet oddly close to my heart) ;) ...








So here to divert me a little bit, this one is both at once spooky and erotic.

Miserable Nightwatching

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