Berlinagain beginagain

[imomus]

the air is forest fresh
all the taxis are mercedes
people have a slightly sullen postpunk glare, no cries of "have a great day" here
cars look tiny neat and eco
the yellow ticket machines work and are clean
the futuristic bus voice
mysterious superlegitimate canals, train boxes
there is something sacred about industry and nature here
fucking giant blotchy footballs everywhere, on unten den linden, up the tv tower
football shaped cookies advertised with the slogan "football hungry?"
modernism
sobriety
sensible bicycles
the "yokel stare" if you look odd
the new railway station
apparently a madman stabbed 19 people at the opening
the old palast der republik is being demolished
so many flower shops
autumnal harvest decorations in people's windows
wooden bicycles for kids
very good coffee
kraft durch freude fuck usa heart aisha (graffiti)
lovely church bells
anal people who don't cross against red
birdsong is the loudest sound you hear
posters for a dance piece with a japanese woman, for the ex-berliner fashion issue
tanned girl with heidi braids in the bakery
everyone looks like they're in some children's book from the 19th century, "the window cleaner", "the flower seller" etc!
coffee and a cake is very cheap
this odd mixture of trendy and ultra-trad

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Your list looks like Alan Rickman's face as he fell slowly from the top of the skyscraper at the end of Die Hard.

White nails.

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

michael finnigan - begin agen (http://www.rwlswann.org.uk/songs/childrens/michaelfinnigan.htm)

love psychogeographic prosepoetry or whatever..
nature and organisation (http://www.scaruffi.com/vol6/natureor.html)

[kaipfeiffer.livejournal.com]

welcome back!

since you mentioned the giant footballs: good thing you kept your earprotectors, to reduce the auditive side of the upcomming football world cup by 40%.

founf a new home yet?
i just saw that the ex squatted house, now official housing collective next door is searching people for some rooms. it's lychener st. 60 (the building with club "ausland" in the cellar).

[(Anonymous)]

diesmal wirst du Deutsch lernen?

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

ficken macht spass.

[(Anonymous)]

das stimmt, bro bro.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

> the old palast der republik is being demolished
Bastards.

[bikerbar.livejournal.com]

"everyone looks like they're in some children's book from the 19th century"

Like freshly baked bread, Central Europe is both traditional yet substantive. The 19th Century is still alive here .. sometimes I think in Prague even the Renaissance is still alive. Categories like "window-cleaner" and "flower-seller" are indicative of a healthy society, like pre-WWII America, where people interact. But the States has given itself over to the fantasy of advertising to such a degree that actual life is bland and unreal. I was telling a friend the other day that the difference in the texture of the States and the Czech Republic is that USA is like a smooth glass television screen, artificial and glaring, whereas Czechy is more like a rough stone (or chipped plaster), hard but real.

So welcome back to the land of the real. Where people could be a bit less glum and distant, but if they were would feel like they were imitating some superficial American film.

vivat crescat floreat

[eightyoldwomen.livejournal.com]

You should try living in a more residential area of Berlin for a while. The gardening gets intense. It's their reason for living.

Recently google finished mapping (http://maps.google.de/) Germany (including satellite), and I made the mistake of showing it to some Germans, who immediately started comparing their garden size to everyone else in the neighborhood.

...

[eightyoldwomen.livejournal.com]

but I have to say that the new s-bahn maps and cheap Weltmeister stuff annoys me, and the English translation on the ringbahn at the Tempelhof Bahnhof.

(unrelated: this (http://www.sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/worldmapper/index.html)is awfully fun.)

Alexandre

[(Anonymous)]

Hi there Nick.
I've been entailing your work in a jovial interested fashion for about some two years now.Quite enjoying it, really! I'm a southern Portuguese with a neo-romantic delusion of grandeur (no,no, not another Dali, heh) and would think it should very much interest you as an artist.Maybe. Anyway, as soon as finished I'd love feedback from another respectful human being.Besides the fact that reading someone's (anyone's!) neural-political-sentimental theorem is always fun!

Salutations

hburrrrrrrr

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Kraft durch Freude, eh. Nice to see Momus joining in the popular flavor ins Deutschland. Next we'll hear him praise, "Juden und Amis ins Gas!" graffiti.

Re: hburrrrrrrr

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Not praise, mate, report. Do you want me to leave out the shadows?

Re: hburrrrrrrr

[(Anonymous)]

"Postpunk glare" made me cringe a little. I hate artificial cheeriness as much as the next guy, but "the fashion of dour" is even more odious.

I hope your being back in Berlin doesn't mean you'll ease up on the pictures of adorably subservise "quiet art." Please, Momus: you just can't! It gave my mornings such a sense of peace!

-Rob

Re: hburrrrrrrr

[desant012.livejournal.com]

The shadows are a part of life, after all.

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

everyone looks like they're in some children's book from the 19th century, "the window cleaner", "the flower seller" etc!

oh crikey now i have to get obsessed with going to Berlin again.

[henryperri.livejournal.com]

no sign of wheatpaste vandalism in those pix.. thank god that's over with.

[(Anonymous)]

and you will be getting more football until you can't stand it, I will change the words by Kraftwerk from "Europe is endless..." to "Europe is football mad.."

Keep safe and say hello to the rabbit, I'm certain he will miss you.

[class-worrier.livejournal.com]

I'm recently back from A trip to Berlin. I found the traffic light ultra-conformism strangely exhilarating.
I half expected (hoped?) the Police to screech round the corner any time I crossed against the lights.
Although, I do wish Glaswegians knew how to queue for a bus. We seemed to have lost the knack somewhere in the early nineties.

Re: hburrrrrrrr

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

Didn't C.S. Lewis say there was nothing but the shadows?

[(Anonymous)]

do you have a guess at which is the most berlin like american city????

[larameau.livejournal.com]

berlin ist arm, aber sexy...
berlin is poor but sexy...

[orlog.livejournal.com]

that has to be one of my favourite posts of yours ever!

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

I was going to say that. We've got to stick a (unlit) pipe in his mouth and sit him down in front of a proper typewriter.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Chicago.

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

I often think that the reason for the English (and I do mean English here, not British) "grudge" against continental Europe generally, and Germany in particular, is a secret hidden envy; an envy that they still have cultures, atmospheres, feelings of their own, which the English have lost. Hatred is often the last resort of those who cannot bring themselves to admit that their old enemies retain what they wished they still had.

RPC
(the first time I have ever posted here! ... I hope that some, at least, will remember me of old)

[nina-blomquist.livejournal.com]

Portland, OR.

[siokaos.livejournal.com]

do you think modernism and primitivism, in practice, are mutually exclusive?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Wow, hello Robin! You're certainly remembered. And welcome...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure what you're identifying in my description of Berlin as "primitivism", or perhaps you're saying I've left some kind of primitivism out? Do you mean the "shadows" in the Nazi slogans? That's certainly an advanced form of barbarism. We also see a lot of "primitivism" in early Modernist art; Picasso's African masks, Eliot's Sanskrit chants, the Freudian unconscious and its influence on the Surrealists, and so on. Anyway, my answer to your question is "no".

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

I would like to say I never left, but unfortunately that is not the case. But I think I'm writing better than ever, although perhaps not as much as I'd like.

violet carnation

[stupidinvisible.livejournal.com]

did you go to the 4th biennial?

i don't think berlin is an arrogant city, yet.

i am moving to tokyo in a couple of months, i want to write for their vice. any recommendations for how to go about it? tdh

[agoraphiliac.livejournal.com]

everyone looks like they're in some children's book from the 19th century, "the window cleaner", "the flower seller" etc!

I thought that too, about Germany. People seem to wholly inhabit their place in society, with no gap or excess: banker, student, RAF terrorist, whatever you are, that's what you are. There's a phase in life during which one is permitted use of a backpack/bookbag, and then it ends. Unlike here, in the US, where everyone looks a little bit like a college student.

In the US, maybe it's that we all believe we're very nearly movie stars, or very nearly millionaires, that gives us our blurred look: dressed-down movie star? aging grad student? corporate lackey on casual Friday? no telling.