As time goes on I find myself “becoming more romantic and more callous at the same time.*” Life is not unbalanced, on the contrary, the distance from my extremes gives me a firmer stance, a more spread center of gravity. In theory, this makes me more open and [more]
Les touristes qui vont à Vienne visitent la Hofburg parce que c’est là où la princesse Sisi avait habité. Et ils visitent la Berggasse parce que c’est là où Sigmund Freud avait analysé ses patients. Et ils visitent la Ziegelofengasse parce que c’est là où Falco avait écrit [more]
I have a fetish for print. I actually enjoy touching paper. Doesn’t it sound like a tale from the realms of magic: The fact that reading a book – inanimate signs on paper – can get you into this internally buzzing, thudding, cavorting state of mind (body)? Read [more]
Tomi Ungerer on what it takes to be successful: “Discipline, pragmatism, enthusiasm.”
In der Zwischenzeit allerdings hatte die Historie ihr Eigenes verbrochen. Während meine allerbesten Lebensjahre verrannen, hatte das Frankfurter Label des Buccovina-Gipsyband-Maestro Shantel sich darauf eingelassen, das Album der Jewrhythmics Anfang 2012 bei sich zu releasen, im niederträchtigen deutschen Feuilleton-Dschungel sorgen alte jiddische Volkswaisen im neuen Disco-Gewand halt zumindest [more]
Once when I lived in Vienna near the Schloss Belvedere, I had a Viennese writer friend call me on my cell. “I can’t meet with you today,” he said, “I am in the hospital.” Thinking something terrible had happened since I had seen him the week before when [more]
This morning I sat down with a coffee thinking over the day and went through the list of things to be done. There were insurance policies to be understood, a beef with the landlord to be settled and one with the health insurance company, the tax declaration to [more]
Last night, Cora Tabb of Tabb’s Cabs picked me up from the airport, along with a buoyant Sweet Briar freshman. As we were exiting the airport, the freshman announced that she wasn’t headed to Sweet Briar College, but to an address in Lynchburg, to spend the night in [more]
Morgens um 5 vor 10 ist die Welt sehr schön. Sie besteht aus einem Pool, der groß genug ist, dass man darin Bahnen schwimmen kann, darum ein paar Palmen und einige wenige Menschen auf Liegen, die sich kaum bewegen, kaum reden und kaum auffallen. Was gut ist, denn [more]
The car parking that is vis à vis the Schering-factory. My first impression was, that it belongs to the company. And maybe there is a connection in the underground between the two sides of the street, that I could not see. It is on my list for further [more]
In order to predict what the encounter between a religious community and new media looks like, one must look at that religious community’s historical relationship to both religious authority and the interpretation of sacred text. In a text-centric religion like Judaism, it may seem that there is little [more]
Ich sitze im Schellingsalon und beobachte die Billardspieler. Die Bedienung ist eine Frau und sie hat einen Schnurrbart. Ein Kind mit einem besonders schönen Schmetterling im Gesicht kommt, und es sagt, wie man am besten am einarmigen Banditen gewinnt. Der Vater, sagt sie, säße am Tisch und sei [more]
Und vor allem: Was hat das eine mit den anderen zu tun? Gleich, liebe Könige und Kaiserinnen aus dem ehemaligen römischen Reich deutscher Nation, die ihr euch herablasst, die liderlichen Möchtegern-literarischen Samenergüsse der Sixtonischen Pages über euch ergehen zu lassen, gleich, wenn auch nicht sofort, aber innerhalb Minutenschnelle, [more]
Johanneskirchen, Germany. The house where I grew up is at the edge of town. A few houses down the road there is a sign that demarcates the border of the city. On the one side of the sign there are some old farmhouses, a medieval chapel, villas, row [more]
While roaming around in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous of all Indian states, there is one thing you hear, see, and feel over and over again. It’s the women’s low social status and recognition compared to their male counterpart. Especially in the rural areas the women, who are [more]
– LED in Zusammenhang mit Leuchten, Weihnachtsdekoration etc. – Richard Wagner. – Leni Riefenstahl; ich find die Aufnahmen so toll…(gefolgt von einem Satz, der das Wort „unpolitisch“ enthält). – Von Jahr zu Jahr grösser werdende Sofas; sie wachsen in die Breite und in die Tiefe und werden [more]
«In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is resting, in feeling anything is mounting, in feeling there is resignation, in feeling there [more]
Alleged killer of Fusilier Lee Rigby handed a letter explaining his attack to the woman who stroked the body of the fallen soldier. “Sometimes the cowardly and foolish could be those dearest to you, so be prepared to turn away from them.”
Bill Burr. “The New Louis CK”. Very funny: everybody is wrong, including me. Machine gun, hard worker. Just great. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcGSsT4BAOc
While having dinner at a Shanghai hotpot restaurant last night I couldn’t help but take a paparazzi shot of this couple (sorry guys): She is watching a movie on the iPad (next to the bowl with the salad), he is doing whatever on his iPhone. The perfect date, [more]
Facebook makes people now officially and scientifically-proven unhappy. The study claims that feelings of loneliness, jealousy and self-doubt are being experienced to a very high percentage. No news. That means the majority feels terrible but keeps “liking” until they hate themselves. Of course Fb’s representation of reality undermines [more]
….. I would love to have taken “T” 1950 or “Snow” 1960 by Saul Leiter. He died on the 26th November and I had never heard of him until “Snow” caught my eye in an obituary. Even better I discover I like what he said about photography “I [more]
Actually “Wattstax” is quite a weird thing. It’s mostly a concert film, about the Wattstax concert that took place in Watts in August of 1972, the seventh anniversary of the riots. There’s some other stuff, like interviews with Stax locals about their lives and above all Richard Pryor [more]
Last night a fire drill was conducted at my grandparents’ assisted living home. Ten minutes before the drill, a staff member had entered the recreation room where we were eating Pizza Hut supreme thin crust and announced, apologetically, that the room would be crammed with all of the [more]
The philosophy of modernity since Descartes, since the Enlightenment, since Kant has been put into question as such a practice of violence insofar as the concept and the demeanour of construction (for instance, of systems) and of erection (of a transcendental subject) are invariably combined with the authority [more]
The withdrawal of the human being has already begun. The subject in human being is accelerating on the line of departure from the human being. It draws the trace of an exertion which tries to turn the world and the self upside down by giving way to an [more]
You know the situation: You sit at a table with some friends (or your family, or at work). You’re having a conversation. And every so often someone reaches in his pocket and starts typing on his smartphone. It doesn’t disturb the conversation but it kind of feels intruding: [more]
Pune, India. Every so often another “house of the future” comes on stage. In papers and presentations. At biennales and triennales. Made with lots of words, garnished with images of shiny, happy people, surrounded by the latest gadgets. The echoes of these projects, however, don’t last for very [more]
Wenn man am Flughafen in Miami bei der Passkontrolle durchfällt und ins Hinterzimmer zur extrasorgfältigen Personalienüberprüfung gebeten wird, fragt man sich, ob die NSA die Sache mit der Überwachung wirklich so gut im Griff hat. Wäre dem so, könnten sich die USA ihren absurden Einreisekontrollapparat an Flughäfen dann [more]
I am all for more consumption. To get better at it we need to make this easier. To do that I would very much like to campaign for agreement that it is already easy because that is true. Why is this so hard to do? We’re not Victorians. [more]