Yesterday I went to a fabulous performance of «Rigoletto» at the opera in Cologne. It was my first time seeing a Verdi-Opera and it blew my mind. I was lucky to go with a friend and opera-aficionado, who briefed me on the train ride. Opera is all about [more]
Messianists have a strange relationship to history. Where we see current events in the news, messianists are interested in the same events but only in order to furiously gather clues and prophecies for a final end or a final return. There is nothing fundamentally new in the news [more]
Xmas spirit on Union Square; ice skating in t-shirts, and a cone-shaped Xmas tree.
I’ve been taking a walk every day in Virginia, on the backroads behind the residency. On these walks I pass various insolubles. After nearly two weeks here, I am getting no closer to the answers. It’s particularly frustrating because I’ve started rereading Sherlock Holmes and have a higher-than-usual [more]
On a regular Swiss voting-sunday, taking place every few months, you can experience the magic of democracy in its full perspective. Even in the smallest towns in the backcountry you can see people practicing their citizen-rights, waiting in line at the voting polls. There are thousands of people [more]
Last night, after a wonderful evening with lovely friends, we were sitting in the U2 recapturing the topics we had discussed over dinner. We found that we agreed with our friends’ standpoints and that we loved their company and their wine, too. It was late, and we were [more]
The strange building that I praised yesterday, here it comes again, as top view.
In his Leibniz lectures in the summer semester of 1928, Metaphysical Principles of Logic, Martin Heidegger touches on the “question of ethics”. Fundamental ontology as developed in Being and Time is not the whole of metaphysics. It has to be supplemented by a metontology. Only the unity of fundamental ontology (which [more]
Christian used to have a house on the top of a hill of a Greek village before the 2010 crisis. The house is Wittgenstein inspired, doesn’t have electricity, the toilet is a dirt field with blotches of heather, water can be found only outside, flowing from a higher [more]
To get a German passport I have to trace where my German-ness comes from. To write my mother’s side of our family’s history down is harder than I thought. It is connected to this passport, but I feel it needs more consideration than I am giving it right [more]
I guess I am a Millenial – please bear with me; but also I don’t care if you do because I’m a Millenial – but I think I have a pretty decent understanding of how things used to be, sometimes even from my own memory. Like, I have [more]
Going to Vienna on these sudden trips is always a ride, ein Ritt, never a moment to stop and think about the entirely surreal situations you are casually pirouetted into. The unnerving waltz playing on loop on the Austrian Airlines flight gives you a first indication of the [more]
Die Digitalisierung der Musik war natürlich Satans Werk, hat er so doch bessere Möglichkeiten, seine Botschaft unters Volk zu bringen. Mithilfe von Software lässt sich jede Audiodatei rückwärts abspielen und auf mögliches Backmasking überprüfen. Für das Rückwärtsabspielen von CDs brauchte man einen speziellen Player, und in Zeiten von [more]
was a Sunday! The Sun made it my Day. Yes Yes Yes! The Sun- always the sun!
Trotz, Selbstironie und Unsinn, so wie sich das gehört für eine gentrifizierte Gegend.
My father sends me this photo today of him in 1968. A weird coincidence after me reflecting on iranian youth. I call him to find out whether he agrees if I publish it or not. A discussion starts. It’s for my own protection, that I shouldn’t. I sense [more]
There’s this point in your life, when you say to yourself: right, that’s it, now there’s nothing left on earth that I haven’t tasted yet, that I still want to taste, and that I believe will thrill me. Every now and then, you might visit some 3 Michelin [more]
Mohnkuchen, Neues Museum Café, Berlin, December 1, 2011. Taken by me, the botanist of the sidewalk. Took this photo because I cannot order Mohnkuchen (poppy seed cake) without thinking about Paul Celan’s book, Mohn und Gedächtnis (poppy and memory) and I thought it was so fitting to record [more]
I never knew a residency would be a riot of conversation. But sharing three meals a day with twenty other people, who are constantly cycling in and out, means that when you’re not writing, you’re talking. The meals determine the tenor of the talk. Breakfast is gentle, people [more]
So for the first 43 days I have avoided politics although I may not have avoided the political. Time to catch up. On the 23rd of October Georg Diez said “it is all true”, he had been reading a biography of John Foster and Allen Dulles, respectively Secretary [more]
It is always exhilarating when signs of appropriation, interpretation and growth keep appearing in the city and attempts of correction are given up, because more evolved aesthetics and striking beauty are at work here. Tree buds sprouting on roofs and facades, cracked roads and side walks shaped by [more]
It was cold and wet, cars swooshed by splashing rainwater up my legs, and I was drenched to the skin. As I was pedaling down one of the most unpleasant streets in Berlin, the city seemed to exist of nothing else but big nasty SUVs fighting me in [more]
When I search for “60pages” on Twitter – which amounts to ego-googling these days, because obviously it is I and I is it – I very often find schoolgirls and – boys who complain about homework and their workload: “still 60pages to read till tomorrow”. They’re mostly French, too. [more]
The Method Acting Architecture is always close to the point, when it get converted into Tourette Architecture. It is a fine line to walk on. One of the radial streets of Berlin is like a walk on this line: Müllerstraße. I will walk this way on the next [more]
Looking for an apartment in Istanbul is a tricky thing. After having decided where to move to I am now contacting landlords and real estate agents and making appointments to visit the flats. It’s going to take a while for some reasons but every now and then I [more]
Gestern habe ich einen Fehler gemacht. Ich habe gefehlt, im zweifachen Sinne des Wortes. Ich habe eine Leerstelle hinterlassen und das war falsch. Zu fehlen war ein Fehler. Den ich nicht wieder gut machen kann. Es sei denn, ich kann die Zeit zurückdrehen. Vielleicht geht das. Das erste [more]
In der letzten Woche gab es gleich zwei interaktive/innovative Musikvideos: Bob Dylans Video, bei dem man sich, wie bei einem Fernseher, durch 16 Kanäle klicken kann, auf denen jeweils ein anderer Schauspieler Like a Rolling Stone synchronisiert und Pharell Williams’ Video zu Happy, das 24 Stunden am Tag läuft [more]