I don’t carry many books with me. That’s not a badge of honor but a fact after moving house 36 times in my adult life. And it’s not as if I don’t read. Now that the cloud is our digital repository of memory both literary and real, I [more]
Imagine there is something that makes you dependent. Something you want to do even if you feel it’s not right for the moment. Anyhow, it feels good. At least it is a good feeling doing it. It makes you feel relaxed. It helps you. It supports you. It [more]
The gunman behind several recent attacks in central Paris is caught and named. Convicted in 1998 for links to Bonnie and Clyde. A manhunt had been under way since Monday morning, when the gunman critically wounded a photographer at the offices of Liberation. The gunman was sentenced to [more]
And then it started to rain… You slip on smooth surfaces you never noticed before. You have no clue where your umbrella is. You actually need to *think* which shoes to put on. People comment on the weather: look it’s raining! Like in Europe, when the first snowflakes [more]
Today, after an unforgiving sprint across the Charlotte Airport to catch my flight back to Virginia, I walked across the sunny tarmac to the tiny plane. An airline worker in a fluroescent vest led me there, a tall man with a broad smile and kind eyes. “Where you [more]
What really can get you through a cold, rough day: humour. It can be silly, it can be dark, it can be sweet or nasty. If laughter prevails, so will you.
[jwplayer mediaid=”17766″] A man with a gun bursts through the revolving doors of a TV station on the outskirts of Paris. An old man with a walking stick will climb up a flight of stairs to the street. The gunman steps around the old man, menaces the TV [more]
Und dann hört man den Satz; er war ganz und gar kein politischer Mensch. Gesprochen in der Eröffnungsrede einer Ausstellung von Arbeiten eines Grafikers, der 1938 in Deutschland Plakate entwarf, auf denen auch (aber doch ganz klein nur) Hakenkreuze zu sehen sind. Gesprochen in einem Museum von [more]
There is nothing worse – nothing, I tell ya! – than starting a negative review with “I’ve tried, Artist X. I’ve really tried.” So I’m even gonna be pretend that I’ve tried to like “Arcade Fire”. But I have listened to them, quite closely in fact, at various [more]
Alpine vegetation is thick, tapered to the ground, lenient. It doesn’t need much. The higher it grows the more elemental its geometry becomes. The phenomenal high desert of white and steep rocks is relentlessly colonized in fragments of green wads and furs. The commander of the British Army [more]
Mit anderen Worten, Du kannst das bißchen Werbung in eigener Sache in meinem Item nicht ablehnen. Und überhaupt. Ich hatte schon wieder ein Dreitages-Loch in meiner Blogging-Frequenz. Das ist nicht gut, alter Junge, die Konstanz der Beiträge spricht für die Lust der Blogger am Bloggen, korrekt? Genug geredet, [more]
“Today I received an email from a friend. It said: ‘Dear Eva Today, as I was reading the former Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il’s “On the Art of Cinema”, specifically the lines: “The real objective of cinematic art is not merely to enhance people’s awareness [more]
Heute ist nicht einfach nur der 19. November, heute ist auch Welttoilettentag. Seit 2001 wird dieser Aktionstag begangen, auf Anregung der Welttoilettenorganisation. Aber erst in diesem Jahr wurde er von der UNO-Generalversammlung zum „Welttoilettentag der Vereinten Nationen“ erhoben. Nun gibt es ja jede Menge sinnlose Aktionstage, den Weltknuddeltag, [more]
1. Because in every moment of her writing Duras circles the “origin” of the origin. 2. Because this circling is related to an unrelated emptiness. 3. Because circling around the empty origin is touching truth. 4. Because to touch a truth means to relate to the namelessness of [more]
Almost over now. It ain’t dark yet, but it’s getting there. Maybe I will actually save one post for later. But today is about my friend Zoë Claire Miller, artist, connoisseuse of all things odd, and owner of Novak, The Critical Dog. In October 1666, two fishermen caught [more]
As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World Next day, after he’d sentenced a salmon fisherman to death for poaching on the preserve of an ancient tribe known as the People who lived to the [more]
Hinter der Landzunge leuchtet es rötlich. Die Nacht ist blau, das Meer und der Sand leuchten weiß und kalt, Vollmond. Die Röte in der Ferne lässt sich nur erahnen. Von hier, wo wir sitzen, Süd Libanon, können wir den Ort nicht erreichen, die übernächste Bucht, das nächste Land. [more]
You’re never gonna catch me… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_-64DIXTlQ
1.The drum circle: Chairs and bongos suddenly materialize in the middle of the subway car. For reasons of acoustics that are beyond me, the drums are barely audible over the rattle and shudder of the hurtling train. 2. The gospel quartet: Four black men in dapper, church-like attire [more]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_gAVZBKoMI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eniYRR2N2f4
There is something about running. The combination of repeating a simple body movement and reaching a higher state of flow. The sky above, the ground below, getting on, letting go. It’s like recalibrating your brain. I don’t like going to the gym for that matter. There are eyes [more]
Antigone is this raving dreamer, who tries to protect herself against the symbolic imperatives and the temptations of the imaginary in order to develop a self-assured demand which is a kind of law of all the lawless, the ‘law’ of those who come into conflict with the law, [more]
What is the highest ethical ideal according to Nietzsche? That human beings free themselves from the spirit of revenge. Freedom begins where the will to revenge and punishment turns into the will to responsibility, i.e. to freedom. To want to revenge oneself means to want to be unfree [more]
“I’d like to see where Travis Bickle is today.”
Let go, I say. Holding on is what makes us, me, so exhausted. I am personally winning this battle. I am worried about less and less unimportant things. Basic things are being worked out with haste and I worry deeply about how to make better spaces / better [more]
Neulich fragte mich ein nichtdeutscher Freund, ob ich ihm die Sache mit den aktuellen Koalitionsverhandlungen in Deutschland mal erklären könnte. Die Frage war mir peinlich. Nicht, weil ich sie nicht beantworten konnte, sondern weil meinem Freund von vornherein klar war, dass ich dazu nicht in der Lage sein [more]
The best thing you could do in Tiergarten is to get lost. Four-wheel-drive Panda climbs uphill, on rocks and mud, a small chunky box, unstoppable and green. Through ferns and huge larch trees, bopping, constantly disappearing and reappearing behind mounds and bushes. It’s got attitude up to here. [more]
Had a minor hangover and the most lovely day around town yesterday. Happy Happy to be enjoying a warm and sunny autumn!!