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March 19, 2004
Liquid torture
Night falls, the sales girls in the stores become impatient, and there is this one entrance in a sidestreet, with a guy on a bar chair in front of it. It's my favorite place, among the three or four I know. Its walls are decorated with art, though only sometimes you notice it is actually changing. DJ's enter the podest, unfolding their speech of sound, filling the tiny cracks in the walls with crumbs from the grinding bricks.
After shaking my body of what seemed hours, I am sitting, which is one level lower than anybody else, just for a moment, until I realize it was more than just that. I can see everything that's going on. I am watching and separate, become the watcher, become an observer of flirty glimpses, a witness of couples falling apart, a surfer on the wave. And the sound and the motion and the bodies are fluid towards the end of the room. So much anticipation. So much energy. A bunch of garden hoses becoming lose under water pressure.
I am waiting, for the next drop of water hitting my skin. My eyes strive a table to my shoulder, it slowly fills up with bottles, soaked napkins and glasses. I smile, knowing, I am that glas on that table, with the remains of cranberry vodka on descending ice, slowly rocking towards the border.
Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 07:31 AM
March 09, 2004
Piles and other mountains
I hate doing the dishes. Believe me -- while there are many things I don't like, doing the dishes is on the very top of my list. It comes right after ironing shirts and vacuum cleaning. It is one of these things that has to be done, it's coming to you, inevitable, mountains of pans, dishes and glases, piled up until they reach critical mass.
What do I hate so much about it? Is it soy sauce, olive oil and water swimming in bowls, joined by coffee, soap and soaked breadcrumbs, or is it the fact this is a job that requires so little thinking? Admittedly, I have trouble with things that require no head. Which does not mean I got the ones that do require it always right in the first place.
I am not contemplating about doing the dishes here anyway. What you do when you do the dishes is of secondary importance. It's more important what everything else of you does while you do the dishes. So usually, I am molding ideas for my projects. Or I deconstruct frustrating phone conversations I had throughout the day. The dishes happen either late at night or early in the morning. Even if doing them before coffee is worse than the worst.
Being able to do different things with your mind while your hands do the dishes is a luxury. I realize that now. Because my mind is captured by other things, things not so easy to handle. In fact, looking for a connection between something so trivial as cleaning up the traces of primary survival patterns with something that moves my inside upside down is futile. But of course, I understand that cleaning up is sort of a healing process. You change your hair color, you clean up your car or you give your dog a wash. Whatever you clean, it has a primary and a secondary reason. Not for everybody, but for everyone I know.
It was about time to do the dishes. And it was about time I made some profound changes in my life. I'm cleaning it up right now. It started more than a year ago. I didn't know where I'd be now when I started, and I learned to accept that it didn't matter. Accepting things to happen by themselves is something I always had difficulties with.
But that's the idea of it. You don't have to understand it. Just let your life unfold. Be careful it doesn't pile up until it reaches critical mass.
Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 08:51 AM
March 07, 2004
Turn the tables
I have to admit I’m more than intrigued with what DJ’s create on their turntables. In most cases it is just weaving patterns of other peoples music, as a friend of mine pointed out recently. In rare cases, and those are the stunning ones, something fresh comes out of it.
While I personally gave up on the idea of becoming a rock star, and successfully suppressed my desire to reinvent music, I still love to play with it. After a couple of hours playing with GarageBand, I feel now confident enough to let people listen to a song. Hey, I didn’t write it after all, I am just a weaver.
I’d love to hear what you think of my version of Coldplay's Clocks.
Posted by Henning von Vogelsang at 12:55 PM