Monat: März 2009

It’s so incredible! Every year the same: from one day to the other it’s spring! Winter? Never heard of. Freezing? Never felt. 6 months of winter blues? What’s that?

My backyard Turkish women lean outside and clean windows. My corner ice-dealer is overcrowded with mothers and (more!) fathers and their kids. Suddenly I can smell earth. I almost cry and start to bury my fingers into my ridiculous balcony soil, pull out old dead brushwood (sorry, the word is ridiculous for a Berlin balcony, couldn’t find a better one). I smile crazily at a multidotted ladybird. I’m able to sense something and they all smile at me.
I open windows for things to come 😉
The bar is open.

Later I met my brother Bernd and we thought it’d be good to go out and reward ourselves for anything so we went around the corner to Marquès (Graefestraße 92, Berlin-Kreuzberg, extremely good!) and had deeeeelicious dinner – one ultrathin zucchini touched me and I had to think of Barbapapa, do you remember?

A little later when I was home I thought it would be good to continue me and my brothers work in the kitchen and soak the sink wood board with linseed oil and turpentine. My aroma synapses said thank you!
Mmmmh, earth, oil, zucchini, wine, that’s a lovely start into an endless summer!

… is one of the beautiful many songs that Kitty Solaris (and her simpatico all-guys-band) performed tonight at Admiralspalast. I liked it there! It was intimate, she was in a funny mood (told us about Tourkoller = tour paddy?) anyway – means being on tour and getting wacky – needing red wine, infecting me so much that I had to say hello (after the show on my way home) to my new neighbor shop (open 24 hours a day / 7 days a week, selling a very huge variety of good wine for under 10 € – Kottbusser Damm, entrance Ubahn Schönleinstr.) – back to Kitty: she and the 3 guys rocked the place and I remember when I was wayyyy younger I wanted to be barmaid Kitty (Bonanza??) with red hair and golden earrings and that typical western dress and of course cowgirl boots! I’m almost there 😉

And I think that H&M model (the right one) looks really sick.

… and this is the Spätkauf (allnightlongshop):

Arbeit acht Tüte! My bike had a flat tyre and I went to one of my favourite and closests bike shops in Admiralstrasse, I wanted to have that indestructable tyre now and they did it for a good price and within 20 minutes!
I payed and looked up: they have a board hanging there with pin letters to build words … oh how I loved it, I read some amazing combinations and my day was filled with poetry!

I went out with my friend Hella tonight to have some reeeaaally good dinner – if you live in the Kreuzberg / Neukölln area go to Nansen (Maybachufer 39), I heartily recommend it.
I noticed weird chair-like shadows on one of their walls. It took me a while to realize that it’s not shadows. It’s a painting. Genius.

Constantly yearning for higher temperatures I stroll around in my city with eyes and ears open and antennas upright. Now even bikes love to wear beetle disguises! Or mushroom. Anyway: hello nature! Blossom out!

I looked (at the company where I work) out of the window and watched: a man on the roof repairing something, then smoking and contemplating; fast flying clouds in crystal blue sky; women with dog and bucket pointing at fresh green baby buds; a magpie preparing her nest …
mmmh springtime is approaching and I can’t sit still anymore …

And then I had a cup of China herb tea and it was smiling at me!

Ban Xia + Chen Pi + Fu Ling + Zhi Gan Cao + Chuan Lian Zi 🙂

I’m just thinking about the hilarious German word IMBISS, it’s almost untranslatable, it is a kiosk or a stand and it derives from BITE. I’m hungry, let me bite, that’s good.

Lately I found a closed bite-kiosk in Kreuzberg called SCHROTTI’S INN. Beautiful! The owner might be nicknamed Schrotti (which means something like Scrappy / Junky /Trashy).

Another Emergenza day (read yesterday!) at beautiful Lido club, funny, there was almost no audience at all except friends … why? Weekenders go elsewhere? Many schoolbands and I started to get bored but then a soul voice awoke me again – the music was not that interesting or fresh or awakening, but the voice! That woman has a voice close to Gloria Gaynor! The band is called Hot Action Diso Club and I wish that woman a gigantic future!

Next stop KATO. Johnnie Rook had their record release party gig. That was punk! That was soul! They say about themselves: “Wir haben Herz, wir haben Arsch.“ which means something like we got soul, ass, heart … They reeeaally rocked the place!

And here comes something personal that I discovered: These super front women are no Hungerhaken which means they are not skinny like skeletons, they are sexy. If I were lesbian I’d love every inch of them but I’m not so I love ghost men (sorry, personal, might be erased tomorrow with clear mind) but what I want to say: the Hot Disco girl wore a country flower dress, not very pret-a-porter or shit like that but had a goddesss aura and Franziska the Johnnie Rook front woman showed her Speckrollen that I loved her for and she has power for a continent or two! At least! Super! Sexy! Women!
Kiss!

There’s this Emergenza thing in Berlin I don’t know much of, it’s a kind of band competition from casting a thousand to semifinals or something, the audience votes and the best bands of the evening go on living.
Tonight at Lido, one of the most beautiful venues in Berlin-Kreuzberg, there was Emergenza number I don’t remember and Khani and I watched and listened to a handful of promising bands! Always having Bands On Boats in our mind of course 😉
We liked the first band, very young HipHop performers from Berlin-Pankow called Kurios (lovely woman singer with glasses in the background!) and the chicken gang, sorry, the guys with feathers and makeup looking like they were playing cowboys and Indians without the cowboys, they played rockyfunky reggae-like sun-full warm-hearted intoxicating music! Keep their name in mind: Solrise!

Funny, I’ve lived here in my apartment for almost 9 years and I thought I discovered all details in my stucco. But today, staring at the ceiling, thinking about antennas and spring, I discovered a flying little angel ghost with a tail behind him or her who’s waving at me. I like fresh surprises and new things in old things 😉

Another music night! Sandy Bird at nbi/Kulturbrauerei. I was there for the first time and I liked the place, perfectly small, warm red light, clear acoustic. 3 guys 1 woman.
It’s funny, I still thought about the various bridges of yesterday and I found them again between their songs: they never really stopped between them, they bridged them, I liked that. They – I can’t really describe their music – are powerful and concentrated and the rhythms have – I love it: breaks! And waves, escalating, increasing and ebbing away again. Guitar, bass, drums and a great violin bridge a mighty combination!

I saw and heard two young musicians tonight at The Coffee Karma in Berlin-Friedrichshain: A Dead Louise and “Golden Diskó Ship“, both Berliners, I think, both single performers. Was er nicht in seinem Bart hatte, hatte sie in ihrem Ringelpulli, heehee, I try to translate it: The Louise guy had a dusty (or maybe not) about 30 centimeters long dark beard, really, he looked quite funny, quiet, nice, I thought about how much charisma Captain Haddock has with his shorter beard and how little has that Louise guy who kept on excusing himself and saying that he thought he better say nothing, not telling a story but actually wanting to …. blah.
A very skilled guitarplayer though!

The Golden Diskó Ship is a one-girl-show, she plays joyfully with her own looped voice and various weird sounds from a laptop and a good guitar and a children guitar and once she set a wind-up pink-furred plastic-cat free who beeped perfectly to the song she was just performing. And she had a beautiful projection behind her, self made film snippets, personal pieces, city views etc that matched sensitively to her sound.

I rode my bike home, crossing the Warschauer Brücke (the connection from Friedrichshain to Kreuzberg where I live), having a very simple tune from her in my head, starting to like my city right here right now on the bridge between winter and spring.

Stepping from winter into spring is always an adventure in Berlin. Tonight I had a film show in my favorite club – the Club 39 – in Berlin-Kreuzberg – I blew June heat via beamer into the winter room. Means: my friends came, some strangers came, too, we shared time and some drinks and some space and watched my „Ode To June“ film, which is 30 min long and has a bucketful of warmth and flowerful moments.

But suddenly there came a noise from outside, just before starting the film, and I thought I was in a parallel universe: a large group of people started to perform some unique something in the street singing and playing RING OF FIRE, 5 akkordeonists disguised as teletubbies, dancing, moving … see my bad photo …

I don’t know what happened there … I go to bed now and start to ship my weird thoughts over to my colorful film dreams hopefully 😉