Dagies Blog

The big celebrations of Carnival don’t touch Berlin at all. Almost not at all. There are some guys that still want to party (Non-Germans notice: The Ultra-Western part of my country celebrates Carnival 3 days long with parades and endless parties): opposite to my house there’s a gym, see how they have fun!

Today I was at Antje Öklesund for the first time, it is a great live music club in Berlin-Friedrichshain.
And I discovered a gem!
This doesn’t happen often. Normally I go to concerts and have some drinks and listen joyfully to the music and that’s it. Today I went there with Khani and we had some drinks and listened joyfully … whow that band rocked the house! Rocked the Hinterhaus! Rocked the snowy icey half-dead-hibernating yetis!
A skinny singer with a monster voice! A weird drummer with underarms like calf legs. A warmsmilingsexy keyboarder and two beardy nerdlike base-guitarmen. UTAH from Denmark. Come back guys in summer! And I give you a drink or seven!

About Antje, the name-giver of the club: Im Herbst des Jahres 1599 wurde an der südnorwegischen Küste eine Holzkiste an Land gespült. Die Kiste war mit einer Decke und einem kleinen Kissen ausgelegt. Das Mädchen, das darin saß, war etwa drei Jahre alt und trug nichts bei sich außer einem dünnen blauen Kapuzen mäntelchen. Es zitterte am ganzen Körper, als die Fischer es am Strand auflasen und zum Bürgermeister trugen. Doch niemand brachte auch nur ein einziges Wort aus ihm heraus.Der Fischer, der es am Strand gefunden hatte, hatte Mitleid mit dem Mädchen und nahm es mit nach Hause. Seine Frau hingegen war erbost, da sie schon jetzt nicht wusste, wie sie die vier anderen Kinder ernähren sollte, doch ihr Mann bestand darauf, dass es bliebe.Sie gaben ihm den Namen „Antka“, und nahmen es als Tochter des Fischers „Antkesson“ in ihre Familie auf. So wuchs Antka in der Familie des Fischers auf und zeigte sich schon bald als wissbegieriges und aufgewecktes Kind. Doch die Mutter mochte Antka nicht besonders und zog ihr ihre eigenen Kinder ihr vor. Antka dagegen holte das Wasser für die Familie und wenn sie sich mit ihren vollen Eimern über den Dorfplatz schleppte, riefen ihr die Kinder hinterher: „Antka, Antka, De er et oeklesund“, was soviel heißt wie „Antka, Antka, Du kommst nicht von hier“. Schwer schnitten die Riemen an ihren Schultern und schwer wog der Makel der Fremden an ihr. So nahm sie der Fischer mit zur See und lehrte sie den Fischfang. Doch Antka blickte oft hinaus zum Horizont und wenn der Fischer sie ermahnte, die Netze zu halten, da summte sie verträumt vor sich hin…….

Haa! This is one of the most magic moments in the process of processing … the second exposure to light!
It comes right after 1st developer + bleach + clear and before 2nd developer + fix.
At that moment the deed is done and you can check and try to detect frames and images …

I feel like black&white double super 8 fllming these days!
Berlin is covered with snow and the sun is shining but I can’t wait for the white hell to disappear. Having a film in my mind called “Lust For Luck – Get Up, Jucy Lordan!“ which is going to be a lot about, well, taking hold of the reins and running towards … whatever. To the horizon like Jack Sparrow proposed?
“— Now, Bring me that horizon.“ that’s what he exactly said, says Auntie Google.
I’m cutting snowflakes and preparing a nice animated double exposure.

I hate mimes. Say “Marcel Marceau! Boo!“ to me and I break down and get the scabies. But! There is something else in this polyverse! With SOUND!! The Umbilical Brothers come from Australia, performed in the Tipi tent in Berlin tonight and we all loved them, even my little nephew who doesn’t understand more than 10 words english but that doesn’t matter, he understands all the stories they tell with their extremely skilled funny intelligent laugh-myself-to-death noises (special beatbox microphones I guess) and … well … I wish them luck and fame worldwide!
Watch them on Youtube (here’s my favourite: Velcroworld!) or better if you have the chance go see them in reality because they are so REAL (one thing I love about artist is when you see and feel they have really fun performing on stage, it’s like a spark that oscillates, can you understand me?!) and they have layers. Their jokes are not flat. They are partly extremely simple. Boys jokes. About zippers and chainsaws and robots and guns and flies. But with layers behind. And their choreography is gorgeous. Musicians.

These days just happen, Berlins winters are notorious, everyone’s glorious, it’s Berlinale (Filmfestival), I don’t really care, there are side-events … went to Deborahs Film show at Directors Lounge, didn’t feel like in the beginning, it was cold, I was old, wine was sold (just for the rhyme – in reality wine was bad and cold) but the programme was … mixed and good and special and intimate. And: almost all of the participating filmmakers showed up! And: something that will probably never happen again: all super 8 film makers (except one guy) were there projecting their / our films. Milena! Karola! Eva! Me!
Technique was crucial in the beginning because time was out and no one had checked the projector, but 4 skilled super 8 ladies worked like 4 fingers of a hand and we had … fun.

Karola brought apples and shared them. They tasted like spring. Yearn!

I just met Marie (dreaming over her coffee) and Deborah at the Ankerklause and the latter handed me her Red Films program “Meanings & Effects of Red“: Berliners and visitors, go to Directors‘ Lounge (SCALA, Friedrichstr. 112A, Berlin-Mitte) Monday February 9 at 8 pm! It will be a very cool and mixed program (8 and 16 mm and some DVD) of red films (including 2 of mine).

Hello February, there is hope on my balcony!

Today I bought a beautiful Russian Double-Super-8 camera from a collegue who told me that he bought it almost 20 years ago at the „Stasiflohmarkt“ in Berlin (Stasi = GDR State Security; Flohmarkt = Flea Market: when the GDR broke down almost everything was sold out … the Stasi had their headquarter here and they, too, sold a lot of their equipment … everything except for weapons I think …)

So now I’m a lucky owner of a probably 30 or 50 years old extremely beautiful heavy metallic – no batteries – wind up! camera with some changeable lenses and a manual in Russian … which reminded me that I once began learning Russian almost 30 years ago at my highschool (I grew up in the Western part of Germany and nobody was interested in Russia in the late 70es so our course died after one year … I was very sad because I just got into that complicated and at the same time flowery language).

But thanks to my teacher then (another cool story: he taught Russian and Mathematics and looked like Einstein (hello Herr Becks! Oops, he must be dead by now …). He was very friendly and an inspiring teacher. He, a German, became a prisoner of the Russians during World War 2 but he was treated quite ok and started to like the Russian language and culture and decided to study it after he was released.)

Jumping back now from the story in the story in the story I tried to understand some of the words in the manual, needed a dictionary, asked Tina, got one, browsed a little, and found my favourite expression of the day: „Gefühl angenehmer Mattigkeit“ (sensation of comfortable lassitude)!
They have one word for it – „istòma“. Just one simple word for such a complex feeling … awesome. Genial.

Some beautiful aspects of winter in a big city: My crowded Hasenheide (“Rabbit’s Heather“) park! Kids and parents riding the sled. And you know what? The sun sent out a million of photons and ten of them were warm! Particles or waves?!

Yeehaa, this morning I looked into my balcony flower box and guess what I discovered: sprouts! Sprouts! Popping out! Green! Newborn! (I’ve had this box standing there for years, a small biotope, the plants live there on their own and can do whatever they want, every now and then I add tomato plants or cat grass …). Welcome, tulips and daffodils!

Ice age in Berlin! Temperatures fall miles below zero. Bike lanes are meanly frozen over, I’m a coward, I take the bus. Look out of the window, try to ignore my sneezing neighbors, see a dirty grey city.

Antennas up, I see more than a dirty grey city: a blackbird in a flower pot on my brother’s balcony on New Year’s Day, a (probably) sparrow hawk working on his or her nest …

Hello January! Hello fresh new year!

Slowly preparing to hop over into the next year – I look into the crystal clear sky and see Venus and Moon shimmering through my street trees. And for those with good eyes: can you spot the sun glasses hanging in the twigs? Look look 😉

One of my alltime nicest favorite Kreuzberg bars is the Würgeengel (El Ángel Exterminador, Luis Buñuel). It’s like a warm red hole that you can come to after a long days work. Meeting my brother. Having 2 glasses of delicious red wine. And what a bomb Berlin is right now, it’s pulsating with people from all over the world and we felt like a little eye in the hurrican because we’ve lived here for 20 years. Seen some changes. Call it home. (I grew up in the middle of Western Nowhere and I lived there only 19 years, ha!)
Unluckily the temperatures fell below 0 Centigrade and my bike lock froze. Had to wake it up with matches I always carry with me. Winter survival kit 😉

I love it when worlds collide. I had a late morning-coffee-date with Khani today at Biocompany (they sell organic food in Berlin supermarketwise, quickly growing, expanding. Smaller organic food stores die. Is the world that simple?) but we didn’t enter because the café was crowded with baby buggy pushing parents who allowed their breed to chose between 6 different sorts of croissants and made us feel sick so we preferred to go to the place where reality hurts: Kaiser’s Supermarket (directly @ Kottbusser Tor) with an inbuilt café where you get your coffee good and cheap from probably extremely exploited but extremely friendly and relaxed employees and can watch the outside world passing by which means noon beer drinkers and junkies and tourists and dogs and sometimes straying people from god knows where and neighbors. Sometimes it just feels good to be there for some time and watch them and like them. Especially on Christmas. Why? Don’t know.

I noticed a pair of sneakers hanging from a wire in front of Kaiser’s, reminding me of my Los Angeles days *sigh*, and the woman hanging there (not from a wire) told me there were 3 pairs 3 days ago. We wished each other a good day, she continued her day begging for money and I taking pictures.

Xmas night? I spent it with my very small very beloved very patchworky family at my brothers place and I guess we had a precious good time and a goose who had a good life before it was killed and good red Italian wine. Later when I went back home on the Underground I felt … good in Berlin. Love to y’all 😉

The Kottbusser Tor and the Making Of photo taken by Khani. Get your website ready!!

Music was my first love and it will be my last. This is a song I always remember. And a truth.
Party weekend! Saturday: The Milchbar (Milk Bar) in Kreuzberg hosted the fantastic „Oberkreuzberger Nasenflötenorchester“ – a bunch of guys with nose flutes bombing the house with nosy versions of „Eloise“ and other alltimefavorites. Incredibly rocking and rolling and shaking. One leading guitar, some electronic samples and 8 rocking guys with funny flutes. Sexy.

I was there with Khani and Nadine (who just came back from her 3 months job-stay in Heidelberg and celebrated with us her happy-homecoming feeling) and then we met Jule, an old friend of Khanis, who proudly presented us her „Kleinert-Splint“ at her hand (she had thrown some garbage in the garbage can, pressed it down with her hands not knowing about glass splinters and got her hand nerve cut and torn tendon … outch) – she had a 2 hours surgery (general anesthesia) and they repaired all they could repair and left her with that Kleinert-Splint which allows her finger to bend somehow. Looks cruel but very interesting!!
There’s a plastic thread stabbed through her thumb tip connected with the wrist joint …
This Kleinert magician guy was born as a farmers son in Montana, his mother pushed him supporting his career profession wish and he, well, read it here german and here english

Today, Sunday, different scene, different music, same soul 😉
Berlin-Köpenick, Schlossplatztheater, Les Gosses, a duo of two women, one singer (Frederike Haas), one accordeon (Sirid Heuts), sliding us down to Paris, down to Edith Piaf century, down to small leather suitcases, big love stories with sad endings, harbour ladies, travelling rapscallions.
Rapscallion! What a beautiful word! I learned it using leo.org to whom I want to say thank you by the way. And thank you too to those two Gosses /Gören / Ischen/ Brats for the power you gave me this evening, a very very dark day, the day before Solstice, / Equinox – the power of singing and the beauty of music and the esprit of survival.

I have a part time job in a publishing house, nice little island, share the room with a collegue. Lately there was a curious stinking cloud lingering in our room: vomit. Pure vomit. Disgusting. Where did it come from? Not me, not him, for sure. It took us a while to detect the spring: a Ginkgo fruit! Ripe, incredibly healthy, incredibly stinking. The Ginkgo tree is called „Duck Feet“ as far as I remember, in Japanese, because the leaves look like. Why do I tell you this story? I have no idea. Today was the first half-sunny day in an endless row of grey heavy dark days. I go nuts here :-O Berlin stinks but is a healthy alternative maybe. For now.

I think I can tell it right now even if it’s some more days to years end, this was the best concert of the year.

The LIDOin Belin-Kreuzberg hosted Giant Sand. “What is essential for music is the lower part of the whole body“ said Howe Gelb in the end of the concert and even if I don’t quote it 100%ly right right right right now (2 o’clock morning, 4 or 5 Astrabeers inside) I say I totally agree. And disagree because I love my brain and its vibes (upper part!) but it leads too long and far away reminding me (plus the 20 understanders) that I bet on the wrong horse 5 years ago … and again it leads me somewhere else (highways!) and back to the concert … dream audience! The place is gold, the time was more than right (Berliners! Need! Warm! Music! Now! Especially! With! Hot! Vibes! Inside!) I felt that each and everybody was there totally absorbing the music with an open heart. I never before experienced a concert before in my life with so much testosterone around me and I enjoyed my stay being not the oldest person around because the musiclovers started at the age of 50. Or 40. I felt young. Maybe I erase everything written here tomorrow.

Anyways.

Sunday night on my way to the best Pizzeria in town (Il Casolare, Grimmstr. 30) I saw two very big stars in the sky, one above the other, really fat, more like planets. I mean, stars are planets anyway, what a beautiful constellation, Andreas, stargazer, can you blog me a comment and tell me who they were???

Back in Berlin, riding on my bike through a park again, it’s dark and grey but I know: in 4 weeks the days will start to get longer again! Thinking about that I found a heart and I heard and saw hundred tweeting birds on a tree top!
Happy wintertime 😉

What I really begin to like about this WORM place is beyond other the beautiful bar.
They made everything from recycled material – I especially like the tables and chairs – and they got little chewing gum sacks (for spitting them out before drinking!)
So clever!

Second Workshop day – out door experiences! 4 groups on the tracks and traces of coincidence, finding things and filming their trip. To be processed tomorrow …
I went with Esther, walking. It snowed. At one corner we were attracted by kitschy organ music (Holland clichee 🙂 and found a half covered organ from at least 2 centuries ago playing joyfully for itself.
What will the others have found? Was coincidence playing with them? We’ll see …

The Worm isn’t only an inviter of short film makers but also a host of illustrious events such as tonight a bunch of guys presenting the Cassette Culture of the ex GDR (release of book+DVD) – very fascinating insight in the 70s and 80s underground of East German music.

And then, featherlike snow outside, warm synthesizers and red wine inside, there was Tarwater playing.

Somehow makes we want to be a hunter and collector of weird sounds. I’m quite sure that we’re going to set up a super 8 wabi-sabi band here on Monday …