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Rambling: Sabotage, failure and quitting.

26.11.15
7 min
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I am not a quitter, which I’ve found out these years that is not something to take pride in. It just means that I will not actively make a decision to stop something that I clearly don’t want anymore, even if I haven’t consciously noticed and even when I have. And what’s worse is that if it’s falling apart, I’ll cling to it so hard till it hurts, till it’s shuttered into crumbles of what it once was. This goes for jobs, relationships, friendships, whatever. So I get tired of something but I won’t actively stop it. I will mess up, fuck up till some other person decides for me then try to hold on tighter and then, when there’s nothing left, release, feeling both sadness and joy. 

After 2 months of almost no sleeping due to exams and school projects, the day I can finally catch up with work, I get laid off. You know that day. You are sad, you feel like you failed but, at the same time, you feel so HAPPY. You’ve been released. But you are not supposed to feel happy, because what are you going to do now? So even when I have a hard time dealing with changes and letting go, even when I feel numb and sad, I know it’s good and that I’ll be fine. The mourning period is nice because you get to be curled up in bed watching old repeated Seinfeld and Friends episodes while you feel pity for yourself and you get to cook and bake what you like and catch up with Homeland. Being an Audiovisual Design student, it is normal to hear my friends go “Have you watched it yet? You HAVE TO. It’s amazing! Do it NOW, here, have my Netflix password, watch it!” and then I explain that there’s a long list of movies and pilots I have to watch for school, and sometimes, I don’t even watch all of that. So I spend a lot of months a year hoping for school to finish so I can choose what I watch, even if it’s Clueless or Mean Girls or catching up with Homeland or Silicon Valley instead of a Pier Paolo Pasolini film, which I also love, but sometimes I’m just not in the right mood for that. 

So where was I? Anyway, I finished my year with mediocre grades, no job, no nothing. Pure self sabotage. I am sort of an expert on that, because when you don’t actively decide to quit, you sabotage yourself till you have a clean slate to work with. As I told a classmate yesterday, even if I wrote that 20 pages script and its 20 pages analysis in 2 days without sleeping after 2 days of no sleeping due to a Sound I project, I really think I’m learning. And I am. Maybe I can’t quote Kierkegaard and Ansperger by heart, but I got it. Something that you learn at design school is to live without sleeping well for months and maybe not sleeping at all for almost a week and to do things fast. Especially because you are not getting paid but putting lots of money into it and need the rest of the time to do something that gives you the money to pay for that. Although sometimes it seems impossible to balance that and you get fired. Ha. But I clearly wanted to pass those classes even if it wasn’t with flying colours like the little nerd in me would have wanted and I clearly didn’t want that job anymore, therefore, my sabotage angel chose for me and did it right. Sabotage is only quitting in a non so active way. 

Something that I do a lot is define myself through failure. Imagine you get a job, get promoted, find the love of your life. I usually don’t tell, because, if I like someone I just think I’m gonna jinx it by telling everybody (and when I do is maybe a start on the self sabotage thingy) and if I get a job or good grades, as my dad always put it, is “something that you do for yourself and you have to do things right, that’s the normal thing to do, it shouldn’t be cheered upon”, so, all my As were normal and my classmates Bs deserved a Playstation. So I kinda learnt not to tell nor feel overexcited before something I achieved, but failing, that’s the not normal thing to do, and that’s the one I communicate. Which maybe, should be the other way round. Perhaps I’m just trying to show everybody that they can fail and they can be crazy and they’ll survive regardless. 

The silver lining to this rambling is that, yesterday, at this beer event at the lovely Plaermo Hippodrome, which I’ve never visited before because I live blocks away from the one in San Isidro, I was walking around, drinking, looking at guys and as I walked I crossed one that I liked and made eyes at him, then went straight to the toilet, where i was heading. When I got back, he kinda stopped me, we went for more beer and he told me he’d just return from San Francisco, hence the surf-y look. He reminded me of this surfer I hooked up with a few times. And I asked him what it felt like being back, he said he didn’t understand a thing, he was still jet lag and the city seemed strange. He asked me if I was stoned, which I was very much so: “Hence the sexy stoned eyes, disrupting all the square vibes here”, he said, we were on tune regarding the square vibes at the event, even if I look as bad (and as content) as Rihanna when stoned (I know we’d be great friends, RiRi). We were about to kiss. Then he started talking about how San Francisco is different because, for example, Argentinian DJ Hernán Cattaneo went to play there a few dates and “by the fourth night, we were calling each other’s names when we saw and greet each other, it’s all really chill and cool like that”. And the spark was gone. I felt judgy, because I think that doing normal things with someone famous is nothing extraordinary or to take pride in. I get it, part of the flirting, maybe, maybe it was just a comment, anyhow, I wasn’t up for it anymore. I felt like a bitch, maybe I was being one and I also felt what I’ve heard many times before, that “nothing is good enough for me” in a bad way. So I would try to be cool and keep talking to him, and then a friend came and hugged him and they started talking about his trip and decided that it was a perfect time for me to leave, which, before, I wouldn’t have, I would’ve stayed. So that whole “nothing is good enough for you” shit is bullshit. You start thinking it yourself as well, but it is not like that at all, when it isn’t right, it just isn’t right. So yesterday I learnt how to actively quit, even if it was a small insignificant thing. 

Julia Zange
People

I first met Julia through her clone, who was stalking me on Facebook. Then she called me an angel. When we first met in person in summer, I was wearing all white and she was drinking alcohol-free beer. I asked her to do 60Hz together, so now we have a radio show every Monday at 7pm on Berlin Community Radio, with Georg and Armen. For a long time, and still today, it is unclear what Julia does not do. She is an actress, she writes novels, she has a female dog named Henry, is an absolute natural in doing the medleys for our radio show, and when we first said goodbye to each other, we invented a word: Sturzbetroffen.

Aman Sethi
by
Shuddhabrata Sengupt
People

Aman Sethi carries with him a compass that makes it possible for him to identify the magnetic centre of any reality before him. Neither the dross of received wisdom, nor the fool’s gold of pretended insight detains or harries him.  I have met Aman in the insurgent forests of central India, on basketball courts in South Delhi, on balconies across the Yamuna, in secret libraries, dives, bars, dinner tables, kitchens and nondescript street corners. But in all his travels, in all his attending to distractions and delusions, I have never met Aman far from his own still centre. In Aman, that is a silent place, a place of listening, memory and fine toned analysis of fables and foibles. It is a place where I have found a wry, tough compassion and a febrile anger that never gives way to rage. It is what anyone who writes the first draft of history must have.

colossus

"Let's Change": Cybotron - Colossus (1978)

24.11.15
2 min
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So this time I’m not the one writing but only both translating and introducing my friend Cristian. He is a live music encyclopedia and the one we all look at at any gathering when we are in need of great jokes and a good intense laugh. He is a really honest, fun, smart and humble guy… He is really punk-rock in that way, which is what punk-rock was about to me when I was a teenager and we were all into punk, and what is still about nowadays, if you ask me. He is really special like that. I’ve been nagging him for a long time now about starting a radio show, but at least I got him to write a few lines. 

Agostina Rufolo

—–

Monday.

“Let’s Change” (Translation of the name of the party that won the presidential election on Sunday in Argentina, “Cambiemos”)

We all love space-rock, we talk about Hawkwind, UFO, Gong, Pink Floyd, even Kraftwerk? Or Neu?, CAN?!, etc…  I think there are a few more progressive rock bands of “solar” high-flying not recognized by the genre “fans”, but, why not consider Cybotron? From Australia, these guys, apart from being a leading influence and pioneers of the first electronic music wave, they also express vibrant and catchy melodies filled up with space trip, taking any listener to the best sci-fi story, more complex and progressive, full of electronic sounds.

Maybe now with all that stoner rock frenzy and XXI century style progre-psychedelia with long instrumental passages (which I support a lot) and all that, some of you will take my words into consideration and try to give these not really known “mosters” from kangaroo continent a chance.

I leave you to their third record.

“Colossus”, 1978.

Cristian Ch

Doesn't have to be a stranger

22.11.15
6 min
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Quite a hectic day. Biked towards my friend’s recording studio. And as I did, I saw a falcon standing on the Hippodrome’s fence. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I’ve always seen a few flying really high on the sky but never had a bird of that size so near me. I went really near him, gazing in that regal pose. Some species are incredibly sexy like that. I wish I had a phone to take a picture. #NoFilter #Falcon #Regal #Blessed. But felt lucky that I didn’t ruin the moment taking a picture. I went as near as my fear allowed me since seeing the size of his peak freaked me out a bit. Hoped I could have him as a lovely pet, flying around, then I would walk outside to my garden and he’d fly toward my arm an stand there, being beautiful as I caress him. I don’t know why I assume it was a he, because I have no idea, really, but it seemed pretty masculine, although that’s bullshit. If it was a she, she was fierce and hot yet sweet, much more than Beyonce will ever try to be. I kept going on my bike and arrived to the studio. My classmates were late, so we chilled and talked about the future for a while. The future is somehow always present among 20 somethings. We always talk about “our plans for the future”, but is always the near one; trips, living abroad, plans while living abroad, further education, getting a bachelor degree or just drop out half way through because the 4 years program the public uni suggests is completely unrealistic and then you spend a decade studying (including finals), ideal jobs… I think it’s good that marriage is not a plan for a certain age, but something that happens. Love is something that happens. Maybe. Someday. Hopefully.

Then my classmates arrived and I had to leave for 2 hours to my last dance rehearsal. Which I was kinda pissed about since my position in many of the choreographs has been changed many times. So I have to focus on remembering every little detail changed instead of concentrating on smiling and enjoying myself at the last rehearsal ever with this professor. Then biked back the 40 blocks to the studio again, in my dance clothes which consisted on fuchsia stockings, black legwarmers, a really short black skirt and a Ramones top. Going for what would be now 12 Km. on my bike after 2 hours of dancing, I felt with more energy than ever during that day, which is why I can’t ever stop dancing or I’ll die. Just like sharks not being able to stop swimming (which is something else I cannot quit). Arrived to the studio and had an incredible afternoon recording Foley. During which, I found out about the Paris attacks through a DJ I know announcing she was OK but of course the party was cancelled. I find it as a really unfortunate coincidence that today I uploaded a picture wearing a headscarf my dad brought me from Morocco, which is so colourful and lovely. Not appropiating culture but celebrating it, I was almost ready for the Sahara. And then I chose undies that had a poodle and the Eiffel tower which says “Paris” on the front and “Oh la la” on the back. Not funny, but, as I said, an unfortunate coincidence. Not implying at all a headscarf makes you a terrorist, more like the kind of associations ignorant people make. I really hope this doesn’t backfire against refugees all over Europe, but it most likely will some way or another. 

After smoking a bit with my friend at the studio and talking about politics, Argentina facing this crazy ballotage where I can’t vote for neither candidate nor party. One being right-wing, the other being right-wing disguised as left. So I’ll do the teenager thing to do and will put a paper with the anarchy symbol written on it. Even if my friends have been nagging me for weeks trying to convince me to vote the one they go for. Everything seems like a football match here, parties being the respective teams.

I started heading back home, amazing night to be on a bike. Bought a 1/4Kg of ice cream at my fave of the area, and also really cheap, Arnaldo. Chose 3 flavours: Tramontana (cream, little cereal balls covered with chocolate and dulce de leche, which I always ask little of because I find it too sweet and ruins it), Tiramisu (like the dessert, one of my faves) and Marroc chocolate (bitter chocolate with little pieces of an Argentinian candy made with chocolate and peanut cream). I decided to buy a burger since there’s a new Burger King. Looked for bike parking with no luck so just left it tied to a post. Security guard stopped me and I told him I did look for it but couldn’t find it and that I wasn’t staying long. He was super nice and let me go.

Burger King cashier: “I love going home after a workday because I feel I did things right.” It was weird to hear that coming out of a fast food place cashier, which made him adorable. I returned home, happy to finally be there, happy that I was about to eat. And the burger was the wrong one. Why didn’t I check? I always check. I was STARVING. So I took a bite anyway because there was no way I was hopping on that bike again without food in my system and headed back. Then when I had to complain about my burger being not the one I asked for he was not working anymore, the cashier was having dinner with workmates, but came towards me anyway and said sorry like a zillion times while he detailed everything the new ones were doing wrong. I asked him if he felt like going back inside there and do it himself. He said he wanted that badly. Then added “My shift is over, but I’d help you anyway, anytime”. I kinda wanted to hug him. I looked at him and I almost hug him. But restrained myself because it would’ve been weird. It felt really nice having a stranger stopping whatever he was doing (which was eating in this case, after a long day working, something I wanted to do so badly) to take care of me. I guess it’s nice when someone takes care of you, doesn’t have to be a stranger.

Paris-IMG_4249

Le Petit Cambodge

Georg Diez about about José Lira and the Paris Attacks
18.11.15
7 min
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I was in Paris, again, like ten months ago. Then it was Charlie Hebdo, now it was Bataclan, the Carillon, La Belle Equipe, Le Petit Cambodge. It was places people go to when they want to have fun, when they want to meet people, when they want to live.
One person who really impressed me in these days that I was there was the Brazilian architect Jose Lira. I met him through Patrice Maniglier who edited a very good issue of Les Temps Modernes about Islam and the State. Jose was at Le Petit Cambodge when the shooting began, he was sitting at a table outside.
Here is what he wrote: 
“These are the times when we are at a loss. We don’t know what to do, what to think, I don’t know what to say, but many friends have written to me, concerned, all the terrible news coming from Paris are amplified through the distance, also thanks to the awful tone of news media, resounding with a public that likes tragedy, blood, fear. There was even someone who made up that a Brazilian architect had died in the attacks… I write to tell you that I am well, and to share a little bit of what I am feeling. Perhaps this might help you and me think some more, perhaps feel more closely what happened. I still have not been able to read much about what happened, and I confess that I am shocked by the way the news are treated, in a way that is sometimes too abstract, sometimes too sensationalist. The fact is that I cannot forget the fragile but serene gaze of the victims by my side yesterday evening.
I had spent a blissful Friday afternoon in the company of two former students from the School of Architecture at the University of São Paulo; soon other friends, almost all of them Brazilian and architects, joined us. We decided to have dinner at the Petit Cambodge, a delicious restaurant, in a vibrant, youthful part of the 10ème. At around 9:30, when we were almost done eating, the shots began. We were eating at a sidewalk table, the sound of the machine-gun was very close to us, I saw sparks on the other side of the sidewalk. I swear I first thought those were fireworks, perhaps part of a performance in this neighborhood so full of artists and irreverent people, and I thought it was odd that everyone got up and started running. How extreme! But the shots wouldn’t stop and began to hit all the dishes and bottles all around, and impulsively I joined the flow of people who were running from the restaurant to a grocery store next door. Once in there, I realized that only two of my friends were there; we didn’t know where the other five were. Back inside, there were about twenty of us, and no one had any idea about what had just happened. One of my friends was bleeding, perhaps from glass shards on his forehead.
Ten minutes later, the firemen arrived and we left; then came the police, as always truculent and insensitive. The scene was indescribable. A Holocaust at the level of those back in the day in Cambodia. I didn’t know where to look, there people on the ground, groups of friends comforting the wounded, people crying, some people already dead lying alone, others almost dying. We were looking for our friends. I saw one of them on the ground, assisted by her French friend, also covered in blood. I approached her. A beautiful young woman, her body so small, her skin so fine, very wounded, who spoke to me serenely in Portuguese: “I need to get out of here, I need to get to a hospital.” We tried to comfort her, to embrace her, to stay by her side while waiting for the medical help that had not arrived yet. The firemen helped her with oxygen and a blanket, but they did not know who needed the most help, they did not know what to do.
Two other friends appeared, in good shape, and took us to one of my former students, an amazing young man, a person from the most precious kind, who was splayed inside the restaurant. He was very hurt, but conscious, my friends surrounding him, helping him as we could, while he kept repeating with us that he would stay strong. Once in a while I trembled, I begged for medical help, I glanced to one side and the other and was met by the serene gaze of the other victims, perhaps the only people who, partly in shock, partly in the humble or resilient manner of vulnerable people, observed all that movement like angels, waiting, processing, looking at the world from up high, perhaps, more than us, stunned by this world which each day becomes more terrible, more intolerant, more filled with hate, with ressentiment, with fear, with despair. I could not move to help the others, the men, the women, their bodies so fragile, more or less wounded, with their eyes attentive to everything that was happening. We were magnetized by the single goal of saving our friends, and the firemen and the police still not knowing whom to rescue first, who was in worst shape, telling us all the time: “There are 10 dead, there are 20 dead, there are 40 wounded, patientez!”
I will not get into this issue now, but it is very strange to see so much security, so many military and police on the streets of Paris, and so little preparedness to deal with the eventual victims of what they most fear. I will not get into this, because I just want to tell you that what really concerns me, and increasingly so in life, is the feeling in the singular, the pain in the singular, people in the singular. Something so hard to convey, to share, as we know; and also (and not only) for this reason so ignored by the analyses, the news, the leaders, their technicians and technologies, by the aggressors, by people and groups, accustomed to speaking of tens, of hundreds, of thousands. I don’t speak of their personalities, of whether they are intelligent or not, cool or square, happy or not so much, successful or frustrated. But I speak of their bodies, their pain, the look in their eyes, their frailty, their smallness, our skin that tears so easily, our bones that break, really, our organs that sometimes fail, our breathing, labored sometimes. Our voice that murmurs, whispers, whines, talks, asks for help if needed, when possible, our bodies which collide, can’t move, can support other bodies, comfort them, protect others at risk, run when threatened, our kind of automatic reactions that proclaim all the time: “I want life,” I want to preserve life, this potency of feeling, acting, thinking. So brutalized today.
But what I wanted to say is that five Brazilians, among them myself, did not have their bodies hit by shots. Our two friends underwent surgery and are recovering. We are all together. Their fragility and their strength, their serene and vulnerable gaze, their delicate way of saying “I feel pain, I don’t, here, please help me,” all of this will make a difference. Because life does not wait. We will go back to Brazil soon. And well. To this Brazil that has given us so many signs of intolerance—religious, ideologic, ethnic, politic, moral, gender intolerance. But, after all, our home. Thank you for your concern!”

Western and Provinz

16.11.15
60 min
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60hertz

Sissi Tax is world famous in Styria, particularly in Köflach, where she was born in 1954. At the same time, she claims that wherever she is is a province. In her poems and books she explores those far provinces of language (especially of the umlaut, the society for the preservation of which she founded herself) and the mind, and besides writing numerous books, working as a prolific translator, and being the most „Stamm“ of all guests of Paris Bar ever (half the waiters are her adopted sons), she has been a contributor to 60pages, writing about films. With Julia Zange and Paul Feigelfeld, she discussed some of her older and some of her newer writings, dialects, accents, umlauts, Western movies, and much more.

Glücksfall

16.11.15
1 min
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Sein warmer, klagender Gesang stieg auf, breitete sich aus, wogte aus der menschenleeren Gasse der beiden grauen und klotzigen Kaufhäuser zwischen die er sich, gegen eines scheu gelehnt, gestellt hatte und legte sich auf die nebelige und herbstkalte Einkaufsstrasse auf der früh morgens die ersten Menschen noch schlaftrunken aber eilig vorbeizogen. Als dieser Klang den Körper erreicht hatte, schwoll ein süss- dumpfer Schmerz, stach dann in die Lunge, der Atem blieb stehen, augenblicklich süchtig geworden wandte der Leib sich betäubt, aus sich heraus tretend der Musik zu, tappte betört, langsam und magisch hingezogen auf sie, so wie sie aus diesem Mann und seinem Akkordeon quoll, zu. Wie ein Hall, ein Rückschlag, schlug die Musik vom Gesicht als Druckwelle kommend gegen die hintere, innere Schädeldecke und drückte bei ihrem Weg nach vorne zurück säuerlich rieselnde Tränen durch das Gehirn, durch die Augen wieder hinaus. Ein Abschiedslied, dieser gewaltige Klang an die ferne, unmögliche Heimat in dieser kalten und einsamen Gasse und Stadt. Langsam schlichen sich neugierig ein paar ältere Männer an ihn heran, schüchtern, hin zu seinem heilenden, versöhnlichen Gesang.

On Refugees

11.11.15
7 min
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Conversation

Dear Aman,

I visited Lageso again today. That’s what they call the official post in Berlin where refugees have to register. Landesamt für Gesundheit und Soziales [Office for Health and Social Affairs Berlin], abbreviated as Lageso.

Like Pegida. Or Hogesa. It’s been an autumn of abbreviations with six letters. Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident. That’s what one is called. And Hooligans Against Salafists.

These are the scary six-letter-groups that have changed Germany. Especially Pegida, who march through Dresden every Monday and are getting more and more radical. They carry signs that say “traitor” on them and have a gallows with them that they hold ready for Angela Merkel.

And yesterday I happened to read two columns that spoke of a “putsch” against Merkel. This is the mood in Germany at the moment. Just as The Economist is calling Merkel a model European, which isn’t true either, CDU politicians and political journalists in Berlin with bite reflexes are working to push Merkel out of office. 

But what for? And why?

Back to Lageso. I was there for the first time in the end of summer. The people there were quiet, they were tired, they had made it. They were in Germany. There were about 400 people, I’d say, that were waiting to get a number, with which they’d continue to wait to get an appointment to make an application, which they then had to wait again to have processed.

That was strange to begin with. Even in Berlin, where a lot of stuff doesn’t work, an airport for instance, that’s supposed to cost 5.4 billion euros instead of 1.1 billion and may never be finished.

Is this Germany, some of them asked, the country where everything works and is on time according to cliché?

Is this Germany, many asked, when they saw the images of Lageso a few weeks after I was there, in late-September, early-October?

They were images of dismay, images of desperation, images of distress. “This is worse than in Turkey, worse than in Hungary,” said a Syrian refugee. “If I had the money, I’d go back.”

I was there one morning to behold the scene. Five thirty. Darkness. The shaded forms can be seen from a distance. They’re standing on the street, ten, 20, 200, more. Men on one side, women, children and families on the other.

The door opens at six. The people make a dash for it to secure the best place, they want these numbers, they need these numbers, it’s all about numbers. As if in the 21st century they couldn’t regulate everything online that isn’t working here. Every morning the same scenes, ambulances driving off with the injured of the mad scramble.

Maybe it’s not supposed to work. There are stories of corruption in Lageso, there are stories of violence against refugees by security guards, there was a boy, Mohamed, who got lost in the chaos and was only found weeks later, abused and murdered.

“We will manage,” that’s what Angela Merkel said. The help and the openness of a large share of the population reflect this.

“We won’t manage,” that’s the mood that they spin, the media, the politicians. Images like the ones from Lageso are useful for demonstrating that it isn’t working.

The chaos is produced synthetically, so it often seems, so some say. The chaos shows we won’t manage.

And that was the point at which I had to cringe for a second when I read your mail. I thought, yes, you’re right, yes, that’s the view that I wanted to present, forms without dignity, without civilization. That’s the image that should be generated, because it can be manipulated to dehumanize the refugees, to reduce them, make them into an abstract quantity, into a number.

I wanted to present this mechanism to you. And I realized all of the sudden, that this sight, this point of view, this thinking has made a greater impression on me than I thought.

You talk about the state, the nation, the framework that the Europeans gave to politics – and you talk about it critically.
You say that it’s old thinking, that it’s dangerous thinking. And you’re right.

“What the Left has missed, is the utopia of internationalism,” my friend Nils recently said at lunch. If you believe in the nation as a solution for anything, then you’ve already lost.

But why did it sound for you like that’s what I wanted to suggest? Or did I even say it that clearly?

Alternatively: The state, the way it currently exists, may actually function better than the supranational constructions, the EU for instance, which degrades into egoisms.

Aman, how do you see an ideal order? What do you see for the future? What can Europe learn, from India, from other parts of the world?

What Europe is going through right now is a renationalization not only of thought, but also in politics. Egoism. Pop-psychological conjecture. Old role plays.

It is horrible. It’s as if you were to break through the base and realize that there’s no net, nothing to stop you and hold you up.
Is the continent breaking up again right now in front of our eyes? Sometimes it seems like it. The dramatic part of this is almost less, as you rightly say, that it’s breaking up, which is dramatic enough – the really dramatic part is that there’s a thought vacuum, a perplexity in policy, which you observed from a distance very well and precisely and better than I did.

In a certain sense you caught me. You noticed something in me that I don’t want to see. I consider myself to be outside of a world of thought that only talks about “self-defence” and “invasion” and “measures.” They just decided that Syrian refugees will only receive a provisional admittance and that there families in Syria won’t be able to join them here, where they would be protected.

They should remain amidst war, in distress and in misery. How can a country overcome this moral blemish? This kind of decision?
But am I myself so far removed from this policy? In your words a self-evident utopia appears, one that I’m missing. With the relentless news reports here it’s hardly possible, it seems sometimes, to lift your head up and regard the situation clearly and to see yourself in this scenario, one character among others.

You spoke of Abdul, who is a mentch, as my friend Igor would say, Yiddish for a person of integrity; he is a musafir, that’s what you call him, and it’s good that you told me about him, because of course there’s dignity in him, there is beauty and there is liberty in him.

But we want to see the people that are coming as weak. We want to see them as a mass. We also arguably want to see them as degraded, to whom we can give back some dignity out of our good graces.

We, we, we.

Who is this we?

It’s an awful train of thought you’re referring to. It’s an extremely Western, European, German view. It’s the egoism of colonists. It’s the white man’s burden, again and again.

Abdul, the mystery, the man that crossed the German-Swiss border in bright cycling gear, who was happy here and then again not, because happiness is an attribute not a condition. This Abdul that disappeared again, who knows where to – this Abdul is existence in the emphatic sense.

Not in this pitifully threatened, threatening tone, which is used when talking about the mass of refugees, as beings who remain in the minority in their passiveness.

A person is most dangerous, so it seems, and also most normal in what he or she does. Free and self-determined.
This person is the threat. For any order.

Thank you for showing me that again with Abdul’s story.

It was very quiet again today in Legaso by the way. I’m going to try and find out why it was like that today and what changed. And I’ll report back to you.

Sincerely yours, as always,

Georg

How we would have met in real life

09.11.15
6 min
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  • Thank god not everybody lacks of sense of humour on Fountayne Road…
  • Haha I thought it wasn’t a joke at first but, as I’m a cat person, I got it was a joke, he was just a comfy furry ball there on a cloudy blanket. Although I don’t live in Fountayne Road, no idea who added me there, but I liked the group so I stayed.
  • Haha, so you just look for cat pictures on the page.
  • No, I just enjoy nice posts and think if i’d rent the rooms you guys post.
  • Are you looking for a room?
  • No, I think I’m going to Berlin after all. Was thinking about Stockholm before, but I was kinda looking for a while, yes. Now I’m in Buenos Aires.
  • Ah, bad choice, London is the best.
  • But so expensiiive
  • True but true…
  • Haha I’ll go visit
  • Well let me know, I’ll introduce you to the cat!
    I see you know Blair, he’s my neighbor.
  • Yeah, I don’t remember how, though. Very weird how I ended up in that group.
  • Facebook is so funny.
  • INDEED. But if it wasn’t via FB we would all connect the same weird ways somehow.
  • Well without my stupid cat joke and someone randomly adding you on that private and selective group I don’t really see how. I guess you’re an artist if you want to go to Berlin.
  • Maybe we bumped into each other somewhere or if it was on the internet maybe a forum or chat room. Haha no, I’m kinda sick of artists right now. I’m a writer, but I don’t know, also studying Audiovisual Design. Maybe I am an artist or want to be one. Fuck. But I also translate and subtitle, that’s so not artsy.
  • :) Subtitle is cool.
  • And write for magazines. Yeah, it’s incredibly tiring though.
  • How would I watch my hacked movies without it…
  • Right! I “volunteer” for this art site that uploads art documentaries and the volunteers subtitle them to Spanish. It’s a pirate site. So yeah, translators… We are really charitable.
  • Yeah, modern slavery for art. What’s the site? I’m interested.
  • Haha no, I think it more like passing and sharing the culture to people who don’t understand Damien Hirst’s bloody accent. Lalulula.tv is the site.
  • Well I don’t understand Damien Hirst’s art so getting his accent would be a good start…
  • Hahaha I do love the shark at the Met, though. But I love sharks.
  • And cats.
  • Now I’m subtitling one about Olafur Eliasson. And cats too and bats and spiders and snakes. And red pandas.
  • Oh bats are so cute!!!
  • Yesss
  • Haha bloody cute animals on internet.
  • Haha yeah. Anyway, lalulula.tv is a great site.
  • It looks like. I will check.
  • Well, it’s English with Spanish subtitles only.
  • Now I’m trying to imagine how we would have met in real life.
  • I kinda always think about that regarding people I’ve met on the internet.
  • You would hear me in a gallery telling a joke about a dead cat to my friend. You would take it seriously at first. Be sad.
  • And think about my dead cat River Phoenix and be sad, yes. Then keep drinking to try to get loose and not be sad.
  • Then I would tell you it’s a joke and you would be mad at me.
  • Would I?
  • Then I would tell you My Own Private Idaho is one of my favourite movies.
  • Depends on the joke, but I don’t think so.
  • And you would forgive me haha.
  • Of course.
  • And you would invite me for a dulce de leche.
  • Because it is a great movie! And my cat had this amazing name. I’m not so fond of dulce de leche… too sweet… but the one from Uruguay is better.
  • Good choice! I’m from Brazil, in a little city North East they have a very special one made with fresh milk directly coming from the cow.
  • Really? Where? My great grandmother was from Rio Grande do Sul.
  • Rio but the city is called Ipira in Bahia.
  • Nice.
  • Oh so you’re almost Brazilian :)
  • Hahah we could say, I like that.
  • :)
  • Have you  ever been here?
  • Where?
  • Buenos Aires.
  • No, I almost did 3 years ago to visit an old friend of mine. We used to play in the same band. But it was too expensive. Shame.
  • Oh shame indeed. What band?
  • It was called Alleph.
  • Nice
  • After the book from Jorge Luis Borges.
  • Yeah, got the reference.
  • Now my friend plays in a band called Morbo y Mambo. Do you know them by any chance?
  • Oh I love that band! Saw them at TRImarchi Graphic Design Festival in Mar del Plata. Great guys.
  • Oh cool
  • Who is your friend?
  • Manuel. But it was more than 10 years ago and so brief…
  • Aguilar?
  • The bass player. Yeah. You know him?
  • Not really, by friends in common but yeah.
  • That’s so crazy. Thank god for that cat.
  • Hahahah. See? But I don’t have him on FB, I just know him from events.
  • Don’t ruin it, say you know him, say it’s your childhood friend!
  • Hahaha I have 162 mutual friends on FB with him.
  • WTF!!!
  • Haha yeah a lot.
  • Just how many Facebook friends do you have? I only share 95 with my closest friend and we basically moved to the same countries almost at the same time and you share 162 with someone you don’t know.
  • I have like 1500 friends.
  • Wow…
  • Yeah I know. Comes with working at magazines.
  • Ah yeah OK makes sense. Have you ever sorted your page and unfriended people who you didn’t remember?
  • Yeah but what happens is that the first ones to appear are the ones I do know then I get tired and I don’t delete anybody.
  • So, to change the topic, are you writing?
  • Oh yeah, I mainly write personal stuff at the moment. Really short, I can’t write long for now.
  • Is it fiction?
  • No.
  • So purely your experiences.
  • Exactly. That’s what I can write about lately.
  • Interesting.
  • Is it? You can say if it’s rubbish.
  • No I haven’t read yet :)
  • Great haha.
  • Interesting the idea of writing experiences. Choose the ones you will talk about.
  • Yeah, not that I choose too. It just happens.
  • Haha so you just write whatever happens to you?
  • No, it’s just whatever comes out as writing. Sometimes I write in my mind but don’t write it down.
  • I had that since a few weeks. Well I guess our meeting is worth writing about ;)
  • It is, I will write about it.

Rambling: Sabotage, failure and quitting.

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Glücksfall

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How we would have met in real life

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