– feeds your head
I’m sitting in the dark of a movie theatre, immersed in images, a depiction of a life lived in the century before this. Paintings, the talk of art and of life. Faded photographs mixed with images of paintings radiating with color. It’s a movie about Otto Modersohn, a German painter, made by his great-grandson*. A movie about his art, but just as much about his wives and their art. These women, their stories, they resound in me, touch me to the core of my being. Their desire, their longing, I can feel it. Their journal entries reach out from across the oceans of time and grab me. I am mesmerized. The past becomes alive. These women become alive.
His second wife, Paula Modersohn-Becker, a brilliant artist, more significant than her husband as the judgement of posterity would show. She wants to be free, she wants to live without the ties of a marriage, and he tries to meet her half-way. He let’s her go to Paris, let’s her leave their life behind. In 1906 that decision must have been more than radical, for both of them. But then he goes after her. Maybe it was a mutual agreement as stated in the movie, but when I hear the lines from her diary about her burning desire to be free and then the later realization that “she wasn’t made to stand alone” I can’t help but wonder. Was it resignation or maybe pity, or a combination of both, that made her ask him to come and join her? She gets pregnant and they leave Paris to go back home. She gives birth to a daughter and then passes away. What does that mean? I don’t know. But I know what it’s like to want to be free, to want to get rid of the emotional ties, the shackles of love that hold you prisoner in a life you don’t want to live. It hurts so bad. And sitting there in the movie theatre I can really feel her pain. The movie has me in a firm grip. I’m enchanted by all these stories, these women and their struggle to maintain the balance between society’s expectations and their own dreams. Read more of this post
Today has been one of those days when everything sort of almost works but not quite. Not one of those days that seem to be dedicated to in-depth explorations of the deepest dimensions of Murphy’s Law, just one of those days when everything, and I do mean everything, turns into a hassle. No matter what you do it ends up being more time-consuming, more stressful and not at all as easy as you anticipated. Things don’t go really wrong, but they don’t really go right either. Like a light version of Murphy’s Law. Read more of this post
I’m at that point in my life when people expect you to have a plan, or actually that you had a plan and that you’re pretty much there now, at the goal or at least closing in on it. As in done with your education and a few steps on in your career. And that you’ve started the obligatory family. Well, I’m done with my education but I don’t have a degree, I have just abandoned my second so-called career and I’m divorced. So I pretty much fail on all points. And yet, I don’t feel like a failure. I actually feel fine. Of course there are things I want to change in my life, there always is, but over all I’m confident that I’m indeed on the right track. To some people that statement is pretty much a declaration of my insanity, but I’m fine with that too. I accept that they have a different understanding of life than I do. I actually do have goals, but mine are a bit more vague. They don’t include a well payed job, a house, two cars, two kids and a flat screen TV. None of those things interest me. None. Not even the well payed job. I actually don’t want to be rich. Of course I don’t want to be poor, being poor sucks and I’ve had plenty of experience in that area, but all I really want is to have enough money to not have to worry about having a roof over my head and food on the table. That’s it. A place to stay and food for the day. No cars, no TV and no kids. I have been informed that this is not a socially acceptable approach to society. More than once. People often look at me with a twinge of pity in their eyes when I say this. Kind of like the way you look at the village idiot. “That poor fool.” Read more of this post
A new year. It always takes some time getting used to. For me at least. For the first few weeks I always write the wrong year on things. Which isn’t that big a deal, but it does function like a reminder that something has changed. And somehow it also makes it feel like something else should have changed, something besides the mere date. A new year, a new beginning. But on the other hand that makes no sense since the change is artificial. We have just all agreed that a new year has begun. According to our calendar this is now a new year. So has anything actually changed? In repercussive ways sure. New laws, new regulations, new taxation periods, new billing periods etc, but do all of these changes have an influence on the bigger metaphysical picture? No idea.
Sometimes it feels like it does. Like it actually does mean something on a more personal level too. And I’m not just thinking about new years resolutions. There is this certain sense of a somewhat clean slate. Like a new beginning of sorts. This could of course be a socially induced feeling, it most likely is, but does that mean that it’s any less real? If I feel like a new year is a new beginning, does that then mean that it actually is? Does my perception determine what becomes my reality? I suppose so. Read more of this post
I have spent the past 5 hours reading. Not leisurely browsing various online articles or skimming through a magazine but reading. Passionately. The kind of reading where you all of a sudden realize that the room is completely dark apart from your reading lamp and that you desperately need to go to the bathroom and haven’t had a cigarette for hours. That kind of reading. As a child I used to do this all the time, but the older I get the less I do it. Time issues I suppose. When you are a kid you have more time to get devoured by books. Or if it’s the other way around, I am not sure. Probably both. I also think there’s an element of sin to it as you get older. Like it would somehow be a waste of time. You are neglecting not only your bodily functions, but also your other tasks and duties when you dive into a book for hours on end. But seriously, so what? Considering all the time that’s wasted on watching TV in this world it seems strange that getting sucked in by a book for a couple of hours should be a bad thing. Reading is almost never a waste of time. I say almost, because I have wasted a number of hours on books in my days. Not many, but there have been times when I have felt like writing to the publisher to demand a warning text on the cover of the book. But mostly it’s not a waste of time.
I’m not sure if this is true for everyone, but in my world there is nothing that can capture me as a book can. Nothing. When I watch movies either my thoughts will start to wander or I will start improving the plot in my mind. I will do this either by just thinking about how the story could get better, or I will really think that the story is better than it actually is and get all excited. That’s when my best friend will usually shake his head and tell me that “no you’re just making the story better again. It’s not that complex”. And he’s always right. It never is that complex. But the reason I’m doing this is because I am bored. Read more of this post
I am greedy when it comes to art. Very greedy and very curious. If I like something I always want more. This presents itself in what can only be described as gluttony. I will devour everything the artist has done. Be it paintings, books or songs. I want to take it all in. I am not a collector in the sense that I need to own it all, for me it’s all about the experience. I don’t mind if I only have the music as mp3 or if I borrow the book from a friend or see a painting at a gallery. The important thing is that I do get to experience it somehow. All of it. Particularly when it comes to music and literature, my two biggest passions. There I will get completely obsessive. I will read all the books and listen to all the recordings that exist. I will dig my way through the entire body of work. Passionately. But not blindly. When it comes to art I don’t believe in unconditional love. Even the most talented people will do things that aren’t brilliant. And people develop. Sometimes in a good way, other times in a not so good way. Very few people manage to present a body of work that’s amazing all the way through. There are some, but they are not many. And of those, most are dead. Read more of this post
Some moments in life are weirder than others. Moments that just seem overloaded with symbolism and meaning, stand out like technicolor in a black and white movie. Scenes that just get etched into your retina. Like little clips you can play in your head again and again until you’re almost not sure if they are true, if it really happened like that, because it all just seems so surreal. Almost. Because reality is always stranger than fiction. And a lot more cliché.
I had a moment like that. Years ago. And that moment has been haunting me from time to time ever since. A moment so surreal that it really felt like being in a movie. A moment that had me looking for hidden cameras. At the time I was having a ridiculously complicated affair with this guy, a musician. And we’re sitting on a bench, in Paris of all places, talking about what to do with the mess that is our affair. Read more of this post
I am having one of those days where it feels like someone has replaced my brain with porridge. I have spent the better part of the day trying to write something that makes sense. So far it’s not working. I have been working on a million different things and I have made progress on none. My productivity has been zero. I have accomplished nothing. My focus is beyond bad. If I didn’t know better I would say I am hung over. It feels like it. But without the comfortable numbness. That sense of “I don’t care”. I don’t have that. Not at all. Read more of this post
Last night on my way home I ran into an old “acquaintance”. I hadn’t seen him since new years and I haven’t seem him in daylight since last summer. It was a very brief encounter on the U-Bahn platform and not much was said. But the one thing that struck me was that he had aged. He looked older. I could see that one year that had passed. It was nothing dramatic, just a few more lines here and there, but still a testimony to the passing of time.
It’s happening to me a lot these days. I run into people who I haven’t seen in a while, people my age, and it hits me that they have aged. Noticeably. I can see their age in their faces. Not in a bad way, it’s more like they for the first time actually have an age. Like just started happening. And for some reason that scares me a little. Read more of this post
I wish I had someone who took care of me. And when I say take care, I don’t mean take care as in nurture, I mean take care as in book that long overdue appointment with my taxman, clean up all the papers on my desk, do my laundry and paint my bedroom. Someone who could just take care of all the shit I never get around to doing until it’s almost too late. I need a life administrator, a personal assistant, someone to take care of all my bullshit. Someone who takes care of me and the mess I create. And yes, it does sound very much like wanting to have a partner or a parent. There are plenty of people who live their lives like that. But unfortunately I am not one of those people. Nor do I want to be. I was never really all that ok with having parents in the first place and the ones do I have are completely useless in all of the above areas. In fact, they would need the exact same assistance. And I suppose this statement could lead one to assume that my condition might have some sort of hereditary aspect, an assumption that could also very well be absolutely correct, but even if that is the case it doesn’t really bring me any closer the solution of my issue, so what ever. Plus, I am really way too old for parents. I need to look for the solution somewhere else. Read more of this post
jc.tryps 