I've been reading quite a lot as of lately. I'm striving to finish my bachelor's degree on Humanities this year, and I've been employing my sleepless time quite aptly, I'd say. Mostly about Wittgenstein, for an exam. Outside there's some mild snowfall, ensuring tomorrow the streets will continue to be as slippery as it gets. My main source of books here in Berlin is the main library of the Humboldt University, a huge concrete and wooden box of a building, not so different from the Pompeu Fabra University library, but more Kafkian, more post-modern and definitely more German. That is to say, security is observed militantly at German libraries compared to other places. You're not allowed to carry any sort of bags inside, and even stepping past the book return section with your coat on is forbidden, so you have to descend into the basement, place all your stuff inside the left-luggage locker and back into the invariably crowded lib.
Since I go there by foot usually, the soles of my boots are all muddy from the dirty snow, and I contribute to the general dirty state of affairs in the basement. I don't mean by this to make it sound like a shithole of a place, not at all... Au contraire. I'm really fond of it, and it's actually quiet enough considering how many people there tend to be. Inside the architects did something I can't describe quite well but which conveys a wonderful "mathematical" feeling,
here's a google link, in case you don't believe me. The guys don't look terrible either; I guess it's quite cool to be a HU student and affect this HU pose. Love it. Not my world yet, I'm still a guest in this tepid academic banquet but sometimes it's hard not to stare. The view from the windows is also amazing, the Friedrichstraße railway station with its roof covered with snow and ice, and the elevated S-Bahn trains coming and going. This is one of the busiest areas of Berlin (former East-Berlin, actually), which doesn't really mean much at all.
Berlin is not anywhere as stressful as any other major city in Europe, I think. It's a huge city, but really spread: so much that it actually feels empty quite often. Not a bad thing either, especially for those of us who enjoy walking around, even when it gets really cold. Here, by the station, next to a
sculptural group of dubious taste, one sees two dark metal plaques on the wall with the grim inscriptions "Züge uns Leben und in den Tod". Trains into Life and into Death. No shit. Berlin's historical memory, more often than not subtly approached by things like this, suggest all too well its spooky side. Its frivolous, Baudelairean feel is suddenly eroded, and even if it's still hard to picture how it all happened, some historical significance overcomes you, at least for a while, not for too long, because the cheerful frivolity of the city is unbeatable, I'm afraid, for all the ice and mud... Sorry. This same place served as an inner city, inner state international border between East Germany and West Germany.
It's quite surreal that the Berlin underground trains (U-Bahn, from Untergrundbahn) wouldn't stop by the border, but would go instead across it, and soldiers would stand performing their surveillance duties in the station, underneath the divided city. Urban, regional and even international trains from the Western Bloc stopped here, in the East, which served as a peculiar border crossing. My next book acquisition will definitely be Cees Nooteboom's
Berlin diaries, chronicling the city after the Mauerfall, from 1989 up to 2009... That's something I'm really looking forward to see, how this city became what it is now. I have my own theories but I want to see what Nooteboom has to tell about these twenty years. Of course the cover refers directly to the Berlin Wall, no matter how "fallen" it may look on it, but one here would have suggested the marketing department of Suhrkamp -the publishing house- something just as sellable, but more appropiate for the years ensuing 1989.
The Cold War is interesting, but in the end it turns to be kind of annoying. In more than a way this literal can of worms was the centre of the world, with so many international fears stored into a single place, but I find much more appealing its 21st century banality, it has always been there: you can sense it too. Someone should say something about it, maybe Nootbeoom does. And f I'm to follow my friend's advice to read translations because the German used is not that knotty, then tha should prove a good read to start the decade.
Saturday evening I went to the Arsenal Kinemathek with a good friend of mine. The occasion was "Rising Stars, Falling Stars", a regular event of this film institution, hosted by queercore big name and artist Vaginal Davis, who apparently lives here in Berlin since 2007. I was obviously really curious, and decided that my period of forcible ascetism should come to an end for good. The movie shown this time was Erdgeist, a Dutch film adaption of a popular play by Frank Wedekind which was, I must say, lots of fun to see. I was especially impressed by the actress who played Lulu, the main character: Asta Nielsen. I don't have the words to describe her, so I'll just post a picture here. She's... plastic enough to have played the role of Hamlet, apparently. Me, I've always drooled with the expressionist aesthetic, so I was more than happy. Here the elegance of the scenography, in really ductile chiaroscuro, is topped up by art déco interiors, a sober and really theatral reenactment of the original, the spirit of the roaring twenties, and a sense of humour I really didn't even expect. Vaginal Davis appeared came into the auditorium from the projection room, walking clumsily and looking as if just arrived from her husband's funeral. She advanced to the next row staring at people manically, and trying to reach for people's shoulders, muttering in a creeky voice "Are you my lover?". Everyone was terrified. Davis's second victim was girl who looked like Saffron from Absolutely Fabulous (or alternatively, like a certain poet I know...). They shaked hands and exchanged mortified looks. I was thinking about answering "yes" or "maybe" when in the end she seemed to go for us, and she what could happened, but she finally let us go. The young pianist, because yes it's a silent movie, and we needed one, looked really amused to be there -I think she was underage)- among such a bizarre crowd. There was quite a good stash of queers, natürlich, in all sorts, including the creepy man in a colourful suit that was sitting next to me (and who was far more attentive to me than to the movie). After the screening we moved to the foyer where it became clear that arthouse events are still a bit of a geeky thing, no matter how expensively cool people appear to be.
