Today I am going down to my favourite Berlin cafe to write. Last time I was there was four months back and I did not plan to be away so long. It was winter then and a homeless man came along the rows of customers to beg. He stood for some time reading over my shoulder, and when I looked round, he was nodding and smiling with glorious approval. He put his hand around me to scroll down so that he could keep reading. He put his index finger, seamed with grime in its peeling fingerless glove, up to my glowing little screen and almost touched it. He kept pushing his finger under the lines he liked, making little grunts to let me know he thought my writing was grand. I was so chuffed by him. The screaming espresso machine and the scraping of the stools and people chatting in German as they unwrap their croissants and unfold the thoughtful, liberal, kindly and independent German newspapers stacked in the corner are all sounds I have missed.
Tag: artist
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watching the sun set
Mum’s just taken Dad on an outing & waving goodbye to them I began to cry. Soon it will be the long goodbye. My Dad seems so cheerful and excited, sitting up in his passenger seat having been hoisted up by two of us out of the wheeling chair. The carer said he woke up this morning saying, “I have to get up! and get dressed! because today we are going to Jacob’s Well!” I was pining to go too but there is too much intricate and painstaking one-handed assemblage packing to do, for shipping to Germany. In between packing and finger X-rays I have rejoiced in the opportunity to serve, to be here and offer freshly ground espressos and little nightly shoulder massages where my Mum has torn her ligaments by helping haul Dad in and out of chairs; last night Dad’s hand took hold of mine on the guard rail of his hired hospital bed and was making little stroking movements that suggested to me a brand new notion. “Dad, is there any part of your body which might like a massage, too?”
“Oh,” he said, diffidently, “I suppose.”
“Maybe your hand?” I said, turning it very gently to palpate the withered meat. When I was done with that hand, his good hand, I said, “Maybe your other hand would like a bit of a rub, too?” And when I drew the clenched stricken left hand out from under the blanket like a miracle it had relaxed in sympathy, all the fingers spread flat and the palm as large as it ever was. I massaged the sweet curling poll of his head where perhaps he has never been massaged before. Dad closed his eyes and let his face unfold. I wish I could be here forever just offering these tiny daily services, these mutual favours. It uncrumples me to relieve his suffering. It filled my heart with heat when he said, three days ago after our first outing which was also to the seaside, “Darling could I have a cup of tea with honey and lemon, please?” Two months back he had to be fed sips of water from a spoon because his swallowing was so bad. This was the first time he had asked outright for anything to eat or drink since we all thought he would die, that night in Emergency. My mother that evening fell and shattered her hip, and they were lying two beds apart in the Emergency room at the hospital. My father said that if he had a heart attack or something else like that he did not want to be revived. Now he has revived, to a certain extent, all by himself. Or, via company. The companionship of the three of us in the house with this wonderful carer who is never too tired to bring him a fresh glass of milk when he calls into the baby monitor at three a.m. has latched him back onto life. The night after the voluntary cup of tea he had a friend visit who had come all the way from Sydney just to see them. It was the first time in all Dad’s friends’ visits I have heard his voice as much as the visitors’ voices, they had a spirited chat and then as it began to grow dark we asked Dad didn’t he want to come inside in case he got cold. “No,” he said, lying on the striped foam mattress on the cane couch which came back from Indonesia when we first moved here. “I’d like to stay out here a while. I want to watch the sun set.”
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pure new cold all over
It’s snowing! It’s snowing! It’s snowing! I came into a cafe going, It’s snowing, and she said, I know, and I said, But – it’s snowing! and then hours later walked out into the dark and under the golden lights every car wore a fresh crisp white bonnet, my old tears burst its banks, oh – snow.
In my cafe two fellows in black beards were drawing at a big round table and as the cafe closed two girls in long tresses came up to say, So? Are you drawing? They looked up, patiently. The girls were pretty and the boys kind. “So do you do this professionally? Or…”
Ah, yes. That tasteful first question, also asked of every dentist and every builder’s labourer – so how much do you get paid for that? The taller girl plumped her bag down on top of the nearer guy’s paints. She got out her phone. “May I?” Yes, he said, standing back so that she could take a picture of his work. Her friend said, Doesn’t it bother you, working in a cafe? Behind her packing up my laptop and my notebooks I answered for him, only quietly – the only thing that bothers me about working in a cafe is that people come up and interrupt, this has happened to me many times, someone actually waving their hand under my nose to get my attention so that they can say, Doesn’t it bother you working in a place like this, how can you concentrate?
Coming out into the fresh snow, unexpected and perfectly flawless just yet, I saw a man – let’s say a man – had drawn a huge erect penis on the rump of one of those anointed cars, cos some people don’t understand perfection. I could hear children cluttered round the corner shrieking in their snowsuits, that time of year! is here! so I put down the palm of my hand on someone’s bonnet to make a snow angel of five long fingers, marking: I too see this snowing time of year. This indoor landscape. Domain of families and gold. I too am here.
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everywanna’s an artist
Giggling to myself at what seems a very typical Berlin expatriate conversation I just passed. American accent. Eight uses of “I/my” within two sentences. One “I need to find,” one “animation,” one “my Dad.” Everywanna’s an artist. Hey I just made that up.
This week life has handed me lemons & I’ve made lemonade. Actually life didn’t hand me the lemons, I had to go out and buy them but on the Turkish markets they were very inexpensive. We’re having an unaccustomed heatwave in Berlin & das Limo tut gut. The tart citrus and slight sweetness seem to me so unsubtly symbolic, so refreshing, so true.
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drawing from life
Went to my first life drawing class in eight years. Boy, was that challenging. For one thing, the models were clad rather than naked and I had never tried to draw drapery before. Also, they were never still. The organisers of this local class had asked a hairdresser who operates across the road to bring his barber’s chair and give someone a haircut, on the dais, so that we could sketch them. He had mutton chop whiskers down the one side of his face and on the other temple the tattoo of a flame, which very much resembled a matching sideburn. When he took his shirt off for the longer poses people gasped. Rioting pin-up girls and 50s bathing beauties disported themselves on shoulders and back. I fingered my unpierced earlobes uneasily. How do people get up the nerve to do that to themselves?
Our barber seemed to regard tattoo decisions as some kind of impulse buy. He pointed out one and another that he had thought better of; one arm was almost entirely blacked over to rid him of some ‘tribal’ tatts he no longer wanted. He’s going to get it drawn over again with white ink. I didn’t know you could do that. His hair was immaculately waxed and the volunteer, once done, looked natty too. Gorgeous boys. I was drawing and drawing. Trying to get the hang of it. Remembering snippets my last teacher had told us: like, Don’t draw the outline, the outline doesn’t exist. Draw the bulk, the heft, the volume, the weight. Because we were seated in the round people ended up as backdrops in one another’s drawings. At the break everybody got up and circled, pointing out pieces they likes and taking photographs. Slowly it dawned on me some of our efforts would be mounted on the group’s Facebook page. Last time I drew, phones were not smart. Facebook didn’t exist. There was no one to hear you in space when you screamed with frustration at the immense difficulty of the line, that doesn’t exist, the weight and the heft, which must be almost felt as much as seen, and the flicking sound one’s eyes make reading the page and then the figure, the figure then the page.
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hipsteroid rage
The problem of hipsters. Nobody is one, yet everyone complains about them. It’s a bit like environmental damage: everybody thinks someone else needs to change.
I am listening to the couple at the next table lament how hip this neighbourhood has become. On this leafy street they can no longer find a seat, on a sunny Saturday, and it’s all because of hipsters. The woman has a chic-knotted green scarf and little red shoes. But that’s just the trouble: if I say, yeah, I wish I were cool enough to qualify as hip but sadly, I lack the raw materials… I come off sounding like I wanna be *too* cool ~ hip enough to not even care about not being hip.
Like my neighbours, I like a quiet street which is not too crowded with popularness. Yet I want the cafes to be good enough to draw such a crowd: Great coffee. Decent service. Music that doesn’t depress me. Essentially I am wishing failure & suffering on the businesses I claim to support: or partial success. “Emerging artist” status.
It’s like indie bands. One must discover a talent that is great enough to be worth a thorough listening; but not so great that it’s filling stadiums. Like infinite growth on a finite globe, this enterprise seems to me destined to failure. And failure is to hipsterism as stubble is to chic: a whiff of it, you’re a groovy artist. Too much and you’re under a bridge. Hipster or dumpster. It’s bloody brutal.
The other problem with hipness, or as I think of it, ‘atmosphere’, is it requires a willing peasantry. This groovy part of Berlin is enjoyable because of its mix of cultures and the picturesque and endearing ways that troubled souls, drug addicts and unorthodox people fill the streets with life. I don’t see any of these hipster-allergic folk wanting to move to the suburbs, or to genuine country communities where there may be very few artists. Other human beings serve as background scenery: a form of tourism. The scenery’s got to be grating enough to be ironic, to set the heroic Self free in bold, beautiful relief against its lesser-talented background. Like Park Slope.
