"k is for kafka"

One vote for sex kittens.

I think what I said before was agreeing with what Abigail has said. Or I wanted it to. And I also agree with Alex, that both prompts and challenges are good things. They might even be similar. What I was disagreeing with, then, was this making-explicit of the theme. I think the theme should be glowing, nebulous, elusive, allusive, conducive, amorphous, morpheus, ephebus, etc. alles klar?

baby strollers used by icelandic mothersÆ
1.) techno
2.) suv
3.) vintage
4.) any combination of two or three of the above
5.) hot wheels
6.) glow in the dark
7.) 5.) and 6.) combined (seriously)
8.) chic (cannot be combined with 9.))
9.) tricycle (cannot be combined with 8.))
10.) moonroof
11.) geothermally powered (just kidding)

jl

Neasa
weirdly, i thought of beat in tandem with aelx, but it was because i was in the fantastic irish fast food chain answer to mcdonalds, eating extra spicy "tasty chunks" (i am not joking) and listening to the music at 1.30 in the morning and trying to figure out what it was:

jungle beat!
no...mangue bit!
beat.
like the police on the street.

oh fuck, there's also beet.
beat like in the music, like in a race, like the vegetable...beat it! beat up.

the sun does not beat down on me very often here in belfast.

and what about the suggestion of not mentioning the theme, or the word of the theme, anywhere in the issue? and having people suss it out on their own?

i liked the rockstars theme, but then i thought about all the wasted press that goes to these goddesslike people, and the fact that they're venerated sometimes far too often, and that we can do something that's different from that. which may or may not mean more press for them.

(i also initially liked decay but then was swayed by the discussion that it was a bit heavy as a theme, especially after the future, which was heavy enough.)

what about kittens?

neasa

Alex

The idea is that issue two (one?) will have an audio component, such as a cd (or tape or piano roll?), so recordings would be wonderful, any way you can make them. Interviews, found sounds, stomach noises, original music, unoriginal music, beats, men-on-the-street, concerts, megahertz, whatever.

beat: rhythm hit hurt poems win defeated pulsate masturbation bafflement vegetable (Beta vulgaris is the name!) waves...prisoner abuse.

Abigail

Remember how you picked up handful after handful of different stones at the beach, wet and slippery, that one a little purple? Well, not anymore. Yesterday they cloned the first stone, says the radio: it is fine for skipping over still water, small, round, as if contracting its surface, as if keeping something back. It has seemed impenetrable, said Dr. Lars Schneider, for years and years we worked on this rock and often it seemed we would never get inside, never harvest its plans and directions for its assembly. Tonight the lab is empty while everyone celebrates at the bar across the street. But there's still work, they say, tracing the ancestry of rocks, broken from mother stones and sea-tossed old.

okay, so here are just some of the things i'm thinking about generally as i do not understand what the theme is and i'm sure will think differentlý when i hear what you and everyone else are plotting:

angels, & berlin, himmel über and all. okay, that's just the constant background noise in my head.

cole swensen. no wait, that's for school, maybe.

okay, some book artists to write about / contact & interview:
- johannadrucker. she does theory.
- lee scott macdonald. he makes papermaking equipment.
- the mobilivre people.
- one of the '13+' european artistsbookartists. check out livresdesartistes.com. especially unica t, this now defunct collective of four women: "unica t is a fictious person making real books." now these women are working on usus (boatbook.de) and the tloen encyclopedia (tloen-enzyklopaedie.de)
- but why am i so stuck on books? have to think sounds. okay, how about:

these theoretical rooms that acousticians dream up. my roommate is interested in them. i would say that he could just write the article, but he is busy and also german. not that his english is bad, but, you know, it's harder for him.

i could write something about how german sounds, i guess, but i don't actually have any science or linguistics background so that might be a little silly. more than that i want to interview whoever is responsible for this bizarre enchanted "art supply" store around the corner that sells supplies for the future and as of yet unimagined things, as far as i can tell, like a hardware store and industrial supply store for machines and processes that do not yet exist. they seem to specialize in things in sheets and rolls. like every variation on plastic ever.

but clearly i am just talking about myself. portrait of the artist as article proposal.

i will think about rocks and beats, i promise, and get back to you.

oh and also i want to write about this guy charles mee:

www.panix.com/~meejr/indexf.html

he's the father of a friend of a friend, and has done work at ART, but more to the point i think he's really cool. full circle, the play he did at ART, a revision of berlin circle, is genius, and says things about germany and its history and charcater and art and literature that the germans themselves can't say with such tersity, if that's even a word.

blah. ich bin kaput.

okay here is the begining of something maybe

on boxhagenerplatz on sunday there is this flea market, except it is not just a flea market and if you have spent any time fantasizing about berlin in the 21st century, well, yes, that is where it is.

but this is not the point.

last sunday, there was this big crowd of people, and in the middle was this hippie boy sitting on a speaker. and remember once upon a time "two turntables and a microphone"? well it was like that but no turntables, just a microphone oh and a machine that will loop things, i forget the name although he said it many times. it might be called "loop station" or "loop mixer" or "tesla coil" or keinefuckingahnung. and anyhow he made many strange noises with his body, and sometimes did more traditional sound making things like singing, playing the guitar, blowing over the water bottle we thought he was going to drink from. but the point is he would start with one sound, and improvise, until after five minutes there are a dozen sounds playing together and the everybody is hanging on gasping wondering what will he do next. also because it is berlin all crowds also feature: dogs, very little kids, very big kids dancing and rolling cigarettes. but most people are just kind of breathless.

sometimes over the music he freestyles. i find this impressive because i am impressed the command of the german language exhibited by any and all native speakers. i wonder if i should be impressed, though, because occasionally he plays actual songs that he has written, with german and english lyrics which are frankly sappy. this is from someone who cherishes earnestness.

but i think what i am most interested in is this: the crowd thinks it is magic. they are awed, no matter that they know the trick. they were just as captivated when feist did it, singing into the microphone until it sang back. and she was just a little canadian girl; the guy on boxhagenerplatz is a sorcerer, and maybe it's an act or maybe it's drugs, but his entire body is keeping the beat and he loses his shirt and shoes as he writhes around, in a world not really ours. but the crowd, even after he shows us exactly how the magic boy operates, is also entranced.

i thought i would go back tomorrow to see him again, but all of a sudden i am meeting agnieszka at ostbahnhof at 1, so i don't know. but also i don't know how this could be an article. i don't have recording devices. i don't even have a camera. ideas? help?

here is something i started thinking about watching kings of convenience and feist and kept thinking about watching this hippie boy: some musicians are performing for themselves, or for their songs or for Art, or to pay the bills, or whatever. and some people are there for their audience, are performing because they want to assemble that crowd and give something to them, and as long as they can hold them there, that's their job. it reminds me of present in this way: maybe the idea is just to have something to give our friends, and also maybe strangers.

oh kids i like it here but i miss you. vote44, whoever they are, has giant signs all over this city that say "a new president for america," and something about that third person voice makes me feel very far away. but, yeah, a new president for america, and enjoy your peanut butter extra for me.

deine abigail

ere's more i guess.

oh but first: the present and pirate websites have both impressed me muchly. i would like to add this: i have recently learned that when a girl is decked out (is that what we would say in english??? tarted up? with makeup and such, i mean), in german youth slang speak, you can call say that she is ausgetackelt. but ausgetackelt actually refers to a ship under full sail and rigging. ah pirate etymology. ah i actually do miss the sea.

but i want a new email address! although i could not tell you why, it is clearly unnecessary. but it wouldn’t have to fit in my suitcase.

but you get my story because no one else will have it. also i have another idea: the significant other of one of my mom’s old housemates is now an english professor at tufts, and her speciality is the Beats, specifically female Beats. There is an anthology (of academic papers) that she co-edited called Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation. the title comes from kerouac’s semi-famous definition of a hipster, “whose girls say nothing and wear black,” and anyway it’s pretty good. maybe we could come up with some punchy questions to ask? i say we meaning some sort of nondescript collective we who know and care more about the Beats than i, maybe there is no such we and so this idea ends and my beet story-in-search-of-a-plot begins:

this part actually happened in munich: “sie sind rote bete,” he says, offering me the plate of beets. this means: they are beets. there’s also a small amount of chopped onion and parsely. he smiles, speaks slowly, expectantly, as if offering absinthe to an alien. “kennst du rote bete?” i smile and nod, explain, yes, we eat beets in the states too. also, last week, i say, i tried beet juice.

back in berlin: someone had made it and brought it to brunch. this person had made other juices too, but “rote bete,” he said earnestly, “ist gesund.” healthy. it tasted like that too, meaning it tasted like root vegetables and dirt and your parents who moved to the country in the 70s.

everyone there eating brunch was born in the following years, and are now enjoying their twenties in the city. if we were home with our parents in the country listening to their old beatles records, they might have asked: how does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?

but we know that we aren’t. we missed the nineties, we have only vague images of people talking about a third way that is neither communism or capitalism and dancing in the streets and warehouses and courtyards and train stations. and now we don’t know, we don’t know about revolution, but we are fairly sure that we’ll never make it through school, or at least that when we do, there won’t be a job waiting. we are trying not to think how many years this juice will taste so fresh, the colors- the vermilion juice, the golden sunlight- so bright.

for the most part, the fading’s already begun. the not-so-alternative alternative weeklies know it too: “Für die Macher von nicht konzessioniert Bars und Clubs werden die Zeiten harter,” [for the sponsors of unliscened bars and clubs, the times are getting harder] reads the headline in zitty: a slew of former berlin scenesters describe the gradual loss of the city as “ein anarchisticher Abenteurspielplatz,” (an anarchistic adventure-playground, and you have to see the real Abenteurspielplaetze - they six year olds you build, like. actual structures and fires and stuff, and i’m jealous) as its vacant squat-spaces are filled and its aesthetic commodified . but how do the beets taste now? my friend claudia, born and raised in (east) berlin, on the topic of local produce: “say what you like about the GDR, but at least then we knew where our vegetables were coming from!”

when you are making the beat, you can imagine magical metamorphoses, twists of rhythm becoming heart palpitations in distant balkan villages where 4-4 time sounds neanderthal. not that there’s anything wrong with neanderthals. but the point is, maybe you can dream futures, write manifestos, maybe you can even carry them out.

but we are the kids who just got here, we are dancing awkwardly, we feel the beat but we aren’t sure where it’s going. maybe if we knew we wouldn’t dance so earnestly, with all our energy and joy and heart. for the record, if this were a metaphor i too would find it corny and absurd and forced, but this is actually how kids in berlin dance: without self-conscious style or pretty makeup, trying out bits of walzer or belly dance or whatever they’ve just learned. but in any case, the only beat we know is the present one, and since we are young and probably drunk, this is just fine.

except that there is also something unsettling about not knowing. especially here, where the twentieth century weighs heavy, and manic. you want to ask him, if i am else lasker-schuler, will you be my gottfried benn? except then you would have to flee to switzerland and palestine, and besides, he’s too pretty for you.

maybe this is why everyone asks me anxiously about american politics, about the patriot act, and who will i vote for, also am i scared of terrorism, what do i think of george bush, noam chomsky. they are looking for the next catastrophe, refusing to be totally surprised.

and in the meantime: dancing, painting, reading; living on beer, cigarettes, milchkaffee, and root vegetables.

i have more to say about the older avant gardes but it might be kind of academic and i have already rambled so long and obnoxious and insufferable. and poor you! don’t be a martyr, honey, go outside and play and tell the other kids i miss them.

deine seeraueberin-abigail
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