Blasting Growlers gig yesterday at An Club, Athens
After moving to the newly assigned gate for my early morning flight, a woman in her fifties sat next to me. The delay was some type of ordeal, even for the most morning of types, but what she did afterwards was probably bound to happen sooner or later.
She started yawning loudly with an estimated frequency of at least four yawns a minute, her eyes closed, her hands resting on her lap, palms facing each other. This went on for at least five minutes. Based on her movements, appearance and position, I concluded that these were not meant as simple yawns but was some kind of new-age-like breathing meditation adapted for the occasion. I am not sure if it was due to my will to simply observe, but her yawning did not have the slightest contagious effect on me.
Soon after she finished, we were finally asked to start boarding. With a swiftness you would not expect from a person who has just yawned more than the whole of the airport population on that very day, the woman next to me and her friend bypassed the long rows of queuing passengers and shamelessly snuggled their way through, becoming some of the very first to board the plane.
Obviously, completely ignoring one’s surroundings is a character trait that can take many forms.
Lorna Simpson exposition at Haus der Kunst in Munich: brilliant, unsettling but tender, provoking and welcoming at the same time. Simpson’s work, with its continous play between the viewer/artist and the identities that define them, is quickly stirring up familiar but long-forgotten sentiments and thoughts. Discounting one’s own memory is usually the norm.
Memory and loss, distance and proximity, questioning the border of unspoken identity features: some of Simpon’s themes as she weaves her stories out of scattered texts which are briefly and continuously defined by the gaps between the images surrounding them.
The great -as usual- HdK curators gave the material the space and light it deserved. Walls have ears, they say and in this case the walls were there to listen to a visitor’s own stories each time she bent forward following some well-planned added detail on a huge felt canvas, only to echo back their interpretations each time she stepped backwards from a wisely misaligned collection of smaller frames.
When conscious subtleness is paired with honest clarity, as in Simpson’s case, the result is power in its finest form.
Metaxourgeio, Athens
Englischer Garten: Unpretentious locals swimming in the Isar river and sunbathing on natural beach-island and river banks. Love this city.
More and more Athenian pedestrians choose speaking aloud to themselves as favorite passtime
Time just passing by: the least media-genic event
If you read “Bad News for Bacon Lovers” and the first thing that comes to your mind is Francis Bacon, then you’re definitely on a good path.
Home is where the book you’re curently reading is.
Wordaholic: the writer that refuses to call it a day before word count target is reached
Home is where your Frühstück was.
Lifestyle press is like a failed perfume for the chronically unwashed. Now the crisis stinks so much, lifestyle mags just make it more obvious.
Even the rain is dirty nowadays in Athens
Flune: the surreal state of having caught a proper cold in June.
Unidentified flying object just spotted over Munich. Rumors have it it’s called Sun.
Paraphrasing Joseph Heller: “He knew everything about music except how to enjoy it.”
For sale: a house made of writer’s blocks
‘No destination found for “The Hague”. We suggest you search using “La Haye”‘
A most welcome side-effect of frequent travelling is the diminishing of indecisiveness. But only if you travel light, of course.
“Art is beautiful, but it’s lots of work”
(U-Bahnhof Königsplatz)