Happy 1 November: To those who worship in a cathedral of rain dripping from the trees, woodpeckers etching a gospel into the bark, mockingbirds calling the sun out of the shadows, bats folding their wings tipped with sunset, owls threading the night air and stitching a cape that whirls them away through the starry sky, to the constellations who have watched over every creature ever born.
Yesterday was Astra Carey’s birthday and today is the day in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg. I was thinking about both of these things as I spent Halloween for the first time ever as an “adult” at a nice dinner party — a popular activity this week. At the first I heard the latch snick shut too late, but tonight was surrounded by my fierce Teutonic guardians. Of course when I got home I watched Lars von Trier (earlier this week Melancholia and then tonight AntiChrist to keep in perspective how things actually are “broadcast from the outside in” [I am pretty sure that’s what that Maps lyric really says or at any rate I like it better].)
In the exactly three months since I “resigned in protest” from the church I have not missed it at all. I had already spent all the years I can remember from a child just meditating and thinking about being this or that animal the entire duration of every service anyway, though I believed in the teachings about forgiveness, patience, love, charity and so on and appreciate communal rituals and think they are important. Of course I am completely skeptical of yuppies who claim to be “spiritual but not religious” as this is just a cop-out not to have to be bothered to go to a service. Of course now I am one of those people while I am figuring out how to implement “organized pantheism.”
Toward the end of her life a relative was so upset and disgusted by the priest/child abuse situation – the horror itself of course but also the cover-ups – she was seriously investigating other religions, everything from the Anglican church to the Baha’i faith. She was a rational and methodical person but I understand now that this is a rational behavior – if – not in the historical abstract like the Borgias – actual people alive now who you know who are Catholic are deceitful, sadistic, unforgiving, abusive of the trust of those they hold power over and you are Catholic this generates a ?. So they have to go, or you do. Finally having such a personal revelation I was suddenly quick to voluntarily excuse myself.
But I am a little nostalgic today. I used to love not just Halloween but All Souls Day and All Saints Day. These days of obligation were taken very seriously in Belgium, almost as seriously as May Day: the trains, metros, stores, banks, postal service, schools – everything – would shut down and people spent the day walking from churches to the small graveyards beside the churches to the larger cemeteries. This was a solemn public ritual but I could tell other people felt similarly hopeful that perhaps the interceding saints, on this one day, would let the departed know how much we loved them still in life. I’m pretty sure my animal and human family members and my (sadly, many) friends who have died the past few years knew because, well, they did. But you never get to say everything, and you never know what is going to happen. Maybe the comforting thing about participatory rituals is that they make a reality.
After being “back” for only a week I find I am already struggling a bit to remain in the cocoon of wellbeing spun by having been “home” the week previous…so I decided to quickly tell a couple highlights of my adventure in the interest of hanging on, at least in words.
The citizens of Würzburg, in the center Bayern Inferioara not Hessen, determinedly identify with their neighbors on the Main in Frankfurt as opposed to affiliating with the residents of the Kingdom with whom they actually share statehood. One citizen explained to me that Oktoberfest was not celebrated in Würzburg, “only in Bavaria.” (Just to clarify, Würzburg is in Bavaria.) I cannot be exactly sure why this is, since, while it is certainly not as wacky and zany as any place in UB, it is very agreeably weird in its own way. I will investigate further in the future.
In any case, a number of amazing things happened while I was there. The first one was that suddenly, I could speak German. After the fiasco of this past summer, I had really only been studying haphazardly, by which I mean listening to the “party music” programming on Radio Bayern 2, reading just a couple pretty easy books, and practicing with my friend the idiosyncratic new language based on 30 percent German and 70 percent JDilla.
However it became obvious even in the short distance between the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof and the Würzburg hauptBahnhof that an increased level of proficiency was going to be necessary and that filling in the unknown vocabulary with French, Italian, Dutch or Lupe Fiasco would be both impossible and sociologically ill-advised. For some reason I was not very worried, probably because when you are fortunate to be on a train in Germany in Bavaria and it is cold enough to wear a hat, scarf, and gloves, there is not really anything to worry about. When I got to the hotel, the lobby of which doubles as a Mexican restaurant (see I told you this place is afterall in Bayern), for some reason without really thinking anything about it I just asked (bitte) for die Schlüssel zumZimmer zweihunderteins? A few minutes later, looking out the window of said room, I realized something must have gone horribly wrong since in the past I rarely get articles and never numbers right on the first try in conversation.
Yet this was not an accident or aberration ( at least for the week or maybe the whole thing was). After that, I just could speak German. I know it sounds like some sort of miracle but actually I should be able to speak German, I just hadn’t been able to until this very moment. After I tested out this new ability over the next few hours – getting directions, getting a magazine at a newstand, chatting with some people who were also standing by the Main admiring the swooping bats and rain on the river – I was convinced of its existence.
At that point I was suddenly overcome with one of the greatest senses of ecstasy I have ever known. (more…)
Apollinaire was very popular in Bonn and in Berlin, where he befriended Herwarth Walden, who, among other things, occupied a societal role similar to that of Apollinaire. Apollinaire also wrote and drew quite prolifically, of course, in addition to being a tastemaker around whom a circle of other artists and authors coalesced.
In early 1913, August Macke was very excited when not only Apollinaire but Robert Delaunay (and later Max Ernst) came to hang out at his place. Apollinaire spoke German very well, also. Anyway, AM just loved these guys, and generally began trailing them around and writing to them all the time and so on.
There is much more to this story, some of it very exciting, and be assured I will get to it all shortly…
However not everyone was enchanted by Apollinaire. That “not everyone” included, well… for the immediate subject at hand, Franz Marc. FM actually had little use for Delaunay, after a (short) while, either. During 1913, FM pesters Delaunay with tons of perplexing, unsolicited criticism, finally in one outburst declaring that RD wasn’t a very good writer, either.
Apollinaire did like FM’s work, but FM kept a distance. Today upon discovering that it is Apollinaire’s birthday, well, what can I say? It explains a lot. Here is a very comprehensive if somewhat outdatedly designed Website about Apollinaire.
AM finally told FM, basically, to stop embarrassing him in front of his cool new friends. FM pointed out that it was he who had introduced these three to one another, and, that also, RD was kind of a jerk, refusing to give AM anything but a scrap of used drawing paper (like literally AM was begging for any type of memento and that was what RD let him have!). Anyway, RM and AM fought all the time as it was, so this altercation of course could not be resolved swiftly or in a few words and continued over the course of some petulant correspondence and huffy silences…full citations to come. FM was jealous, of course, but also he hated to see AM fall in with people he thought embodied the worst characteristic of all, that of being fake.
Fortunately, since everything that has happened before will happen again, this throwdown has been re-enacted by two parallel characters in one of the most important documentaries of our time (it had to be peddled as fiction because of the potency of its truth), Mean Girls (2004).
Above is the epic scene in which Janis Ian (as FM) confronts Cady Heron (as AM) [we won’t even get into the whole LiLo thing here, or about… nevermind) about being plastic…
With a special guest appearance by Damian as Helmuth Macke.
– Il eût mieux valu revenir à la même heure, dit le renard. Si tu viens, par exemple, à quatre heures de l’après-midi, dès trois heures je commencerai d’être heureux. Plus l’heure avancera, plus je me sentirai heureux. A quatre heures, déjà, je m’agiterai et m’inquiéterai; je découvrirai le prix du bonheur ! Mais si tu viens n’importe quand, je ne saurai jamais à quelle heure m’habiller le cœur… Il faut des rites.
“I saw what the moorhen sees as it dives: the thousand rings that encircle each little life, the blue of the whispering sky swallowed by the lake, the enraptured moment of surfacing in another place. Know, my friends, what images are: the experience of surfacing in another place.”
{ Ich sah das Bild, das in den Augen des Teichhuhns sich bricht, wenn es untertaucht: die tausend Ringe, die jedes kleine Leben einfassen, das Blau der flüsternden Himmel, das der See trinkt, das verzückte Auftauchen an einem andern Ort, – erkennt, meine Freunde, was Bilder sind: das Auftauchen an einem anderen Ort. }
Franz Marc, Aphorismen 82, 1915.
The images are Vier Füchse, a postcard from 1914, and Liegendes Pferd, a water color from 1911.
