Almanya - or why do I look like a genetic copy of my mom?

I just came home from an extraordinary experience at an open air cinema in a park in “Friedrichshein”. Together with some new friends (awesome!), I had the pleasure to watch Almanya. It is a movie about a Turkish family and their story of how they came to Germany, connected to how they live today and where they come from.

The story telling has many interesting aspects, like the use of language. As the main language is German, they had to illustrate how it was for the Turkish family to arrive in a country where they did not understand a word. So the “German” in the story is a fictive language and as a linguist, this was extremely exciting for me.

Apart from being extremely well told, the story left a main thought in my head: How everything in the past and somehow also in the future is connected. I have parts of my mom and dad in me, I carry their history with me and that of many people in my family. I am a result of the culture that my family conveyed to me. Personally, I feel extremely close to my mother and my sister and I really feel that we have a deeper connection that grows stronger every day. My most influential teachers of life lessons are from my family. My mom taught me that love is blind, my step dad taught me the importance of honesty, my granny taught me the beauty of forgiveness (and backgammon) and somehow everyone took part in who I am today. This close web of lifelines makes us who we are today.

I met people who struggled on their own, people who had left their family and sought after their own truth and happiness. For some time I thought that there were two categories of people: family people and independent people. Today I realized that maybe their web of family needed those people to get disconnected and start something different and new. And who knows, even though they are not actively connected to their family, they live up to some dream buried deep inside the family history.

In the movie, the grandfather was the one who uprooted his family and took them to a foreign land. It did not make them a family with less heritage and culture, it made them more diverse and culturally enriched. My mother, who was the first one in the entire big family to get divorced and who raised my sister and me on her own, also disconnected from certain parts of her heritage and it made us richer as a family. I know that my family respects my mother for her independence and that maybe sometimes some of them wish to be as brave as her.

I have always felt a bit disconnected from time and always very aware of the history I carried with me, or should I say that carried me? I like the thought of being an evolvement of something that existed before I was there. And my family is the proof that this evolvement is necessary, exciting and great. Tonight I am simply grateful for the things I carry from them.

The cruel Murder of Cody!

Review of Cody and Murder at Café Zapata, Berlin, 02.02.2011

Cody

Murder

It is weird for me to write reviews, because I really like to do it, but I am extremely subjective and often write on matters I am not really an expert on. I just discover things for myself and want to share it.

When it comes to music, I have phases, when I go out and find cool stuff all by myself. Most of the time, though, my friends have to stick my nose into new stuff and I will eventually love it. The same goes for this one: my roommate Nicolai told me to come to this cool act, called Murder, an Neo Folk band from Denmark. There also would be a Danish band, “Cody”, as intro act.

Nicolai is a very considerate person, so the night before yesterday, he gave me the latest album of Murder to get into the mood. I went into my cocoon with a hot water bottle, called a liver compress (which has to be explained in another post) and listened to the album. It was just great: me on a wave of wonderful music doing a journey through the past day. It really was what made my day that day and Murder was a big part of it. So then I really looked forward to the concert.

It was at Zapata, in the ancient Tacheles complex, a Berlin icon from the 90’s and today crowded with international students and tourists. It is a quite diverse bunch of people there, because they have really cool and different concerts.

Because I am so lazy, no: so smart, no: so effective (!), I went there right after work, got a new book and a Falafel and sat at the bar for a beer to read a bit, before the whole thing started and my roommate would arrive. The early bird gets lucky sometimes, because I was in before they started selling tickets, so I had saved the 13 € entry fee.

I liked meeting the Danish boys I would enjoy the show with and off it goes with the bands:

Cody:
They are a group of six, with very diverse instruments (2 guitars, drums, cello, violin, and contrabass). Each one of them is a very good musician and together they do magic. I was fascinated by their performance and how good their live sound was. It really filled up my barrel. I have this personal metaphor: there are things that take energy away, like negative stress and there are things that give you energy. It is like a barrel that gets filled and emptied. Due to work and a lack of after work activities, my barrel was quite empty, but it got filled up, when I saw them. So, I used the money I had saved on the entry fee to by their latest LP. 



Murder:
They are quite known in Indie circles. The appearance of the lead singer Jacob Bellens on stage was quite interesting, as he looked like a history teacher who could not find his classroom – in a good way. Anders Mathiasen does guitar and vocals and he reminded me slightly of a young version of my dad, which is weird, but in some way also a compliment. They also have a base player and a drummer. They had this Danish humor, which was entertaining and the quality of their performance was top. A lot of it is carried by Bellens’ great voice. I have to admit, that my heart was sold to Cody, so to me they could not really do better.



All in all, it was a splendid evening and I really enjoyed the entire experience. It gave me a lot of new ideas and hope, which was good, as I was quite negatively loaded that day. I have a feeling that I will finally get what I wanted from a city. I am able to see great cultural events, be it music, exhibitions or whatever. I always missed that in the past few years. The thing is, that it was there in the other cities as well, but I did not make anything out of it. Now, I am taking in as much as I can and it really is uplifting.

Where the Wild Things are

I am too excited to tell you my thoughts that I wont post any information about the content of the movie, but here is the trailer.



I have a new favorite movie. It is called “Where the wild things are” and it is about a boy without any fear who decides to become the king of a group of monsters. It is the first time in my life that I can imagine what is really going on in a boys mind. Plus, the older I get, the more I miss childhood and the wild possibilities that existed just for us.

The movie made me accept silence. I only accept silence, when my mind is so busy reflecting and figuring out that it does not need any entertainment. At times I have to play the radio constantly to distract my mind, but not so last night. “Where the wild things are” opened a new box of imagination to me and I am eternally grateful for it.

The minute the movie started, I felt like I was allowed to peak into the head of my dear friend Letzu. I admire her secretly for her way of seeing the world and somehow I feel like I had the chance to see through her eyes for the lasting one and half hours. Some people are interesting to me because they stand out of the categories I prison my encounters in. Letzu is one of the rare people who opened a new category and until now she has been alone in that box, because I have not met anyone whose world was as wild, colorful and devastating, but beautiful as hers. I feel like “Where the wild things are” took me there and it touched me to my very core.

Also I am currently reading “Power and Love – A Theory and Practice of Social Change” by Adam Kahane. Most of his life the author relied on love to accomplish his goals and saw power as something negative to be avoided. Seeing that brave character of Max telling wild stories to these strangely lovely monsters demonstrates to me how everyone relies on power to make things happen and to effect change. Without power, love has no impact. Power does not necessarily mean to dictate others, but it can be a way to make things happen and create new ways to solve issues. Power without love is cruel and in the end we will all be where we started in childhood: Someone will cry and leave the playground.

To me, this movie is a masterpiece. I will definitely read the book by Maurice Sendak and dream of the beautiful pictures it left in my mind.

And by the way: Until today I secretly wished to only give birth to girls. From today on I would be just as thrilled to have a boy (at some point in a future very far away from now).

...and forget her, too!?

One of my most favorite songs right now is „F**k you“ by Ceelo Green. It’s one of these super awesome songs that makes you wanna dance every time you hear it, even at 6 in the morning. I love the irony and the honesty of the song and really think it speaks for a lot of people. Yes, sometimes you want to say that phrase to certain people and yes, they deserve it. I also deserve it most of the time, when someone dares to tell me to f**k off. It’s ok. I understand. So why the hack is the U.S. industry changing the song to “Forget you”? It changes the meaning of the song so immensely that I cannot stand it any more. Now I heard the censored version on a German radio station and hated it! We are allowed to play the nasty version, so do so!
So for all of you, who are into the real shit, here is the original version:



And I pitty the people whom even YouTube does not allow to play the version. It's too good!

My stomach is full, but my heart is empty.

It’s been a while since I arrived in Berlin but it’s only recently that I went to my first concert in this awesome city.

One day, when I was feeling quite down, my sister played some old Manfred Krug songs to me. I loved it. And then my 60’s loving friend Sophia played Beatplanet, like she always does – and it was good. Because Beatplanet is a bit like Manfred Krug, just from today.



A member of Beatplanet has gone solo as Sven van Thom and together with Sophia I went to his show in Kulturfabrik. I loved the place, even if the music would have been bad, it would have been a great night as there was this intimate atmosphere, a small stage and a golden equin curtain. I totally loved the curtain! And the Martini Rosso - the red one. You know.


Luckily the music did not disappoint me, either. Seeing the guys on stage, there was one thing quite clear: they cannot not make music. It’s something they just have to do, despite the fact that the majority of the German music industry would not invest in this kind of music, as it is intelligent and sometimes challenging. You get the humor if you really listen; you get entertained if you get irony. They will not spill out love songs compatible for Bravo reading teen-agers, but for people who already have made their sometimes traumatic experiences with the other sex.


The night is worth remembering for the entertaining conversations between the songs, “Blockflöte” taking off his shirt and exposing his stomach, the attempt of making Sven’s hair moving with a hairdryer, the college block with handwritten songs in it, and all the beautiful people supporting Sven van Thom in his show.


Now I really need to see Beatplanet live. And I need to get to more Berlin like things.