02 Saturday May 2020
Posted in hiSTORY, music, Poetry, StorycodeX, Storytelling
Tags
corona, history, Music, musical storytelling, story, Storytelling
A crisis is a strange thing. Paralysing and constringent for some. Liberating and revealing for others. I choose the latter, it’s better for your health.
So I started my Living Room Sessions with a couple of verses that poured themselves over my strings not too long ago. A look back ahead at what’s happenig right now…
21 Monday Dec 2015
Posted in experiences, hiSTORY, music, Poetry, StorycodeX
Tags
Authenticity, change, drama, history, listening, Storytelling, surprise, surprise. suspense, true story
“Was kommt auf uns zu? Ich sehe herum, und alles zerbricht.
Alles ist in Stücken. Diese Zeit, in der wir leben.
Was, wenn etwas passieren würde? Wer würde sich um uns kümmern?
Es scheint, dass alles uns zerstören könnte.
Die Leute wollen unsere Familie zerstören. Hüte dich vor Ihnen, sie wollen uns alle zerstören.
Ich fühle es, alles so nah.
Diese schreckliche … schreckliche Katastrophe.”
(Maxim Gorki, Die Kleinbürger, 2. Akt., 1902)
Die Angst vor dem Fremden, dem Anderen, dem Unverständlichen gehört zum Menschsein und zur Menschgeschichte wie das Auf- und Untergehen der Sonne. Leider. Hierfür gibt es in der Geschichte ebenso wie in den Geschichten der Literatur allerorten viele traurige Beweise. Davon ist Obenstehender nur einer. Aus einer anderen Zeit, aus einem anderen Land, aus einem Drama, das seinen Namen verdient, beschäftigt mit dem einen Thema, das in uns stets und immer fortwährend die größten Ängste und größten Drama auslöst: Die Veränderung. So viel Positives aus jeder Veränderung hervorgeht, aus dem Neuen, aus dem Anderen, aus dem Vermischen des bisher Unvermischten, so sehr hat der Mensch immer genau davor Angst.
Auch heute wieder, 113 Jahre nachdem Gorki seine Kleinbürger über “diese schreckliche Katastrophe” hat lamentieren lassen, klingen die Menschen haargenauso. Alles zerbricht. Alles ist in Stücken. Alles scheint zerstört zu werden. Und hütet Euch vor ihnen. Vor Terroristen. Vor Islamisten. Und überhaupt vor dem Islam. Vor Flüchtlingen. Vor Marie Le Pen. Vor der Pegida. Vor den Medien. Vor Facebook. Vor der Digitalisierung. Vor der Globalisierung. Vor Deinem Nachbarn. Vor …
Und ob wir das (was auch immer DAS ist) schaffen, wird wiederum die Geschichte zeigen. Aber, wie immer, sind nicht die großen, lauten Medienberichte über katastrophale Zustände an Europas Grenzen oder in Flüchtlingsheimen, über zunehmende ausländerfeindliche Übergriffe auf und Demonstrationen gegen selbige, über hilflose Helfer und machtlose, weil ideenlose Politiker die (einzige) Realität. Nein (und auch das zeigen etwas feinfühligere Medien), es sind all die kleinen Geschichten und Momente des Alltags, in denen Integration, begleitet von unglaublichem Einsatz und Geduld, nicht nur möglich wird, sondern schon Realität ist.
Menschlichkeit ist möglich. Menschlichkeit ist Realität.
So gesehen und intensiv gefühlt bei der Schulweihnachtsfeier meiner Töchter in der vergangenen Woche. Liebevoll dekoriert und inszeniert (siehe Foto) bot, wie in jedem Jahr, jede Klasse etwas dar. Gesang, Tanz, Instrumentalmusik. Sehr schön, wie immer. Was nicht wie immer war, war der Weihnachtsrap der sogenannten “Übergangsklasse”, in der Kinder mit Migrations- oder Flüchtlinglingshintergrund über die Sprachbrücke in den Regelschulbetrieb begleitet werden. In erstaunlich gutem Deutsch (man denke an die kurze Zeitspanne von September bis Weihnachten!) und mit unbändiger Freude wurde hier gerappt und getanzt, ungeachtet von Alter, Hautfarbe, Herkunft, Glaube oder anderer angebliche trennender Faktoren. Vereint im Rap.
Es waren nur zwei Minuten, aber zwei Minuten, in denen ich spürte, sicher auch angeschickert von der allgemeinen, dem Frühlingswetter trotzenden Weihnachtssentimentalität, der Stimmung der stimmungsvoll geschmückten Schulweihnachtshalle: Menschlichkeit ist möglich, und Menschlichkeit wird siegen, sie muss. Und ja, wenn wir das alle wollen, dann schaffen wir das!
Wir dürfen nur die Hoffnung nicht aufgeben, dürfen Geschichte und Geschichten nicht vergessen. Derer, die jetzt Hilfe benötigen, ebenso wie die derer, die vor vielen Jahrzehnten oder Jahrhunderten hilfebedürftig waren. Denn das waren möglicherweise die Unseren, waren möglicherweise wir.
History repeats itself. All we have to do is learn.
06 Sunday Dec 2015
Posted in experiences, hiSTORY, StorycodeX, What is STORY?
Tags
#refugeeswelcome, buddhists, catholics, future, hate, hindus, history, human story, infographics, jews, learning from hiSTORY, lessons, love, muslims, peace, protestants, refugees, story, storycodex, true story, war
Sometimes, it takes 77 years for the true power of a story to unfold.
Sometimes, it takes 77 years to prove that data and graphs are nothing without a story
Sometimes, you read 77-year-old figures, and it simply goes BOOM when you connect them to the present.
And sometimes, the best pieces of content need no further explanation…
#refugeeswelcome or #refugeesnotwelcome ?
#understanding or #ignorance ?
#peace or #war ?
#love or #hate ?
#HIStory or #HERstory or #OURstory ?
#jews or #muslims or #catholics or #protestants or #hindus or #buddhists or #whoeverisdifferent ?
#hiSTORY or #future ?
#lessonslearned or #nothinglearned ?
We will see. Hope dies last, they say. But it dies.
28 Wednesday Oct 2015
Posted in experiences, hiSTORY, Poetry
der bayer wieder
als hätt’ er’s stets gewusst
macht im dialekt
mehr unter- noch als selbst-bewusst
alles perfekt.
mal erfreut er sich am leid
mal leidet er mit freuden
mal freut er sich allein
dann wieder leid mit leuten
mal weint er leis’ beim lachen
oder lächelt unter tränen.
so sehr er weiß, er sollt’ sich grämen
sollt’ wüten, fluchen, sich am schicksal rächen
so helfen ihm doch freuds fontänen
nicht an schmerzen zu zerbrechen.
sprech ich noch vom bayern hier?
oder vielmehr doch von dir, von mir?
der hinter sorgenfalten, leid und tod
doch stets ein lächeln zu seh’n vermag.
denn wahrlich mensch ist nur
wer moll hört ebenso wie dur
wer freud verschmilzt mit leid
dem ist das leben … a wahre freid.
und der fühlt sich freier.
unbewusst.
wia a bayer.
05 Monday Oct 2015
Posted in experiences, hiSTORY, StorycodeX
Tags
#refugeeswelcome, Babylon, change, drama, expectation, First World War, germany, history, learning from hiSTORY, listening, Mekka, Paradise Lost, Pegida, refugees, Second World War, Storytelling, Thilo Sarrazin, true story, Truth, Willkommenskultur
(Photo: Raul Rognean, 2010 Wien – “Turmbau zu Babel” – Pieter Bruegel dem Älteren, Öl auf Eichenholz, 114 cm × 155 cm – Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)
In Germany, there is a new dictum, word-of-the-year-to-be: “Willkommenskultur”. It refers to the way that (in a historically remarkable dimension) “the Germans” (whoever that is), have reacted to the (not surprising, but surprisingly massive) influx of refugees to their country, from places less fortunate than their own. These Germans have welcomed and continue to welcome them with open arms, open minds, open hearts. Germany, the new paradise, a refuge where people understand, listen, help, help, help. Wherever they can, whenever they can, however they can – even at their own expense, pecuniarily, temporally, emotionally. Germany, the eye of the world’s storm for so many battered, shattered and scattered men, woman and children. A place where all is calm, all is bright. A Western Mekka with an angel(a)ic halo.
But, unfortunately, Mekka is not that far away from Babylon, never was. It’s a thin line between the land of milk and honey, where all is understanding, same language, same beliefs, same values, and the place where nothing is understood, where languages are world’s apart, beliefs and values just as much. Where a lingua universalis does not exist, where decent English is merely the fragile foundation of Babel’s Tower, rudimentary knowledge of German vocabulary and grammar nothing but an inevitable beginning, yet never a remedy. Language alone cannot bridge gaps, refute misconceptions, overcome prejudices. Misunderstandings generally go deeper.
Paradise Lost?
Indications of the gauzy fragility of our newly discovered Willkommenskultur are omnipresent for dialecticians, and I fear the tipping point is soon to come…
Scene #1: Sitting at McD’s a couple of days ago, I overheard a discussion between an elderly couple, cracker-barrel philosophising about the refugee crisis. Sentences like “Die sind doch selber schuld, wenn sie aus ihren Ländern fliehen!” and “Wir sollten die alle wieder zurückschicken” fell amidst fat big mac munchs, nutritious cornerstones American foreigners had brought decades ago, those foreigners that helped put an end to this couple’s own fellow countrymen’s flights.
Scene #2: For the first time in months, anti-islamic, right-wing Pegida movement has managed to active 8.000 supporters for its recent rally, its Facebook presence states an increase of almost 4.000 page likes since September 20, with 62.341 talking abouts. Just highlighting one random comment makes you shomit (shiver and vomit): “Wir sind nicht alle Asylantenfreudlich.Viele,sehr viele Deutsche wollen das Pack hier nicht haben und stehen hinter jedem, der sich gegen die Parasiten wehrt.” Willkommenskultur? Hmmm. The only consoling thing: the ignorant female writing this comment only has 39 friends herself, serves her right. Still: She is not alone, and the engagement rate on Pegida’s Facebook page is alarming, amazing, and incredibly credible to those prone to reactionary German protectionism.
Scene #3: A zeit.de interview with Thilo Sarrazin, German politician and writer, clear-cut enfant terrible who in 2010 published a controversial book called “Die Deutschen schaffen sich ab”. He’s back in town, in search of scandalous limelight, provoking with statements like “Wir müssen unsere eigene Bevölkerung und unser Gesellschaftsmodell vor äußerer Bedrohung schützen. Dazu gehört auch ungeregelte, kulturfremde Einwanderung im Übermaß.” or “Die allermeisten trauen sich vermutlich gar nicht mehr, ihre Ängste und Meinungen offen auszusprechen. Ich kann nur eines sagen: Es gibt eine ganz große unterdrückte Wut und einen ganz großen Frust, der sich keineswegs auf Sachsen beschränkt.” (in: zeit.de from September 13).
Sounds detestable, refusal is the natural reflex.
But: What if he’s right, even if just a little bit? What if the infamous election slogan of Bavaria’s CSU from decades ago “Das Boot ist voll!” may indeed be nothing but the truth very soon? After all, the recent influx of refugees seeking for asylum (however justified or not every individual plea may be) is not even comparable (not in size, not in drama) to the imaginative storm clouds of otherness that were apparently dooming over last century’s Wohlstandsdeutschland, its gardens in Grünwald and kindergardens in Bogenhausen. Now it is indeed a sheer oppressive mass of people, a veritable tsunami smashing its waves on our own front door. What if the first asylum seekers who get accepted begin their eager integration process, willing to become full, respecting and respected members of their new homeland, not only learn our language and customs, but also start applying for and even getting the jobs you or your friend wanted, get the crèche place you thought was reserved for your daughter? “Fachkräftemangel” is yet another IT-word of German society, and certainly many a qualified refugee will help fill this gap, but: “weil sich der einfache Mann nicht durch Ärzte und Ingenieure bedroht fühlt, sondern durch Menschen, die stark sind, Muskeln haben, einfache Tätigkeiten machen können und damit seinen Lohn senken oder ihn vielleicht ganz überflüssig machen” (from same interview with Sarrazin), tolerance and helpfulness might quickly turn into reluctant and coy doubt, which again might turn into open resentfulness, rejection, maybe even uproar and rebellion.
hiSTORY repeats itself with (more or less) instant karma
Might and maybe are dominating words here, and I’m not saying Sarrazin is right, not at all agreeing with most things he says and the way he uses societal developments for his own populist fame (and fortune), BUT: hiSTORY teaches us that people love to help other people as long as it doesn’t interfere with their own lives in a sustainably negative way. So: what, if…what, if…what if…???
During my summer holidays, when the first refugee streams were mere abstract news in digital feeds, so not that long ago, I read a remarkable and highly recommendable book called “Die zerissenen Jahre 1918-1938”. In words understandable to historical laymen like me, author Philipp Blom circumnavigates the macro perspective, historical dates, and hashed and re-hashed highlights that made us detest school history lessons. Blom rather makes use of impressive, very well-dosed storytelling that makes macro developments come to life in micro worlds, spans the perspectives from heroes all over the world, and accountably explains (not justifies) why the darkest chapter of the 20th century was practically inevitable. The book’s 500 pages make this pretty apparent. I read about the seemingly little things that made big things happen, about little misunderstandings that led to massive catastrophes, about manipulated, ill-informed and emotionally ignored people(s) that blew off steam in the face of the innocents and unprotected, but also about power-obsessed, fanatic men (men, NEVER women!) who brought so much pain onto their people that these had to flee their homes, Jews, Russians and Germans being just a few to be named.
And while I read these stories with awestruck incredulity, I frequently felt compelled to draw parallels to what is happening all around the world today, 100 years later: While Europe is certainly a better and safer place to be, so many countries are not: Syria. Afghanistan. Iran. Somalia. Russia, you name it, even China, if we’re honest.
One of the sentences concluding Blom’s hiSTORYcal book puts my thoughts into words:
Für diejenigen, die glauben, dass wir aus der Geschichte lernen können, ist diese Parallele zur Zwischenkriegsgeschichte alles andere als beruhigend. (bpb Edition, p. 507)
To be honest: Looking at the state of the world today, aware of the fragility of Europe’s freedom, peace, and stability, and also of the thin line between Willkommenskultur and Pegida, aware of how quickly moods can change, I am not really beruhigt.
25 Sunday Jan 2015
Posted in experiences, hiSTORY, Ideas
Tags
9/11, Auschwitz, Billy Joel, Black and White, charlie hebdo, Christian, Günter Grass, germany, grey, hebdo, history, Jew, Muslim, paris, prejudice, religion, shades of grey, stereotypes, story, terror attacks, Theodor Adorno, tolerance, understanding, World Literature, World War II
„Shades of grey wherever I go
The more I find out the less that I know
Black and white is how it should be
But shades of grey are the colors I see.“
(Billy Joel)
Charlie Hebdo, even the name Charlie alone, has become a sad chiffre for the state of the world we’re in – or maybe have always been. On January 7, 2015, at 11:30 AM, the world stood still for a second, probably even changed irreversibly. Once again.
Like on September 11, 2001.
Like on November 10, 1938.
Dates scarred into modern conscience, because they marked the end of worlds as we knew them. Once again.
Watching the unbelievable Paris scenes, enduring the multitude of talk shows that spilt over our TV screens like the inevitable vomit after a serious case of food poisoning, I could actually physically feel the caesura this event means for Europe, just like 9/11 for the USA. For better or worse, only history will tell.
Stereotypes will grow, prejudices will thrive, the legislative and especially executive countermeasures to serve the earlier will be scarily en vogue. Left, right. Muslim, Christian, Jew. Black and White.
Blueprint “Schreiben nach Auschwitz”
Writing about anything else in the aftermath of the Hebdo murders felt like an impossibility to me, inappropriate, even an act of blasphemy in a strictly non-religious sense.
Posts on communication and marketing trends in 2015 were on the storycodeX to-write list in early January – as for many a net writer interested in this stuff. Topics like the rivalry of Content Marketing and Brand Journalism. Like the true meaning of Content. Or Doc Searls’ and David Weinberger’s “New Clues”, but … just wouldn’t work. It’s like the author’s fingers refused to type, forced their tips to the West, to France, to the city of love.
Emotional thoughts and thoughtful emotions that somehow drew me towards a re-read of a speech by Günter Grass, held as part of his poetry lecture at Goethe University in Frankfurt in 1990. Its title: “Schreiben nach Auschwitz”. In his speech, Grass not only elaborates on his literary story and stories, but also makes a critical reference to Theodor W. Adorno’s discourse “Minima Moralia” as well as the infamous and often over-exaggeratingly dogmatized claim “Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht schreiben ist barbarisch” from his 1951 essay “Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft – Gedichte nach Auschwitz”. The full context of this quote goes as follows:
“Kulturkritik findet sich der letzten Stufe der Dialektik von Kultur und Barbarei gegenüber: nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch, und das frisst auch die Erkenntnis an, die ausspricht, warum es unmöglich ward, heute Gedichte zu schreiben. Der absoluten Verdinglichung, die den Fortschritt des Geistes als eines ihrer Elemente voraussetzte und die ihn heute gänzlich aufzusaugen sich anschickt, ist der kritische Geist nicht gewachsen, solange er bei sich bleibt in selbstgenügsamer Kontemplation.”
It might seem a far-fetched, lame mental leap from World War II to the afterbirth’s of Al Qaida and ISIS, but mental leaps always are, and are allowed, maybe even meant to be. So here’s mine:
Granted, the extent and magnitude of the Nazi terror that forever displayed to the world the ugly grimace of human abyss is by no means comparable with anything we see happening in the name of Allah by a fanatic, blinded-by-hate extremist minority of an otherwise peaceful religion today. Not yet, that is.
Also, the apparent historic facts of the lurching Weimar Republic and today’s crumbling century-old models of life in many parts of the world, not only in the Middle East and Africa, seem to hold little resemblance.
And the respective motives for launching terroristic machinery are quite different. On the outside at least.
On the inside it’s always about power, money, and religion in a wider sense.
NAZISIS – Same Illness, Different Symptoms
Still there are parallels, alarmingly terrifying parallels, between what took its beginning in Germany’s 1933, in a time of ubiquitous uncertainty, political and economic fragility, susceptibility towards extremism, and the rise of organizations like Al Qaida and ISIS. In the end, it’s the promise of a better life for the faithful and devout, a better world, even a better death and afterlife, killing and dying for a greater good.
I figure a young, frustrated, unemployed, sidelined man with no role in society, no prospect for a future, in disharmony with the world, approached by someone seemingly larger than life, promising wealth, meaning and purpose, to serve a cause … and off the soldiers march.
I figure the constant human need to find bogeymen for their own misery, the all-too-human suspicion of everything and everybody different, and how it’s always easier to blame others than yourself. And if you then even get the official mandate to punish those others … off the soldiers march.
I figure the damage that fanatism and the colors Black and White have always done, the pain and the suffering they have created, always for seemingly greater goods, proclaimed by charismatic mindfuckers using people to kill people, turning them into blind-folded soldiers … soldiers that march off to wherever they are told.
Self-sufficient Contemplation – The Death of Civil Courage
While drawing parallels between the spoilt acronyms NAZI and ISIS, and bringing them closer together for thorough examination seems like a worthwhile topic for a Bachelor or Masters thesis in Political Science, Cultural Science or History (that would certainly do this idea more resilient justice than my unstructured, initial thoughts here), the author is drawn back to Adorno and a key phrase in above quote in relation to writing after Auschwitz, after 9/11, after Hebdo: “Selbstgenügsame Kontemplation”, probably best translated as “self-sufficient contemplation”, the enemy of the skeptical, questioning intellect.
Maybe self-centered contemplation is indeed even the death of civil courage, the end of questioning, the end of insurgency. To read about such tragedies and incredibilities, watch them on TV, maybe follow a hashtag that makes you feel engaged, yet de facto going on with your life as if nothing had happened. To go on with writing about meaningless bullshit like content strategies and the best way to fill people’s heads with marketing shit they don’t want to see, at places where they don’t want to be bothered, by companies they care for even less after being menaced. Gosh, how many newsletters or tweets or Linked-In group posts did I receive right after Paris, and how many of them made me think “Why the hell is this important now???”.
I agree, life goes on, and life changes as it does – that’s probably the only constant we can really rely on. And the probability that also storycodeX.com will return to the path it initially set out on is high. Still, sometimes it’s simply time to pause for a moment, take a grateful look around at your own life, your own health and wealth, at the freedom of speech we enjoy, a privilege that should never be taken for granted, a freedom that none of us post-war kids ever did anything for, nothing that makes us actually deserve it. It was given to us a gift by our parents and grandparents, and we need to fight for it, now and forever.
But not by all means, not with uninformed impulses, and never in a way that serves delusional superiority over others, never with a sense of Black or White, but with a dialectic appreciation of the beauty of Grey, the manifold shades of which much better represent our world and everything that has ever happened, everything that is happening right now, and everything that will ever happen. The world is grey, and should we ever learn how great it is that there are always two sides to a coin, that this is what makes life rich and exciting, only then will we be able to do what – let’s be honest – everybody wants: to live in peace and enjoy life.
“Der Verzicht auf reine Farbe”
Günter Grass concludes his speech in Frankfurt and his reference to Adorno (whose famous quote he also, at first, misunderstood as a prohibiting verdict) with the retrospect cognition that his own (and his fellow post-war writers’) literary output would never have been possible without the leaden weight of history, and for him personally without the weight of Adorno’s verdict. In his own reading, Grass notes that “diese Vorschrift verlangte Verzicht auf reine Farbe; sie schrieb das Grau und dessen unendliche Schattierungen vor.” (Grass, Schreiben nach Ausschwitz, 1999.)
Or as Billy Joel put it three years later:
„Shades of grey are all that I find
When I look to the enemy line
Black and white was so easy for me
But shades of grey are the colors I see.“
(Billy Joel, 1993)
So I say: GREY IS THE WORLD. AND GREY IS BEAUTIFUL.
20 Saturday Sep 2014
Posted in experiences, hiSTORY
Tags
change, David Gray, drama, expectation, hero, history, Mix Tape, Sail Away, story, Storytelling, surprise, true story, Truth
Somewhere between getting lost in transmedia and celebrating AOL („Annual Offline Leave“ – you should try it, helps you understand what Lennon meant when he said that “life is what happens while you’re tweeting” … or something like that), I remembered that I wanted to relive the part of my life when a mix tape (o.k., it was a mix CD, but that sounds so … unromantic, so modern, although the round thing itself is already square) actually changed my life. And at the same time catapulted my relationship with Mister G. to another level of intensity.
It started, as it often does, at work. The place where you spend most of your time, and sometimes are lucky enough to meet interesting people with whom you want to be a little more than colleagues – well aware of the company’s ink saying, but what the heck.
That’s where I met her, over 10 years ago now. And, of course, I mean look at her: She already had a boyfriend. Grrrr. What to expect? So it was waiting mode for God knows how long, felt like decades, which sounds pretty “100 Years of Solitute”-like romantic, but was in fact a couple of months, to be honest. Still … an eternity.
Eventually, not in vain.
The tide was turning, the dark knight’s access to the princess’ castle finally denied, for whatever reason, what should I care? This was my “Over The Top” moment, the knight in white satin’s imaginary baseball cap going in reverse, a unique moment and chance in time that I answered with …
… this mix tape (aka CD) titled “Something Beautiful”.
It contained a hell of a collection of songs, broad hint with a capital B. It was clandestinely handed over by a good, discreet and conspiratorial friend … and then the waiting began. Again.
Decades passed.
Naturally, every one of the selected songs had its own story, a story in itself, a story for me, but also a connection to many of the stories that my Queen of Hearts to-be had been going through (as I had heard through the grape-vine and witnessed as a sideline observer). So hopes were high for a favourable, comprehending, comprehensive and, from a music and lyric lover’s perspective, appropriate reaction. A reaction that would show whether she was the right one. A simple “Oh, thanks” would have been just as disappointing as her not liking the kind of music her stalker was offering her, maybe even selecting the wrong, meaning most obvious song as her favourite one, one of those I had chosen from a “she’ll definitely love this one” perspective.
BUT … after waiting an appropriate while before even answering to this unasked-for present, she immediately named THE one song as her favourite that I had indeed put on this compilation as a kind of test balloon to check whether our two clocks were ticking in synch. THE one song that was my favourite song, from my favourite singer, expressing my favourite mood … a massive Broad hint from destiny. Or so I wanted to interpret it.
And the song was … “Sail Away” by David Gray. A song that has never been the same ever since, has probably reached an unsurpassable pool position on the past ten year’s hot rotation lists, has bestowed on us a very special moment at Mister G.’s 2006 concert in Munich, and has been the “Honey Call” tune on my mobile since mobile phones could read mp3’s.
Who knows, maybe without this joint Sail Away passion, we would never have gone out, never have kissed, never have, never have, never have …
OK, probably, if it was really meant to be in the first place, we would have gone out and done all that other stuff anyway, even if she’d had named the eponymous Robbie Williams song that found its way onto “Something Beautiful”.
I prefer the Sail Away story.
True story, true love.
Sail away with me honey
I put my heart in your hands
Sail away with me honey now, now now.
17 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in hiSTORY
Tags
1916, authentic, drama, Easter Rising, Eire, freedom, history, independence, Ireland, musical storytelling, oppression, rebellion, revolution, song, story, true story
It’s March 23, Easter Sunday, in the year of 1916. A smoky pub in the centre of Dublin city, bursting with Irish volunteers and crown haters, the scent of men’s sweat and stout medicine; tense anticipation is in the air. Schoolmaster and legend-to-be Patrick Pearse is cutting his way through the underground crowd, accompanied by Gaelic murmur.
Pearse’s freshly thwarted demonstration of Irish resistance to British oppression for this very day is still eating away at him, but he will not let his supporters see or feel his disappointment. He is determined to make a stand against the British and their century-long occupation of Ireland, Plan B must kick in, and now’s the crucial moment, it’s giving up or “now more than ever”.
He climbs the pub’s small stage, pint and hope in hand, to address the crowd.
And this is the song he never sung. But he could have, in this very moment, and maybe he or someone else did, who knows. The song about the Easter Rising of 1916 that was never recorded, lost in the fire fight of history, never recited, forgotten until today. The song that helped mobilise the demoralised debris. The song that summed up centuries of suffering into five minutes, that brought the pub’s atmosphere to the boil. The story song that was the final spark needed to light the historical Easter bonfire, flames enough to engrave freedom as something indeed achievable into the Irish soul. A fire that lasted for only six days, but whose smoke signals reached out years into the future, forming silhouettes of an independent Ireland, the Eire that was officially constituted in 1937.
These are the improbable song’s lyrics. It could have been called “9TEEN6TEEN”:
…………….
“It’s been a thousand years and it’s so hard to tell,
More than a million tears though I should know it well.
Will anybody tell me when it did start?
Well, in fact it don’t mind as it’s been god-damn hard.
They came across the sea with a plan in their head,
And at its open end we would surely be dead.
Tried to take away our pride and annex our land,
But they never realised how we’d make our stand.
And now we’ll rise, we’re gonna rise at Easter!
We’re gonna rise, and we will make the whole world see!
We’re gonna rise, we’re gonna rise at Easter,
Cause we’re sick of all the tyranny and greed!
They took all we had, much more than we could bear,
It won’t happen again, this to you all I swear.
No more rapin’ our wives, mutilatin’ our kids
By now the only tongue they speak is the row of our fists!
So many battles won, so many children lost,
Can’t you feel a shudder in your heart rehearsing this cost.
So don’t you tell me nothing ‘bout no two in the bush,
Cause it can’t get any worse, come out and make a rush.
Just come and rise, come on and rise with me at Easter!
We’re gonna rise, and we will make the whole world see!
We’re gonna rise, come on and rise with me at Easter,
Cause we’re sick of all the tyranny and greed!
We tried the peaceful way, it only led them astray,
Out to the wilderness that reappears every day.
What was believable once is unbelievable now,
So now I give a fuck for anything they say.
We’ll chop the bloody hands that tried to kill our will,
And use them in return to show we’re living still.
So come on and chant will me the song that we all know
Cause by the time the sun will rise it will be time to go!
Time to rise, we’re gonna rise at Easter!
We’re gonna rise, rise and make the whole world see!
Come out and rise, we’re gonna rise at Easter,
Cause we’re sick of all the tyranny,
Sick of all the tyranny,
Sick of all the tyranny and greed!”
………………..
HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY!
And: Cheers down the Hatch!
27 Monday Jan 2014
Posted in experiences
Tags
admonish, Alexander Liebmann, commemorate, Concentation Camp, Deportation, First World War, Gang der Erinnerung, history, Hitler, Jakobsplatz, Jewish, learn, live, Maike Tellkamp, mourn, Munich, Nazi, Ohel Jakob, Path of Memory, reconcile, remember, Second World War, speak, story, synagogue, true story
Today, I followed my wife’s recommendation to attend a very special event: A guided tour through Munich’s still considerably young new main synagogue “Ohel Jakob”. The weather was miserable, the girls nevertheless out for an extended walk with a good friend’s dog (and the friend, of course) along the river Isar. So I took a trip down memory lane, the memory of uncountable and unaccounted for tragic stories of Munich victims of the ruthless Nazi Regime.
I’m very glad I went. Not only is everything that has to do with the past, present and future of our Jewish communities in Germany a must topic of interest for anyone only remotely interested in history and equipped with an ounce of collective conscience. The new main synagogue in Munich is also a miraculous site to see and explore. It’s a place of light, a place of hope, a place that literally and perceptibly seeks reconciliation and a bright future, in the middle of the city, in the midst of its people.
It’s a place where light and shade are one, where you can feel the true meaning of hiSTORY.
The first indication of which is high-tech: security detectors. You can’t enter into the fane without a security check, without prior registration with an official guided tour, and not through the actual, beautiful synagogue entrance. Deranged anti-Semitic ideology debris is still a threat; it never seems to be really over. In fact, even in 2003, the year of the laying of the synagogue’s cornerstone, German authorities uncovered a plot by a group of neo-Nazis who wanted to bomb the ceremony.
I am allowed to enter, fortunately, along with about 40 other interested people. We wait in the very modern entry hall of the Jewish community center for a good friend of mine, Maike Telkamp, who was about to take us on a vibrant, informative and emotional tour through past, present and future of Munich’s Jewish community.
Today’s stories are being written as we live, right here, right now. Tomorrow’s stories are yet to come. It’s yesterday’s (hi)stories that not only make the today we have possible, maybe the only today alternative there could be; they pave the way for the crossroads and stories of the future. Maike made this very obvious and tangible in her almost 90-minute tour. And the most impressive part of this experience was not her profound knowledge of the subject (that was probably to be expected, this being her job and all, nevertheless impressive and illustrative). It wasn’t the bullet points of her speech, the fact, the figures, the features of the buildings, the art within, the technical details.
At least to me, it all came to life and (even though you think you know it all, you’ve seen it 
all, you’ve read it all) hit me in the epigastrium like the punch of a heavy-weight boxer, bringing tears to my eyes, when she told this one man’s story: Alexander Liebmann. His name is one of the 4.500 names displayed by a very intelligently, very impressively, yet subtly constructed piece of art, the center of the so-called “Gang der Erinnerung” (The Path of Memory) that leads believers and visitors from the community center to the synagogue. A quiet, reflective room, it every meaning of the word. Over a length of 32 meters, 32 glass panels, illuminated indirectly from behind, show the names of every single man, woman or child accounted for as a victim of the Third Reich. In varying boldness and legibility, symbolizing the degree of oblivion that has laid its cloak onto these human’s destinies ever since.
The sheer mass of names alone renders you taciturn, only put into perspective by the figure “6.000.000” engraved into the opposite wall of this Memory Path, above a massive Star of David. 
As impressive and shattering as these 4.500 names are, they are abstract, just names. You might walk past, awe-struck, with a bad historical conscience, but you would not be emotionally taken aback. It’s Alexander Liebmann who does exactly that, or better his story that Maike tells while explaining make and meaning of the Memory Path. Like the zoom of a camera onto an individual in the middle of a large crowd:
Liebmann was born on October 31, 1871, in Berlin, where he studied at the Berlin University of the Arts, even travelling to Paris every now and then for research. After working as a teacher, he fought for Germany in the First World War, r
eturning severely wounded and a war hero. His injury made it impossible for him to do most jobs that could have helped him make a living, but he and his wife were gladly employed by a friend as porcelain painters is his ceramic manufacture. When Alexander and Johanna Liebmann received a note on March 27, 1942, to be ready for deportation to a concentration camp on April 3 (simply for being Jews and after receiving the “Eiserne Kreuz 1. Klasse” and the “Hessische Tapferkeitsmedaille” for heroic services in the name of the same country that was now planning to kill them), the couple decided to leave together at least in the manner they decided themselves, if not the when: they committed suicide.
The rest of the tour was still interesting and informative, but it was always Alexander I saw.
As I was standing in front of the only remains of Munich’s former main synagogue which was burnt down by Hitler’s henchmen in June 1938: I saw Alexander there, praying, celebrating the Shabbat.
As I put on the Kippah to respect the house of prayer, I saw Alexander being harassed in his own city for wearing it, for believing.
As I was sitting in the synagogue’s front row, listening to details of the Jewish divine service rituals, looking up to see the last ray’s of today’s sunlight being refracted by 
the ingenious metal construction that embraces the massive roof windows and suggests the form of the Star of David over and over: I saw the hope that had left Alexander and Johanna back in Berlin of 1942 – the hope that this place now radiates, for today and tomorrow.
Not only for the Jewish community, but for all of us, especially for our children, who need to remember, always, never forget, understand – and live to see a day when religion is a reason for joy, love and life, not the cause of fear, hate, and death. When the first four words engraved into the wall of the synagogue’s Path of Memory (“remember – mourn – commemorate – admonish”) truly lead to their four counterparts at the end of the tunnel (“learn – reconcile – speak – live”). A day when one of the questions asked after the presentation part of the tour (ironically by a little boy of maybe ten or twelve years of age) whether “Jews and Germans both come here, or only Jews?”, will not need to be asked anymore.
Back home, over dinner with the family, we all reported from our day: Chasing our friend’s dog along the banks of the Isar, returning home happy, hungry and tired – on the one hand. Chasing ghosts of the past along the Path of Memory, returning home tired, hungry, and happy to be alive today, to enjoy the fragility of piece with the ones I love. And being willing and able to remember the stories of the past, helping them create a better narrative for our future.
Next time, I think I’ll take my kids along …
