August 2015 – Ontij

Blurp – Taking off your Boots

Weird experience. At the end of a mega-fetish-industrial-noise party, I sit on the ground, take off my boots and put my leggings back on. And a guy comes up to me telling me this is “not done” and I should have used the bathroom to do it in private… Other people walk past and I get “the eye”.

*flabbergasted*

Around me are a lot of almost-naked people, some of them only wearing pieces of duct tape, there’s quite a bit of semi-fucking going on, there is an open view on the bondage area & the dungeon, and just sitting on the ground, not even in full sight, and just very practically getting some warmer clothes on before leaving is “wrong”? Gosh, you would have had to try hard to spot my underwear.. Really… Maybe if I had made a performance out of it, it would have been acceptable..

Guess it says enough about the party. Musicwise it was amazing (ouch my feet), the other aspect… Well.. I’ve been to quite a few of the more regular “normal” Berlin parties which had more atmosphere and where well… the audience might have been extreme, but most definitively themselves? Imho, there was quite a bit of showing off, and not enough expressing… I remembered what someone once told me about KitKat: you can put a german secretary in leather & latex, it will still be a german secretary”..

Blurp – Support the Senior Citizens

Sitting here in my still sweat-drenched t-shirt & about to count all my bruises, I just realized the fat old guy I supported when he crowd-surfed the pogo zone was actually Jello Biafra.

I don’t do hero-worshipping, not even old ones, but if anyone would have told me 30 years ago, that at age 48 I would be jumping around in the pogo zone and keep the even older former singer of the Dead Kennedys in the air, I would have just laughed and for sure not believe it…

Dang, I planned to not dive into the pogo zone this time (gig was sold out, and there were quite a few “tanks” in it), and was safely standing in a corner, but well, third song or so was “California über alles” and I suddenly found myself bumping (and for all, being bumped) all over the place…

No reason to stop after that. (and it was a frikkin good gig, two members of Victims Family are part of the band. nuff said 🙂 )

Rant – Brave New World

Weird. Reading the news about the neonazi riots against refugees in a small village in Germany, watching the despair of the refugees trying to cross the border between Greece & Macedonia, the hopeless situation of the refugees in Calais, I should have taken my usual deep dive into anger & weltschmerz.

But this time, I didn’t. And why not? Because…

a famous german actor not only gets really pissed at some politician who thinks refugees are only here for the 300 euros of “pocket money”, but starts a private initiative with a rapper to house refugees, and donates 100.000s of euros for it
a christian democratic politician (I never expected coming it from that corner) not only publicly says building a wall around Europe is not a solution, but he himself takes two refugees in his own home
a local initiative to support the refugees waiting with 100s to get registered publishes a list what they would need, and from that list it becomes clear, the city people have donated everything that could possibly be needed, from food, clothing to toys and diapers. The help from the city people comes in such amounts, it’s actually almost impossible to manage
even non-leftish papers publish lists and statistics to counter all those underbelly feelings of “worried citizens”
all the initiatives I see popping up in my newsfeed to support the refugees at Calais
and how many times by now have I seen the “cookie analogy” popping up in my newsfeed (“there’s 20 cookies. The banker takes 19. There’s one cookie left. The banker tells the worker “watch it, the immigrant will take your cookie”)? Or all the other stuff my fb-friends post from which one thing becomes really clear.

Empathy and solidarity are still going strong.

Yes. The world is burning. And going to hell in a hand basket.

But. Thank goodness it seems not just the weirdo alternative leftish people refuse to “think” with their underbelly, but the mainstream tends to do the same. And it’s not just words. Or signing another petition. It’s frikkin ACTIONs. They might be drops in the ocean, but dang. It’s a lot of them…

(now the frikkin european politicians should finally GET it: a. if you export weapons, you can take up refugees b. the xenophobes might shout (and act…) loud, in this case, the oso quiet voice of the majority tells a different story: refugees ARE welcome)…

Impressions – The city through old eyes

Walking through the neighborhood with my 78-year old mum visiting me, I see someone I know standing in the door of one of the local squat pubs. So I go over, and while my mum admires the huge murals outside. I chat with this fellow-foodsaver. The pub is a distribution point for saved food, bread & cake have just arrived.

So I tell my mum to go inside and take some. She obviously feels a bit awkward, until one the people outside, an elder, broadshouldered batcaver all dressed in black and wearing a Crass shirt and a nice fluffy mohawk, steps into the doorway, and almost knightly and very insistingly invites her in. A bit shy, she has no choice but to step inside, still feeling very out of place and trying her best not too look at all the weird hairdo’s and tattoos. Then she discovers the cakes…. and yes, they’re fresh from the bakery, and yes, they are for free…. We didn’t stay for a drink, but my mum immediately popped into the small art gallery next door to have another look inside :).

Thing is, sometimes what surprises my visitors says more of how my original country has changed, than about the more positive aspects of this city.

My mum wondering how all these little craft and other shops survive and aren’t taken over by huge chains. Enjoys the cheap indian food, and swallows hard when her wine arrives, the glass is so big. Stopping at a supermarket open til midnight, and my mum exclaiming how cute, how cute, and I wonder why, it’s just a very normal supermarket, until she tells me, there’s only one girl behind the counter, this late at night, and nobody thinks it’s dangerous. I of course have to inform her about the not-so-nice backgrounds, no minimum wage means, yes, the food is cheap, but either the owners works at least 12 hours a day, or that the bread is so cheap because the person on the other side of the counter works 40 hours a week, and still is dependent on “social service money”.

But yah, I rather live in a poor city which smells bad, is dirty, and where the drunks hang outside, than to worry about walking the streets alone after dark, my mum actually asked me if it wasn’t too risky for a woman on her own.

Blurp – A random outside event

Nice surprise at the Lohmühle Summerfest today: militant queer-rap with great lyrics on nice danceable, slightly cheesy, rhythms. If they play near you, go see them, live so much more better than soundcloud.

It also made me realize, looking around me in the audience, how many people were around who, if you want to mention gender, can best be described as “post-gender”. But fuk all that, in the end we’re all individuals (and dangit, how we love to express this 🙂 ).

And of course I enjoyed the rest of the fest, the diversity in age and appearance of the people, everywhere self-made food & drinks and little performances or play areas for kids & grownups, just letting myself go with the not really straight flow, meandering between wildgrowing greenery, self-built houses & sheds, random recycling/art, kids, dogs & cats running freely, laughing my ass off when a kid got reprimanded for pushing her daddy into the dust-kicking pogozone & mummy next jumping in herself dragging the kid along, and the general utterly relaxed atmosphere. Berlin at its best imho, but ah well, I am a bit of a hippie at heart 🙂

Blurp – Just a fly

For 3 days now, there’s a fly in my room with a fetish for my monitor. Irritating the shizniz out of me.

And normally, due to my cats hunting instincts, the average lifespan of any insect (or spider, or mouse, or well.. anything that moves including my toes) is about minus 1 minute. But I guess I shoved my cat off my desk too many times. Grumpf.

*baits cat… gets utterly surprised look*

*tries to swat fly with own – human – paws… too slow*

*puts cat in front of monitor*

*cat completely flabbergasted*

AAARGH….

Impression – Eeew.. am I settling down?

Biking downhill from the hidden garden of the Villa I realized something weird..

Yep, living in this neighborhood, in my little “scene”, always felt good.

But, looking back at another busy, full weekend, with renovating a bit in the giveaway shop, saving & distributing food on the market, where all the standholders know me by name (and friendly laugh at my slight wasp-phobia), going to another great gig & hanging outside with my friends waiting for it to begin, at the sunday fooodsaving brunch chatting with our regular guest, a random couch surfer or some people I dragged in to enjoy the free – vegan – food, then off to the circus acts in the garden of the Villa, and admiring the huge amount of apples & pears hanging in the old fruit trees (long live the Villa bees!), and end the night freezing my ass off under the stars watching a sweet little movie, every now & then scanning the sky in the hope the Perseids give me a falling star.

Dangit. I’ve “arrived”. My two feet, my heart and my head are firmly planted here. That’s scary. That’s frikkin scary. Omg, I haven’t “settled”, have I?

Though the word itself still triggers an almost allergic reaction (literally, as I noticed not that long ago, it results in choking & coughing my lungs out), eeks, I’m settled, in my own, slightly freaky, way.

Though, when talking to someone who (also?) loves traveling unpaved roads, yes, I do have a certain “longing”, especially for the Balkan – the beautiful german word “fernweh” describes it so well. Though I still picture myself as the crazy old woman on top of a mountain with 15 cats and 3 goats (and a donkey or an alpaca).

And I know my experience here might differ from others, who point out how this city can suck you dry, how hard it is to crack this nut, how much the anonymity of a city of millions can lead to utter loneliness, or can’t understand how I like living in, what one of my friends called it, the warzone, with its filth, its bad smells and its very present and visible seamy side..

My always present urge to keep moving is goners, that urge to move on, even when and where the situation feels good (thank you, nomadic ancestors, for the horizon fever & the always itchy feet). It’s so weird to realize this.

At least it’s gone for now. It prolly will be back in winter, since this city so frikkin different depending on season, but for now, weirdly enough.. the itch is gone…

Blurp – A Noisy Crowd Going Quiet

So.. a crowd of about 400 wearing band-shirts from Napalm Death, Neurot label bands, industrial festivals, Swans and scandinavian metal bands, & anticipating one hell of a loud feedback distortion trance, watches the support gig.

Which is completely different from the slow torture death metal of the main act & consists of one woman with an experimental cello-like instrument and an eery voice.

And there is utter, complete, silence in the audience while listening to her soft music. And I mean utter silence. No one utters even one word, no whispers, no phones ringing, no cameras clicking. Only sound I’ve heard, standing up front, was actually the opening & closing of the fridge & the popping of bottles behind the bar at the back of the venue.

Now that’s the kinda crowd I like 🙂 Not only open minded when it comes to a completely different style of music, but also showing the uttermost respect for it.

On a side note, my inner organs, bones, diaphragm & the fillings in my teeth are still vibrating from the sub- sub- sub-bass frequencies from Sunn o))). The moment I saw the huge wall of amplifiers on stage I grabbed a pair of the free earplugs… but those only protected my ears 🙂

Impression – Summer Time

Summer… which means either I have visitors or am visiting…

Though my eyes never are closed for what’s happening in this neighborhood, walking together with people who are not “settled” here, opens my eyes even more for those small things I perceive as quite normal.

Going home from a squatting pub in the early sunday morning daylight, and note from the corner of my eye random people sleeping on abandoned, graffitied, couches on the sidewalk.
During the foodsaving brunch, talk to one of the life-experienced people who really, really, really wants to help, but well, she’s slightly confused and already rubbed some people the wrong way. With a huge smile, she tells me her ex lives around here. Then looks away, tears filling her eyes.. she doesn’t miss the guy, but oh, how she misses the dogs… I hear one of the other foodsavers making a remark to his friend how so many people here can still laugh, still have a huge smile on their face, but if you hear their stories, you wonder how they can keep going.
Sitting in front of the giveaway shop, trying to have a meeting, get pissed at and become quite rude to some drunk guy who starts laughing weirdly in a foreign language whenever we want to discuss something more seriously. Luckily he buggers off after one of the other giveaway people tells him to get lost in his own language.
Waiting for one of my guests, and watch a naked guy making a bed by wrapping himself around a young tree growing out of the more than 1 meter tall weeds on a street corner.
Say hello to one of the local too-many-dogs ladies sipping her beer on the steps of a gentrified-away – former second hand children’s toys, now empty for over one year – store, and my guest shaking his head, wondering if I know all the freaks here. Deeply inhale the smell of rotten garbage at the end of my street.
Grab a drink in one the newer “steam punk” pubs my guest wanted to visit, and watch some local talent taking the open stage.
Relocate to an artist “public living room” for vegan cake & coffee at midnight and see an escaped ferret run across the street looking for food (and my guest running after it with his phone to make a pic).
Hear some really nice music from a balcony nearby, and can’t help but to get slightly pissed at that one annoying neighbor who called the cops on it.
Having a chat in the park with a girl in her early twenties, asking for a cigarette, who obviously takes more care of her dog than of herself, and, after refusing her offer of some stronger liquor, we exchange life stories.. . A few days later, I distribute saved food, I meet her again, & she shyly asks if she can give me a hug, tells me she quit drinking, and thanks me for our talk. Only when she walks away I make the connection…

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts:

Related posts: