"Das Eckhaus" Revisited. The real story.

In 2008, I wrote in my blog about a house. A house that once stood in a certain corner in the old city of Dresden. A house that was painted by the great expressionist painter Ludwig Meidner in 1913. The painting was called "Das Eckhaus" or "The House in the Corner". I became fascinated by this beautiful and evocative painting of a villa that was no more. I learned that it had a name. It was once called Villa Kochmann and it was totally destroyed in the allied carpet bombings of February 1945 that left Dresden a city only in name. 

I wondered who lived in this house. Who were the Kochmanns? At the time there was little information and I decided to fill in the gaps based on my own imagination. One day, I was surprised and moved to find a comment in my blog by Joan who was the great niece of Franz Kochmann, the once owner of das Eckhaus. She had stumbled by chance upon my blog, saw the painting and decided to provide some more information about her great uncle that lived in this very house. The villa Kochmann suddenly seemed to be coming to life. Five years later, I was contacted by L. David Tomei and based on his personal research, I can now start to piece together the life of the owner of the house in the painting. 


Franz Kochmann
 - Copyright L. David Tomei
and the Kochman family

Franz Kochmann was born on 12 September 1873. From what we know, prior to World War I, he was a well known and respected citizen of Dresden. But he was in fact a lot more than that. From a very young age he became passionate about a new magical science that was also an art and a practice. It involved creating durable images by recording light and it was simply called photography. Kochmann possessed the vision coupled with the technical ability to make this vision real. He decided to improve, design and produce photographic cameras based on his ideas and patents. In 1921, he founded the Franz Kochmann Fabrik where a number of fine cameras were produced for the professional and advanced amateur markets. Among the most notable were the Enolde and Korelle model series. Perhaps the finest were the Reflex-Korelle models first introduced in 1935. They proved to be one of the most important cameras of the 1930's. 

Herr Franz Kochmann, the successful entrepreneur, eventually became the wealthy industrialist who could afford to live in a villa that was named after him. He could now commission works of art and even become a patron to unknown but talented painters such as Ludwig Meidner or Oscar Kokoschka. There is evidence that in the villa Kochmann in Dresden one could see many important works of art hanging on the walls such as the black ink over graphite drawing "The Bar" signed by Ludwig Meidner or the "Double Portrait of Trudl" by Oskar Kokoschka to name but a few. And of course somewhere in the living room, maybe close to the imposing fireplace, or was it in the library, the Kochmanns had hung Meidner's "Das Eckhaus". A painting found in a house, depicting the very same house that contained the painting.     

But the dawn of one of the darkest hours of humanity was breaking. The rise of the Nazis to power changed the status of the Kochmann family overnight. Herr Franz Kochmann was targeted by the Nazi regime and became Franz "Israel" Kochmann (men were forced to add the name "Israel" and women "Sarah" so that they would be easily recognized as Jews). His company was taken away from him by force and nationalized. It is not clear precisely when he finally departed the family home in Dresden though late 1938 would appear to be accurate. He was refused a request to emigrate but was given permission to move to Utrecht which was at the time under Nazi control. He appears in the records (die Rijksinspectie van de Bevolkkingsregisters) as having registered in Utrecht on 26 March 1942. Such a registration was required of Jews who arrived in Holland at the time. 

The Kochmann art collection was seen to be comprised of mostly decadent art when the Nazis entered the villa. The greatest part of it was confiscated immediately and never returned to the family.

Following World War II, Herr Kochmann got a job with the Dutch camera company Vena and contributed to the design of several successful cameras such as the Venaret. These cameras were simple and inexpensive and did not come near the quality of his earlier designs produced at his own Dresden "Fabrik". 

Franz Kochmann's life came to its tragic end on 25 June 1956 when he was struck by a car in Utrecht. His wife, Clare Cleve Sprotte Kochmann died on 15 April 1971 at the age of 96.

So, here I am looking at the Meidner painting once again and it's late afternoon. It's just oil on canvas one can say, but then it's also so much more. It was a house, it was a family, it was a life and a history that should not be forgotten. 

My thanks to Joan and L. David Tomei.

You can visit David's vintage camera site right here

"Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day" by Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966)

Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day

Calmly we walk through this April's day,

Metropolitan poetry here and there,

In the park sit pauper and rentier,

The screaming children, the motor-car

Fugitive about us, running away,

Between the worker and the millionaire

Number provides all distances,

It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,

Many great dears are taken away,

What will become of you and me

(This is the school in which we learn...)

Besides the photo and the memory?

(...that time is the fire in which we burn.)

(This is the school in which we learn...)

What is the self amid this blaze?

What am I now that I was then

Which I shall suffer and act again,

The theodicy I wrote in my high school days

Restored all life from infancy,

The children shouting are bright as they run

(This is the school in which they learn . . .)

Ravished entirely in their passing play!

(...that time is the fire in which they burn.)

 

Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!

Where is my father and Eleanor?

Not where are they now, dead seven years,

But what they were then?

No more? No more?

From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day,

Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume

Not where they are now (where are they now?)

But what they were then, both beautiful;

Each minute bursts in the burning room,

The great globe reels in the solar fire,

Spinning the trivial and unique away.

(How all things flash! How all things flare!)

What am I now that I was then?

May memory restore again and again

The smallest color of the smallest day:

Time is the school in which we learn,

Time is the fire in which we burn.

"A Monster Calls" A novel by Patrick Ness (with illustrations by Jim Kay)

When the monster called after midnight it was completely unexpected. As unexpected in fact as the appearance of this extraordinary children's novel by Patrick Ness on the bookshelves. Based on an original idea by Siobhan Dowd and with the help of the truly magnificent expressionistic illustrations of Jim Kay, Patrick Ness has managed to create a book that is both frightening and emotionally charged. He adeptly balances different genres of traditional storytelling with difficult subjects and concepts such as childhood, truth, dealing with serious sickness and loss, pain, guilt, confronting and eventually overcoming your worst nightmares and fears by finally finding that inner strength which makes the difference in times of trouble and adversity. 

This is a powerful and exceptional book that will equally touch children and adults. When you read it as an adult, you re-establish the connection with that atrophied part of yourself, that lost forgotten time when you were a child and the world was very much defined by the power of your imagination. It re-awakens memories that made you stay up at night when all the grown-ups were fast asleep. Memories that had to do with your struggle to understand the adult world that you found yourself in. A world that was so unimaginatively lucid when compared with the world that you knew and understood. That was the time when your antennas were still up there receiving and transmitting below all grown-up frequencies. They had not yet been brought down to be "serviced and adjusted" by adult considerations according to society's norms.

The beautifully haunting graphic work of Jim Kay contributes a lot in giving an almost definitive gothic visual appearance to the written word, pulling you into the dark recesses of Conor's mind. These images are almost archetypes that will not be forgotten after you close the book. They existed in the past and they will continue to exist. The Monster is a pagan giant, a wicker man stuffed with the sum of all your fears and the darkness that you refuse to confront. His roots and his branches will tangle your soul and will not let you put this book down. I challenge you to try...

Listen to:

Electric President - Monsters

"Treacle" by YouYourself&i. A serious claim to the Indie throne of Canada

It was late in the evening and I was still trying to understand what went wrong with this kid. You see Daniel Gélinas from Montreal was not supposed to do all these things. This was not the way things were planned for his future… Good grades at school, clever kid, had fine prospects. A bright career all lined up and ready for him. What’s wrong with a nine to five white collar job? Nothing, I say. Nothing! Be useful to society my boy and think of the security in these times of crisis…  And what does he do? He throws everything out of the window … “I prefer not to”. What kind of Bartleby answer is that? Was it a nervous breakdown? He didn’t show any signs of losing the plot before but… there he is now in abandoned schools and derelict basements, recording scratches, cat hisses and songs. What happened?


I wonder if his so called friends at school are to blame. Friends at that age can throw you in the dark alleys of juvenile delinquency.

Look at these shady characters that helped him self-produce his new album called “Treacle”. No wonder…. And instead of just making a song or two, a single or, ok, an EP as a hobby without neglecting his career, no… he records a double album of music in the making. Music adrift in unchartered waters. Unfinished yet complete, coming from a cry to a whisper and going from a bang to a whimper. Music that can be found in-between chords, under the floorboards, flowing naturally or being dragged out into the open raw for all to see. Daniel Gélinas constantly dives in the fresh undercurrent of experimental ideas and resurfaces with strange turns of lyrical phrase and musical structure. Juggling between French and English, his songs have a strange capacity to Velcro into your head. 

But make no mistake about it. This is no syrupy music. This is certainly “treacle” in its dictionary definition of “antidote to poison”. To the “static mainstream poison” that we listen to every day on the radio, antidote in the sense of cleansing, or in the sense of the 'Drink Me' potion that shrinks Alice in size making her slip into a different world. 

Where does all that leave us with Daniel? Well, you make choices in life that YouYourself&i have to live with. Make the choice and listen to a couple of tracks from the album right here. But this is uploaded just to wet your appetite. The real trip is the double album "Treacle I & II" by YouYourself&i which is available to download for a minimal price following the link below:

The site of Daniel Gélinas and YouYourself&i

It should be noted that all the graphic work for the album was done by Daniel and his bunch of merry men and women from Montreal. 

The making of "Treacle"

When you buy the album, you therefore actually hold in your hands a limited edition lovingly handmade piece of indie history in the making.

Listen to:

YouYourself&i - Basement Heroes

YouYourself&i - Preludes 

The Boxers of George Bellows

George Bellows (1882-1925) was an american painter who managed to capture in his work the birth of the modern era in the United States at the turn of the past century. Is it possible for an artist to paint not only what he sees but go beyond, capturing something larger than life? Something that becomes not just a picture but a definitive imprint of a bygone era? The distilled spirit of an age, the "zeitgeist" of say, the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th? The answer is yes, if one looks at the work of George Bellows. Take for example his painting "Cliff Dwellers", depicting life in the ever sprawling neighborhoods of New York City dominated by tall, intersecting appartment blocks connected by washing lines. No skies and no horizons. Children are left to play in the street and the hustle and bustle of everyday life is so vividly portrayed that you cannot resist being drawn into the painting. Your eye travels in the picture, panning and zooming like a camera lens. After a while your imagination starts to fill in the gaps.You almost feel a strange nostalgia as if you were there once, lived among these people, shouted and cried and heard the noise of the tram passing by. George Bellows was eager to show how this world of industrial turmoil changed the urban landscape and how it affected the everyday lives of the common people. With a kin eye for detail and a talent for capturing the dynamic essence of a live, moving composition, he was the right man at the right time. 

Nowhere else is this more evident than in his paintings of boxers. Prize-fighting boxing at the time of George Bellows was illegal. It took place in seedy, underground joints hidden behind false brick walls that would slide open to reveal a noisy, smoke filled backroom, filled to capacity by a raw crowd, in a betting frenzy shouting, drinking and gesticulating around the ring. Often, the violence inside the ropes would spill over into the audience. Sometimes the cops would receive information and they would raid these places. Panic would then set in and the crowds would run to get away, leaving the two boxers up there, by themselves, oblivious of what is going on, up there, continuing to exchange the blows in front of the cops after all the crowds have cleared out and the only thing left are their hats, the odd shoe and broken bottles on the floor...     

Painted in the chiaroscuro style from the spotlights directed towards the ring, the boxers are caught in the thick of the action and even though they are off balance at the moment of defending or delivering a blow, they strike a perfect compositional balance by the perfect symmetry and complimentarity of the action. This is a brutal, head on collision dance. Their strained and blood stained muscles shining in the spotlight, their faces a blur or rather literarly a pulp, they are locked in combat in a fight that is a fight for survival.    

A noisy, passionate, deformed, ugly crowd follows closely the boxing match absorbed by the action. Painted with thick strokes, some faces could very well have been drawn by Honoré Daumier a little bit earlier at the other side of the Atlantic ocean. You get a glint of an eye here, a hideous mocking laugh there, all teeth shining. The blood red color of the boxers can be found also in some of the faces in the audience. They are an integral part of this brutal scene, tainted in red by their enthousiasm, anxiety, anger and anticipation as the match reaches the crucial minutes before the bell. With the sound of the bell some people will have gambled away their whole life. With the sound of the bell, the men in the tuxedos smile and money changes hands. 

 

With the sound of the bell you realise that you are in a gallery looking at a George Bellows painting. Then again, you get the impression that your clothes have a faint smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol and that your ears are still buzzing from the roar of the crowd when the referee started the countdown. A countdown that has lasted almost a hundred years...  

"This is Water". The David Foster Wallace Kenyon Commencement Speech 2005

In 2005, David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College in the USA. The speech turned out to be an inspired moment for David Foster Wallace and an inspiring experience for those who heard it. This is what he said:

"(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, the deployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning.

Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about "teaching you how to think". If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think. But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I'd ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your scepticism about the value of the totally obvious.

Here's another didactic little story. There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education--least in my own case--is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualise stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotised by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about "the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master".

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

By way of example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home. You haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it's pretty much the last place you want to be but you can't just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store's confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough check-out lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can't take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn't yet been part of you graduates' actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is.

Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious liberal arts form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic being disgusted about all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks, burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper-stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest [responding here to loud applause] (this is an example of how NOT to think, though) most disgustingly selfish vehicles, driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers. And I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel, and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and selfish and disgusting we all are, and how modern consumer society just sucks, and so forth and so on.

You get the idea.

If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.

But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.

I wish you way more than luck."

David Foster Wallace

Antonio Porchia - The Master of Aphorisms

At first glance, it's quite strange that Hippocrates, the famous Greek physician of the 5th century BC, is somehow considered to be the father of the "aphorism". That is probably because, according to the Oxford dictionary, the term "aphorism" seems to have evolved from "a concise statement of a scientific principle, typically by a classical author" to "a pithy observation which contains a general truth" in the modern sense of the word. In all cultures, one can find great writers of this so called "wisdom literature". At its most basic form, an aphorism is just a witty statement sometimes evident and maybe just too easy to have some intrinsic value. At its best though, an aphorism transcends the narrow confines of a subjective "clever" observation, forcing the reader to reconsider the meaning of common words. Revealing a kind of universal truth and often venturing into almost haiku poetry. Welcome to the world of Antonio Porchia. 

Antonio Porchia was born in 1886 in the Calabria region of Italy but very young moved to Argentina settling in Buenos Aires from where he never departed until his death in 1968. He was a simple man who wrote one, and only one, small book called "Voces" in 1943.     

This book contained his "distilled" thoughts in the form of one or two sentence aphorisms. It is quite remarkable how this simple man who lived alone managed to tap such a source of infinite depth in form and substance.

Jorge Luis Borges had this to say of Porchia's aphorisms: "... In Porchia's aphorisms, the reader feels the immediate presence of man and his destiny. The aphorisms included in "Voces" lead much further than their written text. They are not an end but a beginning. They don't strive to create an impression. One can assume that the writer wrote them for himself, without knowing that that he was creating for others the image of a lonely man, who sees things with clarity and is conscious of the unique mystery of every moment."

Here are a few examples of Antonio Porchia's aphorisms as found translated in english from the highly recommended Argentinian site on Antonio and his work.

http://www.antonioporchia.com.ar/

Some of Antonio Porchia's aphorisms

"Man goes nowhere. Everything comes to man, like tomorrow."

"One lives in the hope of becoming a memory."

"You’ll find the distance that separates you from them, by joining them."

"What we pay for with our lives is never costly."

"Nothing ends without breaking, because everything is endless."

"I’ve come to be a step away from everything. And here I stay, away from everything, by a step."

"The less you think you are, the more you bear. And if you think you’re nothing, you bear everything."

"I’ve abandoned the beggarly need to live. I live without it."

"One who says the truth says hardly anything."

"The chains that bind us most are the chains we’ve broken."

"Sometimes what I want and what I don’t want make so many concessions
to each other that they end up looking alike."

"If we didn’t lose anything during life, we would lose life without anything."

"My voice tells me: “That’s how it all is.”
And the echo of my voice tells me: “That’s how you are.”

"Shadows: some hide, others reveal."

"Men and things rise, fall, move away, approach. Everything is a comedy of distances."

"Sometimes, at night, I turn on a light so as not to see."

"You have nothing and you would give me a world. I owe you a world."

"When the tide is out" (2011). A short animated film by Xaver Xylophon

BEI EBBE // WHEN THE TIDE IS OUT (2011) from Xaver Xylophon on Vimeo.

Το Θείο Τραγί του Γιάννη Σκαρίμπα

Το Θείο Τραγί του Γιάννη Σκαρίμπα γράφτηκε γύρω στα 1931 και δημοσιεύτηκε στις αρχές του 1933. Πρόκειται για ένα μοναδικό κείμενο στην ελληνική πεζογραφία στο βαθμό που εισάγει στοιχεία που έχουν τις καταβολές τους στους καταραμένους Γάλλους ποιητές του 19ου αιώνα (Baudelaire, Comte de Lautréamont, Arthur Rimbaud) προϊδεάζοντας θέματα και ιδέες που θα απασχολήσουν πολύ αργότερα την γενιά και το κίνημα των Beats της δεκαετίας του 50 και θα βρούν πρόσφορο έδαφος να δοκιμαστούν στην πράξη μέσω των επαναστάσεων και της φιλοσοφικής σκέψης της δεκαετίας του 60.

Η ανατρεπτική ιδέα του Σκαρίμπα να δημιουργήσει έναν αντι-ήρωα ο οποίος στρέφεται συνειδητά ενάντια σε κάθε αντίληψη καθωσπρεπισμού και ψεύτικης ηθικής, έναν στην κυριολεξία "ακοινώνητο" άνθρωπο που πληρώνει με το ίδιο νόμισμα κάθε έκφανση του σαθρού κοινωνικού, πολιτικού και θρησκευτικού συστήματος, φέρνει έντονα στο νου ποιήματα και κείμενα του Μπωντλαίρ, "Τα άσματα του Μαλντορόρ" του Λωτρεαμόν ή το "Μια Εποχή στην Κόλαση" του Ρεμπώ. Ίδια είναι η λύσσα, το φτύσιμο όλων των δήθεν αξιών, το κάψιμο όλων των αρχών αλλά και ίδιος ο ποιητικός οίστρος και η άγρια ομορφιά και εκρηκτικότητα του λόγου. Τίποτα δεν θα γίνει δεκτό επειδή, σώνει και καλά, έτσι πρέπει να είναι ή επειδή έτσι λένε οι κανόνες. Ούτε καν οι φυσικοί νόμοι. Ακόμη και ο ίδιος ο λόγος του Σκαρίμπα "έχει σηκώσει μπαϊράκι" και φαντάζει ευθύς, άφοβος και τελικά ποιητικά μοντέρνος μέσα στην αναρχία του, την επανάληψη και την συντακτική, γραμματική αλλά ακόμα και ορθογραφική του τρέλλα.     

Τέλος μέσα από το κείμενο του Σκαρίμπα βλέπουμε να βγαίνει πέρα από το άναρχο πνεύμα της επανάστασης και η αγωνία της φιλοσοφίας του Υπαρξισμού για την οποία θα μιλήσουν πολύ αργότερα, μεταξύ άλλων, ο Σαρτρ και ο Καμύ. 

Χαρακτηριστικό είναι αυτό το απόσπασμα από την αρχή του δευτέρου κεφαλαίου:

  "Είπαμε - ένας αέρας φυσούσε.
         Η δημοσιά φιδοσέρνονταν ατέλειωτη - σαν μιά αιωνιότη - στον κάμπο.  Εβούιζαν οι καλαμιές, κρύο έκανε.
   Κι αυτός προχωρούσε.
         Ήταν παραδομένος στο δρόμο του, σαν ο στραβός στο αιώνιο σκοτάδι· επήγαινε - όλο επήγαινε - σαν μια ψυχή μες' την ερημία του χρόνου.
          Τον είχαν παρεξηγήσει οι ανθρώποι· η σκόνη τον είχε κάμει ολόασπρο, κι ο δρόμος - αχ θεέ μου - ο δρόμος ποτέ δε θα τέλειωνε. Δεν αιστάνονταν τίποτε· μήτε χαρά μήτε λύπη· αδιάφορος ήτανε κ' ήσυχος· γιατί; μήπως δεν ήταν η δημιουργία στη θέση της; ή μην είχε αντίρηση για το νόμο της έλξης; η σιωπή τον εγνώριζε, οι νύχτες τον ξέραν· ήταν της ερημιάς αυτός άνθος...
          Ο κόσμος αργά· τα πράγματα αφημένα στο πάει τους· να δημιουργούνται οι ορίζοντες· να γεννιέται - μούλος - ο χρόνος· οι τόποι, οι εποχές να πηγαίνουνε. Ξέρετε πως περπατάνε στη γη; να, πηγαίνουν· τίποτ' άλλο· πηγαίνουν σε προυπαντάνε τα όρια σε ακολουθάν πίσω οι δρόμοι - οι πολιτείες - σου τραγουδάνε βαθιά. Έχει ένα χτύπο το χάος· έχει ένα σφυγμό το κενό· και μόνο οι ώρες σωπαίνουν· και μόνο οι καιροί δε μιλούν. Η αιωνιότη σε κοιτάζει και σκέφτεται· τα πλάτη, οι απόστασες, είναι αφιερωμένα στο βάδι σου· αναθυμιάζει μ' ευλάβεια κατ' απ' το βήμα σου η γη.
          Έτσι πάνε· όλο ίσα και ντρίτα· άκρη άκρη στις σιδεροτροχιές, στα ποτάμια, άκρη-άκρη στους ωραίους γιαλούς· πάντα δημοσιά κι όλο κάμπο· δεν ανεβοκατεβαίνουν τα βήματα, δεν πάνε οι στράτες λοξά· για σένα δεξά ή ζερβά να διαβαίνουν τα όρη, να εξελίσσονται οι θάλασσες· ή καμπύλη, ή ευθεία, αλλά τι καμπύλη; Όση η γη. Και τι ευθεία; Όσο ατέρμονη είναι η πλήξη των όρνιων και το τέρμα των τραίνων που κουβαλάν το χιονιά... κι ο κόσμος αργά· η αιωνιότη πιστώνει. Η φυγόκεντρη δύναμη ας είναι ένα παραμύθι των κύκλων, και μόνο μια ψείρα νάσαι συ στις στροφές· έτσι· έτσι όπως πάνε οι δρόμοι μονάχοι τους έτσι όπως στέκουν τα βράχια.
Και αυτός προχωρούσε..."

Αν ο Jack Kerouac είχε διαβάσει Σκαρίμπα δεν θα είχε νιώσει τη ανάγκη να γράψει το "On the road" το 1951. Το Θείο Τραγί τα είχε ήδη πει όλα, 30 χρόνια πριν και σε ελάχιστες σελίδες. Άλλη μια τρανή απόδειξη στο απόσπασμα που ακολουθεί:

"       ...Τ' απογιοματάκι μπάινει ένας ζήτουλας: μπρε του λέω, πώς σε λένε, πουθ' έρχεσαι; Από πάνω μου κάνει και μου δείχνει αόριστα· διακονεύω ψωμάκι· έτσι ο θεός να σχωράει τους θαμμένους σου, δεν κάνεις αφεντικό μ' ένα έλεος;
           Τον λυπήθηκα· αχ πως πόνεσε η καρδιά μου του δόλιου· σκέφτηκα πως η ίδια μοίρα μας ένωνε· περιπλάνώμενες είμαστε δύο ψιχούλες κ' οι δυό μας· σπουργιτάκια των δρόμων· να, δύο κακόμοιρα πλάσματα. Όλοι οι άνθρωποι είναι καταγραμμένοι και ήσυχοι· βρίσκονται καταχωρημένοι κανονικά στα βιβλία, με ημερομηνίες και ονόματα. Έχουνε κ' ένα αμετάβλητο νούμερο: τον αριθμό του μητρώου τους· είναι τα ονόματά τους μακρότατα: Γεώργιος Καντακουζηνός, του Ιωάννου και Ελένης· μην ψάχνει άδικα και τους βρίσκει η αιωνιότη, φτάνουν απ' το χωριό ως το έθνος· νομός, επαρχία, δήμος, κοινότης· κ' έπειτα οι θρησκείες και τ' άλλα· σίγουρα πράματα· η αλήθεια ολόσωμη με υπογραφή και σφραγίδα· όχι τρίχες.
            Ενώ εμείς όλο από πάνω ερχόμαστε και δείχνουμ' αόριστα. Είναι τα πιστοποιητικά μας αμφίβολα, είναι οι δρόμοι μας γρίφοι· άγραφη είναι η ληξιαρχική μας σελίδα· άγραφη αφού δεν μας γνώρισε και μήτε την ξέρουμε. Την αξιοπρέπεια, την τιμή, το δικαίωμα, τα κάνουμε μείς λαθρεμπόριο γιατ' είν' μονοπωλημένα τα είδη τους· κυκλοφορούν, χωρίς τα ένσημά τους στα χέρια μας τ'απαγορευμένα αυτά πράγματα. Τάχουν αυτοί κάμει φίρμα τους· τα βάζουν και στα εμπορικά τους ταμπέλα. Ο Θεός: είδος οικόσημο· η αρετή· σπεσιαλιτέ - ειδικότης... Μα ποιός θα μπόραε να ψήσει αντάμα τους κάστανα. Σας λέω μήτ' ο διάολος. Τουλάιστο ο διάολος - ο αγαθός αυτός άφρονας - σου ζητάει μοναχά τη ψυχή σου και σ' αφήνει όλα τ' άλλα: Το δικαίωμα της ζωής, την απόλαυση, τον έρωτα της γυνάικας, το γέλιο. Σε συντρέχει μάλιστα να τ' αποχτήσεις μπρε μάτια μ'. Πού τέτοιος φίλος! μια ψυχούλα στην έχω χαλάλι του. Ενώ αυτοί - άβυσσος αυτουνών το ιμάτιο - αυτοί όλα τα θέλουν, θέλουν και την ψυχή και το σώμα. Σου υπόσχονται και τη βασιλεία των ουρανών, μα σου χτυπάνε μαέστρικα τη βασιλεία της Γης μας. Ο «περί δικαίου των κώδικας» μόνο για δικαιοσύνη δεν γράφει. Ο «Οίκος» των προμηθεύει μόνο άστεγους, και η φιλανθρωπία τους «Αμαρτωλών Σωτηρίες»... Αμαρτιών μας τα πλήθη... εμείς... ενώ αυτοί συγγράφουν Βοκκάκιο στα γόνατα των κοριτσιών των δικών μας!... Σας λέω είν' εξαίσιοι!
             Να, για δαύτο γυρίζουμε. Είμαστε της ζωής μεις οι μούργοι κ' ειν' οι άλλοι κορόιδα μας. Εμείς καλλιεργούμε μόνο από έρωτα προς την ελευθερία το ψέμα - ένα ψέμα όλο ποίηση, μιάν αναποδιά όλην οίστρο - ενώ αυτοί είναι αυτόδουλοί του και σκλάβοι του. Η συμφωνία τους είναι ν'αλληλοκλέβουνται έντιμα, ενώ η κλεψιά είναι άτιμη. Είν' η συνθήκη τους τίμια με σήμα κατατεθέν της το ψέμα. Τί μπρίο! Τί μπρίο! Πώς διάολο συσχετίζουν τα άσχετα; Πώς μπρε μάτια μ' συμβιβάζουν τα άκρα; Είναι όλοι τους «τίμιοι» κατά τον πιό άτιμο τρόπο!... Πού να τους παραβγούμε εμείς οι κακόμοιροι σ' αυτή τους την ανομία τη νόμιμη, σ' αυτή την πεπειραμένη αρετή τους. Είναι πολύ πεζεβένηδες...
             Να, γι' αυτό γκιζιρνάμε. Μήτε σπείρουμε, μήτε θερίζουμε γιατί για μας είναι τα χούματα μπρούτζινα και νικέλινη η γη μας. Τα Έθνη, οι πολιτείες, οι τόποι, δεν έχουνε σύνορα στον δικό μας χάρτη και τα δυό ημισφαίρια μας πέφτουνε λίγα. Η ζωή μας δεν ανέχεται όρια. Εμείς ένα σύνορο ξέρουμε: της ζωής και του θανάτου· μια πατρίδα γνωρίζουμε: των σολών μας το πάτι. Είμαστε μείς οι πολίτες του άπειρου, κ' έχουμε κ' εμείς μια σφραγίδα: τον πάτο μας. Μ' αυτήν σφραγίζουμε μεις τα πιστοποιητικά της τιμής των..."   

Είναι πραγματικά δύσκολο με δύο μικρά αποσπάσματα και κάποια πεζά λόγια να μπορέσει κανείς να παρουσιάσει έστω και σχηματικά αυτές τις ηλεκτρισμένες εκατό σελίδες του Σκαρίμπα που αποτελούν το "Θείο Τραγί". Αφήστε στην άκρη λοιπόν ότι άλλο διαβάζετε και πιάστε στα χέρια σας αυτό το βιβλίο. Ή όπως θα έλεγε και αυτό το εξαίσιο τέρας, ο Γιάννης, ο πρωταγωνιστής της ιστορίας, ...μην αφήσετε άλλο να ξεχουρδίζετ' ο χρόνος. Γκιζιρνάτε ντεεε...

Το βιβλίο "Το Θείο Τραγί" του Γιάννη Σκαρίμπα κυκλοφορεί από τις εκδόσεις Νεφέλη

"...You can clap now" - Vic Chesnutt performing "Everything I say"

Some concerts can be life changing experiences. The venue is right, the artist and the audience straight away create a bond, the music flows and you feel you are about to witness something magical, something unique. It doesn't happen so often, to get all the parameters right, but when it does you feel it. From the first seconds.   

I am not going to say a lot about the late Vic Chesnutt. Paralysed at the age of 18 he discovered that he could still play some simple guitar in the wheelchair to accompany his beautifully written songs. He released 17 albums during his short career and even though he was not so well known to the wider public, he influenced musicians from around the world who mention him as their prime source of creative inspiration. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. produced his first two albums but Vic Chesnutt was never meant for mainstream success.  
        
Filmed for the music series "the neighbors dog", this concert took place in the living room of a Canadian house. There is no stage, no extravagant light show and no distance separating the audience from Vic and his musician friends who included members from Godspeed You Black Emperor and Thee Silver Mt. Zion. There is nowhere to hide in a setting like this. It's raw. Bryan Carroll (from All Music Guide) described Vic Chesnutt's music as a "skewed, refracted version of Americana that is haunting, funny, poignant, and occasionally mystical, usually all at once". The song "Everything I say" as performed in this crisp and beautifully filmed extract is a perfect confirmation of that statement. Chesnutt cracks a joke at the beginning and then starts playing as if there was no tomorrow. An electrifying performance where everything is balancing on the turn of each note. From a silent strum of the guitar to the distorted "wall of sound" attack, there is such a release of musical energy that the feeling you get is one of almost mystical exhilaration. 

In classical music concerts, a knowledgeable audience will wait for the final note to become inaudible and then still refrain from clapping and cheering as the last feeble vibrations of the musical wave are absorbed in silence. The same reverence can be witnessed in the audience's reaction at the end of this song. There is a long pause and Vic releases the tension with a simple "you can clap now". 

This show would be one of Vic Chesnutt's last performances caught on film.