We started at the Visitor/Documentation Center. While watching the two movies I felt a little feeling of sympathy and desire to better understand the context of peoples lives and the history of east Germany and the Soviet Union. Simple narratives always tend to put me off. I don’t know why but humans never got out of the habit of writing myths. This historical notion that the eastern block was enveloped in Ideology and false consciousness, thereby implying that the west was not at all in the midst of anything like that and not only brought down the eastern block but in the words of some historians brought an end to Ideology brings me back to Adorno in his essay “Art, Culture, Society.” In this essay he tries, as he always does, to describe the sneaking pervasiveness of false consciousness and how the slippery, bamboo-like fascistic tendencies can sneak their way into any uncritical gardener’s garden. He writes, “…the semblance of freedom makes reflection upon one’s own unfreedom incomparably more difficult than formerly when such reflection stood in contradiction to manifest unfreedom, thus strengthening defense.”(198)  Adorno understands the difficulty we have today in deciphering what is free, what our our freedoms and what is a free state, what are these things and what do they mean under free market capitalism? It is interesting to think about how much the definition of the word ‘free’ is augmented once conjoined with a noun.

I did also really enjoy learning about the process of demolishing, privatizing, monumentalizing, and reselling of the Berlin wall. Capitalism digested the iron curtain through a series of stomachs and valvic transfers much like a happy cow.

On Monday I went with Janina to a practice space for bands that was located in the very far east reaches of Berlin. The building had a real 80’s Robocop vibe from the outside. A black nameless box. A battery charger. We walked inside and it was a labyrinth of hallways and sounds that ranged from okay to awful. Janina was getting a bass lesson from a friend in his practice space which was not so different from the ones I have been in in America. One of the walls is covered in gear, (more big black boxes.) There were cords scattered about everywhere, a couch where I decided to do some homework and a analog recording set up on the other side of the room. After she finished her lesson we all played together. In order to be jamming on the same embarrassment level, each one of us played the instrument we’re least comfortable with. It was really fun and as Janina pointed out some ‘good’ sounds were actually made from time to time. We had to call it quits when this skinny older metal guy came in to record vocals with Toby, the person who’s space it was.

Janina and I wandered over to her friend Adam’s ‘flat’ which was set up in one of the practice rooms. When he opened the door the first thing I saw on my right was his bed, then a little hallway in front of me. I walked on expecting the hallway would lead into a room as it turned left but it just dead ended right their and I realized his flat was just an L-shaped hallway with a cubby just big enough to fit a bed. Adam is a very nice, short and stocky boy who just moved to Berlin recently from Edinburgh, Scotland. Janina had told me he was bragging to her about his cooking and said he would prove it by making us dinner. Adam began the preparations by taking us to his ‘private bathroom’ to wash the dishes, which ended up being the old women’s bathroom with a lock on it and a shower hose installed for the two guys who decided to pay 20 euros a month to live in L-shaped hallway rooms. It smelled awful but I really liked how proud of it he was. He even mentioned that he brought his mom there to show her all the facilities. We went back to his flat and he made us poor man’s pesto made of oil, garlic, peanuts, and arugula and some salt. We had it with Rotini pasta. It was not so bad tasting, actually kind of good but I felt like I had placed a bag of sand in my stomach afterwards and so shared with them the great American term: Gut Bomb. Realizing it was going to take an hour to commute back home Janina and I said our goodbyes and talked all the way until we had to change U-bahns, missing a couple of transfers in the process.

I am going to try and write this more like notes about a story that could be written.

⚀ On 4/8 I found my way to my first punk gig in Berlin, it was off of  Kotbusser Station though that much could be assumed I think. 

♙With the help from my only contact for the show who met me on the street, I was lead through the opening terminal of a car garage, then to the left through a metal gate and up a set of outside stairs, and then through a door and up some more stairs into long, dirty white-tiled room. 

♝The bartenders were three guys crammed in this little hand-made bar/giant cupboard. They all were stern, slack-shouldered and funny but only in a way where they would never smile. I saw them drop and smash three bottles on the floor while trying to hand them to people and every time they just shrugged their shoulders, faces mute with neither dismay or enthusiasm.

❀Stiff and sober with no friends to weave into and around myself I paced slowly through the venue having friendly but brief conversations until I really hit it off with a German girl named Janina. More about her later.

☻I only saw the last two bands play which were Good Throb from UK and Nadie from Spain. I don’t know why but I feel so uncomfortable writing about their sounds, maybe its because I have cringed so much when reading how people have described the musical acts I’ve played in. I don’t want to inflict that one anyone else

☠I think I got a rosey-tinted first impression of the Berlin punk scene because those two bands that played were made mostly all women and that always brings out a lot of women/queer people to the show. I have heard since then that it is considered by some cool guys in the scene that to bring up gender inequality in the scene is reactionary and down right uncool! (booo)

⚰Regardless I ended up having a really good time. Music began playing after the bands stop which is a pretty normal thing for someone to plug in an ipod and amateur dj for their friends after the show but it was the special German edition and I ended up being totally compelled to dance until they through everyone out at 2:30am which I think for Berlin standards is pretty early in the night.

☛ ☜