Respect. Mandate. Berlin (First) Summer 2009

Video art is the new poetry and autumn is the new spring and language is an old bridge.. and no one knows what's going on but they walk anyway. Down lanes of lines, out of time. I want to respect you and me and everyone I know and don't know anyway. Because I can. I peer in my mind into a hole where they burnt books that anyone can and does just walk over and history spun on an axis so far here so far away, I have a lot to learn. So I turn. Another page, another summer burning. And realise I don't need to rhyme or make up time, I can fall and keep falling and get up again. Crawling. And some people care, and some don't. I care. It's my spiritual dare.

So you stare.

We walk between walls real or imagined in the dead zone and wonder, will I be shot? Will a dog eat me? Will I crush this dog with my bike or be crushed by a car and end up in a coma or with a broken collar bone? Where am I hiding or running to or from? .. A repressive regime inside me, inside all of us? S/he asks as s/he kisses.

And I press down on my bike with my palm and lean onto it and fall backwards over it and hit my head on a pole. Because I can. And I plan. A better day, a better way. But I take the ticket anyway.

My teacher asks me 'How do you find this graffiti?' (in german as an exercise) and I respond (in german as an exercise) 'I find it interesting. Berlin is one big painting.' She agrees. Let's paint on the skin of dawn, let's transform the dawn. Before it turns too dark.

'Memory is fragile, garbage lasts forever' says the choreographer's website. In hindsite, my hindskin peels off and I cower from the wind and I scream. Maybe. 'I'm pushing up daisies'. All is degraded and memory can be plastic, brittle spittle. But I'll spin for the record, let you spin me right round baby on this upside down Earth, spin shit and spin out.. like a clown with a frown. But I won't turn you down. Not really. Really really. I'm open out minded, and money goes around.. and around and around and around. Inside eyes. In the wars, open doors. . Plant this plant for your grandma and grandpa. There are scars on their hearts. There's a scar in this city, like a severed left and right brain hemisphere... which side am I on?

You're in 'die Totezone'.. oh of course I am. You have no such place. She stands against a building smoking a cigarette with a Turkish wedding dress on as they walk by and stare. A guy comes up to her and spray paints on the wall to her left 'He', on her torso and wedding dress an Anarchy 'A' and 'rt' on the wall to her right. He stands back and takes a photo of her/it. She looks at him for a moment and bursts into tears. He doesn't know what to do.. he looks around in a panic. He then goes to her and tries to comfort her (yes good idea). She violently pushes him away... again he panics... Suddenly it cuts to them swinging off the arms of a nude sculpture in the park of a Greek statue. They're like children again, laughing and playing.

In the sky a plane pulling a sign says 'I respect you and me anyway.'

It's not a command, those days and nights are long gone... like this scar of a wall in the heart of this city. A memory fading. Something in a book. Don't give me that look. Yes I know nothing, I'm naive and a sook. But fucken give it up bitches and bastards.. you know you wanna hook.

Photo: Stack, Berlin 2010