Secret Fragments #6

The song was beautiful.

 ‘This is your 30^th year / Now you are dum-dum-dum …’ Even the words he hadn’t heard and those he couldn’t now remember were perfect and thrilling to him. How wonderful it had been! And how wonderful they had been! The singers, and musicians that was. But looking at it again, sinking back into the evening, the guilty heaviness he had felt soon bloomed in his stomach. Bloomed in the place where his guts had turned as he listened, and the beginning of a cough scratched at his throat. Bloated from the beer and sickly from all the food he tried to listen as hard as he could to the song; and sing along though he did, and smile, and keep his eyes fixed on them all, he felt he was missing part of it. He smelt the smoke that clung to his jumper and couldn’t get past feeling how fat he was. And beyond that, he thought to himself, why wasn’t he in that circle singing to Marseille? Not actually that circle, but another one, somewhere, another time. Their ruddy faces and clear voices rang clear and had made him shudder at his evening of shoving more and more in to himself. He needed to get involved somehow. He knew he had smoked too much to take any pleasure in that, and besides, thick smoke sat around him anyway, clouds trailing from the cigarette Pest held in her fingers.

The trip home from the party turned Pest grouchy and he melancholic, and the gloomy thoughts of the song accompanied him the entire journey. He longed just to be there and warm so he could forget about it all. His spirits instantly rose as they ascended the stairs to her flat and he remembered Buda’s stash of weed.

He was rolling a second joint when Pest fell asleep. Now he was utterly content. What he loved about getting high, he thought to himself, was that it made everything else feel so good. Any chair would bring him warmly into its fold; a swig of beer stung the edges of his tongue and cooled his throat. A cigarette would comfort, and then he would put one of the chocolates from Ghent whole into his mouth and smother it under his tongue and crush it with the roof of mouth. It would spread out in thick rolls to line the warm wet little grotto, and he would feel the sharp edges of the nuts cut into his check and squash into the grooves of his teeth, the sides of his check pulled inwards by the gloop.

‘You are enjoying my birthday chocolates are you?’ Pest had snapped at him. ‘Ye you enjoy them!’ He had felt himself shrinking inside and he despaired for a moment that she had ruined everything by exposing his gluttony. But the feeling thankfully fell away and now she was asleep so he continued to enjoy the chocolates. He would assess and reassess how many more he could have before she would realise in the morning that he had kept on eating after her chastisement.  

This is what he was missing at his grandfather’s he thought, but then reflected, with his grandfather’s port and cigarettes it wasn’t so different. These were the real joys of life he thought. As he was prone to do now, his mind floated towards Lady Baxter-White and the Baron, and wondered if they had enjoyed themselves like this. Had Bobo? And if she had, had it been before or after her eighteenth birthday? He settled back into the past and brought the visage of his glamorous ancestor in front of him. Loosing none of her beauty back in London she had darkened, his grandfather had told them. No longer the face of a dandelion but instead a lilac snowdrop standing in shadow. His grandfather had gone to his study to collect an envelope of old photos and he showed them how his mother’s expression had hardened into a steel pout. The lines already forming over her face were evident in the dusty pictures. Against a silent hysterical current that flowed faster as her birthday approached, Bobo challenged their caution with silence, and her coldness sent all into disarray. Because she hadn’t been enjoying herself.

‘One time, two days before her birthday, when my father took her hand in his, as had been demonstrated by the handsome wives, she withdrew, stood up and bright red in the face screamed at him that he was presumptuous and had no right and left the room. For a moment the juggernaut screeched to holt, and my father found himself flung down from the crest of the wave to a floor he hadn’t previously been aware existed. But the places were already set, and the machine steadily in motion. My father had no more power to alight, or halt the engine, than Bobo did. The train ran itself. And that, I believe, is where it began. I don’t know the exactitudes. Bobo found a quiet resolution that she was to keep as long as I knew her. And my father, well … All I know is that he got through Bobo’s eighteenth with Bordeaux, the eighteen months of their engagement with a few crates, and was half drunk as she walked up the aisle.’

Marriage at eighteen … and him drunk. But older than her. Thirty or so. Imagine marrying a thirty-year-old …  Imagine being married at thirty. They would all be thirty soon, and then what … It wasn’t too bad because times are made just to enjoy ourselves. And we don’t know when the next time we truly, ignorantly enjoy ourselves will come. And this feels good and that can’t be bad. And there were other times and even if he let this time slip past, let the circle of song fall into the mist of things missed, this had sharpened his search to touch the map and really feel next time. It had been beautiful. Squandered, nonetheless.

He wondered what Buda and Vienna really were getting up in that dingy old flat in Pecham. Buda would have enjoyed the song, as she listened to all the songs that he later loved. It had been that way at school, with Pest and the others as well, and they had stumbled upon a band they had loved, but no-one else knew them.

His limbs felt solid and regel, and he was aware of the cold blue streams running through them.  His toes were little pebbles at the end of his bonny little feet that spread out on the sequenced carpet below him. The beer that slopped around the bottom of his glass was now warm and flat but it was trusty and refreshing nonetheless.  All he really cared for now, all he needed for, all he really willed to have was a playful breeze to dance past his feet and over his arms and chest and up to his neck and face. And to listen to that song.

The effort to find it was awful and he almost toppled over an empty beer bottle.     

Where was the laptop?

He fell asleep before the end.

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2014

Secret Fragments #5

            A few days before he had gone to Pest’s apartment in Tower Hamlets. Weeks before Pest and Buda had invited him to come along to the birthday party of a girl called Marseille who they had met in Cornwall on Buda’s eighteenth and he had subsequently met a few times in London. Buda was no longer going and Pest had said she wasn’t sure if she was but would let him know. She hadn’t let him know but he turned up at her flat on the day of the party anyway. In the doorway her lips tightened as she sucked her teeth but she let him in without a word.

            Sitting in her sitting room, tidy and précised as it has never been when Buda has been there, they drank coffee and he confronted it to break the silence.

            ‘I hear Buda has a new friend.’

            Pest looked at him sharply trying to gage from which angle he was approaching. She raised her eyebrows, turned away from him to look out the window and said, ‘Yes, they are certainly good friends.’ He watched her façade of indifference crumble as she turned to look out the window.

            Clouds lined the sky in white and grey clumps but through a parting bright sunlight streamed into the apartment and flooded Pest’s face. The blotches and faded make-up lines were lit up in sordidness. She looked exhausted. Neither her nor Buda had been looking well for weeks. Three years of living together in London with no parents and no boyfriends and no school they had hit the streets hard. While Buda had hollowed-out Pest had grown plumper, having left her father’s home cooking and farmer’s market vegetables for fatty Italian food and beer. But whereas in the past he had believed that the degeneration of her teenage good looks (blonde, short and rosy cheeked with blue eyes and a babbling laugh that flattered) had a kind of daredevil caution-to-the-wind glamour about it, all the wildness had now settled, crusting over and turning her tired in face and heavy in step. When not hanging loose, about the coffee machine or in the cupboard searching for sugar, her hands skittered over the mugs and plugs like blind rodents with determined spirits of their own.

            ‘You could invite yourself around,’ she said, fingers fumbling with the lighter. ‘You could just go round there, like you came here. They have all sorts of people there. Vang Vieng is always there with all her friends.’

            Vang Vieng was Buda’s sister, five years older than them and therefore when at school had appeared to them, with her dark eyeliner and tattoos, as a sparkling beacon of a life that could be after school. Between rows, with Pest in tow, Buda had tiptoed closer to Vang Vieng and made out a place for the two of them in this new thrilling world. Weekends when Buda’s parents were away she would frantically call Pest and gabble the news down the telephone line. At the party besides the cider and rosé that the two of them sipped in the corner of the kitchen and upstairs on Buda’s bed, flasks were handed round of unknown contents. A spliff was lit up in the shed and a stubble-chinned boy called Sam stole a hockey stick. On one occasion Pest had been taken into an empty room of the long haired brother of Vang Vieng’s boyfriend. Buda had sat on the sofa with the boyfriend and clenched at his wrist hanging loosely over her flat left breast and squeezed it and asked in giggles what he thought the two of them were doing in there, and when they would come out.

The others at school weren’t sure what happened in this new world, at this country brothel, but gazed with envy at their faces Monday morning.  Their faces soaked in glee, revealing that the morbid beacon could be found outside of school, not just after school.

            ‘Yes Vang Vieng’s lot are already there,’ Pest said as she sucked on a cigarette. ‘Sam and Carl too, always there. You know them, you could easily go round. We need to go.’ For a second he thought she meant to Buda’s, but then he realised it was already 7, and Marseille’s had already begun. After a last deep drag Pest stubbed the cigarette out viciously, grimacing into the ashtray.

            She lit another at the bus stop and then dropped it in angry sparks when the bus arrived.

            ‘Have you got a present?’ she barked at him as the bus roared away behind them.

            ‘Er no, I thought it would be OK? That I just came? Should I get one now?’

            She made to answer but the breath caught in her throat and she let out a spluttering cough, hitting her chest with her face shaking her hand at him. ‘No. I thought Buda had said to you to bring some chocolates or something. Never mind.’

            There were plenty of chocolates at the party. In exchange for the collage Pest had made for Marseille she received a small box of chocolates from Ghent, for her birthday that had been two months before. Pest shoved them deep into her bag and the two of them went to sit at the corner of the long wooden table, picking at the crisps in bowls and now and then made a little conversation with the jovial people either side of them. His enthusiasm for the party had dissolved at Marseille’s welcome which although warm was brief, and equally given he noticed to every other guest that arrived. He spirits rose each time his hand dived into the bowl of crisps, but evaporated again as he swallowed. He felt a little ill.

Pest drank the beer on offer at a faster rate them him. He started getting anxious that were being unsociable and that he was drawing askance glances for the mopey dollop he was sitting next to. Someone Swedish asked Marseille if he could smoke. When the singsong affirmative came Pest dived for his pockets. Her stubby fingers writhed about in his pocket, rubbing and pocking into the little flesh of his groin. He thought how he would have loved her finger to be down there when they were at school. In fact they probably had at one time. He felt nothing now but the memory of heroic times past but this was enough to lift him a bit. He grabbed himself another beer and opened himself to the table.

Seeing no other opportunity, he broke into the boys’ conversation next to him. It was a bit about politics and a bit about London and it was easy for him to find things to say. After a while he found he was enjoying himself. He took a cigarette from them and they laughed easily. Later, turning to Pest he saw that she was deep in conversation as well, with a short haired apple-cheeked couple. He tried to catch her eye but they skated over him.

            He turned back to his own happiness which became exuberant when biscuits began being passed around. They were covered in chocolate and inside between two slaps of biscuit was a caramel mesh, and when you bit into the biscuit this mesh held it fractured pieces together in stringy gloops. They all had plenty of these, smiling at each other and at their greed, and when they were gone the apple-cheery twins talking with Pest said there was some crumble in the kitchen which they could have. They found a bottle of cider here too. The couple were held up in the hallway and his friends had moved on. He was gloriously happy and in a moment of bubbling contentment he put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her check hard. She pushed him away instantly but he saw she was smiling.

            There was then a tinkle of glasses from the other room and some shouting. There was lots of swivelling of chair reaching for glasses and phones. Marseille had situated herself in the centre of a circle of people holding guitars and sheets of paper that had formed at the other end of the room.

            They started to sing. 

 

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2014

 

 

 

 

 

Secret Fragments #4

This song, you know this song! He hadn’t but soon came to as it became an anthem to all the best things that lay outside. The parties of Vang Vieng especially, and everyone who went to those parties knew that song. He must listen to that song again. That song with such ease would bring all that once been sliding back in front of him: the sunny bus journey to the costume warehouse, drinking vodka walking through town, building up courage to buy cigarettes. In those days he had been sure he was faking it. But now, looking back, the cold bare truth of it all had been there, climaxing in the sloppy drunkenness of his eighteenth birthday. In their phoney house parties and failed attempts at taking drugs they had been living much closer to what they envisioned on the sparkling horizon than they ever would have believed. Or so he came to believe.

And as he listened to that songs again, what came back was not a longing for what he desired, but for what before he had been living in ignorance.

He took himself back to the table.

‘And that, I believe, is where it began. I don’t know the exactitudes. Bobo found a quiet resolution that she was to keep as long as I knew her. And my father, well … All I know is that he got through Bobo’s eighteenth with Bordeaux, the eighteen months of their engagement with a few crates of the stuff, and was half drunk as she walked up the aisle.’ His grandfather was still talking. He remembered that he had asked the original question, but whether that question had been answered while he daydreamed, whether this was the long-winded answer, or whether the question had been cast aside entirely, he was unsure.  

He surveyed the table in front of him with languid eyes. Like soldiers there was a row of three green wine bottles down at the corner of the table between where his father and grandfather sat. Speaking to them, the old man looked into its centre, resting his head on one white and gnarled fist that punched into his chin. His father was next to him, straight backed and still, looking at his grandfather, gently but with indifference. After a minute or so he would turn to the china shelf opposite behind Sofia, and then to his wine glass, and then back to the old man again. He was circling the wine in his glass as a steady tempo and occasionally this grabbed the gaze of their old storyteller. The rising and falling waves of wine attracted the drooping eyes into an uneasy flicker before returning to the centre of the table once more. Apart from this involuntary shifting of his gaze his grandfather was still. His face had fallen into unconscious exhaustion. Only his mouth moved up and down, sluggishly and heavily between each sentence where it rested dead shut. In the longer pauses between words his eyes-lids began to fall before the spinning wine caught his attention again and the mouth was roused once more into speech. A sonorous flow, now impossible to follow, just words and phrases here and there that he comprehended a couple of seconds late each time meaning he missed what then came next. 

‘Did Aunt Margaret know Lady Florence?’ That had been his original question. Where on earth were they now? His grandfather was talking about his parent’s engagement. Though Bobo was only approaching her eighteenth birthday, upon the return to London, everyone was poised for what must surely follow after the events of that summer. The incident with the stallion had changed everything, or rather, his grandfather said, it had crystallised what had been growing in the wings for some time. Margaret, Bobo’s sister, had speedily extracted herself and this was a relief to everyone. With delicacy, the pleasure taken in this was unspoken. Such was the utter fullness of the sister’s departure - complete with all souvenirs that she had sown together to begin her life and the last shadows of her memory on the faces of either him or Bobo - not even an absence was felt when she left. Just a never been. The other parts of their little group and their little lives sunk into the space she had vacated, and they found themselves up against each other a little too close, like the last few in a game of Ring-a-Roses. But that which pulled them together, that which had forced Margaret to extract herself, that presence which hovered amongst their little society and each felt at the back of every thought, was tiptoed around, and not looked directly at, and certainly not mentioned.

His father was spinning the wine again.

Chocolate wrappers were strewn across the table, as were a few plates and saucers that had escaped his father’s earlier after dinner sweep, and there were a couple of ashtrays, one by his grandfather and another by Sofia. Around his father’s place it was tidy. He had smoothed and folded his chocolate wrappers and stacked them into a little pile on his plate in front of him. His eyes weren’t glazed like his grandfather’s but neither were they engaging in what was being said. They were quiet, calm eyes, disconnected by choice and deigned to look at other things, a collection of spittle in the crook of the old man’s mouth, the coast line in the background of a photograph on the shelf, at the shimmering veil of alcohol sliding down the inside of his wine glass. Comfortable and relaxed, those eyes had long ago ended taking any real interest in his father’s face.

He stretched out a hand to grab a chocolate from the box in front of him. His arm sprung up faster than he expected and almost knocked over his blooded wine glass. His hand fell into the box of chocolates and his fingers writhed about in search. It was full of the wrappers Sofia had thrown back in. He could not see inside from his position and unwilling to shift himself up he fumbled blindly. Fear swept over him as he realised there might be none left. 

            He was too drunk to even wonder at the eloquence of his grandfather at this time of night. ‘The spectre, brought shinning into centre stage, at this distance, and without the backdrop that had been, lost a definable brilliance and became a vague cloud of unease. At rare times it flashed into indubitable existence – perhaps in the corner of the drawing room one afternoon – but then disappeared again. Leaving the sunflowers and returning to London, and the breaking up of their tight little party, what they had been dancing around appeared to dissolve in the city’s smog, and though each caught a scent of it now and then, noticed a glimmer of sparkle in the evening light, none could now grasp on to what they had been sure was coming before. Having not recognised its storming approach to each other when it had been clear, having kept their dignity in refraining to comment so soon, back in London, any certain trace of it that’s groove might have been carved in their collective memory was absent. Soon each began to doubt themselves and disbelieve that it had ever been.

            ‘As summer finally set for another year the promise would have perhaps disappeared forever if it hadn’t been for my father whose gigantic sunny optimism and acceptance of what was, what always had been, and what certainly ever would be, propelled him to the peak of the wave that towered about them, over the sunflowers and through the streets of London. Of this wave the little currents of Bobo’s circle were only a spitting whirl of froth on the enclave. As my father’s personal bubble swooped up the curve of the wave so he brought with him the other strings of froth, and became their shining helmsman leading them forward. Unsure whether now to look up at the promise that had been resurrected or to be discreet and risk disappearance again, all were in a nervous tense expectancy right up to the week of Bobo’s eighteenth. With hair sprouting thinner and more frantic from their heads, each received the news of the engagement with excitement and exhaustion spinning in their eyes.’

 

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2014

 

 

Waiting for the Dawn: Alex Bay’s 'Daylight'

‘Nobody Like You’, the first song on Alex Bay’s EP Daylight, begins with a ‘1, 2, 3, 4’ in a gruff male voice, opening the record in a rock ‘n’ roll vein that isn’t sustained. Indeed, the rest of the EP, 5 songs in total, are more 90s mellow rock than Babyshambles or Kings of Leon. This is not a straight up criticism of Daylight, for with Bay’s lack of pretention and heaps of self-assuredness, at its most powerful the music is reminiscent of the best of Joseph Arthur or Eagle Eye Cherry, and needs not be rocky to be good.

Bay is from North Hertfordshire. This is his first EP and his voice sounds more mature than his 24 years. ‘Nobody Like You’ breaks earlier than you are expecting. A chorus of other voices rises behind Bay and it is very quickly great fun. Bay has a confidence in his own sound – even if at this point a listener isn’t completely sure what that is – which spurs on feet tapping and head nodding, if not banging. In addition to this, perhaps the first thing you notice is the quality of the sound production. The songs sound full-bodied and are as crisp as a bell. As Bay is still relatively young to the music industry, this level of production is impressive, and allows a listener to relax, confident that they are in the hands of someone who know what they are doing.

Woven in and out of the backing chorus in this song and some of the others, are the strings of a tragic violin, occasionally backed by two or three more ...



To read the complete article please visit ADS Records

Find Alex Bay on SoundCloud -  https://soundcloud.com/alexbaymusic/alex-bay-daylight/recommended

Don’t Forget the Mirror: 'Schwarz Gemacht' at the English Theatre Berlin

In the beginning it is like a fairy tale with the tinkling of a piano and projected curtains opening over the back wall of the stage. The stage is empty save for a lone man pacing under two square frames that tower at sharp angles above him. These robotic limbs are lined with newspapers, and stacks of the same prop up the stage that slopes down to the right as you look at it.

A woman’s voice begins to narrate the Geshichte von den schwarzen Buben, or The Story of the Inky Boys, a poem for children by Heinrich Hoffmann. The poem comes from the book Der Struwwelpeter (1845) which comprises of ten poetic cautionary tales for and about infants, opening a bedroom door to reveal through the crack a hideous and bizarre adult world full of terrors ready to punish misbehaviour.

Klaus (played by Ernest Allan Hausmann) translates the poem into English, telling of Ludwig and Kaspar and Willhelm who, armed with flags and wearing trim jackets, tease a ‘woolly-headed black-a-moor’. After the poem Klaus dives upon a pile of newspapers in the centre of the stage and begins reading the stories frantically.

This is 1930s Berlin, and Klaus is following developments closely. Throughout the production he returns to these newspapers, standing in them, sleeping in them, diving into these stories for any sign of approaching danger or anything that would threaten his identity as a German.   

And this is Schwarz Gemacht, an original play by New Yorker Alexander Thomas, playing at the English Theatre Berlin (ETB) this month. Through the character of Klaus, Thomas tells the story of an Afrodeutscher, angry and withdrawn and desperately seeking a role to play in his beloved homeland. Haussman plays Klaus with a restrained fury, stiff and prickly, hiding the rage that would reveal his acknowledgement of himself as ‘other.’  That rage surfaces only a couple of times, but when it does is raw and wretched. Thomas has the woman’s voice from the beginning return throughout the production as Klaus’s mother, soothing and comforting, and instructing her son to ‘grow and be a good little German boy.’ With a pitiful poignancy Klaus translates his mother’s words as if repeating a mantra: ‘Ich bin Deutcher. Ich bin Deutscher’. Reading everything but the truth in the newspapers, Klaus refuses to see the warnings around him as National Socialism tightens its grip on the country, holding onto his precarious identity as a German with the tenacity of a terrified child clinging to his mother’s dress.

The story of the Afrodeutscher in the 1930s is not one that is commonly told and therefore Thomas had a challenge to get the audience up to speed without losing dramatic pace. Thomas accomplished this through the character of Lisa, played by Miriam Anna Schroetter. Lisa is a young woman from the States, guest in the house of her Berliner cousin Ruth (Kerstin Schweers), Ruth’s husband Walter (Marco Klammer), and Klaus, who occupies a blurred role in the house between friend, colleague and servant. Not only does Lisa enable Thomas to teach the audience the history of blacks in Germany, but also enables the play to be spoken almost entirely in English. Thomas’s careful construction of Lisa and his deft creation of the scenes in die Pension which weave in and out of the two languages, means that at no point does the play feel diluted or cumbersome in its means to be accessible for any ignorant and solely-English speaking members of the audience.

Rather than just structural devices Lisa and her hosts reflect the same confused identity in relation to their heimat as is seen in Klaus. ‘I was born in America,’ Lisa says. ‘But actually I am German.’ While she attempts to discover her heritage, Walter, one-time successful film director now reluctant accomplice in the production of Goebbels’s propaganda films, mocks his country with a black humour that fails to mask disgust, and cuts off Lisa’s elementary German saying that he prefers English. Ruth, meanwhile, is too nervous to even leave the flat.

Schroetter is as sweet and bright as she is patronizing and irritating. By tiptoeing on the precipice of exaggeration, Schroetter enables the petite Lisa to embody the sweeping force of America on stage. Only Klammer damages these scenes. His Walter at times becomes unbelievable as he overplays comic lines and slips into pantomime. It is an old actors’ line that to ‘play drunk’ you must try very hard to act sober. Klammer is merely pretending to be very drunk, and you are aware of it throughout.

This weakens the scenes in die Pension but not fatally. Director Daniel Brunel (artistic director of the ETB) has the four characters each standing under the jagged frames at the corners of the stage throughout these scenes. Klaus refuses to approach the drunken Walter despite his requests, who therefore resorts to throwing things at Klaus, his much sought-after Arbeitsbuch, for instance, or an empty flask of drink. Ruth will talk of past tenderness but scream at Klaus from across the stage and restrain Lisa from approaching him. For her part, Lisa draws Klaus to her when they are alone but only before a mutual modesty and submission to social conditions pull them apart again.  

Thomas raises the foreboding shadow of National Socialism off-stage with the occasional knock on the door from the local community watchman. It is not a knock we hear but a sharp chord on the piano, freezing the characters as if playing a game of musical statues. There is an element of the ridiculous in this as the four appear like children, hiding from one of the monsters of Der Struwwelpeter. It is these unseen dangers that threaten what Klaus calls Gemütlichkeit, the comfort, peace and love that he finds in his home country. It is not in fairy tales that Klaus watches for these monsters, put in the stacks of newspaper stories that Ruth feeds him with, telling him that he must be prepared.

Apart from Lisa’s naïve sunniness, the only other warmth in the play comes from old Maurice (Sadiq Bey), an African American playing (verboten) jazz in the city. Maurice, though adrift from and sceptical of his country, like Lisa exhibits its stereotypical traits. A mad-cat pursuit of freedom, friendliness, jokes in riddling banter, and the carefree attempts at a foreign language. Like Schroetter’s Lisa, Bey’s performance is beautifully poised on the cusp of cliché. Maurice exuberates a mellow and confident attitude towards himself and the world about him, detached, but never cold. When confronted with American racism by Klaus, Maurice responds, languidly, ‘My country is scheiße. But yours is scheiße too. And getting more scheiße everyday.’  

The harder Maurice tries to get Klaus to see his reflection in his own black face, the harder Klaus grips to his identity as a German. ‘Du bist Andere!’ Klaus screams at Maurice. ‘Ich bin Keiner!’ In Klaus’ quest to become a contributing member of German society, Thomas constructs the ironic scenario whereby Klaus ‘blacks up’ to act an African in one of Goebbels’s propaganda films. Thomas shows that it is from the State and in the newspapers that Klaus looks for instruction on how to be, on how to construct an identity imbedded in German society.

In Hoffman’s Geschichte von den schwarzen Buben, Ludwig, Kaspar and Wilhelm experience a hubris that isn’t to come to the Nazis in this play. As punishment for ‘laughing’ and ‘hooting’ at the moor, the ‘naughty boys’ are scooped up by ‘Saint Nicholas’ and thrown into his ‘mighty inkstand.’ In this story, as in the other tales, it isn’t the moor or Saint Nicholas or the inkstand, but the dark tendencies within the children themselves that are warned against. In Schwarz Gemacht, it is in this direction that Thomas directs our gaze.

Towards the end of the play Klaus relates a memory he has of playing upstairs in his grandmother’s attic. He remembers hiding from his ‘monster’ that was represented by a piece of furniture under a sheet in the centre of the room. When he eventually builds up the courage to confront his nemesis, Klaus rips of the sheet and is greeted by his own reflection in a great oak wood mirror. As with Ludwig, Kaspar and Wilhelm, as with Lisa and as with us, it should not be through the black and white columns of our country that we construct our identity, but by looking at ourselves.  

As Maurice says to Klaus, ‘You’ve gotta see yourself sometime.’  

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2014

English Theatre Berlin - http://www.etberlin.de/

Songs of Roland: Roland Satterwhite at the English Theatre Berlin

Even in Berlin the theatre can be more restraining than liberating. The audience are quiet and compelled to respect the sanctity of the place. There is polite applause, and no raucous bawling. Therefore when a gig is performed in a theatre its nature is consequently altered. There is clapping, and perhaps appreciative cheering, but only minimal whooping and all bottle flinging is held in check. Everyone is nervous of jiggling legs knocking over glasses of white wine schorle and after half the set list all are shuffling to relieve numb butt cheeks. More London Symphony Orchestra than Southbank bear pits.

For the performer however, playing in a theatre can go either way; they may, like the audience, restrain themselves in awe under the proscenium arch, or they can find liberation on stage and a licence to perform a new role. The latter appeared the case for Roland Saterwhite who on February 14^th played his first concert in a Berlin theatre at English Theatre Berlin. As well as being a musician, Roland practices free improvisation, and therefore it was perhaps expected that this wouldn’t take the form of a regular concert.

However at first, emerging amongst a half constructed set, caught in the lights Roland appeared like he was indeed scared of the stage. He crept ... 



To read the complete article please visit ADS Records

Roland Satterwhite - http://www.benedekrecords.com/

Django Lassi - http://www.djangolassi.com/

ETB - http://www.etberlin.de/

Ich bin Fremd hier #12

            I ordered a gross fass Bier that I couldn’t afford and tried to read about Merkel’s electoral triumph in Ex-Berliner. There was no mention of the Nazis of Marzahn.

It was a small little bar with French music. The drinks were cheaper than at the hostel, but not by much. The atmosphere was superb however and I begun to feel cheered as I sipped on my second beer. The bartenders were polite and unobtrusive. There were quiet couples on most tables and I felt undisturbed, unacknowledged and at peace. The toilet for Herren was up some stairs. There were two urinals, a mirror and a sink that is out of order. This means that when I returned to the bar the tenders must have knowned that there was no way that I could have washed my hands. I wondered if this bothered them. 

The bartenders there speak French to each other. I tried to catch what they are saying but only understood the odd word and phrase. Putting Merkel aside, I opened my book ‘city-lit Berlin’ and contently started to read. The Kneipe was almost empty save for me and another punter a little down along the bar. I carried on reading perfect gems of literature from and about Berlin. I made notes in the margin. Without looking up I noticed a man sit next to me. He spoke French to the bartenders. It was the most French I have heard in Berlin yet and he said as much to me in German.

‘Besser als English,’ I reply.

‘Woher kommen Sie?’ he asks.

‘London,’ I say in a low drawl that I have subconsciously perfected.

We get talking and he asks me what I do. I tell him what I do, and that I like to write.

’Write! You must write and keep writing. We have few gifts, only one usually. So we must use what we have. I cannot write. I can speak seven languages – none from school, only from listening – but I could never write. To me it is like a storm. Too many words I do not know what to do with them and cannot make sense of it. But you, if you can write – and I take it that you can – then you must write. You must tell stories. There are so many stories to be told and so few that are – because people can’t write or because people can’t be bothered. My talent is in painting and sculpturing ….’

‘And you tell stories with that?’

‘Let’s not talk about that,’ he says. ‘But if you can write you must write! Write, and keep writing! And you must dare! You must dare, and meet people and ask questions and get drunk and then you write about it all! You must dare and write! They are the two important things. Forget everything else. And if only two people in the whole world understand what you are saying. Then there is still success. Fuck the rest! If you are on a desert island with one other person and you tell him a story and he believes in it and thinks about it, then voila! You have changed his life. You have changed his world.

‘We only have a few talents. Most of us only one! Some of us none. We must concentrate and focus on only that talent.’ He makes a ring with his thumb and forefinger and grabs my hand so I do the same. ‘Look through that and focus on only that.

‘You are young but I am old. I am fifty in February. But you are young. You have something to say. The Berlin that lies around you now is your Berlin. You can own this city. You can own this city! You can tell this city because you are here now and you are seeing it and you are surrounded by it. You can write about this barman and this bargirl.

‘You are young now but one day you will be my age. So often we are embarrassed. And why? Embarrassment freezes us and chains us to convention. We have to dare!’ He roars into my face, and I, suddenly taken up by his faith, roar back in his face. We bellow together into each other faces. I don't feel embarrassed. I fear this is only because of the beers I have drunk, and that I would not be able to do this without them, failing in his believing eyes.

He continues.  

‘To dare, and to think, and then to write. You write and you get published, and most people won’t understand your story but you keep writing. I can’t write but I wish I could. I dare and I think but I cannot write and tell my story. I am forty-nine, in February I will be fifty.

‘I look at pictures of myself when I am fifty and I think, that is me? But it is me, and it is me when I look at a picture of myself when I was five. When I liked a girl in the playground. It is still me. I have learnt stuff but it is still me. I haven’t changed. And nor will you.

‘You come from a good family? You have that. You have that and your friends at home. You have that there safe and you have knowledge from that but you are here now. You are here in Berlin but it could be anywhere. It is city XYZ. It is a foreign city and you have left your family and friends and now here you are immersed in it.’

All this time I have nothing to say. All that he says is resounding inside me and telling me to not give a fuck about having brought no-one to the Pub Crawl three nights in a row. Or to worry about the Irish Pub or where I will live. I am in Berlin. I am in Berlin! I am lucky.

‘I fear I do not dare enough,’ I say.

‘Don’t think about it, just dare!’ And he says I think of just catching a U-bahn to Bergheim.

‘There is nothing that we could do today that the world hasn’t already seen. That God hasn’t already seen! There are naked men … and there are naked women … There is nothing we can’t do. We have to enter the world and meet people and ask questions and let the rest take over and allow ourselves to be pulled and to drift and be dragged and blow in the elements of the world and then return to write about it. I can’t write about it but you can. But you must!’ And he makes the circle with his forefinger and thumb again and I do too and he looks through his at me and I look through mine, through my beer fogged eyes. ‘You can write so you must write! That is all you should do, because that is all that matters. All we have is our brains. Dare Think Write.

We clink our drinks together.

Once when I was in Antigua, Guatemala for a few days, I ventured into the park and was accosted by a boy. He was, like most of them there, a shoeshine boy. But he also sold drugs: weed and coke mainly. He would offer it to me each day and each day I would decline. He would then linger about me and we might talk a little about the other people in the park and other things, though I can’t remember what. Or we would sit and he would stand in indifferent silence. One of the days when he again offered me drugs I asked him, ‘How old are you?’ He looked at me with a withering scorn and said, ‘Fuck off’ and left.

And damn right. My question had been only formed only in curiosity. I wasn’t going to be particularly shocked if he was younger than I thought and still dealing drugs. In Guatemala it wasn’t to surprise me. I just wasn’t sure how old he was, and was curious. He had a high voice and puppy-fat cheeks. But I felt the child after I had asked that question. I didn’t know where he came from, or what his family or home was like, but imagined he had grown up tougher and more resilient and in many ways more worldly than I had grown up in Bath, Great Britain. That ‘fuck off’ I deserved and I felt small and infantile and utterly embarrassed. In one way, because in a pathetic moment, I thought we could have been friends. For three days.

My conversation with this man reminded me of that, in the sense that at times of pause in our conversation, social etiquette – or perhaps merely convention – pushed me to want to say ‘Sorry, I’m Bertie by the way …’ or ‘Woher kommen Sie?’ I don’t know how he would have reacted. But I think that it could have been similar to the boy. Apart from asking where I came from and what my family was like, he hadn’t really asked me any questions at all. And for my part, it didn’t really matter what his name was or where he came from. Like it didn’t matter what he name of that bar is, or why everyone there speaks French. I still don’t know these things. Yet I have been there many times since.

This man’s age mattered, but I never would have asked that anyway. But his name didn’t. And so I resisted asking anything else. We were talking about me, after all. What would it matter if he was Thomas or Matthias from Vienna or Montpeilier? Asking for such detail would have been an attempt to put a tag on this, to block and mark it. ‘Ah yes, remember Nicholas from Budapest I met that third week in Berlin …’ A tidy name and province to log away like Jann from South Africa and Roger from Hampshire. He story didn’t matter either, as our subject was me.

So I resisted asking these question that an excessive sense of politeness drew me towards. He didn’t need that. And I certainly didn’t need that. He simply spoke honestly, and truly, and gave me hope and inspiration in a foreign city after a dry shift. And then he left, and I wasn’t to forget what he said, even if I can’t now recall his face.  

Bertie Digby Alexander

Berlin 2014