When I was painting, I always was listening to music. The colors were formed upon the canvas systematically according to the chords melancholic or happy, flashy or chary. Levitating in time and space, I almost could reach a Nirvana-like state, as this strange journey got started into the past. I was falling unstoppable even more deeper into the bottomless crater of my own memories, accompanied by rhythm and vibes. I couldn’t escape from that swipping pull, I had to think about the long forgotten, about faded scenes, which subtitled with music just forced my mind to have to remember. I couldn’t resist myself against, from song to song emergenced alternately excursive faces, showing theirselves totally unexpected, they came from nowhere, just to win the temporary importance of the presence, but immerse straight after in the dark sea of the forgotten. Each and every song had its own name label. Oh, how well I know those moments, they are deep damned to squeeze, but they are following one, they are suddenly here again, persistent and obtrusive, one song long ongoing, recurring, stirring miracle. I was caught by the old sadness, I felt the lonely pain of the one way remembrance (I never had a common song with somebody), and needed to ask myself intentional, where are all the people (predominantly women), who did mean so much to me? The songs still are there. In the meantime they got transformed to my personally evergreens. When I listen to them, skeletons are getting alive, and the ghosts in my head start dancing.
The Jukebox Of My Life
Limited Harmony.. Closer To The Distance
• Move Over
It was 2000, the beginning of May. Here I was, standing reverentially touched in front of the Lyon Street #122, in San Francisco. Nothing indicated that, that she ever lived here, one did simple know that (or not), but I could see her through my mental eyes behind of the facades, in her apartment, lying on her colorful couch, up beat, maybe on a trip of some kind. I could feel her presence almost real, I heard the clang of her jewelry, during she was lying back and laughed haggish. I took a deep breath. I sucked it in, the air of the heroical nostalgia of Ashbury Haight. Yes, I’ve been there. Thirty years too late. Janis, I missed y o u.
JANIS JOPLIN • MOVE OVER
• The Ship Song
C.R. lived at that time in San Francisco. She wasn’t a projection of the past. I’ve got to know her short before Christmas in Florence at the Biennalè. We both exhibited there, and were staying at the same two** hotel. She talked to me already on the very first day. She just drunk coffee and ate one orange for breakfest. She had this erotically smoky voice, and those certain two dimples around her lips, to them I am attracted by women so much. She spoke English only, and she had a lot to say. Although at that time (now, eleven years ago) I didn’t speak her language yet, I had the feeling, to understand her completely. The language had no meaning, we communicated with each other on a quite different level. I enjoyed every moment of her presence and felt her attractiveness. She was ten years older than me, already fourtyfive, though a very pretty Canadian Jewish woman. We spent ten unforgottable days together. I delayed my departure day by day, the strike of the Italian railroder came more than welcome to me. It was so hard to say goodbye to her.. I wanted more, even more to experience with her, and I believed strongly in saying to myself, that it was only a friendship I was interested in. However, on the last day, in front of the Uffizi, as our lips met in a one long never-want-to-quit kiss, I have totally forgotten, what I wanted, or don’t wanted. During the night I couldn’t sleep at all, her kiss burned on my lips still, I just could think of her, and used the time of the dark night to write her my very first love letter. As already mentioned, I didn’t speak any English at that time, but the love I felt was showing me the words I was searching for. I left the letter at the reception early in the morning, as I finally left Florence with a heavy heart and heavy suitcases. Hardly arrived at home again, I started to play her favorite song from Nick Cave. During the song played nonstop, I stared hours long, days long, weeks, actually months long at a picture of her, which was made at our last dinner. When I looked at her, my breath caught, she and her features were set full with mistery. Her mystical smile and her sparkling green-blue eyes accompanied with the overwhelming heartbreaking lyric and melody had only one effect. Like an obsessed fetishist, I falled madly in love with a picture.
NICK CAVE • THE SHIP SONG
• I Got The Feeling
..you know? I think, no, she didn’t. But I did know, I need to see her again. Best, immediately. Between us was only the ocean. Actually not an insurmountable obstacle, not at all, for a loving person, like me. Oh, this love didn’t know any border. But I needed to be patient, still for a long time. We did have only one possibility to communicate with each other, we were developing our relationship through writing to bridge the gap of time. So I’ve been confronted though with her language again and again. I don’t know if it was a captivating story to read, but the printed pages were getting to a big thick book by the time. On that way she was always with me, twentyfour hours of the day, hidden between the lines, turned into black characters, so we got united. I felt her in my deepest inner, and woke up every night, when she was sending an email to me. Bing! With the time difference I lived the past of her future in the same time. Virtual lovers in the cyber space of the universe. I’ve got the feeling, so deep and so moving, like only two times, eighteen years before and than ten years later, again.
SHARON JONES • I GOT THE FEELING
• Words
É.Á. was only the beginning in engaging myself with the closeness of writing, first time done on my native tongue which was full burdened with taboos. She was a Jewish woman, like C.R., eleven years older, than me. I was seventeen, and it was my birthday /the best, ever!/. I’ve got a huge water melon from her and from her artist friend a beautiful, self made japanese, Edo drake. The red and white calligraphically patterned drake was flying on this one day only. We were in a summer art camp. É.Á. wasn’t an artist, but the daughter of a famous painter in exil. She suffered very much from living in the shadow of his fame, to bear his last name, since she was very creative as well. But so she just teached ideology and Russian at my school. As the school started again, I saw and met her daily there. Additionaly we were writing and sending letters one another via snail mail, each and every day. That was our secret game. It was so exciting to escape into the written empire of phantasy, I could feel her warmth and felt safe and secure in her thoughts. But very soon this penpalship seemed to be more than a simple friendship. Each day the letters got more intense and even more intimated. The written, but never spoken words we used were exploded into unknown emotions, Oh, she understood very well, how to handle sensitive words. One day she did write to me „szeretlek“ and the lines got blurred before my eyes, my hands shivered, as I was reading her usually six to eight pages letters till to the end.
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