Archive reflections

Berlin Kitchen-table dreamin’…

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 | Economics and Politics..new models and old., deepchild live and dj sets, reflections | No Comments

Sitting in my kitchen at 11am. Miraculously, I’ve been up and active for an hour already; steadily drinking in the morning. Plunder coffee. Cool breeze outside flirts gently with the sound of children yelping in the kindergarten, and Antony and the Johnsons serenade my morning. Here in Neukölln, there is peace. It’s been a couple of weeks since my last show, and I’m starting to normalize once again. DJing at Maria with some wonderful friends, this Friday, which should be a special evening of proper deep-house, disco, boom-bap inflections:

Line-up /
Deepchild
Dirt Crew
Agaric
Oliver Deutschmann
Mano Le Tough
Esther Duijn
Iron Curtis
Magit Cacoon
James Blonde

—

27 Aug 2010 (DE) deepchild DJ-set @ Sweatlodge Radio, Jackie Terrasse, Club Maria
23 Sep 2010 (US) deepchild LIVE @ DECIBEL Festival, Seattle
30 Sep 2010 (Mexico) AM Club
1 Oct 2010 (Mexico) Fonica club. Cholula Puebla
2 Oct 2010 (Mexico) Jager room
7 Oct 2010 (US) deepchild, DJ-set @ Endup, Sanfrancisco
23 Oct 2010 (DE) deepchild in Köln,“Lichtblick” @ Sensor Club
30 Oct 2010 (UA) deepchild LIVE @ Cinema Club, Kiev, Ukraine
29 Jan 2011 (DE) Tresor, Berlin

—

And so…

The last few weeks have been stained with a sense of wonder, a sense of pause, moments of breathing out; eyes open wide, head to the skies. It’s easy to become swallowed in the panic and strangeness of a life in transience… and Berlin is beginning to really feel like home, almost 6 months after our final move here. Smitten by the curious local diversity, the kindness of strangers, the stories these cobblestones and brass-plaques still sing. Songs of regret and release they catapult far, far into the silent skies - beyond the relics of Russian spy-satellites abandoned in the pre-millennial stratosphere. Relics which still creak and transmit.

“I am thy father’s spirit,. Doomed for a certain term to walk the night.” – Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5.

These Spirits still walk here, but their rage has faded. You see them in the eyes of old, haggard drunkards in military garb…loitering outside LIDL, drunk on beer from plastic bottles…

Across the river from us, in Kreuzberg-central someone has painted “ Kreutz Kotze” on the rooftop, in broad lashings of white paint. Berlin’s development and gentrification still opens wounds for those who dream of an anarchist utopia, who “kick against the goads” of the new. I can empathize – but how to begin to express the gratitude for the blessings of this new Kiez? How to pay homage to a city which treats me with so much dignity, even as my German falters, my mouth stuffed with cotton-wool syllables and awkward grunts?

I have my songs…my muted transmissions. The boom and bap. Lord knows.

Grace.

“These Waves are All Around Us Now” – Young American Primitive.

And so they are.

It’s bizarre to watch, from this vantage point, the unfolding dramas in the recent Australian election. Suddenly, 2 candidates and a hung-parliament; the political machine stymied by indecision and two largely policy-free individuals, whilst a tide of Green washes up in the background. Indecision. Fear. Retroactive imaginations, parochialism and paranoia. What has my country become? What a strange state of affairs.

I voted with my heart…trodding out a familiar dirge below-the-line, Green up front….baffled by the Liberal Party’s reactive lack of vision.

Tony Abbott is so baptised by old-world mythology, it strikes me silent. He has every right to be “threatened” by gays – but, in this case, is not the leader for at least 10% of us, and the rest. His sexual biases, Monarchist preferences and climate-change scepticism aside, what breaks my heart about Abbott and co (and, to a degree, Ms Julia Gillard) is their reduction of “leadership” to a game of sideswipes and attacks; their “vision” a fiscal –gospel, anodised with clichés and assumptions about “aspiration” being equitable to happiness.

These equations…these gesticulations of calculus, redlines and blue-ribbon mathematics – they do not sing. They are meaningless. When framed in the context of an Australian parochial-mythology, they become weapons, NOT aspirations.

In the light of the TAMPA tragedy, Abbots ridiculous “No Boats” propaganda is sinister, tragic, and completely ignorant of the reality of Australian asylum-seekers.

When Abbott quotes the Bible to support a relinquishment of previous Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd’s goal to half homelessness by 2020, I have only tears.

Who IS this man? And why is he seeking leadership? In his own words, the agenda for ascension is clear.

““In the end, the fundamental job of government is to run a good economy.”

It is what it is, though, and the mighty ship of state rolls on, revisiting ever-closing cycles of revisionism. I feel crushed, sometimes by what I see – knowing that I’m just so fortunate. To have options, friends, community…this is the blood in my veins…these are my fundamentals. I suppose my mind is removed so much from a deeper understanding of the mechanics of the political/economic systems - but I do know that my life has shown that “prosperity” is not the reflected in the individualist dreams which my prosperous nation has sold it’s people. We need to celebrate and affirm our deeper riches.

Time out to dream again, I think. I so want to be proud of Australia. I so want Australia to be leading a new Dreaming for the rest of the world.

No…scratch that – I want Australia to be Dreaming WITH the rest of the world.