Dagmology* 119

O-scarred

2011-03-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

I don’t know if it is because I have been in this town for 11 years now and consequently I’ve seen 11 times already that a gathering of thousands of people turn one part of Hollywood into a traffic nuisance for a couple of days. Or maybe it is because in one way or another I was assigned to cover the event, getting a bit closer to the mechanics of the show. Elusive as it really is to the outsider, I helped to propel the myth of the Oscars by covering them. And for a while I liked it, felt part of the excitement.

I picked up a little left over piece of that famous red carpet outside the Kodak Theatre (still have it to this day), took the obligatory pictures next to the larger than life Oscar figurines. Even photographed a few real statuettes in the exhibit showing the history of this prestigious honor. Was in awe at who got an Oscar for what in 1943 and 75 and 88 and 2001. Somehow that must count for something. Me and those Oscars in a room. A photo of me and the Oscar. Important by association. The illusion of closeness.

But for the last years the Oscars have lost their luster to me. They are too obvious. They might have always been a blatant marketing tool. Even though the Academy’s original idea is all about honoring the best of the craft. But how else can you sell that than through what people like to look at: the stars and their style.

It feels so much like a business now I might as well watch the yearly gathering of the plumbers of America or the National Banking Association handing out their prizes to the best of their trade. Everything feels calculated. And I don’t mean the style. That has probably always been paid for and packaged. To perfection in the 21st century. I only wait for the moment where a reporter rattles off the designer names of the gowns and jewelry forgetting the name of the actress who wears it.

But what really lost its appeal is the show. Is it really a surprise who wins? So much now goes into campaigning for the little golden guy the Oscars feel like a midterm election. No mystic there. It ruins my joy of seeing movies being honored for the craft of filmmaking. It is just a 3 hour ordeal where you cross off the categories to be sure you have the numbers right for the report that will go out on TV. (and this year the oh so youthful MCs were boring, I missed a storyteller)

What happened? Me growing up, getting jaded? The wonder disappeared? The age old trick of time that by repetition everything loses its meaning? Maybe it was never different. Maybe it is just what things look like in 2011. Me being stuck in the 20th century again. I’ll pause for a year or two so I can have my magic back… (Sap!)

eleven

2011-01-01T17:13:00.000-08:00

1-1-11 ... have a good one, every day to be written anew

cyber anxiety

2010-09-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

I am not a fearful person. In fact I loathe being afraid. I am suspicious of organizations that rule by fear (that easily includes almost all religions, dictatorships, bad parenting, hot drink movements....) Yet I am ruled by one fear, the fear of the online me. I google myself in regular intervals. No, not in the way of some 7 years ago when I giddily embraced my new found notoriety on this world-wide stage called the Internet. I must be somebody worth writing about, I innocently and vainly thought. So 20th century. That elation is years gone. I now google myself as my own cop, monitoring what is out there about me. Patrolling the cyber streets of Dagmar Hovestadt. And mostly I now shudder.
I have a website so the aggregators like vultures feast on information and photos that I put out there. At least it was me who made that available for all to see. So no secret there. Yet I had potential clients and friends in mind, people I know, I had met in real life when I started the site, not pipl.com, snitch or 123people who put my online info in neat files that read like dossiers. I am linkedin and on xing, the business versions of social networking sites. Another big chunk of data on me I voluntarily feed to the vultures. No Facebook, no MySpace, no Hi5, no Twitter, I avoid those for what it's worth.
A while back I found my actual birth date, ethnicity and a file number of a court case on criminal searches. Driving too fast in Eastern Arizona and getting caught by a highway patrol officer will lead to that. At the time that event happened 5 years ago and I had gone to online (!) traffic school to take care of the ticket. Successfully. I was incensed over the entry in criminalsearches. Called the court in Eastern Arizona asking them to close access to my file. Which, to my surprise, a very eager clerk promised to do. "Shouldn't be available online, your case. It was all taken care of. It should be sealed in 48 hours." Of course that wouldn't take it off that website of a private company that scours public "criminal" records, feeds their server and makes it available to anyone through their website search.
So I sent an e-mail to the website, stubborn and curious, convinced it would be a cry in the desert. I did mention "cease and desist" in the e-mail and "lawyer". Within 20 minutes I had a reply, from Vanessa who informed that they did receive my request to edit information on me and that the process is completed. To my satisfaction. I cannot be found on their website anymore. Score! I was proud to have slain one of the dragons. But really - how many other sites are out there looking for data on me? And who else is? What for? Who am I out there to whom? Maybe I am just way too paranoid and take myself too seriously. Classic 20th century. So worried about my privacy. Holding on to that feeling for as long as I can. Which unfortunately fills me with cyber anxiety, my own version of a Woody Allen relationship to the (cyber) world.

heat

2010-07-18T16:37:00.000-07:00

Summer is hot now. The ACs are whirring around me. The whole neighborhood is abuzz. I stay cool by keeping a cool mind. As long as the temperature don't hit the triple digits I tell my mind it is not really all that hot. Just like I tell my mind that I don't really have a jet lag and command it to program itself to the place of arrival when I board the plane. It works. That is why you have a mind, so you can use it, to fool yourself.
AC is highly overrated. Most of the time, when it's on, it is way too cold. Without it, I admit you sweat a little. But I try to go the Spanish way, keep the curtains down during the day, air the place out during the night. In LA it gets really fresh and cool once the sun is down. No problem. AC is costing too much for nothing essential but creature comfort (except when it is over 100, then babies, old people and hospitals certainly need it).
Today in the LAT today someone popped up who wrote a whole book about artificial cooling. "Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World" written by Stan Cox. His thesis is that AC empowered the trek to the West to overpopulate a place that you normally wouldn't flood to in such huge quantities if it wasn't for AC. Cutting it out is an easy way to safe energy. Lots of it. AC is just another dead end on the altar of technology. Right up there with SUVs. Ideas for a world that is blind to the realities of the consequences wasting resources.
Speaking of. Friday night I went downtown to enjoy a French band playing on a public square for a happy audience on a beautiful summer night. "Caravan Palace" swings it old style with a nice house-beat underneath, perfect summer evening music to dance to and let lose on the Grand Plaza. No wonder those European free-spirits tried an old fashioned way to cool down the hundreds dancing at their feet. The band played on a stage behind a little pool, an urban design thing to please the eyes amidst high rises and concrete squares. The water separated them from an enthusiastic crowd. Which the cute and very animated singer didn't like. She climbed down the stage, into the pool of shallow water to do what any normal person would do: She asked the crowd to join her and dance and play in the water. What else is summer for? I watched from atop and knew how this would end.
The European in me felt cool and normal, the Californian in me felt giddy and anxious. The thing about public spaces here is that they are organized by rules that make it impossible to truly use them as a human being. No drinking, no smoking, no messing with pretty ponds. But the singer was so excited that even the Angelenos relented. Maybe it was okay, for that one night to just jump in. And for a moment there was a childlike happiness of dozens of people splashing in the water, dancing, turning, feeling giggly and elated, for jumping in the element and doing something forbidden. Hundreds around watched and clapped and hooted and loved that moment - that ended after 2 minutes with the singer back on stage apologizing with an irresistible French accent for having disturbed the order of things. "I ham sorrieeehhh. You cannut bieh in ze wat-errr." And because the devil was out the box the concert organizer had to take the mic and shush everyone back to the dry land. "We have to stop the concert right now if you do not leave the pond. I am sorry. We will lose our permit. The mosaic in the pond has to be protected. Please get out of the water."
Way to spoil a cool down moment. The French musicians on stage were a bit flabbergasted and didn't see the problem. I totally got that. They just laughed at the weird rules that exist in LA and blasted on with their fun swinging sound. But I was also happy to see the Angelenos, pushed by a French girl, forget about the orderly behavior and just do what you do when it's a beautiful summer night: you use the pleasures of water, the public space and the mood and live.

my thumb

2010-05-25T10:17:00.002-07:00

A little while ago the niece and nephew came to town. First time in LA for real. 13 and 15 years old. No discussions, they deserve a tour of what the city is about. That meant (because the aunt doesn't approve of advertising consumption as an actual fulfilling leisure activity) no shopping malls (the stores in the burbs where they are from are the same anyway), but the LACMA, downtown, the Walk of Fame, the boardwalk in Venice, the new skate park on the beach (nephew is an avid skater) a farmer's market down our street (those kids had not idea this exists...) and because they are teenagers, an amusement park. Hollywood's own Universal Studios theme park. Always fun to tour the back lot and think you are close to where "the movies" are being made. Also they have a new Simpsons ride and the sun was shining.

Standing in line we debated for a moment to save $5 or actually pay full prize and get the annual pass. I had gone to the park with a girl-friend of mine on visit from Germany a few years back and had committed to the one year thing - only to find out I didn't go again. Guess I am not excited enough about amusement parks to feel drawn there again and again. But, since it doesn't cost anything extra you may as well...

Last time you had to have a picture taken that would be printed on that plastic 1-year card as to make sure only you would use that special access to the park. But technology progresses. To a police treatment. "For my protection" my thumb print was taken and associated with the pass. I wanted to refuse and yet I pressed that digit on the glass plate, staring at the indifferent park entrance girl with her blue Universal emblazoned polo shirt. "This is terrible." I say to her shrugging. "Makes it the easiest, just how we do it. It's for your own protection." What are you protecting me from? You gather forensic evidence for what? My sensibilities are those of a dinosaur in the digital age. It is just my thumb. But the only other time that is required is when I enter this country at the border. Iris scan and thumb print. Trickled down as the procedure to enter an amusement park. Digital markers everywhere. Credit card swipes, online traffic, GPS stamps, cell phone coordinates - why this indignation about just one more thumb print? Because it deserves to be recorded. That in 2010 it is normal to be treated like a felon in police custody when you go to an amusement park.

school of Iggy

2010-03-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

Well, roll over, Woodstock. Says Iggy Pop and perfectly happens to hit upon a feeling that is a deep-seated itch of mine. He spoke those words as he accepted the induction of the Stooges into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. A perfect little quip for the well heeled, well dressed, well preserved crowd in front of him. The Stooges finally got their place in that hall – curiously together with ABBA, who only sent A and B to the ceremony. The other B had a family thing in Sweden and A doesn’t like to fly anymore.
Regardless.
Iggy was up on stage, soon bare-chested, skinny, bony, tendon-baring, shaggy hair and ever the rebel rouser that pushed rock ‘n’ roll over the edge, helped turn it into an angry noisy crooked version, trailblazing a path to be followed by a lot of great punk and alternative music. He might not have meant those four words exactly how I heard them, but to me they were a final release. Done with Woodstock! That annoying love fest of the boomers who have tortured the rest of us over four decades with it. An at best mediocre 3 day concert. Yeah, yeah, I know all the names and all the protests and all the power that every true boomer cannot resist to brag about. I understand it was earth-shattering.
And why? Because boomers, so enamored with their own importance, have more than achieved their not so secret mission of boomerizing everything around them. Telling everyone who didn't want to listen how IMPORTANT what they did was. How amazing the music was. How much better their ideas of society were.
It wouldn’t be so annoying to me if they weren’t so much in love with their own revolutionary uniqueness, over and over, for decades, as if life doesn't continue. As if those after them didn't produce their own revolutions. In the ensuing decades the boomers have subverted every single one of their anti-establishment ideas to profit from them. And still hit everyone over the head with how much they changed it all for us. Thanks. The world would be a better place had the boomers just shut up like every other youth movement and found an adult place in society to change things for the better.
Roll over, Woodstock. Iggy is right. And in case you were thinking birth years. Being born in the boomer years doesn’t automatically make you a boomer. Being a boomer is a state of mind that exclusively looks at the world through a revolt from 40 years ago, completely unfazed by all the things that the present teaches you, overlay-ed with the notion that it is still the mother of all things.
I guess I just don't like being stuck. The mind has so many more ways to go around. That is why I came here, to look at the same things differently. I like to move along. Find new insights, topple old ways. Boomers don't. Roll over.

book of face

2010-01-13T11:20:00.000-08:00

I’ve received about 10 of them over the past year. Generic e-mails, telling me so and so would like to be my friend on Facebook or wants to show me photos, but I would have to join, here’s the link. I delete the message. Occasionally there is another mail reminding me of who has already invited me to join, 6 people, neatly listed with a photo. To the trash it goes. More often even I’ve had to answer the question face to face: “Why are you NOT on Facebook?” I shrug and say, it sucks up too much time. I don’t like it. But really…
Why am I not?
It would be beneficial. As an ex-pat you can easily stay in touch with a lot of people in the old country and friends and acquaintances across the US. You can see what they are up to, they know what your are working on. They can even see where you’ve been, by looking at the photos you post and the video. You can turn it into a great marketing tool for your business. After all I am a free-lancer, I like to communicate, to write, to photograph and to stay in touch.
Why am I nowhere to be found on Facebook?
Because I can. Because I allow myself the luxury of it. Because I like that, a lot. To not be found. To not let everyone know what I am up to on a daily, weekly basis. To not throw out my likes and dislikes, my favorite websites, bands and movies, my photos, my friends or virtual friends for all the millions on Facebook to see. Yes, I can change the privacy settings and limit access to most of my information to only the select few. But how do I select? What does it mean if I do not accept friend requests of dozens of people, while I allow others? And would I be able to stand only having 50 instead of 500 friends, which would probably be an enviable sign of my online popularity? Isn’t that why people do it, to show how many they know, to network? To connect for business or social gain?
I guess I could spend a little time to find answers to these questions, come to my own conclusions and design my FB presence accordingly. But there is one more thing, that is hard to overcome. Facebook caters to the hard-wired peeping tom instincts in humans. It feels weird. You click through people’s pages and there is all this stuff, their photos, their friends, their descriptions, their updates. Who are these people? Who do they know? What does it say about them? Do they just play, portray a version of themselves they think is cool, fun, interesting? All pretense, no reality? How does the Facebook version relate to the real person? Why am I even clicking through this, what am I looking for, why should that interest me?
It feels strange and wrong to browse through Facebook (which I obviously have done, I am a journalist after all and I do not like to be completely ignorant of the facts). To snoop around all these people’s profiles. Gossip fodder. It feels like I am sitting again in the archives of the Stasi or looking through some FBI file, browsing through their compilations of people’s life. Most of those reports are as well meaningless accumulations of everyday life. Yet they were important for a regime, they used to make a political system feel safe about its citizens, they gave the government the feeling of control over someone who raised suspicion. All the mundane banalities of everyday life became meaningful not to last because they were printed in black and white on hundreds of pages of paper, complemented by secretly shot photos, compiled over years and then in their quantity signifying control over another person’s life.
I know, on Facebook, the reports are just posted on a server, in color, reported not by secret agents but by the subjects themselves. They want the world to know. Why am I thinking of the Stasi? The FBI? It is a big and heavy comparison without much rational base only justified by one thing – the way it makes me feel.
Facebook makes me cringe. I don’t want to be one those reporting on themselves. I am a thoroughly modern person, loving my gadgets, the unfathomable change of human existence through the digitization of information, my Wired subscription, heck, my blog! I just don’t like Facebook because I don’t like how it feels to me and what it does to you as a person in constant need to feed that virtual existence to all the “friends” out there with stuff that somehow is supposed to mean something.
It doesn’t to me, so I remain off Facebook.

liquid yellow

2009-12-31T15:16:00.000-08:00

Just because it feels nice to have this date above my thoughts I am writing. A brief moment of a symbolic nod to the ending of one, the start of another. Year and decade. But I don't really have anything else to say - nothing at least that doesn't require a longer treatise on the state of society and the adoration of idiocy, the madness of consumerism and its contribution to idiocy(idiocy obviously being a heavy burden on my every day life), not to even start with environmental destruction, the joy of a deep breath, the smile at the sight of the ocean or the sun over the desert mountains, the satisfaction after a good class of yoga, the search for meaning and the truth of existentialism, the miracle of the transcendental power of art and music, the joy and pain of meeting others attempting to find their way through this complete absurd concoction of existence we all came here to try. Too much work. Liquid yellow. On we go. twenny-ten.

a tree question

2009-12-14T11:27:00.000-08:00

It’s that time of year again, where all around it’s about that time of year, the jolliest, happiest - and about the time that has passed yet again, so fast, to end another year. I as always have no emotions in this one. Just made it into home # 6 in my trek through LA. Six addresses in ten years, I do feel like I did accomplish some sort of Americanization. In 12 Berlin years I only called 2 addresses my home. But here it is part of being a true denizen of LA, a city so spread out you can only understand it truly by moving around in her and experiencing her from all different angles.
Even though to me this "fifth season" holds no enticement (and the added nuisance of being tortured by Christmas songs for weeks every time you enter a store) this year I am curious about a vocal part of this society that feels the need to defend Christmas. I stumbled across them through e-mail lists I landed on by handing my address to people I interview as a tv producer. They just make me part of their address book and hence I am connected to a viral world I have no personal stake in.
“There is a Christ in Christmas. Fight for the Christmas tree.“ Read one of those e-mails encouraging its recipients to inundate the ACLU with CHRISTMAS cards so their mailing center would become overloaded as a punishment. The ACLU is one of those groups that fight to call those trees "holiday trees" in public displays as to respect all religions. I am not sure those who don’t believe in the Christian savior are offended when you call those trees that. It seems a minor point to me, except for a few very delicate souls who are adamant about the separation of church and state or about the dissing of their religion.
I actually like to call them holiday trees. It reminds me of the multitudes of spiritual ways. I love that thought. Even though where I am from there was never a need to defend Christmas because until not too long ago being a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Jew wasn’t really a prevalent idea and hence there was never anything wrong with a Christmas tree. The thought of offending someone by assuming everyone celebrates the birth of Christ was truly foreign because by unspoken definition being German meant being Christian. Being American is not so simple. So I enjoy that there is a desire to respect other religions by acknowledging their lack of Christ and hence their lack of joy over a tree that celebrates the birth of the particular savior. There isn't only just one way and that is a thought I forever find consoling.
Not coincidentally in those e-mails this whole “they are taking our Christmas away from us” means to say “they” are a certain man in the White House and the D-party that can only do wrong. Funny that from that end of the political spectrum it is always about emotions and personal decisions that become the public and political. A point I truly am stuck on to ponder because it is against my sensibilities. But it being December I’ll rest my case. As far as I remember the point of celebrating the birth of the savior was that there is hope for humanity in all its colors to get along (and eventually all follow the one savior which over millennia has led to tremendous bloodshed, but that is a future development from the birth itself and an all too human interpretation of that birth). To me all religions have the same root, distinguished as they are by history and mentality and geography, they are all united by a yearning for peace and a longing to find meaning in the human condition. That if anything is the point of these year end celebrations, to rest your case, put aside the differences and see the human being on the other side. Call it holidays, call it Christmas - just stick with the essence.

bearpit Berlin

2009-10-04T07:37:00.001-07:00

Picture this. A sunny late summer afternoon in September. A mellow slope in a public park, hundreds of people, sitting on the grass in a big round grouping, sort of a spontaneous amphitheater setting. Children jumping around, animated conversations here, faces turned delightfully towards the golden light there. And then a man with a curious bike and a sound system enters the provisional stage - a community of strangers and the sounds they make. That is bear pit karaoke.
I was clearly back in my old life, on my once a year trip to Germany. This year it happened in early fall. The last Sunday in September I strolled into Mauerpark in Berlin, a public venue for the young and not so young hipsters and scenesters of surrounding Prenzlauer Berg and sat on the grass to listen to people singing in public. My friend Maud, always in tune with what's new in town, had spent numerous sunny summer Sundays there and I happily joined that custom - with hundreds and hundreds others, eagerly awaiting the Master of Ceremony, Joe Hatchiban(come on, admit it, you want to say that name out loud and if you have a German background you are halfway through a Karl May novel by then). Like an old-fashioned Berlin street organ piper, a true Zille original, Joe shows up in a custom-made bike, pulls off two gigantic wooden speakers from the bike rack, sets up a microphone, fires up the Mac with karaoke software and off Berliners go, for hours and hours of singing and listening, clapping and dancing, enjoying a good time with a beer or a prosecco, an occasional smoke here and there. Bear pit karaoke is what Joe from Dublin, who from Mo-Fr works as a bike messenger, calls his thing and he turns out to be quite an entertaining MC himself.
It was election day in Germany, but it was warm, something they call Altweibersommer, summer of the old women, the last days of 25 degrees C before fall has you in its grip. But I, coming from California, not worried about the last rays of a warm sun, just truly enjoyed the fact that I could sit outside, in a public park, people were drinking their beers, smoke their cigarettes, converse and hang out without a sponsor or a banner or a profiteer. That is fantastic in Europe, this idea of getting together in public without much restrictions, no entry fee, no organized parking lots, no valets, no caterers, just some self-starters trying to make a quick Euro selling beer or lemonade from their baskets. Truly free, individual expression without commercial guidance. Funny, now that I live where that seems hard to do I very much enjoy it for just the idea and public square mentality. Everyone else took it for granted and left the place trashed with bottles and papers (something that will eventually lead to action by the authorities who even in Germany can't completely ignore 100s of people convening for fun). The fate of all good and popular things (Love Parade anyone?)
How could I explain to my Berliner friends that in the most natural venue in LA for this type of gathering you cannot smoke, cannot have a beer and most likely need a permit from the city to do as humans do. The beach would be a great but virtually impossible territory for this, at least in the towns of Santa Monica and Venice. The reasons for restriction might be understandable, but it feels really lame. Land of the free...it is not always. So I have a big smile on my face and bow my head to the spirit of the old country, in this respect.

vollmond

2009-09-09T22:21:00.000-07:00

How could I forget? It's been too long since I spent a full moon on top of a hill. LA makes it so easy to be in touch with nature. All you have to do is get in your car and ride for 30 minutes - which on a Friday night can suck. I admit, this traffic conundrum makes you lazy, traffic becomes an excuse, and really, there are many days where you just get tired of sitting in that car and driving, driving, driving. Too bad. But last Friday was the night, we were determined to go. We braved the traffic and were rewarded. Sitting on a mountain top, staring at the moon, the city somewhere below you, behind the range, just an orange glow, too dim for that bright moon you enjoy all by yourself in the midst of millions. Quite magical. Part of the city, part of the cosmos. A dose of calm and quiet and beauty. A bond with the moon and the city, that never makes it easy to enjoy its beauty. Fires have been ravaging the other side of town and the nature over there. And on the way back down from our full moon mountain top we got stuck in a sobriety trap on PCH. 30 cops, 5 crew cars, 10 bikes, a tow truck and a 20 minute crawl to get waved through. But that moon was still up there, shining bright, a silver shimmer on the Pacific. I was all relaxed and calm - it didn't matter how soon we would be home. So easy to be okay with the moment.

afterthought

2009-09-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

... I should stop getting so worked up about this health care thing. And I am. But it was/is a compelling lesson in the differences in political culture. To me the revelations in this debate made me see Europe as more advanced in its public discourse and functionality. But that is my prerogative, as a European. I read in a fascinating commentary a few days ago in the LA Times, about the period when FDR introduced the Social Security system in the 1930s, that not much really changed since then in the way social reforms are being discussed. A Republican senator among many critical voices that invoked the march of the Red also then, was quoted as saying, that Social Security would "end the progress of a great country and bring the people to the level of the average European."
I guess all the progress I see on the other side was never really appreciated over here. But I do know that those average Germans (which I know the most about) are a lot better informed about policies and issues than the average American. As if on cue, I heard yesterday that many citizens these days write their Congressmen urging them to stop the public option in health care and finishing their e-mails and letters with: "And keep the government out of Medicare!" - which is a truly enlightening statement. Government works so well for them they don't even realize the "evil" bureaucrats have been running and financing it for over 40 years.

brain

2009-08-12T20:37:00.000-07:00

These days I can't help but think of a German saying, a Bavarian one to be precise. God, throw some brain from the sky! It's the frustrated exclamation of a Bavarian at the ineptitude of God's underlings on Earth who just don't seem to be able to make use of that gray matter up there under their skull. I could use some more of those cells to understand what is going on these days in my country of choice.
I've been living in this country for 10 years and as much as I am a studious observer and willing participant - there are vast parts of this society that leave me perplexed. Many Americans are up in arms over the health care reform that the President wants to accomplish. At first that seemed rightful. There are close to 50 million people uninsured or under insured, the majority of personal bankruptcies is due to medical debt, the world-class care you can undoubtedly get in this country is easily affordable for a Japanese yakuza or a Saudi prince or a Hollywood millionaire while the majority is in some weird health care provider plan that limits the choice of doctors and hospitals (like mine) or kicks you out when you get seriously ill or move to another state. And should you lose your job that great plan you had is gone as well.
So you would think there is a lot to get angry about.
But what are people mad about? On the radio I heard a woman in Pennsylvania at a town hall meeting say, in a quivering voice: "They (the government) let the beast out. I don't want to live in Russia." Heck yeah, the health care system there is dimensions worse, but I didn't see any connection. Russia though to her was synonymous with socialism. "I don't want the state to have power over my body. This is the end of America. No to health care reform, no to socialism." I wasn't sure she or any of the many enraged voices truly read any of the proposals. All they felt was that somehow the decades long fight for an adequate health insurance system in the world's richest country signals the end of a free America and the opening stages of a Communist dictatorship. Hence the rage.
But here's where my middle-European Americanized self has to give up. Why this irrational, emotional drama of the perceived end of whatever America they have in their head? There is a problem, it needs a solution. Urgently. All it gets from that half of the American population is emotional resistance. Who could seriously think of socialism as a threat at the end of the first decade in the 21st century? I guess I am more flummoxed by the fact that people actually have not evolved passed that rhetoric that clearly dates back to the 1930s and 1950s. Who would seriously find this a threat? And who in this country can seriously find private enterprise the ONLY best solution when all that has done in relation to health care is quite evidently put millions in misery. Health care cannot just be run like a business because consequentially sickness would have to be a profit center only and sick people deserve better.
If you don't like the way a government does tasks it should do, take it to the task. Have competition. Make private enterprise work for you, make government work for you. Punish each if they don't perform. Government is not per se the end of a job well done. It does "security" obviously very well. Soldiers, policemen, firemen - any private sector competition in this area has not necessarily shown its superiority. And it doesn't take a Blackwater or a Katrina disaster to make the case for bad private enterprise.
I know a little about real existing socialism from my limited but curious exposure to East Germany. I did not like that type of society. Nothing in the US points there. I just don't get it in my head that the very same people who might benefit from a reform don't even want to listen, understand, shape the debate for fear of some perceived dogmatic mistake. That to me is more socialist in thinking than the open debate I expect from a democracy. If anything those wailing voices remind me of the way East Germany did its propaganda - never listen, never look at the issues, the facts, the solutions - just adamantly fight what they call the evil capitalists and subsume everything under that phrase. Why would you not want something that could potentially improve your life and instead voice an opposition that ultimately only benefits the status quo and those that don't have your best interest in mind. What's the matter with Kansas?
This country has an admiration for un-intellectualism that sometimes scares me. All the talk-radio guys and the Sarah Palins of this country are an amazing boost to encourage intellectual ignorance, quell intellectual curiosity and cultivate an almost fanatic need to look at the world through eyes that are stuck in the 1890s or 1950s. So, yes God, throw down some brains, so at least there is a debate about health care and not about ghosts of the past with no relevancy to today. I just can't be dogmatic any more, it's 2009 for Chrissake.

one of us

2009-07-08T20:22:00.000-07:00

So now he is gone. Sent off in a golden casket. Surrounded by his sun-glasses-clad brothers and sisters. Farewell to a pale brother. The man whose heart couldn't take it anymore. I wouldn't necessarily think of myself as someone being struck by the death of Michael Jackson, but I was. He was a part of my teenage fabric. I was the right age, hungry for music and dancing and images when MTV started. I watched Billy Jean and Thriller on Dutch TV week after week, imitating the moves as I stood in front of the TV in the early 80s, loving what the music did to my joy of moving. Loving this guy who was sooo good at moving and singing. My first time in the US I happened to see him on stage during the Victory tour. He was an integral part of my personal American quilt. As a teenager in Germany I didn't connect him to a struggle or being black, to me he was American and they came in all colors. He could sing and dance and make me dream and move, a star from a culture I found endlessly fascinating.
That later on the real existing Michael Jackson and what he signifies parted ways. I observed and accepted. Poor guy, haunted by a lost childhood, by media, by a world that just didn't want to heal. He tried strange remedies, a new nose, the adoration of childhood, a fantastical lifestyle. He went as far as a black man can go to function in a world run by the white man. The ultimate sacrifice to the struggle. He became white, he had white children. He became tabloid fodder, scandalized, not without his own doing, something I cannot make sense of other than that he refused to grow up and that he existed in a world where that doesn't work.
During the farewell, on world-wide TV, I sat in a black church in South Central and felt the healing in his death. I was sad because I am always sad when life's absurd irony is screaming in your face, when the inevitable end can be felt clearly because someone somehow close to you actually passes on. I was sad also because of the enormous tragedy of his time on the planet. No Greek playwright could have come up with this plot of a life. And yet, gone, he was a kid from the hood, the pride of the community, a black man, the greatest entertainer in the world. It felt good sharing the farewell with brothers and sisters in a church.
Some people might not feel anything, get even upset by the over-coverage of just an entertainer. They will feel this with someone else they find easier to connect to. I see the media beast that feasts on the creature they created. Hypocrites. That has nothing to do with what happened. Media create their own surreality for their own purpose. Who cares. I just happen to have a line to this fellow traveler and his torturous bond with earthly existence. Even though at the time I wasn't so excited about it as I was about the dancing - he reminded people to not forget they always have a choice to go to the bright side, to look in the mirror, to make it a better place. I think that is good and I'm glad he told the world. To my own surprise. Maybe I am a sap after all, at least every now and then....

safe

2009-06-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

Last week I bought a safe. Been meaning to buy one for years. Ever since I got to LA in fact. This is earthquake country. Mudslide country. Wildfire country. I come from a safe country, where there is not too much nature actually capable of endangering the vital papers of life. And we have houses of stone built for eternity. A whole different sense of security in that one. But here, I always wanted to pack the important things in a box so they'd be safe in case something comes along. I'd have them handy, organized. Finally, an ad brought an ominous black box into my field of vision. 40 dollars for a home safe, securing the valuables for 30 minutes in a fire, and waterproof.
So I hauled it up the long walkway to our house. It's really heavy. Inside the heavy box with a top door is a shoe-box size space that fits legal size hanging file folders - if only it hadn't warped in the middle. Made in China. 40 Dollars don't get you something worthy of German engineering. So the folders actually only fit at the very front and very back. The middle space is for diagonal filing. My German papers work there, they are too long for the folders (German legal size paper is called Din a 4. Its skinnier and longer.) I can make it work, put my life's papers in there. But now I don't know if I want to. I kept the packaging box and still am ready to return it. Do I really need a safe? Is it not just sitting there, taking up space? Don't I have most of my important stuff online?
There's the passport, the birth certificate, the Master's certificate. Tax returns. Insurance papers. Stuff you could get back, but it would save time if you didn't have to. I don't understand why I am so undecided about this. Old, deep-seated anxieties. Am I just too free a spirit for a safe? What seemed to be a reasonable, sensible thing to do turns out to be an enigma now that I did it.
I am confused. I should probably put some other things in there they want you to have prepared, just in case. A battery-less torch light. A little cash. An emergency radio. Then I should buy some gallons of water. And canned food, stash it safely. So we are prepared. The "big one" is always coming.
I dread all this because I always hated to be prepared for life's surprises. That was for losers, Spiesser, for squares. As far as I was concerned: To hell with retirement savings, life insurances, owning real estate. No way to live. It's all about the moment. I should have known. The safe. A manifestation of middle-class anxiety staring at me. A manifestation of my growing older, away from those rebellious youth ideas of freedom from what my parents valued.
Calm down. It's just a box to make things easier. To be efficient. Just in case.

I wish to Say Video

2009-06-13T12:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a little movie I made about my friend Sheryl's art project. If you want to know more: www.iwishtosay.org

June Gloom

2009-06-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

Nature works, in its own ways in L.A. June is the month under a cloud of gray, as the ocean warms up, the marine layer envelops the city in some London type gloom. I am surprised to find I enjoy it. When most of your days are sunny and golden, rain and gray skies become the exception you can enjoy. I like that about L.A., things get turned around, have the opposite meaning from before, it's its own planet.
The gray skies seem to put some sense into people and make them take care of business - that marijuana loop-hole just got stuffed, the city council decided that 600 dispensaries are enough, no more emergency exceptions. The sky stays gray. This year particularly persistent. The ekkonomik outlook seems to even affect the weather in California.
It doesn't seem to put too much sense into me. I should be looking for new endeavors all the while spending my days at my desk examining my past, looking back to find the trail that brought me here and write about it. It is a lot of work, but when, after a lot of bad stuff, some pieces of the puzzle fall in place and you actually have the words to capture them, it feels really good. I enjoy to write.
Last week I read a short story about DALLAS, the 80s tv series, and how it changed my life at an event called "Spark". It's a monthly date in small theater in Santa Monica where 7 people read their true life stories about one topic to an audience of dedicated listeners. I went in May because my friend DJ talked about his tattoo (here's DJ's website, he just published his first book, so I'm sure he appreciates it: www.djameseldon.com). It was a great evening, filled with stories about the body. I was surprised to be so engaged in the act of listening, of sharing people's life stories, about cancer and aneurysms, body image obsession and obesity. So simple and yet so intense, the act of telling a story and listening to it live. Much better than TV. When I saw that the next night in June would be about "80s tv series" I immediately thought of DALLAS, the show that became a big bonding experience with my mother - and made me long for the US. It was the 80s, I was 15, what did I know about the ridiculousness of shoulder pads? They liked the idea so I got the spot. It was a beautiful experience to share the stage with six gifted writers and have an audience listen to you. Exciting and encouraging, a whole new way of connecting with the world. No twitter involved.
I guess that is what the gray skies are about, giving you a chance to look inside, not get distracted by the sunshine, that so eternally entices you. Steel your resolve when the sun comes back, because you've had the time to connect and find your story.

Mary Jane to the rescue

2009-05-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

It is an uneasy embrace that comes with frequenting a certain chain of coffee stores and thus supporting a huge corporate entity – but I admit I succumb to their lattes (which I happen to really like) and the free WiFi and the guaranteed social gathering I can be part of once I sit at my table at one of their many many manifestations. Those corporate coffee shops take blatant advantage of the weakness of the American inner city that has lost its ability to be a place for people to walk and hang out and interact in a public space - without the need to shop. An ability that European and Mexican cities still have, a tradition of a market square, a place where you can sit, inside or outside, watch people, chat, read, for hours on end. Or a Cafe where you know the guy behind the bar, where the afternoon turns into evening, where the same people hang out and you develop a feeling of connectedness by just seeing that “that guy” is there as well. Life in your ‘hood, your Kiez.
Traces of that can be felt during an afternoon at a, I dare say that name, Starbucks. People need to connect, feel part of the social fabric of their city. And yet it is just not like an afternoon at a Cafe in Berlin. Too many plastic cups and cops and deal makers with guaranteed money schemes in loud conversations. My afternoons at Starbucks are an eternal search for the feelings of ease I have in those coffee shops of Europe where I wouldn’t dare sit down with a laptop and write. Too pretentious in my German world.
But here’s something that made me reevaluate the dread of supporting a corporate profit scheme because of my need for social connectedness (and yes, there are privately owned coffee stores I go to as well). L.A. – city of surprises. Ta-ta!!! Starbucks isn't really all that ubiquitous. There are more marijuana dispensaries in this city than there are Starbucks coffee shops, a public TV show just revealed. Estimates say over 500. Triumph of pot. Not that I have any need for it. But those dispensaries are legal in California, because they are meant to be medical marijuana clinics. Yet their growing numbers in this city are quite impressive. Permits are free with little enforcement on how the business is run. It’s a funky little snafu that no one in the city government has yet the willpower to tackle. So it gives me the giggles albeit being sober. Step back Starbucks. Feels like living in Amsterdam. Sometimes the people just do it their way. And of course the new man in the White House is also at fault. This legalized distribution is still against federal law, but he made it known that he won’t prosecute the medical marijuana law in California at the moment, something Bush Light wanted to do (That's a name some one at a conference not too long ago came up with when referring to No.41, Bush Classic which makes in turn his son Bush Light). So Pasadena Patriots, get ready, here’s another dramatic fault in the system. Dress up as your favorite 60s Hippie and get cracking.

worker's day

2009-05-01T15:58:00.000-07:00

As I write this sitting at my desk I wish I was in Pasadena. I should be there but work keeps me stationary. And Friday traffic, which can be quite abysmal, miserable and sometimes...non-existent. The mysteries of LA. I know for fact that every day there is a magic hole in the traffic that lets you zoom through, despite the odds. Last week I've found it, I made it in 35 minutes from Universal City to Santa Monica in the thick of the afternoon. I was prepared for stop-and-go and went 65 with an extra half hour to kill upon arrival. Where else do they give you back time? As far as I know though nobody has ever really found out when or where to find the hole in the traffic. So I can't risk going on a freeway now. I am too late already.
I digress. Pasadena. May First. International Labour Day. Where I come from this is a nice little holiday at the beginning of spring. Schools, banks, stores, offices are closed, obviously - we celebrate the hard work of the working class. It deserves its day off. Lots of demonstrations and union rallies, opportunities to show those capitalists that the people they have working for them are watching and organizing and making sure it is all fair and dandy. Or complaining that it's not. Ah the good old European ways where the workers find strength in numbers, fight exploitation, poverty and inequality. The street belongs to them and that is good, on that day. It relates to a tradition of socialistic ideas, that as far as I can see, are in today's climate just that, ideas and ideals of a more just society. An important asset in the dialogue about how to distribute the wealth generated in each community of a nation. Nothing unusual and with a history of societies whose attempts at real existing socialism failed without doubt, no one raises an eyebrow over the idea as such.
Now I live in a country that has its own weird idea of socialism. I think when people say socialism here it has nothing to do with anything in existence but a lot with some dusty ideas of people who are immune to history. Whatever socialism is synonymous for to them plays formidably into the hands of people who like to make lots of money without payback to those who put their sweat into it. So the Pasadena Patriots are probably quite indicative of that particular subgroup of Americans who have socialism-panic. They are using, right now, this May Day for a rally to protest the "current path to socialism" they see in this country and the state of California. "The Pasadena Patriots encourage citizens to join the Pasadena May Day rally and fight for capitalism, a free-market, lower taxes, lower regulations, less government and freedom of the individual." Now there's a rally invitation you could not get away with in Kreuzberg (which is a district in Berlin with its own 22 year old history of May 1 rallies, a very peculiar ritual which often requires throwing rocks at policemen in riot gear).
But the funky fresh take on Labour Day would not have made me want to watch those patriots in Pasadena. Neither the odd out-datedness of their concepts. It was the last sentence on the invite: "Participants are encouraged to dress like your favorite Communist dictator." Whou-hou! Pretty funny those Republicans under threat of Socialism. Too bad, would have liked to photograph that. Bummer. Hope my work day is off soon...

the joy of Henry

2009-04-21T12:34:00.000-07:00

Now those of you who know me know I have a few heroes and crushes that could be considered embarrassing or worthy of a teenager. You are only as old as your heart. Doesn’t make it much better. But I am fessing up to it so hold your horses.
This one particular infatuation dates back to 1997 where I came across a punk rocker turned spoken word artist still doing music named Henry Rollins. I forgot how exactly he crossed my path. Something I read. Some I guy I was into mentioning him. Some 80s flash-back. I bought a book he wrote and then another one. In November 1998 finally he made it to Berlin where I was living at the time, battling with a question I had been toying with too long: Should I go back to the US and live my life there? So I sat in Kreuzberg, on an uncomfortable wooden bench in a church that like many churches had a become a multi-purpose building for lack of churchgoers and listened to this raw and loud and unafraid guy ranting about life and its ups and downs. I loved his humor and the way he observed life. I loved the realness of it. You only have one life to live. And Henry Rollins lived it in Los Angeles, that town that had always stirred my longing, over there all the way in the West, where the Pacific ended the trail, where the sun would eternally shine.
A good year later I left Berlin. Within a few months I “met” Henry Rollins again, at a record store (now long gone) where he also signed my copy of a new CD by the Rollins Band who I later saw perform in Silver Lake. Wow, I had made it, living in the town of the guy that was one of the forces that kicked my ass. And don’t you always meet again? A month ago Rollins popped up on my favorite public radio station KCRW with his very own show. I could have listened to him before, on the fantastic alt-radio station Indie Rock. But you know, those radio dials are programmed in and it is really hard to flip them... But finally no escaping. He made himself heard on 89.9. And lo&b.hold his power to kick ass hasn’t diminished. Listening to the musical journeys he subjects you to is a jolt of life. a necessary reminder of what is out there, what music can do, what you did in your life when that track hit you. I sometimes forget how much I cherish music to make sense of my life and express my emotions. So that is what Henry is for. Ever combined the Ramones, some Russian avant-garde composer, Sonny Rollins and the Black Flag, not to mention the German favorite Killing Joke? Puts a smile on my face, makes me search my ipod for more treasures of my life during the week, even though it is a while back. Made me be buy (okay download) an old album by the Lounge Lizzards who are among the concert highlights of my life time. The joy of Henry, you can call me a fanatic any time!

opener

2009-04-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

A German friend today connected to me on LinkedIn by saying social networks are the pest. I find myself agreeing with him. Time suckering endeavors, looking great for teenagers, now much hyped advertising tools. Oh so bitter I am. Sign o the times, everyone got something to say to anybody and your experience of life is valid only if you capture it for the digital highway. So you have your "friends" see the photos and read your updates and in return read their exciting adventures at the supermarket or in the bathroom. Wherever I go now I see people snapping away, txting, yapping on their cell phones about the moment they cannot experience because they are so busy reporting on it. I guess some of that gray matter up there will disappear for lack of usage. That my friends has already been scientifically proven as WIRED informed me recently. I see dark days. And hope. People are social beings, they are lonely, they want to be with a group, they want to connect, they want to share - it's been like this since they drew chalk paintings on the wall of their caverns. Different times, different techniques.
Now everyone is a sender and a receiver and the numbers are big. Today is the day that Ashton Kutsher's Twitter feed has a larger follower ship than CNN's. Albeit for the good purpose of buying mosquito nets.
So that is it then. Me starting a blog with a photo of my chosen home of Southern California.
Too much to figure out. This 21st century is full of change. Might as well share the confusion. Confront the skeptic brainy dark German me who searched for the light of California to stir her up. Heck, I always want to be a writer, I need the exercise. And you, the anonymous masses, will suffer the consequences.