Hey, kids, I’m back and better than ever! You may wonder what I’ve been up to since the last blog entry. Well, I’ve been damn busy, as you can imagine. You see, in between I fell of the fun wagon, had a lot of fun-shrinking experiences with those dark forces that lurk down every emotional alleyway — the kind of people you like to read about in »Newsweek« magazine, to quote Rick James, but do not necessarily want to have calling late into the night laying their bizarre trips on you. It was a conglomeration of these types that brought me to this tremendous personal transformation. I feel better, and I can communicate in a happier way now, so this entry shouldn’t bum you out — but it might piss you off or cause you to break things. Just don’t forget that when you smash the phone into the wall, even it has a consciousness. So the next time you want it to work for you, it may just say, »Hey, fuck you! Remember the time you were reading Atti’s blog and it freaked you out, and you took it out on me? Well, now I don’t feel like being so helpful to you. Tough titties!« So don’t hurt inanimate objects or, just like people or dogs, they might just turn and bite your ass.
So let’s start off by asking the old standby existential question: What is life? Right now, today, at this moment, stripped of all illusion and uncertainty. What unique cosmic convergence brought us all together today?
Was it the first time Dr. Smith complained to Will Robinson about the pain, the pain? Was it when Jim West and Artemus Gordon, in some amazing disguise, were captured by Dr. Miguelito Loveless and his lovely companion, threatening to destroy the western world as we know it? Was it Mary Richards pouring coffee into a mug under a giant wooden letter M? With electric curlers in her hair and single-female angst brewing? Was it the black light poster lit in my sister’s bedroom? Joni Mitchell on my first stereo, »Ladies of the Canyon«? A book about Jewish marriage? Listening in at my parents’ closed bedroom door? Was it the drive from Hamburg to Bavaria, eating Japanese food for the first time? The time I wouldn’t eat for a month when my parents went to Spain? Was it when, at five years of age, I started referring to my father as good old Dad? Knowing she was pregnant after sleeping with Sandra for the first time? Touching my heart with my fist whenever Thomas left? The recurring dream of rolling down a hill, out of control, next to a barbed-wire fence? My grandfather’s unconditional love? My dad’s laughter?
Life is a series of delicate meetings held together by a spider’s thread strong as a steel span, tender as the wind blowing it all away.
And love? Love is the only shocking act left on the face of the earth. Eroticism, murder, betrayal, starvation, torture, war, all pale in the face of love. We stare for hours at CNN, watch the world unfold hour by hour, numbed, deafened, defeated. We wander into the wrong neighbourhood and are showered by hatred. We study the universe through distant cameras, drive ourselves mad searching for the origins of life. We detach ourselves and engage in futile superficial conversations about sexual politics, impressing one another with intellectual repartee, dress ourselves in various guises to avoid the alienation of aging skin, exchange hostile glances in loud, desperate nightclubs. This is the dance, the prelude to need and desire.
We confess our sins in cold, damp churches, kneel to the Lord to open our souls, punish one another for the frailties we cannot bear in ourselves. Winding ourselves up into frenzies of fear and self-loathing we are tamed by a cocktail or hallucinogen, pretty colours, strange desert journeys, emptiness and abandonment.
We flee from this most terrifying moment: in a warm room in the quietest night with whispers of tenderness and trust penetrating the senses, control, power, anger are thrown aside and we bear witness to the only valid instant in the universe, love.
When, in Fellini’s »La dolce vita«, a journalist asks Anita Ekberg what are the three things she likes most in life, she answers, »I like lots of things, but there are three things I like the most: Love, love, and love.«
Ten years since I wrote these pieces about life and love, and I would write them similarly today. Last month’s thoughts were edgy, I found myself sitting in a corner of my room brooding over life, love, and loss. The result became a movie script that I don’t want to reveal too much about. Just wait and see…
»Write me your poetry in motion«, sings Kate Bush in one of her most beautiful songs, the haunting »Song of Solomon«, a piece about sex. She’s right; sex (at its best!) is poetry in motion. Her music has carried me through the funkiest of times; it flew me to the moon and back.
Trying out new recipes, reading Jack Kerouac, meeting friends, old and new, and writing — this is how 2013 began for me. I wonder what the upcoming weeks will bring. But no matter what, if this New Year is a bright or a rather dark one, I just wanted to let you know that I’m still around, wishing you love, light, and serenity, as always. Don’t worry; we’re ass-kickin’ into the high gear right here — focused like a damn Tibetan monk. We will »televise the revolution« — we will »fight the power.« We’re cool. Peace.
André