Statement of Record
If nostalgia is primarily aesthetic, then it is also unstable, and if we get attached to beautiful images today, we might spurn them tomorrow. We might love the beautiful images because we can’t apprehend them, “the beautiful” always relocating itself, unrecognizable as the city outside, which is why we keep trying to rebuild the city in our minds.
I moved from Wedding to Schwabing, from Leopoldplatz in Berlin to Leopoldstrasse in Munich, from migrants and an enduring German underclass to posh Bavarians and global citizens. There is probably no starker contrast between any two German metropolitan districts. I offer just three examples: chilled drinks, dog poop, and street music.
I wake up at five in the morning /
because there is a rope moving up my neck /
an eel that swims up to my father and back again /
in the bathroom mirror my eyes are his /
To go out with me for fresh air or for some sun and to listen to the birds. . . to go out with me is to watch behind my back to be anticipating what is ahead to look for kids suddenly lurching out of the bushes out of my mind. . . to be out with me is not to be out with me and I don’t know how I can change that unless all the stop lights remain green and no one...
In a warm pasture overlooking the Austrian village of Stockerau, six-year-old Ernst Herbeck nibbles a long blade of grass, back against an oak, inhaling the loamy moistness of cow patties, daydreaming of Berlin.
He has never been there.
He will never go.
He has seen photographs.
He was too...
So, what’s new? ‘Some wankers are doing shit to the place where I live and I can’t do anything about it’? Okay, how about:
Statement of Record