From Hamburg to Berlin thru Ludwig's Lust, December 12, 1995

It is around 1:10 European time, I am sitting in a train from Hamburg to Berlin again, the opening was yesterday evening with around 700 people, the whole Kunsthaus completely packed. Most of the people couldn't see my performance 'cause there was too much of a crowd ( if I had known I would have actually planned a completely different piece) a press conference with around 40 journalists, two TV channels and the major newspapers. It was really not bad. The last couple of minutes were really hectic as we came to the Kunsthaus late and I had a couple of phone calls that I had to return immediately in order to be able to function. I will also have to make a couple more phone calls during the train ride in order to take care of certain problems that have to be immediately resolved. Now I am watching an ugly gray day passing by, staring at me through the windows of this train, almost in slow motion because of construction on the rails, it looks even more sad with all these abstract patterns consisting of traces around of caterpillars on the gray brown earth. Business as usual, the maigre trees are connected with this white and red line used to mark a construction site and to warn of danger. Borderlines that are temporary, plastic tape that we used to play with when we were children and we felt very important. The nice thing is when you travel, as soon as you see one thing the memory already rushes to the next impression, sometimes it is so fast that everything feels like an abstract pattern of buried memories when you finish your journey. The ground looks red now, completely covered with lost leaves from naked trees. somebody wearing a brown coat was walking his dog in the forest, the train is faster so that memories seem to overlay each other, like a painting with different layers and you only can grab a moment of it, but it is more the process,, then the actual aim. A big flat stone flying by, completely flat like a flounder. It doesn't look so gray anymore maybe because we are driving faster now. My eyes burn slightly I feel really overworked. Again, a for some reason often I am thinking about this when my body moves from one place to the next: what am I doing here and why am I doing this. I was working yesterday about the relationship between "Gegenstand" and "Begriff". "Gegenstand" is German and it means thing. You can also write about a thing that you can't necessarily touch, but usually a thing is tangible. the "Begriff" is usually an abstract thing and intangible it is something like an expression (a terminus an idiom or and Antonym) which is kind of hard to understand for a foreigner because the "Begriff" contains the word "Griff" and you could associate that this means that the "Begriff" is more tangible because it might remind you of the word "greifen" which is the word for touching or grabbing. the dilemma we are in with these two words is again the linguistic relationship between a word like "Gegenstand" (the thing) and "Verstand" (mind) and verstehen (understanding) and stehen. as I wrote on the November, 26 or , the relationship between standing and understanding is almost amusing and that there is a tremendous difference between comprehending or so "begreifen" and understanding "verstehen". So please go back to that letter and read it first because I don't want to repeat myself. You might though already connect the dilemma I have between the "Begriff" (expression or even comprehension) and the word "Gegenstand" which is in German philosophy frequently used as a word to describe a problem that your talking about because you use "Begriffe" to talk about a "Gegenstand". Now it might be hard for you to really understand what I am talking about as I am talking about it in my fatherlanguage, which makes it more difficult for you and easier for me. For someone who reads German this might be nachvollziehbar, (understandable or comprehensible). for someone who doesn't want to understand this might be bullshit and I have to admit it is not a major problem considering that there are so many in the world and so many problems to understand or solve and so many language barriers that this is rather tiny. So I advise you to just not loose your interest and skip this letter to the next one, because it might be even more confusing and some unnecessary ballast to carry around. For those who stayed with me in this window let's be a little mean and skip this problem to the next day and lets have a monodialogue about something more fun...: I recently had sex with "Irmi's Reisebegleiter" from "Ludwigslust". Now explaining what I mean is forcing me to be a little mean. As most of you already know I think that the most dangerous and valid adventures take place in ones head and under one's ad-dresses. As the owner of this lingerie-store ones said "you can hide a multitude of sins in it." As my thoughts are fee and my fantasies alive I had sex with an "Irmi's Reisebegleiter" from "Ludwigslust". This is another word for a Hamburger, which wouldn't make sense to call it hamburger because a Hamburger is not simply a burger it is a "Bürger" (a resident) from this German town called "Hamburg". Ludwigslust is the train-station after Hamburg and it takes an 1,5 hours to get there so it could be in the middle between Berlin and Hamburg, at least trainwise. Ludwigslust is Ludwig's Lust and as I am a lacto ovo fish and pseudo vegetarian I don't eat meat, which makes me not being able to eat any Hamburger, nor a Frankfurter or any hot dog either. But certainly in my head I can enjoy one. Right? You might suspect that I am trying to avoid any kind of "fleischliche Gelüste" (terrible to translate as meatlike lusts). Of course if I would be a Berliner I would try to not admit it because people might find me real sweet. The German Berliners that you know in Berlin as Berliner Pfannkuchen are known in south Germany as Berliner and they are filled with marmalade and with powdered sugar on top. When I used to meet my dear friend Donutus I never ever would have thought of the cocky (cookie) there was especially because of the little us that used to decorate his name. Is this a source of chauvinism? In fact there are other sweets that Germans are eating. Even worse is the eatable "Amerikaner", there are black and white one's (with sugar only or chocolate). In German language wise this is at least a real source of confusion. Confusion in a way that there is only a slight little tricky grammatical difference between saying "Ich bin Berliner and ich bin ein Berliner. A difference that also the translators of J.F. Kennedy should have known and I wasn't aware of the problem either until he said it and some people laughed. Of course it was clear what he meant and the Berliners sympathetic with him very much for saying this. Anyway now I am far away from this "Irmi's Reisebegleiter" from "Ludwigslust". But Irmi's Reisebegleiter is Irmi's and a Reisebegleiter is something between a travel agent and a bodyguard and in "Ludwigslust" according to the image I saw it is a Hamburger, or maybe I should avoid this problem and call it a cheeseburger. I never touched it to tell you the truth I just saw the signs. And now I think I should have at least gotten the chance to talk to him, because he said came especially back for me, but he left so quickly and I don't really know who he was. Too bad or maybe not...?