Blog / Chronik

I know–it sure doesn’t look like much. An old mattress on the floor, boxes piled high, and not much furniture.
I don’t know the last time I felt “at home.” It’s something I was searching for.
I wondered if I would ever find it. I wondered what it would feel like if I did.

A little apartment on the third floor of an old building in an old town.
Beneath these slanted ceilings, I feel comfort, safety, warmth. I look forward to coming back to this place after a long day at work. I find myself wishing I was there when away for a night. There’s satisfaction: this little tiny corner of the world is mine, at least for a little while.

Is this home?

95FF+HM Westerly, Rhode Island

If there is one thing that is indisputable, undeniable, beyond all doubt and above all else, it’s this: the general “joy-coefficient” increases by at least an order of magnitude when one can finally do something that one has longed and waited for for a long, long time. A late, wet, cold-season triumph, gloriously reeking of chlorine satisfaction.

2M62+FG Vöcklabruck

I’m way overdue in posting this. Aside from busy-ness, tired-ness, and other excuses, I didn’t know what to write with this photo. I still don’t.

This is a photograph of Stonington Gallery in Stonington, Connecticut. It was the first gallery to “represent” me and my artwork. In the photo you might be able to make out 3 of my photos scattered around the room. The owner, also named Sarah, is a wonderful human. On this Saturday, I went in to order some custom frames. I’m very excited about these frames.
They’re pretty plain, actually. A simple black metal frame, 8x10inches. 4 of them. You can buy 8×10 frames anywhere, it’s one of the most common frame sizes. So why did I spend double or triple what a normal store would cost to get these standard sized frames custom made?

They signify my future.

The plan goes something like this. Lately I’ve been absolutely adoring small sized prints of my work. I’m talking 2x3inches, maybe 4×4 at the largest. This is a new direction for me. Photo prints, cyanotypes, solar plate etchings. I’m endearingly calling them my “tiny prints”. I just love them. I wanted to elevate my presentation. These 8×10 frames are high quality. I will cut custom mats to fit the tiny prints. Imagine a 2×3 sized print inside a frame that’s about 4 times larger in its dimensions. It’s going to be beautiful.
These tiny prints will be going into galleries. They will be submitted to contests and exhibitions. They will be sold at markets and online. Maybe I’ll make a book out of them.
It’s new work that excites me. Not only am I excited about the possibilities of the work itself, I am hopeful about what the results might be. Will this elevate my practice? Will it bring a new audience to my work? Will I be noticed by other galleries? Book publishers?

Not to ramble, but I have one more thing to add. I recently realized how much my thinking limits me. When someone asked me what I would do if I made an income that is 5x higher than my current job pays, I dismissed it as an impossibility. But who’s to say that? I think I’m capable of more than I think I am. And so these frames and small prints signify everything and everywhere I might someday find myself. All the good that might happen. The unexpected joys. Success and contentment.

84Q2+38 Stonington, Connecticut

“That shouldn’t be a problem, please proceed.” was the understanding receptionist’s response at the indoor swimming pool to my croaky-voiced question about whether I could take a picture of the temperature chart for the pools – so that, if I’d really end up being sick and bedridden in the coming days, I could at least think back wistfully and with a grin about how warm and wonderful it would have been at the pools, and how warm and wonderful it might be when I return to that place in good health.

That’s how it is for me with disappointments and sobering realizations: When long-held and desired ideas or plans are finally put into action, only for reason to suddenly make itself heard to let me step firmly on the brake pedal. Frustration, annoyance – bargaining, ignoring. One of my rather dubious talents is that I can equip a certain kind of anticipation with an unspeakable level of opacity, reliably covering up everything unpleasant. Just like here. Until, in addition to the fatigue I had pushed aside for half a day, a general feeling of coldness set in. Then a hoarse voice and a runny nose. Too obvious to not connect the dots.

So, here I stand. Right at the finish line. Surrounded by warm indoor pool air and the smell of chlorinated water. I’d love nothing more than to go get changed, but afterward… it would certainly become even more unpleasant. Honestly, I almost have to laugh. The fact that reason has prevailed so narrowly – and, by my standards, actually quite quickly too – is something that hasn’t happened to me very often before. I have to smile wistfully. A non-athlete finally wants to do something in that direction again, and then this. Well, then it ends up being the same old compromise again. Humor as the savior. Me, the one-trick pony. An evergreen of coping with life. Time to let the pools go.

I frame the shot, adjust my winter hat, press the shutter. With a sentimental smile I inhale the smell of that place for a final time only to head back home again – to actually spend almost an entire week there being sick.

I’ll be back. The second time will be even better than this first, humble encounter.

2M62+FG Vöcklabruck

distant lights
finding
my way home

 

CGJV+4V Narragansett, Rhode Island

The very unusual-looking man in the photo is man named Karl Valentin. A true Bavarian original. A comedian. For almost 100 years he has been admired by the residents of Munich – and by me as well. Maybe someone might be wondering now, why I am dedicating a blog entry to him and my answer to that question is the following: because he kind of made me fail writing this very blog entry – and in doing so, he helped me realize something very important about myself.

Everything begins in Munich. Dirndls, Lederhosen, beer, Oktoberfest – yes, that place. It’s where I was last week for several days which included “my Saturday”. I came across many photo-worthy moments there but I quickly realized that my blog entry would – and should – focus on Bavarian humor and the special role it has historically played in general and, above all, for me personally. Like how revealing it has always been, how anti-authoritarian, how honest, how bold – just to name a few characteristics of it. It really has had a major influence on me, how it made me see life and people and how it helped me to cope with both. Karl Valentin was one of its most eccentric founding fathers of it. A true idol so to say.

But somehow, throughout the entire past week, none of my drafts felt quite right. Romanticized and idealized, an over-the-top tribute to Bavarian humor – well, it didn’t fit right at all, it actually made me even feel sad whenever I started writing about it. In the end I’d say I ended up in some kind of writer’s block that forced me to dive deep inside of me and listen to what might be hiding behind of it.

Over the days I realized that there’s a connection with my present perception of me and life around me these days and that it’s just not the time where I can go out into the world relying on humor alone anymore. That humor, right now, needs to be accompanied by something else. Anti-humor, for example, or a more factual approach. It sounds cryptic, I know – but it simply didn’t feel right to use humor as the only vehicle or topic for that blogpost where humor has been often used by me to push other, more serious things aside, to keep things light or to delay things until, well, Godot may finally arrive.

So, I let go of my original plan. I accepted that it didn’t work for my anymore, that it was a failure. A good one. What soon followed was relief. New spaces opened up, a broader perspective. And I recognized a very special irony behind it all. The circle closed. An a hundred years long one.

Back in the mid 30s of the past century Irish writer Samuel Beckett was struggling with depression and writer’s block. He decided to learn German and, in an attempt to counteract his bleak state of mind, he traveled to Germany to explore the land of Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Dürer. He arrived in a country in political upheaval, and the inspiration he had hoped for did not come – at least not until the very end of his trip. In a coffeehouse in one of Munich’s suburbs he came across the comedy duo Karl Valentin and Lisl Karlstadt. In his travel diary, Beckett wrote:

“I actually saw Karl Valentin in 1937, performing in a café-theater on the city’s edge. I laughed a lot – filled with sadness.”

Enthralled, Beckett arranged a personal meeting with Karl Valentin through a German friend. It turned out to be a very surreal encounter – partly due to the language barrier between Beckett’s Irish English and Valentin’s deep Bavarian dialect. Karl Valentin showed him his cabinet of curiosities which was still under construction in Munich at the time. One of the installations was a cinema full of wax figures, all waiting for a film to begin but, and here’s the punchline, the film never started.

After returning from his trip, Samuel Beckett wrote his masterpiece “Waiting for Godot”, a landmark work of absurdist theater that would bring him worldwide fame.

To conclude my very special, unplanned blog entry this week I want to share a few quotes from Karl Valentin. I have my doubts that the absurd wordplay and humor can truly be translated from German into English but I want to give it a try nevertheless.

“Even the future used to be better in the past.”

“The only thing that’s certain is that nothing is certain—so I stay suspicious, just to be on the safe side.”

“Today, I’ll treat myself and pay myself a visit. Hopefully, I’m home.”

“I know no fear! Unless I get scared.”

“Hopefully things won’t be as bad as they already are!”

“Raising kids makes absolutely no sense – in the end they’ll just copy everything they see from adults anyway.”

“Everything has been said, just not by everyone (yet)!”

I’ve said everything now and sometime in the future I’ll definitely go back to Munich to, maybe, see a stage performance about either Karl Valentin or Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” by myself.

 

4HPJ+2P München, Deutschland

 

A snowstorm starts with cloudy skies. As the moon is obscured, we think: it won’t be so bad. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Then the snowflakes start to fall. A few at first, then faster, till the ground is covered. We shut off the lights, lock up the house, and head to bed. As it starts to pile up, we think: what if I’m snowed in? what if the roads aren’t plowed? what if we lose power?

After a while, we drift off to sleep. Anxiety clutches our dreams as we toss and turn. We think: I wonder how it’s going outside…

Then morning comes. With some apprehension we get out of bed and open the window curtains. The fresh snow is beautiful. There are maybe a few inches on the ground. The power is on. No trees fell. All is well. We think: I knew it wouldn’t amount to anything!

 

997F+MH Charlestown, Rhode Island

At night, it’s less bad.

I hold my breath, I feel myself tensing up.

Every time I drive here.

This narrowness.

Tightness.

The bent guardrails.

Crumbling asphalt.

It goes uphill, it goes downhill.

I never know what might be coming towards me beyond this curve.

Often a dance with the haste of others.

Navigating and working through the fear, the uncertainty.

Mindfulness and slowness.

Daring to give in to doubt.

The surrender of just stopping and waiting.

3XC9+H8M Frohnhofen

I want to keep this post vague. It’s about funny coincidences again.
There’s a problem I have had my whole life. Only, I didn’t know it was a problem until recently. It was always there, but I had no words for it.
Then, a little over a month ago, I learned there was a name for it. What relief–to know that I’m not alone, that it’s actually quite common, that there is the hope of healing from it.
It’s a time where I feel like I am exactly where I need to be. Something that fell into my life just when I needed it to. How this problem, and others, have all come to a head right now–right when there’s help.
The little signs of it popping up in my life. The nonchalant mentions of it in conversation. It’s just so strange.

I’m learning how to be more compassionate, nurturing, and kind… to myself. I’m going to continue to grow and overcome.
Say it out loud with me:

I am strong.

HWG5+MV Westport, Massachusetts

And then, of course, there’s the other side too. The one I only subtly hinted last time.

I’m still in the middle of tidying up here, and it’s likely that this task will keep me busy for another week or longer. In the meantime I’ve divided a large basket of books among several “free book exchange shelves” around my home and some more at an “open bookcase” in my favourite coffeehouse in Linz.

Of course I have unearthed many more, new and surprising “trails of breadcrumbs” (of course just metaphorically speaking), each a more or less intense journey back into the past 40 or so years of my life. Whereas I focused in my last blogpost on how it is for me to let go or release this or that relict of my past I want to put the emphasis of my this week’s blogpost on the opposite principle, the, so to say, other side of the coin: the realization of how important it is to not let go of certain things, to keep them and to care for them more than ever before.

One prime example of what I mean is the surprising rediscovery of a tiny box full of old and beloved children’s and youth audio dramas. I’m genuinely curious whether something like this ever existed in the United States or if it’s just one of those quirky trends that inexplicably only emerged in German-speaking countries. Whether it’s acoustic adventures about and with Enid Blyton’s Five Friends, spooky audio dramas, fairy tales, or – as pictured above – the Three Investigators – it’s that I, my sister and apparently many other children of our age “devoured” these recordings.

Now, so many years later, I’m beginning to realize just how much this media format shaped me in hindsight. A two-sided cassette tape, with its ominous (yet timelessly expressive) cover art, could unlock 2×30 minutes of pure imagination through my then young ears, opening up entirely new worlds through sound alone.

Once again I find it almost impossible to put the feelings I had when I stumbled upon that box of old audio dramas in words. It’s like seeing an old childhood friend for the first time in decades again, only to realize that nothing about him or her has changed ever since. With just the push of a button, you could relive the same joy you had about 35 years ago. Happiness, nostalgia, excitement, awe – the usual emotional lineup for sentimental souls like me.

So this time it isn’t just about letting go and forgetting. It’s equally about remembering and holding on. Tidying up and reminiscing, like life itself, is rarely a straight path or a straight story. Even here that process can and maybe should meander. I find it wonderful not to act according to rigid rules. Every breadcrumb matters and deserves its place and attention. Marie Kondo would likely nod and laugh in agreement. In the end, it’s also about valuing things, recognizing their personal significance, honoring them as kind-hearted messengers of and to the past, and, ultimately: about keeping them, with double the care.

 

3WPW+FC4 Fischlham