Archiv der Kategorie ‘2012/01 Janne Teller‘
Janne Teller – blog 8 and Farewell Janne Teller!
It’s 2.15 in the morning again, and I’m not sleeping. I look out of the window at the night overcome by a strange sensation that the night is looking at me as well. Two lighted windows in Bleibtreustrasse, but the looking doesn’t stem from them. No it’s BiBi, my leash-animal blog who looks for himself to be seen, and this month of walking wondering him, BiBi has shown me his true face: brother to Narcissus, sister of Agape. Black as endlessness, white as nothingness. Violet as dawn, orange as dusk. BiBi follows no stars, because you’re his star, the back of your head his sun and moon. Is he a good companion, I’m not so sure. He’s loyal no doubt, faithful, doesn’t argue and has no bad habits of his, except his very being seems in nature to be one of a bad habit, like drinking alone, flashing to the night. There is no compass to BiBi, because BiBi is indeed a window, his geometric form a continuous, fluid shape of selective transparency. Marble. Marble is what I wish to touch, to hold on to, forgetting, letting go of BiBi, thick solid soft and hard marble like the statue of Aphrodite and the Tortoise I saw the other day in Altes Museum: Aphrodite’s bare foot supported by the shell of the turtle, leaving no doubt that they walk together. Walking that rounded touchable lasting strength of seasoned slightly chipped marble, so far from BiBi whose virtual momentaneous whisper depends on which curtains are drawn or open at the time BiBi walks the street with me, or where he has his eyes when mine are taken in by Brandenburger Tor, numbered trees or marble for example. BiBi is a window that looks in, not out. That might be good for amorphous whispering through sleepless nights, but it isn’t for novel writing. So now I turn off the light, and wish you all a good night. Janne Teller – blog 7:
While writing and wandering about Berlin, I’ve also taken the time to go to several operas, die Philharmonie, as well as to dive into some of all the arts at display in the city. It’s the eternal choice for a writer: the one between living and writing about living. Or somehow manage to turn the writing into living. Sometimes I’m better at it than at other times. Here in Berlin, all three have worked rather well together, and I’ve enjoyed spending the afternoons getting to know German painters I didn’t know, see works unbeknownst to me of painters I did know – with the good conscience of a morning spent working on my new novel that’s slowly growing into being. And when it comes together the way it has, every part of life seems to have its own place in the process: the art seen feeds the art being produced. Not directly, I don’t write about any of what I see; but indirectly, the energy that artists of many centuries have divulged is right there in Altes Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, Gemälde and so on, for me to absorb, carry with me and slowly transform into the energy I myself can divulge through my literature. I eat art. that’s what’s become evident to me while being here. When I’m upset, the Italian Renaissance calms me, when I’m sad, the French impressionists lift my spirits, if I should be too happy a walk through the Dutch 17-18th century gloom will no doubt temper my exuberance … But it’s also more subtle, the transfer of something I don’t know of and which I’m unaware of happening before I suddenly notice myself walking around smiling, as if having been offered a gift of neither binds nor boundaries. The same happiness that can come over me during an opera aria, even one I might not take to particularly, yet that sensation of being granted something more, something beyond myself, something feeding my spirits – and giving me the energy to write even when I thought I was depleted. More prosaically: the ability to feed off of paintings can come in particularly handy in Berlin galleries: nowhere else in the world have I been so unsuccessful looking for edible offerings in museums, as in this city. From the Metropolitan and Moma in New York, over Louisiana and Glyptoteket in Copenhagen, to Pompidou and the Louvre in Paris, as well as even the Pinakothek in Munich, there are cafe’s or restaurants you’d have reasons to visit also without visiting the museum. Why not in Berlin? Did I overlook something when in my search around the magnificent Museumsinsel on a Thursday late opening-night, I ended giving up and retire to Gendarmenmarkt? Is it not part of the Berlin city culture? Or is new Berlin, the unified Berlin, still so much a place under construction that its artistic dining offers are yet to come? In the latter case, may I make the argument for a topclass eating place, with an ad-joint cafe and bar right at Museumsinsel …. Till then, I’m glad I have a full board stipend here at the Bleibtreu Hotel – and then that I’m able to eat art …
