electricgecko

Wind over water at the unornamented mirror lake of Menara Gardens. Built afar, adjacent the olive grove, by an imagined beduin cult of brutalist worshippers.

There is no photographic image, no advertisement, no glowing condensed corporate typography. Buildings seem to emerge directly from the reddish-brown ground, molding into soft cubes and boxes. The cityscape does not pry for attention, its decidedly nonmodern psychogeography seamlessly merges into a pastoral sprawl inflated to vast dimension and density.

I have a great affection for cats, as all tasteful and self-respecting humans do. Particularly, I cherish their arcane capability to offer a particular kind of intense, but silent companionship. Observing a city beneath a full moon, low and heavy, in quiet unison with a cat is a privilege quite uncomparable to anything else.

Palais el Badi: Afroeuropean Mythologies

A gleaming S-Class in black and chrome is parked next to a reddish clay wall, passed by a kid on a creaking bicycle and a handsome old man in a grey kaftan (I take special note of his accurately groomed, short grey beard). The limousine’s presence marks the place as psychogeographic science fiction. It is an intruder, an object from another time and universe, one I seem to be strangely familiar with: NFC readers, softly organic trainers, caftans, dust, cooked wool, satellite dishes, Buckydomes, walled gardens, fliphones, iPhones, hairstyles, all somehow materializing in an unexpected kind of 2020.

Urban Moroccan housing defaults to a subtle ledge starting on the first floor. It offers shade to the life in the street, increases the size of the living quarters (ground floors are mostly used for storage or workshops) and lends an element of decided, simple ornamentation to the otherwise plain cube. This is usually mirrored by the roof construction: the top floor is reduced to about a third of the ground floor area, creating a large terrace. From this, the shape of the residential unit emerges: a soft-edged rectangular box, defined by two interrelating incisions.

A bed in the desert, nature in perfect silence. There is the soft sound of flocks of small puffy birds passing overhead, and a warm breeze. Sun sets over the ranges, the desaturated Atlas mountains loom in the background. Life is forced into equilibrium. Many ways to go from here. (02/10/20)

In Casablanca, architecture appears to be more substance than artefact. It seems to bee perpetually melting, flaking, merging with nature and civilisation. Many buildings echo a faint Art Deco heritage, misunderstood even by the foreigners that brought it to these parts. Since, the idea of the graceful line seems to have evolved into something more organic, matching northern African sensibilities and energies. Here, the new and modern appears as just another iteration, reintegrated into the profoundly social mechanics of the medinas and markets, all refinement reserved for two-storey courtyards, areas of consultation and quietness.

What would you go to Casablanca for? For two days? — Ingrid

Ich fragte Kachelbad, ob er das Gefühl kenne, wenn man sich bewusst macht, dass man gerade in diesem einen Augenblick existiere, und Kachelbad wusste, wovon ich sprach: Es dauert nur wenige Sekunden, wenn man darüber nachdenkt und schon wird einem mulmig und bekommt das Gefühl, zu verschwinden. Als sei man immer weniger Körper und immer mehr Gedanke. Fast meint man, sich von hinten zu sehen, sich in Auflösung zu begreifen und nur noch zu denken. So ein Himmel und so eine Situation provozieren jenes Gefühl vielleicht auch. Doch seit meiner Kindheit überfallen mich derlei Gedanken. Ich mache mir bewusst, dass ich gerade nun in diesem Augenblick existiere, dass es all das gibt, was ich sehe und spüre und fühle, dass es die Physik gibt, dass Handlungen Konsequenzen haben, ich sehe meine Hände, begreife meine Augen und verstehe, dass niemand frei ist, weil alles Konsequenzen hat, auf die man reagieren muss. Doch das Denken bleibt abstrakt, so lange, bis ich fast mantrisch immer wieder um den Gedanken kreise, dass ich jetzt gerade hier in diesem einen Moment existiere und dass das nicht anzweifelbar ist, eben weil dieser Gedanke sich durch die Zeit bewegt und eine Geschichte und eine Zukunft hat, er steht vor der Geschichte und macht deutlich, dass Entscheidungen erforderlich sind (Atmung, Nahrung, Bewegung, Leben oder das Gegenteil), und mir wird mulmig zumute, noch mulmiger. Gleichzeitig aber gibt es keinen anderen Modus, in dem ich so deutlich meine Existenz spüre. Die Vorstellung, was wäre, wenn das nicht wirklich sei, was also die Alternative zum Dasein wäre, ist undenkbar, sie bleibt abstrakt.

Hendrik Otremba, Kachelbad’s Erbe, 369-370. Hoffmann und Campe, 2019.

Es ist eine einigermaßen spezifische Empfindung, und sie derart präzise formuliert zu lesen, macht ein bemerkenswert warmes und verstörendes Gefühl, der lebende Schatten des eigenen Inneren auf einem Display eines Ultraschallgeräts.

It’s remarkably silent as we slowly cross Beethoven Street. I ponder the gradually passing shadows and whether they are the most real thing I’ve seen today. Dry-clean smell permeates this black Kia Optima. We keep inching along Culver. Finally, the freeway sprawl, in front of us. I servo down a window in anticipation – only to find the freeway packed with the afternoon jam, and myself in stasis again.

Jon said that Uber has put a layer on top of the city, opened it up. It provides no freedom, replacing one rigged system with another. New economics, but no new access (economics newer create new things). Nothing improved, it’s a stall, sideways momentum. My driver is a quiet, chinese man, entirely clad in beige. He puts a Muji tray of caramel sweets on the handrest. I take one and never eat it.

Under the street lights, a Volkswagen Passat stops to pick me up. Its interior smells of industrial strawberries, the stereo playing progressive sidechain arpeggios. There is a moody iridiscent sliver in me that enjoys how well this music matches the ride, the nighttime tunnel flow. We are traversing the dark city in an almost meditative state. Gasoline Zen, I post to Twitter.

The music selection is an integral part of every ride, in a very different way than during Berlin Taxi rides. American radio stations somehow seem to have access to a deeper archive of 1980s rock classics, inacceptable music that seems strangely adequate in Californian air. Toto, Stones, The Wings, they all seem to complete a cliché that may be more real than the actual city.

Thomas is driving me. He is in a palm tree-patterned daishiki. He is listening to The Wave radio at full volume, some black-eyed R’n’B, and keeps humming along. The ever-present industrial strawberry smell mixes with his vanilla perfume. All of this is highly pleasant.

This one blasts trap beats, the stereo’s volume perfectly tuned. As the sun casts soft shadows onto my ankles, I notice yet another variant of the faint dry clean/dried fruit scent that I am unable to place (this country’s olfactory industry has long since emancipated itself from the limited selection of fruit available on earth, I scrawl into my notebook). The car is en route to Los Feliz, where I’d like to visit Ennis House, and stare at the cityscape in dusk and sun. On Glendower Avenue, the door closes and the Prius hums away. I remain by myself on a steep road, next to a vaguely Aztec structure.

I am not sure on which mental or metaphysical level this kind of disassociation occurs. It may be beyond the biological firmware, in the sense that systems of perception are recording everything with ultimate precision, in a kind of sensory equivalent to raw sensor output. It is not fully processed, as the cognitive system occupies itself elsewhere, with more pressing (and de-pressing) matters. But the data of every moment exists, and we exist in it.

Now, the thing to be learned is to re-associate again, to solely be in the moment. To let the sensory data wash through all of our being, and fill everything with the wonder of the phrase I am Here. To understand and negotiate being there (implying the ontological separation from the world) and being here (implying oneness of perceiving and existing).

The coordination between hues of orange of about 24 vintage Polyside Chairs arranged around square plastic tables, four oversized umbrellas advertising SION KÖLSCH and the swooping letterforms so tastefully deployed to the menu headers of Café Hallmackenreuther is ever so slightly off, and thus achieves a kind of perfection any Pantone folder would ruin. The palette is positively exciting, reframing the scenery as an episode of quintessential 1973ish West-Germanness.

A table over, one of the quarter’s apparent doyens is holding court. With white-bearded smiles, patrons, strangers and acquaintances passing the square are waved over – while multiple magazines, tiny glasses of white wine and an eager young labrador keep being miraculously juggled. „Flat white, in a cup“ is the order, which is swiftly downed upon arrival.

Beyond the leafy courtyard, the café itself has opened its glass front, providing ample space to bustle about for a pair of stewards that tends to the crowd reclined in polyethylene. One is green-eyed, lanky and bumbling, a shoddy bowler hat hiding strands of streaky blonde hair and yesterday’s night out. His partner – all sagging thrashed denim and big-haired, nose-pierced, crop-topped street cred – is doing a considerably more professional job, inserting some urban eroticism into an otherwise almost pastoral scene. French, Italian and Kölsch are spoken among maple trees, all softly blending in the most pleasant summer air.

Hallmackenreuther, Belgisches Viertel, Cologne.

Als ich nach Berlin kam, aus dem Durcheinander meines Lebens in das Durcheinander der Stadt, gab es eine Gruppe, die sich ausnahm in ihrer Ehrlichkeit und Schönheit zwischen all dem Schutt, den Optionen, den Drinks, der Sonne über dem Brunnen vor dem Dom und den Hackeschen Höfen, die damals noch ein Ort waren. The Aim of Design is to Define Space spielten Rock der klang wie Rave, und alles sah besser aus als bei den anderen. Sie sagten was ich damals hören musste. Der Moodboardpop des allzu geradeaus betitelten Depeche Mode wird mich immer an den Besarinplatz erinnern, die Türme des Frankfurter Tors, den Blick auf die Volksbühne aus der S75. Und daran, was wichtig ist (Frisuren und Schuhe).

Im vergangenen Jahr spielten Aim ein Konzert am Schlesischen Tor und nun gibt es neue Musik, eine 12″ und wohl ein Album, ein weiteres Konzert (Dialog mit der Jugend, the grown-ups are tired), das Alex und ich besuchen werden.

Es gibt nun eine neue Geschichte über diese Stadt zu erzählen, gleichermaßen dunkel und perfekt ausgeleuchtet: Aim #@%!$, das erste Release seit elf Jahren, nach der Volksbühne. Das ist alles, 5K-Schranz, Wut, Klugheit, Schönheit, die eigene Sprache, die rasierten Seiten, das tätowierte Herz. 1992, 1994, 1997. Teile von uns waren immer hier.

One might say that everything was better back then. The girls were prettier, the parties wilder and the drugs better. Back then, The Aim of Design is to Define Space was the best band, which was more Berlin than Berlin was the Aim of Design is to Define Space.

Am Ende dann Schulzkys Aimriff, das immer sein muss, auch für mich. Good fucking day, ihr Bauern.

• The Aim of Design is to Define Space – Clean Bible Dirty Christ, 12″. Monkeytown Records, 2019.