electricgecko

My Tomba Brion was grainy, wet and rainy, shrouded, forlorn, empty. An abstract haven, a higher plane of beauty, Scarpa piercing one’s heart in the most calculated, measured way. The garden of death. condensed spatial elegy, semiotic intricacies at the highest resolution – crisp yet untainted by the burdens of explanation and expression: Intensity that remains abstract, intellectually and emotionally, linked in the venn of vesciia piscis, amorphous but distinct. Sharp and soft, present and evaporating into the venetian pasture surrounding it: If you want to be happy all your life, make a garden.

It exists at the end of a gravel road, at the end of a world, and the beginning of a journey. I would not like to trade it for another iteration. Es gibt nur die Kunst, die Liebe und den Tod, dazwischen gibt es nichts. Quiet and smooth, like all dangerous things. Sufficiently incomplete.

Wenn das Leben eine bestimmte Kurve beschreibt, erreicht es für einige Sekunden den Scheitelpunkt dieses oder jenes Momentums, und während sich die Gravitation verlagert und das Selbst durchfließt, entsteht für einige Sekunden Schwerelosigkeit (auf dem Dach des Museums: Sechs orange Wolken, Popcorn, ein Kran und der Turm, der aussieht, als sei er von Kenzo Tange gestaltet, an der Straße, die in die Vergangenheit führt). Die Universen tun sich auf und auch die Zeit, und alles ist gleichzeitig sichtbar, jede aufgewendete Energie, jede verbrauchte Zelle, alle Abstraktionen sind konkret. Hier bist du hingekommen, gefüllt mit allem, das du getan und gedacht hast. Von hier an, weiter.

The unremarkable times, the times that will vanish from your memory. The days unaccounted for: chores, places, encounters and commutes. You saw something remarkable today, gazing across the icy lake, a particular definition of matter and energy in all known and unknown universes. You sat with it for a moment, then it vanished (there was nothing). You took no note, you grew no new synapses. All this time, burning the finite amount that is you, turning it into the most beautiful waste. Love is inhabiting the unremarkable times.

And: my fondness for shadows, for not being able to really discern all detail. Another complexity reducer, darkness like a drug, the dust of fallen angels mercifully covering my cognitive world.

Der Geruch von Rauch liegt über der Insel, das Meer im Wind. Schwarz, grün, opal, weiß. Salz permanent auf Lippen und Haaren. There is no fish shop on these islands. You know someone that knows someone.

Faroe, in perpetual hazy, wet, storm-swept suspension in void. A rock in space, all the beauty and all the rawness, and everything is as direct as possible. The malte thing, old and new, at once, rendered as island.

Travel, the third kind. Being here is less about travelling in italics, rather about being somewhere else. A micro-period, otherwise unpaused. Doing what one does, altered by incidents and customs, life’s general shape and psychography remaining as they are. It is a state that produces new lines of inquiry, and the pursuit of interests unique to a temporary environment, but their shape and weight is similar to one’s, italics, regular life. Spending time near the Trentino threshold with regular intent, as every day, as every place. Later, one will say that one went about one’s business here, reading, writing, corresponding, minding work and minding self. A time abroad, Bildungsreise, Totenschutz, auch ich in Akardien.

The future that is Aarhus: Zooming servos, old buildings, young humans, muted colours, preserved plants from everywhere else but here, rolling grassy hills, neon shoes, silence, survival of the fit, survival of the few, survival of everyone in these smoothly tarred streets is ensured.

Worte: Der Widerstand des Geistes gegen all die Bilder (Worte, die dich vor dem schützen, das du sehen musst). Nichts ändern resultiert in Routine oder Askese.

There is an old man, his years past the ones usually deemed good and his face marked by deep ridges. They are ridges evoking thoughts of oaken bar interiors and the final cigarette left in a red Gauloises softpack. Index and middle fingers of his right hand are taped in the most decorative way: light grey texture tape, quite sturdy. The man plays the stand-up bass, his instrument as battered, worn and well-kept as his light-blue striped shirt and the navy woollen suit jacket he draped on his instrument’s huge container. Together, they are resting on a street sign, as if they were a small person. Next to the man, guitar and drums.

With every slap of the strings, there is the faintly clicking slap, characteristic of bop and billy styles. The man plays smoothly, his head bobbing to the rhythm. He knows he is the foundation of this music, and he has known this for a long time. His features are pointed and sharp, vaguely hanseatic, possibly patrician, if such a thing exists. A small captain’s cap is perched on his head, adding to the impression. He smiles ever so subtly, not all the time, but every time an interesting part or bridge is about to begin, a part of a song he is looking forward to.

There is an air of grandeur to the man. As if there was a great sorrow once, a sorrow he since has overcome, but which still marks all of his being. I think that all of this – his posture, his instrument, his garments and the music – they are all the same thing. They unite to form what can only be called aura. I strive to carry whatever awaits me in my life with the same grace, the same purpose: He is one man and this is what he does.