Hamburger Chronicles (three) - Wandering years
When I saw Heiner Metzger for the first time, he was a shadow standing in front of a big glass box: a fish restaurant not far from the landing stage. Before that, he had been a pleasant voice in a telephone, and before that he was words in a mail, and before that he was a mailaddress. Shortly after introducing each other, he became my chauffeur. And then I understood from his words - and from his age - that he was an inhabitant from sonoria, who had seen and played some places, starting of with jazz, now involved in something that resists nametagging. Hamburg got crystallized by drizzling rain. We drove past big buildings; he pointed at the television tower and at the park. The tires ripped open the asphalt. The musicians of Trio Vopa joined us, dressed against the cold, loaded with instruments and amplifiers. The view got reduced to noses and shoulders.
Blinzelbar resisted bravely at the huge mass of concrete that grew out of her head. In it bicycle wheels, drawings and Heiners scores framed and thus transformed into documents. Blinzeln means to wink. Instead of a bar, full of people winking at each other, it was a white space exposing things that should be winkable. Judith had been so kind to offer her gallery. All is clean on the art-frontier: Trio Vopa played a very accurate set; in their music I heard the transparency of bauhaus design, and a belief that today's experiment is tomorrow's tradition: young pioneers they were. And the listeners were very silent, hesitated with their applause at the end of each piece.
After my set we got some more chance to talk with eachother. Here comes Judith's little story. But first I have to make clear that Judith is from Bayreuth, a place with a bombastic heritage. And, if we put Heiner's, mine and Judith's age together we could become a person, who in his youth had wittnessed the same landscapes and country roads as Wagner had seen from his carriage. He (or she) might have stolen his beret. Would it have changed history? In this/his/our nineteenth century one could still encounter a young man, whose suit would inform us that he was on his wandering years, an apprentice travelling by foot from one village to the other, where he would offer his help to a craftsman, and thus through practice become a master himself.
Judith had driven a hitchhiker to Weimar. On the mainsquare Goethe and Schiller are two bronze statues, arms around eachother's shoulders, ready to start singing. Weimar is also a word that is married to Republic, which stands for a period in history that was destroyed by crises and the national-socialist movement. The hitchhiker didn't have an exact destination in mind. Judith happened to go there. And it was allright for her temporary travel-companion. He told her that he was a tailor. He travelled with his sewing machine and a suitcase. When he arrived in a new town, he would ask for a job. If there was, he would stay, if there wasn't, he would go on.
Judith thought this would be a nice idea for musicians. It is. Just read on.
heiner metzger and blinzelbar : www.heinermetzger.de
axel haller from trio vopa : www.schraum.de
Blinzelbar resisted bravely at the huge mass of concrete that grew out of her head. In it bicycle wheels, drawings and Heiners scores framed and thus transformed into documents. Blinzeln means to wink. Instead of a bar, full of people winking at each other, it was a white space exposing things that should be winkable. Judith had been so kind to offer her gallery. All is clean on the art-frontier: Trio Vopa played a very accurate set; in their music I heard the transparency of bauhaus design, and a belief that today's experiment is tomorrow's tradition: young pioneers they were. And the listeners were very silent, hesitated with their applause at the end of each piece.
After my set we got some more chance to talk with eachother. Here comes Judith's little story. But first I have to make clear that Judith is from Bayreuth, a place with a bombastic heritage. And, if we put Heiner's, mine and Judith's age together we could become a person, who in his youth had wittnessed the same landscapes and country roads as Wagner had seen from his carriage. He (or she) might have stolen his beret. Would it have changed history? In this/his/our nineteenth century one could still encounter a young man, whose suit would inform us that he was on his wandering years, an apprentice travelling by foot from one village to the other, where he would offer his help to a craftsman, and thus through practice become a master himself.
Judith had driven a hitchhiker to Weimar. On the mainsquare Goethe and Schiller are two bronze statues, arms around eachother's shoulders, ready to start singing. Weimar is also a word that is married to Republic, which stands for a period in history that was destroyed by crises and the national-socialist movement. The hitchhiker didn't have an exact destination in mind. Judith happened to go there. And it was allright for her temporary travel-companion. He told her that he was a tailor. He travelled with his sewing machine and a suitcase. When he arrived in a new town, he would ask for a job. If there was, he would stay, if there wasn't, he would go on.
Judith thought this would be a nice idea for musicians. It is. Just read on.
heiner metzger and blinzelbar : www.heinermetzger.de
axel haller from trio vopa : www.schraum.de
posted by ... at 5:08 pm
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