Daily life

Another rainy April day in Vienna sinks in after breakfast. Galoshes and raincoats come out of the closet and accompany us to school and play. To wile away the minutes before kindergarten, Louis became a tiger, Eva a bear, and me a wildcat.
Henry, the youngest, became a scary backpack.


Tonight I am going for the second time to a German Sprachclub, organized by a Hungarian who recently moved to the seat of Austrian power. Last Tuesday night was really nicht schleckt. Often its hard to understand the smorgasbord of accents arriving from all corners of the globe. And Its always a bit embarrassing when you can’t understand human speech. But I’m getting used to that sensation, and am less bothered. Everyone should experience this feeling in my opinion. A little dose of hubris reduction.

In my German class at the university, I am the minority because, alas, I am not an opera singer. Out of the twelve students, we have six opera singers, a cello player, a violinist, and a pianist. The city of music, Wien. I like the teacher. She is rather self-deprecating in that quintessential eastern European fashion. And works hard to move along our awkward forays into the German grammatical system.

In the evening, Eva and I practice yoga together. And sometimes Eva’s friends come over to practice with us. Last night we did a lot of spinal twisting and back-bending and today my back is thanking me.

And now I bid you aufwidersehen to go enjoy my tea with honey set to the rain outside our glass house.

tschüss!

To Each Time its Art, to Art its Freedom

Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit


Declares the golden letters adorning the entrance of the Secession, a building conceived in April of 1898 and realized only a few months later to house the second exhibition of the Secessionists in November of that same year.

To visit Gustav Klimt’s Beethovenfries, still housed inside, I walked through a swingers club. Flashing lights, poles, American hip-hop, hot tubs, beds, champagne, ladies, gentlemen. The french highschool class, coming in behind me, was into it. C’est bien le meilleur expo que j’ai jamais vu, I heard one ado exclaim.

But before you arrive to the club scene, you first walk through a large open room with nothing in it. A big hollow echoing cement act, left purposely blank. Off to one side you see a stack of a single image, a picture from Barcelona of a concrete race track, reproduced on 20,000 posters, representing “nothing less than the world itself,” if I don’t misquote my German speaking guide. Then it is sex, sex, sex until you finally find your way all the way down into a corner of the basement where sits Gustav Klimt’s portion of the Gesamtkunstwerk that was the 1902 exhibition of the Vienna Secession, a group of fin de siècle Viennese artists protesting against the old aesthetic expressions.

The Frieze itself was spectacular. Created as part of a larger project that combined sculpture, architecture, music, and painting to honor Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the frieze depicts mankind’s search. Or rather the poet’s, as it seemed to me. Maybe there is no difference? There are lady-like mystical genies floating calmly along, then a scene of a naked woman and a naked couple entreating a golden knight. The knight, spurred on by this human suffering and by his muses who hover stoically above him recalling the poetic genius of Rodin’s Hugo, rushes to face the monster, the gorgonic daughters, Gnawing Grief, and other animalistic or female dangers. Finally the floating spirits lead to a lady with a lyre, and then, after a blank sheet of concrete where originally stood Klinger’s Beethoven sculpture, the frieze finishes with a choir that forms the back ground for a couple, naked and kissing, transcendental.

Heaven.

After I couldn’t take in any more, I exited, back through the swingers club, then through the concrete room out into the sunshine. It all reminded me a bit of a dream I used to have. I headed off in search of one of the renowned Viennese Cafes, to drink some pancake soup and a coffee, and to read Frederic Mortin’s account of Vienna 1888/1889. It’s so nice to be able to be here, in the spot where it all took place. This art and individuality, these internal, personal movements that would bring the modern world into an apocalyptical crisis.

I came home, refreshed, and found Henry and Louis playing on the new hammock, singing and laughing. We learned some songs and made some dinner and went to sleep early, exhausted from all that Easter candy. Anton the cat and I stayed up a bit later, learning German and purring on my sofa that overlooks the city. One day I will know this language! And I hope that day will come soon.