Viennese Night

My apartment here is the most beautiful I have ever seen. A classy mixture of glass and concrete on the third floor of a museum styled house overlooking Vienna. Now its nearing midnight and a recently full moon is hovering over the city, casting its yellow eye into my living room. The reflections covering my glass walls are distorted by street lamps and city lights from below, and as I look out over this Viennese summer night my diaphanous belongings stare back at me. German books, notes about my days here, a half drunk bowl of tea, lots of space. All this space mixed with the concrete, the big city below, the glass walls, and the silence reminds me a little of that final fightclub scene.

I am not at home here. But there is no reason for me to be, really. There are many things charming about this life that I am leading here.

I really like learning spoken languages. Its strange when you come to from a reverie and realize that it was in another tongue. All too frequently for me these days, it is in some strange mélange between French, English, and German. After I come home from German class, I’m often tired and want a nap. If I lie down for a few minutes, and relax, my head starts Germanizing. I don’t know how to explain it really, but it feels like my head is downloading the things I have learned throughout the day. Its not thinking, certainly nothing linear, but its all in German syllables. I remember it happened with French too, after about the same amount of time (one month). But then by month three or so, this had stopped. French no longer exhausted me, nor did my head play frantically with French syllables when I lay down for a few seconds. This must be a result from learning a language so quickly, you know, moving to a new country with next to zero knowledge of the oral language. Do other people have similar experiences? I imagine they must. But its rare to meet someone in this transitional stage of language learning, maybe because it lasts such a short time. I don’t know.

This morning I spent my last euro on French books. After German class, I sought out la librarie Française, located in the ninth district, a stones throw away from Freud’s old digs. The delightful madame there helped me dig through old volumes, organized in that quintessentially French manner until finally we came upon something that resembled a social history of the 19th century. Et voila mademoiselle! I like the French so much. I don’t know what it is, their pleasantries perhaps. The quality of their voices as well. I bought two Balzacs, one Flaubert, and a history of France’s political crises from 1871 to 1968. Raphael and I are planning a 19th century conference of sorts for my June trip to Bordeaux via Paris. Ça me plait bien, evidemment. Et finalement, j’ai la lecture qu’il faut.

I wonder if in my rather short sejour in France I have unwittingly become French. I miss France much more than any other home I have ever had. Not that my thoughts don’t wander every once in a while to Athens or Saint Louis. Though somehow those places are different, because I didn’t choose them. Athens, Georgia was chosen for me, as the best free education I might have, growing up in the southern states. Saint Louis too, was not a choice of location, rather of education and money. With 24 years, I chose Bordeaux, never having been to France and barely having been to Europe. It was, however, my choice, and one based solely on place. Here in Vienna I feel like an expatriate. I go see French films, I listen to French music, and am ever excited to meet French people. It’s not some mania with fashion, or pastries, or snobbery, or I don’t know what. It’s because I feel comfortable there. At home, even. With the humor especially. Why should we think of our birthplace as somehow definitive of ourselves? Why shouldn’t this, like our wives and husbands, our careers, or our clothing be something we choose, once we have become an adult and acquired those distinguishing faculties.

Tomorrow is Der erste Mai, and I wonder how this socialist holiday will be feted here in Austria. Eva and Thomas have already voiced their disdain for the whole affair. But I’m looking forward to it, naturally. I like the community spirit that comes with communism, her strikes and manifestations. And with these thoughts, gentle reader, I bid you a good night, condemning myself to a fitful moonbright night.

Fait à Vienne, le 30 Avril

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.

City of Dreams

Spring arrives early to Austin. Shy foliage eager to welcome a thawing sun starts to appear as early as the feast in honor of the patron saint of lovers. The proximity of Valentines day with the last day of carnival speaks to the dreaminess of this particular season: The dreaminess and nostalgia that are the natural symptoms of the violent changes so characteristic of the turning years. Just as the values and mode de vie of the 19th century persisted with a decorative decadence well into the first decade of the dawning epoch, so our 20th century morality clashes with this new era, and sounds an even clearer cacophony as we finish off with a flourish its first decade.

In honor of this exquisite melange of love and dreams I propose this love poem, written by one of the dreamiest, most transcendental voices of the recent siecle, W.B. Yeats.

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams.
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Here we have the dreams of Joseph and his father. The loss of old world vestments and all they mean to our heritage mixed with the resulting poverty of a modernity stripped of romance and formalities. "But ah! she dreams not now; dream thou!" commands our sage.


Traum, sounds the German word, reminding the English ear of the shocks that color so much of the last century. Reve, sounds the French, singing a different tune. Reveries beg from modernity the slowness necessary to come to fruition. In our own tongue, dreams have a delightful history, signifying in Old English "joy," "mirth," and also "music."


Vienna, lover of music and dance, in all of Calliope's costumes, has long been heralded the city of dreams. Vienna, the city who promises soon to welcome me into her cafés, her woods, and her dreams. Vienna!

Wien, Wien, nur du allein,
Wirst stets die Stadt meiner Träume sein.

Nostos (homecoming)

Within two hours of having left the Hartsfeild airport bien chargé with the 30 kilos of treasure I had hauled from Bordeaux to Paris to London to Atlanta, I lost everything. Dark parking lot, broken car window, sketchy American city centers, you get the picture. The price of calling home a country whose wealth disparity is unparalleled. Among my most prized possessions were the books I had acquired over my 16 month sejour in France, the fruits of many an afternoon perdu dans les petites ruelles de Paris et Bordeaux.

After a charming christmas filled with festivities and family in Dahlonega, Alan and I continued our tour of American cities, heading first to Baltimore and New York, then turning west towards Saint Louis, and finally south to the capital of Texas. The thing that continued to strike me was how infrequently we came into contact with people. How little our cities felt like cities compared to France's bustling metropolitan centers. The metro system in Baltimore was eerily deserted of people on the first day of 2010. The station was a large echoing concrete structure through which mostly empty trains rumbled every 15 minutes or so. Inside, we crossed a young black lady, heavily made up, two policemen, proudly sporting their pistols on their hips, and an obese white man half heartedly lounging in the ticket window who tried to dissuade us from walking through the North side of the city (you might see a poor person). We exited the station at the inner harbor, which resembled an empty disney land with bright colors and broad streets. We walked the few remaining blocks to our New Year's day brunch destination to find a much livelier scene--all the middle class of Baltimore was there, sipping oversized and over decorated bloody maries and making small talk with the enthusiastic waitstaff. I marveled at the contrast between this and the deserted streets. Everyone had driven in cars, large hunks of metal to keep you distant and safe from the city and your fellow citizens. The site of it made me want to gag. But we stayed on for the two hour wait anyway. And the fried green tomatoes were as promised, if a bit on the salty side.

New York was cold. It was refreshing to see people out on the roads. The roads were loud with honking and street advertisements, but there was life here, and a mixture of social classes, races, and age groups. I threw a french dinner party for my friends there, complete with des tartes aux pommes for desert. We made a table out of packing cartons and listened to Serge Gainsbourg until the wee hours of the morning. Alan and I visited the Met and had lunch with various friends before hopping back on the china town bus to Baltimore and heading west. After driving 10 hours in fairly poor conditions, we arrived at the Indiana border, only to find that the state was closed. Big accident, stand still traffic. We bought a mauve colored hotel room and I took a bath and drank a beer at the same time. La decadence a l'americaine.

I was excited to see the Saint Louis arch that next morning. It had been a long time since I had seen my good friends and I felt immediately at home in Dustin and Ryn's spacious apartment on Pershing. I chatted Dustin excitedly and then we all walked up to Meshugah's where I found everything as I had left it 2 years ago: Derick was loud at work on Newton and Cambridge, Charlie was speaking quietly to some regulars, and the barista asked me for a third time if I had ordered a double or a single shot. I sat at a corner table with Dustin and argued over whether there had been an ancient novel while Ryn read Pamela and Alan programed. That evening I went to Atomic Cowboy to see Firedog play and dance with Rebecca and Liz.

I slept well that night, next to Alan in Dustin's living room. It brought me back to the days of the flophouse, and I got all teary-eyed. The next day I hung out with Mark, and we read Jung's Man and his Symbols out loud and dirty in a poorly lit café. He is going into the dream interpreting biz, and needed some knowledge. The next morning we got up early, packed my bike and blender into the mix, and headed south towards warmer climes. The drive was fairly uneventful save for a second car break-in scare in Oklahoma that turned out to be nothing more than a couple of food service dudes getting lit up on the clock. We were overly paranoid about out duck-taped window.

We got to Austin in an ice pocked car a bit after midnight on the 9th of January. The house was still awake and chatty, and I got to see Arthur! Since then, I have found a part-time gig at a nearby yoga studio and have started auditing classes. Genre and Politics in Antiquity, 19th Century French lit, Cold war Politics, and Aristotle's De Anima. The days are sunny and the cafés are many. Pas si mal que ça.

Prehistory, take two.

Last Saturday Raphael and I woke up at 5am to make the 3 hour drive to Les Ezies to visit the Museum of Prehistory and the expositions available on Lascaux, the most elaborately decorated prehistoric cave in the world which was closed to the public in 1955 because of the co2 damage done to the paintings. The museum provides a well laid out introduction to prehistoric tools and art and it houses a tiny but beautiful lamp found in la grotte de Lascaux that dates back to 20,000 BCE. There are tons of skeletons of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon men, the oldest dating to 34,000 BCE. No one knows what happened to the Neanderthals. Perhaps they were killed by our ancestors, but we have found no traces of violence, or perhaps they integrated themselves into Cro-Magnon society, and didn't go extinct at all. They had larger skeletons and craniums than the Cro-Magnons and their traits can be dated back much further ca 600,000 BCE. They were better hunters than our ancestors and they attacked their prey directly, engaging them in combat, instead of trapping them or scavenging. They also had better tools, were better at fishing, and often had sweeter dwelling spots. The only skill the Cro-Magnon man can claim over the Neanderthal is art. There are no paintings or engravings in the Neanderthal caves, whereas in the caves of the homo sapiens sapiens, the diversity of styles, themes, and tecniques is simply bouleversant. The art instinct dates to 40,000 BCE, or era that marks the rise of homo sapiens sapiens. And not surprising, the first artists were primarily interested in female genitalia. It seems that just as modern day pornography is responsible for the quick advancement of internet technology, the ancient equivalent spurred a similar advances in carving and painting tools. The Museum of prehistory has on display prehistoric vulvas of every shape and size imaginable, and as far as I can tell, we have not made significant alterations to their representation in the past 40,000 years. There is also a panel depicting, in various positions, prehistoric booty, offering us some insight into J-lo's popularity today. Raphael tried to convince me that this booty was religious booty, but in my opinion these booties have more in common with the art my 12 year old students make on their english hand-outs than something you might find in a church. So I have posted the work in question to let you make your own decisions.



After the museum we headed northwest to see the exhibitions specific to Lascaux. The Lascaux museum, in addition to documentary films and representations of the most famous panels also keeps a zoo with modern animals that are the most similar to the ancient ones represented on the cave walls. There was an adorable baby auroch who kept running up and down his pasture to the bemusement of his parents. The first painting to absorb my attention was this painting of a man wounded by a bull (or an auroch). The bull also is wounded, his intestines hanging down from his belly. And the man, very crudely drawn in comparison with the animal, has the face of a bird and an erection. There is a strange bird with a very long leg (perhaps a cane) portrayed below the man. The eyes of the bull are intense, his brow furrowed, his horns lowered, as though conscious that this act of violence will be his last. It is a strange picture. and by far my favorite of those at Lascaux.

Another painting depicted two bulls facing away from each other. It is clear that when the painter began his work he meant for the two animals to be facing the dame direction (look at their legs), but he changed his mind in the process. Many paintings show signs of superimposition, either by the same artist who changed his mind or perhaps by a second artist who thought he could do it better. The documentaries were quite informative in showing step by step how the ancient artist used and reused the same lines to form different images. This reminded me of a documentary I watched on graffiti wars in which it was explained that it was completely acceptable to draw over older works of graffiti, so long as what you created was better than that which preceded you. Its so cool how little things have changed.

If you want to see more of Lascaux and the paintings there, and dont have time to come to france, check out the site: http://www.lascaux.culture.fr/#/en/00.xml

Le Pays de L'homme

I spent my 26th birthday in the capital of prehistory deep in Dordogne were I visited caves that have been engraved or painted by men 200,000 years ago. I don't even know how to make sense of that number. As a classicist, I am used to imagining life 5000 or even 10,000 years back, but multiply that number by 20 and I'm more or less lost.

On our way out to Les Eyzies, we stopped by an ancient Roman villa from the 2nd Century CE that boasts some well preserved mosaics and baths. As with many of these ancient sites, the guys from the Middle Ages decided to put a church on it. And so you have to walk around and through this great big medieval church in order to get a clear idea of the grounds. Still it was quite impressive. The mosaics in the baths are all pictures of sea animals and then in the living areas the art becomes more abstract.

After leaving this site, we kept on towards Bergerac where we stopped off to try some of the local wines, the reds darker and stronger than those from Bordeaux, and the whites honey sweet and light. After a quick visit to Cyrano's statues we hit the route again driving through a beautiful countryside scattered with rolling hills and streams and quaint little wooden bridges and finally arriving in Les Eyzies just as the sun was beginning to set. We threw up our tent, shelled out 10 euros, and walked into the little town in search of food. Even in the dark you could feel the presence of the vast overhanging cliffs that threatened the little village. We toured the whole area in less than 10 minutes and shortly after returned to our tent, since there wasn't a single cafe lit up on a sunday evening after 8pm.

In the morning we woke up early and hungry. We walked through the town again really taking in the scenary this time, and noticing how appealing this area might have been for the cro-magnum man because of its cliffs and rock formations offering shelter from weather and wild animals. After eating we headed to la Grotte de Fonte-de Gaume famous for its paintings that date to the Magdalénien period. We have found the tools that they made to apply the paint--tube like things from which the artists would blow the paint onto the engravings. This was the only polychrome site that we visited on our trip (black and red paints). But since any vegetal based coloring would be lost to the ages, we must imagine that these paintings were probably much more colorful à l'epoch.

We hiked up a sizeable hill to the entrance and then were led through the narrow entrance of the cave. These caves were not inhabited because it would have been impossible to light or heat them because of the limited oxygen capacity. This means that the beings that drew these pictures and the other beings whe presumable view them did so in a space that was only frequented to that end, the artistic (perhaps religious) end. Sadly, the paintings on the doorway and in the entrance area were destroyed or badly damaged by kids in the 19th century, before the historic importance of this cave was well known. Still, the cave was incredible! Housing over 80 bisons, a number of Mamoths, and some well-endowed prehistoric ladies, depicted more or less like my friends Caroline sees them today. Something funny is that many of the animals are superimposed one onto the other. That is to say that the artist(s) used lines from one animal to form a different picture if the light hits the work in a different way. very cool, prehistory. Another thing that I found interesting was that most of these animals are depicted in pairs: a mother and her kid, two lovers, (more rarely) a fight between two animals. But always in pairs. On the other hand, the humans were always alone. And the humans were never a part of the animal scenes--no scenes of hunting or anything like that.

Its so amazing how little and how much we know us these people. I like to imagine that they painted everything, all the cliffs and rock faces native to their region. And that they used tons of colors to create their world.

After a couple days of caving, we headed south to visit some famous chateaux that date to the 11th and 12th century and that house modern museums of medieval warfare. Then we visited the old seat of Josephine Baker and her rainbow tribe, paying hommage to one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and remarking the extent to which our conception of art has changed throughout the last two millennia . not as much as all that, I imagine.