last night, standing on a friend’s balcony shortly after the midnight toast, having a quiet cigarette and thinking about nothing in particular, this poem suddenly came to mind and stayed there, on a loop, for some time. it seems an excellent thought to begin the year with, so here it is. happy new year, everyone. here’s to 2013!

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
  
may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
  
and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

- e.e. cummings

I’m having a bit of a moment and not writing about it isn’t helping, so maybe writing about it will. 

I am not a patient soul. Well, that’s not entirely true. OK, it’s 90% true. Whatever. The thing is, I can be very patient with others - to a fault, even - and there are situations in which my patience is infinite. But when it comes to me, my own actions and decisions… Not so much. I drive myself relentlessly - arguably this makes me good at what I do; also arguably, I am too hard on myself and don’t often stop to take note of successes. Either way, I believe that I am ultimately responsible for my choices and my happiness, and so when I feel a change is needed or an opportunity presents itself, I tend to evaluate and act quickly. 

Equally importantly (to me), I try not to let fear play a critical role in my decision making. While some fear is healthy, too much can be crippling, and I don’t want to pass on something amazing because I’m afraid of failing or getting hurt. I try not to be reckless, but I’m determined not to let my fear get the best of me. Most of the time this is relatively easy - I’ve been learning this path for a while now. 

And for the first time (it could be argued that I’m sometimes not so bright) I am beginning to see the relationship between my quickness to act and my quest to conquer my fear. Acting quickly is a little like opening the cupboard door to prove there’s no monster there. Your heart may be hammering in your chest, your palms cold and clammy, but once you’ve opened the door you can see what’s behind it, for better or worse.

I currently find myself having to wait. I am waiting for a few things, and they are all rather important to me. They are pieces that will mark the start of their respective bigger pictures, and I have no control over their timescales. I have put in motion all that I can, and while a positive outcome seems quite possible for all three, none are assured, and I can’t gather more intel about what’s going to happen until it starts happening - I have to wait to open the door to see what the monster looks like (or not). It’s a uniquely tricky situation for me. 

As a result of this stasis, I find myself in a holding pattern I don’t remember having been in before, circling round each decision again and again. Because nothing is moving, I review the same state of affairs over and over, and every time I confront the same fears that I did the first time I decided what I was going to do. I go through them, reason through them, deal with them, every time. And now I’ve got a new problem: this cycle is wearing me down. Lately, fear has been clawing at me when I’m not looking - waking me up in the middle of the night, peeping out from behind perfectly innocuous conversations, shambling around zombie-style, nibbling on my brain. 

I don’t often feel embattled or defensive - I try not to let myself get into those positions - but right now I’m feeling positively chained. And I know myself well - when I feel this way I have a tendency to poke at things with a stick until they move, and that’s then usually not for the best. 

So this is a new level for me to learn, a new kind of discipline. Instead of the relentlessness, or perhaps in complement to it, I must - really this time, *must* let go of the things I can’t steer or move. I must have faith that they will move, and that whatever their direction I will be the equal of it. I have done what I can, and when I can do more I will. Until then, I must find a way not to drive myself - literally - to distraction. There is no point making the monster bigger when the monster may not even exist. 

…

Yeah, that helped. 

I’ve finally decided to try experimenting with this whole public/private blog thing. I’m not yet sure it’s going to work - I rather suspect most of my posts would be comfortable in either one, so don’t be surprised if they meld back together at some point in the not-distant future. But in the meantime, check out http://louisaheinrich.com.

That is all.

Lately, I’ve developed a (bad?) habit of going back and re-reading my blog posts from the dim and misty, which often leads me into a ridiculous downward spiral about how hey, I used to be able to write and stuff. But my fingers aren’t broken, so surely I still can. Let’s give it a go, shall we?

So I was sitting around last Friday night, happily at home, listening to the Psychedelic Furs and Elvis Costello and reflecting on my action-packed past couple of months. As usual, I’ve got a fairly good-sized set of memories of great days and nights, and also as usual, I’m already having difficulty placing them in time.

A couple of months ago, at Ignite Berlin, I did a talk about the inadvertent time machine that is my brain (sorry, the video cuts off midway through. For a description of the rest, see this very kind blog post). Since then, I’ve had several conversations about this - more people than I would have thought suffer from some level of my disorder or whatever you want to call it, and one in particular seems to experience time (or fail to) in almost exactly the same way I do(n’t). The thing is, I’m starting to see that there’s a good side to this as well as the side that leads to hilarious social fuck-ups and general confusion. 

The good news is that this slippery grasp on time makes it in many ways easier for me to inhabit my life. Because of my ongoing problem with geographical commitment, at any given point many of the people I’d most like to see are hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Technology helps with this, sure - there’s Skype and Facebook and SMS and good old-fashioned voice calling - but there’s really no substitute for being in a room with someone. And the fact that the last time I saw you might have been yesterday or two years ago, as far as my weird time sense is concerned, makes that far easier to manage. I tend to run at a fairly furious pace (albeit with much-needed periods of lying very very still in between), and patience has never been one of my virtues. So the slipperiness of time keeps me, sometimes, from running myself too far into the ground trying to keep up with the people I care about. Then again, it also sometimes has the opposite effect. Sometimes I don’t realise that I haven’t dropped someone a line in far too long, because I’ve been thinking about them a lot and it feels like we just saw each other last week - when in fact I haven’t so much as heard their voice in years, let alone met their three-year-old. 

Where things get really tricky is when I meet new people I like. Those I’ve known for years know how I work, I know how they work, and they’ll understand where I’m coming from even if my communication patterns are a little eccentric. But new people? They don’t know, and it’s not easy to warn them. When I discover any new thing I’m interested in, my brain instantly starts making connections between it and everything else I’m interested in, and people I know, and etc. etc. and it all gets a little compulsive. A few years ago, I developed a moderately-sized obsession with light pollution that made several of my friends consider killing - or at least gagging - me. (Sorry, guys.)

And it’s not all that different with people. Because my memory is strange and unpredictable, I create an organic web of connections for every new person that I’m intrigued by - to interests, topics, other people, places, buildings, beverages, whatever - that provide me with some sort of anchor. It’s not so much whether I’ll remember your name (chances are I won’t), I’m more interested in having a picture of whatever it was that we connected on. Depending on the extent of the connection, this could become a rather large and somewhat tangled web, and the same compulsive tendencies apply. How do I explain this to people? Unsuccessfully, usually. Things do eventually settle into a rhythm; everything does. But that takes time, and because I’m wildly impatient, I want the shape to emerge, like, *now*. 

I’ve been thinking I need to write a lot more about this time/memory/interpersonal connections thing. This has been a very rambling beginning, or more accurately a picking up in the middle.. A friend suggested as much the other night - well actually what she said is, “YOU MUST WRITE A BOOK ABOUT THIS.” I’m not sure about that - the idea of writing for bound, printed publication still kind of paralyses me - but I grant that it merits more exploration. So I’m going to give it a shot.

That is all. For now.

anyone who’s been to berlin, or even read about it, knows that the art scene here is unique. there are plenty of reasons for this, which i might get into another time, but one of the ways that’s most visible to visitors or non-art-fags (i say this with the utmost of affection, and in full acceptance that i am in fact an art fag) is through the vernissage. vernissages elsewhere tend to be either (a) stupefyingly boring or (b) rammed full of people who are there largely to show one another that they can afford to buy the art and have the good taste to know whether or not they should. in other words, not very much fun at all. here, things are a little different. broadly speaking, berlin vernissages fall into one of five categories:

the local hero (a beloved local artist who’s become successful, showing in a relatively high-end space) - so crowded you can’t see the work, enormous queues for insufficient booze, everyone crammed into the hof/sidewalk chainsmoking and shouting at each other. equal parts networking and party… but somehow still good. always better if you know the artist, but the best part of these is the after-party, to which a much smaller
group of already-drunk people repair to talk bollocks and try to take each other home. these are almost always great parties, especially if certain scene miscreants/enfants terribles are around (in which case they commonly continue into after-after parties and so forth). i have come up with some of my favourite ridiculous installation ideas at these. there are still people in berlin who think i made something involving cocktail glasses and breast milk. it’s john’s fault.

the blah blah (artist from elsewhere, reasonably well known gallery, maybe even a few collectors) - boring, except for the work. sometimes. often crowded but when they are, at least there’s people there who actually care about the work as well as your usual networkers. the after parties (when they happen) are lame.

the hipster mecca (anything at the berlinische gallerie or c/o) - does what it says on the tin. best place to discover the latest trends in hipsterism. worst place ever to be if you care about the art. generally makes me wish i’d brought c4.

the wallflower (unknown artist but good work) - these feel either like funerals (if the artist isn’t local) or parties (if s/he is). also great after-parties in the latter case.

the bizarroworld (weird, often awful art in weird, often awful but also often wonderful, spaces) - full of hippies and/or hipsters who apparently don’t realise how shit the “work” is. everybody’s wasted. usually someone breaks something (often something large) by midnight. if the space is big enough there tends to be bad dancing to worse music. the only reason to go to these is the crumbling architecture, which can be stunning. or if you’re into fucking people who wear patchouli. [shudder]

so there you have it. my not in the least objective but hopefully still somewhat helpful guide to berlin art openings. you are welcome.