BERLIN DIARIES: Block Party

Dear Reader,

Yesterday evening I was caught by an attack of what is generally referred as a writer’s block. However dear Reader, you should know that you are lucky because two things unlocked me… But more about that later…

Yesterday we went to Alexanderplatz in Berlin, we were hungry as hell and trying to escape the sun which was definitely to warm… In order to find shade we went in the City Hall of Berlin… There, in a desperate move, Raya stole a free prospectus, and while she was attempting to escape someone complimented her on her pink hair. We finally ended eating in a Vietnamese restaurant.

Then we decided to head to the Tacheles.

What is the Tacheles?

The Tacheles is what remains of an old great shopping mall… which is now a huge and free squat for artists who live there, create there, and sell their pieces there. A community of artists.

Two euros for a pussy

While Raya and I were slowly discovering this strange, a bit disturbing, colorful, overwhelming, wonderful universe, we ended to enter to our first artist’s room. We were forced to leave him 2€ (1 per person) to visit it. As I recall he was the only one who asked for that… And he was not the most inspired artist we saw this day (ok let’s break it, I was not particularly touched by his works, and I don’t think that Raya was to…) It was a strange world of clitorises, pussies and dicks, everything mixed in all the imaginable combinations.

Unfinished business and the power of a smile

Moving along I entered another artist’s room only to be hypnotized by a painting that was waiting for me in the next artist’s room… A woman (Claudia Viehl) had painted a landscape, and had basically only colored the sky… Something caught me in there, I cannot really explain what, but still something strange happened. Meanwhile Raya entered the first room and charmed the artist living there with a smile… And as I was explaining to her that I was fascinated with these white landscapes and colored skies, she thought that all these pieces were unfinished.

The Tacheles is actually more than what I can describe to you only with words, you have to experience it. (Photos will be illustrating this article soon enough).

What I didn’t realize then, is that this peculiar universe, and maybe this strange painting that had caught me, just left me in a turmoil of ideas and also with a block. Now, I don’t like being blocked, I hate it to tell you the truth, there is no greater frustration than trying to write something, knowing what you wanna write, feeling all this energy inside you, and not being able to organize everything and just let it out. So I was pretty disturbed, frustrated, and angry when I tried to write this same article yesterday evening (not in our usual Starbucks with my dream-waiter), not being able to, and sometimes wishing I could break someone’s skull.

After being a jerk, I let myself convinced by Raya that I just should sleep on it. Anyway we went to see Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. A great movie, if I may I would just tell you that the Original Version is maybe the best way to enjoy it, and when you are French in Berlin it’s adding to the spirit. Oddly enough, this movie that blew our minds (twice in a day), unlocked the block… And while we were leaving the Potsdamer Platz (Berlin is a strange city, each time you leave a new subway station you seem to discover a new town within the town), we discovered remains of the Wall…

Jim On the Wall

Our day was concluded by a subway trip back to the hotel in which we were discussing the movie and the applauding in the theater, a perfect stranger sitting next to us just burped during our conversation, creating the biggest laugh ever, losing us in our own conversation, and leaving us trying to go on…

Text: Jim Dante