Prediction: Berlin

In February 2014, three or four weeks after I started this blog, I wrote about Berlin as an important art center. Among others, I wrote about the German painter/musician, Albert Oehlen, whose paintings and drawings were showing at Galerie Max Hetzler that Spring. I compared his process to that of Andrew Holmquist, who was painting in Chicago at that time.

Albert Oehlen at Max Hetzler, 2011

Stargazer, 2011, Andrew Holmquist

Russell, Byron, and I visited Berlin in May, 2011. Just before that, I read that Berlin was currently considered one of the world’s most influential centers of Contemporary Art. A friend said I should come back and tell her what I found there in the center of art. When I got home, I told her, “I found Minnesota.”

The award winning  Minnesota photographer, Alec Soth’s exhibition Broken Moments, was just about to open at Galerie Friedrich Loock, near the Hamburger Bahnhoff, a former railway station now functioning as a museum of contemporary art, and part of the Berlin National Gallery.  http://alecsoth.com/photography/

alec soth’s whitney biennial 2004 piece

My unread copy of Fritjof Capra’s book, The Tao of Physics, is currently lying on the kitchen floor in the pile of books headed to Half-Price Books. Years ago when I first bought it I mentioned to my friend, Chris, that I was planning to read the book because I didn’t know what that concept might mean. Chris told me, “It’s like this. I didn’t marry my husband because I met him. I met him because he was the man I was going to marry.”

Apparently, that was good enough for me. It’s about the maximum amount of information I want to keep in my mental filing cabinet from any individual piece of reading anyway. I think of that concept, the tao of physics, often, and many times I have observed the world working in exactly that way.

Now that I hear Andrew Holmquist is moving to Berlin, and because of how I think the world often works, I want to lay it out here first. Soon, if I go to Berlin, I will not only find Minnesota, but Northfield. Galerie Max Hetzler? http://andrewholmquist.com/home.html

 

Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus: Two Boys Kissing

After 125 weeks of consistently posting, I’ve missed a few weeks. When Byron told me something I already knew, that a certain portion of my online readership is composed of computer programs surfing the void, seeking something I don’t understand, a leak started in my energy-for-blogging-balloon, and I fizzled. I’m never sure if it’s because I feel invaded or undervalued. It’s like Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail. When she sends her heart out into the, “Dear Void,” she is hoping to find something that is not empty. Even though I mostly started blogging for me, to find out what I think and broaden what I know, I’ve been really happy to find readers, and to welcome generous comments.

And now I am back. Yesterday Jim and I attended the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus performing their commissioned work, Two Boys Kissing, composed by Joshua Shank, with lyrics by David Levithan, based on his book by the same name.

As I mentioned when I wrote about the last concert we attended a couple of months ago, Night at Northrup, there is a huge room in my heart where I keep what it felt like to live in that time when we were all beginning to read and learn about that new cancer that appeared to be killing gay men, but for which we were (of course) all eligible. I am amazed when someone can recreate the exact combination of fear and grief and our human vulnerability that I remember as that time. I have already mentioned Alice Elliott Dark’s moving and perfectly written short story, In the Gloaming. And yesterday, when the TCGMC sang Plain Song for Kenny, they precisely recreated that feeling and made it beautiful. I used all my Kleenexes at once. That song, performed by another chorus is available for $1.00 at the link below. A short preview is available also at the same link:

http://www.tresonamultimedia.com/product/Portland-Gay-Mens-Chorus-Live-from-Eillie-Caulkins-Opera-House!-Coffee-Concert-4/94101

That original crisis of AIDS changed our cultural attitude toward gay people, and that is the theme of Levithan’s book, as well as the musical piece. I always love to be reminded of our human commonality. My favorite part of the work is the ending:  Make More Than Dust.