Brrrrrr Brrrrrr Brrrrrrrrrrr. It’s fucking cold! Can I be any more blunt? Not only did mother nature ignore my wishes for an early spring in Berlin but she also backhanded me and gave me the finger while she was at it. She started by teasing me with beautiful sunny weather on the day I arrived and then out of nowhere two days later the blizzard conditions began along with her ferocious cutting winds. I have to say however that I was fortunate that the weather was nice the day I got back because my connecting flight in Dusseldorf was delayed so that I arrived to Berlin a few hours late.
I had arranged to have Patrick pick me up at the airport to help me with all of my luggage. Not surprisingly he was no where to be found when I emerged from the baggage claim. So I had to do it all by myself and lemme tell ya It really was just such a joy! I had the enormous metal trunk, two huge backpacks and my carry on luggage. People looked on in both amazement and pity as I hauled it all down the terminal and out to the bus stop because ya’ll should know that even under these circumstances I’m still too cheap to take a taxi. I think that thrifty quality must come from my mother, who is very much the same way.
Me and all of my luggage pretty much occupied the entire back of the bus. Finallly we reached Zoologischer Bahnhof where I got out and schlepped everything another two agonizing blocks to the U-Bahn station. The people in the train were looking at me like who is this crazy gypsy, hobo, freak haha, it was priceless. A few stops later I got off at Nollendorfplatz station in Schoneberg, The epicenter of gay Berlin. By that time I was so exhausted that I had to take little breaks to catch my breath every fifty or so feet, after all I was carrying something like three times my own weight. when I reached Patrick’s apartment a few blocks away. I collapsed on the couch from exhaustion. The whole ordeal was overwhelming.
Patrick is the same guy I was living with last summer who I almost married in order to gain legal status here in Germany. Thank God, I avoided that blunder. Our relationship has always been crazed and tumultuous. But even though we argued and fought a lot last summer, Patrick wrote me an email almost every day that I was in the states. I think he was just clinging onto the fantasy of falling in love and getting married. Even though I had long since expressed to him my disinterest in a romantic relationship with him. It’s hard when you like someone as a friend but they refuse to accept anything other than a full on romantic relationship. Maybe it’s my fault for planting the seed of this fantasy in his head.
Patrick and I met last May. I was stumbling completely wasted out of a bar across the street from his apartment at eight in the morning. He lives on the ground floor and was sitting out on his balcony. I don’t even remember how we started talking but I ended up climbing up about eight feet onto his balcony drunk as a skunk and we sat and chatted and watched a film together. It was all very romeo and juliet! We shared very little in common other than the fact that we are both artists and both have a parent who converted to Mormonism. But that was enough I suppose, because we started hanging out a lot and attending art openings together.
I was still living in my Kreuzberg apartment at the time paying 250 euros a month. Patrick suggested that I move in with him rent free. A very tempting offer. Patrick like countless others in this city, lives in social housing, so his rent is paid for entirely by the state. Finally about two months later after I returned from Spain completely broke, against my better judgement, I did move in with him and thats when the problems began. At first we fought about little things like leaving the the toilet seat up or not washing my dishes immediately after I used them. I always felt like the one on thin ice so to speak, because he had the power to ask me to leave at any time, regardless of my financial situation which was pretty bleak at the time. I felt a lot of pressure about the marriage even though I knew within the first week that I didn’t want to go through with it.
After a while I began to resent him more and more. I need to be in control of my own destiny. I’m very uncomfortable when someone holds something as crucial as housing over my head and then tries to use it as leverage in an attempt to try and control me. So when I returned to Berlin a month ago things pretty much went back to the way they were when I left the first time. After a week I found him to be completely insufferable. I started drinking again a lot and we would get into these huge arguments. Finally one night I told him that I could never live with someone so incredibly OCD and that I could never love him the way he wanted me to. I went out for the night and in typical, cold German fashion he called me on my mobile phone and told me he wanted me out immediately.
I didn’t really take him seriously until I got back to the apartment and saw a note on the door threatening to call the police signed patrick and my mother’s name. haha. The idiot had actually called my mother, I don’t even know how he got the number. Apparently my mom got a call from this fool and I’m sure, anxious to get him off the phone she told him to call the police if he had a problem and not her. After all, what could she do? Im twenty seven years old and this imbecile is calling my mother in america. When I got inside the apartment the Police were already there. I was so fucking pissed I couldn’t even see straight. I wanted to kill him. I called my friend Fabio and he rushed over in a taxi and we moved everything to to his place.
It was all just so much fucking drama. I made sure to be very respectful and polite to the police despite my drunken state, I don’t need to spend anymore time behind bars. Actually the police were really cool and sympathetic to me. They could see what a fucking stupid irrational fool Patrick was, but all the same, it is his flat and so I left and that was that. I was actually quite relieved to be out of there. I stayed with Fabio for about a week before moving in with his friend Jan who had an extra room to rent in Kreuzberg. Jan is a very easy going straight guy and is charging me a very reasonable 200 euros a month for a very spacious and sunny room overlooking a coutryard. It’s been so great to be living back in east Berlin and away from the gay ghetto that is Schoneberg. Anyway I’m a lot happier over here, so upward and onward I guess...
A few weeks ago I stopped by the studio of Aldo, an artist friend of mine whom I used to work for part time as an assistant last summer. He has just leased his own gallery space at Zimmerstasse, 11 about a block away from Checkpoint Charlie in Mitte. We collaborated on a photo shoot that same week and afterwards he offered to give me my first solo exhibition later this summer at his new gallery. If everything works out I’ll do a slide show, a video installation and four or five paintings. Nothing is set in stone yet but its a great opportunity for me and who knows maybe I’ll even make a little money. His gallery space is called Bimal Projects and it’s grand opening is actually coming up this week.
I’ll exhibit using my newly adopted artists name, "Tennessee Claflin." I chose to change my first name from Brian to Tennessee in homage to a relative of mine who was a nineteenth century American women’s suffragist, free love advocate, and candidate for US congress from New York. Her achievements are often overshadowed by those of her equally amazing older sister and best friend Victoria Claflin Woodhull, who was the first woman to run for president of the United States in 1872. Both of these incredible women ran for public office in America before woman even had the right to vote. Not only were the Claflin sisters the first women in America to open their own Wall Street brokerage firm backed by Tennessee’s lover, Cornelious Vanderbilt, but they were also the first people in the United States to publish Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto in their radical newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin’s weekly. These two fierce bitches had NYC all up in arms back in the day. They were a truly amazing and inspiring pair not to mention super scandalous during their time.
A couple weeks ago I went out with my friends Travis and Mario to a new bar in Friedrichshain called Monster Ronson’s Karaoke Fag Bar. We met up there with Travis’ friends Christophe and Snax. Christophe is also an artist and had a part in Otto, Bruce’s zombie film. He played the zombie in the infamous gut fucking scene which prompted a few scattered walk outs at its Sundance premiere in January. I ended up getting really drunk as usual. It was a crazy, hot mess of a night ending with me carrying on with some amazing drag diva, the bitch almost had me pissing my pants she was so fucking hilarious. I found out later it was the legendary performance artist, Joey Arias. (I thought that bitch looked familiar) Travis introduced me to the owner of the bar who I found out coincidentally also grew up in SLC and he invited me to join his gay mormon karaoke church which holds "services" every sunday night. So who knows, I might end up there later on tonight to sing show tunes because ya’ll know Mary Poppins be the bomb! Or maybe I’ll wow them all with my signature rendition of Nasty Girl by Vanity 6. Oh yes children, it’s gonna be cunty.
Mauricio, a friend of my late boyfriend Stephen, contacted me a few weeks ago asking me to send him any photographs or artwork that I might have of Stephen’s. Mauricio is putting together a Stephen Sprouse book and I can’t think of a better person suited for the task. He did a tribute to Stephen right after he passed away back in 2004 in his MAO Magazine and it turned out fucking amazing. I’m really excited to see how this book turns out. It’s stressful for me though because I have a literal treasure trove of Stephen’s work that I had transfered onto my laptop from his old ibook, but many of them are photoshop files and I don’t have Photoshop Software on my laptop so I cant open them. So if any of you Berlin kids out there have Photoshop for mac gimme a holler! Now I wish I had gone into Manhattan to meet with Mauricio during my 12 hour layover at JFK last month cuz he has photoshop for mac and it would have been so easy to just transfer everything directly to Mauricio’s computer. I’m sure I’ll figure something out though, I just need to be quick about it cuz the book deadline is in mid April. So I have plenty to do in the next few weeks.
Actually I might be going to Ireland for a few days in the next couple weeks, I found a ticket on Ryan Air for like fifty euros roundtrip and I have a friend that I can stay with for free in Dublin. Bruce emailed me a couple weeks ago and invited me to meet up with him in Belfast. I guess he is pimping out, I mean screening his film there and there’s also some kind of Zombie themed party at the local queer taverrnn. It all sounds like a healthy dose of glitz, glamour and smut, but the euro to pound exchange rate deters me a little bit. Uggh, I really detest being a slave to money. Maybe I can find someone to screen me, I mean pimp me out! Speaking of money, I finally came across my first Bronco graffiti tag of the year right here in Kreuzberg, I’ve never seen Bronco do the same tag more than once so far and the one I saw the other day read - "No Money, No Problems" Bronco is my favourite graffiti artist here in Berlin although I can’t decide if I agree with him/her or if that is just something poor artists say in order to make themselves feel better about being broke, cuz I’m poor and lemme letcha know, I gots problems a plenty!
If Only It Were True. . .
Blue Light Bend
Kill. Lies. All.
Disko Spotlights
Little Red Car
Checkerboard Disko
Berlin’s Literary Set Adores Me ;)
Almost As Much As They Adore The Golden Arches!
Daphne, Glamourous Mother Of The Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence
----
Terrific Travis & Marvelous Mario!!!
----
SqueezeBox @ Monster Ronson’s
Lettuce???
Furchtsam Selbstbildnis
Crow Oracle
Apple, Lemon, Avocado
---
---
---
Daniel Libeskind’s Jüdisches Museum
Grafitti Is Power
This photo was featured on the cover of the New York Times a few weeks ago. It Speaks Volumes.
What Is Essential Is Invisible To The Eye
Looks Like Somebody Out There Needs A Drink!
Classy Berlin
Illuminated World
Taggers In Tears
The True Essence Of Schöneberg
Alphabet Street
---
---
---
Sprouse Book Pics
The Emptyness Of War
Street Art In Neukölln
Painting With Thai Script
Kleiststrasse February
Eight Of Clubs
Hangin Out @ Fabio’s
War Is Terror (who do you believe?)
Kreuzberg Church
Görlitzer Park
Watch Fitna To Learn All About The Shade
Nor Will I Live In It
Mitte Art Opening
Kreuzberg Sculpture
Big Sister Is Watching You!
And So Are The Aliens!
No comments:
Post a Comment