One day in the spring of 2012 I was walking through the underpass where Boelckestrasse runs under the train tracks which in turn run parallel to the 100 heading west between the Tempelhof runways and the Teltow channel. A year later I burned the bridges and headed for Spain, Ireland, Madagascar and Thailand.
This image and the feelings I had that April day 12 years ago kept coming back to me as where a plethora of others. Memories in any form and shape. Sounds, music, pictures, sights, words, prose, poetry, people, and feelings. And blank pages waiting to be filled with those memories as well as hopes, notions and wishes for those moments that were yet to be lived.
When I tried for my one and only novel called “Arthur”, i was trying to come to terms with some of the things that happened and with the problems I had coping with some of it. That was about 25 years ago and people are still waiting for it to be published even though I never made an effort to do so.
Today I am a photographer or at least most people would think that is what I am. My mail signature says I am also a musician and writer. And also what my friend Toni Lovejoy christianed me, for which I can’t thank her enough. A natural poet.
As such I feel the urge to share those feelings and memories. Now more than ever. Anything between the joy of a seemingly endless summer and the fears of the inner darkness. I will treat any photograph, writing or pieces of music as a potential addition to this collection, which will eventually add up to one single thing. The ongoing tale of my life. Of guilt and redemption. Love and pain. Hope and fear. Laughter and tears. And the hope what I have chosen to believe is true, what I need to believe. That I am us and us is me. That this whole senselessness is not a bad thing after all.
So after a discussion I had with my friends Jim Bracher and Igor Doncov about meaning in photographs, I thought this is as good a time as any to take this thing from being an idea of a thought to being something that is in the slow, tormenting process of making it to the surface, wherever that is.
Ten days ago then I went to my hometown and walked the streets of my old neighborhood on a sunny Sunday morning. It was not what I expected. The feeling wasn’t there. The light was wrong. I didn’t touch a single house. I remembered a couple of names. I was surprised to find a motorcycle shop on Ross to be still there. What that means is that I didn’t previsualize anything. Not the photographs, but also not what I am exactly going to do with all the words, images and music once I have gathered and sorted them.
But it feels good that I don’t know. It feels right. It feels that I am in the dark just like I was when I started this life in that very town I was looking for the stories at ten days ago. It will come to me, I am sure. I can’t see the photographs yet, but I know they are out there. And just as the music and the words, I will find them and they will find me.
I will keep you posted about the development and whatever I will find, I will share here. In a way this will be the one thing I’ll be working on from now on. And actually I think everbody is…
Basically Good 